On Borderlands We Run
It's midnight; Sam is fast asleep drooling on his laptop, Castiel is thumbing bemusedly through an issue of Playboy that's older than Dean is, and the FBI is at the door. Things, Dean thinks, have probably been better—which is saying something, considering the past few months.
Dean twitches the curtain just slightly, catching a glimpse of the grim-looking blonde; under normal circumstances, he might be distracted by the fact that he's pretty sure this is the hottest FBI agent he's ever laid eyes on. But there's something about her and the men standing behind her—one wearing a black pea-coat and a smirk that already is getting on Dean's nerves, the other an elderly gentlemen with rumpled clothes—that sets Dean on edge. After all this time, he can sense trouble coming, and there's something ominous in the way the air seems to crackle around the blonde and the way the man with smirk seems to glimmer just slightly in the darkness.
The lady agent's got her hand resting on the butt of her gun; there's something about the way she's holding herself that makes Dean think less of the FBI and more of other hunters he's known. He can tell by the way she's holding her shoulders that she's coming to the decision to kick the door down; the man in the pea-coat can tell, too, Dean thinks, because he's got this amused twinkle to his eyes that suggests he'll enjoy watching her do it. Despite Dean's overwhelming sense of frustration, that dark amused look reminds him of himself whenever Cas decides to unleash some kind of terrifying smitey power; that feeling of being entertained when others would be cowering in fear.
"Um, guys?" Dean turns to reexamine his companions: they are still entirely useless. Sam makes a snorting gurgle noise, and Cas glances up from his magazine with mild disinterest.
"I'd let them in," says Cas, in a voice that indicates he could care less about the whole matter.
Dean tries to glower, but no one pays attention and so it's ultimately unsatisfying. With a heavy sigh that Cas ignores, Dean turns and opens the door; the trio outside immediately pushes their way into the hotel room. The chick flashes her badge and says: "Olivia Dunham. I just have some questions for you. This is Dr. Walter Bishop and his son Peter; they're consultants with Fringe Division."
If she expected the last two words to mean anything to him, she's going to be severely disappointed. "Questions about what?" asks Dean brusquely, aware that Dunham's eyes are scanning the room intently.
Cas has gotten rid of the Playboy and is staring in that creepy way of his at Peter Bishop; Dean wonders if he can see that glimmer, too, that dance of golden lights around the strange man's head. It's pretty fucking weird.
"Do you remember Jacksonville?" asks Dunham without preamble, and it is so entirely the opposite of what Dean was expecting that he's speechless for a beat or two. Behind him, he can hear Sam finally waking up—to his credit, he seems to take the appearance of three strangers in their motel room in stride.
"I'm sorry, what?" says Dean impatiently. There's something off about these three—Dean is starting to doubt that they're actually FBI, which means that it wouldn't actually matter if he kills them and dumps their bodies in a lake. Of course, Dean tells himself, he wouldn't do that. Probably.
"When you were a child, you lived in Jacksonville for a few months," says Dunham, and her expression softens in a way that almost scares Dean. She looks almost sympathetic, when only a few moments ago she looked like she would not have any great problem with tearing his head off and feeding it to carnivorous ducks. "Look," she interrupts, before he can answer, "we're not here about any of—whatever it is you've been doing. Legally, you're dead, which makes you out of my jurisdiction." Her lips quirk upwards just slightly, almost unconsciously, as if she's unaware that she's a second away from matching her companion's smirk with one of her own.
Dean looks at her blankly.
"You were part of an experiment in Jacksonville," continues Dunham. "Dr. Bishop and his partner were testing children with a drug called Cortexiphan. You were treated with the drug, but your father took you out of the program before it—ended."
This is news to him; but even so, he remembers a nightmare he had once, and a little blonde girl who set things on fire when she was scared. Even though he is Dean Winchester—who has died too many times to count and faced down Heaven and Hell—he feels a tremor of fear, in some forgotten part of his soul. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about," he says, his voice even rougher than usual. To reassure himself, he glances back at Cas, hoping that the angel has gotten his shit together and is preparing to blow these whackjobs out of the neighborhood.
But Cas is looking remarkably uncomfortable and not at all smitey. "Olivia Dunham," he says haltingly, like he knows her and is acknowledging their shared history, except she looks mildly bewildered at this familiarity.
"Who the hell are you?" she demands, and her fingers tighten over the butt of her gun. Dean thinks that—despite the fact that she looks like she wouldn't mind shooting his angel—he kind of likes her.
"My name is Castiel," he intones, powerfully. "I am an angel of the Lord." This last bit is really a bit of an exaggeration at this point, but Dean isn't inclined to point that out. And then, because apparently Cas feels the need to explain to her that he has freakish omniscience, he adds: "You are Olivia Dunham and you are fighting a war against an alternate universe."
Dean has that overwhelming feeling that this is going to be one of those days where he is forced to remember the extent to which the Winchester family luck will go to screw him over.
Dr. Bishop, who had previously looked really sort of fascinated by a discolored spot on the ceiling, glances at Castiel with dawning interest; Dean takes this as a very bad sign. Even Dean can see that this guy has "mad scientist" written all over him. Before he can say anything, though, the son shakes his head minutely, and the elderly man occupies himself with edging away from a moldy patch of carpet.
"Alternate universe?" says Sam, at the exact time that Peter Bishop drawls, "Angel of the lord?"
"Never mind him," says Dean gruffly, waving a hand dismissively at Cas. "He's just—crazy."
Once again, Dr. Bishop perks up. "Has he been ingesting LSD? I once spent an entire day convinced that I was a holy envoy for a Greek deity—" Peter rolls his eyes and coughs, pointedly, and his father shuts up, looking put out that he can't finish his anecdote. The slightest glimpse of a smile flickers across Agent Dunham's face, as if not only is she used to this, she finds it all especially endearing.
Which is fair, really. Dean has had some major experience in learning how socially awkward crazy people (read: angels) can get under your skin.
Cas bristles a bit—whether at being accused of being mentally unstable, or the implication that he's been dabbling in illicit drugs—but stays mercifully silent. Maybe he can sense that these people would be less than receptive to news of heaven and hell and the various apocalypses; Dean certainly can.
"Perhaps he has some residual psychic ability," mutters Dr. Bishop, peering at Cas in a way that makes Dean uniquely uncomfortable. "That would certainly explain his delusions, and—"
"And the fact that he knows what we're here for?" interrupts Peter, and now he's looking at Cas, too.
"I'm sorry," Sam interrupts, obviously getting fed up, "did you say 'alternate universe'?" He is sitting up, leaning forward just slightly, poised to spring; Dean wishes he would look just a little less on the offensive. Dean is actually sort of curious about these people—about Jacksonville, and what they want with him.
Dunham trains her gaze on him, and Dean is momentarily distracted by the fact that her eyes are very green and her lips are very soft-looking: it's kind of a shame that she looks so ready to shoot him. Of course, he tells himself, that could just be her face. "Do you remember me?" she asks, tentatively, in a way that makes him think that she is only asking because someone has told her that she knows him and she doesn't remember either.
Dean scowls, mostly on instinct. "Am I supposed to?"
"We were in the Cortexiphan trials together," she explains. "In Jacksonville. We have reason to believe that-that your participation in these trials left you with some latent…abilities." She casts a look at Peter, who smirks at her; instead of shooting her friend in the foot, per Dean's expectations, she gives him this exasperated tolerant look. "I'm sorry—it's just, everyone else we've seen from the trials…The others have been manifesting their abilities."
"Their abilities," says Dean, and it's less of a question than him repeating it to try and make sense of it.
"Things like telekinesis, empathic ability, pyrokinesis…" Dunham trails off, no doubt noting the lack of skepticism on his face. It occurs to him to maybe scramble for astonishment or something, but it seems pointless now; anyway, she brushes over it and continues, "There is a man who has been trying to create an army by recruiting those of us dosed with Cortexiphan—David Robert Jones."
"An army for what?" demands Dean suspiciously, but he has a bad feeling he knows the answer to this. "And are you trying to tell me that I've got some kind of—some kind of ability?"
He can't help but thinking of Sam's freaky mojo, and Peter Bishop seems to misread Dean's expression, because the other man smirks a little wider and says, "Oh, c'mon. Surely you've spent your life occupied by the mystery of why you're different from everybody else?"
Dean scowls, noting even as he does so the way that Peter's words seems to wound Agent Dunham. "Actually, right now I'm spending my life wondering at the mystery of who the hell keeps leaving French fries in my bed."
"Oh," says Cas, without inflection, "That's probably me."
Emphatically, Dean gestures at the angel standing behind him. "Would you look at that? Mystery solved. Now I'm sure that you fine federal agents have more important things to do than tracking me down, because I can assure you that I don't have any freaky powers—"
"You know," interrupts Peter, in a conversational tone, "you and your brother are already legally dead." The threat that weighs heavy behind his words insults the hell out of Dean, and he wonders just how upset Olivia Dunham would be if he shot this Bishop guy in the face.
"We don't want anything from you," says Dunham, and even though she doesn't even acknowledge Peter, Dean has this visual image of her hushing her partner. "We just wanted to ask you if you would be willing to let us know if Jones tries to make contact with you, and to warn you that when he does, it might be—unpleasant."
The way she says "unpleasant" might worry him, if he weren't already so used to bad things.
Peter is distinctly uncomfortable with the way that Dean Winchester is looking at Olivia, and is even more uncomfortable with the way that Olivia is looking at Dean. He's used to Olivia's burning intensity—really, he is—and this Winchester shouldn't take him by surprise. There's something about having been a Cortexiphan kid that can leave people with a thing like fire inside of them, and generally Peter's sort of impressed by it. But right now he can only remember John Scott, and how Peter used to be convinced that Olivia only went for those brawny hero types; the only thing that stops Peter from anything approaching true concern is the way the creepy guy in the trench-coat is staring at Dean Winchester's back.
Still, Peter keeps trying to edge innocuously closer to Olivia. All of these childhood friends of hers that they've been hunting down all have this hero complex for Olivia—she was the strong one, they always say, with this glimmer in their eyes like they're looking at the sun. Privately, Peter knows that, if by some twist of fate, Olivia were on David Robert Jones's side, there would be no dissuading her childhood companions from her side.
"So you tracked us down just to tell us not to join this guy's army," says Dean, in this disbelieving tone like generally people track them down to do just the opposite.
Olivia and Peter exchange a look before she says, "You don't understand. This man wants to basically tear apart the very fabric of our reality and he wants to use you to do it. We need to know that, at the very least, you won't be—"
"Out there helping to jumpstart the apocalypse?" Dean snorts, and he looks inexplicably amused. Sam, on the other hand, looks sick to his stomach.
Generally, Peter would be insatiably curious as to who the hell these people are, but in this case he kind of just wants to get out of this motel room. He is uncomfortable, which is shocking, because Peter normally has this insolent acceptance for whatever situation he's in, except on the (not so) rare occasion that he's kidnapped and tortured.
"Tell them yes," says the creepy guy in the trench-coat, with this deep gravelly voice that emanates authority. He only glances away from Dean's back momentarily, to look oddly at Walter. "The Winchesters will not let David Robert Jones use them for his interdimensional war."
As everyday a thing as it is for Peter and Olivia to hear, Peter can't help but feel that it should throw the Winchester men a bit; but it doesn't. Dean and Sam continue looking amused and nauseated, respectively.
"Is that all?" asks Sam.
Olivia pulls a card from her pocket and holds it out to Dean; he takes it, glances at it momentarily, and slips it into the back pocket of his jeans. "If anything out of the ordinary happens—" She stops here, looks them over, and revises her words: "If anything happens that you think might be connected to Jones, or to Jacksonville, I'd appreciate it if you gave me a call."
"Call us if you need anything," Peter adds, half-genuine because he can sort of understand this nomadic existence of theirs, and half because he wants to remind everyone just how well he reads people. "You look like the kind of people who could use some friends in the Bureau—especially the kind of friends that regularly deal in the weird and inexplicable."
Dean smirks a little bit at that, not in a malevolent way but companionable, and maybe he's not all bad after all. "We'll do that."
"Or—or if you spot a bald man," Walter says suddenly, leering oddly at the Winchesters. "Completely hairless, generally in a fedora, eats a lot of peppers—"
"Walter," says Peter patiently. "I think we're going now." Then, because however not-bad Dean might be, Peter is not exactly used to this jealousy thing, he adds, "We didn't just come all this way to track you down. You weren't actually that hard to find. We're on our way to a case."
Walter grins delightedly. "There's a woman with gills."
Fifteen minutes later, the FBI is gone, and Dean is standing, mildly dumbstruck, in the middle of the motel room. "What," he says, "the hell was that?"
Sam makes this odd gurgling sound and falls immediately back asleep on his laptop; Cas has not only brought the Playboy back into existence but an entire cardboard box full of them that Dean is pretty sure John hid at Bobby's house twenty years ago. This is his life. He fights the urge to go after Olivia Dunham and ask if she'd like another special consultant.
A/N: In honor of Supernatural being back tonight, and me being able to watch it because Fringe isn't new until next week. I will admit that this is more crack than anything else...And if I ever get more free time-which honestly, I don't actually have any, I just misuse the time I do have-I am one hundred percent turning this into some epic thing. Like, at least 10,000 words and one super shippy Dean/Cas moment alongside a super shippy Peter/Olivia moment, and possibly, somehow, Anna the angel/Blue!Lincoln. Because I can. So please review and encourage my blatant misuse of apply-to-colleges-and-do-useful-things-with-your-life time.