31. Chuck Equals...God?
I really don't know what to believe at this point.
Do I believe that God exists? Hard to say.
Do I believe that Chuck is God? Hell to the freaking no. If he is, I can't comprehend it right now.
I look at the mousey guy before me. I have to almost laugh. This guy is God, as in the person who could have prevented so much shit from happening? God, who seemed to abandon the world and left people to die?
"I'm sorry, but if God didn't show up all those years ago in all those times when some people could have really used his help, what makes you think this is him now?" I ask my brothers.
"Jo, the amulet," Sam says. "It's not because of us, it's glowing because of him."
"He's not wrong," says Chuck.
I tilt my head. "Still not convinced."
"Then let me show you. Do you mind if I borrow that?" He gestures to the amulet. Sam shrugs, handing it over. "Watch."
I blink, startled, as the light suddenly vanishes. I look at Chuck questioningly. "So what? I'm sure angels can make that happen."
He sighs. "Still not a believer, are you? All right, well, here's something that might make you see reason. That thing you were most worried about, the thing you wrote off as nothing but words, it's true."
"Gee, I didn't realize I was in the presence of the Riddler." I scoff. "You don't know anything about me."
"Oh, really? So I wouldn't know that you're in love with Castiel? I wouldn't know that that baby you're carrying in you is his?"
Dude, what in the actual hell? I just met him today! I'm taking all my restraint to not look like I'm freaked out by Chuck right now. "I heard this record before. L-Lucifer tried to pull that one over on me, and it didn't work. It's just words that he used to get under my skin, or try to anyway." I swallow. Mentioning Lucifer makes me think of Cas, and those two are with Amara right now.
"Did you ever think that maybe he was dropping hints?"
"You're implying he was telling the truth," I state coldly. "Why would the Devil be the one to tell anyone the truth?"
"Because he can sense that you're living for two lives instead of one."
Great, now he's in on the gig too. I wonder if he's secretly a demon. I shake my head. "I still don't believe you."
"The non-believers are the hardest to convince, but I wouldn't expect anything different." He smiles softly. "This will definitely prove it."
"Hey now." I back up as he reaches for me. "Just what the hell do you think you're gonna do?"
"You need to trust me on this."
"I just met you today. Sorry if I'm not the easy-trusting kind."
"Uh, Jo," Sam cuts in awkwardly. "Maybe you might wanna...you know...go with it?"
I look over my shoulder at Sam with wide eyes. "Is some of that fog still screwing with your head?"
"You've seen what's happened. The proof is there. If this is what you need in order to understand...I mean..."
I purse my lips, looking back at Chuck. He doesn't look as though he's gonna do anything sketchy to me. Still, my hunting instincts are well on high alert. I sigh loudly. "Okay. But if you do anything shady, I have the right to punch you."
Chuck chuckles. "You don't have to worry."
This feels like an odd experience, having this stranger reach for me. For some reason, I'm holding in a collected breath. I feel like my brothers are holding their own behind me. For some reason, I'm nervous. Nervous of, what?
Begrudgingly, I allow the contact with Chuck. The second he touches my stomach—holy shit.
There's movement inside of me.
I almost scream, because that's normal to do, right? Scream, like they do in the movies where aliens are growing inside of people? I know I can handle the supernatural things about this job, but, this?
"She's been hiding from you," Chuck notes fondly.
She. Not "he". She. I'm trying to find straws to grasp at, but right now I really don't have that luxury. I'm standing in the bunker, with Sam, Dean, and supposedly God, finding out that, somehow, for I don't know how many months, I've been pregnant. So I guess on top of being God, he's a Winchester's personal pregnancy test.
Well, I highly doubt having God tell you that you're pregnant is a joke or a lie in any sense. There's no false positives with Him.
I almost feel embarrassed, floundering for words in front of Chuck. "But...b-but...I haven't shown any signs. I'm not even showing!" My hands hover where Chuck's currently is. The anxiety is still fresh in me, almost coaxing fear to come out and join it in bugging me. They tremble. This doesn't feel real. "I haven't had morning sickness or, or any of the weird symptoms!"
"In rare cases, mothers-to-be don't show much. You lucked out."
"Y-yeah." I clear my throat. "I guess I did."
"What, no smart comment about how this is just a trick of the eye?" Chuck half smiles.
"I-I think we're past that point." I swallow.
"You could've saved yourself all this trouble if you had just done a test, Josette."
I laugh nervously. "Yeah...about that..." I shake my head, trying to ignore how stupid I'd been in the past few months. "H-how long has she been in there?"
"How long ago did you talk to Lucifer?"
"That was months ago," I whisper. "I shouldn't be able to see my damn feet."
Chuck winces. "She doesn't like hearing you curse."
"You can hear her?"
"No, I'm just guessing."
"So, then, do you not like hearing me curse?" I fail at joking.
I've been pregnant. With Cas's baby. All this time, she's hidden from me. She's kept herself quiet, undetectable. I didn't even have any symptoms.
Lucifer's right. Lucifer is the only one who knows, aside from Chuck, and Sam and Dean. Cas...he doesn't know. Lucifer's has his hooks in too deep. He's not even aware of what's happening on the outside. He doesn't know he's a daddy-to-be. But then I think about Cas's brief moment of control. The way he looked at me.
Did he know then? Did he suspect? Did he think his mind was playing games with him?
"Personally, I would've felt better talking to you privately about her, but, since you needed the proper convincing..." Chuck shrugs.
"This doesn't mean I'll swell like a balloon just because you touched her, right?" I ask warily. I picture myself with an added 30 or so pounds, waddling like an overfed penguin at the zoo. I can't hunt like that. It's an embarrassing mental image. Not that I'm embarrassed about carrying a baby.
"You might gain a few pounds, but not a lot."
I look back to my brothers, who look pale from the news. Right, I've been hogging Chuck to myself because of my...pregnancy...when we've got Amara and Lucifer to find.
"Okay," Sam squeaks. "So, wow, um, Chuck," he chuckles, "well, I guess we don't call you that, huh?"
"I prefer it," Chuck says.
"Okay, uh, 'Chuck' it is." Sam sighs. "I'm sorry. You're gonna gave to, uh, give us a moment to start to process. We didn't even know you were around. I mean, Dean and I knew about Chuck, but we just didn't know about...Chuck. I mean, I-I-I was hoping you were around. I-I-I prayed and I—but I don't know if they got, uh, lost in the spam or if—"
"Sam?" I ask my little brother.
"Yeah?"
"Babbling, honey."
"Okay."
"There we go."
"I'm getting that not everyone's totally on board," Chuck says cautiously.
"Here's the thing, um...Chuck," Dean finally speaks. "And I mean no disrespect. Um...I'm guessing you came back to help with the Darkness, and that's great. That's, you know—It's fantastic. Um, but you've been gone a—a...long, long time. And there's so much crap that has gone down on the Earth for thousands of years. I mean, plagues and wars, slaughters. And you were, I don't know, writing books, going to fan conventions. Were you even aware, o-or did you just tune it out?"
I'm not going to even begin to try and understand what's really going on here.
"I was aware, Dean."
"But you did nothing," I state blankly, rubbing my shortened hair.
I don't realize what I've done until I feel the slight sting on my hand. A shocked silence falls in the bunker. I just freaking slapped God across the face. I never thought about it, or did I and I just wasn't aware of it? Great, now I'm a dead girl walking. I just slapped God.
I flinch, seeing Sam and Dean looking at me like I've just poked an angry bear. I'm waiting for something. Lightning to strike me on the head. Me to just drop dead. But none of that happens.
Surprisingly, Chuck takes it rather calmly.
"Okay, I deserved that," he says.
"Damn right you do," I snarl. "You left your angels lost and leaderless! You let the world go to shit! You didn't come when the people who needed you most called! What made you turn tail and run away, huh?"
"Watch what you say."
"Sorry, but the truth's always been a stinger." I slap him again.
"Can you stop that?!"
"Jo, hey, maybe you want to stop the—?" Sam tries to cut me off, but I talk over him.
"That's for letting this happen! For almost letting the apocalypse happen! For letting Metatron shut Heaven down! And for letting your sister terrorize the world! You've got balls for showing up now of all times when you basically sat back and hid in a hole!"
"Okay, okay." Sam gets up, slowly pulling me away from Chuck. "I think you made your point, Jo."
"I don't believe how you could just sit there and watch all of this." My lip trembles. "I don't understand it."
"You don't have to," Chuck says firmly. "Please, simmer down, Josette. The stress you're putting yourself through doesn't help her."
Her. Right. That still hasn't sunk in yet. I really should've taken the damn test. The one time where it would've been acceptable to believe the freaking Devil...
Sam guides me away from Chuck and has me sit beside him. He rubs the small of my back, and I find my temper plummeting.
"People—people pray to you," Dean says in a cautious tone. "People build churches for you. They fight wars in your name, and you did nothing."
"You're frustrated. I get it. Believe me, I was hands-on—Real hands-on for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautiful creatures that I created...would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting." Chuck sighs. "It's enabling."
"But it didn't get better."
"Well, I've been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has."
"Well, from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you're trying to justify it."
"I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean, but don't confuse me with your dad."
I feel the backlash of Chuck's words. Don't confuse me with your dad. How God and John Winchester are similar. Both, in my opinion, terrible fathers. Yet...they both did the best that they could within their power.
I can't believe I just justified a father's absence.
"I don't think there's any confusion there," I say in a tight tone of voice.
"That's only because I think you're seeing it the same way he is."
I inhale deeply. Am I really prepared to go toe-to-toe with God on fatherly abandonment issues right now? "You're taking some things in a different context."
"Jo," Sam whispers to me. "Is it really worth it?"
I groan in exhaustion, rubbing my short hair. "I guess it's really not," I mumble, slapping my arms down on the table.
"You have to understand this about the Darkness—she's relentless, a force beyond human comprehension," Chuck switches topics. "It's the only reason I came off the sidelines."
"Must have been great being her brother, huh?" I ask bluntly.
"It was the worst. Always telling me what to do, making me do what she wanted. I mean, you guys know how that works."
"So, where is she?"
"No freakin' idea. She's warded herself specifically against me. What have you come up with?"
"Zip," says Dean, "and we've been at it for months."
"Well...matter of time. I've always had faith in you...even if you didn't return the favor. Where's the guest room? I could use a shower."
"Uh, it's, um...just down the hallway—fourth door on the left," Sam tells Chuck.
Dean sighs. "Hey, Chuck. You know that she's got Lucifer, right?"
"Uh-huh," says Chuck.
"The way we heard it, um...last time you bottled up the Darkness, it—it took more than just you," says Sam. "I mean, we heard that Lucifer was involved."
"No."
"No?" I probe.
"Lucifer was perhaps my greatest hope and my bitterest disappointment. Do you think if I could trust him for a moment, I would have put him in the Cage? And I wasn't gonna mention this, but thank you so much for springing him."
"That wasn't really the plan, um..."
"Now, as bad as he was, after all this time in prison, he's probably worse. And by now, he could have formed an alliance with Amara. Not walking into that trap, guys. So, no. Thus spake the Lord."
I rub my temples as Chuck leaves the room. My mind feels like it's on the verge of exploding right now. "Uh, if you'll excuse me, I'll just, um..." I awkwardly get out of the chair and slink away.
I don't make it back to my room; I brace against a wall for support, sliding down it, pressing my knees to my head as I let the sobs shake through my body. All of it is hitting me full-force now: Amara. Cas. Lucifer. Chuck, who's really God. Me being...
It's hard to even think it, even though the proof is living inside of me.
"Oh, Cassie," I whisper, looking up at the ceiling through teary eyes, "if there was ever a time for you to hear me." I sniffle. "Once we're out of this, we need to be out of this, for good. You, me," I unfurl myself, stretching my legs out, "and her." My hands place themselves on my stomach.
My heart flutters when I feel her nudge against me.
**So...who believed Lucifer from the beginning?
Did it take Chuck to convince you that Jo's pregnant with Cas's baby?
It certainly took that for Jo. Silly girl. Should've tried to prove Luci wrong with a pregnancy test...not that it would've proved him wrong anyway since she's expecting.
Puts a wrench in things now, though...
And like Jo said, Cas isn't aware (at least she thinks he's not) that he's a daddy-to-be.
Yikes.
Oh, and, yeah, Jo slapping freaking God, well, I wrote that scene ages ago and it kind of stuck because Josette Avery Winchester would be the one Winchester to have enough balls to slap God.**