genderbend, meet canon: brainstorming
Jul. 22nd, 2012 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kasihyaI'm writing bits of this ... it ended up being waaaaaaay darker than I was envisioning, mostly because the episode to which it's related is stupid and awful and wangsty.
The good news is that I am also working on my own novel! The last piece I wrote really helped me figure out *how* I want to write, and I think I improved in writing it. Which is awesome! Now I'm trying to overcome the fear that I have of writing on small paper. I'm halfway through this notebook, dammit, I'm not going to leave it half-empty and then move on. GODDAMN, am I right?
Anyway. I wanted Dean and Deanna to meet and hug it out or something.
I’m trying to think of a way to connect the two universes, and whether I want everyone to meet their counterparts, or some to meet the others — hah. Cas would be good, because whichever version of him met the others would know what was going on. Maybe the angels in both universes are looking for a version of Dean that’ll be more willing to say yes to Michael. They compare notes from their team of angel psychologists, and realize that if they trade Dean for Deanna, then both will say yes, and everyone wins. So the angels swap them. Deanna wakes up in a motel with a dude who looks like her sister, and Dean wakes up to a girlier version of his brother. Cas isn’t able to cross dimensions on his own, so both sides takes different tacks. First, they need to figure out why; then dude-Sam, dude-Cas, and girl-Deanna go to find/summon Gabriel. Meanwhile, girl-Sam, girl-Cas, and dude-Dean (OH. Deanna would say yes because Adam doesn’t exist in her universe, so there would be nothing stopping Michael from taking her right off the bat in 5x16. Or something) come up with a plan to strike down girl-Zachariah. They meet up with Barbara Singer, do research, etc.
It turns out that there are other ways to pass between the dimensions. There are gateways, places where the walls are thin and humans can reach through without angelic intervention, but the passage requires a balanced equation — so, for example, Dean can’t just waltz back through unless Deanna is there to take his place again. Maybe the two Castiels still have the ability to send things across dimensions, even if it takes a tremendous amount of effort. Either way, AU gets the message across to Canon, and everyone goes to a field in the middle of nowhere to perform the ritual that will create a temporary melding of the two planes.
They perform the ritual. It starts! And then AU-Zach shows up to keep Dean from returning, and the sigil that the group from Canon has set up doesn’t work on her because the universes aren’t quite merged yet. But then Canon Gabriel shows up, and he and AU-Zach have a very short fight that ends with Gabriel sending his AU sister away. He doesn’t like this idea at all because it would involve dragging his counterpart family into it; and if there’s a chance that the apocalypse won’t happen in another dimension, then that’s good for them and for his AU self.
Once the plot is wrapped up (such as it is), there is, of course, a few minutes of Dean and Deanna mugging for each other, while Sam and Samantha roll their eyes and are relieved; and Castiel regards himself/herself with silent, intense stares. Then Dean and Deanna trade off into their respective universes, and have introspective conversations with their respective siblings about why the switch would have made them say yes in the angels’ eyes; then they maybe wonder if ‘family’ applies to their counterparts.
One, the two universes’ angels mutually agree to the swap. Two, Adam doesn’t have a counterpart because, with their genders switched, Joan terminated the pregnancy that would have resulted in Eve. So the kidnap-Adam scheme can take place and interrupt Canon’s search for Gabriel — or does it take place before that? Oh. Maybe the switch happens just before they go to visit Lisa. They’re on their own at that point, so they don’t realize anything is wrong, aside from the car being set up for someone different. Then Canon Lisa doesn’t recognize Deanna, and AU Lisa doesn’t have a son, so both of them realize that something is up.
Adam is important here. In Canon, Zachariah can still use him as bait to lure Deanna in, but without the same emotional connection to Canon-Sam, she’s not going to make the same choices. Meanwhile, all that AU-Zachariah has to do is wait for Dean to give up; he’s stuck in a parallel dimension with people who look like his family, but aren’t, and still want him to make the same sacrifices for them. But they don’t know him quite as well as his real family does, so he’ll be able to give them the slip eventually.
Wait. How the hell did any Zachariah in any canon find them? It’d have to be someone else who told them. Possibly just someone they have on the ground, who saw Dean’s car, communicated that to their counterpart, and then they were able to track them down … yeah, that would work. It’d be gimmicky, but hell, the whole damn thing is gimmicky.
So once they’ve established what’s going on, then they need to get out of the way of everything. And then — oh, hah. Adam’s conversation with Sam and Deanna would be even weirder and less plausible. ‘Yeah, this is gonna sound crazy, but I’m your brother and … uh … she’s our brother from a parallel dimension.’ And Deanna would take him aside and ask since when they had a younger sibling. Which would lead Cas to realize that that’s why they picked this version to switch with; that’s the difference, it’s Adam.
I’d imagine that this pisses Deanna off enough that she’s not going to immediately run away to say yes to this version of Michael, but Sam is still wary, and is trying his best to just treat her like his brother, which is … weird. So the same sort of scenario plays out, and then they get a letter from AU-Castiel and AU-Barbara, saying ‘come to this spot at such-and-such a time’ without regard for the fact that, holy crap, Adam, because AU-Team doesn’t have Eve, and Dean doesn’t know that Adam is alive again. So Canon-Team has to figure out how to rescue Adam and get to the Fields of Megiddo in time.
Deanna has absolutely no connection to Adam, but she’d still want to rescue him, right? Or would she? She’d want to save Adam, but she wouldn’t feel the same need to not let this Sam down, does that make sense? Does that indicate the correct priorities? No, no it does not. Adam doesn’t even exist in her world. She’d be more concerned about being a better sister than Dean is a brother. This Sam isn’t disappointed in her, he’s disappointed in some other version of her; she has a chance to prove to her younger sibling that she can be better. So she wouldn’t have run off, which would mean that Cas didn’t have to go track her down and beat her bloody to bring her back. So they’re more coordinated for the moment, more united, which is … weird. And uncomfortable at times, because Sam may look like her sister, but he’s not, and the cognitive dissonance is astounding. I think that Deanna’s experience would just be different, because the visual aspect? Not so weird. Yeah, Sam is four inches taller and wider than she’s used to seeing, but she is used to having a male-presenting sibling. (Castiel … freaks her out a little bit, as does Bobby.) However, the fact that she expects him to be exactly the same as her sister, and he isn’t, that’s weird.
On the other side of things, Dean has every reason to want to ditch and say yes, except that he’s on the wrong side of the universe, so he’s not even going to get to save the right people. So he’ll work with the others, but less willingly. His experience is twofold, because Samantha is smaller than him, and she expects things of him that he doesn’t understand; Castiel is absurdly attractive, which is confusing; and his father-figure is now a woman, which freaks him out. Sam is angry with him for not being her sister, recognizes that he can’t help it, tries to suppress it, but he can still tell that she’s disappointed. Barbara treats him roughly, like she hasn’t even noticed the difference, which he guesses is supposed to be comforting but is instead unsettling. She acts like Bobby, but she’s not. She just wants to help him. Castiel is unfazed, but only because she knew about the existence of other dimensions. She just didn’t think it would ever come to that.
Anyway. Samantha is very curious about Dean’s universe, and wants to know all about them … oh, and that’s how it comes out that there is no AU Adam. Which doesn’t strike them as all that important, so they skip over it and continue to research. Then they write everything up, and send it to Canon. Canon-Castiel sends them the message about Adam, and then everything makes sense. Sort of. They can’t send help, because they need to balance the equations. This comes in later, because when they’re all together, Cas offers to come over to Canon, to fill in the void left by Canon-Cas and provide them with protection. Since Michael still doesn’t have a vessel in AU-verse. But she can’t cross over, which means that Canon-Cas is still alive somewhere, and will come back, which is good. (Because they don’t know what happened to him, they don’t know that he sigil’d himself out of there.)
Except that this leaves them with no time to call in Gabriel, so dead-Zachariah-in-the-warehouse will have to do. They have to leave Adam alone with Michael, and rush to get Deanna back to her universe in time. Which means that the reunion is a lot less cheerful and fluffy than I’d wanted. There is probably conversation, but it’s not so goofy. When AU-Zach shows up, girl-Castiel whisks herself out of there so that Canon-Sam and Deanna can sigil out AU-Zach; then she returns.
I’m trying to think of a way to connect the two universes, and whether I want everyone to meet their counterparts, or some to meet the others — hah. Cas would be good, because whichever version of him met the others would know what was going on. Maybe the angels in both universes are looking for a version of Dean that’ll be more willing to say yes to Michael. They compare notes from their team of angel psychologists, and realize that if they trade Dean for Deanna, then both will say yes, and everyone wins. So the angels swap them. Deanna wakes up in a motel with a dude who looks like her sister, and Dean wakes up to a girlier version of his brother. Cas isn’t able to cross dimensions on his own, so both sides takes different tacks. First, they need to figure out why; then dude-Sam, dude-Cas, and girl-Deanna go to find/summon Gabriel. Meanwhile, girl-Sam, girl-Cas, and dude-Dean (OH. Deanna would say yes because Adam doesn’t exist in her universe, so there would be nothing stopping Michael from taking her right off the bat in 5x16. Or something) come up with a plan to strike down girl-Zachariah. They meet up with Barbara Singer, do research, etc.
It turns out that there are other ways to pass between the dimensions. There are gateways, places where the walls are thin and humans can reach through without angelic intervention, but the passage requires a balanced equation — so, for example, Dean can’t just waltz back through unless Deanna is there to take his place again. Maybe the two Castiels still have the ability to send things across dimensions, even if it takes a tremendous amount of effort. Either way, Alt gets the message across to Canon, and everyone goes to a field in the middle of nowhere to perform the ritual that will create a temporary melding of the two planes.
They perform the ritual. It starts! And then Alt-Zach shows up to keep Dean from returning, and the sigil that the group from Canon has set up doesn’t work on her because the universes aren’t quite merged yet. But then Canon Gabriel shows up, and he and Alt-Zach have a very short fight that ends with Gabriel sending his Alt sister away. He doesn’t like this idea at all because it would involve dragging his counterpart family into it; and if there’s a chance that the apocalypse won’t happen in another dimension, then that’s good for them and for his Alt self.
Once the plot is wrapped up (such as it is), there is, of course, a few minutes of Dean and Deanna mugging for each other, while Sam and Samantha roll their eyes and are relieved; and Castiel regards himself/herself with silent, intense stares. Then Dean and Deanna trade off into their respective universes, and have introspective conversations with their respective siblings about why the switch would have made them say yes in the angels’ eyes; then they maybe wonder if ‘family’ applies to their counterparts.
One, the two universes’ angels mutually agree to the swap. Two, Adam doesn’t have a counterpart because, with their genders switched, Joan terminated the pregnancy that would have resulted in Eve. So the kidnap-Adam scheme can take place and interrupt Canon’s search for Gabriel — or does it take place before that? Oh. Maybe the switch happens just before they go to visit Lisa. They’re on their own at that point, so they don’t realize anything is wrong, aside from the car being set up for someone different. Then Canon Lisa doesn’t recognize Deanna, and Alt Lisa doesn’t have a son, so both of them realize that something is up.
Adam is important here. In Canon, Zachariah can still use him as bait to lure Deanna in, but without the same emotional connection to Canon-Sam, she’s not going to make the same choices. Meanwhile, all that Alt-Zachariah has to do is wait for Dean to give up; he’s stuck in a parallel dimension with people who look like his family, but aren’t, and still want him to make the same sacrifices for them. But they don’t know him quite as well as his real family does, so he’ll be able to give them the slip eventually.
Wait. How the hell did any Zachariah in any canon find them? It’d have to be someone else who told them. Possibly just someone they have on the ground, who saw Dean’s car, communicated that to their counterpart, and then they were able to track them down … yeah, that would work. It’d be gimmicky, but hell, the whole damn thing is gimmicky.
So once they’ve established what’s going on, then they need to get out of the way of everything. And then — oh, hah. Adam’s conversation with Sam and Deanna would be even weirder and less plausible. ‘Yeah, this is gonna sound crazy, but I’m your brother and … uh … she’s our brother from a parallel dimension.’ And Deanna would take him aside and ask since when they had a younger sibling. Which would lead Cas to realize that that’s why they picked this version to switch with; that’s the difference, it’s Adam.
I’d imagine that this pisses Deanna off enough that she’s not going to immediately run away to say yes to this version of Michael, but Sam is still wary, and is trying his best to just treat her like his brother, which is … weird. So the same sort of scenario plays out, and then they get a letter from Alt-Castiel and Alt-Barbara, saying ‘come to this spot at such-and-such a time’ without regard for the fact that, holy crap, Adam, because Alt-Team doesn’t have Eve, and Dean doesn’t know that Adam is alive again. So Canon-Team has to figure out how to rescue Adam and get to the Fields of Megiddo in time.
Deanna has absolutely no connection to Adam, but she’d still want to rescue him, right? Or would she? She’d want to save Adam, but she wouldn’t feel the same need to not let this Sam down, does that make sense? Does that indicate the correct priorities? No, no it does not. Adam doesn’t even exist in her world. She’d be more concerned about being a better sister than Dean is a brother. This Sam isn’t disappointed in her, he’s disappointed in some other version of her; she has a chance to prove to her younger sibling that she can be better. So she wouldn’t have run off, which would mean that Cas didn’t have to go track her down and beat her bloody to bring her back. So they’re more coordinated for the moment, more united, which is … weird. And uncomfortable at times, because Sam may look like her sister, but he’s not, and the cognitive dissonance is astounding. I think that Deanna’s experience would just be different, because the visual aspect? Not so weird. Yeah, Sam is four inches taller and wider than she’s used to seeing, but she is used to having a male-presenting sibling. (Castiel … freaks her out a little bit, as does Bobby.) However, the fact that she expects him to be exactly the same as her sister, and he isn’t, that’s weird.
On the other side of things, Dean has every reason to want to ditch and say yes, except that he’s on the wrong side of the universe, so he’s not even going to get to save the right people. So he’ll work with the others, but less willingly. His experience is twofold, because Samantha is smaller than him, and she expects things of him that he doesn’t understand; Castiel is absurdly attractive, which is confusing; and his father-figure is now a woman, which freaks him out. Sam is angry with him for not being her sister, recognizes that he can’t help it, tries to suppress it, but he can still tell that she’s disappointed. Barbara treats him roughly, like she hasn’t even noticed the difference, which he guesses is supposed to be comforting but is instead unsettling. She acts like Bobby, but she’s not. She just wants to help him. Castiel is unfazed, but only because she knew about the existence of other dimensions. She just didn’t think it would ever come to that.
Anyway. Samantha is very curious about Dean’s universe, and wants to know all about them … oh, and that’s how it comes out that there is no Alt Adam. Which doesn’t strike them as all that important, so they skip over it and continue to research. Then they write everything up, and send it to Canon. Canon-Castiel sends them the message about Adam, and then everything makes sense. Sort of. They can’t send help, because they need to balance the equations. This comes in later, because when they’re all together, Cas offers to come over to Canon, to fill in the void left by Canon-Cas and provide them with protection. Since Michael still doesn’t have a vessel in Alt-verse. But she can’t cross over, which means that Canon-Cas is still alive somewhere, and will come back, which is good. (Because they don’t know what happened to him, they don’t know that he sigil’d himself out of there.)
Except that this leaves them with no time to call in Gabriel, so dead-Zachariah-in-the-warehouse will have to do. They have to leave Adam alone with Michael, and rush to get Deanna back to her universe in time. Which means that the reunion is a lot less cheerful and fluffy than I’d wanted. There is probably conversation, but it’s not so goofy. When Alt-Zach shows up, girl-Castiel whisks herself out of there so that Canon-Sam and Deanna can sigil out Alt-Zach; then she returns.
Where does this go from there? Well, when they reconvene, they need to figure out how to avoid being swapped against their will again. They do a ‘native soil’ type of thing, only more complicated — carry something with them at all times that anchors them to their own world.
So how does the apocalypse play out in the other world? Without Adam in it. They’re just hoping that Deanna will say yes? No, there’s got to be some sort of backup plan. This is stupid. Unless they’re planning on dragging Joan out of wherever the fuck she ended up … no, that wouldn’t work, she’s Sam’s mother, not sister. So they definitely need Deanna to say yes … which means that this is more important for her than it is for Dean. The angel psychologists figure that Sam is the only thing stopping them from saying yes … therefore, they need to push them into situations where they won’t be around their respective sibling. (Man, this requires some weird grammatical shit.) For Deanna, that would be the warehouse scene — if she was taken and put into Canon, then she has a greater chance of saying yes.
What if the location of the warehouse falls within the jurisdiction of the thinner walls between the worlds? And so when Deanna says yes inside the warehouse, it would allow Alt-Michael to come through and claim her. Only in this case, Dean and Alt-Sam come through first. They grab Adam; and Deanna, seeing her Sam, says no at the last minute. Or maybe Dean convinces her to say no. Either way, they all leave the warehouse intact.
They then need to figure out what the hell to do. Adam needs to be clued in on what’s going on, especially since Deanna and Canon-Sam have been pretending to be brother and sister in order to make it easier on his comprehension and to not seem totally insane. But once that’s all been sorted out, they recognize that Michael is going to be pissed, and they’ve staved off nothing at all. Adam is still a target, and he’s technically dead in one world, doesn’t exist at all in the other. I think that maybe he goes with Deanna and Alt-Sam back to their world; he’s untraceable, and the angels really won’t be looking for him there.
Which means that … okay, what comes after that? After that comes the convocation of other gods, which just pisses me off, so not going to include that; or. Or. The only other thing I could think of would be if they were somehow able to convince the gods not to kill them.
If Adam is in Witness Protection, so to speak, then Michael is back on Dean. If everyone could use the switch to their advantage somehow, that would be neat. What if they took up each other’s archangels? Or! Canon-Sam brings out the best in Deanna — he’s not as difficult for her to understand and all of that — and vice versa, right? While Dean and Alt-Sam … do not. What if they pick up on that, especially the first, and use it? They can’t redeem Satan, obviously. But the relationships are different enough that it might throw Lucifer and Michael off, enough to throw them into the Cage.
What if one person could take in both? Then the others could — okay. All four gather in one merged plane. They can tell their respective vessels that the existence of parallel planes, with other people living identical lives, has made them accept the inevitable, etc. Yes. Alt-Cas is there; as soon as she can tell that the Michaels and Lucifers have been summoned, she grabs Deanna and Canon-Sam and books it — no, she can’t take them both, she can’t go anywhere with Canon-Sam. Not unless — no, wait, Canon-Cas is temporarily gone. So she yoinks Deanna back to Barbara’s and then — wait.
This takes place later. First, okay. First, the warehouse showdown. Then Adam exits stage left, and they agree to keep in touch, if possible. They carry around stuff that will keep them grounded in their own worlds, and prevent the angels from switching them straight back again, or substituting out other versions of themselves. Then they each meet their Gabriel, who gives them the message about the Cage,etc. They let each other know, just in case the paths are different now.
This is where I’m stuck. What would make any of them think to switch it off? Something about. Okay. When does Cas get back to Canon? After the affair with Crowley, so after the rings. Score stands: two angels, two devils, four vessels, no backups. What if they learn ahead of time that the great battle for heaven and earth is actually just a one-on-one fight? They’re preparing to get a huge battle going with many, many different legions of nasty things coming after them, but that comes afterwards. It doesn’t make a whole lot of tactical sense, which just emphasizes the pointlessness of it all.
Maybe Sam thinks of it first. He puts together Bobby stabbing himself to save him, and Deanna stopping the process of becoming a vessel halfway through for Alt-Sam. It’s that last one that catches his attention, because what if they could do that? He calls Deanna, and asks her if that’s what happened, and she’s like ‘Fuck no Sam, what are you saying, this is a terrible idea; put me through to other me so that I can tell him what an idiot you are being’ and he says, ‘Well, was that what happened? You changed your mind, and he had to leave?’ and she says, ‘Yeah. I couldn’t do it. Thanks for the heads-up on my sister doing something incredibly stupid. It’s been fun talking to you.’ And then she hangs up and calls Dean, and ‘Do you know what your idiot brother just wanted to know?’ which leads to ‘Son of a bitch. Why did he talk to you?’ ‘Because you didn’t chuck an archangel out of your skin. That shit burns, like remember that summer we had a hunt in a coastal town, and we took Sam to the beach but forgot sunscreen, and our shoulders got blisters?’ ‘Oh god, Dad was so pissed.’ ‘I thought she was going to hit the roof! And Sam didn’t go outside without sunscreen on except at night for the next three years.’ Then Alt-Sam wants to know who she’s talking to, and Deanna remembers why she’s talking to him in the first place, so she hangs up and gets serious again.
The thing that I’m having difficulty with is finding a way to integrate the worlds, and to keep people alive. Theoretically, Sam could both say yes to Lucifer, but we know that it takes a while to overcome that, and only then under extreme stress. Which leaves Dean and Deanna worrying out how the hell to keep off the pressure to become Michael as well.
Possibly they ask Chuck for any insight that he’s got. (And it’s a little weird, isn’t it, that in a universe where everything else is switched around, Chuck is exactly the same.) He says that he doesn’t know, obviously, but he does know where the final showdown is scheduled to take place. To this end, Cas and Alt-Cas work out that, if they relocated half a mile to the west, they’d be in another convergence zone.
I don’t know what happens from there. I don’t know how things would have gone without Adam. But Dean and Deanna know that if they don’t do something, then things are going to end up like they did when Zachariah zapped them to the future. Maybe Deanna comes up with the idea of somehow putting herself in enough danger that her Sam will be able to take back control for long enough to throw herself into the Cage. If it enabled her to reject Michael, maybe it will be enough. The danger is that if she fails, then boom; apocalyptic showdown right then and there. Lucifer is out on both planes, so she can’t just ask Dean to switch places with her again if she fails. She and Barbara and Cas go and try anyway — wait. Maybe Dean does this; Deanna may have thought of it, but she doesn’t think that Michael will let her get away with it a second time. So Dean goes all archangel on his brother’s ass, or starts to …
Who am I kidding? This whole storyline is a fucking disaster, and there’s no way to make it any less of a shitshow without breaking out something completely out of left field.
What about this: Sam says yes. Sam turns into the devil. Deanna calls down Michael, but she does so at a point of convergence, and gets the wrong Michael. Michael doesn’t realize this until he’s joined her and taken over her body. The fight between Michael and Lucifer begins, but they’re both thrown off by the fact that they’re alternate versions of each other; Sam takes advantage of the opportunity to seize control, open the Cage, and throw herself and her sister in.
On the other side of things, Dean has no Michael to call down when he tries, and Lucifer is walking around in Sam’s body. He learns about what happened from Cas when his counterpart appears to tell them what happened. As a fully-restored angel, Alt-Cas is now able to cross over and meet herself; she tells them what happened to Michael and Deanna. Her mission is now to return to heaven and figure out what’s going on, and where God is in all of this. It’s probably fairly obvious that she doesn’t want to hang around with her other self and the counterparts to two friends who just died to save her world.
Which leaves Dean in the same place as before, and it’s kind of depressing to realize that he’s completely on his own. He can’t pull the same maneuver as Deanna did, because he’s lost the element of surprise. Until he thinks … are they the only two parallel universes? No, says Cas reluctantly. There are not. So what they need to do, says Dean, is find one where — No. No, they are not allowed to do that, because the one constant, in every universe that is related closely enough to be able to reach, is that the two of them will be born, and that they will start the apocalypse. If it’s any comfort, Cas would continue, there are others where Sam is strong enough to resist, and all goes according to plan. ‘Thank you very much. That’s really helpful.’ ‘What do you want me to say? Do you want me to lie?’ ‘No, I want you to help me figure out how to get Sam back before Lucy’s thousand-year reign starts.’ ‘There is nothing left. You might as well find the other Michael and say yes.’
Start over. What if Sam doesn’t throw Deanna in, just herself? Or she tries, but doesn’t manage to do so. Then Michael!Deanna has to go face off against Canon-Lucifer!Sam. The scene that followed would go something like the actual fail that was the show, but with Deanna instead of Adam. M!Deanna is distraught at this point, because he doesn’t want to kill his brother, no matter how far astray he’s gone.
Do you realize how much shit this is? Seriously. Just … stop. Stop everything. Stop this whole shitshow. Stop it after the cross-self phone conversation, and the fallout from that. Resume after Sam/Sam have gone.
What if Sam calls up Lucifer at a point of convergence — Alt-Sam — and gets both of them by accident? Both versions of Lucifer, which she might just have a chance of overwhelming because they’re distracted, because what the fuck, hello, other self. Except that no, that’d be the one thing with which they’d be in agreement: Sam does not get control back over her body. Therefore, there’s a double-Lucifer fighting to control both planes at once. Then Sam tries to do the same thing, but he’s no longer needed. And the only thing left for it, now that Alt-Sam has gotten herself thoroughly fucked up, is for Michael to join forces with himself. When Sam can’t find Lucifer anymore, he calls Deanna, who tells him what happened. There is a collective ‘… Fuck.’ Then Dean says, well, that’s it then. I’ve got to go be Michael. Cas and Bobby are out of options, and they want to just leave the earth; Barbara and Alt-Cas are in a similar boat. Sam wants to find Alt-Sam and see if he can persuade Lucifer to come find him; Dean is not letting that happen. He ditches, and goes straight to the place where the new final showdown is supposed to take place (which he gets from Chuck); he says yes to Michael. Alt-Cas hears about it from Cas, and tells Deanna, who rushes over with Alt-Cas and Barbara to stop Dean from ending the world. When she gets there, Dean has been taken as a vessel. The fallout is much like the actual story, but with different players: Multi-Lucifer!Sam and Multi-Michael!Dean bitch at each other for a while in tandem. Deanna tries to stop them; Multi-Lucifer!Sam kills Alt-Cas and Barbara, then tries to kill Deanna, and Alt-Sam regains control of herself enough to open the Cage, grab Multi-Michael!Dean, and hurl both of them into the Cage.
Alt-Cas comes back and revives Barbara; then Sam, Bobby, and Cas show up because they’ve realized that Dean is gone. They find the remains of Alt-Free Will gathered around the closing of the Cage. Sam is horrified and demands an explanation. Deanna tells him what happened, through her shock — she just watched her sister die, after all. And Sam is stunned, because he hadn’t planned on living this long. And now they’re stuck with the not-versions of each other’s siblings, and it’s awful, they can’t do it. ‘So what are you going to do now?’ Sam asks Deanna. ‘Lisa, I’m going back to Lisa,’ she says. ‘You?’ ‘Keep going, I guess. I don’t have anyone waiting for me.’ Deanna briefly suggests traveling together — their opposite numbers are gone, so they can cross planes more easily now — and they both agree that no, that would just be awful.
This could easily work out if the situations were reversed, and it was Dean and Alt-Sam, except that I think they’d still see each other sometimes, and it would become a horribly fucked-up relationship of a whole different degree, and they’d probably end up sleeping together, and it would just be unpleasant. But more compliant for the canon-‘verse. Yeah, I think I’ll go with that one.
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But Wait There's More
I am definitely going to include at least one point at which Sam finds Deanna attractive and has to remind himself that she's his brother's alter ego.
I also need to decide on Deanna's relationship with Cas.
There have got to be differences between the two universes besides gender, or it's boring. Sam and Deanna have a more strained relationship; Sam doesn't trust any iteration of Deanna as far as she could throw them. Deanna is desperate to earn A-Sam's trust to prove to herself that she's worthy, that she CAN get back her sister's trust.
Deanna and Cas slept together that time Sam left and they thought that Cas was going to die. The strip club was a disaster, and so Deanna was like, 'I guess I'll have to do the job myself' and when they didn't die, Cas shrugged it off as Deanna being kind instead of seizing the opportunity.
Cas dies killing Zachariah B. They stab each other or something.
I'd imagine that dean's reaction to Sam B not trusting him elicits a self-destructive spiral in the opposite direction from Deanna. If Sam doesn't trust him, them what's the point? Unless she ticks him off enough that he wants to prove to her that he's better than his counterpart. Which means that Deanna says yes, but her sister comes in and sees her say no, which is heartening for both Deanna and her counterpart - who sees that and realizes that maybe B Sam isn't correct in her assumption that Deanna is untrustworthy.
Ending relationships stand: either unhealthy dean and Sam b, or Deanna and one of the two Sams. It depends on who survives. Not everyone will, I think.
This is stupid and wrong and fun.
Barbara enjoys knitting and crocheting. She designs protective patterns and sells them at craft fairs. Her devil's trap rugs are popular, and she's known as the crazy cat lady of the town, minus the cats.
Yeah, that's better. Things are different.
The other thing is that in This Axe, Deanna is quite clearly very possessive of Sam. How does that evolve throughout the story, because that's important. She goes to hell and back for Sam in 3. In four is when that trust starts breaking, because Sam gets involved with Reuben, and Deanna is like 'I'm in love with you, you freak, what are you doing with a demon?' - which makes her react more harshly to her Sam than Dean does on the A-Plane. There is broken trust, all of that angst. When she leaves that voicemail apologizing to Sam, she includes the whole 'by the way I am in fucked-up incestuous love with you please come home' which, of course, Reuben gets rid of. When everything blows over, so to speak, and Sam doesn't mention it, she figures it's just going to be one of those things that they don't talk about, and it hurts, etc. Point being, she trusts Sam less than she should, because these are irrational human beings who don't like to talk about their feelings or even to acknowledge that there is such a thing as feelings. Also this is the point at which Cas shows up.
So Deanna tries to forgive Sam, and there's a rift created there, into the gap of which Cas inserts herself, and then Sam stops trusting Deanna because of Michael, so there's that, and it's a whole big mess on this end, even more so than on the A Plane.
(As a side note, I think it would be funny if Sam spent forever angsting over the fact that he was in love with Dean - before S4 - and then it came out that that was the case, and Dean was just like '... So? We're a weird family; it just turns out we're a little weirder than I thought.' And he takes it upon himself to rag on Sam for it, never let him live it down, probably because he's not taking it too seriously because if he does take it seriously then it means that he'll have to acknowledge that someone knows him inside and out, knows his flaws, and still finds him worth loving.)
And More!
Deanna and Sam establish that Deanna doesn’t have another sibling besides Sam, via dramatic cut.
Cas sends the message.
Deanna and TFW talk to Adam; Cas gets the message, and they leave to make preparations. Sam goes to the store; Deanna and Cas are in the basement.
Dean and Samantha and Barbara hang around the house while Cas is gone, trading stories across planes. Things are getting tense when Cas returns, with coordinates a few miles away from the warehouse. They send these across and hit the road.
The coordinates arrive as Sam rejoins them in the basement. They go back upstairs, in relatively high spirits, and discover that Adam has vanished under Bobby’s nose. Emergency Angel Messaging Systems a go-go. They decide to go after Adam, and Sam and Deanna have their trust bonding.
Dean and TFW2 are halfway to the convergence point when they learn from Cas that the other TFW is going to the warehouse after Adam. Dean explains Adam to them, and they’re like ‘holy motherfucking shit, angels on both planes are all dicks.
At the warehouse, Zachariah talks to Adam, tells him the truth. Adam is upset, understandably.
TFW2 open up the convergence point, creating a ‘safe zone’ where they can cross over and all be in one place. They waste some time ditching Zachariah. Then Dean demands that they move their asses over there, while Sam wants to leave him chained to a tree because of trust issues in the opposite direction. She’ll go and save his Adam. Castiel comes back and freaks out at them, telling them they can’t, that they’ll destroy reality, etc.
Castiel goes in ahead of his compatriots and sigils the hell out of everyone present.
Dean and Sam say, to hell with this, we’re not going to stand by. Sam wants Dean to stay behind to hold open the gate, and for Cas to come with her because he’s more useful and also not a potential threat. Cas says that she can’t; an extradimensional wave of thought like her would have even more of an adverse effect on the fabric of reality. Plus the angels will be back, and she’s got more of a chance of fighting them off than Dean does. Sam makes it clear that she will kill Dean if he fucks things up. Then they step into Plane A and double things up.
Deanna and Sam show up in the white room, feeling strange and wrong (because of doubling-up, but they don’t know that). Zachariah is pleased and gloats a bit. He tortures Adam and Sam for a while, until Deanna says yes.
At the convergence point, Cas stands an uneasy guard until Zachariah shows up, with reinforcements. She settles in and prepares to fight. There is probably some boasting going on, too.
Dean and Sam burst into the white room. Sam goes to Deanna-turning-into-Michael. Deanna says no, and throws Michael out. She hisses at Zachariah, distracting him so that Dean can kill him. Then she grabs Adam, and they all book it out of there. Outside, things are starting to get strange, rippling and thundering clouds overhead, etc.
Back to Castiel — she has killed two of Zachariah B’s companions, and they are now in a one-on-one fight. Zachariah finally forces her to step out of the circle, back onto her own plane. The gate shuts.
The car full of duplicates and one very confused, terrified Adam reaches the convergence point, and it’s not there. They rush to reassemble the circuit while the world gets stranger the longer that they stay.
When they open it up again, Castiel and Zachariah are in close combat on the other side, and Cas is losing. Deanna rushes to help; Adam is confused because did they not just kill that douchebag; Cas deliberately lets Zachariah get in on her to give Deanna a chance to stab him. Zachariah tosses Deanna back easily and kills Cas. What she is not expecting is for Adam to come up behind her and impale her with extreme prejudice. He is mostly in a state of shock, but also hello, revenge for pulling him out of heaven and fucking up his life.
The halloween icon is my official Supernatural icon, by the way. I refuse to get an actual one.
The good news is that I am also working on my own novel! The last piece I wrote really helped me figure out *how* I want to write, and I think I improved in writing it. Which is awesome! Now I'm trying to overcome the fear that I have of writing on small paper. I'm halfway through this notebook, dammit, I'm not going to leave it half-empty and then move on. GODDAMN, am I right?
Anyway. I wanted Dean and Deanna to meet and hug it out or something.
I’m trying to think of a way to connect the two universes, and whether I want everyone to meet their counterparts, or some to meet the others — hah. Cas would be good, because whichever version of him met the others would know what was going on. Maybe the angels in both universes are looking for a version of Dean that’ll be more willing to say yes to Michael. They compare notes from their team of angel psychologists, and realize that if they trade Dean for Deanna, then both will say yes, and everyone wins. So the angels swap them. Deanna wakes up in a motel with a dude who looks like her sister, and Dean wakes up to a girlier version of his brother. Cas isn’t able to cross dimensions on his own, so both sides takes different tacks. First, they need to figure out why; then dude-Sam, dude-Cas, and girl-Deanna go to find/summon Gabriel. Meanwhile, girl-Sam, girl-Cas, and dude-Dean (OH. Deanna would say yes because Adam doesn’t exist in her universe, so there would be nothing stopping Michael from taking her right off the bat in 5x16. Or something) come up with a plan to strike down girl-Zachariah. They meet up with Barbara Singer, do research, etc.
It turns out that there are other ways to pass between the dimensions. There are gateways, places where the walls are thin and humans can reach through without angelic intervention, but the passage requires a balanced equation — so, for example, Dean can’t just waltz back through unless Deanna is there to take his place again. Maybe the two Castiels still have the ability to send things across dimensions, even if it takes a tremendous amount of effort. Either way, AU gets the message across to Canon, and everyone goes to a field in the middle of nowhere to perform the ritual that will create a temporary melding of the two planes.
They perform the ritual. It starts! And then AU-Zach shows up to keep Dean from returning, and the sigil that the group from Canon has set up doesn’t work on her because the universes aren’t quite merged yet. But then Canon Gabriel shows up, and he and AU-Zach have a very short fight that ends with Gabriel sending his AU sister away. He doesn’t like this idea at all because it would involve dragging his counterpart family into it; and if there’s a chance that the apocalypse won’t happen in another dimension, then that’s good for them and for his AU self.
Once the plot is wrapped up (such as it is), there is, of course, a few minutes of Dean and Deanna mugging for each other, while Sam and Samantha roll their eyes and are relieved; and Castiel regards himself/herself with silent, intense stares. Then Dean and Deanna trade off into their respective universes, and have introspective conversations with their respective siblings about why the switch would have made them say yes in the angels’ eyes; then they maybe wonder if ‘family’ applies to their counterparts.
One, the two universes’ angels mutually agree to the swap. Two, Adam doesn’t have a counterpart because, with their genders switched, Joan terminated the pregnancy that would have resulted in Eve. So the kidnap-Adam scheme can take place and interrupt Canon’s search for Gabriel — or does it take place before that? Oh. Maybe the switch happens just before they go to visit Lisa. They’re on their own at that point, so they don’t realize anything is wrong, aside from the car being set up for someone different. Then Canon Lisa doesn’t recognize Deanna, and AU Lisa doesn’t have a son, so both of them realize that something is up.
Adam is important here. In Canon, Zachariah can still use him as bait to lure Deanna in, but without the same emotional connection to Canon-Sam, she’s not going to make the same choices. Meanwhile, all that AU-Zachariah has to do is wait for Dean to give up; he’s stuck in a parallel dimension with people who look like his family, but aren’t, and still want him to make the same sacrifices for them. But they don’t know him quite as well as his real family does, so he’ll be able to give them the slip eventually.
Wait. How the hell did any Zachariah in any canon find them? It’d have to be someone else who told them. Possibly just someone they have on the ground, who saw Dean’s car, communicated that to their counterpart, and then they were able to track them down … yeah, that would work. It’d be gimmicky, but hell, the whole damn thing is gimmicky.
So once they’ve established what’s going on, then they need to get out of the way of everything. And then — oh, hah. Adam’s conversation with Sam and Deanna would be even weirder and less plausible. ‘Yeah, this is gonna sound crazy, but I’m your brother and … uh … she’s our brother from a parallel dimension.’ And Deanna would take him aside and ask since when they had a younger sibling. Which would lead Cas to realize that that’s why they picked this version to switch with; that’s the difference, it’s Adam.
I’d imagine that this pisses Deanna off enough that she’s not going to immediately run away to say yes to this version of Michael, but Sam is still wary, and is trying his best to just treat her like his brother, which is … weird. So the same sort of scenario plays out, and then they get a letter from AU-Castiel and AU-Barbara, saying ‘come to this spot at such-and-such a time’ without regard for the fact that, holy crap, Adam, because AU-Team doesn’t have Eve, and Dean doesn’t know that Adam is alive again. So Canon-Team has to figure out how to rescue Adam and get to the Fields of Megiddo in time.
Deanna has absolutely no connection to Adam, but she’d still want to rescue him, right? Or would she? She’d want to save Adam, but she wouldn’t feel the same need to not let this Sam down, does that make sense? Does that indicate the correct priorities? No, no it does not. Adam doesn’t even exist in her world. She’d be more concerned about being a better sister than Dean is a brother. This Sam isn’t disappointed in her, he’s disappointed in some other version of her; she has a chance to prove to her younger sibling that she can be better. So she wouldn’t have run off, which would mean that Cas didn’t have to go track her down and beat her bloody to bring her back. So they’re more coordinated for the moment, more united, which is … weird. And uncomfortable at times, because Sam may look like her sister, but he’s not, and the cognitive dissonance is astounding. I think that Deanna’s experience would just be different, because the visual aspect? Not so weird. Yeah, Sam is four inches taller and wider than she’s used to seeing, but she is used to having a male-presenting sibling. (Castiel … freaks her out a little bit, as does Bobby.) However, the fact that she expects him to be exactly the same as her sister, and he isn’t, that’s weird.
On the other side of things, Dean has every reason to want to ditch and say yes, except that he’s on the wrong side of the universe, so he’s not even going to get to save the right people. So he’ll work with the others, but less willingly. His experience is twofold, because Samantha is smaller than him, and she expects things of him that he doesn’t understand; Castiel is absurdly attractive, which is confusing; and his father-figure is now a woman, which freaks him out. Sam is angry with him for not being her sister, recognizes that he can’t help it, tries to suppress it, but he can still tell that she’s disappointed. Barbara treats him roughly, like she hasn’t even noticed the difference, which he guesses is supposed to be comforting but is instead unsettling. She acts like Bobby, but she’s not. She just wants to help him. Castiel is unfazed, but only because she knew about the existence of other dimensions. She just didn’t think it would ever come to that.
Anyway. Samantha is very curious about Dean’s universe, and wants to know all about them … oh, and that’s how it comes out that there is no AU Adam. Which doesn’t strike them as all that important, so they skip over it and continue to research. Then they write everything up, and send it to Canon. Canon-Castiel sends them the message about Adam, and then everything makes sense. Sort of. They can’t send help, because they need to balance the equations. This comes in later, because when they’re all together, Cas offers to come over to Canon, to fill in the void left by Canon-Cas and provide them with protection. Since Michael still doesn’t have a vessel in AU-verse. But she can’t cross over, which means that Canon-Cas is still alive somewhere, and will come back, which is good. (Because they don’t know what happened to him, they don’t know that he sigil’d himself out of there.)
Except that this leaves them with no time to call in Gabriel, so dead-Zachariah-in-the-warehouse will have to do. They have to leave Adam alone with Michael, and rush to get Deanna back to her universe in time. Which means that the reunion is a lot less cheerful and fluffy than I’d wanted. There is probably conversation, but it’s not so goofy. When AU-Zach shows up, girl-Castiel whisks herself out of there so that Canon-Sam and Deanna can sigil out AU-Zach; then she returns.
I’m trying to think of a way to connect the two universes, and whether I want everyone to meet their counterparts, or some to meet the others — hah. Cas would be good, because whichever version of him met the others would know what was going on. Maybe the angels in both universes are looking for a version of Dean that’ll be more willing to say yes to Michael. They compare notes from their team of angel psychologists, and realize that if they trade Dean for Deanna, then both will say yes, and everyone wins. So the angels swap them. Deanna wakes up in a motel with a dude who looks like her sister, and Dean wakes up to a girlier version of his brother. Cas isn’t able to cross dimensions on his own, so both sides takes different tacks. First, they need to figure out why; then dude-Sam, dude-Cas, and girl-Deanna go to find/summon Gabriel. Meanwhile, girl-Sam, girl-Cas, and dude-Dean (OH. Deanna would say yes because Adam doesn’t exist in her universe, so there would be nothing stopping Michael from taking her right off the bat in 5x16. Or something) come up with a plan to strike down girl-Zachariah. They meet up with Barbara Singer, do research, etc.
It turns out that there are other ways to pass between the dimensions. There are gateways, places where the walls are thin and humans can reach through without angelic intervention, but the passage requires a balanced equation — so, for example, Dean can’t just waltz back through unless Deanna is there to take his place again. Maybe the two Castiels still have the ability to send things across dimensions, even if it takes a tremendous amount of effort. Either way, Alt gets the message across to Canon, and everyone goes to a field in the middle of nowhere to perform the ritual that will create a temporary melding of the two planes.
They perform the ritual. It starts! And then Alt-Zach shows up to keep Dean from returning, and the sigil that the group from Canon has set up doesn’t work on her because the universes aren’t quite merged yet. But then Canon Gabriel shows up, and he and Alt-Zach have a very short fight that ends with Gabriel sending his Alt sister away. He doesn’t like this idea at all because it would involve dragging his counterpart family into it; and if there’s a chance that the apocalypse won’t happen in another dimension, then that’s good for them and for his Alt self.
Once the plot is wrapped up (such as it is), there is, of course, a few minutes of Dean and Deanna mugging for each other, while Sam and Samantha roll their eyes and are relieved; and Castiel regards himself/herself with silent, intense stares. Then Dean and Deanna trade off into their respective universes, and have introspective conversations with their respective siblings about why the switch would have made them say yes in the angels’ eyes; then they maybe wonder if ‘family’ applies to their counterparts.
One, the two universes’ angels mutually agree to the swap. Two, Adam doesn’t have a counterpart because, with their genders switched, Joan terminated the pregnancy that would have resulted in Eve. So the kidnap-Adam scheme can take place and interrupt Canon’s search for Gabriel — or does it take place before that? Oh. Maybe the switch happens just before they go to visit Lisa. They’re on their own at that point, so they don’t realize anything is wrong, aside from the car being set up for someone different. Then Canon Lisa doesn’t recognize Deanna, and Alt Lisa doesn’t have a son, so both of them realize that something is up.
Adam is important here. In Canon, Zachariah can still use him as bait to lure Deanna in, but without the same emotional connection to Canon-Sam, she’s not going to make the same choices. Meanwhile, all that Alt-Zachariah has to do is wait for Dean to give up; he’s stuck in a parallel dimension with people who look like his family, but aren’t, and still want him to make the same sacrifices for them. But they don’t know him quite as well as his real family does, so he’ll be able to give them the slip eventually.
Wait. How the hell did any Zachariah in any canon find them? It’d have to be someone else who told them. Possibly just someone they have on the ground, who saw Dean’s car, communicated that to their counterpart, and then they were able to track them down … yeah, that would work. It’d be gimmicky, but hell, the whole damn thing is gimmicky.
So once they’ve established what’s going on, then they need to get out of the way of everything. And then — oh, hah. Adam’s conversation with Sam and Deanna would be even weirder and less plausible. ‘Yeah, this is gonna sound crazy, but I’m your brother and … uh … she’s our brother from a parallel dimension.’ And Deanna would take him aside and ask since when they had a younger sibling. Which would lead Cas to realize that that’s why they picked this version to switch with; that’s the difference, it’s Adam.
I’d imagine that this pisses Deanna off enough that she’s not going to immediately run away to say yes to this version of Michael, but Sam is still wary, and is trying his best to just treat her like his brother, which is … weird. So the same sort of scenario plays out, and then they get a letter from Alt-Castiel and Alt-Barbara, saying ‘come to this spot at such-and-such a time’ without regard for the fact that, holy crap, Adam, because Alt-Team doesn’t have Eve, and Dean doesn’t know that Adam is alive again. So Canon-Team has to figure out how to rescue Adam and get to the Fields of Megiddo in time.
Deanna has absolutely no connection to Adam, but she’d still want to rescue him, right? Or would she? She’d want to save Adam, but she wouldn’t feel the same need to not let this Sam down, does that make sense? Does that indicate the correct priorities? No, no it does not. Adam doesn’t even exist in her world. She’d be more concerned about being a better sister than Dean is a brother. This Sam isn’t disappointed in her, he’s disappointed in some other version of her; she has a chance to prove to her younger sibling that she can be better. So she wouldn’t have run off, which would mean that Cas didn’t have to go track her down and beat her bloody to bring her back. So they’re more coordinated for the moment, more united, which is … weird. And uncomfortable at times, because Sam may look like her sister, but he’s not, and the cognitive dissonance is astounding. I think that Deanna’s experience would just be different, because the visual aspect? Not so weird. Yeah, Sam is four inches taller and wider than she’s used to seeing, but she is used to having a male-presenting sibling. (Castiel … freaks her out a little bit, as does Bobby.) However, the fact that she expects him to be exactly the same as her sister, and he isn’t, that’s weird.
On the other side of things, Dean has every reason to want to ditch and say yes, except that he’s on the wrong side of the universe, so he’s not even going to get to save the right people. So he’ll work with the others, but less willingly. His experience is twofold, because Samantha is smaller than him, and she expects things of him that he doesn’t understand; Castiel is absurdly attractive, which is confusing; and his father-figure is now a woman, which freaks him out. Sam is angry with him for not being her sister, recognizes that he can’t help it, tries to suppress it, but he can still tell that she’s disappointed. Barbara treats him roughly, like she hasn’t even noticed the difference, which he guesses is supposed to be comforting but is instead unsettling. She acts like Bobby, but she’s not. She just wants to help him. Castiel is unfazed, but only because she knew about the existence of other dimensions. She just didn’t think it would ever come to that.
Anyway. Samantha is very curious about Dean’s universe, and wants to know all about them … oh, and that’s how it comes out that there is no Alt Adam. Which doesn’t strike them as all that important, so they skip over it and continue to research. Then they write everything up, and send it to Canon. Canon-Castiel sends them the message about Adam, and then everything makes sense. Sort of. They can’t send help, because they need to balance the equations. This comes in later, because when they’re all together, Cas offers to come over to Canon, to fill in the void left by Canon-Cas and provide them with protection. Since Michael still doesn’t have a vessel in Alt-verse. But she can’t cross over, which means that Canon-Cas is still alive somewhere, and will come back, which is good. (Because they don’t know what happened to him, they don’t know that he sigil’d himself out of there.)
Except that this leaves them with no time to call in Gabriel, so dead-Zachariah-in-the-warehouse will have to do. They have to leave Adam alone with Michael, and rush to get Deanna back to her universe in time. Which means that the reunion is a lot less cheerful and fluffy than I’d wanted. There is probably conversation, but it’s not so goofy. When Alt-Zach shows up, girl-Castiel whisks herself out of there so that Canon-Sam and Deanna can sigil out Alt-Zach; then she returns.
Where does this go from there? Well, when they reconvene, they need to figure out how to avoid being swapped against their will again. They do a ‘native soil’ type of thing, only more complicated — carry something with them at all times that anchors them to their own world.
So how does the apocalypse play out in the other world? Without Adam in it. They’re just hoping that Deanna will say yes? No, there’s got to be some sort of backup plan. This is stupid. Unless they’re planning on dragging Joan out of wherever the fuck she ended up … no, that wouldn’t work, she’s Sam’s mother, not sister. So they definitely need Deanna to say yes … which means that this is more important for her than it is for Dean. The angel psychologists figure that Sam is the only thing stopping them from saying yes … therefore, they need to push them into situations where they won’t be around their respective sibling. (Man, this requires some weird grammatical shit.) For Deanna, that would be the warehouse scene — if she was taken and put into Canon, then she has a greater chance of saying yes.
What if the location of the warehouse falls within the jurisdiction of the thinner walls between the worlds? And so when Deanna says yes inside the warehouse, it would allow Alt-Michael to come through and claim her. Only in this case, Dean and Alt-Sam come through first. They grab Adam; and Deanna, seeing her Sam, says no at the last minute. Or maybe Dean convinces her to say no. Either way, they all leave the warehouse intact.
They then need to figure out what the hell to do. Adam needs to be clued in on what’s going on, especially since Deanna and Canon-Sam have been pretending to be brother and sister in order to make it easier on his comprehension and to not seem totally insane. But once that’s all been sorted out, they recognize that Michael is going to be pissed, and they’ve staved off nothing at all. Adam is still a target, and he’s technically dead in one world, doesn’t exist at all in the other. I think that maybe he goes with Deanna and Alt-Sam back to their world; he’s untraceable, and the angels really won’t be looking for him there.
Which means that … okay, what comes after that? After that comes the convocation of other gods, which just pisses me off, so not going to include that; or. Or. The only other thing I could think of would be if they were somehow able to convince the gods not to kill them.
If Adam is in Witness Protection, so to speak, then Michael is back on Dean. If everyone could use the switch to their advantage somehow, that would be neat. What if they took up each other’s archangels? Or! Canon-Sam brings out the best in Deanna — he’s not as difficult for her to understand and all of that — and vice versa, right? While Dean and Alt-Sam … do not. What if they pick up on that, especially the first, and use it? They can’t redeem Satan, obviously. But the relationships are different enough that it might throw Lucifer and Michael off, enough to throw them into the Cage.
What if one person could take in both? Then the others could — okay. All four gather in one merged plane. They can tell their respective vessels that the existence of parallel planes, with other people living identical lives, has made them accept the inevitable, etc. Yes. Alt-Cas is there; as soon as she can tell that the Michaels and Lucifers have been summoned, she grabs Deanna and Canon-Sam and books it — no, she can’t take them both, she can’t go anywhere with Canon-Sam. Not unless — no, wait, Canon-Cas is temporarily gone. So she yoinks Deanna back to Barbara’s and then — wait.
This takes place later. First, okay. First, the warehouse showdown. Then Adam exits stage left, and they agree to keep in touch, if possible. They carry around stuff that will keep them grounded in their own worlds, and prevent the angels from switching them straight back again, or substituting out other versions of themselves. Then they each meet their Gabriel, who gives them the message about the Cage,etc. They let each other know, just in case the paths are different now.
This is where I’m stuck. What would make any of them think to switch it off? Something about. Okay. When does Cas get back to Canon? After the affair with Crowley, so after the rings. Score stands: two angels, two devils, four vessels, no backups. What if they learn ahead of time that the great battle for heaven and earth is actually just a one-on-one fight? They’re preparing to get a huge battle going with many, many different legions of nasty things coming after them, but that comes afterwards. It doesn’t make a whole lot of tactical sense, which just emphasizes the pointlessness of it all.
Maybe Sam thinks of it first. He puts together Bobby stabbing himself to save him, and Deanna stopping the process of becoming a vessel halfway through for Alt-Sam. It’s that last one that catches his attention, because what if they could do that? He calls Deanna, and asks her if that’s what happened, and she’s like ‘Fuck no Sam, what are you saying, this is a terrible idea; put me through to other me so that I can tell him what an idiot you are being’ and he says, ‘Well, was that what happened? You changed your mind, and he had to leave?’ and she says, ‘Yeah. I couldn’t do it. Thanks for the heads-up on my sister doing something incredibly stupid. It’s been fun talking to you.’ And then she hangs up and calls Dean, and ‘Do you know what your idiot brother just wanted to know?’ which leads to ‘Son of a bitch. Why did he talk to you?’ ‘Because you didn’t chuck an archangel out of your skin. That shit burns, like remember that summer we had a hunt in a coastal town, and we took Sam to the beach but forgot sunscreen, and our shoulders got blisters?’ ‘Oh god, Dad was so pissed.’ ‘I thought she was going to hit the roof! And Sam didn’t go outside without sunscreen on except at night for the next three years.’ Then Alt-Sam wants to know who she’s talking to, and Deanna remembers why she’s talking to him in the first place, so she hangs up and gets serious again.
The thing that I’m having difficulty with is finding a way to integrate the worlds, and to keep people alive. Theoretically, Sam could both say yes to Lucifer, but we know that it takes a while to overcome that, and only then under extreme stress. Which leaves Dean and Deanna worrying out how the hell to keep off the pressure to become Michael as well.
Possibly they ask Chuck for any insight that he’s got. (And it’s a little weird, isn’t it, that in a universe where everything else is switched around, Chuck is exactly the same.) He says that he doesn’t know, obviously, but he does know where the final showdown is scheduled to take place. To this end, Cas and Alt-Cas work out that, if they relocated half a mile to the west, they’d be in another convergence zone.
I don’t know what happens from there. I don’t know how things would have gone without Adam. But Dean and Deanna know that if they don’t do something, then things are going to end up like they did when Zachariah zapped them to the future. Maybe Deanna comes up with the idea of somehow putting herself in enough danger that her Sam will be able to take back control for long enough to throw herself into the Cage. If it enabled her to reject Michael, maybe it will be enough. The danger is that if she fails, then boom; apocalyptic showdown right then and there. Lucifer is out on both planes, so she can’t just ask Dean to switch places with her again if she fails. She and Barbara and Cas go and try anyway — wait. Maybe Dean does this; Deanna may have thought of it, but she doesn’t think that Michael will let her get away with it a second time. So Dean goes all archangel on his brother’s ass, or starts to …
Who am I kidding? This whole storyline is a fucking disaster, and there’s no way to make it any less of a shitshow without breaking out something completely out of left field.
What about this: Sam says yes. Sam turns into the devil. Deanna calls down Michael, but she does so at a point of convergence, and gets the wrong Michael. Michael doesn’t realize this until he’s joined her and taken over her body. The fight between Michael and Lucifer begins, but they’re both thrown off by the fact that they’re alternate versions of each other; Sam takes advantage of the opportunity to seize control, open the Cage, and throw herself and her sister in.
On the other side of things, Dean has no Michael to call down when he tries, and Lucifer is walking around in Sam’s body. He learns about what happened from Cas when his counterpart appears to tell them what happened. As a fully-restored angel, Alt-Cas is now able to cross over and meet herself; she tells them what happened to Michael and Deanna. Her mission is now to return to heaven and figure out what’s going on, and where God is in all of this. It’s probably fairly obvious that she doesn’t want to hang around with her other self and the counterparts to two friends who just died to save her world.
Which leaves Dean in the same place as before, and it’s kind of depressing to realize that he’s completely on his own. He can’t pull the same maneuver as Deanna did, because he’s lost the element of surprise. Until he thinks … are they the only two parallel universes? No, says Cas reluctantly. There are not. So what they need to do, says Dean, is find one where — No. No, they are not allowed to do that, because the one constant, in every universe that is related closely enough to be able to reach, is that the two of them will be born, and that they will start the apocalypse. If it’s any comfort, Cas would continue, there are others where Sam is strong enough to resist, and all goes according to plan. ‘Thank you very much. That’s really helpful.’ ‘What do you want me to say? Do you want me to lie?’ ‘No, I want you to help me figure out how to get Sam back before Lucy’s thousand-year reign starts.’ ‘There is nothing left. You might as well find the other Michael and say yes.’
Start over. What if Sam doesn’t throw Deanna in, just herself? Or she tries, but doesn’t manage to do so. Then Michael!Deanna has to go face off against Canon-Lucifer!Sam. The scene that followed would go something like the actual fail that was the show, but with Deanna instead of Adam. M!Deanna is distraught at this point, because he doesn’t want to kill his brother, no matter how far astray he’s gone.
Do you realize how much shit this is? Seriously. Just … stop. Stop everything. Stop this whole shitshow. Stop it after the cross-self phone conversation, and the fallout from that. Resume after Sam/Sam have gone.
What if Sam calls up Lucifer at a point of convergence — Alt-Sam — and gets both of them by accident? Both versions of Lucifer, which she might just have a chance of overwhelming because they’re distracted, because what the fuck, hello, other self. Except that no, that’d be the one thing with which they’d be in agreement: Sam does not get control back over her body. Therefore, there’s a double-Lucifer fighting to control both planes at once. Then Sam tries to do the same thing, but he’s no longer needed. And the only thing left for it, now that Alt-Sam has gotten herself thoroughly fucked up, is for Michael to join forces with himself. When Sam can’t find Lucifer anymore, he calls Deanna, who tells him what happened. There is a collective ‘… Fuck.’ Then Dean says, well, that’s it then. I’ve got to go be Michael. Cas and Bobby are out of options, and they want to just leave the earth; Barbara and Alt-Cas are in a similar boat. Sam wants to find Alt-Sam and see if he can persuade Lucifer to come find him; Dean is not letting that happen. He ditches, and goes straight to the place where the new final showdown is supposed to take place (which he gets from Chuck); he says yes to Michael. Alt-Cas hears about it from Cas, and tells Deanna, who rushes over with Alt-Cas and Barbara to stop Dean from ending the world. When she gets there, Dean has been taken as a vessel. The fallout is much like the actual story, but with different players: Multi-Lucifer!Sam and Multi-Michael!Dean bitch at each other for a while in tandem. Deanna tries to stop them; Multi-Lucifer!Sam kills Alt-Cas and Barbara, then tries to kill Deanna, and Alt-Sam regains control of herself enough to open the Cage, grab Multi-Michael!Dean, and hurl both of them into the Cage.
Alt-Cas comes back and revives Barbara; then Sam, Bobby, and Cas show up because they’ve realized that Dean is gone. They find the remains of Alt-Free Will gathered around the closing of the Cage. Sam is horrified and demands an explanation. Deanna tells him what happened, through her shock — she just watched her sister die, after all. And Sam is stunned, because he hadn’t planned on living this long. And now they’re stuck with the not-versions of each other’s siblings, and it’s awful, they can’t do it. ‘So what are you going to do now?’ Sam asks Deanna. ‘Lisa, I’m going back to Lisa,’ she says. ‘You?’ ‘Keep going, I guess. I don’t have anyone waiting for me.’ Deanna briefly suggests traveling together — their opposite numbers are gone, so they can cross planes more easily now — and they both agree that no, that would just be awful.
This could easily work out if the situations were reversed, and it was Dean and Alt-Sam, except that I think they’d still see each other sometimes, and it would become a horribly fucked-up relationship of a whole different degree, and they’d probably end up sleeping together, and it would just be unpleasant. But more compliant for the canon-‘verse. Yeah, I think I’ll go with that one.
Table Format
- Dean leaves and goes to Lisa’s house.
- DEANNA leaves and goes to LISA’S house.
- En route, an angel sees him stop for gas, and alerts Zachariah, who switches him.
- En route, an ANGEL sees her stop for gas, and alerts ZACHARIAH, who switches her.
- DEANNA arrives at Lisa’s house, and is rebuffed. She returns to hotel, which has all of Dean’s things. While there, Sam finds her, and they realize that something is seriously amiss. Castiel arrives, and transports them back to Bobby’s house.
- Dean arrives at LISA’S house, and is rebuffed. He returns to hotel, which has all of DEANNA’s things. While there, SAM finds him and calls in CASTIEL, who sends him to sleep and takes them both back to BARBARA’s house.
- DEANNA, Sam, Bobby, and Castiel trade notes about their parallel planes while researching what the hell happened and how to fix it. However, they are interrupted when Castiel leaves unexpectedly. He comes back with Adam in tow.
- Dean wakes up handcuffed in the panic room. CASTIEL and SAM explain the situation to him. When he agrees not to go off running again, SAM handcuffs him to herself, and all four of them go about researching what the hell happened and how to fix it.
- Deanna wants to know who the hell that is; Sam explains, and Castiel expresses confusion. When Adam wakes up, DEANNA and Sam don’t explain that she’s a different version of Dean. Castiel seals Adam to keep him from being found.
- After hours of research and some quality time at the library, TEAM FREE WILL and Dean have figured out the whole thing with points of potential convergence, how to set up the ritual and cross, and where to set it up. CASTIEL sends a message across the planes to Castiel.
- Castiel receives the letter from CASTIEL, explaining what they’re going to do, and how they’re going to do it. DEANNA goes downstairs to get preparations; Sam and Castiel go to the store for additional materials, while Bobby watches over Adam while he sleeps.
- TEAM FREE WILL and Dean make similar preparations, while SAM wants to know as much as possible about Plane A. They start off towards the point of convergence.
- Adam disappears, and chaos ensues. Team Free Will and DEANNA debate about what to do. They end up consulting CASTIEL’s notes, and from there, they deduce that there’s another point of convergence whose jurisdiction encompasses the White Room. Castiel sends a message to CASTIEL.
- CASTIEL receives Castiel’s message. Dean understands what it means, and has to explain Adam to TEAM FREE WILL. CASTIEL deduces that that’s why these two planes were chosen, and they plow onward to the new point of convergence.
- Castiel fights off the angels guarding the White Room. In the White Room, Adam is given the same information by Zachariah. They are interrupted by Sam and DEANNA. Zachariah proceeds to torture Sam and Adam in his efforts to get DEANNA to say yes to Michael.
- TEAM FREE WILL and Dean arrive at the point of convergence. They perform the rituals themselves, while SAM warns Dean that this is probably a trap. He says he knows, but what other choice does he have? So they open up the convergence point. ZACHARIAH arrives to stop them. CASTIEL ditches temporarily for Brazil, which leaves SAM free to sigil ZACHARIAH out of the area. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to work on the warehouse. CASTIEL comes back.
- DEANNA, defeated, says yes, not wanting to fuck things up for Dean by killing his brothers. At that moment, Dean, SAM, and CASTIEL burst in. Dean grabs Sam; CASTIEL takes Adam in hand to get him out of there; SAM goes after Zachariah. DEANNA gets angry when Zachariah beats up SAM, and says no mid-incarnation. She throws off Michael and kills Zachariah.
- Team Free Will and TEAM FREE WILL meet up outside of the White Room. They explain what’s going on to Adam. He decides to hide out in Plane B; since Eve was technically never born, he can pass between the two universes. Dean asks DEANNA why she said no, how she did it, and she explains that she couldn’t let down SAM … again. CASTIEL instructs them in how to anchor themselves to their own planes, so that the angels can’t switch them again without their permission — even though it was a one-in-a-million chance that they were found in the first place. She also fixes their cell phones for interplanar communication, so that they can keep in touch with each other now that she’s not sure where her alter is. They all go their separate ways.
- Hammer of the Gods
- The One With Brady
- Two Minutes to Midnight
- Sam puts together Bobby stabbing himself to save him, and DEANNA stopping the process of becoming a vessel halfway through for SAM. It’s that last one that catches his attention, because what if they could do that? He calls DEANNA, and asks her if that’s what happened, and she’s like ‘Fuck no Sam, what are you saying, this is a terrible idea; put me through to other me so that I can tell him what an idiot you are being’ and he says, ‘Well, was that what happened? You changed your mind, and he had to leave?’ and she says, ‘Yeah. I couldn’t do it. Thanks for the heads-up on my sister doing something incredibly stupid. It’s been fun talking to you.’ And then she hangs up and calls Dean, and ‘Do you know what your idiot brother just wanted to know?’ which leads to ‘Son of a bitch. Why did he talk to you?’ ‘Because you didn’t chuck an archangel out of your skin. That shit burns, like remember that summer we had a hunt in a coastal town, and we took Sam to the beach but forgot sunscreen, and our shoulders got blisters?’ ‘Oh god, Dad was so pissed.’ ‘I thought she was going to hit the roof! And Sam didn’t go outside without sunscreen on except at night for the next three years.’ Then SAM wants to know who she’s talking to, and DEANNA remembers why she’s talking to him in the first place, so she hangs up and gets serious again.
- Sam calls down Lucifer as per Swan Song at a point of convergence, and gets both Lucifer and Lucifer. He thinks he might have a chance of confusing them, plus saving DEANNA from losing SAM. Instead, he gets completely overwhelmed, and now there’s a double-Lucifer fighting to control both planes at once.
- Unaware of this, SAM tries to go for the same thing, and discovers that there is no Lucifer. She and DEANNA call Dean, who tells them what happened.
- There is a collective ‘… Well, fuck.’
- Dean tries to figure out what the hell to do, while Castiel and Bobby have pretty much given up hope.
- DEANNA says, well, that’s it then. I’ve got to do the same thing, I’ve got to take in Michael and Michael and fight Multi-Lucifer!Sam. CASTIEL and BARBARA are out of options. SAM wants to find Multi-Lucifer!Sam and see if she can persuade Lucifer to leave Sam and come to her. DEANNA isn’t letting that happen. She ditches, and goes straight to the place where the new final showdown is supposed to take place, which she gets from Chuck. She says yes to Michael and Michael at a convergence point.
- Castiel hears about this new development from CASTIEL. He tells Dean, who rushes over with Castiel and Bobby to stop DEANNA from ending the world.
- When Team Free Will gets to the Field of Megiddo, DEANNA has been taken as a vessel. Multi-Lucifer!Sam and MULTI-MICHAEL!DEANNA bitch at each other for a while in tandem. Dean tries to stop them; Multi-Lucifer!Sam kills Castiel and Bobby, then tries to kill Dean. Sam regains enough control to open the Cage, grab MULTI-MICHAEL!DEANNA, and hurl both of them into the Cage.
- Castiel comes back and revives Bobby; then SAM, BARBARA, and CASTIEL show up because they’ve realized that DEANNA was gone. They find the remains of Team Free Will gathered around the closing of the Cage. SAM is horrified and demands an explanation. Dean tells her what happened, through his shock. And SAM is stunned, because she hadn’t planned on living this long.
- CASTIEL and Castiel return to their respective heavens to figure out what’s going to happen next. Dean briefly suggests that they travel together — their opposite numbers are gone, so they can cross into each other’s planes more easily now — and they both agree that no, that would be awful. Dean goes back to Lisa, and SAM travels on. They agree to keep in touch, just … not now.
But Wait There's More
I am definitely going to include at least one point at which Sam finds Deanna attractive and has to remind himself that she's his brother's alter ego.
I also need to decide on Deanna's relationship with Cas.
There have got to be differences between the two universes besides gender, or it's boring. Sam and Deanna have a more strained relationship; Sam doesn't trust any iteration of Deanna as far as she could throw them. Deanna is desperate to earn A-Sam's trust to prove to herself that she's worthy, that she CAN get back her sister's trust.
Deanna and Cas slept together that time Sam left and they thought that Cas was going to die. The strip club was a disaster, and so Deanna was like, 'I guess I'll have to do the job myself' and when they didn't die, Cas shrugged it off as Deanna being kind instead of seizing the opportunity.
Cas dies killing Zachariah B. They stab each other or something.
I'd imagine that dean's reaction to Sam B not trusting him elicits a self-destructive spiral in the opposite direction from Deanna. If Sam doesn't trust him, them what's the point? Unless she ticks him off enough that he wants to prove to her that he's better than his counterpart. Which means that Deanna says yes, but her sister comes in and sees her say no, which is heartening for both Deanna and her counterpart - who sees that and realizes that maybe B Sam isn't correct in her assumption that Deanna is untrustworthy.
Ending relationships stand: either unhealthy dean and Sam b, or Deanna and one of the two Sams. It depends on who survives. Not everyone will, I think.
This is stupid and wrong and fun.
Barbara enjoys knitting and crocheting. She designs protective patterns and sells them at craft fairs. Her devil's trap rugs are popular, and she's known as the crazy cat lady of the town, minus the cats.
Yeah, that's better. Things are different.
The other thing is that in This Axe, Deanna is quite clearly very possessive of Sam. How does that evolve throughout the story, because that's important. She goes to hell and back for Sam in 3. In four is when that trust starts breaking, because Sam gets involved with Reuben, and Deanna is like 'I'm in love with you, you freak, what are you doing with a demon?' - which makes her react more harshly to her Sam than Dean does on the A-Plane. There is broken trust, all of that angst. When she leaves that voicemail apologizing to Sam, she includes the whole 'by the way I am in fucked-up incestuous love with you please come home' which, of course, Reuben gets rid of. When everything blows over, so to speak, and Sam doesn't mention it, she figures it's just going to be one of those things that they don't talk about, and it hurts, etc. Point being, she trusts Sam less than she should, because these are irrational human beings who don't like to talk about their feelings or even to acknowledge that there is such a thing as feelings. Also this is the point at which Cas shows up.
So Deanna tries to forgive Sam, and there's a rift created there, into the gap of which Cas inserts herself, and then Sam stops trusting Deanna because of Michael, so there's that, and it's a whole big mess on this end, even more so than on the A Plane.
(As a side note, I think it would be funny if Sam spent forever angsting over the fact that he was in love with Dean - before S4 - and then it came out that that was the case, and Dean was just like '... So? We're a weird family; it just turns out we're a little weirder than I thought.' And he takes it upon himself to rag on Sam for it, never let him live it down, probably because he's not taking it too seriously because if he does take it seriously then it means that he'll have to acknowledge that someone knows him inside and out, knows his flaws, and still finds him worth loving.)
And More!
Deanna and Sam establish that Deanna doesn’t have another sibling besides Sam, via dramatic cut.
Cas sends the message.
Deanna and TFW talk to Adam; Cas gets the message, and they leave to make preparations. Sam goes to the store; Deanna and Cas are in the basement.
Dean and Samantha and Barbara hang around the house while Cas is gone, trading stories across planes. Things are getting tense when Cas returns, with coordinates a few miles away from the warehouse. They send these across and hit the road.
The coordinates arrive as Sam rejoins them in the basement. They go back upstairs, in relatively high spirits, and discover that Adam has vanished under Bobby’s nose. Emergency Angel Messaging Systems a go-go. They decide to go after Adam, and Sam and Deanna have their trust bonding.
Dean and TFW2 are halfway to the convergence point when they learn from Cas that the other TFW is going to the warehouse after Adam. Dean explains Adam to them, and they’re like ‘holy motherfucking shit, angels on both planes are all dicks.
At the warehouse, Zachariah talks to Adam, tells him the truth. Adam is upset, understandably.
TFW2 open up the convergence point, creating a ‘safe zone’ where they can cross over and all be in one place. They waste some time ditching Zachariah. Then Dean demands that they move their asses over there, while Sam wants to leave him chained to a tree because of trust issues in the opposite direction. She’ll go and save his Adam. Castiel comes back and freaks out at them, telling them they can’t, that they’ll destroy reality, etc.
Castiel goes in ahead of his compatriots and sigils the hell out of everyone present.
Dean and Sam say, to hell with this, we’re not going to stand by. Sam wants Dean to stay behind to hold open the gate, and for Cas to come with her because he’s more useful and also not a potential threat. Cas says that she can’t; an extradimensional wave of thought like her would have even more of an adverse effect on the fabric of reality. Plus the angels will be back, and she’s got more of a chance of fighting them off than Dean does. Sam makes it clear that she will kill Dean if he fucks things up. Then they step into Plane A and double things up.
Deanna and Sam show up in the white room, feeling strange and wrong (because of doubling-up, but they don’t know that). Zachariah is pleased and gloats a bit. He tortures Adam and Sam for a while, until Deanna says yes.
At the convergence point, Cas stands an uneasy guard until Zachariah shows up, with reinforcements. She settles in and prepares to fight. There is probably some boasting going on, too.
Dean and Sam burst into the white room. Sam goes to Deanna-turning-into-Michael. Deanna says no, and throws Michael out. She hisses at Zachariah, distracting him so that Dean can kill him. Then she grabs Adam, and they all book it out of there. Outside, things are starting to get strange, rippling and thundering clouds overhead, etc.
Back to Castiel — she has killed two of Zachariah B’s companions, and they are now in a one-on-one fight. Zachariah finally forces her to step out of the circle, back onto her own plane. The gate shuts.
The car full of duplicates and one very confused, terrified Adam reaches the convergence point, and it’s not there. They rush to reassemble the circuit while the world gets stranger the longer that they stay.
When they open it up again, Castiel and Zachariah are in close combat on the other side, and Cas is losing. Deanna rushes to help; Adam is confused because did they not just kill that douchebag; Cas deliberately lets Zachariah get in on her to give Deanna a chance to stab him. Zachariah tosses Deanna back easily and kills Cas. What she is not expecting is for Adam to come up behind her and impale her with extreme prejudice. He is mostly in a state of shock, but also hello, revenge for pulling him out of heaven and fucking up his life.
The halloween icon is my official Supernatural icon, by the way. I refuse to get an actual one.
