-Summary: Cas pulled his broken body over the grass-covered graves beneath them. The buried dead that he and Sam would soon be among. But Dean was alive and only a few feet away. Only a few feet and he could fix this. He would fix it. There was still time: time to send him back, time to make the other choice, time to choose a different road. TIMELINE AU

-God as Chuck: My head-cannon for Chuck is that God is Chuck. He's not possessing a human, merely letting himself, as a cosmic being, sit on the backburner while he plays out life as a human. Sort of like acting out a role, but so method that most of the time he lets his character forget he's even acting to begin with.

-Chapter Warnings: Lots of chatter in this one, but hopefully interesting chatter, at the very least! Writing is still a bit rough, as I forced it through in my 'off' phase. It may also be rough typo-wise because I struggled a lot with editing it.

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The Road So Far (This Time Around)

Season 2: Chapter 5

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The smile slid right of Chuck's face the second the door opened. Expectancy gave way to shock and then immediately confusion, but Dean wasn't buying it for a second. He shoved the glowing amulet into his jean pocket (a second before he remembered the thing burned hot in God's presence, but dammit, too late now) and regarded the disheveled deadbeat-God-turned-prophet-turned-writer with nothing less than vehemence.

Chuck tried to laugh it off – awkwardly at that – but any ploy he had at not owning up to Dean Winchester standing on his front porch with his right front pants pocket lit up like a friggin' Christmas tree was somewhat de-railed by the fact that the house started shaking.

The hunter had only a moment of what the hell? before the rising pitch of a pissed off angel's true voice and the sudden brightening of the world around them clued him in. Oh. Right. Prophet meant archangel chained to his ass. Dean had sort of forgotten about that.

Chuck looked wary for all but a moment before his façade collapsed into something stern but resigned. "You're not supposed to be here yet."

With a wave of his hand, the world went quiet. The walls and floor stopped shaking. Dean's pocket stopped burning. The glass around them – windows and car windshields, cups inside the house, and what the neighbor probably called 'yard decorations' but freaked Dean the fuck out more than any monster (civilians, man. Nothing more terrifying) – stopped vibrating, soon to shatter from the high pitch ring of an angelic temper tantrum. The world sort of went grey around the edges in a way that made Dean blink heavily, then shake his head when that didn't clear his vision. It didn't clear up, and now that he noticed it, the sound around them seemed oddly muted. Like listening to the world through a tub of water.

Chuck sighed and pulled the door open all the way, stepping to the side with a beckoning gesture. Dean, with a finger stuck in his ear trying to make them pop or something, took a step forward and immediately spun at the movement just out of peripheral range.

The hunter stared, wide eyed, at a double of himself, having an animated talk with a second Chuck. He glanced between the two bickering, a grey film over the entire image just like the rest of the world, and back to the much clearer, unmuted version of God standing next to him.

"Just a little distraction," Chuck supplied with an offhanded shrug. He watches his double – what Dean was starting to realize was like one of Gabriel's constructs (like Father like son?) – for a moment before he turned away. "Raphael won't interfere now."

Dean glanced skyward for a moment, but it looked like the archangel had gone silent. There was no doubt in the hunter's mind that Chuck had conveniently ended that tantrum with his 'son' none-the-wiser.

"You mean he won't know his deadbeat dad's been right under his nose all this time, ignoring every damn, desperate prayer sent his way?"

Well, he had come to have words, and never let it be said that Dean Winchester beat around the bush.

…Okay, at least let it be said he didn't do that around anyone other than Sam.

Chuck sighed again, running a hand through his hair and scratched at his beard. He seemed world-weary in a way the prophet had only ever seemed depressed and unhygienic. "You shouldn't be here, Dean. Not yet."

He didn't sound angry, just defeated. Like he'd full-well expected one, Dean Winchester, would show up to mess up his afternoon plans of alcohol, wallowing, and crappy writing one of these days, he had just hoped it wouldn't be this day.

Dean had never really understood that line between 'Chuck' and God.

The hunter, rebuke on his tongue, found the words stuck in his throat as God's eyes dropped to his chest and his face, stripped of reservation, turned so damn mournful it was breathtaking. Dean blinked, anger momentarily distracted, as God stepped towards him, hand outstretched towards his chest. Dean fought the immediate urge to take a step back, suddenly uncomfortable for so many reasons. Chuck didn't stop, nor did he ask, but he did glance at the Righteous Man and pause long enough to give him plenty of time to protest.

While Dean was still trying to figure out what he'd even say if he were to protest – which, yes, of course he was going to fucking protest – Chuck pressed his splayed out palm to Dean's chest and the next thing the hunter knew, he was struggling to remember how to expand his chest to suck air into his lungs against the onslaught, both physical and mental. It was like watching the last ten years of his life as a movie, only on rapid six-friggin-arrow, fast-forward mode. You know the one, where you've seen the movie before so even though you're just catching a single frame every tenth minute of the film, you still know absolutely everything that's happening in between.

Chuck was, apparently, 'catching up'.

Meanwhile, his chest flared at the sudden contact of primordial being of limitless power and, oh yeah, Castiel's fucking father. He couldn't tell if the pounding beneath his ribcage was his suddenly frenzied heart having a friggin' panic attack, Castiel's undeniable rage and upset that flooded every bit of his already angry-buzzed body, or the equally tragic longing that made Dean feel like his lungs apparently wanted to burst out of his chest Alien-style to give God a hug-and-or-possibly-strangle-him-to-death.

Had he mentioned he had no idea what was going on in his sternum but he was fairly sure he wasn't alone in there and it was all kinda weird and less than comfortable for the very human-is-safe-everything-else-is-questionable hunter?

"Oh, Castiel," Chuck breathed out, a heartbroken look unabashedly spread across his ancient eyes.

Dean sucked in a breath, not realizing he apparently hadn't tried breathing in a while because he almost choked on it and ended up coughing and staggering away from God's hand, finally severing the connection. His chest immediately flagged, heart calming and warmth and anger fading back to normal-Dean levels.

"Holy shit," he wheezed out, pressing his hand to his suddenly cold, bereft sternum. "What the hell?"

Chuck had the grace (ha!) to look at least remorseful of the state Dean found himself in, but honestly the hunter didn't care about that. Sure, he was pissed and the whole habit Heaven had of getting all-up-and-personal with humans without some fucking warning was ridiculous. But that wasn't what his brain was catching on as he stared at the weird mix of sorrow and pride – and slight apology – on God's face.

"He's…" Dean swallowed, realizing he was about to get one of the many answers he'd come here for. Honestly, he'd been prepared to get none, piss off God, and find himself back in 2016, dying alongside his brother and the rest of the world. To realize that might not actually happen – or at least it might not happen yet – shut his mouth as much as it did his brain and he definitely struggled to get both going again. The warmth in his chest friggin wiggled, like it was elbowing him in the ribs, and he realized how stupid he suddenly was. He already knew the damn answer to this question. He'd only come here looking for someone else to say it that wasn't a demon. "He's in there?"

God slid his hands smoothly into the pockets of his bathrobe in a move that would have been nothing but awkward on Chuck. The difference and yet similarity between the two was distracting. He looked up at Dean, a good couple of inches of difference in their heights. "Just a sliver. Probably meant to burn up on re-entry. Honestly, I'm surprised it didn't."

"What?" Dean blinked, only picking up half the words coming out of the primordial being's mouth. "What the hell does that mean?"

Chuck shrugged, demeanor relaxing back into almost-human-Chuck as he drifted into the house in search of a drink. "Human souls weren't really built for integration."

He headed into the kitchen, answering Dean's question without answering anything at all. God grabbed a couple of beers out of the fridge, pulling one free of the plastic ring and tossing it to Dean, who caught it with the kind of force that suggested he was considering hurling it back at the guy's face.

Chuck didn't seem to notice. "Actually, nothing about the human body is great at integration. It was the best defense I could give against disease. Sucks for organ transplants. Though, to be fair, I wasn't really thinking that far in advance when I was going through the first draft."

Dean still didn't know what God was shuffling on about, but he supposed it didn't even matter. He had is answer. "Is that why I keep seeing him in dreams? And the…"

The hunter trailed off, unsure how to phrase it and even less willing to remember it. He mimicked an explosion one hand and a beer, a grimace on his face, and a muttered something about Azazel.

"Oh, yeah, definitely," God confirmed, way too calmly as he popped the beer with a light spray. "Probably did that in self-defense, I imagine. No way he'd have put you in that much danger on purpose." He shrugged again, raising the beer to his lips and taking a swig. "He took quite a beating from it, so you may not see him for a while."

It took a moment for God to notice, but when he did, Dean didn't actually have to say anything. The very blatant look on his face that said 'I'm going to start punching if you don't make sense here soon' was obvious enough. Chuck cleared his throat, a move so reminiscent of Chuck that Dean struggled for yet another moment to separate the two. It ended as quickly as that face adopting a vaguely amused expression at the utterly empty threat, though he did start talking straight at least.

"That sliver is just a shadow, Dean." The hunter frowned at the wording, something familiar sparking in his mind but he didn't remember what that was. "Not much at all, really. If I had to guess, I'd say Castiel – your Castiel, of 2016 – used up what grace he had to get you back here, and whatever was left after he saw you through the trip got a bit…clingy?"

There was something he clearly found utterly entertaining about that, if the sly, slightly smug, and infuriating amusement in his eyes was anything to go by. Dean had no clue what about this could possibly be funny, but he knew he was damn close to slapping that look of God's face, even if it broke every bone in his hand.

Chuck cleared his throat again and chugged the last of his beer distractedly. "That explosion wiped out any energy he'd manage to store up. But he'll be back."

Something deep inside the hunter shook loose at that, and he felt like he could finally breathe, something he hadn't been able to do properly since that damn cabin and the thought of charcoal wings spread across dilapidated wood walls. The rest of him stayed tense, though, because he hadn't come here just to ask about his homemade angelic chest bomb.

Cas was going to be alright. More to the point, he was fucking here and Dean knew it now. Now on to those who fucking weren't and never would be again.

"And my dad?"

Chuck suddenly gave the very distinct impression of tilting his head to the side despite the fact that his neck didn't move an inch. "John?"

Dean grit his teeth hard enough to hear them squeak against one another, returning to his previous pissed-beyond-words state of natural being as he stared down a friggin' all-knowing cosmic being who apparently needed shit spelled out for him. "He's dead."

Confusion flickered through ancient eyes for an infinitesimal fraction of a second before understanding dawned and then something so dangerously close to pity took over that Dean almost punched him right then and there.

"Dean-"

"Don't you fucking 'Dean' me! You know why I'm here. Why Cas sent me back."

"To change things," Chuck answered with as close to a verbal shrug as anyone on the planet had ever achieved. Dean's hands curled into fists and he had to remind himself, several times, that punching God was not a good idea.

He threw his arms out to the side, taking it out on the innocent air around him instead. "I'm not changing a goddamn thing!"

The cosmic deity gave him a single, admonishing look for the choice of words. "You are."

"I'm really not." The words were low and dangerous, growled through clenched teeth and zero remaining patience.

Chuck signed. "John's death is unfortunate, but inevit-"

"I swear if you say inevitable I will find a way to kill you."

God looked almost fondly exasperated again, and Dean's inability to anger the guy was only raising his own levels of frustration. "If you don't like that word choice, let's try another: necessary."

"So what, it's destiny? My father dying just had to happen, some things just have to stay the same?"

"Yes and no," Chuck replied and Dean just stared him down until he continue. It was all he could do, because any alternative was certainly going to involve violence. "Think of it like a game of Chess. For every move you make, your opponent gets a chance to counter. You throw a ball into a pool, the water has to go somewhere. For every push you make, time will push back, or push somewhere else."

"A balance?" Dean asked, though the tone suggested he wasn't exactly being sincere.

"Yes and no."

"You better cut that shit out before I find a way to hurt you."

God's eyes were back to that fond exasperation thing and Dean tightened his fist. "Yes, to some extent, Time is a balance. Every up has a down, Ying has a Yang, so on and so on. It's going to try and stay the same. But also no. If you push too hard…"

"It'll break."

God nodded readily. "Snap like a toothpick. There goes your balance. You don't want that to happen, Dean. We're talking unpredictability like you can't even imagine. Take everything you know about what you think is coming and throw it out the window. You really don't want to see what that looks like. You're dad living past this point?" He held out his hand as he settled against the counter once more, palm flat and parallel to the ground before he tipped his hand. "There goes your balance."

"That's bullshit," Dean ground out. "He's one man! You telling me 'destiny' is balanced on one friggin' guy?"

"One guy who fathered the true vessels." His counter claim was calm, and Dean's jaw clacking shut was audible. "You and Sam are important, and leaning on each other, depending on each other alone, because you're all you've got left… Hard as that is, it's what's going to get you through what comes next."

The hunter stood in God's kitchen, trembling, from rage and grief and pain and all of it, because damn it, that didn't sound wrong. It didn't sound fucking fair, either, but it didn't sound wrong. He and Sam had always managed better when they were together, and John just didn't factor into the picture well. Never had.

"You're going to have to play the game, Dean, whether you like it or not. A very careful game of push and pull; toe the edge but don't go over; decide what pieces you can't afford to lose, and know you're going to sacrifice some others."

"Pick our battles, huh?" the hunter asked bitterly, shaking his head.

"Sam always was a smart one," Chuck responded with a wry smile, eyes sliding into the other room where his computer sat, open, the Winchester Gospels still crisp and fresh across the screen. "Time is fluid, Dean, but it doesn't flow like either of you think it does. And what you're trying to do, you can't do without some give."

"I'm not here for a philosophical lecture." The fact that he refused to accept that lecture, from God or Sam or Cas, was another matter entirely.

"Well, you're here for something," Chuck offered unhelpfully, the first hints of annoyance creeping into his words. "So I'll keep talking and maybe eventually I'll say something you will listen to."

His body language never lost an inch of the relaxed, Jeff-Bridges-as-the-Dude-ness, but there was a bit of a warning in his voice now that told the meager human he was getting close to a line. Dean managed to bite his tongue, though every fiber of his being was telling him not to give a damn. It was only Sam's quiet, pleading voice in his head that kept him from pushing Chuck harder than he already was.

'I can't do this alone, Dean.'

God could send him back. He'd come here knowing the potential his frustration and hotheadedness was risking. So, he supposed, until Chuck said something he really couldn't take, that he could reign that rage in enough to at least let him say what he had to say.

Dean had only ninety percent come to yell at him. The other ten percent was for answers, which he'd only get if he actually listened. He wasn't happy about it.

"Time isn't a linear thing," Chuck continued, popping a second beer. "It exists, simultaneously, in every corner of the universe, all the – 'scuse the pun – time. You change something, and it updates, all at once, across the board."

Dean breathed through his nose, already walking back his commitment to not throwing a punch. It took several ten-counts, something Sam had once made him start doing to manage his anger that really didn't fucking work and he'd remember to tell the boy scout whenever this Sam got around to the subject, before he was able to grind out, "What do you mean?"

Chuck considered for a moment before spreading his hands out, gesturing with them and the open bear, as he explained, "Take Palo Alto. The first time you lived through this, there were demonic omens a week before Jess's death, weren't there? Your dad told you about them."

The man from the future stumbled over the question for a moment. It seemed so non-sequitur to their conversation, and so much had happened in the last six months that honestly, he'd sort of forgotten how this had all started. Not to mention he pretty much had two sets of memories he had to reconcile now anytime he compared first-time-then to second-time-then.

He cracked the yet-untouched beer in his hand open and took a chug. God, his life sucked.

"This time, no omens." Chuck apparently didn't need him to answer, as he continued right on, not even casting the sudden beer chug anything more than an understanding, cursory glance. He set his own can on the counter beside him, crossing his arms over his chest. "But you only showed up a day or two before Jess was supposed to die."

Despite having just drank half a beer, Dean was pretty sure his mouth had never been drier. He wasn't sure if it was the casual way God said Jess's death was supposed to happen, or maybe just the nonchalant acceptance that it hadn't happened, but Dean was back to having breathing difficulties.

The hunter had expected God to have a problem with the fact that they were trying for a reset. That Dean was basically cheating by coming back to the past to change it all. He'd been ready to argue, tooth and nail, for his right to be here. But, like with all things – and Dean couldn't even believe he'd spent energy worrying about it – God just didn't care.

"You see what I'm saying?" Chuck asked, and no, Dean really, really didn't. "If time was linear, there would have been demonic signs the last week in October. You would have shown up November first, and Jess wouldn't have died by November second due to your presence."

The way he talked about it almost reminded Dean of Sam when he was geeking out about something nerdy. It was the most interested in anything he'd ever seen God get. It only pissed him off more.

"But Time isn't linear. It knew you were coming, knew your presence meant Jess wouldn't die that night, and so no demonic omens occurred. Time updated all at once, across the board." Chuck finished with a wry grin, swiping his beer back off the counter as he stood up. "Don't you get it, Dean? You think you can't change anything, but you already did."

Dean's brain stuttered a full ten seconds after Chuck wrapped up his little lecture, all but smiling up at the hunter who sat there, stunned. Wait, what?

"Are you saying…" The man from the future shook his head. "Then what the hell comes next? Is the Apocalypse…?"

God looked slightly apologetic and harried at the question, but his relaxed posture remained the same as he admitted, half sheepish, half nonchalant, "I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?" There was that anger again. He might as well grow a vagina for all of this emotional roller-coastering he was doing. God, no wonder women were so pissed off during their periods. "You're an all-knowing god, how can you not know?"

Chuck just shrugged. "I don't want to know, Dean. I'm all-knowing if I want to be, and I don't want to be. Plus, time is constantly updating. It's dizzying to try and keep track." At the intimidating level of angry red, sort-of-turning-purple that was blossoming across Dean's face, he tossed his hands up a bit, a little more human-Chuck showing through. "Why do you think I'm down here, living out life as a human?"

"I don't know," the hunter ground out, "maybe because you're a damn coward and a piece of work too fucking scared to face his own kids and deal with the mess he created."

Chuck sobered momentarily, a look of something dark and dangerous and old filtering across his face with such severity that Dean very quickly remembered just who it was he was talking to. Bits and pieces of that wrathful Father from the Old Testament filtered through his brain.

Too little too late on that one, buddy, he mumbled internally.

Luckily for him, 'God' had gone the way of the hipsters in the last century. All peace and Zen, apparently, and he quickly resumed his expression of fond, if not thinning, exasperation.

"I'm not hiding, Dean. If I was, I certainly wouldn't have picked a prophet as my hiding spot, smack dab in the middle of this mess and tied to one of my own children." Blue eyes darted up to the ceiling pointedly. "This isn't going to be an easy for you to hear – believe me, I know – but I am helping as much as I can."

"Helping?" the hunter roared, taking a step forward that brought him dangerously within Chuck's personal space. "My dad is dead! More people are going to die, and you're just sitting here, writing our crappy lives for entertainment!"

Chuck rubbed at his forehead, his elbow almost brushing against the imposing hunter with how close he was. But God didn't seem to take notice. "Look… I'm not the writer of all things, and I don't decide what happens. Could I? Sure, but I tried that for a while and it didn't work out so well."

Dean didn't speak. His lip twitched angrily and his hands remained fisted at his sides. Chuck tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling and, hell, maybe at the kid hanging out above the house watching some illusion of a prophet go about his day.

"When I first started all of this… Yes, I wanted you – humanity – to know who I was. It was ego, plain and simple. I wanted my creations to love me, so I made myself a fixture in your lives. Laid down some rules, answered prayers, smiled down from on high and fixed it when it needed fixing. The whole lot. But look where that got me?" He lowered his head to take in the Righteous Man with a small, self-deprecating smile. "I gave you guys free will, something I missed on the angels, and there you all were, barely using it. It was all 'God, grant me this' and 'please, fix that'. I couldn't hold your hands forever. Eventually you had to leave the nest, start making your own decisions.

"What's that saying the Western world is so fond of? I'm just a kid with an ant farm?" Chuck tossed his hands out to the side, a sort of 'well…yeah' gesture. "They're not wrong, you know. The sentiment and connotation aren't great, sure, but the analogy's pretty on point."

Dean ground his teeth together. "You're really going to stand there, again, and tell me you don't care?"

Chuck let out an aggravated sound and pinched the bridge of his nose. Such a human thing to do. "No, that's not… Why do you get an ant farm, Dean?" When the hunter didn't answer, he threw out his arms emphatically. "To watch the ants! You don't get an ant farm so you can tell those little guys what tunnels to dig, where to put the dirt, how many rocks to move. You get an ant farm so you can watch them do incredible things!

"You guys, the human race, has such potential. Who am I, as a parent, to stand in the way of that? To curtail it by hovering, protecting, or solving all your problems for you? So, yeah, I stepped back. Sure, it took a few centuries for you to find yourself, and it got ugly a couple times there. But you came through. And you've grown so much more than I could have ever dreamed. Done amazing things."

Dean was shaking his head, hand raised and he just needed God – Chuck – to stop talking. "What does all this have to do with what's happening now? Heaven and Hell are going to start the friggin' end of the world, and you're going to let them!"

Chuck's face turned back to that slightly apologetic, little bit sheepish, but mostly nonchalant expression that Dean had been working so hard not to slap. "It's the angels' turn to be kicked out of the nest."

"What?"

"I started with you guys first. You have free will, a rebellious nature; kicking you out of the house was always going to go better than my older kids." Chuck shrugged guiltily. "Now it's their turn."

"This…" Dean almost couldn't speak, the anger and frustration and downright disbelief boiled in his blood and flooded his throat, stalling his tongue. "You're telling me this is all some sort of…lesson? For the angels? Half the humans on this friggin' planet are going to die, and it's a god damn lesson?"

"They're…not taking it very well."

"Are you kidding me?!"

"Dean-"

"No. No fucking way. You are going to go back to your messed up family and you are going to end this." Dean jabbed his finger into God's chest, and the celestial being allowed his body to be pushed back against the counter. "This is not my damn mess to clean up. Me and my family have done enough. We've bled enough. You. Fix. This. Now."

"Enough." The reverberating command rang through the house hard enough to vibrate the walls and shake the furniture. Dean stumbled back, blown away from the god as he straightened, finally having enough. The power flowing off of him ebbed almost immediately, leaving Chuck once more. "I know you don't understand, Dean. You don't have to believe me and you don't have to have faith in me, but I am doing everything I can for my family."

"Bullshit." Fear thrummed through Dean's veins, survival instinct screaming through every synapses to shut the hell up, but it just wasn't in his nature. Screw the consequences.

Chuck huffed a frustrated little sound, but he remained just Chuck. "I can't step in now. Imagine if 'God' suddenly came back to humanity, solved all your problems, created world peace, and then left again. You have nukes now. You'd never survive."

"Then here's an idea, don't leave." Dean's own daddy issues aside, was it so much to ask of a fucking father to take care of his damn children?

"But I'm going to." Chucks voice softened. "One day, I won't be here anymore, Dean. Death – or something else – will reap me, and then what? I'm a father; it's my job to prepare my kids for a world that I'm not in, and I'm trying to do that while I'm still around to help them through it."

He sighed, and the sound was rough, even for a god. "I walked away from the angels, and they're just starting to figure out I'm not coming back. If I step in and solve it now… when the time comes that I'm gone for good, they will end the world, and I won't be there to save it. At least this way, I can stick around and keep it from being a total disaster while they… figure it out."

"A total disaster? Thousands of people are going to die!"

"In a hunt, can you save everyone, Dean?"

The man from the future reeled back at that question like a punch to the face. That- that was not fucking fair.

"That's one, maybe two people, and I feel like crap when it happens!" he shot back. "You're talking half the planet!"

"That's something you and I can never see on the same level," God answered calmly. "You're one man, I'm God. I'm not saying it with arrogance, or that you're too small to understand. I'm not, Dean. But our worlds are never going to make sense to one another.

"I get that not being able to save everyone hurts you." Chuck smiled up at him briefly, despite the rage and anger and distrust facing him back. "You're good and righteous, and I'm proud of you. Everyone you can't save tears at you, and you'll never stop being that man. It tears at me too. We just see it from different perspectives."

Dean was already shaking his head, but God just kept on going, not letting the hunter argue. "This is the best that it can be. I know you don't understand or trust me, but this is everything I can do to save the world I created."

"And what? We're supposed to be thankful?"

Chuck closed his eyes briefly, patience thinning. "No. It's not that kind of help."

The god, in his boxers and bathrobe, beer in hand, pushed off the counter, setting the can down as he did so. "And you won't be very thankful about this either, but trust me. It's for the best."

"What is-" Dean took a step back as the words left his mouth, Chuck already in his personal space with a single step, a mistake on his part by crowding the God in his anger and frustration. Fingers were pressed to his forehead before he could so much as swat them away.

"Go back to your brother; he needs you. And you need him." Those blue eyes bore into his, ancient and old and yet still somehow Chuck beneath all of that. Wrinkles formed at the corners as God offered him nothing short of a fatherly smile. "For what it's worth, Dean, I believe in you."

Then the world went white.

-o-o-o-

Dean sat in his stolen Ford Pinto, staring out the windshield at Bobby's dusty house, parked in the salvage yard, and wondered how he got there. He had just been doing something, but he couldn't remember what. His talk with God had been a bust – bastard still wasn't going to lift a finger – but there'd been something else he had been doing.

He'd been going home? Home to Sam. Green eyes darted back through the windshield to the dusty house beyond, and Dean couldn't help the smile that pulled at his lips. Home.

But there had definitely been something else…

The hunter turned his head to the right, taking in the brown grocery bag sitting passenger side, filled pretty much to the top with stuff and emitting the happy, wonderful, world-redeeming scent of pie. Right, he'd stopped and picked up some groceries and supplies for Plan…well, he supposed it was Plan G now, since Plan F(uck it) had gone belly up. Although, if he really thought about it, this was Plan C, and he was just running the plans out of order.

Fuck Plan F, Plan C was where it was at.

With a slight grin, brought on by equal parts pie, being home, and the new determination swelling up within him (centralized as a deep warmth just behind his sternum that he couldn't help but rub at), Dean grabbed the bag with one arm and pushed open the door of his stolen vehicle with the other. As he climbed out, groceries shoved against his side, he didn't notice the small wooden box tumble out from the top of the slightly squished, dangerously tilting bag. It bounced off the seat, hit the ground, and rolled up under the footwell where it lay just out of sight. The hand-carved, Aquarian star across its top was masked entirely by the shadows cast by the dashboard of the stolen vehicle.

He slammed the car door shut, hefted the bag, and started for the house. He pushed thoughts of his failed meeting with God to the back of his mind – God damn Gods – and didn't think much of the fact that he couldn't quite recall the face of the not-man he'd just come back from meeting, or most of the meeting itself. Nor would he ever notice that the next time he thought of Chuck Shurley, he thought of the nerdy, slightly pathetic, alcoholic prophet stuck writing his crappy Winchester Gospels with an archangel tied to his ass, and nothing more.

Dean was whistling happily by the time he pulled open the screen door to Bobby's house, Plan C in hand, surrogate father and brother waiting for him inside, and the smell of pie wafting up from the bag to fill his nostrils and, let's be honest, his soul.

The apocalypse didn't stand a chance against a Dean Winchester armed with family, hope, and pie.

-o-o-o-

Chuck sat back in his old, squeaky writing chair, staring at the computer as his fingers stilled on the keys. He was Chuck Shurley for only a moment longer before something far older took over his body and God groaned, bodily leaning forward and hitting his forehead to the sturdy surface of the desk. The resounding thunk was cathartic, but not nearly enough so.

You try to do something nice for the Winchesters.

Seriously!

It was like moving molasses. In the winter.

God picked his head off of the desk, staring at the words blinking back at him from the open document on Chuck's laptop. The blurb that described a little wooden box that shouldn't even exist in this timeline, sitting – useless – in the footwell of some stolen vehicle he just knew Dean wasn't going to revisit anytime soon.

Molasses. In the winter. In Antartica, for crying out loud!

He let out another groan and slammed the lid of the laptop shut. He needed a drink.

God damn Winchesters.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A/Ns: If you're not sure what the box is, google it because you'll be very excited. At least until you get as frustrated as Chuck when you realize Dean's already lost it. I'm such an evil (read: no good, dirty, rotten) author