#so like... billie amara rowena the empty etc and they pull gabriel since he's an angel and familiar with reality altering powers

[mybrainproblems]

Two steps to the left of canon AU mashup where Chuck won plus some of the dark humor zaniness of “Wristcutters: A Love Story” and a whole lot of angst and trigger warnings for references to suicide/suicidal thoughts.

Okay so Dean dies not so unintentionally in 15x20 and ends up in the afterlife limbo of “Wristcutters: A Love Story” and he didn’t actively commit suicide but he still ends up there. But he was expecting it to be Regular Type Heaven and he’d get to see Cas (even if it’s just greatest hits memories) but hey, Chuck won and he made the afterlife worse and in this case just to continue to fuck with the Winchesters et al.

And Dean pretty much takes on the role of Mikal looking for the “people in charge” to clarify that okay yeah, he maybe wanted to die but he didn’t literally commit suicide. Loophole, guys. Send me back.

Oh boy lots more thoughts about this thing than I thought I’d have...

But the longer Dean spends in limbo, the more things he starts to forget and like he’ll never forget Sam, but everyone’s faces start slipping away first. Or he forgets details, and most of the details and memories he loses are good/happy things. So he remembers Gadreel and kicking Cas out of the bunker but it feels like he’s trying to grasp soap bubbles when he thinks about movie nights and hanging out with Sam and Cas. So like, he remembers the worst of 05x04 but forgets 05x03. But the more he tries to find the PIC to leave limbo, the more of his memories he loses. Basically Chuck has created a misery positive feedback loop where people who end up there are already depressed and at a low point, then they forget everything that ever made them happy or was good in their life and spiral further down and forget themselves.

Dean is still holding onto remembering he has a brother named Sam and a few other memories and he knows there’s some guy who he cares about who he misses but is dead and is pretty much drawing a blank beyond that. But he’s still determined to leave! And after a while he runs into this guy and somehow they hit it off and it’s almost like they already know each other and are able to anticipate each other to a certain degree but they’re also both pretty sure they’ve never met. (Spoilers: it’s Cas. Chuck pulled him from the Empty and is just watching the both forget each other for science. Yes, I am horrible.) They start traveling together, driving around with a couple of other people looking for the PIC. The car is an 00s Corolla and the plastic panels keep falling off. It’s a running gag because yes there is some humor in this wasteland.

Anyway! They begin to fall in love (again) and they both know that they need to leave but they can’t really remember why and both of them have lost most of their memories and very little that’s left even approaches good. And Chuck is pissed! Because he sent them both there to be miserable and wallow in their worst memories with nothing good left and yet here they are, falling in love in limbo and holding onto a few scraps of memories and sense of self.

They do manage to find a portal of some sort to get back to the real world but only Cas can use it because Chuck’s rules for limbo do count Dean’s intent to not survive the hunt as a suicide. Dean pushes him through to the real world and goes back to the car and (rip off of W:ALS) falls through a portal underneath the seat that is supposed to go to the Empty but someone intentionally misplaces his file and he ends up back in the mortal world again.

Fuck if I know how they defeat Chuck but they do.