![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
last01standingTitle:World Through Walls (1/6)
Rating: PG-13ish
Disclaimer: I can lay no claims on DA or SPN
SPOILERS: General DA, SPN though season four
Summary: Logan hasn't seen Dean since the shooting but their paths are about to collide again. (Sequel to World Behind Windows)
Author's Note:So it's been like a billion years since I posted fic. But I did the study abroad thing this summer so I have an excuse. By effect I also do not have a job for the three weeks before school starts. Which is why this fic finally has a plot instead of sitting pathetically in my notebook where it has lived for the past eight months.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
World Through Walls
ONE
In a strange sort of way, he knows he’s dreaming.
Knows he has to be dreaming because this was all over years ago.
He hasn’t had a dream about the blonde girl with the red dress since he woke up in the hospital minus functioning legs and he doesn’t have any reason for starting now. Except the girl in red is creeping toward him with a smirk on her face. Except he is seeing white eyes and remembering white light.
“Winchester, Winchester, Winchester, Cale. Two by two, both doomed to fail. Winchester, Win---“
Logan wakes up in a cold sweat. It is still dark outside but he knows he won’t be going back to sleep anytime soon.
He hasn’t heard from Dean Winchester in two months.
He doesn’t know why he’s so worried. It’s not like Dean calls him with any regularity. It’s a postcard about once a month and Logan leaving a message in the Winchester drop box whenever Eyes Only finds anything paranormal instead of just criminal. But Dean always sent something after he’d finished a job Logan had tipped him on. It would come in two weeks later, dated at the top with a few chatty lines about him and his brother that don’t say a thing about monsters but are more a way of saying I’m here. I’m alive. The postcards are never signed but the handwriting was familiar and it makes Logan feel better to know Dean is out there.
But he hasn’t heard from Dean in two months. Which is weird because the last he heard, the Winchester brothers were making their way up the west coast. Logan had left a message about a rash of poltergeists almost five weeks ago and he’d been expecting Dean to show up on his doorstep, ten years older with the same smirk and a few new scars.
He has been looking forward to it for a long time.
If only to prove he hadn’t dreamed it all.
He hasn’t seen Dean since he woke up in the hospital. Hasn’t seen Dean since 2009 and now it’s 2022 and staring at the transgenic called Alec he keeps feeling that pang for the man who kept him alive in the aftermath of the shooting.
Yesterday, he strapped on the exoskeleton, loaded his gun with homemade salt rounds and took care of the problem. He broke the exo, broke his ankle and found himself back in the wheelchair as the last of the transgenic blood was starting to wear out.
He knows he’s not going to stand back up.
And maybe that’s why he’s thinking of Dean Winchester right now. Maybe that’s why he’s scrounging through his old files looking for every scrap of paper the man has sent him over the past two and a half years. Maybe that’s why he’s freaking out over missing his stack of post cards even though they were probably part of the mess that had been lost in his penthouse last year.
He isn’t panicking. He just leaves another message on the Winchester’s answering machine, sorts through the normal jumble of Terminal City muck, does a half hour research on Eyes Only’s newest project and goes back to sleep thinking of how numb his broken ankle feels and how things are going to have to work themselves out in the morning.
He wakes up in daylight to a commotion outside his window and he starts the day by pushing himself up out of bed, planting his broken ankle on the ground and collapsing in a heap.
But he adjusts just like he always adjusts. Like he’d learned to adjust in 2009 where he’d woken up to ride shotgun to a demon hunting Dean Winchester. Just like he’d learned to adjust again when he woke up in his right time missing motion from all of his lower extremities.
The wheelchair is a familiar prison and pushing himself out of the door feels strangely inevitable like he was never meant to be on his feet for long.
Terminal City moves twenty times faster than he does, their world spinning at hyper speed. He wants to think he used to move that fast in his youth, or maybe he moved that fast in the few short months where he hunted ghost and demons with Dean Winchester but sitting right now, staring up at the world from his permanent vantage point, he can’t imagine it.
“What happened to you?” Max asks. “Been a while since you went with the wheels.”
Poltergeist problem but she doesn’t need to know that. The government has made it their business to remove the transgenic problem. White is making his push. The whole thing was a mess and he still can’t think of anything but the girl in the red dress mocking him from his dreams.
“You seen Alec?” he asks.
Max looks surprised. But then again she always looks surprised when Logan asks about Alec, like their tentative friendship was something of an affront to nature itself.
But Logan genuinely likes Alec. At first the friendship had been largely to satisfy his curiosity at the man’s physical similarity to Dean but after a few roadblocks along the ways, it had progressed into the first friendship Logan had made in years.
Still, he knows most people would never have gotten over their first impression of a double-crossing Manticore agent sent to assassinate his alter ego. He wouldn’t have given Alec a second glance if it wasn’t for Dean.
“No,” Max says. “But he’s got a shift at Jam Pony. Shouldn’t be too hard to track down if you need him.”
Logan doesn’t need to track him down so he doesn’t say anything else. Max is standing next to him, far enough away so that to reach out and touch her would be impossible. They have learned this dance well, anything else would result in his death, but he misses the old days, long nights bent close together over a computer screen or in a car on a stakeout. He doesn’t even long for a kiss. He hadn’t known enough of that to miss it. All he wants is a friendly pat on the shoulder that won’t get him killed.
It’s too dangerous now and Logan understands but he wonders what will happen if the virus is ever cured. He half suspects that after two years, the habits are too ingrained to ever change.
“I’ve got some research I could be doing,” Logan says.
“And I’ve got to get back to the mission.”
He wonders when she stopped being his best friend.
He loses himself in the research. He’s been pouring over texts of prophecy for the past three days, something he never would have considered before the accident three years ago. But he believes in nightmares now so it’s only logical he believed in the rest of the occult stuff that came with it.
On the side he is running his usual scan of the informant net for possible Eyes Only cases and another through the newspapers for events of paranormal nature.
He has come the to the unavoidable conclusion that his life is incredibly strange.
But he’s adjusted. If he has to split his time between transgenics and Eyes Only and hunters, then that’s what he’ll do.
There is a definite nest of vampires in Idaho, a businessman repackaging drugs in Seattle and the cult planning an apocalypse. He elects to focus on the cult. He is getting nowhere and suspects that he will be get nowhere until they actually start to make their move. This is not a scenario he likes.
He calls a hunter from his slowly mounting list of paranormal friendly contacts so he can feel like he accomplished something.
At three PM everything goes to hell, but it’s not Terminal City unless there is at least one major crisis. He just hopes no one wound up in a zoo this time. He considers for a brief moment going outside to confront the problem and is even to the point of pushing himself to his feet when he remembers the broken ankle and the lack of supercharged blood and he sinks back, selfishly wanting to keep up his illusion of strength for as long as he possibly can.
He pulls up a news feed within minutes. An explosion in sector four. Seattle is no stranger to explosions these days but they still make Logan’s heart leap up in his chest. Nine to one this was aimed at the transgenic and the flood of people outside were transgenics ushering one another into their infirmary. Logan doesn’t have the medical expertise to help this so he sits and watches with mounting horror wondering if Eyes Only could say anything to make this kind of violence stop.
He doesn’t know how long he sat watching but he is snapped from his trance by a rap on the door. One of the younger X-6’s poked their head through. Logan is ashamed to say he doesn’t know the boy’s name. “Mr. Logan? We need you in the med bay.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do,” Logan says tiredly.
“It’s Alec, Mr. Logan,” the boy says. “He was unconscious when they brought him in.”
There’s a lurching panic in Logan’s chest. “Is he all right?”
The kid shakes his head vehemently. “He woke up, Mr. Logan but there’s something wrong. You should come. Max thinks maybe you can help.”
He doesn’t know how. He hasn’t felt like he could help for years now but he’s Logan Cale so he’s going to try. “Let’s go,” he says, wheeling himself out the door toward what the transgenics have designated their infirmary. He can hear signs of the fight before he sees it. There is the crash of someone being thrown into a wall. There is a clamor of excitable voices. Max says, “Alec, look you’re hurt and you’re confused but you need to calm down.”
And then a different voice—one Logan isn’t used to hearing speak with quite this level of intensity—says, “Are you all out of your freaking mind? Who the hell is Alec? Who the hell are you? Where the hell am I? Where’s—“
Logan pushes the door open and for a moment, all eyes swivel toward him. Alec blinks like it’s the first time he’s seen him in years and chokes, “Logan?”
Logan’s eyes widen. There are a million things off with this Alec. It’s something about the way he carries himself, the slight slouch rather than the military straight posture. It’s something about the panic in the eyes of someone trained to keep those ticks under wraps. It was in the inflection of the voice and the pattern of words. Piled up together it screamed that this man in front of him was not Alec.
Nonetheless, it is someone he recognizes immediately. “Dean?”
Max throws up her hands in frustration. “Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?
***
| 2 |
Rating: PG-13ish
Disclaimer: I can lay no claims on DA or SPN
SPOILERS: General DA, SPN though season four
Summary: Logan hasn't seen Dean since the shooting but their paths are about to collide again. (Sequel to World Behind Windows)
Author's Note:So it's been like a billion years since I posted fic. But I did the study abroad thing this summer so I have an excuse. By effect I also do not have a job for the three weeks before school starts. Which is why this fic finally has a plot instead of sitting pathetically in my notebook where it has lived for the past eight months.
ONE
In a strange sort of way, he knows he’s dreaming.
Knows he has to be dreaming because this was all over years ago.
He hasn’t had a dream about the blonde girl with the red dress since he woke up in the hospital minus functioning legs and he doesn’t have any reason for starting now. Except the girl in red is creeping toward him with a smirk on her face. Except he is seeing white eyes and remembering white light.
“Winchester, Winchester, Winchester, Cale. Two by two, both doomed to fail. Winchester, Win---“
Logan wakes up in a cold sweat. It is still dark outside but he knows he won’t be going back to sleep anytime soon.
He hasn’t heard from Dean Winchester in two months.
He doesn’t know why he’s so worried. It’s not like Dean calls him with any regularity. It’s a postcard about once a month and Logan leaving a message in the Winchester drop box whenever Eyes Only finds anything paranormal instead of just criminal. But Dean always sent something after he’d finished a job Logan had tipped him on. It would come in two weeks later, dated at the top with a few chatty lines about him and his brother that don’t say a thing about monsters but are more a way of saying I’m here. I’m alive. The postcards are never signed but the handwriting was familiar and it makes Logan feel better to know Dean is out there.
But he hasn’t heard from Dean in two months. Which is weird because the last he heard, the Winchester brothers were making their way up the west coast. Logan had left a message about a rash of poltergeists almost five weeks ago and he’d been expecting Dean to show up on his doorstep, ten years older with the same smirk and a few new scars.
He has been looking forward to it for a long time.
If only to prove he hadn’t dreamed it all.
He hasn’t seen Dean since he woke up in the hospital. Hasn’t seen Dean since 2009 and now it’s 2022 and staring at the transgenic called Alec he keeps feeling that pang for the man who kept him alive in the aftermath of the shooting.
Yesterday, he strapped on the exoskeleton, loaded his gun with homemade salt rounds and took care of the problem. He broke the exo, broke his ankle and found himself back in the wheelchair as the last of the transgenic blood was starting to wear out.
He knows he’s not going to stand back up.
And maybe that’s why he’s thinking of Dean Winchester right now. Maybe that’s why he’s scrounging through his old files looking for every scrap of paper the man has sent him over the past two and a half years. Maybe that’s why he’s freaking out over missing his stack of post cards even though they were probably part of the mess that had been lost in his penthouse last year.
He isn’t panicking. He just leaves another message on the Winchester’s answering machine, sorts through the normal jumble of Terminal City muck, does a half hour research on Eyes Only’s newest project and goes back to sleep thinking of how numb his broken ankle feels and how things are going to have to work themselves out in the morning.
He wakes up in daylight to a commotion outside his window and he starts the day by pushing himself up out of bed, planting his broken ankle on the ground and collapsing in a heap.
But he adjusts just like he always adjusts. Like he’d learned to adjust in 2009 where he’d woken up to ride shotgun to a demon hunting Dean Winchester. Just like he’d learned to adjust again when he woke up in his right time missing motion from all of his lower extremities.
The wheelchair is a familiar prison and pushing himself out of the door feels strangely inevitable like he was never meant to be on his feet for long.
Terminal City moves twenty times faster than he does, their world spinning at hyper speed. He wants to think he used to move that fast in his youth, or maybe he moved that fast in the few short months where he hunted ghost and demons with Dean Winchester but sitting right now, staring up at the world from his permanent vantage point, he can’t imagine it.
“What happened to you?” Max asks. “Been a while since you went with the wheels.”
Poltergeist problem but she doesn’t need to know that. The government has made it their business to remove the transgenic problem. White is making his push. The whole thing was a mess and he still can’t think of anything but the girl in the red dress mocking him from his dreams.
“You seen Alec?” he asks.
Max looks surprised. But then again she always looks surprised when Logan asks about Alec, like their tentative friendship was something of an affront to nature itself.
But Logan genuinely likes Alec. At first the friendship had been largely to satisfy his curiosity at the man’s physical similarity to Dean but after a few roadblocks along the ways, it had progressed into the first friendship Logan had made in years.
Still, he knows most people would never have gotten over their first impression of a double-crossing Manticore agent sent to assassinate his alter ego. He wouldn’t have given Alec a second glance if it wasn’t for Dean.
“No,” Max says. “But he’s got a shift at Jam Pony. Shouldn’t be too hard to track down if you need him.”
Logan doesn’t need to track him down so he doesn’t say anything else. Max is standing next to him, far enough away so that to reach out and touch her would be impossible. They have learned this dance well, anything else would result in his death, but he misses the old days, long nights bent close together over a computer screen or in a car on a stakeout. He doesn’t even long for a kiss. He hadn’t known enough of that to miss it. All he wants is a friendly pat on the shoulder that won’t get him killed.
It’s too dangerous now and Logan understands but he wonders what will happen if the virus is ever cured. He half suspects that after two years, the habits are too ingrained to ever change.
“I’ve got some research I could be doing,” Logan says.
“And I’ve got to get back to the mission.”
He wonders when she stopped being his best friend.
He loses himself in the research. He’s been pouring over texts of prophecy for the past three days, something he never would have considered before the accident three years ago. But he believes in nightmares now so it’s only logical he believed in the rest of the occult stuff that came with it.
On the side he is running his usual scan of the informant net for possible Eyes Only cases and another through the newspapers for events of paranormal nature.
He has come the to the unavoidable conclusion that his life is incredibly strange.
But he’s adjusted. If he has to split his time between transgenics and Eyes Only and hunters, then that’s what he’ll do.
There is a definite nest of vampires in Idaho, a businessman repackaging drugs in Seattle and the cult planning an apocalypse. He elects to focus on the cult. He is getting nowhere and suspects that he will be get nowhere until they actually start to make their move. This is not a scenario he likes.
He calls a hunter from his slowly mounting list of paranormal friendly contacts so he can feel like he accomplished something.
At three PM everything goes to hell, but it’s not Terminal City unless there is at least one major crisis. He just hopes no one wound up in a zoo this time. He considers for a brief moment going outside to confront the problem and is even to the point of pushing himself to his feet when he remembers the broken ankle and the lack of supercharged blood and he sinks back, selfishly wanting to keep up his illusion of strength for as long as he possibly can.
He pulls up a news feed within minutes. An explosion in sector four. Seattle is no stranger to explosions these days but they still make Logan’s heart leap up in his chest. Nine to one this was aimed at the transgenic and the flood of people outside were transgenics ushering one another into their infirmary. Logan doesn’t have the medical expertise to help this so he sits and watches with mounting horror wondering if Eyes Only could say anything to make this kind of violence stop.
He doesn’t know how long he sat watching but he is snapped from his trance by a rap on the door. One of the younger X-6’s poked their head through. Logan is ashamed to say he doesn’t know the boy’s name. “Mr. Logan? We need you in the med bay.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do,” Logan says tiredly.
“It’s Alec, Mr. Logan,” the boy says. “He was unconscious when they brought him in.”
There’s a lurching panic in Logan’s chest. “Is he all right?”
The kid shakes his head vehemently. “He woke up, Mr. Logan but there’s something wrong. You should come. Max thinks maybe you can help.”
He doesn’t know how. He hasn’t felt like he could help for years now but he’s Logan Cale so he’s going to try. “Let’s go,” he says, wheeling himself out the door toward what the transgenics have designated their infirmary. He can hear signs of the fight before he sees it. There is the crash of someone being thrown into a wall. There is a clamor of excitable voices. Max says, “Alec, look you’re hurt and you’re confused but you need to calm down.”
And then a different voice—one Logan isn’t used to hearing speak with quite this level of intensity—says, “Are you all out of your freaking mind? Who the hell is Alec? Who the hell are you? Where the hell am I? Where’s—“
Logan pushes the door open and for a moment, all eyes swivel toward him. Alec blinks like it’s the first time he’s seen him in years and chokes, “Logan?”
Logan’s eyes widen. There are a million things off with this Alec. It’s something about the way he carries himself, the slight slouch rather than the military straight posture. It’s something about the panic in the eyes of someone trained to keep those ticks under wraps. It was in the inflection of the voice and the pattern of words. Piled up together it screamed that this man in front of him was not Alec.
Nonetheless, it is someone he recognizes immediately. “Dean?”
Max throws up her hands in frustration. “Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?
| 2 |
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
6/8/09 00:47 (UTC)(no subject)
8/8/09 03:59 (UTC)It's going to be epic. I wouldn't have returned to this verse if it would have been anything less.
(no subject)
8/8/09 04:00 (UTC)(no subject)
6/8/09 04:25 (UTC)I love this line!
Yay! I'm happy that this verse is on the active WIP list!
And I still love that scene with Dean in the infirmary and now I'm wondering where Sam is and and and *and patiently waits for the next bit*
(no subject)
8/8/09 04:01 (UTC)Thanks for the kick in the ass to restart this.
(no subject)
6/8/09 06:38 (UTC)(no subject)
8/8/09 04:03 (UTC)(no subject)
6/8/09 10:57 (UTC)(no subject)
8/8/09 04:03 (UTC)(no subject)
6/8/09 23:43 (UTC)(no subject)
8/8/09 04:06 (UTC)(no subject)
8/8/09 14:06 (UTC)I am very excited by this and I loved your "World Behind Windows" series. Did you know there is an active SPN/DA community called
(no subject)
11/8/09 03:53 (UTC)I didn't know there was a specific SPN/DA crossover com. I'll definitely have to check it out. Thanks for the tip.
(no subject)
13/8/09 01:48 (UTC)(no subject)
13/8/09 04:21 (UTC)(no subject)
9/9/09 19:49 (UTC)"He knows he’s not going to stand back up." - I don't know why, but I'm in love with this sentence. It's so depressing and hopeless and so Logan. *thud*
(no subject)
17/9/09 04:44 (UTC)Glad you're enjoying this!