SINGER SALVAGE YARD - 4 AM
After creeping out of bed and maneuvering past the cots and sleeping bags, Sam snuck out the backdoor with supplies in a pillowcase. He hurried through the extra-powdery snow. Quiet to move through, but with moonlight on white, there wasn't any 'cover of darkness' to be had. Thankfully, Bobby kept his old garages.
He went a safe distance, found a garage where the entrance wasn't facing the house, and began laying everything out. Prepped a ring of holy oil, and then a summoning spell.
"What are you doing?"
The voice scared the crap out of him. (Guess powdery snow works both ways.) Castiel had followed Sam out and was standing just at the edge of the entrance. Thrown a robe over the old tee and pajama pants he slept in. Pulled on duck boots. His shoulders were hunched up against the wind, his hands dug deep in his pockets.
He looked so normal. So human. That's all Sam could think.
"I'm fixing this," he said cryptically.
"By summoning Balthazar?" Castiel asked, not a bit confused by the ritual in front of him. "And giving up the one advantage we have."
"We got more than one." Sam unzipped his jacket just enough and pulled out the Colt.
As one would expect, there followed a moment of loud recognition and panicked shushing.
"Where did you get that?" Castiel asked.
"A little gift from Death," Sam said, hoping that would be all the explanation of that he needed to give. "Maybe with this, we could hammer out a cease-fire."
"Cease fire? Sam, with that we can kill the King of Hell."
"And everyone else with him?"
There was a moment of appropriate Bwuh Face from Castiel until he was hit in the head by his giant grey parka. As Castiel had followed Sam, so too had Bobby followed Cas. Unlike Sam and Castiel, Bobby was dressed for snow, obviously annoyed that Castiel was courting flu season again.
"Coat on, dumbass," Bobby said. And he stared Cas down until he put the damn parka on, though not without a tiny squint of rebellion. Fair enough for Bobby, and with that out of the way, "Mind tellin' me what the hell you two are up to out here?"
Now Sam had two friends to explain it to. Cool. Welp, off with the bandaid.
"If we kill Crowley, it'll end the world."
"We don't know that!" Dean had entered the chat, having been awakened by the increasing migration and legged out after them. He'd had the presence of mind to put on boots but was otherwise about to freeze like the idjit that he was.
Bobby stared a moment. Sighed. Slow-blinked. "We can either put a pin in that and you can explain the mess out here, or you can take from the top."
"The Crowley from our world," Sam started again, slower and less bluntly now, "said our timelines are getting too similar and crushing into each other. And unless one of the worlds gets burned off, they both go up. Because Dean created the schism, he has to decide which world ends and I have to pull the trigger. Either I kill Crowley and this world ends, or we kill ourselves and our world ends."
"Listen to yourself," Dean said. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard, and Limp Bizkit? That was a thing! Two timelines can't exist because they're too much alike? That's demon babble."
"It makes sense," Castiel said. "Anchored by narrow points of immutable fate, as time wears on, the two branches are in danger of bottle-necking into each other. The only way to prevent total annihilation of all is to sacrifice a branch."
"It's not even a sacrifice," Dean said, trying to be persuasive. "You clip the tangent in the past, nobody in the present feels a thing, it's like Back to the Future II."
"What is with you and Back to the Future II?" Sam asks, sounding suddenly weary. "That was a terrible movie."
"It's the best one in the trilogy!" Dean whisper-shouted.
"It doesn't make sense!" Sam whisper-shouted back. "You can't go to the future and meet yourself!"
"Have you forgotten that I literally did that?"
"It was a trick, Dean! Zachariah just messed with your head to convince you to say yes to Michael!"
"Angels can time travel, why is it so hard to believe-."
Sam had begun to get animated, gesturing with the Colt. "If somebody actually traveled to the future, it would mean they skipped over the present to get there, right? So then the future they'd land in would be one where they'd gone missing! So even if he showed you your real, destined future based on that point in time, it would have to be in a pocket reality or an illusion so future-you would still be there."
Dean frowned, all confusion. "No, cuz..." He tried to do the math in his head. Had Zachariah tricked him? "Hey, what the hell?" He pointed to the Colt.
"It's a long story," Sam said, guiltily putting the gun back in his jacket.
"Death gave it to him," Castiel said.
"Apparently not that long."
"Yeah?" Dean asked, all accuse-y. "When were you planning on telling me?"
"Speaking of which," Bobby said to Dean, "when were you planning on telling us we might've been putting together a crew to end the world?"
"It's not real," Dean said, "Crowley just made that up to get us to do his dirty work. There are no worlds smooshing together."
"Then why do your phones still work?" Castiel asked.
Bwuh Face ran rampant through the group. Was this finally on-topic?