Here is how the story will end:
Two brothers.
No.
Four brothers stand in a cemetery. And assorted other figures, one forgotten, one rebellious, one a father.
Why are they there? They aren't supposed to be there. New line.
Four brothers stand in a cemetery. Lucifer wears Sam Winchester. Michael wears Adam Milligan.
Michael, you think to yourself, is wearing the wrong vessel. What is he doing? He's going to get himself killed.
That's the whole point. Why does it bother you so much? Dean will still be there. Dean rides in on his chariot of steel and victory, and Michael… You stand up. You circle your chair and wring your hands. You don't know what to do about this. You'd expect this kind of behavior from Lucifer, or Gab-
Michael is not supposed to disobey you.
He is wearing Adam Milligan.
Start over. New line? New document. This chapter has to be finished today. Your publisher will have your ass otherwise. And the world is ending. These seem of equal importance. You grab something to drink and sit down again.
It takes you a few minutes to realize that you're rambling about yourself. This story isn't about you. It's about:
Two FOUR brothers. Standing in a cemetery. It doesn't matter who is wearing who or whose father is standing watch in the moments before they tear themselves to shreds. This is where the story began. This is where the story will end. It was always going to be like this.
Focus. Breathe. Remember those wrist stretches Becky sent a PDF of.
You wonder if you should tell her that she might die in a few hours. That everyone might die. You decide against it. She's having a nice day. You don't want to ruin it.
You settle down to write your world's elegy again. A few hundred miles away, Becky is exchanging messages with a friend online, laughing. Further away, Sam is preparing to say yes. Dean is not. Because Michael, apparently, has decided to wear Adam, and this is your fault for introducing a red herring and expecting him to understand it wasn't a loophole. Michael is not, bless him, your brightest child.
There will be interlopers on the sacred battlefield. Lucifer won't take kindly to that, will he? He will probably take care of it on his own, but… You scribble a note anyway, to make sure. There can be no more mistakes. He won't feel you pull the strings too tight if it's something he's already inclined to.
This is exactly why the last book came out late. Why they've all been a struggle to write, ever since you became a part of the narrative. This is not a story about you.
This is a story about-
Once upon a time, there were two siblings, and they loved each other more than anything else. (For nothing else yet existed for them to love.) And as time passed, the younger grew outside the bounds he was allowed. The younger began to create, until this was a story about Him, until the stories about her were locked away. You heard her scream and rage against the confines of her prison for centuries until she went suddenly silent. She is alive. You know this because you are alive. She is still there, and some nights, when it gets unnaturally still, you can hear her scratching at the walls of her cell with bloody fingers, the nails long since ripped out, scrape and scrape and scrape with the rhythm of a guilty heart.
You slam your hand against the table. This is not a story about you!
It was a mistake to write yourself in. This is a story about Sam and Dean, who are not you and Am- who are not even Michael and Lucifer. You look at them, and you tell yourself you don't see your sons. Not in anything but promising parallels, the kind that would make a reader's eyes light up as they connect the dots. You tell yourself Dean does not look a bit like Michael as you write about his Father leaning over him and whispering a solemn order to slay Sam. You tell yourself that Sam does not look like your favorite child as he screams and sobs inside Bobby's panic room and begs for his brother to let him out, for anyone to let him, for anyone to even stand near the door and tell him it will be okay and he will be allowed his freedom again and he will be forgiven, isn't it extended to everyone, isn't it meant for him, too, Father, don't leave me in here, it's so cold-
Amara went silent. It took centuries.
Lucifer went silent. It took decades.
Sam went silent. It took seven hours. Dean nearly drank himself into a coma. He would have, if you hadn't written, "His hand is shaking, and he can't grasp the bottle. It shatters on the floor next to him."
You reach for another drink. You miss. It shatters. The mess is a terrible, stinking thing. You fold your hands over your face and peek through your fingers at the words you've tangled around yourself.
Oh, God, what have you done?
You lay your fingers on the computer keys again. You write, and they all lived happi
The computer freezes. You swear. You smack it until it obeys again. In doing so, you've been skipped to the next line again.
You became subject to the rules of your story the moment you stepped inside it, but before that you condemned it with the thought, it will end in fire and brotherly blood. It's like poetry, it rhymes.
States away, a lone angel looks up from his books. He's not sure what he's looking at. He's just gotten the strangest urge to yell, "Hack!" He ignores it and goes back to reading.
So, now this story is about you. Fine. This story has always been about you. Fine. You are a selfish person. Who else could call down floods and fire on what they love? Are you going to get cold feet now that you have to stand in the wreckage rather than look down from above?
You can't do what I do, Amara would say, if Amara was here and she didn't hate you. If she was your older sister, ready to taunt and tease you about your newest work. Her words would not be a mark against your power but a simple truth. Destruction is not the role suited to you. You do it badly. You regret. You don't have the stomach for it, she would say, and then her mouth would curl, Isn't that one of mine? Stomachs?
"Yes," you say to a sister who is not listening, "hunger was one of yours."
That one, she does not answer, you wear very well, little brother.
You are a selfish person. You wanted to stand closer. You wrote yourself in. You can't write yourself out. You can't write any of you out. You are locked inside the story.
There has to be a way. You lay out the options. You can come up with two.
One, Michael kills Lucifer and Sam. He will wait for the paradise promised. You will give it to him, and he will pretend it was worth it.
Two, Lucifer kills Michael. For that, he must be punished. It is fratricide, after all. You will curse him to wander Earth, forever, alone but for the boy locked inside his head with him.
Three, Sam Winchester overwhelms Lucifer's control and throws them, all of them, Sam and Lucifer and Michael and Adam, into the pit. It swallows them whole.
You stare. That's not supposed to happen. That's not supposed to be an option.
But neither was Adam. You set it up without thinking about how it might pay off, and here it is again, a chance! You leap upon it. Down this road, there must be some way out. Sam must escape, body and then soul, and that still leaves the other three locked away but- And then Raphael dies. Dies scared. Dies alone. And Castiel becomes you, tries, fails, falls. Maybe further. There is light at the end of this narrative thread, you can feel it.
The light is an oncoming train. It hits you with a force unimaginable. You learn to wear destruction well. You write a story where you must be defeated. A very scared, very hungry little boy eats everything up, light and dark and all in between. He becomes you. You become him. Amara screams inside a brand new cage. Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends.
You want to throw your computer.
You put your head in your hands. You fall silent. It took less than two hours.
There is no way for you to end this story. Not in a way that you can accept. Because you are a selfish person. You are selfish, and you love your children, more than they know. That's why you were going to sit here and write instead of watching them kill each other with your own eyes. You are executioner in all but action.
You are also a coward. People wonder where Gabriel got it from. The lineage is clear to you. You pour a little of yourself into every creation. You couldn't even go to him as he died. You have not woken him up again. You don't know how to face a son who surpassed you.
Because, yes, you are proud, too.
People wonder where Lucifer got it from.
God wanted the Devil. God wanted His favorite son to feel special, to not feel forgotten again. God wanted Lucifer to turn his back on this plan because it would mean that everything coming apart would be his fault. Because it would mean you don't have to admit what you did wrong.
Except, you locked him in a cage in Hell for centuries. Of course he didn't come out raring to disobey again.
Can you admit it now? Can you say,
"
The quotation lies open. A broken promise. Your mouth is dry. You want more to drink.
You wonder if Raphael will drop in to stop you if you try and drink yourself to death. Not that you can. You've already tried that, and it doesn't work. God is not dead, because no one can kill Him, and it's starting to become a fucking problem. You lose the glass this time. You drink from the bottle.
What of yourself did you give to little Raphael? What sin did you stamp into them when you formed their wings out of space-dust and their eyes out of nebulae? Wrath to Michael, Pride to Lucifer, Cowardice to Gabriel, and to Raphael…
Happy birth day, child. I bless you with your Father's exhaustion.
Well. No one ever said parenting was easy. You should know. You did it first.
What if you did stop?
You stare at the question. The audacity of it. Fear wells inside you. You can't stop. You have to keep writing. What are you, if not the writer? What is your purpose, if not to create this story and see it to it's conclusion?
What if you stop and nothing changes? And you are not there to chronicle it?
What if you stop and everything changes? And you won't know what's happening.
Your heart is beating fast.
What if.
Michael, I order you to walk off the chessboard.
So much for free will. Baby steps. You scribble that onto a piece of paper and tear off that end. You wonder if you should sign it somehow, so that he knows it's you. Then you realize how stupid that is. You only developed a signature when you realized that you'd need one to sign contracts.
You'd have better luck carving the commandment in stone. Unfortunately, you seem to be all out. You hold the paper scrap gingerly.
This might not be enough. This might not change anything.
If it does, it doesn't feel like it will be a victory. It feels like it will be a ceasefire.
You don't need Michael to make the choice to stop. You will take that burden on. You are choosing now. Later, he will choose not to start again.
Or he won't. And you will lose a son.
You will lose both your sons.
You clutch the paper scrap close to your chest. You pick up your pen and write on the torn paper at the table what you will repeat on your computer.
You should tell Raphael who you are.
You aren't going to. You should. You are still a coward.
You will tear this page in half, even as you tell yourself you won't, even as you write these words. Raphael is watching, but this will be nothing suspicious. Every writer has their editing process. They are well-acquainted with your tendency to burn the slate clean.
A bottle of whatever's closest. A wastebin. A match, because you aren't Dean Winchester and you don't make enough off these books to afford tossing a lighter into your every mistake.
Your publisher is going to be furious with you. For the first time in ages, you bark a laugh. For now, your document lies blank, but soon, the words you've burned will rise again to haunt you on it.
You pick up a shard of glass off the floor. Raphael is watching. You feel their eyes upon you. You turn the shard over in your hand. You shut your eyes and scrunch up your face before you try to stab it into your throat. God can't die, but He can still feel pain.
A steady hand grabs your own before impact. You look up into your child's borrowed eyes. They look tired. They say nothing. You let the glass drop. It breaks in two on the floor.
"I have a message for you," you say.
"From your dad," you say. Raphael has already mourned you. Your words don't even wake the kind of false hope in them that you could disappoint all over again.
"It seems important. Um. So." You thrust the crumpled scrap into Raphael's hands. They read it.
"This is a very sad attempt to stop Michael," Raphael's voice cuts. They are speaking to Chuck, the prophet. Chuck, the God, hears them. Both versions of you wince.
"It's a command," you say. "From on high? Aren't you supposed to follow those?" Raphael looks at you the way someone might look at an endangered species of bird as it poops on their porch and they consider how good they have been to that bird to not let their cat wander around outside. "Don't you want your brothers not to kill each other?"
"You're human. You don't understand how little want plays into this." You can feel your chance slipping. Not like this.
"If- if you're so convinced that no one can stop the Apocalypse, then take that to Michael. Take it to him, and tell him the prophet you're supposed to watch over gave it to you, and then when he ignores it, you can come back here and gloat!" You are scratching the walls of the story, nails coming loose. "But take it to him!" Raphael looks at the smoldering fire in your wastebin. "What are you-" They step over to the fire and hold out the scrap.
You leap forward. "Raphael, take it to Michael, now."
Raphael stares at you.
Humans sometimes say that when someone becomes a parent, they acquire a voice. A mom voice. A dad voice. The kind that makes a child shut up and listen, if they know what's good for them. You have never thought of yourself as having one. You have thought of yourself as having a prophet's trembling voice, wracked by anxiety and the knowledge of the coming end. Raphael is still staring at you, and you are now aware that you also do, in fact, have a dad voice.
"Please?" You tack on at the end, in the voice of Chuck the Prophet. Raphael doesn't believe you. They hold the paper you passed them tightly in their fist.
This is the part where, if you were a better person, you would tell them you're sorry for leaving. You would tell them that you're coming back home.
"Raphael," you order, "go and tell Michael to stand down."
Raphael nods like they are in shock. They vanish.
You look around at the place you've lived for years now. You aren't going to be able to stay here much longer. You look at your computer. You sit down. You finish this part of the story.
Somewhere, Metatron snorts. You shoo the part of you that sounds like him, the part of you that is him, your own personal critic.
You starve for resolution. The keys tempt you to continue.
You will have to learn to go hungry a little while.
