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last01standingTitle: World Behind Windows
Rating: PG-13ish
Disclaimer: I can lay no claims on DA, SPN or Life on Mars
SPOILERS: DA pilot, SPN through season four, plot premise taken from Life on Mars (UK)
Summary: Logan gets shot. That’s when things get strange.
Notes:For those of you who know LoM, it might be of interest that Logan is Sam Tyler, Dean is Gene Hunt, Bobby is Hyde, Lillith is the Test Card Girl and Sam Winchester’s disappearance has something to do with this whole mess.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
World Behind Windows
Two
Winchester’s Impala is gone by the time he gets back to the safe house. The walls are cleared and empty and that bastard even took out the trash so there’s nothing Logan can do to trace him. But that is Dean Winchester. It was one of the things that had everyone’s parents terrified in the years he was on the loose. Dean Winchester is a ghost. He is in Arkansas one day and then a week later he in Nevada. There is no pattern, no method, just aimless wandering and brutal murders. Looking for Dean Winchester will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack the size of the entire country. Logan looks toward the ceiling, heaves a sight and collapses down onto the bed.
There’s nothing he can do now. Nothing at all. Not that it would really matter. He’s exhausted. His whole body hurts (he got shot this morning, didn’t he? The action itself seems more like a dream then this does.) He reaches for the remote and turns the television on. It’s some sort of emergency room show. Logan doesn’t know which. He never liked hospitals and watching one for an hour just reminded him of sitting in one of those sterile waiting rooms. He turns the televisions off and thinks of the note in his pocket imploring: Find Sam Winchester.
Reenergized, he gets to his feet, grabs his jacket and his duffle back and walks out the door and twenty minutes later, he’s standing outside the public library. There’s something beautiful about this place, the ambience, the smell of it, the feel of all that knowledge packed end to end in shelf after shelf. The libraries had been one of the first things to go after the Pulse. There had been riots and fires and the books had burned just like the city. Every thing burns, but paper went up that much faster.
So the libraries had burned fast an furious, volume after volume going up in flames while the fire department dealt with more pressing matters, like saving people from collapsing apartments and turning fire hoses on crowds of rioters. Logan doesn’t blame them, really he doesn’t, he just wishes it could have all been different.
He sits down at a computer terminal, marveling at the sheer speed the broadband has while connecting him to the internet. Oh, he remembers the way the internet had been before the Pulse. He remembers the feel of this wealth of information at his fingertips. He remembers networks of people of businesses, all wired together at warp speed.
If he wanted to, he could hack into the FBI, pull up the specs to the most classified information. He could tap into Yale’s computer system and change grades. It’s all right here, right at his fingers. He shakes his head and takes the simpler route, pulling up google news and type Sam Winchester into the search box.
There are no new hits after a rash of articles about the explosion and the alleged death of the Winchester brothers. Logan bites his lip and then on a wild hunch he types in unexplained, crime and Seattle and there it is. On December 31st 2008 there were three severed heads found outside a park in Seattle like a brand reading ‘Winchesters were here.’ Only that can’t be right. That can’t be right because Logan had seen Dean’s face when he mentioned Sam Winchester. He’d seen the shut down, seen the panic and the pain lurking under the surface.
Winchester doesn’t know where his brother is. Winchester doesn’t know what the hell’s going on. Winchester’s looking for his brother same as he is.
Logan blinks.
Only this isn’t real. He isn’t really here. This is all in his head. He’s been shot and he’s in a coma in 2019 and this is all some sort of waking dream. And the articles he’s reading right now, the people sitting quietly in the corner, they’re not really here. They don’t really exist.
He stands abruptly, almost toppling the chair over and stalks out of the library duffle bag still in tow. And he starts walking. When you get right down to it, Logan’s a creative guy, but he’s not that creative. He just has to keep walking and walking and he’s going to run out of streets, run out of people, just run out of details. But if this is a hallucination, it’s an incredibly vivid one. He’s running his hand down the side of the building, taking in the rich texture of the bricks and the siding. He keeps hearing snatches of random conversation, keeps seeing different bits of scenery and it’s hard to believe he’s making this all up.
He doesn’t know how long he’s walked but it’s getting dark by the time he stops and there’s an odd pain just above the small of his back that he can’t explain and doesn’t think he wants to. He stops outside a coffee shop when he sees the car. The magnificent black impala just outside a coffee shop. Logan digs into his duffle back, pulls out the wallet with the ID in it and decides he can spare some of his meager funds for some pre-Pulse coffee no matter how much it would cost. It isn’t like he’s going to stay here forever. Who needs funds in a fantasy world?
He orders a frappuccino feeling every bit like the rich yuppies of his youth but he doesn’t care. He thanks the friendly blonde cashier when she hands him his drink and grabs his drink and slides into the booth across from Dean Winchester who’s pouring over the obituaries with a red pen. “Doesn’t seem like your kind of place,” Logan says without preamble. He’s playing this fast and loose, just like he’d played that last Eyes Only case, the one that had landed him in this situation to begin with. Logan has a plan. He always has a plan but he never factors self-risk into the equation. Maybe that has been his problem all along.
“Logan Cale,” Winchester says, raising his eyes from the obituaries to look at him. “That’s about the girliest drink on the menu.”
Logan looks down at the frappuccino and defiantly takes a sip. The taste of sugar is so strong, he almost chokes on it. He hasn’t had anything this rich in years and it’s the worst and the best thing he’s ever taken all at once.
Winchester rolls his eyes. “Do you remember that little agreement we had where we decided you’d leave me alone?”
Logan takes a deep breath and takes a gamble. “I can help you find your brother.”
“My brother,” Winchester says slowly. “You can help me find my brother?” He leans forward across the table until his nose is just a hair’s width away from Logan’s own. “What could you possibly do to help? You don’t know a thing about him.”
“Finding people is my specialty,” Logan says. His voice is even kilter, not change in inflection. This is Logan Cale taking control of his delusions.
“That why Bobby sent you?”
“Yes.” A bold-faced lie. Logan is good at lying, good at molding people to get what he wants. Good and achieving ends. It is one of the reasons Eyes Only even made its way off of the ground.
“Let me tell you what I think,” Winchester says. His voice is still low, dangerous almost and Logan feels like he’s playing with fire. “I think Bobby’s little game of makings sure all hunters pair off in twos is bullshit. I think the real reason he keeps sending people to meet with me is he wants to find Sammy same as all the other and he knows I’m the only one who can do it. And when I find my brother—because I will find my brother—Bobby wants someone there to take Sammy out.” He leans in. “And I’m not going to let that happen.”
There is passion in this man’s face, in his voice and Logan thinks he might have been moved if he knew what the hell was going on. But he doesn’t know so he doesn’t react. This is the sort of thing he’s learned while working a contact. It’s the silences that get people talking more then speeches. Winchester’s breathing hard, his eyes are narrowed, Logan fights to keep his face blank.
“You can tell Bobby I’m not letting anyone kill my brother,” Winchester says. “I can still save him. I’m going to save him.”
“You can tell Bobby yourself,” Logan says. “I’m staying right here.”
Winchester doesn’t say anything, but there’s something guarded in his eyes something lurking behind the surface that is infinitely more human then Logan would have suspected from a hallucinated serial killer set free from the depths of his mind. “I’m not saying a word to Bobby until I get my brother back.”
Logan doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to play this so he takes another sip of his frappuccino, almost missing the bitter black from the Post-Pulse world. Winchester eyes him carefully and then goes back to his obituaries. Logan drinks his coffee slowly and watches Winchester out of the corner of his eyes. After he’s finished his drink, Winchester folds the paper up, tucks it into the folds of his jacket and announces, “Time to get out of this city.” He hesitates, flips the collar of his jacket up and raises his brow as if to ask, you coming?
Logan looks up, nods and grabs the duffle bag and the coffee. Winchester looks at the drink, scowls and says, “You bring that pansy-assed drink into my car and I’ll kill you.”
Logan tosses the drink into the garbage and walks out into the clean streets of Seattle. It’s started to rain but Winchester doesn’t seem to notice. He walks slowly and deliberately to his car as the rain plastered his hair to his forehead. Logan lags a few yards behind him, half-afraid Winchester is going to snap.
“Look,” Winchester says, pulling open the door to his car. “Get in or go away, I’ve got no problem leaving you here.”
Logan slides into the passenger’s seat and tosses his bag into the back. Winchester revs the engine to life and they start moving slowly through the Seattle traffic and toward the interstate.
They pass Fogle Towers on the way and Logan finds himself staring at the building something clenching in his stomach. This is the house he doesn’t live in. This is the apartment he will buy in five years. The place where he will build Eyes Only up from scratch.
At the front gate, there is a little girl in a blood red dress who meets his eyes, smiles and waves.
________________________________________________________________________________
Soonest I can promise anything else is next weekend. See you then.
| 3 |
Rating: PG-13ish
Disclaimer: I can lay no claims on DA, SPN or Life on Mars
SPOILERS: DA pilot, SPN through season four, plot premise taken from Life on Mars (UK)
Summary: Logan gets shot. That’s when things get strange.
Notes:For those of you who know LoM, it might be of interest that Logan is Sam Tyler, Dean is Gene Hunt, Bobby is Hyde, Lillith is the Test Card Girl and Sam Winchester’s disappearance has something to do with this whole mess.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
Two
Winchester’s Impala is gone by the time he gets back to the safe house. The walls are cleared and empty and that bastard even took out the trash so there’s nothing Logan can do to trace him. But that is Dean Winchester. It was one of the things that had everyone’s parents terrified in the years he was on the loose. Dean Winchester is a ghost. He is in Arkansas one day and then a week later he in Nevada. There is no pattern, no method, just aimless wandering and brutal murders. Looking for Dean Winchester will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack the size of the entire country. Logan looks toward the ceiling, heaves a sight and collapses down onto the bed.
There’s nothing he can do now. Nothing at all. Not that it would really matter. He’s exhausted. His whole body hurts (he got shot this morning, didn’t he? The action itself seems more like a dream then this does.) He reaches for the remote and turns the television on. It’s some sort of emergency room show. Logan doesn’t know which. He never liked hospitals and watching one for an hour just reminded him of sitting in one of those sterile waiting rooms. He turns the televisions off and thinks of the note in his pocket imploring: Find Sam Winchester.
Reenergized, he gets to his feet, grabs his jacket and his duffle back and walks out the door and twenty minutes later, he’s standing outside the public library. There’s something beautiful about this place, the ambience, the smell of it, the feel of all that knowledge packed end to end in shelf after shelf. The libraries had been one of the first things to go after the Pulse. There had been riots and fires and the books had burned just like the city. Every thing burns, but paper went up that much faster.
So the libraries had burned fast an furious, volume after volume going up in flames while the fire department dealt with more pressing matters, like saving people from collapsing apartments and turning fire hoses on crowds of rioters. Logan doesn’t blame them, really he doesn’t, he just wishes it could have all been different.
He sits down at a computer terminal, marveling at the sheer speed the broadband has while connecting him to the internet. Oh, he remembers the way the internet had been before the Pulse. He remembers the feel of this wealth of information at his fingertips. He remembers networks of people of businesses, all wired together at warp speed.
If he wanted to, he could hack into the FBI, pull up the specs to the most classified information. He could tap into Yale’s computer system and change grades. It’s all right here, right at his fingers. He shakes his head and takes the simpler route, pulling up google news and type Sam Winchester into the search box.
There are no new hits after a rash of articles about the explosion and the alleged death of the Winchester brothers. Logan bites his lip and then on a wild hunch he types in unexplained, crime and Seattle and there it is. On December 31st 2008 there were three severed heads found outside a park in Seattle like a brand reading ‘Winchesters were here.’ Only that can’t be right. That can’t be right because Logan had seen Dean’s face when he mentioned Sam Winchester. He’d seen the shut down, seen the panic and the pain lurking under the surface.
Winchester doesn’t know where his brother is. Winchester doesn’t know what the hell’s going on. Winchester’s looking for his brother same as he is.
Logan blinks.
Only this isn’t real. He isn’t really here. This is all in his head. He’s been shot and he’s in a coma in 2019 and this is all some sort of waking dream. And the articles he’s reading right now, the people sitting quietly in the corner, they’re not really here. They don’t really exist.
He stands abruptly, almost toppling the chair over and stalks out of the library duffle bag still in tow. And he starts walking. When you get right down to it, Logan’s a creative guy, but he’s not that creative. He just has to keep walking and walking and he’s going to run out of streets, run out of people, just run out of details. But if this is a hallucination, it’s an incredibly vivid one. He’s running his hand down the side of the building, taking in the rich texture of the bricks and the siding. He keeps hearing snatches of random conversation, keeps seeing different bits of scenery and it’s hard to believe he’s making this all up.
He doesn’t know how long he’s walked but it’s getting dark by the time he stops and there’s an odd pain just above the small of his back that he can’t explain and doesn’t think he wants to. He stops outside a coffee shop when he sees the car. The magnificent black impala just outside a coffee shop. Logan digs into his duffle back, pulls out the wallet with the ID in it and decides he can spare some of his meager funds for some pre-Pulse coffee no matter how much it would cost. It isn’t like he’s going to stay here forever. Who needs funds in a fantasy world?
He orders a frappuccino feeling every bit like the rich yuppies of his youth but he doesn’t care. He thanks the friendly blonde cashier when she hands him his drink and grabs his drink and slides into the booth across from Dean Winchester who’s pouring over the obituaries with a red pen. “Doesn’t seem like your kind of place,” Logan says without preamble. He’s playing this fast and loose, just like he’d played that last Eyes Only case, the one that had landed him in this situation to begin with. Logan has a plan. He always has a plan but he never factors self-risk into the equation. Maybe that has been his problem all along.
“Logan Cale,” Winchester says, raising his eyes from the obituaries to look at him. “That’s about the girliest drink on the menu.”
Logan looks down at the frappuccino and defiantly takes a sip. The taste of sugar is so strong, he almost chokes on it. He hasn’t had anything this rich in years and it’s the worst and the best thing he’s ever taken all at once.
Winchester rolls his eyes. “Do you remember that little agreement we had where we decided you’d leave me alone?”
Logan takes a deep breath and takes a gamble. “I can help you find your brother.”
“My brother,” Winchester says slowly. “You can help me find my brother?” He leans forward across the table until his nose is just a hair’s width away from Logan’s own. “What could you possibly do to help? You don’t know a thing about him.”
“Finding people is my specialty,” Logan says. His voice is even kilter, not change in inflection. This is Logan Cale taking control of his delusions.
“That why Bobby sent you?”
“Yes.” A bold-faced lie. Logan is good at lying, good at molding people to get what he wants. Good and achieving ends. It is one of the reasons Eyes Only even made its way off of the ground.
“Let me tell you what I think,” Winchester says. His voice is still low, dangerous almost and Logan feels like he’s playing with fire. “I think Bobby’s little game of makings sure all hunters pair off in twos is bullshit. I think the real reason he keeps sending people to meet with me is he wants to find Sammy same as all the other and he knows I’m the only one who can do it. And when I find my brother—because I will find my brother—Bobby wants someone there to take Sammy out.” He leans in. “And I’m not going to let that happen.”
There is passion in this man’s face, in his voice and Logan thinks he might have been moved if he knew what the hell was going on. But he doesn’t know so he doesn’t react. This is the sort of thing he’s learned while working a contact. It’s the silences that get people talking more then speeches. Winchester’s breathing hard, his eyes are narrowed, Logan fights to keep his face blank.
“You can tell Bobby I’m not letting anyone kill my brother,” Winchester says. “I can still save him. I’m going to save him.”
“You can tell Bobby yourself,” Logan says. “I’m staying right here.”
Winchester doesn’t say anything, but there’s something guarded in his eyes something lurking behind the surface that is infinitely more human then Logan would have suspected from a hallucinated serial killer set free from the depths of his mind. “I’m not saying a word to Bobby until I get my brother back.”
Logan doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to play this so he takes another sip of his frappuccino, almost missing the bitter black from the Post-Pulse world. Winchester eyes him carefully and then goes back to his obituaries. Logan drinks his coffee slowly and watches Winchester out of the corner of his eyes. After he’s finished his drink, Winchester folds the paper up, tucks it into the folds of his jacket and announces, “Time to get out of this city.” He hesitates, flips the collar of his jacket up and raises his brow as if to ask, you coming?
Logan looks up, nods and grabs the duffle bag and the coffee. Winchester looks at the drink, scowls and says, “You bring that pansy-assed drink into my car and I’ll kill you.”
Logan tosses the drink into the garbage and walks out into the clean streets of Seattle. It’s started to rain but Winchester doesn’t seem to notice. He walks slowly and deliberately to his car as the rain plastered his hair to his forehead. Logan lags a few yards behind him, half-afraid Winchester is going to snap.
“Look,” Winchester says, pulling open the door to his car. “Get in or go away, I’ve got no problem leaving you here.”
Logan slides into the passenger’s seat and tosses his bag into the back. Winchester revs the engine to life and they start moving slowly through the Seattle traffic and toward the interstate.
They pass Fogle Towers on the way and Logan finds himself staring at the building something clenching in his stomach. This is the house he doesn’t live in. This is the apartment he will buy in five years. The place where he will build Eyes Only up from scratch.
At the front gate, there is a little girl in a blood red dress who meets his eyes, smiles and waves.
Soonest I can promise anything else is next weekend. See you then.
| 3 |