Jack watched Chuck fade out of view through the back window, breathing in a slow sigh of relief. They succeeded. He was done.
"And we're sure sure that he can't figure out how to get his power back?" Dean confirmed, glancing up in the rear view mirror. "I mean, he was God. He knows literally everything."
"He doesn't anymore." Jack said softly, leaning his head back against the seat and closing his eyes. "That much knowledge would kill him, he's human. He can't remember."
"You doing okay back there, kid?"
"Yeah." He replied weakly.
Dean kept his gaze for a moment before he just turned back to driving.
Sam glanced back, doing his best to mask his concern. "You get some rest, Jack. You did good back there."
"Thanks." Jack failed to mutter. Closing his eyes didn't help, but once he had he forgot how to open them. He had existed his whole life… just one moment in one place.
Right now he was everywhere. Like electricity, a thought and he could see it. Anywhere in the world. He checked in on Donna, Eileen, Bobby, Charlie... He peered through the bunker. He looked in the silo. He could do all that from the car speeding down the highway, one single path through the infinite multitudes.
It was an adjustment.
Chuck's memory was fathomless, and it was spreading like wildfire across his brain, unfolding eons in seconds, cataloging an eternity in the void balanced with Amara and Death before he took breath and birthed the warriors of his sister's confinement. Jack saw the moment the horsemen split. He saw the big bang. He saw the creation of angels, crafted from the supernovas of a chaotic forming universe. He watched countless worlds rise from sparks into empires and fade to dust. He found himself catching up to the present. He watched Sam and Dean's life from birth, not sure if the tears were only in his head when he watched a demon slit his wrist over Sam's crib. He watched John Winchester impart his discipline on them. He watched a knife in Sam's back and hellhounds at Dean's ankles. He felt a physical punch to the gut when Castiel laid a hand on Dean's shoulder in hell.
Dean Winchester is saved.
"That was when the connection broke." Jack thought he had said it out loud, but when no one in the car responded he realized he was mistaken. It was too much of an effort to speak up again.
He watched it again, once, twice. It made him feel physically nauseous. All of the unfathomed cosmos were perfectly in tune with Chuck, the small flicker of an angel's doubt was like a lightning bolt. Angels obeyed. That was all they knew how to do. They weren't like his archangels with their own intuitions, angels were merely an extension of him, programmed to follow orders.
"He wasn't pulling the strings." Jack tried to assure them, but again he realized he hadn't moved his lips. "Chuck wanted to see the story… he didn't want to write it. Not until the end. That was all you…"
He watched Ruby corrupt Sam in parallel to Dean's corruption of Cas.
Castiel wasn't the first angel to pull away from heaven, but he was the first one to be tainted with the soul of a righteous man rather than the temptations of sin. It was fascinating.
Chuck never knew which path Dean would take, but he knew where every possible path could lead. Not a single prediction saw Dean get into that church. Castiel had achieved the unachievable. Providence was subverted. A thousand new paths opened up and the cosmic rush was intoxicating.
He almost forgot to reach through and pull Dean out of that church before Lucifer stepped into the world and melted the flesh off his bones. Sam too, why not?
He spent simultaneously millenia and mere hours, riding the high of being confronted with the true unknown. He was disappointed when the puzzle pieces started sliding into place, the picture clearing. New paths were cemented; The story was different now, but he could see it again. The loss was impossible to set aside.
Raphael had smited Cas so thoroughly there wasn't even enough to scrape into the empty. This provided him with a unique opportunity. He could pull him back together. He was careful, taking care, hundreds of years within frozen time. He had to get it perfect, he could not risk losing the small shard of Dean's soul that severed his bond with fate.
When Cas came back. the paths blurred and when it was done these three improbable rebels had averted the certainty of the apocalypse. Once again as the earth sealed over and the dust settled, Chuck had found himself already craving the uncertainty of Castiel. He went to work rebuilding him again.
The dread Chuck felt when Dean took the mark competed with the thrill of seeing where that led, and suddenly he felt connected to Dean in a way he never had any human before. Reconciliation with his sister, a trip through the cosmic potential at the edges of interminable realities, and by his return the story of Earth had been turned on end.
Jack felt the wave of hatred for himself, and he imagined giving a weak smile at the emotional mess he'd have to sort through to reconcile that later. He turned his back, wishing to avoid reliving the pain and turmoil he himself caused from a whole new perspective. Chuck's omniscience seemed to flicker and fade after Sam's soul splintered into his shoulder anyway.
He rushed through to the end, desperate to catch up to the present in the diminishing hope that he'd be able to wrestle these memories under control. Time had been moving so fast at the start of… well, time itself. Now each second was painfully slow, and he aged centuries sorting through Chuck's analysis of every minute. "Sir, this is a radio shed."
Chuck was choking down on the reins, brushing right up against the his own applied limits to affect free will before finally tearing everything down in every reality but one. And then he began to deconstruct that.
Jack was distracted by feeling the pull of every soul as they were erased off the planet. An instant for any observer on earth, but each person one at a time for him.
He almost missed Cas and Dean run out of Death's library.
"When Jack was dying, I made a deal to save him.…"
Jack blinked back tears again, heart racing as he watched the scene continue.
The empty was tearing open. Cas tried to throw Dean to the side, but the hunter grabbed his arm, pulling Cas close and throwing his arms around him.
"Dean, please-" Cas shouted over the sounds of the slithering void reaching towards them. Jack could feel the second hand panic exploding out from both of them.
"I love you, Cas." Dean breathed, directly in Cas' ear. He arched involuntarily as he felt the ink touch his back, but he held on tight. His prayer was clear. You aren't going without me.
Jack felt Chuck himself invade the room, standing in the silence left behind, the violence of moments ago fading into absence, a world once again without Death, a world missing an impossible pair. And a wholly unsatisfying ending.
Jack felt another nauseating twist in his gut when he felt the idea blossom.
He'd just build another.
No.
It was easy, really.
Please no.
The memories continued, pushing through every attempt Jack made to slow them. His hands… the perverse hand of God, sewing together a human body, stuffing it with a hastily crafted approximation of a half finished soul. Cracked drywall smoothed over with reconstructed memories, edited to his liking. The story would be finished. He didn't rip everyone off this earth just to end it there.
Chuck left him on the floor, phone ringing on the ground, and a memory of staying silent while Cas was ripped from existence.
Jack tore his eyes open, gasping for air as he pulled himself out of it. He locked eyes with Dean in the mirror, and felt the shudder down his spine.
It wasn't Dean.
Dean was in the empty.
Dean was gone.
This isn't Dean.
"You sure you're okay?" Not Dean asked over his shoulder, suggesting to Jack his expressions had all been in his head.
"Yeah." He replied softly.
.
He didn't tell them.
The imposter was acting normal, and Sam was none the wiser, and with all of Jack's wisdom he didn't know what to do besides do nothing at all. He said his goodbyes and stepped out of time to think.
"You want to bring them back." Amara's voice wasn't accusing, but it wasn't necessarily approving either. "This is your idea of hands off?"
"I'm doing it."
"Interfering is what got Chuck in trouble in the first place."
"I'm not Chuck." Jack said firmly. "And I'm not leaving them there."
She looked across the bunker at the figure that couldn't see them. "What are you going to do about him?"
Jack closed his eyes. "I don't know."
"You know you won't be able to pull Dean out with that thing here."
"That thing is Dean… sort of."
"And that's the problem." Amara finished. "The soul can't exist in tandem like that. They'll consume each other as they try to merge."
"He doesn't have a soul." Jack said mournfully. "Not really."
"Close enough to cause problems."
"It's not fair anyway." Jack murmured. "To Sam…" Sam hadn't noticed yet, but Jack was counting the days. The new Dean was a bluff, a collection of memories and intent robust enough to ride out the last apocalypse to completion, but it was never meant to navigate the world any further. The seams were coming undone, and soon they would be without subtlety.
"I don't want Sam to know." Jack paused. "He shouldn't have to know how long his brother has been gone, or where.
"You're not going to be able to wait much longer."
"I'll figure it out." And he did.
Five inches.
The slightest adjustment, five inches to the left, letting a vampire and a poorly placed hook do the dirty work for him.
Jack kept his eyes on every corner of earth, heaven, hell, and purgatory to try to hide from tearful goodbyes from a whisper of his father. He blocked out Sam's despaired prayers, begging him to help.
I am helping. I can rescue him now.
Jack finally used the last spark of an imposter Dean's almost-soul to rip a hole into the nothingness beyond reality. He liked to think that this Dean had been Dean enough that he'd have willingly sacrificed himself for a chance to rescue his family from the Entity.
It was enough to steel himself for the task ahead.
With the presence of God and the audacity of a Winchester, he stepped through, and he wouldn't be leaving without his fathers.