Not Quite Rear Window
A/N: Written as a treat for Chocolate Box 2018 for penna_nomen, requesting characters trying to take a day off and not succeeding, first meetings, and snark.
If there's a God up there, and no, he doesn't mean some snake with a god-sized ego and a gold fetish, Jack is pretty sure he's being laughed at right now.
Several hours earlier, SG-1 had just finished getting debriefed after a particularly complicated off-world negotiation mission, and General Hammond had scheduled them for two weeks of downtime. Unfortunately, it's conditional on nothing coming up, so Jack decided against trying to take a trip up to his cabin. He and Murphy both know there's just no way something is going to fail to come up.
Instead, Jack figured he'd spend a little time around the house, get in some good stargazing time with his telescope, maybe get the team together for a night out at a restaurant that's not O'Malley's or a movie that's not Star Wars. The day they get released from the mountain, the night is forecast to be clear and only slightly cool, so he decides to spend it on the roof.
All joking aside, he really doesn't use his telescope to spy on the neighbors. Not usually. Except tonight, while setting up, he had noticed a completely unfamiliar long black classic car parked in the drive a couple houses down. He would have thought nothing of that, but when he had paused to take a sip of his beer and was looking out over the neighborhood, a flash of violent movement through one of the house's front windows caught his eye.
It had taken him a minute or two to adjust the magnification view of the telescope down enough, but when he finally had, he'd seen the couple he vaguely recognized as owning the house in an all-out brawl with two younger men he'd never seen before. His first impulse had been to reach into his pocket for his phone, but his brain had stuttered to a halt at seeing little old Mrs. Miller toss a man that had to be half her age and twice her height and weight. Before he'd fully processed that, he'd seen the other of the two men stab Mr. Miller in the chest.
That's not the weird part. The weird part was that as he watched, clear as day he saw Mr. Miller's body light up with orange lightning from within. Combined with Mrs. Miller's sudden super strength, this new weirdness had painted a picture that changed the situation from a matter for the local police to a matter for the SGC. He'd restarted his previous aborted grab for his phone and called a different emergency number.
Now, he's stuck staring at one of the two young men sitting on the other side of a metal table in a featureless interrogation room deep under Cheyenne Mountain. The SGC had managed to call in favors to get road blocks in place around Colorado Springs fast enough to catch the two men trying to leave town thanks to his description which included their license plate number.
Carter and Daniel are in an identical room down the hall with this one's accomplice. The younger of the two men, that one had looked guilty and repentant from the moment they'd been asked to step out of their vehicle. This one, though, had been belligerent to the same degree the other was cooperative. Feigning ignorance, loudly spouting creative threats about them damaging his car, and just generally drawing all the attention onto himself and being a giant pain in the ass. It's a technique Jack is so very familiar with.
He could be home, relaxing, most of the way through a six pack by now, but the universe clearly hates him. So instead, he's stuck back under the mountain, left to try and get some kind of sensible story out of this punk kid involved in suspicious alien activity and the deaths of a harmless elderly suburban couple. A kid who won't even give them a halfway believable fake name, let alone his real one. He may be a classical guy when it comes to music, but even Jack recognizes someone trying to pass himself off as a character from Spinal Tap. This is gonna be easy – not.
Hopefully the fingerprints they are currently running will give them some ideas if all else fails, but in the meantime it's his job to at least get a story to disprove. Jack gives a theatrical sigh. "I don't suppose you could just give me a real first name to work with? No? C'mon, kid, this is supposed to be my night off."
"Well you could just let me and my brother go," the kid suggests, his tone pure cocky provocation.
"Oh, sure," Jack replies easily. "I could do that, but I think my boss would be just a little pissed if I didn't sort out the little issue we have with you first. See, you're a person of interest in the murder earlier tonight of Mr. and Mrs. Jameson Miller with a weapon of suspicious origin."
Jack pulls out the blown up photograph of a nasty-looking jagged knife carved with symbols Daniel hadn't recognized on sight and lays it on the table. A knife they'd taken off of the younger of the two men before they'd found an entire additional arsenal of odd weapons in their car's trunk.
"Suspicious origin," the kid repeats with a little chuckle and a smirk. "What's that military-guy code for?"
Jack smirks back. "Classified."
He groans and leans back, causing the cuffs he's wearing to clink. "Of course, shoulda guessed that one, huh?"
"We just want to know where you got this knife and what you know about it. Like why it caused the bodies of the Millers to light up in orange when they died."
For the first time, the kid looks disconcerted. "Somebody reported that?"
"Less reported and more saw. Your home incursion interrupted my night stargazing. C'mon kid, just tell me what kind of technology this thing is."
"Technology? Oh, man, have you got it so wrong." The kid shakes his head in feigned sorrow, like he feels bad for Jack for being so off base.
"Well, then why don't you explain what it really is to me?"
"Aside from the part where you aren't going to believe me? Like, at all?"
"Aside from that part."
"I'll think about it. Hey, here's a thought, why don't you tell me who the hell you guys even are, first? You're not the feds or the local five-o. I didn't think we'd done anything to piss of the military yet."
"I'm Colonel Jack O'Neill, Air Force. You're in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. The rest is, again, classified."
"Well, isn't that just perfectly vague and ominous."
Starting to get seriously irritated with the run-around, Jack decides to try a slightly different tack. It probably won't work with this smart-ass, but he's not getting anywhere as it is. So he drops his easygoing posture and turns his voice hard, "Do you think this is a joke? That the deaths of two innocent civilians is funny?"
Jack is surprised by how the kid abruptly straightens and spits out a "No, sir," without any trace of mockery, before wincing at himself. Well isn't that an interesting reaction. It isn't any kind of helpful answer in regards to the matter at hand, though.
The kid fidgets, glancing at him and then away again, before heaving a sigh. "Fine, but you're just gonna think I'm crazy. Your harmless elderly couple were possessed by a pair of demons. The seven disappearances of young boys exactly five years old to the day in this county was part of a ritual they were planning to perform once they had the requisite thirteen. The knife isn't technology, it's spell craft. Kills demons, and unfortunately their hosts, assuming they weren't already dead."
Jack takes a long moment to process the words. They still don't make any sense on reflection. "O-kay. Going for the insanity defense then, aren'tcha?"
"Sure you don't want to backtrack a little and try a more believable story? Like an unfortunate meeting with a Goa'uld down a dark alley?" Jack watches closely, but absolutely no recognition registers in his expression to the name of the SGC's snakey nemeses-es.
It's pretty clear to Jack that the kid actually believes the nonsense he's spewing, more's the pity. For all his previous bluster, Jack sees nothing but sincerity in him when it comes to the crazy story. He waits, but nothing else is forthcoming. Jack decides to give them both a break. "You need anything? Water, coffee, water? Bathroom? No?"
When the kid shakes his head no, Jack steps out to see if maybe Carter and Daniel have gotten anything more substantial out of this one's partner. Just after shutting the door, he almost literally runs into Walter, who is bringing down a pair of FBI files that came up from searching for matches to their fingerprints. Flipping it open, he reads the highlights. Sam and Dean Winchester, occult obsessed serial killers. Jack finds himself taken aback. It's surprising and a little disappointing, because he hadn't gotten any kind of bad vibe off of Dean, and he was used to being able to trust his instincts about people. Plus, as if delusional homicidal aliens aren't enough, now he has to deal with Earth wackos, too?
Jack walks down the hall to the room where Carter and Daniel were talking to the younger brother. He knocks on the door and calls them out to join him. He passes across the file and asks if they got out of Sam, only to hear that for all his apparent remorse upon arrest, he gave them nothing. Not even the story about demons Dean had given Jack; the younger brother had simply said they wouldn't believe anything he said so he wasn't going to say anything. Oh, and he'd asked for a lawyer, Carter said.
Daniel is eager to consult his books, looking for clues about the inscription on the blade, so Jack waves him off. Jack figures he and Carter should go back to Sam with the story Dean had told him and see if they can get a reaction. Even if the why of the whole thing seems unfortunately clear now, they still need to know how these two got their hands on some kind of alien weapon. The problem is, when they reopen the door, Sam Winchester is no longer in the room. After he calls for an immediate lockdown of the base, Jack finds that the room down the hall where he'd left Dean is just as empty.
A few hours later, when the base has been entirely searched from top to bottom, they aren't any closer to having answers. The footage from the cameras where the Winchesters had been held separately turned to static for no more than a minute each in turn, before clearing to show empty rooms. A general check of the cameras shows a similar distortion in Daniel's lab where the dagger had been left, and when they check it is also missing. By the time they go looking for the Winchesters' car in the impound lot where they left it, it's not a surprise to find nothing.
Although he isn't sure whether or not he expects any of the details of Dean's story to have any relation to the truth, he does have Carter look into local disappearances. She finds that there have, in fact, been seven local boys who went missing exactly on their fifth birthdays recently. All of whom were found, scared and hungry but alive, in an abandoned warehouse at the edge of town thanks to an anonymous tip. None of the kids recognize either Winchester, but three of them are scared to tears by images of the Millers.
The anonymous tip in question was left less than a half hour after he'd caught the Winchesters in the act. When they trace it back to one of the room phones at a low budget motel and show the clerk pictures of the brothers, they find that they had checked out just minutes after the call. They'd checked in days after the first disappearance, and no other clerks in the area recognize them. Carter points out that it doesn't mean they hadn't been involved in the kidnappings themselves, they could have been staying in the warehouse. Jack isn't so sure. There had just been something in Dean's eyes that had made him want to believe that the kid, even if off his rocker, wasn't really capable of such horrors. None of it makes any sense to him, and not in the way Carter's technobabble makes no sense, or Daniel's fascination with old rocks makes no sense. He knows he just doesn't have the mindset to understand, or need to understand, those things. This just doesn't add up in the way something won't when half the pieces are missing.
No further efforts to find some of those missing pieces turns up any trace of either an explanation or the Winchesters themselves as weeks and months stretch on. Daniel finally manages a rough translation of the writing on the blade from the photographs they'd taken to be something about banishing evil. Carter finds several strange discrepancies in the other cases in their file, but none of it makes any sense. Especially not the two times Dean has been reported dead, once with an actual burial.
Eventually, the Winchesters get pushed to the bottom of the SGC's pile of concerns. Whatever their part in the incident he'd seen had been, they're untraceable for all practical intents and purposes. Since there's absolutely no evidence they're out to end the world or even expose the SGC, they take a backseat to more urgent and immediate concerns. Homicidal snakes and mechanical bugs, off-world accidents, strange lights in the sky over Maryland, unexplained mass deaths in Missouri, and even bizarre weather patterns take precedence. They've never seen anything like the blade or the so-called demons before, and nothing similar gets reported to any of the agencies they ask to keep an ear out. Jack expects they've heard the last of the Winchesters and isn't sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.
When they do come up again, it's because they're being reported dead. Again. He doesn't take it too seriously. Of course, being officially declared dead had never stopped anyone on SG-1, so maybe his perception is a tiny bit skewed. Tiny bit.
Four years after the original incident, the team gets sent out to investigate a report of strange activity in a small town involving unidentified floating lights and several disappearances. While the others are looking into the physical locations of the sightings, he's been sent to smooth over things with the locals. When the sheriff informs him there are already FBI agents on the case and leads him to the file room for introductions, he immediately recognizes the two overly tall not-quite-as-young-anymore men in cheap suits with their heads bowed over a file.
"Aw, crap. Winchesters."
Both of them tense up warily and their heads shoot up in unison to look at him a little wide-eyed. Then there's a pause as Dean squints at him, clearly searching his recollection, before his expression clears and he elbows his brother before declaring gleefully, "It's the bona fide real life X-files Colonel, Sam!"
Dean expression transforms into a smirk directed at Jack before he asks, "Hey, can you get us Colonel Danning's autograph? Wormhole X-Treme! was such a great show. Very realistic."
Considering he'd never told Dean a damn thing about the SGC, Jack can already feel the headache forming behind his eyes. Seriously, he thinks, definitely not for the first and probably not for the last time, somebody up there hates him.