The Wheels On The Bus Chapter 35 (Patreon)

“What?!”

Jack sees it the moment Dean slams the doors to the gymnasium open. He’s soaked in blood, the red sticking to his clothes, several splatters of it all over his face. Jack raises a hand to signal where he is.

The man nods, and then turns to all of the hunters behind him, handing out instructions.

“Adam, we’ve got injured hunters,” Jack calls back to the commentator’s booth. “Switch with me.”

Adam nods, already by the doorway, and Jack takes his place inside, just as Dean and the injured hunters start to climb their way up the stairs.

“Dean’s here?” Sam, from where he’s sitting on a bed, looks up.

“Yeah,” Jack says. “I’m on healing duty. Injured hunters.”

The first of said hunters walks in just as he says that, supported by a slightly-less injured one so they can both hobble inside. Sam stands and helps them get to an empty bed.

Jack gets to work as soon as the first one lays down.

“What do you mean the Cage can’t contain Chuck?” Dean says, approaching Sam, voice lowered but still within Jack’s hearing range, as he finally enters the room, after everyone else has come inside.

Sam’s still helping the injured settle down, so he doesn’t answer, instead guiding people to beds and grabbing chairs for those who aren’t as badly hurt. Dean, patiently, waits.

His brother sounds weary as he finally turns to him.

“I mean it can’t contain Chuck because it was never meant to,” he says. Jack looks up briefly to see a frustrated look cross Dean’s face, but Sam speaks again before he can say anything. “That thing can contain an archangel, sure. But it can’t contain Death. Death reached into it and got me back, remember?”

Huh. Jack would look up, but he’s currently putting someone’s insides back into their stomach, and it’s delicate work, so he doesn’t dare break his concentration.

“And guess who’s on par with Death, who created a universe where Death can exist in the first place?”

“Chuck,” Dean spits out with disdain.

“Right,” Sam says.

“What the fuck are we supposed to do, then?”

Sam doesn’t answer. Quietly, Jack sends a thought out to Adam to contact everyone else, just to see if there’s something they know. Between Castiel, Michael, Rowena, Belphegor and Amara – magic heavy-hitters – there’s got to be something.

There’s a flurry of emotions in the line right after, none too intact for Jack to grasp, but tangible enough to feel. The undercurrent continues, even as he finishes healing his first injured patient and moves on to the next.

The Cage appears to be made out of whatever the Empty is, Castiel suggests. It’s why we have – the thought cuts out for a second – It’s why we have all these angels attacking us right now.

Jack sends out a pulse of worry.

I’m fine, Jack, Castiel sends back.

Apparently, Death can bypass that, Rowena says.

I’d made a crack in it, beforehand. On accident, but, it happened.

That means you know how the Cage operates, though, Belphegor says.

Yes, although at the time, I hadn’t known about the Empty part. I hadn’t exactly been aware of its existence,he says, I had the sense to not approach it fully, though, only reach out and pull.

No, no, no, no – think of it this way. The Empty is where all demons and angels go to rest, correct?

Yes?

And prior to all this mess, it had been asleep.

Yes. My awakening unfortunately woke it up.

Jack sends out another quiet sorry. Castiel only sends back a pulse of fondness, a feeling akin to his hair being ruffled, and a warm laugh from his father.

He smiles, knitting together the last laceration his current patient has. He moves to the next bed. This one’s arm is missing. He’s not sure he can help regrow a new one without losing time for everyone else. He’s just going to have to stop the bleeding and let the stump heal cleanly.

We can assume, then, that whatever material the Empty is made of, it renders all celestial and infernal creatures asleep by default, unless they’re woken up. Belphegor says.

That would make sense if that’s why it was used to create the Cage, Rowena says. If anyone tried to approach or break it by themselves, they would immediately drop asleep.

Exactly, Belphegor says. So why the fuck was Lucifer awake the whole time?

Dead silence down the line.

Michael, that’s Adam this time. Michael, you there?

There’s no answer.

Jack looks up. Both Sam and Dean are frowning, concerned.

“He’s probably fighting,” Dean says.

“Who’s seen the inside of the Cage before?” Sam asks, then, as a correction, “And remembers it clearly.”

I have, Adam says. It’s…weird.

“Weird how?” Dean asks.

You could make shit inside it if you imagined hard enough, Adam says. I remember Lucifer did it a lot, he was really good at it. ‘Cause, you know.

Sam flinches. Involuntarily, it seems, because he looks confused right after. Jack turns away and focuses back on his task. Someone’s life is on the line here.

But Michael didn’t fall asleep? Rowena asks.

No, Adam says. I didn’t either. Neither did Sam.

What’d it look like, in its default state?

Blank, Adam says. Dark. Cold. But it was endless. Like, you could walk forever if you wanted to. I’ve run around it for years when I got bored, once.

That’s…interesting.

Like the Empty.

I’ll throw in my two pinches of salt here – you were already awake when you saw the Empty and what it looked like, Castiel.

Is that something? Adam asks

Could be, Rowena says. Because if no one can be awake when in the Empty itself, then –

“Cas could have seen the part of it where someone can be awake,” Sam says. “Like, the flipside of the Empty.”

Exactly.

“Where does that lead us?”

It leads us to the conclusion that perhaps the Empty makes up the Cage – that’s Amara! – But the inside is hollow.

That might be why it can be opened and closed, Castiel says, And not just somewhere that someone can be dropped in and put to sleep.

Exactly, Belphegor says.

Amara, how’s Michael? Adam asks.

We’re busy, she says. But – thank you for pointing out the inadequacy of the Cage. She pauses, hesitance filtering through the line. There’s a sigh. Because I might have a solution to our conundrum.

-

“Lucifer!” Michael screams, even as he’s falling, even as his stomach drops from the news that the plan to trap his father here had been in vain. His vessel never used to react like that. It’s never supposed to react like that. What the fuck.

He instinctively tries to flare his wings out, but only succeeds in getting his vision to white out from pain.

“Gabriel!” that’s Raphael, yelling.

“On it!”

A loud note from his trumpet sounds out, and then a low hum buoys them all up, stopping the three of them and Amara from falling down to the bottom.

Above, Michael can see their father’s face, smiling in almost-pity, as he looks at Lucifer.

“Hey, pops,” Lucifer says. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Lucifer,” Chuck says. “You’re stubborn even beyond the grave, aren’t you?”

“Mm, you know what they say,” he says, and then grins, before he smashes his head right into Chuck’s nose. Michael blinks, not expecting that, but his brother’s immediately put distance between him and their father as soon as Chuck lets go from the pain. Lucifer’s hovering, mid-air, posing like he’s leaning on something tangible. Perhaps he is. He’s learned to weaponize the Cage a long time ago, after all. “Bad grass doesn’t die fast.”

Chuck’s just as fast to move once he’s recovered from the shock, appearing right in front of Lucifer before Michael can even see him move a muscle.

He punches Lucifer right in the gut, and the angel goes flying down in the space it takes any of them to register what’s happened.

“Shit,” Gabriel says, looking down from where they’re all held up by a steady vibration. “I can’t see him.”

“Did he go through the bottom?” Raphael asks.

“That’s impossible,” Michael says. “The Cage – ”

There’s a sudden rush of air in front of them, and they all turn, only to see a large, scaled creature open its jaws and close it around Chuck. Michael stares up at it, gaping.

“That wasn’t here before,” Amara mutters.

“I’ve waited a long time for this, old man!”

A flash of light, racing up towards the head of the dragon. Lucifer. There’s blood all over his mouth and chest, like he’s just thrown up all of his vessel’s insides, but there’s a manic grin on his face. “And thank you ever so much for walking into my domain!”

Light is condensing above him, forming the outline of something. It shines, brightly, just as the dragon below explodes into chunks of blood and flesh that disintegrate into nothingness like the illusion it is. Chuck glares up at Lucifer, but the light behind him has already formed another large serpent. It snakes around Lucifer and heads straight toward Chuck, taking a huge bite of his midriff and dragging him down below.

“Guess that’s another thing that backfired, huh!” Lucifer calls out. “You piece of shit!”

All four of them stare down at where Chuck’s disappeared. Amara, in the corner of Michael’s eye, frowns at something, tilting her head like she’s listening. He realizes then that the mindlink has been busy with people throwing thoughts back and forth.

“Huh,” Raphael says as she looks up at Lucifer, looking absolutely unhinged. “Not to give everyone false hope, but we might have something to our advantage, after all.”

“We’re not stuck here with dear old dad,” Gabriel says, pointing his trumpet towards Lucifer. “We’re stuck here with him.”

“Focus,” Michael says. “It’s not over yet.”

“Michael,” Amara calls.

He turns. She has a grim look on her face.

He’s not going to like this.

“Change of plans.”

-

Belphegor sways and feels his connection to the mindlink snap, falling to a knee as his control over Hell tugs at his awareness. His consciousness is already paper-thin, and with the rampage around him and the ghosts constantly moving, it’s getting yanked all over the place; that’s not even counting the demons all over the globe, racing and popping up all over to join in the fight, mindlessly responding to his command. He can’t afford to do something as mundane as staying connected to a mass telepathic connection.

He doesn’t notice that an angel’s moving to stab him until someone above deflects the blow with an arm, and then proceeds to smash the angel’s head into the ground before taking a huge bite out of it.

“You’re disgusting,” he mutters.

The Shedim looks up at him, smiling with blood all over her teeth and chin. “Not even a thank you?”

“Thank you, you’re disgusting.”

“That’s more like it, boss,” she says. “You okay there?”

“It’s a little hard to focus when I feel like I’m in too many bodies at once,” he says.

“Hmm.” She stands, grabs his arm and pulls him up to his feet. He’s too tired to even fight it. “Maybe we should get you somewhere safer.”

He snorts. “It’s an all-out siege, there isnowhere safe.”

She hums again. He feels a sudden powerful pulse, and he realizes she’s just let out a telekinetic blast that plows off every angel that had been approaching them meters away.

Carefully, she takes the crowbar he has in one hand, leaving him to stand only with psychic support holding him up. There’s a cut on her jacket, right by her arm, from an angel blade, and she rips the fabric of the sleeve open so she can get more access to the wound.

Slowly, she squeezes the flesh around the cut and wipes off the blood with a palm, before smearing it all over the crowbar. She does it again, until the crowbar is blackened with blood, and then she hands it over to him.

“What’s this for?” he asks.

“In case you run out of bullets,” she says, smiling. “If you go down because you were too distracted to think quickly when you run out, we kind of lose, boss. Who knows if these ghosts are gonna fight if they’re thinking straight.”

He huffs, but adjusts his hold on the crowbar anyway, careful.

Another pulse comes from her, pushing off another wave of attack.

Belphegor looks up at the sky, which hasn’t stopped raining lightning all over the place. Even if the ghosts and demons around them are taking the winged dicks down by the second, the entirety of the Hosts being resurrected means they might be drastically outnumbered. The ghosts can slow down the angels, but they can’t kill them, not without enough weapons. The demons that have arrived and the Shedim aren’t close to enough to match the manpower (angelpower?) they’re up against.

Whether he falls or not, he’s not sure he can clear the field. Their only hope might be to finally get rid of Chuck and have the angels fall back, somehow.

Somewhere to his left, he hears glass breaking. Pure dread shoves him straight back into awareness as he turns behind him.

An angel had made it inside earlier. The demonic interference by the Shedim should have been enough to stop the little bastards from getting inside again, but –

Another crash. If he’d had enough energy to make his blood react in a way that would make him go pale, he would have been pallid with fear.

The angels have gotten inside.

-

There’s a shift in the pressure of the air around him. Adam feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Something is wrong.

“Everything’s going wrong,” he mutters to himself. It’s a funny thought to have when literally nothing has gone to plan since the beginning, but the feeling stays with him anyway. There’s a certain electric feeling in the air, like he’s standing a little too close to something giving off fumes.

The lights above flicker. They haven’t done that since Belphegor and the Shedim have taken over the fight outside.

He gives the gym a sweep. All the exits are blocked and guarded, there’s people with angel-killing weapons standing guard. A few of the healed-up hunters have taken positions all over the gym, while Jack is still taking care of the ones who’d had less life-threatening injuries, as he’d fixed up the rather dangerous ones first.

Sam and Dean themselves are already in position, Dean at the front of the gym doors and Sam at the fire exit. Adam can feel their anxiety through the mindlink, loud and clear, although there’s also a laser sort of focus in the undercurrent of it.

He wonders if they feel the shift. They must. They’re seasoned hunters.

Still, none of them are ready for when Belphegor’s full-blown panic slams into their brains.

Get ready! He says. The angels have breached our defense!

-

“What?” Michael asks.

“Change of plans,” Amara says. Below them, there’s a primal scream of rage, while above, Lucifer shifts the Cage’s scenery into the raging ocean. Michael doesn’t have a warning before the other three grab onto him so he doesn’t fall into the angry, black waves of the sea that’s suddenly below him.

Harsh winds blow around him, pelting his physical form with rain. His clothes stick to him even worse now, washing at the blood that’s all over him.

“Easy, Mike,” Gabriel says. “Fuck, why did Luci have to change everything to this.”

Raphael’s bow and arrow glow, and she moves her hold on it as it shifts, raising it up as it expands and warps around them. A second later, they’re all in a transparent sphere, untouched by rain.

In the distance, there’s an explosion of water, and then after that, large, large tentacles, thrashing about the waves.

“That, I assume,” Amara says.

“None of them will hurt our father, not badly,” Raphael says. “But it will certainly exhaust his physical form.”

“He’s weakened,” Amara says. “A part of him is missing. It’s still yet to be retrieved.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way, or he’ll literally pull a deus ex machina,” Gabriel says. “Anyway – what change of plans?”

“The Cage won’t hold Chuck,” Amara says.

“What?!” Gabriel and Raphael stare at her, disbelieving.

Raphael turns to Michael sharply. “What have we been fighting here for, then?”

“I didn’t know,” Michael says. “We didn’t know.”

“Calm down,” Amara says, putting a hand on Raphael’s shoulder. Raphael stiffens, clearly unused to any form of physical contact, but says nothing, since Amara notices and lifts her hand right after. “We’ve just recently received this information.”

“Where – ” Gabriel squints at Michael, eyes flashing blue for a second, and a look of understanding flits across his face. “Ohhh, I see. That’s handy.”

“Sam’s gotten us information that the Cage won’t be able to contain Chuck,” Amara says. “But I might be able to have a solution for us.”

“And will it work?” Raphael asks.

“I don’t know,” Amara says. “I’ve never tried it before. The last time I had been imprisoned, it had been outside of the universe, with the lock on a human being.”

“We don’t have a lock,” Gabriel says.

“And no one should have to go through the insanity of being the lock.”

“We don’t even have a human around to be one,” Raphael says.

“What do you propose, then?” Michael asks.

“I may not be able to lock him out of a universe he made, not without anything to hold it close, but,” Amara says. “I created the Empty. I am its mother. It belongs to me and only me.”

Michael’s eyes widen. “You’re not saying – ”

“I am,” she says. “I’m saying we’re going to try to lock him in the Empty.”

-

Jack throws a hand out behind him as soon as Belphegor’s message gets to him. The door to the booth slams shut, unused furniture find their way flying towards the doorway, barricading it. He raises his hand, aiming it towards the walls of the room, and then up the ceiling, and as it moves, angelic wards burn themselves into the concrete.

As soon as he’s done, he returns to the hunter he’s healing. He’s got a stab wound in his thigh, but it’s nothing Jack can’t fix.

“What’s wrong, kid?” the man asks.

“Angels,” he says. “They broke through Belphegor’s defense.”

The man tenses, all the other remaining hunters in the room doing the same.

“I need to heal you first,” Jack says. “You can’t fight your best if you’re not in top shape. I’ll need a minute, but let me heal you first.” He focuses on the wound, watching it knit itself back together. “Please.”

The flesh reforms in the stab wound, followed closely by skin smoothing itself out, as if the wound hadn’t been there at all. Right, next patient.

“You’re a good kid, you know that?” the hunter says, making Jack pause. “You’re a good kid.”

“I’m…” Jack trails off, unable to say much. Memories of the apocalypse world flash across his mind again. “Thanks.”

“I mean it, you’re doing your best,” he says. “When all this is over, we owe you, like, a trip to Build-A-Bear or something.”

Jack laughs, mostly at the ridiculousness of it all. Who knows if any of them are going to get out of here alive? Who knows what comes next after this? Who knows how to react when he’s possibly making friends with people outside of his family and the weird quartet he’s gotten into, and the world is still falling apart around him?

He’s never had the luxury of even considering these things. Not before. Certainly not now.

The hunter’s gun is on a nearby table, so he picks it up, checks how many bullets there still are. He nods at whatever he finds.

“Go on, then, kid,” he says, standing. “Fix everyone up. And then when you’re done, open the door for us. We’ve got angel ass to kick.”

Jack nods. “Okay,” he says, determination renewed. He sets to work on his next patient. There aren’t a lot more injuries to fix, just a couple of stabs and cuts here and there on people.

Outside, there’s a loud bang!

The angels have reached the gym. He pushes his Grace on further, urging it to heal faster. As soon as the injury’s stitched up, the hunter he’s helping stands and grabs her own gun off the desk, heading for the barricaded door, ready. The man from earlier takes his place up beside her.

Gunshots, outside, followed closely by screaming.

“Everyone back! Everyone back!” Adam yells, voice muffled through the wall but panic clear all the same.

There’s a shake. The lights flicker, and then, they go out.

“Shit,” Jack mutters. The only source of light in the room are his eyes, and the power pulsing through the wounds he’s healing. This one’s only got cuts along the arms. They heal quickly, and Jack moves on to his last two patients.

Another tremor. Jack focuses on the injury. One second, two seconds, three – the wounds are done. The hunter takes their position and he moves on to the last one. Five seconds, six, seven.

A scream, too close this time.

“Fuck!” That’s Adam. There’s a loud clash of metal.

The wounds on the hunter close, healed.

Jack whirls on his heel, throwing a hand out to the barricade. All the furniture slam themselves up to the ceiling, sticking there, and the door throws itself open. The hunters rush outside, already firing at their targets. The room empties in less than two seconds.

Jack stares at the empty doorway, hearing the gunshots and the ringing of angel Grace outside, his brain dangerously close to tuning it all out. All the furniture held up by his power slowly lower themselves back down.

His father had told him he didn’t have to save the world.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to.

-

Adam jumps over the railing, the armor around his arm morphing into a shield as he slams it right onto the angel below him. The angel goes down, but unfortunately, Adam has to take a while to get his footing and get away, and in the time that it takes him to even stand, the angel slams him into a wall.

He chokes, the air in his lungs knocked out of him. His head cracks against the concrete. He doesn’t even realize he’s fallen, slumped down on the floor of the gym, and that his shield has disintegrated from lack of focus.

Come on. Come on. He’s been killed once, has spent thousands of years in Hell with an archangel, and his soul is in tatters. He’ll survive this. He should survive this. How the fuck is his body not responding when he’s not even fully human anymore and should have the advantages of that inhumanity?

Still, he finds it hard to even focus, vision spinning. Had his spine taken injury? It had to have. He’d hit the wall back-first.

His Grace. Angels aren’t constrained to the limits of their human vessels because of their Grace. He’s got a lot in him, he should be able to do the same thing.

He focuses, trying to capture that same feeling of bringing forward the Grace in his soul whenever he summoned a weapon into being or shifted it into something, directing the heat of it to his back and to his head. After a few seconds, his vision starts to get clearer.

Unfortunately, it’s a little too late, since the angel’s already close and kicks him right in the stomach. He wheezes, out of breath again, and feels a sharp pain in his abdomen. Had the kick been hard enough to damage something?

There’s gunshots above them. The angel looks up and deflects the bullets with their blade, before sweeping a hand out and sending the hunters that had attacked flying to the side. They let out a huff, irritated.

Adam tries to focus on his Grace again, seeking out the injury in his stomach. Weakly, he pushes himself back to put some space between him and the angel, but he barely even moves from his spot on the floor.

The angel above him lifts a foot, wordlessly staring him down with cold indifference on their face. They’re going to crush his head in.

“Hey asshole!”

The angel looks up. So does Adam, as best as he can.

“Fuck off!”

There’s a heavy pulse above them, and Adam’s vision fills with gold for a moment. The angel in front of him is thrown back, right onto the gym floor as the civilians around them have thankfully vacated, packing themselves onto the bleachers as much as they can.

Someone drops down in front of him. Adam can blurrily make out a beige jacket.

Jack.

Adam sees the angel past Jack’s feet, unsteadily getting up, coat rumpled and hair askew, a murderous glint in their eyes. They look livid.

Jack’s voice doesn’t waver. He raises a hand instead, standing between the angel and Adam resolutely. There’s no panic coming from his connection in their mind link, only steady, undisturbed calm.

“I said,” he says, “Fuck off.”

That single pulse of gold energy erupts from his hand again.

The angel explodes into nothing but flesh and light.

Adam immediately curls up, instinctually shielding himself from the rain of blood and ground up meat. Unfortunately, his stomach screams in pain, and he uncurls himself just as fast, only to be pelted in hot blood and freshly liquefied flesh.

He stares at his hands as the wet little plops around him stop. There’s blood all over him.

“You okay?”

Jack’s kneeling in front of him, one hand held towards Adam’s stomach. He can feel the pain slowly fading away.

“Did you have to make them explode?”

“What?”

“Did you have to be so dramatic?” Adam sits up as Jack pulls his hand away. Nothing hurts when he moves. “I feel like you’ve spent too much time around us now.”

Jack laughs. “I learned from the best,” he says. Adam jokingly swats his arm.

“Don’t go too over the top, you little shit,” Adam says, smiling. He calls his Grace to the surface again, reforming his shield. He stands; Jack helps him up.

There’s still angels in the gym,  even though most of them have stopped to stare at just what Jack has done, surprised by the sheer display of power. Nearly everyone has, even the hunters that are herding the civilians up the bleachers or fighting off angels.

Adam stands with his back to Jack’s holding the shield up.

“Nice to have you awake for this one though, bud,” Adam says. “It was shit to fight alone last time.”

Jack laughs again. “I’m glad to be fighting with you.”

-

“Focus on the entrances!” Belphegor yells. “Don’t let any other angel get inside the premises!”

The mass of ghosts and demons around him move, swarming past the angels, shoving them aside as they surge nearer towards the building. Several angels stab and swipe at them, but they don’t even notice, some defending themselves and some taking the blow without so much as a flinch, all focused on the one command that has been given to them.

“We’ve got reinforcements coming from the east,” the Shedim beside Belphegor says. She’s been holding him up for several minutes now, and is the only reason he hasn’t collapsed yet.

As if to prove her point, Belphegor’s ears ring. He winces. The Shedim patiently lets him lean his weight on her hand that’s on his shoulder.

“We’re going to need more weapons,” he says. “Or something to at least bolster our numbers, barricade the school further.”

“More demons will come.”

He nods. He can’t do much but wait. The demons are already teleporting towards the school as fast as they can.

But time isn’t on their side right now. Every second wasted is a second that can mean the life or death of someone. He can feel Adam and Jack’s minds on the telepathic link, both racing and clearly in a frenzy from fighting off enemies. Sam’s and Dean’s are clearer, with them being more experienced, but there’s still that nervousness, that anxiety of what if.

He diverts his attention to Hell, for a moment. Michael’s thoughts are still faint, laser-focused on his own battle. Castiel, Amara and Rowena are the same.

At the very least, all of them are fine. For now.

“Come on, think,” he mutters to himself. Amara’s got a plan to beat Chuck, so he doesn’t have to worry about that – he’ll think about it again if it fails, but for now, he’s got to focus on his own tasks or he’s going to start ripping his hair out – and everyone inside is fighting for their lives, so he’s got to make it easier for them.

“The windows are broken,” he mutters to himself. “We need a closed space.”

“What are you thinking, boss?”

“Angelic warding,” Belphegor says. “But it needs to be a closed, contained space to work. If a part of the building is broken, then it’s going to be useless.”

The Shedim hums. She yanks him backwards sharply so he doesn’t get hit by an arrow that’s suddenly sailing by, and then grabs the bloody crowbar in his hand, throwing it towards the direction the arrow had come from. It stabs through the attacking angel’s throat, the skin and flesh around it bubbling as the angel screams.

The Shedim calls the crowbar back, and it lands in her hand just as the angel explodes in Grace.

She hands it back to him. He nearly drops it. He can’t feel his fingers.

“We can make a flesh barricade,” she offers.

A shudder escapes him, against his will. Belphegor gags. “That’s awful.”

“It’ll work, though. It can patch up the windows,” she says. “We’ll just melt some bodies and board up the entrances.”

The idea has some merit to it, even if it does sound disgusting. He frowns, turning it over in his head.

Wait, no. He’s got no time for that. He’s got no time for anything. He can’t waste any second doubting decisions.

“Do it,” he says.

The Shedim grins, and her eyes flicker grey for a moment, communicating with her siblings over whatever bond they all had. Within seconds, Belphegor can see Shedim darting all over the place, ripping out throats and limbs off of angels and running towards the dead vessels, picking them up and tossing them at each other.

“I feel like I’m gonna regret that,” Belphegor says.

“After this fight is over? Sure,” the Shedim says. “But it’ll work.”

“Hm,” he hums. His eyes slide shut and he lists to the side. The Shedim holds him in place.

“Careful,” she says.

“Sorry.”

He’s going to pass out. He’s sure he’s going to pass out. He can’t hold control of Hell and of his body at the same time any longer.

“Shit, get down!”

The Shedim shoves him to the ground so that he’s crouching, hunching over him to shield him. There’s a bright flash of light that has him instinctively closing his eyes and bringing an arm up to eye level.

When he lowers it and hazards a look at what’s happening, he sees that the Shedim has stayed right where she is, poised over him like a cat protecting her kitten, growling lowly.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Seraphim,” she spits out. “Just smited a good portion of the ghosts out.”

“Shit,” he says.

“You good to stand on your own, boss?”

“No,” he says, bitterly. He’s not about to lie, not when they’re in the midst of a fight. Even in the face of danger, he can already feel his body trying to shut itself down.

The Shedim nods, moving to side so she can grab his arm and lift him up, slinging it over one of her shoulders. He realizes what she’s doing when she grabs the other arm and places it on her other shoulder.

“If you lose concentration, we’re dead,” she says, turning to glare at him for a moment. Belphegor freezes in fear less at the glare itself and more at the fact that she’s twisted her head around like a fucking owl. “Don’t blow this for us.”

“Wasn’t planning to,” he says.

She stands, carrying him in a piggyback and keeping his arms in place telekinetically so she can take the crowbar and the shotgun from him. He closes his eyes, letting his mind fully spread out to the rest of Hell. Whatever tension he feels snaps free; he feels lighter, now that he’s not trying to control ghosts and demons and his body at the same time anymore.

He feels around for Hell – at the demons that are still approaching and those that are already here, at the ghosts hurriedly descending to the school from whatever part of the world they might be, some of them cracking and flickering as they get farther and farther away from the object that’s tied them to the world of the living in the first place. He feels into the caverns of Hell, at whatever else is left behind there.

If he’d had a physical body to fully control right now, he would have smacked a hand to his forehead. Of course. Stupid. How could he forget?

He feels a writhing mass in Hell, clawing and thrashing at the hivemind, like, bloody, wet flesh slapping against the walls of his skull.

Maybe they won’t be able to kill angels, but they sure as shit would be one hell of an obstacle to go through.

And just like that, the many-limbed, many-headed, stuck-together mass of bodies in the Third Circle start crawling their way out of the depths.

-

“How the fuck would we do that?” Gabriel asks.

“Can we do that?” Michael asks. “Shit – incoming.”

Raphael throws her arms to the side, moving the sphere they’re in to the left, just as a severed octopus arm crashes into the sea, right where they’d been earlier.

“Luci’s going ham,” Gabriel mutters.

“So’s Chuck,” Michael says. “But – the Empty. Could it hold him?”

“He’s never been able to defeat me on his own,” she says. “Not in an all-out fight. It could.”

“How do we do that?”

“The walls of the Cage are made of the Empty,” Amara says. “If we can shove him into them, he’ll be able to enter it.”

“This place doesn’t adhere to physical space,” Raphael says.

“Is there a way to get to the walls?” Michael asks. “Can you bring them closer, since they are made of the Empty?”

“I don’t know,” Amara says. “This place – it doesn’t adhere to physical space, but it also adheres to gravity. And yet we still can’t reach the walls, only the bottom. It’s like a black hole, somehow, when Lucifer’s not doing that.”

She motions outside, and on cue, a large snake leaps out of the water to take a snap at Chuck, who dodges and snaps his fingers. One of the snake’s eyes explode.

Think. Think, think, think. They have to shove Chuck into one of the walls and let Amara push him into the Empty to put him to sleep.

“Well, if we can’t get to the walls from the inside.” Gabriel points a finger up. “Then…”

Michael looks up. Of course.

“We have to get him outside,” he says. “And then shove him into a wall.”

“That’ll be tricky. He’ll move fast,” Raphael says. “And we won’t have Lucifer’s illusions to help us.”

“Then we’re just going to have to move fast,” Michael says. “We’ll get him to the walls, and then once he’s there – ”

“I’ll take care of it,” Amara says. It looks like it pains her to say it, but there’s a determined look in her eyes anyway.

“We’ll end this,” she says, “For good.”

-

The civilians won’t be safe on the bleachers forever, but at the moment, it’s easier to make sure they’re in one place so the hunters can focus on protecting that area.

It makes it easier for Adam to focus on fighting, anyway, blocking blows with shield and slamming the flat surface into angels to knock them off balance before quickly shifting the shield into armor to help him punch through their chests. There’s blood all over his face and on one of his sleeves from how often he’s done that, but he’s shit with a sword, so he’s not about to risk it. Besides, it’s not like he can control the force behind any of his punches with the Grace armor on, so he’s resorted to using that to his advantage by just going berserk with it.

Jack, several meters away from him, is having an easier time, golden pulses of energy ringing out of his hands, blasting angels away or into pieces upon contact. His eyes have been bright gold for minutes now.

Adam looks around. They seem to be making good progress with cutting down enemy lines, as nobody’s attacking him now and he actually has time to observe his surroundings. Belphegor must have taken back control of the situation outside and re-strengthened their defenses. Good.

Jack misses one angel with his pulses, and they run straight at him. He catches their face in one of his palms and slams them back onto the ground, their whole body growing bright as he smites them.

He stands, the smell of burnt flesh and ozone wafting all around him.

“Belphegor’s got everything under control, I think,” Adam says.

“Looks like it,” Jack says.

“Thank – fuck,” Adam says, correcting himself at the last minute, taking time to just hunch over and put his hands on his knees, catching his breath.

Blood smears all over the pant leg where his armored hand is touching. He winces, pulling it away, but the damage has already been done. There’s a dark stain on one of his knees.

Jack laughs, beside him.

“Shut up, I can’t even afford pants right now,” Adam says. “I’m broke as fuck.”

“We’ll steal one then,” Jack says.

“Look at you, advocating for stealing now.” Adam snickers. “Cas is gonna kill us when he gets back.”

“Not if he doesn’t find out.”

I can hear you, Castiel sends at both of them.

They both laugh. Adam’s comes out as a little more hysterical.

What are they doing? The world is ending and they’re fighting for their lives and he’s joking around and there’s blood all over him and his pants are ruined, and oh god.

He takes in a deep breath. He’s about to start hyperventilating. Focus. Focus.

A gunshot rings out in the gym. Then, silence.

It’s Dean who breaks it first.

“Barricade the doors!” he yells. “More of them could be coming in soon, don’t let your guard down.”

That sends the hunters into a flurry of movement, most rushing towards the doors and grabbing whatever they can. A couple of them are rushing up to the commentator’s booth to grab the unused equipment. It’s not like anybody’s going to mind when it’s a life or death situation.

Jack motions a hand up towards the scoreboard above them. The sound of metal bending rings loud in the gym, causing a few people to look up. Most of the hunters only give it glance before returning to their tasks.

Finally, the last of the metal holding the board up breaks, curling in on itself. Jack lowers the scoreboard carefully, letting it hover towards the floor, before moving his hand towards the gym entrance, the board moving along with it.

The hunters notice, obligingly stepping aside so the board can float over and settle itself on the closed doors.

“Think you can do the backboards?” Adam asks.

“Sure,” Jack says, moving to face one of the basketball rings. He raises a hand towards it, focused, and the metal holding the backboards start to snap away too, curling in on itself.

There’s a loud slap of flesh to the side. Both Adam and Jack turn.

Something’s on top of the gym, and it’s slapped a hand on the glass wall at the highest part of the bleachers.

Another hand follows it, slapping loudly on the glass. Both hands are sliding down, like there’s something slimy coating them.

Adam realizes the dark streaks are blood.

“What the fuck,” he says, and as soon as he does, another hand joins the other too, also slapping on the glass. Then another, and another, and the hands already there start crawling their way downwards, pulling themselves down towards the ground quickly.

Adam sees a flash of a face, but the neck is bent all wrong, and there’s another face right beside it instead of it being attached to a torso. There’s more hands, all crawling downward, but making no effort to break the glass they’re now crawling past on.

“What the fuck,” Dean says this time, a little louder than Adam, gun pointed upwards, but not shooting as most of the civilians are up the bleachers, and are themselves trying to get away from the glass, some of them screaming.

Whatever’s outside doesn’t look like anything Adam’s seen before. It looks like human bodies, but all tangled up together, people’s limbs locked onto someone else’s, joints bent wrongly to the point where skin has broken and bones have stabbed through the meat. He sees a face’s eyes look to him, momentarily. They’re wide, alert, as if aware of everything that’s happening. It’s got a huge grin on.

Adam shudders in disgust, backing away.

“What the fuck is happening,” Dean says again.

“Are they – ” Sam looks a little green, which is saying something considering the man’s been in Hell. “ – demons?”

The writhing thing outside continues moving, the sounds of them crawling around extending all the way up to the roof, onto the other side of it, and then eventually to the other side of the gym. Every patch of glass they can see gets covered by bloody, intertwined flesh.

“Wait,” Dean says. “This – these aren’t demons.”

“They’re not?” Jack asks.

“No, this is…there’s a level in Hell, where the dead are just lumped together in a really small space,” he says. “These are the poor bastards from the Third Circle.”

Don’t shoot them, they’re with us!

“Belphegor?” Adam asks. “What crazy fucking idea did you have now?”

The angels were breaking into the school, he says. Adam can hear the absolute glee in his voice. So, we made a barricade.

“I hate you,” Dean says. “You slimy motherfucker. I hate you.”

You come up with something better, Belphegor says. Do you know how fucking thick the mass of all of these bodies is? This is impenetrable especially with angelic warding -

“Shut up! I don’t want to hear anything else!” Dean yells. A few people stare at him, confused, but he doesn’t seem to care that he looks like he’s talking to himself since no one other than a few people can hear the mindlink.

“The angels are gonna have a hell of a time trying to get through, at least,” Sam says.

“Don’t encourage him,” Jack calls out.

“Just – everyone who needs help, get to the infirmary.” Dean points to the commentator’s booth. “Jack, Adam, you’re helping.”

Both of them nod, quickly moving towards the stairs for the booth. Even if Adam doesn’t have powers, he can still do first aid so Jack has time to attend to everybody.

“The rest of you, stand guard,” Dean says. “We’re not done here yet.”

“It’s up to Michael,” Jack says, as he and Adam ascend the stairs. The lights are still off, busted. There’s gotta be a lighter here somewhere.

Adam nods. They’ve all bought themselves time in protecting the civilians, as best as they can. They’ve done their part.

“It’s up to Amara.”

-

“We’re gonna have to lure him outside,” Michael says. “But be sure to keep him at a close distance, so we can push him into the walls.”

Around them, the fight between Lucifer and Chuck is still waging, both players fueled by pure rage. If the Cage hadn’t been completely limitless aside from the mouth of it, Hell probably would have been obliterated by now.

“Gabriel, I’m gonna need you to hit us both,” Michael says. “Give us a huge boost up towards the top. I’ll fight him, make sure he doesn’t get away. Raphael, you keep an eye on the whole thing.” He points to his sister. “When you see the chance, shoot him into the wall.”

“Understood,” she says.

Michael pauses. “Do not hesitate, not for a second. If you have to shoot me, do it.”

Raphael’s eyes widen, for a moment. Even Gabriel has a look of surprise flash across his face, though he says nothing.

Raphael nods, after a few seconds.

“Understood,” she repeats.

“Amara, you stay alert,” Michael says. “As soon as Chuck’s shot.” He pauses. He might die. “You know what to do.”

Amara nods as well.

“Five minutes to alert Lucifer as to what’s happening. Anyone of us will do. After those five minutes, whether or not we’ve passed on the message, Gabriel’s throwing me and Chuck up, understand?”

He gets a series of nods in response.

“Good,” he says. He’s still in his armor, he’s still got his sword. They can do this.

He looks up, just as Chuck rips through the throat of another dragon that Lucifer’s formed to spring out of the ocean. Lucifer’s already flying halfway to meet him, sword clashing right against Chuck’s own.

Michael steels his jaw. Right.

He counts. Three. Lucifer strikes a blow to their father’s shoulder. Two. Chuck swipes at him in rage. One. Chuck shoves him back with a blast of energy.

Now.

“Raphael,” Michael says, and the sphere they’re in goes down, all of them falling as soon as it does, but the others are quick to move. He feels someone already grabbing him, pulling their arm back, and throwing him right at Chuck.

He swings his sword this time. Chuck catches it with a hand, the blade digging into him, so Michael shifts it into a scythe, the handle of it caught in Chuck’s grip.

The blade stabs into the man’s lungs.

Michael feels Raphael fly past him, likely to find Lucifer, because Gabriel’s sounding out his trumpet below. He holds onto the handle of the scythe as tight as he can, just as a powerful wave hits them both, rocketing them up. A second later, the illusion falls away, the rain disappearing and the roar of the ocean underneath them vanishing.

Chuck holds onto the handle of the scythe and pulls, trying to get the blade out. Michael shoves it forward, blood gushing onto Chuck’s clothes and out of his back at the movement.

Gabriel’s trumpet sounds out below them again, louder this time. Michael doesn’t dare look up to see the top of the Cage as they continue their ascent, keeping his hold on his weapon as his father tries to wriggle out of it.

A flash of light flies beside them. He only sees Lucifer kick Chuck forward, impaling him further onto the weapon. The force knocks them both to the side a bit, but the pulse from Gabriel’s trumpet keeps them on a steady upwards trajectory, flying past Lucifer as the kick had caused him to stop to deliver the blow.

Chuck bares his teeth, livid. Michael doesn’t let go.

Suddenly, light, a change in the air. Michael feels like he can breathe easier.

They’re out. It’s Hell. They’re in Hell.

Michael! That’s Castiel.

I see them, Rowena says, to the rest of the team on the line. They’re on the move.

Michael twists with a yell, turning his upper body so as to throw Chuck sideward, but not letting go of his weapon. Both of them start to fall, but he feels a rush of power behind him, and then a hard kick to his back. Lucifer, again.

He and Chuck go flying sidewards.

“You - !” Chuck begins, knowing exactly what all of them have planned, but Michael summons every ounce of his Grace into focus, holding onto his father’s very essence through the weapon it’s manifested into. His hands are burning, he realizes, his physical form unable to take the surge of power, but he holds on, skin almost welded onto the scythe’s handle.

“Again!” Gabriel yells. Lucifer’s behind Chuck, suddenly, and kicks him forward, angled so that they’re still being thrown downwards by the force of the blow.

Chuck’s ribs dig into the handle of the scythe from how hard he’s being pushed forward, and he lets a hand go to grab Michael’s head, violently thrashing, twisting them both around as they fall.

Michael grits his teeth despite the pain. All he has to do is hold on, and not let go. That’s his part of the plan –

Pain.

Hot, blinding pain.

He doesn’t need to look down to know that there’s a large, golden arrow, stabbed through his chest. Not when he can see that the head of it has stabbed itself into Chuck’s as well from the force that Raphael’s put behind it.

The shot is enough to throw them both to the side, pinning them onto the blank canvas that makes up the wall of the Cage. Michael holds on to the scythe, not willing to let go even as he feels his Grace start to bubble up, slipping away from his physical form, as he feels himself slowly erupt.

The wall of the Cage gives way, like water, and he and Chuck both sink into it.

It’s cold.

-

When he opens his eyes, he’s lying facedown somewhere. His body doesn’t hurt, surprisingly. He feels as if whatever had happened before, his body is supposed to hurt.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t feel like anything. What is he doing here?

He shifts, sitting up, looking around him. Everything looks dark, not in the way that someone’s shut off the lights or anything, but dark in a way that it looks like he’s staring at an empty part of the universe. Everything in the universe is filled with things, even the parts that people see as empty space. There’s always dust. Air. Atoms. Everything is made out of something, down to the smallest part of it.

This looks like nothing.

He tries to stand, and feels something awkward on his torso. He looks down.

There’s an arrow sticking out of his chest.

He remembers, suddenly. Right. They were fighting, in Hell, in the Cage. They were trying to get Chuck trapped somewhere, and Amara had told them she could try to trap her brother in the Empty. He’d told his siblings to do whatever it takes to get Chuck thrown into the Cage’s walls, even if it meant shooting him.

Looks like he did get shot.

“I feel like I should be grateful for having visitors,” a voice says behind him. He stands, quickly, and turns. “As I think that’s the protocol for these things, but I also don’t ever remember inviting any of you pests into my domain.”

Adam’s face stares back at him, but its eyes are blank, and lightless.

“Archangel Michael,” the Empty says. “An unorthodox entrance.”

“Where’s Chuck?”

“Somewhere.” The Empty waves a hand vaguely, the other cradling a wine glass. “I don’t give a shit. What I want to know is…while I’ve told Jack Kline that I did hope we would never see each other again, and he’s honored his promise, I made an exception for the Winchesters to drop by, what with this whole apocalypse thing going on.” It points a finger to him. “But you’re neither Jack Kline nor a Winchester.”

“It was an emergency,” he says, raising his chin in defiance, out of habit, but the movement makes him aware of the fact that there’s an arrow sticking out of his chest.

How isn’t he exploding into light, yet?

“That would be because you’re already dead,” the Empty says. When he looks up, the Empty’s gotten closer, the throne it’s sitting on mere feet away from him. It’s sitting so that its back is leaning on one of the arms of the chair, its legs swung over the other. “See, when an angel dies, the Grace erupts into light because it’s escaping from the vessel, escaping from the constraints of the physical world, similar to how human souls ascend and leave the body.”

It swirls the wine in its glass, idly observing it. “That light explodes, and the force of it burns the angel’s wings into the earth – and all of that goes here.” It taps a cane onto the dark surface they’re both on. That cane had definitely not been in its free hand earlier, but it is now.

“But,” the Empty says. “When you got shot, you fell straight in here, so there was no need for your Grace to escape its physical constraint and pass on. Hence.” It looks over to him. “Why you’re not burning up like a dying sun.”

“Ah.”

The Empty swings its legs over, sitting down properly. It lays its cane down its lap.

Michael hears footsteps behind him. He turns, and sees his father, bloody and battered, but walking fine, murder in his eyes.

Wasn’t he supposed to be asleep?

“I’m still not pleased,” the Empty says, but sighs. “Although I suppose I can see why this was necessary.”

“Excuse me,” Chuck says, voice cold, and staring straight at Michael. “I think my son and I have something to finish.”

“You’re not excused,” the Empty says. “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the angel.” It snaps its fingers. “Eyes here, feathers.”

Michael reluctantly turns away from his father’s irate face. The Empty looks unamused.

“Now, what to do with you,” the Empty says. “Because, you see, everything here goes to a default state of sleep. When someone awakens, it gets…” It frowns. “Loud.”

“Let him be,” someone says, and this time, the Empty does react, eyebrows raising as he looks at someone over Michael’s shoulder. Michael turns around again to see who it is.

“Amara,” he says.

“Mother,” the Empty says. “Fancy to have you visit here.”

Amara inclines her head in acknowledgement. “A surprise to know you still existed in this universe,” she says, and then turns to Chuck, who’s gone silent and is just glaring at her coldly. Her expression softens. She looks sad.

“Brother,” she says.

“Sister,” he says. “You would really try to lock me away.”

“It had to come to this,” she says. “It didn’t have to, but you wouldn’t listen,”

“No, you wouldn’t listen,” he says, stepping forward. “You wouldn’t listen to reason when I gave it to you.”

“You’re letting your ego get to you,” she says. “Your selfishness.”

“You’re siding with the humans,” Chuck says, with such disdain that Michael can’t believe it’s him in the first place. What happened? What happened to the man who created this universe to explore the possibilities of humanity in the first place? Who celebrated free will? Who loved his creation so much he would lock away his own sister and son just to protect it? When had they traded places? “You’re siding with the Winchesters.”

“I’m siding with what’s right,” Amara says. “And I think…I think you need time. I need you need to realize exactly why all this is wrong, brother.”

“I don’t need anything,” he says, raising his voice. “And I certainly don’t need you talking to me about what’s right or wrong.”

Amara holds a hand up just as Chuck snaps his fingers. It’s like a string’s suddenly been pulled taut, and Michael staggers from the sheer power that rips out from both of them, pulling at each other and not letting go.

“Do you think you can hold me here?” Chuck sneers. “You can push me down into the water, sure, but do you think your measly little creation – ” He glances towards the Empty, who’s now standing beside Michael (when had that happened?), and who only gives the man a blank look “ – could hold me down?”

Amara says nothing. Chuck laughs.

“You’re powerful, yes,” he says. “This place? Not so much.”

“If it can hold the strength of a thousand angels, brother, it can hold you.”

“You forget - ” Chuck smiles. “ - I’m more powerful than any of my angels.”

The Empty suddenly doubles over, clutching its stomach. The wine glass and cane are nowhere to be found now, and since it’s still copying Adam’s form, Michael instinctively goes to its side, trying to summon his Grace to heal whatever’s wrong. His Grace doesn’t respond, snapping him out of it. Right. He’s dead.

The surface underneath them ripples, like water. Michael sees lights below, blinking in and out. Angels. Demons.

He’s right.

Even if Amara can lock him in here for a little while, he can attack the Empty little by little, chipping away at it. The damn thing hates getting woken up, hates being disturbed, and isn’t meant for anything other than guarding its domain. It’s not going to stand much of a fighting chance against Chuck himself, no matter how powerful it is.

Amara appears to come to the same conclusion as he does, eyes widening as she turns to look at the Empty, who’s kneeling on the ground, hunched over.

Michael clenches his fists. He’s dead. He can’t contact anybody anymore.

But Amara can.

“Amara!” he yells. “Tell the others.”

“What?” She looks surprised, and he doesn’t blame her. If she can’t even lock her own brother up in here, then what chance do the others have?

But –

But the universe revolves around Sam and Dean Winchester. That’s its very purpose. It was conceived to be the world for the Winchester Gospels. The universe recognizes, then, that two of its pillars are Sam and Dean Winchester and trust them to keep it alive, and will do everything in its power to make sure everything falls into place.

And they’re so close. So, so close. But they don’t have Winchester luck.

But the others still back at Earth might.

“Just do it,” he says. She’s not constrained by the Empty, it’s her domain. She’ll be able to connect with everyone easily.

Chuck throws a hand out towards him, and he flies back, the others disappearing from his sight quickly. There are no walls here in the Empty. No doors and no outside. There’s just the vastness, and Michael’s immediately flung into it. He can’t find his way around here.

But he’s dead anyway. This isn’t his fight anymore.

He smiles and closes his eyes. Perhaps he’ll go to sleep.

-

Adam collapses, falling to the floor in a heap without so much as a sound. A nearby hunter, the one he’d just help stitch a wound close, yells.

“Adam!”

Jack glances towards where the noise is, but has to turn back to his task at hand. His patient is steadily losing blood, and he needs to focus on this first.

His eyes haven’t stopped glowing for hours, having gone straight from fighting to healing up everyone he can. So far, they haven’t had any other breaches, so that means Belphegor’s defense is doing well and they’ve been able to catch their breath here, but they have a lot of injured people, civilians included.

“Get him on the bed, get him – ”

Jack closes up the wound, reconnecting the hunter’s arm back together. Job done, he immediately turns on his heel, pushing past people to kneel beside Adam.

“Adam? Adam.”

He crouches down lower, trying to see if Adam’s unconscious, but to his surprise, he’s awake. His eyes are open, wide, as if in shock. He looks like he’s seen something terrible.

“Let’s get him on the bed, kid,” someone says. Jack moves aside for the hunters to carefully lift Adam up and place him on the bed.

That look of shock stays on his face, and his hands are shaking. When Jack hazards to put a hand over his forehead, he’s freezing.

He stares up at the ceiling, but he looks like he’s not seeing anything at all.

“…Adam?” Jack tries.

No answer.

Jack’s violently pulled to the side as he feels something tug at the mindlink, the force of whatever’s happened enough to physically throw him around.

“Kid!”

Someone catches him before he can crack his head on the edge of the bed. They help him stand back up, slowly so he doesn’t accidentally throw up from dizziness. Everything’s blurry, and spinning, and it feels like there’s something missing, but he can’t tell what it is.

What was that? Castiel asks. Jack, are you okay?

“I’m good,” he murmurs, both for his father and for the hunters holding him up.

A few seconds later, Sam pokes his head past the doorway, also looking like he has a headache. Jack’s willing to bet Dean’s looking the same.

“Jack?” he asks.

“Adam’s – Adam’s collapsed,” Jack says.

“Shit.”

What the fuck was that? Belphegor asks. Everybody okay?

Jack can barely make out what’s going on in the undercurrent of the mindlink, as everything feels far too muddy. It’s like looking into fogged-up glass. He knows there’s something happening, but he can’t make it out because there’s too much, and his brain is tuning it out.

Everyone, he can hear Rowena saying. Everyone –

Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Panic blooms from Belphegor’s end. I can’t feel –

“He’s dead,” Adam whispers, so softly that Jack’s surprised he even hears it. But he does, and his mind grinds to a silent halt as soon as he does.

Adam turns to him, with that terrified look on his face. “Michael’s dead.”

No.

No, no, no.

They just got him back. They just got him back, this can’t be happening. They just got him back and they haven’t even seen him yet, he can’t be gone.

I can’t feel him on the link, Belphegor says, frantic. I can’t feel him on the link. What the fuck. What the FUCK.

Something warm hits Jack’s collarbone. He lifts a hand up to his cheeks. His fingers come away wet.

He’s crying.

Michael! It feels like Belphegor’s overturning everyone’s thoughts. Jack physically winces as he feels the tremor of power run through him. Michael, answer, you dumb fuck!

Jack wipes at his face, but he can’t stop crying. His head hurts, his chest hurts, everything’s blurry, and he can’t stop crying.

There’s only silence down the line.

Belphegor quiets. The sort of still that follows denial.

Jack doesn’t know how long he stands there, but eventually, he hears Adam move to grab the pillow underneath him and to put it over his face instead. Seconds later, he hears soft sobbing.

Michael’s dead.

He only realizes he’s been pushed to sit down when his back leans against the chair. The hunters have brought him one to sit on.

They lose people all the time. That was the whole thing about being a hunter. Jack’s no stranger to that. He’s lost all his friends from apocalypse world, he’s hurt Mary, he’s seen allies go down like flies.

But this is Michael. He’s an archangel. He’s not supposed to die. Not him. Not one of his best friends.

He’s barely paying attention when Amara’s thoughts break past the haze of his grief. She’s saying something, something about Chuck, about them being in the Empty. Something’s going on.

He forces himself to tune back into reality. That’s what Michael would want, right?

I need your help, Amara is saying. There has to be something to weaken my brother further. At his state – at his state, even the Empty won’t be a match for him.

Right. They’re still fighting Chuck.

How the hell are we gonna do that? Dean asks.

I can’t think of anything either, Rowena says.

That’s like asking for a miracle, at this point, Dean says. A fucking Hail Mary. Something so batshit crazy it might just work.

“Wait!” Sam says, outside. He catches himself saying that out loud and taps into the link. What about – what about that bingo card thing you guys did? Adam and Jack, I mean? Can’t you do that again?

Jack freezes.

Slowly, he digs around his pockets, until he feels a folded piece of cardboard. He takes it out, unfolding it and straightening out the creases.

It’s his bingo card.

He’s won.

Of course. He’d forgotten. He’d been marking the card off the whole time he’s had it, laughing along with the others while trying to navigate the insanity of the situation, watching Belphegor being a shit, hoping that somehow they’d be able to get Michael back unscathed.

He tries to remember what Adam’s written down on his own card, since he’s not in any state to help right now. Jack’s smart. Jack learns fast. He’d figured things out mere minutes after his birth, after all. He can remember a few Enochian sigils.

There’s still blood on his hands from all the fighting earlier, since he hasn’t had time to heal his own wounds. They’re only scrapes, minor cuts, even if some of them are on his hands. The wrongness of the decision doesn’t hit him until after he stares at the sigils on the back of the bingo card, written in his own blood.

They need to weaken Chuck. They can’t kill him, because his very essence holds the universe up. That essence needs to continue to exist somewhere, even if it’s not within his reach.

Jack holds the card up.

“I invoke the rules of the universe,” he recites. “I invoke the law of balance, for actions have consequence and everything is the product of the history before it. I call upon the threads in the fabric of existence that answers to causation, that says everything in this universe answers to everything within it.”

The card in his hand starts to glow, a bright gold just like his eyes.

“With the authority I have as a part of this world, I demand what is rightfully mine.”

Adam had spoken carefully, earlier. The card only works once. He’s got to be specific with his prize, or at least word it in a way that gets the result he needs. Chuck needs to lose the ability to fight back.

“Every victory implies something to be won,” Jack says.

He’s got to do it.

For everyone. He’s got to save the world.

“I demand Chuck’s power be forfeit.”

It’s like the room bleeds into nothing. One second, he’s in the infirmary, holding up a glowing card, and the next, before he can even blink, everything’s dark and blank and Empty, and he’s sitting in the middle of nowhere, watching someone with Adam’s face hunched over in pain, Amara standing right across Chuck, both of their powers pulled taut against each other as Amara tries to shove Chuck into unconsciousness and Chuck pushes against it.

He stares, not knowing what else to do, and both siblings turn to him in shock at the intrusion.

“Jack?” Amara asks.

The card in his hand explodes into gold light, racing up his arm like cracks of light on his skin. When he looks up, he’s already standing right next to Chuck, not knowing when that had even happened, but he understands, suddenly, what he has to do.

Jack puts his hands on Chuck’s face, furious.

This is for Michael, he thinks. And Adam. And Cas and Sam and Dean and Amara and everyone you’ve ever hurt.

The man’s eyes glow gold as well as Jack digs into his very core, greedily snatching up every drop of power and taking it for himself. He feels like his skin is stretching, like he’s suddenly become too much for his body, like his bones are running out of space for all of him.

And then he lets Chuck go, feeling nothing but emptiness before him.

He lets out a breath. Can he even breathe here?

Chuck stares at him, in shock, in denial, and he looks down at his hands, and then back to Jack.

There is fear in his eyes. Good.

“What have you done?” he asks. “What have you done?”

“Nothing you didn’t deserve,” Jack says, already stepping away. He backs up, until he’s right beside the Empty, gently lifting it up to its feet.

It looks like him now, as it straightens up. He wonders how it does that, if it does it on purpose or if it’s something it can’t control, like it has to latch onto the image of someone or someone from their memories. He should ask.

Chuck looks furious as Jack turns his attention back to him.

“How dare you,” the man says, because he’s nothing but a man now. “How dare you, how dare you – ”

“That’s enough, brother,” Amara says, sadly. “We’re done here.”

“We’re not done until I say we’re done.”

“On what authority?” the Empty asks, cutting in. “You’re nothing now.”

“I am – ”

“Nothing,” Jack repeats. Is it wrong to feel satisfied? To feel vicious? To feel vindicated? “It’s over, Chuck.”

Chuck looks like he still wants to say something, but the Empty raises its hand.

“Enough,” it says. “You’ve disturbed this place long enough already.” It gives Chuck a glare, then Amara, of all people, and then Jack. “I said I never wanted to see you again. Get the fuck out.”

Jack raises an eyebrow.

“All of us?”

“All of you,” the Empty says.

“But – ” He motions to Chuck. “What about him?”

“What about him?” the Empty says. “I have no use for a man.”

It shoves Jack backwards, away from it, and poises its fingers to snap. Just before it does, Jack swears he’d seen it smile.

-

Belphegor feels the shift in the air even before the Shedim he’s currently sharing a mind with – the one who’s currently carrying his physical body – looks up. She smashes an angel’s head in with a crowbar, distracted for a second, before looking up again.

Something’s different.

“Feel that, boss?” she asks.

Yeah.

Something’s odd. Not any sort of odd, as far as he can tell, because it’s too early to say if it’s good or bad or dangerous, but it’s just…odd. Like someone’s taken a polisher to the sky, or a new sort of material to the clouds. It’s like everything’s been given a repaint, and it’s still the same thing, still looks the same and works the same, but something’s…new. Odd. It’s odd. That’s the most he can say about it in his confusion.

Even some of the angels are stopping, looking up as if trying to figure out what’s wrong.

“This air tastes gold,” the Shedim says.

Can you stop saying weird shit, please.

“It does, though,” she says, and then turns away from the fight, walking towards the school. She puts a hand on the fleshy mass in front of her – the tangled bodies from the Third Circle that has wrapped itself around the building in order to protect it from any angel trying to get inside, angel wardings carved all over it – and starts scaling it to get to the roof.

What the hell are you doing?

“Something’s coming,” she says. “I wanna get a good whiff of this first.”

It’s probably the stench of a million bodies all tangled together like a more fucked-up version of the human centipede.

She snickers, still climbing up. Belphegor rallies against her mind, but makes no move to overtake, for now. He can see, through the eyes of all the ghosts and the demons, that the angels have stopped, almost as if they’re trying to figure out what’s wrong too.

“This air tastes clear,” the Shedim says. “It tastes bright.”

Just once. Can you say something normal.

“It feels new,” she says, hoisting herself up to where the roof should be but is nothing but a floor of bodies. “Here, look – ”

He’s pushed to the forefront of the body without any warning, and he almost falls, but catches his balance at the last second, making sure his own physical body doesn’t fall off of this one. He has no idea what the hell she’s saying, how the fuck someone can even taste air with a physical form as limited as the human body, but he tries to take a deep breath anyway.

“What the fuck,” he mutters.

He feels warm, all over. He realizes that the storm clouds above them have made everything so cold, and that it’s actually freezing out here. But something feels like it’s wrapped around him now, like a comfortable, well-worn but well-loved blanket. Like he’s sitting in front of a fireplace. Like when they’d stolen some bikes and drove them into a river and everyone’d argued about it for shits and giggles even when none of them were really serious about it.

It feels like he’s by the beach at dawn, everything around him quiet and peaceful, and he’s only watching the sunrise and nothing else. The world isn’t ending. There’s no big thing he has to take care of. He’s just being, and everything is new and beautiful and it’s the start of a good day.

It feels like he’s standing in the halls of the Silver City, when everything was brand new; when the halls were bright and pristine not from any silly thing like paint, or tile, or glass, but from pure light, and there was nothing but calm and peace and curiosity. It feels like when he was young and new to everything, and he’d been given a name and a job to do, and someone was holding his hand as they led him through the halls, telling him they were going to do wonderful things, they were going to create, they were going to build something called a universe and it was going to be wondrous.

“Boss?” the Shedim asks, taking control of the body for a moment. “You’re crying.”

He lifts a hand up to touch this body’s face.

He is crying.

“This feels like Heaven,” he whispers, disbelief in his voice. “This feels like – like Heaven, and I – ”

He remembers. He remembers this is what Heaven had felt like.

How long has it been since he’s felt this?

“I hadn’t – I couldn’t remember – ” He laughs, mirthlessly. “I couldn’t remember, because it’d felt different. Everything felt different, it felt wrong, and I didn’t even realize, but this – ”

This feels like home.

[ Thisis what Heaven feels like? ]

“Yeah,” he says, sitting down, because he can’t trust himself to keep standing when he’s also carrying the weight of his physical body around, not when he’s crying like this. “Yeah, kid, this is what Heaven feels like.”

Wonder thrums through the Shedim’s thoughts, and when he laughs this time, it’s real. It’s joyous.

He’s missed this.

[ Oh, someone’s here. ]

He leans over the edge of the roof, seeing a familiar blonde head of hair.

“Jack?” he mutters.

Jack’s standing in front of the crowd, looking out at all the ghosts and the angels and demons in front of him, all frozen in confusion at what’s happening. There’s something different about him, not just the fact that he looks a little less ratty than he usually looks to Belphegor.

Belphegor switches viewpoints, to a ghost on the ground, right in front of the crowd around Jack.

Jack raises a hand in his signature awkward greeting. “Hello,” he says.

“What have you done?” an angel whispers, one close enough to the ghost Belphegor is seeing through for him to hear.

A look of sorrow passes Jack’s face. Whatever’s happened, there’s no going back from it.

“What I needed to,” Jack says. “It’s unfair for this whole world to pay the price for the disappointment of few.”

“What have you done, Nephilim?” another one says, this one with more horror in its voice than rage.

Belphegor switches back to the Shedim again, this time seeing not with the body’s physical eyes but borrowing its true sight.

Oh.

Oh, god.

Well, oh Jack, apparently.

“You know we’ll never serve you,” an angel says, bloodied and battered and missing one eye. They lift their head in defiance, and around them, their brethren do the same.

“You don’t,” Jack agrees. “You serve humanity.”

A hush falls over the crowd.

“Do you remember?” Jack asks. “What you were born for? What you were supposed to usher in?”

Flashes of memory come up in Belphegor’s mind, and this time, they stay. There’d been the plan for the universe, the plan for the Garden, and the announcement that creatures called humans were to be born.

“I can’t do it, Father,” Lucifer had said. “I can’t bow down to these humans.”

That had been why all of this happened, why Heaven split. That was the beginning of it all, Winchester Gospels aside.

“You were created to serve humanity,” Jack says. “To move in their best interests. You were created to love them.”

He gets a few steely glares from the angels for that.

“I don’t need you to serve me. I don’t want you to serve me, or love me, or any of that,” Jack says. He motions around them, at the carnage, at the school, at the town.

At the world, Belphegor realizes.

“All I’m asking you is one thing,” Jack says. “Let this world live. Please.”

Nobody answers. Everyone just stares at him, like they can’t believe what they’re seeing, can’t believe what they’re hearing.

Do they feel it, Belphegor wonders, the way the air has changed, the way everything seems to be so much brighter, like the universe has restarted and gotten its shine back again? Do they feel the change, even though he himself can’t figure it out? And what has changed, though, other than the fact that Jack’s the one holding the reigns this time?

He nudges the Shedim gently, and she lets him have a turn at the forefront again. He tries to open up his sight, his senses, tries to catch exactly what’s different with the composition of reality. It’s what he’s good at, what he’d been doing in Heaven and then later Hell when he’d been assigned to design weapons. It’s why he’s so good at designing weapons, because he taps into the fabric of the universe and figures out which threads to pull and use to his advantage.

Everything feels so comforting, so warm, so…

So loving.

Jack loves this world.

“For God so loved the world…” Belphegor recites, and then puts a hand to his mouth before he can start sobbing again. It’s not that he even wants to cry, it’s just that – it feels like he’s been tired, for so, so long, and this is the first time in forever he’s felt like he can rest.

Nobody has loved this world in forever.

“Please,” Jack says again.

Belphegor switches to another ghost, and then a demon, trying to see what the angels are doing. Most of them look shocked, a few look angry, and some…some just look sad. Like they’re tired too, like they’ve just woken up and have been called to battle and now that they can feel the warmth of Heaven again, they’re just so confused because what the fuck are they fighting for?

Hadn’t it felt like this the first time, too? The first war in Heaven? Nobody had understood why the fuck they were fighting in the first place then, right?

An angel that’s currently strangling the demon Belphegor’s manning the consciousness of pulls away, taking back his sword. He wipes at his face. He’s crying too.

His angel blade disappears from his hand.

Another angel, the one just a few feet away from them, turns to him, angry. “Adnachiel.”

“I’m done,” Adnachiel says, raising his hands up. “I’m done.”

“What on earth are you talking about?!”

“God in Heaven, don’t you feel it?!” Adnachiel motions around them wildly. “Don’t you feel that? We haven’t – we haven’t felt…” His breath gets caught in his throat, the reaction strangely human. He takes a few moments to calm himself down, straightening up after a few minutes. “He’s right. We were made to serve and love humanity, to love this world. That was why Lucifer fell in the first place.”

“Adnachiel, this is heresy.”

“The only reason we’re still fighting the war until today is because of that.” Adnachiel points to Belphegor – to the demon he’d been fighting earlier – but Belphegor mistakes it for himself at first and flinches. “The reason why Hell and demons exists is because of that. And frankly,” Adnachiel spits out. “I’ve never understood all this mess in the first place. What sets us apart from Hell if we hate this place so much?”

“It was supposed to end,” another angel says. Surprisingly, Belphegor recognizes this one as his memories are starting to come back to him. It’s Mendrion. “All of this was supposed to end.”

“To bring about paradise,” Adnachiel says. “Or whatever the fuck the whole Winchester Gospels thing was about, but Father respected their choice before, right? When they’d changed the plan?”

“Don’t you dare blaspheme,” the first angel says. “Our Father – ”

“He’s alive,” Jack interrupts. “He’s…his sister is with him.”

All the angels turn to him then, in rapt attention.

“But he’s angry,” Jack says. “At everything. At humanity. At the universe.”

“At everything?” Mendrion asks, voice soft. Afraid.

Jack nods.

“He wants to destroy everything,” Jack says. “And…I don’t know if you guys have always been ready to die for him, to serve him. I don’t know if any of you are scared.”

Adnachiel is. Belphegor can see it in the way his hands tremble.

Trying to hammer in some goodwill and maybe bridge a broken celestial gap, Belphegor nudges the demon he’s seeing through to reach out. There’s a weak push against him, like they’re irritated they have to do so, but they reach out, brushing their bloody fingers against Adnachiel’s arm. The angel turns to them, confused.

The demon places a comforting hand against his forearm.

It’s okay. They’re all afraid.

“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” Jack says. “We can live. We can try to fix everything. We can…” He stops. He also looks like he’s about to cry. “We can start again. For real, this time. No big plans. No grand schemes. No grey men or cannon fodder or worldbuilding side characters to be thrown aside for the main story. Just…existing.” He smiles. “Everyone being free.”

“But,” an angel starts. Belphegor recognizes this one too. Zachariel. “We’ve always had a plan. We’ve always existed for a plan.” He looks terrified. “What are we supposed to do now?”

Jack’s smile softens. “We can figure that out together,” he says. “But you’ll have to give everyone a chance to.”

Nobody says anything, for a moment. Nobody moves.

Then, Zachariel throws down his sword. So does Mendrion. And then the others do the same, one by one, dropping their weapons as a sign of surrender, as they see everyone else doing so.

Belphegor returns to the Shedim, relief flowing all over him.

“Look at that,” the Shedim says. “They taste a little brighter now too.”

Yeah? He asks.

“Yep,” she says. “They taste like summer.”

You know what, he says, and he would have laughed if he’d had control of the body. Just this once, I’m gonna let the shit you say slide.

-

It’s hours before everything gets cleaned up, mostly because Belphegor has to return the mass of bodies from the Third Circle back into Hell. They’re quick to move, though, dragging themselves off of the school building and crawling onto the streets instead, spilling out like a large, winding carcass all over the roads.

“That is,” Adnachiel says. “Something.”

“I hate it too, buddy, but I was out of ideas,” Belphegor says. He’s still using the Shedim’s body since he needs to see where the whole thing is going, and so it doesn’t accidentally destroy anything.

“Very creative, but, disgusting.”

“Using bodies was my idea, by the way.” The Shedim shoves him back into the backburner for a moment to interrupt. He wrangles control right back after a second.

Adnachiel gives him a weird look, but only laughs after.

Ahead, one of the hands on the fleshy hivemind pushes off a window wrong. A lump of the whole thing falls onto a tree.

“Oh – oh goddamnit.” Belphegor pinches the bridge of his nose. Well, there’s the property damage.

Jack, approaching from behind him, laughs.

“Speak of the devil,” Belphegor says.

“Not really,” Jack says.

“Okay, smartass, we get it,” he says. Jack laughs again, softly.

As it tapers off, both of them quiet, growing serious.

“How do you feel?” Belphegor asks.

Jack takes a while to answer.

“Sorry,” he says.

“For what?”

“For Chuck.”

“For Chuck?” Belphegor turns to him, bewildered, but the look on Jack’s face makes him bite down everything else he’d been about to say. The poor boy looks mournful.

“Yeah,” he says. “He loved everything once, you know? All of this. The Earth, humanity, creation – the idea of free will. The angels.” Jack pauses. “For as much as Lucifer hates him now, they’d loved each other like a family once. That was why it hurt, why there was a war…”

He trails off. Belphegor nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “I remember.”

That’d been why Lucifer had rebelled in the first place. He’d loved his father too much, loved the creation he’d brought into being too much that he’d been horrified the second he’d seen the possibility of the humans destroying everything.

He remembers Lucifer leading him along the hallways, when he’d been young and new, and he’d looked up at the archangel as he’d laughed and shone bright and said, “We’re going to create something called a universe.”

“You do?” Jack asks.

“Yeah,” Belphegor says. “It’s still spotty, but…everything’s coming back.”

“What triggered it?”

“Everything feels like Heaven, right now,” Belphegor says. “It’s like – like I’ve been away for so long and then something just reminded me of it and then I realized, oh, I’d never forgotten what this felt like. The distance just made me think I forgot, and now that something’s reminded me of it, it’s all rushing back.”

Jack nods. “He grew angry, over time,” he says. “I don’t know why. I don’t think I can ask him. Maybe it’s just…just one of those things where sometimes you wake up and you don’t recognize yourself anymore. You’re angrier. You’re meaner. You’re…wrong.” He pauses. “And your younger self would mourn if they saw you.”

“Do you think he’d mourn how much he’s changed?”

“If he’s forced to,” Jack says. “If he has no choice to, I think he could.” He smiles. “Humans do it all the time. It’s painful, to realize you don’t know yourself anymore, but most of them find their way back, somehow.”

“Hm.” Belphegor snorts. “Where is the old man, anyway?”

“With Amara,” Jack says. “The Empty booted us out of their place and she told me she’d take care of him. She’s somewhere.” He looks up. “Halfway across the world, far away from here.”

“You can feel her, right?” Belphegor asks. “Because you two are the balance now?”

“Yes,” Jack says. “We’re…in harmony.”

“Good to know,” Belphegor says. “Good to know.”

Another pause comes over them. The fleshtrain in front of them crashes into another tree, knocking it down.

“So…Michael,” Belphegor starts.

“In the Empty,” Jack says. “He’s dead. He’s actually dead.”

“Can you…”

“I don’t know,” Jack says. “I know Cas has been brought back to life by Chuck before but, I don’t know if the Empty’s going to be keen on listening to me.” He winces. “It doesn’t like me very much.”

Belphegor glances to the school. The whole thing is slimy and covered with blood.

“Fuck. Poor Adam,” he says. “That poor kid.”

“We’ll find a way,” Jack says. “Maybe we won’t find it right now, but we’ll try. We’ll keep trying.”

Belphegor nods. Then he frowns as a thought comes to mind. He digs around his pockets at first, before realizing this isn’t his physical form.

He forces himself to switch back to his body, groggily opening his eyes. The Shedim crouches to let him fall back down on the ground gently.

Slowly, he starts riffling around his pockets. He knows he’s got it here somewhere. The Shedim he’d gone to hell with had reached out to the bingo card he’d had, and he’d felt power from him. It should be here.

He pulls a folded piece of cardboard out of his jacket’s pocket. The Shedim had teleported it back to his body after all.

“Crazy son of a bitch,” he says. “I owe you for that one.”

“You have your bingo card?” Jack asks.

“Yep.” He looks up to meet the kid’s eyes, a grin plastered on his face. Even if they have no guarantee that Jack can bring Michael back…

Well. Their Hail Mary pass hasn’t failed them yet.

-

He’d fallen asleep. He doesn’t even know when he’d fallen asleep, but he had, and his head hurts from all the crying he’s done.

Adam stares at the darkness around him. He hasn’t removed the pillow from his face yet. He doesn’t have the energy to. He’s too tired. Everything hurts, his head hurts, his throat is dry as fuck, and he thinks he’s about to get a headache.

This sucks.

The pillow above him moves. It’s being pulled away from him, and he tries to grab it back but the brightness of the lights overhead make him shield his eyes instead.

“Give that back,” he says, hoarsely. He needs some water, but he doesn’t want to stand.

A cool hand presses onto his forehead. Slowly, the oncoming headache he feels starts to ease, and the fatigue on his body ebbs away.

“Jack?”

“I look away for five seconds,” a voice that isn’t Jack’s says, a voice Adam’s gotten thousands of years to be familiar with. “And you make a mess of things.”

Adam’s eyes snap open, the brightness around him be damned. He turns his head, scrambling to sit up, but he’s gently pushed back down on the bed before he can fall.

Stupid fucking human eyes and their need to adjust to their surroundings first. It’s taking too fucking long for him to see the room clearly.

Michael’s looking at him fondly, a soft smile on his face.

“Hello, Adam,” he says.

“You…” Adam stares at him. His words aren’t working. At least, not the way he wants them to. “You – you – son of a bitch!”

He grabs the pillow in Michael’s other hand and thwacks him on the head with it.

“Piece of shit! I cried! I cried! You fucking asshole!”

To his credit, the angel just takes it, barely even budging as Adam keeps hitting him. He doesn’t say a word, for all the five minutes Adam spends swatting at him.

Finally, Adam gives him one last hit, before he drops the pillow on the bed, exhausted.

Michael patiently opens his eyes, having closed them when Adam was repeatedly attempting to kill him with the pillow.

“Don’t do that again,” Adam says. “Don’t – don’t do – don’t…”

His hands are shaking now, whatever burst of adrenaline he’d gotten from the shock of seeing Michael alive giving way to fear.

Michael stands. He’s barely got his arms around him before Adam’s clinging to him like a lifeline.

In a way, maybe he is.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I had to make sure everything would go well. I rather like seeing you alive.”

“Stop being such a dramatic asshole,” Adam says. “You’re a prick. You’re such a fucking prick. Oh my god.”

Michael snickers. Adam moves away to look up at him. There’s a joke he’s not getting here.

“You’ll figure it out later,” Michael says, ruffling his hair. “Get some rest. You look like you just crawled out of the grave.”

Adam grabs the pillow and hits him again.

-

It’s hours before they can get to the cemetery. Michael’s volunteered to go ahead of them to help Castiel and Rowena out of Hell, and quell whatever the situation down there is, in case Jack’s call to stand down hasn’t been as well-received as it had been topside. Sam and Dean still have to make sure all the civilians are alright and that as many people as possible are accounted for, while Belphegor and Jack are taking care of the mess outside.

When the gym is finally cleaned out and the civilians are assigned rooms to sleep in, so they don’t all have to crowded in a room freshly-bleached of blood (only because there’s still bodies upon bodies of angelic vessels littering the streets and have yet to be cleaned up, and the poor citizens of this town have already seen enough traumatizing shit), the others finally step outside to survey the damage.

A few trees have fallen over, and there’s blood smeared all over the outside of the school. Belphegor waves from where he’s sitting, and in the distance, a walking lump of human bodies all fused together steadily worms its way towards the cemetery.

“I’ve seen a lot of things in my lifetime,” Dean says, as he, Sam and Adam approach Belphegor and Jack. He points to the large shadow of Hell’s finest body horror in the distance. “But I don’t ever want to see that thing walk the earth again.”

Belphegor snorts. “Like you haven’t seen it back when you were downstairs.”

“And I’ve been trying to forget,” Dean says. “Get up. Let’s go.”

It’s a long, but silent walk to the cemetery. The ghosts around town are currently gathering up as many corpses as they can for a mass funeral later, and so that when the civilians come back out, they won’t have to see their town turned into the aftermath of a warzone. The Shedim who’s been carrying out Belphegor’s body is with them, kind enough to give the demon a piggyback ride again so he doesn’t collapse out of pure exhaustion and actually go comatose.

Eventually, as the sun rises in the horizon, orange light peeking past the spaces in the thick stormclouds, they arrive at the cemetery. It takes them a few more minutes to get to the large rift in the earth where all of this started.

They wait, silent. Everyone seems too tired to say anything. It’s expected. They’ve just fought for their lives. And they’ve won.

What do you say, hours after the end of the world?

A hand shoots out of the earth, gripping the edge of the rift. Sam kneels down to grab it and help the person up. It’s Rowena.

“Thank you, Samuel,” she says. She looks like she’s seen better days, tears on her sleeves and her hair askew, but she’s alive. She’s well and alive. “We have some guests, in case you haven’t been notified yet.”

“Guests?” Sam shares a look with Dean. Rowena doesn’t look too alarmed, so he and his brother only keep an eye on the rift as she walks past them.

Another hand holds onto the earth and pulls himself up. Dean’s right there to help Cas out, steadying him as soon as he’s on his feet.

“You alright?” he asks.

“I’m good,” Cas says. He turns, looking around immediately. “Jack?”

“I’m here,” Jack says, stepping forward, a hand out as if to comfort his father. “I’m okay.”

Castiel wordlessly pulls him in close, pressing a kiss to his temple. Jack laughs, wrapping his arms around his father.

“I’m glad,” Castiel says.

They both stay there, for a while, until eventually Castiel pulls back, taking a good look at Jack, inspecting his face for any cuts or bruises. He pauses as he meets the boy’s eyes, and his expression falls. He looks impossibly old, then, like all the sorrow in the world is on his shoulders.

“I did it,” Jack says. “I did it, Cas. I saved the world.”

“You did,” Castiel says, so much pride in his voice he sounds like he’s about to weep. But. “You did it, Jack.”

“Cas. Hey, Cas.” Jack puts a hand on his father’s shoulder, squeezing it in reassurance. “It’s okay. I know what sort of burden I’ve taken on myself.” He smiles. “It was worth it, dad. It was worth it.”

He laughs again. “Besides,” he says. “I’m not alone, aren’t I? I’ve got everyone here with me, for whatever’s going to happen.”

The look on Castiel’s face softens. He smiles too.

“I’m so proud of you,” he says, pulling Jack back into a hug, tears in his eyes. “I’m so proud of you, Jack.”

Jack smiles into the hug, burying his face in his father’s shoulder.

Adam looks at the scene fondly, even as he approaches the rift to help Michael out of the earth, three other people with him. Sam flinches as he sees them, but they all keep themselves at a distance from everyone else, not even saying a word.

“Welcome back, everyone,” Jack says, as he and his father finally step away from each other. He grins, as he looks to the others; to Michael, to Adam and to Belphegor. “Welcome home.”

“Yeah,” Adam says, squeezing Michael’s hand. Belphegor just closes his eyes and lifts his head, smiling, as if in relief that it’s all over.

“Welcome home.”