The Passenger (Big Bang, NC-17, Dean/Victor)
Title: The Passenger (1/6)
Author: hansbekhart
Artist: evalens
Rating: NC-17 (Dean/Victor, Dean/Castiel)
Summary: Victor Henriksen survives Lilith’s attack only to be a plunged into a world beyond his experience and understanding, full of demons, angels and trickster gods. War is coming. He turns to the Winchesters for help, but Dean’s year is running out and Sam is desperate to find a way to save his brother. An outsider in their war, Victor finds himself caught up between good, evil and sheer chaos. He and the Winchester’s newfound allies must scramble to save a world that has already been destroyed by Armageddon. Slash. (Character death, horrific imagery, violence)
The room is white, all white, and the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is Dean Winchester. “You’re dead,” he manages.
Dean shrugs, smiles. “That’s what your boss thinks. Thanks for that.”
Victor shakes his head. Doesn’t even know what Dean is talking about, what his boss has to do with anything, what his boss has to do with the bloody rotten heart that the little girl smeared over his face. She said it was Dean’s, that he could have it now. Victor squeezes his eyes shut. He wants to tell Dean what happened, about Lilith and the white light and how it all went on for hours and hours. His mouth is dry and his jaw might be taped shut. Can’t even think to feel all the shit that must be wrong with him. His eyes travel up to the IV, all those little lights on the wall. There’s someone standing behind Dean, leaning against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his coat.
“What,” he says. “You. Why.”
Dean Winchester is holding his hand. “Use your words like a big boy,” he says, but his face is pale and scared. “You’re okay now. They got you out.”
Then Victor really is crying, his whole body shaking and jerking. He thinks he might be screaming. It goes on for a long time and when he’s quiet again he’s still shaking and Dean is still gripping his hand. It hurts where Lilith pulled out his fingernails and he can barely feel anything through the bandages and painkillers, but he hangs on.
“Nancy,” he gasps. “Reidy. The others.”
Dean doesn’t say anything, which is all the answer Victor needs. “Lilith,” Dean says, after a while. Soft like she can hear him calling. “She blew the place sky high. The paramedics pulled you out of the fire. Nancy too, but there wasn’t … she died on the way to the hospital.” He shakes his head. Victor can hear the collar of his leather jacket creak. “Maybe we were wrong. Ruby thinks so, anyway. Sam too. Not that he’s said anything, but - y’know. Tango to my Cash or whatever.
If he could, Victor would tell him that it was worth it. That he’d rather have died, because a righteous death is all he’s ever asked for, and it beats sacrificing something good and pure any day of the week. But his throat is raw from fire and screaming and the best he can do is a soft, hurt noise. Dean glances up at him, meets Victor’s eyes. Man looks fucking exhausted. Looks human.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” Dean says. Victor grips Dean’s fingers as best he can. The guy in the corner hasn’t moved the whole time, staring at Victor with wide, sorrowful eyes. Hard for Victor to see him, like he’s not really there. Only thing that’s really clear is that he’s not Sam.
“You can’t be here,” Victor rasps. Jaw’s not taped shut, just hurts to move it, hurts to move anything. “They’ll catch you.”
Dean shrugs. “I’ll be fine. You just worry ‘bout yourself.” He tries for a smile, but it slips quickly off his face.
Victor shifts his head on the pillow. It’s all he can do now. Whole body feels so heavy. Being dragged back down to sleep. Dean’s thumb is stroking over the back of his hand like it’s not covered in bandages. It helps.
**
The first thing that Victor does, when he can do anything more than piss into a bag or blink, is ask for the charm that came in with him. He feels better just having the thing around his neck, and some part of him - the part that didn't believe in demons or possession or the boogieman - thinks that maybe that's the point, that he's buying into the placebo. He still doesn’t take it off.
The doctors come and explain what’s wrong with him. He listens, nods. They have a lot of recommendations. Surgery. Bed rest. Retirement. Physical therapy. The other kind of therapy. Afterwards, there are visits from higher ups. They tell him that no matter what he wants to do, he'll be looked after. It's kinder than he was expecting, but he did manage to take out the Winchester brothers, the most notorious serial killers that the new millennium's managed to cough up. He's gotta tell Dean - assuming he ever sees Dean again - that towards the end of the hunt, Dean and Sam got bumped up the Most Wanted list, second only to Osama bin Laden. He thinks Dean would appreciate the humor in that.
They bring him his laptop. There're a couple emails from Reidy that he doesn't open, just leaves them be. He never even saw Reidy’s body. Too busy getting the world turned upside down. They do a special on the Winchesters on America's Most Wanted. He finds it uploaded on YouTube, watches it late at night with the volume turned almost all the way down. Walsh goes over the whole story, from the Winchesters' sordid beginnings to their sordid deaths. There's even a section about Victor. The hero FBI agent who foiled yet another escape attempt, barely escaping with his own life. The writers must've made a special effort, but the story of that night doesn't make too much sense. Doesn't matter. America's proud of you, son, and all that crap. The cards and flowers pile up on the table and he ignores them.
He can't get warm. Not even where he's burned all up and down his leg, where the skin feels hot when he holds his hand over it. His whole body shakes and shivers so hard that he can barely talk. Not that he talks much anyway. There's nobody to talk to. Reidy's gone. He used to talk to Dean Winchester sometimes, got so deep in the man's head that he'd carry on full conversations, but it feels a little weird to do it now that he knows Winchester isn't a raving monster. So he curls over onto his side and doesn't talk to the doctors, doesn't talk to the suits. There's no way to explain what happened and Victor knows better than anybody that in the absence of facts, they'll make up whatever they want. So he sleeps. When they let him, he drags his IV and his fucked up leg up and down the hallway outside his room. Walks back and forth. The doctor catches him at it, asks him where he's going in such a hurry - if he's planning on jumping back into the good fight. There’s not a whole lot to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.
Twice, he wakes up in the middle of the night knowing that someone is in the room with him. He never sees their face; only knows that it’s not Dean or Sam or whoever Dean brought with him, that first day after. Somebody else. Shorter and stockier, staring out the window like he’s not even there to see Victor. Gone as soon as Victor’s awake enough to really see him.
He should be scared. He’ll probably be terrified later. He remembers when he was a kid, realizing abruptly that he should be scared of strangers. It had been two years by then, two years of taking rides from grown ups he didn’t know, of a hundred stupid decisions that could have ended his family for good. He lifts the charm off his neck high enough to be able to see it, to watch it catch the light.
He’d come home and dropped to his knees where his mother sat on the couch. Couldn’t have been more than eight at the time. Pressed his face into the worn crease of her pants and couldn’t even get anything out, any of the apologies he wanted to say. The bridges he’d walked under and the nights he’d slipped out of his bedroom window to go play down by the river. She hadn’t even noticed he was there.
**
Eight days later, he finally goes through his mailbox. There are ten emails from Reidy, only two of which are for him. He’s just cc’ed on the rest, business emails that don’t even fucking matter anymore. There was a funeral for Reidy. A service held for everyone who gave their lives to bring down the Winchesters. Victor hadn’t even regained consciousness by then.
He clears out his junk mail rather than read through any of the real messages. Over six hundred invitations to invest in Nigeria and get a bigger dick, and he’s scanning down the list when one catches his eye.
SAMANTHA IS ACHING FOR YOUR BIG BLACK COCK.
He clicks.
The email is from letthereberock@hotmail.com, which is less subtle than usual. Making sure the message was received, he guesses.
HELL AIN’T A BAD PLACE TO BE. FOR A GOOD TIME CALL YOU’RE MOM.
878-978-8899 24/7/365
And that’s it. It’s more than he was expecting and his hands shake as he deletes the message. Doesn’t want any more risk on their heads than necessary. He won’t forget the number, anyway.
Two weeks later, he’s sent home. Two agents come to take him to the airport, scrubbed and creased and embarrassingly earnest. He doesn’t know what they’re expecting out of him. He says thanks when one helps him into the wheelchair, when he understands that all the paperwork’s been taken care of, that all he has to do is leave. He doesn’t have enough pride left not to be stupidly grateful for that, to not have to think or speak or do anything but get home.
They ride with him all the way. First class tickets, one sitting next to him and the other across the aisle. On high alert, which they probably are. The Winchesters had friends, a whole network of backwater freaks. For all the Bureau knows, they’re all out for his blood. For all Victor knows, it’s true.
He and Reidy didn’t get to fly much over the last few years, because the Winchesters never flew. If he ever heard from Dean again, he should ask about that. Gotta be hell on a car, driving cross-country like that, and that Chevy they impounded must get what, ten, twelve miles to the gallon? He remembers talking it over with Reidy, trying to figure it out. Deciding that total lack of fuel efficiency was another symptom of a diseased mind.
He closes his eyes and goes to sleep. Been a long time since he’s been on a plane. He doesn’t wake up until the plane touches down in Dulles. He makes them leave the wheelchair at the gate. He knows what’s waiting for him past security.
Josiah’s eyes never leave Victor’s as he makes his way slowly down the walk. He can’t bend his knee - can’t lift his leg. He slides one foot, lifts the other, making a grim, slow path.
“Sir,” the man on his left says quietly. “Is there anything we can do to help?” They introduced themselves at the hospital and Victor forgot their names immediately. They’re braced on either side of him. He can feel them at the ready, tensed to catch him when he falls.
“No,” Victor says. He lifts his chin and straightens his spine and counts the back and forth of shuffle and step until he can meet his father the way he wants to, the way he always does. It’s the first time he’s felt like the man the news says he is, like he’s done anything to be proud of.
“I’ll take him from here,” Josiah says, when they reach him. The agents shake his hand one by one, and then turn to shake Victor’s. It’s awkward because his left hand is the good one, and the agent cracks a stiff smile when he offers his right instinctively.
“Been an honor, sir,” the other one says and Victor flinches.
It’s a short walk to the van, which Josiah left right outside with the hazards on. “Did you,” Josiah says, motioning towards the van and the wheelchair ramp inside.
“No,” Victor says, “I don’t think my house is exactly ADA compliant. I’ve got some crutches from a few years ago, I’ll manage.”
It’s almost evening and the traffic is non-existent. Victor stares out the window, tries to figure out what day it is, what month. The highways should be clogged with commuters. Maybe it’s the weekend. He can’t even remember when the last time he went home. Josiah drives in silence, his back straight and chin up. Victor studies his hands. His fingernails have started to grow back, little tender half-moons that don’t cover nearly enough of the sensitive bare skin that should be underneath them. Reidy used to bite his fingernails, Victor thinks, and squeezes his eyes shut.
When he opens them, he’s home. The car is parked and Josiah is watching him in a way that makes Victor think they’ve been parked for more than a few minutes. “Let’s get you settled,” is all he says. He takes Victor’s keys from him and goes to open the front door. Victor stares at the door handle, counts the steps around the car, up over the sidewalk, up the broad stairs. He did the walk up and down the halls in the hospital. Managed three flights of stairs once before they caught him at it, made him go back to his room. He can do this.
The door opens while he’s still staring at the handle, trying to talk himself into reaching out for it, and Josiah’s there, Victor’s crutches propped against the side of the car. Kneecapped three years ago by some scumbag, chased the guy down with a bullet in his leg and not a clue about the blood soaking into his pants, and fuck if he never heard the end of that one.
Between them, they manage to get Victor out of the car. Josiah hangs back and lets him get up the stairs by himself. The house is cold, unlived in. He hasn’t even been here since - early autumn, maybe. August, September. Maybe a day or two in-between, make sure his TV is still there, make sure his life still exists. Long enough that the last time he was home, he brought Reidy with him and they had a couple beers together, watched the game. He hasn’t had a drink in months. It was paranoia, the thought of the Winchesters turning the hunt around. Of letting their guards down long enough to have those couple drinks in the hotel bar, of sleeping hard enough that they wouldn’t wake up until the knife was at someone’s throat. They knew what Winchester did to his victims.
Victor sits heavily on the couch. “Still taking your work home with you,” Josiah says.
“Yes sir,” Victor answers. The room is cluttered with boxes stacked on top of each other, full of paperwork and police reports and photographs. Evidence that shouldn’t have been in his possession. The last five years of his life. Abruptly, it’s too hard to even lift his head off the couch. His body aches all over. All he wants to do is just set all that weight down, just for a little while.
“Got a long drive back,” Josiah offers. Victor nods, and Josiah hesitates. “Your mother,” he says, “she saw you on the news. Been glued to the TV ever since, they tell me.”
“I meant to bring her some flowers, last time I was in the city,” Victor says, and Josiah shakes his head.
“You just take care of yourself,” he says. “We’ll see you when you’re better.”
The house is dead quiet after he’s gone. Victor puts on the television, makes a pot of coffee. He can make it from room to room by letting the walls hold his weight, bracing on the hard surfaces. When he limps back into the living room his own face is on the TV screen, and it startles him so badly that he drops the coffee. It soaks into the rug and his pants. Probably saved himself from a scalding, all the bandages wrapped around his legs. He stares at the stain spreading dark and ugly across his carpet and goes to get his jacket.
The liquor store is two blocks away. Level ground, at least. He buys the best bourbon they sell. It’s awkward, bracing the bag with his crutches. The bottle clinks against the metal with every slow step. It’s full dark by the time he gets home, and he pulls the door shut feeling like someone’s watching him do it.
He has to talk himself into every sip. The first burns his stomach. He’s on more painkillers than he wants to count but the bottle has never seemed like a better choice. He gets the phone at the bottom of his first glass, makes the call at the bottom of his second.
Reidy’s mom lives way the hell down in North Carolina and never leaves her house. He’s met her twice. Equally embarrassing both times, Reidy taking him home to see the family, pie laid out on the windowsill like a fucking movie set. She doesn’t answer the phone. She’s probably had enough calls from the media, it’s a wonder the damn thing’s still plugged in.
“Mrs. Reidy,” he says. He clears his throat. “It’s Vic. Victor Henriksen.”
He can remember knowing what he wanted to say to her. He’d planned in the hospital to tell her that her son was a good agent, a good partner. That he died bravely. Truth is, Victor doesn't know how Reidy died, just that Reidy screamed and the line went dead. Victor wants to think that his partner was luckier than anyone else in the station that night. That maybe he died quickly. But maybe it went on and on and Victor didn’t even look for his partner, didn’t even think to find Reidy’s body in all the other madness that was going on. He doesn’t want to lie to Reidy’s mother.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a long while. “I’m sorry for your loss. Your son, he was a friend to me.”
He hangs up and pours himself another drink. He remembers the pot of coffee and finds it cold and stale, a bad smell in his airless kitchen. He doesn’t really want any more bourbon; he’d give anything for a good cup of coffee, a really good one. He can barely remember the last cup he drank, the last anything before hospital and IV tubes and sucking his food out of a straw.
Water bottle, maybe. Back to back with the Winchesters, a little bit of a break between the first demon, Ruby, and all the ones that came after it. Found it in the little fridge in the back and poured a little bit over his face before drinking the rest. His heart was still pounding so hard that it hurt all over his body. He looked up and through the doorway, Dean Winchester was watching him, nodding grimly to whatever Sam was saying. They made a brief sort of eye contact, and Dean's mouth twisted. Trying and failing to smile.
Funny thing was, it made Victor feel a hell of a lot better about the whole thing.
He wanders back into the living room, regards the files and papers making everything look like such a fucking mess. All of it would be boxed up, now. Sorted and archived and annotated and then put into plain, identical boxes and stuck in a basement. Part of him wants to just burn everything.
He and Reidy used to talk about it sometimes. About what they’d do when the Winchesters were finally caught. It went past ego after a while, as much as Victor had hated them at times, as much as the hunt had exhausted them. When the brothers were tripped up on a motion detector, all Victor had felt was relief. Anger as well, then and later, after Dean Winchester made googly eyes at a public defender and talked his way out of a life sentence.
Yeah, they used to talk about it a lot. Reidy was full of fantasies about where he’d go, what he’d do. Disneyland was a perennial favorite, of course. Paris, South Africa, China. The meals he’d eat on company expense, steak and oysters and sushi off of a naked body. He’d said most of it to get a rise out of Victor, like he could get a better answer than the one Victor already had.
“I’ll get drunk,” Victor had told his friend, “unbelievably drunk. And then I’ll go back to work.”
Victor lifts the glass to eyelevel. The liquid inside trembles in time with his hand. He toasts the paperwork, the television (now playing nothing more threatening than the Bachelorette), his empty house. He drains it in one long swallow and doesn’t quite make it onto the table, the glass teetering and then falling, throwing the last few drops of bourbon onto the carpet. He falls asleep where he is without even noticing what he’s done, his neck crooked and leg tucked up against the chair, the burned skin of his leg stretching in a way that will eventually wake him up in shrieking agony.
He sleeps and, eventually, dreams.
He dreams of his mother’s house. The way it was when he was a boy. Sitting at the wobbly kitchen table. He used to kick the underside of that table, finally knocked a leg off when he was thirteen. He’s a grown man in the home of his childhood. It’s summertime; he can tell by the way the sun slants warmly through the window, the only light in the darkly paneled house. He stands and walks over to the sliding doors. Anthony is playing in the yard. Trucks scattered around him in the sand, tipping out of the box and into the grass like they’re trying to escape. There’s a little girl with him, in a little white dress. She’s down there in the sand like it won’t get her white dress the least bit dirty.
Victor wants to watch Anthony play. It used to be his very best dream. He’d sit in the grass with his brother and the sun would never set. He’d wake up feeling more safe than he ever feels awake. But it’s cold even though he can feel the sun on his face, the kind of cold that burns on his skin and sets his whole body to shaking. Somehow he’s a child again and instead of reaching down to open the door he’s reaching up for it, and that’s when somebody grabs his hand.
He stares up into the face of a man he’s never seen before. A white man, maybe as old as Victor but poorly kept, soft and doughy and average looking. Victor tries to yank his hand away but he’s only a little boy now and the man holds onto him. “You don’t wanna go out there,” the man says, pointing two fingers. “Look.”
Victor looks, and sees everything that he missed when he was an adult. The rust on the toys, the trash and animal shit in the sandbox. Anthony glances over his shoulder - maybe he’s looking to see what’s keeping his brother - and his face is swollen and black, his eyes eaten out and his neck chewed open. The little girl has her hands inside of his chest like it won’t get her pretty white dress covered in rotten meat, and when she looks at Victor her eyes are white and dead as pearls.
He wakes up screaming, and the man is still there.
Chapter Two
Author: hansbekhart
Artist: evalens
Rating: NC-17 (Dean/Victor, Dean/Castiel)
Summary: Victor Henriksen survives Lilith’s attack only to be a plunged into a world beyond his experience and understanding, full of demons, angels and trickster gods. War is coming. He turns to the Winchesters for help, but Dean’s year is running out and Sam is desperate to find a way to save his brother. An outsider in their war, Victor finds himself caught up between good, evil and sheer chaos. He and the Winchester’s newfound allies must scramble to save a world that has already been destroyed by Armageddon. Slash. (Character death, horrific imagery, violence)
The room is white, all white, and the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is Dean Winchester. “You’re dead,” he manages.
Dean shrugs, smiles. “That’s what your boss thinks. Thanks for that.”
Victor shakes his head. Doesn’t even know what Dean is talking about, what his boss has to do with anything, what his boss has to do with the bloody rotten heart that the little girl smeared over his face. She said it was Dean’s, that he could have it now. Victor squeezes his eyes shut. He wants to tell Dean what happened, about Lilith and the white light and how it all went on for hours and hours. His mouth is dry and his jaw might be taped shut. Can’t even think to feel all the shit that must be wrong with him. His eyes travel up to the IV, all those little lights on the wall. There’s someone standing behind Dean, leaning against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his coat.
“What,” he says. “You. Why.”
Dean Winchester is holding his hand. “Use your words like a big boy,” he says, but his face is pale and scared. “You’re okay now. They got you out.”
Then Victor really is crying, his whole body shaking and jerking. He thinks he might be screaming. It goes on for a long time and when he’s quiet again he’s still shaking and Dean is still gripping his hand. It hurts where Lilith pulled out his fingernails and he can barely feel anything through the bandages and painkillers, but he hangs on.
“Nancy,” he gasps. “Reidy. The others.”
Dean doesn’t say anything, which is all the answer Victor needs. “Lilith,” Dean says, after a while. Soft like she can hear him calling. “She blew the place sky high. The paramedics pulled you out of the fire. Nancy too, but there wasn’t … she died on the way to the hospital.” He shakes his head. Victor can hear the collar of his leather jacket creak. “Maybe we were wrong. Ruby thinks so, anyway. Sam too. Not that he’s said anything, but - y’know. Tango to my Cash or whatever.
If he could, Victor would tell him that it was worth it. That he’d rather have died, because a righteous death is all he’s ever asked for, and it beats sacrificing something good and pure any day of the week. But his throat is raw from fire and screaming and the best he can do is a soft, hurt noise. Dean glances up at him, meets Victor’s eyes. Man looks fucking exhausted. Looks human.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” Dean says. Victor grips Dean’s fingers as best he can. The guy in the corner hasn’t moved the whole time, staring at Victor with wide, sorrowful eyes. Hard for Victor to see him, like he’s not really there. Only thing that’s really clear is that he’s not Sam.
“You can’t be here,” Victor rasps. Jaw’s not taped shut, just hurts to move it, hurts to move anything. “They’ll catch you.”
Dean shrugs. “I’ll be fine. You just worry ‘bout yourself.” He tries for a smile, but it slips quickly off his face.
Victor shifts his head on the pillow. It’s all he can do now. Whole body feels so heavy. Being dragged back down to sleep. Dean’s thumb is stroking over the back of his hand like it’s not covered in bandages. It helps.
**
The first thing that Victor does, when he can do anything more than piss into a bag or blink, is ask for the charm that came in with him. He feels better just having the thing around his neck, and some part of him - the part that didn't believe in demons or possession or the boogieman - thinks that maybe that's the point, that he's buying into the placebo. He still doesn’t take it off.
The doctors come and explain what’s wrong with him. He listens, nods. They have a lot of recommendations. Surgery. Bed rest. Retirement. Physical therapy. The other kind of therapy. Afterwards, there are visits from higher ups. They tell him that no matter what he wants to do, he'll be looked after. It's kinder than he was expecting, but he did manage to take out the Winchester brothers, the most notorious serial killers that the new millennium's managed to cough up. He's gotta tell Dean - assuming he ever sees Dean again - that towards the end of the hunt, Dean and Sam got bumped up the Most Wanted list, second only to Osama bin Laden. He thinks Dean would appreciate the humor in that.
They bring him his laptop. There're a couple emails from Reidy that he doesn't open, just leaves them be. He never even saw Reidy’s body. Too busy getting the world turned upside down. They do a special on the Winchesters on America's Most Wanted. He finds it uploaded on YouTube, watches it late at night with the volume turned almost all the way down. Walsh goes over the whole story, from the Winchesters' sordid beginnings to their sordid deaths. There's even a section about Victor. The hero FBI agent who foiled yet another escape attempt, barely escaping with his own life. The writers must've made a special effort, but the story of that night doesn't make too much sense. Doesn't matter. America's proud of you, son, and all that crap. The cards and flowers pile up on the table and he ignores them.
He can't get warm. Not even where he's burned all up and down his leg, where the skin feels hot when he holds his hand over it. His whole body shakes and shivers so hard that he can barely talk. Not that he talks much anyway. There's nobody to talk to. Reidy's gone. He used to talk to Dean Winchester sometimes, got so deep in the man's head that he'd carry on full conversations, but it feels a little weird to do it now that he knows Winchester isn't a raving monster. So he curls over onto his side and doesn't talk to the doctors, doesn't talk to the suits. There's no way to explain what happened and Victor knows better than anybody that in the absence of facts, they'll make up whatever they want. So he sleeps. When they let him, he drags his IV and his fucked up leg up and down the hallway outside his room. Walks back and forth. The doctor catches him at it, asks him where he's going in such a hurry - if he's planning on jumping back into the good fight. There’s not a whole lot to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.
Twice, he wakes up in the middle of the night knowing that someone is in the room with him. He never sees their face; only knows that it’s not Dean or Sam or whoever Dean brought with him, that first day after. Somebody else. Shorter and stockier, staring out the window like he’s not even there to see Victor. Gone as soon as Victor’s awake enough to really see him.
He should be scared. He’ll probably be terrified later. He remembers when he was a kid, realizing abruptly that he should be scared of strangers. It had been two years by then, two years of taking rides from grown ups he didn’t know, of a hundred stupid decisions that could have ended his family for good. He lifts the charm off his neck high enough to be able to see it, to watch it catch the light.
He’d come home and dropped to his knees where his mother sat on the couch. Couldn’t have been more than eight at the time. Pressed his face into the worn crease of her pants and couldn’t even get anything out, any of the apologies he wanted to say. The bridges he’d walked under and the nights he’d slipped out of his bedroom window to go play down by the river. She hadn’t even noticed he was there.
**
Eight days later, he finally goes through his mailbox. There are ten emails from Reidy, only two of which are for him. He’s just cc’ed on the rest, business emails that don’t even fucking matter anymore. There was a funeral for Reidy. A service held for everyone who gave their lives to bring down the Winchesters. Victor hadn’t even regained consciousness by then.
He clears out his junk mail rather than read through any of the real messages. Over six hundred invitations to invest in Nigeria and get a bigger dick, and he’s scanning down the list when one catches his eye.
SAMANTHA IS ACHING FOR YOUR BIG BLACK COCK.
He clicks.
The email is from letthereberock@hotmail.com, which is less subtle than usual. Making sure the message was received, he guesses.
HELL AIN’T A BAD PLACE TO BE. FOR A GOOD TIME CALL YOU’RE MOM.
878-978-8899 24/7/365
And that’s it. It’s more than he was expecting and his hands shake as he deletes the message. Doesn’t want any more risk on their heads than necessary. He won’t forget the number, anyway.
Two weeks later, he’s sent home. Two agents come to take him to the airport, scrubbed and creased and embarrassingly earnest. He doesn’t know what they’re expecting out of him. He says thanks when one helps him into the wheelchair, when he understands that all the paperwork’s been taken care of, that all he has to do is leave. He doesn’t have enough pride left not to be stupidly grateful for that, to not have to think or speak or do anything but get home.
They ride with him all the way. First class tickets, one sitting next to him and the other across the aisle. On high alert, which they probably are. The Winchesters had friends, a whole network of backwater freaks. For all the Bureau knows, they’re all out for his blood. For all Victor knows, it’s true.
He and Reidy didn’t get to fly much over the last few years, because the Winchesters never flew. If he ever heard from Dean again, he should ask about that. Gotta be hell on a car, driving cross-country like that, and that Chevy they impounded must get what, ten, twelve miles to the gallon? He remembers talking it over with Reidy, trying to figure it out. Deciding that total lack of fuel efficiency was another symptom of a diseased mind.
He closes his eyes and goes to sleep. Been a long time since he’s been on a plane. He doesn’t wake up until the plane touches down in Dulles. He makes them leave the wheelchair at the gate. He knows what’s waiting for him past security.
Josiah’s eyes never leave Victor’s as he makes his way slowly down the walk. He can’t bend his knee - can’t lift his leg. He slides one foot, lifts the other, making a grim, slow path.
“Sir,” the man on his left says quietly. “Is there anything we can do to help?” They introduced themselves at the hospital and Victor forgot their names immediately. They’re braced on either side of him. He can feel them at the ready, tensed to catch him when he falls.
“No,” Victor says. He lifts his chin and straightens his spine and counts the back and forth of shuffle and step until he can meet his father the way he wants to, the way he always does. It’s the first time he’s felt like the man the news says he is, like he’s done anything to be proud of.
“I’ll take him from here,” Josiah says, when they reach him. The agents shake his hand one by one, and then turn to shake Victor’s. It’s awkward because his left hand is the good one, and the agent cracks a stiff smile when he offers his right instinctively.
“Been an honor, sir,” the other one says and Victor flinches.
It’s a short walk to the van, which Josiah left right outside with the hazards on. “Did you,” Josiah says, motioning towards the van and the wheelchair ramp inside.
“No,” Victor says, “I don’t think my house is exactly ADA compliant. I’ve got some crutches from a few years ago, I’ll manage.”
It’s almost evening and the traffic is non-existent. Victor stares out the window, tries to figure out what day it is, what month. The highways should be clogged with commuters. Maybe it’s the weekend. He can’t even remember when the last time he went home. Josiah drives in silence, his back straight and chin up. Victor studies his hands. His fingernails have started to grow back, little tender half-moons that don’t cover nearly enough of the sensitive bare skin that should be underneath them. Reidy used to bite his fingernails, Victor thinks, and squeezes his eyes shut.
When he opens them, he’s home. The car is parked and Josiah is watching him in a way that makes Victor think they’ve been parked for more than a few minutes. “Let’s get you settled,” is all he says. He takes Victor’s keys from him and goes to open the front door. Victor stares at the door handle, counts the steps around the car, up over the sidewalk, up the broad stairs. He did the walk up and down the halls in the hospital. Managed three flights of stairs once before they caught him at it, made him go back to his room. He can do this.
The door opens while he’s still staring at the handle, trying to talk himself into reaching out for it, and Josiah’s there, Victor’s crutches propped against the side of the car. Kneecapped three years ago by some scumbag, chased the guy down with a bullet in his leg and not a clue about the blood soaking into his pants, and fuck if he never heard the end of that one.
Between them, they manage to get Victor out of the car. Josiah hangs back and lets him get up the stairs by himself. The house is cold, unlived in. He hasn’t even been here since - early autumn, maybe. August, September. Maybe a day or two in-between, make sure his TV is still there, make sure his life still exists. Long enough that the last time he was home, he brought Reidy with him and they had a couple beers together, watched the game. He hasn’t had a drink in months. It was paranoia, the thought of the Winchesters turning the hunt around. Of letting their guards down long enough to have those couple drinks in the hotel bar, of sleeping hard enough that they wouldn’t wake up until the knife was at someone’s throat. They knew what Winchester did to his victims.
Victor sits heavily on the couch. “Still taking your work home with you,” Josiah says.
“Yes sir,” Victor answers. The room is cluttered with boxes stacked on top of each other, full of paperwork and police reports and photographs. Evidence that shouldn’t have been in his possession. The last five years of his life. Abruptly, it’s too hard to even lift his head off the couch. His body aches all over. All he wants to do is just set all that weight down, just for a little while.
“Got a long drive back,” Josiah offers. Victor nods, and Josiah hesitates. “Your mother,” he says, “she saw you on the news. Been glued to the TV ever since, they tell me.”
“I meant to bring her some flowers, last time I was in the city,” Victor says, and Josiah shakes his head.
“You just take care of yourself,” he says. “We’ll see you when you’re better.”
The house is dead quiet after he’s gone. Victor puts on the television, makes a pot of coffee. He can make it from room to room by letting the walls hold his weight, bracing on the hard surfaces. When he limps back into the living room his own face is on the TV screen, and it startles him so badly that he drops the coffee. It soaks into the rug and his pants. Probably saved himself from a scalding, all the bandages wrapped around his legs. He stares at the stain spreading dark and ugly across his carpet and goes to get his jacket.
The liquor store is two blocks away. Level ground, at least. He buys the best bourbon they sell. It’s awkward, bracing the bag with his crutches. The bottle clinks against the metal with every slow step. It’s full dark by the time he gets home, and he pulls the door shut feeling like someone’s watching him do it.
He has to talk himself into every sip. The first burns his stomach. He’s on more painkillers than he wants to count but the bottle has never seemed like a better choice. He gets the phone at the bottom of his first glass, makes the call at the bottom of his second.
Reidy’s mom lives way the hell down in North Carolina and never leaves her house. He’s met her twice. Equally embarrassing both times, Reidy taking him home to see the family, pie laid out on the windowsill like a fucking movie set. She doesn’t answer the phone. She’s probably had enough calls from the media, it’s a wonder the damn thing’s still plugged in.
“Mrs. Reidy,” he says. He clears his throat. “It’s Vic. Victor Henriksen.”
He can remember knowing what he wanted to say to her. He’d planned in the hospital to tell her that her son was a good agent, a good partner. That he died bravely. Truth is, Victor doesn't know how Reidy died, just that Reidy screamed and the line went dead. Victor wants to think that his partner was luckier than anyone else in the station that night. That maybe he died quickly. But maybe it went on and on and Victor didn’t even look for his partner, didn’t even think to find Reidy’s body in all the other madness that was going on. He doesn’t want to lie to Reidy’s mother.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a long while. “I’m sorry for your loss. Your son, he was a friend to me.”
He hangs up and pours himself another drink. He remembers the pot of coffee and finds it cold and stale, a bad smell in his airless kitchen. He doesn’t really want any more bourbon; he’d give anything for a good cup of coffee, a really good one. He can barely remember the last cup he drank, the last anything before hospital and IV tubes and sucking his food out of a straw.
Water bottle, maybe. Back to back with the Winchesters, a little bit of a break between the first demon, Ruby, and all the ones that came after it. Found it in the little fridge in the back and poured a little bit over his face before drinking the rest. His heart was still pounding so hard that it hurt all over his body. He looked up and through the doorway, Dean Winchester was watching him, nodding grimly to whatever Sam was saying. They made a brief sort of eye contact, and Dean's mouth twisted. Trying and failing to smile.
Funny thing was, it made Victor feel a hell of a lot better about the whole thing.
He wanders back into the living room, regards the files and papers making everything look like such a fucking mess. All of it would be boxed up, now. Sorted and archived and annotated and then put into plain, identical boxes and stuck in a basement. Part of him wants to just burn everything.
He and Reidy used to talk about it sometimes. About what they’d do when the Winchesters were finally caught. It went past ego after a while, as much as Victor had hated them at times, as much as the hunt had exhausted them. When the brothers were tripped up on a motion detector, all Victor had felt was relief. Anger as well, then and later, after Dean Winchester made googly eyes at a public defender and talked his way out of a life sentence.
Yeah, they used to talk about it a lot. Reidy was full of fantasies about where he’d go, what he’d do. Disneyland was a perennial favorite, of course. Paris, South Africa, China. The meals he’d eat on company expense, steak and oysters and sushi off of a naked body. He’d said most of it to get a rise out of Victor, like he could get a better answer than the one Victor already had.
“I’ll get drunk,” Victor had told his friend, “unbelievably drunk. And then I’ll go back to work.”
Victor lifts the glass to eyelevel. The liquid inside trembles in time with his hand. He toasts the paperwork, the television (now playing nothing more threatening than the Bachelorette), his empty house. He drains it in one long swallow and doesn’t quite make it onto the table, the glass teetering and then falling, throwing the last few drops of bourbon onto the carpet. He falls asleep where he is without even noticing what he’s done, his neck crooked and leg tucked up against the chair, the burned skin of his leg stretching in a way that will eventually wake him up in shrieking agony.
He sleeps and, eventually, dreams.
He dreams of his mother’s house. The way it was when he was a boy. Sitting at the wobbly kitchen table. He used to kick the underside of that table, finally knocked a leg off when he was thirteen. He’s a grown man in the home of his childhood. It’s summertime; he can tell by the way the sun slants warmly through the window, the only light in the darkly paneled house. He stands and walks over to the sliding doors. Anthony is playing in the yard. Trucks scattered around him in the sand, tipping out of the box and into the grass like they’re trying to escape. There’s a little girl with him, in a little white dress. She’s down there in the sand like it won’t get her white dress the least bit dirty.
Victor wants to watch Anthony play. It used to be his very best dream. He’d sit in the grass with his brother and the sun would never set. He’d wake up feeling more safe than he ever feels awake. But it’s cold even though he can feel the sun on his face, the kind of cold that burns on his skin and sets his whole body to shaking. Somehow he’s a child again and instead of reaching down to open the door he’s reaching up for it, and that’s when somebody grabs his hand.
He stares up into the face of a man he’s never seen before. A white man, maybe as old as Victor but poorly kept, soft and doughy and average looking. Victor tries to yank his hand away but he’s only a little boy now and the man holds onto him. “You don’t wanna go out there,” the man says, pointing two fingers. “Look.”
Victor looks, and sees everything that he missed when he was an adult. The rust on the toys, the trash and animal shit in the sandbox. Anthony glances over his shoulder - maybe he’s looking to see what’s keeping his brother - and his face is swollen and black, his eyes eaten out and his neck chewed open. The little girl has her hands inside of his chest like it won’t get her pretty white dress covered in rotten meat, and when she looks at Victor her eyes are white and dead as pearls.
He wakes up screaming, and the man is still there.
Chapter Two