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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
Four
Winchester drives just a little too fast, plays the music just a little too loud and sings along just a little off key. Logan watches the scenery out the window waiting for it to start repeating itself, but it never does.
They stop in front of a house. Winchester reaches over to the glove compartment and flips through a box before coming up with an FBI badge. Logan opens his mouth to disapprove but then he remembers a similar badge in his own bag, shuts his mouth and follows Winchester to the door.
The woman who opens it is thin and haggard with frizzing blond curls and dark circles under her eyes. Winchester flashes the badges and says, “Mrs. Miller? I’m agent Tyler and this is my partner, agent Foyle. We were hoping to ask you some questions about your son.”
Her face sort of crumbles, all semblance of composure leaking out of her posture. “Have you found his body? ” she asks, voice crackling.
Winchester shoots him an uncomfortable look as tears start falling from the woman’s face. Logan realizes that Winchester doesn’t know how to handle grief. That he’s emotionally disjointed, set apart from the rest of society. Logan can relate but he can’t help. He can’t find the right words here. He doesn’t know what the plan is.
“There’s been nothing, ma’am,” Winchester says finally. “However we’ve received a tip that there may be someone else targeted by the same kidnapper and we could use your help?”
“Oh,” there was a sag in her shoulders, a defeated body language. “Of course, come in.”
She steps aside and Winchester brushes past. Logan stands on the doorstep for a moment, unable to move. He thinks he hears something off in the distance, but it might just be the wind. “Is everything all right, Agent Foyle?”
“Yes, Agent Foyle,” Winchester echoes just a little harsher. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” Logan says. He blinks and walks through the door.
The house is cluttered, the mantel place overflowing with pictures. A little boy smiling out of most of them. Twelve years old with wire frames and brown hair. Winchester glances at the picture on the mantel and looks at him for a moment before sitting down.
“Mrs. Miller,” he says stiffly. “Is there anything you remember about your son’s disappearance that could be of help for us.”
“It’s one year tomorrow,” she says, her voice hitching. She sniffles. Logan can hear the sound magnified exponentially off the photographs. His head hurts. “One year tomorrow, my little Dennis didn’t make it back.”
Winchester shifts in his seat. Logan imagines he is like shards of glass that every extraneous motion sends a bit stabbing into skin. His nails are digging into his palm and it hurts and it’s real.
“Is there anything else you remember?” Winchester asks. “Anything at all? Did you receive any threatening phone calls before the incident? Was your son acting strangely?”
“No,” Mrs. Miller says, voice racked with tremors. “Nothing. He was my son, normal. Perfect. You can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child.”
Logan can’t breathe. In his head flashes a picture, a newscast playing in its disjointed way a halting story about a plane crash that should have been just news but ended up being personal. The scene is twisting, caving in on itself and the steady beeping of a heart monitor is invading his ears.
“Agent Foyle?”
The world, the 2009 world, snaps back into focus with a jarring intensity. There is a fly buzzing against the wall. The carpet is beige. The couch is maroon. Winchester is saying, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Miller, my partner is recovering from a traumatic injury. He’s completely insane, but still, you know, really good at his job.”
Logan squeezes his eyes shut. This doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes any sense, but he has no choice except to play along. “Do you know where your son might have gone on the day he died?”
“He was out with some friends. I used to hear them talking about it, but you know how small boys can be. There are a lot of woods out here. Sometimes I like to pretend he’s still out there somewhere.”
Winchester drums his fingers his leg. It makes a soft, muffled, thumping sound. “Thank you,” he says. He pauses for a moment. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Outside the house, Logan lets his indignation bubble to the surface. “What the hell was that!?” he shouts. “Was it really necessary to make that poor women relive her son’s death?”
Winchester glances over his shoulder to make sure the door to the Miller house is locked. Then he stands just a little too close to Logan and says, “This may not be how you rich boys like to play it, but this is all I know how to do. That women could be the only hope we have of stopping this thing before we lose another kid. Now you can either shut up and play along or you can leave. I don’t care either way.”
In that moment, Logan wants to leave. He wants to leave more then he can possibly imagine. He wants to go back to the familiar, broken, Post-Pulse world. But he doesn’t know how.
So Logan stays. They work their way backward through the families of the last nine years. Grieving parents all missing a son who would have been thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old this year. Logan doesn’t know what to make of it. He has no means of measuring this sort of grief.
It’s past dark by the time they’re done. Logan feels like he’s frozen in a state of status, like he’s been held indefinitely in between breaths. He closes his eyes and wishes he would wake up.
“You know they all sort of look like you,” Winchester says. “The kids who went missing. Scrawny. Dark hair. Glasses. Anything you want to tell me, Cale?”
He’s noticed this as well. Noticed the parade of pictures that resembled the Logan of his youth. It doesn’t strike him as unusual. He’s in his own head after all. There’s going to be some reason all the missing boys look like him. Just like there’s some reason for Dean Winchester’s presence and Sam Winchester’s disappearance.
“Cale!” Winchester repeats. “Seriously. You all right?”
“Yeah,” Logan says. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t know about you,” Winchester says, “but I’m starving. There’s a fast food joint down the street. You want anything before the stakeout begins?”
Logan isn’t hungry in the slightest, so he shakes his head. Winchester shrugs and says, “Suit yourself.”
The door slams on its way shut and rather then face the silence, Logan flips on the television. The channel playing has some sort of medical drama. He doesn’t like this kind of show. Doesn’t like the white antiseptic feeling of a hospital and he can’t look at it for too long before he remembers that in the real world he is laying in a hospital bed with a tube down his throat. He’s makes a move to switch the channel but something stops him.
Following his accident, Logan Cale remains in a persistent vegetative state. Though obviously the bullet to the spine and the collapsed lung are the most primary concerns—
“Hey!” Logan says. “Hey, that’s me! You’re talking about me in there!”
--there is no way this could account for his complete non-reaction to external stimuli. But hope is not entirely lost. There are times, when he seems to move; motor responses as if he is caught in some deep REM sleep from which he cannot wake.
He finds himself gripping the sides of the televisions.
Can you hear me, Logan? The doctor’s shining a light at the television, at him.
“Yes!” Logan says. “Yes! I can hear you! I’m here, I promise!”
The doctor sighs. Still, despite this sliver of hope, the patient remains non-responsive.
“Non-responsive!” Logan repeats. “I’m not non-responsive. I’m right here. Responding.”
The doctor is moving on now, moving of screen and then next scene has two people in the on call room, both of them missing a shirt and Logan falls back against the bed, staring at the television blankly. He is in a coma in 2019. That has to be the case. Which is bad news to say the least because Uncle Jonas isn’t going to keep him on life support for too long. Just enough to make letting him go socially acceptable and then poof, Logan’s flat lining.
He can’t let that happen. He won’t. He’s going to wake up.
“Don’t you like it here?” a voice says from somewhere behind him. Logan freezes, both hands on the television. The temperature in the room has dropped. He sees his breath hanging in a mist in front of him. He can see someone in the reflection of the television.
He turns around slowly.
There’s a little girl sitting on his bed with long blonde hair and a blood red dress. Logan has seen her before. Seen her standing outside Fogle Towers as Winchester had left Seattle in his dust. Behind him, the television changes stations, settling on the soft snow of static.
“I’d thought you would like it,” the girl says. “Everything’s back just the way you want it.”
“I want to go home,” Logan says. “I have—“
“You don’t have any friends at home,” the girl interrupts. She giggles and swings her legs off of the bed. “You just have me. I like you, Logan. Almost as much as I like Sammy.”
“Sam Winchester?” Logan repeats. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“Nothing, silly,” the girl laughs. “You’re my new favorite. It’s like playing with dollies with hearts that bleed.”
“I want to go home,” Logan says.
The girl takes a step toward him and seems to double in size. Logan stumbles backward, tripping and landing roughly on his left hand. A jolt of pain shoots up his arm and it feels as real as anything ever has. “No,” the girl says in a voice that is too big for her body. “No, you can’t go home. I think you’ll like it here. If you go home, you won’t have any way to run and I don’t like broken toys.”
“Please,” Logan says. His voice cracks. He can hear his heart beating in his ears.
“I could make it stop, you know,” the girl says. “Your heart. Listen to it go now. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.”
Logan jolts upright in bed. Breathing hard. There’s a thin layer of sweat coating his forehead and he has to raise his fingers to his jugular to take his own pulse. The television is on, but it’s playing the news. Something about the war in Iraq. His heart is still beating; ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Winchester says.
Logan blinks and turns blindly to try to find the source of the voice. The room is bathed in light and the alarm clock besides him tells him it was nine in the morning. Logan takes a deep breath. He’d fallen asleep. The girl was a nightmare within a dream.
Winchester is sitting at the table, with a coffee in one hand and a lap top in front of him. “Seriously,” Winchester says. “I’ve never met a guy who can sleep twelve hours in spite of screaming nightmares.” Logan opens his mouth to try and deny it, but Winchester continues before he gets the chance. “Give it up, Cale. I’ve had enough screaming nightmares to see the signs. You all right?”
“Yeah,” Logan says. He pushes himself out of bed, bare feet landing on the coarse carpet. He wiggles his toes and wishes he’d thought to wear socks. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Whatever,” Winchester mutters, flipping through a stack of papers. “I think I’ve got us a lead on our case.”
Logan yawns and walks over to the table. Winchester thrusts a map toward him. “The kids all disappeared within the same mile of woods. Now the way I figure it, this has to be ground zero. I started looking through some old news stories and I found this.”
He turns the laptop toward Logan. “A plane crash?” he reads.
“Not really the right MO,” Winchesters says. “But the dates match up and it’s quick and violent. Seems like a vengeful spirit to me.”
“Right,” Logan says, “Vengeful spirit.”
Dean snaps the laptop shut. “Look, if you’ve got a better idea you’re allowed to share.”
“No,” Logan says. He moves over toward his bag and grabs a fresh shirt. “No, it sounds—“ he swallows. “Plausible.”
“We’ve got no way of knowing which one is our spook. Twenty people died in that plane crash. They were buried in a dozen different states. Salt and burn doesn’t really look like an option.”
Logan closes his eyes. His mom died in a plane crash when he was a kid and his dad, his dad had just wasted away. The universe is right on schedule, his mom used to say, but it wasn’t because she was supposed to make it home that night.
“Basically,” Winchester said. “We’re looking stakeout.”
“Yeah,” Logan agrees though he doesn’t know what the hell Winchester is talking about. “My thoughts exactly.”
***
Logan has been on stakeouts before. Back in the early days of Eyes Only before he had his network of informants, it had just been him in his Aztek watching. The first few bust had come purely from Logan Cale. When Eyes Only started to make a name for himself, things had gotten easier, but he’d missed it a little. He’d missed the complete feeling of satisfaction when his bust had really been his bust.
Still, he’d forgotten just how boring it could be. How little their was to do within the confines of a car. Winchester doesn’t do silence any better then he does. He drums his fingers, he whistles toneless melodies of unidentifiable songs. He doesn’t talk and Logan can’t think of anything to say.
After what seems like forever, the silence breaks as Winchester’s phone rings. Logan recognizes the opening riff of Back in Black before it’s answered with an irritated, “Yeah?”
The woods are all but silent in the dying day’s light. The wilderness seems to stretch out from miles in all direction. Logan listens to the strange sounds of rustling leavings and the dull roar of the wind. He is cold even through the buffer of the impala’s door. There is a shotgun loaded with rock salt shells in his lap, courtesy of Winchester’s bizarre concept of self-defense.
Winchester shuts the phone with a snap. “We’ve got to go,” he announces, turning the key in the ignition. “Now.”
“What?” Logan asks. “Why?”
Winchester is a flurry of motion in the driver’s seat, a juggler with two dozen balls soaring through the air. “We’ve got to get to Wyoming,” he says.
“Wyoming?” Logan repeats. “What the hell is in Wyoming? You said we had work to do here!”
“Sam’s in Wyoming,” Winchester says like that explains everything. He slams on the accelerator and the car lurches backwards in reverse. The force of it is so sudden, Logan pitches forward and nearly cracks his head on the dashboard.
When he straightens back up, he sees something, a little boy, twelve years old, wondering through the trees with a glazed look on his face. “Dean!” Logan shouts. “Look!”
Winchester stomps on the breaks and squints into the woods. “Son of a bitch,” he mumbles and pushes the car into park. He turns in his seat and grabs a sawed-off shot gun from the back seat. “We got to kid that kid out of here. Cover me.”
He’s out of the car before Logan even has a chance to process the situation. Winchester’s disappeared after the boy by the time he jolts himself into motion, clutching the salt-loaded shotgun in clumsy hands. He takes two steps before he hears it, a voice calling his name through the darkness. He stops dead in his tracks, pressing both hands to his ears, but it sounds different then the antiseptic sounds from the hospital.
“Logan,” the voice says again, light and almost inaudible on the breeze.
Logan turns around only to see a figure moving toward him, flicker a little as if she were a recording. Still, he recognizes the person moving toward him. He remembers the dark hair tickling his forehead as she kissed him goodnight. “Mom?”
| 5 |
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
Four
Winchester drives just a little too fast, plays the music just a little too loud and sings along just a little off key. Logan watches the scenery out the window waiting for it to start repeating itself, but it never does.
They stop in front of a house. Winchester reaches over to the glove compartment and flips through a box before coming up with an FBI badge. Logan opens his mouth to disapprove but then he remembers a similar badge in his own bag, shuts his mouth and follows Winchester to the door.
The woman who opens it is thin and haggard with frizzing blond curls and dark circles under her eyes. Winchester flashes the badges and says, “Mrs. Miller? I’m agent Tyler and this is my partner, agent Foyle. We were hoping to ask you some questions about your son.”
Her face sort of crumbles, all semblance of composure leaking out of her posture. “Have you found his body? ” she asks, voice crackling.
Winchester shoots him an uncomfortable look as tears start falling from the woman’s face. Logan realizes that Winchester doesn’t know how to handle grief. That he’s emotionally disjointed, set apart from the rest of society. Logan can relate but he can’t help. He can’t find the right words here. He doesn’t know what the plan is.
“There’s been nothing, ma’am,” Winchester says finally. “However we’ve received a tip that there may be someone else targeted by the same kidnapper and we could use your help?”
“Oh,” there was a sag in her shoulders, a defeated body language. “Of course, come in.”
She steps aside and Winchester brushes past. Logan stands on the doorstep for a moment, unable to move. He thinks he hears something off in the distance, but it might just be the wind. “Is everything all right, Agent Foyle?”
“Yes, Agent Foyle,” Winchester echoes just a little harsher. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” Logan says. He blinks and walks through the door.
The house is cluttered, the mantel place overflowing with pictures. A little boy smiling out of most of them. Twelve years old with wire frames and brown hair. Winchester glances at the picture on the mantel and looks at him for a moment before sitting down.
“Mrs. Miller,” he says stiffly. “Is there anything you remember about your son’s disappearance that could be of help for us.”
“It’s one year tomorrow,” she says, her voice hitching. She sniffles. Logan can hear the sound magnified exponentially off the photographs. His head hurts. “One year tomorrow, my little Dennis didn’t make it back.”
Winchester shifts in his seat. Logan imagines he is like shards of glass that every extraneous motion sends a bit stabbing into skin. His nails are digging into his palm and it hurts and it’s real.
“Is there anything else you remember?” Winchester asks. “Anything at all? Did you receive any threatening phone calls before the incident? Was your son acting strangely?”
“No,” Mrs. Miller says, voice racked with tremors. “Nothing. He was my son, normal. Perfect. You can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child.”
Logan can’t breathe. In his head flashes a picture, a newscast playing in its disjointed way a halting story about a plane crash that should have been just news but ended up being personal. The scene is twisting, caving in on itself and the steady beeping of a heart monitor is invading his ears.
“Agent Foyle?”
The world, the 2009 world, snaps back into focus with a jarring intensity. There is a fly buzzing against the wall. The carpet is beige. The couch is maroon. Winchester is saying, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Miller, my partner is recovering from a traumatic injury. He’s completely insane, but still, you know, really good at his job.”
Logan squeezes his eyes shut. This doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes any sense, but he has no choice except to play along. “Do you know where your son might have gone on the day he died?”
“He was out with some friends. I used to hear them talking about it, but you know how small boys can be. There are a lot of woods out here. Sometimes I like to pretend he’s still out there somewhere.”
Winchester drums his fingers his leg. It makes a soft, muffled, thumping sound. “Thank you,” he says. He pauses for a moment. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Outside the house, Logan lets his indignation bubble to the surface. “What the hell was that!?” he shouts. “Was it really necessary to make that poor women relive her son’s death?”
Winchester glances over his shoulder to make sure the door to the Miller house is locked. Then he stands just a little too close to Logan and says, “This may not be how you rich boys like to play it, but this is all I know how to do. That women could be the only hope we have of stopping this thing before we lose another kid. Now you can either shut up and play along or you can leave. I don’t care either way.”
In that moment, Logan wants to leave. He wants to leave more then he can possibly imagine. He wants to go back to the familiar, broken, Post-Pulse world. But he doesn’t know how.
So Logan stays. They work their way backward through the families of the last nine years. Grieving parents all missing a son who would have been thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old this year. Logan doesn’t know what to make of it. He has no means of measuring this sort of grief.
It’s past dark by the time they’re done. Logan feels like he’s frozen in a state of status, like he’s been held indefinitely in between breaths. He closes his eyes and wishes he would wake up.
“You know they all sort of look like you,” Winchester says. “The kids who went missing. Scrawny. Dark hair. Glasses. Anything you want to tell me, Cale?”
He’s noticed this as well. Noticed the parade of pictures that resembled the Logan of his youth. It doesn’t strike him as unusual. He’s in his own head after all. There’s going to be some reason all the missing boys look like him. Just like there’s some reason for Dean Winchester’s presence and Sam Winchester’s disappearance.
“Cale!” Winchester repeats. “Seriously. You all right?”
“Yeah,” Logan says. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t know about you,” Winchester says, “but I’m starving. There’s a fast food joint down the street. You want anything before the stakeout begins?”
Logan isn’t hungry in the slightest, so he shakes his head. Winchester shrugs and says, “Suit yourself.”
The door slams on its way shut and rather then face the silence, Logan flips on the television. The channel playing has some sort of medical drama. He doesn’t like this kind of show. Doesn’t like the white antiseptic feeling of a hospital and he can’t look at it for too long before he remembers that in the real world he is laying in a hospital bed with a tube down his throat. He’s makes a move to switch the channel but something stops him.
Following his accident, Logan Cale remains in a persistent vegetative state. Though obviously the bullet to the spine and the collapsed lung are the most primary concerns—
“Hey!” Logan says. “Hey, that’s me! You’re talking about me in there!”
--there is no way this could account for his complete non-reaction to external stimuli. But hope is not entirely lost. There are times, when he seems to move; motor responses as if he is caught in some deep REM sleep from which he cannot wake.
He finds himself gripping the sides of the televisions.
Can you hear me, Logan? The doctor’s shining a light at the television, at him.
“Yes!” Logan says. “Yes! I can hear you! I’m here, I promise!”
The doctor sighs. Still, despite this sliver of hope, the patient remains non-responsive.
“Non-responsive!” Logan repeats. “I’m not non-responsive. I’m right here. Responding.”
The doctor is moving on now, moving of screen and then next scene has two people in the on call room, both of them missing a shirt and Logan falls back against the bed, staring at the television blankly. He is in a coma in 2019. That has to be the case. Which is bad news to say the least because Uncle Jonas isn’t going to keep him on life support for too long. Just enough to make letting him go socially acceptable and then poof, Logan’s flat lining.
He can’t let that happen. He won’t. He’s going to wake up.
“Don’t you like it here?” a voice says from somewhere behind him. Logan freezes, both hands on the television. The temperature in the room has dropped. He sees his breath hanging in a mist in front of him. He can see someone in the reflection of the television.
He turns around slowly.
There’s a little girl sitting on his bed with long blonde hair and a blood red dress. Logan has seen her before. Seen her standing outside Fogle Towers as Winchester had left Seattle in his dust. Behind him, the television changes stations, settling on the soft snow of static.
“I’d thought you would like it,” the girl says. “Everything’s back just the way you want it.”
“I want to go home,” Logan says. “I have—“
“You don’t have any friends at home,” the girl interrupts. She giggles and swings her legs off of the bed. “You just have me. I like you, Logan. Almost as much as I like Sammy.”
“Sam Winchester?” Logan repeats. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“Nothing, silly,” the girl laughs. “You’re my new favorite. It’s like playing with dollies with hearts that bleed.”
“I want to go home,” Logan says.
The girl takes a step toward him and seems to double in size. Logan stumbles backward, tripping and landing roughly on his left hand. A jolt of pain shoots up his arm and it feels as real as anything ever has. “No,” the girl says in a voice that is too big for her body. “No, you can’t go home. I think you’ll like it here. If you go home, you won’t have any way to run and I don’t like broken toys.”
“Please,” Logan says. His voice cracks. He can hear his heart beating in his ears.
“I could make it stop, you know,” the girl says. “Your heart. Listen to it go now. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.”
Logan jolts upright in bed. Breathing hard. There’s a thin layer of sweat coating his forehead and he has to raise his fingers to his jugular to take his own pulse. The television is on, but it’s playing the news. Something about the war in Iraq. His heart is still beating; ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Winchester says.
Logan blinks and turns blindly to try to find the source of the voice. The room is bathed in light and the alarm clock besides him tells him it was nine in the morning. Logan takes a deep breath. He’d fallen asleep. The girl was a nightmare within a dream.
Winchester is sitting at the table, with a coffee in one hand and a lap top in front of him. “Seriously,” Winchester says. “I’ve never met a guy who can sleep twelve hours in spite of screaming nightmares.” Logan opens his mouth to try and deny it, but Winchester continues before he gets the chance. “Give it up, Cale. I’ve had enough screaming nightmares to see the signs. You all right?”
“Yeah,” Logan says. He pushes himself out of bed, bare feet landing on the coarse carpet. He wiggles his toes and wishes he’d thought to wear socks. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Whatever,” Winchester mutters, flipping through a stack of papers. “I think I’ve got us a lead on our case.”
Logan yawns and walks over to the table. Winchester thrusts a map toward him. “The kids all disappeared within the same mile of woods. Now the way I figure it, this has to be ground zero. I started looking through some old news stories and I found this.”
He turns the laptop toward Logan. “A plane crash?” he reads.
“Not really the right MO,” Winchesters says. “But the dates match up and it’s quick and violent. Seems like a vengeful spirit to me.”
“Right,” Logan says, “Vengeful spirit.”
Dean snaps the laptop shut. “Look, if you’ve got a better idea you’re allowed to share.”
“No,” Logan says. He moves over toward his bag and grabs a fresh shirt. “No, it sounds—“ he swallows. “Plausible.”
“We’ve got no way of knowing which one is our spook. Twenty people died in that plane crash. They were buried in a dozen different states. Salt and burn doesn’t really look like an option.”
Logan closes his eyes. His mom died in a plane crash when he was a kid and his dad, his dad had just wasted away. The universe is right on schedule, his mom used to say, but it wasn’t because she was supposed to make it home that night.
“Basically,” Winchester said. “We’re looking stakeout.”
“Yeah,” Logan agrees though he doesn’t know what the hell Winchester is talking about. “My thoughts exactly.”
Logan has been on stakeouts before. Back in the early days of Eyes Only before he had his network of informants, it had just been him in his Aztek watching. The first few bust had come purely from Logan Cale. When Eyes Only started to make a name for himself, things had gotten easier, but he’d missed it a little. He’d missed the complete feeling of satisfaction when his bust had really been his bust.
Still, he’d forgotten just how boring it could be. How little their was to do within the confines of a car. Winchester doesn’t do silence any better then he does. He drums his fingers, he whistles toneless melodies of unidentifiable songs. He doesn’t talk and Logan can’t think of anything to say.
After what seems like forever, the silence breaks as Winchester’s phone rings. Logan recognizes the opening riff of Back in Black before it’s answered with an irritated, “Yeah?”
The woods are all but silent in the dying day’s light. The wilderness seems to stretch out from miles in all direction. Logan listens to the strange sounds of rustling leavings and the dull roar of the wind. He is cold even through the buffer of the impala’s door. There is a shotgun loaded with rock salt shells in his lap, courtesy of Winchester’s bizarre concept of self-defense.
Winchester shuts the phone with a snap. “We’ve got to go,” he announces, turning the key in the ignition. “Now.”
“What?” Logan asks. “Why?”
Winchester is a flurry of motion in the driver’s seat, a juggler with two dozen balls soaring through the air. “We’ve got to get to Wyoming,” he says.
“Wyoming?” Logan repeats. “What the hell is in Wyoming? You said we had work to do here!”
“Sam’s in Wyoming,” Winchester says like that explains everything. He slams on the accelerator and the car lurches backwards in reverse. The force of it is so sudden, Logan pitches forward and nearly cracks his head on the dashboard.
When he straightens back up, he sees something, a little boy, twelve years old, wondering through the trees with a glazed look on his face. “Dean!” Logan shouts. “Look!”
Winchester stomps on the breaks and squints into the woods. “Son of a bitch,” he mumbles and pushes the car into park. He turns in his seat and grabs a sawed-off shot gun from the back seat. “We got to kid that kid out of here. Cover me.”
He’s out of the car before Logan even has a chance to process the situation. Winchester’s disappeared after the boy by the time he jolts himself into motion, clutching the salt-loaded shotgun in clumsy hands. He takes two steps before he hears it, a voice calling his name through the darkness. He stops dead in his tracks, pressing both hands to his ears, but it sounds different then the antiseptic sounds from the hospital.
“Logan,” the voice says again, light and almost inaudible on the breeze.
Logan turns around only to see a figure moving toward him, flicker a little as if she were a recording. Still, he recognizes the person moving toward him. He remembers the dark hair tickling his forehead as she kissed him goodnight. “Mom?”
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