Honestly, Bishop was upset with himself for not thinking of it sooner. If there was an infinite number of worlds, then, statistically, there would have to be one where Aidan hadn’t died. Where his ghost had never turned him human. Where he hadn’t sacrificed himself for the greater good like the sentimental schmuck he was.
There had to be at least one world out there where Aidan was alive. There had to be at least one world out there where Aidan loved him back.
It was understandable for Dean and his boyfriends - both from alternate realities mind you - to keep quiet about it. They’d all had bad experiences in what they called Apocalypse World, The Bad Place, and Earth 616. But they were happy now. Happy and together and loved.
And Bishop wanted that, too. He’d only ever wanted that.
So when God approached him with an offer, he was all ears.
Simple enough deal: compel Dean Winchester into killing his sweet Sammy, and Chuck would open up a portal to a world where Aidan loved Bishop.
Was he betraying his friend? Yes. Had he promised to never compel the Winchester again? Possibly. Would it all be worth it to see Aidan’s smile directed at him, happy and healthy and full of love? Hell yeah.
Dean trusted him, so all it took was a phone call. A meeting at a diner in Lebanon. “Something urgent to discuss.”
Hook, line, and sinker.
A pat on the shoulder. A smile. “Go home and kill your brother, Dean.”
The hunter frowned. “What?”
It was harder to compel against base instincts, but it could be done. “Remember what you told me in Purgatory? What your dad said to you? That you might have to kill him to save him? Those are the only options, Dean, and you just couldn’t save him.”
Dean hung his head. “I couldn’t.”
“So now you have to kill him. Go home and kill your brother, Dean.”
The hunter looked up at him, defeat shining in those bright green eyes, and nodded. “Yeah. No other choice now.”
Bishop just smiled and gave Dean’s shoulder a reassuring pat before heading out of the diner and down the sidewalk. He wandered for a bit, weaving through alleys and down side roads, when God finally appeared before him.
“He do it?” the vampire asked.
Chuck nodded. “Best possible ending. Better, what with the whole morally gray character betraying his friend for his own selfish needs thing.”
It might have stung, if Bishop hadn’t been used to being the villain in Aidan’s story for 200 years. “Can I see him now? Can I see Aidan?”
The deity smiled at him. “Honestly, James, I don’t do fanfiction.”
Bishop frowned. “What?”
Chuck shrugged. “Yeah, I mean. Who am I to completely rewrite someone else’s ending? Especially when that ending happened six years ago.”
“You lied.” Bishop’s eyes slid black, fangs descending, and he lunged. Maybe not the smartest thing to do, but what did it even matter? It wasn’t like he was ever going to see Aidan again, anyway. Why bother with self-preservation?
Chuck held up a hand that stopped the vampire in mid-air. “Honestly,” he said. “I like you. That’s why you’re even in this story. Kinda wish you were mine, and not some sad British knock-off, but,” he closed his hand into a fist and watched with fascination as the monster before him began to slowly dissolve into ash.
Bishop screamed as his body slowly ripped itself apart, even as it tried to heal.
“That’s not a good enough reason to stomp all over canon.” God snapped his fingers and the vampire disintegrated. He brushed a stray bit off ash from his shoulder and sighed. “I respect Anna and Jeremy way too much for that.” He disappeared.
---
Sam jumped awake in a cold sweat, his body shaking.
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Scattered (BHUS crossover, spoilers for SPN 14.02)
Tiny little particles. Shattered life.
Tiny little rips. Shattered reality.
He woke up with a gasp and a cough, expecting ash, pain, a burning ring around his neck.
This time - this time? And how many other times were there? How many other realities? How many other failed attempts to make something for himself? - this time the pain was centered just below his heart.
Stake.
It had missed his heart, but he’d clearly been staked.
There was blood on his hand as he held his side, blood slipping through his fingers, a crackle of electricity in the air, the stink of ozone.
It was be Aidan and his ghost and his dog, or Aidan and his son, or Aidan and his princess, or simply just Aidan, fed up and angry. Always angry.
Finally, finally, finally, his eyes focused, the room swam into view.
It was not Aidan.
It was two strangers. They were not Aidan - too tall, too young, too soft, too painfully human - but they were still angry. He could see it in their eyes.
And then he passed out.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
He’d bought a wedding ring once. For himself. For Aidan. It was a simple golden band, not too unlike the silver ring that was currently on his own finger.Â
So he was married.
He’d been married before, in other worlds. Never to Aidan. Sometimes to Jane. Sometimes to strangers. To a woman in his village, the place where he’d grown up. Once to Silas.
He wasn’t married to Aidan here, either. Wasn’t even really himself - and that happened sometimes, too.
The driver’s license in his battered wallet said his name was Nick. The last name was smeared out by time and water and blood. It didn’t matter. These people didn’t know him. Sam and Jack and Mary and Bobby. They didn’t know him, but they all hated him.
That happened in a lot of other worlds.
Most of them, actually.
So he was Nick. He was human. He was married.
Nick had done a bad thing.
Nick had let the Devil in, and that wasn’t just a figure of speech. Angels and demons were much - MUCH - more prevalent in this world. He’d heard of them, back home - wherever or whichever home was - so that wasn’t a shock.
The fact that someone - he, apparently - had been stupid enough to say yes to Satan was a sticking point, though. That was bad. Bad things had happened. Bad things had been done with his hands and his face, but that was ok. Because that was Lucifer. And he was Nick. He could start over.
Again.
He could start over again.
Sam patched him up, treated him kindly enough. He had nightmares, little flashes of what Lucifer had done, and it wasn’t as bad as they were making it out to be, really. Violence, bloodshed, murder, manipulation, attempts at taking over and/or destroying the Earth.
Nothing he hadn’t already done or tried for the sake of his family or his friends or himself.Â
Easy enough to deal with. He played it off as a big deal, though, because a normal person would. A normal human would. And he was, now, he supposed. Normal. A human.
But then that angel. That damned angel. That Castiel.
Had to go and trigger another flashback. A worse flashback. Because he was used to the blood and the murder and the semi-truths told in full darkness. That was a-ok.
The blood in the crib.
The blood on his wife.
The pills and the booze and the false promises.
He’d had a family in this world, and they’d been taken from him just like they had in every other. Every universe. Every bit of ash scattered to the wind.
He never got to have his family.
Maybe Lucifer hadn’t done what he’d promised, hadn’t exacted justice and vengeance, but Lucifer was gone. Nick was gone.
In their place was someone who knew a thing or two about vengeance.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Arty had seen something. Arty had said something. Arty had forgotten.
Arty would never have to worry about forgetting anything again.
Bishop helping Josh learn to control his wolf and his transformations, leading to Josh becoming a sort of animal-whisperer and leading his own pack of wild wolves
Rowena teaching Sally how to be a witch
Crowley/Bishop
Aidan finally giving in to his vampiric instincts and urges and simultaneously using his vicious bloodlust to save people
Bishop fashioning a catch-all weapon by encasing an angel blade in a wooden stake and spiking it through with iron
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Pressure pain around his neck. The cloying scent of blood in the air. The heat of Aidan at his back. A hand, his hand, soft and shaking, one last attempt to touch. Ash. Darkness.
Darkness. Void.Â
Empty.
He’d never heard tell of a vampire getting an afterlife, but if he had to define Hell, this would be it. An endless stream of nothing and no one. Blackness above him, around him, and beneath him. No one to talk to. No one to hold dear. No comfort. No family. No love.
Just. Empty.
So he walked. Maybe, he figured, he could find a door. Any door. His door. Aidan’s door. A way out. Some way out of his own personal version of Hell.
His footsteps echoed around him, so loud in the silence of... wherever he was.
And then...
Soft at first, growing louder. Growing closer.
Someone else. Anyone else. Any clue as to what this was, where he was, why there was no light of oblivion at the end of the long lonely tunnel of his life.
Bishop stopped. Smiled. Turned.
It was him. Him, but not him. Like looking in a warped mirror. Something about the eyes, the set of its mouth.
“Why are you awake?”
The accent. God, it sounded almost like he used to. Maybe a little sharper, a little snider, a hint of seething discontent in the soft vowels and pronounced consonants.
“Where am I?” It was a good first question, he figured.
“Why,” the other version of him said, “you’re in The Empty, dear. The space carved out by the universe before the universe even existed. The beginning and the end. The place God, the Devil, and Bob ship off all their dead. But why,” it stepped closer, “are you awake?”
“I...” Bishop’s hand went to his throat, to the place the razor wire had shredded. “I died.”
“So did all the other angels and demons. But THEY are being good. THEY are asleep.” It took another step closer, until they were nose to nose. “You should be asleep. That way I can be asleep.”
“Why do you look like me?”
It sighed heavily, rolling its eyes. “Because I’m the primordial chaos, the black hole of Creation. I am The Empty and The Empty is mine. Can’t go breaking the brain of the first thing to waltz in conscious since the beginning of time, can I? Now, what are you and why are you trouncing around here disturbing me?” It slid around him, inhaling deeply, breathing him in. “Vampire.” It sounded almost impressed. “How did you get to be here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t belong here. Here is for the refuse of Above and Below. You, sir, are strictly middle-ground. Your kind gets Purgatory. Your kind knows no peace.”
“If I don’t belong here, then send me back.”
It hummed, scrunching his face up almost comically. Bishop was starting to wonder if he really looked like that, moved like that, talked like that, or if this place, this Empty, was distorting him, confusing him, trying to drive him insane.
“But where to send you back to?” It asked, and without warning, it grabbed ahold of his head, fingers digging into Bishop’s temples, squeezing. Pressure pain.
Pressure pain. Razor wire around his neck. Tainted blood in his veins as his whole being dissolved in Aidan’s hands. Body burnt at the stake as a crowd dressed in peasants’ rags gathered to watch. Bayonet aimed just a little bit higher. Vengeful spirit of a pretty nurse stepping inside of him and forcing a stake through his heart. Buried alive and forgotten. His mother bashing his head in with a rock the moment she found him kissing Thomas behind the barn. Marcus with a stake. Aidan’s dog rending flesh in the hospital basement. Knife in the chest, body in the fire. A denim-wrapped nightmare with a magic gun. Shark-toothed grin with an obsidian blade cutting him down in an endless wood. A voice in his head promising love and vengeance if he only said yes. And on and on and on in an endless cycle, life after life, death after death.
Pressure pain. Nothing he hadn’t felt before. Life after life. Death after death. Empty.
It blinked. Blinked his own eyes at him, mouth turned down in a confused frown. “Oh, James,” it whispered. “James, I can’t send you back. Nowhere in the multiverse will have you.” It leaned close, its breath like ozone, like space, like a ghost. “Even Purgatory spit you back out.” It took a step back. “That’s why you’re here, I suppose. All those lives and all those deaths. All those possibilities scattered like ash in the wind and the only place the universe had left to send you was here. But you aren’t supposed to be here. You aren’t supposed to be awake.”
“So?” It was the only word he could muster after that... whatever it was. Every choice, every path, and they’d all taken him to the same place. Loneliness. Isolation. Betrayal.
Empty.
“So. If you’re awake, I can’t sleep. And I do need my beauty rest, James.”
“Then put me to sleep.” Why not? He had nothing left to live for, nothing left to die for, nothing but endless darkness and this twisted clone of himself that could rifle through the shattered remnants of his soul and make him relieve every bit of pain and torture, every wrong decision. Every death. The least it could do was give him oblivion.
“Gladly.” It reached out again, not unexpected this time, and took Bishop’s head between its hands. It smirked. Squeezed. Blinked. Frowned. Relaxed and tensed its fingers again. It cocked its head to the side, squinting at him. “That doesn’t hurt?”
Bishop pulled back slightly, still in The Empty’s grip. “Should it?”
“It does.” Hands that looked and felt like his own dropped to its sides. “It always does. It always has. I am chaos, James. I exist outside of The Whole. I am everything and nothing. I know everything and nothing. All of that positive and negative, it only causes pain.” It licked its lips. “I don’t touch without hurting.”
“I don’t usually get touched without being hurt.” He didn’t know why he said it, only knew that it was true.
The thing with his face - The Empty - leaned close. Closer. Their noses brushed. Their lips touched. Sealed. Opened. Tongues and fangs, blood and oxygen, nothing and everything.
It pulled back. “We should go to sleep now, James.” It sat down on the blank floor, surrounded by blank space. The essence of nothing. Empty.
Bishop sat down beside it. Let it guide him down, down down, until he was stretched out, his head in its lap, looking up at his own face as his own hand started carding through his hair.Â
“Sleep now.”
Pressure pain. A rush of thoughts, memories, the best moments of the best lives, a thousand existences without sorrow. Fingers carding through his hair. The warmth of another beside him. Hell traded in for Heaven.
