I was not happy with...certain elements of Season 11. As usual, I dealt with it through fiction.

False Gods
K Hanna Korossy

The first time, or so he thought later, he picked up the book without a thought and reshelved it according to the Men of Letters' and Sam's complicated catalog system. It wasn't like Sam to leave his stuff lying around, but sometimes one reference led him to another to another, and the next thing Dean knew, there was a research trail winding through the bunker. Not hard when you lived in a place with a gazillion supernatural artifacts and volumes.

The second time, he had the book halfway shut before a glimmer of déjà vu made him pause. Hadn't the same volume been out in the same spot just a few hours before? He shrugged it off. Gazillion artifacts. And most of the books looked the same.

The third time was the next morning. He'd finally sent his brother off to bed when Sam had succumbed to fatigue at the library table—Dean was pretty sure drool didn't do thousand-year-old manuscripts much good—and had just peeked in the kid's room to see him still passed out spread-eagle on his bed. So unless he'd gotten up in the middle of the night to do research, Sam hadn't left the book out. Not that Sam never got up to do research in the middle of the night, but Dean's door had been open, and he'd had a mom's ear for nighttime disturbances since he was, oh, four, so he was sure Sam hadn't stirred.

Which made the book lying innocuously open on the table, unexplained. And Dean never liked the unexplained.

He hadn't bothered to stash any weapons in his robe, not for a trip to the kitchen for coffee, which was clearly an oversight he would rectify in the future. Now, though, Dean settled for wariness as he sidled slowly up to the book.

There were books that were dangerous to touch, dangerous to read out loud, even dangerous to smell. But Dean was sure—well, pretty sure—there weren't any that were dangerous to, you know, just look at. Read a few words silently from. Which was all he needed to do before he realized what the book was.

The Bible. He was on freakin' Red Alert because of a Bible. An old Latin Bible that apparently liked that spot on the library table, but still.

"What're you looking at?"

He turned, and immediately grinned at the sight of his brother standing in the library doorway, sporting an epic case of bedhead.

Sam gave him a sour look, knowing immediately what he was so gleeful about, and muttered a "shut up" even as he futilely tried to flatten the bush on his head.

"I wasn't gonna say anything," Dean said fondly. "Einstein."

Sam barely rolled his eyes, ambling up next to Dean to see what he'd been focused on. "You're reading the Bible?" he asked skeptically.

"Why not? Lookin' up Chuck's bio." At Sam's raised eyebrow, he relented, scratching his jaw as he looked again at the book. "Uh, actually, I think it…wants to be read."

Sam looked at him. Asked, deadpan, "How much did you drink last night, man?"

Dean spared him an exasperated look; he thought he sounded crazy, too. "I didn't… Okay, like, three whiskeys, but that's not what this is about. This is the third time the book's been out since yesterday."

Sam inclined his head, inviting a go on.

"I mean, unless you've been sneaking it out to mess with me, I'm pretty sure it keeps showing up here, open, on this spot, no matter how many times I put it away."

Sam digested that. "You put books away?" he finally said.

Dean did huff in exasperation at that. "Dude!"

"Okay, okay." Sam eyed the book then, as Dean sucked in a breath, reached out and closed it enough to see the binding, then the inside cover. Then again, Dean had already put the thing away twice with no ill effects, so it was probably safe. Just…persistent. "Huh," Sam finally said, laying it back open. "I think this is one of the original Gutenberg Bibles. I didn't know we had one."

Dean gave him a blank look. "…the dude from Three Men and a Baby?"

Sam made the sound that Dean had known since Sam was a preteen meant, My brother is an idiot. "Johannes Gutenberg. The Fifteenth Century printer?" He waved a hand when Dean just squinted at him. "Never mind. It's old, okay?"

"Okay," Dean said gamely. Not like he hadn't gotten that already. "Old Johannes wasn't a wizard or something, too, was he? 'Cause, dude, apparating book."

"No, I don't think so." Sam bent close over the open volume, geeky fascination fully engaged. Dean's fingers itched to pull him back to a safer distance, when Sam muttered another, "Huh."

He had to work on Sam's vocabulary. Flash cards or something. "'Huh'?" he prompted.

"One of the verses is…highlighted somehow. It almost looked like it was burned, but…" He turned a page, went back. "There's no sign on the other side. And it's not distorted at all."

Okay, that was probably something he should've noticed himself. He blamed Sam's distracting porcupine head. Dean leaned in, too, to see for himself.

It was Deuteronomy, the Old Testament. One verse only, and Sam was right, it looked almost singed into the page, but with perfect clarity.

"Cavete ne forte—" He grimaced up at Sam. "Dude, it's too early in the morning for Latin."

Dean might not have been armed in his night clothes, but Sam always had his phone on him. He was already busy looking something up on it. "Uh, looks like…Deuteronomy 11:16. 'Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them.'"

It was too early for this without coffee, too, but Dean frowned, trying. "O-kay," however, was all he got because, what the heck?

Sam was frowning, too, but it was his thinky look. "Was it always opened to this same page?"

Dean grimaced. "I don't know, maybe? Not like I always check out what you've been reading. But it was open about the same amount. And I think I remember that weird 'A.'" He pointed.

"So, what, it's a parting warning from Chuck?"

His brother was looking at him like Dean knew all the answers, which Sam had had ample opportunity to learn was not true, but never failed to rouse Dean into trying. "Dude, does that sound like something Chuck would warn us about? He wasn't exactly into the worshipping thing."

Sam looked puzzled. Or maybe constipated.

Dean cast about for an explanation. "Maybe…someone else left it about Chuck?" Because the timing was more than a little coincidental, considering God had been staying with them not long before.

Sam had gone still, face serious. Always worrisome. "So someone pulled out a Bible—repeatedly—in our warded bunker, opened it to the same page, and highlighted a passage in it by burning it in a way that shouldn't be possible. A passage about not being deceived and worshipping false gods. Right after Chuck was here, claiming to be God."

"Claiming?" Dean looked at him, boggled. "You really think—?"

"Think about it, man: how many gods have we come across who were just supernatural beings playing a role belief assigned to them? Osiris, Kali, Veritas, Cacao, Chronos, Zeus. They were powerful, sure, but what made them gods? Most of them were mortal."

Dean sank into the nearest chair because this was starting to make his head spin. "Okay, so…God's not real, either? Just something humans believed in, so Chuck stepped in to bring it to life?"

"Yeah, or…" Sam looked down at the Bible, touching it with reverent fingers. "Or maybe there is still God, and He's not some insecure two-bit writer with family issues who needs to stay with a couple of hunters while he figures out what to do with his life."

Mind still blown. Dean wasn't sure if he was angry at the idea or relieved. "Wow. Okay. Uh, you think Chuck knew?"

"No." Sam joined him sitting down. "I'm not sure we know. But it kinda makes sense, right? I mean, can you see Chuck coming up with thousands of kinds of beetles? Or sunsets? Or a human cell?"

"Well, when you put it that way…"

"And Someone wanted us to know it." Sam tipped his head pointedly at the open Bible.

"Huh," Dean said. Because sometimes that was the only word that covered it.

They put the Bible away. Went and had breakfast like normal. Didn't find the book out again, and never discussed it after.

But that night, Dean said a little prayer before bed…just in case.

The End

And so summer reading begins! One fic every Sunday (barring unforeseen circumstances) until Season 12 starts. Stay tuned for next week's return to Season 8... - KHK