And Grace Will Lead Me Home: 5/5

[epiphanyx7]

PART FIVE
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Castiel walks the earth. Dean and Sam walk with him.

(Mostly, though, they drive the Impala.)

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The End (Maybe).

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Illustration by sleepwalker1015

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The authors would like to extend their most sincere thanks to the following sources:

• Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, co-authors of "Good Omens", to which we made a subtle reference. You know, Castiel reading about an angel who owned a book shop, in Part 4?
• JK Rowling's "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" from the Harry Potter Universe. This is mentioned directly in Part 2, "Castiel and Sam vs. the Occamy".
• Joss Whedon: for a line from Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("It's fruitless. It is without fruit!") in Part 3, when Castiel learns to drive, and also for a Firefly-inspired scene in part three ("He looked bigger when I couldn't see him!") Castiel and Sam vs. the Mephit.
• Marvel Comics, for passing references to the X-Men, Spiderman, and anything else we've forgotten we wrote about.
• Belisarius Productions & the creators of J*A*G, for a passing reference to JAG in part 4. Castiel and Gabriel discuss the characters Harm and Mac.
• The creators of The Magic School Bus, because 'Dorothy Ann' is a way better name than 'Deanna'.
• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, for a quotation from Le Petit Prince in the DVD extras
• The creators of Stargate:SG-1 for the references to Wormhole X-Treme (a fictional show that only exists in that universe).
• And of course, Eric Kripke, for creating this amazing universe and filling it with such amazing characters and then killing all the fun ones. (Mary, John, Azazel, Andy, Ava, Jess, Bela, Jo, Ellen, Ash, Ruby, Uriel, Anna, Zachariah, Gabriel, Hendricksen, Lillith, Alastair, Samuel and Deanna Campbell, Gordon...) Seriously, Kripke, we love you, but you're not leaving us a lot to work with, here.

Author's Notes

Epiphanyx7: 

Once upon a time, in a fit of insanity, I decided to write snippets of "Five Supernatural AUs that I am NOT going to write." This was the first, weirdly enough, and I really had no intention of ever writing the complete story. How could I? My imagination said "Wouldn't it be awesome if Castiel was like, on earth for ALL OF ETERNITY and he kept finding reincarnated-versions of Sam and Dean? And for some reason or another -- maybe because Cas in an angel, maybe becuase its FATE, they remembered him, and would always try to find him?" Yeah I was not going to write this, I was going to write Star Trek slavefic, and somehow THIS is what I ended up writing. Yeah. Yeah. IDEFK. I completely and totally blame Leen, who was all "What happens next? I need to know. What's going on? Lookit my mesmerizing and hypnotic breasts, don't you want to do everything I ask? You are feeling verrrrry sleepy..."

So in conclusion, this entire thing is her fault, she made me do it and I made her co-write it with me, and she came up with a lot of the fantastic ideas and was all demanding about it needing MORE CASTIEL and then MORE GABRIEL and then NO THERE SHOULD BE MORE SEX and really, really, really. This is ALL HER FAULT. We had a lot of fun writing this, (at least I did) and there was a rather interesting three-day period in which she camped out on my couch and prodded me with a very sharp stick every time I stopped writing. That's the only reason the story was finished at all, the only reason that I didn't cry myself to sleep at night and then drop out of the big bang for reasons related to HATING EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS STORY. And so, please remember, that even if she says that I did the heavy lifting here, she was like a magical unicorn pony of wish-granting and sparkly rainbows, and kept me sane, rubbed my back, comforted me, made me keep writing, gave me ideas, hugged me a lot, made me food, wrote quite a lot of the scenes, and fixed obvious grammar/spelling mistakes that I didn't even notice (like calling Cas "Catsiel").

I love her more than I love Misha Collins, which is like a lot.

 Unavoidedcrisis/Sunspot:

Eight months ago, Bean told me she was never ever going to write this AU. Now it's 40k+ and we can't seem to go 2 days without talking about another scene we want to write. Writing this story made me happy in ways I can't describe. It also made me sad enough that I cried, laugh hard enough to pull a muscle, and frustrated enough to threaten to defenestrate my co-author. (GDI, NO ONE IS ADOPTING A WOLF BABY EVER PERIOD END OF DISCUSSION FOREVER)

Of course, for as often as I threatened to hurt her, I loved her twice more. We had too much fun writing this and I'm so glad we opted to keep the part about puppy!Sam, which is my favourite thing in the history of things, except maybe for the Skittle billboard at the end of part two.

Whatever happens from here, I am so so glad I got to work on this and I hope you all like it as much as I do..

 And of course, a hundred kajillion hugs for sleepwalker1015, who did art for us, and who was extremely enthusiastic and wonderful when doing her illustrations. If you haven't already, please check out her art post!

Next: Extras and Deleted Scenes