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“Stop it with the Stephen Hawking impression, Cas. I asked a simple question. Was that crap Zachariah showed me the future or not?” Dean demanded, pacing back and forth across Bobby’s living room, the wooden floor creaking under his every footstep. Bobby was standing by his desk, taking every moment to enjoy the recently restored use of his legs. Meanwhile, Sam had sunk his six-foot-three frame into one of the beat-to-hell armchairs, watching Dean and Cas argue with a pinched expression.
“Just because you ask for a simple answer doesn’t mean there is one,” Cas snapped back, before taking a deep breath. Only a few years ago, if you asked Sam what he thought angels were like, he wouldn’t have pictured Castiel. And once he met Cas, he wouldn’t have pictured him sighing in resignation – ever – but that was the power and influence of Dean Winchester, he guessed.
“The same mechanics that apply to traveling to the past don’t work the same for the future,” the angel explained again, with labored patience. “The past is not entirely unchangeable, but it is stubborn. It wants to stay the same. The future is a spectrum of possibilities that Zachariah could tap into, choosing one from the multitude. But by showing it to you, he irreversibly changed it. Maybe in small ways, maybe in large ways, but the future will be changed regardless.”
“Seems to me like we’re not changing enough if Sammy’s planning on saying ‘yes’ to the Devil anyway,” Dean snapped, shooting his brother a look that made Sam’s skin feel too tight.
“I’ve promised I won’t do it unless we’re all on board,” Sam reminded him, letting his gaze briefly flicker to Bobby and Cas too. After Ruby and the blood – he couldn’t rely on his own judgment anymore, especially when that judgment was telling him to try controlling Lucifer from the inside out. “But it’s the only plan we’ve got right now.” The only way I can begin to make up for the mess I’ve made, he didn’t bother to say out loud. Everyone already knew.
“Yeah, well, I don’t like it,” Dean muttered.
Obviously, Sam thought, trying to suppress an eye roll.
His brother crossed his arms over his chest. “Just because we’ve made it this far on a wing and a prayer doesn’t mean we should bet the whole house on it this time.”
Castiel tilted his head to the side like a bird. “You don’t have wings,” he said, looking Dean up and down almost accusingly. “And you rarely pray either.”
Sam didn’t know that Dean prayed at all.
But then again, Dean had been different since he came back from Hell. Not weaker, the way Sam had thought with Ruby’s manipulations warping his brain, but… different. And part of it had to do with Cas – this friendship of his that had sprung into being like lightning and seemed almost as intense.
“So, what’re you actually proposing here, Dean?” Bobby asked, greying eyebrows raised.
“I’m suggesting we watch the preview before we buy the movie,” Dean snarked.
Castiel’s look of confusion only deepened and for once, Sam was right there with him. “…You know, skip a few chapters in the book. Check out the dessert menu before ordering dinner. I mean, if Zachariah can show us where the future’s heading, why not Cas?”
It took Sam’s brain a second to process what his brother was saying, but by the time he did, he found he was already half-speaking-half-shouting. As was everyone else.
“Let’s start with the fact that I don’t have that kind of power,” Castiel began. “Especially since I’ve been cut off from Heaven—”
“And what would even be the point, Dean?” Sam couldn’t help but add. “If seeing the future changes the future, then we’ll end up investing a ton of resources for nothing.”
“From everything the angel said, time travel ain’t like a crystal ball. You’re picking one card from a full deck. What you see could be aces, but then it all gets reshuffled anyway,” pointed out Bobby.
“Except, we’re in good with the dealer,” Dean said, gesturing to Cas like he was a new car being given away as a gameshow prize. He wet his lips as he turned to the angel. “Forget your dead batteries for a moment. If you had the juice, you could pick our most likely future, right? The one that has the highest chances of coming true if we go with Sam’s nutso plan?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Cas answered with the reluctance of someone who had been talked into things by Dean Winchester before and was aware that it would likely happen again.
“And the reason Zachariah’s future is basically moot is because I reached out to Sam afterward? I made a big fuckin’ change. Right?”
“Yes…”
“So, if we map it all out, exactly what we’re planning on doing to stop Lucifer – and then drive on down that road to the most likely future only to find it’s paradise on frickin’ Earth – all we’d have to do is not get off-track, yeah?”
Cas’s shoulders slumped. “Again, theoretically, yes, but that’s introducing several variables already—”
Sam tuned the angel out to exchange a glance with Bobby. It was pretty obvious Dean didn’t want there to be flowers and rainbows in the future. He wanted it to be desolate – worse than what Zachariah had shown him – so that he could justify kicking Sam’s plan to the curb.
Even after everything Sam had done to him – to the world – Dean was still determined to prove he was worth saving – by default, if nothing else. And, well, it wasn’t like Sam was looking forward to becoming Lucifer’s sausage casing. It might even help him overpower Lucifer – if he knew his sacrifice would be worth something in the end.
“Is there any way to get you the kind of power we’d need?” he asked Cas when there seemed to be a pause in the conversation. “Outside Heaven, that is? Some magical artifact or…?” But he couldn’t even think of a way to finish that sentence. Whatever options were out there would probably take way too long to find when the countdown to the Apocalypse was already alarmingly loud.
Castiel looked at Dean hesitantly, which was not the response Sam had been expecting. A jolt of hope shot through him. “What, Cas? What is it?”
“Technically, I could harness the power of a human soul.”
The first image that came to Sam’s mind was of himself draining that poor nurse for her blood. “What? Like – absorb it? Or like a demon deal?”
“Neither,” Cas said with a scowl, as if it was a ridiculous question. (Their whole lives were a ridiculous question.) “I wouldn’t be taking someone’s soul away from them or diminishing it in any way. The human spirit – it’s a power source, like a nuclear reactor for fueling grace. I would just need to – touch it.”
“Touch it?” Dean questioned, looking far more interested than he should, given the context.
“Yes. Touch it,” Cas answered flatly. “I would stay here with whoever’s soul I was using for power. After a set amount of time, I would also harness the power of the soul to bring you and Sam back, but it likely wouldn’t be a pleasant experience. Souls don’t usually like to be… handled.”
For a while, Dean and Cas did that thing where it looked like they were having a whole conversation with their eyes while still making it clear they found the other mostly incomprehensible. Sam certainly didn’t understand them. He cleared his throat. “And it wouldn’t matter if that soul was already promised to a demon?” he asked hesitantly.
Everyone else in the room reworked his math at the same time.
“Oh, balls,” Bobby muttered, a scowl on his face as he reached over to grab a bottle of whiskey.
/////
It turned out that since Bobby’s soul was still in his body, it should work just fine – although “Crowley might complain about us gambling with his investment,” the angel muttered.
“Or maybe after that kiss, he’ll be jealous another supernatural entity is feeling Bobby up,” Dean responded with a grin.
“Hey, Dean?”
“Yeah, Sam.”
“You know Cas has felt up your soul, too, right?”
The middle finger that Dean threw his way was expected but Sam couldn’t help grinning at it, even while Bobby grumbled complaints into the ancient text he was flipping through.
In the end, the group decided to send Sam and Dean forward 15 years – a nice, clean number. (Plus, Dean said he’d already been on a road trip five years in the future and the food there sucked.)
“So, what?” Bobby asked, looking around the group warily. “The two of you are just gonna pop into my living room over a decade from now? Should I clear my schedule?”
“I’m sure your knitting club would be fine moving to Tuesdays,” Dean responded, hefting his bag of supplies onto his shoulder.
Castiel seemed unbothered by their banter. “I don’t know where you’ll be going exactly. You’re going to the future for answers, so I’m giving you the best chance of finding them by anchoring you to the Dean of that time. You’ll wind up wherever he is.”
Dean. A Dean in his 40s. Now that would be a sight to see.
“And what if I’m dead?” his brother argued.
Sam felt himself grimace, but figured it was a fair question. Cas didn’t seem willing to entertain it though. “Then, we’ll figure out a way to stop it,” he replied. “I’ll bring you back in 48 hours.”
And just like that, Cas was gone.
Not just Cas, of course. Bobby and Bobby’s house and the very ground under Sam’s feet disappeared, too.
Just because Sam had time-traveled once before didn’t make the process any less jarring or the shift any less sudden. It was as if the entire world was a radio station that had been angrily changed and Sam was left straining for the last few notes of the old song.
Beside him, Dean didn’t look much better – his mouth still open to argue with Cas one more time – his eyes whipping around when he realized that the angel wasn’t there. And then, the two of them were left to notice what was there instead.
The place that they’d ended up in was strange. An almost military-like corridor, only broken up by a series of numbered doors. Even the air smelled different – like metal and stone with a surprising undercurrent of lemon, like someone had gone on a cleaning spree recently. And they weren’t alone.
Standing at the end of the hallway was someone who looked very much like Sam’s brother – or at least would look like Dean if Dean had the beginnings of crow’s feet around his eyes and was prone to wearing robes.
“Are those… hot dogs?” Sam couldn’t help but ask, gesturing to the other Dean’s pajama pants and then he immediately wanted to hit himself on the head for it. Probably not the best way to talk to someone who’d just watched you materialize out of thin air.
That said, this older Dean wasn’t reacting like Sam would’ve expected him to. He wasn’t freaking out and pulling a gun on them. He wasn’t demanding answers. Instead, he stared at them like they were a pile of unwashed dishes with burnt cheese crusted over them. An annoying discovery, but not really that out of the ordinary. He ran his hand down his face – the glint of a metal band on his fourth finger visible.
“I’m not dealing with this without coffee,” Dean’s future self grumbled, turning his back on them and walking down the hall on socked feet.
Sam and Dean looked at each other – a silent What the hell? – followed by a million other questions they didn’t have the words for yet. But that didn’t stop them from scrambling after him, their footsteps echoing loudly against the concrete floors.
/////
Sam didn’t know how to feel – about anything – starting with the version of his brother bustling around the kitchen. He’d seen monsters wear Dean’s face a couple of times, but in some ways, that was easier to understand than grasping that this was Dean. The robe was the first thing that threw him off – an indulgence Dean could never have had, and one Sam hadn’t thought of him wanting, in their constantly nomadic life.
But there was something weird about his body language, too – a confidence that didn’t take the form of puffing his shoulders out in John Winchester’s leather jacket. He seemed almost relaxed with himself. Relaxed with them despite the strangeness of the situation.
Future Dean slid his phone out of his pocket as he prepped coffee, typing off a short message with barely a glance in their direction.
“Aren’t you going to check if we’re shifters? Ghouls?” Sam asked skeptically from where he sat at an actual kitchen table. There were salt and pepper shakers shaped like bees in the center of it, which seemed even more out of place for Dean than everything else. What kind of future was this exactly?
“This place is pretty well protected,” Future Dean said before stuffing his phone back in his robe. “Ain’t no way a ghoul or a shifter is getting in here.”
“And where is here exactly?” Past Dean questioned, looking brittlely calm, both hands fisted on top of his legs underneath the table.
“Home,” the other Dean said shortly, finally taking a seat across from them. “And seeing as it’s my house, I’m the one who gets to ask the questions. What year are you guys from?”
“What? You can’t guess?” Dean asked from beside him, challengingly.
Sam saw Future Dean’s eyes sweep over him and his brother for a moment – lingering on places like where Dean’s amulet had once rested against his shirt – but only for a moment. The older hunter waited.
“2009,” Sam answered rather than get caught up in a pointless stalemate. “We’ve got the rings – the horsemen’s rings – but we were just…”
“Trying to figure out how to use them to put the Devil on ice. I remember,” Future Dean responded.
“You remember – what? Coming here to the future like us? Did this happen for you, too?”
Future Dean snorted. “Oh, you’re definitely off-script for this one. And knowing our luck, this little trip of yours will wind up seriously fucking over the world. Again.” His tone was light, but Sam imagined the sting of accusation anyway.
“The world doesn’t look too fucked up to me,” he heard himself argue. After all, that was the thing they’d come to investigate – and as strange as this future was, it didn’t seem bad.
Living in an underground bunker could hint at something Apocalypse-like going on outside, but he couldn’t overlook that Dean was alive and well and apparently married or the fact that the fruits in the bowl on the counter had grocery stickers on them. It meant that their plan had worked. (It meant he was going to spend eternity being Lucifer’s person suit.)
Future Dean leaned back in his chair. He seemed settled, almost soft-looking. He might even be weapon-free and that was another sight Sam thought he’d never see. “Just ‘cause we mess it up doesn’t mean we leave it that way. We’ve even saved the world a few times when it wasn’t our fault. You know, when we had a spare Saturday.”
“We?” Sam found himself asking, eyes glancing one more time to the ring on Dean’s finger. Then, he froze.
Because he could sort of – maybe – imagine a world where Dean had seen enough weird shit that the presence of time travelers wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But he couldn’t imagine Dean acting the way the future version of him was acting if Sam had spent the last 15 years in a hole in the ground.
The next words came to him almost at a distance.
“Hey Bitch, steer clear of the kitchen. Keep everyone else away, too. Will explain later,” Past Dean read out-loud from a phone that was clearly not his before dropping it on the table and spinning it around so that his doppelganger could see the text message.
“Really? You picked my pockets?” Future Dean asked, exasperated.
“Like you wouldn’t do the same.”
Twin green eyes glared at each other, but Sam couldn’t even stop to think about how trippy that was. His mind spun, trying to process how his entire world view had changed – again – in the space of about a minute.
I’m alive, right? That’s what that text has to mean. But how can I…?
“Miracle! Whoa, slow down!” a voice called out, and at first Sam thought it was the answer to his question.
Except then, a large dog skittered into the room – name emblazoned on her collar – on the way to give Future Dean her attention. She stopped right before she reached the table, blinking in confusion at the two newcomers, who must have smelled very familiar to her.
Dean had a dog. The surprises just kept coming.
And yet, nothing could quite match the drop-tower-like jolt in his stomach from glancing in the direction the dog – Miracle, apparently – had come from and catching sight of his own reflection in jogging clothes, looking equally bewildered.
/////
“I told you to hang back from the kitchen. What? Did you really need your kelp-protein shake so damn bad?” Future Dean scolded his brother.
“I was on a run with Miracle,” Older Sam threw back in exasperation, stalking over to the refrigerator for a bottle of water. The dog had a bowl in the corner of the room and was drinking her own water enthusiastically. “So, excuse me if I didn’t stop partway through to check my messages.”
“What if the flying monkeys from Oz were attacking me or something?”
“I thought you said this place was protected,” Past Dean asked sarcastically.
His older counterpart waved his hand. “Things from Oz are different.”
And wait, what?
“If something was really wrong, you’d have called, not texted,” Future Sam insisted, taking a large swig of water.
“Well, clearly, something is wrong because Thing 1 and Thing 2 are here,” Future Dean countered, gesturing to the two of them, and at least this felt more like the reaction that Sam had been expecting when they first arrived.
Future Sam gave the two of them the same once-over Future Dean had, sending an unexpected ping through Sam’s spine. “2009?” he wagered.
“Yeah.”
His older self winced. “Not the best year for us. Although, 2010 wasn’t much better.”
“What the hell, Sam?” Future Dean shouted, the arms of his robe sliding down to his elbows as he threw his arms up. (And Sam sort of wanted to ask the same thing. What the hell happened? How the hell had he gotten from where he was to where this Future Sam wound up?) “Shouldn’t you be the one telling me how important it is to not step on a butterfly or some crap?”
“Dean, that’s us,” the other Sam said, shaking his head as if his brother was being ridiculous. It was a tone that should be familiar to Sam, but the voice sounded different compared to how he heard it in his head, even if he still recognized it from his phone’s answering machine message.
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“No, I mean that’s us,” Future Sam repeated, with the exasperated patience of a middle school principal. “You think they haven’t figured out a ton about the future already – just by being here? If there’s anything we should’ve learned by now, it’s that having only a little information is dangerous. Especially in our hands. If they’re here, we either give them enough context that they don’t completely undermine the future, or we have Jack wipe their memories.”
Sam knew which he would prefer – if only because this strange, warped reality was the most hope he’d had in months. But Dean – his Dean – didn’t seem thrilled about being talked about instead of to. “Who’s Jack?” he asked their future selves a little too sharply.
“That’s a long story,” Future Dean responded dismissively, not even bothering to fully look their way. “He’s got angel powers though, so he can help us sort out this mess.”
Past Dean’s jaw clenched tighter. “What about Cas?”
It was a good point, actually. What about Cas? Sam’s mind might not have gone there as quickly as Dean’s, but it was hard to imagine a day when they’d need angelic assistance and Castiel wasn’t their first call.
Future Dean and Sam traded glances.
“Cas ain’t exactly up for that kind of thing anymore,” the older Dean said self-consciously, and to Sam, that could only mean one thing.
Oh shit, he thought, feeling the quiet explosion going off inside the younger Dean despite the way his brother was trying to reign himself in. Dean’s emotions were often put on a delay, kept tamped down until they could fully go off later. But he was not in the right company to pretend indifference right now.
“What… what happened to him?” Sam asked on Dean’s behalf while his brother clenched his back teeth.
“Nothing,” Sam’s older self promised, and Sam sort of wanted to shake him a little bit. “Or at least nothing like you’re thinking. He’s fine; he’s just –”
“Human,” Future Dean spoke up softly, almost guiltily. “Cas is… human.”
Sam felt his shoulders unhunch like a sleeping bag being rolled out. Alright, that’s not so bad…
He looked to his version of Dean to share a look of relief, only to find the hardness in his brother’s jaw hadn’t softened. There was an accusation in his eyes as he stared at his doppelganger.
“It ain’t like that, okay?” Future Dean responded to the unspoken challenge, causing Sam to feel even more out of the loop. “Cas could’ve kept his wings or even gotten a promotion. He wanted to become human.”
“You really believe that?” Dean scoffed, taking Sam by surprise. He’d never really considered the idea of a human Cas before, and it was odd to realize Dean had – but even more strange to see his brother so against it.
If anything, Sam would’ve figured Dean would like having a friend that he could go drink-for-drink at a bar with. Who’d be forced to ride in the Impala and listen to hours of Zeppelin rather than disappearing and reappearing in the blink of an eye. Instead, he seemed determined to really lay into his future self. “Did you forget where I just came from? Cas ain’t cut out for the human shit, and if you’re saying he had a choice, I’m also gonna bet you had something to do with him making the wrong one.”
“Dean –” Sam started, ready to argue that Cas was his own person – one who’d managed to turn against everything he’d ever known to save humanity. There had to be something he found charming or endearing about simple human pleasures that inspired him to reenact The Little Mermaid.
But then another voice was beating him to the punch. “What Zachariah showed you wasn’t the real future – not even a potential reality. It was designed to pressure you into accepting Michael’s offer. However, if you need further reassurance, I’ve never broken my foot, I don’t take drugs recreationally, and I’m quite happy with my monogamous sex life.”
Dean’s head whipped around, his eyes bugging out of his head. And well… Sam couldn’t blame him.
Even though Cas’s voice still sounded as rough-worn and lightbulb-exploding as when Sam first met him, the former angel looked – well – very much like a former angel. For starters, the accountant get-up was gone. Instead, he was wearing his own set of pajamas, the worn-out collar of his dark blue shirt pulled slightly to one side to reveal more of his left shoulder. And his hair – it wasn’t the electrified kind of messy Sam was used to seeing him wear. It was bedhead.
The sight was so disconcerting that Sam was only briefly distracted by the pretty woman at Cas’s side, her medium-length dark hair hiding part of her face as she bent down to pet Miracle. (Was she Cas’s wife? Dean’s? he wondered with a thought of Jess and a pinch of jealousy.)
“Dude, was that a joke?” Young Dean asked Castiel, as if the concept was deeply, personally offensive to him. “Did you trip on your way outta Heaven and accidentally get the stick pulled out of your ass?”
At first, Sam thought Cas’s frown spoke of offense, but then he turned his gaze from younger to older Dean in confusion. “Didn’t you say asking people if they got hurt when they fell out of Heaven was a ‘pickup line?’” he asked with air quotes.
Both Deans’ mouths zipped up, while Future Sam snorted in amusement. “The sad thing is, it’s been 15 years, and you still haven’t gotten any smoother.”
He only managed to narrowly dodge the swat older Dean aimed for the back of his head.
/////
“So, should we be expecting any other house guests to arrive?” Past Dean asked, once Castiel and his – partner? – had taken their places at the table. Actually, Cas had commandeered Future Dean’s seat while the man in question had roped Future Sam into helping him in the kitchen. Together, they had enough hands to bring over the coffee pot, six mugs, and a jar of wildflower honey with some kind of home-crafted label on the glass.
“Not unless Jack and Claire finish their hunt early,” Future Dean said, thrusting a spoon in Cas’s direction, but it was stated almost like a question.
“They’ve gotten rid of the ghost in Des Plaines, but they were planning on staying another night in Chicago to attend some sort of concert. Jack, at least, should be back tomorrow,” Cas responded, drizzling a bit of honey into his coffee before he practically inhaled his first cup. Future Dean shook his head, refilling the former angel’s mug before he’d even poured his own – and suddenly, the bee salt-and-pepper shakers made a lot more sense.
Sam was trying to think. They’d mentioned Jack earlier, but – “Who’s Claire?”
“You should’ve met her already,” Castiel mentioned with furrowed eyebrows, as if disappointed in Sam for not remembering. “Jimmy Novak’s daughter?” An unfortunate flashback to a blond girl with grace-fueled eyes juxtaposed against the rush of demon blood dripping from his teeth surged to the forefront of Sam’s mind. Claire Novak wasn’t someone he’d thought they’d ever be seeing again, to be honest.
It was clear Young Dean was surprised, too. “You’re telling us that tweeny bopper became a hunter?”
“Yes,” Castiel replied simply, but with an undercurrent of sadness Sam thought he could relate to.
“And she’s hooking up with this – Jack?” Dean questioned, even more disbelievingly. “You’d think she’d have a problem with angels given you’re still riding her dad,” he pointed out before looking Cas up and down again. “Or are you? How does that work while you’re human?”
Cas’s face shifted through a dozen emotions in the space of half a minute, which was roughly six more emotions than Sam had ever seen him demonstrate before.
“First off, you’re a dick,” Future Dean told his past self, his hands resting tensely on either side of Cas’s chair back, like he was giving it a sports massage. “Second, this is Cas all the way through. Jimmy’s vessel got exploded, his soul went up to Heaven, and Chuck made Cas a new body that just looks like the old one because – well, he probably figured Cas liked the color.”
“Wait – what do you mean ‘Chuck’? Like the writer, Chuck?”
“Yeah, turns out that that two-bit hack was actually God,” Future Dean responded dryly.
He was joking, of course. He had to be.
“That’s part of why we know that Zachariah’s vision of the future was a farce,” Castiel added, looking at Young Dean softly. “There’s no way that the real Chuck would consent to being a stock keeper asking about toilet paper in any real version of the future.”
Dean’s mouth opened and closed, like a battery-powered, talking fish with the speakers broken, and Sam imagined he didn’t look much better. Why didn’t it sound like they were joking?
“Anyway, we retired his sorry ass,” Future Dean picked up the story, dismissively. “And now Jack and his aunt Amara kind of share the job. Which brings me to my third point. Jack’s a Nephilim. Half-human, half-angel – if you overlook the software upgrades – so he ain’t possessing anybody either. And he and Claire are pretty much Cas’s kids and Claire’s got a girlfriend, so you –” he pointed at his past self – “Stop getting your wires crossed.”
This was… too much for Sam to process – especially using a brain that was still background processing the other twenty insane things he’d learned since he came here. Chuck was God. Chuck was God. Except, apparently, he wasn’t any more because Cas’s kid was God and Team Free Will had staged a coup. Seriously, what the hell?
He’d always known his life wasn’t normal – but this seemed a few steps beyond the example John Winchester set of hunting ghosts and vamps.
“And, um, who are you?” Sam asked the brunette across from him somewhat desperately, hoping to get at least one easy answer to a burning question. He’d noticed Cas signing their conversation to her, so he made sure to look her in the eyes and enunciate clearly. “How do you fit into all this… insanity? You’re not also some kind of deity, are you?” Given the revelations of the last few minutes (and how pretty her smile was), he honestly wouldn’t be surprised.
“And you say my pickup lines are lame,” Future Dean shook his head, tapping the woman on the shoulder so she knew to look at him. “Eileen, are you sure you want to marry this guy? Not only is he embarrassingly dorky, but he doesn’t even know your name.”
Sam’s heart jumped up to his throat like it was a quarter bounced off a hotel bed.
His eyes snapped to his older self, who was too busy staring at the ceiling and asking for patience to notice the question he was being silently asked. “Stop trying to convince her to break up with me. It’s not gonna work,” Future Sam said exasperatedly, which meant –
Eileen was his girlfriend? No, his fiancé?
“What can I say?” She teased Future Dean, patting her flat stomach through her plaid shirt. “If I end up having a girl, I need someone on hand who knows how to braid long hair.”
Sam barely heard Dean’s bark of laughter over the sound of his world turning upside down.
/////
“I’m… gonna be a dad?” Sam asked in awe, once he managed to find his voice. He wanted to walk around the table to touch Eileen’s stomach, but also realized how creepy that would be, so he let his nails bite into his knees instead.
Eileen nodded. “Twins,” she added brightly.
“Really?” His voice shot up an octave.
A moment of silence passed in suspense.
“No, not really,” she eventually admitted with an airy sounding laugh. “Carrying one of your most-likely-giant children at a time is going to be more than enough for me. But it’s fun to see your reaction’s the same over a decade apart.”
“I can’t believe you even got the doctor in on it,” his older self mumbled under his breath, and Sam sent a twinge of sympathy his way.
Past Dean, however, just looked delighted. “Oh, she’s a keeper.”
Sam watched her sparkling eyes and couldn’t help but agree, even if he struggled to know how else to react. He came here expecting a world where he was nothing more than Lucifer’s Saran wrap. And now, he was being told that not only was he free and thriving, but he was going to have a kid.
“How is this possible?” he finally asked, trying not to sound as lost as he was.
“Well, you see, Sammy, when two people love each other very much – ”
Sam didn’t even bother to look as he lobbed a balled-up napkin at his brother’s head. It bounced off the top of his hair and skittered onto the floor, where Miracle pounced on it with glee.
“I meant, how am I even around to become a dad?” Sam interrupted testily. “A few hours ago, it looked like my only job prospect was being the Devil’s backseat driver. So, if you’re telling me there’s another way to avert the Apocalypse besides strapping myself in with Lucifer, I’m all ears.”
The four people from the future looked at each other uneasily.
“Not exactly….” Future Sam answered – but he was hesitant to give them anything more.
“Hey ‘Google Translate.’ What does ‘not exactly’ mean? You know, for those of us that don’t speak Van Helsing,” Dean spoke up. His brother liked to joke, but his face was deadly calm and serious as he waited for answers.
Again, it was Future Sam that seemed to be the committee-nominated choice to speak.
“You say ‘Yes’ to Lucifer,” he conceded reluctantly. “Just like Adam says ‘Yes’ to Michael. And it’s not pretty at first, but – when it matters – you’re able to regain enough control to drag all four of you down into the pit.”
An unconscious shudder traveled through Sam at that, making him feel slightly cold underneath all his layers. “And then?” he croaked, because that was clearly not the end of the story.
“A war in Heaven for one thing. But I guess the important bit is that Cas gets you out. Sorta. He tries.”
Future Sam seemed to realize he was about to be punched, so he rushed to explain. “The pit’s a bit more maximum security than where Dean was kept in Hell, and Cas had less help so… he escaped with your body, not your soul.”
For a second, Sam looked at himself – startled – trying to tell if there was anything obviously missing about him, but Future Sam only shook his head. “No, I – I got it back,” he promised, his reassuring gaze moving from Sam to Past Dean and back again. “Or Dean did, I guess. I don’t know if you’ve realized yet, but he has this uncanny ability to get all-powerful supernatural beings to break the rules for him instead of crushing him like a bug.” It was said with a huff, and – Yeah, that sounds like Dean.
“So, anyway, he convinced Death to… let your soul out. It came with some nasty consequences, because things like that always do. But…” Future Sam looked at him, and his smile was warm – almost paternal. “Things worked out. You pay your penance, I guess, for what you’ve done. And as the years pass, you eventually stop feeling so guilty for the mistakes you’ve made. Until one day, you wake up and realize that you haven’t had a demon blood craving in months and the life you always thought would be the end of the world – isn’t.”
“You like helping people, and yeah, sometimes, that involves going out and hunting – but you can also help in other ways. Teaching or coordinating like Bobby did. We have a community now – better communication with other hunters and supernaturals, better tools, better resources. The losses have gone way down. We could retire if we wanted to.”
“Overall, things feel pretty stable – you know?”
Sam did not know, and he figured that was part of his problem. How often had he heard the words, “Everything’s going to be okay”? Less than a dozen times, probably? Certainly less than most kids, given John Winchester’s distaste for platitudes or even softened truths.
Instead, those kinds of reassurances had come from his teachers, from Jess – crucial people in his life, for sure, but people whose words he’d never been able to fully trust because they didn’t know what was out there. They had no idea just how damned his family was.
Even the few times he'd tried to tell himself that he’d gotten out, that he was free now, didn’t mean much because a not-so-deep-down part of him knew that he was lying.
But this Sam – the one from the future – knew where he was coming from, had stood in his shoes before. This Sam, he could believe.
It still wasn’t as easy as he hoped it would be.
“You’re skipping a lot of letters between Point A and Point Z,” Past Dean laid out what Sam had been secretly thinking, eyeing all the older people in the room suspiciously.
Dean’s future self snorted, as if he’d expected nothing less than for them both to be cynical bastards. “Well, yeah, it’s the Spark Notes version,” he grumbled. “There’s a helluva lot standing between you and us. Lucifer came back and killed Sam at one point. I got turned into a demon and wound up as Michael’s monkey suit. Eileen’s come back from the dead a couple of times. All of us got nothing on Cas, of course. He kicks the bucket every few years. It’s like he’s trying to make an Olympic sport of throwing his life away for stupid, noble causes.”
Cas crossed his arms over his chest. “You, of all people, don’t have the right to –”
“What do you mean, me of all people?” Dean interrupted, looking down at the former angel incredulously. “Me of all people knows how shitty the shit end of the stick is when you make a deal. Me of all people has told you that crap ain’t worth it, which is why I haven’t made a deal since—"
“Since Chuck,” Cas cut in triumphantly, loud enough for Miracle to sit up to attention. “Several years after I negotiated my last deal. Or did you think Sam wasn’t going to tell me about your proposed trade –”
“Of course, he tattled,” Dean grumbled, completely ignoring the insulted looks both Sams sent his way. “That was hardly a deal, Cas. Chuck didn’t even take us up on it, and – what? – you’re gonna say that me and Sam are worth the whole frickin’ universe?”
“To me, yes. Always,” Cas insisted with unrepentant fierceness – and that seemed to stop Future Dean short. Sam, too. This was the same Castiel that had barely tolerated him when they met? The same Castiel that rarely talked to Sam now if it wasn’t about the Apocalypse or God or, well, Dean? Sam felt his forehead furrow.
Dean and Cas continued to stare at each other – gazes so intense that Sam wondered if switching the lights off would reveal a laser beam running from one to the other. And yet, by degrees, their eye contact turned slightly less incendiary.
“I’m not faulting you,” the former angel said softly into the private space the two of them had somehow created in the middle of the crowded kitchen. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t gamble your life away for others – and the circumstances were dire. I’m simply reminding you that you’re being hypocritical. The pot calling the kettle stainless steel.”
For a second, Sam wondered if Dean would let it go. But it was his brother, so, of course not. “It’s black, Cas,” Future Dean corrected quietly, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“What’s black?”
“The expression,” Dean huffed. “It’s ‘the pot calling the kettle black.’”
“But both our pot and our kettle are stainless steel,” Cas insisted, the stubborn look in his eyes coming back. “Even if that is the expression, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to update it to make it more accurate.”
“Because you sound like a weirdo, for one.”
“You tell me I’m weird regularly. If that wasn’t an incentive to change before, I don’t know why it would be now.” Castiel raised one challenging eyebrow as if daring Future Dean to continue arguing with him.
But the other man only shook his head, refilling Cas’s once-again-empty coffee mug and shoving it back in his direction. “Here,” he said, “you’ve made your point, so now you can shut up about it.” He turned back to the rest of the room, a You see what I have to put up with? expression lining his face.
Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Dean look so fond before.
Meanwhile, Cas’s remaining grumpiness dissolved as he obediently drank the coffee, and when he finished his sip with a sigh, he leaned back into his chair, almost giving the impression that he was leaning back into Dean, whose hand moved to Cas’s shoulder and lightly squeezed.
Sam had no idea what to make of this entire interaction. He’d heard Cas and Dean bicker over missions, of course – and then fall back into sync a minute later – but like everything about this future, their way of talking to each other had taken on a surprisingly domestic flavor.
“You two gripe like an old married couple,” Past Dean grumbled, taking the words right out of Sam’s mouth – and yet, the second they hit the air, Sam stilled.
“There’s a reason for that,” Future Sam muttered under his breath, causing Eileen to knock her elbow into his stomach. (His older self looked at least somewhat contrite, apologizing to his brother with the grimace on his face.) But young Sam barely paid the three of them any attention. His mind was suddenly rewinding some of the conversations he’d had recently – rearranging the puzzle pieces to form a completely new picture.
(The Castiel that they’d left behind in the past had given up everything for humanity, but this Cas had said he would give up everything – including humanity – for the Winchesters. So, either his motivations had changed a lot in the last 15 years, or they hadn’t changed at all.)
“Er, look,” Future Dean began uneasily, rubbing the back of his neck as he assessed the two people from the past. “I don’t know how long you’re planning on being here for, but we can’t get you back until at least tomorrow when Jack shows up. So, if you’re staying, there’s, uh, some things you’re gonna figure out.”
(“What about Cas?” Dean had asked almost immediately once they’d landed in this new time, even though there had been dozens of other questions sitting at the forefront of Sam’s thoughts.
And when Dean’s future self told him that Cas was human, he’d put the blame squarely on his own shoulders. Sam had thought Dean was just being Dean – holding himself accountable for things he really didn’t have any control over, but maybe, he was the one misjudging things.
What did Cas love so much about Earth that he jumped ship to save it? The food he didn’t eat? The people he rarely and awkwardly interacted with? The wonders of nature that he couldn’t appreciate while standing guard over them inside the Midwest’s most carpet-stained motel rooms?
Sam had always thought of angels as mysterious – containing hidden multitudes. That Cas had secret and unknowable reasons for the things that he did. But maybe, the answer had been staring him in the face all along. Or, well, staring at Dean’s face.)
“Me and Cas – ”
(“Me and Cas” – Sam had heard that a lot, too. Not at first, of course. Dean’s early answers about “the angel” had been short and clipped, and he and Sam had stopped talking altogether at several junctures since his brother had come back from Hell. But since the two of them had reunited after the Zachariah incident, Castiel’s name had come up more and more in Dean’s stories and plans. And now, whenever there was a problem – or even something resembling a minor inconvenience – Dean was calling Cas down to help. Sam had never put much thought into how often Dean used angel speed dial. But that definitely felt like an oversight now.)
“Uh, we… We’re kind of…” But despite the brave start, Future Dean cut himself off, grinding his back teeth in frustration.
“Dean, it’s alright,” Cas murmured to him in a low tone. It was obviously meant to be a reassurance – permission and understanding all at once – but it seemed to make Dean more agitated than anything.
(“I’m quite happy with my monogamous sex life,” Cas had declared unashamedly. And oh… oh. Sam wrinkled his own nose in memory. A little too much information there, Cas.)
“Me and Cas –” Dean repeated testily, looking into Cas’s blue eyes like he was arguing something important – something he needed the angel to understand – while Cas just waited, open and supportive.
“You know what? Screw it,” the older hunter declared, reaching out for Cas’s chin to tilt the other man’s face up.
And though Cas’s eyes grew briefly large with surprise at the suddenness of Dean’s actions, that didn’t stop them from sliding closed as soon as Dean’s lips pressed against his.
Yeah, Sam thought, as he caught sight of Dean’s wedding ring against Cas’s cheek – literally the first thing he clocked when he landed in this time – and Cas’s matching one gleaming against Dean’s shoulder. I’m an idiot.
/////
“Hey! I thought we made a rule about the kitchen,” Future Sam complained with a look on his face like he’d seen some unfortunate things.
Future Dean broke off the escalating kiss with his husband to flip his brother off, but Eileen only winked and said, “That just means that we get a freebie to use later,” which made Past Sam feel a lot of conflicting emotions, if he was being honest.
Of course, they faded into concern as the sound of a chair scraping against the floor drew everyone’s attention to where Past Dean had suddenly scrambled to his feet.
“I’m – gonna go hit the head,” he declared, gruffly – his eyes fixed to the kitchen wall rather than anyone’s face. And then he stalked away before anybody could tell him he didn’t know where that was.
Sam sighed – disappointed but unsurprised. Dean learned to pack his emotions away the same way he’d learned to shove clothes into duffel bags when John Winchester told them they had five minutes to get out of Dodge. Whatever didn’t fit should be left behind. At least he hadn’t started shouting.
Future Dean rubbed at his temples like he was thinking the same thing. “Someone’s gonna have to go after him before he ends up opening Pandora’s box or something.” He gave Cas a very obvious stare.
For a minute, they exchanged glances back and forth, until Sam had started to rise from his own seat – but Cas gestured for him to sit down. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised as he made strides toward the hallway.
“Are we sure that’s the best idea?” Sam couldn’t help but ask once the former angel had disappeared and Eileen and Future Sam had started up a rapidly signed conversation. “I mean, isn’t Cas one of the worst people to talk to him right now?”
Future Dean walked over to the stove and started fiddling with the settings – apparently preparing to make breakfast as if this was any normal morning. “Well, he sure as hell doesn’t want to see me right now.” Sam, at least, had to agree with him there. “You guys want bacon?”
“Dean, the baby,” Future Sam protested, his hands suddenly stilling, while Eileen nodded her head vigorously.
“Pregnant women can eat bacon s’long as it’s cooked properly,” Dean countered, pulling a pan down from the cooking rack above his head.
“At least use the turkey bacon.”
“Oh, the stuff I threw out yesterday?”
“What? Dean!”
“You don’t think he’s going to blow up at him?” Past Sam interrupted, trying to get the conversation back on track.
“I mean, probably. But it’s not like Cas hasn’t had to deal with him being an asshole before,” Dean stated casually before realizing that this younger version of his brother probably wasn’t going to let it go. He met his eyes steadily. “Look, if you or Sammy talk to him, you’ll try so hard to make sure he knows you’re okay with the whole guy thing that you’ll freak him out about the guy thing more.”
Sam opened his mouth to argue, realized exactly what he was going to say, and winced as he shut it again.
“He doesn’t know Eileen well enough to want to talk to her – and if he does, there’s half a chance he’ll try flirting. So – Cas.”
Sam felt like, of anyone, he should trust Dean’s judgment on this, but it still felt weird to do nothing.
“He likes Cas,” Dean added, perhaps unnecessarily at this point, turning around to rummage through the fridge for bacon and eggs. “He’s always liked Cas, even when he didn’t know him – or trust him – or want to know or trust him, for that matter. Doubt he’s gonna be able to stop now just because he watched himself play a little inside baseball for the opposite team.”
It wasn’t exactly an invitation, but that was the closest to an opening that Sam was going to get. “And when you say he’s always liked Cas, you mean…?” He raised both eyebrows, questioningly.
Dean hit his head ducking out of the fridge, causing the light inside to flicker in the process. “I thought you said you came from 2009, not middle school, Samantha,” he griped.
Sam put his hands up in supplication. “I’m happy for you – and Cas. You’ve got to know that. I’m just – trying to figure out what I missed. Before this little trip… I was sort of under the impression you were still hung up on Lisa.”
Eileen’s eyes lit up at the gossip, as she turned to her Sam, accusingly. “I thought you said the two of them were obnoxiously obvious from Day One. That it was a wonder you didn’t go prematurely grey watching them divorce half a dozen times before they were ever officially together.”
Future Dean snorted. “Dramatic much?”
“They were. I did,” Future Sam half-shouted, looking at his past self as if he was the one who was nuts. “There’s no way you haven’t clocked it, or – or – maybe you guys came from an alternate universe after all – because it was impossible to ignore. Half of their conversations are staring contests from, like, 12 inches apart. Cas literally used to stand over Dean in the middle of the night to watch him sleep and, sure, Dean would complain about it, but he’d let him. Do you know how many supernatural beings told them – to their faces – that they’re obsessed with each other? And yet, it took them over a decade and a good chunk of my sanity to actually do something about it.”
And, okay, now that it was all being listed out like that, Sam felt a little embarrassed. It’s not like he hadn’t noticed anything. The staring, in particular, was hard to ignore. But it wasn’t like he’d met that many angels besides Cas. He’d thought some of them might just be like that.
Future Sam was breathing heavily in a way he hadn’t been when he’d just come back from his run, while Eileen ran a hand up and down his arm soothingly.
“Cut the kid some slack,” Dean mumbled, his words directed down at the pan he was using to cook – the heat from the stove providing a good cover for his red cheeks. “You remember shit that way ‘cause you got fed up with us by the end.”
“You made him a mixtape,” Sam fumed.
“Alright, alright. Stop getting your panties in a twist. You forget that you and Cas didn’t spend all that much time together in the beginning. And most of the yappy comments from Cas’s extended family didn’t come ‘til later. You did set me up with Lisa, after all. And were somehow surprised when Cas said I was his favorite.”
“You mean that the two of you had the ‘more profound bond.’”
“You joke, but you seemed really hurt by that at the time.”
“I was soulless, Dean. I literally couldn’t feel hurt about anything.”
“Could’ve fooled me. You were certainly bitching up a storm about it.”
“Boys!” Eileen managed to somehow cut through the rapidly devolving situation, for which Sam was grateful. “One at a time.”
“Look at your baby daddy. I was the one who was asked a question,” Future Dean pointed out before he turned to the time traveler.
“Cas claims he was gone on me from the beginning,” he said with an implied eye roll. “Love at first sight. I’m not sure that’s as sweet as he thinks it is, considering his first sight of me was when I was torturing souls on the racks of Hell – but the dude’s always had a few screws loose, what can I say? It’s not like he figured out what those warm-and-tingly feelings were about until years later anyway.”
“As for me, well – the guy thing wasn’t…” He cleared his throat. “Let’s say, I probably would have had an easier time accepting that part if I’d met Cas when I was younger – but, uh, by my mid-twenties, I’d pretty much blocked all that stuff out.”
“Still, Cas made an impression. And he kept on making one. Sometimes, it was because he’d pop out of thin air to threaten me. Sometimes, it was ‘cause he’d just get it – me, I guess. He’d have no damn idea how to roll down a car window, and popsicles confused the heck out of him, but he’d look at me and – I could feel it. That he knew everything I thought about myself, and yet, he still wanted to keep looking.”
He shrugged, laying strips of bacon down on the pan with a satisfying hiss, like this wasn’t the most Dean had voluntarily talked about his feelings in – ever. “I didn’t let myself think about it.”
“I ended up with Lisa for about a year, and she was great. You know – patient. She let me pretend to be normal, for a while, when you were gone, and I knew I was never gonna be normal again. But to keep it up, I had to constantly be that guy. That guy with the dream girl and the kid and the mortgage.”
“That guy couldn’t even think about you, or talk to Bobby, or call Cas because all that stuff was too real. It mattered too much.” And if his voice sounded a little tight at that, no one was going to mention it.
“She and Ben deserved better – someone who could give them 100% – and my modes are either 60% or 200%. Nothing in the middle. I’d say it wasn’t going to work out from the minute I started hunting again, but – realistically – we were always kind of doomed.”
Sam – Sam didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded and let Dean continue cooking.
The truth was, he hadn’t really pictured what Dean’s and Lisa’s day-to-day life would look like when he’d imagined nudging them together. He just hoped it would be generically happy, the way he pictured the world would be like if Mary Winchester hadn’t died, or Jess hadn’t shared her fate. That’s what normal life was in his head. Safe. Blissful. Separated from all the things that went bump in the night.
But looking at Dean now – humming along to some song Sam hadn’t heard but which sounded suspiciously like pop music – and watching Future Sam excitedly talk to Eileen about how they could baby-proof the bunker – he couldn’t imagine either of them happier in some suburban fantasy. And that, in itself, was a revelation he was going to need to think about for a while.
/////
Cas rejoined them about 30 minutes later – right when Dean was finishing off his second breakfast sandwich. It had been surprisingly delicious, given Sam’s shuddering memories of the vending machine Thanksgiving dinner concoctions Dean had made when they were growing up. Even Future Sam kept his grumbling about the fat content to a minimum.
“Don’t worry, I kept a couple warm for you,” Future Dean told the other man, bringing over a plate from the counter. And while Sam knew that it was far from the strangest thing to happen since he got there, it definitely was a sight to see the former angel squishing down his egg-bacon-and-croissant so it could fit inside his mouth.
The few times Sam had seen Cas consume anything, it had been alcohol, and even then, he gave more of the impression of a car filling itself up on gas than someone actually tasting what they were consuming.
It was even more bizarre to see Cas almost choke on his food after Dean asked, “You didn’t make out with him, did you?”
“Of course not –”
“I’d probably give you a hall pass for a smooch, but anything more than that and I’d want to be invited in on the action.”
Future Sam looked disgusted. “We just ate. Jerk,” he complained, pushing his plate away, while Cas just frowned at his husband.
“You think you’re being amusing,” the former angel scolded, his tone of voice clearly implying, You’re wrong. “But you know as well as I do, he’s not in a mental place to be propositioned right now and that I care much more about your well-being and trust than ‘getting some.’”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a romantic,” Dean teased, nudging a crumb off Cas’s bottom lip in what likely counted as his version of an apology. “But you can’t just come in here and not tell us what happened, or I will start imagining shit. How likely is it I’m gonna have to send up a hunter Amber Alert on Mini Me?”
Cas gave his question some genuine thought.
“I’m fairly confident he won’t try to leave the confines of the bunker,” he decided. “I showed him where the gun range is – and the medieval weapons room – and the Dean Cave. Plus, I hinted where you keep the good bourbon, so if he wants to get blackout drunk, he knows he has convenient options.” He took another savagely large bite of his sandwich, completely ignoring Dean’s noise of protest. “I also set him up in a room – number 9. You’re in 11, next door.” Cas directed this last part at Sam.
We go from living in motels to running one, he thought, wryly, but still made sure to give a sincere, “Thanks, Cas.”
“He’s still… upset, of course,” Cas continued, looking down at his plate, troubled. “But I reminded him that if he really finds the idea of a future relationship with me repellant, there’s no reason he has to pursue one.”
“You – what? Cas!” Dean’s outraged shout echoed through the kitchen, causing ripples to form in his glass of orange juice. “What the hell did you do that for?”
Cas’s eyebrows sat low on his forehead. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? And I thought it would bring him comfort. Everything he knew about his life prior to this morning remains true. He can continue to maintain his same understanding of himself. And who he becomes tomorrow stays his choice.”
“You’ve always wanted free will, Dean,” Cas commented, acting surprised that he would have to explain this to his husband.
“No. You know what I want?” Dean insisted. “I want my dumbass former self not to completely wreck my life. And I want you to stop getting in your head about what you can and cannot have when it comes to me because you’re always wrong.” He turned towards the hallway. “I’m gonna go talk to him.”
“Dean, no,” Cas demanded, tugging the hunter back by the sleeve of his robe.
“Dean, yes,” he responded irritably.
“I really think he needs to be left alone right now – to process.”
“Well, you lost your vote when you told him that we weren’t worth fighting for.”
Cas took in a sharp breath. It came out again through his flared nostrils. “You’re irritated right now,” he observed through a tight jaw. “I understand you feel I’ve misspoken. But you’re not allowed to accuse me of – that.” He let his hand fall away from Dean’s arm, as if to prove his point.
“I simply reminded him that he has options. Dean,” he repeated, looking especially serious, even for him. “You always have options. That’s part of what’s compelling about being in a long-term relationship. This isn’t – a demon deal you can’t get out of. It’s about choosing to remain together, every day.”
“…You know I would never want you to be with me out of obligation, and now, if that Dean finds himself giving his Castiel a chance, I’m reasonably confident it won’t be because he thinks he has to.”
Dean was already shaking his head. “He’ll pull some stupid shit. You know he will. He’ll push you away because he doesn’t know what he wants yet, and in the process, not only is he gonna screw this up—” He gestured between the two of them. “But probably let the world crash and burn. Or did you forget that you were kind of crucial to stopping one or five Apocalypses?”
“Dean, I don’t know if you’re aware of this fact, but you have pushed me away several times over the years,” Cas stated with such a completely straight face that it circled back to sarcastic. “It was never far enough that I didn’t come back.”
“That’s because you’re an even bigger idiot than he is,” Dean grumbled, but he rolled out his shoulders some too, releasing some of the tension that had built there.
“Sometimes, yes,” Cas agreed easily. “I’ve made many wrong choices in my life. Given a chance to start over, I’d probably wind up making many more well-intentioned, yet misguided, decisions. But the one thing I trust myself to do is choose you.”
“Nothing that Dean can do will change the way that his Castiel feels about him. Just like nothing will stop the dust and gas of the universe from drawing together under their own gravity to make stars. Those feelings exist – have existed and will exist – whether you return my affections or not.”
Dean reached out to grab the nape of Cas’s neck and pretended to shake him slightly. “I ‘return those affections.’ You know I return those affections. I returned them, like, twice yesterday.”
Cas hummed, while Sam tried to stop his mouth from twisting.
“That’s why I’m pissed. If your little pep talk means I lose you again…”
“I don’t think it will,” Castiel murmured, his voice low and steady as he put his hands into the pockets of Dean’s robe like they were his own personal mittens, now that they seemed to be on the verge of reconciliation. “I, perhaps, wouldn’t have always been so confident. There was a time – when I first got back from the Empty – when I wondered if you didn’t actually feel that way about me. If you reciprocated out of – guilt – or a desire to indulge me.”
“Again – what the hell, Cas?”
“It wasn’t for very long,” Cas defended himself. “You are often intentionally deceptive about your emotions, but your heart ends up shining through, no matter what type of façade you put on to try to disguise it. My point is – that just as I have faith in myself to love you regardless of the circumstances, I have a surprising amount of faith in you, too.”
Dean looked like he wanted to bang his head into a wall. “Gee, thanks, honeybunch.”
“I think you will love me,” Cas said assuredly, steamrolling over him. “Because you are full of love to give. You’ve survived so much – Hell, Purgatory, the Mark of Cain, the death of family members and friends – with that capacity for love intact. I have yet to find its limit. And if you were able to – care for me and forgive me given some of the things I’ve done in this life, I find it hard to imagine you would reject me just for the knowledge that you loved me in another one.”
It was a hell of a speech.
And just from glancing at Dean, Sam knew that he agreed.
His eyes were bright – and he was looking at Cas like he was something much more than a slightly sleep-deprived former angel in pajamas.
“You realize that you can’t keep on turning in the same homework, right?” he murmured, kicking Cas’s leg lightly with his own foot. “Just ‘cause you change up the wording a little doesn’t mean I don’t remember that you’ve already used most of that ‘You’re made of love’ stuff for your last State of the Union address.”
“I will tell you the same thing over and over again until you believe me,” Cas replied earnestly. And then his head went from tilting to one side to the other. “Plus, I’ve seen you watch 21 seasons of a medical drama that keeps returning to the same love triangle from Season 1. I don’t think you actually mind repetition.”
Sam wasn’t even going to try to understand what they were talking about – either of them.
Back in 2009, there had been a moment when he’d watched the two of them silently communicate, and he’d marveled at how much they didn’t make sense to him. He was starting to realize, now, that they weren’t supposed to.
That some of what they had between them was just for them to know and treasure and argue about. That the Dean Winchester he grew up with and knew better than anyone wasn’t the only one to exist. And he wasn’t just talking about the fact that there were literally multiple of them right now.
Somewhere within Past Dean, there was this other facet, one that maybe only Castiel – former angel of the Lord – could bring out of him. And Sam had never even known it existed.
It made Sam lonely, in a way. It also made him grateful.
Cas was right when he said Dean cared a lot about almost everyone he encountered, but for a long time, Sam had been Dean’s main priority, and both he and his brother were painfully aware of that. It added a layer of guilt to some of the decisions Sam knew he had to make for himself – like going to Stanford, like trying to make an honest living.
But, maybe with Cas in their lives – with Eileen, too, eventually – they could find a balance. A way for them to both be all parts of themselves.
It was only a slightly terrifying thought.
/////
Given everything that had happened in such a short period of time, it was no wonder that the rest of the morning and the afternoon passed in a somewhat surreal blur. He and Eileen talked about her upbringing in Ireland. He and Cas somehow got into a heated back-and-forth of translating jokes into Latin to see which version was funnier. Meanwhile, Future Dean lectured him on which sports teams to bet on in the future.
“Does that mean you’re going to let us keep our memories?” Sam asked hopefully, glancing between the other members of the group.
“It means we’re gonna have a talk about it without little ears listening in. And if we decide to let you remember, you better thank us by getting rich.”
Sam was already planning on writing down everything he learned. The only problem was the way his future self was eyeing him knowingly. It was going to be hard to get anything past someone who knew all your tricks.
“Want to take a tour?” Eileen offered when there was a lull in the conversation.
“Sure,” he agreed, eager to stretch his legs, but also curious to finally explore.
“You wanna come?” Future Sam asked Dean and Cas, but Dean waved him away. Cas’s answer seemed to take the form of reaching down to scratch Miracle behind the ears. Future Sam shrugged, placing his hand on the small of Eileen’s back as he guided the rest of them towards the door.
The hallway leading out from the kitchen connected to what could only be described as a war room – the focal point being a ten-person table inlaid with a map and lit from below.
“How’d we wind up with this place, anyway?” Sam asked in awe, running his hands over the cool-to-the-touch surface of the table. He’d naively thought it was going to be a simple question.
“Ah.”
Future Sam managed to put a lot behind that one syllable before running fingers through his hair. “Well, you know how you kind of time traveled here…?”
And to think, when most people said you took after your family members, they meant that you had the same eyes. Not that you shared a habit of wandering into the wrong year.
Sam shook his head as his future self finished up one of the craziest stories he had ever heard.
“Wow,” he mouthed the word as much as said it. The truth was he didn’t really know what else to say. “Guess that explains why you guys didn’t look that surprised to see us.” Then, because he still hadn’t learned his lesson, he followed it up with, “But there can’t have been too many more blasts from the past, right?”
Future Sam’s wince was, once again, an answer in and of itself.
By the time Past Sam had been shown around approximately a quarter of the bunker and had the whole Crowley-resurrected-the-soul-of-Samuel-Campbell-but-Sam-shot-him, Mary-Winchester-was-a-gift-from-God’s-sister-but-died-again, and Dean-made-a-wish-on-a-pearl-for-John situations explained to him, he was ready for a break.
“I… think I’m going to head to my room for a bit,” he muttered, struggling to remember exactly which direction his room was in the maze of corridors, given the headache he felt coming on.
“Sure, of course,” Future Sam responded quickly, sounding a little too happy to be rid of him, but Sam supposed it had been an exhausting day for him as well. “Just take two lefts and you should be back at the dorms. Don’t go past the dungeons, okay?”
It was a testament to how desensitized he was by this point that he only nodded.
To be fair, he appreciated that they left the rules at that – clearly trusting him not to go rifling through mysterious boxes just for the heck of it.
Of course, no sooner had that thought come into his head that he caught sight of a door opening up in front of him and young Dean looking furtively out.
He stopped dead when he spotted Sam and, yep, just from a glance at the door, Sam could tell that the room he was emerging from was not Room 9.
“What are you doing?” Sam hissed to his brother, who fully slid out of the room and shut the door behind him.
“Scoping out the future. Wasn’t that the point of this whole mission to Mars?”
“No, I was learning about the future. You know, by asking the people with the answers. You were – apparently – going on a panty raid.”
He expected Dean to have some snappy comeback, but to his surprise, the tops of his cheeks turned red.
“You didn’t actually look through anyone’s underwear drawers, did you?” Sam needed to check.
“Embarrassed by your Fruit of the Loom, Sammy?” And that, at least, sounded more like the Dean Sam knew and was fondly exasperated by. “Seriously, it’s nothing. Let’s go find some grub,” Dean muttered. Given that his brother had missed breakfast, Sam was almost inclined to believe the request to join him in the kitchen was genuine. But.
“I’m actually really tired,” he said, massaging a crick in his neck for good measure. “I was just gonna take a nap.”
“You realize you’re literally the youngest one here. Right, Grandpa?”
“It’s not like I’ve been getting the best sleep lately,” he countered testily. And it was the truth. He’d been too worried about Lucifer coming to visit him in his dreams that he’d stayed up to the point of exhaustion, staring at the ceiling. Still, he knew – and Dean knew – exactly what game they were playing here.
Dean scowled the same way he did when he lost rock-paper-scissors. “Fine. I guess you need all the beauty sleep you can get. But we’re going out tonight for burgers.”
It made sense, given the revelations of the day, that Dean didn’t want to stare into his literal future over dinner, so Sam agreed. Better Dean brought him along than snuck out on his own. But just because he’d help Dean get out of dinner didn’t mean he was letting him off the hook entirely.
He raised both eyebrows, waiting for Dean to be on his way, while staying stubbornly in place in front of the mystery door. And Dean – realizing that he was only delaying the inevitable – finally turned on his heel.
The sound of his boot-heavy footsteps only emphasized his stiff posture. He was no doubt aware that Sam was watching his retreating back. But Dean also wasn’t going to give in to the urge to look over his shoulder.
Still, Sam paused an extra few minutes after Dean turned the corner before re-eyeing the room his brother had been investigating.
There was another thing Winchesters had in common. Breaking and entering.
Not that there was a lock to pick in this case. He simply pushed the door open.
Sam wasn’t surprised to find that this was Future Dean’s and Cas’s room. Nor was he completely shocked by the contents of it – but maybe his brother was.
While the room’s mostly concrete walls were reminiscent of the rest of the bunker, it was obvious that attempts had been made to make the space homey. The unmade bed wore a deep green duvet and pillows that looked plush to the point of being slightly overstuffed. A leather chair like the ones in the library was positioned in the corner, a very familiar trench coat draped over it.
Meanwhile, the top of the dresser was slightly cluttered with hydrogen peroxide, meat tenderizer (also known as Dean and Sam’s favorite blood stain remover recipe), and a small terrarium, featuring a plant that looked more like a cut-off piece of a pine tree than anything else.
Two of Dean’s favorite guns and an angel blade were on a rack on the sole brick wall, looking almost artistic hovering over a small, plug-in fireplace. But what drew his eye was the fake wooden frame on the nightstand, showing a slideshow of different pictures.
There was one of Dean and Sam leaning up against the Impala. Another of Dean in the kitchen with someone Sam could only assume was Jack, rolling balls of cookie dough. Cas and Jack in matching Taylor Swift t-shirts with the corner of – Dean’s? – thumb in frame. A young blonde girl – Claire? – and Dean, locked in a fierce air hockey battle.
And, of course, there were pictures of Dean and Cas. Dean and Cas in what appeared to be a cowboy bar, with a mechanical bull in the background. Dean and Cas at the Grand Canyon. Dean and Cas caught asleep together in the room referred to as the Dean Cave.
Dean and Cas mid-kiss at their wedding – with Eileen, apparently, officiating. Sam as Dean’s best man. Jack as Cas’s. Painfully obvious proof of the full and happy life they’d built together against all odds.
Sam wondered how many seconds his brother had stared down at these photos before painstakingly returning the picture frame to its exact spot on the nightstand so that it wouldn’t look like it had been disturbed.
Quite a while, he’d guess.
/////
Dean and Sam were, in fact, let out to go get burgers – and even told to try for a place about an hour out because people in Lebanon knew them by name and would ask them questions if they ate in town. They were not allowed to take the Impala, but Dean must have really not wanted to spend time around his future self because he gave up on that argument after only 20 minutes, accepting the keys to another of the bunker’s vintage cars with a grumble.
That didn’t stop him from fondling the curves of the Ford they ended up taking, but frankly, nothing was ever gonna stop Dean from calling good-looking cars “she” and then making inappropriate eyes at them.
For the first few minutes after they pulled out onto the open road – heading towards some “pretty damn awesome cherry pie,” according to Future Dean – everything felt almost normal. But then, the weight of the unsaid things between them started to make itself felt – the silence loud even though it was covered up by the sounds of Bon Jovi.
Sam had been thinking a lot about this moment over the last couple of hours. About what to say to a Dean that desperately didn’t want to talk – or at least, not about this. What magic words would let him know that – whatever he was feeling now – it was okay, and that it didn’t change anything between them?
He wiped his hands along his jeans. “You realize this means that God is literally your father-in-law,” was somehow what he’d settled on.
Dean’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. He kept looking straight ahead at where their headlights cast long reverse-shadows against the cracked-to-hell asphalt, while Sam waited, trying to keep his body language casual.
Eventually, Dean let out a breath that seemed to rattle in his lungs on the way out. “That lying, pervy asshole is gonna be lucky if I call him Chuck, let alone anything else with a capital letter,” he grumbled.
It was an acknowledgment and a deflection all at once and it was – frankly – more than Sam had expected he’d get.
“I’m with you there,” he agreed, turning to look out the window at the passing cornfields. He could see Dean in the glass’s reflection, his shoulders lowering slightly the further along they got without Sam following up with anything more.
But Sam didn’t feel the need to push. He’d let Dean know that he was there for him if he needed to talk, and the rest was for Dean to come to terms with – in his own time.
/////
It was weird how much the next morning reminded Sam of a nature documentary. Dean was the easily spooked exotic animal, assessing the danger of the situation, and everyone else was a wildlife expert, trying hard not to send him back to his den – mostly by acting as painfully normal as possible.
Dean scowled and grunted at Future Sam’s friendly “hello,” only nudged Sam to make him move over a seat, and didn’t even look in the direction of where his future self was – once again – making breakfast. He only managed an actual greeting for Eileen, who smiled back and asked if he slept okay.
The most fascinating part, of course, was watching him watch Cas.
This morning, the former angel was frowning in concentration over a crossword puzzle, and while it was clear that Dean’s plan had been to ignore him, too, his eyes kept on getting caught on him whenever they attempted to sweep past.
“Glasses,” Future Dean said – seemingly unprompted – when he dropped the first pot of strong-smelling coffee of the day and a bright purple glasses case onto the table. He nudged Cas, as if to make sure he heard him. “Come on, you’re squinting.”
“Oh,” Cas replied – before slipping a pair of squarish dark frames from their pouch and onto his face. “Yes, that’s better. Thank you,” he murmured, without bothering to look up.
His husband, however, fixed Past Dean with a pointed stare.
Sam turned in time to see his brother’s scowl and red cheeks before he hid his expression completely.
To be fair, though, Future Dean was mostly on good behavior. He didn’t try to rile his younger self up. And he and Cas didn’t do anything to shove their relationship into Dean’s face. However, their rings remained proudly on their fingers, occasionally catching the light as they passed down serving dishes of breakfast potatoes, steak with peppers, and scrambled eggs. Sam found himself drawn to watching their hands, himself, and then he figured out it was because of how strange it was to see them touch.
It shouldn’t be. They weren’t doing anything that friends wouldn’t do at an overcrowded kitchen table where broad shoulders tended to brush. But it was strange for Dean and Cas. And it was only because of this that Sam realized how careful the two of them were around each other in 2009.
For sure, if one of them were hurt, the other one would step in to help. And Sam had it on good authority (Cas’s) that some punches had been exchanged, too. But in less extreme moments, there was always a couple of inches between them – like the pillow barrier a young Sam and Dean had erected across the middle of their motel bed. Except, in Dean’s and Cas’s case, they were also the ones choosing to stand decidedly inside the other’s personal bubble.
In 2024, the pillow wall was gone between them, and it was clear young Dean noticed.
And yet, he didn’t bolt at the first opportunity the way that Sam would have expected him to.
Instead, he let himself get drawn into an argument about old comics and then – when he found out a good Deadpool movie had been made – he (fake) reluctantly agreed to watch it – if only to check they weren’t “lying out of their asses.”
There were only two small sofas in the Dean Cave, though, so Sam and Dean had to bring in extra seats. Sam thought Dean was smart to set his where he wouldn’t accidentally catch an eyeful of either couple canoodling, but to be fair, PDA seemed limited to Future Sam throwing a casual arm over Eileen’s shoulder.
Sooner than Sam would have guessed, the end credits were rolling – and young Dean seemed to like what he saw enough that he didn’t think twice before turning to Cas. “You’re into this movie?” he asked incredulously, jerking his thumb back at the wide screen. “Woulda thought a lot of it would go over your head.”
“I had a significant portion of pop culture downloaded into my brain by the Metatron,” Cas explained. Sort of.
“And the innuendoes were fairly straightforward,” he added, almost as an aside. “In fact, Dean and I once—”
“Nope, no,” Future Dean interrupted, slapping a hand over Cas’s mouth. “Not a good choice for story time, Cas.”
Sam, at least, spared himself the experience of checking young Dean’s expression at that comment.
In the last 15 years, Cas had apparently developed the social grace to look a little bit bashful. “Right. Apologies,” he responded when he’d been cleared to speak again.
Future Sam then began to loudly talk about the sequel, and by the time they’d watched that, too, Sam was impressed that they’d all managed to make it through the morning mostly unscathed.
Of course, when lunch turned into a Cards Against Humanity game, Cas got the chance to prove he knew what an innuendo was by somehow kicking all their asses.
Sam was, to be honest, horrified. But he could see it now – what Future Dean meant about how he’d always liked Cas, even when he didn’t want to, because here it was, happening with the younger version of his brother in real time.
Dean’s own laugh would catch him by surprise, only to be hastily swallowed back down. His chair started migrating closer to Cas’s, even as he purposefully leaned back away from him. His occasional, snappy, “Fuck you,” turned into a blush. No wonder Future Sam had been so close to losing his patience with these two by the end.
And if Sam found himself staring a little too enamored at Eileen’s quick comebacks, nimble fingers, and windchime laughter, at least his brother wasn’t in much of a position to tease him about it. In a life of very few mercies, that felt like a not-insignificant one.
Even when they all parted ways for the afternoon, giving Sam some blissful alone time in the library, the wave of general good feelings carried with him. Which is, perhaps, why Past Dean’s sudden shout of “—the hell!” from the nearby hallway caught him so off-guard.
He skittered, slightly, on the too-clean floor – his gun out in front of him – only to see Dean in a towel, clearly just out of the shower, glaring daggers at a 20-something-year-old wearing a Burger King paper crown on his head.
Sam rubbed his eyes, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating, but when he opened them again – the situation in front of him was still the same.
“Hi, Dean, Sam,” the newcomer said cheerfully, one hand raised in greeting.
Sam put his gun down – though those blue eyes didn’t look like they’d felt especially threatened by it in the first place.
In fact, both the color and the look of complete disinterest in a weapon being pointed at him, seemed familiar – even before Sam’s mind flashed back to the photo album he’d spied on the other day. He felt his shoulders slump, as the adrenaline left his body.
“I’m guessing you must be Jack.”
/////
“So, what you’re saying is – this is your fault,” Future Dean huffed as he presented Jack with a mug of hot cocoa.
The kid accepted it with a sheepish smile, bobbing his marshmallows up and down with a spoon. “Possibly? Before I left for my hunt with Claire, Amara was telling me we needed to get to work creating alternate universes to replace the ones that Chuck destroyed.”
“Jack—” Cas started in what was, undoubtedly, his parent voice. But Jack interrupted.
“I was going to wait—" he insisted, with large, beseeching eyes. “I was. But then, I kept on thinking about the first Apocalypse and all the things you said went wrong back then. I didn’t intend to create a new branch, but maybe… I did it by accident? Like how I woke you up from the Empty the first time?”
Future Dean crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah, okay. At this rate, I’m just gonna expect Pokémon to start spawning in the bunker. Since you keep conjuring stuff you think about too long.”
Jack did a poor job of hiding his obvious excitement at that idea, and to Sam’s left, Past Dean looked a painful combination of impressed, reluctantly charmed, and like he was fighting a migraine. “So, what does all this mean for us?” he ended up saying, his voice a little gruff. “You’re just planning on erasing us like Doodle-Bob?”
“No, no, of course not,” Jack exclaimed with unpracticed earnestness. “The whole idea of free will is that our choices make people who they are. Your souls might be very similar right now—” he gestured from one Sam and Dean to the other— “but by coming here, you made a choice they didn’t make. You’re now separate people. And you deserve to live out your own lives.”
Jack turned to Cas, soaking up the proud approval there like a dandelion in the sun.
“We get to keep our memories?” Sam questioned, trying to keep his hope in check. “Since it won’t affect this timeline?”
Jack nodded, his lopsided Burger King crown tilting further at the motion.
Sam felt the ground quiver under him with the force of his own staggering relief, and he was glad he was already sitting. “In that case, how many of those books in the library do you think we could scan before tomorrow?" he asked the table, trying to seem more composed than he was.
He was surprised when his older self reached into his pocket, pulling out a USB drive. “Standard issue we give to all hunters nowadays. Contains scans of most of the books in the library, searchable by keyword. You can also sort data by date of publication, language, and how many times other hunters have bookmarked the same passage. Clicking through their bookmarks, you can see additional notes they might have contributed based on their own experiences.”
Holy shit.
“It’s like Bobby’s version of Busty Asian Beauties,” Past Dean whistled.
“Where’d you even come up with the idea to do all this?” Sam asked in wonder.
Future Sam hesitated. “Um. You know Becky?”
Sam had to wrack his brain for a little bit, and even when he stumbled on an answer, he was pretty sure it had to be a wrong one. “Crazy Becky? Writes incestuous fanfiction Becky?”
“Uh, well, she’s sort of a friend now?” Sam admitted, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “And this is apparently how they sort fics on a site called AO3? If it makes you feel better, she and most of her friends switched to writing Destiel fics a long time ago.”
“Destiel,” Sam saw Dean silently mouth the word out of the corner of his eye, looking mostly numb.
“Hey, don’t knock a good tentacle fic ‘til you try it,” Future Dean scolded.
And yup, Dean and Sam definitely needed to leave this time period. Get back to where things made at least a little sense.
“Even though that drive contains a pretty comprehensive database on monsters, you probably still want a crash course in our personal history before you go, right?” Future Sam cut in, and thank God – or someone – that he grew into somebody that Sam could actually look in the eye right now.
“Yeah. That would be great.”
And thus began one of the most bizarre and – frankly – depressing history classes of Sam’s life.
/////
By the time the next morning dawned, Sam and everyone else in the bunker was operating on much less than four hours of sleep, but it was all worth it for the contents of the leather-bound notebook in his hands. It contained names, dates, places, even pictures – but, more than that, this book represented lives they could save, nightmares that they didn’t have to go through, blood they didn’t have to bleed.
It was like all the luck that managed to pass them by for decades – since before they were even born – was being delivered to their doorstep in one sudden windfall – and Sam had never been so terrified of waking up in his entire life.
Still, there was nothing to do but to hope that all of this wasn’t a dream and fight like hell for the life he’d been told he could have if he avoided the countless Saw traps.
“Are you ready to head home?” Jack asked Sam, looking as energetic as ever. He’d insisted on taking Dean and Sam back to 2009 personally and they’d agreed, if only to save Bobby’s soul from extra groping.
Sam did a quick headcount of the war room. “I am. But – uh – let me go find Dean.” Any Dean. They were both missing, and as disorienting as this whole situation had been, he didn’t want to leave without telling the older version of his brother “Goodbye.”
As he perhaps could have guessed, though, their simultaneous absence wasn’t a coincidence. Halfway down the hallway to the kitchen, he heard the murmur of two voices, sounding like echoes of each other.
“—the bad cop?”
“This ain’t an interrogation. It’s me, trying to let you copy 15 years of my homework.”
“Sammy’s already got everything written down and color coded. I can copy off his homework if I need to.”
“He’s got a cheat sheet for the Apocalypse. And I’m glad, okay? That you don’t have to go through that crap. But I also know that all that fighting and losing we had to do taught me a few things, and without it, I’m worried you aren’t ever gonna learn ‘em.”
Sam tensed from where he was listening in, anticipating where this conversation was heading and worried it wasn’t going to be pretty.
“Let me guess – the power of gay love?” Past Dean said, as sarcastically as possible – but it was also the first time he’d referenced the whole thing with Cas head on, as far as Sam was aware.
“You’re bisexual, asshole. And you know that deep down, whether you admit it or not.” Sam could practically see Future Dean’s scowl. “But we’re not talking about Cas’s dick, okay? I’m talking about Cas. The person. Or the Chrysler-building-sized angel. The guy who has literally gone to Hell and back for you.”
“I think the name rings a bell, yeah,” Past Dean quipped.
“Well, then wait ‘til it stops ringing because I need you to listen to this next part. Cas is – the problem with him is he’s not gonna stop. That dumbass will go through Hell ten times over for you – and a few other afterlives besides. There’s probably nothing you can do to convince him not to. Heck, if you asked him to change vessels because you’re feeling all squirmy inside, he’d do that, too. But you’re not gonna, you hear me? You’re gonna respect that he’s probably already down bad for you – and not take advantage of him.”
“I’m not saying you plan to,” Future Dean added before his younger self could protest. “You’re a better person than you give yourself credit for – and Hell didn’t change that, okay? Your heart’s in the right place or whatever. But when you’re confused or pissed, sometimes the people closest to you get the kickback, and you need to cut that shit out.”
“I’m not telling you to love him,” he continued softer, so that Sam almost couldn’t hear him. “Because Cas doesn’t want me to and because you’re a stubborn son of a bitch who never saw a good thing without a million strings attached. But you’re not going to treat him like a jackass, you understand?”
“It doesn’t matter if Zachariah’s little vision quest wasn’t the real future – no other version of us is going to treat Cas like he’s collateral damage. Or like he’s just a tool to be brought out and used up when we’re in a bind.”
“You don’t want to put a ring on it? Fine. But you better appreciate the heck out of him – you better not let your issues become his insecurities – because I’m telling you right now, he’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to you – and if you’re too freaked out to do something about it – then you do your best to make it your loss, not his. Capiche?”
This might be the first time in history that someone had given themselves the shovel talk – at least out loud – but it was as touching as it was strange. In fact, Sam had been so absorbed in their conversation that the sudden touch to his arm startled him more than he’d like to admit.
He whirled around, only to find Eileen with a smirk on her face. “Eavesdropping?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he admitted, his face twisting up in embarrassment, but what was the point in lying? “Seems kind of intense, though. So, if there’s something you want from the kitchen, I’d maybe—”
“Actually, I came looking for you,” she declared, uncapping a Sharpie she’d had in her pocket.
“Um. Okay,” he responded, not even getting a chance to ask the obvious question before she was reaching for his arm. Her breath tickled him as she pressed the tip of the marker to his skin and when Sam got his arm back, he saw a long string of numbers scrawled just below his elbow in slightly rounded writing.
“My number. Or at least my number 15 years ago. In case you need someone for backup,” she explained, and he could feel warmth glowing inside him to match his cheeks.
“And Past You won’t think it’s weird that some guy you don’t know is texting you out of the blue?” Sam wondered, already putting effort into memorizing the number just in case his arm got chopped off.
“Well, I guess you’ll have to be very charming then,” she teased, her dark eyes dancing along with the flickering bunker lights.
With motivation like that, he was certainly going to try. “Want to give me a few tips? On how to not sound like an idiot in front of you?” he asked, hopefully.
“I don’t think so. I like you all flustered and ramble-y,” she promised, before stepping back, her mere presence prompting him to follow her back out onto the main room. “Now, let’s get you home. The sooner you return to the past, the sooner you can start working towards the future, right?”
He thought about his notebook again and what it represented – more years with Bobby, a way to help friends they hadn’t even made yet – and now the number on his arm – the chance to still get to meet a child with his mother’s bright, lively eyes.
“That’s definitely a good way to think of it.”
/////
“So, I suppose this is it,” Future Sam announced half an hour later when everyone had finally regrouped.
As ridiculous as it was, an unmistakable air of nostalgia lingered over the room, like they were a family parting after Thanksgiving dinner. After all, it wasn’t every day that Dean and Sam encountered kindred souls – and these guys were about as kindred as they could get.
“I guess so,” Sam responded, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. “It’s been –” Fun wasn’t the right word, but it wasn’t the wrong one either. “A little insane, honestly. But a good kind of insane for once.”
“I’d say we should try it again sometime, but –”
“You don’t want to be in the same room as this,” Past Dean interrupted his future self to point at his own face. “And remember how young and pretty you used to be.”
“More like I can’t stand hearing how high your voice is. I don’t know why it hasn’t dropped yet, but you might want to see a doctor about that.”
“I’m pretty sure you only started talking like that because you’re in some sort of weird competition with Cas—” Sam’s future self spoke up. Which meant it was definitely time to go – before they could escalate into full-on bickering.
“Bye, Dean, Sam,” Sam interrupted the two of them loudly before turning to the rest of the assembled party. “Cas, Eileen – it was nice seeing you.”
“You as well, Sam,” Cas answered, while Eileen just winked at him. And then he turned to let his brother say his goodbyes.
“Yeah, uh.” His brother cleared his throat. “Take care, I guess. Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.”
“But your timeline is already diverged. You’ll both likely do many things that the others won’t,” Castiel protested – but then, he caught the quirk of a smile on Future Dean’s face – and just sighed fondly. “Safe travels,” he concluded to both of them.
That seemed to be the cue Jack had been waiting for to place one hand on each of the two brothers’ shoulders. “I’ll be back in time for dinner,” he told his family.
“You better. I’m only making lasagna ‘cause of you,” Older Dean lied.
And then, the future melted away, like a sidewalk chalk drawing being erased by a hose.
It was gentler than Sam was used to time travel being – almost like fading in to sleep and then waking up softly again.
Except, normally, he didn’t wake up from his dreams to a fiery-looking Castiel wielding an angel blade or Bobby cocking a gun at him.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” Dean moved quicker than Sam did, throwing his arms up in front of Jack. “It’s fine. He’s a friend.” And completely impervious to bullets, Sam thought, but Dean’s instincts were to protect first, think through it later.
“He feels – powerful. More powerful than an archangel,” Castiel observed, still looking wary, and it was so strange – seeing him like this again.
Whatever he was reading from Jack might not be discernable to human senses, but angel Cas had this aura – like an invisible shield around him that made him seem difficult to approach. Sam had somehow forgotten that in the last 48 hours. Dean simply didn’t care. “He is,” he agreed with Cas, lowering the angel’s arm for him. “But he isn’t gonna hurt us either.”
“I won’t,” Jack agreed, earnestly. “I just wanted to see you – what you were like before.”
Castiel’s eyebrows furrowed, his angel blade finally disappearing up his coat sleeve. “You’re saying we’re familiar – in the future?”
“We’re close where I come from,” Jack clarified. “But it’s not your future anymore. My existence is one of a kind – like Chuck’s was and Amara’s is – so I won’t be born in this world. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be watching over you.”
He turned to Sam and Dean. “You should be free of Chuck’s influence now. I’ve also taken care of Michael and Lucifer. They’re in the pit. While you could free them with the horseman rings, I would advise against it.”
Sam felt his mouth open in shock. “Just like that?” Even with all the information they’d gotten from the future, he figured he would still have to go through possibly years of torture to stop the Apocalypse and yet, Jack was saying he took care of it with a passing thought?
Jack’s smile, usually so young, looked suddenly older than his years. “You deserve a life, Sam. As much of a life as I can give you. I won’t directly interfere again. That’s what free will is all about. But hopefully, with this fresh start, I won’t have to.”
Dean didn’t look as emotional as Sam felt at that, but Sam could still see it in his eyes. “You’re alright, kid,” he muttered, clapping Jack on the shoulder.
The Nephilim beamed. “I was raised by good people. And a healthy dose of Scooby Doo.”
“Damn right, you were.”
And then, between one blink and the next, Jack was gone – vanished as if he’d never been there in the first place – and it was only the notebook in Sam’s hand that provided any proof that the last few days had really happened.
“Explain,” Castiel demanded, after a few seconds had passed in silence and Sam had sunk into the couch – his adrenaline crash severe.
“What the angel said,” Bobby groused.
And Sam was about to answer them – he was – even though the very concept of finding a place to begin felt overwhelming – when Dean spoke up first.
“What? Just straight into it? Not even a ‘Hello, Dean? How was your trip?’” he challenged the two of them.
“Why would we bother with pleasantries? It ain’t like you even brought us back a t-shirt,” Bobby grumbled.
But Dean – Dean’s eyes were on Cas's in a way that they had been stalwartly avoiding Future Cas’s ever since the bomb was dropped – and Cas, unaware of all that occurred, did what Cas did. He looked back.
“Hello, Dean,” he said – his tone slightly exasperated but distinctly affectionate.
Dean let out a breath Sam didn’t even know he’d been holding, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “…Heya, Cas,” he replied.
And even if the angel couldn’t hear the sound of a decision in it, Sam did.
He opened up his notebook and checked the first thing off his list.