A/N 1: So, here we are again. I love toying with end-game possibilities when it comes to Sam and Dean, and for some reason my mind is stuck on their interaction with God, which will hopefully be something we see once the show achieves the run-down to its natural end. Yeah, call me one-track-minded, but I do so love the possible conversations that can arise in such a confrontation. I think that the only way for the show to really hit the 'we've done it all' mark is to reveal God at some point, what with Castiel gone haywire and gaga with soul-fused powers and all. So, here's my sorta second take on the whole thing.

Conversations with God

Chapter 1: Dean

First there was fire.

It surrounded him in blazing orange, burned a devastating swathe across his sight. It crept around the edges of vision and left his eyeballs bleeding moisture that evaporated almost instantly. For a moment he thought it was over, the crisping, sizzling sensation scorching retinas, burning veins, searing pupils, blowing blood from his tear ducts. He thought he was screaming, and maybe he was. But who cares, right? One more… brilliant… blazing… fucked up… failed Hail Mary pass blown to shit and then some. Fire was a destroyer for them (for him), the great purifier and absolver of life. It took with one hand, and then it took with the other, right before revealing that it had more hands than a Hindu god on a killing spree, and it was just getting started. All comers, none spared.

Fire was the end of every Winchester.

It took his mom, left her devastated in defiance of gravity, burning on a ceiling and boiling blood, skin, flesh and fluid. It stole breath and it ate into life. It gave comfort in opposition to peace, devastated nerves right after shocking the very core of existence in ruinous conflagration. It gave no mercy, observed no sympathy, obeyed no clemency. It was impartial, even when it was directed by the hands of man, monster, demon or angel. I'm sorry. So sorry that I could not live without him, and damned you both for it.

It took his dad, leaving false comfort in peace, bestowing a burning end to stall unnatural possession, to purify a mortal coil bereft of soul. It ate through bandages and hungered after necrotic flesh. It awarded the final dissolution to avert unholy return, to ward off the depravities of the very things that life was spent on hunting down and obliterating. Never become what you hunt. Death before dishonour.

It took his little brother. Not in death, no, not as a rite of passage to sever the anchor that bound soul to flesh and released obligation to mortality. Fire was impartial, was shorn in birth as in death from subjective goals. Served only objective, total immersion. Fled from the hand that birthed it and tore through anything dry, brittle, desiccated and doused in oil, gasoline or other black and tarred fluids of empowerment. But there were… escalations. Increments. Fire that burned bright orange, then golden yellow, then profane blue, the colour of all-consuming sorceries unbound by nature taking its course and having its way. The colour of magic as it died. But there was also hellfire, the tool of darkness and perversion, the bane of the fallen, the weapon of the mighty adversary and its callow, depraved minions. Fire that burned even the black smoke of the enemy's incorporeal, near-untouchable essence. Fire that burned to torment even the hand of the one who had always used it to warp souls and remake them into a fallen parody of humanity. Hellfire had scoured his little brother's being to the very core, ruptured sanity and soul, skinned sensibility and shrived purpose, leaving pain to toy with time and start all over again when even harrowed flesh, bone, guts and organs reconstituted themselves in the intangible, immutable and irrevocable confines of the Cage. A fat face full of Hell, and always the fire, assailing his skin, his face, his throat as he screamed himself raw.

Hellfire took him as well. It was less a torture than his little brother's, and far less a torment than what his littlest brother – oh God, Adam, I'm so sorry, I chose Sam, I chose the one I knew and loved bestwas enduring still. Locked, dissolute and destroyed, an eradication that bordered on atomization, if only it were allowed, if only it were a recourse of mercy endowed even when the perpetrators of the greatest rage and hatred saw fit to finally give in and release. But hellfire was hellfire, and when you knew one aspect of it, you knew, even for a second, how truly, terribly, blatantly agonizing it was in every possible way. One taste was a foretaste, and one lick was enough to let you know just how truly fucked you were for ever thinking that you knew what you signed up for, what you sacrificed in the name of love, of salvation for all but yourself. Adam isn't home right now. But he was, and he was burning still.

But there were worse things than hellfire. Worse fires that burned, and not in pits of hell, or holes in Purgatory, or souls of warped contention and best intentions. This was a fire that was limned on the outside by horrible, spewing tongues of red, captured in the anguish of eternity, encircled by eldritch black gouts yet dancing around a core of vicious, unseen waves of heat. It was enough to blast the flesh from bones across mile-wide distance, to bubble stone to slag and melt bone into glass. It annihilated man, it disbanded the dark aspect that bound demons into their forms, it turned angelic wings into cinders and tortured archangels into whimsical slivers of mewling apathy before humiliating them with true death.

It ran in thin rivulets around Dean Winchester, spider webs of fine lines so thin that the molecules in the air screamed and hummed like miniature lightning discharges, sounding over even the devouring maw of moisture evaporating into nothing more than breath-robbing gas. And Dean bowed his head, and thought it fitting that his death was nary a whisper, mostly a sizzle and definitely a bang of organic matter giving up a ghost that would not be free of this all-destroying appetite. He tucked his head under his arm, screamed open-mouthed and silent as life and humanity clamoured one final time for defiance before submission, for foolhardy stubbornness enough to make even the bull-headed John Winchester squirm uncomfortably in whatever grave or resting place he held. For an angel, once a brother, now a foe, whose betrayal took form as fire fuelled by every monstrous soul once trapped in Purgatory, brought into existence as a planet-eating, gold-encrusted miasma of liquid-flowing destruction. And Sam was there, crouched somewhere behind Dean, hunkering down behind the heavy sliding door that separated this rust-bucket of a warehouse chamber from the next, no doubt gripping tight to make sure his floppy-haired head didn't separate from his gigantor body and zoom into that Cage dimension where it still went sometimes, when stress got the better of him and Dean was in mortal danger. Damn nuisance, Hell-memories, and Sam's were enough to make you piss yourself on a regular basis. Hope this fire kills us both quick little brother. Hope it gives you peace, Dean thought belatedly, choking back a sob that would have stuttered and gasped into oblivion anyway.

And then there was…

Silence.

And in the silence, Dean Winchester suddenly quieted himself, hearing his own cracked voice shudder to a stuttering halt, his screams of rebellion and unwavering resolution – just one more gasp, just one more fleeting dying down. He dared to raise his head, bring it out from where its last resting place would have been, and opened up eyes that burned almost as mercilessly in their drying-out sockets. Expecting death, expecting some weird, in-between moment of cruel recollection and life-flashes-before-my-eyes before that horrific terror of Purgatorial bane-blast nullified him. And what he saw…

What he saw made him want to weep.

The fire, that had no colour and only promised damnation beyond even hell, was flickering and fanning out all around him, running a circle around his embattled position on the decimated concrete slab of the no-name warehouse interior, still trapped between the four walls of this unremarkable and forgettable and empty storage place, somewhere in Pack-You-Away-After-Twelve, Arizona, population 'Consider Yourselves Goddamn Lucky to be Alive'. The fire made no sound, was an absence of it, assaulting battered senses like a drink of dirty water after five days of nothing. In the absence of aural stimulation, Dean wondered whether his eardrums had melted out, but he felt no stabbing pain in his ears. Your nerves are shot, you can't feel shit. Nope, not that either, because his heart hammered in his chest so hard it felt like it wanted to punch a hole through his ribcage, and his breathing was suddenly so loud and laboured that he actually felt mortified. But the fire that had no colour except the burn of psychedelic fractals before total blindness erupted and became forever was suddenly white, and silent and pure as driven snow. It didn't hurt him to look at it, and he realized that even the closest fluttering plume of it, not even a foot away from his ass, gave off no heat. He squinted, eyes still beleaguered, still sore from impending doom. He looked up, at where Castiel stood, and was still standing. And Dean gasped, a hoarse sound throttled out of his throat. Castiel, eyes etched in gold and pure-blind fury, the misguided rage of a newly minted god, was frozen in his rictus grimace of self-righteous smiting even as the fire all around danced merrily free of whatever had frozen him.

"What…" Dean began, finding his voice, even though it could hardly be called vocal, let alone communicative.

"Of all the damnable cries for attention," a voice brought Dean to a reality far removed from whatever one he had thought he occupied prior to his demise. On creaking legs and almost unwilling arms he managed to swing his body about, still-harried gaze seeking the owner of the voice. He found him just a few steps behind himself, standing right in the middle of the fire, untouched by it, not even the simple and almost nondescript clothing so much as moving in a fiery breeze. The… man… looked like a GQ poster boy, all angular face, full mouth, perfectly proportioned nose, elegant high brows and smouldering blue eyes. And a hairline like that would be the envy of every mid-life-crisis guy, even ones without the damnation of male-pattern baldness encroaching. A tall, slender and elegant body, with arms held to the sides, hands clasped behind the back. No shoes, only classy grey pants and a button-down shirt with the long sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Dean half expected camera flashes and someone yelling 'pout, now!' any second. The man took a single step closer, the eyes not leaving the enraged god-Castiel, still frozen in time.

"What the hell?" Dean grated. He tried to swallow, nearly choked on Death Valley and dignified what was left of his ego with a not-so-gallant clearing of the throat. Only then did the guy look at him, and Dean honestly wished to never be the brunt of so much… intensity. Castiel's deadpan god-visage, bereft of all compassion, was enough, and even Sam-as-Lucifer never instilled such awe – or terror – in Dean. And then pieces began clicking together, demanding attention with all the ferocity of three decades-plus of hunting, paranoia and big brother's prerogative, and the revelation left him reeling. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me," he said, voice husky, mouth thinning with distaste.

"Better late than never," God stated, voice sounded magnificently convivial. It pissed Dean off like very few things ever could. He frowned for a short moment. Hadn't the guy's hair been blonde a moment ago?

"Your time not being our time, right?" Dean challenged, almost wishing for Castiel's fire to run its course and burn him to a deeply impersonal collection of undetectable atoms. Blue eyes turned sea-green and danced with the eldritch reflections of the white fire around them.

"If I gave you a bird's eye view of all of this," God said, and raised His right arm to spread it to one side, encompassing the scene around them, "you would probably have ended up like My arrant little soldier-turned-pretender over there." Dean quickly cast a glance in Castiel's direction. Still frozen like a life-sized meat popsicle. "Although grace does allow for better containment than, say, a human soul."

"Why the… why pitch in now? Really? Now? After all this?" A little bit of defiance returned to his fatigued body, and Dean tottered upright, pushing himself to his feet with one arm and ignoring the undignified seesaw of the other arm desperately seeking to balance his efforts. He felt suddenly hot, hotter than before, and sweat burned an itch into his dry skin, sending a barrage of pins and needles dancing across his body.

"No matter what answer I give you right now, Dean, you will not be satisfied," God said, and His unblinking gaze conveyed only sympathy. Again, Dean rallied stubbornly, refusing to fall for puppies even when they were employed by the Almighty. "I'll let you have a moment to give in to blinding rage before I give you a little feedback on all of this."

"You selfish… selfish… holy father-figure BASTARD!" Dean's ungainly and not-so-very extreme epithet ended in a cry of pure frustration, and he knew that if he had any strength left he would have wind-milled and flailed about with enough pent-up energy to float a foot off the air, so all-inclusive was his annoyance at that point. "You could have prevented all of this!"

"Wanna know why I let this happen?" God asked in a kindly voice. Still the fire raged in beautiful, incandescent white and harmless glory, and still Castiel was frozen in what was fast becoming quite a ridiculous pose of useless intent. God did not wait for Dean to find a word to suitably convey his response, instead continuing. "Free will."

"Come again?" Dean hacked out, eyes narrowing as he tried to compute. God shrugged slightly, yet in no way unsympathetically. Was this it? Free will as the excuse, again? Castiel the wunderkind angel-turned-angry-god had used that one too. So had Sam, but for different reasons. Good ones. Salient and worthy ones.

Sam.

Mother of G – Dean looked at God, eyes suddenly swimming in moisture, and he tried to convince himself that Sam was similarly frozen, just like Cas was. He swallowed almost convulsively, knowing it was a fool's hope. Why would Sam experience any mercy now, just because the Guy they'd been hoping on since Lucifer rose suddenly chose to put in an appearance? But hey, here he was, having a nice chat with God. Who suddenly pronounced:

"Choice."

"Oh yeah, and look what that got us!" Dean snarled, living in a moment of anger before steeling himself for when he would have to beg for Sam's safety. He threw an arm out in Castiel's direction. "Family that doesn't end with blood and we get screwed over yet again, and for free effing will!"

"Castiel will be dealt with shortly," God said, and walked closer, hair unnaturally still, and turning the colour of a haystack. Dean wondered what the price would be for smacking God in the face, or at the very least throwing himself bodily at Him. "Free will is a human gift."

"Yeah, we're such a swell bunch when we all get to do what we want," Dean snarked, his anger simmering. "It didn't stop Your angels from dicking around with this planet!" His lips quivered with pent-up emotion, and his mind vacillated between screaming fury and the desire to just give in and sob his embattled heart out at the travesty of his life. It was kinda of hard not to listen as God spoke, the words easy, the voice melodious and non-invasive, no elements of the crooning corruption of Lucifer, the whimsical mood-swings of the Mother, or the slightly unhinged and very much power-mad lilt of Castiel, even remotely apparent in His voice. God sounded like some guy you would meet on the street and ask for directions.

"Demons don't have it anymore. They are… illusions of it. Free will without restraint, even when they scheme and plot and plan. My angels? Never granted such options until now, simply because the rule book kinda got thrown out the nearest window. I admit I was curious to see how it would all go, but the grace that powers them is… not really made for such things."

"Tell that to your idiot eldest kids!" Dean snapped irately. He just couldn't help himself, so he looked anywhere but into God's face, settling rather for casting about, in search of a rock to kick away, or a something to occupy his somersaulting thoughts. Anything to keep the ire going, because he didn't just want to give in now, now that the potential for setting things right completely was having a chat with him.

"Two of them are being punished as we speak, and it was of their own doing," God said matter-of-factly. Dean swallowed, knowing the two particular archangels in question. "Gabriel, the little dickens – bless his mischievous little heart – will be spending a lot of time doing exactly the opposite of trickery, and Raphael…" God's face turned slightly pensive, "Raphael will learn soon enough that there's a difference between his will and My own, and what happens to false pretences."

"Hate to break it to You, but 'little Gabe' got toasted by Lucy, and Raphael got short-changed by short bus over there," Dean said, feeling incredibly weary now, even as he hiked a thumb in Castiel's general direction. He looked at God, and was immediately shocked, unnerved and reminded of whom he was talking to by the unremitting hazel-green – does this guy's eyes stand still on one colour for more than one second? Seriously? – gaze that watched him. He was sure there was a hint of quiet, coaxing sympathy there, and couldn't find it in himself to muster up belligerence. No, that would have required that God condescend to him, and try as he might, Dean couldn't find any trace of holier-than-thou in that stare. "Right, of course, how could I be so stupid?" God gave a small smile, one that touched the corners of the eyes, but not the eyes themselves.

"No deed unwatched, no evil unpunished, no good unrewarded. No escape from responsibility."

"Yeah right," Dean snorted.

"All things in their time," God chided gently. He walked past Dean and moved to stand in direct sight of Castiel, albeit separated by a wall of white fire and maybe fifteen feet or so. "Free will was why I separated you from the angels, Dean. Free will was why I let each and every one of my human children do as they please, even when the consequences for bad decisions were crystal clear, even when some of you willingly fell in spite of nearly unending warnings, as if to spite Me." God breathed out a slow sigh. "This freedom is why you suffer, why you fall and get up again. Why you learn from your mistakes, even when the guilt makes you lose your minds. Lets you rise higher than you were before, lets you become more than you could ever be, had not suffering and pain tempered your efforts. Can you imagine what life would have been like, if everything was handed to you on a platter? Every decision made already, every choice set in stone? Even I shudder at the sheer boredom of it."

"No offense, but You didn't have to live it," Dean stated, taking a calming breath and trying to make sense of all of this. It was a testament to some form of shock that the reality of talking to God, face to face, had not yet turned him into a weepy pile of jello. Or that his apparent flippant attitude did not see him get a smiting of truly Godly proportions. Go figure. All the anger in the world, and finally he meets his Maker, and he doesn't even feel the courage-blunting terror, or the soul-eating ferocity of a lifetime of being c-blocked by the very order of things that He had instituted and allowed to happen. As if that victory of getting some answers and demanding some resolutions, however fleeting it would have been, was robbed of clout even before it could live and draw breath.

"Didn't I?" God winked at him – winked! "Oh, I'm not just talking about My Son. No, remember what Joshua told you in that… disgusting and pathetic rendition of Heaven?" God asked, twirling one hand in the air, eyes raised skyward, mouth twisting ever so slightly on announcing what He actually thought of Zachariah's imagination. Dean swallowed, appalled at having one of his burning questions answered so casually, and simultaneously appeased and heartbroken at the outcome of that episode in their lives. He also remembered, clear as day, what the angel Joshua had said.

"You were on earth," he whispered, and found his eyes suddenly capable of moisture again. A bit too much, so he chalked it up as a bit of weirdo white fire managing to… irritate the dryness further. Funny how there had only ever been just one angel that had never lied to them, in any way. "He also said You were done, didn't want to get involved."

"In the actual apocalypse? No, I didn't, and I didn't. I placed My faith on the right horses, as it were. Bided My time until there really was no other alternative left than getting involved in this way. Thought it best to explain a few things while I'm about."

"So you were…" Dean stated, leaving the question hanging.

"Living multiple incarnations and lives, experiencing life through the very existence of the human children I love so much," God completed the statement, and Dean was shocked beyond belief to see His eyes glistening as well. "Not through them as vessels. As separate, unknowing and complete, free-thinking individuals, subject to the same pitfalls and trials, shortfalls and failures, triumphs and successes, as any one of you. No powers, no last-minute Hail Mary's. Born, in pain, into life, learning, growing, excelling, suffering, despairing, persevering, crying, mourning, laughing, triumphing, dying… the whole kit-and-caboodle, no holds barred."

"Sinning?" Dean asked, channelling a bit of Sam's incisive lawyerly instinct. He was rewarded with a smile.

"Even sinning."

"I thought God couldn't sin."

"I can't. But people can. People do, and when I said I went for the whole experience, I meant it. But even as it was me, it wasn't me." Seeing Dean's frown, and reading far beyond merely the facial expression, God's smile became one of immense longsuffering and tempered mercy. "It's hard to explain without going very deeply into all sorts of quantum mechanics and chaos structures. In the end there's just no mathematical way to even describe the end result. Even words will fail in the explanation, eventually. But I had to do it."

"Why?" Dean asked, perplexed. God gave a slight sigh, and a wistful smile crossed His face.

"So that I can stand here, right now, and tell you that I understand what my human children go through, each and every single day."

Dean closed his eyes. Really, really wished that life's revelations didn't knock the wind from him every single time. Wished he had Sam's giant brain to somehow prepare himself for when those knocks came, so that he could put two and two and fifty million and seventy-nine point three-oh together to come up with some super-human logic to just give him peace of mind. But no, this was God, so Dean supposed he was in for a few. He opened his eyes again, ignored that single tear running down his cheek that always betrayed just how he felt, even when every single defence in his mind tried to coerce his body to submit to a junta of 'never show weakness', just like his dad had taught him.

"I wish I never had to ask of you, what I did," God said.

"Ask me?" Dean replied, puzzled, voice hoarse and full of tears.

"I wish it never boiled down to you, or your brothers. That you could have been spared this Armageddon. Spared my angelic children's cries of frustration and loneliness, and their efforts to end the world when they could no longer justify or understand my absence from Heaven. I wish I could have spared you all several lifetimes of absolute Hell, in every sense of the word." God took a step towards Dean, who swallowed, raised his trembling chin and tried his best not to coil his body for fight-or-flight. Hoped to God that God was not in the mood to hug, because that would seriously just be the weirdest thing ever. Because Dean might just not be able to deny such a thing, and that idea scared him, no matter that it was God. Fortunately, God seemed to read feelings, emotions, thoughts, misgivings, apprehension and shortcomings as easily as most people simply breathed, and Dean was spared the terrible ignominy of such a decision. He simply stepped past Dean, drawing level, shoulder to shoulder, Dean facing forward to Castiel while God's back was turned to the angel.

"Can You take it back?" Dean asked finally, when it seemed God expected at least some form of response. It was a stupid question, and Dean thought he knew the answer already. Can You take it all back?

"I can. But I won't."

"Why not?"

"Simple enough reasons," God sighed, and rolled His head on His neck as if to straighten out some stress-induced kink. "On a linear line of thought: because you would never have had that humbling and beautiful relationship with your brother that you did. Never become the man your father first made you, despite the ill will you still harbour towards his memory. Never achieved such a state of purity in your sacrifices."

"Never grew up a hunter? Never had to watch my mom die and my dad lose it year by year? Never see Sam suffer and die, again and again?" Dean threw back, because it was now or never, and he had to know. God, however, seemed unwilling to rise to the bait in some lame defence. He continued.

"Because the normal life that you both never truly had would have driven you apart if it had ever been yours in the first place. Because the trials that you suffered, both of you, and the efforts that you made, simply to be there for each other, in every possible way that siblings can be, and beyond, would never have yielded the power to defeat everything that pushed you to the ground and tried to grind you down otherwise. Dean, don't you see?" God looked at Dean, turning his head to stare into the golden-green orbs of the elder Winchester standing next to him. "You and Sam have had the world, in its simplest and most exceptional terms, simply because you could not but exist so inextricably locked into each other's souls! A lifetime of mutual understanding and shared love that no one in this universe has ever had, nor ever will. A life spent to such depths of lifelong, driven, fantastical love, adoration and forgiveness that it brings anything and everything to its knees. Had Michael and Lucifer but learnt from you both, instead of whining and professing loyalty with no sympathy to temper it, the Apocalypse might have been averted for entirely different reasons, so great is your example." God smiled, the line of His mouth widening before parting to reveal sparkling, even perfect teeth. Which separated to release a deep chuckle. "I am really, really happy that it was you and Sam that did this. For the world, and for Me."

"I don't understand," Dean managed, still not so stable in the voice department.

"Someday, maybe, you will. I'm not going to say more on this. Just… trust Me when I say that what you and Sam share is something that will outlast even Death. Real and figurative. It was a completely random connection, in the grand scheme of planning, placed across billions upon billions of souls, across uncounted realities in a multi-verse of existences, and it somehow brought everything bearing down to this point." God again spread His hands, stepping outside of Dean's immediate vicinity. The hunter swivelled on his feet, following God's presence with his eyes. "And positively decided the fate of every single universe there is. That, Dean, is you and your brother's legacy."

"Wow," was all Dean managed. He didn't know what to feel, or to think. It was humbling, and breath-taking and just so bloody awe-inspiring that he wondered if feeling proud was even remotely justified. He never saw it this way, and he wondered if he would ever muster up enough peace in his life to let it stay at that and simply be grateful. And then he swallowed. He had another question to ask, and he swallowed before he did. "So, was this all a game? Some… bizarro, cosmic game?"

"Not at all. It's not easy, making rules and standing by them, watching everything play out, knowing you can stop it, or change it, even when your children suffer unimaginable horrors to keep existence as it's known from fraying and tearing apart, and to keep on going. No, no games."

"And what about Sam? What about his memories, and the time he spent in Hell? What about his free will in the matter?" Dean waited expectantly, feeling the first real thrill of gut-clogging dread, wondering what God's answer was going to be.

"Come on, Dean," God said, smiling again as His hair turned black, His eyes turned golden and He reached out with one hand, the hand forming a fist and lightly punching Dean's shoulder in a rare show of almost playful camaraderie. It barely caused Dean to waver in his stance, but it was a gesture of incredible assurance. "I may allow some taking with one hand, but I certainly don't shirk giving with the other when it's truly merited. I'll let Sam tell you all of it, but I want – I really want – you to relax on that part. It may not be what you thought it would be, but it's more than enough to give you peace."

"Is he okay?" Dean asked, voice cracking with hope.

"He will be," God said simply, and Dean felt an entire planet's worth of worry slip from his slumped shoulders. It was like freely breathing air again after drowning for an eternity.

"What about Adam?" Dean asked, still hoping.

"Let's just say that there, just this once, I intervened a bit more… forcefully."

"You took him out of the Cage?" Dean asked, hope making him sound as giddy as a child.

"I changed a lot of things. Needless to say, your half-brother was never truly a part of this particular story, and his continued stay in there was completely unmerited, as were the memories of that time." God winked with one luminous eye.

"Wait, so you…" Dean's eyes widened. "You Windexed his mind?"

"You can't remember what never happened in the first place," God replied. Dean tried to wrap his head around the idea, ran back into his own head to try and see if he remembered anything of the whole fiasco with Adam and Michael, and came up with a blank space, edged with fast-fading ripples of… something.

"My head hurts," Dean admitted with a frown, trying to compute how the setup was working.

"Then give it some rest and stop worrying about the details. I'm good with that, so…" God grinned, and shrugged slightly. "Leave it at that. Your half-brother was never supposed to enter into this equation, even if it was only to satisfy the whims of my archangels. He is safe, and you'll probably see him again, one day, when all of this is over. Really get to know the kid. And yes, he is still your half-brother. No sense in changing that, even if, according to the scheme of things, he was only allowed to exist as a backup, should you prove unwilling to play ball."

Dean breathed deep, finally getting his emotions under control. His brothers were safe, and even though he was dying to know what exactly was happening with Sam, he also knew, somehow, that it wasn't bad at all.

And then he remembered Castiel, still frozen, still, probably, unaware of the cosmic conversation taking place at the moment of his supposed triumph and damnation of all things Winchester. It was really scary, Dean admitted quietly and very deep inside his own mind, the levels of power that seemed separate the real God from Castiel; the once-angel was still frozen, and all his supposedly infinite power was neatly sidestepped. The real God didn't even seem all that annoyed or angry, let alone looking like He was breaking a sweat to block the efforts of a bajillion monster souls.

"What about him?" Dean asked, turning around and facing the frozen angel. God pursed His lips, His hair growing silvery and shimmering in the light of the white fire that still danced all around them. His eyes narrowed slightly. "You gonna pull the plug on him?"

"Castiel's fate is not a question of 'if'. It's a matter of 'how'."

"You can't clip his wings?" Dean asked, incredulous. He was rewarded with a true-blue snort.

"Castiel is not the first misguided being to dream himself a master of everything. He won't be the last." The statement was so loaded that Dean swallowed, knowing he had an answer right there, even if God did not deign to voice it directly. The Almighty, walking and talking as if it was the most natural thing to do, looking like a feature-morphing male model, sighed. "Let's clear this blip on the chaos radar up then, shall we?"

Around them, the fire suddenly winked out of existence, leaving not even an afterimage of a blaze in Dean's eyes. Time suddenly resumed its natural progression.

Coming soon… Conversations with God, Chapter 2: Sam