Illegitimi non carborundum

Title: World Behind Windows
Rating: PG-13ish
Disclaimer: I can lay no claims on DA, SPN or Life on Mars
SPOILERS: DA pilot, SPN through season four, plot premise taken from Life on Mars (UK)
Summary: Logan gets shot. That’s when things get strange.
Notes:For those of you who know LoM, it might be of interest that Logan is Sam Tyler, Dean is Gene Hunt, Bobby is Hyde, Lillith is the Test Card Girl and Sam Winchester’s disappearance has something to do with this whole mess.

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World Behind Windows
Five

Logan doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Of course his mother is here. There’s no reason it wouldn’t be his mother crawling out of his subconscious to meet him. “You’re not real,” Logan says firmly. “You’re not real so go away.”

“Logan,” she says. “Logan, I’m home. I’m here to take you home.”

Every instinct screams at him to run. His skin is crawling. He feels somehow disconnected, like he’s not really here, (and he’s not really here. Not really). “Come with me, Logan,” she says. “I’m sorry I missed New Years.”

He has to stop himself before he says it’s not even Thanksgiving. He has to stop himself and remind him that this isn’t real. He has to stop.

His mother looks just like he remembers her with long dark hair and wide blue eyes. She was wearing a tattered pair of black dress pants and a blue blouse. She could have walked out of his nightmares. January 4th 2000 when the plane went down. Not 2009 and definitely not 2019. She shouldn’t be here. It didn’t make sense even from this world’s standpoint.

There is no such thing as ghosts.

No such thing.

“Come on, Logan,” she says, holding out a hand. “Let me make it up to you.”

Logan takes her hand and everything fades around him. The sounds around him are muting, the colors slowly loosing their intensity. He feels cold. The hand in his hand doesn’t feel weird. He blinks and is overcome by the strange feeling of movement. He is on his back, staring as the lights flashed overhead. There is something on his face. He can’t breathe.

Someone page Sam Carr! We’re losing him!

He tries to draw a breath but he can’t. He can’t.

“Get down!” Winchester screams.

Logan doesn’t get down so much as collapse, a pain ripping through his back like a bullet chewing through flesh. He hits the ground roughly and all of a sudden hospital lights are bleeding into stars which are bleeding into nothing but white and he can’t breathe.

Someone is calling his name. He doesn’t know where it’s coming from. He doesn’t know when it’s coming from. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. His mother’s face hovers over him. Winchester is shouting his name. Snatches of medical jargon float past his ears. He hears a gunshot. He hears his heart beating. He sees white flooding in all around him. He can’t--

--The world restarts. Logan shoots bold upright. Air floods his lungs. He coughs at the strange sensation and tries to blink away the whiteness all around him.

“Logan?” a voice says. “Cale? You with me? Was starting to think you might be dead back there.”

He is in a car. The back seat of a ’67 Chevy Impala as the scenery whips by his window. There’s snow coating the ground. Winchester’s in the front seat which means it’s still 2009. He touches his neck, feeling for his pulse. “I’m alive,” he says, more for his own benefit then anything else.

“Damn lucky you got out alive,” Winchester says, eyeing Logan in the rearview mirror. Logan can’t help but thinking this must be an echo of his world. “The hell were you thinking?! Standing there like an idiot while that ghost worked her mojo on you?”

Logan puts both hands on his forehead. He has a splitting headache. He’s heard things don’t hurt in dreams, but this feels real. This lets him know he’s still alive.

“Cale?”

“Mom,” Logan mutters. He can see her if he closes his eyes. Can see the dark hair and light eyes.

“Mom?” Winchester echoes. “You know she was thirty five when she died ten years ago. And you’re—“ He waves a hand vaguely, failing to come up with the numbers. “The ages don’t add up. The name thing’s a weird coincidence but the ages don’t add up. Must be a distant relative or something.”

“I mean she looked like my mom,” Logan says. This isn’t real he reminds himself. This is insanity, but he’s never had a dream this tangible and he’s starting to care. There’s something growing inside him, some insidious need to make it right. And that scares him more then anything else. “What happened to her?”

“The ghost?” Winchester asks. Logan nods even though there’s no such thing. “I called a friend of a friend in her home town. Took care of the remains. Shouldn’t be bothering anyone anymore.”

“And after that?” Logan asks. “What happens to her after that?”

The needle on the speedometer is edging up past eighty. The highway is deserted except for their car. A long moment passes and then Winchester says. “I don’t know. We just deal in spooks. Anything after is above our pay grade. Pretend she went into the light. Pretend she’s gone. Pretend whatever the hell you want just don’t make that kind of mistake again. I can’t deal with that.”

A light. Logan remembers the light. Remembers how it enveloped everything and burned at his insides. He doesn’t want to die. And if that means staying right here, that’s fine by him. He can play this game. “Miss me too much, huh?” he teases.

Winchester laughs. “More like I wasn’t looking forward to cleaning you off of the Impala.”

Logan forces a smile to his lips and finds it comes with ease. “You going to tell me why we’re on the road instead of taking me to a hospital?”

“I don’t like hospitals,” Winchester says.

Logan shivers. “Me neither,” he admits. “Never stopped me from using one if someone needed it though. What’s the hurry then?”

Winchester stares out at the road at the acres of scenery blanketed in a soft snow. There hadn’t been any snow on the ground when he’d fallen asleep. “Sam’s in Wyoming,” Winchester says.

Something about the placement of this, the time sets alarm bells ringing in the back of Logan’s head but he can’t remember why. There is something important out here. Something bigger then the note still nestled in the folds of his jacket whispering, Find Sam Winchester. “What’s the rush?” Logan asks. “Won’t Sam just wait for us?”

Winchester waits a beat before answering. “It’s complicated.”

Logan very nearly laughs. This world is complicated. Winchester is complicated. Logan’s situation is complicated. He has trouble thinking of how anything could make it more so. “Try me,” Logan says.

Winchester takes a deep breathe. “How much did Bobby tell you?”

Logan considers lying for a second. Considers inventing all sorts of detail stemming from his cover and what he is supposed to do here. But he can’t do it. He doesn’t have all the facts and the last time he moved without all the facts a bullet took him back to 2009. He doesn’t know how to sell a lie in a world where ghosts exist even if it crawled out of the depths of his own mind. “Not much,” Logan says. “I think he was more worried about you.”

It is the right thing to say. Logan is good at reading people and he’d guessed a while back that this Bobby character had been close with to Winchester brothers but now he isn’t. It’s not a huge leap to suspected betrayal.

Winchester keeps his eyes on the road but Logan recognizes the tension in his frame so he is quiet and he waits. After a few miles, Winchester says, “It’s been the same thing every town. I get the call and I go and I get there too late.”

“What happened?” Logan asks.

Dean is shaking. Not a lot but enough for Logan to notice and in that moment Logan is sure that the public has it all wrong about Dean Winchester. He doesn’t know what Dean is but serial killer is no longer on the list. Logan knows a crook when he sees one. He’s made it his life’s work to spot corruption in people who generally appear clean and whatever else you might say about Dean Winchester, he is not a bad guy. He is not a serial killer.

It has to be important. There has to be some reason his mind has decided to present him with a killer who is not really a killer and the idyllic pre-Pulse world that is infested with ghosts. It doesn’t make any sense.

More and more often, Logan is starting to think that there is no pattern to this world. No answers hidden in empty graves. More and more, he is starting to think he is simply insane.

“I’m too late,” Winchester says. “I get to the town a day behind and Sam’s gone and people are dead and I know Bobby thinks Sammy’s the one who did it.”

“Thinks?” Logan repeats.

Winchester flinches. “He saw it. He says he saw it. Sam had left a few days before and by the time I got there, Bobby was ready to shoot to kill. I stopped him. Haven’t said two words to him since. He let me be for a few weeks and then started sending guys like you along. Said no one should be doing this job alone. The hell of it is, I might appreciate the company if I didn’t know they were all looking to off my brother at first sight.”

In the backseat, Logan stares at his hands and thinks of a gun loaded with silver bullets and how it would feel to pull the trigger. He can’t think of anything to say.

“So,” Winchester says, knuckles white on the steering wheel, “that’s the story. Bobby thinks my brother’s gone dark side. Me, I don’t care what happened either way because I’m going to get him back.”

There’s incredible force in that sentiment. Something Logan isn’t expecting. And in that moment, he envies Dean Winchester just a little because Dean’s got complete faith in someone. He’s used to having a partner, someone he can lean on.

And Logan’s never had that before. Sure he’s worked with people before, but Eyes Only is a solo operation. He has secrets. He takes the risks. He doesn’t trust anyone.

Dean trusts his brother. It might be misplaced. It might get him killed but Dean trusts his brother. Dean believes in something.

Logan doesn’t have that. And up to this moment, he didn’t realize how badly he wanted it.

Winchester takes a long, shuddering breath. “And here’s the thing,” he says. “I’m going to find my brother and I’m going to save him. If you’re just along to put a bullet in his brain, I’ll drop you off right here because if you so much as look at Sammy the wrong way, I will end you. You understand?”

“Yeah,” Logan says. He’s never experienced that sort of blind loyalty before but yeah, he understands.

Winchester punches the accelerator and the snow whips silently past the windshield.

***

The town is full of corpses.

It’s not a big town. Not by a long shot. Only about a hundred people if Logan has to guess but that doesn’t make it any better because each and every one of them is dead.

The deaths are neat as far as deaths go. The blanket of snow coating the ground and the frigid temperatures make the blood slow to pool so the stab wounds and the slit throats look ridiculously neat. The sun is out and it bounces off the pristine white snow making the whole world seem unnaturally bright and overexposed.

Winchester walks through the town in a daze, moving from house to house, checking every store. Logan doesn’t know what he expects to find. Maybe his brother’s beaten body curled up next to all the other.

This isn’t real, Logan thinks, trying to keep the nausea at bay. It isn’t working. Logan can feel the wind stinging at his face. He can hear the crunch of Winchester’s boots on the new fallen snow. He can smell the scent of blood and sulfur that hangs, omnipresent in the air. This isn’t real but this feels real. This feels all too real.

“Dean?” he calls. “Dean, what the hell happened here?”

Dean kicks in the door on another house, enters, reaches, exits. “Demons,” he says. “God damned demons took out the entire freaking town.

Stuff like this doesn’t happen in the world before the Pulse. He would have remembered something this gruesome. This isn’t real. Someone would have noticed. This would have been national news.

“What do we do?” Logan asks. He is frozen, rooted to the spot. This isn’t real.

Dean walks up to another porch, opens another door, confirms another death. His face is completely neutral. “We burn this place to the ground.”

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