Miss part one?  It’s here https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/10/31/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-1-dean-does-dead/
Sam began drawing the summoning circle.  Castiel waited nearby, silent and staring.  Sam had the distinct impression that Cas didn’t approve of this latest resurrection.  He warned Sam that it was theoretically possible to bring someone back too many times and that Dean simply had to be approaching that threshold, if not over it already.  But Sam blew him off because this wasn’t Pet Sematery, ok, it wasn’t a freaking Stephen King book they were living.  Dean had been fine all the other times he’d been brought back and he’d be fine this time too.  So Castiel had no choice but to go along with it.  

As he continued the circle, Sam ran through dozens of scenarios in his mind.  He had no idea what he could possibly offer the crossroads demon in exchange for his brother’s life this time, I mean seriously what more did they even have to offer up at this point, but he figured he’d play it by ear.  Demons always wanted something, they were predictable that way.

But before he could start the ritual, Crowley appeared, in full British tizz.  He kicked the circle away.  “You shouldn’t do that, Sam, all willy-nilly like that.  There’s no guarantee it will be me who shows up.”  Sam didn’t respond, just waited expectantly for Crowley to suggest his deal.  Because there would be a deal.  Sam just knew in his gut that somehow, some way, Crowley could fix everything.  “I’m a busy man, you know, can’t just drop everything whenever you Winchesters do something stupid!  Because that would be a full time job!”  Crowley would know what to do.  He always had an ace in his sleeve, a terrible bargain to offer.  Something.  He always did.  Sam didn’t totally get the thing between Dean and Crowley, the friendship if you could really call it that, but he knew that for some bizarre and inexplicable reason, Crowley would move mountains for Dean’s sake.  But Crowley had no mountains to move.  He turned his wrath on Castiel instead.  “You were really going to let him go through with this…this…insanity?”

“I didn’t know what else to do.  What else could I do?”

“You are the sorriest excuse for an angel I’ve ever known.  Did they neuter you somewhere along the way, or were you always this pitiful?”  Castiel blinked slowly in response.  Castiel was not what one would call comfy with verbal sparring.  Castiel was not exactly glib.

Sam intervened.  “It’s my choice if I want to make a deal, Crowley.  Now let’s do it.”

“I can’t help you.  I’ve been trying, already.  He’s…he’s gone!”

“What do you mean, he’s gone?”

“I can’t sense his presence.  He’s been…erased.  I felt him at first, a displaced soul, and I could have worked with that.  But then he just vanished!  Poof, totally off my radar!”

Castiel seemed puzzled by what Crowley was saying.    “A soul cannot…vanish?”  Sam agreed.  The whole concept was ridiculous, against the laws of God and nature.  Souls went places, they left a trail of bread crumbs behind them that you could follow to find them.

“I know that, Castiel, don’t you think I know that?  A soul cannot vanish, but a soul HAS vanished.  He’s gone, I’m telling you!  Gone!  Not heaven, not Hell, not in Purgatory, not in the Veil.  Dean Winchester is gone.  And I mean gone!”

Sam shook his head, trying to piece it together.  “His body disappeared too.  Where could he be?”

“I…don’t know.  This is outside of my experience.”  Crowley looked a little upset about it all.  The Dean and Crowley bromance thing got so weird sometimes.

But then Sam felt a rush of power and a moment of nothingness.  Before he could even panic he found himself in a desert somewhere in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a sea of sagebrush as far as the eye could see.  Castiel and Crowley had been transported as well and they looked around, disoriented.  Dean and some strange pink-haired woman stood in front of them and they seemed to know each other already.  The woman was confused.  “Why’d you do that for, Dean?”

“Because I can.”  Dean and the woman had a good laugh about that for some reason.  Sam realized that Dean was glowing, emitting some sort of really spectacular light, and in the next heartbeat realized he desperately needed to be on his knees before that light with his face practically planted in the ground.  The weird part was how much he liked it, how badly he wanted to be down on the ground, how it felt so right.  “Heh.  Eat dirt, Sammy!”  Sam heard a nearby thud as Castiel apparently joined him in his prostrate pose.  The woman did, too.  Then nothing.  Sam recovered his self-control enough to turn his head just enough to glance Crowley’s direction.  The demon struggled, tried to fight it, grunted and writhed, but eventually even he too had to assume the position.  “Oh for…” Dean seemed temporarily struck by the weirdness of the situation.  “God’s sake?”  

The woman with Dean replied, her voice muffled because she was speaking into the ground.  She was eating dirt too, apparently and Sam wondered if she liked it as much as he did.  It seemed really wrong to enjoy doing something you didn’t even want to be doing, that you were doing against your own will.  “It gets annoying, doesn’t it. Almost immediately.  Only Lucifer liked it.  That really should have been a red flag.”  Whoever she was, she knew Lucifer, and while Sam was certainly thrilled to see Dean seemingly alive and well, him showing up with someone who had historical dealings with Lucifer seemed like an entirely bad sign.   Dean shut off the glow – boop Sam felt it when it happened – and he found he was able to retake his feet.  “Eventually you’ll learn how to shut it off and keep it off until you want it.”

Castiel and Crowley had climbed to their feet as well.  Crowley was brushing dust off his black suit and muttering to himself about dry cleaning bills.  The woman, whoever she was, remained on her knees, although sitting upright, perching on her heels like a low chair.  Sam sent a glare at the kneeling stranger.  He sensed that she was trouble, just a vibe he was getting, that her appearance was a very bad omen like one single small black cloud on a distant horizon.  “What’s going on, Dean?  Who is that?”

Dean sent a querying look to the woman, as if he really didn’t know how to introduce her.  As if maybe he didn’t even know her name.   “I don’t really have a name, I guess.  There was never anyone to give me one.  I was alone from the very beginning.  What the humans call me, that isn’t really a real name, is it?  It’s like a title.  And it’s hard to spell.”

Crowley made a sound of horrified protest.  He apparently knew who, whoever this was, was.   Sam was relieved to see that Cas still seemed confused, that he wasn’t the only one left clueless.  Crowley made as if to transport himself away to whereever it was Crowley went when he wasn’t around, but found that he was stuck right where he was, which he liked even less than dust all over his black suit.  Sam realized with a start that Crowley could have easily just demon-dry-cleaned his suit and if he couldn’t do that and couldn’t disapparate, whoever this stranger was had enough power to shut down Crowley.  In other words, a LOT.  Dean scrubbed his eyebrow with the back of his thumb and looked sheepish.  “Are you asking me?”  

“I am.  If you don’t mind.”

“Seems like a huge responsibility, naming someone forever, and you’re making me do it in a split second in front of a crowd?”

“You brought us here, not me.  I would have stayed in the meadow a little longer.  I need a name.”

“What if you hate it?”

“I won’t.”

“What if they laugh?”

The woman eyed Sam, Castiel, and Crowley.  “Don’t laugh, guys.”  Who was this person?  A person who didn’t have a name?  But had a title?  What did that even mean?

“I promise nothing.”  Crowley.   The woman laughed.

“This is, uh…”   Dean had a moment of frantic mental fumbling.  Then he grinned and Sam figured he’d stumbled his way onto a name that he liked.  “Jovi.”  Gawd.   Seriously.  GAWD.  SERIOUSLY!

The newly named Jovi laughed and extended her arms in a “ta-da” gesture.   She liked it.  She liked the idiotic terrible classic rock name that Dean had pulled out of his ass.  Sam decided that he wanted answers, right away.  “No. Dean.  Seriously.  Who IS that?”

“Sammy, I’m uh,  I’ve been.  Huh.  It’s too weird to say out loud.  But it looks like I’m moving on here.  Getting kicked upstairs.  Way upstairs.  She, uh, changed me into something…not human.”

“There’s gotta be a way.”  Sam was undeterred.  “There’s always been a way.”

“Only because she let there be.”  Dean glanced at the woman and Sam was dismayed to realize that his brother didn’t look unhappy.  “There’s no going back, is there?”  

The person/creature Dean was calling Jovi shook her head.  “I don’t know how to change you back, Dean.  It would probably kill you to try it, and I would have to go away again, to rest.  I’ve been gone too long as it is.”

Dean tried to elaborate for Sam’s benefit.  “I don’t think I belong in this world, anymore.”

“Not in your traditional capacity, anyway.”   As Jovi spoke, Castiel began to stare at her with awe.  He had figured it out too, who it was they were dealing with, and what exactly had happened to Dean.  Sam wracked his brain trying to put it all together.  

Sam stepped forward and gestured with his head.  He needed to talk to Dean privately.  Dean agreed and they stepped a few paces away.  “Can’t we stop her?  A spell, or?”

“Not this time.”  

“You sound like you don’t exactly want to.”

“Not this time.  Sammy, listen.  Not. this. Time.”

Castiel overheard and chimed in.  “Not this time.”

Crowley concurred.  “Not this time. Bloody hell.  Two of them, now.  And one of them’s HIM. Gah!”  Crowley often made that noise.  Must be British or something.  

“What do you all mean?  Not this time?”

Dean shook his head.  “Just figure it out, already, dude, everyone else has.”

“Sorry, I’m dense.  It…it…Dean, it seems like you’re giving up on me here.”

“Look, here’s the thing.  I’m exhausted, Sam.”   

“Then…then go to Tahiti for a couple weeks!”

“And if I did, I’m sure while I was there, there would be some Tahitian demon running amok and I’d have to spend the whole trip learning to say rock salt in Tahiti-talk.”  Dean paused and Sam detected a vibe, angry, frustrated, burned out; Sam could relate to the feeling, they’d both gone through it a hundred times before.  It went away eventually if you ignored it hard enough, it always went away.  Eventually.  “Sammy, listen, I don’t want to do this any more!”

“You live to do this!”  It was temporary, that was the thing.  If you didn’t quit, if you didn’t let yourself wallow in it, the feeling would go away, it would get better.  It always did.

“Yeah, but it’s not….much of a life, Sam.  Is it?  Do I look happy to you?  I’m turning into one of those old hunters that gets people killed.  Just a drunk, bitter, burned out shell of a person with a sawed off shotgun in one hand and a flask in the other.  And I don’t want to get you killed.”

“Dean, you won’t.  We’ve come this far together, don’t be giving up on me now.”

“It’s not giving up, it’s moving on.”

Sam stepped away, throwing up an arm in frustration.  Dean couldn’t quit.  It was ridiculous.  It was a totally insane concept for Dean to quit.  How many times had they tried to quit between the two of them and it never worked, maybe for a week or a month, but quitting never stuck.  He turned away, trying to think of the magic words to undo whatever it was that was happening, only to wind up face to face with the Jovi person…no, being.  It was obviously some kind of being, not a person.  Sam needed to remember that and not think of it as a person.  She smiled brightly.  “Sam Winchester, my faithful servant, I won’t leave you here alone.  Your brother can be replaced.”  Her faithful servant?  I think NOT.

“You can’t…replace, my brother!”

“I know that, I’m not stupid.  But I won’t leave you alone, either.  I think you would make…a lot of trouble…if I did that.”  She blinked and stared off into space for a moment.  “At first I thought a woman, but I’m not sure that would be enough.  You’re kind of an odd duck?”  Whatever it was, being, person, whatever, Jovi turned to Crowley.  “Crowley, you seem to be about two pages ahead in the script here, why don’t you go and do what you already know I’m going to tell you to do.  I’ve given you the ability.”

Crowley looked down, surprised to find he was holding an unusually large key in his hand.  It had a rainbow of ribbons attached to the handle.  Whatever lock it opened, Crowley was less than pleased by the task he had been assigned.  “Because they will kill me if I do?”

Jovi smiled and for some reason Sam suddenly felt exceedingly nervous.  “I am the resurrection and the life, Crowley.  If they kill you, I’ll just bring you back.  It’ll only hurt for a minute.”

Crowley sucked air in through his teeth.  “Bollocks.”  He prepared to leave with a bitter expression, then hesitated with a curious look on his florid face.  

Jovi was slightly perturbed that Crowley had not left to do her bidding.  “Question?”

Crowley gestured Dean’s direction.  “Did you make me like him?  Care about him?”

“No, Crowley, I did not make you like him.”  Crowley responded to this news with annoyance; he would have much rather have been forced to like Dean against his own will.  “But I did make you, and Castiel, protect him.  At all costs to yourself.  Kind of explains a lot, now doesn’t it?   Sometimes deus ex machina really is deus ex machina.”  Crowley and Castiel reacted to this news with different flavors of surprise.  Sam, who felt suddenly like he might have connected the dots, sent a confused, questioning look first to Castiel, who replied with an awed expression, then to Dean, who confirmed the truth with an embarrassed shrug.  Sam felt stunned as the pieces fell into place.   It was…she was….but then that meant that Dean was…and that simply could not be.  “But you liked him all on your own.  I don’t make beings like each other, Crowley.  That’s not really my thing.”  Crowley accepted the explanation, even though he didn’t much like it, and vanished.

As the pieces of the truth fell into place, Sam felt a hot surge of rage and tore into Dean, who was now…but no.  That couldn’t be.  But it seemed to be.  Yet it couldn’t be.  It went against everything that Sam had thought they were fighting for, if…And Dean was…happy?  “How can you be so accepting of this?  After everything? Everything she…THAT…put us through?  It’s obviously done something to your…mind.  Or your soul.  To make you…want this.  Or think you want it.”

Jovi intervened, feeling obligated to explain herself.   “I…um.  Well.  Naturally I did something to him, Sam, I had to, to make him able to contain…himself.  Otherwise he would have exploded!  It’s a lot of energy for an earthly vessel on the best day, and his was coming apart at the seams.  And I did do it against his will but only because I already knew he would say yes eventually and I wanted to skip all the blah, blah, blah.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”  Sam was just about fed up with the interruptions.  He just wanted to talk to his brother for a minute.

Jovi squelched a laugh.  “Sorry, that was cute.  Someone needs to look up the word smite in the dictionary.”

Dean took Sam’s arm, pulled him away, trying to distract him.  “I can’t explain it, Sam…but it feels, inevitable?  Like every moment has been leading up to this.”  He turned back to Jovi.  “It was, wasn’t it?  Inevitable?”

Jovi nodded.  “I’ve been working for this moment for a hundred generations.  You were literally born to do this, Dean.  But it’s more than that.  You earned it.  You did everything right and passed every test.  You followed the rules when you were supposed to and broke them when it was necessary.  So few people really understand the importance of that.”  She paused for a moment, girlish and coy.  “And…you’re SO good looking.  I know I’m not supposed to care about stuff like that, but.  It’s the vessel talking.  Mostly.”

Dean missed a beat before continuing.  “I’m tired, Sam.  I’m tired of this…of weapons and warfare and blood…being all there ever is to me.  Sammy, you’ve always been more than just this.  I want to be more, too.”  Dean paused for a moment.   “Of course you would try and ruin this for me.  It figures.  It just freaking figures.”

“What?”

“Geez, I win the lottery here and you’re still trying to save me.  You hear that tone in my voice, Sam?  You know what that is?  That, my friend, is rue.  I am rueful.  I am officially full of rue.  I barely even knew what rue was before an hour ago, but Sam, I assure you, that in this moment, I know, that I am chock full of the stuff!”

Sam ignored Dean’s vocabulary breakthrough to focus instead on a flaw he’d seen in Jovi’s argument.  “Wait a minute, wait just a minute here.  You said he passed every test.  What does that mean?  A test?  Was this all just a test?  Our mother, was a TEST?”

This notion had not occurred to Dean.  “Is that true, Jovi?”

“Is what true?”  Playing dumb.

Dean, of course, totally fell for it.  “That I was being tested?”     

Jovi started to explain, and then stopped, and Sam caught the faintest whiff of fear coming off of her.  Good.  “Dean, you have to understand I just had to be really sure this time…I HAD to test you so I would know if you could handle it.  I can’t give this power to just anybody.  But a lot of the things…most things…that happened were totally out of my control.  I didn’t make the demons.  Lucifer did.  Have I used them at times, yes.  But what happened to your mother was NOT because of me, and I hated it.  It made it harder for me to get here, not easier.  And I didn’t make anybody drink demon blood…as just a random example with absolutely no value judgements attached.  Free will can be a real bitch sometimes.”

Sam felt color rise in his cheeks.  It felt like a cheap shot, manipulative, like she was turning her sins around on him to distract everyone from the real issue at hand, which was, of course, her sins.  But before he could raise a protest, Dean sensed something.  It was kind of like watching Superman hear someone call for help off in the distance somewhere, he cocked his head and his brow furrowed and he ground his teeth.  Someone was in trouble.  Someone needed him.  Jovi apparently felt it too.  They spoke simultaneously.  “Crowley.”

Dean hesitated, apparently expecting Jovi to act first.  But she didn’t.  “Shotgun.  If you don’t want to save him, it’s your call, Dean.”  Typical.  How entirely typical that was.  She had sent Crowley on a mission for her, all but forced him into it, assured him that she’d help him, resurrect him if needed, yet she would have turned her back on him when the rubber hit the road, if Dean had asked her to. Completely and totally typical.  Sam had no love for Crowley but it just seemed both totally harsh and yet so unsurprising given who they were dealing with.   

God toyed with people, used them for his-now-her own purposes.  And Sam was onto her.

Part 3 is here:  https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/11/01/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-3-free-range-lucifer/

 

Hi, and Happy Halloween!  I’m going to take a slight departure from my normal blog activities to post this cheesy and unbelievably sacrilegious Supernatural fan fiction I wrote (you can read about this experience here on Ordinary Times http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2017/10/25/you-know-what-i-did-last-summer/)  It is massively long, for which I do apologize.  I am a very fast writer and when I’m having fun I write a lot. 

This takes place at the start of Season 10, at which point I stopped watching the show because I was fed up with these great scenarios that never went anywhere.  I wanted to know how the show ended so I wrote my own ending using the following criteria: 

1) No one dies  2)Everything has to actually change/end/be unambiguous – no Sopranos or Angel-type endings 3)Characters who died that I liked needed to come back to life if possible 4)End had to be neither too happy nor too sad and needed to be thought-provoking, even disturbing 5) had to involve both the return of God, and have Lucifer as the main villain 6)had to set up that potential Supernatural spinoff they keep talking about but haven’t managed to pull off (seriously people, please let me create this spinoff, I have a vision, it would be SO good) 7) and last but not least, had to involve a female character that everyone is always complaining Supernatural lacks – but that isn’t a Mary Sue. 

So now with no further ado, here is Supernatural: Manic Pixie God Girl.

Dean Winchester was dead again, but what he really cared about was his car.

It didn’t really matter how he had died.  Or where, or when.  The why was always the same, good vs. evil.  Same crap, different day.  If anything, death was a nice change of pace.  A relief.  A lull in the battle, a moment to pause, catch his breath, take stock.  To Dean, death felt like sliding into a warm bubble bath, if he’d been the kind of guy who took warm bubble baths.  He barely showered any more, there hardly seemed to be a point.  He just got dirty again.  Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and most days Dean felt very, very far from God.

But the freakin car, man.  Baby.  That hurt.

Whatever had happened – and again, it didn’t matter, all we are is dust in the wind – it had destroyed Baby.  Baby had once been a 1967 Impala but now she was scrap metal. It looked as if she had been rolled, crushed, barbeque-ed, chewed up and spit out.  Baby had been hurt before, hurt bad, but this was the kind of damage there ain’t no coming back from.  Baby was toast.

Dean wanted to cry but then he remembered that he was totally dead.

It started to dawn on Dean all of a sudden that he was having an awful lot of thoughts for a dead man.   Too many thoughts, really.  So he took stock of the situation.  The site of a tremendous battle, maybe an explosion, some kind of blow from above, a meteor strike, possibly?  He could see his body or what was left of it, in the center of an impact crater.  He was actually dead.  For reals.  That had not been a misconception on his part.

He could see his body.

He knew then.  He didn’t want to believe it, but he knew.  “Damn it, I’m a ghost,” he would have said, if he could speak, which he couldn’t.  Of course he was.  Dean Winchester had been just about everything else in his life – hunter, vampire, demon, occasionally even a man when he could squeeze it into his schedule- so it figured that this would be the final act.  A ghost.  A vengeful spirit that belonged nowhere, doomed to slow insanity.  Sigh.  He must have turned down his reaper.  But he didn’t remember a reaper coming for him, that was the funny thing.  He kind of thought he might have gone with a reaper this time, if given the choice between another year of world endings and scraped knuckles and skull-splitting headaches and horrible sacrifices, and eternal heavenly peace (he hoped so, anyway, he sure hoped heaven was where he was heading) he might have chosen the latter.  But he didn’t remember a reaper.

He had to find Sam.  Sam could fix this.  He could summon a reaper to take Dean to heaven (hopefully), or maybe cram him back into his body somehow, as unappealing as that sounded given the appearance of his body.  Sammy could fix things like this, he was smart that way.  Dumb about a lot of other things, but smart like that.  

Walking was easier when you were a ghost.  Took a lot less effort.  Didn’t even have to really watch your step, you just sort of floated along.  Hovering, like a, like a, uh, a hovercraft, or something.  No need to worry about twisting your ankle or tripping or nothing.  He didn’t seem to be tied to his body or the place he died, which was a convenient surprise.  Ghosts usually were.  Dean had learned long ago not to look too closely at convenient surprises, they happened so rarely.  So he didn’t bother wondering why.  He just kept moving away from whatever had happened, towards someplace where he hoped Sam would be, trying to remember why it was that he had turned down the reaper, imagining what heaven (hopefully) would be like and worrying about how long it would take him to lose his mind.  He even started to think being a ghost might be kind of fun for a while, before the insanity set in.  He could scare people, jump out and say Boo.  He could rob a bank.  Being a ghost might not be so bad, at least not at first, and by that time Sam would have fixed it.

Even though they hadn’t been able to fix Bobby.

Dean ignored his doubts, focusing instead on the sound of an engine in the distance.  It was getting closer, so he stopped walking and turned to wait.  He figured it would be Sam, or Cas, or even Crowley coming to find him, to take him back to the bunker and work some magic trick on him and fix this latest setback.  He expected to be sitting inside a chalk circle within an hour.  Or, or hovering.  Whatever it was ghosts do, he would do it if it got him to heaven (hopefully).

The car came up over the last hill.  It was Baby.  Sam.  Then he remembered with a twist in his guts that it couldn’t possibly be Baby, Baby was dead.  Unless Sam had managed to somehow resurrect Baby, or maybe he turned back time somehow, that was a thing, right?  Seemed like something Sammy would come up with.  But then why was he still a ghost, why was he still standing on the side of the road like some kind of a transparent bitch?

Before Dean could puzzle it all out, the car came to a stop beside him.  It was definitely Baby, no doubt about it, Dean knew Baby like she was a part of him and he’dve recognized her anywhere.  Every dent, every scratch.  It was Baby, for sure.  But Sam wasn’t driving.  It was a girl.  No, a woman.  She was really tiny…what do they call that…petite? so he’d thought it was a little girl at first, a child, no doubt evil like Lilith had been, but nope, she was all grown up.  She had pink hair and giant sunglasses that took up half her face.  She was wearing camouflage pants and flip flops and a dirty, possibly gray tank top.  But it may have been white and it was just really dirty.  No bra.  Nice.  

Alllll grown up.  Definitely.  She looked like a good time.  Not evil, or if she was evil, she was evil in all the right places.

There were purple and black bruises up and down her bare arm, Dean noticed as she leaned across the seat with said arm outstretched to roll down the window.   The arm was spotted with some sores that he recognized faintly in some dim corner of his mind as the results of methamphetamine abuse.  Whoever this chick was, she had issues, that was for sure.  He found himself leaning in through the window to chat, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.  “And who, pray tell, are you?”  He was pleased to find his capacity for speech had returned.

“I’m the girl who’s driving your car.”  She had a great big ol’ black eye under the sunglasses and she could see him despite his ghostly state.  Ok, step in the right direction.

Dean’s patience suddenly evaporated.  “This is not the day, lady.  Who are you?”

“You know who.  I am.”  She said it funny like that.  You know who.  And then a pause, and then an I AM at the end, like she was making a declaration of her very existence.  But Dean didn’t know who it was, he really didn’t.  He was at a total loss. He wondered if this was one of the things he was supposed to know but couldn’t remember, like how he had died and what he had said to the reaper.  Oh yeah, the reaper.  Of course that’s who it was.

“You’re the reaper, right?”  She sighed and looked annoyed and Dean had the distinct impression that under the dark glassy lenses of the giant sunglasses, she had rolled her eyes.  Dean was wrong.  Ok.  Not the reaper.  The reaper must have really come and gone already and he just couldn’t remember.   He wondered if this was how it started for ghosts.  First you forget things you’re supposed to remember like where the reaper was and then next thing you know you’re foaming-at-the-mouth-insane, attacking everybody who just so happens along.  This person was…someone else, apparently.  You Know Who, Dean decided to call her.

Then this You Know Who made a very small movement, barely perceptible, and she started to glow.  Just a little, and only for a moment.  It was shiny and silver and rainbow, like mother of pearl or opals.  There was a goodness in it.  A purity.  Dean had seen a lot of demons and angels and monsters and magic implements emitting various mystical glows in a thousand hues, but he had never seen anything like it.  It was beautiful and it smelled clean and sweet like Love’s Baby Soft only fruitier and it made him fall to his knees, but not in a bad way.  It made him fall to his knees because he wanted to.  He pressed his face and palms against the side of Baby and felt a wave of love and adoration that he could only just place as reverence.  

“Why do you people never just recognize me?”  She pouted.  “Stupid humans.”  And then she must have stopped doing whatever it was she was doing, since Dean found himself snapping out of it.  He thought he might just know who You Know Who was, after all.  He sat back on his heels for a moment, trying to accept the magnitude of who, scratch that, what he was dealing with.  Because this, now this…this was big.  The door to the car opened, and Dean winced, preparing to be smacked in the face by it.  But due to his ghostly nature, it just passed right on through him.  “Aren’t you going to get in?”

“Lady, I got a few choice words for you.”   

“Seriously, get in.  We have nothing but time, you and me.”  Despite being skeptical to say the least, Dean couldn’t quite shake a slightly starstruck air.  Because, WOW.  He looked her over again, still trying to take it all in.  She was a very unimposing person, skinny, scrawny, puny, chronically malnourished and probably sickly as a child.  Or she had been, since it was clear now that the pink-haired chick was only just a vessel for…for…

He found it bizarre that so much power could be contained in such a small package.  He wondered how such a thing could even be done as he got into the car.  When he tried to shut the passenger door, his ghost hand passed right through it.  Annoying.  “How come ghosts can like, sit on stuff and walk, but then doors pass right through us?”

“A mystery for the ages.”  She made a small gesture with her finger, a “come here” wiggle, and the door slammed shut.

“I usually drive, you know.”

“Oh, do ya?”  She smiled.   “I’m kind of used to being in control, so.”  She pulled a U-ie and headed back the way they came.  Baby fishtailed as she accelerated.  “We need your body back.”

“I don’t think it’s going anywhere any more.”

“Your body is some of my best work, Dean.  I’m not giving up on that one without a fight.”  She paused and Dean started working up the nerve to ask some questions.  It must have been obvious what was on his mind, because she saw right through him.  “Go on…”

“You’re not uh, an old man with a long white beard?”

“Not my favorite form.  Only use that one when I’m dealing with other old men with long white beards.  Nowadays men don’t grow long white beards that much anymore.  And the ones that do, are generally people I’d rather not be dealing with.”

“I just…I wasn’t expecting a lady God, I guess is what I’m saying.”

“Uh.  Yeah.  I guess.  People are always surprised.   I haven’t, um, gone girl for quite some time, but I got so sick of wearing Chuck.  Kinda put me off dudes.”

“You were wearing Chuck?”

“I have a heck of a time finding vessels that fit.  He was the best I could do.  Don’t worry, I don’t burn up my vessels like the angels.  He’s living it up in Singapore right now with nothing but good memories.  This body, no one was using it any more, poor thing, and it looked like it still had some miles left in it.”  She held up her arms to inspect them, and seemed happy with what she saw.  Baby continued to drive herself as if You Know Who’s hands – pink nail polish, by the way, chipped at the tips but still sparkly – had never left the wheel.  Dean liked pink nail polish.  “It’s a new ride though so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little bit of a spaz.  Vessels are never totally natural to me.  It’s a lot of energy to cram into one meat puppet.  And this one is high as a kite!”

She extended her arms out wide, as if testing the limits of her new vessel, while the car continued to steer itself.  A skunk waddled by in the road ahead and the car veered; she didn’t even look up.  As she stretched, Dean noticed a massive gunshot wound in the chest of the body.   Whatever had happened to that meatsuit she was wearing, it had been thorough.  “Are you all right, there?”

“Hurts like a momma, but I can’t be destroyed.  I’ve tried, believe me.  You know that movie Groundhog Day, kind of like that.”  

“Really?”

“Yeah.  Only it went on for eons.”

“Really?”  That didn’t seem right.

“This isn’t always, like, the most funnest job ever.”

Dean pondered that as they returned back to the scene of whatever it was that had just transpired.  Sam, diligent as ever, was collecting what remained of Dean – which, as it turned out, was not much.   Chunks.  “He’s going to do something stupid.”

“Oh, he thinks he is.”  You Know Who looked intent for a moment and Dean’s body disappeared from the crater.  He wondered where it had gone to, imagining it floating overhead like tiny pieces of Mike Teevee.  Out the car window he could see poor befuddled Sammy recoiling, looking around, his eyes scanning for someone, or something, nearby.  Sam looked right at the car and Dean even felt that they locked eyes a moment, but apparently Sam could see nothing – it was as if the Impala was invisible or maybe veiled somehow.  A noise came then; a loud, pain-filled inhalation, barely even human.  Dean realized with a shock that it had come from his own lips.  He was back inside his body again, back inside…the…the chunks.  He tried to speak but could only gasp and grunt desperately at the strange woman.  “You’re still dead, Dean.  You don’t need to breathe.”  Calmly, she turned the car around and drove the other direction, away from Sam again, pointedly ignoring Dean’s agony.  

Dean writhed in the kind of pain he’d only ever felt before in Hell.  It was a pain he associated with being dismembered, sliced into bloody hunks of meat, and he figured out how he must have died.  Blown apart, or chopped up, or something.  He gulped, or tried to; something moved inside his neck, at any rate.  Felt like he swallowed a huge chunk of gristle, maybe.  He recovered his voice, a rasp he barely recognized.  “It hurts!  Make it stop!”

You Know Who averted her eyes as she spoke.  “I know it hurts, Dean, I’m so sorry.  I’m going to fix it.  I just wanted to give you a taste, to remind you of what it means to be human.  Pain.”  She paused and pressed her lips together and Dean heard a whimper escape his lips despite his best efforts to be stoic.  He held up his hand before his eyes and realized it was missing.  “Don’t you think it’s time to get off this merry go round, Dean?  Aren’t you just, getting tired of all this?”

Reluctantly, Dean nodded.   He did want it all to be over, finally over.  He wanted to go wherever his hand had gone.  “Please.”

“If you want me to, I can make it stop.  The pain will be gone.  All of it.  Even the things you don’t tell anybody that keep you awake half the night and living on pain pills.”  Dean looked at her in desperation, convinced he couldn’t bear the pain another second.  But then a second ticked by, and then another.  He could feel them ticking by in his shattered bones and each one seemed to last for hours.  Eventually she met his eyes through her ridiculous giant sunglasses.  “It’s not quitting, Dean.  It’s getting a promotion.  And I can make it so Sammy can’t do anything about it.”

Even more reluctantly, Dean nodded again.  It took a lot, knowing that he was letting Sam down, and Cas down, and lots of innocent people would probably die because he didn’t want to fight any more and nobody else was as good of a hunter as him.  But he didn’t.  He hadn’t wanted to for a long time, but for Dean, fighting evil was a hard habit to break.  You Know Who smiled, revealing square white teeth, and Dean found himself in a sunlit meadow full of wildflowers and butterflies and these big fat furry bees buzzing around, the kind of place he sometimes saw at night in his dreams.  She was nearby, he could feel her like a sunbeam on his shoulders.  Deer grazed, a doe and twin spotted fawns.   A wolf jogged out from the trees, tongue lolling, and ran to Dean for a head scrub that he joyfully gave, before lying down nearby the deer with its head on its paws.  He realized he was fully healed and intact and was momentarily stunned by how well he felt.   He was nearly overwhelmed by emotion, by gratitude.  “I feel…incredible.”

“I fixed everything.  That alcoholic liver you were working so hard on, all the old injuries that never healed up quite right.  You had a brain aneurysm that was just about ready to pop.  But you’re still dead, Dean.  I’m not bringing you back this time.  And I’m not going to let anyone else do it, either.  This can’t go on any longer.  I let you guys get away with breaking the rules so many times because it was entertaining to me but I’m starting to feel like I’m pulling wings off a butterfly here.”   She sidled up beside him and he basked in that soft sunbeamy feeling she gave off.

“So…what is it for me, then?  Heaven, or Hell?”  This had to be heaven, it just had to be.

“Here’s the thing…it’s kind of humiliating.  But, um.  Ok.  I’m lonely?  I need an um.  A friend?  I usually hang with an angel but then that just pisses the other ones off.  They are SOOO petty.  I always liked humans much better, but you’re so short lived, it bums me out.  You’re like gerbils.  Everything seems to be going ok and then one morning, boom, dead in a pile of sunflower seeds.  I’ve tried keeping people alive longer but, it never really ends well.  The spark goes out.”

“Um, ok.  A friend.  Sounds harmless.  What does it mean?”

You Know Who clasped her hands in front of her chest and shrugged her shoulders in a burst of female excitement.  “I’m going to change you!”

“Change me? Into an angel?  A demon, again?”

“Ewwww!  As IF!  No, something new.  Everybody get your popcorn!”

Dean was not at all sure he liked the sound of this.   “Wait.  Don’t I have to agree to that or something?”

Before Dean could fully voice his concerns, she grabbed him by the head with a surprising strength for someone so small.  There was a flash of that glorious opalescent light that threw them both back a few paces.  You Know Who stumbled right out of her flip flops.  Dean realized he was glowing with that lovely sweet smelling light and held up his hands before his eyes, inspecting them, still more than a little relieved to see both hands present and accounted for.  You Know Who stumbled back a few more paces, this time from surprise, then regained her footing.  She peered at him over her sunglasses, then unexpectedly and involuntarily stumbled forward again like a sailor on a ship in a stormy sea and dropped to her knees at his feet.  “Oh!”  Her glasses fell off.   

Words forced their way up from Dean’s belly right out his throat.  He tried to keep them contained but he couldn’t.  “Hap-py Birthday!”  As he said it, somewhere in the back of his mind a memory flashed, a memory of being a child lying on a gold shag carpet watching Frosty the Snowman.  “Why…why did I just say that?”

“It was a test.  I had be sure you were still…YOU.  That you didn’t turn into something…icky.”  You Know Who’s eyes…the first time he’d seen them, hazel…gleamed with delight, with hope.

But something was going wrong.  He felt…soggy.  Dean shuddered, looking down at himself with a rising dread.  His hands and arms were dripping with water.  Running with it.  Rivers of water flowed down and out of him.  He looked up in alarm.  “What’s happening to me?”

“Oh, I forgot my part!  “Do you want to build a snowman?”  I’m sorry.  You were starting to melt.”  

“To melt?”

“If I didn’t like how you turned out?  Like, if you were a monster maybe or something?  I fixed it so you’d melt.  If I didn’t say the magic words.  It was a failsafe.”

An idea so crazy that Dean positively hated having to consider it, came to mind.  “Did you, uh, can’t believe I’m asking this, but did you…turn me into a snowman?”

“No.  Duh!  I made you like me.”

The concept was only slightly less disturbing than becoming a snowman.  “What?”

“I didn’t even know if I could do it to a human.”  She stopped talking for a moment and gulped hard, as if she was trying not to cry.  She blinked several times and then her eyes got really wide.  “But I totally think it worked!”      

“Like YOU?”  Dean gulped and blinked a few times himself.  “You mean…”

“Version 2.0.  Better the original!”

Dean pondered the implications of this development.  He was…no.  She had turned him into…no. No freaking way.   “No.  No thank you.  Thank you, but no.  I’m gonna have to take a hard pass?”

“Too late!  It’s done!”

It dawned on Dean that she still on her knees before him.  “Why are you down there, exactly?”  

“Oh, um.  Everybody seemed to enjoy worshiping me so much, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  And let me just say, it’s pretty sweet!”

“You’re worshiping me?”

“Yeah!  And it’s awesome.”

Dean discovered he had negative a million percent interest in being worshiped.  At least, right that minute.  “Knock it off.”  Maybe later after he had had a little time to…sink into the experience.

“I can’t, you have to make me.”

Dean gave her an incredulous look, then without even really meaning to, his mind focused for a moment and a very small part of it that he had never been aware of before gave a little jump.  It felt like a cerebral hiccup.  The glow ceased.  “Well, I knew how to do that for some reason.”

“You know how to do a lot of things now.  May I rise?”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

You Know Who grinned.  Ah, that sunbeam.   She rose tentatively to her feet.  Tentatively, because it was obvious that she was in pain.  “I never liked for people to worship me, either.  It’s…off-putting.  Took me forever to learn how to shut it off.  But you got it right away.  Smartie.”  She paused to breathe a shuddery breath.  He realized she had to be hurting bad from the bruises and gunshot wound and whatever else awful things had happened to that vessel before she claimed it.  “Could you heal my vessel for me?  Please?”  Dean had a moment of doubt he that he could, and then it happened.  Right before his very eyes the wounds faded and then disappeared.  She slid her bare feet back into the flip flops.  “Thanks.  I can’t heal my own vessel, it’s kind of like tickling yourself?”  In spite of his reservations, Dean started to wonder what else there might be to this new ability and it was as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.   “Go ahead, take it for a spin.”  

He did.  And what a spin it was.  He could feel everything, everyone, every star in the sky, every cell in every living thing in all of creation, every mitochondria in every cell.  Mitochondria.  What were they?  Why were they?  He went in for a closer look.  He learned…well, more like he absorbed, really….what mitochondria were and what they did and he was surprised to find they were sentient in their own tiny way.  He had an irresistible urge to connect with it all, to know it all, to take it all in.  But when he tried, he became overwhelmed and started to gray out.   He stutterstepped to the side, trying not to succumb to the rising dots of blackness before his eyes.  

You Know Who caught him, steadied him.  “You have to pace yourself, Dean.  You can’t connect with everything all at once.”

“It’s a little bit…overwhelming.”  Even as he said it, Dean realized it was so much more than overwhelming, he didn’t even have the words to say.  But she already knew, of course.

“Yeah, a little bit.”  She laughed at how much of an understatement it was.  Then she turned serious.   “It’s the burden of creation, Dean.  It’s good, so good, we’re a part of everything that IS, has been, and will be,  but you can’t tap into it for very long.  That’s why I always have to go away and rest.  It takes it out of you.  Especially if you’re in a vessel.  You have to hold yourself back, even though it’s so tempting not to.”

“Are you…”

“We.”

Dean sighed, still struggling with disbelief.  “…really all knowing and all powerful?”

You Know Who focused for a moment and then suddenly they were on the surface of a rocky dead planet.  Dean took it all in, it was awesome, in the truest sense of the word.  “You can do it too, you know.  We can go anywhere and do anything, anything you ever dreamed of.” She explained before Dean could even think of the question.  “It’s Mars.  There’s hardly any life here so it’s not so…draining like Earth is.  I come here sometimes when I need to chill.  I thought this could be our first project, but if you have something else in mind…please, I’m all ears…”

“Hey, I like the idea, and the enthusiasm, but you gotta give me a minute to catch up here.  This is…kind of a big development for me.”

An expression crossed her face, a combination of pleasure and fear.  Dean realized then that she was nearly desperate to win his approval, which seemed…weird.  Surprising.  Being who and what she was, the idea that she might be insecure, needy, was unnerving, to say the least.  Yet he found on some level that he liked it.  He liked the idea.  He didn’t normally like desperate chicks, like, at all, but for some reason there was something endearing about it coming from her.  “Ok.  Of course.  I’m sorry.  I was born this way, or formed I guess, so I don’t know what it must be, to be something different and get it all of a sudden like that.”

“So you’re not all knowing?”

“Nope.  Not even.  I’ve been around a long time, and seen a lot of fudged up stuff.  And, um, that gives me the insight to understand things others don’t, sometimes?  I can make predictions that a lot of the times, come true.  Eventually.  But it’s just experience, not being that smart.  I’m really not that smart.  Not at all.  Metatron said one time, I’m like the Bridget Jones of deities.”  Dean couldn’t help but respond to the mention of Metatron with a dry expression.  She noticed.   “I know he killed you that one time, but.  He was sometimes kind of insightful.”

“I can kind of tell that…you don’t know what you’re doing.  No offense.”

“None taken.  Earth is a mess, I agree.  Wouldn’t call that a success.  It was my first try at creating an intricate system of life, so.  I kind of consider Earth to be my mulligan?”  Dean looked away, distracted for a moment by a peculiar surge of creative energy, and at his will, an unusual looking mountain range rose in the distance.  He looked at it, satisfied.  It was good.  Just like it said in the book. You Know Who took note with a pleased smile.  “Some nerd looking through a telescope just like, totally creamed his jeans.  Front and back.”  Dean snorted a laugh.  At least she was funny, this new…friend…of his.  After a decade stuck with Sam and Cas, he was beyond ready for a laugh or two.  “We are practically all powerful, though.  There are a few things I just can’t seem to manage, like destroying myself.  But I made you stronger than me, maybe you could?”

“I could destroy you?”

“I don’t know.  Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Oh, good, you scared me for a minute there.  Of all the times I would have loved to be destroyed, this isn’t one of them.  Things are just getting interesting.”

A thought tickled the back of Dean’s mind.  “Why did you make me stronger than you?”

This question was apparently not something that You Know Who had wanted to get into on a first date.  It took her a long moment and much fidgeting before she was able to piece together a response.  “Um, ok, well, I guess you’ll find out soon enough.  Sigh.  I tried this once before.  Only, I still wanted to be in the driver’s seat then, so I made him less powerful than me?  And the worship thing was still kind of a one way street then?”

“You made an almost omnipotent being that still had to worship you??”

“When you say it that way, no wonder it blew up in my face!  Plus it was an angel, and the angels were like an experiment that really didn’t…pan out.”  After a long, embarrassed pause, she forged on.  “It’s embarrassing, because you sort of know him?”  She sent a shy look at Dean from the edges of her eyelashes. Dean realized with great chagrin the angel in question.

“Lucifer.”

“Yeah, and then everybody’s all like, well why don’t you just destroy him?  Um, ok because I don’t know if I even CAN, and it would totally wipe me out for a million years to even try it.  I was tired for one century and you guys did, like, the 20th.”  She exhaled, thinking about how badly it had all gone.  “The whole Lucifer thing was kind of a disaster.  Sigh.  I had to think about it a long time before I realized what I did wrong.  I didn’t pick the right being, and the imbalance of power was too great.  It, uh, made for some hard feelings.”

Dean burst into glow again just to see what would happen, to be sure that it wasn’t all a trick somehow.  You Know Who fell to her knees, overcome.  He shut it off and extended a hand, helping her to her feet.  She weighed about as much as a baby bird.  “Just checking.”

She didn’t let go of his hand right away.  Those pink fingernails.  “You can still worship me, too, you know.  I just can’t make you.”  After a slightly nervous pause, she continued. “I never had to earn anyone’s love before, I thought it might be a fun challenge.”  Dean sensed that she had some reservations about her ability to do this and suddenly understood that feeling of insecurity he had sensed before.  “Awkward!!”  She laughed, nervous.  Then she quickly let go of Dean’s hand and took a step back.  “I’ve always been the man with the plan.  I think that’s the key?  I can’t be in charge, I’m obviously just terrible at it.  I just want to ride shotgun.”  Dean thought for a split second about riding shotgun and suddenly they were back on Earth again, back in Baby.  Dean, of course, was in the driver’s seat this time.  You Know Who seemed very pleased by this turn of events.  “Oh, a surprise!”  She clapped her hands, childishly excited.  “I know!  We’re going to stop your idiot brother from making a deal with a crossroads demon, aren’t we?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok.  You’re the boss.”  She was nearly overcome with joy.  “You’re the boss!  YOU are the boss!  You don’t even know how good it feels to say that.”  After a moment, a realization.  “You know we don’t actually have to drive there, right?’

Duh.  “Oh, yeah.”