Title: Supernova
Universe: Supernatural
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: Dean, Sam, Death (mentions of Castiel, Raphael, and Crowley)
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers through 6x20; unbeta'ed
Word Count: 3,120
Summary: On the formation of a star.
Dedication: for tokki_chan, because I am glad you are enjoying SPN. But uh, don't read this til you catch up, okay.
A/N: So I woke up this morning and suddenly really wanted to write this, IDEK. It is an hour and a half of my life I will never get back, but at the very least I can use it to try and convince myself that the earth sciences classes I took to fulfill my GEs weren't a total waste of time. Or something. HEY LOOK MORE GEN FIC? SKIP IT.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.

"Have a seat, Dean," a voice says as Dean walks into Bobby's kitchen, looking for nothing more than Sam and some lunch.

Dean stops moving when he hears that voice. He stares at the sight that greets him in the kitchen and tries to process it all. Sam is there and lunch is there, but then again, so is Death.

Who is sitting primly at Bobby's table, legs crossed and leaning back in his chair with perfect posture in his perfectly tailored suit. Dean shivers instinctively at the sight of him; the temperature in the room suddenly feels well below freezing even though they're on the cusp of another ridiculous South Dakota summer and Dean knows for a fact that Bobby's house doesn't have air conditioning.

More likely, it only seems cold in here because no matter how many times he's spoken to Death before, no matter how many times he's revved up the ridiculous Winchester Bravado to address the man, thing, entity, looking Death in the eye still sends a blood-icing chill down the back of his neck every time he has to do it. He wishes he didn't have to do it anymore. Why is Death here.

Sam, seated at the table across from Death, looks like he might pee himself. He gives Dean a significant look.

"Uh," Dean manages, because shit.

Death gestures to another empty chair across from him. "Have a seat, Dean," he repeats, voice even and maybe a little conversational. Death sips at a medium-sized cup of sweet tea from McDonald's (that is supposed to be Dean's) as the bag of fast food Sam had gotten them for lunch congeals on the table between them. Death also helps himself to Dean's McNuggets.

Dean hastily takes a seat. "Uh…something we can do for you, Death?" he prompts, after a minute of watching the older gentleman in the suit decimate some nuggets and some honey mustard.

"Forgive me," Death manages, though doesn't sound particularly repentant. "The taste of McDonald's reminds me of all the people who died from eating there." He pauses to look at Sam. "You know, the salad is actually worse for you than most of the regular menu items. Stuff will kill you."

Sam makes a vaguely horrified face upon discovering this. Or maybe it is the fact that Death is telling him something he eats will kill him. It's a toss up. Sam really loves his crispy chicken salad.

Death turns back to Dean while Sam gapes. "Yes, there is in fact, something you can do for me, Dean," he answers without missing a beat, voice dry and creepy and hands a little too close to Dean's on the tabletop to be comfortable. "You can leave Castiel alone to his mission."

Dean stares. Then sputters. "What? No!" he says automatically, which earns him this horrified expression from Sam and this vaguely chastising one from Death.

"As I recall," Death reminds him, voice hardening just a little bit at the edges, "you owe me a favor, Dean Winchester. I've decided to call it in, as you say." He glances sideways at Sam. "Unless of course, we are washing our hands of that deal entirely, in which case…"

"No. No, we're not," Dean says quickly. "That deal is still on our hands."

Death is unfazed. "Wonderful." He gets up to leave. "Then consider us even."

Dean stops him. "Wait! Just… why, man? Why do you care what happens to Cas?" He frowns at Death, wondering if this is a trick somehow, if Death is in cahoots with Cas and Crowley too. Dude had to serve the devil once, after all. For all Dean knows, Cas made a deal with Death too, and once they open the door to Purgatory something will pop out of the gate that will allow Death to cut a red swath across the globe.

Death just gives him that look again, that same pitying, judgmental one that says he thinks Dean is infinitely stupid and beyond notice and that he can't fathom why everyone always seems to think he's so damn special. He takes his seat again, folding his hands on the table. "I have no one's agenda to serve but my own, Dean," the former horseman says simply. "And you of all people know, that there is a balance I like kept. It's neat, it's tidy. And as of now, my agenda is best served by you and your brother leaving well enough alone for once. The last thing I need is for you to destroy the universe before it's even had a chance to breathe."

Dean and Sam share a confounded look.

"Er, what do you mean by destroy the universe?" Sam asks, because he can't help himself. This is his (sort-of) first time meeting Death and being conscious and not evil for it. "Didn't we save it?"

Death sighs and sips some more at Dean's sweet tea. "Let me tell you a story, boys," he begins after a moment of thought, apropos to nothing. He looks specifically at Sam. "You being the smart one, I imagine you know how stars are made. And from there, galaxies, and planets, and life."

"Uh… yeah, mostly. I mean, scientifically speaking," Sam answers, clearly flattered and terrified all at once that Death thinks he's smart. Or at least, smarter than Dean, which is slightly less flattering, but still.

Death nods. "It's a lot like that; as you know, the formation of one star is often precipitated by the destruction of another."

Dean feels his brain shutting down because he has no idea why the hell they're suddenly talking about stars. Sam looks curious and doubtful too, but like he's going to follow anyway, just to see where this story goes.

Death eyes them for a moment before speaking again. "As an example, a star in some distant galaxy, a star that is maybe as hot as or hotter than your earth's sun will explode. When it does, it will take out all of the planets and moons and whatever life is in that solar system out with it. That explosion will ripple through space, and the particles from that explosion will scatter into the far reaches of the universe, most likely to lie dormant for hundreds of thousands of years."

"Does this story have a point?" Dean asks, after a minute.

Death gives him another one of those stupid monkey looks but continues as he well pleases. "The death of a star is cataclysmic. It destroys everything in its path. But at the same time, the ripple it causes changes things in other galaxies."

Sam nods like he knows exactly what's happening. "The force of a supernova ripples through dormant areas of space," Sam explains to his brother. "The energy it unleashes usually makes it so other loose particles that have been lying in space from previous explosions or impacts get moving again. The supernova is like introducing a massive amount of energy into a dormant system." Pause. "Like… how the Impala's engine runs on combustion."

"Dancing particles in space. Fascinating," Dean drawls.

Death pushes on. "With that energy, the previously inactive particles will shift and gather, attracted to one another's gravity and growing in mass and consequence until chemical reactions between the atoms cause them to ignite." Death sits back, looking at Dean. "That is how a star is born. Out of the ashes of what came before, the death of one star leads to the creation of a whole new universe," he says.

Dean never paid much attention in science except for maybe in physics, because he'd enjoyed combustion and circuits. This far-reaching universe and galaxy stuff had always seemed unimportant to him on the scale of his puny human life. "So circle of life, blah, blah, blah. What's the point?" Dean demands again, and surreptitiously grabs the McDonald's bag on the table so he can at least eat his lunch while one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse gives him a refresher course on all the stuff he'd never listened to in high school.

Death takes a deep breath. "I'm saying," he says, tone clipped, "that God is a lot like a sun."

Sam stares, and finally looks as lost as Dean feels. "God is the sun?"

Death shakes his head. "A sun. You people really need to learn that I say exactly what I mean."

And then, just like that, a change in an article has Sam looking like he's beginning to latch on to something, or at least, the significance of Death's choice of a versus the.

"Wait, so this whole thing is…a… a metaphor?" Sam asks.

"Simile," Death corrects. "I said like a sun."

Sam winces. "Right."

"Uh… what?" Dean says.

Death starts to look weary of the whole game. "God is like a sun," he repeats. "The apocalypse is like a supernova."

Sam is thunderstruck.

Dean never paid attention in high school English either, so the words keep soaring above his head. What is a simile even? Why can't people just say what they mean? For the record, if this was math, he'd be killing it. Math had been his best subject by far because Dean has always been good with absolutes. Yes or no, wrong or right. No gray areas in between. John Winchester's son through and through.

Sam runs both hands through his hair, on the verge of epiphany. Which is not surprising. Sam had always been the literary soul in the family. "But Dean said you were the only one strong enough to kill God," he breathes, looking at Death. Death seems pleased with the younger Winchester's progress. "So…wouldn't you be the supernova?"

"I am the explosion in this case," Death clarifies. "I am the act that killed God, but not the reason he died. The moment you two and your personal apocalypse happened, the world ended. And that, that is when I reaped God. As it was always meant to be."

Sam's voice gets small. "So…God is dead."

Dean scowls. "Wait, the world didn't end though."

"Oh, it ended," Death says. "Not in the way originally intended, maybe, but the fact that it was the time and place where I was supposed to kill God didn't change. Like I said, despite all the ridiculousness you Winchesters cause in the grand scheme of things, I do my best to maintain a careful balance of how things should go. It was God's time. He died. That star is gone."

"A supernova," Sam breathes.

"Are we seriously back at that?" Dean demands. "What does it have to do with anything? God is dead. That's the point, obviously. The story was what, some fancy literary crap you decided to confuse us with first?"

Death scoffs. "The point of the story was to tell you where we are now, Dean Winchester. It takes a star a very long time to die. All those years God was missing? He was dying."

A whoosh of air to Dean's right tells him that his brother is freaking out or something. Dean stubbornly eats his Big Mac.

Death just as calmly sips Dean's sweet tea. "And while God was dying, in a distant galaxy, billions of particles, tiny, harmless seeming particles from explosions of yore, were gathering in another part of space. Lying dormant, but full of potential."

Sam stands up abruptly when everything clicks into place. He's such a nerd. "And then the supernova sent energy into those particles and a new star was born." His hands are shaking. "The point of all this is, you're saying there's a new star."

That is Dean's cue to choke on his Big Mac. Chunks of it go flying across the table; a piece of partially masticated lettuce lands on the back of Death's hand with a tiny splat. Death frowns at it and tips it off, onto the floor. "Wait a second," Dean croaks, when he can speak without hacking again, "There's a new God?"

Both Death and Sam look at Dean like they hadn't expected him to get it. Dean scowls at them, because he's not a complete moron okay.

"A new God has the potential to be born," Death corrects. "The supernova is only the inciting event, Dean. The elements inside of our new star still have to use the energy from God's death to interact in just the right way in order to ignite. There needs to be more pressure, more heat, and many more collisions before it can reach the point of nuclear fusion and come to life fully. That is what is happening now. And you two want to interfere."

Dean has the uncomfortable sensation of things slowly clicking into place in his head.

"Cas is God," Dean breathes suddenly, and is forcibly thrown back to a time and a place almost two years ago, when Castiel had exploded and then returned, somehow bigger and brighter than he'd ever been. The question Dean had asked in that moment had seemed so random at the time, the first words he could think to say in the afternoon light of Stull's Cemetery at what was supposed to be the end of the world. "Cas, are you God?" had spilled out of him unprompted at the time, but now he knows why it had felt that way.

Dean drops the remnants of his lukewarm Big Mac back into their little cardboard box. "That's why you want us to let Cas do what he's doing."

Death manages a small upward turning of his lips that makes for the world's most condescending smile. "So your power of understanding hasn't completely been beaten out of you. Wonderful."

Dean frowns. "Wait, but shouldn't he be, you know, more all-powerful and all-knowing? He's got the all-douchebag part down, but I was kinda hoping he'd at least be able to take down Raphael without having to team up with the devil."

"And that, I suppose, is a far as your power of understanding can go," Death sighs. He turns to Sam. "Do you care to elucidate for your brother, or should I?"

Sam looks like he wants the McDonald's bag to breathe in and out of. "Cas isn't God, Dean. Cas is becoming God," he murmurs, vaguely disbelieving. "And Death doesn't want us to go after him because this whole thing with Crowley and Raphael is the last…part. The pressure and the heat and the collisions that are supposed to ignite him. That will make him…the sun."

"Under which a new world will form, and life will flourish, and the planets will orbit according to His will," Death adds, with a vague wave of his arm, like that's the part of the pitch every salesman has to say. "Do you see now, why I don't want you two running in there, destroying things before they've even had a chance to be created? It throws the balance off. And I like balance." Death pauses then, to finish off the last of the sweet tea in the cup. "Though," he begins, as if looking off into some distant future, "if you really must, you may kill Crowley, I suppose. I know it's futile to tell you two to leave off completely. Demons at least, were never meant to rule hell."

Sam frowns. "Wait, really?"

Death gives him this look, like he can't fathom why Sam thinks he cares enough to lie.

Dean on the other hand, is pretty sure demons do run hell, having been there before, but none of that is the point. "Cas is God," he mutters again, because yes, he is still on that, okay. "That's just… weird." He took God to a whorehouse. He introduced God to Pizza Man porn.

"Come, Dean. Surely it's not unheard of for a son to take over his father's place at the time of his father's death," Death reminds him as he gathers his hat and his coat and his cane. "All universes follow certain rules after all; these are themes that will be repeated over and over again ad infinitum, or at least, until I am charged with reaping Time."

"Of course," Dean mutters, because the only absolute there seems to be in life is Death.

Death seems pleased. "Now that we are at an understanding and I have called in my favor with you, Dean, I believe it's time I return to work." Death stands and moves to leave, though not before jacking the McDonald's bag with rest of the McNuggets in it without so much as a by your leave.

Sam, hands still braced against the table, has this curious, thoughtful look on his face like his brain is still running a million miles per minute and he has as many questions as miles ready in his head. "Wait," he calls out, before Death can blink out of the room.

Death stops, looking at the younger Winchester with an expression of polite boredom.

Sam doesn't seem to notice. "Is…is the civil war in heaven like… the last one, then?" he blurts out quickly. "I mean, if things repeat themselves, and Crowley isn't important, then does that mean…" he trails off, looking hopeful.

Death's lips quirk imperceptibly as he drapes his coat over his arm and sets the tip of his walking stick on Bobby's floor. "Now Sam, you know it would be giving away too much if I answered that," he says.

And then, without another word, Death disappears.

Dean blinks in confusion as Sam slides bonelessly back into his chair, looking philosophical and nerdy and strangely self-satisfied. "What the hell was that about?" Dean asks.

Sam manages a smile and reaches out to clap Dean on the shoulder. "I think everything is going to be okay," he manages after a moment. "I think Cas will win this war, and everything will go back to normal. Well, as normal as they can be."

Dean frowns at him. "How the hell do you know that? Cas may be in the middle of breaking out of his nerd-angel cocoon and flapping his God wings or whatever, but he's still a baby God. Raphael's a freakin' archangel, man."

Sam just shrugs, and it is a little bit smug, like he already skipped to the ending of the book and knows how everything happens. "I've just heard this story somewhere before, I guess," is what he says to Dean. "You'll see."

Dean snorts as he picks up the uneaten half of his burger again. "Fine. You think you're so smart, but Death totally took your salad while you weren't paying attention."

Sam blinks and looks back at the table, where only gross bits of Dean's hacked out mouthful of Big Mac remain. "Seriously?" Frown, sulk. "Dammit."

And Death probably isn't even going to eat it, either.

END