Miss Part 6?  It’s here: https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/11/04/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-6-hoofbeats-in-heaven/

And so just as Sam had hoped, they went right back to the way things were.  Riding in the Impala, fighting demons.  Everything was fine, everything was cool.  Things were pretty much entirely normal, pretty much.  Dean maybe knew some more stuff than he had in the past, maybe he had some weird hobbies now like astrophysics and reverse taxidermy – that was where he actually brought stuffed formerly dead animals back to life again – and bansai (he could grow a stunted, twisted little Japanese tree from a seed in only a few days) but he was still Dean, good old Dean.  Distracted Dean, but still Dean.  He had so many things on his mind sometimes he started thinking about them at all the wrong times.  Sam sometimes thought of him as the Absent Minded Professor.

One night they were cleaning out a nest of demons when one thing led to another and Distracted Dean made a mistake Regular Dean, thinker of few thoughts, never would have made and took a scimitar to the midsection.

He looked down at the blade sticking straight out of his chest and snorted.  “Well, that ain’t good.”  He fell to his knees and Sam rushed to help him into a laying position, but then a quick glance revealed that wasn’t going to work, it was a through and through.  About a foot of blade stuck straight out from between Dean’s shoulder blades. They exchanged a look, and then somehow Dean managed a strangled laugh.   “I guess I’ll just hang out here for a while.”

“Why aren’t you dying?”

“I don’t think I can any more.”

“Do you want me to…I don’t know, yank it out or something?”

“Not unless you brought some Bactine.”  Dean still was capable of joking somehow.

“I’m fresh out.  What are we gonna do?”

“Help’s coming.”    Dean didn’t explain who the help was, he didn’t have to.  Sam ground his teeth and wracked his brain trying to think of any conceivable alternative, but before he could say anything, there she was.  She looked different.  Classy.  Elegant, even.  Almost regal.  Sam thought that maybe if he’d seen her looking like that in the first place, he’d have known right away who she really was.  

Jovi’s vessel had put on some weight, no longer was it a skinny, scrawny methhead’s corpse.  It looked healthy, if still freakishly short.  She’d been caught in the act of brushing her teeth and had a toothbrush still jammed in her mouth.  Sam hadn’t thought it possible, but he hated her even more; that she could still be alive and all concerned about oral hygiene when Jess and so many other people weren’t, all at her behest.   And why?  Not even for some grand, higher plan.  Just so she could have a Dean-shaped eff buddy for all eternity.  “You changed your hair.”  God damn it, Dean.

“Oh.  Yes.”  The pink was gone, returned to its natural color.  “I liked it, it was fun, but it just seemed too…unprofessional.”  

“It looks good.”  Sam fought a nearly uncontrollable urge to smack Dean upside his head.  He often suspected Dean was carrying a torch when he should be holding a grudge.  

“Geez Louise!”  Jovi spat a mouthful toothpaste on the floor vehemently.  “What have you done to yourself?  You look like a shish kebab.”  She put the toothbrush back into her mouth and continued brushing.

Without ceremony, without removing the toothbrush from her mouth, without even ceasing to brush, she strode forward pulled the blade out, causing Dean to shriek.  “You could’ve at least counted to three!”

“Just postpones the inevitable.”  She must have finished with her teeth because the toothbrush vanished and she spit on the floor one more time, rather close to Sam’s leg.  Deliberately, he thought.

“What did I tell you, Dean?  She likes inflicting pain on people.”   

“Oh, and like you don’t, Sam.”  Before she’d even finished speaking Dean’s injuries were already healed and she was making ready to poof herself back to whereever it was she’d come from.  

The second he was able, Dean launched himself to his feet and across the room at Jovi.  “Wait, wait, wait, don’t go!”  She recoiled a little, leaned back, like she was being accosted.  Sam shook his head and stood as Dean completely invaded her personal space with the enthusiasm of a Jehovah’s Witness used car salesman.  “I need your help with my dodo!”

“With your what?”

“My dodo.  That I made.”

“You made a dodo?  Damn it!”

“Was that wrong?”

“I owe Oriphiel…Crowley…20 bucks.  He said the first thing you would make was a dodo bird, and I was like, no freaking way.”

“Was it wrong to make a dodo?  Because it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Well, yeah, because.  I mean, DUH.  You can’t just remake old things, Dean.  They had their chance.  Things that died need to stay dead.”

“Why?”

“Because it upsets the natural order of things, that’s why.”

“You brought me back.  Repeatedly.”

“Well…that was different.”

Sam couldn’t hold his tongue.  “Don’t you see, Dean, it’s fine when she does it.  Just not anyone else.  Right, Jovi?  Your game, your rules?”

“No, that’s not it at all, you giant, literally giant ass, it’s because I was trying to accomplish something, a larger goal, and your brother here is just doing it for…oh I don’t know, mental masturbation.”  She turned her attention to Dean.  “Just to see if you can.  You haven’t put a second of thought into it, you just recreate the most ridiculously obvious thing you can come up with.  “Oh I’ll make one of those crazy dodo birds I learned about in kindergarten, hurr de hurr.”

“And how is that better than creating life because you’re lonesome?”

“Screw you.”  And she was gone. 

Over the next several weeks Dean sustained mortal injuries 17 more times.  Sam eventually had no choice but to conclude he was doing it on purpose to see Jovi.  She would always appear without being called – Dean said they had a bond and Sam didn’t much care for the sound of that.  Dean would try to suck her into an argument or a discussion about some finer point of creation and then Sam would intervene, reminding Dean about all the terrible things she had put them and their family and friends through.  Sam had put together quite a thorough dossier on God’s wrongs by this point and was only too happy to call Jovi to account for each and every one.  After the first few times, Jovi refused to engage, but Dean would usually engage enough for the both of them.  At least he still listened when Sam tried to reason with him.  God had ruined their lives, and some things are just too big to forgive.

In the meantime, Sam and Castiel continued their research, trying to find anything, anything at all that could turn a god human.  Short of somehow managing to get Dean retroactively born to a virgin, there wasn’t anything they hadn’t tried.  Potions, spells, rituals, various mystical devices.  They could try to kill Dean, they thought, with the Colt or Death’s scythe or possibly a couple other ancient weapons they hadn’t managed to track down yet, but since the Colt hadn’t killed Lucifer and Dean was supposed to be stronger than Lucifer, not to mention the fact that they didn’t want to kill Dean anyway, it all felt rather pointless.

Dean stopped reading books, which at first felt to Sam like a bit of a relief; he’d grown tired of stumbling out for a midnight snack only to find SuperDean sitting in a circle of lamplight reading Nieztche with an expression on his face that Sam could only describe as sinister.   But then he started the experiments.  Instead of spending hours reading, he spent hours dissecting pretty much everything that Jovi had ever created, right down to the subatomic level.  He still seemed like Dean, still drank like a fish, played music too loud, chased women incessantly – if anything, did more women chasing than normal – and indulged his every whim, but when he wasn’t doing the Dean stuff, he was doing the mad scientist stuff.  

He mixed acids and bases.  He raised planarians and multiple generations of fruit flies.  He spread out thousands of species of wasp on a table and stared at them for 4 hours before carelessly bringing them back to life again leading to a very exciting 10 minutes in the bunker while he tried to convince them all to leave voluntarily.  In the name of science he churned butter and baked bread and brewed beer which was very quickly gone.   He got drunk on his homemade beer and tried to explain random elements of it all to Sam, like how ingenious lima beans were and what the deal was with snapdragons and why leopards really had spots because it actually wasn’t the reason why everybody seemed to think.  But his increased understanding did not lead to improved results.  He just wasn’t as good at making things as Jovi was.  He could repeat the things she made, most of them anyway, clumsily and with a lot of effort, but he couldn’t seem to make anything, new or old, without a template to follow.

Mostly he just wanted to recreate a dodo.  He tried and tried with the dodo.  It never panned out.  Got so that while Sam was never quite used to coming home to find a half-dead dumpling of a formerly extinct bird gasping for air on the bunker floor, it wasn’t a complete surprise, either.  

Whatever it was that Jovi had done to make that bird work, Dean couldn’t repeat it.  “I just don’t get what I’m doing wrong, Sammy?  Why can’t I get this right?”  

Sam understood that this was a point of pride for his brother.  Jovi had told him not to do it, had mocked the very idea of it, so of course he had to.  “I don’t know, Dean.  I wish I did.”  And he did, too.   He really did.

For some reason Sam had a feeling that if Dean could only get the damn dodo right, everything else would fall into place and they could keep going on along as they had done for so long.  Things would get back to normal just like they always did.  With God in the Impala beside him, and all right with the world.

********************

The thing that bothered Dean the most was that he kept killing the gerbil.  The dodo thing was annoying, sure, of course it was.  But the gerbil, that furry little guy had a freaking death wish or something.  It just kept dying.  When it wasn’t getting kicked or stepped on or dropped, it drowned.  It got electrocuted.  He forgot to feed it one time…ok, maybe more than one time.

Have fun loving a gerbil.  That was what Jovi had said to him.  She had said she tried her hand with humans in the past, extending their lifespans, keeping them as companions, but that in the end they lost their spark, turned into little more than pets.  At first he hadn’t believed it; after all, he and Sam had come back more than once and they still seemed ok.  But after he had brought the gerbil back a few times, that’s what happened to it.  At some point, after enough resurrections, it wasn’t a gerbil any more.  It was a nothing in the shape of a gerbil.  It just stood in the middle of its cage and shivered.  It would still nibble a pellet now and then, take a lick at the silver ball of its water dispenser, just enough to stay alive, but it wasn’t a gerbil any more.  It was a nothing.  So Dean took it outside and willed a hawk to come by and take the poor shivering thing from his hands.  At least someone could get some good out of it.

Later that same day, he went to see Lisa.  He hadn’t gone to see her since the last time, since the time he walked away from her forever, for her protection.  But now?  Why would she need protection, if she had him?  Who could stand against God?

She was with Ben, of course.  Ben was a man now.  It was strange.  They looked happy.  Wait.  It was strange that Ben was a man, not that they looked happy.  Of course they were happy.  Why wouldn’t they be?  I mean, just because he wasn’t in their lives any more, did he really expect them to have sensed his absence somehow, did he really expect that they’d have been worse off without him?  That there would be a missing piece they couldn’t fill?  They didn’t even remember him.  Had he expected otherwise?  Had he expected that down deep, on some level, they’d know he was gone?  That they would mourn him, or miss him even just a little?  Because it sure didn’t look like they’d been mourning.  And anyway, it had been years, even if they had noticed something was awry at the time he had gone, surely they would have gotten over it by now.  Moved on.  He had moved on, and he could remember.   Why shouldn’t they?

For the umpteenth time Dean looked at Ben and wondered if Ben was really his son.  Sometimes he thought he wasn’t, and then other times he was almost 100% that he was.  This was one of those times.  He was pretty sure.  Something about the kid’s build, about the way he moved.  The rest of him was all Lisa, but something about the body seemed familiar.  And it was mighty tempting to just reach out with the power and know for sure.  But he didn’t.  Because why?  What would change?  If he knew for sure, if he knew that Ben was really his son, he wouldn’t want to let go of them.  He could reveal himself, he could restore their memories, he could try again to live happily ever after, but he didn’t think he was really made for happily ever after.  

And then what?  Lisa would get old and die, Ben would get old and die, and if he tried to change that too many times, it would be like the gerbil all over again, except worse.  He didn’t think he could stand to make them into angels; angels were just so…angel-y.  He wondered idly if he could make them like he was.  But he couldn’t even make a dodo bird work.  What Jovi had done to him seemed like it had taken her a lot of effort and she had said it took generations to get it right.  She hadn’t been sure it would even work, and she was so much better at making things than Dean was.  If he tried and failed and Lisa just fell over dead like the dodos had, or Ben turned into something like Lucifer, he could never bear it.

So he turned and walked away from them again and much to his surprise it hurt just as bad as it had the first time.               

********************            

The eighteenth time Dean died on purpose, Jovi didn’t show.   Sam had never seen so much blood in all his life – and Sam had seen a LOT of blood in his life – but Dean just kept on walking and talking and laughing about it like it was all some hilarious practical joke she was pulling on them.  Sam couldn’t reach Castiel and so he actually had to take Dean to the emergency room to get him stitched up.  The doctors and nurses scurried around treating Dean with grim, horrified faces, as if he was a zombie or something, and Sam couldn’t shake the feeling that he kinda was.  A walking dead man.  

His flesh was in ribbons, in tatters.  His blood pressure was zero.  They dumped, as one of the doctors kept repeating with awe, over two gallons of blood back into him.   All the blood in his body had to be replaced, and then some, since a lot of it just ran right back out again.  1700 stitches.  Dean cracked jokes about running on empty and repeatedly said “thank you sir may I have another” and apologized profusely for the mess.  He kept right on flirting with the nurses who perhaps unsurprisingly weren’t particularly into it.  When Castiel got back he healed up the slice wounds and Dean laughed off the entire adventure.   

But all the same, after that, Dean stopped taking chances.  He started using his God power a lot more preemptively.  He was able to vanquish a demon from across the street or down the block or without even leaving his barstool.  Which was good in a way, and not so good in other ways.   It was way easier, safer, they were able to put down a lot of beasties in very short order, but it was honestly more than a little boring even for Sam, who generally enjoyed having more time for research and sleep, or even time to do something totally crazy like read a book for pleasure now and then.  And for Dean, who really did live to hunt, it gave him more time to drink and carouse and way too much time to sit and think about things.  One thing in particular.   

He rarely talked about Jovi, but something about the oh-so-casual way he would bring her up when he did, made Sam suspect that he was thinking a lot more than he was talking.  “I mean, when you stop to consider it, being alone is pretty much one of the worst things you can go through.”  This was totally out of the blue after Dean had gotten a few pitchers and then a few more shots into him one night.  “I mean, that’s why they put prisoners into solitary confinement, it’s as a punishment.  I mean, it’s like in the Geneva Convention that you can’t do that.  I can’t even imagine being alone like that, can you?  And I’m a loner.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  Sam knew, of course, he just didn’t want to talk about it.  Talking seemed to only encourage Dean to think about Jovi even more.  Besides, when the subject came up, Dean phrased everything so reasonably that it was sometimes hard not to agree with him on the finer points even as he danced around the big picture.  Dean seemed incapable or unwilling to see the forest for the trees where Jovi was concerned and would take concession on anything, no matter how small or obvious, as an endorsement.  So Sam tried not to get sucked into the debate, focusing instead on wondering with a vague unsettled feeling about why exactly it was that Dean, who had once spent 15 minutes reading the ingredients on a tub of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” with his lips moving, now knew what was in the Geneva Convention, let alone that there had been one.   Smart Dean messed with Sam’s head sometimes.

“I mean, Jovi, you know?  Alone for so long.  I mean, Sammy, I get where you’re coming from, believe me, I really do, but I think maybe we should…I don’t know, cut her some slack?”

“Dean…”

“No, shut up and listen for a change.  I mean, I already know all the things you’re going to say already, Sam, but she was right, you know, when she said we break the rules all the time and everybody always forgives us.  I mean, I tortured people in Hell.  I’ve hurt people, real people.  You drank demon blood, and you didn’t have a soul, for like, a whole entire year…”

“Because she MADE those things happen, Dean!”  Why could he not see that?

“Right, exactly, there were mitigating circumstances.  Made the things that we did seem like a good idea at the time, sometimes the only way, even.  And maybe that’s how it was for her.  I mean…”

“Quit saying I Mean every other word out of your mouth.”

“We forgave Cas for the things that he did that were…less than ideal.  Even Crowley, ok, maybe I didn’t exactly forgive him in the strictest sense, but…”

“Don’t even get me started on you and Crowley.  See, that’s the thing, Dean.  It’s the Crowley situation all over again.  You spend enough time with a monster and you start seeing them as…I don’t know…some kind of friend.”

“I don’t see Crowley as a friend, Sam.  He’s a tool.  In every sense of the word.”

“Ok then, a compatriot.  A brother in arms.  It happened with Crowley and now you’re falling into the same trap with Jovi.  She is NOT our friend.  She is not on our team.  She is the source of every awful thing that has happened to us since we were even born, practically.  Don’t forget that.”

“I almost killed you when I was a demon.  And you forgave me.”

“She could have stopped that.  She could have stopped Metatron as easily as swatting a fly, Dean!  She could have saved your life at any point in time but she didn’t, and she said it herself, the reason why she didn’t, the reason why she let us suffer, it was all just a test.  Mom, Dad, Bobby, Jess…and how many more people…like Kevin…are dead because of her actions, or her failure to act?”  Dean said nothing, just drained his drink and poured himself another one, full right up to the brim of the shot glass.   “All this time I thought, well, at least there’s some grand plan here, we’re going through all this torture for a good reason and someday we’ll find out what it is and it will all be worth it.  But we aren’t, are we?  There’s no higher plan!  All this stuff happened for basically no reason, because God is a douche!”

Dean scrunched up his face and nodded agreement.  “I’ll drink to that.”  And he did.

Three days later Sam came back to the bunker to find Jess standing there waiting for him.  It wasn’t really Jess, it was just her body.  She was stiff and still, like a mannequin or a robot, only it was her real human body.  She looked exactly the same as when Sam had known her over a decade before.  She hadn’t aged, she was even wearing the same clothes she’d had on that night he left her for the last time, that night Dean had showed up on his mission to find Dad and derailed Sam’s life forever.  Sam felt his heart skip and skip, and skip, and then finally it resumed beating normally again.  Only it seemed to be up in his throat somewhere.  Dean came in with a big smile on his face.  “I’m gonna leave this one up to you, Sammy.  You get the final word.  Yay, or nay?”

“Uh…wha…what?”

“Well, I wanted it to be a surprise, and then I thought maybe…well, it was all a long time ago, and maybe you aren’t necessarily unhappy with the way things turned out in the Jess department.”

“The Jess Department?”

“Maybe you don’t want to be tied down, is what I’m saying?”

“Dean, what is going on here?”  

Dean grinned sheepishly and scrubbed at one of his eyebrows with the back of his thumb.   Sam had a sinking feeling that whatever Dean was about to say, he was totally, for sure going to hate it.  “Well, I got to thinking about what you were saying, the other night, you know, about all the people who were close to us, that, that died for no other reason than Jovi was testing me, and how that was the reason why we probably shouldn’t forgive her, her tresspesses, you know?   And, and you were right about all that, Sam, you were right, and so, I uh…”  He trailed off and looked back over his shoulder.  “Guys, come on in.”  

The first one to come in was Jo, then Ellen.  Then Bobby, oh, Bobby.  And then they just kept filing in, one after another.  So many.  Sam had forgotten how many people there really were.  The room was packed with familiar faces.  There were people he was embarrassed to realize he hadn’t thought of in years, like Ash and Frank Deveraux and the virgin they’d been trapped with that time when Lilith was after them; Sam felt deep shame when he couldn’t recall the girl’s name.  Kevin wandered in eventually and the sight of him made Sam’s guts twist.  If Dean thought this would somehow make him more kindly disposed to Jovi, Dean was dead wrong.  “What did you do?”

“Isn’t it obvious?  I brought them all back.”

“Oh, Dean.”

“Everybody I could think of that I felt like, oh I don’t know, were taken too soon.  Because of us.  I didn’t bring back Mom and Dad though.  I wanted to talk to you about it first.”

“What…what do you think this is going to accomplish?”

“No harm, no foul, right?  I mean, if Jovi did wrong, and I make it right, it all comes out ok in the end, and everybody lives happily ever after.  There’s no reason for any…hard feelings.”      

Sam couldn’t even.  He couldn’t even.  He mostly thought that expression was stupid and trendy but seriously, he. couldn’t. even.   The most unforgivable part of all the things that Jovi had done, was not that it had all been for nothing, not exactly.  The most unforgivable part of it all was that the pain and the suffering and the death had all been to bestow the powers of God upon a man who, while he was Sam’s brother and of course he loved the guy, had all the forethought and impulse control of a 13 year old boy.  He sometimes even thought Dean was borderline retarded, he really did, like maybe Dad had gotten drunk and dropped him on his head when he was a baby or something, and now was absolutely one of those times.   The idea that in any conceivable reality, Dean Winchester of all the people on the face of the globe, living or dead, would be the best choice to become God was like a freaking joke.   I mean, resurrect Mother Teresa for Pete’s sake.  Gandhi.  What about Malala or, or…or Jimmy Carter?  But Dean?  It was idiotic.     

Someone spoke up then.  It was Ellen.  “Um, excuse me, boys, uh, I have a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Dean, what do you want us to do now?  Where do we go?”

“Oh.  Huh.  Well.”  The befuddled look on Dean’s face confirmed Sam’s suspicions, that Dean had had absolutely no long-term plan going into this endeavor, of course he didn’t. He was Dean.  Plans were for pussies.   

“We can’t exactly stay here, Dean, sugar, I mean, I can’t even scratch my own ass it’s so crowded in here.”

Jo rolled her eyes and Sam was so happy to see her doing such a familiar human thing that he almost forgot how terrible the entire situation was.  “Mom!”

“Good question, Ellen.  Well, I guess you just resume your life again.  Pick it up right where you left off.  Only…no hunting this time.  You let me and Sammy take care of that.”

“But…how?”

Dean considered this and ground his teeth. “Well, uh…money.  Here.  I have lots of money.  You guys take it, take all of it…” He started shoving stacks of bills, his gambling money, into the resurrectee’s hands.  “And there’s more where that came from, lots more.  You’re always welcome…to uh…if you need anything, anything at all, just shoot me, I don’t know, an email or something.”  One by one, they wandered out, their hands full of cash.  Sam wondered if he should stop them, help them, but it seemed such a massive undertaking that he honestly didn’t know where to begin and simply stood silent as a small army of resurrectees shuffled out into the night.  Bobby made as if to follow them, but Dean just laughed.  “Well not you, Bobby.  Duh!”

“What’s…what’s going on, Dean?  How are we here?”

“Bobby, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

That night was fun, in spite of Sam’s grave reservations, which were numbering into the thousands by that point.  They threw a sheet over Jess – something about her just standing there staring at them was off-putting – and then he and Bobby and Dean sat around and got drunk and it felt a little bit like old times.  Bobby told them all about heaven.  He could remember it, he said, a little, said he did a lot of fishing, but it was fading fast.  They tried to fill in all the things that had happened since Bobby had been gone but it was a lot to put into words.  It was nice being back together again though.   After a while, the conversation lulled and Dean got up to take a leak.  He still had to do things like take leaks and sneeze and puke and all the rest of it, the downside of being in a vessel, apparently.  Bobby, having concluded by that point that Dean was not gonna give him a straight answer, screwed up his courage and asked Sam how it was that he had come to be back on Earth in human form again.  “You’re sitting down, right?”

“Of course I’m sitting down, I’m sitting right here in front of you, ya little…”

“Dean.”  Sam sighed.  “Dean is God now, ok?”

“What?”

“Dean is God.”

“What?!!”

“Dean Winchester has been invested with the power of God.  Not a God.  The God.”

Bobby paused to take a swig of whiskey right from the bottle.  “What happened to the other one?”

“It’s still there.   Sort of split the job into two.  And gave half of it to Dean.  The bigger half.”

“To DEAN?”

“To Dean.”

“Dean Winchester.”

“The one and only.”

“That, hands down, gotta be the worst idea I ever heard of.”    

“I’ll drink to that.”  And he did.  

Dean came back in then, and Bobby sent him a WTF look.  “Aw, you told him, didn’t you.  I wanted to drop the bomb on him right when he least expected it…”

“I always the least expected it.”

“Just to see his face.  Heh.  Oh well.  Well, Bobby, what do you think of that?”

“I think it’s bat-poop crazy, that’s what I think of that!”

“Well, nobody asked you.”

“You just did, genius.”

“Shut up.”

Bobby sighed and scratched at his beard.  “Well, I guess it ain’t any weirder than any of the other stuff we been through, now, is it?”

Sam turned that around in his mind a few times and while it may have been the booze talking, it felt true.  “Don’t jinx it, Bobby.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of this, is that things can always get weirder.”  He drained the dregs of his beer and reached for another, popping it open.  It began to overflow and he hurried to slurp at the escaping foam before it could spill.  Out of the corner of his eye, Sam noticed a strange half-smile on Dean’s face, the kind he always had when he was up to something.  A glow broke out over Dean for a split second and leaped out of him.  It flew across the room and into Bobby.  Bobby gave a shout and leapt to his feet and turned around and around craning his neck to look at his own back, like he was trying to get a kick me sign off his shirt.  Wings sprouted from Bobby’s shoulder blades and curse words flew from his lips.  Of course.  Of course he did.  Sam should have known he would.  “You didn’t.”

“Oh, I did, baby.”

“Why?”

“Because I need three, and I need someone I can trust.”

“You need three?  Three whats?”

Before Dean could respond, Bobby had recovered his wits.  “Did you just turn me into a goddamn angel, you little weasel?”

“No, I turned you into a goddamn archangel, bitch.  That’s even better.”  He continued explaining to Sam.  “I need three archangels.  I already got Cas, but I need two more.  And I gotta be sure it’s someone who won’t go to Lucifer and who won’t go to Jovi.”

Sam felt a chill move down his spine and squeezed his shoulders together as if trying to prevent the wings from emerging.  “Don’t even think about it.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Sam, come on.”

Bobby sputtered.  “But you did it to me?”

“Eh, you weren’t doing nothing better anyway.  Fishing in heaven, sounds boring as Hell.”

Bobby sighed, still craning his neck to inspect the wings protruding from his back. “Balls.”

Part 8 is here: https://atomicfeminist.com/2018/01/15/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-8-wham/

Part 4 is here: https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/11/02/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-4/

When Castiel got a look, a good look, at the Crowley-thing he couldn’t believe it.  

Abomination!   

It wasn’t an angel, not at all, it was A Something Else.  It was mostly angel but it had a swirl of messy darkness marbled through it not unlike a substance that Castiel dimly recalled as fudge ripple ice cream.  A swirl of demon and human essence intertwined, polluted the purity of angel nature.  The Crowley-thing sent Castiel a snide look and Castiel realized he must have been gaping at the monster.  “Take a picture, it will last longer.”  A human expression.  Castiel didn’t know how to respond.  He looked at Gabriel, but Gabriel laughed.  Gabriel always laughed.  No matter what terrible trick God pulled out of…her…sleeve, Gabriel simply laughed.

It wasn’t funny.

Castiel realized in that moment he was quite angry at God this time.  Not just disappointed and confused like he normally was.  Castiel was actually angry.  Furious, even.  He had spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about God – of course, that was his reason for being.  He had done God’s bidding, praised and worshiped God, searched for God, shouted prayers to the sky begging and pleading for God to answer him, even tried to become God in God’s absence.  And for what?  For her to come back at long last, to emerge from hiding, to finally get involved in the affairs of the world once more, only to elevate a tainted creature to his level?  It was an insult was what it was.  

For the first time Castiel felt that maybe he could understand Lucifer’s position a little. This sudden unwelcome thought horrified him and he found himself exceedingly relieved that there was a new God.  Not as a replacement, of course, he was still loyal to the old God, to a point, but more – a backup plan.  A second opinion.  A line item veto for God…or Jovi, now, he needed to get used to that…for her worst instincts, her more impulsive moments.  Castiel was, on the whole, pretty ok with Dean as God.  While it had been a shock, it made sense to him somehow.  Even though he knew that Sam had his doubts and he understood why, at least Dean was someone that Castiel felt that he could follow.  He just wasn’t sure he could follow Jovi any more, at least not only her.  It just seemed to Castiel that when she made this Crowley-thing she had finally gone too far.   

“What’s your bloody problem?  Can’t handle my glory?”

Castiel had been staring again.  He didn’t know what to say.  He didn’t want to speak to the awful thing anyway.  The very idea made him want to scrub his tongue with strong-smelling cleaning chemicals.  He started to speak and then stopped, and sent Gabriel another pleading look.  Gabriel had a way with lesser beings that Castiel lacked.  “Well, Crowley…”

“Oriphiel.”

“Oh yeah, uh, Oriphiel…well, it looks to us like you aren’t exactly 99 and 44/100ths pure, there.”

“What?”  He dropped the “t” from the end of the word and curled his lip as he said it.

“Like she left a little demon behind in the mix?  Around the edges?”

“Oh?”  The Crowley-thing inspected himself and seemed impressed.  “Good.”

Castiel could hardly wait to get back to Dean.  This couldn’t stand.

********************

As for Gabriel, he still couldn’t believe he had his life back.   How sweet was that?  

After the meetup with Castiel and Crowley, he was thinking about maybe firing up a little Casa Erotica and kicking back with a cold one to celebrate when who should appear but Dean Winchester, aka God.  “Yikes. I totally owe you a big apology for all the times I did that to you.”  Dean started to talk and Gabriel held out a hand to stop him.  “I’m way ahead of you, man.”  Because he was.  “Jon Bon Jovi’s house was just leveled.”  After a moment of shock, Dean started to talk again but Gabriel waved him off a second time.  “Would you like to know HOW Jon Bon Jovi’s house was just leveled?

“I’m not sure.”

“Terrorists…”  He made air quotes around the word terrorists.   “…with an infrasonic weapon…”  He made air quotes around the word weapon.  “…that played the song “Let It Go” from Frozen?  People heard it from 500 miles away.  Mr. Bon Jovi is now being interrogated by the Department of Homeland Security.  Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but. Hilarious!”

“Sigh. I don’t know what that is.  Frozen??”

“It’s amazing that I can come back from the dead less than an hour ago, and still be more up to speed on pop culture references than you.  It’s a movie.  A chick movie.  I think you better watch it.  Or absorb it.  Download it, inject it, snort it, whatever it is you deity-types do.”

“Hm.  Much as it pains me to say it, Gabriel, I’m here for your advice.”

“Little late for that now, don’t you think?  I mean, my advice would have been, when a very nearly all powerful, super needy, and notoriously capricious being bestows omnipotence upon you and offers you an eternity of unconditional love, don’t reject her.”

“Is she going to go to Lucifer.  That’s all I need to know.” Gabriel debated the question in his mind for a moment before replying.  He could definitely see both sides of that one.  Dean frowned.  “What, you don’t know?”

“Eh.  I can see both sides of this one.  I’ve seen her do some messed up stuff on a whim, but she’s also…infinitely benevolent.  So good.  Good like, you can’t even fathom the good there.  She’s a very sweet girl, at heart.  Which my brother, decidedly, is not.  Probably the attraction, there.  Good girl, bad boy…I’d watch my back.”

“If they team up, what do I do?”

“Run?”

“Would you be freaking serious?”

“I’m as serious as a heart attack, Daddy-O.  Can you stop them?  Both?  And Michael?  Because the first thing that either of them is gonna do is get him a vessel.  And she can rearchangel him like that.”  He snapped his fingers to punctuate the point.

Dean sighed thoughtfully.  “I got no idea, Gabe.  I’ve been doing this for like, three hours.  I have a sinking feeling though, that the reason she was so insistent on opening that cage today was less to set Adam free, and more because she thought she might need Lucifer to defeat me at some point in the not-so-distant future.  Does one plus one equal better than me?  I don’t know.”   

Gabriel considered it, and had to acknowledge that it could be true.  “She does like her contingency plans.  It’s not that the one thing wasn’t true, but just that a bunch of other things were also, equally true.  She doesn’t lie, not really, not ever, she just doesn’t always volunteer all the information?”  Something occurred to him, something important.  He didn’t really want to help Dean, exactly, but felt obliged to; part of the whole God-Angel dynamic, probably.  “I think you’re gonna need some angels.  Because she’s already making them.  Lucifer doesn’t have the ability to make angels but he’ll be making demons, bet on that.”  He decided to keep the whole “Jovi is making human-angel-and-yes-even-demon hybrids eww” idea under his hat, an easy decision since he knew Castiel would be blabbing it in Dean’s ear as fast as his feathered wings could carry him.  He was actually surprised Castiel wasn’t already surgically attached to Dean’s shoulder.

“Can you get on that for me?”  

After a long awkward pause, Gabriel screwed up his courage to speak.  “Welll, here’s the thing, Dean, old buddy, old pal.  You know, that I don’t really like to do the whole, getting involved in family squabbles thing…and if you put me in a position where I have to pick a side…I’m not sure which side it’s gonna be.  If you were getting along I could serve you both, and I’d be happy to do it, but.  This is like an After School Special –  When mommy and daddy don’t love each other any more!”  He really laid it on thick, allowing his voice to break as if crying because he knew that Dean hated stuff like that.  “Don’t make me choose!  I just want to be a family again!”  

“Really, Gabriel?  You won’t help me?”

“I like being alive, and I’d like to keep it that way.  And I love her, endlessly and eternally, whereas you, mmmph.   Not there yet.  Heads up though. Oriphiel…Crowley?  You know him, right?  Is for her.  Whatever loyalty you expect from him, don’t.”  Dean made a shocked sound.  “I know, your butt buddy drops you like a hot potato when there’s a new kid on the block.   Ouch!”  

“Castiel?”

“Trusty Cas is in your corner as always.  That’s how sweet she is, she left him to help you.  And she didn’t do that on accident either by the way.  But he’s just one.  You’re gonna need a minimum of three archangels, ones that you can trust, four is better, and as many angels as they can create.  It’s exhausting, making angels is, so you should imbue your archangels with the power to make more angels for you and conserve your strength.  No working miracles, boyo.  Creation, destruction.  All the fun God stuff is strictly off limits for now.  Save that mojo in case you need it.  Because you’re gonna need it.”  Dean grimaced in frustration.  Gabriel grinned back at him.  “Unlimited cosmic power…itty bitty living space.”

Dean disappeared with an annoyed expression.

Now then, where were we?  Oh yeah, Casa Erotica.

********************

When Lucifer found Michael’s true vessel, he wanted to scream.  He did, actually.  He screamed so loudly that he shattered nearby windows and caused an unfortunate pigeon pecking around his feet to explode.

The vessel was unacceptable, completely and totally unacceptable, but apparently it was the only one available.  He wondered if she had known this when she gave Michael’s essence to him; he found it very likely that she had.  He found it very likely that not only had she known, she had orchestrated it.  She’d had the other vessels killed perhaps, or never born, or altered so that they could no longer house an angel.  She did things like that.  So few seemed capable of perceiving her true nature.

Lucifer approached the boy.  He knew that the boy’s name was Aidan, which Lucifer decided that he despised just on general principle.  The boy, a skinny, scrawny urchin of perhaps 10 years of age or maybe a little older – Lucifer didn’t like to look at humans long enough to be able to accurately guess ages, even after all this time – was on a cellular phone device.  Phone devices, which despite their being trendy and ubiquitous, rather like the name Aidan, Lucifer adored.  Something about them made humans exceedingly easy to corrupt.  “Hello.”

“Screw you.”  Lucifer could see the screen of the phone.  The boy was launching cartoon birds into rickety buildings containing round green vaguely porcine monsters using a slingshot, and appeared utterly mesmerized by the process.  And yet God somehow claimed that she preferred humans to angels.  “Perv.”

“Oh, no, no.   I’m not a…perv.  I’m a superhero.”

“Yeah, right.”  He never even looked up from his phone.  It was so rude Lucifer could hardly believe it, that a child wouldn’t even look at an adult that was speaking to it.  Someone should spank the little beast preferably with a belt or the limb of a tree.

“I can make you a superhero too.”

“Bite me.”  Lucifer would have loved to do exactly that but he needed the little brat.

“Watch.”  The boy still didn’t look up from the phone device so Lucifer transformed it into a snake.  The child shrieked and flung the reptile to the ground.  In midair Lucifer changed it back again and tweaked it just so, so that when it hit the ground, the screen shattered into a web of cracks.   As soon as he recovered from the fright the boy fell to his knees after his precious device.

“You broke it!”

“No, you broke it, when you threw it onto the ground.   You should have been more careful.”

“I thought it was…” Suddenly the boy blinked and realized how silly it sounded.

“You thought it was a snake.  That’s because it was a snake.”

“What?”

“I turned it into a snake.  Watch.”  Lucifer turned the phone back into a snake which struck at the boy.  He skittered back out of range and Lucifer allowed it to resume its original form.

“Hey, that’s really cool!  How did you do that?”

“Because I’m a superhero, I already told you.  Is there something wrong with your ears?”

“Wull.”  Lucifer assumed he had meant to say well.  “Can you fix it?”  Still obsessed with the phone device.  Odds bodkins, how strange humans were.

“In a minute.  I want to talk to you about something, Aidan.”  Ugh.  “Now, Aidan, I’ve come here today with on a secret mission.  Because you are a very unique boy.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.  I would like to turn you into a superhero too, but the thing is, you have to agree to it.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.  Very few people can become a superhero.  You’re one of the…”  Lucky?  No, that wasn’t quite right; too random.  Special had negative connotations to it, since that’s what the humans called their imbeciles and lunatics and cripples these days.  “Chosen.  You have been chosen to become a superhero, Aidan.  But you have to give me permission…”

“Yeah, yeah, do it!!”  As easy as that.  Nary a question about what he was getting himself into, not a single thought for his poor mother.  Hollywood had done its job so well, befuddled the humans’ feeble minds with the myth that they were all Chosen Ones.  Every last one of them believed down deep inside that eventually a magic owl would be arriving bearing an invitation, that a man would appear someday in a park to bestow unearned greatness upon them.  Because they deserved it.  

Lucifer loved the 21st century.  The pickings were so easy.

He held up the vial that contained Michael’s essence and the boy swallowed.  “It doesn’t hurt.”  He uncapped the vial and Michael’s essence flowed into the boy.  Lucifer watched with great satisfaction as the boy’s eyes shed their humanity and grew clear, purposeful.  

Michael examined his arm and hand with dismay.  “Oh, no.”

Lucifer smiled.  “It will be all right, Michael.  You know as well as I do that most vessels are merely temporary.”

Michael nodded.

Lucifer stomped on the cellular phone device.  Goodbye Aidan.

Looking for Part 6?  It’s here: https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/11/04/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-6-hoofbeats-in-heaven/

Miss Part 3?  It’s here: https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/11/01/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-3-free-range-lucifer/

Crowley was standing back out of the action, checking his phone.   He had performed all the heroic acts he cared to do for one day and he had a lot of pressing things on his agenda that required attention.  Hell didn’t just run itself, you know.  

The Goddess cast an appraising glance his direction.  Her eyes bored into him and she narrowed them into slits and clenched her jaw and her hands balled up into fists and he reckoned that he must have finally outlived his usefulness.  He prepared himself mentally for destruction.  But he didn’t really worry much, he had a right knack for coming back to life again and it hadn’t failed him yet.  

After a moment, he could ignore her gaze no longer.  “What?”

“You know what I did wrong with the angels, Crowley?”  Crowley pointed at himself, as if he surprised that she was talking to him.  But she was, of course, and he wasn’t surprised at all, because she needed him.  God needed Hell like Sheriff Joe Arpaio needed tent city jails.  And he WAS Hell.  He was the heart and soul and brains and balls of Hell and God Herself by all rights ought to come crawling to him to beg assistance.  And perhaps he’d make her do exactly that, in time.  Crawl and beg.  “They never had blood in their teeth.  How can you really be good, if you don’t know bad?  I think that’s why I always favored Lucifer.  He walked on the wild side.”

“And you’re telling me this, why?”

“I need new angels.  A host of them.  And I need someone to make them for me.  Out of beings that know darkness and thus, can totally fight against it.”  She grinned a sideways grin and there was mischief and a kind of a mad glee in it.

Crowley suddenly realized with a nauseating certainty what was about to happen to him; it was worse than being destroyed, far worse, and he took a step back, raising his hands in front of him, to try and protect himself.  “Oh, no, oh no you don’t….”

The Goddess burst into a glow that swirled around her as if she was standing in a whirlwind.  With a gesture, it separated from her and enveloped Crowley and swirled around him a few times before entering him and then blinking out, leaving him feeling rather unpleasantly violated.  He staggered a few paces with his face contorted into an agonized grimace before recovering.  “I name thee Oriphiel and elevate thee to archangel.  Make me angels, from demons, Oriphiel.”  She gestured dismissively with a faraway expression.  “I’ve resurrected a few of the best for you.  They’ll find you.  And if you could keep them from causing too much trouble in the meantime that would be, like, super awesome?”

Crowley winced and groaned.  Because this was simply awful.  An angel?  Intolerable!  He unfurled a set of angel’s wings and inspected them with extreme displeasure. “Bloody hell!  I don’t have the first idea of how to be an angel!”  Or even a smidgeon of desire, although he did realize with dismay that he now possessed a very strong urge to please and protect the miniature and adorable, I mean really, just look at her, precious thing, darling, simply darling…BOLLOCKS what was happening to him?!?….but really, how lovely she was, this delicate goddess standing before him.

“I’ll make you a teacher.”  Jovi clapped her hands twice and the Archangel Gabriel reappeared from whereever it had been that he’d gone to upon his demise.  Gabriel appeared surprised, but not that surprised.  Crowley understood the feeling; once you’ve been resurrected a few times over the novelty wears off.  Dean Winchester sidled over then, casting a wary glance at everything that had transpired.   Crowley-Now-Oriphiel felt a surge of pride over the magnificence of his wings – because they were quite nice – and spread them out a bit wider so Dean would notice and be impressed by them.

Gabriel looked about with a calculating expression and seemed to immediately grasp every implication of every nuance of every development even though Crowley-Now-Oriphiel wasn’t quite sure he understood it all himself and he’d been an eyewitness.  With a smirk Gabriel fell to his knees at Winchester’s feet, even though no one was glowing.  Suck-up.  “I see the Dark Lady has returned.  Nice.”    He glanced appraisingly at Dean.  “And she brought a friend.”  

“I made him myself!”  The Goddess was nearly breathless from excitement.  Gabriel took it all in with great amusement.   

Winchester did not share the enthusiasm.  “Uh, Jovi, I couldn’t help but notice there’s an awful lot of, uh, activity going on over here.”

She beamed with pride.   “Yeah!  I turned Crowley into an angel…bet ya didn’t see that coming!”

Dean gaped and who could blame him, after all who bloody HAD seen that coming?  If Crowley-Now-Oriphiel had, he’d surely have ducked.   But he found he was getting rather used to the idea, he found that it wasn’t as objectionable as he’d originally thought, so he couldn’t help but gloat.  “An archangel!”   Winchester’s eyes bugged out for a second from the shock.  “Oriphiel.  That’s a name with some…gravitas, eh?”

“And I remade Gabriel…FUN!!

Gabriel winked comically at Dean.  “I give the best worship you have ever had, Big Boy.”

Winchester sighed, exasperated.  Jovi winced.  “Don’t be mad.”

Dean digested this news.  He clearly wasn’t happy; Crowley knew him well enough to sense his displeasure, but he was still in the honeymoon period, it seemed.  “Check with me next time, ok, Jovi? Before you do the big ticket items??”

“Ok.  Yes Sir.”  She was positively delighted by being told what to do.  Really, she was lovely, wasn’t she?  Dear little thing.  Crowley-Now-Oriphiel found he couldn’t half wait to serve her.

Gabriel rose to his feet to address Winchester.  “Gee whiz, I should have asked first.  Mother, may I?”  Dean ground his teeth.  Then Gabriel turned his attention to Jovi.  “You’re not the Dark Lady this time, are you?”  Jovi glanced at Dean from the corner of her eyelashes and shook her head no.  “I see.  It’s a good look for ya.  If, a bit unexpected.  I’ll go tell it on the mountain.”   He paused and took a moment, as if trying to absorb everything that had just happened.  He laughed, delighted by it all, ever a creature of chaos.  “Be seeing you, Dad.  Thanksgiving is gonna be here before you know it.”  He leaned in and spoke quietly so Jovi couldn’t hear.   “Enjoy the ride.”

Gabriel nodded Oriphiel’s way and they disappeared, off to do good, and Oriphiel was quite surprised to find he was rather looking forward to the endeavor.

Doing good.  Might be a nice change of pace, really.

*********************

Ok.  Dean didn’t want to be too hasty, too rash, so before speaking he took a brief moment to go over a few things that had transpired over the past hour…that…that maybe didn’t seem exactly like stellar ideas.  Lucifer was free, Gabriel, that freaking troublemaker, had been resurrected, Michael was evil and also, free, Crowley was an angel, and he himself was God.  Ok.   A lot to take in, there.  Don’t yell.  He bit his tongue hard and had to swallow a couple times because he kinda felt like yelling sort of a lot and he thought that maybe him yelling might be the wrong move to make, like maybe she might react badly to that.  Everything was cool.  Everything was just fine and dandy.   Ok.  No yelling.  “The Dark Lady?  Why do they keep calling you that?”

Jovi paused for a moment as if considering how best to phrase her reply.  “Um, cause, whenever I want to do anything really crazy, I always turn into a woman.  I’m not really sure why?  I just do!  I’m usually, uh, not very happy then?  So the angels learned a long time ago, whenever I showed up in female form, trouble was sure to follow.”  She seemed a little embarrassed.  “Wrath, and stuff.  But that was before.”

“Before what?”

“Well, before you, naturally!”

“Are, you, uh.  Going to turn into a dude at any point in the near future?”   This question seemed kind of important to ask.

“No.  That’s the part I put into you.  So to speak.  Heh.  I’m a girl permanently now?  I felt like since you’ve only ever been a guy, it would probably be too big of an adjustment for you to make, to be a switch hitter.  Whereas I was a genderless glowing ball of light for trillions of years before I started taking on vessels, so it’d be easier for me to be flexible in the boy-girl department.”    

“Well, I must admit, that is a huge relief.  If I was going to wake up tomorrow with…” He gestured to indicate girly bits.  “I wanted to know.”  Dean realized suddenly that Jovi was shivering.  He felt very solicitous of her well-being.  That connection, no doubt.  It was like a suction cup now.  Each time he examined it, probed it with the new Swiss Army Knife of perceptive abilities he seemed to have folded up within his brain now, he thought it had maybe gotten a little stronger, that connection had.  He wondered if it would keep growing or if it would level off at some point.  “Are you all right?”  For the first time in ever it felt like, he wondered if he might be capable of caring about someone other than Sam.  Really caring.  He hadn’t cared for so long, the idea felt a little terrifying.

“My vessel is cold.  And wants a cheeseburger.  And lip balm.”

“I could go for a cheeseburger myself.”  A cheeseburger.  That sounded like an entirely good idea.  So Dean focused, his brain hiccupped, and suddenly they were back at the bunker.

********************

Sam glanced around, annoyed, disoriented.  They were back in the bunker.  Dean.  Dean had done it.  Adam was tucked into bed in a spare room that they never went into.  The spare room hadn’t even had a bed in it before but now Adam was tucked into a bed in there.  Wearing pajamas.  In a bed with sheets and pillows and a duvet cover that looked like it had come from a Pottery Barn catalog.  Dean had done all that in a split second, with a thought.  Sam sent him a venomous glare.  “Future reference, I don’t like that.”   

“I’ll ask first next time. Provided that time allows.”

“Sigh.  Next time.  Where’s Cas?”

“Archangel confab.  Gabriel, back from the dead, Castiel, and uh.  Crowley, if you can believe that. She says we need three, minimum.  Archangels, I mean.  And apparently he was handy.”

Sam laughed bitterly.  “That seems to be about par for the course, doesn’t it?  Lucifer is free, Michael’s gone over to the dark side, and Crowley is an archangel.  And as almost freaking always, only one of us is human.  Go Team Winchester.”   

Sam exited into the main living area of the bunker. Dean followed, shutting the door to Adam’s room behind him with his mind.  Out of the corner of his eye Sam saw the door swing shut seemingly of its own accord and winced, but Dean didn’t notice.  “Heh.  A guy could get used to that.  Getting beers and finding the remote and never even having to get up off the couch.”

Of course that where his mind went first.  Alcohol and the remote.  “Where is IT.”

“SHE, was cold and hungry.”

Sam’s voice dripped with sarcasm and it wasn’t a fraction of what he felt.  “Aw.  Poor IT.”

“I think you should stop calling her that.”

“It’s not a her, Dean, it’s an IT.”  Put IT in a pretty package and Dean couldn’t help himself.  Idiot.

“Not any more.  She’s a her now, and forever.  She gave me the dude stuff.  This is a new configuration we’re trying out here.”

“Gee, that’s so sweet.  Manic Pixie God Girl.  Dean, I cannot believe you are blind to the fact that this…this…thing…is messing with your mind.  Your soul.  And everything else.  It has made our existence a living Hell, literally, for our entire lives.”

“Seriously, enough already.  You of all people.  Enough.”

“How much did she mess with, Dean?  She says not Mom, ok, I’ll choose to believe that.  But what DID she do?  To get you low enough so you’d be OK with this?  Dad? Ellen, Jo?  Bobby?  Dean, think about it.  How much did she take away from you, so she could have whatever was left?”  Sam paused, deciding how best to twist the knife.  “Lisa and Ben?”  

Dean inhaled sharply through his teeth.  “Sammy, you little…”

“Hear me out.  She admitted she was in control of Crowley, making him do things to help you, why not hurt you too, if it served her purposes?   Hurt the people you care about?  Drive them away from you?  If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the nature of God during all this, Dean, it’s that people are nothing but means to an end to IT.”

That gave Dean pause for a moment and Jovi must have been eavesdropping because she appeared in front of Sam in a fury.  She was freakishly tiny, like Snooki or Tila Tequila.  He realized he had to be like 2 feet taller than her practically.  Sam wondered if he could pick her up and snap her like a twig, but of course it was actually the other way around. “Go on, Sam.  IT’S right here.  IT’S listening.  IT promises not to go totally Biblical on your ass.  Please, continue.”

Sam smirked.  “I’m not afraid of you.  What more can you do to me than what you already have?  Send me to Hell?  Been there, done that.  Take away everyone I love? Done that, too.  Take my soul? Too late.  You’ve proved again and again, GOD, or Jovi, or whatever you want to call yourself, that you will stop at nothing, hurt anyone for no better reason than you want people to like you.  It’s disgusting!”

“I don’t want people  like me, I NEED people to like me, and that is an entirely different thing altogether!  I can’t help my nature any more than you can!”

Sam gestured at Dean as if to say I told you so.  “I told you so!”  He said it because the gesture alone hadn’t felt like quite enough to get through Dean’s thick skull. Then he felt a surge of hot pain like a bee sting only more full of pus and he grabbed the side of his neck.  A lump was developing there, swelling so quick he could feel it growing under his palm.  “Did you just give me a boil?”

“Well…just one.  Not like a plague of them or anything.  Which, I could’ve.”  Dean gave her a look and she gestured slightly and the boil vanished.  “You have no idea what it is to be me, Sam Winchester.  To have an insatiable need, ok there I admitted it, a need for companionship and to be utterly alone.  To just want someone there with you in the endless nothing of infinity and eternity.  For billions of years, stacking atoms into molecules and doublehelixing strand after strand of DNA thinking, oh maybe this time.  Trial and error, failure after failure.”  She turned to Dean to plead her case and Sam was relieved to see it on his brother’s face, to see that she was losing; that even though Dean liked this terrible God-ette her stock was dropping fast.  “You know, I can’t even sleep.  My vessel sleeps and I sit in there just waiting for another day.  Dreading it.  I gave you the gift of sleep, Dean…you should appreciate it.” She turned back to Sam and her eyes were crazy and she sounded more than a little unhinged.  “Finally to get somewhere and find out the creation you worked so hard on and you wished and hoped for and waited for… just really isn’t that into you.  That they mostly just want someone to blame when things go wrong.  They take your gifts, and curse your name, and then they ask you for more gifts.”  She stopped talking for a moment and muttered mostly to herself.   “I don’t even know what I’m going to do if this doesn’t work out.”

Sam knew he had her on the ropes then and switched into full interrogation mode.  “Jovi, yes or no, did you have Crowley hurt Lisa?”

“All you Men of Letters think you’re some kind of lawyer or something!”

“Answer the question, Jovi.”  Jovi recoiled, what little of her composure that remained evaporating visibly when Dean spoke.

Finally, after a long, tortured moment, she replied.  “I’m…I’m a jealous God, Dean.”  

“Agh.”  Dean said it like he’d been kicked in the guts.   Sam laughed. 

“I didn’t cause it to happen, but.  But.  I didn’t prevent it.  I could have.  I should have.  Thought about it.  But she’s very pretty, and I was in CHUCK.  I’m not proud of it.”

Sam couldn’t help but ask.  “You were in Chuck?”

“Very few vessels can contain me, Sam.  I have to take what I can get.”  She paused for a moment and her shoulders slumped.  “I had to wait so long to find a female one.   And this one isn’t even pretty.  It’s like a very sexy Muppet.”  She turned back to Dean, growing desperate.  “I could have stopped it, I could have stopped it with…with Lisa…but I didn’t.  And that’s the truth.  I had to make sure you two were separated permanently and it just…it seemed like a super good opportunity.”  She swallowed hard, then continued and Sam could hear the despair in her voice but he didn’t feel guilty for it, not one little bit.  “It was for your own good, Dean.  But also because I was jealous.”  Dean absorbed the news stoically.  “God Lesson One, sometimes you have to do little hurts to prevent big ones later on.  If I hadn’t allowed that to happen, if I wouldn’t have made sure you were driven apart, what might have happened later on, Dean, when you were a demon?  Could you have lived with yourself it if had been at your hands?  Just sayin’.”

Dean had heard enough.  “I think you need to leave.”

“I know.  I’m going.  Go ahead, unerase her memory.  Tell her you’re God now, see how far that gets ya.  Hey, maybe she’s into it.  Some of em are.  Have fun loving a gerbil.”  She gave Sam a puzzled once over.  “You win again, Sam.  You must have been like the world’s cutest baby ever.”   She disappeared, but then two seconds later she was back again, and furious.  “You know what everyone hates about you Winchesters??  You are a couple of freaking hypocrites!  The rules never apply to you, but boy howdy, everyone else better follow them to the letter, no matter what.  Extenuating circumstances be damned.  The word forgiveness is not in your vocabulary.”  She spun away from Sam to address Dean and Dean alone.  “Well, LEARN IT, Dean, because like it or not, you’re God now, and it’s kind of part of the gig!”  She vanished again, this time for good.

Sam and Dean exchanged a look.  “Your Becky is scarier than my Becky.”

 

If you missed Part Two, it’s here: https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/10/31/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-2-dean-gives-god-a-bad-name/

Not save Crowley?  

While there had been many a time in his life where Dean would have loved to watch the demon fry, he couldn’t quite help himself.  He focused for a moment

and

He felt a sickening sensation, the kind that you get when you drive too fast on a hilly country road after a night of too much tequila.  And then it stopped.  Dean realized to his very, very, very great dismay that he was back in Hell.  He could smell the brimstone.  He had, apparently, without intending to, transported himself and his pitiful little party of Gods and misfits right smack dab into the center of Hell.  And what was worse, far worse, so, so very very, again, totally very much worse, was that before him was a cage, and the cage door hung open.  Wide open.  

Lucifer was free.  

Sam grabbed Jovi by the arm and shook her.   “What have you done??”  Dean couldn’t do a thing to stop him because he wanted to do the exact same thing.  God, that dumb bitch, she had had Crowley free Lucifer!  He felt rage, a surge of rage and it was like no rage he’d ever experienced, a flare so intense it was terrifying and he wanted to destroy everything that was pissing him off right then and he wondered if this was maybe the downside of being God.  That you felt things way stronger than you did when you were a human and had the ability to react to those feelings, badly.  And immediately.  Thus you had to have a lot of self-control all the time for people to be safe around you and he had never been a guy with an excess of that.  

Lucifer and Michael/Adam, apparently chock full of energy upon exiting the cage they’d been sealed in for the past several years, had attacked Crowley and killed him.  Still kneeling over the body, they were ripping what was left of poor Crowley to shreds. Sam shook Jovi again, so hard her teeth rattled.  Dean realized he could feel Jovi pulling at him like a magnet and he suspected that that no matter where he went, even if they were at two different ends of the galaxy, he’d always be able to feel that little tug.  He realized  that she was scared and he felt goosebumps rise on the back of his neck.  Through their link he knew somehow that being in Hell weakened her, and as a result she was incapable of stopping Sam’s assault, and that she was afraid.  

Luckily, after quickly testing his limits, he found that he himself was unaffected by Hell for the most part.   Maybe a little around the edges, but still fully functional.  He grabbed Sam’s wrist and removed his arm with a perhaps a little more force than Sam expected.  Sam pulled away with an accusing expression and rubbed his arm.  Such a pussy.

Dean had no time to salve his brother’s ego.  He immediately turned his attention to the quickly deteriorating Jovi.  The recriminations could wait.  “What’s wrong, Jay?”

Her voice was thin and high and on the verge of panic.  “I can’t stay here long!  Hell is where I put everything that hurts me!   It’s like my kryptonite!”

“What about me?  I feel fine?”

“I don’t know.  You’ve known Hell before, it might make you better able to withstand it.  Like an inoculation?”  God, she looked terrible.  No faking, she was getting weaker by the second.

Lucifer’s attention had been drawn by Sam’s presence.  “My vessel.”  Lucifer grinned threateningly as he rose to his feet and started towards Sam, who was unfortunately currently inhabiting the only vessel that could truly contain Lucifer’s essence without being totally destroyed in the process.  Sam gulped and Dean felt a surge of adrenaline.

Castiel intervened, pulling out his angel sword. “No, brother.”  As he came closer Dean realized that Lucifer’s meatsuit was disintegrating by the second.  He needed Sam in order to survive and while Dean knew he couldn’t take Sam by force against his will, Lucifer was persuasive and Sam had agreed once before.  Dean had the horrifying, hopeless thought that maybe it was destiny, that maybe he was destined to be the hand of God and Sam was destined to house Lucifer and the whole nightmare they had already prevented once – the world ending around them as he and Sam fought the final battle of good vs. evil, not on the same side but on opposite teams – was just about to start up all over again.  Maybe there really was no escaping that destiny for the Brothers Winchester. 

“Lucifer.  Stop.”  Upon hearing her voice, Lucifer beamed with delight, with amazement.  Lucifer was absolutely brimming over with joy at seeing Jovi.  The fallen angel quickly jumped to conclusions about her purpose, and who could even blame the guy?  Lucifer clearly assumed that she’d come to rescue him, that all was forgiven and they could be a big happy family again.  Then the chilling thought came that maybe it was actually Dean himself who had jumped to conclusions about Jovi’s intentions.   

Maybe there was more going on here than met the eye, maybe Jovi had done all this deliberately to bring about the Apocalypse since they’d maybe screwed her out of it the first time.  Dean tried not to think about how many times she’d said she’d tried to destroy herself before and especially not all the times she’d tried to destroy the world before.  Literally, not figuratively.  Old Testament, that was the OLD Testament.  Right?

Then she burst into glow and while it was just as beautiful as it had been the first time he’d seen it, Dean found himself totally immune to the effects, just as she had promised him he’d be, which was very reassuring.  He did not have to worship her, and that meant she really had made him stronger than she was for whatever reason and that meant that the Apocalypse would not be happening, at least not today.   

Dropping to his knees before Jovi, Lucifer gazed at her in adoration.  Even on his knees he was nearly as tall as she was and they were pretty much staring right into each other’s eyes.  Dean felt a dark pulsation of an emotion he could not identify but it was like a lot of hot blisters formed on the inside of his torso and painfully popped one by one by one quickly like fizzing bubbles in Alka Seltzer.  “My Dark Lady has returned.  You’ve brought me my vessel, my lady, thank you.”

Jovi answered with cold amusement.  “No, Lucifer.  I haven’t.”  She turned to Dean, deferential.  She was deferring to him – again, very reassuring, the body language there. Dean felt reassured despite all evidence to the contrary.  “Can you heal this vessel? And make it last?  It…it suits him, I think.”

“Do I have to?”

“Well no, of course not, remember?  But I would appreciate it.  I have a plan, I promise.”  Dean still hesitated.  “If we don’t heal this one, he’ll just find another one.  Ruin someone else’s life.  Like Sam’s.  Remember how much trouble that was the last time?” Reluctantly, Dean started glowing.  He somehow managed to direct it away from Jovi, so she didn’t have to do the whole worship thing, pushing it all at Lucifer.   He wondered vaguely if she might’ve done the same; directed her glow away from him and towards Lucifer, perhaps tricking Dean into thinking he was immune to her when maybe he actually wasn’t?  But he pushed that thought away.   She seemed so nice, so sweet, so genuine, he couldn’t help but trust her, even though he knew it was probably stupid and naive for him to feel that way.  Later.  He’d figure it out later.

After a few moments of not-so-tender ministration, Lucifer had healed.  It turned Dean’s stomach, doing something to help the creature that had inflicted so much suffering on his family.  So he turned his attentions to healing Crowley, or he tried to anyway.  As fast as Dean could heal him, Michael…or was it Adam…ripped Crowley to pieces again.  The screams were awful, even for someone who had seen and heard as much torture as Dean had.  Jovi clapped her hands over her ears and winced.  Dean focused his intentions like a magnifying glass concentrating a beam of sunlight to melt a hole in an old Pat Boone album.  The archangel wearing the body of Dean’s formerly dead half-brother responded to Dean’s command and finally stopped the attack on Crowley’s rapidly healing body.  He crawled over to grovel at Dean’s feet, leaving a trail of Crowley behind him.  Once he managed to get Crowley put back together again, Dean refocused the glow back onto Lucifer, double strength, and allowed Adam…or was it Michael…to rise.

Crowley scrambled to his feet as well.  He was disoriented at first, but he caught up quick, and after gaining his bearings he hurried to Sam and Castiel, who were nearest to him.   “We need to get out of here.  Every beastie in Hell sensed that gate opening and they’ve all come a-running to serve Lucifer!!”  Then Crowley noticed Lucifer was kneeling on the ground beside him and jumped.  “Aaa!  Did you know he was here?”  Dean couldn’t help but laugh.  This was one strange situation he’d gotten himself into.  If only it was just himself and not everyone else, too.

Lucifer, in the meantime, had realized what had happened, what Dean had become, what Jovi had turned him into, and was stricken.  Wounded.  Deeply wounded.  Dean took pleasure from it.  Lucifer sent Jovi an accusing glare – Dean could see him working out the calculus and the implications – and Lucifer then beseeched Jovi plaintively with a strangled voice that bordered on a whine.  “No. You haven’t.  My Lady??”

The howls, screams and cries of the creatures in Hell grew ever nearer.  Jovi seemed distracted, staring off in the distance as if judging how far away they were, and she swallowed, which did not seem to be a particularly good sign.  “I have.  I’m sorry.”

Lucifer inspected Dean with disdain.   “A human.  Of course, a human.  That human!!!”

“There are two of us now, Lucifer.  I’m going to set you free and if you misbehave, Daddy’s going to take you to the woodshed.”

Dean shook his head, confused.  “We can’t set him free?”  Whatever this plan of Jovi’s was, he wanted no part of it.  This was most definitely a Bad Idea.  

“Believe me, Dean, he causes just as much trouble locked up, if not more.  I locked him up because I was lazy, not because it was the right thing to do with him.  Sigh.  I was just…procrastinating, I guess.  Putting it off but I can’t put it off any longer.  Take us back, Dean, please.  All of us.  We’ll sort it out later.”

Dean tried to do the reverse of what he’d done before, to back them all right out of Hell again, but nothing happened.  “Um?  I’m not sure I know how.”

With a start Dean realized that Lucifer was aglow with a dark version of the light that Dean and Jovi possessed.  Jovi gave Lucifer an annoyed look.  “He’s opposing you.”  Dean struggled harder, but nada.  Jovi looked sternly at Lucifer, but not without affection, as if he was a naughty little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Would you stahp?”  She almost smiled as she scolded the fallen angel.  Scolded him!  Dean would have vastly preferred she smote first and asked questions later.

Lucifer grinned.   “No.”

Dean sent Jovi a panicked glance, feeling his control slipping.  “I thought I was stronger.” As if to prove that supposition entirely wrong, Lucifer rose, one foot and then the other.  

Crap.

“You are.  But he can be very tough to beat down here.  He feeds on it.  Subdue him, if you can.”  Easy for her to say.  Dean and Lucifer began to grapple, both physically and also using their opposing powers.  Seemed pretty unfair given that Dean had had his powers for about 3 minutes and Lucifer had had his for eons, but whatevs.  They pushed and prodded at each other, testing limits, probing for weaknesses.  Dean could sense that he was stronger, but Lucifer didn’t seem quite as subject to the laws of physics as Dean did.  He was slippery, oily, gooey, greasy, hits just seemed to slide by him and through him without making much of an impact.   Jovi turned away as the horde of monsters just reached them.  She raised a shield and the beasts of Hell threw themselves against it, trying to breach it and get to their master’s side.  “Crowley, take Sam Winchester and begone.  Protect him at all costs to yourself.  Hide him, if Lucifer gets out and we don’t.”

And we DON’T?  Like, we may not get out of here?  Dean found the idea that he might not escape Hell to be just as unappealing in that moment as it was when he was mortal.  If not more so.   He would have very much liked to ask Jovi a question or two but then Lucifer got a slimy cold hand around Dean’s windpipe and gave a squeeze.

“Yes, ma’am.”  After he spoke, Crowley grimaced, plainly annoyed by his sudden, inadvertent obedience.  “Bloody Hell.”

Sam raised a hand to try and stop Crowley.  “No, wait!”  But his protests were ignored. Crowley disappeared with Sam, and Dean felt a palpable sense of relief knowing that at least Sam was out of the line of fire.

Even though she was battling hard to maintain her shield, Jovi spoke calmly.  “Michael, Castiel, subdue Lucifer.”  But Dean could sense through their connection that it was an act; underneath her calm, she was shook and shook hard, and he was concerned by how pale she’d grown.  Nearly gray, and drawn with effort.  She was sweating and trembling. He had to get them out of Hell, and fast.  

But how could he with Lucifer’s hands around his throat?

Castiel, wielding his angel blade, started toward Lucifer.  But Adam…or was it Michael…stopped Castiel with a hand on his arm.   The archangel smiled, sinister.  “You know, brother, the funny thing about Lucifer is, he can be very persuasive.  We had a lot of time together in that cage, Castiel.  And some of the things he says makes a LOT of sense.  The Dark Lady reappears, and what does she bring us?  A human as a new God? Really?”  

Castiel’s eyes widened with near-panic as he realized.  “Michael has been corrupted by Lucifer!!”  Michael/Adam kicked Castiel in the chest before Cas could make a move.  Castiel flew through the air into Jovi’s shield, then dropped hard back onto the rocky ground.  He didn’t stir.  Dean would have loved to help, he really, really would’ve, but Lucifer had his thumb in Dean’s eye and was pushing down really, really hard.

Jovi’s calm demeanor began to crumble.  She did the only thing she could think of to do and Dean realized as she did it that he should have thought of it himself. “Castiel, I elevate thee to Archangel of the Lord!”  Her voice cracked bad and Dean realized with dismay that she was moving beyond fear straight into panic.  She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she didn’t know what she was doing, that she wasn’t all-knowing.

So much for having a plan.  Eh.  Plans were for pussies anyway.

Castiel leapt back to his feet.  His strength had grown dramatically and he ground his teeth in anticipation.  He flew at Adam/Michael and Dean was extremely relieved to see that the two were evenly matched, that Castiel was able to match Michael/Adam blow for blow, strike for strike.  Their swords clanged together and sent out sparks as they met.      

Dean noticed with dismay that Jovi’s shield appeared to be weakening.  The creatures of Hell attacked it again and again, and every time the area it covered grew a little smaller, a little smaller.  He managed to glance at her between trading blows with Lucifer.  She’d gone well beyond pale, she was ghostly, and her entire body shook with effort.  Dean mustered all his strength and will and threw one punch, then another, into Lucifer’s face.  He remembered Lucifer beating the hell out of him in the past and put that pain and rage he felt then into every blow.  And damn, he was strong.

Lucifer stumbled back a few steps and Dean was on him before he could regain his footing.  He connected with Lucifer’s eye and was supremely satisfied when the skin beneath his knuckles burst open like an overripe plum beneath a combat boot.  He could actually feel the eye socket shatter.  And it was a good feeling.  Spectacular.  Then there was movement behind Lucifer, a shimmer, something interdimensional glistening like a mirage and suddenly Sam appeared, Crowley at his side.  Freaking Crowley had disobeyed orders and brought Sam back.  But before Dean could react he realized that Sam had an angel blade.  He sank it to the hilt in Lucifer’s back.  The dark glow weakened and blinked out as Lucifer crumpled to the ground.  

And then boom, there it was again.  The power.  All of it.  Dean could reconnect and he sank his metaphysical teeth into it.   He focused intently for a moment and pulled them out of Hell, an act that was surprisingly much more physical than mental or spiritual.  They reappeared on the roof of a skyscraper in the middle of a city, some city somewhere, he had no idea which one, but it was a big one.   It was dusk and the sun was setting and the lights were starting to come up. 

Lucifer fell over sideways, injured but not dying, unfortunately.

Castiel and Michael/Adam were still fighting, and in the confusion, Castiel was distracted just for a moment but a moment was all it took, as evenly matched as they were.  Adam/Michael had his opportunity and took it and he began to get the upper hand.  Castiel backpedaled frantically and sent a panicked look Dean’s direction.  Sam noticed and tried to call it to Dean’s attention.  But Dean already knew.  “Dean…”

Dean already KNEW, of course he already KNEW, but…he held up his hand, still focused on what he was doing.   He had left her behind, he hadn’t meant to but he had left her behind.  He struggled but he couldn’t get her.  He could touch her but he couldn’t hang on for longer than a moment; wisps of her slipped through his grasp like sand through his fingers.  The window he could pull her through had all but gone.   The shield was all but gone.  He could feel Hell creeping up around her, he could feel her resolve slipping, her heart was going so quickly, how could a heart beat that fast?   “Jovi.”  He could only manage a whisper and he hoped it was enough so she knew he was still there, still trying, that he hadn’t given up on her and run out on her and he never would.   He decided to give it another few seconds and then he was going back for her and even if they were caught at least she wouldn’t be down there all alone. 

In the meantime Castiel was barely hanging on.  Sam spoke again, more insistent.  “Dean!”    

Dean didn’t welcome the distraction, not at all, but it triggered something within him.  It was as if he was able to splitscreen his own mind.  His power didn’t divide in half, it felt like it increased twofold.   He granted Castiel some of his strength and Cas managed to rally, forcing Michael/Adam back easily.  Dean turned his full attention to his other problem.  “Jovi, listen, you have to let me get you. Come on, c’mon c’mon.”  Please come on.  He perceived that she did something differently then, something that let him in; she let go of that tattered shield she was holding on to and dropped her guard, and as the beasts of Hell rushed in he wrapped his will around her and pulled with everything he had.  She stuck for a moment and his heart skipped a beat but then he wiggled her free like a stuck bolt in the Impala, just a little movement back and forth and she came loose, and he pulled her her up and away from the evil that was engulfing her and deposited her back into the world.      

Jovi reappeared 3 feet above the rooftop and dropped, hard.  She sat up and touched the back of her head.  “Ow.”  

Dean rushed to her side and slid to a stop on his knees beside her.  “Sorry.  You were putting up quite a fight there.”

“That was a sensation I never experienced before.  I’ve never…had to submit to another’s will.  It startled me.”  She smiled, bemused.  “You are stronger than me.  Much.”

“Yeah, well, we can arm wrestle later.”  He touched Jovi and she was healed, and then she returned the favor – he hadn’t realized until he actually started healing, but he’d been beaten bloody in his fight with Lucifer and he’d bit a hole through his lower lip from sheer nerves when he’d been fighting to save her.  He could still taste the blood on his tongue even after she’d healed him.  He helped her to her feet and as he did, he cast a wary eye at Lucifer.  The fallen angel pulled the blade from his back and sat up, coughing weakly.  Dean hoped Sammy had got him right in the lungs.  

Castiel and Adam/Michael were still fighting nearby.  Jovi looked at them, intent, and then Adam’s body – because Dean knew somehow it was only Adam’s body now, that whatever Jovi had done, Michael had been forcibly evicted and was gone out of his half-brother at last – fell unconscious.  “Why didn’t you just do that in the first place?”  Dean had no answer.  He didn’t even know what she’d done.  At the last moment, Castiel managed to stop his blade barely an inch from Adam’s throat.  

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance and rushed to Adam.  Dean healed his injuries with a thought, but he kept him unconscious.  Sam looked at Dean, hoping for reassurance.  “Is he ok?”

“He is no longer Michael.  Just Adam.”  Jovi had followed them.  Apparently she didn’t realize or couldn’t understand that wasn’t the answer that Sam was looking for.  She didn’t seem to understand Sam, exactly.  Then again, who really did, heh.   Castiel’s wounds healed beneath Jovi’s touch, and Castiel gazed at her and laid his palm against  her cheek, as if trying to convince himself that she was real.  “It’s really me, Castiel.  I know you were looking for a long time.”  Castiel nodded and Dean felt a rush of happiness that his friend’s long search for God was finally over.

Ignoring Jovi totally, Sam repeated the question.  “Dean.  Is Adam ok?”

“You have your brother back, Sam.”   Jovi didn’t seem to comprehend that having a brother, any generic brother, was not enough.  “You don’t need Dean any more now?  You have a brother.  Adam is your brother.”  Sam glared at her.   She peered back at him as if looking at an unusual specimen under a microscope.

Dean mostly ignored the exchange, intent upon on healing Adam to the best of his ability.  “I think he needs to sleep.  He’s been through a lot.”

“He can’t remember, can he?”

Castiel ran a hand over Adam’s head.  “He seems to have no recollection of anything that transpired within the cage.  His soul is intact and undamaged.”

Dean felt relieved that Castiel, the expert on such matters, agreed that his fix had worked.  “I took the memories away and I was able to heal his soul…”

Sam sputtered an interruption.  “Does the weirdness of that have ANY effect on you?”

The weirdness did have an effect, of course, but what could you do, sit around thinking about how weird everything was?   Pondering it?  Wallowing in the weirdness?  That didn’t make much sense given how weird him and Sam’s lives were on any given day.  “…but…and don’t ask me why I know this, Sam, but I do.  Adam’s quantum memory on the subatomic level is beyond my ability to repair.  His brain itself can’t remember, but the particles that make up his brain, do remember, in some capacity.  It’s like they were used to existence inside the cage.  The trauma is imprinted upon his essence in a fundamental way that, I can’t totally erase.  Time will have to do that.”  Sam gave Dean a blank stare.  Castiel gave Sam a befuddled glance and then mimicked Sam’s facial expression.  “I don’t know either, guys, look, I just know.  There will be some part of him that always remembers what happened.  Not consciously, but still.  A spiritual scar.”  

Jovi produced a clear glass bottle of glowing liquid, a vial, you could say, and held it up to inspect it.  “Naughty, naughty Michael!  Just look at all the trouble you caused!”  She turned to speak to Lucifer, who had managed to stand and was recovering his strength, unfortunately. “There, I unarchangeled him.  He’s yours, if you want him.  There’s probably a vessel out there somewhere that can contain him.”  She gestured dismissively at Sam, Dean, and Adam.  “The Winchester vessels are no longer available.  Ocupado.”

Lucifer decided to try charm, the only weapon still available to him, such as it was.  Dean didn’t think it was much of a weapon at all and hoped Jovi felt the same.  “Dark Lady, please don’t send me away.  I only ever wanted to be with you. I can still be of use to you.  Let me serve you.”

Much to Dean’s relief, Jovi had apparently had enough previous experience with Satanic shenanigans to see through Lucifer’s insincerity.  “Three’s a crowd, Lucifer.  Get thee gone.”  Lucifer sucked air through his teeth and scowled.  Jovi tossed him the bottle full of Michael, which he caught, neatly.   

After another sullen scowl Dean’s way, he disappeared.  

And while Dean certainly didn’t feel good about it, Jovi had a good point – Lucifer seemed to cause plenty of trouble locked up, what more could he do free?