Reblog to Save The World

Written for SPN Coldest Hits Nov 2020 challenge: write the most ridiculous, absurd ending to Supernatural you can think of. The more implausible, the better.

I can't write crank, so this will just have to do.

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So, this was how it ended.

In the bunker of the American Men of Letters, Dean and Sam Winchester prepared to fight to the bloody end of their final chapter. For the entirely of their lives, they had unknowingly been characters in a story of supernatural struggle and one short-lived triumph after another. They had lost people they'd loved. They'd each succumbed to their own inner darkness, and crawled their way out by their fingernails. They'd given up everything – including each other – to save the world. Only to now learn the world had never needed to be saved. If this really was the end, they were ready for it.

Any moment now, Chuck would make his grand entrance. The clank and shriek of the outer door of the bunker was the harbinger of God's wrath. In mere moments, he would stride through the entrance and down the stairs. And the final chapter in their story would begin.

"Let's do this with a bang, Sammy." Dean instructed, griping one of the angel blades they had imbued with the power of a Hand of God. He stationed himself facing the entrance, in a fighting stance. A warrior until the end. "If Chuck thinks he's going to get a whimper out of us, let's give that fan boy a little taste of hardcore canon."

Sam chuckled hollowly, and took his place at his brother's side. "I – uh – don't think that means what you think it means, Dean. But yeah. Let's kick it in the ass."

With a familiar rustle of trench coat, Castiel took his own place at Dean's other shoulder, ready to fight and die for humanity alongside his family. Looking frightened but equally resolute, Jack shuffled up beside Sam, clutching another of the imbued angel blades in one hand. In small gestures and looks, commiseration and whatever reassurances that could be had were exchanged between all of them in these last moments.

It was to be the four of them against the most powerful being in existence. There was no one else left. Amara had acquiesced to her brother, and allowed herself to be consumed. The Empty had returned to a deep slumber with Chuck's aid. Death had wielded her scythe against God, and been reduced to a shadow of herself. Billie had had only enough time to warn the Winchesters that theirs was the last world in existence, and that God was coming for them.

For hours, they had waited in existential dread. Gathering their weapons. Saying their farewells. And now at last, Chuck was here.

There was the echo of footsteps approaching. Dean ground his teeth together, feeding the fire of his own wrath. Sam took a deep breath and set his shoulders. As one, the four turned their eyes to the steps leading up to the last world in existence.

The door above them opened. It wasn't Chuck.

Crowley stumbled slowly down the stairs.

In stunned confusion, they watched him descend. All four pairs of startled eyes took in the demon's pained expression, the small blood stains on his rumpled canvas jacket and charcoal shirt, the way he appeared to favor one side, clearly making an attempt to not lean too heavily on the railing as he made his way down. He wasn't wearing a suit and he didn't look particularly pleased about this less-than-dramatic entrance, but it was definitely him.

Dean looked to his brother, to his angel, for an explanation, but they both stared with the same slack-jawed befuddlement. He finally managed to stutter out an angry and confused, "Crowley?!"

"Don't bloody well help or anything."

The gruff remark, tinted with familiar resentment, confirmed it.

Dean formed words once – twice – nearly choked on the volcanic swell of too-long suppressed fury about to erupt out of him. The last thing he wanted to do was level it at someone who hadn't earned it, but damn it, they were supposed to be facing down the fucking incarnation of ultimate divinity right now. "What-what the Hell, man?! What are you doing here?!"

"Came back to once again clean up your little world-ending mess, what's it look like?" With a grimace, Crowley reached the bottom of the stairs. He finally raised his eyes to meet Dean's, and smiled slightly. "Hello again, boys."

"And – " His gaze flicked over to Jack. The demon gave the Nephilim a curious once-over. "…actual boy." He didn't look particularly impressed with the Winchester's pseudo-son, but his dissatisfaction had a distinctly avuncular air about it. "Aren't you a little young to be about to die to save the world?"

"Umm," Jack started to respond, but Dean cut him off.

"Hey! Where the Hell is Chuck?!"

Crowley smirked, and with the lightest touch of a hand on Dean's shoulder, pushed past him. He inclined his head at Sam as the younger hunter stepped out of the way, and climbed wearily up the two steps into the library, towards the small decanter of whiskey waiting on top of the liquor cabinet, without a backwards glance.

"If I had to guess? Sprucing up his resume." Crowley chuckled to himself as he reached for a glass. "He's going to need it."

As the Winchesters and Jack trailed after the demon in confusion, Cas turned and scrutinized the landing overhead. The heavy metal door to the bunker remained closed.

Either this was some sort of trick – or trap – or Chuck wasn't coming.

"What does that mean? Crowley, what the Hell is going on?!" Sam demanded. For a long time, Sam had been the one responsible for shouldering the hope that there would be a way out of all this. He'd felt like he owned it to the others, after he'd lost faith the first time they had Chuck cornered. But he was having a difficult time imagining that this was somehow their saving grace.

With tired self-satisfaction, the demon poured himself a generous two fingers, enjoying the clink of the decanter against the glass and the gentle slosh of the liquor as it settled at the bottom. This was his moment of triumph, and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to enjoy it.

Crowley eased back around to face the boys, tipped his glass, smirked. "To saving the world. Again" And downed the poor excuse for a drink before making a face. "Mother of sin, that's awful."

"Yeah well, I'm sorry our brand of booze isn't up to par with whatever coma cocktail they're serving in the Empty," Dean retorted, "But – hey! I'm talking to you," he snapped as Crowley raised a brow and languidly turned back around to refill his glass. "You just show up, right when we're expecting Chuck to storm through that door, like it's no big friggin' deal. Like the whole damn world wasn't about to end. And-and – what? Make yourself a drink?"

"You're absolutely right, Dean, my sincerest apologies. Here – " This time forgoing any attempt to feign indifference, Crowley winced as he shifted his weight onto what appeared to be a bad knee and turned back to the Winchesters. Two glasses now dangled from his fingertips, and he held out one to Dean. "You're going to thank me for it in a moment."

The hunter stared at it. He was starting to have the feeling that the final, bloody, winner-take-all showdown he had been preparing himself for all these months might not happen. It was surreal, unsettling. If that was the case, he definitely needed a drink.

Dean took the glass.

"Right, then." Crowley sipped his drink this time. It hadn't improved any. "Where to start?"

"This is Crowley?" Jack asked, squinting and tilting his head just enough to make him an endearing replica of Castiel. "But, I thought you said he was dead."

"And everyone said you were going to turn out to be little Lucifer Jr. Evil to the core, hellbent on mass slaughter and destruction. And yet, here you are. Looks like we share being misjudged in common." He gave Dean a pointed, knowingly look. The hunter met the challenge with an expression that managed to convey both exasperation with the demon and guilt directed at Jack. Crowley watched the silent drama play out between him, Sam and Cas before growing bored of it. "I was dead, until rather recently."

"Or asleep, or stuck on repeat in a playlist of my greatest regrets, whatever you want to call it." He looked, for just a moment, like he might be recollecting something emotionally compromising. But whatever it was, he shrugged it off and carried on.

"But then, I received a visitor. Care to wager a guess? Used to slurp down souls, the other half of a divine power couple. One of the few beings in existence who can actually pull off a canary yellow pantsuit?"

"Wait, hold up. Amara?" Sam asked. "No offense, Crowley, but what would Amara want with you?"

That might have hurt, if Crowley wasn't about to lay down some hard truth.

"Apparently, the lot of you had a little chat about, well, the end of the all things. But while Moose and Squirrel were off chasing their own tails in their usual show of heroics, Amara had the very clever thought to seek out someone more cunning than herself. Bright lass, that one." Crowley looked rather pleased with himself as he swirled his drink. "Allllways knew she'd come back to her dear, old Uncle Crowley eventually. She sought me out, woke me up." More like prodded him awake with the toe of her high-heeled shoe like a socialite inspecting a vagabond asleep on her stoop, but he wasn't about to mention that part. "Explained the mess you'd all found yourselves in."

"She offered me a deal. Amara wanted a way to save the world which didn't involve caging or killing her brother. And in return – " Crowley spread his arms in a take-yourself-a-gander gesture and smirked. "'Course I told her it would cost a little more than just popping me back into existence. Fully restored humanity, with a few little perks. A patched-up soul, a few extra decades for the old meatsuit – "

"Is there a point at which you tell us what happened to Chuck?" Cas called out from the other room. "Or is this the part where you finally talk us all to death?"

"Dude. Did you just say – "

"Thank you, Castiel," Crowley rather quickly cut Dean off. Suddenly, he wasn't so interested in meeting any of their eyes. "Best for everyone if we stay on track."

He cleared his throat and limped from the cabinet to one of the library tables. Though Cas remained on the threshold of the room, watching the bunker entrance, the Winchester brothers and the nephilim moved to join the apparently former demon around the table. It was an unconscious, seemingly inconsequential act on their part, but one that wouldn't have happened only a few years before.

"Back when the Olsen twins had their little spat a few years ago, I took the initiative of utilizing what intel could be gathered on Mary-Kate's extended retreat here on earth. Learned a few things from Metatron, the original paparazzi. For months, I had minions scrolling stupefied through the vast dregs of the internet. Until they found it. Chuck's blog."

"Now I'm really confused." Jack confessed. "Who's Mary-Kate, and what's her relationship to God?"

"I'm sorry, Chuck kept a blog?!" Dean asked, then held up a hand. "No, wait. You know what? That actually makes sense. And, yeah, I do need this." He downed the drink, and slapped the empty glass down on the table. "Alright. Hit me with the rest of it."

"So, it was – what – where Chuck kept all his notes and drafts for the Supernatural books?" If anyone were to asked, Sam wouldn't willingly admit to it, but he was starting to take all this seriously.

"Actually, it was a blog full of cat memes. Some of which, Chuck made himself. Keep in mind this was pre-Instagram."

Or not.

"I think…" Sam slowly lowered himself into one of the chairs. "I'm just going to sit down."

"Are you lot following what I'm saying? Chuck made those cat memes. He made them. Just like he made everything else in this quite literally godforsaken universe. Anything that two-bit BuckLeming made, he imbued with a piece of himself. Like all writers, except this is God we're talking about."

Crowley set his glass aside so as to lean a little more on the chair for support. His knee was really starting to bother him, but he wasn't about to make his grand reveal while sitting down.

"Four years ago, I hadn't known what to do with any of it. God and the Darkness had reconciled and supposedly gone off to tour all of creation together. Similar to closing the Gates of Hell, just another a card up my sleeve. Until," he raised his brows and grinned at Dean, "dear Amara came a-knocking."

"My plan required a few additional components. A couple of laptops, a decent internet connection, and – oh, yes – a certain redheaded queen of Moondore and one nerdy little Prophet."

"Whoa, whoa, wait! Charlie?" Dean was having a hard time processing. "You had Amara bring Charlie back? And Kevin?!"

"That's right," Crowley practically sang, feeling pretty good about having included that clause in his deal with the Darkness. After all, the hacker-turned-hunter's death had been entirely unnecessary. And the boy, well. There wasn't much Crowley could atone for, but he could at least not leave Kevin Tran wandering around in the Veil until madness took him. And besides, they had both proved to be exceptionally useful. "And once I'd assembled my little team, we spent the next two weeks or so recoding those memes and circulating them all over the internet. Or hadn't you noticed the recent barrage of cats everywhere? Social media feeds, food blogs, wikis and databases, news site and even – " Crowley winked conspiratorially at Dean " – a few hentai sites."

"Yeah, been a bit too busy for that."

Crowley tsked. "Self-care comes first, Squirrel."

"Okay, I get that Chuck made the cat memes," Sam interjected, before banter could devolve into bickering. Or more likely, dismissive eye-rolling. "But what made these so special? I mean, like you said, technically, Chuck made everything."

"What made these particular memes special was our very own Special K." At the look of confusion on Sam's face, Crowley waved a hand in dismissal and muttered to himself. "Never mind, forgot you weren't actually there for that one. Waste of a callback."

"Thanks to Kevin, encoded in all those memes were two Words. Two of Chuck's Words, taken directly from the Tablets." He looked intently between the two brothers. "Creation. And Destruction. You know," He couldn't resist an eye roll as he formed air quotes around his glass. "For 'balance'. We really only needed the first one."

"The memes, you see, were just a means to an end. An assured delivery service, if you will. Every time someone saw the Words, embedded in those images, any time they reblogged or liked or shared one of those memes, they did exactly what humans have always done when communicating with each other. They shared a little piece of themselves. Put a little of themselves into the act of creation. And a little of Creation into themselves. So that suddenly, Chuck was no longer the only one with the power to create – or destroy. Because that power, that divine ability, had been disseminated among all the people and cryptids and monsters, and even demons and angels – supposing they enjoyed the occasional cat meme – throughout existence. Each individual, imbued with an infinitely small piece of Chuck's power. A mere speck of potential. And Chuck, left with almost none. Nothing more now than what, deep down, he always has been," Crowley reached for his glass, and raised it and a brow in consideration. "A second-rate scribbler with delusions of grandeur."

"So you can stare at that door all you want, Feathers," he called over to the threshold of the library, where Castiel still stood glaring up at the entrance, "but no one else except yours truly will be making a surprise appearance during this season finale."

Dean spread his hands like he was trying to flatten out a creased and confusing map, and figure out just where this road had started to twist and turn. "So to be clear, everybody out there now, they can just – create?"

"They've always been able to create and destroy, Dean. They create when they tell a story, to themselves or others, and when they nurture something inside someone else." Crowley momentarily smiled self-deprecatingly and cast a knowingly look at the hunter before continuing. "They destroy ideas and history and cultural knowledge when they burn books. And they destroy potential futures when they dismantle outdated ideologies. This just – " He waved his whiskey, looking for the right turn of phrase. " – scatters some sprinkles on top of their sundae. Puts a little more power behind the intention. Nothing that anyone will ever really notice, much less understand. And most of the time, one person's creation will be canceled out by another's destruction, and visa versa. But it will be there."

"Oh, that's just great." Dean snatched up his empty glass – and the half-full one out of Crowley's hand – and made for the liquor cabinet.

"And you don't think that will cause complications?!" Sam demanded. "It could lead to – "

"Of course it will change things, Moose." The elder Winchester having both surprised him and escaped his immediate range of retaliation, Crowley settled for glaring irritably at Sam. "You think you two stopping the apocalypse over and over again didn't change things in radical ways we haven't even been able to grasp yet? At least my way of doing things didn't end with the angels falling out of Heaven or a new breed of evil being unleashed upon the earth or what have you. Though I suppose it would be too much for the lot of you to recognize finesse when you saw it."

With the back of his hand, Dean nudged Crowley's shoulder, and offered one of the two refilled whiskeys. Crowley eyed it and the hunter warily, then accepted the drink. Only to be surprised again when Dean clinked his glass against Crowley's before taking a sip and turning his back on the former demon to take up his self-assigned position at the head of the table.

He motioned for Crowley to continue.

His good humor restored, Crowley did. "Of course, that wasn't enough. Not enough to stop God. Sure, having his power shared with billions of beings across the last world in existence weakened him. But we needed to ensure that he could never regain it, never rewrite things to the way they were before. So," he smiled a self-satisfied smile. "We rallied the troops. The Supernatural fandom. Chuck's own little cult." He clicked his tongue before taking a sip of his drink. "Nice bit of irony there."

"Uhhh, the Supernatural fandom?"

Sam exchanged a severely concerned look with his brother. Their experience with the fandom was a mixed bag of love potions, uncomfortable-but-maybe-necessary self-reflection, incest, and musical numbers.

"Don't worry." Crowley said, without sounding particularly reassuring, "Mums the word about the whole 'divine gift of creation' bit. We simply posted a few writing prompts here and there, inserted ourselves into some forum discussions, DMed a whole fandom's worth of fanfiction writers. All painfully simple, in hindsight. But the best plans usually are." Crowley paused to take a long, slow sip of his drink. He wanted to savor this moment. The Winchesters and Castiel, stunned, hanging on his every word. "Absolutely inspiring, what people can accomplish when they're really passionate about something. Because your little fan base? They desperately want the lot of you to have your happily ever afters. Banging bloody nubs across keyboards even now, I'm sure of it."

With obvious wariness, Castiel relinquished his post, and finally joined the others around the table. He didn't appear particularly pleased by any of this.

"So, the fandom took out Chuck, then. Not you."

Crowley decided it best for all concerned to ignore the angel entirely.

"To be clear, they couldn't completely write Chuck out of the story. He's too established, too enmeshed in the canon. Wouldn't want to fuck with continuity or anything. No, they just – wrote him smaller. Less. And that ability to create? Well. It did the rest."

And because he couldn't resist, Crowley looked around at the three boys and their little nephilim, rocked back slightly on his heels, spread his arms, waggled his brows and said, "Ta da!"

"So you saved the world, the last remaining world in existence," Sam asked, face scrunched in incredulity, "with cat memes and fanfiction?"

"That I did, Moose." And then, because he couldn't help rubbing it in – "And you lot had gone and given up on me, hadn't you? I'm disappointed in you, boys. You should have known better."

A half-amused, mostly-exhausted huff escaped Sam in reply. The two hunters, the angel and the nephilim all looked at one another in wonder and relief.

"Sonuvabitch," Dean muttered to himself.

It was over. For the last fifteen years, maybe the entirety of their lives, Dean and Sam Winchester had fought and struggled against forces far greater than themselves. Monsters, ghosts, and witches. Demons and angels. Fate and destiny. Themselves and their own inner darkness. God. Every chapter of their lives written in blood and loss. And now at last, they had the two things they'd always wanted: freedom and family. It was all, finally, over.

"So," Sam lingered over the word, searching. "What now?"

Crowley steadily watched the whiskey in his glass swirl as he tilted it this way and that. "You could try saying thank you, you know."

"Alright, fine." Dean conceded after a moment. "I'll say it. Thank you, Crowley, for saving the world and our asses. But, uh – " With his glass, the hunter motioned towards the knee Crowley had been favoring the whole time. "If that's what stopped Chuck, what the hell happened to you?"

"Chuck happened," Crowley replied. He hid his pleasure over Dean's acknowledgement by painfully shifting his weight to one side, pulling out the chair he'd been leaning on, and slowly lowering himself into it. Damned if he hadn't earned the rest. "Caught up with me on the way to the bunker, after all was said and done. Once he realized what had happened and just who was to blame. For such a scrawny little shit, he can hold his own in a fight. And, to be honest, I was more than happy to indulge him in a game of bloody knuckles. I owned him one, for tugging on my puppet strings where Lucifer and the rift were concerned."

And then, because he was feeling particularly at home in this moment, with an impressed Sam across from him, Dean grabbing the whiskey bottle from the liquor cabinet, and Cas refusing to budge his eternal expression of constipated contemplation, Crowley stretched out his injured knee, slouched back in the chair, and finished off what remained of his whiskey.

To his pleasant surprise, without being asked, Dean refilled it. Then his own. It was going to be a night of celebration, to be sure.

"Just between the five of us?" He included them all in a small sweep of the drink. "Seemed only fair, letting him get in a few good hits. It being the end for him and all. No need to win a bout of fisty-cuffs when we'd already won the world." And Crowley smiled into his glass. "Even when I lose, I win."

"There were too many cats on the internet to begin with," Cas grumbled to no one in particular, wavering between being relieved none of them were dead and being irritated at Crowley's unexpected return and triumph.

So that is how it ended.

Except that after the final defeat of Chuck and the establishment of absolute free will, the story continued. After all, just because a story reaches its final chapter, it doesn't mean the characters don't continue on living their lives beyond the boundaries of the page. Only now, they're the ones writing their stories.

Crowley moved into the bunker. He wasn't so much as invited as decided to stay, and made himself both useful and a nuisance. He had just saved the world, so little to no fuss was made about it. Crowley set to work on closing the Gates of Hell and rebuilding the American Men of Letters, and eventually, earned himself a place among the boys. With Castiel's guidance, Jack worked to reform Heaven. Charlie began designing a program to help cryptids and non-predatory monsters slowly integrate themselves into the human world, and the human world to become more aware and accepting of the supernatural. Kevin became the first of a new breed of demonologists. And the Winchesters retired from hunting – mostly – to train the next generation of those who would carry on the family business. And maybe in some ways the world was a little bit worse, and maybe in some other ways it was a little bit better.

But it certainly wasn't an ending.

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I am not playing to win this challenge, so heap on the kudos and comments! And by all means – reblog some cat memes!

Thanks to Thayer for reading and being encouraging of a very early, very different draft of this story.

Looking forward to the end of the road – so we can all write a new one.