fic: SPN, for Leiral.
fandom: Supernatural
author: Keiran
title: It’s Worth It
rating: 13
warnings: spoilers for Jus in Belo
summary: Alternate ending for Jus in Belo, not perhaps literally what leiral requested here, but, I hope, close. :)
Many thanks to yami_tai for betaing.
A broken arm. Concussion. Cracked ribs, judging by how difficult it is to draw breath. A laceration from shoulder to mid-back, plus massive bruising, just about everywhere. All of that, and Viktor still considers himself lucky. He feels good about himself, life and everything. Because it means that he is limping away from the burning station, apparently unnoticed, having learned a couple things that might save his life again next time.
He now knows demons make mistakes. Blasting him straight through the backdoor (which was a feat in itself) was a mistake.
He also knows demons are drama queens. And if his work at the FBI taught him anything, it is that drama queens, no matter how ingenious or insane, can be brought down.
Henricksen leans against a tree and breathes shallowly. He can’t hear pursuit and his skin isn’t crawling, so hopefully he’s safe for the moment. He gathers himself and plunges into the undergrowth. You cannot be too careful, dealing with any enemy, much less an unknown one.
He is stumbling and can barely see straight when he reaches the other side of the run-down park. His breath is coming in short gasps, which really makes it hard to focus beyond putting one foot in front of the other.
He should be going to hospital. He aches, is tired and there is long road ahead of him.
“Fuck,” Henricksen mutters testing his arm. The bone seems to be in place. It’s just a fracture, he concludes. The laceration is bleeding, but a sheet swiped from a garden line makes a good makeshift bandage. From what he can see of it, it looks worse than it is, he decides in the end.
He needs to move. Needs to make use of his credit card before it’s tracked… Wait, that’s not right. He doesn’t need to hurry, does he. He would be assumed dead. Henricksen pauses mid step and stares ahead, dumbstruck. Right here and now, he is facing a career altering choice, battered and bruised, leaning against a white picket fence. From what he saw, that one time he dared to look back, little was left of the building, besides smoking ruins. Not much chance of finding enough of the bodies to confirm their identity. Likely they wouldn’t even find enough to make an estimate of how many were killed. That was his last confirmed location, he would be written off as dead.
The good little FBI agent, escaping a lethal situation, would be calling in, reporting a freaky little white girl, aged ten to twelve, who blew up the station with a flick of her wrist. Yeah, that would go over well.
If, on the other hand, he goes with his gut, he has no one to report to. He has no one to call for backup. He is a shooting duck in a war he doesn’t understand. There would be no rulebook to cover his back, there would be no one to turn to.
Henricksen trudges forward, past a parked vehicle. His own car is probably still smoking in the station’s parking lot. That thought gives him pause. “Fuck!” he allows himself a muted scream. His goddamned car! Oh, that if nothing else needs exacting some vengeance for. Viktor stalks into the middle of the road and waves like mad at a cab that happens to be driving by.
“Stacco motel,” he tells the driver. He tosses the man a twenty when he gets out and makes his way to his room. Luckily the keys are still in his pocket. It’s a few moments’ work to grab his duffel bag and get the hell out. Reidy’s car is still there. “Thanks, man,” Henricksen offers to the emptiness accompanying the slamming of the motel door. Even in death Reidy came to his aid - he’d always left the keys lying around when he didn’t use his car.
An hour to the minute after the explosion tore the world from underneath his feet Viktor Henricksen leaves Monument, Colorado. His arm gives him trouble and he is well aware that driving with the concussion is not a good idea. He has to hurry though, if he wants to catch them. A day’s rest is out of question. Even an hour might be too long.
His hurry is rewarded seventy miles down the road. As he slows down in front of another hole in the wall motel, he sees the black Impala, sleek in the shadows of the evening. Good for him, since his head has really begun to throb. The smell of blood always made him faintly nauseous, and now, combined with the concussion and the driving, Viktor hopes no one lost anything around the bushes, because he can’t stop the retching once he’s out of the car.
He straightens soon enough, feeling marginally better, and tidies his clothes. Useless, but he makes the effort. He walks to the door and knocks SOS. The walls are thin and Henricksen can’t help but smirk, knowing enough about the two boys now to guess what’s going on. Guns are being drawn and defenses are being mounted. Then the door opens and Henricksen, to his utmost surprise - a complete freak out, to be precise - is pulled into a hug, by Sam Winchester.
“Christo,” Sam says, and Viktor pulls away, awkwardly. Something wet is dripping down his neck, he cannot wait to get it off.
“Viktor, actually.” He waves at Dean who nods and relaxes his grip on the gun. The item on his neck turns out to be a soaked Kleenex. “The hell?”
“It’s just holy water. We needed to be sure,” Dean says, breaking eye contact with Sam. “How did you get out?”
“Dumb luck, mostly. Nancy-” and damn, it’s difficult to say the name, “Nancy’s body shielded me from that girl. The explosion then blasted me straight through the door.”
He’s not keen on talking about it, but understands the need for information just the same. “There were only us three at the station. Us and the bodies, about ten. The civilians had mostly gone home by then.”
“Civilians?” There’s a note of surprise bordering on desperation in Dean’s voice. Viktor isn’t sure what to make of it, but he nods anyway.
“All the townspeople. They were bruised, some of them, but otherwise fine. The officers though, they all had their throats cut.”
“Demon work,” Sam says. He too seems relieved.
“So what happens now?” Henricksen asks after a period of silence.
The Winchesters exchange loaded looks. Henricksen knows they know. It’s too bloody obvious. “You really don’t want to do this, man,” Dean says eventually. “It’s hard. Most of the time you’re on your own up against the world.”
Henricksen rolls his eyes. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
“I’m just saying it now. Because later, it’s kinda hard to change your mind,” Dean grins, the rascally smile that Viktor was always tempted to punch off his face. Now it’s almost endearing. “Works better than any drug.”
“It’s worth it,” Sam says in the background. “It can hurt like hell, but it is worth it.”
Dean ducks his head and moves to the duffels. He digs around for a minute, and comes up with a leather-bound notebook. “Get him started on the basics, Sam,” he says, right before the door closes behind him.
Unspoken is the fact that Viktor cannot stay with them any longer than necessary. Despite coming out of the siege relatively unharmed, he knows he is not ready to face demons. He doubts the boys are, either, but he doesn’t say anything. Sam helps him to patch up the laceration on his back after binding and splinting his arm. The cut’s not deep, thankfully. Sam starts talking as he applies the antiseptic. He talks of ghosts, ghouls, and monsters. He talks about folklore (“Pay attention to lore, local or otherwise. It’s more true than you know.”), local legends, how to distil the useful information from the myth built around it. Mostly, he talks about getting rid of them.
Salt and burn the source, salt and burn, repeat, over and over again. “If nothing else, the burning slows them down, gives you time to rethink your options,” Sam says.
Dean returns inside an hour, holding about a hundred bound pages. “It’s a little haphazard, but there’s plenty about most evil creatures you might encounter. How to kill them, their modus operandi, that kind of shit.”
They say their goodbyes soon afterwards and Viktor can see the loneliness of the job already. Even the allies have to stay apart. Sam gives him a scrap of paper with a name and address. “Bobby Singer?” Henricksen asks, raising a brow.
“He’s a hunter. He’s stationary, he can help to hook you up with others. He’s got a good library too, and he’s been hunting for a long time, you can learn a lot from him.”
Dean’s gift is a Browning HiPower. “Silver bullets. Full mag.” Henricksen nods in thanks.
“Good luck,” he says, stepping over the salt line on the doorstep.
“You too.”
Viktor Henricksen, ex FBI agent, drives out of Colorado feeling light-headed. He can tell this job will suck. He can tell there will not be enough meals, more injuries than he can treat and financing - he’s trying not to think about that. After a lifetime of pursuing credit card frauds the thought is a little daunting. He’s got some money put aside, for when he got too old to hold the gun steady, which he might not end up needing, considering his new life expectancy. It will last him a few years, if used sparingly. But he forces all of that out of his mind. He’s focusing on getting to South Dakota instead. There will be time to think, to feel, later. Now there’s only the road.
It’s a month to the day, before Henricksen completes his first hunt. And, like Dean said, it’s like looking into hell. He’s alone in the little cemetery, watching the dry bones burn to ash, knowing he has to hurry before someone notices the light and arrests him for grave desecration.
Driving back Viktor passes the house the ghost originated from. There are shadows of people moving inside, a child, and he can’t help but smile. It is worth it.
author: Keiran
title: It’s Worth It
rating: 13
warnings: spoilers for Jus in Belo
summary: Alternate ending for Jus in Belo, not perhaps literally what leiral requested here, but, I hope, close. :)
Many thanks to yami_tai for betaing.
A broken arm. Concussion. Cracked ribs, judging by how difficult it is to draw breath. A laceration from shoulder to mid-back, plus massive bruising, just about everywhere. All of that, and Viktor still considers himself lucky. He feels good about himself, life and everything. Because it means that he is limping away from the burning station, apparently unnoticed, having learned a couple things that might save his life again next time.
He now knows demons make mistakes. Blasting him straight through the backdoor (which was a feat in itself) was a mistake.
He also knows demons are drama queens. And if his work at the FBI taught him anything, it is that drama queens, no matter how ingenious or insane, can be brought down.
Henricksen leans against a tree and breathes shallowly. He can’t hear pursuit and his skin isn’t crawling, so hopefully he’s safe for the moment. He gathers himself and plunges into the undergrowth. You cannot be too careful, dealing with any enemy, much less an unknown one.
He is stumbling and can barely see straight when he reaches the other side of the run-down park. His breath is coming in short gasps, which really makes it hard to focus beyond putting one foot in front of the other.
He should be going to hospital. He aches, is tired and there is long road ahead of him.
“Fuck,” Henricksen mutters testing his arm. The bone seems to be in place. It’s just a fracture, he concludes. The laceration is bleeding, but a sheet swiped from a garden line makes a good makeshift bandage. From what he can see of it, it looks worse than it is, he decides in the end.
He needs to move. Needs to make use of his credit card before it’s tracked… Wait, that’s not right. He doesn’t need to hurry, does he. He would be assumed dead. Henricksen pauses mid step and stares ahead, dumbstruck. Right here and now, he is facing a career altering choice, battered and bruised, leaning against a white picket fence. From what he saw, that one time he dared to look back, little was left of the building, besides smoking ruins. Not much chance of finding enough of the bodies to confirm their identity. Likely they wouldn’t even find enough to make an estimate of how many were killed. That was his last confirmed location, he would be written off as dead.
The good little FBI agent, escaping a lethal situation, would be calling in, reporting a freaky little white girl, aged ten to twelve, who blew up the station with a flick of her wrist. Yeah, that would go over well.
If, on the other hand, he goes with his gut, he has no one to report to. He has no one to call for backup. He is a shooting duck in a war he doesn’t understand. There would be no rulebook to cover his back, there would be no one to turn to.
Henricksen trudges forward, past a parked vehicle. His own car is probably still smoking in the station’s parking lot. That thought gives him pause. “Fuck!” he allows himself a muted scream. His goddamned car! Oh, that if nothing else needs exacting some vengeance for. Viktor stalks into the middle of the road and waves like mad at a cab that happens to be driving by.
“Stacco motel,” he tells the driver. He tosses the man a twenty when he gets out and makes his way to his room. Luckily the keys are still in his pocket. It’s a few moments’ work to grab his duffel bag and get the hell out. Reidy’s car is still there. “Thanks, man,” Henricksen offers to the emptiness accompanying the slamming of the motel door. Even in death Reidy came to his aid - he’d always left the keys lying around when he didn’t use his car.
An hour to the minute after the explosion tore the world from underneath his feet Viktor Henricksen leaves Monument, Colorado. His arm gives him trouble and he is well aware that driving with the concussion is not a good idea. He has to hurry though, if he wants to catch them. A day’s rest is out of question. Even an hour might be too long.
His hurry is rewarded seventy miles down the road. As he slows down in front of another hole in the wall motel, he sees the black Impala, sleek in the shadows of the evening. Good for him, since his head has really begun to throb. The smell of blood always made him faintly nauseous, and now, combined with the concussion and the driving, Viktor hopes no one lost anything around the bushes, because he can’t stop the retching once he’s out of the car.
He straightens soon enough, feeling marginally better, and tidies his clothes. Useless, but he makes the effort. He walks to the door and knocks SOS. The walls are thin and Henricksen can’t help but smirk, knowing enough about the two boys now to guess what’s going on. Guns are being drawn and defenses are being mounted. Then the door opens and Henricksen, to his utmost surprise - a complete freak out, to be precise - is pulled into a hug, by Sam Winchester.
“Christo,” Sam says, and Viktor pulls away, awkwardly. Something wet is dripping down his neck, he cannot wait to get it off.
“Viktor, actually.” He waves at Dean who nods and relaxes his grip on the gun. The item on his neck turns out to be a soaked Kleenex. “The hell?”
“It’s just holy water. We needed to be sure,” Dean says, breaking eye contact with Sam. “How did you get out?”
“Dumb luck, mostly. Nancy-” and damn, it’s difficult to say the name, “Nancy’s body shielded me from that girl. The explosion then blasted me straight through the door.”
He’s not keen on talking about it, but understands the need for information just the same. “There were only us three at the station. Us and the bodies, about ten. The civilians had mostly gone home by then.”
“Civilians?” There’s a note of surprise bordering on desperation in Dean’s voice. Viktor isn’t sure what to make of it, but he nods anyway.
“All the townspeople. They were bruised, some of them, but otherwise fine. The officers though, they all had their throats cut.”
“Demon work,” Sam says. He too seems relieved.
“So what happens now?” Henricksen asks after a period of silence.
The Winchesters exchange loaded looks. Henricksen knows they know. It’s too bloody obvious. “You really don’t want to do this, man,” Dean says eventually. “It’s hard. Most of the time you’re on your own up against the world.”
Henricksen rolls his eyes. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
“I’m just saying it now. Because later, it’s kinda hard to change your mind,” Dean grins, the rascally smile that Viktor was always tempted to punch off his face. Now it’s almost endearing. “Works better than any drug.”
“It’s worth it,” Sam says in the background. “It can hurt like hell, but it is worth it.”
Dean ducks his head and moves to the duffels. He digs around for a minute, and comes up with a leather-bound notebook. “Get him started on the basics, Sam,” he says, right before the door closes behind him.
Unspoken is the fact that Viktor cannot stay with them any longer than necessary. Despite coming out of the siege relatively unharmed, he knows he is not ready to face demons. He doubts the boys are, either, but he doesn’t say anything. Sam helps him to patch up the laceration on his back after binding and splinting his arm. The cut’s not deep, thankfully. Sam starts talking as he applies the antiseptic. He talks of ghosts, ghouls, and monsters. He talks about folklore (“Pay attention to lore, local or otherwise. It’s more true than you know.”), local legends, how to distil the useful information from the myth built around it. Mostly, he talks about getting rid of them.
Salt and burn the source, salt and burn, repeat, over and over again. “If nothing else, the burning slows them down, gives you time to rethink your options,” Sam says.
Dean returns inside an hour, holding about a hundred bound pages. “It’s a little haphazard, but there’s plenty about most evil creatures you might encounter. How to kill them, their modus operandi, that kind of shit.”
They say their goodbyes soon afterwards and Viktor can see the loneliness of the job already. Even the allies have to stay apart. Sam gives him a scrap of paper with a name and address. “Bobby Singer?” Henricksen asks, raising a brow.
“He’s a hunter. He’s stationary, he can help to hook you up with others. He’s got a good library too, and he’s been hunting for a long time, you can learn a lot from him.”
Dean’s gift is a Browning HiPower. “Silver bullets. Full mag.” Henricksen nods in thanks.
“Good luck,” he says, stepping over the salt line on the doorstep.
“You too.”
Viktor Henricksen, ex FBI agent, drives out of Colorado feeling light-headed. He can tell this job will suck. He can tell there will not be enough meals, more injuries than he can treat and financing - he’s trying not to think about that. After a lifetime of pursuing credit card frauds the thought is a little daunting. He’s got some money put aside, for when he got too old to hold the gun steady, which he might not end up needing, considering his new life expectancy. It will last him a few years, if used sparingly. But he forces all of that out of his mind. He’s focusing on getting to South Dakota instead. There will be time to think, to feel, later. Now there’s only the road.
It’s a month to the day, before Henricksen completes his first hunt. And, like Dean said, it’s like looking into hell. He’s alone in the little cemetery, watching the dry bones burn to ash, knowing he has to hurry before someone notices the light and arrests him for grave desecration.
Driving back Viktor passes the house the ghost originated from. There are shadows of people moving inside, a child, and he can’t help but smile. It is worth it.