On the set of Supernatural, Season 6, Episode 15: "The French Mistake", immediately afterward

The prop window shattered into a thousand pieces, propelling the bodies of Sam and Dean Winchester through. What nobody on the set saw, of course, was that the moment the two men hit the breakaway safety glass, a simultaneous interdimensional transference took place, sending the bodies of the two Hunters back to whence they had came.

Jared and Jensen hit the cushioned mats sprawling, incoherent, still clutching the vamp-slicing blades pressed into their palms by Bobby Singer only a few moments ago and an entire sphere of reality away.

"Come on you sons o'bitches!" Jensen shouted, staggering to his feet. "Come get some!"

He was not greeted with the sight of a vampire nest. This was probably just as well, for if he had been, some luckless stuntmen dressed as vampires would have had a very bad day at work indeed. His vision was blurry as hell from the impact through the window and his own mostly hysterical state of mind, but he recognised his surroundings. He was on the soundstage.

"We did it," he murmured, unable to believe it. He turned to Jared, getting to his feet. "Jared, we did it! We're home!"

"FREEZE!"

Some of the details of the world around him began to coalesce properly now. The set was a mess. Walls were broken in, crumbled, as though someone had bulldozed clean through. That wasn't the worst part, though. There were bodies; not actors pretending to be dead, either, but actual, real-life, dead bodies scattered around.

Armed cops were pouring onto the set. Canadian cops, so again, they weren't pretending, they weren't part of the show. They surrounded he and Jared, training their weapons on both.

"DROP THE KNIFE! DO IT!"

"What the hell…?" Jensen breathed.

"WINCHESTER!"

He whirled, to see a man in a bloodied dark suit emerge from the destroyed remains of a set. He recognised the guy, vaguely; Carlos something? He'd been cast to play the villain of this epis-

Oh God.

With a scream of vengeance, not-Carlos lunged forward, ready to run Dean through with a particularly wicked looking blade. That was all the advancing cops needed. Shots rang out, one after another, sending not-Carlos sprawling backwards, ugly red holes opening up all over his body. Eventually he slumped to the ground, the back of his head blown open, blood and brains spilling out onto the set floor.

"DROP THE KNIFE! FINAL WARNING!"

Jensen did so, the blade clattering to the floor below after what seemed like an age. Jared did the same. The cops swarmed them, checking them for further weapons, cuffing them both, frogmarching them outside.

Jensen spotted a familiar face. "Serge!" he called out desperately. "Serge, what the hell happened here?!"

The tall French-Canadian man, cool as a cucumber as ever, eyed him with disdain. "Your little spat with that crazy extra spilled over, that's what happened," he said. "So now you can add Eric Kripke and Bobby Singer to Misha Collins on the casualty list. I congratulate you."

"Eric? Bobby? Misha? They're dead?" Jared gasped. "How?"

As they were led out to waiting Canadian police cruisers, Jensen's face darkened. "How the hell do you think?" he growled at Jared, in a voice that was suddenly three octaves lower than his own. "Sam and Dean god-damned Winchester, that's how."

It was as though a switch had flicked in his mind. He had gone to their world and he had tried to act like them, and be a hero: he had done things he had never thought himself capable of. And in return, it seemed, those two lumbering bastards had come here, to his world, to his life, and in not much more than twenty-four hours they had managed to decimate the show, kill his friends, and destroy his life utterly.

How had he not seen this coming? It was ever thus with Sam and Dean; so long as they came out the other side, they left a trail of bodies and shattered lives in their wake.

Even as the cops questioned him, even as the media reported in a frenzy on the incredible circus of activity and scandal that had engulfed the set of a hitherto low-profile sci-fi show, Jensen Ackles promised himself that this wasn't over.

An alleyway, Now

The associated detritus encrusting the alleyway floor stirred, just once, feeling the beckon of a wind that did not originate anywhere on this plane of existence.

And again.

An electrical charge filled the air. A luckless cat had time to attempt to leap to safety, but too late; it was fried in a heartbeat, vaporised into nothingness by an expanding circle of white energy that sliced clean through anything in its path.

In the midst of that white circle, three figures materialised into being.

"Did we make it?" Jared asked. "Are we back?"

Jensen didn't answer immediately. Instead, he walked to the nearest wall of the alley, and drew a complicated symbol on it. Nicking himself in the shoulder, he added a drop of blood to the symbol, which immediately glowed with energy. Seeing this, Jensen smiled thinly.

"We're back," he said. "You ready?"

Jared, clearly nervous, steadied himself and nodded. He hefted the unconscious child in his arms. Tall for his age already, with a shock of brown hair and open features, the youngster was a ringer for Jared himself, and everyone had indeed assumed that he was Jared's son.

Except that, of course, that wasn't the truth at all.

"Let's go find your Daddy," Jared said.

The End