Fic: Go Down Swinging (1/3)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence
Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money.
Spoilers: 3x12 Jus in Belo
Word Count: 2090
Summery: Victor Henriksen plans to go down swinging. AU as of the end of Jus in Belo.
AN: I'm writing this because I'm annoyed that they've just gone and killed my favorite secondary character. *grumble*
When the blast hits, Victor is standing among the holding cells, thinking about... well, life the universe and everything, but mostly life, his life, and how he's wasted it.
He's standing there, staring at a toilet filled with holy water, and thinking about how despite having had his head dipped in the damn thing, he somehow feels more dirty on the inside than the outside. He thinks about black smoke. He thinks about his finger pulling a trigger and an innocent man lying dead. He thinks about the look in Sam Winchester's eyes when he asked how long they'd had those tattoos. He thinks about how he gave the sheriff a hard time. He thinks he might be a jackass. He thinks there are worse things to be. Like possessed.
He thinks about his partner, the closest thing he's had to a friend in years, being murdered by demons. He thinks about how he's always lived his life on the right side of the law. He thinks about the respect he held for the agency, for his superiors, for the legal system. He thinks about how he's always tried to do the right thing. He thinks about the lie he's about to tell.
He thinks about ghosts. He thinks about how his second wife called him an obsessed bastard before she left him. He thinks about John Winchester dragging his sons across the county. He thinks she didn't know the meaning of the word “obsession.” He thinks that neither did he. He thinks about vampires. He thinks about werewolves. Hell, he even thinks about Bigfoot, but mostly, he thinks about demons. He thinks about this war, between humans and hell. He thinks about what Dean Winchester said, about the world ending bloody. He thinks he's wasted his life. He thinks that maybe he should do something about that. He thinks he hears a child speaking out in the bullpen. He thinks he hears the name “Lilith,” but then there's a blast of white light, and he doesn't think about anything for a long time.
Victor Henriksen graduated high school when he was sixteen. He wasn't a genius or anything. Oh, he was smart enough, but mostly, he was driven. He took summer classes and night classes. He sat among other kids who were there because they'd failed their courses and tried not to resent them too much. He got As. When there was a subject he didn't get, he'd study harder. He'd find a touter. He'd make himself get it. He worked summer jobs and scrounged every penny for an expensive SAT prep course. His parents were proud of him, his older sister made fun of him, and her fiancée brought him books and helped him with his biology homework. He didn't have much of a social life, but really? He didn't much care.
His older sister and her fiancée died during a convenience store robbery a month before he started college. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He attended American University in Washington DC on a scholarship. He got an internship with the FBI through a university program when he eighteen. He'd always been driven, but now he had a purpose. He knew what he was going to do with his life.
He applied to police academy when he was twenty. He was accepted, and he graduated at the top of his class when he was twenty one. He spent two years on the force before he made SWAT. He was on the team for a year before he applied to the FBI. He was accepted, and at twenty-four, he went to Quantico and became an FBI agent.
He knew what he was going to do with his life. He was going to save lives. He was going to hunt monsters.
It would be fifteen years before he'd come to appreciate just how wrong, and how right, he'd been.
When Victor comes to, he's got a tube jammed down his throat. He starts to gag and thrash. There's a sudden commotion, machines beeping, people around him talking, yelling, shining a light in his eyes. He tries to focus, but everything hurts so god damned bad that he can't. He blacks out.
The second time he wakes up the tube is gone and his mind is fuzzy with painkillers. He's in a hospital. They tell him about the “gas leak” and Victor knows that's a load of steaming horse shit. He knows what caused that blast. He wonders how people are so willing to overlook the obvious because it doesn't fit with their perception of reality, and then he remembers ignoring all those little niggling details that didn't quite fit while he was tracking the Winchesters. Like a Jane Doe look alike corpse. Right. Little.
His body is a mess. The doctors tell him he was lucky, that he was shielded from the blast by the thick walls and metal doors of the holding cell area. They tell him he was pulled out of the rubble seven hours after the blast. They tell him he's really lucky that there won't be much lasting physical damage.
Much.
He's had skin grafts all down one arm and on the side of his face. He's had bits of shrapnel removed from pretty much every part of his body, but worst of all, his right leg is screwed to hell. They've replaced his knee joint with an artificial one and his whole god damned leg hurts so bad every time he moves it he wants to scream. They tell him he'll be able to walk again, but he'll have a limp. He'll never regain full use of the leg. His career with the FBI is over. The bureau has pretty strict rules about agent fitness and health, and gimp agents are out. That hurts. That makes him want to curl up and die. His job's been his life for so long that he doesn't now what he'll do without it. Sure, they're letting him off with a full pension, but that doesn't really soften the blow.
Then he remembers black smoke, and terror, and the end of the world. He remembers his partner and the sheriff. He remembers Nancy.
He realizes he has no right to feel sorry for himself.
He makes himself get better. He pushes the physical therapy as far as he can. He pushes until his therapist warns him that if he pushes any harder he'll be doing more harm then good. His stitches come out. He does crunches. He does push ups. He can't run, not yet, so takes up swimming. The pain in his leg subsides and he can walk more or less normally. He keeps pushing himself. He starts jogging. It gets better. There's always a twinge there; when he climbs stairs, when he moves too fast, but he learns to ignore it.
He also studies. He reads books on mythology, demonology, ghosts. He surfs the net. He finds that there's no sure way to tell the truth from the myths. He has about a billion questions and no way to contact the Winchesters, so he sticks with what he knows. Demons can be slowed down by a shotgun filled with salt. Salt at windows and doors will stop them from entering. Devil's traps will hold them. Holy water burns them. Exorcisms will send them back to hell. Charms and tattoos will stop them from possessing you.
He goes out and gets inked as soon as he gets released from the hospital. That weird dirty on the inside feeling doesn't quite go away, and the memory of his finger pulling that trigger doesn't stop replaying in his dreams, but he tells himself that it's at least a little better, because now it'll never happen again.
He memorizes the exorcism.
He manages to extrapolate some more information on what's out there by going back over his notes on the Winchester's behavior. He puts some pieces together about that dead nurse and the mysterious deaths at Green River. He now knows ghosts are real, and he works out that you get rid of them by dousing their corpses with salt and setting them on fire. According to Dean Winchester's statement in Baltimore, shapeshifters are also real, and judging by the silver bullet pulled out of Dean's twin's corpse, you kill them with silver, which according to every source he can find, is also how you kill werewolves.
As for vampires, there's so much information out there it makes his head spin, but most of it's a bit too Anne Rice for him to believe. Wooden steaks and decapitation seem pretty consistent, so he figures he'll go with that if he has to.
He wonders what else is out there that Dean didn't mention. He supposes he'll find out soon enough.
Once his leg is as healed as it'll ever get, he gives his landlord notice, puts the few possessions he has that he cares about in storage, sells everything else, packs his car with weapons, and hits the road. He has no one to worry about him, no one to ask him where he's going or what in the hell he's thinking. All he has is a scattered pile of notes, a series of articles about some mysterious deaths up in Pennsylvania, a carefully collected stash of weapons, and a regular pension check from the FBI.
The mysterious deaths turn out to be the work of a ghost, and salting her corpse and then setting it on fire does, in fact, get rid of her. He stands over the open grave and watches the body burn.
He catches his first demon in Arkansas. It's possessed a teenage girl and used her to murder a priest. He lures her into a devil's trap and then exorcises it, ignoring its taunts and attempts to provoke him. All he wants is to make sure that the kid is okay, and he's sure as hell not going to let a demon goad him into hurting her. The exorcism works and the girl survives. She breaks down into tears and Victor ends up holding her as she sobs.
“Oh God, oh God,” she sobs against his shoulder. “It made me... I ki...”
“It's okay,” he says holding her. “It's not your fault. Not one bit of it.”
“How could you...”
“'Cause I've been there, and it's not your fault. You didn't do it.”
When she quiets, he cleans up the mess, and moves the priest's body. He destroys any evidence that might lead the police to the girl. He cleans up her fingerprints and makes it look like a robbery, and all the while he ignores the strange feeling settling into the pit of his stomach. He reminds himself that he might not be doing the legal thing, but he's doing the right thing, that the poor kid is innocent and doesn't deserve to take the fall for this.
He's been on the road for one month and he's handled two ghosts and the one demon, when he picks up on Sam and Dean Winchester's trail. It's an article in a local newspaper that he's checking for leads: an elderly couple claim a pair of young men saved them from some sort of rampaging wild animal. They're pretty vague on what the animal was, exactly, but they say that one of the two men was very tall.
He heads straight to the town and questions the elderly couple, but they have no idea where the two men where headed. Victor does, however, get a positive ID with an old photograph of Dean Winchester, so he'd knows he's on the right trail.
He asks around town and lucks out when an auto mechanic tells him that he saw an old, classic Impala leaving the town, heading north. Victor immediately starts digging through newspaper articles online, searching for what might have drawn then brothers northwards. He finds a story about some teenagers going missing in a small community in Montana. He packs his car and goes, driving non-stop until he gets there.
It takes him no time to find the pair of them. That damn car of theirs is so flashy it's impossible to miss. He spots it in a motel parking lot and a few minutes later he's knocking on their door. About thirty seconds after that, he's staring down the barrel of a shotgun and into the narrowed eyes of Sam Winchester.
More? (y/n)?
As the answer seems to have been "yes"... Part Two
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence
Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money.
Spoilers: 3x12 Jus in Belo
Word Count: 2090
Summery: Victor Henriksen plans to go down swinging. AU as of the end of Jus in Belo.
AN: I'm writing this because I'm annoyed that they've just gone and killed my favorite secondary character. *grumble*
When the blast hits, Victor is standing among the holding cells, thinking about... well, life the universe and everything, but mostly life, his life, and how he's wasted it.
He's standing there, staring at a toilet filled with holy water, and thinking about how despite having had his head dipped in the damn thing, he somehow feels more dirty on the inside than the outside. He thinks about black smoke. He thinks about his finger pulling a trigger and an innocent man lying dead. He thinks about the look in Sam Winchester's eyes when he asked how long they'd had those tattoos. He thinks about how he gave the sheriff a hard time. He thinks he might be a jackass. He thinks there are worse things to be. Like possessed.
He thinks about his partner, the closest thing he's had to a friend in years, being murdered by demons. He thinks about how he's always lived his life on the right side of the law. He thinks about the respect he held for the agency, for his superiors, for the legal system. He thinks about how he's always tried to do the right thing. He thinks about the lie he's about to tell.
He thinks about ghosts. He thinks about how his second wife called him an obsessed bastard before she left him. He thinks about John Winchester dragging his sons across the county. He thinks she didn't know the meaning of the word “obsession.” He thinks that neither did he. He thinks about vampires. He thinks about werewolves. Hell, he even thinks about Bigfoot, but mostly, he thinks about demons. He thinks about this war, between humans and hell. He thinks about what Dean Winchester said, about the world ending bloody. He thinks he's wasted his life. He thinks that maybe he should do something about that. He thinks he hears a child speaking out in the bullpen. He thinks he hears the name “Lilith,” but then there's a blast of white light, and he doesn't think about anything for a long time.
Victor Henriksen graduated high school when he was sixteen. He wasn't a genius or anything. Oh, he was smart enough, but mostly, he was driven. He took summer classes and night classes. He sat among other kids who were there because they'd failed their courses and tried not to resent them too much. He got As. When there was a subject he didn't get, he'd study harder. He'd find a touter. He'd make himself get it. He worked summer jobs and scrounged every penny for an expensive SAT prep course. His parents were proud of him, his older sister made fun of him, and her fiancée brought him books and helped him with his biology homework. He didn't have much of a social life, but really? He didn't much care.
His older sister and her fiancée died during a convenience store robbery a month before he started college. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He attended American University in Washington DC on a scholarship. He got an internship with the FBI through a university program when he eighteen. He'd always been driven, but now he had a purpose. He knew what he was going to do with his life.
He applied to police academy when he was twenty. He was accepted, and he graduated at the top of his class when he was twenty one. He spent two years on the force before he made SWAT. He was on the team for a year before he applied to the FBI. He was accepted, and at twenty-four, he went to Quantico and became an FBI agent.
He knew what he was going to do with his life. He was going to save lives. He was going to hunt monsters.
It would be fifteen years before he'd come to appreciate just how wrong, and how right, he'd been.
When Victor comes to, he's got a tube jammed down his throat. He starts to gag and thrash. There's a sudden commotion, machines beeping, people around him talking, yelling, shining a light in his eyes. He tries to focus, but everything hurts so god damned bad that he can't. He blacks out.
The second time he wakes up the tube is gone and his mind is fuzzy with painkillers. He's in a hospital. They tell him about the “gas leak” and Victor knows that's a load of steaming horse shit. He knows what caused that blast. He wonders how people are so willing to overlook the obvious because it doesn't fit with their perception of reality, and then he remembers ignoring all those little niggling details that didn't quite fit while he was tracking the Winchesters. Like a Jane Doe look alike corpse. Right. Little.
His body is a mess. The doctors tell him he was lucky, that he was shielded from the blast by the thick walls and metal doors of the holding cell area. They tell him he was pulled out of the rubble seven hours after the blast. They tell him he's really lucky that there won't be much lasting physical damage.
Much.
He's had skin grafts all down one arm and on the side of his face. He's had bits of shrapnel removed from pretty much every part of his body, but worst of all, his right leg is screwed to hell. They've replaced his knee joint with an artificial one and his whole god damned leg hurts so bad every time he moves it he wants to scream. They tell him he'll be able to walk again, but he'll have a limp. He'll never regain full use of the leg. His career with the FBI is over. The bureau has pretty strict rules about agent fitness and health, and gimp agents are out. That hurts. That makes him want to curl up and die. His job's been his life for so long that he doesn't now what he'll do without it. Sure, they're letting him off with a full pension, but that doesn't really soften the blow.
Then he remembers black smoke, and terror, and the end of the world. He remembers his partner and the sheriff. He remembers Nancy.
He realizes he has no right to feel sorry for himself.
He makes himself get better. He pushes the physical therapy as far as he can. He pushes until his therapist warns him that if he pushes any harder he'll be doing more harm then good. His stitches come out. He does crunches. He does push ups. He can't run, not yet, so takes up swimming. The pain in his leg subsides and he can walk more or less normally. He keeps pushing himself. He starts jogging. It gets better. There's always a twinge there; when he climbs stairs, when he moves too fast, but he learns to ignore it.
He also studies. He reads books on mythology, demonology, ghosts. He surfs the net. He finds that there's no sure way to tell the truth from the myths. He has about a billion questions and no way to contact the Winchesters, so he sticks with what he knows. Demons can be slowed down by a shotgun filled with salt. Salt at windows and doors will stop them from entering. Devil's traps will hold them. Holy water burns them. Exorcisms will send them back to hell. Charms and tattoos will stop them from possessing you.
He goes out and gets inked as soon as he gets released from the hospital. That weird dirty on the inside feeling doesn't quite go away, and the memory of his finger pulling that trigger doesn't stop replaying in his dreams, but he tells himself that it's at least a little better, because now it'll never happen again.
He memorizes the exorcism.
He manages to extrapolate some more information on what's out there by going back over his notes on the Winchester's behavior. He puts some pieces together about that dead nurse and the mysterious deaths at Green River. He now knows ghosts are real, and he works out that you get rid of them by dousing their corpses with salt and setting them on fire. According to Dean Winchester's statement in Baltimore, shapeshifters are also real, and judging by the silver bullet pulled out of Dean's twin's corpse, you kill them with silver, which according to every source he can find, is also how you kill werewolves.
As for vampires, there's so much information out there it makes his head spin, but most of it's a bit too Anne Rice for him to believe. Wooden steaks and decapitation seem pretty consistent, so he figures he'll go with that if he has to.
He wonders what else is out there that Dean didn't mention. He supposes he'll find out soon enough.
Once his leg is as healed as it'll ever get, he gives his landlord notice, puts the few possessions he has that he cares about in storage, sells everything else, packs his car with weapons, and hits the road. He has no one to worry about him, no one to ask him where he's going or what in the hell he's thinking. All he has is a scattered pile of notes, a series of articles about some mysterious deaths up in Pennsylvania, a carefully collected stash of weapons, and a regular pension check from the FBI.
The mysterious deaths turn out to be the work of a ghost, and salting her corpse and then setting it on fire does, in fact, get rid of her. He stands over the open grave and watches the body burn.
He catches his first demon in Arkansas. It's possessed a teenage girl and used her to murder a priest. He lures her into a devil's trap and then exorcises it, ignoring its taunts and attempts to provoke him. All he wants is to make sure that the kid is okay, and he's sure as hell not going to let a demon goad him into hurting her. The exorcism works and the girl survives. She breaks down into tears and Victor ends up holding her as she sobs.
“Oh God, oh God,” she sobs against his shoulder. “It made me... I ki...”
“It's okay,” he says holding her. “It's not your fault. Not one bit of it.”
“How could you...”
“'Cause I've been there, and it's not your fault. You didn't do it.”
When she quiets, he cleans up the mess, and moves the priest's body. He destroys any evidence that might lead the police to the girl. He cleans up her fingerprints and makes it look like a robbery, and all the while he ignores the strange feeling settling into the pit of his stomach. He reminds himself that he might not be doing the legal thing, but he's doing the right thing, that the poor kid is innocent and doesn't deserve to take the fall for this.
He's been on the road for one month and he's handled two ghosts and the one demon, when he picks up on Sam and Dean Winchester's trail. It's an article in a local newspaper that he's checking for leads: an elderly couple claim a pair of young men saved them from some sort of rampaging wild animal. They're pretty vague on what the animal was, exactly, but they say that one of the two men was very tall.
He heads straight to the town and questions the elderly couple, but they have no idea where the two men where headed. Victor does, however, get a positive ID with an old photograph of Dean Winchester, so he'd knows he's on the right trail.
He asks around town and lucks out when an auto mechanic tells him that he saw an old, classic Impala leaving the town, heading north. Victor immediately starts digging through newspaper articles online, searching for what might have drawn then brothers northwards. He finds a story about some teenagers going missing in a small community in Montana. He packs his car and goes, driving non-stop until he gets there.
It takes him no time to find the pair of them. That damn car of theirs is so flashy it's impossible to miss. He spots it in a motel parking lot and a few minutes later he's knocking on their door. About thirty seconds after that, he's staring down the barrel of a shotgun and into the narrowed eyes of Sam Winchester.
More? (y/n)?
As the answer seems to have been "yes"... Part Two