Chapter Fourteen: In Which Chuck is Right (as Usual)

"Though Mary had quite literally gotten hit with a truck less than a day ago, she still radiated a quiet kind of beauty. "I want a deal." She spoke with gentle certainty, a fire in her eyes. Who writes this crap?"

Sam kept flipping through the book. Mary, despite herself, leaned a little bit closer. She hadn't really minded the description very much.

"And here it describes you as a hot soccer mom except with knives. Seriously, what?"

Mary snatched the book out of his hands and gave the page a quick skim. Sure enough, there it was. Well, then. No one had flattered her like that in quite a while.

"Why soccer mom?" she asked, tossing the book at Dean, who was waiting for Sam's laptop to boot up. "I mean, really?"

Dean shrugged. "You drive a minivan."

Touché. Mary dug another book out of the pile. No Rest for the Wicked. Hastily, she tossed it back down. She'd already lived the desperation of trying to save Dean once. She didn't need to read about it and experience it again.

"There's an entire internet community."

Mary peered over his shoulder. Her eyes flicked over the screen, trying to take it all in. Fanfic—Ryah_Ignis's Butterfly Effect, John Lives AU. Fan Vid contest—due date May 2nd. New SPN RP! Quiz—Which Character Are You? Meta—Mary's Parenting.

"What is there to discuss about my parenting?"

Sam snorted under his breath, so Mary whacked him with one of the pillows. They'd been through some weird stuff before, but this really took the cake. She couldn't wait to see the look on Bobby's face when she told him that someone had described him as a scruffy, tough-as-nails hunter who used attitude to cover his vulnerability.

"There's an entire group dedicated to shipping you with Bobby. They call it Mobby. Or, wait, no, I like Bary better.."

"What's that?"

"Relation-shipping—what the—"

Dean slammed the laptop shut and yanked away from it as if he had been burned, rubbing at his eyes. Mary was almost afraid to ask, but she plucked the laptop up anyway. Sam looked over her shoulder as she reopened it to the page—

"Oh my God what is that?"

She threw the laptop over to Sam, who handled it a little more gently, if only for the sake of the research he had stored on the hard drive. He grimaced as he looked down at the page.

"People ship—oh that's just—no."

"They know we're brothers, right?" Dean asked, still blinking rapidly, as if he could erase what was surely etched on to his brain by now.

"Apparently it doesn't matter," Sam said weakly, exiting out of the webpage.

Admittedly, Mary still wanted to take a look at the article someone had apparently written on her parenting and maybe take the quiz to see if they knew anything about her at all, but now wasn't the time.

Mary shuddered. "That's it. We've got to find this Carver Edlund guy. How does he know anything about us?"

/

Dean pushed the doorbell with "Come on, Shurley, you know descriptive nouns!" determination, his mother and gigantic "No." his mother and brother behind him.

The doorbell rang. Well, that was weird. Happy for the distraction, Chuck pushed the keyboard away from himself and stood up, cracking his back. He needed a higher desk. Shaking off the weird trance that always descended when he wrote about his most vibrant characters, Chuck wandered over to the door.

"Can I help you?"

He couldn't fathom what they were doing on his front doorstep. They certainly didn't look like they were going to ask him if he'd accepted Jesus as his lord and savior or try to sell him a vacuum.

"Chuck Shurley?" the woman leaning on crutches asked.

Had he won the lottery or something? "Uh, yeah."

"Chuck Shurley as in Carver Edlund?" one of the men asked.

Or something. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm Sam," said the other man. "This is my brother, Dean, and my mother, Mary. You've been writing about us."

Wow, this was a really good cosplay. Chuck shook his head. He didn't know how Supernatural had gained such a dedicated fanbase, but at least he was still getting a check from the publisher every now and then.

"Um, look, it's always great to hear from the fandom, but I—uh, there's a reason I use a pseudonym."

"We just want to talk, Chuck," the woman, so-called Mary said gently. With a fire in her eyes. Radiating a quiet kind of beauty. Gah. "How do you know about us?"

The first man, the one claiming to be Dean, took a step forward. "How do you know about demons? Tulpas? Wendigos?"

Chuck gulped. "This isn't like Misery, is it? Oh God."

Mary shook her head. "I've never been a big Steven King fan, honestly."

"Then what is it?"

"We're the Winchesters," Sam said.

He should have known that the shippers would come for him one day. Chuck resisted the urge to dive back into the house, knowing that the crazy people would probably make it worse for him if he did.

"I—wait. Winchesters? I never wrote that. It was never in the books. I thought the symbolism was too much. I mean, come on, the name of a gun company for a family of hunters?"

He looked nervously at each of them. The three were exchanging exasperated looks, as if he were the one being utterly ridiculous.

"What do you know about Lucifer?" Mary asked. "Or the seals?"

Chuck gaped at her. He'd been rewriting that chapter only this morning. It had never even left the house—he hadn't even left the house since writing it. He needed to get out more.

"I. Write. Fiction."

"No. We're not fiction, Chuck. We think—"

Oh no. This was bad. This was very, very, very bad.

"There's only one explanation. I'm a god. A cruel, cruel god. I am so sorry." One of the Winchesters tried to interject, but Chuck kept going. "The things I put you through…I murdered your father! And then killed Jessica! For what, literary symmetry? What kind of god am I?"

Sam sighed. "You're not a god, Chuck. We think you're psychic."

Psychic? He walked into doorframes on a regular basis. How on Earth could he possibly be psychic? Chuck's eyes strayed down to his computer, where his cursor sat innocently blinking.

"You're not a god, Chuck. We think you're psychic."

Oh no.

/

Chuck sat in his living room, chewing absently on a cold piece of pizza. Already, his fingers were itching, wanting to get back to his keyboard. He belonged to several writing groups on the internet, so he knew there were several writers who felt the same way—that they would vibrate out of their skin if they didn't write. But now, he found himself wondering if maybe there was a more sinister reason for his desire than using his creative juices.

"Hey," he muttered, hearing the door open.

Just ten minutes ago, he had just written a conversation between himself, Dean and Mary. Things were starting to get a little repetitive.

"Tell me how you're doing this."

In three swift steps, Dean had crossed the room. He dragged Chuck off of his couch and pinned him against the wall. Mary made no move to stop him. Whether that was because of the crutches or because she didn't care if he got hurt, Cuck didn't know. It hurt every bit as much as he had written.

"I—"

"Dean, stop!"

And cue Castiel, angel of the Lord. Just as he had written. Dean eased Chuck back on to his feet. He reached up and massaged his throat a little, rethinking a couple scenes he'd written with the Winchesters getting tossed around.

"He's to be protected. Chuck is a prophet of the Lord."

"A prophet of the what?" Mary said.

Across the room, Mary's jaw had dropped. She looked over to Chuck, who could only shrug. He'd written this, but come on. Make himself a prophet in his own series? How stuck up could you get?

"He's a mess," Dean deadpanned.

And so the characters turn on the creator. Chuck sighed.

"Perhaps," Castiel agreed. "But in time, his books will be known as the Winchester Gospel."

"You've got to be kidding me," all three said in unison.

Chuck had wanted a movie adaptation starring Chris Evans. That was all.

"Fine. Okay. I've given up on understanding," Mary said. "How do we get Lilith away from Sam if Chuck has…foreseen it or whatever?"

Castiel looked very seriously at them both. "The prophet's prophecy will come to pass. It is not in my power to stop it."

Mary growled in frustration and Dean knocked a stack of paper off of his desk. Chuck watched his latest manuscript float to the ground. It was going to take forever to put that back.

"Dean, you have to understand. I cannot interfere because prophets are protected. Each one has an archangel to look after them. They're Heaven's deadliest weapon. If they see a threat, they will destroy it. Totally."

Dean's head snapped up. "So what you're saying is if a prophet were to be put in danger…"

"An archangel would arrive and eliminate it."

It took about three seconds for the penny to drop. Chuck's heart swooped. Castiel gave them a solemn nod and vanished, leaving Mary, Dean and Chuck standing in his living room. Getting away was pointless.

"You're coming with us," Dean said.

"I—no. I'm a writer," Chuck said. "I'm not an action hero!"

"No," Mary agreed, "you're not. You're bait. Come on."

And with that, they forced him out of the house and into the car that Chuck had spent what felt like half of his life describing.

"Uh, cool car?"

The corner of Dean's mouth twitched a little, but Chuck should have known that flattery would get him nowhere. Accepting his fate, he sat back in the leather seat and waited. They pulled up at the motel that he had dreamed about after about ten minutes.

"Look, guys, I'm not sure—"

Deaf to his protests, Dean and Mary dragged him out of the car and towards the motel room. They burst through the door to find a woman that could only be Lilith holding the knife that must be Ruby's to Sam's throat.

"I am the prophet, Chuck!" Chuck cried, unable to come up with anything better.

Behind him, he heard a disgusted "oh, God," from Dean and a quiet, "oh no," from Mary.

Whatever it was, it seemed to do the trick. White light poured in through the window, and the entire room started to shake. Chuck found himself very glad that this creature was on his side.

"Chuck here has an archangel on his shoulder. So, unless you want to tangle with that, I suggest you get."

Lilith glared at them, eyes blindingly white. Chuck felt the pizza make a move in his stomach. Then, her head snapped back and black smoke poured from her mouth. Chuck stumbled backwards into Mary, watching her go.

Oh yes. He was going to be a bestseller.