Song Remains the Same

by R. W. Winters

For Alex Winchester, normal has never been in the equation. Mute since the nursery fire, she grew up on the road chasing ghosts with her brothers and father. When her voice is inexplicably restored and the angel Castiel appears claiming to be her guardian, both of their lives change forever in ways that Heaven and Earth never expected. Castiel/OFC. Sisfic - S4-9 - Alternate Ending.

72. Pardon My French

Song Remains the Same

Chapter 72 / Pardon My French

"There is no such thing as fiction. Just non-fiction written in the wrong parallel universe."
- Unknown

---

Crash! The Winchesters collided with the solid glass of Bobby's window and flew through it out into the stormy night… so imagine Dean's confusion when instead of wet muddy ground he landed on a lumpy mattress and instead of riotous rain and thunder he heard someone shout out, "Cut!" followed by a smattering of applause.

Dean was already shoving himself up to an unsteady crouch on the balance-defying mattress—in front of them, a small sea of people sat in chairs watching and nodding in approval. What the hell? Where are we? Weird computery-looking equipment littered the area directly ahead—coils of electronic wires, sound equipment, weird carts stacked with camera looking things. Dude… what the hell?

Suddenly a guy thumped Dean on the ass. "Real good solid fall," the guy said as if proud. "Way to go." Um, excuse me?

"Jared, Jensen!" An old, fat white man with a bald head and a squawking voice raised a coffee cup at them from his perch behind some sound mixers ahead. "Outstanding! That was just great."

Who? Dean was totally lost. What was just great? And why you touching my ass? Suddenly, right beside his ear, a guy in a hoodie with an ear piece held up a clapboard like in the movies. "'Supernatural' scene one echo, take one. Tail slate. Marker!" He clacked the thing down, jarring Dean anew. Dude, what the hell?!

He looked over at Sam, trying to see if his brother had any clue what had just happened to them—and then realized, wait… where's the other one? Sam got the same look on his face at the exact same instant as they both realized.

"A-Alex?" Dean asked aloud, looking behind them and around them in cautious alarm. A ringing bell sounded over the set as the brothers gaped around in search of their mysteriously missing sister.

"Where'd—where'd she go?" Sam asked in a low voice. He looked ready to attack at a moment's notice, but no one in the immediate vicinity was paying much attention to them or seemed to be posing any sort of threat.

"Did—did Balthazar not throw her in here with us?" Dean asked. Wherever 'here' was. Dude… what the HELL!

"I… I dunno." Sam was at a loss and confused. "She was right beside me."

Dean turned in a full circle as he backed off of the mattress, starting to feel sick and panicked at the loss of their sister. "Alex?" He asked in a low voice. Maybe she was just out of sight or had been thrown further than them. His voice raised as he tried to catch sight of her somewhere, anywhere. "Alex!"

A kid with a stoned expression, dark unwashed hair, and several-day stubble turned to them and looked like he misheard. "Um… yeah? What's up?" He was holding a clipboard and had some huge headphones around his neck.

Dean balked, suspicious. "Who the hell are you?"

The guy made a face. "Alex…? Bigsby?"

Dean scowled, annoyed. "Wrong Alex."

The Bigsby guy rolled his eyes lightly, muttered something like "fucking Ackles," and walked off.

What was this place? People in regular clothing milled around—the sounds of construction and hammering were audible from somewhere nearby. The ceiling was high as crap which made Dean think they were in some kind of warehouse. Lighting rigs, fans, ladders, and half-built walls were scattered all around. There were huge camera looking rigs, tracks, and even weirder than all of that was some kind of creepy replica of Bobby's study. Inside the study (which looked exact), two dudes with camera equipment were lounging around like they owned the place.

What… the… hell?

Sam shook his head, eyes darting all around the place in a shocked daze. "She's—she's not here, Dean," he breathed blankly, obviously wondering what to do.

"Yeah and apparently neither are the mooks," Dean said, realizing that at least was a good sign. Maybe. But Alex missing wasn't a good sign. "Where the hell did she go?" he asked, furtive and urgent and giving everyone who was in close vicinity the suspicious evil eye. "Where the hell are we?" This made no sense.

"I… I dunno," Sam said in a low whisper, joining Dean in canvasing the area quickly to access threats. "S-should we be killing anybody?"

All Dean saw was a bunch of people sitting around on their asses and he shrugged, hoping he was right. "D-doesn't look like it," he ventured.

"…Running?" Sam suggested, looking ready to do just that.

Dean had his hands out and upturned, frozen halfway in the air like he was in the middle of shrugging. "Run where?" And more importantly, they couldn't run and leave their sister behind. She had to be somewhere close by. Dean bellowed for her again, garnering several curious glances when he did. "Alex!"

Alex Bigsby looked up from where he was fiddling with a camera mount. "Yeah?"

Dean made a face. "Not you!"

Bigsby was vaguely insolent. "I'm the only Alex here bro."

Sam stooped and picked up a piece of glass near their feet and held it up, wobbling it back and forth at Dean, who stared dumbly. "You seeing this?" Sam asked, watching the gel-like glass piece jiggle like jello.

"What is this, like a movie set or something?" Dean asked, even as he had an idea on how to find Alex. He dropped the movie set theory and scooped his phone out of his pocket, scrolling to the first number in his phone labelled simply A and hit call. No Signal his phone flashed over and over. Dean held it up in the air, frustrated. "What the… my phone doesn't work." He shoved his phone back into his pocket angrily. On a mission as his shock dissipated, Dean strode forward to the guy who had saluted them with coffee earlier. Sam followed closely and nervously. "Hey, you," Dean growled. "Yeah you. I need to find my sister, now."

The old man seemed slightly taken aback at the tone of voice and bold approach. "Who, Mackenzie?" At the double-take that Dean did at the question—just who the freakin' crap was 'Mackenzie'? The old man squinted at Dean. "You feeling okay Jensen?"

"Jensen?" Sam and Dean asked in dumbstruck unison.

The old man just frowned in confusion, looking at them for explanation.

Sam was getting over his shock and starting to get urgent. "Look, never mind, listen—we need to find our sister."

The guy looked between them in mounting confusion. "Your sister, Jared? You mean Megan?" At the double-takes Sam and Dean gave him, the old man sighed and rolled his eyes, sitting back in his director-style chair and waving a hand like he was batting something away. "Okay, you know what? Whatever this goofy prank of yours is, I don't get it and I don't feel like it today, boys." Surly, he hauled himself out of his chair with a grunt. "Very funny, J-two. I'll see you tomorrow, kay?" He nodded to a guy who was beside him with a walkie-talkie. "Moving on."

"Moving on!" the guy shouted into the walkie-talkie, and the lights suddenly all changed with a loud metallic groan, becoming warm and bright instead of cool and dim. Sam and Dean blinked in surprise, confounded. "That's a wrap on Jared and Jensen!" The alarm sounds rang twice more and someone shouted something about all clear.

Totally clueless and confused, Sam looked at Dean. "All right, who the hell are—"

"Jared!" A young blonde woman appeared out of nowhere and took Sam by the arm, whisking him away. "Three minutes, okay? Great."

Dean, following closely in growing confused anger—who was Jared? He didn't like this at all. "Where are we going?" he whispered, then suddenly found himself assaulted by a young brunette woman.

"Jensen, there you are!" she cooed, coming out of nowhere and pushing him along, away from Sam and over in another direction. "Let's just get you in the chair…"

"'Chair'?" Dean repeated, finding himself in front of a lightbulb-bordered mirror. "No, I'm trying to find my sis…" he trailed off, shocked, "ter."

Photos of himself and Sam were taped to the mirror along the edges. Photos Dean knew he had never taken. A lot of them were of his more brutal injuries, but with him making goofy faces. What the hell! And then Dean saw one of Sam making a smoochy face in his FBI getup and Dean did a double-take and snatched the picture off the mirror, dumbstruck. Sam? What the actual fuck are you doing? How did these people have these photos?

"Oh your sister? Mackenzie?" the woman asked conversationally, pulling wipes out of some little box on the little table below the mirror. "Haven't seen her, Jens. Did she visit again? Let's just get this makeup off your face, kay?" Without permission she grabbed his face and started rubbing his face with the little white cloth she had.

"Makeup?" Dean asked, giving her a look like she had to be crazy while pulling away from her death-grip. "I'm not wearing any ma—" the cloth she'd been wiping over his face had come away with tan, skin-colored substance and it made his eyes go wide. Dean gawked with horror at himself in the mirror. He could see it now when he looked close—he even had eye makeup on. "Oh crap. I'm a painted whore!"

There was a brief, humoring laugh. "You always say the funniest stuff," the makeup artist said, trying to resume her actions. "Hold still please."

Dean wasn't having it. "Hey hey hey—I don't need that foofy crap all over my face, bad enough you put makeup on me, quit touching me!" He clearly offended the makeup artist—and guess what, he didn't care. "You got a phone?"

She gave him a strange look and slowly nodded to the table, where some kind of fancy touch-screen phone was laying. "Um… yeah… you wanna use it or someth—" Dean had already snatched it up. "Okay then," she said, meek and thrown off.

Dean used the sleeve of his jacket (the much more manly solution) to scrub his face off as he dialed Alex's number in from memory and hit call. "Come on, come on…" he muttered.

He heard the other end pick up and his heart leapt. Thank god. And then suddenly it plummeted again. "Thanks for calling Lawrence Animal Hospital, how can I help you?" a man's voice asked.

Dean gaped at the phone, looked to make sure the number was right. It was. "…The hell?" he muttered, getting really, really worried. What is happening right now?

"…You okay Jensen?" The makeup artist was peering at him with an odd expression.

He shoved her phone back at her angrily. "Why do you keep calling me that?!"

"Um… 'cause it's your name." She looked more and more confused by the second.

"No it's not!" Dean retorted loudly, looking around at the insane asylum he and Sam had found themselves in. He was irritated at every little thing, especially the few people who had stopped to stare at his antics. "This is a bunch of craziness. Craziness!" He threw his hands up and stalked off.

Another makeup artist patted Jensen's makeup artist on the shoulder sympathetically. "Actors, right?"

---

"Trish Evian here with Jared Padalecki from TV's Supernatural. So, Jared, season six."

Sitting in a fold-out high chair, Sam was gaping around behind himself—a replica of the panic room was there and it looked exactly like the panic room from Bobby's but it was kind of, you know, missing an entire wall and opened up into this warehouse sound-stage place. Am I dreaming? This can't be real.

"Jared?" The interviewer woman waited and Sam made himself stop gawking. He turned back around toward her.

A huge video light glared into his face and he blinked against the nearly-blinding brightness. A guy stood next to the interviewer with a camera on his shoulder, filming Sam's every move. Standing off to the side, another dude held a boom mic rig over his head. The woman, Trish, seemed to be expectantly waiting for him to say something. "W-what?" Sam asked, not sure if there had been a question or not. He was stumped and feeling really nervous. He hated being on camera or filmed in any way, shape, or form.

"You beat the devil, lost your soul, and got it back again," she said pleasantly, listing off things not that many people knew—and as a result, Sam was pretty damn shocked. "So tell us, what's next for Sam Winchester?"

It was so overwhelming to Sam. TV's 'Supernatural'? Season six? Jared Padalecki? What's next for Sam Winchester? Under intense pressure, Sam shook his head repeatedly, failing to come up with words. The camera was laughing at him, leering and daring him to say something dumb. "Look, I-I-I really don't—"

"Oh, and if you could include the question in your answer?" Trish smiled, very friendly and professional in the face of his weird behavior. "Thanks."

Sam swallowed, looking into the camera briefly then over at the mic guy. Well, might as well see what he could learn about what sort of Twilight zone this was. But first, he had to answer the question. He fumbled royally for some kind of intelligent answer, but he had no idea of what to say. "What's next for Sam Winchester is, uh… some stuff, and things, like, emotional stuff. Um, you know, like more of what has… been on the show… before? Twists and turns and uh, uh, plot stuff. Like you'd expect. Of a show. This show." Trish frowned slightly at his bumbling answer and glanced at her cameraman.

Sam fidgeted, feeling close to passing out. The camera was freaking him out and the video light was hot as crap, making him dizzy. What's next for Sam Winchester, the question had been. And he was Sam. So, maybe he actually could answer the question. "Um… Sam's trying to figure out how he feels about Dean lying to him and the all stuff he did when he was soulless," he answered honestly, turning a little red from the pressure. That camera was in his peripheral vision, mocking him. "And, um, he's still trying to process what happened to Alex."

Trish paused, looked like she'd misheard. "I'm sorry, to who?"

Sam paused, a confusing lightbulb going off in his mind. Wait. If Alex hadn't come here… if she wasn't beside them… if he'd just mentioned her and the interviewer looked like she didn't know who Alex was… maybe… maybe Alex wasn't on this show? But that made no sense—because if this show was about their life, as it looked like it was, then where the hell was Alex? Sam decided to find out what was going on. "Lemme ask you something. Trish." Sam tried to fish for information inconspicuously. "If you, uh, were to describe this, this show to me in like a sentence or two… um… what would you say it was mainly about?"

Slightly thrown off balance but going along with him, Trish answered, seeming to wonder if someone was playing a prank on her. "It's a show about two brothers who hunt evil and fight the paranormal." She paused, then added: "And now there's angels."

Sam sat back slightly in his chair. "Two brothers," he repeated, looking at her in thorough confusion. "Two brothers only."

"Yeah…" Trish frowned a little, not seeing where he was going with the questions. "Well there was the step-brother, Adam?"

So they knew about Adam but left out Alex? They had totally accurate replicas of Bobby's place and the panic room, they knew all Sam's dark secrets, but Alex was just… gone? "So… no sister?" Sam asked, beside himself with shock.

Trish looked completely stumped at his question. "Sister?"

Even the cameraman and the sound guy were now giving Sam weird looks. "I'll take that as a no," he muttered, not sure what to do with this information. No Alex. Just him and Dean. "And this is season six?" he asked, more and more astonished by the second. "People actually watch a show about our lives?" He caught himself. "Their—their lives."

Trish answered slowly, studying him closely. "A few… it's not a blockbuster or anything but it has a consistent fan base. You know that, Jared." At that moment Trish seemed to decide Sam was joking around and cracked a disarming smile. "Such a jokester. You mind if I ask the questions now?"

Sam stood up, shaking his head. He saw Dean lurking nearby looking cagey and giving him the let's go signal. "Um, actually, I feel sorta sick, mind if we do this later?" He was already brushing past her and heading for his brother.

The second Sam got to him, Dean smacked a photo into Sam's chest. "Dude, I was wearing makeup," he complained, sounding equal parts upset and insulted.

Sam took the picture and looked at it and was immediately flabbergasted. It was him, but he was pretty sure it wasn't—he was wearing an FBI suit and making a kissy face at the camera. "Oh god. What is this?" he asked, looking at Dean for an explanation.

"That's what I wanna know!" Dean hissed.

Sam rubbed a hand against the side of his face, looking at his fingers. On them, a chalky skin-colored residue. Shocked, he stared. "…I'm wearing makeup too."

Dean pointed at him meaningfully. "Use your sleeve." He took off, walking toward a huge set of Bobby's attic.

Sam rubbed his jacket sleeve on his face fast and shoved the humiliating photo into his jacket pocket, trying to refocus on what was happening to them. "Look, I think I know what this is," he said as he caught up to Dean. "It's a TV show."

"You think?" Dean wisecracked, vaguely gesturing around them sarcastically as he came to a stop.

"Yeah. I mean, here—wherever 'here' is, this—this twilight zone Balthazar zapped us into. For whatever reason, our life is a TV show."

"Our life, huh?" Dean asked, chuckling wryly, feigning casual amusement. "Have you noticed, Sam, there's just one little, small, tiny missing element…?" He dropped the little smile in favor of an indignant expression, as if it were Sam's fault. "Like, I don't know, our sister?!"

"Yeah, no, yeah, I noticed," Sam started.

"So if this show is based on our life, where the hell is she?" Dean demanded, looking around and throwing his hands out in freaked exasperation.

"Dude, I dunno," Sam said, managing his turbulent emotions a lot better than his brother. "I asked about her and the interviewer looked at me like I grew horns."

"Well I tried calling her number and it was some animal hospital!" Dean fired back like it was a contest to see who could have experienced the most shocking moment concerning the situation.

They fell into silence for a moment, trying to figure it out—Sam tensely frowned down at the ground as Dean ran a hand over his mouth and shifted his weight around. "Do—do you think that guy Virgil got her?" Sam asked, not wanting to even go there but knowing it was a possibility.

Dean gave Sam a dark glare for suggesting that. "I swear she was right with me when we flew through that window, Sam!" he thundered lowly.

"No, I know, me too!" Sam protested, because it was obvious that Dean was silently holding Sam's calmer reaction against him. Sam was worried too, a lot, just wasn't about to lose his head like Dean. And the third degree wasn't going to solve the mystery.

Dean was staring at the attic set and suddenly jabbed an angry finger at it. "That's her bag, Sam, right there, on that damn bed. That's the same duffel bag she's used for like fifteen years so where the hell is she?" Dean, who wasn't good at holding still when he got upset, started to walk off blindly in search of an exit.

Sam followed, mulling it over hardcore, looking back at his sister's familiar bag tensely. A thought came to him and he caught up to his agitated brother. "Hey, all right, here's an idea. You ever heard of the multiverse theory?"

"And just what the hell is that, Brainiac?" Dean asked in what was almost a sneer.

"It's like this hypothetical set of infinite possible universes that all exist at the same time but in different, I dunno, dimensions."

Dean stopped to make a point of giving Sam a churlish look. "Are you trying to put me to sleep? 'Cause it's working."

Faintly exasperated with his brother, Sam took a couple quick steps to catch up with Dean, who was already stalking off again. "No, listen—what if this is one of those? And these Jared and Jensen guys are like, our parallel selves?"

Dean sent Sam a sidelong pinched frown. "Our what."

Sam didn't answer. "And maybe in this universe, Alex doesn't exist for whatever reason," he theorized. "I mean, in this universe she doesn't exist on the show, obviously. So maybe when we fell through into this universe, maybe she just landed back on the other side of the window at Bobby's 'cause she's like… incompatible or something."

"Oh well that's real comforting, Sam," Dean snapped.

"I mean, it's an explanation," Sam ventured. He didn't like it either.

Dean stopped walking again to give Sam his best accusing, helpless rant. "Yeah, one that means she's back there with those winged dicks alone with Raphael after her!"

Sam knew that. "Cas won't let her get hurt," he said, hoping that was true. "I don't think."

Dean shook his head, looked around the enormous set again. They were standing beside a hospital room set—the same hospital room they'd interrogated dragon-girl in just a few weeks ago. "Don't like this, Sam." He began to walk again.

"No, me either," Sam said, on his heels. "But listen, let's just keep our heads and figure out more and find out how to get back."

"Yeah. Good." Dean stopped again abruptly, almost making Sam run smack into him. Whirling around, Dean gave his brother a pissy expression. "But seriously, why would anybody want to watch our lives? Especially without Alex? I mean they kinda missed the whole point of our family if they cut her out, right? Who would watch a show about two idiot brothers and their million issues without the cute little sister factor? Who in their right mind would cut her out?! And why?!"

"You got me there," Sam conceded, focused on calming Dean down so that they could work through this odd situation they had found themselves in. "Look, I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm just saying, we—we landed in some dimension where Alex isn't here, you're Jensen Ackles, and I'm something called a 'Jared Padalecki.'"

"So what, now you're Polish?" Dean rolled his eyes and walked off, finally finding a door. When he pushed it open, they found themselves outside in what looked to be the middle of day. It was chilly and overcast, but the good news was that Dean spotted a familiar sight.

The Impala was parked ahead next to a huge trailer. "Hey look, at least baby made it," Dean said, a grin relaxing his features. And then some guy rounded the car with a bucket in hand and began to fling mud artfully across the windshield.

Dean's smile fell and he was already moving forward. "Hey. Hey! What—" he stopped mid sentence when he saw five more Impalas in various states of condition lining the lot to his right. Two of the car bodies were severely junked and dented. Shocked beyond belief at what this day was delivering, Dean stared. "Is nothing sacred?" he asked in a barren, shocked voice. "First they erase baby girl and now they do that to my baby?" he swallowed, reaching for Sam briefly. "I feel sick. I'm gonna be sick." He walked it off, trying to find where this nightmare of endless sets ended. He and Sam wandered through a maze of plywood-backed buildings, getting more and more lost.

"I wanna go home," Dean muttered, physical illness welling up in him as they walked past fake front-only buildings of actual towns they had been to recently. "This whole place is bad-touching me." It was like their reality was this universe's joke. He stopped and looked up at the sky, so frustrated he could have kicked something. "And where the hell is Alex?" he shouted out loud, like the universe might hear him better if he got louder and angrier.

Sam, shook his head, scanning around in vague confusion as they stopped at the back of a set-dressing wall. "We gotta call Cas."

Dean realized holy crap, yes—good idea. And then immediately thought, well, maybe not. "Yeah—if he's still alive." The brothers exchanged a brief look. They'd both heard Balthazar—Cas was in deep. Either way, worth a shot. Dean squeezed his eyes closed for effect. "Dear Castiel, who art maybe running his ass away from Heaven, we pray that you have your ears on. Can't find your girlfriend. Kinda freakin' out here. So… breaker breaker…"

He opened his eyes back up, looking at Sam hopefully. Did that work?

Off at the edge of his peripheral vision, through an open door into more parking lot, Dean glimpsed a flash of beige and turned to look. Cas! He was standing in a space that had been dressed to look like a street. The angel had his hands in pockets as he stared back at them in mild curiosity.

Dean took off at a jog, so glad to see the guy he could have hugged him. "Hey, Cas! Thank god, what is all this, huh?" he asked when they reached him. "W-w-what did Balthazar do to us?"

Cas squinted at each of them in turn, taking a couple beats to answer as if he were preparing himself. When he spoke, his voice sounded slightly wrong. "To keep you out of Virgil's reach, he's cast you into an alternate reality, a universe similar to ours in most respects yet dramatically different in others."

"Yeah, just like you said, Sam," Dean said in faint pride, smacking his brother on the chest briefly then trying to put it into his own terms, which turned out to be comic-book-esque. "Like—like bizarro earth, right?" he asked Cas. "Except instead of having bizarro Superman, we get this clown factory, this erased sister freakshow!"

That angry comment seemed to throw Cas slightly and confuse him a little. "Um…" he looked down, like he was trying to remember something. "Yeah, well… anyway, no time to explain. Do you have the key?"

Dean was insulted—Cas needed to get his priorities straight. "Forget the key Cas, where the hell is Alex?"

Cas again seemed to be thrown off. "Um… A—" his eyes went down in thought and he jerked his head back and made a scrunchy face as he dropped his calm, stoic demeanor. "Okay, wait, who?" His voice also jumped up several notches in pitch.

Dean balked in sheer disbelief, his face going slack. "Did you just say 'who'?"

"Man…" Cas pulled some rolled up sheets of paper out of his pocket, his voice still higher in pitch, almost making him sound normal. "Did they put out new pages? Is that a new character? I don't see his name on here anywhere…"

Dean was insulted and realized this couldn't be Cas. "He's not a him, he's a her, and she's our sister!" he exclaimed indignantly.

The Cas impostor stopped paging through the stack in his hand and looked absolutely confounded, raising a single eyebrow and cocking his head to the side as he gave Dean a look like he was abso-friggin-lutely nuts. "…Uh what?"

Sam looked at the impostor in shock. "Is—is this some kind of joke, Cas?"

The impostor frowned right back, suspicious. "I, uh, dunno," he answered honestly, confused. "Is it?" He suddenly got a knowing look. "Wait… wait." He abruptly grinned and shook a finger at them chidingly, smiling in a relaxed way that looked so wrong on Cas's face. "Is this one of your famous J-two pranks?"

"Our what?" Sam asked, flummoxed.

"Give me that," Dean snapped, grabbing the script away from the impostor, or, in better terms, the actor. Reading quickly off the pages and finding that his theory was right, Dean got pissed. "These are words on a script." The impostor was loosening his tie to take it off and Dean noticed then how the guy wore a thick silver wedding ring. That was the final proof for him that this guy wasn't the real Cas. Dean grabbed him by the wrist and pulled his hand up and showed Sam for effect, shaking the guy's hand around angrily. "This isn't Cas," he growled, dropping the guy's hand with a shove.

The Cas actor gave Dean a slightly weird look but shrugged it off, pleasant and seeming to be waiting for them to start acting normally. "So you guys wanna run lines, or…?"

"His name's Misha," Dean proclaimed the second he found Castiel's lines on the page. He looked at the actor in disbelief. That wasn't a real name—couldn't be. "'Misha'?"

The actor was confused, and a smile that tried so hard to understand what was happening hovered. "...'Jensen'?" he returned, trying to play along.

At the same second, the brothers exchanged a sidelong glance—this was another dead end—then brushed past the actor. "Misha? Jensen? What's up with the names around here?" Dean asked, annoyed as crap as they walked off.

"You guys!" Misha shouted after them, chuckling pleasantly. "You really punked me! I'm totally gonna tweet this one!"

Dean and Sam again exchange a sidelong glance at that one. "So, looks like our prayers aren't reaching Cas," Sam muttered, shaking his head as they put more and more distance between themselves and the actor who played Castiel. "Or the real Cas."

"Yeah, seems like we're out of soul-phone range," Dean returned, equally grouchy. He looked up at the sky, face working in anger. "Balthazar, you bastard, I'm gonna rip your—"

Sam suddenly grabbed his arm to make him stop. "Hey look!" He motioned to a nearby trailer that was very nice and very large. "'J. Ackles.'" Sure enough, the door was labeled J. Ackles.

Dean paused, realizing. "That's fake me!" he said, pointing to himself. He gestured at the trailer with both hands, making a wide arc. "This must be fake mine." He looked at Sam with mild excitement. "Dude, I own a trailer." They were both thinking the same thing and went into it, wide-eyed at how lavish and expensive it was. Dark wood accents and polished silvers made the place look super modern and lavish. At the end of the trailer a huge flat-screen TV was playing clips of what could only be the show—Dean and Sam were both on screen in suits, speaking seriously and frowning in thought.

A miniature remote-controlled helicopter covered in a tacky flame design sat smack dab on a display stand and was what first caught Dean's attention. "Dude, I have a helicopter!" he exclaimed, transfixed with the gadget immediately.

"Yeah but remember what you don't have. Your sister," Sam reminded grimly, then immediately after did a double take as he turned around and caught sight of a huge aquarium. "Whoa, whoa… all right, who puts a three hundred gallon aquarium in their trailer?"

Dean turned and stared at it in growing surprise. "Apparently Jensen Ackles." Who was this guy?

"Huh, yeah." Sam spotted an open laptop on the little dining table nearby and quickly made for it then slid into a chair in front of it. "All right, here we go. Let's see what we can figure out." He pulled up a search engine on the internet and began typing. "Alex… Winchester…" he paused and made a face. "What the hell is this show called again? Paranormal?"

Dean was stooping to look at a pile of magazines on the coffee table in front of the TV. Supernatural! The magazine the cover proclaimed. On it, he and Sam were glaring seriously like they thought they were hot stuff or something. "Close. 'Supernatural,'" Dean answered, then scoffed. "How original." He held up the magazine and let Sam see. "Just look at these male modeling sons of bitches," he said. "Nice blue steel, Sam."

"I think I look kinda good," Sam said, cracking a grin then quickly wiping it away. Seemed wrong to smile at the current time. He returned to the laptop. "Okay. Alex… Winchester… Supernatural." He hit enter and began to look through the search results.

As Sam did that, Dean flipped through the magazine he had picked up. Glossy spreads were filled with familiar faces—Cas, Bobby, Ellen, Jo, Rufus, even Dad. The spreads showed real and recognizable moments out of Dean's life, but no Alex anywhere at all. But in some photographs, it was almost like you could tell she'd been removed—in some photos, there was a space between Sam and Dean where she'd been, or a space to the side of one of the brothers where she was supposed to be. Dean reached a spread about the apocalypse and saw himself, empty-armed, on his knees near the Impala near where Sam had just jumped in. She wasn't there. She wasn't there. "Dude, this is like the Twilight zone," Dean muttered, getting more and more mystified and disturbed. "She's nowhere." He heaved a deeply troubled sigh and tossed the magazine down, not liking this one bit but trying not to lose it completely. There was an explanation. Had to be one. He peered over at Sam. "Getting any hits?"

Sam glanced up at him, making a face. "Yeah, but they're weird."

Dean headed his way, curious. "Whatcha got?"

Sam's expression was hesitant. "…Fan fiction."

"Oh god." Dean stopped mid step, shuddering in aversion. "I remember that crap."

"One fan fiction," Sam corrected, reading the screen closely as Dean cautiously sat down opposite of him. "Okay, so some author named River Winters—guessing that's a pen name—has written a nearly-million word story about Alex Winchester, who is Sam and Dean's sister."

Dean's eyebrows were high on his head. "Almost a million words?" he scoffed. "Someone has no life."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Sam agreed. "But I mean, other than this one story I don't really see anything else—there's a 'tumble-er' for her or something, but the website's down, so I can't see it… well, wait here's a page about Jo that came up on the search." He started to read from it. "'In early drafts of the Supernatural script, Jo Harvelle was named Alex. The character was originally conceived as a love interest for Dean, but even the writers admitted that Jo came off more like a little sister character. They changed the name and re-wrote the script accordingly.'" Sam stopped reading with an odd expression on his face. "So that's… something?"

"Dude." Dean wrinkled his nose at the thought of them almost putting him with his own sister. "Gross." He spotted another laptop sitting nearby on the coffee table that he hadn't noticed before and got up to get it. "Hey, I'm gonna get in on this research thing."

For the next fifteen minutes the brothers scoured Supernatural websites in an effort to make sense of everything. Finally Dean sat back, exhausted and stumped. "Okay, everything else is the same in this crazy show as in our actual lives. Basically." He gestured at the screen. "Same big story lines, same hunts, just… no Al." Sam nodded, having found the same stuff. And nothing to do with anyone who had come into Dean and Sam's life through Alex—no mention of the Wards, the Winchester Mystery House was still standing (hadn't burned down in this universe), stuff like that. Dean shook his head blankly. "I don't get it. How could these, these show writers or whatever know all about our lives and not know about her?" Dean asked, because it was truly disturbing. Even more so than these people knowing about their lives was their sister being cut out of it like she'd never been there at all. It made him think about that guardian angel thing Cas had originally claimed on her. Did that have something to do with this? It was too eerie.

"I got an even better question for you," Sam said intently, leaning closer to Dean. "How does one fan fiction author have the facts straight? I've been skimming the first four chapters of this story and… this is so weird. I remember this stuff happening exactly the way it's written here. Dean, exactly." He was trying to make sense of it, face working hard in thought. "So how would this one person know the truth while the rest of this universe just… forgot about her?"

"You got me." Dean rubbed his mouth in thought. "Maybe we go put the shakedown on this Winters River, huh?"

"River Winters," Sam corrected offhandedly.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Whatever. I mean what is she, a hippie?"

"Hippie or not, she knows about Alex," Sam said with a shrug. "And if you ask me, sounds more like a prophet or a psychic than a hippie."

"What, like Chuck?" Dean asked dubiously.

"Exactly."

Dean was thinking hard. "Where's this story dead-end?"

"Lemme pull up the last chapter published," Sam said and clicked a few times. "Chapter forty-four was the last one. About two weeks ago. Hm." He scrolled to the bottom of the page and skimmed. "Oh. Looks like, uh, this is me jumping into the pit." Somber, Sam scrolled down further, reading more. He then shrugged as if he had nothing good to report. "Says she's on hiatus while season six films."

"Huh." Dean thought then shrugged. "Well, maybe this chick knows what's going on with us right now, huh? She obviously knows more than the rest of these saps!" he shouted 'saps' at the ceiling like he was berating this entire alternate universe. Sam made a face and scoffed laughingly. Dean pointed a commanding finger at his brother. "Find out where this writer chick's from. We gotta talk to her."

Sam hesitated. "How?"

"She's a fan of this terrible show we're on, right?" Dean asked, then threw his hands up slightly. "I dunno. Uh… use that."

Sam stared at his laptop screen hard, thinking. "Wait." He got that look in his eyes he got when he was struck by a solution. "I got it. Twitter."

Dean frowned. "What-er?"

"It's a social media thing, Grandpa," Sam wisecracked, getting a sardonic little expression from Dean in return. "Padalecki left himself logged in. I send out a Twitter…er? on his account and say River Winters has won a Supernatural prize pack in recognition for writing such a long story, please privately message the account with your home address for delivery…" he shrugged. "And then hopefully we have the address within a few hours."

Approving, Dean nodded. "Inspired. Creepy serial killer inspired." That earned him a little look from Sam that prompted him to become defensive. "What?"

San was typing and glanced at Dean sullenly over the laptop screen. "Don't knock it if it works."

Dean ignored the comment and googled Jensen Ackles, curious to know about his parallel self. Interestingly enough, he learned that Jensen Ackles had a brother and a sister in real life. Huh. So we have that in common… curious, Dean googled Jarred Padaleskie—Google immediately suggested did you mean Jared Padalecki?—yeah, whatever Google. After doing more reading, Dean found that Jared was one of three kids as well—he had a brother and a sister, too. Huh. That was kinda spooky and coinky-dinky. Dean rubbed his chin in thought and clicked over to videos of Jensen Ackles acting reels.

A video of an angsty blonde began to play. "If I didn't have cancer, and I wasn't married, and I had plenty of money... would you—would you want to run away with me?" she asked someone very emotionally. The camera cut away from her and then a dude who looked a lot like Dean had at eighteen but with the wrong hair stared at the woman sadly.

"Money?" he asked, melodramatic and not convincing. Sad piano music played in the background. "What, you think I really care about money, Nicole? I care that you're healthy."

Sam looked up across the table at him, frowning curiously. "That voice sounds like you," he said, suspicious. Dean slammed the laptop shut.

"Don't like this universe, Sammy," Dean said, renewed with need to escape this place now. "We need to get out of this place."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "No argument here."

"Look, I just had a thought," Dean said, realizing maybe he knew how to get back home. "If we can reverse Balthazar's spell... I watched every move." He grabbed a pad of paper off the coffee table and began to sketch. "We just, uh, get the ingredients right, get back to that same window, and… there's no place like home." He showed Sam the sigil Balthazar had drawn and that they could draw too.

Sam hesitated. "Yeah but what if Alex is here somewhere, just somewhere else?"

Dean faltered. "You think?"

"I mean it's a possibility…"

"But she could also be back in our universe and needing help," Dean argued, very rationally upset at how he had no clue which one was was no way to know and that was the really stressful part. "Maybe this fan fiction chick will know," Dean muttered, raking a hand through his hair in annoyance. "It's a long shot but hopefully she replies to your twittery thing and doesn't live in Russia." He looked around the trailed tersely. "All I know is we gotta get outta this freakin' maxiverse, man."

"Multiverse," Sam corrected.

Dean sent him a dark glance. "Nerd."

Sam settled back into his chair and gave Dean a cool look. "Yeah, make fun of how smart I am and how helpful my random knowledge is," he said sarcastically. "Makes you look real good."

Dean was taken aback for a second and then became prim. "Well that was just mean."

---

Kilauea, Hawaii
About Forty Minutes Ago

Crash! The Winchesters collided with the solid glass of Bobby's window and flew through it out into the stormy night… so imagine Alex's confusion when instead of wet ground she skidded onto hard, dry pavement as glass showered around her, cutting and scraping exposed skin as her palms and knees screamed against hard concrete.

Son of a bitch! She heard someone shouting nearby but she didn't recognize the voice. She stared at the concrete and felt the sun beating down on her. She looked around in a daze of confusion. This wasn't Bobby's yard. She pushed herself up on burning palms and looked to her left where Sam should have been. Nothing. Her pulse seized up. She looked to her right, where Dean had just been. No one. Her heart began to hammer. What happened to them? "Dean?" she asked in an urgent voice, looking around and trying to find any sign of either brother. "Sam?" She raised her head up, squinting against bright sunlight, trying to push herself up further. Her jarred nerves and shocked joints refused to cooperate and she groaned, rolled over onto her back.

"Astrid!? Ah miel, ce qui s'est passé? Oh mon dieu! Ici, permettez-moi de vous aider, vous êtes d'accord? Astrid? Pouvez-vous parler?"

A tall skinny lady with too much makeup on and garishly tan skin babbled at her in French, suddenly in her face from above. Alex pushed the stranger away, freaking out. "Get off me, off of me!" She flailed, trying to get away, trying to catch sight of either brother. "Dean! SAM!"

"Calmez-vous, ma chérie, juste respirer!" the woman insisted, confusing Alex even further.

"Hey, whoa, you all right Assy?" came a soft, concerned voice. Someone was crouching down beside her with the babbling Frenchwoman. "That was quite a crash."

Alex froze, squinted up at a very familiar looking guy. "Johnny Depp?" He was wearing the weirdest clothes too—piratey looking stuff—but he looked normal from the neck up.

He chuckled lightly. "That's'm name, don't wear it out."

Alex blinked at him dumbly. What… is happening?

"Here Sam come, Astreed," the Frenchwoman said in badly broken English. Oh thank goodness, Sam…

Alex's relief was cut short as a young man who was clean-shaven and brown-headed and not Sam suddenly appeared, falling to his knees beside her and looking at her with wild, shocked eyes. "You okay?!" he asked, touching her chin, looking at her scrapes with shock. "You're all cut up—what happened?"

She squirmed away from this stranger, trying to backpedal away from all these weirdos. "Hey, hey, don't touch me!" she snapped, shoving his gentle hand away. "You're not Sam!"

"Er… yes I am," he said, taken aback then holding his hands out in a calming gesture. "Astrid, it's okay. It's me. Sam. Claflin." Who? At the continuing lack of recognition, he tried again. "Your co-star?"

"Co-star?" she echoed, looking around wildly. There were a bunch of trailers and she could see some palm trees arcing over the roofs—there were some tropical looking flower bunches dotting the area too. Her face fell. Was this a movie set? What was happening? "Where am I?" she asked, getting scared.

"Hey, move back, move back! EMT!" A newcomer arrived: a slightly overweight guy with carrot-orange hair who carried a satchel of medical supplies. He was wearing a paramedic's uniform and was looking at Alex intently. "Astrid, can you tell me what happened? Did anyone see what happened? Did you fall?"

Who is Astrid?

"She just up and flew through the window, Nudge," Johnny Depp explained. "Never seen anything like it."

"How?" the EMT who was apparently called Nudge demanded.

"An angel did it," Alex muttered, pissed at Balthazar as she glared around at the nearby area vengefully. Where the hell were her brothers? She was angry and getting up very clumsily, calling for her angel all the while. "Cas! Cas, get me outta here!"

Everyone stared at her as she wavered to her feet. Nudge was trying to get her to calm down, holding her by the arms. "She must have hit her head hard," he said, then tried to pull Alex over to the trailer steps. "Come here and sit down."

"No, I'm fine," she insisted, although she wasn't. She'd just lost her brothers and Cas wasn't answering. "Cas!"

"She's lost her accent," Sam Claflin observed with a perplexed, worried look on his face. "And what's she wearing?" Alex made a face—she was wearing what she always wore!

"She also doesn't seem to recognize her personal assistant," Johnny Depp said, gesturing vaguely at the Frenchwoman who was wringing her hands anxiously.

"Hey, I can hear you, you know," Alex snapped, glaring at this Sam guy and then Johnny Depp. That's when she noticed all the pirates. There were like ten at least, some milling around but a bunch of them had stopped to stare at the scene she was creating.

"Astrid, how many fingers am I holding up?" Nudge asked, holding three fingers up super close.

She swiped at his hand to get it out of her face. "Okay, first of all, what kind of name is Astrid?" she asked peevishly, then leaned closer, furtive. "Second, why are there pirates everywhere?" Maybe she was hallucinating. That would make a lot more sense than this actually being real…

Nudge took her wrist, pressed two fingers into the veins deeply. "Pulse seems normal… I think she's in shock though."

"Hands off, dude!" Alex yanked her wrist away, looking at everyone in turn—Claflin, Johnny, Nudge, nervous French lady. Her anger began to waver. "H-has anyone seen my brothers?" she asked, wetting her lips and getting really anxious. They were nowhere to be seen or heard. "Big guys, one's kinda surly and bow-legged, the other one's tall and has girl hair?"

Claflin looked stricken, like he feared for her life itself. "I think we need to call an ambulance…"

"No, no ambulance!" Alex insisted, then began to shout as loud as she could. "Sam! Dean!"

"I'm… I'm gonna go get the director," Claflin said, appearing to be really worried. He hurried off as Alex continued to bellow for her brothers.

"Dean?! Sam!" she paused, exasperated and beside herself. "Cas!" Where were they?!

"What, like those guys on Supernatural?" Nudge asked, giving her a really weird look.

Alex stopped, breathless and slightly flushed from screaming so loud. "Huh?"

"Sam and Dean Winchester from Supernatural? And Cas the badass nerd angel? Yeah, I'm a big fan." Nudge pulled out his cell phone and showed her the screensaver. Alex gawked. Sam and Dean were his phone background. They were blue-steeling it up in what looked like a professional photograph. "Favorite show," Nudge said even as Alex grabbed the phone from him and stared at her brothers. That was them, and underneath them big stylized letters proclaimed SUPERNATURAL.

What the crap is a Supernatural? Balthazar had said something about hiding them, right? What, had he separated them for some reason? Were Sam and Dean some kind of TV stars in this weirdo world she was suddenly in? She was apparently in some kind of movie… looking at Nudge with rising hope, Alex swallowed. "W-where do they film it?"

Nudge squinted one eye closed in thought, looked up with the other one. "Canada, I think."

"And where are we right now?"

Nudge hesitated, looking at her like he suspected she'd lost her mind. "Uh… Hawaii?"

Well, that wasn't close at all. Irritated, Alex shoved his phone back at him and barreled past, heading for the trailer she'd just smashed out of. "Move."

"Wait, you need medical attention," Nudge protested.

"No, I need to go to Canada," she retorted. Skinny French Lady babbled protests and questions in broken French-glish, following Alex into the trailer.

Inside the trailer was decorated simply and sweetly but Alex didn't really pause to gawk. She made a beeline for the purse sitting on the little cot bed there—she grabbed it and rifled through, taking quick inventory of what was inside. A wallet that had US dollars and euros, credit cards, an ID, a passport, some cigarettes (score!), a keychain with several keys and a USB drive attached, some gum, perfume (Alex tossed that away without looking to see where it went), lipstick (also tossed), a lighter, and an iPhone. Alex grabbed the passport out to look at it. When she flipped it open, she froze. Staring back at her, a photo of herself… and the name Astrid Bergès-Frisbey. The passport said République Française and bore the flag of France. Huh? What is this? Some kinda joke? Grabbing the iPhone out of the purse and turning it on, Alex saw more French.

"Why is everything in French?!" she asked aloud, flabbergasted at what was happening. The woman was still babbling at her in words she didn't understand and Alex waved her away in rising irritation. "I don't understand a word you're saying, lady!" she thundered, dialing Dean's number and hoping to god he answered.

"Hello, Daisy's Vegan Bakery!" a perky woman's voice answered on the other end.

Alex yanked the phone away from her ear, shocked. That was Dean's number all right, but a vegan bakery. What kinda Twilight zone am I in?! She dialed Sam's number and got a disconnected tone. She paused—then realized oh yeah, Cas. She put his number in and got of all places, a church in North Dakota. "Oh you have got to be kidding me!" she shouted at the phone. Frustrated and a little panicked at the dead ends and unexplained circumstances, she threw the phone back into the purse, quickly putting together a game plan. Balthazar said he was hiding them before he'd thrown them through that window, and apparently he'd done that—put them into some strange reality or dimension and given them cover stories—brainwashed these people into thinking she, Sam, and Dean were actors or something. But she was not okay being separated from her family. Not one bit. So, Canada it was then. And now.

"What are you doing, hon?" Johnny asked cautiously, coming into the trailer and watching her carefully. The Frenchwoman chattered hysterically and tried to grab the purse away from Alex.

"Leaving," Alex said evenly, batting the woman away in annoyance. She spotted a laptop and grabbed it too, tucking it under her arm vengefully.

"We're in the middle of filming!" Johnny protested. "Your big water tank scene's today!"

"My what?" Alex asked, looking up at him and becoming distracted when she saw all the photos lining the wall beside him. There were pictures of herself in a mermaid tail and nothing else—long hair covering her boobs just barely. In one picture, she smiled and posed with Jack Sparrow, giving a peace sign and a huge, dorky grin. Alex gaped and snatched the picture off the wall, realizing what this was. Johnny Depp, pirates… and as a result, she developed an extremely bad attitude. "Oh and this is just what the world needs," she muttered. "Another fucking Pirates of the Caribbean movie—one was enough!" Johnny looked absolutely shocked and she marched right up to him with the laptop and the purse full of resources, expecting him to unblock the doorway. When he didn't, she looked at him dangerously. "Get out of my way." She was in no mood to be held up for even a second.

"Astrid, you're not in your right mind, obviously, come on dear, I think you might have a serious head injury—just stay here and calm down and we can—oof!" He went down hard when she punched him square in the face. On the floor, he held his bleeding nose as the Frenchwoman shrieked and covered her mouth, jabbering hysterically. Johnny moaned, looked up at Alex in disbelief and pain. "Son of Christ you punch like a man!"

Alex shook out her aching hand. "That wasn't even full power," she muttered, stepping over him and heading for the door. She paused then, looking down at him with a hopeful little cringe. "Really good job in Edward Scissorhands, by the way. I um, enjoy your work."

---

Later
Canada

It was chilly as dusk settled over what Sam and Dean had realized was Canada. After trying to leave the set of Supernatural in one of the Impalas (which ran like a friggin' import, not a classic American muscle car), they were stopped by a crew member and ended up having to use a chauffeur guy to drive them around.

Either way, that River Winters chick had seen the Jared Padalecki tweet and responded pretty quickly. As luck (or bizarre fate) would have it, she lived in Canada not terribly far from the set. The boys were hoping she was at home. After all, the chauffeur had just driven them two full hours to the address River sent. They pulled up finally and peered out at the house, exchanged a silent look, then simultaneously started to get out of the SUV.

"I'll just wait here then?" the chauffeur asked.

Sam was the one who replied. "Yup, thanks Clint."

"It's Clif," he corrected.

"Oh, uh, right."

Shutting their doors in sync, Sam and Dean then approached the house cautiously. It looked pretty normal—single story, neat yard—it had a basketball goal beside the driveway, a little gray hatchback car was parked nearby, some flowers and wild rosemary were potted on the little porch area. "Okay so what if this chick is like a witch or something?" Dean asked, highly on edge and eyeing the bike they walked past like it might come alive and bite him.

"I don't think she is, Dean," Sam said, looking at the welcome mat and the fancy W hanging on the door. "Just keep your eyes open." He knocked on the door sharply and stood back.

For a minute, they stood there and waited. And then a young woman in her mid-to-late twenties came to the door, distracted by a phone conversation she was in the middle of. "Yeah, I was thinking they won't find out for awhile about the marria—" she saw who they were and her jaw sagged open, her eyes went wide, and she almost dropped her phone, "—aaah, aah, aage…" Appearing to have lost the ability to breathe, she swallowed and in a weak voice spoke into the phone. "M-Melissa? Yeah, ah, I'm-I'm… gonna have to call… you back." She hung up and almost dropped her iPhone completely as she stared at them with a shocked, sort of happy expression on her face. She wore leggins, a hoodie, and thick-rimmed glasses. Her blondish hair was piled onto the top of her head messily and she wasn't wearing makeup—didn't look like she got out much.

"River Winters?" Sam asked doubtfully.

"Yeah…" she agreed hesitantly.

"Hi, we're—"

A dawning grin began to light her face. "Oh, I know who you are!" she said, suddenly recovered from her shock and beaming instead. "Jared and Jensen!" She threw her arms out to indicate them, seeming to be beyond believing her luck. "From Supernatural! Wow!" She laughed out, then abruptly got very confused and nervous. "…Why are you at my house?"

Sam was intense and serious. "Actually, we're Sam and Dean."

River faltered, then she rolled her eyes and batted a hand, scoffing. "Very funny. Wait. Are you guys here to deliver the prize pack?! Wow! Wait, there's no cameras here are there?" She remembered her own appearance and did something weird with her eyelashes—put two fingers against them, like testing to see if there was anything on them.

Dean got surly. "There is no prize pack, move."

He brushed past her rudely, making her jaw drop. "Hey! Wha—" she turned, following him cautiously in a daze into her own house and he rounded on her.

"How do you know what you know?" he thundered angrily.

River looked confused, then attempted a lighthearted, uncertain pun. "…School?"

Dean's face showed absolutely dead-in-the-eyes chagrin. "Oh, we got a jokester, Sammy," he commented to his brother then stared hard at poor, clueless River. "I mean how do you know about Alex Winchester?"

River was taken aback all over again. "Wh… H-how do you know about her?" Her face was twisted up into a severely confused expression. She then gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth. "You guys read my story?" She was turning red and withering, making a face. "Aahh, embarrassing." She took her hands away and fidgeted with her hoodie self-consciously. "And what do you mean 'how do I know about her'? I, you know, invented her."

"No, you didn't," Dean fired back vehemently.

She frowned in confusion, peering at him in dumbfounded offense. "…I didn't?" She looked between the brothers in growing suspicion. "Okay, sorry, um—what's happening right now? Why are you guys in my house pretending to be Dean and Sam?" She then paused, a slow smile spreading across her face. "Wait. Is this some kind of J-two prank or something?"

Dean and Sam looked at each other, mystified. Dean then heaved a growling, annoyed breath. "We really gotta find out what a J-two prank is, Sammy."

Sam spoke up and brought the more level-headed, rational approach. "Okay, sorry, what Dean's trying to say is that, first of all?" He motioned between himself and Dean meaningfully. "We're Sam and Dean. The real Sam and Dean." That earned them a very skeptical look from the fan fiction author. "Second, Alex is real. We were just thrown into your universe by an angel from our universe and we can't find her now."

River looked at them with a look on her face that seemed to say you have got to be shitting me. "And you're... serious about this right now," she finally said slowly as she tried to figure them out. "Like, dead serious, no joking, mean every word."

"Yes." Sam's earnest expression matched his voice.

River squinted at them dubiously, then gave a little laugh, turned and walked toward the kitchen. "Okay… hold on a second."

The house had an open floor plan—living room, dining room, office, and kitchen were all in the same space. Sam glanced around briefly, seeing pictures dotting the walls, some dog toys, a tv and XBOX, and general evidence of family life. Not the home of a witch, he didn't think…

River was opening the refrigerator and rooting around for something. "What are you doing?" Sam asked hesitantly, looking to Dean who just shook his head, shrugged, rolled his eyes, and made a face.

The author pulled out a container labeled Oikos. "Looking at the expiration date on the yogurt I just ate because I must be hallucinating."

Dean gave Sam a disgusted look of utter irritation. "Of course she eats yogurt. Told you. Hippie." Dean marched over and snatched the container of yogurt out of River's hand then threw it hard against a wall in an effort to intimidate. "Listen, kid, tell us how you know about her!"

He didn't achieve the desired effect. Instead, he pissed the author off. "Hey! Don't throw yogurt in my house!" River exclaimed, indignant, staring at Dean like he was out of his mind. She put her hands on her hips with no shortage of attitude and gave him a look like he was about to get his ass kicked. "What's wrong with you?" Yogurt slid down the wall lazily.

"Sorry, sorry," Sam said, quickly moving over and trying to pacify. He turned to his brother, pissed. "Cool it, Dean."

River abruptly snatched a roll of paper towels off the counter and some spray cleaning solution and shoved them into Dean's arms. "…What's this?" he asked, balking.

"They're called cleaning supplies, Jensen," she answered in clipped tones which quickly ramped up into forceful affect, "Now use them!" Her expression was challenging and she had the distinct attitude of a sassy mama at that moment as she pointed her finger at Dean threateningly. "I don't care if you're the Pope, you throw food in my house you better be ready to clean it up."

Dean looked like he was thinking about saying no but thought better of it and gave a disgusted sigh then began to wipe the yogurt off her kitchen wall insolently. "Look, we're Sam and Dean," Sam said, trying to be reasonable and trying to move this forward. They didn't have all the time in the world.

River wasn't much of a fangirl anymore, in fact, she looked ready to kick them out. "Sam and Dean aren't real," she said impatiently. "Are you guys on drugs?"

"We are real!" Dean insisted, tossing the paper towels away into the trash can and thunking the cleaning spray down. "We can prove it!"

She folded her arms and looked at him testily. "Oh yeah? How?"

Dean didn't seem prepared for that one. "Uh… I dunno." He looked to his brother for help. "Sam?"

"Uh—ask us something only we would know," Sam said, using his hands vaguely as he thought out loud. "Ask us something you've written about or planned that only we would know."

"And hurry it up," Dean said unpleasantly. "We don't got all day, princess."

That earned him a little dark look from the author. "Well you've got the shitty attitude right, anyway, 'Dean'," she commented, then seemed to figure what the hell? She threw her hands out, a signal of irritable surrender. "Okay, fine, I'll bite," she muttered, seeming to think this was a ridiculous exercise. She thought a second, trying to come up with a question. "Okay. What's your sister's middle name?"

"Elizabeth," the boys answered in unintentional unison.

River was startled at the immediate and correct answer, but then made herself brush it off. "Okay… so you've read chapter twenty," she said. "That doesn't prove anything. Um…" she thought some more, wracking her brain. "What'd you do for the twin's twenty-first birthday?"

Dean answered this one. "Sam was at Stanford. Me and Al got some booze and went to the park and just chilled."

River looked a bit shell-shocked to hear Dean say that then slowly shook her head again, frowning. "No, wait, that was in the story already too. Chapter… twenty-nine? Maybe? I can't remember my own stuff anymore. Wait. Waaaaaait." She smiled, almost a smirk, like she thought she had the perfect question. "I got it. Sit down, guys." She motioned to the couches and indicated they sit separately, facing each other. "Not beside each other. Opposite sides." Dean was looking irritated past belief but Sam gave him look that communicated calm down, just take it easy.

She bustled over to the little office nook in the living room and picked two sheets of paper out of the printer and two markers out of the cup beside the huge iMac computer on her desk. She handed them each a piece of paper and a marker. "What, is it time for arts and crafts?" Dean wisecracked as he took what she gave.

"No…" River stood between them and looked at them assertively. "Write down the first thing Alex said when she got her voice back. The exact word or words she said. I've never put this in the story and I've never told anyone else what it was." She seemed to think she had won. "So if you get this right... maybe, maybe I'll believe you two." She muttered under her breath about a J-two prank going too far.

Sam and Dean exchanged a look and then both bent over the paper they'd been given, penning their answer to the author's question. They both remembered this, of course they did—there had been the initial pained groan of "unf!" when she had stubbed her toe that December day in 2007. Then there had been the wide-eyed stares they all gave each other as they realized that she had made that sound. Dean had asked, "did you just…?" Even as Sam asked, "was that you?" Alex, gaping, painfully hopeful and terrified at once had made a strange sound like "uuuhhh?" then stuttered out the first word she had ever spoken in her entire life. Of course they remembered that. Of course they knew.

"Got it?" River asked lackadaisically. The boys both nodded. "Okay, let's see." She motioned come on tiredly, waiting to see what they had written. They showed their sheets of paper at the same moment. Dean's answer was written in his all-caps, bold handwriting; Sam's was written in narrow, smaller, more elegant handwriting. But the sheets of paper said the same single word: Dean.

The second she saw what they had written, River's eyes went wide as saucers and her hand drifted up in slow shock to open her dropping-open mouth.

"She was so shocked," Sam said fondly, looking down with a reminiscent little smile on his face.

"Yeah, we all were," Dean said, voice full of deep emotion. They were both remembering it like it were yesterday.

"No way," River breathed, a sort of scared expression on her face. "T-that was a, a lucky guess!" The fan fiction writer was trying to toughen up, asking them another question almost angrily like she didn't appreciate this prank. Instead, she was getting breathless and shaken up. "W-what date did she get it back?"

"December fifth, two-thousand-seven," Dean answered immediately, standing up and giving her a serious stare. River's eyes went even wider and she took a step back.

Sam stood up, too. "Her tattoo's here." He touched underneath his arm, over his rib cage.

"She hates watermelon flavored stuff," Dean offered, walking closer.

"Sucked her thumb until she was four," Sam put in, also closing in on the shrinking author.

"Can hit a moving target from five hundred yards easy," Dean said proudly.

Sam chuckled. "Wanted to be Mr. T off the A-Team for a couple weird years there."

"Drools in her sleep and it's nasty." Sam gave Dean a slightly disapproving look for that one. Dean seemed to agree that had been too much and apologized silently. Then both brothers looked at River, who had backed up against an armchair at the barrage of Alex facts. She looked absolutely stunned. Dean prompted her solemnly. "You believe us now?"

"But… but… how do you know all that?" River asked in terrified confusion. "How could you possibly know all that? Those were all just my headcanons!" Her face began to show amazement. "You mean…? She's—she's really real? She's real?" River began to hyperventilate almost and her hands flapped around her face nonsensically. "All this stuff I made up isn't made up!? Holy fucking shit! Alex is real!? YOU'RE real?!" She stared at Dean and looked like she was going to fall over. She smacked her hands to either cheek. "Oh my god oh my god and her first word was really your name? Holy shit OH MY GOD!" She abruptly had a hand over her heart, clenching a handful of hoodie as she wobbled on her feet slightly, giving a gasping cry sound like she was going to sob. At the boys' looks of confusion, she made another pathetic cry sound. "I'm sorry, I'm really emotional right now—y-you guys have a sister?" She was grinning like an idiot. "I mean, you seriously have a SISTER?! And she's Alex?! So perfect, oh god, y—" Her face suddenly went blank—the grin fell and in its place was a confused, suspicious expression. She narrowed her eyes into little slits. "…How do I know what I know?"

Dean threw his hands out, making a no duh face. "That's what we wanna know!"

River gasped again and put a hand over her mouth, overjoyed all over again. "Waaaait—wait. This means… Cas and Alex… and Alex and Cas… they're real too?" She looked at them with bright eyes and an expression full of disbelieving amazement. Her eyes were filling with overwhelmed happy tears of all things. "And… in love?" She made a sound akin to a whale noise. "Most… epic… love… story… of all… time…!" Dean of course was rolling his eyes at this point even as River lost the ability to English. "Oh… my… GOD… hahaha, WOW!" River fell down sideways like she was drunk but managed to catch herself in the little armchair there. "I needa sit down," she said very factually, sounding like she was in mild shock.

"Whoa, are you okay?" Sam asked, moving closer uncertainly.

She was staring at the floor like a crazy person, grinning madly. "My OTP is real. I don't even know what my body is doing right now." She looked at Sam and Dean in vast amazement, grinning the entire time, then became sort of anxious. She had her hands clasped into her chest, was breathing with deeply emotional heaves. "It's all real? He was her guardian angel and gave her her voice back and, and… ohhh… the Vatican." Sam and Dean watched the author crack up completely and lose her mind, giggling and flushing and biting her own knuckle. "Oh my god, oh my god—"

"What… happened at the Vatican?" Dean asked, confused and looking to Sam for answers.

River made a face and stifled an immature snort of laughter as she tried to be nonchalant. "Nothing, nothing," she said, then clutched the arm of her chair and looked at Sam in sudden frantic hope. "Wait… does Alex wear a penny necklace?"

Sam hesitated. "Yeah… says it's her lucky penny or something…"

"Are you serious?!!" River threw herself back into the chair, staring at the ceiling in a total daze. "I need a minute, wow."

Sam and Dean exchanged weirded out looks—this chick had lost it. "Something we should know?" Sam asked.

River suddenly became intensely serious, sat up straight, and folded her hands in her lap, the picture of non-conspicuous. She said nothing, just shook her head no with overemphasized indifference.

Dean and Sam exchanged a wry, semi-impatient look. "I'll tell you what we need to know," Dean said, moving them back to business. "How you know what you know."

River straightened her glasses by pushing them up her nose. "But I told you I don't know how I know what I… know." She looked unsure about using so many instances of the word 'know' in one sentence.

Sam, ever the patient one, sat down on the edge of the coffee table near her, clasped his hands between his knees as he leaned forward. "Just tell us everything about this story you're writing, River. Start at the beginning." Dean stood back and crossed his arms and put on his listening face.

River looked between them in a slight daze, seeming to have a hard time believing this. "Okay… well…" she shrugged, made a face like she had no idea what to say. "I started watching Supernatural a couple years ago. And, I mean… even in the pilot I was like, thinking there should be a sister, you know? It was just missing a sister for me. And I don't even know why, but she never talked when I imagined her, she was mute. So like I kept watching the season and her name popped into my head and I never really tried to come up with any other name, it just appeared in my brain and I knew her name was Alex." River scratched her ear absently and toed at the carpet timidly. "Um, and when Cas appeared, I decided she was his love interest—and I started writing." She glanced at Dean, as if she already knew he was going to make a stink-face about that revelation. "And then as I wrote the characters just… took on a life of their own. Seriously, half the stuff I came up with, I dunno where it came from. So… dunno what to tell you guys. I watch the show and imagine what would happen and then write it and… that's—that's it."

Dean and Sam were quiet for a minute, mystified.

"So… no dreams or visions?" Sam asked for clarification.

"Nope." River made an apologetic face. "No Chuck-visions, no psychic whatevers. Just… I thought I was imagining her in my mind." She said that anxiously, then chewed on her lower lip, said, "Hmm." She became thoughtful and tapped her chin with a finger. She had chipped mint polish on her short nails. "I must be magical," she concluded calmly, nodding and becoming deeply philosophical. "But do I write it 'cause it's true... or is it true 'cause I write it?" She sounded very uncertain about the answer and made weighing motions with her hands, thinking with a funny little expression on her face. "I really want it to be the first one. Otherwise I'm insanely evil," she said, giving a nervous heh sound before she became sort of contrite and worried. "So much pain," she muttered, then began to bite a mint fingernail in a fog of vexed thought.

"Yeah well that seems to be the theme of our lives, wouldn't blame yourself," Dean muttered back.

After a couple seconds of mystified silence, Sam moved the conversation along. "Okay, River, so the reason we're here is because when we got angel-zapped onto the set of the show earlier today, no Alex anywhere to be seen. Do you have any idea what could have happened to her?"

River frowned thoughtfully. "Wait… so like… you replaced Jensen and Jared or something?"

Sam nodded. "Exactly."

"Ooh, well maybe Alex replaced her actress, too!" River said excitedly, then lost steam. "Well. If the actress I picked is actually your Alex, I mean." At the confused looks she got, River stood up. "I picked somehow to play her in my own mind I guess, someone who looked like what I envisioned and kinda looked related to Jensen and Jared. Er, Sam and Dean. You guys."

"Who is it?" Sam asked, even as River headed for the nearby iMac.

"Lemme show you." She plopped down in front of her shiny computer and woke it up as Sam and Dean followed to stand behind her. The screensaver of falling rain switched to a Photoshop screen she quickly minimized. Dean squinted—he swore that kind of looked like an image of Crowley kissing his sister.

"What was that?" he asked suspiciously, staring hard at the screen. It had been there so briefly he didn't know if he'd seen what he thought he saw.

"Nothing, nothing," River said, clearing her throat nervously. "Some… ad or something, I dunno, heh, internet." She opened a search engine tab and typed in Astrid Berges-Frisbey, then showed Sam and Dean the image results. "Here. This her?"

"Yeah, that's her!" Sam exclaimed, enthusiasm perking his voice up but then he paused, made a face. "What is she wearing?" Image after image showed a young woman who looked exactly like Alex wearing weird outfits—fancy dresses, high heels, drapey tops and weird skirts, and a constantly vapid, dreamy smile. "Is that a lizard tattoo?" Sam asked incredulously as he squinted at a full-length photo.

"Astrid… Burger… Frisbee?" Dean asked, misreading and scoffing. "What is she, French?"

"Can you find out where this actress person is right now?" Sam asked.

"Already know," River said, sitting back in her swivel desk chair with a wise smile on her face. Sam and Dean stood back, expectant. "There was like a bunch of stuff on Twitter and Tumblr today about Astrid having an on-set freakout down in Hawaii. She up and disappeared after punching Johnny Depp in the face." She said that then suddenly frowned in thought, seemed to realize. "Oh."

Dean looked immediately proud and Sam had a little hidden smile on his face. "That's her," Dean said confidently.

River opened her mouth in a delighted half grin, half wowed expression. "You're right! Oh my gosh, you're right! What an Alex thing to do, huh?" she gushed, then grew self conscious at the weird looks from the Winchesters. "Sorry. I just kinda love her, 'cause up until a few minutes ago she was my character, not an actual person. But hey, good news, right?" She grinned at them widely and made finger guns at them. "She's obviously on her way to find you guys!" She jumped up and put her hands on her hips, giving them a solicitous look. "So you know what you gotta do, right?"

Dean frowned slightly. "What?"

"Stay on set or like at Jared's house here in Canada," River answered. "Places she'll know how to find you. She's smart—she'll figure out where you are and track you down. She's obviously already on her way, so…" she grinned again, eyes sparkling behind her glasses. "Just be findable, you know?"

Sam had latched onto something she said. "I have a place here in Canada?"

River nodded once. "Yup."

Dean gave her a look. "Stalker."

The author didn't bat an eye, in fact, seemed to accept it as a compliment. "Hey, I'm just well informed."

"Like I said," Dean said. "Stalker." He nodded toward the door. "Sam."

"You're leaving?" River asked, sounding sort of surprised at the sudden exit.

"Got spell ingredients to somehow round up, princess," Dean answered curtly.

River skidded to a stop in front of him, holding up a hand that said stop. "Hey um wait. Hugs. I need hugs."

Dean scoffed, seeming to find that ridiculous. "Oh sweetheart I don't do hu—"

He was cut off by her enthusiastic, earnest hug. When it lasted several seconds, he grudgingly patted her back as she squeezed him hard. She pulled back and pointed a lecturing finger at him as she smiled. "Don't lie to me. You love hugs." She suddenly patted the side of his face and gave him a meaningful look. "Hey. Seriously though? You're a good person. And not everything bad that happens is your fault. You need to stop that."

Dean blinked twice at the unexpected and kindhearted proclamation then hardened his face and made himself look annoyed as he pulled away and brushed past. "Yeah thanks Doctor Phil."

"Classic Dean," River said, grinning and shaking her head at his reaction, obviously loving it.

Sam stood there in front of her and held his arms out slightly awkwardly. "I'll, uh, give you a hug," he said, much more agreeable than his brother was.

"Bring it in, Sammy," River said, hugging him and grinning. "You sweet, sweet man, you." Sam pulled back and looked at her questioningly and she laughed nervously. "Hey, if you uh, when Alex shows up, I'd really love to meet her?"

"Look, sorry Riv," Dean said. "But the second we find her, it's vamoose for us." He paused in the doorway then turned back, giving her a slightly patronizing look. "Writing about our sad lives has gotta be depressing. Find a better hobby."

"Pssh." River made a face. "In your dreams."

"Seeya," Sam said, and shut the door behind himself. River ran to the door and peered out the little window beside it, watching as Sam and Dean Winchester walked away from her house. Did that really just happen? She pinched herself hard on the arm and then yelped and rubbed the skin. "Ouch. Well. I think I need a drink." She paused. "But first—"

She went onto Tumblr and posted: ALEX IS REAL OMG! :)

---

The Next Day
On the Set of Supernatural

The window that Sam and Dean had entered the alternate dimension through had been reset and was no longer broken. All was quiet on the set. No one was around to see the red-hot symbol appear suddenly and begin to glow with increasing intensity.

Without warning, the glass shattered violently as two men blasted through and landed gracefully, poised like tigers.

They rose to their feet in tandem, straightening their suits and glancing around shrewdly. One of the men was tanned with a hook nose, greased black hair and a foul expression. The other was devastatingly handsome with steely eyes and a constant little smirk. "You find the key," Daniel told Virgil, his sharp eyes traveling the strange world they had found themselves in. "I'll find the girl."

Silently, Virgil nodded yes, and Raphael's henchmen parted ways.

---

Meanwhile
Somewhere Over America

Onboard a nineteen-hour flight to Canada that was driving her absolutely nuts, Alex stared at the seat in front of herself. Her mind was blown. She'd just watched a mind-numbing amount of this television show Supernatural on Astrid's laptop and was left asking herself what the hell was happening. If she didn't know better she would have thought this was a Gabriel thing. That's how looney it all was.

Alex had used Astrid's credit cards to buy and download all five seasons of Supernatural while she'd waited at the airport for a flight. Now she kind of wished she hadn't. The things she'd seen were emotionally jarring. A lot of bad memories had resurfaced and a lot of old pains suddenly were new again. It was weird enough seeing her brothers and dad on screen and watching moments of the past few years of their lives play out on TV but to watch it all happen with herself freakishly removed from it like she'd never been there at all? Trippy. And upsetting.

She had been erased seamlessly and completely. Well, maybe not completely. She had found a couple small signs of herself: Noticed her duffel bag in the backgrounds of a couple scenes, seen how her whistle was on Dean's keychain if you looked closely. Caught sight of a few snatches of her handwriting on Dad's journal's pages in a few shots. But that was it. What kind of black magic mojo did it take to erase someone like that? The weirdest thing about watching the show was seeing how her brothers seemed fine without her, how the story remained the same without her in it. Alex had watched the first few episodes with major indignant fury, yelling "hey, Sam didn't do that, I did you friggin' idiots!" and "dude, what?! NO! I was in this part! Are you kidding me?!" But as she continued through, skimming episodes and getting into more painful territory, she'd become upset to watch Dean and Sam mourn Dad without her, see Sam watch Dean die on Tuesdays a thousand times without her there for him, see Dean make that soul deal for Sam. And then she'd seen Dean on the rack.

Christ. She got to season four and realized Cas was about to appear and seeing him had made tears spring to her eyes. She'd called him several more times since being shoved into this alternate universe but he wasn't answering. Which either meant he was dead or not able to hear her. But he would always hear her, right? She was so terrified that he was going to disappear on her again, leave her hanging without explanation again.

Since the airplane had WiFi, Alex had taken to surfing the internet after she couldn't watch any more Supernatural episodes. First she found YouTube videos of Astrid Bergès-Frisbey and watched herself speaking French and moving her mouth in ways she had no idea how to actually move it. That was too weird and she stopped after a little bit then instead read a Supernatural wiki for awhile and developed a real hate-on for the show creator Kripke, who apparently knew everything about their lives but decided to leave her out of the show. She then googled "Alex Winchester Supernatural" and found a very, very interesting few results. The first one had been a fan fiction called Song Remains the Same. Alex had skimmed it, read the first few chapters and then chosen a random chapter, thirty-one. When she read it she'd subsequently turned red as a beet when she realized her first time having sex was out there in horrifying detail for the entire world to see. Soon after Alex had discovered the Tumblr page for the story in question and had found where you could send the author a note. She submitted one immediately:

How do you know what you know about Alex Winchester? Who told you? PS, please remove the sex scenes from this story, they are VERY PRIVATE!

The only thing she liked about this universe? She could google 'Castiel' and see tons of pictures of him. His familiar features comforted her and she saved some pictures to a jump drive she'd found in Astrid's purse. That had given her an idea and Alex then searched "Destiel" and was reduced to laughter and tears as she found image after image of her brother and husband together in very compromising positions. She saved a bunch of those for future trolling and then searched 'Wincest' and laughed until her stomach hurt. She saved tons of those, too.

But now she was back to feeling majorly disappointed and confused, not to mention scared. What if she got to the Supernatural set and instead of Sam and Dean she came face to face with these actor guys? Jared and Jensen? What if she was stuck here and Sam and Dean were in some other alternate reality? What if Cas never heard her prayers and Balthazar was killed by that Virgil guy and she and Cas were forever-separated by dimensions?

"I'll find you," he had told her once. "Somehow, no matter what, I'll find you."

She shut her eyes, focusing on that promise.

How strange to have watched Cas on that TV show and see him alone without her. She couldn't stop thinking about how her entire life was a TV show and she had been completely erased.

"Hello folks, we should be arriving to our destination in just a few hours now," came the pleasant voice over the plane intercom. "Sit back and enjoy!"

Sit back and enjoy. Yeah. Right.

---

That Night
On the Set of Supernatural

Sam and Dean had spent the day gathering whatever supplies they could to complete Balthazar's ritual (and had come into possession of a dead saint's bone thanks to next-day airmail and Jared Padalecki's credit card). They had then lurked around the Supernatural set all day and waited for Alex to show. She still hadn't and they were both getting really worried and agitated. Add to that how they'd had a run-in with a mojo-less Virgil a few hours prior and then subsequently noticed the missing key Balthazar had given Sam. The brothers were both in bad moods, trying to locate the missing key on set.

They walked into the Bobby Singer Study set, retracing their steps—they'd done some shameful excuse for 'acting' that day on this set and thought maybe they had dropped the key there.

"There you are, guys!" the producer said, startling them. He was sitting in Bobby's seat at Bobby's desk like he'd been waiting for them. "You got a minute?" The red-faced chunker with white hair and flabby jowls had come out of nowhere. It was a little spooky, to be honest.

"Actually, we're—we're looking for, uh—" Sam started.

"For that extra you tried to kill?" the producer asked knowingly. Virgil wasn't an extra, he was a bad guy, and Dean and Sam looked at the director strangely. "So, is it money? Is this the kind of act that goes away if we can scare up some coverage on a raise?"

"More money?" Dean asked, scoffing. "You already pay these two jokers enough as it is."

"'Cause I'd like to think that over these years, we've grown closer," the producer continued, ignoring him for the most part, talking to them almost like they were kids. "That you don't think of me as 'Director Bob' or 'executive producer Bob Singer,' but as 'Uncle Bob.'"

"Wait... you're kidding," Sam said, growing indignant. "So, the character in the show, Bobby Singer—"

"What kind of douchebag names a character after himself?" Dean asked, saying what Sam was thinking.

"Okay, guys, let's begin again," Bob said, and turned away slightly to heave his ass out of the chair.

Sam and Dean turned around to speak in hushed tones. "You know, I don't think Virgil would have shagged out of here without getting his mitts on that key," Dean muttered.

"Yeah," Sam said, patting his pockets for the millionth time like the key would magically just be there again. "Yeah, I agree."

Bob suddenly clapped them on the shoulders, making them turn. "Guys… look. You can't come to work on poppers and smuggle kidneys in from Mexico and make up your own lines as you go and keep complaining about a nonexistent sister character. Most importantly you cannot make up your own lines! Good god, what about your careers?"

Sam had clearly had enough. "You know what? Screw our careers, Bob!"

"What?!" Bob was completely stunned.

Sam shook a finger at Bob and then pointed at himself furiously. "And screw Kripke too!" He swept off in a huff.

"You heard my brother," Dean said frostily, getting a confused expression from the balding producer. "That's right, I said brother. 'Cause you know what, Bob? We're not actors. We're hunters. We're the Winchesters. Always have been, always will be. Sam, Dean, and yes, Alex Winchester." Bob made a face (he was tired of hearing about this sister they'd been talking about all day). Dean got pissed. "Roll your eyes all you want, old man! She's important! She matters! I don't care if your stupid Crypt-Key creator guy wrote her out of our lives!" He calmed down and spoke slowly, measured. "Where we're from, people don't know who we are but you know what? We mattered in that world. In fact, we even saved a son of a bitch once or twice. And yeah, okay, here, maybe there's some—some fans who give a crap about this nonsense—"

"I wouldn't call it nonsense…" Bob protested.

"Yeah well, Bob Singer—if that even is your name—tell me this—what does it all mean?" Dean asked. "Our lives on screen for entertainment? I mean what is wrong with you?"

For reasons unknown, the producer seemed encouraged. "Okay. This is good! I mean, we've all had our psychotic breaks, right? I can work with this. And by the way, Kripke's coming first thing tomorrow morning to talk to you boys. So, rest up, okay?"

Sam suddenly barreled back in and grabbed his brother. "Dean. Virgil—I think he has the key."

Dean looked at Bob decisively. "We quit." Bob's jaw dropped. The brothers hurried off and Dean sent a middle finger sailing up high over his head. "Add in our sister, jackass!" he thundered, leaving a very confused Bob Singer behind.

"Great, so he's got the key," Dean muttered to Sam as they hurried through darkened sets. "What, you think he's heading back to the real world with it?"

"That's what I'd do," Sam said, worried.

"Crap. Cas is screwed," Dean muttered, anxiety making his stomach turn. "What the hell is taking Mouse so long, huh?" He jammed a hand through his hair in alarmed agitation. "We can't go back without her but we gotta get that damn key, Sam!"

"Maybe she went to my place," Sam suggested. They'd been to Jared Padalecki's mansion last night after meeting River. It had been, in a word, interesting. "Let's go there and wait. The flight times from Hawaii to here we figured out mean she's gonna be showing up soon unless something happened."

"Yeah but if we're at your place and she comes here, to the set, we are equally screwed," Dean said, trying to think. It came to him. "We split up. One of us waits here for her, one of us waits at your place."

Sam nodded, seeming to be a little comforted by this plan of action. "Yeah, good."

Dean clapped his brother on the shoulder, gave a sarcastic little chuckle. "Yup, you go see your demonic wife, I'll hang out here." He definitely got a Sam bitchface for the demonic wife comment.

---

Outside, Twenty Minutes Later
Supernatural Set

Exhausted both emotionally and physically, Alex pulled out a last-ditch effort and scaled a chain-link fence along a back lot of the set of Supernatural, desperate to find her big brothers. She'd long since ditched the laptop and everything she carried except money and an ID, preferring to travel light. On the way to set she had bought a big-ass Ka-Bar hunting knife and thigh-holster from a hunting goods store. Just in case. She'd left her angel blade at Bobby's back at home and didn't like being weaponless.

As she wandered discreetly through trailers, trying to find any sign of Sam and Dean, she heard a familiar-ish voice call, "'Night, little fella!"

…Was that Cas?

A burst of adrenaline propelled her into a jog and she ran around the end of a trailer toward where that voice had come from. She saw a familiar head of dark brown head just ahead. "Hey!" she called, trying to catch his attention as she ran up. "Hey, hey hey! Cas?"

He had stopped at her calls and was turning to look at her curiously as he held a phone out like he had been in the middle of typing something on it. Alex came to a stop, looking him over with an odd expression. It looked like Cas, but he was wearing the wrong things: Jeans, sneakers, an ugly blue knit snowflake zip-up sweater and some kind of new age shirt under it. He examined her up and down fully, sort of rudely. "…Sorry, do I know you?" he asked, a half smile on his face.

Disappointed—god, this was the worst—he must be the Cas actor—she couldn't remember his name from the wiki entries. "Uh… guess not," she said, sucking up major deflated feelings. She wearily charged ahead on the mission at hand. "I'm looking for Dea—uh, Jensen and Jared. Do you know where they are?"

He cracked a grin at her the likes Cas never had, and it was sort of creepy. "Ah, security'll let in just any pretty face these days, huh?" he asked, distinctly flirty. "You're not supposed to be here… but you know what, I'll let you have my autograph, okay?"

"Your what?" Alex asked, then scoffed royally, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, no, I'm good buddy."

He seemed slightly surprised at her reaction. "Aw. You a J-two girl?" He gave her a dashing little smile. "How can I convince you over to the Cas side?" And then he winked. Winked.

Unable to believe this day, Alex's shoulders slumped and she rubbed her face tiredly with a hand. "Oh, I'm Team Cas, trust me."

"Smart girl." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, opening the door to his little sedan. "Look, can't stay and chat, I got an early morning, gotta head out. Exit's that way, sweetheart!"

"No, I need to know where Sam and Dean—uh, Jensen and Jared are!" Alex protested.

The actor was closing his door already. "Sorry, gotta bounce!"

He started the car and pulled away, and that's when Alex saw—holy shit, there was a guy hiding in the back seat with a knife! "Hey! Hey!" she called, trying to warn the actor who was already texting and driving, it looked like. Crap. He was speeding off fast, too.

Alex looked around frantically for some kind of way to pursue. She spotted a motorcycle with S. Roché painted on the side—hey, French, that matches the theme of this bizarro reality I'm in—and without a second thought she ran over, jumped on, then gunned it to life, grumbling under her breath the whole time. "Friggin'… frackin'… stupid… uggghh." She was so annoyed with everything at the moment. She just wanted to find her damn brothers and now she had to go save this idiot actor.

---

Misha Collins had just been minding his own business, texting and driving and swerving a little when a stranger with a sharp weapon had suddenly sat up from the backseat and held him at knifepoint as he drove. "Oh god, ahhhh!" Misha screamed at the top of his lungs, almost running off the road when his hands flew up in shock.

"Drive, idiot!" the man commanded in a thick accent, digging the cold knife into Misha's neck.

"Holy crap, who are you!?" Misha cried pathetically, face contorted in fear as he re-gripped the wheel and tried to do what he was told.

"Never mind, mortal," the man said insolently, then nodded. "There. Drive there, pull over." Misha did as the man asked, pulling over to the side of a dark abandoned building, shaking in fear. They'd done some location filming here before, actually. "Get out," the man commanded ominously. "Your blood will be used for the angels tonight."

"What?!" Misha yelped as he was forced out of his car at the end of a sharp knife. "A-are you one of those Cas-haters?! I'll quit the show, I'll quit I promise!" He had his hands up high as he groveled.

The knife came to pull sharply against his throat again. "Silence."

"Okay, okay, okay!" Misha blubbered, "Easy, easy!" He cried dramatically, realizing oh god I'm about to die… and then he heard the loud roar of a motorcycle—what? Misha and his assailant both turned to look just in time to see a young woman screech to an abrupt stop just a few feet away—she jumped off before the motorcycle had fully stopped and the momentum made the bike crash hard into the brick wall beside her. A small explosion of sparks went up behind her, lighting the area dramatically for a few seconds as a gust of wind caught her loose hair and blew wildly—she strode forward with a fierce expression on her delicately-featured face even as she whipped a huge, scary knife out from a thigh holster. Misha recognized her from a few minutes ago and he gaped. She looked like a movie action hero and Misha momentarily forgot there was a knife at his neck. "Whoa…"

"Hey!" she shouted in a surprisingly strong voice at the guy holding Misha. "Get your hands off…" she paused, became uncertain, "that… actor guy!"

The knife guy let go of Misha and shoved him down to cry in a heap against the car without protest. "What a dramatic entrance," the assailant commented mildly, clapping ironically. "Bravo. And this is a pleasant surprise," he commented to the mysterious young woman. "The one Raphael is after… do you think, once we have you in our possession, Castiel will bow to the archangel's every whim? What a lucky chance of fate t—"

"Oh shut up," she said as if in annoyance and threw something at the guy—was that a glove?—Virgil ducked back, apparently not knowing what it was she'd thrown, only trying to get away a perceived threat. She used the fake-out to leap in and slash at him ferociously, but he caught hold of her wrist and made a slash of his own. She ducked it and with a loud grunt, she did some sort of move out of ultimate fighter movies that Misha had always thought were pretty cool—she used her weight and the momentum to throw the guy over her shoulder and onto the ground. He was already rolling and recovering, jumping up and lunging forward anew to attack.

Misha cowered against the side of the car, clutching himself in shock as the small-framed woman attacked the guy with the knife without a second thought, risking her life as if she did it every day. The two grappled fiercely and then…

"Augh!" She stumbled back, breathing hard. Misha was standing up now, clutching his car for support, watching in rapt attention. There was a cut on the side of her already-scraped up face, fresh blood in a slashing line on her cheek—but the assailant had a hand to his side and a shocked look on his face. Blood seeped out of his stomach area and seeing it, the woman's head moved back, a cool little triumphant expression played on her face. "Sure you wanna tangle with me, Desperado?" She waggled her knife at him with a taunting smile. "Mine's bigger."

The attacker looked at the blood on his hand, the knife in her grip and then abruptly fled into the night. The woman made to give pursuit, but Misha grabbed her hard by the wrist, panicked. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! You crazy!? He's twice your size! He'll kill you!" It was crazy he hadn't already!

Insulted, she made a highly disgusted face at him. "He couldn't kill me if he tried for a hundred years!" she snapped, then yanked on her arm. "Let go!" She was freaky strong and Misha started sobbing again. His tears made her go still. "Hey—what are you doing?" she asked, looking like she wanted to back away slowly.

"He almost killed me, he had his cold knife right here!" Misha whined, pointing at his neck.

"Okay, well he doesn't anymore, so snap out of it!" she commanded, watching him sob like a child. "For fuck's sake," she muttered. Misha just sobbed harder. The woman got very annoyed. "Oh stop it." And when he didn't, she smacked him across the face. At the very least, the sobbing stopped.

He gaped at her, gasped audibly for effect. "You slapped me! This is the face adored by millions of fangirls!"

Alex raised her eyebrows at this crazy, crying actor who looked like Cas but was nothing like him. "Millions?"

He lost a little confidence. "Thousands." At her hard stare, he got flustered. "At least hundreds, a few hundred, okay?"

Alex, annoyed Virgil had gotten away and still having no sign of her brothers, was getting desperate. "Okay, you know what, dude? I just saved your life. You owe me one." She grabbed him by the front of the sweater roughly, threateningly. "Take me to Sam and Dean, now."

He shrank away from her fearfully as she held tight. "What could you possibly need from them in the middle of the night?" he asked in a high-pitched squeak.

"Okay, look," she said, too tired to do anything but tell the truth. "I'm Alex. Winchester. Their sister."

His face promptly showed confusion. "…Is this some kinda role play thing?"

"Role play?" Alex was so over this day and let go of him with a shove, pointing a finger in his face rudely. "Okay, look—guy who plays Cas—"

"Misha," he said, moving her finger away with his hand. She froze a little at the touch. That was Cas's hand. She stared at his hand as it went down beside him again. "My name is Misha, and frankly I'm a little upset you didn't know that," he said sort of primly. "You said you were a Cas fan earlier."

"'Misha?'" she repeated doubtfully. "'Misha'?" A completely exasperated sigh came out. "This is the weirdest day of my fucking life," she muttered, then chopped a hand through the air harshly. "Look, 'Misha.' You gotta take me to my brothers, now, please."

"Okay, not roleplaying?" Misha asked, trying to figure it out. "Fan fic? Cosplay? General delusion?"

Alex pointed at him with her knife, getting a wide-eyed gape in return. "Hey, if I have to threaten you with my knife, I will. Take me to them." She holstered the weapon.

Misha nervously licked his lips, then frowned. "Wait. J and J were both babbling on and on about some sister thing on set today, so wei—" he suddenly jumped and clutched onto her when a cat meowed nearby. "Ahhh!" He looked at the dark, still alleyway. "I… heard a sound," he said pathetically at the glower she was giving him.

"It was a cat." Alex shoved him away from her. "In the car, Fruitbasket. I'm driving, you're navigating."

A few minutes later on the freeway, Alex drove as Misha sat in his seat and quivered, crying and trying to hold it in, but failing miserably. Mildly touched because god, he looked so much like her Castiel, Alex let a sidelong glance rest on him for a couple seconds. "You don't have to cry. I saved your life back there. You're alive—that's good, right?"

"He had his knife on me and now you're kidnapping me!" Misha cried in a voice that was warped by tears.

Alex rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I'm not kidnapping you, weirdo."

Misha sniffed and dabbed at his eyes. "At least if I'm going to be killed, it's by someone beautiful this time," he said, looking at her for a second then abruptly getting tearful again. "My life flashed in front of my eyes," he lamented dramatically. "And I didn't even send my last tweet!" He suddenly started to feel around on the floorboard for something. "That reminds me." He found what he'd been looking for—a mobile phone—and calmed down a lot, then began to type. "Just… had… hashtag close encounter… am fine… now riding around with crazy but pretty girl who… thinks she is… a Winchest—hey!" He gaped at Alex who had just grabbed his phone from him and tossed it over her shoulder and out the window. "That was my phone!"

"It's roadkill now, Sweatervest."

He sulked and hunkered down into his seat. "You could use my name, you know. It's Misha. Or did you forget?"

Irritated, she glanced at him harshly. "Misha… Jimmy… how many doppelgangers do you have?"

Misha hesitated. "What?"

"Nothing."

There was a long, uncomfortable pause and then Misha cleared his throat, then motioned at a sign ahead. "Get off here, this exit ahead." He worked his hands nervously in his lap then tried to make conversation. "So… are you on Twitter?"

"What is that, some kind of drug?" she muttered.

"Uh, no, it's a website. What century are you from?" Misha asked, seeming genuinely perplexed. Alex shrugged and made a face. "Twitter?" Misha asked, incredulous. "Where you post short thoughts and funny commentary on everyday life and people can see what's on your mind?"

"Oh, right, yeah. I've heard of that." On the news or something. She didn't use social media. That was Sam stuff. And what a stupid idea, anyway… Twitter? Why would she need that? "If I wanna tell someone my thoughts, I just say it to them—why would I post it online like some freako? Why don't people just talk to each other anymore?" She was ranting now. "I didn't always have the luxury."

Misha gave her a funny look. "Huh?"

"I used to be mute," she said, her foul mood making her ranty. "You know, silent? Couldn't speak?"

"Used to be?" he asked, not following.

"Well I'm obviously not anymore!"

"Yeah, no, I can see that, but… I mean… I thought being mute, people were kinda… stuck that way."

She was silent for a beat. "Usually, yeah. But I guess I got lucky." Her bad mood suddenly became angst-ridden. Oh Cas. You're right beside me but you're not at all.

"Interesting backstory," Misha commented. "How long did you work on it?" At the sharp look he got, he shrugged defensively. "This Winchester sister character you've invented, sorta intriguing I gotta say." He got nervous again. "Look, just promise me you're not gonna… cut Jensen and Jared up."

Bitch, please. Alex gave him the stinkface of the century. "I wouldn't cut up my brothers."

Misha shrank back into his corner of the car. "Are you always this unfriendly?"

She felt a little bad and tried to behave herself. "You remind me of someone, okay?"

"Someone you hate, apparently," he muttered. It was quiet again for a minute and she felt him stealing curious glances at her. He was getting that cocky attitude back he'd had when she first found him earlier tonight. "So. You married, 'Alex'?"

His question surprised her and she took a long time to answer, not sure what to say. She settled on, "No…"

"Hesitated a long time before answering," he observed coyly. "You sure about that?" When she said nothing, he started prompting her. "Dating? Engaged? It's Complicated?" Her eyes slid to his challengingly, briefly, and he seemed intrigued. "Huh. Mysterious." He was grinning crookedly.

Alex's eyes fell to his left hand where a thick silver wedding band said he was indeed wed. "You're married," she muttered, thinking of Jimmy Novak and now Misha Collins. "You're always married."

Misha looked at her like he hadn't heard right. "What?"

"Nothing."

There was another short silence. Then, "Turn here."