Title: Into the Woods

Crossover: Stargate SG-1/Supernatural (Jack/Mary)

Summary: After his son died, after his wife left him, and after he visited his first alien planet and lived to tell the tale, a retired Jack O'Neill just wants to fish and drink beer. Unfortunately for him, he;s stuck in a vanishing forest with mythical creatures and the not-so-cute-and-fluffy Mary Winchester. She wants to get home to her sons. He just wants to get back to his retirement. To do that, the colonel and the hunter have to work together and get the hell out.

A/N: This was done for fantasybigbang. hunters-retreat has made awesome art to go with it here: http: /hunters-retreat .livejournal. com /310121. html#cutid1 (copy into address bar without spaces)

Jack O'Neill loved fishing.

Really.

There was the steady rhythm in the throw, the relaxing state of waiting for a tug, and – in his case – the almost complete impossibility that a fish would actually tug on the string. (Unless someone transported them just for the hell of it, there were no fish in the lake.)

It was all pretty damn good, good enough that Jack was considering getting this little cabin just for himself rather than renting it only a few weekends a year. He was a retired man now. He needed hobbies and…stuff.

Point was: fishing was good.

It was nice.

And if he remembered teaching Charlie how to throw a line, it was as sweet as it was bitter and God knew he deserved the latter more than anything else.

The only thing that could distract him from his fishing task was beer or, rather, the lack of it. Fishing was good but it was better with a cold beer and Jack's ice chest was sadly empty, prompting a ride down the hill and to the store with the old man who gave a discount to any good military folks.

Fishing was good.

Beer: that was his downfall.

He just didn't know it yet.

But he'd find out soon enough, on the way to the store in his truck with retired-fishing-beer on the mind and an empty road in front of him.

Cause, of course, his moment of almost-peace could not go on undisturbed. It had to be broken into – violently. The violent disturbance that typically came in the way of guns, bomb, or politicians was replaced by -.

Dragon!

It was the first word that popped into Jack's mind for the creature that swooped out of the nearby forest, leathery wings beating against the wind and tail making a large gouge where it dragged across the floor. Dragon. Bat. Dragon. Lizard. Dragon. Alien. Dragon. Alien-Dragon.

Whatever the hell it was, it was in front of him. Its body was moving farther up and its head was tilted toward the sky. Its tail was too low though, still in Jack's path, still right in front of his car, blocking his path and disturbing his beer-running peace. He tried to brake, tried to swerve out of its path. It was useless. The tail hit the front end of his car and sent it sliding across the asphalt and smashing into a tree on the other side of the road. His head slammed into the driver side window, his teeth rattled, and his vision swam.

"Ah crap," Jack groaned, bringing one hand up to the side of his head. He scrunched up his eyes and gritted his teeth. "Crap!"

With that last shout, he scrambled for the door handle. His fingers found it and he pushed out of the car, stumbling to his feet and muttering under his breath, "Just wanted to fish, damn it!" He looked up toward the sky. There wasn't a dragon. There wasn't an alien. There wasn't even a cloud up there conveniently shaped like one.

However, there was a destroyed car that proved that something had been there.

Jack turned his attention toward the patch of woods the flying car-totaler had come from. He couldn't see anything – anything at all. It wasn't just the knock to his noggin either. It looked like someone had shut all the lights off just beyond the first trees.

Jack leaned across the passenger seat and squinted. He still saw nothing and that…wasn't normal, not when the sun was high and the rays easily should have illuminated something beyond those trees.

"God damn it."

Jack pulled his gun out of from under his seat. He then pushed his car door open, moved around the front of the car, and approached the woods slowly, a familiar weird tingle that used to mean things weren't making a lick of sense but had come to mean – in only few days – that there was an alien nearby.

There was something wrong with his retirement when he got that feeling.

He moved closer to the woods. As he got closer, his view got clearer, complete darkness slowly falling away to reveal a person lying face down on the floor. It was a woman with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. As he watched, she lifted her head an inch off the floor, shook it once, and then turned to look behind her.

That was when Jack saw it, a large black hairy…thing was coming towards her. It looked like a malformed monkey – a huge malformed monkey with too many teeth and hammer-like hands. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't human and, damn it, retirement meant he didn't deal with – didn't even think about – anything that wasn't human.

It was the unspoken role: don't even think about it just in case someone picked it out of your brain.

The woman turned onto her back.

The big…thing slapped a large (and very thick) branch out of its way. It ripped off from its tree and crashed to the ground.

The woman was crawling backward. Big Monkey-looking thing was taking long strides. It would reach her within seconds.

Cursing again, Jack rushed forward, lifting his gun as he went.

However, the sound of his first shot echoed with the sound of her own as she pulled a gun from who-knows-where and fired three quick shots at the overgrown-monkey. The thing stumbled backward. She scrambled to her feet and took off running for the road. That's when she saw him.

"Go back!" she yelled, already jumping over exposed roots and around trees that hadn't looked that weird from the outside.

Jack didn't need that advice, not when Ugly Monkey was shaking off four bullets to the chest with too much ease.

They ran.

Only they shouldn't have had to cause, last Jack had checked, the edge of the woods was just right behind him. It wasn't any more though. Instead, it was running away from them as they were running toward it. That patch of woods just got bigger, the light from beyond the trees going farther and farther away until it was nothing but a pinprick.

The woman slowed to a stop. "Crap!"

Jack stopped with her. "What just happened?"

The thing was crashing through the trees toward them.

"Come on," she snapped and ran to the side, pointedly not waiting for Jack to say a single word.

He ran after her. "Yeah, sure, don't wait for me," he muttered.

She was waiting though, slowing down every mile to look back, notice he was still there, and sigh in something like relief and annoyance all mixed up into one. He slowed down with her of course and she snapped, "Hurry!"

"Hurry where?"

She didn't answer, instead moving uphill and into a patch of trees, where she disappeared from view.

He followed her. He pushed through the branches, the edges scratching his arms and face as he went. On the other side was another hill, this one steeper. There was a hole at the top that led into a cave on the mountainside.

There was now a mountain in the big forest. Huh.

"Get inside!" she said – ordered, really. He was getting a little sick of the ordering 'cause – you know – retirement. The lack of orders was a bit of a perk.

Jack climbed up. He had to duck his head to enter without giving himself another pretty bump to match the last one. The inside was bigger though. A large camping lamp that sat on a rock in the corner revealed an area about the size of his living room. A few feet away from the lamp was a large backpack, one of those thousand-zippered things with a compartment for everything you'd need and a whole bunch of crap you wouldn't.

The woman pulled the bag toward her and began to rummage through it.

Jack hovered near the entrance and, presumably, the only exit. "So," he tried, "that was interesting."

The woman didn't look up from her bag. "That's one word for it."

"And the other would be…"

"That was a yeti."

Jack stared at her and then nodded, slowly. "A yeti?"

"That's right."

"Oh." He paused. "That makes sense in a crazy, we've-both-lost-our-minds way."

And, of course, she still didn't look up from her bag. "What would you call it?"

"A…big, ugly monkey."

She finally looked up, stared at him with a disbelieving, how-could-you-be-so-stupid look he knew way too well. "Okay. Why don't you call it that then: a big, ugly monkey? I'll stick to calling it a yeti. It's shorter.

"Good point." He nodded his let's-go-with-the-crazy nod. (Let no one ask where that one came from.) "So, there's a yeti – in the woods. These very big woods with hidden caves and a big ugly, monkey."

"How many bullets do you have left?" she said, which wasn't any kind of answer.

"Eight," he said. Ten, really, but the crazy women didn't need to know that.

"Save 'em for emergencies."

"Yeah, I was kinda figuring that. How many of those things are in here?"

"Those? I've only seen one but that's not the only thing in here."

Jack narrowed his eyes. Apparently, beating around the bush was not going to help. This woman didn't even seem to know there was a bush to beat around. "How about you tell me what the hell is going on?" was his flat and oh-so-polite way of doing it.

She finally gave up on looking for whatever she was looking for in her thousand-zippered pack. She pushed the backpack away in frustration. "I did."

"A little more information would be appreciated."

"You don't need any more information. I told you: You're in the woods. That was a yeti. We're stuck. We're screwed. You're not helping. Are you hearing me?"

"Loud and clear," he answered sarcastically.

"Great." She looked up and down, up at the little gray hairs appearing at his head and down at the old, beaten fishing boots on his feet. "Who are you anyway?"

"Colonel Jack O'Neill." He wasn't sure what he expected to get from that. A little more respect would've been nice. A 'this is the situation, colonel' would've been nice. His hopes weren't that high but it would've been nice.

Instead, her reaction was, "Ugh! Great."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Mary. Sorry, no titles for me."

"A civilian. Ugh!" he mocked.

She stood up to face him. "Hate to break it to you, colonel, but you're the civilian in here."

"Is that right?"

She raised her head to stare him down. "Unless you know what that thing was you just shot?"

He scratched at the back of his head.

"That's what I figured."

"You got me. Good thing I'm not a man that claims he knows it all – on good days. So, how about you just explain it to me." She opened her mouth and he interrupted. "A little more than 'there's a yeti in the woods'. Not so sure I don't think you're crazy about that one but it's not like I need a history lesson. How do you kill the 'yeti'? Better yet, what's going on with this forest."

Crazy Women didn't feel like telling him. That much was obvious. He was wasting her God-given time and he wasn't minding that one bit. Apparently getting it through her head, he wasn't about to snap a salute at Mary, No Titles, she answered. "You're in the vanishing forest."

"I'm getting this odd feeling I should know what you're talking about?"

She shrugged. "You wanted me to tell you. I told you. This thing moves." She frowned. "I'm not in Arizona anymore, am I?"

"Uh…I wasn't in Arizona." He shook his head. More on that later. "The…big, flying…lizard?"

"Dragon," she corrected, "but I bet even you knew that.

Huh. Where was Daniel Jackson when you needed him? Demons. Mythical creature. Vanishing forest. Difficult people. Geeks knew that kind of stuff or they would if they weren't on Abydos playing house with a beautiful woman, probably preparing to pop out a mini-geek. Of course, there was a better a question: why the hell was Jack thinking about Daniel Jackson?

"Are you hearing me, Colonel?"

Oh, yeah, there was something very weird going on and nobody to win it over with a chocolate bar. He wasn't sure if the weird thing was the yeti or the woman.

"That's all…very interesting."

She sighed again, an irritated, put-upon sigh that was supposed to make him feel like an itty-bitty, really annoying fly. Thankfully, for him, he knew that feeling well. He excelled at making people feel like there was an itty-bitty, really annoying fly named Jack in the room.

"I'm sure you've heard the stories. Someone goes into the wilderness to look for a lost treasure, lost city, lost dog… They're never heard from again."

"They got lost."

"Sure, they got lost. They got lost in here."

"What? You're saying this is some kind of," Jack threw his hands up in the air, "'lost and found'. They're all in here."

"No, I'm saying they all died in here. This place appears. It sticks around. In that length of time, people decide they have something they really need in here. They come in. They get attacked by a yeti or a werewolf or whatever else smells them out. They never get out. People might come looking for them but they don't get out either. Before something like this can be put on a record, the forest vanishes."

Jack decided to ignore the werewolf for a second. "…Vanishing forest."

She nodded once. "Vanishing forest."

"So, it just picks itself up and moves?"

Mary brought her hand up to the side of her head and rubbed. Jack had just graduated from fly to a maker of migraines. "Some people think it's a ghost forest. The animals, this whole place, used to be well-know. It used to be worshipped. They were sacrifices, tributes to their gods. Then, some people got sick of all the deaths, burnt the place down. However, it's not that easy to destroy something like this. If anything, the burning just made it more powerful, allowed it to change locations." She dropped her hand. Fly to Migraine-Maker to potential punching bag in under a minute. She was obviously stressed. "I thought you didn't want the history."

"Vanishing forest," he repeated.

"Are you gonna keep saying that? The answers not going to change." She took three long strides until she was right in his face. "This is a forest that vanishes. A yeti lives in here along with a crapload of other things."

"And you're in here because?"

"I'm here to make it vanish for good. Things are just a little more complicated than I thought. I wanted to get supplies more supplies and I got stopped." She glared back at her bag, the thousand-zippered thing that apparently didn't have what she needed. "I'll have to work with what I have."

He raised a finger, flicking if back and forth between them. "We."

She raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"We'll have to work with what you have," he corrected her oh-so-politely. "I want to get out of here too, you know? I have a life."

"You have important colonel things to do?"

"No, I have to go fishing." She stared at him. He added, "And drink beer. I have fishing and beer and -." And not much else, now that he thought about it. He very pointedly did not like thinking about it. "Point is, I want to get back to it."

"Okay, then, listen -."

"Now, I'm not saying I believe there's a yeti running around the forest or that you're not crazy – just to clear that up." He then waved a hand for her to continue.

She caught his wrist and, my, that was a strong grip. "Look, smartass, I don't give a damn what you think of me. I want to get out of here. In order for me to do that, you need to listen and not get in my way. You also need to get off the skeptics train. Burying your head in the sand will only lead to people dying. If you're lucky, it'll only be you."

He carefully removed his wrist from her clutches. "You sound like you speak from experience."

With that, her darkened, that remembering dark rather than the pissed off dark she'd had just a moment before. "Trust me. I do."

Now, Jack O'Neill wouldn't call himself a difficult man…but many, many other people would. That didn't mean he didn't know when to let something go and play nice. "So, there's some big, bad monster out in those woods."

"A lot of them," Mary responded.

"You know what to do about them?"

"That's what I'm here for."

So, either he had caught the crazy or he was seriously close to believing the woman who said he was in the magical damn forest. "Then, let's go kill some big, bad monsters. What do you say?"

She gave him an appraising look. "You need a weapon." She pulled her bag toward her, flipped it upside down to reveal yet another zipper at the very bottom. Out of there, she pulled a very sharp, very shiny knife. She tossed it to him. "Iron."

He spun it in his fingers, tested the weight with practiced hands. Mary looked reluctantly approving. "Iron; that matters?"

"What you use on these things always matter. Regular knives won't do much. Sometimes, iron doesn't even do it but it's the best we've got."

"Then, it works for me. I'm not really a picky kind of guy."