A/N: SPN, thank you for being my best friend.
Jack stood before the bunker. A week had passed since he'd come to earth, since he'd eaten the Grigori heart. Now, not in the Empty, without Billie, he couldn't see his dads. Did they need him? Did they even want him?
No, they have to, he assured himself.
Jack went down the steps to the door, and he opened it.
The war room and library were empty, and Jack looked upon the large space, and he realized he wasn't sure he knew what he was doing. Some kind of siren went off, and he started.
What had he done wrong? What could he do? What was happening?
Then they rushed in: his dads.
Sam went over to a panel with blinking red lights, and flicked a few switches, silencing the siren, and then he looked up, joining Dean and Castiel in gaping up at him.
They were… different. Maybe a little leaner, more worn. Being locked in had done a number on them, and Jack wanted to feel sorry that he couldn't have been there sooner. Somewhere inside himself he was sure he was sorry. Yet, another part was relieved. How could he feel relieved without a soul?
His dads. His dads were just that powerful, that meaningful.
They were family.
Castiel was running up the stairs, hurried footsteps loud on the metal. Sam and Dean followed close behind him, and Jack found himself tackled by his father. There was just the sense of heavy bodies pressing against him, all of them tackling him, fighting for their turn to hold him. Jack couldn't breathe. He didn't want to breathe.
He'd missed this, missed them.
Eventually they pulled back enough to ask questions. Their questions would start, and then fade from their mouths, unable to find the words. They just stared.
"Billie brought me back," Jack explained.
"Is she… is she here?" Sam asked.
"No. It's just me."
"We missed you," Dean told him.
That surprised Jack. He'd seen some of what they had gone through while being locked up, but he'd felt Dean's anger and loss upon Jack last being with him. He saw some of that now. He did, but there was more. It was as if a part of Dean was whole, as if all of them were. Jack didn't know enough about humans to understand the change.
"I missed you, too," Jack told them, smiling.
"Are you alright?" Castiel asked.
"I'm alive, I'm here."
"Are you… you?" Sam asked.
"I don't know. But I know why I'm here. It's to save you. To save everyone. To kill God."
Heavy, ponderous silence reined, like the tension that hung in the air after the strong beat of a bass drum. It thickened between them.
Then, that life-stealing silence broke, Dean letting out a low whistle. "That's quite a to-do list," he remarked.
"Can you do it?" Cas asked.
"Billie's helping with that."
Then, to Jack's surprise, Sam wrapped him up in his arms again.
"I love you, Jack," his dad told him. Jack held on, and buried his face in his shirt, forgetting for a moment what he had to do, what he knew was coming.
It would break them.
But they'd be alive because of it. Everyone would be.
Jack was going to die. He had to die, according to Billie, and as Sam held him, he didn't want to. He just wanted to stay with his dads.
Dean whacked Sam's arm, intoning, "Don't hog the kid."
"Right. Sorry."
"How are all of you?" Jack asked.
"Let's just say I want to take this reunion outside, and on the road, at a bar… anywhere but here."
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "But… uh… apocalypse?"
"Right."
"It's okay," Jack said. "Billie put the souls back where they belong."
There was a long pause. Castiel seemed worried as he said, "She seems to be doing a lot."
"Yes. She… she doesn't like God."
"Okay, well on that crazy note, I'll go get the keys," Dean said. He brushed aside to head down the stairs.
In minutes the four of them were in the Impala, Jack explaining what he could: that he couldn't use his powers for fear of God finding him, that he would need their help, that he wanted to do this for them… that he was glad to be with them, and grateful for their care, the mere presence of them.
The Impala purred, wheels rolling down the long, empty stretch of road, taking them nowhere, taking them anywhere.
Jack didn't know how to feel hope anymore. He could almost see it, picture it, but when he reached out to grasp it, it would flit out of reach. So he took that hope that could not be his own, and he placed it on his dads, in them.
They were hurt, maybe broken, but, they were family, Jack realized. This was a family that had been made, and built with love, and care, and blood, and battles. A family that was messed up, and wrong, but filled with the will to try, to be better. They brought each other down, the built each other up. And all the while they were knit closer and closer together. They wouldn't be separated. The four of them had built this, and Jack just knew, he knew, that this hadn't been God's plan, this unity. God liked drama, he liked things being torn apart. This, what this was… it was whole, even bruised as it was.
Jack was part of it. Castiel was part of it. Dean had built it from the ground up. Jack knew that. Knew how he'd raised Sam, how he'd been there for him when no one else had been. And he knew now that they had to be there for Dean. They had to be there for all of each other.
Somehow, despite God's plan, despite the cruel writer on the other side of the screen, they would.
They were the Winchesters.
God would never know what hit him.