"So how'd you even find out about us?" Michael asked, because that was the one question he was desperate to have answered.
"Haven't you ever heard of the book series, 'Supernatural?'" Becky Rosen asked, looking aghast. "It's by Carver Edlund, but that's just a pseudonym. His real name's Chuck Shurley. Anyway, it was odd, but while I was minding my own business last week, he contacted me, said I'd be interested in a piece of information he had. He gave me the location of the demon, but I didn't know he was a demon, and told me where I'd be able to run into Sam."
Raphael had always known that Chuck Shurley was a prophet. That much he had known. The one thing he hadn't done while pretending to be human was fail in his duties of protecting the last named prophet. The angels never took a close look at the lives of the prophets they had been assigned to protect as some had never needed that protection. They were there specifically if creatures came near prophets that posed a threat. Prophets were to be protected, but not scrutinized.
The archangel had honestly forgotten about the prophet because everything told him the man was safe enough, so he could put him out of mind when he was actively doing other more important things.
"You're just like the guys from Supernatural!" The store clerk's raised voice drew Raphael's attention back towards where Michael and Lucifer were staring at the clerk as though he'd grown a second head.
"Do you have any of those books in stock?" Michael asked.
"Sure do!" The clerk pointed to a shelf behind them, not far from where Raphael was standing, and led them over. His older brothers blinked as they realized the series had more than twenty books, the covers of which all had pretty good representations of the two brothers.
"We'd like to buy the complete set," Dean said, his face turning a pink color even as he said it.
Which was how they came to be sitting in their motel room, the entire series spread about between them as the twins decided they absolutely had to read every single book, and then did.
"They're pretty accurate," Dean finally said when they were done.
"Except for the archangel stuff."
"Okay, everything after I went to Hell. Some of this is even in the wrong order. And why is there an entire set that takes place after Lucifer comes out of the cage? Nothing happened!" Dean exclaimed. "You were never in the cage!"
"If I may?" Gabriel waited a second to see if they would keep talking about it. Both Michael and Lucifer both looked at him. "I think this is a version of what would have happened if Lucifer had been in the cage, instead of the elaborate illusions the two of you used. There are alternate realities because the multiverse theory is correct. One person in this universe makes a choice, someone in another universe makes the opposite choice. There's an infinite number of universes, in that sense. In this universe, the two of you chose to flee Heaven. In others, Lucifer would have ended up in the Cage."
"And these books are a version of what could have happened if Lucifer had gone into the cage?" Lucifer asked.
"Yes."
"Then we should talk to the author," Dean said.
Chuck Shurley's home was not in great condition. It was a dilapidated two story house in a neighborhood of equally run down houses. The lawn was overrun with weeds and it could have used a new coat of paint a decade sooner. It did not seem like a place of heavenly intent, but Michael knocked on the doorway anyway, Lucifer at his heels.
Raphael and Gabriel were standing on the sidewalk. Raphael wasn't comfortable being here because he was the protector of this particular prophet and his brain was still screaming at him not to interfere. But when Michael wanted answers, there was no stopping him, and really, he only had to intervene if the prophet's life was in danger. Which it wasn't. Gabriel was standing next to him because the youngest archangel wasn't sure how to feel about being here either.
The door opened, revealing a small man holding a bottle of whiskey. He had graying hair and a short beard growing. "Whaddaya want?"
Michael was not impressed, and his tone conveyed that lack of interest. "Chuck Shurley? Author known as Carver Edlund?"
"Who are you? Why are you here?"
"I'm Dean Winchester," the archangel replied, "And this is my brother Sam Winchester, and down there are our brothers, Adam Milligan and…."
"Raphael and Gabriel." The prophet swallowed. "You can all come in, I guess." He swallowed again. "Why are you here?"
They all went inside. The interior of the house was more ransackled than the exterior. There were papers and shredded papers covering most of the living room. On the table there was a desktop computer and a printer. There was an overflowing waste paper basket under it, along with a paper shredder in a similar state. Broken bottles littered floor and the couch still smelled strongly of vomit.
Chuck motioned for them to sit on the couch. Raphael quietly cleaned it and Gabriel cleared himself a place on the floor.
"Since you recognize Raphael and Gabriel, does that mean you know about the archangel stuff?" Dean asked.
"Sure I know about it. I wrote all of it," Chuck answered. "But that doesn't explain why you're here. You're not a hallucination."
"Nope," Michael replied.
"Well, there's only one explanation. Obviously I'm a god," Chuck said.
Raphael rolled his eyes. "You're not a god. You're a prophet of god."
"You've been mangling the message, though, and we'd like to know why," Gabriel added. "You left out the part about the archangels, and added in weird stuff about me trapping my brothers in a time loop. I made the choice not to do that very intentionally, so why'd you write it some other way?"
" I write things and then they come to life. Yeah, no, I'm definitely a god. A cruel, cruel, capricious god. The things I put you through –"
"You changed the story. Made it worse than it really had to be. At least we're still in one piece, but the story you tried to tell, how it would have been if we weren't archangels, those characters would not have come out in one piece. And they would have been us in another universe. Why are you writing someone else's story? Prophets aren't supposed to see other worlds."
"Because it's the story I want to tell!" Chuck exclaimed. "And I see exactly what changes you've made! You only think they're for the better, but they're against the Ineffable Plan!"
The archangels blinked in confusion. Prophets didn't change things. They told the stories they were told to write. None of them were entirely accurate, but a lot of them were drunks. None of them had held so much hubris though. Was this really a prophet?
Michael stood up angrily, ignoring the broken glass he stepped in as he did so. "There is no Ineffable Plan! Father left! And maybe that's for the best, if he should still be so intent on seeing Lucifer in a cage."
"He needs to be contained! He would destroy humanity!"
"No," Lucifer said. "I like humanity. I never suggested that I would destroy it. I only questioned their intentions. I wondered if they weren't flawed, if we all aren't flawed in some way or another. Nothing's perfect."
"But they are! They're perfect and beautiful! To say otherwise is blasphemous!"
Michael shook his head. "You do sound like Dad. His last command should have been 'Love humanity and observe them.' His children would have been happier if he'd chosen his words with more care. But you don't care do you? As long as everything falls into step exactly as you want it to, and if it doesn't, you'll try to force it to. Is that why Sam slept for four months? Because you couldn't fix it the way you wanted to, you'd try another way?"
"I was stopping him from following you into Hell!"
"Becky had a bigger place in the books you wrote. Did you drag her into the picture because you never had the opportunity to sleep with her in this universe? You're a creep."
"I am God and you will cease disrespecting me in My House!"
There was a flash of light as the tone of the house shifted. The trash was removed, everything tidied up in a way better fitting a Celestial Being.
"Then we'll leave," Michael said. "You wrote the story you wanted to tell because you'd rather we were puppets on a string than the adults you were supposed to have raised to be good and thoughtful people. Children have minds of their own, Dad, and you have to let them live and make their own choices." He pulled something out his pocket. A necklace that should have been the symbol of a brother's love, but instead contained the darkness that had corrupted their family.
"You might have been able to redeem yourself to your children, but you made the wrong choice." Michael placed the necklace on the computer table and walked towards the door.
Chuck moved to the table and picked up the amulet, trying to understand why it had come back to him.
"You won't be able to get rid of it," Michael warned. "By giving the mark to Lucifer, you tore our family apart and corrupted it. Heaven isn't in great shape, but they could be in worse condition, and it will get better. But you won't be welcome. You chose humans over your firstborn and not only did you abandon them, you harmed us. Actively sought to destroy anything and everything that dared to disagree because you were so selfish that you believed your absolute power to be absolute and it corrupted you. We're done here."
Michael turned towards the door even as Chuck shouted, "Don't you walk away from Me! We are not done until I say we're done!"
Raphael stood from the couch and when Gabriel held up an arm, pulled his brother up. "We're done. We're so done with you and your pitiable actions. You're a petty and spiteful Being, not the god of love and forgiveness your followers would have believed in. Do as You will, but leave us out of it. You don't deserve the power you had over us, not if this is how you would choose to use it."
They flew away instead of leaving via normal means. Chuck had a headache, a really bad one, and the bottle of whiskey was empty. "Damn archangels," he muttered, dropping the bottle on the floor and crashing on the couch. The house was no longer pristine, even more of a mess than it had been when the archangels had arrived. Shattered glass and paper covered every inch of the floor, and the vibrant odor of vomit was not contained to the couch, but to the rest of the furniture as well. And all the alcohol was mysteriously gone. "Fucking hell."
Four archangels sat on the hood of the impala, two bottles of Whiskey and four tumblers to share between them. Michael poured for them.
"Was stealing from that pitiable creature really necessary?" Raphael asked, even as he took a hesitant sip. Adam Milligan had never been old enough to drink (and still wasn't) so the archangel had never tried this alcoholic beverage before.
"Why did we go in the first place?" Michael drowned his first cup in one swallow and poured more. "These things never turn out the way they're supposed to."
"It needed to be done." Lucifer stared at his glass as though it contained all the answers to the universe. If he was but a little more drunk, maybe it would have. "We needed to know this truth."
Gabriel also gulped his, but swished it around in his mouth, letting the flavor linger before swallowing. "Maybe they weren't the answers we were looking for, but it doesn't matter. If he could have changed our path, he would have. He has no power over us, he's just a drunk with too much free time. It's fine." He eyed the bottle, which was almost half empty. "There's not enough alcohol here to get ourselves plastered," he said, mournfully, before snapping. One of the canteens of holy water from the trunk of the impala appeared in his hand.
"What's that for?" Raphael asked. "Why do we want to 'get plastered'?"
"We just found out Dad is worse than just a deadbeat. Of course we want to get plastered," Lucifer said. He still hadn't touched the whiskey in his glass. "Pass the holy water, won't you Gabriel?"
"Maybe you should be the designated driver, Raph," Michael suggested.
"Or we could just go back to the motel instead of doing this here? Or not at all?" Raphael looked around. They were parked by the side of the road in the middle of absolute nowhere. He was unconvinced that dealing with three other plastered archangels could be a good idea. Worst case scenario, someone ended up with a nephil.