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
Nine

“Logan,” Dean says faintly. “You don’t by any chance have a twin do you?”

“This shouldn’t be physically possible,” Logan says staring off at his own retreating form.

“Right,” Dean says briskly, clapping his hands together. “I hate freaking shapeshifters.” He turns around heading back in the direction of the impala at a brisk pace.

Logan stands, frozen to the spot for a long minute before his brain catches up to Dean’s words. He jerks into motion suddenly, almost knocking himself to the ground in his haste to catch him. “Shapeshifter?” he sputters. “What makes you think it’s a shapeshifter. They say everyone has a twin out there.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “You know why they say that? Because there are freaking shapeshifters running around wearing people’s faces!” He stops walking and turns to face Logan. “Look, I’ve run into shifters before. First time bough me a rep as a deceased psycho killer. Second one framed me for a bank job and got the feds on my tail. So forgive me for being a little tense but I freaking hate shapshifters.”

Dean turns back, walks toward the impala and props open the trunk, rooting through his stash of weapons but Logan blinks, frozen to the spot. Another piece of the puzzle that is Dean Winchester slides into place. He has been wondering about this. Wondering how the serial killer from his memories matches up with the Dean Winchester before him now. He’s half convinced himself that his fabrication of Dean Winchester was pure fantasy--born of some need deep inside him and a borrowed name. But here before him is another link between the Dean Winchester of fantasy and the one of fact. Reality and fantasy are blurring into one being and Logan doesn’t know what to trust anymore. “You can’t kill him!” Logan blurts. “That’s me over there! Kill him and I’m gone too.”

Dean straightens up and turns around slowly. In his hand is a gun and a half dozen silver bullets. He loads the gun with quick precise moments and Logan closes his eyes and thinks of bullets tearing into his flesh. “I know what I saw, Logan,” Dean says. “That’s a shifter through and through. It’s not you. You’re the guy standing right in front of me and the only damn hunter I know who would sit back and let a monster stroll around wearing his face.”

This is death come to haunt him, Dean Winchester with his silver bullets and the man in the streets with the sniper rifle who’d pried Sophie Briganza out of his grip and left him to die.

He is going to die. And Dean might well be the thing that kills him.

“That’s not a shifter,” Logan protests even as Dean brushes past him, moving toward the Pavilion and the basketball game that Stanford will win by a point in overtime in a game that should have been a blow out but isn’t. Dean ignores him, moving resolutely through campus. Logan closes his eyes and plays the only card his has. “What about Sam?”

Dean freezes. The words hit their mark. It is still the only thing capable of getting a rise out of Dean Winchester. Logan has seen him kill a man. Has seen him stand calm in a town full of bodies, but mention his brother and the control is gone. This is Dean Winchester, Logan thinks. This is Dean, alive and fighting like he should be.

“What about Sam?” Dean growls.

“He’s not here,” Logan says. “He’s not here and no one’s dead so what’s his game. He wanted you here for something.”

“Of course Sam’s not here.” Dean says. “He’s never here. And the only thing I can do right now is focus on the job at hand. Now you can either shut up and help me or—“

“It’s not a shapeshifter, Dean,” Logan says. “I’m telling you. I can’t explain how but that kid is me! Kill that guy and you’re killing me!”

“That guy is not you!” Dean explodes. “Look I don’t know what kind of crazy little fantasy you cooked up in there but he’s not you!”

Logan feels cold suddenly. The world is spinning steadily and he can see it but he can’t find a place to hold on. “Fantasy,” he echoes.

“I do still have some friends out there,” Dean says. “I had one of them looking you up while you were asleep in the car. Logan Michaels signed into the Shady Pines Psychiatric Facility May of last year. My source says he checked in hearing voices. Thought the television was talking to him. Thought he could hear the future. Now I get this funny little memory tugging me. Didn’t you tell me one time you were from the future? That it was 2019 and you got shot and you woke up here. Sounded a hell of a lot like—“

“I’m not Logan Michaels,” Logan interrupts. “I’m not. I’m Logan Cale and that kid going to the game over there. That’s Logan Cale too.”

“Do you have any idea just how crazy you sound right now?” Dean demands. “That’s a shapeshifter. You’re a hunter. You’re not from the future and that kid over there is not your past self.”

“None of this is real,” Logan whispers. “This is all in my head.”

“Really awesome job of convincing me of your sanity there, Cale,” Winchester says, shaking his head. “What kills me about this is I was actually starting to trust you. I thought you were on my side.”

“I am on your side,” Logan says, squinting at Dean through the darkness. The contacts are starting to bother his eyes. It is a tiny little inconvenience that he never would have allowed if he’d designed this world. “Dean I promise you—“

“You don’t even think I’m real,” Dean cuts him off. “So nothing you say right now really matters.”

Logan falls silent, staring at the ground because it’s true. This shouldn’t be happening. His own damn hallucination is giving him the guilt trip. There is something seriously wrong with this scene. Dean swallows, takes a deep breath and says, “So I’m going to go take care of the shifter and you can—“ He gestures vaguely with the hand holding the gun. “You can go back to doing whatever the hell you batshit crazy people do.”

And Dean leaves. Leaves Logan standing stunned outside the impala that has become a second home in a time that used to be his but isn’t anymore. “Stanford beats Yale,” he calls to Dean’s retreating back. “One point on a last second buzzer beater.”

He doesn’t know if Dean hears him because he doesn’t turn back, just disappears into the crowd of people with his gun tucked into his waistband. A student with a red face and a Stanford t-shirt brushes past Logan’s shoulder and says, “Dude, no way the game’s that close.”

Logan gives him a tight smile and then remembers that Dean Winchester has a gun and is looking to kill the Logan Cale of 2009. Except that never happened. Logan would have remembered if it happened would have remembered a Dean Winchester coming after him with a gun. Dean can’t kill him here because he isn’t dead. He thinks.

He hopes.

He needs to get into this basketball game but has no idea of how to go about it. He doesn’t have a ticket and Deans the one who takes care of most of the cash. He’s got about twenty on him, probably not enough to get him a seat. The car’s is locked and no matter how pissed he is with Dean, the other man would probably decapitate him if he broke a window to get into the car.

He pulls the wallet out of his pocket to check his funds. Just the twenty. The rest was in his duffle bag in the trunk. He puts the wallet back in his pocket and feels something else. His badge. The fake FBI badge that says he is Special Agent Foyle. He turns it over in his hand and takes a deep breath.

He can do this.

At the gates to the Pavilion there is a student scanning off tickets. When he asks for Logan’s, he flashes the fake badge. The kid gets a wide-eyed panicked look and signals for a security officer.

“My name is Agent Foyle,” Logan tells the officer with the brisk professionalism he associates with pre-Pulse governmental agencies. “I have reason to believe that there is a fugitive from justice inside the building. I’m in pursuit. I need full access to your facilities.”

The security guard’s eyes widen. “Fugitive in the building? Is he dangerous? Do we need to evacuate the students?”

“Action such as that would only serve to alert the subject of our presence, I simply need access to the building.”

The guard makes a move to let him through but hesitates and narrows his eyes. “Why were we not informed of this before hand? It seems like Stanford should have been notified if there was a dangerous fugitive in the area.”

Logan falters. “This is a highly classified situation that requires precision.”

“Yeah,” the guard says. “Best story I’ve heard today but I’m still not buying it. I’m going to have to ask you to leave or I will escort you off the premises. Next time you should at least try to dress the part.”

Logan gapes at him wide eyed. This doesn’t happen to Dean. Winchester has the flair for deception, the ability to sell the lie. Logan had had better luck with this in his own time but it had been easier then. Cash talked. He just didn’t have any cash on hand.

What was he supposed to do? He can’t get in. Not that it should matter. None of this is freaking real. His name is Logan Cale and he was shot and he’s lying in a coma in 2019 not riding shotgun to Dean Winchester ten years in the past.

All he wants to do is go back home. He’s done with this place, done caring about it. He can’t do this forever.

He finds himself sitting in the middle of the quad staring up at the dark sky. It seems like there are fewer stars here, the luxury of light pollution. Logan can feel the blades of grass under his hands. There’s a sharp undercurrent to the air like there’s a storm coming in the difference.

This is a dream, he thinks, it has to be a dream because he isn’t crazy.

So why can’t he wake up?

“Poor Logan,” a voice says.

Logan’s eyes pop open and the girl, the demon girl in the red dress smiling sweetly at him.

“I don’t like broken toys,” the girl says. “It’s no fun if you don’t play along.”

“I’m done,” Logan tells her, burning his face in his hands. “This isn’t real and I’m not playing your game anymore.”

“So end it,” the girl sneers. “Take it back. Banish the past to the past.”

“I don’t know how,” Logan growls.

The girl smiles, reaching a hand out to touch his cheek. “The best part about falling is waking up.”

Logan makes a swipe for the girl. He wants to hurt her. Wants to kill her for taunting him. He’s never been this angry with anything before. He wasn’t this angry the day the Pulse destroyed everything. He wasn’t this angry when Max turned her back on the cause. He’s never been this angry before.

But the girl is gone before his fists hit flesh, disappeared into nothing like she hadn’t been there to begin with. And she hadn’t been there to begin with. Logan realizes with a start. She hadn’t been there because this isn’t real none of it is. Not the girl and not the monsters and not Dean Winchester or the other Logan Cale sitting in Maples Pavilion unaware of the drama around him. This isn’t real. This is a dream. And Logan knows how to wake up from dreams.

Which is how he finds himself, almost three hours later standing on the roof of Stanford’s tallest building looking for the courage to jump.

No one notices him. There are people still streaming out of the basketball game even though it had ended more than half an hour ago and no one even thinks to look up to the roof—to look up and see Logan standing on the edge. His stomach is threatening to turn inside out. He is terrified of heights. Has been terrified of heights since his mother perished in a plane crash when he was twelve years old.

He thinks of his mother’s face. Reaching out and telling him to come with her. He spreads his arms wide and looks down. The wind is stinging his cheeks. He feels the stirrings of vertigo clawing at his gut. He can do this. This is all a dream and in a dream you always wake up right before you hit the ground. He has to sever ties with this reality before he can ever hope to get home.

“Logan!” a voice says from behind him.

He looks over his shoulder without moving from the edge. It’s Dean standing twenty yards away from him with a look of outright panic on his face. “What the hell are you doing?”

“This is a dream,” Logan tells him. “And you always wake up right before you hit the ground.”

“I’m a little offended that you don’t think I’m real,” Dean says, forcing out a dry laugh as he edges a step closer. “But you’ve got to back up and think this through.”

“No,” Logan says. “I’ve thought it through. Here’s what I know. It was 2019 and I was transporting a witness to a secure location and my car got jumped and I got shot and now it’s 2009 but it’s not. Not really. I was twenty years old in 2009 and 2009 already happened which means I’m dreaming and none of this is real.”

“You were right,” Dean says. “About your double. Got a look at the kid through a video feed. No lens flare around eyes. Managed to stumble past him with the EMF. Nothing. Kid’s completely clean. Looks too young to be your doppelganger. Too old to be your son. I can’t figure it out for the life of me.”

“He’s me,” Logan says. “Ten years ago give or take.”

Dean shakes his head. “And you know the weirdest thing. Stanford won by a point. Last second shot. How could you possibly know that?”

“I’ve been here before,” Logan says. “This already happened.”

“The hell of it is, I think I believe you.”

Relief crashes down on Logan like a tidal wave. It shouldn’t matter this much. It shouldn’t make a lick of difference if his hallucination decides to trust him or treat him like a crazy person. This is all a dream after all.

But it does matter. Logan looks at the ground and then back to Dean. He needs to get out of here before he loses himself in this place. He’s losing 2019 with every second he flounders. “Then you know why I’ve got to jump. If I’ve been dreaming, I’ve got to wake myself up and if you’re about to die in a dream, you wake up right? This could be just what I need to get back home.”

“Could be,” Dean says. “Logan what if this is real. What if you’re standing on this roof ready to kill yourself and this is real?”

Logan wants this to be real but he can’t imagine how it could possibly be so. The Pulse and corruption he understands but monsters, time travel and Dean Winchester—this is over his head.

“This is all a dream,” he repeats. “It’s got to be.”

Dean swallows, edging toward him. “Look, I’ve been where you are. The whole world around me twisted and wrong. And I could tell when it was a dream. I wanted to stay. Don’t get me wrong I wanted to stay more then anything but I knew it was a dream. So I ask you, does this feel like a dream? If the answer’s yes, I won’t stop you from taking the plunge. But if there’s even the barest shadow of a doubt in your mind, you’ve got to get the hell off that ledge and we can figure this out the right way.”

Logan is teetering on the edge. He looks down and feels dizzy. He doesn’t know if he can do this. But this is his way out. The definitive step. The best part about falling is waking up.

“Want me to tell you what I think, Logan?” Dean asks softly. “I think the only way to get back to 2019 is to survive.”

He wants to jump, but he’s not sure. He closes his eye and shakes himself, trying to shock himself into waking. But when he opens them again, it’s still 2009 and he’s still standing terrified on the roof. He hates heights. He turns to face Dean and takes a step away from the ledge. Relief sweeps across Dean’s face and he claps a hand on Logan’s back and says, “Time travel, huh?” He lets out a snort of laughter that Logan finds entirely inappropriate. “That’s even funnier then vampires.”

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Current plan is chapter 10 goes up Sunday and 11 (aka the last chapter) on Monday. See you then!

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