No Satisfaction
By San Antonio Rose
Cover art by Matchboximpala

Chapter 1
Ring a Ding Dillo

After the IMF's mission in Effingham, Illinois, in the fall of 1969 culminated in the bizarre death of Gunnar Herjulfsen and the complete crackup of Eric Schachtschneider, nee Erich von Waffenschmidt, Jim Phelps had had to come to grips with the fact that Sam and Dean Winchester's beliefs might not be wholly irrational. He wasn't ready to grant their views complete credence, but at minimum, they seemed to be magnets for the inexplicable. There was no way a human or a wild animal could have killed Herjulfsen, who had been alone in a cell in the Effingham jail at the time of his death—yet his body had been mangled and his heart stolen by something with some degree of intelligence. The Winchesters blamed the daevas Herjulfsen had supposedly been controlling; Jim... just didn't know what to think.

Jim did have to credit Sam and Dean on one point, though. They knew their stuff. They could spot a fraud a mile away, and they knew how to safely orchestrate a fake haunting or other supernatural event if a superstitious criminal or spy needed to be broken. Once they even did the research needed to fake a summoning spell—one that wouldn't accidentally summon something dangerous. Before long, anytime a mission briefing revealed that a target had even slight inclinations toward the occult, Jim automatically called in the Winchesters. Most of the time, they were the first to point out that nothing actually supernatural was happening.

Most of the time.

But once in a while...

Being the IMF's walking two-volume set of Encyclopedia Monsterica was getting boring, Dean reflected as yet another mission briefing rolled along in July of 1971. The mark this time, Carl Medlin, was a wannabe wizard with a degree in psychology and a mind control device, or so the Secretary thought. In December, Medlin had launched some kind of minor cult, the Order of the Black Horse, on twenty acres or so of a former plantation outside Baltimore, and it had since become apparent that he was using the cult to scam people into not only signing over all their worldly possessions but also coughing up classified information. Dean could see some women finding the guy attractive; he was blond, blue-eyed, medium height, kind of stocky. But somehow he would have looked more at home in a pinstripe suit and fedora than the ridiculous guru-esque oatmeal-colored linen suit his file picture showed him wearing.

Dean almost quit listening to Jim's briefing as he started running through options for exposing that kind of idiot. It probably meant using Dana as bait—doe-eyed, freckle-faced Dana, who'd been with the team for almost a year but was still more 90-pound girl than femme fatale in Dean's eyes, even if she did have guts. Jo wouldn't have gotten captured or kidnapped nearly as often as Dana had been in the last year, and no one could have mistaken Jo for sixteen when she was twenty-five. Not with a gun in her hand.

"Now," said Jim, starting to circle the living room again as he handed out more pictures, "we believe the occult rituals Medlin is engaging in are a cover for his more mechanical mind control. We're not certain whether he's using a drug like B-230 or some kind of electronic device, but it seems that whatever it is, it's connected to the ring he always wears." And Jim handed the last photo, a close-up of said ring, to Dean to share with Sam.

The brothers looked and swore in unison. The ring was far too familiar—silver band, huge black stone.

"No," Sam breathed. "No, no, it... it can't be..."

Jim paused. "Something wrong?"

Dean swallowed hard and looked up at him. "I... 'scuse me, Jim. I need to call Loki. Privately."

Jim looked concerned, given that they hadn't needed Gabriel on an IMF mission since Effingham, but nodded. "All right. You can use the upstairs phone."

Dean nodded and headed up the stairs to Jim's bedroom.

No sooner had he closed the door, however, than Gabriel appeared, looking grim. "Sorry, Deano. You're not wrong. It is Famine's ring."

Dean swore quietly. "How the hell..."

"How do you think?"

"Crossroads deal?"

"Close. Once in a blue moon Famine decides to go into business for himself. Not sure how it worked in this case, whether the crossroads demon acted as the middleman or not. But the human gets the ring and its power for a set number of years, and when he dies—at any point up to and including the second the deal expires—Famine gets to eat his soul."

Dean shuddered. "We can't take this hunt. Sammy..."

Gabriel stepped closer. "Sam fought back. Yeah, he slipped under extreme pressure, but Sam not only made himself stop but also took down Famine himself. This ring isn't like Death's; even on Famine's hand, its power is far more limited in intensity and scope right now, with Luci in the box. It's more limited still when it's worn by a human. You and Sam know how to cope when it's at full strength. It'll be easier this time." He lowered his voice even further. "But what about the team? What about Paris, especially? You know what that thing does to humans—what would it do to a shifter? Not to mention Dana; she's a giant question mark, from what I can tell."

Dean paced away for a moment, not wanting to admit Gabriel had a point but unable to escape the question. Then he turned back to Gabriel. "So why can't you do it? Keep all of us out of the line of fire."

"Witness Protection, remember? Famine can't know I'm involved. I'd be pushing it just taking the ring at the end and getting out."

Dean sighed. "Okay, supposing we stay in. The Secretary's going to want the ring destroyed. Can we do that?"

"Sure. Fake ring is easy, and so is a bait-and-switch."

"No, I mean... really destroy it."

"Dean, if we do that and if, in spite of everything we've done, someone pops the lock on the Cage..."

Dean sighed again, more heavily. "Can you hide it, then? Like, hide it so it's impossible to find in the next century or two?"

"It can't stay hidden forever."

"That's not what I asked."

Now it was Gabriel's turn to sigh. "I'll do what I can, yeah. But I won't be responsible if doing that throws history off course."

"You mean more than it already is?"

"It won't—it can't prevent some famines from happening. Most calamities don't require a Horseman's oversight. But there may be some that won't go the same route if Famine is weakened even further than he already is."

"Well, then, Atropos can figure out how to set it straight. All I'm worried about is keeping the Cage locked."

Gabriel nodded slowly. "Okay, then. It's a deal."

"You comin' in for the rest of the briefing?"

"Nah, you guys can handle it. I'll be on call, though. Jim's got my phone number, although he doesn't know it yet."

Dean nodded. "Gotcha. Thanks, dude."

Gabriel nodded back and vanished. Dean took a deep breath, let it out again, and headed back to the others.

"What'd Loki say?" Sam asked as soon as Dean was visible from the living room.

"We're right."

Sam cursed quietly and buried his face in his hands. Paris squirmed a little, and Barney and Willy exchanged a concerned look. Jim and Dana, who were now sitting on opposite ends of the same couch, just looked confused.

"I... take it that's bad?" Dana ventured.

"Worse," Sam replied through his hands.

"It's not at full strength," Dean noted. "Loki thinks you'll be okay."

"You think I want to go anywhere near that thing? You think—"

"Sam."

Sam looked up, his eyes haunted and miserable, as Dean sat down. "I can't forget it. I can't." And he shuddered.

Dean knew exactly what he meant. All the changes they'd made to the timeline, all the brain reboots that had followed, none had been able to erase all the mental scars of the Apocalypse. And Dean couldn't forget that disastrous confrontation with Famine, either.

"I know, Sammy," he said quietly. "I get it. I don't want that, either. But dude, we have to. We're, like, the only hunters alive who've got any experience with this."

Sam managed not to curl in on himself completely, but mainly because a) they were in public and b) Dean put his arm around Sam's shoulders.

Jim cleared his throat. "Would you mind explaining to the rest of us?"

Dean sighed. "You want the truth or something you'll believe?"

"We need the truth. We can decide what to believe later."

Dean glanced at Sam and nodded. "You've heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?"

The other men sat up a little straighter.

"Which version?" Jim asked.

"War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death."

"Yes, personifications of signs that will point to the end of the world."

"Not personifications. They're real beings. Death's locked up in a box Downstairs—although honestly, I'm not sure why. I mean, he's powerful, but he's a neutral. Anyway, the other three are loose topside. But what the legends don't say is that each Horseman has a ring of power." Dean nodded toward the photo sitting on the coffee table in front of Sam. "That's Famine's."

Willy leaned forward. "You mean Medlin is really Famine?"

"No, Famine's an old dude on oxygen, rides around in a black car with a bunch of stunt demons, and he's always complaining about how hungry he is. This guy's human. But with Famine's ring, he's got a portion of Famine's powers."

"Which are?" Jim prompted.

"The ring intensifies the deepest craving of anyone who comes near it," Sam answered. "Sometimes it's for food, yeah, but it could be for sex, could... could be an addiction." He shivered again.

Dean rubbed his shoulder. "Hey. We can ask Loki to put sigils up."

Sam nodded jerkily.

Barney tilted his head a little. "So what you're saying is, Medlin uses the ring to create intense cravings in his followers and then promises fulfillment if they give him what he wants."

"Pretty much, yeah," Sam said. "And even... even if it's not at full strength, like Loki said... most people can't hold out. It's like you're starving, like you've been starving so long you're half mad. You—you don't think, you just..." He shivered so hard, the couch creaked.

Dean pulled him closer. "Sammy. It won't be that bad this time. Loki promised."

"Dean..."

"Look, go call him, okay? Talk it over with him. But I'm tellin' you, I don't know that we've got a choice. I think we gotta take one for the team here."

Sam frowned, looked at Paris, and looked back at Dean. Dean nodded, and Sam swore softly in resignation.

"Go call Loki."

Sam nodded and dragged himself upstairs, looking much smaller than a 6'4" 31-year-old Sasquatch had any right to look. The others were silent as they watched him go.

"I'm almost afraid to ask," Dana confessed once Sam was out of earshot.

Dean sighed. "Last time we went toe to toe with Famine himself. It was pretty brutal."

Jim frowned. "How brutal?"

"Guy who'd been on the wagon for twenty years drank himself to death inside of two days. And that was probably the least gruesome case."

Alarmed, Barney and Willy looked at Paris, who only paled but showed no other sign of knowing exactly why anyone would be worried about him.

But Dean didn't look away from Jim. "Look, Jim, I'll give it to you straight. It won't be that severe with a human wielding this thing, but it could still get bad. You guys could still find yourselves wantin' to do stuff you never dreamed you'd want—stuff you'd never think about doing on a normal day, a normal mission. You may not be able to keep that desire at bay for the entire mission. In the wrong circumstances, you could cave, no matter how much you think you won't. And it won't just be food; hell, you guys have seen me eat, so you know what it means when I say I lost my appetite when we were up against Famine. Like, completely, wasn't hungry at all. And there's no immunity to this thing, no way to protect yourself except to stay away."

"What was your craving?" Paris asked quietly.

Dean paused. "Let's just say it wasn't something Famine could use against me." That, in the end, was all that was relevant; he wasn't about to admit that according to Famine, he was too dead inside to want anything.

Some days he still thought that was true. Some days he still wished like hell that it was. Life was better now, his mental health improving with every reboot, but... post-Apocalyptic stress disorder wasn't something that just went away like a cold, even four years on.

Sam came back down while the others were still digesting what Dean had said. The abject misery in Sam's eyes had lost its abjectness but wasn't gone completely, yet Sam had his game face on and moved more confidently than he had on the way up to talk with Gabriel.

"You good now, Sam?" Dean asked as Sam sat down.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Loki... did what he could." Then he looked over at Jim. "Look, Jim, we'll take this mission ourselves. You guys don't have to come."

"No, I'm afraid I do," Jim replied. "You see, you two don't have the clearance to check Medlin's safe to determine what information stored there belongs to our government."

"And you don't believe us," Dean noted.

Jim raised his hands. "I didn't say that."

"What he also isn't saying," Barney added, "is that you guys need backup."

"And you're getting it," Willy agreed.

Sam looked back at Dean, who nodded once in approval. After Effingham—hell, even since that first mission that had gone so disastrously wrong in the Soviet satellite hellhole Dean wished he could forget as thoroughly as he'd forgotten its name—Barney and Willy were just about the only civilians the brothers knew they could trust with their lives on a hunt like this. Those two were good agents, sure, but they knew at least a fraction of the truth and believed it, and Barney had even stuck his toe into the waters of hunting far enough to understand it, although he was smart enough to stick to his usual lines of work and leave demons to the pros. They knew the truth about Paris, too, and were cool with it. Plus, both men were loyal to a fault. If they were determined to tag along on this hunt, there was no way the Winchesters could persuade them not to.

That wasn't to say that the brothers didn't trust Jim. He was a great guy, great agent, great strategist, one of the best when it came to IMF stuff; and after Effingham, he was more open-minded about the supernatural. He was just too much of a civilian, and Dean would have preferred not to have him involved. Still, if Jim was going to pull rank over clearance, he'd probably pull rank any other way he could, so there was no point in objecting.

So there was the core of the team they were stuck with. That left Dana and Paris to dissuade.

Yet before Dean could say a word, Jim turned to Dana. "Dana? What do you think?"

She shrugged. "I can't think what Medlin could use against me. I don't have any addictions that I know of. Maybe chocolate," she added with a laugh.

"Dana," Sam said gravely. "We saw a guy who'd gorged to death on Twinkies. We saw another man who'd boiled in hot oil because he was so desperate for French fries, he didn't even wait for them to come out of the fryer."

Her smile faltered. "B-but it's not that bad this time, right?"

Dean looked at Jim. "How many of Medlin's followers have died from overindulgence after breaking?"

"There have been a couple of heroin overdoses," Jim admitted slowly.

Dana looked worried for a moment, but then her face hardened. "Well. I don't do heroin. I'll be okay."

"Even if we have to use you as the bait?" Dean asked.

She nodded firmly. And before Dean could object, Jim nodded as well, closing the matter. Like it or not, Dana was coming with them.

"Paris?" Jim prompted then. "This won't be like what happened in Vienna, but it's still mind control. You think you can handle it this soon?"

Paris took a deep breath and let it out again. Dean had forgotten the reports about the team vacation back in October that had been derailed when Soviet agents caught and brainwashed Paris before he could meet up with the rest of the group—not that the brothers hadn't been invited to join the others in Switzerland, but Dean still hated to fly. The precise nature of the abandonment issues the enemy shrink had uncovered in Paris' mind had actually been left over from a past shift (probably the Rasputin-wannabe Vautrain, if Dean was any judge, or maybe the orphaned Stefan Zara), but the memory of his girlfriend's murder had been real, and the shrink had tried to use it to program Paris to kill Jim. It had almost worked, too.

But that wasn't the real issue here, and everyone but Jim and Dana knew it. The real question was whether Paris, as a son of the Alpha shifter, had enough control over his shifter nature to be able to keep its basest impulses in check for the duration of the mission.

"Would it help if I promise not to kill anyone?" Paris half-joked.

"Dude," the Winchesters chorused.

"I know, I know. I... will likely need support from the rest of the team. But with that support, yes, I believe I will be able to fulfill my role in this mission."

"What kind of support?" Jim asked in a tone that promised any kind of help Paris might need. "Space to talk?"

Paris nodded slowly. "To talk, yes, and possibly a space where you guys can put me under guard if necessary, at least until I can regain control of myself."

Dana frowned. "I wouldn't have thought you knew anything Medlin could use."

"I know enough to endanger the mission," Paris noted. "That in itself is reason for caution."

"It is indeed," Jim agreed. "But that's true for all of us. So Paris, if you're sure..."

Paris nodded. "As sure as I can be. Given the reason you called me for this one, you need me. And whether the ring really belongs to Famine or not, Medlin has to be stopped."

And that was the kicker. Even if the ring were a fake, they were still left with a man who was blackmailing people into giving up state secrets. And that had to stop, both for national security and for the sake of the victims. People's lives depended on their stopping him.

Hell, people's lives were always depending on what the Winchesters did. That had gotten old the first time they'd encountered the Croatoan virus—hell, it had been old since the day Dad died. Not for the first or last time, Dean wondered why it was so important for them to be the ones to fix everything, save everyone.

Jim nodded once. "All right. Since we're all in, let's continue."

Dean knew neither he nor Sam could help the heavy sigh that they both gave at that pronouncement. He just hoped Jim wouldn't hold it against them.