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"In Conclusion" - Chuck - Supernatural
Title: In Conclusion
Author: Jade Blood
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: This all belongs to Kripke and the CW. I'm just playing around and making no money from this.
Characters: Chuck, mentions Dean, Sam, and Zachariah
Spoilers: Through 4.18
Summary: Chuck finishes his latest book.

“So where are you headed next?” Carver asked expectantly.

“You tell us,” Dean replied, smooth and cocky as ever.

Carver nodded to him, understanding the words and the power they held as both brothers exited. He could hear the Impala’s doors close, metal on metal, the engine roaring to glorious life. They may not meet again in this lifetime, but Carver would be waiting for the signs.

Chuck paused there, wondering if this was any sort of line on which to end. The whole thing felt very Maudlin, trying too hard to be epic in places, and he was taking great pains to omit what he’d felt in that moment. He didn’t mention how Dean’s words had unnerved him, how he’d felt a phantom tremor go up his back. He failed to note how the phrase wasn’t only perfectly timed and delivered with a roguish smirk, but it was accusatory. It had pressed down on an already hefty weight Chuck was carrying, joke or not.

Then there was all the external mess “behind the scenes.” Like how Chuck couldn’t help but notice that the best part of this passage was Dean’s line. That was great, inspired, but it wasn’t the product of Chuck’s mind. The one part that could be seen as genius had nothing to do with him. That was all Dean with his charm and wit, exercising free will by being as facetious as he liked. Chuck might as well be a human tape recorder.

“A cheap one,” he muttered to himself as he tapped between the left and right arrow keys on his keyboard. The blinking cursor danced back and forth over the period in his last sentence. He wanted to be better at this. He’d thought he was, considering how original the subject matter had been. The characters were different and very real. He wanted to laugh at that stray thought. “Real is the word for it.”

That’s why he sucked at this. All he had left was the way it was written, and that wasn’t very good. No point in pretending.

“You’d think they would’ve called on someone like…” He searched his mind for the great writers of his time, waving a hand in the air and not caring that he spoke only to himself. “…Tolkien or King or Gaiman. Or hell, Dan Brown might actually be better at this point.”

That nervous, ugly shake had entered his hands, and an ache pierced above his right eye. To think he’d been considering finally making that doctor’s appointment he’d been avoiding for the past, handful of years. It was fear that had done that. If the source of his pain was something neurologically unsound, let it take him unexpectedly rather than have him spend the remainder of his short life trying to cure himself to no avail. Let it take him in his sleep, and he would dull the pain with alcohol until then. Now he knew he couldn’t die, even if he wanted to. Before, he feared death and the unknown. Now he had the answers and an indeterminate lifespan that could go on for centuries if God (no, the angels… not God) willed it.

“So much worse,” he snorted as he reached that shaky hand toward a bottle.

When his fingers curled around the neck and tipped it his way, bringing the soft reek of booze just beneath his nose, his eyes darted of their own volition toward his phone. He’d been eyeballing it warily for days now. He thought of Zachariah, of Dean and Sam, and he turned back to his latest novel after a long, bitter swallow.

He deleted the last paragraph in a swift highlight of his mouse and a smack of the backspace button on the keyboard.

Only one sound in the world sounds like the squeak-and-creak of an aged Impala door, and Carver was hearing that eerie noise now. He knew on some level that as a writer, he was all too apt to put significance on small stimuli where it wasn’t needed, but he couldn’t help but hear more than a squeaky door and a deeply purring engine when Sam and Dean drove away. That was the sound of a haunted house that held too many memories, rattling chains in the night, the scraping in the walls you pretend are rodents.

Right then, he wanted to run and stop them before it was too late. It wasn’t a vision but a compulsion, as a creator, to protect what he had recently learn should be held sacred. Prophecies aside, Carver still looked to the brothers as his characters to guide. He would trade a connection to God for the power to hold their destiny any day, and he would treat them right. Sam would go back to college, and Dean would settle down and start a family. Jess would return and make Sam happy as she was meant to. Their parents could rise and live, and demons and angels would be in hell and heaven where they belonged.

Carver ached all over. He needed a drink. So he poured one. Then he sat down and began to write.

Chuck wiped furiously at his cheeks and the moisture that had mysteriously appeared there as he typed a final “The End” and centered it at the bottom of the page.

“I’m writing about myself writing about myself,” he muttered tiredly. “My head hurts.”

This last was certainly no lie. Which meant the next book was only beginning.

The End