We went outside and got in the Impala quietly. For the first time, I think we were all finally acknowledging what we were doing. We were trying to beat the clock; beat the Devil. Again. This wasn't an endeavor that had played out well before, for any of us. Sam and Dean had probably been through more with this than I had, but still…
If there was anything to fear, this was it. We'd been up against a lot, and we'd won a lot. We just kept coming out of these things together. It was reassuring, but at the same time… We didn't know anything that could kill Lucifer. An angel blade, maybe, but you had to get in close for that and even then… The Mark of Cain doesn't let its hosts be killed. Even with Amara out and free, it still was on him, and he was still a very, very powerful archangel.
We would just have to trap him until we could figure out how to kill him. It was… It was fucking terrifying. I wasn't even certain anything I had prepared would work.
All I knew was that if I wasn't dying, then I would wish I was by the end of this.
It was going to be a long ride to Washington, and that was time we didn't have. When everyone was in the car, I took a deep breath. "Don't start it yet." I requested. I remembered the last time I'd been there. I'd been so small…
Family vacation. I'd had to use a bathroom. The gas station had parking in back. If anyone saw us, they could be made to forget.
"Grab on to me." I requested. Nobody asked questions, just did as I requested. I planted a hand firmly on the car ceiling, focusing hard; remembering that gas station, remembering that place, embedding the memory in my mind. Ellensburg. We'd stopped on the outskirts of Ellensburg. Josiah was trying to pronounce the word, but kept saying L-burg. Art was too young to speak.
Ellensburg.
I pushed, hard.
A second later we were behind the gas station that I'd remembered. Everyone looked at me in amazement, unbelieving of my ability to do that.
"What?" I asked, taking a few shaky breaths. Everybody moved their hands away quickly, and I slowly lowered mine down from the car. "I like to believe I'm at least a little useful." From there I slumped down in my seat, putting my hands to my head. GOD, did it hurt.
"Are you alright?" Sam asked.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." I said. "Just… Ouch. Haven't tried a warded car before. I think Chuck was the one who kept moving it."
"How did you know you could do it now?" Mary asked. I shrugged, my head still in my hands.
"I didn't." I answered, glancing over at her. I offered her a rueful smile. "Would've looked like a bit of an idiot if I couldn't have, though." Dean started the car, not really saying a word. I reached for my bag, rooting through the different ingredients until I found what I was looking for. Secret power bar stash. Exactly what young witches with a tendency to overreach a little bit need.
I munched as we kept going, Sam giving Dean directions from where we were to the place Cas was in. As we got closer, though, the headache didn't recede. If anything, it got worse. I munched one or two more power bars, and did my best to get in about an hour's worth of a nap. Nothing I did seemed to matter though; the closer we got, the worse I became.
"Are you OK?" Mary asked, realizing I wasn't doing too hot.
"Something's going on." I replied, clenching my eyes shut. This was worse than a vodka/tequila/jaeger hangover. "Keep driving. Maybe it'll go away or something when we get to the source."
"That's a very big maybe." She commented.
"Fully aware."
Nobody said anything else on my headache getting worse, but I just… Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong. I could feel it. And wherever it was happening, whatever was going on, Cas was at the center of it. I couldn't help but grip the rock in my pocket. It was still warm. He was still alive. That was all that I needed to keep going.
When we pulled up to the place, though, I didn't have time to take in the scenery. I had to get out, and get out of the car fast. I hurled myself from the vehicle as quickly as I could, crouching in some nearby dirt to, well…
Hurl.
"Kylie!" Mary rushed to me first, holding back my hair as I heard a door open.
"Dean?" Castiel's voice, clear as a bell. I glanced over, and saw… He was there. He was fine. He was… He was him.
"Cas, is this place warded?" Sam asked, his voice urgent. I did my best to stop the sickness, and stood; albeit slowly and with Mary's help.
"Yes, heavily." He replied. I looked over to see him, standing before the brothers.
"Against Lucifer?" I asked. That was when Castiel froze, looking past the brothers to see me. I waved my hand a little, fighting back a new wave of sickness. "Hey."
"Kylie." He rushed past the brothers quickly, and I couldn't help but gravitate towards him as well. He caught me in a tight embrace, letting out a sigh of relief. "You're OK."
"Of course I am." I replied, burying my head in his chest. "I don't go down easily."
"I tried calling your phone," he explained quickly. "When you didn't answer, I feared that you were in trouble, but I couldn't find you. And I... I had to turn off my own after… events." I shook my head, smiling.
"I don't care, and I'll tell you about it later." I promised, pulling away to look at him. "What's important is that we're together now." He leaned down to kiss me, but I stopped him, putting a hand between us. "You're not gonna want to do that. Not feeling too hot right now and I kinda just lost every power bar I ate on the way here."
"I don't care." He pushed my hand aside and kissed me, hard. For a moment, all the fear I felt… It disappeared. I had this. I had him. I had Castiel back.
For a moment, I felt better. WE could do this, together. With him, I believed we had a chance.
He pulled away, making a little bit of a sour face. "Told you." I giggled. Castiel nodded.
"I still believe it was worth it." He stated.
"Not that I'm not happy for your reunion here," Dean stated, breaking us out of… well… us. We both turned to look at him, Castiel keeping an arm firmly wrapped around my waist. "But we need to know if these wardings can keep back Lucifer." I put a hand up, feeling for what was there, as Castiel answered.
"I don't…" He paused, looking around at all of us. "Why are you all here?" I pushed further, trying to get a better idea of the wardings he had there. They were good, but…
I lurched forwards suddenly, falling back to my knees as I started to dry heave. This wasn't just an overreach of my powers from moving everyone and the car. This was more than that. This was something being dramatically, drastically wrong with the area near us. The power was… Wasn't right. Things weren't right. It wasn't Lucifer, but… It was perhaps even bigger.
"Are you alright?" Castiel asked, kneeling to my aide automatically. "Here." He put a hand on my forehead, and I could feel him searching for the source of my illness. A few seconds later… It wasn't perfect, but it was better enough so that I wouldn't be constantly sick.
"Thanks." I wiped my mouth, rising to my feet again slowly. This time, Castiel helped. "We need to update the wardings. Lucifer is coming."
"He could be right behind us." Mary added. I nodded for confirmation. I'd bought us as much time as I could by transporting us here, but this power… It wouldn't be long before Lucifer could feel it. I needed to start warding it, and fast.
Hell, I needed to actually see what was going on first.
"We're here to save your ass." Dean stated, raising an eyebrow to the angel.
"You and Kelly just taking off was a stupid move." Sam added. "But there's no way we're letting Lucifer get his hands on that kid. It ain't happening."
"Sam's right, okay?" Dean agreed. "We'll work through our crap. We always do. And I know that Kylie here is grateful that we're all here together. But right now, we are here to get you, get Kelly, and get gone." I nodded at Cas as well.
"She can't be moved." Castiel argued. "She's having a –" there were screams before he finished, emanating from the house. Kelly.
"I'll check on her." Mary decided, walking past us all to enter the house.
"How much time do we have?" Castiel asked.
"We don't know." Sam said.
"Probably not long." I pointed out.
"Hey, if he shows, can you flame on again?" Dean asked. I looked up at Castiel, confused as hell until I remembered what Sam and Dean had told me. "Can you torch Lucifer like you did Dagon?"
"No, that wasn't me. That was the child." I looked over at the house, where Kelly's screams of labor pain had emanated from. "And in case you haven't noticed, he's a little busy."
"Then I need to update the warding." I replied. "Is that where the power source is emanating from?"
"Power source?" Sam asked, looking between me and Cas. I nodded.
"It's what was making me sick." I explained. "Extremely powerful, extremely… I don't know how to describe it. Abnormal. Foreign. It doesn't belong and it's upsetting the balance of magic and if I can feel it, Lucifer can." I looked back at the house. "So if it's the kid and Kelly, I need to get up there now, remove the kiddo's power, and ward the grounds better."
"It's not the child." Castiel said. He looked like he understood. "Well… Not exactly. There's… Something you need to see." I followed Cas around the house, heading towards the back and…
To the power source. To the gold crack in everything that floated before us.
"Cas…" Sam said slowly. "What's that?"
"That's a tear in the freaking universe." I felt horrified as I spoke, keeping my distance as the boys got closer. "It leads to another one, one that's not ours. That… That shouldn't exist. This literally shouldn't be here. This is…" I ran a hand through my hair, fighting back the sickness. No wonder I felt off. "This thing shouldn't be here. This is literally not only supposed to be impossible, but also so, so bad and broken and… We have to get rid of it, now. This thing is like a freaking beacon, and we don't know what's on the other side. Anything can come and go through that crack."
"Through there it's Earth," Castiel explained. "But...but different. It's a– it's an alternate reality."
"You went through?!" I exclaimed.
"Yes."
"How in the hell is this thing in existence right now?" I asked. "And more importantly, how has it not levelled everything in a 40-mile radius?"
"It's the child." Castiel said. "With him being born, his power… it seems to be puncturing the fabric of our universe." I widened my eyes, looking back at the house once more. This kid… He was juiced up. He needed to be powered down, but first… First this tear needed to be gone.
"Awesome." Dean muttered.
"What exactly is on the other side?" Sam asked.
"You don't want to know." Castiel replied, his tone more than a little ominous.
"Yeah, well…" Dean let out a sigh, looking back at the… the Rift. "We need to."
The brothers stepped through first, sending off a shockwave that made me feel infinitely worse. I took some breaths, looking back at Castiel. "Promise to hold my hair if that thing makes me puke again?"
"Yes." He promised.
"Then let's go." I replied, standing my ground in front of the Rift. "Into the breach." I took a few steps towards it, gripping Castiel's hand tightly. Once I was in range, I reached out with a hand to touch it.
There was a small flash of light, and then the world… The world in front of us was grey. I looked around, feeling the sickness… Not quite dissipate again, but lessen; like I was being immunized.
"Whoa." Dean muttered, looking around. I followed suit, nodding in agreeance. Whoa was a bit of an understatement. The ground looked like ash, there were literal spikes with bodies impaled on them shooting from the ground – buried under it. The sky was cloudy, and looked like it had been that way for a long, long time. There was no vegetation, no dirt, any trees nearby were just dead and hollow bark…
The world was dead and grey.
"What is this place?" I asked. I knew it was a parallel universe, but other than that… I had no freaking clue. It looked like… Like the apocalypse came.
"It's Earth." Castiel repeated. "But this Earth is locked in eternal war between Heaven and Hell. There are armies of angels fighting hoards of demons, and the few humans that remain are caught in between."
"How do you know that?" Sam asked.
"A friend told me." Castiel replied.
"Oh, good. Now you're makin' friends? That's..." Dean shook his head, deciding to move past that. "All right, on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is this?"
"Bad." I stated. "Really bad."
"I gotta say, a, uh, hole in reality to a bombed out Apocalypse world?" Sam summed up. "Yeah, I'm gonna go with 11."
"I can't…" I shook my head, looking around at everything. "Guys, I don't think I can ward this or hide it or anything."
"What?" Dean asked. "Why not?"
"This isn't our world." I said. "The power from that thing alone," I pointed to the Rift. "I don't know anything about it, other than that it is so unnatural that I can feel it, and it makes me feel sick. I don't know what else is different on this side, if magic exists or if it does, what kind of existence it's in. I can't guarantee that anything I try will work, not without extensive time and trials, and even then I have to do it on both our side and this one. That's…" I shook my head. "Warding it, and hiding it, isn't an option. I don't even know if I can cast magic here, much less its effectiveness." I looked around, and spotted a good area that was a decent distance away from them. It was a dip in the ash, with a barrier in front, like an extremely shallow and accessible pit. "Keep watch here. I need to… Hell, I need to get a better feel for the place, and I can't do it with energy from our Earth seeping through that Rift. Just give me a minute." I walked off to where I'd seen, leaving the boys to figure this out. Once I was certain that they would be a safe distance away, I sat on the ground and crossed my legs. This was… Unstable.
That was the atmosphere I felt around me. Instability. Broken and mangled and unstable space that could screw me over if I wasn't careful. At the same time…
Something about it felt familiar. The unsureness of the place… I couldn't quite place what it made me think of, but I could feel something in it that I recognized.
I pushed that thought out of the way, instead choosing to bury my hands in the ground. "Reveal." I whispered, sending out quiet pulses in to the ground beneath me. If this was a world overrun by angels and demons, I had to watch what I did. One wrong move and they'd be on us in a second. "Reveal."
Each pulse only told me newfound horrors. My hands burned as I did it, but I continued. I had to see how bad it all was. These spikes, they… they reached far in to the ground. It wasn't even dirt, not really. It was… Destroyed. Everything here that had existed was destroyed and warped.
I pulled my hands out of the ground, and saw small chemical burn marks on my fingertips. I tried to heal them, but… It wouldn't work. I couldn't heal here, or at least not myself. I could feel the energy there, within me, trying to. But it just… It wouldn't go. It wouldn't work.
I wondered if I would be able to heal anyone else in this place.
I held my palm up, thinking of fire. And I could feel it again, right under the surface. I could feel the burn right beneath my palm, within my skin, but it wouldn't appear before me. I pushed harder. Worst comes to worst, I could heal myself back in our universe. I kept pushing, fighting hard for it to come. "Ignis inferno." I tried, amping up the power just a little more. Hellfire.
Finally, my hand burst in to flames, igniting all at once. It didn't burn me, but it was… Uncomfortable to hold, and expending more energy than it should. I clenched my hand to put it out, but… It stayed. It was almost sucking the power out of me. I pulled back this time, reigning in as much as I could. "Desino." I ordered. Stop, halt, decease, end. It pulled back, but my hand was still on fire and… Starting to actually hurt. "Desino." I tried again, putting more force in my voice and intent. There was only a small fire in my palm now, but it was burning my hand now. "DESINO." I didn't shout, but I could still feel my voice reverberating. The fire finally receded, and I took a second to look at the burn on my palm.
Note to self. This universe was… Weird about magic. More force to stop it than to start it, but still more force as a whole for both.
If I was going to do anything, I was going to have to be very, very careful.
"Kylie!" Castiel's voice, not urgent, but calling me over. I got up and walked to them, seeing a new figure among the group. Tall, a little heavy, with a bit of scruff. Not someone I knew. Once I got within better eyesight, though, he held what definitely looked like a machine gun to me.
"Hey!" Dean shouted, pushing it away. I stopped where I was, uncertain of whether or not to continue to come forwards. "Easy there, Bobby! What the hell?!"
"Bobby?" I asked, deciding to keep stepping forwards (albeit much slower and more cautiously than before). "Bobby Singer? The Bobby Singer?"
"Don't you dare come any closer to me." He spat, glaring at me.
"What?" I looked from the elder man to Dean and Sam, confused as all can be. "What happened? Did I do something wrong?" I didn't ask if he'd seen what I had been doing. I was almost afraid to.
"This is some kind of trick." Bobby accused. "You're dead. We watched you die."
"Hold on." I took a small step closer, my hands raised and palms open. "Alternate universes. I'm not… I'm not whoever you saw die."
"So your name isn't Kylie Dillinger, you're not from Michigan, and you don't have two younger brothers." I stopped then.
"No, that… That's all true." I said. "Are they alive? Is my family alive?" I stopped then, thinking of other questions. "Wait, you knew other me. Other me…" I took a breath. "I died?"
Bobby lowered the gun then, inspecting me warily. "Yeah." He eventually confirmed. "Almost six or so months ago."
"Was I…" I took a breath. "How did I… the other me… die?"
"Angels." I glanced over at Castiel, and could tell he was thinking the same thing. What happened in this world? Bobby finally took a step towards me, taking a long, hard look. "It's really you, isn't it?" He asked. I nodded.
"From an alternate universe but, yeah," I nodded. "It's me." Then he did something stranger than anything else I'd seen today.
He hugged me, as though… As though I was family. "We missed you, you idjit." He muttered before pulling away. I looked at the others, and saw flashes of hurt on Sam and Dean's eyes.
"Wait," I asked. "Who's 'we?'"
He didn't answer, but his eyes looked so sad; it was as though there was some big secret or story that I was supposed to know, that he kept hoping I would know and understand, but I wasn't. "Things sound pretty different on your side." He commented.
"Yeah, it is."
"Sounds like a good world." He nodded a little. "I'm glad you're still alive in it." There were other things he wasn't telling me, I could see that, but for the moment…
He'd known me. The other me, anyways, just like how Sam and Dean had known the other him. He'd known the alternate me, had probably cared about the alternate me even. The least I could do was at least try to live up to whatever version of me he'd known.
"Was the other me…" I wasn't certain how to phrase it. "Was she good? Was she… Did she get a chance to lead a normal life?"
"As normal as it gets." He replied. "They told me about what you can do. She wasn't a witch." I felt bittersweet about that, but Bobby didn't seem to be judging me for that. He was just stating facts. "She lived a good life. A short one, but a good one."
"Did she," I glanced over at Cas. "Did she get married?"
"Yeah. She did." I let out a small sigh of relief. She'd made better choices than I had. She'd married Cas. I smiled up at Bobby, uncertain as to what to say.
"I'm sorry I'm not the Kylie you knew," I finally said. "But… I can promise you that, from what I've heard about the other you from those boys," I motioned to Dean and Sam. "That she was pretty fucking fortunate to have known you too. There's probably a lot that you know about her, and a lot of her that I'll never be, but… Thanks for watching out for the other me. I know she couldn't have been easy to deal with."
"Shut up." He muttered, but I could see a small smile on his face too. I looked at the guys. They… They needed a moment with Bobby, one that I wasn't a part of.
"I'm gonna head back." I told them. "Check on Kelly, see what I can do in the time we have. Be careful." I got on my tiptoes to kiss Cas on the cheek, and heard a sharp intake of breath from Bobby. I didn't turn to look at him, though. I didn't need to be there, now.
I stepped through the Rift calmly, feeling more better than I had on the other side. The inoculation theory was probably correct. As a test, I focused on my burned hand.
It healed without any difficulties on my part. "At least it's normal here." I muttered, striding in to the house. I had to form a game plan, and fast. That rift couldn't stay open, but I didn't even know how to close it, much less make sure the thing was stable.
I was going to need help. But first things first, I had to update the wardings.
Man, Dean and Sam were NOT going to be happy when I called my backup.
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Hey everyone, WriKai here! So that was a small hint for the Alt-Universe fic I was considering writing. I'm actually planning on writing it from a different Point of View (not Kylie's), but I don't really want to give that away just yet. However I do intend on making Kylie more perma-dead for this one, but not off the bat. There will be history and evolution over time, etc. etc., but... yeah. I got a lot of positive encouragement to write it so I'm getting the first few chapters or so down now before I start putting it up on here. Keep a lookout for "Believing in the Bizarro"!
Feel free to keep sending messages of different thoughts or ideas or criticisms, I appreciate every single one. And as for the longer chapters for these last few, I'm trying REALLY REALLY hard to NOT hit 50 chapters, because I feel at that point it's going a little overboard, but this was such an intense season I wanted to do a lot with it. I'll try to limit my chapter numbers for Bizarro and with the next installment (I'll reveal the name in the last chapter, like always, but if you guys wanna shoot out any of your own ideas then send me a message and I may change my mind!).
As always, thank you all for sticking with me and this series! Hope you're still enjoying what you read!
