"So, what's the future like?" Ash asked as the four of them sat inside the wooden cabin, still trying to figure out what the hell they were going to do next.
Dean leaned back in his chair. "The future?"
"Yeah. You guys came from 2008, right? So what's it like?"
Dean thought about it, then shrugged. "Pretty much the same. Just more people, more traffic, and better cars."
Ash raised an eyebrow. "Better cars?"
"Yeah. Don't worry, yours is still cool."
Ash nodded, satisfied with that. "What about everything else?"
Dean looked at Sam. "Sammy?"
Sam shrugged. "Technology's changed a lot. Computers are everywhere, cell phones are common, and there's this thing called the Internet."
Ash frowned. "The what?"
Dean waved a hand. "You'll figure it out."
Sam gave him a look. "That's not exactly an explanation."
"He asked what the future's like, not for a damn history lesson."
Ash looked between them. "What about monsters? You said angels, vampires, and werewolves are real?"
"Yeah," Sam answered.
"If they're real, why doesn't everybody know about them?"
"Same reason nobody knows about this stuff now," Sam said. "Most people who run into monsters either don't survive or aren't believed afterward. And the ones who do survive usually don't exactly want to tell everyone what happened."
Ash glanced at the Necronomicon. "Can't blame them."
The conversation eventually died down. There wasn't much else they could do tonight, so they agreed to move at first light rather than wander the woods in the dark. Until then, they'd keep an eye on the book and make sure nobody touched it.
Dean pulled his chair closer to the table, eyes on the Necronomicon, and set his phone down to play some metal.
Ash looked at the phone. "That little thing plays music?"
"Yeah." Dean leaned back. "Best part of the future."
Sam shook his head. "Of course that's what you care about."
Dean smirked. "Hey, I'm simple. Good music, a decent car, and something to kill. That's all I need."
Henry closed his eyes and tried to reach for his angelic powers. Angels could move through time — there had to be a way to use that to get them back to 2008.
The problem was that something was still interfering with his grace, the same force that had been choking his abilities since they'd landed in this forest.
Even if his grace suddenly worked at full strength, there was another problem — he had no idea how to actually travel through time. It wasn't teleportation. Time travel was a different beast entirely, and one he'd never learned to handle.
For a moment he genuinely wished he could call Castiel and let the angel fix their mess.
Then he remembered where they were.
Yeah, that option's out the window.
He opened his eyes, running a hand through his hair. Sigh. Why did this mess even happen?
He looked around the cabin. Dean and Ash were already asleep, Dean slouched in his chair, Ash settled against the other wall. Sam was still awake, watching him.
"Henry, I've got a question," Sam said quietly.
"What's up?"
"If we're really in 1981, what do you think would happen if I met my parents?"
Henry went quiet for a moment. Sam's parents were still alive in this timeline. Sam himself hadn't even been born yet.
"You could," he said carefully. "But if you're thinking about changing your mom's fate, giving yourself a normal family — I'd forget about it."
"Why?"
"Because when you start messing with things like that, fate has a way of catching up with you." He lowered his voice so as not to wake Dean.
"It's like this. The harder you try to avoid something that's supposed to happen, the faster you can end up making it happen anyway."
Sam looked toward the sleeping Dean. "So you're saying I shouldn't interfere?"
"I'm saying you don't know what changing one thing does to everything else. You could save your mom, but then maybe something else changes. Maybe Dean changes. Maybe you change. Maybe none of us ever end up where we're supposed to be."
Sam sat with that a moment. "Yeah. I guess you're right."
Henry leaned back, looking toward the Necronomicon. "Besides, we've already screwed with enough things just by being here."
His ears caught a strange sound outside. He motioned sharply for Sam to wake up. Sam blinked awake, confused, but Henry was already on his feet, staring through the window.
Something was moving between the trees.
At first it was hard to make out in the dark. Then it stepped into the moonlight.
It was huge — no easy way to describe what it even was. Its body looked like a grotesque fusion of different things, human faces and limbs sticking out at odd angles, several mouths moving independently as it made a low, wet mumbling sound, wandering through the forest.
Dean woke and followed Henry's gaze through the window. "What the fuck is that?"
Even by their standards, this wasn't exactly routine.
Sam stood beside them, staring. "That thing is huge."
Henry watched it carefully. "Dean, you want to have a go?"
Dean shook his head immediately. "Nope. That thing is gross." He glanced at his gun. "And I don't think bullets are gonna do much to that."
Henry kept watching it lumber through the trees. "Yeah, probably not."
Dean grabbed his jacket. "So what's the plan?"
Henry summoned the blue-and-gold lance into his hand. "I'll deal with it."
Dean nodded. "Good. Wake me up when it stops looking like something that crawled out of hell."
*****
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