SPN big bang: Lankeer 1/5
Artwork by the fantastic spn_2008!
SUMMARY: The Winchester brothers' lives were never easy before. But collision alerts and older-little brothers jumping from bunks are never a pleasant way to wake up. The adventure begins with those twin shocks, and gets decidedly strange when Bobby tracks down the name of the world they are headed for.
Lankeer was once a thriving world, ready to join the fledgling Alliance. But now it has become the Bermuda Triangle of Alliance space -- ships go in and are never heard from again. Instead of scaring them away, this information intrigues the Winchesters, and they decide to investigate this strange world.
Going in blind is never fun. Going in enraged after watching your brother quite literally shot from the sky makes things that much harder. Getting out from Lankeer may prove more than the Winchesters can handle.
If there was one thing that earthbound souls knew about space, it was that it was huge. And cold. There was no air to breathe, and it was nearly empty.
There were a hundred million stars out there, but in between them there was nothing. Nothing at all. Just vacuum.
All the earthbound knew this to be fact.
Their scientists had told them so long ago.
But those who lived out there knew that the earthbound scientists had gotten it wrong.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
There was no regular sleep cycle aboard a spaceship. And it was rare when the entire crew took a rest all at the same time.
But at this time, the red-and-silver cruiser designated the MaryJohn glided silently through the vacuum on autopilot while her three crew members all dozed. It was a truly peaceful scene. Restful. Calm.
Too bad it couldn't last.
When they had set up the controls to the MaryJohn, they'd hit a quandry on the alerts. One or another of the brothers would sleep through any alarm at any given time. It was a little unpredictable as to which one would. So, they'd programmed them all differently.
So when the lights snapped abruptly on in their sleeping quarters and their father's voice bellowed out an alert, the Winchester brothers were instantly awake.
"What the hell?" Sam gasped, bolting upright in his overlong single bed.
"I don't know!" his older brother Dean yelped from his bottom bunk, struggling to untangle his legs from the covers.
Suddenly there was a blur of black and tan in Dean's peripheral vision and he turned his head as he heard the "THUMP!" of bare feet hitting carpeted floor from several feet up and saw the back of Cas as he raced for and through the door after having jumped from the top bunk.
Finally extricating himself, Dean muttered something about ladders as they strode out the door. Sam looked behind them and his brows drew together in brief concentration before the pneumatic doors closed. "Why'd he skin outta here so fast, anyway?" Sam asked.
Dean looked up, thinking Shut up! The alarm obligingly shut off. "Proximity alarm, that kept saying."
"Shit, that's a collision alert!" Sam cursed, and after a quick glance at each other, their fast walk became a full-fledged run the last hundred yards to the MaryJohn's bridge.
They arrived to hear Cas bellow, "Sit down before you're thrown down!"
Dean raced to the seat behind Cas and Sam vaulted into the navigator's chair.
Cas's cobalt eyes were narrow and his tanned knuckles were white on the controls. "Here we go! Evasive in three -- two -- one!"
The MaryJohn lurched and pitched. The effect reminded Dean of one of those huge roller coasters he'd splurged and taken Sammy onto for his thirteenth birthday.
It also reminded Dean that he'd been the one to puke up his internal organs after those huge roller coaster rides.
"There, we're past!" Cas turned in his chair to study Dean. "You okay back there?"
"Peachy," Dean ground out through clenched teeth. Cas got up and went over to the covered sink in the corner, getting a glass of water and bringing it to Dean before collapsing back into the pilot's chair. Dean shot him a grateful smile and after downing half the glass in one long gulp, asked, "What the hell was that?"
"I don't know," Sam said, his fingers flying over the equipment. "But we're going to find out."
"I was too busy trying to...." Cas was interrupted by a huge yawn, which brought Dean's attention back to him. "....to avoid getting hit by it to pay attention to what it was." He glanced over, noticed Dean's scrutiny, and frowned. "What?"
Dean couldn't help the smile. Cas -- he had dropped the '-tiel' from his name about the same time he'd stopped introducing himself as "a former angel of the Lord" and started just saying a simple, "I'm Cas Winchester, ma'am" -- looked much younger than the 20 or so Gabriel had aged him to when he had turned him human. "You look like a kid."
Cas looked down at himself, at the rumpled black sweatpants and faded "AC/DC" tshirt. He and Dean were the same size and shared clothing. There wasn't so much 'Dean's clothes' or "Cas's clothes' anymore, as there were 'our clothes'. Sam's oversized frame, however... Cas finally figured it out. Wiggling his bare toes, he looked up and smiled. "There wasn't time for shoes."
They shared a short laugh, and even pre-occupied Sam cracked a smile. Then Dean asked, "Seriously, are you okay? That was a hell of a jump for just being awake two seconds."
"I'm all right. The soles of my feet and my ankles don't like me very much right now," Cas grinned, "but honestly, I'm all right. You're the one with gooseflesh."
"Huh?" Dean looked down at the tiny bumps raised on his arms and bare legs. "S'what I get for sleepin' in shorts and a t-shirt and barrelin' through the halls in 'em." He wiggled his own bare toes in emphasis, and Cas chuckled softly.
Sam made a soft growling noise, and Dean got up and walked over. "Problem?"
"I can't get a lock on the damned thing," Sam groused. "I got a general size and direction, I got a sense of the speed of it -- but I can't get a lock on it!"
"Give it a rest, then." Sam started to protest, and Dean curled his hand on the back of Sam's neck. "I'm serious. We're all just woken up. Hell, we're all still in our pyjamas. Let's go get changed and -- at the very least -- caffeinated, and then we'll track the damned thing. Okay?"
Sam didn't so much sigh as he did blow the air out of his cheeks, but he nodded and stood up. As they got to the doorway, Cas erupted in another jaw-cracking yawn.
"Correction," Dean said. "Sammy and I get dressed and fed. You get some more sleep."
"I'm fine," Cas shot back. "Seriously, I just ---" A third yawn was met with two nearly identical 'Really?' glances, and he shook his head. "All right, perhaps a little more wouldn't hurt."
"That's my boy," Dean chuckled and they filed out of the bridge.
Behind them, a single light on the navigation console started to blink.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Having two bathrooms off their quarters sure saved a lot of time, Dean mused as he sat on the edge of Sam's bed and tugged on his boots, before running a hand over his damp hair and smiling. He'd not cut it since the day he and Sam had gotten their tattoos, and it was starting to curl slightly over his forehead when he left it ungelled.
He decided today he'd leave it ungelled. His brothers were the only ones who'd see him, anyway.
Dean made up Sam's bed and then his own, before retreating back to Sam's bed and sitting, looking up at the top bunk. Dark messy hair and a lax left hand drifting over the side was all he could see, but his lips drew up in an amused smile as he heard the soft sighs punctuated by an occasional sharp snort.
Cas snored. Who would have thought?
In Dean's wildest dreams, he never would even have thought anything remotely like this could possibly be his life. Never -- not even in his wildest science-fiction movie fueled fantasies -- had he ever dreamed he would be living in space, hundreds of light-years from Earth, with his Gigantor of a brother by his side.
All because he had made a deal with a Crossroads Demon for Sam's life.
Once that deal had been found to be a trick to get Dean into Hell and start the Apocalypse by torturing him until he broke and started torturing others -- and that rogue angels were working together with demons to make it happen too early and without the approval of God -- things had changed fast and furious for the Winchesters.
Removed from Earth by a race called the B'Shain -- befriending a ship full of them -- and having Bobby and the Harvelles Removed for their protection as well. Sam got a bit of marrow from Dean and the demon blood issue was solved.
As a permanent result of the Deal, Sam and Dean each carried a sliver of the other's soul. They were soulmates in the most literal of senses. And that manifested itself in some interesting ways that were still making themselves known.
And then, there was Cas. Castiel, the guardian angel of Thursday. Castiel, who became Cas Winchester -- human being, with all its slings and arrows -- so he could travel the stars with the Winchesters. Cas, who was older than they could imagine, but so much like a child in other ways that he'd been adopted by them as their youngest brother.
Cas still had something of an angel's Grace. He healed faster and had wings that he could actually use. Because he'd had them all his life and he'd been able to fly all his life, it seemed only natural that he was the MaryJohn's primary pilot. The difference was, being mostly human, when he chose to use them the wings were now visible.
They were all happy in their new lives. The only drawback was -- because of the Deal that had necessitated all this in the first place -- the Winchester brothers could never return to Earth. The minute Dean's feet touched Earth, the terms of the Deal would restart where they had left off. He would have that much of his year left, and no more.
Nobody had ever told them this, but Dean could sense that would be what would happen. His brothers and Bobby told him he was being ridiculous, but he knew what he knew.
And right now, sitting on Sam's overlong bed and watchng Cas sleep while the MaryJohn cruised through the blackness of space, he knew that Sam was taking way too long in the shower.
He got up and pounded on the bathroom's pneumatic door. "You gonna be in there till we have another proximity alert?" he called.
"Bite me!" came the instant retort, and Dean smiled. "Cas still out?"
"Snorin' away!" Dean called back. "Dude can sleep through anything but alerts!"
He heard the shower cut off and seconds later the door slid open to reveal Sam with a towel around his waist and another working on his long hair. "I noticed that. Next time we have him in the medical bay, maybe we need to shove him under a scanner and see if Gabriel really did restore all of his hearing."
Cas had been beaten badly by his former brothers when he had become human. They had tried to use their true visages and voices to blind and deafen him. Because of his residual Grace, they had only been partially successful. Gabriel had healed Cas's eyes and ears shortly before they'd been given the MaryJohn, but there were times when Sam and Dean wondered how complete the healing was.
Gabriel was, after all, a consummate Trickster.
Dean scowled slightly at the top bunk. "You think he might not have?"
"I don't know." Sam crossed to their shared chest of drawers, something he hadn't had since Stanford, and got out clothes. He dried off and dressed before he finished, "But I know sometimes the alerts are all that wake him and I've noticed him looking at our mouths when we speak."
Dean's scowl turned into a worried frown. "But he would have said something--"
"Dude," Sam interrupted, giving him a pointed look as he slid on his boots. "He's a Winchester."
"True." Dean sighed. "Okay, so how do we go about finding this out?"
The Winchester in question suddenly yawned and rolled over, yelping as he rolled completely out of the top bunk and into the slightly wider bottom bunk.
Dean and Sam instantly burst out laughing, and Dean called over, "Dude, you okay?"
"I am uninjured," Cas growled as he sat up and fruitlessly tugged his hands through his hair to get it in some measure of order. "And I have found a side-effect to dreams."
"Bunk-diving?" Dean quipped.
"No." Cas scowled up at him, then stood. "I think I might know what that was that nearly collided with us earlier."
"Cool!" Dean said, sitting down on Sam's bed. "So what was it?"
"It was a space-based virus," Cas said, spreading his hands. "Grown to enormous proportions. It was headed for Earth." He frowned suddenly, lowering his hands. "Though that makes no sense, because we are light years from Earth and even if it was, how could a virus grow that large and ....." He blinked. "Dean, why are you laughing?"
Dean just shook his head, unable to speak. He waved a hand languidly and keeled over backwards onto Sam's bed, laughing until he had tears leaking from his eyes.
Sam chuckled. "Cas, that's the scenario of one of those novels we were telling you about a few weeks ago."
Cas frowned. "Then why would I dream it?"
Sam and Dean looked at each other, and Dean howled with laughter as he gestured at Sam. "All yours, kiddo!"
"Thanks," Sam sighed. He came over to sit beside Cas. "You know what dreams are, right?"
"Yeah, they're the human subconscious's way of working out things the brain immediately can't."
"And they're also tied to our imaginations," Sam said. "It's like a storehouse of everything a human sees and hears and experiences. And it pulls them out in sometimes random order and plays it like movies in your mind."
Cas nodded slowly. "So I'm dreaming about enormous space-traveling viruses because --"
"Because we narrowly avoided colliding with something," Sam said.
"Great flying, by the way," Dean managed to put in, which made Cas grin proudly.
Sam shared the grin. "--and your brain latched onto the memory of that plot because that's close to what we went through and you were trying so hard to figure out what it was---"
"--that my brain supplied an answer," Cas finished. "But not the answer."
"Considering those things aren't even remotely real...." Dean gasped out, wiping his eyes. "I'd say not!" Then he sobered. "Uh -- they aren't real....are they?"
Cas shrugged. "Your knowledge of life-forms out here is approximately the same as mine."
Sam got to his feet, swearing curtly as his head impacted with the bottom of the top bunk. Massaging the impact site, he moved to the door. "Bobby might know."
Dean sat up. "You gonna give him a call?"
"Might as well. Time we checked in, anyway."
Cas stood up. "Say hello for me."
Dean frowned. "Aren't you going to be there with us?"
"Depends on how fast I get showered and dressed." He headed for the bathroom.
"Don't fall asleep in there," Dean called.
Cas glared after him. "That was one time, Dean! One time...."
They left him spluttering. "Dude," Sam laughed. "That was mean."
"Yeah," Dean grinned. "I got two brothers to torment now."
"You're loving this."
"Every damn minute."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Exiting out on to the MaryJohn's bridge, Sam frowned. "Huh."
"What is it?" Dean asked, pouring himself a drink of water as Sam settled himself in the navigator's chair.
"There's a light blinking here." He tapped in a series of commands as Dean settled into the pilot's chair.
"Any idea why?" Dean drained his water and checked the controls. They had been drifting ever since their near-collision, and they were now off-course.
Sam huffed slightly. "We're off-course."
"I just saw that," Dean said. He shut down the autopilot and nudged the controls until they were back on course. "Did that make the light go out?"
Sam studied it. Blink..... Blink...... "Yeah. It went out."
"So that was telling us that we were off the programmed course." Dean grinned. "Okay, that's a new one. I wonder if we're even close to learning everything about this wonderful ship of ours."
"Are you kidding?" Sam grinned back at him. "Then what would be the fun of things?"
"You're a weird one, Sammy." But Dean's words were punctuated by a wink.
Sam just grinned and called up a display, studying where they were heading. "You gonna contact Bobby?"
"Working on it." Dean glanced over. "Where are we heading?"
"Huh."
"I get nervous when you say that." Dean got up and leaned over Sam's shoulder, studying the display as well.
"Sorry." He traced the display. "The thing that nearly hit us? It headed this way. And our path veers here -- taking us on the same track."
Dean frowned. "And we're heading for a world."
"We are." They had taken to using 'world' for the inhabited planets and 'planet' for the uninhabited ones. "I don't recognise the co-ordinates, though."
"But it's definitely a world?"
"Yeah, it's a world. See? The computer puts the planets as red and the worlds as blue."
Dean frowned at the blue sphere, then retreated back to his seat. "I'm dialing."
Sam sat back and waited while Dean activated the communications channel.
Bobby's voice came ringing into the cabin a few minutes later. "Which Winchester's this?"
"Dean and Sam," Dean said. "Cas is in the shower. Why don't you have the video link on?"
"Cause I can't get used to these damned things!" Bobby snarked at him. "You got yours on?"
"Always," Dean grinned. "It's the red button next to the--" The screen leapt to life and Bobby's sleepy eyes suddenly appeared. "You're too close."
He rolled back, his office chair swiveling as he did so. "Better?"
"Better," Dean said. "We've had quite a morning. We had a near-miss with a bogie and now we're heading for a world where we think the bogie's gone as well."
Bobby scratched his beard. "That means your bogie's probably something intelligent. Like you've got a ship on your hands. What world?"
"We don't know. It's in the database as a world, but we don't recognise the co-ordinates."
"Fine," Bobby said. "Send 'em here."
Dean glanced over at Sam, who was already preparing the packet. He nodded as he pressed the final buttons.
Smiling, Dean turned back to the screen. "Sent."
Bobby studied the information packet for a moment, and his eyes narrowed. "You're heading to these co-ordinates?"
"Yeah," Dean said. "Why?"
Bobby let out a soft growl. "Well, shit."
On to part two
SUMMARY: The Winchester brothers' lives were never easy before. But collision alerts and older-little brothers jumping from bunks are never a pleasant way to wake up. The adventure begins with those twin shocks, and gets decidedly strange when Bobby tracks down the name of the world they are headed for.
Lankeer was once a thriving world, ready to join the fledgling Alliance. But now it has become the Bermuda Triangle of Alliance space -- ships go in and are never heard from again. Instead of scaring them away, this information intrigues the Winchesters, and they decide to investigate this strange world.
Going in blind is never fun. Going in enraged after watching your brother quite literally shot from the sky makes things that much harder. Getting out from Lankeer may prove more than the Winchesters can handle.
If there was one thing that earthbound souls knew about space, it was that it was huge. And cold. There was no air to breathe, and it was nearly empty.
There were a hundred million stars out there, but in between them there was nothing. Nothing at all. Just vacuum.
All the earthbound knew this to be fact.
Their scientists had told them so long ago.
But those who lived out there knew that the earthbound scientists had gotten it wrong.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
There was no regular sleep cycle aboard a spaceship. And it was rare when the entire crew took a rest all at the same time.
But at this time, the red-and-silver cruiser designated the MaryJohn glided silently through the vacuum on autopilot while her three crew members all dozed. It was a truly peaceful scene. Restful. Calm.
Too bad it couldn't last.
When they had set up the controls to the MaryJohn, they'd hit a quandry on the alerts. One or another of the brothers would sleep through any alarm at any given time. It was a little unpredictable as to which one would. So, they'd programmed them all differently.
So when the lights snapped abruptly on in their sleeping quarters and their father's voice bellowed out an alert, the Winchester brothers were instantly awake.
"What the hell?" Sam gasped, bolting upright in his overlong single bed.
"I don't know!" his older brother Dean yelped from his bottom bunk, struggling to untangle his legs from the covers.
Suddenly there was a blur of black and tan in Dean's peripheral vision and he turned his head as he heard the "THUMP!" of bare feet hitting carpeted floor from several feet up and saw the back of Cas as he raced for and through the door after having jumped from the top bunk.
Finally extricating himself, Dean muttered something about ladders as they strode out the door. Sam looked behind them and his brows drew together in brief concentration before the pneumatic doors closed. "Why'd he skin outta here so fast, anyway?" Sam asked.
Dean looked up, thinking Shut up! The alarm obligingly shut off. "Proximity alarm, that kept saying."
"Shit, that's a collision alert!" Sam cursed, and after a quick glance at each other, their fast walk became a full-fledged run the last hundred yards to the MaryJohn's bridge.
They arrived to hear Cas bellow, "Sit down before you're thrown down!"
Dean raced to the seat behind Cas and Sam vaulted into the navigator's chair.
Cas's cobalt eyes were narrow and his tanned knuckles were white on the controls. "Here we go! Evasive in three -- two -- one!"
The MaryJohn lurched and pitched. The effect reminded Dean of one of those huge roller coasters he'd splurged and taken Sammy onto for his thirteenth birthday.
It also reminded Dean that he'd been the one to puke up his internal organs after those huge roller coaster rides.
"There, we're past!" Cas turned in his chair to study Dean. "You okay back there?"
"Peachy," Dean ground out through clenched teeth. Cas got up and went over to the covered sink in the corner, getting a glass of water and bringing it to Dean before collapsing back into the pilot's chair. Dean shot him a grateful smile and after downing half the glass in one long gulp, asked, "What the hell was that?"
"I don't know," Sam said, his fingers flying over the equipment. "But we're going to find out."
"I was too busy trying to...." Cas was interrupted by a huge yawn, which brought Dean's attention back to him. "....to avoid getting hit by it to pay attention to what it was." He glanced over, noticed Dean's scrutiny, and frowned. "What?"
Dean couldn't help the smile. Cas -- he had dropped the '-tiel' from his name about the same time he'd stopped introducing himself as "a former angel of the Lord" and started just saying a simple, "I'm Cas Winchester, ma'am" -- looked much younger than the 20 or so Gabriel had aged him to when he had turned him human. "You look like a kid."
Cas looked down at himself, at the rumpled black sweatpants and faded "AC/DC" tshirt. He and Dean were the same size and shared clothing. There wasn't so much 'Dean's clothes' or "Cas's clothes' anymore, as there were 'our clothes'. Sam's oversized frame, however... Cas finally figured it out. Wiggling his bare toes, he looked up and smiled. "There wasn't time for shoes."
They shared a short laugh, and even pre-occupied Sam cracked a smile. Then Dean asked, "Seriously, are you okay? That was a hell of a jump for just being awake two seconds."
"I'm all right. The soles of my feet and my ankles don't like me very much right now," Cas grinned, "but honestly, I'm all right. You're the one with gooseflesh."
"Huh?" Dean looked down at the tiny bumps raised on his arms and bare legs. "S'what I get for sleepin' in shorts and a t-shirt and barrelin' through the halls in 'em." He wiggled his own bare toes in emphasis, and Cas chuckled softly.
Sam made a soft growling noise, and Dean got up and walked over. "Problem?"
"I can't get a lock on the damned thing," Sam groused. "I got a general size and direction, I got a sense of the speed of it -- but I can't get a lock on it!"
"Give it a rest, then." Sam started to protest, and Dean curled his hand on the back of Sam's neck. "I'm serious. We're all just woken up. Hell, we're all still in our pyjamas. Let's go get changed and -- at the very least -- caffeinated, and then we'll track the damned thing. Okay?"
Sam didn't so much sigh as he did blow the air out of his cheeks, but he nodded and stood up. As they got to the doorway, Cas erupted in another jaw-cracking yawn.
"Correction," Dean said. "Sammy and I get dressed and fed. You get some more sleep."
"I'm fine," Cas shot back. "Seriously, I just ---" A third yawn was met with two nearly identical 'Really?' glances, and he shook his head. "All right, perhaps a little more wouldn't hurt."
"That's my boy," Dean chuckled and they filed out of the bridge.
Behind them, a single light on the navigation console started to blink.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Having two bathrooms off their quarters sure saved a lot of time, Dean mused as he sat on the edge of Sam's bed and tugged on his boots, before running a hand over his damp hair and smiling. He'd not cut it since the day he and Sam had gotten their tattoos, and it was starting to curl slightly over his forehead when he left it ungelled.
He decided today he'd leave it ungelled. His brothers were the only ones who'd see him, anyway.
Dean made up Sam's bed and then his own, before retreating back to Sam's bed and sitting, looking up at the top bunk. Dark messy hair and a lax left hand drifting over the side was all he could see, but his lips drew up in an amused smile as he heard the soft sighs punctuated by an occasional sharp snort.
Cas snored. Who would have thought?
In Dean's wildest dreams, he never would even have thought anything remotely like this could possibly be his life. Never -- not even in his wildest science-fiction movie fueled fantasies -- had he ever dreamed he would be living in space, hundreds of light-years from Earth, with his Gigantor of a brother by his side.
All because he had made a deal with a Crossroads Demon for Sam's life.
Once that deal had been found to be a trick to get Dean into Hell and start the Apocalypse by torturing him until he broke and started torturing others -- and that rogue angels were working together with demons to make it happen too early and without the approval of God -- things had changed fast and furious for the Winchesters.
Removed from Earth by a race called the B'Shain -- befriending a ship full of them -- and having Bobby and the Harvelles Removed for their protection as well. Sam got a bit of marrow from Dean and the demon blood issue was solved.
As a permanent result of the Deal, Sam and Dean each carried a sliver of the other's soul. They were soulmates in the most literal of senses. And that manifested itself in some interesting ways that were still making themselves known.
And then, there was Cas. Castiel, the guardian angel of Thursday. Castiel, who became Cas Winchester -- human being, with all its slings and arrows -- so he could travel the stars with the Winchesters. Cas, who was older than they could imagine, but so much like a child in other ways that he'd been adopted by them as their youngest brother.
Cas still had something of an angel's Grace. He healed faster and had wings that he could actually use. Because he'd had them all his life and he'd been able to fly all his life, it seemed only natural that he was the MaryJohn's primary pilot. The difference was, being mostly human, when he chose to use them the wings were now visible.
They were all happy in their new lives. The only drawback was -- because of the Deal that had necessitated all this in the first place -- the Winchester brothers could never return to Earth. The minute Dean's feet touched Earth, the terms of the Deal would restart where they had left off. He would have that much of his year left, and no more.
Nobody had ever told them this, but Dean could sense that would be what would happen. His brothers and Bobby told him he was being ridiculous, but he knew what he knew.
And right now, sitting on Sam's overlong bed and watchng Cas sleep while the MaryJohn cruised through the blackness of space, he knew that Sam was taking way too long in the shower.
He got up and pounded on the bathroom's pneumatic door. "You gonna be in there till we have another proximity alert?" he called.
"Bite me!" came the instant retort, and Dean smiled. "Cas still out?"
"Snorin' away!" Dean called back. "Dude can sleep through anything but alerts!"
He heard the shower cut off and seconds later the door slid open to reveal Sam with a towel around his waist and another working on his long hair. "I noticed that. Next time we have him in the medical bay, maybe we need to shove him under a scanner and see if Gabriel really did restore all of his hearing."
Cas had been beaten badly by his former brothers when he had become human. They had tried to use their true visages and voices to blind and deafen him. Because of his residual Grace, they had only been partially successful. Gabriel had healed Cas's eyes and ears shortly before they'd been given the MaryJohn, but there were times when Sam and Dean wondered how complete the healing was.
Gabriel was, after all, a consummate Trickster.
Dean scowled slightly at the top bunk. "You think he might not have?"
"I don't know." Sam crossed to their shared chest of drawers, something he hadn't had since Stanford, and got out clothes. He dried off and dressed before he finished, "But I know sometimes the alerts are all that wake him and I've noticed him looking at our mouths when we speak."
Dean's scowl turned into a worried frown. "But he would have said something--"
"Dude," Sam interrupted, giving him a pointed look as he slid on his boots. "He's a Winchester."
"True." Dean sighed. "Okay, so how do we go about finding this out?"
The Winchester in question suddenly yawned and rolled over, yelping as he rolled completely out of the top bunk and into the slightly wider bottom bunk.
Dean and Sam instantly burst out laughing, and Dean called over, "Dude, you okay?"
"I am uninjured," Cas growled as he sat up and fruitlessly tugged his hands through his hair to get it in some measure of order. "And I have found a side-effect to dreams."
"Bunk-diving?" Dean quipped.
"No." Cas scowled up at him, then stood. "I think I might know what that was that nearly collided with us earlier."
"Cool!" Dean said, sitting down on Sam's bed. "So what was it?"
"It was a space-based virus," Cas said, spreading his hands. "Grown to enormous proportions. It was headed for Earth." He frowned suddenly, lowering his hands. "Though that makes no sense, because we are light years from Earth and even if it was, how could a virus grow that large and ....." He blinked. "Dean, why are you laughing?"
Dean just shook his head, unable to speak. He waved a hand languidly and keeled over backwards onto Sam's bed, laughing until he had tears leaking from his eyes.
Sam chuckled. "Cas, that's the scenario of one of those novels we were telling you about a few weeks ago."
Cas frowned. "Then why would I dream it?"
Sam and Dean looked at each other, and Dean howled with laughter as he gestured at Sam. "All yours, kiddo!"
"Thanks," Sam sighed. He came over to sit beside Cas. "You know what dreams are, right?"
"Yeah, they're the human subconscious's way of working out things the brain immediately can't."
"And they're also tied to our imaginations," Sam said. "It's like a storehouse of everything a human sees and hears and experiences. And it pulls them out in sometimes random order and plays it like movies in your mind."
Cas nodded slowly. "So I'm dreaming about enormous space-traveling viruses because --"
"Because we narrowly avoided colliding with something," Sam said.
"Great flying, by the way," Dean managed to put in, which made Cas grin proudly.
Sam shared the grin. "--and your brain latched onto the memory of that plot because that's close to what we went through and you were trying so hard to figure out what it was---"
"--that my brain supplied an answer," Cas finished. "But not the answer."
"Considering those things aren't even remotely real...." Dean gasped out, wiping his eyes. "I'd say not!" Then he sobered. "Uh -- they aren't real....are they?"
Cas shrugged. "Your knowledge of life-forms out here is approximately the same as mine."
Sam got to his feet, swearing curtly as his head impacted with the bottom of the top bunk. Massaging the impact site, he moved to the door. "Bobby might know."
Dean sat up. "You gonna give him a call?"
"Might as well. Time we checked in, anyway."
Cas stood up. "Say hello for me."
Dean frowned. "Aren't you going to be there with us?"
"Depends on how fast I get showered and dressed." He headed for the bathroom.
"Don't fall asleep in there," Dean called.
Cas glared after him. "That was one time, Dean! One time...."
They left him spluttering. "Dude," Sam laughed. "That was mean."
"Yeah," Dean grinned. "I got two brothers to torment now."
"You're loving this."
"Every damn minute."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Exiting out on to the MaryJohn's bridge, Sam frowned. "Huh."
"What is it?" Dean asked, pouring himself a drink of water as Sam settled himself in the navigator's chair.
"There's a light blinking here." He tapped in a series of commands as Dean settled into the pilot's chair.
"Any idea why?" Dean drained his water and checked the controls. They had been drifting ever since their near-collision, and they were now off-course.
Sam huffed slightly. "We're off-course."
"I just saw that," Dean said. He shut down the autopilot and nudged the controls until they were back on course. "Did that make the light go out?"
Sam studied it. Blink..... Blink...... "Yeah. It went out."
"So that was telling us that we were off the programmed course." Dean grinned. "Okay, that's a new one. I wonder if we're even close to learning everything about this wonderful ship of ours."
"Are you kidding?" Sam grinned back at him. "Then what would be the fun of things?"
"You're a weird one, Sammy." But Dean's words were punctuated by a wink.
Sam just grinned and called up a display, studying where they were heading. "You gonna contact Bobby?"
"Working on it." Dean glanced over. "Where are we heading?"
"Huh."
"I get nervous when you say that." Dean got up and leaned over Sam's shoulder, studying the display as well.
"Sorry." He traced the display. "The thing that nearly hit us? It headed this way. And our path veers here -- taking us on the same track."
Dean frowned. "And we're heading for a world."
"We are." They had taken to using 'world' for the inhabited planets and 'planet' for the uninhabited ones. "I don't recognise the co-ordinates, though."
"But it's definitely a world?"
"Yeah, it's a world. See? The computer puts the planets as red and the worlds as blue."
Dean frowned at the blue sphere, then retreated back to his seat. "I'm dialing."
Sam sat back and waited while Dean activated the communications channel.
Bobby's voice came ringing into the cabin a few minutes later. "Which Winchester's this?"
"Dean and Sam," Dean said. "Cas is in the shower. Why don't you have the video link on?"
"Cause I can't get used to these damned things!" Bobby snarked at him. "You got yours on?"
"Always," Dean grinned. "It's the red button next to the--" The screen leapt to life and Bobby's sleepy eyes suddenly appeared. "You're too close."
He rolled back, his office chair swiveling as he did so. "Better?"
"Better," Dean said. "We've had quite a morning. We had a near-miss with a bogie and now we're heading for a world where we think the bogie's gone as well."
Bobby scratched his beard. "That means your bogie's probably something intelligent. Like you've got a ship on your hands. What world?"
"We don't know. It's in the database as a world, but we don't recognise the co-ordinates."
"Fine," Bobby said. "Send 'em here."
Dean glanced over at Sam, who was already preparing the packet. He nodded as he pressed the final buttons.
Smiling, Dean turned back to the screen. "Sent."
Bobby studied the information packet for a moment, and his eyes narrowed. "You're heading to these co-ordinates?"
"Yeah," Dean said. "Why?"
Bobby let out a soft growl. "Well, shit."
On to part two