elementalv

Title: In Media Res
Author: elementalv
Fandom: Supernatural/SGA (Vegas ’verse)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: 2,940 words (or thereabouts), gen. Assumes reader has knowledge of S4 of Supernatural and S5 of Stargate: Atlantis. Also, this is my first shot at writing Supernatural (because, you know, I need another fandom like I need a hole in my head; doh!).
Summary: In Dean’s experience, all interrogation rooms were pretty much the same: furniture from when Eisenhower was President, shitty one-way mirror and the stench of stale cigarettes and fear.

~*~*~
Dean always figured he knew screwed when he saw it, but that was before yesterday, and now he was pretty sure that screwed actually looked like the military cowing the local cops into letting them take him and Sam out of jail to someplace a hell of a lot less comforting. It wasn’t that his cell was unlivable — it was actually pretty luxurious compared to some jails he’d been in — as it was that there was no way to break out. As far as Dean could tell, every single door in the complex required some kind of science fiction eye scan before it unlocked, which meant that the only way they were getting out was if the military let them go — not a fucking chance — or if Cas staged some kind of jailbreak.

That thought was interrupted by a soldier — not a Marine, not Army, probably Air Force — who opened the door and immediately pointed a P-90 at Dean while another couple of soldiers came in to put him in cuffs and shackles. For a brief moment, Dean was kind of proud of the fact that they thought he was dangerous enough to lock down so tight, and then sanity came back and reminded him that they were completely screwed.

Bad enough that the Feds wanted a piece of him, worse that the military wanted him more. The FBI had bite, but Dean was pretty sure it couldn’t make people disappear. A place like this? Yeah. Him and Sammy weren’t seeing the light of day anytime soon, and maybe that was a good thing. If they were locked up, then Ruby couldn’t get at Sam and Castiel would have to find someone else to stop the apocalypse. It was a nice thought that got Dean all the way to the interrogation room.

In Dean’s experience, all interrogation rooms were pretty much the same: furniture from when Eisenhower was President, shitty one-way mirror and the stench of stale cigarettes and fear. The fact that this interrogation room had new furniture, video cameras up the wazoo and absolutely no odor kind of scared the piss out of Dean. They either hadn’t interrogated that many people or the interviews were too short to leave any kind of lasting impression on the room. Whatever the case was, it was bad news for Dean and Sam, and yeah. Screwed wasn’t really covering it anymore.

The soldiers — airmen? — shoved him into a chair, and about thirty seconds later, an Army officer came in. The lack of a wait time was one kind of mindfuck, and the presence of an Army officer was another kind entirely. As far as Dean could tell, the only good news so far was that the Army had an actual how-to manual when it came to interrogating prisoners, and that manual had a “Just Say No!” policy when it came to torture. He refused to think about the fact that they were on what looked like a secret military base and they could probably do whatever the hell they wanted to him and Sam.

The officer, a tall, bulked-out captain with a nasty scar running down his face and a plain wedding band, set a thick folder on the table then sat down across from Dean. He didn’t even pretend to look down before he started talking. “Dean Winchester, born in Lawrence, Kansas, January 24, 1979. Happy birthday.”

Dean swallowed. “Yeah. Thanks. Am I gonna get a cake? Because I gotta tell you, I’d rather have pie.”

“Will apple work, or would you prefer something else?”

“Cherry’s good. I like cherry.”

The captain nodded at one of the airmen, who left the room for a goddamn second and came back in carrying a slice of cherry pie with a lit candle stuck in the middle of it. He set it in front of Dean then stepped back again. Aside from this being the weirdest interrogation Dean had ever been in, it was also a strong contender for the scariest. Sure, they could have had all kinds of options out there, waiting for Dean’s answer, but he had a feeling that the captain knew all along what Dean would say. That alone was enough to change the slow burn in Dean’s belly to a hard clump of fear.

Dean stared at the cherry pie, at the candle burning down, and for a moment, he honestly couldn’t remember what the hell it was there for. Then he remembered birthday and thought, What the hell? and made a wish before blowing out the candle. There was always a chance that Castiel might be listening, might be willing to haul his and Sammy’s ass out of this mess.

“I promise the pie isn’t drugged,” said the captain. “I had a piece for lunch. It’s good.”

“Um, yeah.” Dean took a bite, and if he’d been anywhere else, he would have agreed with the captain. Since he wasn’t anywhere else and was, in fact, being held by the military, the bite tasted like ashes.

“You and your brother were taken into custody two days ago —”

“Yeah, I was there,” Dean said, trying to scrape together a little attitude, which wasn’t fucking easy. The way the asshole had come in, flashing Dean’s name around like it was AmEx or something, was bad enough. It was somehow worse that he wasn’t even trying to intimidate Dean — like maybe he already knew he held all the cards and was just waiting for Dean to catch up.

“The arresting officer, Detective John Sheppard of the Las Vegas P.D. wrote that you were standing near a corpse with certain specific characteristics. He seemed to think you knew something about it.”

“Don’t know anything.” And if he sounded sullen instead of cocky, that probably had more to do with the fact that he was convinced that there was no way out of this.

“Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want.” Yeah. There was some of that Winchester brass. It was enough, at least, to make Dean feel a little better.

The captain signaled the three airmen in the room, and they all left. Didn’t even hesitate, and that — that wasn’t good. In fact, that sucked monkey balls.

“You have an interesting history, Mr. Winchester,” he said. “You were wanted for suspicion of murder in Missouri, right up until they found your body and buried you. A few months later, you were detained in Pennsylvania, which called into question just who was buried in Missouri. In Milwaukee, you apparently participated in a bank robbery.”

Screwed. Without lube.

“Yeah. Interesting. Whatever.”

“The Federal charges aren’t the interesting part.” He stared at Dean, waiting, but Dean didn’t want to play, so he kept quiet. “The interesting part is the various grave desecrations you’re charged with. A crime scene investigator near Petoskey, Michigan was a little bored and decided to gather and analyze the trace evidence. She found a high concentration of sodium along with an accelerant.”

Dean bit his lower lip and said nothing.

“Salt and burn. It’s what you do to get rid of a vengeful spirit.”

Dean broke out into a cold sweat, because there was no way — no way — this military fuck knew a damn thing about spirits and ghosts and the rest of the shit him and Sam dealt with on a regular basis.

“Nothing to say, huh?” Captain Cool gave him a bare glimmer of a smile. “Before we continue, you need to know that there are three ways this interview can end. The first is that you tell me everything you saw that night, everything you think you saw and everything you think about what you saw. Answer politely and completely, and we take you and your brother back to your Impala and send you on your way with instructions never to come near Nevada again.”

“Yeah, right,” Dean muttered. He was still freaking out over the captain’s apparent acceptance of the spooky side of Dean’s life.

The other man continued as if Dean hadn’t said anything. “Answer me with rudeness and sarcasm, make me work to get an answer out of you or generally be a pain in the ass, and we take you and your brother to the FBI offices in Las Vegas and stand guard over you until they can arrange for you to be taken into Federal custody to stand trial for all the outstanding wants and warrants on you. As a reminder, your brother Sam may not have committed the crimes you’re accused of, but he’ll be regarded as an accessory, so he’ll be on trial for the same charges as you.”

Dean swallowed hard, the small piece of cherry pie sitting like lead in his stomach. “And if I don’t cooperate?”

“You and your brother disappear into the deepest holes we can find.” The captain paused. “You won’t see each other again. Not in this life.”

That was the kicker, the fact that this anonymous captain knew just how to twist the knife to make Dean squirm the hardest. It was enough to make him wonder if the captain was so knowledgeable because he was possessed, but then he thought about just how calm the guy was. Demons, as a rule, weren’t really big on self-restraint, and there was no way anyone of them would be able to keep from gloating right about now. Still — “Christo.”

“Cute,” said the captain, “but irrelevant. I’m not possessed. I am, however, still waiting for your decision on how this interview will end.”

Despite the fact that he would never see Sam again, Dean had a strong yearning for the prize behind door number three. Being tossed into a hole for the rest of their life had to be a damn sight safer than trying to stop the apocalypse. On the other hand, he didn’t think a little thing like secret government detention would be enough to deter Heaven or Hell, and he could easily see Ruby getting Sam out and leaving Dean to rot. Or maybe not rot, because Castiel would probably get him out, and then him and Sammy would be separated and he wouldn’t have the Impala. Door number two wasn’t even in the cards. No way would he let Sam stand trial, not if he could help it. Door number one was the only option left, and he hoped like hell the captain wasn’t jerking him around about being sent on their way.

His decision made, Dean said, “What do you want to know?”

“Describe what you saw that night.”

Dean hesitated, gathering his thoughts, then said, “There was a thing. Shaped like a man, kind of looked like Marilyn Manson on a bad hair day, and it shoved its hand into the guy’s chest.”

“What happened then?”

“The guy screamed. A lot.”

“Did you try to stop the attack?”

“Shot it a few times with rock salt, but it just looked over at me and laughed.” Dean fought back a shudder, thinking of it. Compared to it, whatever it was, demons and all the other monsters he’d fought over the years were downright friendly and sociable. And when he got right down to it, he figured that whatever it was, it had never been human. Not even close, and the only word Dean could come up with to describe it was alien, because he was pretty sure that nothing like that had ever walked the planet before.

“What happened then?”

“It finished with the guy and let the body drop to the ground. It started to come toward me and Sam,” Dean said, his voice tight.

“Why didn’t it attack you?”

“Cop car showed up out of nowhere. The thing ran before the cop spotted it.”

“But you and your brother didn’t run?”

“Couldn’t. We were boxed in.” It had been a hell of a time to discover the flaw in their hiding place.

“Officer Purdy detained you?”

“Yeah. Until that detective got there. He was the one that —”

— that took one look at the dead guy then got way the hell into Dean’s personal space and started in on how he knew, he just knew him and Sam had something to do with all the other dead people showing up. Wouldn’t have been so bad, but Sheppard’s breath had smelled like the tail-end of a three-day bender. The stench, on top of what Dean had seen, had almost been enough to make him throw up the last week’s worth of meals.

“He was the one that what?”

“Arrested us.”

“Did Detective Sheppard say anything to you?”

Dean shrugged. “Accused us of being responsible for the other bodies.”

“Did he say how many other bodies there were?”

The captain didn’t seem fazed by any of what Dean had said so far, which told Dean that he knew exactly what happened out in the desert and knew exactly what it was doing the killing. For a moment, Dean considered calling him on it. Thought maybe he could get a few answers himself, but Captain Cool didn’t look like the type to lose his shit over much, and Dean wasn’t convinced that the answers would be worth the price of his and Sammy’s freedom. It was a gamble, trusting this character, but Dean figured the odds weren’t going to get any better.

“No. He didn’t.”

“Did you get a look at the body that night?”

“Yes. No.” Dean thought about what little he’d been able to see in the moonlight. “Not really. Moon wasn’t high enough.”

“You said yes at first. What do you think you saw?”

Dean slouched down in his chair, thinking back. It was crazy, what he thought he saw, but then again, most of the shit he’d seen in his life had been crazy. “Dude was in his thirties when that thing attacked. By the time he was dead, looked like he was ninety.” Dean shook his head. “Can’t be right. I couldn’t —”

Captain Cool just kept looking at him, and at that point, Dean figured that yeah, maybe he had seen exactly what he thought he’d seen.

“I’m not wrong, am I?”

“As you said, it was dark out, and the moon wasn’t high.” He pulled a sheaf of papers out of the folder and pushed it toward Dean along with a pen. “This is a non-disclosure agreement. In exchange for not talking about what you saw in the desert and for getting out of Nevada and staying out, we will not detain you any further. Read through it, initial each page of one of the copies and sign that copy’s last page. The second copy will be yours to keep, and I’m sure your brother will be able to help you understand any of the language that may be confusing — he was pre-law at Stanford, I believe? When you’re done, knock on the door.”

With that, Captain Cool stood up and walked out of the room. Dean stared at the door for a good two minutes before saying, “The fuck?”

~*~*~
It was another three hours before Captain Cool dropped Dean and Sam off at the Impala, which had been towed out to Henderson. The guy walked around the car and said, “Sweet ride.”

Dean, who really wanted to get the fuck out of Nevada right now just shrugged.

The captain came back around the car and pulled something out of his breast pocket and handed it to Dean. It was a business card, and lo and behold, Captain Cool had a name: Riley Finn. “The government cares about what happened in the desert, Mr. Winchester, but it doesn’t care about your other activities.”

Sam jerked a little at that, but Dean just said, “Any chance of getting our record cleared, then?”

“There’s not a chance in the world that we’re going to get involved in local investigations. Too many jurisdictional issues.” Finn took a deep breath. “But that doesn’t mean you’re fighting alone. I’m liaison officer to another group. It’s an NGO based in England, but it has worldwide resources. Right now, those resources are pointing at a coming apocalypse, and you two seem to be at the epicenter.”

“Fuck.” It came out before Dean could stop himself.

“If you ever get to a point where you need help — with a fight or with research — give me a call, and I’ll see what they can do for you.” Finn held out his hand to Sam, who shook it without thinking, and then to Dean, who thought for a moment before shaking it himself. “Good luck. And get the hell out of Nevada. If you drive fast enough, you’ll be able to celebrate your birthday before midnight.”

Finn apparently wasn’t one for long goodbyes, because he just left Dean and Sam standing next to the Impala while he got in his car and left. It took a few moments, but Sam finally found his voice and said, “Did he just say what I think he just said?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. Just get in the car so we can leave.” Dean got in behind the wheel and just barely gave Sam enough time to settle in before grabbing the first tape he could reach and shoving it into the player. He sort of felt the same way he had when he first climbed out of his grave — like this was a mistake, like he wasn’t really free — but unlike then, Dean wasn’t inclined to think about it too hard.

He had Sam at his side and the Impala pointed east. Everything else was gravy.

~*~*~
Final Author’s Note: Okay, yeah, I couldn’t resist bringing Buffy: The Vampire Slayer into it, and really, it makes sense (to me, anyway) that Riley would be on loan to the SGC.