Chapter 15: And Lo, So Sayeth The Winchester Gospel

Chuck Shurley stared at the arsenal in the trunk of the Impala, at the salt and the holy water and the devil´s trap carved into the underside of the hood. "Well, I got to hand it to you guys," he stuttered, sweat shining on his forehead. "You really are my number one fans." He started to back away, nearly tripping on his old bathrobe. "That's… that's awesome. So, I-I think I've got some posters in the house."

"Chuck, stop," Dean said forcefully, walking in front of the author and cutting him off. Chuck began to wring his hands, looking with terrified eyes at the two larger men blocking the path.

"Please wait," he pleaded. "Please, don't hurt me."

Sam shifted impatiently, running a hand through his hair. "How much do you know?" he asked, frustrated. "Do you know about the angels? Or Lilith breaking the seals?"

Chuck paused, confused. "Wait a minute. How do you know about that?"

"The question is," Dean said darkly, "how do you know?"

"Uh, because I wrote it?" Chuck said, trying his best to smile. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to run into the house and bury himself back in the comfortable world of fiction and booze.

"You kept writing?" Sam asked, incredulous.

Chuck bobbed his head up and down nervously. "Yeah, even after the publisher went bankrupt, but those books never came out." He paused, grasping at some kind of logic or hope. "Okay, wait a minute. This is some kind of joke, right? Did that - did Phil put you up to this?"

Dean sighed, shot Sam a long-suffering look and turned back to Chuck, pulling himself up to his full height.

"Well, nice to meet you. I'm Dean Winchester, and this is my brother, Sam."

Chuck's bearded face paled. "The last names were never in the books," he said slowly. "I never told anyone about that. I never even wrote that down." His eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute, this isn't right. If you're talking about Lilith and the seals, and if you're my characters, shouldn't you also be with…"

"Yo, Sex Bomb!" Eli yelled from down the street, jogging up to them. She had changed back into her old cargo pants and military boots, a dark grey turtleneck under her bomber jacket, her blonde hair in a French braid. She jogged towards them, doing a little disco dance for Dean and thrusting her hips. Sam struggled to keep the smile off of his face as Dean groaned and hung his head in his hands.

"I'm never gonna get over this," he groaned, then shot an ugly look at Chuck. "Was it really necessary that you write horrifically detailed sex acts in your stupid books?"

Chuck ignored him, staring opened-mouthed at Eli. "I can't believe it," he mumbled. "It's not possible."

Eli reached them, a smile on her face. "Hello, young lovers," she greeted the Winchesters before turning to Chuck. "Hey, you must be the author. I'm Eli Grant."

His face when even whiter, until it was positively bloodless. "Not possible," he muttered, tucking his head into his chest and scurrying away. Eli looked at the brothers blankly.

"Was it something I said?"

They followed Chuck into the house. He was pouring himself a large whiskey, gulping it down with alarming speed, two dots of color appearing high on his pallid cheeks. He put the glass on the kitchen counter, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and turned back around.

"Oh," he groaned, pressing a palm to his forehead. "You're still here."

Dean shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, taking in the filthy apartment with interest. "Yup."

"You're not a hallucination," Chuck clarified. Dean gave a humorless chuckle.

"Nope."

Chuck sighed, then turned back around and poured himself another glass of whiskey. "Then, there's only one explanation," he announced morosely, but with a bit of pride. "Obviously I'm a god."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You're not a god."

Chuck faced him, the amber liquid in his glass sloshing dangerously close to the rim. "How else do you explain it?" he demanded. "I write things and then they come to life. Yeah, no, I'm definitely a god." He hung his head, ashamed of his actions. "A cruel, cruel, capricious god. The things I put you through - the physical beatings alone."

Dean shrugged, leaning against the wall. "Yeah, we're still in one piece."

Chuck continued like he didn't hear him. He put his drink down on the counter, looking horrified, and ran his hands through his already messy hair as if he wanted to pull it out. "I killed your father," he wailed guilty. "I burned your mother alive." He turned on Sam. "And then you had to go through the whole horrific ordeal again with Jessica."

"Chuck…" Sam began, but he plowed on, moving now to Eli.

"And you!" he gasped, looking close to tears. "I mean, you can't be real! You were never even in the published books! The plucky Nephilim with the big secret and the heavenly mission? That's crazy! I only wrote you in later because I thought the series needed more female characters. Hell, I even created the way that you look because I thought it would be cute, to pull some fans away from the whole slash fiction thing. You know." He gestured to her weakly. "Like my series' own Buffy. And then there's the whole thing with the angel…" He trailed off at Eli's furious look.

"Well, I'm real," she bit out.

"Oh God," he groaned, closing his eyes and then opening them again to stare apologetically at her. "I am so, so sorry. I put you through so much shit. I had your angelic father rape your mother, and the yellow-eyed-demon possess your dad, and brought the wrath of heaven down on you for no reason at all! All for what? All for the sake of literary symmetry." He looked at the three of them frantically. "I toyed with your lives, your emotions, for... entertainment!"

Dean strode up to him, holding his hands out to accentuate his point. "You didn't toy with us, Chuck, okay?" he snapped. "You didn't create us."

Chuck looked at him like a wounded puppy. "Did you really have to live through the bugs?"

"Yeah," Dean said, exasperated.

"What about the ghost ship?"

"Yes, that too." His voice was starting to sound strained.

"I am so sorry," Chuck apologized again, taking a big swig of whiskey. "I mean, horror is one thing, but to be forced to live bad writing... if I would have known it was real, I would have done another past."

"Chuck, you're not a god!" Dean yelled. Sam shot him a look.

"We think you're probably just psychic," he said patiently, like he was part of a good-cop-bad-cop routine.

Chuck shook his head fiercely and took another drink. "No. No way. If I were psychic, you think I'd be writing?" His voice became a dull whine. "Writing is hard."

Sam looked uncomfortable, like he wasn't sure if he should comfort Chuck or not. "It seems that somehow, you're just... focused on our lives," he said finally.

Dean scoffed. "Yeah, like laser-focused." He paused, his eyes scanning the papers that lay scattered across the messy room. "Are you working on anything right now?"

Later, after they had heard about Sam's impending "throes of fiery demonic passion" with Lilith, Sam and Dean went off to try and change the day's destiny. Eli stayed with Chuck, supposedly to protect him. In reality she didn't want to deal with the brothers' latest emotional crisis, and she also had some personal questions of her own for the author.

"You like beer, right?"

Eli looked up from her spot on the comfy chair, where she was rifling through his latest manuscript. He was hovering over her nervously, a bottle in his hand. "I mean, that's what I wrote you as liking," he said, shrugging.

Eli accepted it. "Yeah, thanks," she said, putting it to her lips. He sat down on the couch, watching as she thumbed through the pages, clearly looking for something.

"I didn't give them anything incriminating," he said, and Eli's head jerked up.

"What?" she asked, placing the stack of papers on the coffee table. He leaned forward, a glass of whiskey in his hands.

"You know, the stuff I wrote about you…and the angel. I didn't give it to them."

"Oh." Eli felt heat rising to her face. "Ah, thanks." She sighed, leaning back in the chair and taking a long drink. After a moment she looked at him from the corner of her eye. "So you know about that, huh?" she asked. He nodded, staring into his glass.

"Yeah. Felt it coming for a long time. I mean, at first I thought if I added a female character she would hook up with one of the brothers, maybe both, cause some soap-opera friction, you know? But it never happened…guess I know why, now. Wasn't really my call to make."

"Mm," she said softly. "Hey, can I ask you something?" He looked at her, his bearded face exhausted. Something was crusted in his beard, deep shadows ringed his eyes, and he smelled like whisky and the must of old bed sheets. He looked like he would drop the ground at any minute. "You have an insight no one else seems to have here. What do you think about…you know…"

"You and Castiel?" he asked, shaking his head. "It's a bad idea, Eli. I haven't seen that far yet, but I'm afraid that it won't end well for you two."

Something twisted low in her gut. Chuck saw her look and sighed, straightening up and putting his glass on the low table. He turned to her, his face serious.

"It's nothing against you, you know, or him. You just…you gotta understand how these guys work. They're not like you and me. Why do you think heaven's so strict on angels being emotionless soldiers?" He leaned forward as if imparting a great secret. "They're born of fire, which means that they feel things much more than mere mortals do. But they're taught to stay away, to keep their hands clean, to be totally… numb. Thousands of years of near-nothingness in the emotions department. Then you give them one taste of human desire, and bam! It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet and they are very, very hungry. They don't know how to deal with all the new sensations. They can't stop themselves. It ruins them. I mean, that's why Anna ripped out her grace."

"So you're saying that, secretly, all angels are sex-starved maniacs?"

"Well, I wouldn't phrase it exactly like that, but…"

"Oh," Eli said lamely, sitting back. She tried to process everything that she had just heard. "So, ah, you think he's with me because…I don't know… like, a bed warmer?" She felt incredibly awkward saying it, especially since they had only stolen a few kisses in the past few weeks.

"No, oh no," Chuck said, shaking his head solemnly. "He feels for you. I mean, really feels, for the first time, well, ever. He even disobeyed. And it's because of you. Don't doubt that because of his…ah, enthusiasm. I'm just saying…" He sighed and picked his glass off the table, swirling the contents morosely. "Just don't expect this to end well."

Eli stayed at Chuck's, reading through piles of manuscripts, trying to decipher the clues she found in them. She discovered the story ("more of a flashback, really," Chuck had said) of her meeting with Azazel. She found snippets of conversations between Castiel and Uriel that mentioned the collar. She pocketed embarrassing exchanges between her and Castiel that she never wanted the brothers to get their hands on. She even found a poorly bound book, covered in coffee stains and titled with scribbled pencil Left of West, of scenes of her hunting life, some with the boys, some before, all out of order and severely marked up with a red pen.

At some point, Eli fell asleep on the couch. At another, Chuck left to get food and booze. And another found Dean hovering over her shoulder, his lips at her ear.

"Boo," he whispered, and she shrieked. Papers flew everywhere; her beer rolled to the ground, spilling brown liquid all over the already stained carpet.

"You jackass!" she exclaimed to his smug face. "That's not funny!"

"Oh, so now you're not laughing," he said. Eli wanted to punch him, but realized that he already looked pretty beat up.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

"Getting hit by a minivan while trying to break this destiny crap," he said, sinking down on a chair. "Not going well. You find anything?"

"Any clues?" she asked. "Nope. Just what we already lived. He does have a rather…florid way of writing it all though. Oh, and by the way, thanks."

Dean blinked, nonplussed. "For what?"

She winked at him. "For thinking my ass is cute."

The rattling of keys at the door told them that Chuck was back. A minute later he walked in, a grocery bag piled high with glass bottles in his arms. He seemed unsurprised to see Dean sitting there.

"Dean," he said, bobbing his head nervously. Dean stood up, suddenly a lot more threatening.

"I take it you knew I'd be here," he growled. Chuck put the grocery bag down on the ground and walked forward tentatively.

"You look terrible," he said, examining Dean's face in the light.

"That's 'cause I just got hit by a minivan, Chuck," he said stiffly, as if trying not to start throwing punches. Chuck's face paled.

"Oh."

Dean exploded. "That it?" he yelled. "Every damn thing you write about me comes true, and all you have to say to me is oh?"

Eli watched the back-and-forth with interest. She knew that Dean wasn't really going to hurt the little guy, but she wanted to see what fear would do, if he really would reveal any more information when scared.

When Dean slammed him into the wall, Eli finally stood.

"How the hell are you doing this?" Dean yelled in Chuck's face. Eli moved forward to intervene.

"Dean, let him go!" she exclaimed at the exact same time that another, deeper voice said the same thing. Dean dropped Chuck in confusion, staring back and forth between Eli and the newly-appeared Castiel.

"This man is to be protected," Castiel explained, shooting a furtive glance at Eli as if unable to help himself. She felt a flush rise to her cheeks and turned away, walking to the table and picking up her fallen beer from the ground.

Dean was oblivious to the undertones of the exchange. "Why?" he demanded. Castiel looked at him again.

"He is a prophet of the Lord."

Chuck peeked out from behind Dean's larger frame, his eyes huge.

"You... you're Castiel... aren't you?" he stammered, then darted a glance to Eli. Eli nearly groaned. Now even Chuck was blushing.

"It's an honor to meet you, Chuck," Castiel said stiffly, picking up a book and thumbing through it. "I... admire your work."

Dean held up his hands. "Whoa, whoa, what? This guy, a prophet? Come on, he's - he's... he's practically a Penthouse forum writer."

Eli nearly choked in her beer.

Dean swung on Chuck. "Did you know about this?" he demanded.

Chuck stumbled over to the armchair, pouring himself more whiskey along the way. "I, uh, I might have dreamt about it."

"And you didn't tell us?" Dean exclaimed.

Why they were arguing Castiel sidled up to Eli, book still in his hand. "This prophet," he said quietly. "Does he know…" Eli merely looked at him and nodded to his unasked question. His face didn't change, but his eyes became fractionally wider.

"Yo, wondertwins," Dean snapped. "Mind if I steal Cas for a minute?"

The two men moved to the side of the room, speaking in hushed voices. Eli walked over to where Chuck was sitting and deftly plucked the whiskey from his fingertips. "I think that's enough of that for you," she said, placing it on the bookshelf and perching on the edge of his chair.

"I knew you would do that," he grumbled, standing and walking decisively up the stairs. Eli slid into his unoccupied seat, listening to the rest of the conversation with interest.

Finally Dean asked the big question. "How do we get around this?"

Castiel looked vaguely confused, his brows drawing inward over his eyes. "Around what?"

"The Sam-Lilith love connection," Dean hissed. "How do we stop it from happening?"

Castiel was like a rock. Eli was amazed that he could still stand there so coolly, the good little soldier, when a few hours ago he had been kissing her senseless. "What the prophet has written can't be unwritten," he said in his gravel tones. "As he has seen it, so it shall come to pass."

"Well, you're no help," Dean snapped, pushing past the angel and marching to the door. Eli stood, halfway following him.

"Dean, where are you going?" she called.

"To get Sam!" he yelled without looking back. "Look, you just …stay here. I really don't need any interference on this one." He slammed the door.

There was a long moment of silence. From upstairs, Eli could hear Chuck's drunken snores. She turned. Castiel was still standing there in his trench coat, staring at her with eyes that seemed too blue to be real.

"Well, I feel stupid doing this," Dean exclaimed to thin air several hours later, standing by a soda machine outside of the RE D motel. "But I am fresh out of options. So please. I need some help." He paused, waiting for an answer from the darkness. "I'm praying, okay? Come on. Please."

"Prayer is a sign of faith." Castiel's familiar voice was not exactly what Dean had been hoping to hear. "This is a good thing, Dean."

Dean turned to face him. "Woah, Cas, what happened to you?"

The angel's signature trench coat was missing, his shirt wrinkled, tie mostly undone, and hair unusually mussed. He looked around awkwardly, tried to put his hands in his coat pockets, realized he wasn't wearing the coat, then settled for folding his hands in front of him. "It is not of any import. Why were you praying, Dean?"

Dean decided to ignore the angel's erratic behavior. "I want you to help me."

Castiel walked closer to him, his face pensive. "I'm not sure what I can do." He straightened his tie as if he had never done it before.

"Drag Sam out of here - now. Before Lilith shows up."

"It's a prophecy. I can't interfere." He paused, looking meditatively up at the sky. "But let me at least tell you why."

Later that night, Eli found herself standing with Chuck and Dean outside of the motel room where Sam and Lilith were. "You sure this is gonna work?" she hissed. Dean shot her a look.

"Cas said that there would hell to pay if anything evil tries to come near Chuck, so I say it's too late to turn back now!" He grabbed Chuck's arm, opened the door with a kick, and forcefully propelled the smaller man into the room. "Let's go."

Lilith was on top of Sam, the Knife held high over her head. She spun around as they entered, her host deceptively beautiful and delicate, her eyes milky white. Chuck swallowed his fear and rushed forward, holding his hands up.

"I am the prophet Chuck!" he called out, and at any other time, Eli would have laughed.

Lilith got off the bed; beneath her youthful face Eli could the true monstrous visage of the demon, writhing and distorted. "You've got to be joking," she snorted, sauntering forward, her fingers with their sharp nails curling, her voice hoarse with the desire to stick her pretty hand deep into someone's chest.

The walls began to tremble, beams cracking and groaning, dust raining down on their heads.

"This is no joke," Dean called. White light began to pour through the walls, filling the room with a strange ringing. Eli looked around; no one else seemed to notice the noise. The sound became worse, as did the light. Eli stumbled, putting her hands over her ears. She couldn't breathe. The presence was enormous, filling her head and shaking her down to her very molecules. Something about the feeling was familiar, the sensation of compression and expansion, like she was about to burst apart and go flying into the walls.

"See, Chuck here's got an Archangel on his shoulder," Dean was yelling, oblivious to what was happening behind him. "So you've got about ten seconds before this room is full of wrath and you're a piece of charcoal. You sure you want to tangle with that?"

Chuck glanced over and noticed Eli kneeling on the ground. "Eli!" he cried, crouching by her. She looked at him and then, feeling something strange, almost feathery travel down her arms, held out her hand.

The tips of her fingers were disintegrating, turning into fine dust and vanishing into the air. Chuck's eyes widened.

"I never wrote this!" he cried over the sound of the Archangel.

There was a long moment where Eli and Chuck just stared at her rapidly-vanishing fingertips. It didn't hurt; it didn't even feel real. All she felt were the pins and needles after a limb fell asleep, traveling steadily down her skin as more and more of her broke apart and went spiraling into the wind. She didn't even feel afraid, she just felt…

Free.

Lilith opened her mouth and poured out of her host's body. The white light and shaking faded. Eli could breathe again, her head spinning, gravity like a dull weight in her chest. She looked at Chuck, then at her hand. It was normal.

"What the hell is happening to me?" she whispered. Chuck shook his head, helping her to her feet.

"I'll tell you when I know."