Notes: For Birds_of_the_Soul in the Summergen gift exchange challenge on LiveJournal. Thanks Amberdreams for the speedy and schedule-adaptable beta, you're the best! This was my first Summergen even though I've been eyeing all the awesome works coming out of the challenge for years, I was very pleased to finally get to play too!
"I need to see Sam or Dean Winchester. It's important."
The young man was scruffy, a little wild-eyed, and walking alone on the highway in the direction of the Men of Letters' bunker, but none of those things were the reason Mary had pulled over and was holding a gun on him.
"What's your name," she barked for the second time. Her heart was drumming away. She'd recognize that face anywhere — the face that had killed her people.
"Kevin Tran," he said this time, then sighed, and muttered, "Prophet of the Lord. Sam and Dean know me. Tell them … God sent me with a message."
Mary's eyebrows climbed almost to her hairline. "Right, and I'm the Virgin Mother," she snorted. "How about instead, you put on these nice metal bracelets, and then we'll figure out what you're doing here."
Kevin took a step or two backward. "You never told me who you are, actually..."
Mary cocked her gun. The click was loud enough to make her point. She tossed the handcuffs from the glove box to him without wavering the gun's aim an inch.
The young man — not much more than a boy, really — swallowed and said, "Will you at least stop pointing that at me if I put them on?"
"Behind your back," she said. She wasn't taking any chances on this prophet being able to detonate a spell like last time.
Mary found Sam in the library. It was an easy guess. "There's something you should see," she said.
Sam smiled warmly when he saw her, of course, but she could still see the stress from missing Dean and trying to figure out how to get him back from Michael. "Of course," he said, unfolding from his seat.
She never got used to cricking her neck back to look at him. "He said God sent him with a message, that you knew him. But I didn't trust him, so he's in the dungeon," she summarized.
Sam blinked at her, then set off nearly running for the dungeon.
She followed at an easier pace.
When she caught up, Sam was standing frozen in the doorway between the bookshelves, saying, "Kevin?" in a lost, stunned sort of voice.
"Sam?" Kevin said. "Sam, I understand a reasonable level of paranoia, of course, but could we get on with the part where I'm not chained in the dungeon, like, today maybe? I really have way too many bad memories of dungeons," he rattled.
"Sorry," Sam said reflexively. "Mom said… a message? From God?"
"'Mom?'" Kevin jerked his eyes over to look at her. "That's a weird choice for a nickname… no, wow, that really is your mom, isn't it? Wow."
"Kevin." Sam closed his eyes briefly. "Focus."
"He said, "They're doing great, tell them to keep it up,'" Kevin said quickly.
"What? That's it?" Sam said, then, "Of course that's it," at the same time as Kevin said, "Well, you know Chuck." They grinned weakly at each other.
Sam turned to Mary and held out a hand. "Keys? He's the real deal."
"What, just like that?" she asked, more confused than ever.
"I assume you did the standard tests before you brought him here," Sam shrugged. "Silver, holy water, ammonium borate?"
"Of course," she said. The Leviathan threat wasn't one she'd lived though personally, but it had been an easy enough test to add, and by all accounts they weren't anything she ever wanted to see. Bobby and the other refugees had adopted it too, with only a little grumbling.
"Then yeah. Keys," Sam repeated. "Nobody could fake this, or at least anybody who could wouldn't bother because it'd be easier to actually resurrect the real Kevin. So he's our friend. We should have Cas check him for tampering too, but he doesn't need to be chained up in the meantime."
"Thanks, Sam," Kevin said. "You know I already forgave you for my assassination, though."
"Shut up, I'm not doing this out of guilt," Sam said as he used Mary's keys to free him. "The only ones with a chance to pull this off, other than Chuck, are Michael or Amara, and either of them could blast a hole into this place without taking a breath."
"Where is Cas?" Mary asked, unwilling to let go yet.
"Showing Jack how to make smoothies, I think," Sam said, blinking. Kevin and his Mom both stared at him. "What? We all have to eat now." He paused, and it wasn't hard to tell he was thinking about how Dean had always been the one making the rest of them remember to eat.
Also, it turned out Dean had been the only person in the bunker capable of cooking an actual meal. Bobby could make a few different variations on chili, Mary was hopeless in the kitchen, and Sam had picked up a vague conviction somewhere in college that cooking food destroyed all its nutrients and more importantly, took time away he could be spending on his books, researching. Cas was trying, but the results were ... erratic.
"Maybe we'd better go check in with them," Sam said, after the pause had gotten awkward.
"Good idea. Let's go," Mary said, eyeing Kevin suspiciously until he walked ahead of her through the archive shelves.
"Who's Jack?" Kevin asked, plaintively.
Jack was examining the algae powder closely. "If this is as healthy as Sam says, we should put a lot of it in," he was saying to Cas, who nodded.
"Only if you want it to taste like crap," Mary said.
"Oh, hello, Mary…" Jack broke off abruptly, staring at Kevin, muscles going rigid. "What is he doing here?"
"Woah, easy, I don't think I know you," Kevin said, smiling to try and diffuse his sudden tension. "I just got brought back to life."
He wasn't expecting the kid — Jack — to suddenly yell, grab the blender, and try to brain him with it. Sam and Castiel had to leap in to grab Jack's arms and hold him back.
"Woah woah, easy!" Sam was saying.
"Jack. This is not the Kevin you knew," Castiel rumbled.
"He killed them all! We can't trust him!" Jack was yelling.
"This Kevin belongs to this universe," Castiel said firmly. "If you still had your grace, you would see that too. He has never been held by Michael." He gave Kevin that familiar penetrating stare. "You've never been held by Michael, have you?"
"Michael who?" Kevin asked, feeling Cas would not only know if he lied, but probably zap him on the spot. "I've been held by demons, angels, and that slimy auctioneer, not counting you guys, Garth, and my mom. Being a prophet sucks balls. Why would you ask … did you guys meet some other-universe-Kevin? Is that why Mrs. Winchester hasn't stopped glaring at me and I nearly got blender-brained just now?"
"Right in one," Sam said. "Jack, easy."
"We know what you're capable of, you're not fooling anyone again," Jack informed Kevin darkly. He took something resembling a calming breath, shook off Sam and Cas' grips, and edged around to put himself protectively in front of Mary.
"It is good to see you again, Kevin," Castiel said, moving in for something that Kevin figured out after an awkward moment was intended to be a hug. He hugged back.
Cas had gotten surprisingly good at hugging since he'd last known him.
"But how are you here?"
"Ah, well," Kevin shrugged self-deprecatingly, "Chuck, uh, brought me back to life, and dropped me in Lebanon. Didn't explain much, just said that you guys were doing good and I might be handy to have around. And, uh … he played guitar at me. Said his sister didn't like his music? And then he kind of disappeared in a hurry."
Sam and Cas were exchanging meaningful looks and nods and then Sam rolled his eyes and Cas coughed.
"God plays guitar?" Mary asked, then shook herself. "Never mind. Cas, can you check Kevin for anything wrong?"
"Certainly," Cas said. "But it will be painful."
"Can't be worse than dying," Kevin said.
He immediately regretted it: there were absolutely things worse than dying, and Cas sticking his arm into Kevin's chest to maul at Kevin's soul topped the list.
The first thing that was shocking about living in the bunker this time was how many people came through it these days. It had used to be just him, Sam, Dean, the King of Hell in the dungeon, and that one time Charlie had dropped by for a day when Kevin wasn't even there. And Cas, sometimes.
But now people came in and out all the time from Lebanon. Gradually Kevin figured out that a whole refugee band from the alternate universe was operating between Lebanon and the bunker, led by Bobby himself. Kevin himself had only briefly known Bobby, as a temperamental ghost, but Charlie had emailed him all the published and unpublished Carver Edlund novels and now he felt like he knew Bobby. Sort of.
Even though he didn't, because this Bobby hadn't ever heard of Sam and Dean till a year ago, and wouldn't have known Kevin even in this universe.
"Seriously, what did I do over there that was so bad nobody can even look at me?" He wondered aloud at Bobby's retreating back. Not so much as an "Idjit!" He felt unreasonably rejected. Kevin looked around, but the only person there to hear his complaint was Jack, who scowled at him. The scowl was losing heat, though. Jack seemed like the type who wasn't used to staying mad for very long.
"Nobody's told you?" Jack asked. He should know the answer to that, since he'd been hovering on Kevin's periphery practically every waking minute since Cas had cleared him.
"No," Kevin said. Pointedly.
"We — the resistance fighters — had Michael and his army on the run," Jack began.
"…And then my mom stabbed him," Kevin finished.
"Your mom sounds like she loves you a lot," Jack said wistfully.
"She did. Does," Kevin said. "I've thought about going to see her, but… she finally got closure, you know? And she's out, out of all of this. If she doesn't know I'm alive again, maybe she'll be safer." He gave a shaky laugh. "God, do I sound too much like Sam when he was a soulless douchebag or what?"
Jack frowned at him. Just when things had been going so well. "I can't picture Sam ever being a douchebag," he said.
"It was when his soul got accidentally left behind in the Cage in Hell," Kevin said. "I heard all about it from Dean."
"It always seems there's more stories I haven't heard," Jack said, but he wasn't frowning at Kevin anymore. "I wonder if I'll ever feel like I know what's going on."
"Well, but you can read the books to catch a lot of it, right?" Kevin said, and then it turned out Jack didn't know what books, and then Mary and Sam came in while he was explaining, and Sam tried to shut it down but it was too late and Kevin kept going at least partly because it was so funny watching Sam turn red and stutter as he tried to tell his mom there really wasn't anything much of interest in the books at all, anyway.
"But I'm always interested in your life, sweetheart," she told him earnestly, and by the end of it all Kevin was forwarding Charlie's email attachment to everybody and they'd forgotten to treat him like he might go off like a bomb at any moment.
Which apparently he had, in the other universe. Angels were assholes. Michael was going to get what he had coming.
"Kevin!" Somebody was pounding on Kevin's door. The bunker was probably under attack. Or something. Kevin groaned, rolled out of bed, and checked the time. Five a.m. It had been a full week without anybody trying to kill them.
"What?" He jerked the door open. Jack was outside, holding a tablet.
"Sam's in Hell," Jack said urgently.
Kevin tried to shake sleep out of his brain. "What? Did he try to get Michael? Did anything happen to Dean?"
"Dean's going back to Lisa!" Jack cried. "I need… what happens next?"
Kevin stared and recalibrated his brain. "You're talking about the last book," he said, just to be sure.
"It can't be the last…" Jack looked at Kevin's face. "But Sam isn't in Hell now," he said plaintively.
"The author decided he was done writing them," Kevin said. "A lot of stuff has happened to Sam and Dean since then, but they just end there."
Jack looked betrayed, like Kevin had told him there was no Santa Claus. "Why would God allow that to happen?" He protested. "Why would he just abandon us all like that?"
Kevin laughed until he slid down the doorframe and started tearing up, sitting on the floor of the underground bunker he'd died in, across from a dewy-eyed nephilim. He'd been that innocent and naive once, not that long ago. Wasn't it supposed to seem like forever? It didn't, the memories of studying in his room, driving his mom's car in a panic, finding Sam and the tablet and the whole crazy ride of it seemed as fresh as yesterday.
"I guess I could write about what happened after that," Kevin said.
He was just intending to write what he'd been there for, of course, but he started outlining the backstory he knew from things he'd heard Dean or Sam or Cas mention over the years, and then he filled in a few of the more obvious details, just things he could picture from knowing how Dean would have reacted to not knowing Sam was back for a whole year - he could hear the angry tone of voice as Dean tried to take his frustrations out on Sam, on Bobby, on Cas. He had ten pages written before he knew it, faster than he'd ever typed up a term paper, and then he collapsed into bed and dreamed more scenes, vivid and real, and woke up and started typing again.
A knock interrupted him. "Kevin?" Cas asked.
"Huh?" Kevin lifted his eyes up and realized he'd been hunched over his keyboard way too long. His stomach rumbled.
Castiel swung the door open. "Are you all right? Jack was concerned about you."
Kevin stared at his screen covered with words and realized his head was throbbing. "Oh, crap. This is a prophet thing, isn't it?" He didn't even need Cas' nod of confirmation. "I hate it when it's a prophet thing."
"I believe I understand the sentiment," Cas said. Damn Chuck anyway. If only everybody knew how aggravating their God actually was.
Kevin and Cas shared a look of profoundly heretical feelings.
Three months later, Kevin had a dozen new books coming out. He also hadn't seen the sun that whole time, his diet consisted of hot dogs and poptarts, and he lived in his bathrobe these days. It was developing a freestanding personality. A funky one.
Cas, possibly sicced on him by Sam and/or Mary, had dragged Kevin out to the TV den for some "family relaxation time." Sam liked murder shows but he got roundly voted down by everybody else who got enough violence and gore in their day jobs. Cas tried to put on a cooking show, claiming it was practical and maybe they would learn something, and Kevin finally had to steal the control and scrolled quickly through shows until he saw something called "Kevin (Probably) Saves the World" and clicked on it before anybody could object.
Five episodes in, they were all discussing the angelic intervention rules in the show when someone pounded loudly on the garage door.
Immediately every person in the room had a gun out and pointing in that direction, but when Mary cautiously swung the door open, Dean stood there swaying, folding, and collapsed into her arms.
"Michael?" Sam asked, voice harsh with caged, wary hope.
"Gone," Dean said. "Long story. Douchebag."
Castiel strode forward and pressed a hand to Dean's temple. "Yes," he agreed. "There is no archangel here, nor warping of Dean's mind that I can tell. Welcome back, Dean," he added gently.
Dean made a heroic effort and managed to raise his head and focus his eyes. "What…the hell…'s this you're all watching 'thout me?"
Dean fell asleep five minutes into restarting Kevin's show, holy water still dripping from his hair, and nobody had the heart to wake him up for questions even though they were all dying to know what had happened. Instead they all just stayed sprawled on and around the couch as the episodes played one after another. Nobody quite wanted to leave.
In the morning Dean called Kevin a bad influence on impressionable young minds for introducing Jack to energy drinks, but he said it in a kitchen full of warmth and light and people, and Kevin watched Sam and Dean exchange a kind of wondering, bewildered look like they weren't at all sure how they'd managed to get here, surrounded by family, like they'd been going down their dark and lonesome road for so long they never expected to come out the other side where people they loved laughed and joked with them somewhere safe, and the world — at least for now — was going to keep right on spinning.
Kevin smiled. Maybe this, or a moment like it, would be where his book series ended.
Who knew? It wasn't over yet.