And that was how Dean Winchester, the artist currently known as God (he had just thought of that one and it cracked him up every time it popped into his head) came to find himself on the top of a mountain in the Alps in the middle of a lightning storm accompanied by a very small, very cute deity with a meat cleaver in her hands.  “What’s that for?”  He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

“You probably don’t want to know.” Ah, crap.

Jovi had known where they were going and was wearing jeans and hiking boots and a puffy black coat trimmed with pink fake fur.  Her hair was up in braids like a milkmaid.  Dean hadn’t, and was dressed in his normal clothes.  His vessel was freezing its ass off.  He still felt sick and awful and weak and now he was gonna catch a chill on top of it. Luckily, it wasn’t far to where they were going, which was some kind of an old temple that hadn’t been attended to for a very long time by the looks of things.  Unluckily, it was up a steep narrow mountain path and his heart beat hard and fast from the exertion and he saw spots before his eyes.  He breathed hard because he needed to breathe to sustain himself, that’s how bad off he was.  He needed to breathe.

The ornately carved marble of the temple looked like it was melting; the faces of the statues that had once adorned it were worn away to featureless nubbins.  Jovi looked at them in dismay as they passed.  She clucked her tongue disapprovingly.  “It’s the acid rain that does that.”

“What?”  It wasn’t that he’d not been paying attention, he just literally felt like he was about to keel over dead at any moment and had been focusing all his energy on maintaining consciousness.

“The pollution.  This world used to be so nice, Dean.  I wish you could have seen it when.”  She didn’t wait for a response.   She just walked off, left him there desperately trying to catch his breath, and descended a set of steps to the center of the temple.  Looking at it from above Dean could see it had at one time been a clock, the floor of the temple had; a clock with no hands.  The numbers were worn away but there were faint indentations where they had once been.  In the center was a pillar with an oxidized copper bowl on top.  Jovi stopped and looked down inside it.  

His curiosity piqued and his breath at least somewhat restored, Dean stumbled down the steps to peer down inside the bowl.  It was filled with some kind of opaque, oily liquid.  It seemed to be both colorless and all colors at the same time which he knew was a trite and overused sort of description but it was the most apt.  He knew who they had come to call upon for help, but he didn’t know how they would do it, since Jovi hadn’t exactly revealed that part of the plan.  Sam had said that she needed part of his energy, which was more than a little worrying since Dean felt like he had absolutely none to spare.

The meat cleaver worried him even more though.  How did one extract energy, anyway?   Gabriel had said something about…chopping….

“I need your pinky, Dean.”

My what?  “My what?”

“Your pinky.  I am SO sorry?”  While Dean was digesting this tidbit of information, Jovi slid a very large hunting knife out from her coat pocket and slapped it into Dean’s palm.  He pulled out the blade with his thumbnail and contemplated it.  The blade was 7 inches long and sharp – wicked sharp.  The metal gleamed as lighting flashed above.  Before he could think about it too much, he lopped off the pinky on his left hand.  The knife slid right through the bone, no problem.  The digit dropped down into the liquid in the bowl with a plurp and the liquid started to bubble.  It barely even hurt…oh wait, yes, yes it did.  Took a second to kick in was all.  Phew, boy, did it ever hurt.  Hurt like a bitch.  Hurt more than you would even think it did.  Considerably.  He grunted without meaning to and his knees, which were already like jelly, nearly crumpled.  Jovi’s eyes were wide, scared.  “Wow you did that really super fast.  I thought maybe you’d have to work up to it or something.”

“Nah.  I figured it was better not to think about it too much.”  His voice shook and he flushed with embarrassment, but to his relief Jovi didn’t even notice.

“Oh.  You’re smart.”  Jovi slipped out of her coat and tied it around her waist.  Then she gulped and fidgeted and blew out some air from her cheeks, trying to get psyched up for whatever it was that she had to do.  The cleaver was for her, he realized with a chill, as she raised it in her fist.   And she was scared.  She set her left hand on the edge of the bowl.  Her hand.  He got off with a pinky, he had got off light, but she had to give up her entire hand.   He thought she was going to do it, but then she stopped.  Definitely scared.  “Should I go up, or down, do you think?”

“What?”

She demonstrated with the cleaver to indicate her meaning.  “Should I strike up, or down?”

“Oh.  Down, definitely.  If you went up, you might end up hitting yourself in the face.”

“Oh, of course.  Ok.  Down it is.”  But she still waited.  He could see her lips move…one, two, three…and then she hesitated.  She did it several times and the knot in Dean’s stomach relaxed a little bit thinking maybe she wouldn’t go through with it after all, but then she did it all of a sudden unexpectedly without counting and he cried out without meaning to.  She did too though.  The hand fell into the basin along with a river of blood and the liquid swirled and roiled but nothing more happened.  “Oh, that wasn’t enough, I guess.  Oh.”

“I can…I can…” He didn’t wanna he didn’t wanna he didn’t wanna…

“No…” She breathed the word so faintly he could barely hear it.  She moved the stump of her arm forward so the bloody edge rested on the rim of the basin and with all her might brought the cleaver down again, just below her elbow, and her forearm fell into the turbulent liquid.

This time, the spell took.  They were thrown back by a gushing gust of power and Dean even slid a ways across the frigid marble, the chill soaking through his jeans like he had sat in a puddle of water. The bowl cracked down the middle and two halves fell to the temple floor, but the liquid remained, still swirling, wilder than ever.  It began to solidify to the consistency of Silly Putty, less liquid, more elastic, and Dean watched in amazement as it rose into a column and then the column took on the shape of a man.  The goo stretched out and down from the pillar, depositing the man on the floor of the temple and then the rest of it absorbed into him with a slurp.  “Hey, Mom.”

“Chronos, I’ve told you like a jillion times, I am not your mom.  You’re like my toenail clipping.”  Dean was dismayed to see a spreading crimson pool forming around her as blood gushed from her severed arm.

“Looks like you need a hand.”

“Ha, ha.”   Chronos tilted his head and Jovi held up what was left of her arm.  A smooth flap of skin had grown over the stump.  “Tch!  Is that the best you can do?”

“On short notice.”  And then, with meaning.  “I’m hungry.”

“Of course you are.”  Jovi climbed to her feet and the pool of blood around her disappeared.  She held a goblet in her hand.  “Will this do?”  

Chronos took the goblet and raised it.  “Cheers.”  Down the hatch it went.  Dean managed to fend off a surge of nausea and climbed back to his feet.   The activity attracted the demigod’s attention.  “You?”  He cast an eye at Jovi.  “What is wrong with you?”

“I don’t even know any more.”

“All those times you told me to leave the sexy humans alone and now look at you.”

“We’re just friends.  Not even that, really, I don’t think.”

“We’ll see what I see in the future.  What do you want, Mother, because I know you want something.  You wouldn’t have resurrected me without some horrible request.”

“We need you to hunt Lucifer for us.”

“Lucifer?  Oh, heh.  Sure.  I’ll get right on that.”

“He’s loose in time.  It’s kind of your area of expertise, I figured?  Go with a pro!”

“And what would I do if I found him?”

“You’d come get me, and I would deal with him.”  Dean was cold and exhausted and he had no pinky and the place where his pinky had been was throbbing and bleeding.  He wanted to just cut through the crap, get Chronos on board, get healed, and sleep for another 3 weeks.

“Because you were so effective against him the last time?”  Chronos snorted.

“Things are different now, Chronos.”  Upon hearing Jovi speak, Chronos peered at Dean through narrowed eyes as if trying to discern his nature.  

Chronos burst into laughter when he realized.  “You have got to be freaking kidding me.”

“No joke.”

“Thanks, but no.  I will fix the damage he causes in time, inasmuch as I can, no promises, no guarantees, but Lucifer and I are two ships, passing in the night.  As are we.  Farewell, Mom.  And thanks for my existence back.”  And with that, he vanished.

“Well, I guess that didn’t exactly work out.”

Jovi sighed and looked defeated.  “We used to have a thing.  It’s complicated.”

Dean felt the rage flare up again and he almost called her a whore before he stopped himself.  Jealous, so jealous.  “He was your ace in the hole, Jovi.  So now what?”  

“We can bind him.  We can make him.  But not tonight.   I need rest, and so do you.”

Before Dean could protest, before he could mention anything about trying again or pizza, he had been dropped off unceremoniously like a package outside the bunker and Jovi was nowhere to be found.

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

Oriphiel had nearly worn a hole in the carpeting from pacing.  He had wanted to go, asked to go, begged and pleaded to go but she wouldn’t have him.  Said he’d be a distraction and ordered him, ordered HIM to stay behind.   The only one that was on her side.  When she appeared the feeling of relief was so great that he felt tears pepper his eyes.  No crying, not now.  Not again.  She needed for him to be strong.  She was so sick and weak and fragile.  He swallowed hard, twice, and was infinitely thankful when his emotions fell into line with his intentions.

Her arm was gone.  She had warned him that she might be missing a piece when she came back but she’d made it sound like nothing, like the tip of a finger, her eyelashes perhaps.  But her arm was GONE.  Oriphiel knew that Dean Winchester, given the state he was in, could not have sacrificed so much, that it hadn’t been 50-50 like Sam had promised.  And as he drew her a bath and made her warm milk flavored with vanilla beans and cinnamon and just a hint of orange peel, he fantasized about all the different ways he could kill Dean.  

Today had been a missed opportunity.  Dean had been so weak, if Oriphiel had only been left alone with him for a mere moment, a pillow to the face could have done, but he knew that if he committed the murder in anything less than the most final and magical way, that Jovi would simply resurrect Dean once again and be made even weaker for having done so.  He needed a way to kill a god and a way to make it permanent.  

Patience, patience.

She came to him then, wrapped in a fluffy crimson robe, her hair damp and curling.  She looked beautiful, she always looked beautiful.   He thought for the seven-millionth time that Dean was a fool.  He took her arm, her upper arm, since that was all that was left, and gazed at it.  He thought for a long moment about what it had looked like, the rest of it, freckles and pores and a faint layer of soft fuzz.  A hand with five slim fingers attached.  He imagined what it felt like to wrap his own fingers around her delicate wrist.  He knew as if it was his own arm by then; even better, for what sort of tosser sat around gazing at their own arm well enough to memorize the bloody thing?  

It took him a great effort but he managed to regrow that lovely arm once again and when he had, she laid the warm palm against his cheek in appreciation and he asked a very stupid question.  “Do you love me?”

As the words escaped his lips he knew he’d made a mistake and longed to call the words back or perhaps to douse himself with gasoline and light a match before she could respond.  “I love everything I ever created, silly.”  His guts twisted and his heart ached as if she had squeezed it like it was a damp sponge, as if she had wrung it entirely dry.    He willed his face to stay still and not move, not one little bit, other than a faint smile about his lips, pretending as if that terrible reply had been in any way enough to satisfy him.

Dean had to die.  It was just that simple.  

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

Once the object was safely hidden away under Sam’s bed in the bunker he had Castiel help him cast a spell that would hide it interdimensionally as well so no one would sense it was there.  All good.  But then after the spell was done, Castiel got weird about it.  “But…but Sam…I don’t want to kill Dean.”

Sam sighed.   Sometimes it was as if Castiel was being deliberately dense instead of just his normal level of accidental denseness.  Some of the angels could understand things like schemes and gambits and ploys – Gabriel was a master of the art – but Castiel seemed to have a giant black hole where his conspiracy center was located.  The plan was necessary.  The plan was obvious.  The plan should not need to be explained.  We hold this plan to be self-evident.  It was like, super annoying, because the more they talked about it, the likelier it was that Dean would overhear them and then all would be lost.  Or that Jovi would overhear them and then all would be awkward.  Sam needed Castiel to just understand something intuitively for once and get on board without having to have it explained to him repeatedly in exhausting detail as if he was a retarded squirrel that spoke only Japanese.

Dean having been out of commission for the past few weeks had been, for lack of a better term, a Godsend as far as Sam was concerned.  He’d been worried out of his skull, of course, so worried, but the upside was that he’d had a lot of free time unsupervised by either God to track down one of the ancient weapons rumored to kill deities.  During Dean’s absence and Jovi’s distraction over Dean’s absence, he and Cas had procured a certain mystical device without ever talking openly about it, operating almost as if they were connected psychically.  As if, had either one of them spoken the words, the magic would have dissipated, their silent pact would have been shattered, they’d have gotten cold feet and refused to consider what felt more and more to Sam to be inevitable.

Or so Sam had thought, but Castiel was blinking that confused vacant blink of his.  Really.  Really?  Now that both Gods were back in the game and ostensibly paying attention, apparently now he wanted to debate the necessity?   Loudly?  Sam sometimes wondered whose side Castiel was really on.  “It’s just a backup plan, Cas, that’s all.”

“But I don’t WANT to kill Dean, Sam.”

Sam gave Castiel a look, the kind of look that any human would have immediately comprehended.  It was the kind of look that was meant to communicate volumes without speaking.   He willed Castiel to fall into line without any further discussion that Dean or Jovi might overhear and tried to keep his own words as cryptic as he possibly could just in case any holy ears were tipped his way.  “That’s not…that’s not what we’re doing here, Cas.  Right?  You understand that, right?  That is not.  What we are doing.  We aren’t…Dean?  No. This is just…worst case scenario, that’s all.  Nuclear option.  If all other options have been exhausted, there’s this.  In the one in a million chance…one in a trillion chance it comes down to it, we’ll have this in our back pocket.”

But Castiel was apparently unable to understand the intent behind Sam’s expression.  “I won’t kill Dean, Sam.  I will not do it.”

Agh, he would not stop saying it!  Sam sighed and figured it was too late anyway.  The words had been uttered and anyone who had been listening already knew.  He stared at the ceiling a moment before meeting his friend’s eyes.  “Who says it’s meant for Dean?”

“Oh…OH!”  Castiel’s eyes went wide.  Finally he got it.   Geez.  It was so obvious – they simply had to be prepared to kill Jovi if need be.  Not like he wanted to, he didn’t, but maybe they needed to.  To Sam’s way of thinking, Jovi was the problem, so killing her very well may be the solution at some point.  At least having the ability, if they needed to.  It was like a check and balance, that was all.

“It’s just a backup plan, Cas, that’s all.  Just in case.”  Sam sucked in a breath, preparing for an argument, readying the list of indisputable, anti-Jovi facts and figures he had ever ready on the tip of his brain.  “I mean, we’d be stupid not to be prepared, all things considered.  Knowing what we know…about history, and in light of, the dangles, and everything…I mean, things just aren’t right, Cas, you know it and I know it.  Making angels out of demons is not right.  Things as they are, are not RIGHT.”

“You’re right, things aren’t right, but…but…Sam…”

“Now maybe they can go on this way, and maybe things will be ok, and maybe everything will work out in the end, happily ever after just like we all want here, and of course we all hope for that, of course we do, but knowing what we know, given her mysterious ways and everything, we’d be stupid not to be, you know, I don’t know, prepared.”  Sam had the vague impression he was talking too much and too fast and was repeating himself in a pretty unconvincing manner but couldn’t stop himself, he had to make Castiel see reason.  “I mean, it’s entirely possible that she could be working with Lucifer, Cas, entirely possible!  And even if she’s not, I mean, come on, she’s not exactly the most balanced entity we know, and Dean…well, we can’t rely on Dean to do what needs to be done, if it comes down to that.”

Much to Sam’s relief, Castiel didn’t put up a fight.  He simply nodded solemnly.  “Only if we need to.  Only if we absolutely NEED to.”

“We will probably never need to though.  For reals.”

“Probably never.  Of course probably never.”

“Just a backup plan.  That’s all.”

“A backup plan.”  Sam willed Castiel to stop talking about it.  “I have to think for a while.”  The angel blinked a few more times and disappeared, and while Sam didn’t think it had gone entirely well, it could have been worse.  Castiel could have refused outright and Sam could be in it alone, trying to save his brother singlehandedly yet again.

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

After another few days in bed eating anything that wasn’t nailed down, Dean started feeling better.   He was sort of surprised that Jovi hadn’t called, or swung by to check on him, to make sure his pinky had grown back again the right way.  The more he thought about it, the more outrageous it seemed that she hadn’t even bothered to check up on him, to see if he needed to be healed, to see if he needed any help learning to use his powers, since Lucifer was on the loose and all.  It was like she didn’t even care about him.  Well, screw her, and so he decided to get out of the bunker and get some fresh air.

Dean didn’t sneak.  So he wasn’t sneaking.  He was just walking, strolling, meandering, really, on the totally public lands that just so happened to lie just outside of the grounds of Jovi’s castle.  He wished she didn’t have a castle; it seemed so silly for her to live in a castle, juvenile and all that. God shouldn’t live in a house, of course, it was beneath the dignity of the title – “Oh I’m going over to God’s house to borrow a cup of sugar”, that just didn’t work – but a castle just seemed so over the top.  Now, he thought he might want some sort of a castle-ish-structure of his own eventually, but a more tasteful one. More like, a compound, or, or, a fortress. Maybe a lodge.  Jovi’s castle was a castle castle, all froufrou and princessy.  It was made of pink marble and looked like something Barbie or Strawberry Shortcake might live in.   Dean’s fortress would be solemn and Germanic and dark and respectable, like the castle of a guy who could get some crap done.

Extending out from Jovi’s castle ran an elaborate system of landscaped grounds, and Dean felt annoyance to see that she had been wasting time and energy on gardening when she should have been helping him, or else resting.  Being God seemed way too much about her sometimes. Yeah, sure, ok, when he had first gotten his powers he had effed around with them and screwed off with the gambling and stuff but that was understandable, anybody would’ve needed to to play around with that kind of thing at first, to get it out of their system.  But she’d been God for like, ever, since the very beginning, you’d think she would have been used to it by that point and known that defeating Lucifer was more important than having a nice yard.

Dean felt a pop, like when you yawn on a plane and the pressure in your ears releases, only this feeling wasn’t just in his ears, it was in his whole body.  A tension outside of him formed suddenly and released. And it wasn’t a good feeling or a relief, this was a pop of badness. Something that hadn’t been there before, was there, and it was an unpleasant something.   A demon, maybe or, or…Actually Dean realized with a start that he knew exactly what it was, or who. Lucifer was there, somewhere nearby, he must’ve come in from whereever in history he’d been hiding out in. And where had he come, but here, to Jovi.  Of course. Dean hesitated, knowing he didn’t have but a fraction of his strength back, knowing that what he really ought to do was run away, but he simply had to know what was going on. Because it was obvious they were plotting against him, Lucifer and Jovi were, meeting up to talk and plan and scheme and God only knows what else, only God didn’t know what else.  Talking, talking about him no doubt, laughing behind his back and making plans on how best to wipe him off the map.

That was the original assumption, anyway, but much to his surprise, he came upon Lucifer doing pretty much the same thing he had just been doing.   Lurking. Well, Dean hadn’t been lurking, but that’s what Lucifer was doing. Lurking in the bushes like the snake he was. Apparently even though Dean really tried to keep quiet like an Indian scout Lucifer already knew he was there the whole time.  Because as Dean crept up behind him, he spoke without even looking Dean’s way, just kept staring at Jovi’s castle the entire time. “You know, there are flowers in that garden that are unseen by the human eye, that no human has ever seen or ever will see.  There are fruits no one will taste and fragrances that none shall ever smell.”

“You don’t say.”

“Some of her creations only last for a day, an hour…she tries them to see if she likes them, and if she doesn’t, she destroys them.  It seems a little unfair, doesn’t it?”

“How so?”

“Why does she get to decide what things live and what things die?  Why does she get to decide that there should be beauty in the world that no eyes shall ever get see but her own?”

Dean thought about his dodo project with irritation.  Why did she, anyway?  “Somebody has to, right?  I mean, doesn’t there have to be some kind of…vetting process?”

“You haven’t even walked with her in the garden.  You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

“Maybe not, but I guess she has a good reason why she does things the way she does them.”  Dean certainly hoped that this was the case.

“She doesn’t though.  That’s the thing. She just gets off on it.  She creates beauty, she creates love and light, she gets you hooked on it, and then she takes it away.  She’s like a drug dealer. She gets you addicted to her gifts but it’s all just to control you. If you don’t toe the line, she’ll take it away.  It happened to me and it will happen to you, too, mark my words.”

“You know how I can tell you’re lying, Lucifer?  Your lips are moving.”

“I used to be her favorite, don’t forget that.  And look where it got me.”

“Things are different now.”

“I know, and…heh.  I must admit that was a twist I did not see coming.   But there’s a failsafe somewhere, I assure you. A back door.  An escape hatch. She can destroy you. She wouldn’t have created you if she didn’t have a way to destroy you.”

“She doesn’t have a way to destroy you.”

“Are you sure?  I’m not.”

“What do you…what do you mean?”

“Haven’t you ever wondered, Dean?  Why does God simply not destroy Lucifer?  The humans have been wondering that for ages.  I’ve been wondering, for ages. And the answer is, the only possible answer is, she doesn’t wanna.  I still serve some purpose for her, so she allows me to live, to plot and scheme and feel like I’m even making some progress sometimes, but all along she has her finger on the button that could end me. Have no doubt of that. I exist because she allows me to.”

Even though Dean knew that Lucifer was a master manipulator, THE Master Manipulator, he could feel those words buzzing hot as they entered his ears, echoing inside the arched, empty halls of his already troubled mind.  “Maybe she created me to destroy you.” Take THAT.

“Maybe she allows me to live to destroy YOU.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Doesn’t it?”  Dean turned it around in his head and it didn’t make sense, naturally it didn’t, since Lucifer had been around for thousands of years and Dean had just been created but the whole thing with Lucifer was, even when you knew what he was saying was 100% pure unadulterated BS it still gave you second thoughts, and third ones too sometimes.  ‘“Time paradoxes can be a real bitch sometimes, can’t they?” Dean pondered the implications of that cryptic statement while Lucifer peered at him with his hooded eyes. “I couldn’t help but notice you’re looking a little…worn out, Dad. Frayed around the edges. Have you been burning the candle at both ends?” Lucifer grinned and Dean had the chilling thought that since Lucifer had been traveling through time, for all Dean knew he had been gone a hundred million years and eaten all the lesser gods and that the only reason why they were even having this conversation was because Lucifer was toying with him before he ate him, too, like a cat with a mouse.

“Yeah, I been working too hard.  But it doesn’t mean I don’t have enough left in me to end you.”

“Augh, that’s so tempting.   Even if I don’t win this time, and I’ll admit I probably won’t, not yet, I’d so love to take a nice juicy bite out of you.”

Dean grinned challengingly but the hackles on his neck were standing at full attention.  He had brought an angel blade, of course, he wasn’t a complete moron, but Lucifer could only be killed by an archangel blade.  Dean hadn’t trusted himself to bring one of those in case he ran into Crowley and his borderline uncontrollable jealousy issue flared up again.  He had enough of his glory back to finish off a darkangel, he was pretty sure; the darkangels didn’t seem to have quite as much oomph as the archangels and they had practically nothing compared to the massive power of Lucifer.  But if he did it, if he fed Crowley an archangel blade point first down his fat freaking face, then Jovi would get all pissy and it would be this big freaking thing.  So he had left the archangel blade back at home in a trunk under his bed because stabbing Crowley seemed like a crime he would enjoy committing in a moment of weakness. “The feeling is mutual.” He’d only be able to fight Lucifer using whatever scraps of power he could scrounge up and his limited skill with the angel blade.  But what could he do, back down now? That would only encourage Lucifer; would send a message that it was possible to psych him out, to bully him. Then it would never stop till one of them was dead. “Ok.”

“Are you saying we should try this?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Because I’m gonna beat you like I beat you the last time.”

“Well, I’m gonna make you wish you were still a snake.”

“That’s actually a common misconception.  I was never a snake. The snake worked for me.  As an employee. And it wasn’t an apple, either, by the way, it was a pomegranate.  Haven’t you ever read a book? Are you illiterate or simply slow witted?”

Dean punched him in the face, his fist imbued with glory, and was greatly satisfied to feel a crunch of cartilage as the fallen angel’s nose broke.  They exchanged a few blows and Dean was pleased to see he was at least holding his own or maybe even better, the way Lucifer’s head snapped back hard when he made contact.  He was stronger yet. But fatigue was already settling in, he could feel it, the way his bones shook every time Lucifer hit him. And not even the bones where Lucifer was hitting him, all his bones right down to his little baby toes reverberated with every strike.  Sometimes he had dreams where he’d have to jump from a cliff or a really tall building and when he’d land his whole body would vibrate with the impact and that was exactly the feeling he was getting right now from Lucifer’s fists. Only way, way realer.

Lucifer managed to get in a couple body shots to his flank and then an uppercut that really rang his bell and Dean went from feeling ok with the way things were going to realizing that he better get his ass out of Dodge sooner rather than later.  But how? Lucifer would just follow him wherever he went and then whoever was where he fled to would be in danger too. Sam, or Jovi. Jovi, or Sam. Where to go? Jovi, at least, had a chance of defending herself, but Dean had a sneaking suspicion that Lucifer would enjoy hurting Jovi even more than he enjoyed hurting Sam.  Then there was the whole “former vessel” thing and Lucifer might be able to worm his way back into Sam’s head again if he got too close.

He was just about ready to flip a damn coin when Chronos, of all the unexpected saviors, appeared behind Lucifer and grabbed him in a headlock.  Dean saw a red glow come from the godlet and realized that Chronos was draining time itself away from Lucifer, attempting to give Dean a head start. He hesitated because he knew that it was probably a death sentence to leave the poor guy there locked up with Lucifer and just like with most of the lesser gods Dean had encountered, he hadn’t been entirely bad, at least, not pure evil like Lucifer was.  He was just a morally ambivalent predator born to hunt humans and he couldn’t help that. Plus, he’d been made out of Dean’s pinky and all, so he felt a little protective. But Chronos urged him on. “If you don’t go right now, you’re not gonna like the future!”

And that was all the encouragement Dean needed.  He was gone like a shot back to the bunker and while he felt terrible since he was abandoning the demigod to certain death and an unpleasant stint inside of Lucifer’s belly he didn’t want the sacrifice to have been for nothing.

 

 

 

    

 

    

 

Miss part 5?  It’s here: https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/11/02/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-5-angry-birds/

When Castiel returned to Dean’s side later that night he knew significantly more than he had before but to his dismay, he felt much worse about it all. He had hoped to feel relieved and reassured, but he was neither.  He followed the Crowley-thing and before sunset when he gave up due to extreme despondency it had already made several angel-ish-beings…and every one of them out of demons.  

It could trick demons into coming to him, trick them into thinking he was still their master, as evil as ever instead of only just slightly, faintly, mildly evil, and when they came close enough, he seized them violently…violently!!…and forced them to become angels.  Against their will!  It turned Castiel’s stomach to watch and so he fled as quickly as he could, once he was convinced that it was real, that his eyes weren’t deceiving him.  

Once Castiel told Sam and Dean was was happening, he was disappointed to find how little Dean really seemed to care about the ghastly new creatures that Jovi was making. Castiel had often found it a challenge when Dean refused to take something seriously, but because this was such a serious issue he had assumed that Dean would naturally deem it as important as Castiel himself did.  It was a bit of a shock when Dean seemed unwilling or perhaps incapable of understanding the magnitude of it the situation.  “But they’re still angels, right?  They’re good, right?

“They seem…good, mostly, yes, but…they’re part demon!”  The very idea made him cringe.   “They’re not angels, they’re, they’re…mongrels!”

“But they’re still good though?”

“Yes, but they’re part demon!”

“And part human, and mostly angel.  Right?  So on balance, they’re angels.”

“They’re not angels!  Stop saying that they are, because they aren’t!”

“Ok, well, what are they, then?”

“Disgusting!”

Much to Castiel’s chagrin, Dean very nearly laughed when he said that.  “Isn’t that a way to…I don’t know, make cream out of crap?  Angels out of demons, seems like a net gain to me.”

“They are NOT angels!”  Castiel cringed every time Dean called them angels.  

“Ok, ok.  We don’t have to call them angels if you don’t want us to, buddy.”  

Now Dean was humoring him, agh.  “Good, please don’t!”  

“What do you want us to call them?  Do you have a…some kind of a…preference?”

“I don’t want you to call them anything, I want you to smite them!”

“Ok.  I, uh, ok.  I’ll take that under advisement.  Anyway, let’s call the archangels…like Crowley…darkangels.  Like demon archangels.  And the regular ones, we’ll just call them dangles.  Ok Cas?”  Sam rolled his eyes as if he thought that Dean was unbelievably stupid and for once, Castiel couldn’t help but agree.  Dean couldn’t help but turn everything into a joke.  Dangles.  Please. Ridiculous.

It hardly mattered as long as they’d soon be gone.  “But you WILL smite them, right?”

“Well, we’ll see.  Probably.  Eventually.  Now Cas, think for a minute.  Why do you think Jovi might be doing that?  I mean, why not just make more normal angels?  Old school?”

Sam at least seemed to understand.  “Because she’s insane, and likes to eff with everyone?”

“Yes, yes, that exactly!”  Why could Dean not see?

“Shut up, Sam.  Cas, think.  Why would she not just make more regular old angels?  True blue ones, like you? Strategically?”

Castiel wracked his brain and tried to think of a good reason, any reason, even a bad one.  “Well, I suppose it…it takes less energy to make an…a…a…”  He wouldn’t say it, he refused to say it.   “…a cross breed…from a demon than to make a whole new entity.”

“That makes sense.  She mentioned that she was pretty tired after making me, maybe she doesn’t have the power to give Crowley to make a host of angels.  It’s a shortcut, a cheat.  Heh.”

“Why wouldn’t she just make them out of humans, then, Dean?  It doesn’t add up.”  Sam was still skeptical, thankfully, and a thought occurred to him.  “Consent, maybe?”

“What?”

Sam clarified.  “She has to get their consent, right Cas?  For a human to be the vessel of an angel, which, of course, in order for them to do stuff down here on earth, angels need a vessel, the human has to agree to it.  Angels up in heaven don’t do her any good right now, she needs boots on the ground, and human vessels have to agree to house an angel. Free will.  She wouldn’t want to violate free will by turning a human into an angel without permission.”

“Vessels do have to give their consent to hold an angel host, yes, but…”

“Demons are turned either because they’d made a bargain to give up their souls, they’d given their consent, or because they were possessed and their free will had already been usurped.”

Dean didn’t see the huge and unignorable problem with that.  “Well, there ya go.  Just that simple.  She wants to make a lot of angels, fast, which, which, we need to, to fight Lucifer, and she doesn’t want to have to ask them pretty please first.”  The larger moral issues were apparently still lost on Dean.  All he could see was the convenience factor and not that it was gross and wrong.

“She can’t DO that!  It’s against the rules!  You have to do something about it!”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little bit…unfair here, Cas?  She made the rules, she can change them if she wants to, right?”

Thankfully at least Sam understood.  “Don’t you see, Dean, it’s just a big cheat, just like you said.  She figured out a loophole, a way to force people, against their will, to house…to actually become angels…without their consent.”

“Well, it’s better than being a demon, right Sammy?  Which is what they were to start with.”

“But they chose that, Dean, they made a deal!  Voluntarily!  And anyone who was possessed had their ability to consent taken from them!  They couldn’t agree even if they wanted to!!”

“God shouldn’t cheat, Dean!  And turning possessed people into angels without consent is cheating!”  Why was this so difficult for him to understand?  

“Yeah, but do you even know that any of the demons were possessed, Cas?”

“Well, no…I couldn’t get close enough to tell without the Crowley-thing noticing me.”

“There ya go.”

“She didn’t ask your permission.”

“That was different.”

“How so?”

“Shut up, Sam.”

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

For his part, Lucifer knew exactly why Jovi was making angels from demons.  She was toying with him.  She had refused him the ability to make angels, keeping that for herself alone, and had been horrified when he had taught himself through observation and trial and error to make demons.  She hated it, hated that he could do anything on his own without asking her for permission, and every demon she turned was a thumb in his eye, a burr in his saddle, a big fat juicy FU.

But, she would learn.  She had made her fatal mistake.  He had known she would eventually, that she’d try with another to do what she had failed to do with him, to make herself another companion, another friend (gag), another sucker to cater to her whims and obey her commands.  He had known she would since she was weak like that and so he had plotted and planned for millennia what he would do when that day came.  She had surprised him, settling for second place, making a new and improved version of herself, actually giving over some of the power and the most of the control to someone else.  That surprised him.  Why couldn’t she have just done that for him, instead?  It stung.  But after he thought about it for a little while he realized it was good that she had done that.  It was good, because it meant that he could have the truest dream of his heart.  He could defeat her but he could keep her.

Lucifer was made to love God.  And even though he knew this, and despised it, it didn’t change the reality of his nature.  He was made to love God.  But he wanted to win.  For so long, he had been faced with the bitter reality that in order to win, he would have to destroy the thing he loved above all else and then he would be the one who would be alone for all eternity.  It was a cruel joke.  He sometimes thought that the only reason why he hadn’t won yet was because he didn’t really want to win.  But now, he realized, he could have it both ways.  He could defeat God, but he could still have God to love, cherish, and obey him.  All he had to do was defeat Winchester, which he had very nearly done once before, and add that glorious strength to his own.  

Then things would be as they should be.  

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

Dean appeared in the bunker, with a copy of the movie Frozen and a cage containing a gerbil, along with a bag of miscellaneous gerbil supplies including a clear plastic ball (oddly, it was called a hamster ball) that you could put a gerbil into and let it skitter around all over the floor exploring.  He set the cage down and attempted to grab the gerbil.  But it bit him instead.  He pulled his hand out of the cage and sucked at the bleeding bite.  “Hey!  I’m just trying to put you in your ball, you little…” On the second try, he managed to grab the gerbil without incident.  He shoved it into the hamster ball and set it free on the ground.  It skittered around.    “Well, what’s so hard about that?”

Time passed.  The gerbil did its gerbil thing and Dean did his.  The movie was pretty good.  Dean found himself moderately engrossed and he could kind of see why somebody like Jovi might find it relatable.  Somewhere in the middle of “Let It Go” Sam came in and when he did, he inadvertently kicked the hamster ball across the room and into the wall.  Dean paused the movie on accident with his mind at the same time he grabbed the remote.  He stared at the remote for a moment in confusion before realizing he didn’t even need to use it.  Then he leapt up to retrieve the gerbil.  Dead.  He resurrected it with a thought.  It seemed fine, downright perky even.  He set the ball down and it rolled away again.

Sam blinked.  “What. The. Hell.”  

“You killed my gerbil.”

“Are you watching a cartoon?  A girl’s cartoon?”

“I know it looks like that, but…I don’t know.  Somebody told me it was…whatever.  I was actually mostly just sitting here trying to come up with a fix for ugly women.  It turns out, that’s actually not possible to do, because some of the ugly genes are actually beneficial to the human race in other ways that aren’t visible to the male eye.  Can you even believe that?”

“Why don’t you cure cancer instead?”  

That hadn’t actually occurred to Dean and he felt more than a little silly.  “Whatever, college boy.  I’m gonna get to that.”  And he would, too.  

“Is Adam still…”

“Still asleep.  I’m keeping him that way.  I think he’s just had as much as one person can take.  I figure the longer he sleeps, the better it will be when he wakes up.”

Sam didn’t seem like he approved of that idea, exactly.  “Can we, uh, talk about this, Dean?  I mean, are we just gonna…carry on like nothing is any different here?  Hanging out in the bunker…fighting demons?”

“It’s not, is it?  Just like you said, one or the other of us isn’t human most of the time anyway, at least this time, we can get some good out of it.”

“Well did you do any research, to see if this can be reversed?”

Dean gave him a puzzled look.  “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because there’s gotta be a hidden downside somewhere, right?  There always is.”

“Now, that’s actually not true, Sam.  Normally, when one hears hoofbeats, they immediately think of horses, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be a zebra.  We are long past due for a freakin zebra here.”  Sam shook his head, confused.  Sam could be deliberately dense sometimes.  “That rare time when the exception occurs.  Hoofbeats, zebra.  Doesn’t necessarily gotta be a horse.  Just because things are usually turning to crap for us, doesn’t mean it’s impossible that something could ever go our way.”

“Dean, are…Are you…smart now?”

Dean grinned.  “Yeah.  Got some competition.”

“I was never that smart.”

“Yeah, I know that.  Now.”

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

When Sam Winchester ruminated on his life  – something he tried not to do very often because it was insanely depressing – what struck him was how quickly things went back to normal.  No matter what they faced, no matter how many friends they lost, no matter what they got turned into, no matter how many times they died and came back again, after a couple weeks it was always the same, him and Dean sitting in the Impala, music blaring, driving down the road in the middle of the night looking for something to fight. Sometimes Cas.

And this time was no exception.  Things went right back to normal again.  Boink.  Sam tried not to dwell on the fact that his brother was God now.  This state of denial was made easier by the fact that Dean continued to act, well, just like Dean.  A simple creature.  He went out practically every night, ate copious amounts of Mexican food and Little Debbie snack cakes, drank himself sick, slept with any woman who seemed willing (something about this seemed wrong to Sam, but he reread a few of the juicier Greek myths and decided not to make waves), and went after demons, ghosts, and ghouls with the same verve he’d always had.   The things he’d said when he’d first been turned about being tired and burned out just seemed like the same things that they always said, both of them, when they were tired and felt burned out.

The only thing Dean ever seemed to use, or perhaps abuse, his newfound powers for was sports betting.  He made a ridiculous amount of money betting on the outcome of ball games and fights and horseraces that he must have either known who would win in advance, or else he did something during the game to make his bet into a winner.  Sam didn’t want to look too closely at this process and so didn’t ask which option was the correct one.  He wasn’t sure if it disturbed him more if his brother could see into the future, or if he was actually willing to mess with the natural course of human events to make some scratch.

Dean didn’t spend much of the money.  He bought a new jacket.  Some socks.  He bought an XBox 360 that he never used.  He bought a fancy French food processor that he used a lot.  He bought a VanGogh and hung it on the wall of the bunker.  But mostly the money just sat there, piling up.  Eventually Castiel asked Sam if they could send some of it to orphan’s homes and Sam said yes.  Didn’t take long before every orphanage on the planet was flush with ready cash.  Dean never even noticed the money was missing.

The only appreciable difference between human Dean and God Dean was that God Dean read a lot more books.  He skimmed through every book in the bunker so quickly he couldn’t possibly have been reading them – could he? – and then showed up one day with a stack of math books he’d gotten somewhere.  He proceeded to work his way through from adding apples to oranges, to calculus.  Sam couldn’t help but ask what he was doing, and he looked up and said, “Math is the key, Sammy.  The key to unlocking everything.”  It was creepy.  After that happened, Sam decided not to ask any more questions, primarily because he didn’t really want to know what it was exactly that Dean planned to unlock.  He just watched as Dean burned through those books in a matter of days and then moved on to world literature and biochemistry, art history and quantum mechanics.   

In short, he didn’t seem to be all knowing, but he was learning fast, and so Sam and Castiel proceeded with their plans to de-deify-Dean as quickly as they possibly could.  They chased every lead, talked to every shaman and scumbag Satan worshiper they could track down, and while there were lots of ways to kill gods, there seemed to be few ways to restore their humanity.  The things that they tried, failed miserably.  Sam was never quite sure if Dean knew what they were up to or not.  He walked right through a web that Sam had woven from strands of enchanted gossamer as if it wasn’t even there.  He stepped into a trap Cas had drawn on the floor, and then out of it again, with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye.  It was as if he knew that nothing they could pull out of their collective asses could do a damn thing to him and it amused him to see them try.  

One day Sam came in and he was greeted by a large, dumb-looking bird with a large beak and a fat belly and teeny tiny wings.  It wandered right up to him and looked at him expectantly with black beady eyes.  “Um…Polly want a cracker?”

Dean was hot on its heels.  “Oh there you are, you sneaky little…”  He grinned at Sam.  “He’s faster than he looks.  What do you think of my dodo?”

“Your what?”

“My dodo.  The bird?  I think I’m gonna make em again.  And maybe some passenger pigeons, and Carolina parrots…and bison, lots of bison…I want the streets of New York City to be like, flooded with stampeding bison.”

“Is that…wise?”

“Why not?  They were here first.”  He paused and Sam could sense the excitement coming off of him, could practically smell the smoke as the little men inside Dean’s brain shoveled more coal into the slow furnace of his mind. “See, at first, I couldn’t figure out how she had done it.  I didn’t…I couldn’t figure out how to make things like this.  How to remake them, I mean.  I could only make things she had already made, by following her recipe, her template, but I didn’t have that for extinct animals.  I tried, but everything kept dying on me, but look at this little guy here…”  The dodo blinked as if it knew it was being discussed.  “He seems ok, right??  Healthy?  You don’t happen to have any birdseed around here, do you Sammy?”

“No…”

“Well that’s ok, I’ll figure it out.  Maybe he eats worms or something.  Anyways I managed to regress avian DNA patterns until I got back to what I figured ought to’ve been this little guy’s DNA and then boom, I made him!  Just like I was building him out of Legos or something!”

“Wow, Dean, that’s…that’s…”

“It’s freaking amazing is what it is!  Creating life!   Think about it, Sam, all this time I spent taking lives, now granted, most of them were bad guys, not even human, but still, you know, and now, lookit, I can give back what I took, Sam!  Isn’t that…”  Before Dean could continue, the dodo coughed violently and fell over, dead.  He looked down at it, back up at Sam, and back down again.  “Oh.”

“Back to the drawing board, I guess.”  

“Yeah, I guess.”

Wanna read Part 7?  It’s here: https://atomicfeminist.com/2017/11/05/supernatural-manic-pixie-god-girl-part-seven-riding-in-cars-with-god/