Full Summary: AU version of the events that follow the season 5 finale (Lucifer goes to hell with Sam). Sam is returned after being through hell, though not for 1 ½ years. This is not a story that's meant to fit in the canon arc, but rather something I've been wondering for a while. How would Sam and Dean look and act at their scariest? This is attempt number 1.
Book of Gospel
Chapter 1: The Mission
When Dean saw his brother for the first time after averting the apocalypse, he thought he was hallucinating. When he first reached out, he half expected his hands to glide right through, but Sam was real. He was there. The relief was so enormous it nearly split him in two.
Human and whole. Castiel assured it with a gentle smile on his face, as well as the fact that Adam was safely back in Heaven. Dean had asked about defying God, to which Castiel had shrugged and vanished. That was almost two weeks ago. Not much had happened since. Dean had left Lisa after Sam returned. He really hadn't intended to stay anyway, but Sam didn't need to know that.
That particular moment found them in the company of the angel once again. Castiel looked as close to upset as he could. Dean was worried, but knew his brother had to be even more so. Sam was having nightmares. Dreams about his round trip to Hell. Dean knew what one day in Hell felt like. It felt like weeks. Weeks of torture at the hands of Lucifer. And he imagined somehow that time slowed the further down you went. He imagined his brother had thought he'd be stuck forever.
"You realize what you're asking, right?" Dean wasn't so sure anymore. In fact he was pretty sure the angel was about as crazy as a celestial being could be and that was including an impressive list of sociopaths. Didn't stop them from being friends though.
Castiel nodded with a sliver of worry showing. Which probably meant that the angel was a great deal more worried than a human could ever be. "I'm asking you to travel forward in time and space to an unknown world where you may die or suffer severe injuries." he stonewalled, which oddly enough felt like home to Dean.
"No. You're asking us to risk our newly acquired – and by the way, very much appreciated – asses on a fool's errand."
"You're welcome," Castiel glanced away in something that might've been indignation and attempted humor. "for saving your lives, by the way."
"So not the point-"
"Well alright, Cass. Why didja say this was so important?" Sam butted in with his soothing gestures, which also brought warm and fluffy feelings back in Dean's heart. He had a brother to bicker with again.
"I received a visit from myself."
"How Paulo Coelho of you-" Dean mocked.
"What? You know Paulo Coelho?" Sam shook his head with a grin. "Dean, shut up. Yourself?" He asked the angel.
"Myself, approximately three hundred and fifty three years into the future. I asked myself to relay a message to you." Castiel responded without flinching over the absurdity of it all.
Dean rubbed his face. "You're killin' me, Cass."
"The message was very simple." Castiel now took a moment to stare ominously at them both.
"What? Is the world ending again or something, 'cause I think we already did our tour on the crazy train."
"No. The world will not end. I asked myself to say this to you: Retrieve the Book or suffer Lucifer's wrath for all eternity."
Both brothers stared at the angel. It was again Dean who spoke first. "So the world is ending?"
"No."
"Sounds a lot like it is,"
"Dean, this isn't helping."
"Bite me, Sam." Oh God that feels good! "You're even more insane than I pegged you for if you think we're going to - not only travel forth in time and space, but do it to defeat Lucifer. Again." Dean stared at the angel hard.
"I am not insane."
Dean threw up his hands and turned away while Sam managed to only sigh and amp up his poppy dog expression.
"You want us to go forward in time," Sam asked. Castiel nodded. "To save the world?" Again he nodded. "From Lucifer? Again."
"Yes."
Dean made a profane exclamation and turned to face the angel. "Why can't someone else do it?" Dean looked pleadingly at the angel and then Sam. "Ya know, a reaper once told me once that when we die it's time to let go? I'm pretty sure that applies to this situation seeing as we wouldn't normally be alive two hundred years in the future-"
"Three hundred and fifty three-"
"You're killing me here, Cass" Dean growled out between gnashed jaws.
"What kind of book is it?" Sam asked.
"A Supernatural novel entitled Swan Song." Castiel replied, looking freakishly at ease with the whole situation. "The last book of the Winchester Gospels."
"Swan Song?" Dean mocked.
Castiel clarified, thinking of course that Dean was confused: "It explains in great detail the release of Lucifer."
"And why does it do that?" Dean arched a brow and frowned simultaneously.
"I do not know why Chuck put that information in there."
"Where is that little bastard by the way?"
"I don't know." Castiel admitted with a glance away.
"What?" Sam asked.
"I've searched the globe looking for him, but there is no trace."
"How can a guy just vanish off the face of the earth?" Dean bellowed.
Sam sighed exasperatedly at his brother before readdressing the angel. "Ok. So you want us to get the book and do what with it?"
"Return it to people in the future who can be trusted."
"And who are they?"
"I do not know."
Again Dean spewed another colorful profanity into the ether.
"But my future self will. Find him and I will help you." This he adressed directly to Dean.
"You mean 'he' will." Dean corrected and finally coaxed a frown out of his friend.
"Why not just destroy the book? And why us?" Sam asked.
"Because it also tells of how you defeated Lucifer."
"And why us?" Dean repeated.
"Because I know you won't fail." The angel looked a moment between the two. "Also you and Sam are the only ones who know all the details." Both brothers sighed again. "It wouldn't be wise to disclose too much information to the people of the future."
The heaviness of his request was beginning to weigh down Dean's mood. "And here I'd hoped for the night off." He looked despondently at Sam.
Castiel interrupted and put an awkward hand on Dean's shoulder. "I will never let you die before your time." He looked at Sam after Dean. "Neither of you." Then vanished.
The brothers shared a look. It was too much for Castiel to ask for. Dean knew it and Sam knew it. And if Castiel's tenaciously exorcized, yet failed, stoicism was anything to go by, even the angel knew it. But Dean also knew enough not to say no. He knew his brother wouldn't want him to and he knew with every grain that his friend hated asking. So with a sigh he called the Fallen back in the room. Castiel stared at them both inn silence as he waited for an answer, never revealing that he'd never left their presence, only become invisible, after his pretense of leaving.
"Do we need to pack?" Dean asked with a gesture around the room.
"You'll receive everything you need." Castiel said, his surprise at their compliance never showing, before placing two fingers on each of their foreheads and pushing them off three hundred years into the future.
353 years later…
Dean opened his eyes and looked around. Shook of the pins-and-needles feeling and turned. "Great. Another one of these trips." Houses looked as if they'd been blown apart. Rubble was littered everywhere. No cars, though. Maybe future people didn't drive cars? It snuck up on him how at ease he felt.
"Dean. Over here?" Sam called and crouched in front of something small. It looked like a flyer.
Dean frowned. Why were there flyers, if there were no cars to put 'em on?
"It looks like an ad for something."
"Like what?"
"A decree." Sam said in awe.
"A what-now?" He arched a brow and squatted.
"It's a decree stating that 'all people of psychic origin will be arrested'." As Sam read his voice dropped towards a whisper.
Dean glanced at him and wondered what kind of feelings, seeing something like that, brought up in him. "Looks old." Sure the kid had his freak on for a while there, but without powers was Sam even still a psychic? Dean decided that, no he wasn't: He was the dorky younger brother, fresh out of the Cage and only slightly crumpled for it.
"Yeah." he agreed absently. The paper was wilted and stiff. Came apart in his hands.
Dean straightened and looked around. It was windy. Blue skies. All in all a nice day. Had it not been for the vaguely familiar scent in the air and the fact that he was once again stuck in the future. "I hate the future." He pouted as his brother came to a stand beside him.
"We need to find that book and get back home."
"Oh shit!" Dean suddenly erupted.
Sam turned in a rush and looked around in panic. "What?"
Dean's shocked expression fell to one of disappointment. "I left a burger at the motel."
Sam frowned before huffing and waving an arm in dismissal.
"What? It's gonna be cold when we get back." Dean spread his arms and followed as his brother started walking in a random direction. "And I'm starving."
"Why am I not surprised?" Sam muttered with a smile on his face.
Dean grinned at his back. "Trust me, dude. If I know my time-travels we won't get another meal until we're back in New Haven."
"We weren't in New Haven, Dean."
"Really?" He sounded genially surprised.
Sam huffed lightly. "Yeah."
"Then where were we?"
"In New London- Look, do you know where we're going 'cause I sure as hell don't?"
"Well hang on a second, Colombo and let me check my map-"
"That's so not funny."
"Dude, you think I don't know? This is about as fudging far from funny as it gets, but right now I'm just glad no one's trying to shoot me or eat me."
"Dean?"
"No, Sam, I'm actually entitled to act this way. This is the second time I've been buggered by an angel and it ain't gettin' any funnier!" He shouted into the air in the hopes someone upstairs would hear.
"No. Dean?" Sam gestured to something behind Dean, who turned in a whirl and saw a young, wide-eyed woman.
"Stop saying my name like that."
"Whatta ya think she is?"
"Human?"
"Really?"
"No idea." She was dressed in black, baggy pants that might've been fatigues in another life.
"We could ask her?" Sam shrugged without removing his eyes from her.
"Yeah, brilliant idea, Sasquatch. And why don't you just hand her a really big stick at the same time so she can beat you with it?" Dean glared at him.
"You got any better ideas?"
He pursed his lips before he realized he actually didn't. At about the same moment Sam noticed that too and took charge of the situation.
"Uhm…hello?"
The girl flinched and ran for it. Without really thinking Sam jumped after her, closely followed by Dean. She turned into an alley without breaking her pace. Sam was the first to round the corner and see what they'd just been led into. Four guys with assault rifles, pointed at them, were waiting. And the second Dean rounded the corner as well, two shots rang out.
AN: Yes I know I'm corny and trite, but I really DO love cliffhangers.