Fic: Demons (Stargate SG-1/Supernatural Crossover)
Title: Demons
Fandom: Crossover between Stargate SG-1 (mid-season 8) and Supernatural (mid-season 1)
Rating: PG-13 for a little language
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Summary: The SGC hears rumors that people are getting possessed by demons.
Note: Spoilers for season 1-8 of Stargate SG-1 and season 1 of Supernatural. Inspired by Fig's latest Gen Fic Day and the Crossover Alphabet Soup.
This takes place in the 8th season SG-1 universe, sometime after "Affinity." That puts Lieutenant Colonel Sam Carter (Air Force, experienced in combat, theoretical physics, engineering, and most things dealing with hard science) in command of Teal'c (alien, former general to an evil tyrant who turned traitor to help Earth's teams) and Dr. Daniel Jackson (archaeologist, linguist, translator, diplomat, and overall soft-science guru). SG-1 is one team of several in Stargate Command who explore other planets, conduct diplomacy and commerce, and fight off tyrannical aliens (most prominently a snake-like parasitical race called the Goa'uld, who take on the personas of gods from various cultures). The Goa'uld weighing most heavily on their minds now is Anubis, who is not only evil and ancient but also Ascended, meaning that he reached a higher plane of existence before being kicked out by other Ascended beings and has certain otherworldly powers as a result.
On the SPN side, this takes place in the 1st season, soon after "Nightmare." Sam and Dean Winchester are brothers who were raised to hunt supernatural beings. Sam is the younger who wants a normal life and is fairly resentful of their father and the way he raised them; Dean has been taking care of Sam and following their father's orders since the age of four. After Sam's girlfriend at Stanford was killed by the same demon who killed their mother, the brothers start hunting together again. Demons often appear as black clouds of smoke; they can possess innocent hosts and wreak havoc using influence, supernatural strength and, oftentimes, supernatural abilities like telekinesis and varying degrees of telepathy. Sam has begun to show psychic tendencies. The brothers suspect that it's related to the demon, but they don't know much in the way of specifics yet. Sam&Dean still know relatively little about the hunting community, other than the ones they personally encountered growing up.
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Demons
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"I'm still not convinced we should tell them so much," Sam Carter said in the car. "I don't like to put stock in NID snitches, especially ones who spend off-hours at a bar with a reputation like Harvelle's."
"A possible Goa'uld on Earth," Daniel said, not looking up from the briefing notes they had divided between them. "We can't not check it out. And if this hasn't been exaggerated...this is huge, Sam, stretching back thousands of years. I'm not even sure how to imagine the scale of the problem."
"I know--I just think we need to approach more cautiously. If these police records are even close to the truth, these boys are dangerous. They've had paramilitary training practically since birth--certainly since their mother died, which was when the older one was four."
But Daniel still looked unsure. "How far do you think we'll get with them if we don't offer them something first? They're going to see this as an interrogation, and judging by their previous brushes with the law, they won't take well to that."
Sam took a moment to consider what she would do if she hunted so-called demons and a small military unit started asking her questions. She thought she might talk, actually, depending on several factors, if only to get more information in return and validate whatever conclusions she might have already drawn on her own. Still, maybe Daniel was right--she might have been a military brat, but she had grown up respecting officers of the military and of the peace; the Winchesters had grown up fearing or scorning them. When they knocked on the motel room door, those two were going to think like prisoners, not like scientists, no matter what the younger Winchester's academic record suggested about his way of thinking.
"Hold back, though," she decided. "Play it by ear and offer what you have to only when it seems necessary."
Teal'c, always a conscientious driver, didn't take his eyes from the road, but Daniel finally nodded in agreement.
"Okay. Let's go over the anomalies in the reports again." Reports--hah. They were more like rumors, filtered through a community of people who were either very paranoid and superstitious or just insane.
"Well, we've got the word 'demon,'" Daniel said, "and there was at least one instance in which the demon was called some kind of god, or a powerful entity to be worshipped by what seems to be a cult. They possess human hosts, take over their bodies and will, and are almost impossible to force out of the host."
"One report suggests that a host who is too badly injured may be replaced," Sam said, "which we've occasionally seen from the Goa'uld in the field. These reports make it sound a lot more common in the local demons, though, and one says that demons can continue to animate hosts who are medically dead. Nothing about vocal distortion, but the eye flash has been documented."
"The rumors claim that these demons have existed on Earth...well, forever, essentially. As long as there have been humans."
"I find it difficult to believe that possible without the knowledge of Stargate Command," Teal'c said.
Sam nodded vigorously. That was one of the parts that bothered her the most. "They're talking about...dozens, maybe hundreds. Even one or two is a stretch. How have they been staying alive without a sarcophagus, or how are they getting new symbiotes?"
"Why have they not gathered followers like Setesh," Teal'c added, "or tried to escape through the Stargate like Hathor?"
Daniel looked up. "And the lore is that the 'demons' usually enter a host through the mouth. Never do they mention back of the neck."
Tok'ra, Sam thought immediately. "That could answer the question of why they haven't tried mass genocide or tried to attract attention," she said.
"Doesn't explain their survival over this many years, though, or the problem of symbiotes."
"I believe the rumors to be greatly exaggerated," Teal'c put in. "If there were as many Goa'uld as these reports would lead us to believe, then I would surely have sensed them earlier while walking among the citizens of Earth."
Sam grimaced. "Then again...even a dozen or two Goa'uld in this country would be huge to us, but statistics would make it pretty unlikely you'd have run across one of them among three hundred million people. I wouldn't be looking for it on Earth, but if there are Tok'ra or Goa'uld around, they would be careful to step back as soon as they sensed someone like me."
"The interesting thing," Daniel said, "is that we've rarely come across Goa'uld who make direct references to Christianity as we know it here on Earth. That's not surprising, given the timing of the closing of the 'gate, but the few names we've come across in the report are all taken from Christian mythology."
Okay, so that part was bothering her a lot, too.
Despite not devoting much time or thought to religion lately, and despite everything that told her to trust facts first, no matter what the facts were, Sam had to admit that part of her had been relieved when the first Judeo-Christian Goa'uld they'd met had been the Devil, not Yahweh. She didn't like thinking that the people and ideas she had grown up with might have been alien in nature and evil in disposition.
"What if these Goa'uld are..." Daniel started, then trailed off, thinking.
"What if these Goa'uld are what?" Sam asked. Facts first. If that was what it was, they would deal with it like any other threat. That was all.
"Adapting," Daniel said. "Learning to fill whatever role they can among Tau'ri that would gain them the most devoted following and yet avoid attention from people like us, or even mainstream religion and other political bodies that could turn on them. It would explain why they don't sound like Goa'uld and why they switch bodies so often; they need to sound like humans to blend in, at least at first, or they might even be trying to spread ideas through several hosts at once. Even entering through the mouth could be a defense mechanism to keep anyone from noticing a pattern of external scars."
"And they're preying on people whom the mainstream doesn't hold in high regard anyway--demon-worshippers, literally," Sam added, following his thought. "It's not like many would listen to reports of possession from them or bat an eye if they committed a crime. Did we do a search for modern rumors about prominent religions in other countries? If this wasn't a group of Goa'uld who seeded Christianity, but rather a group who adapted to it, then it could be happening anywhere, under any number of names."
"I already called Nyan to ask him to do a search through literature and media," Daniel answered. "Rick Reeve said he'd make a few inquiries through academic channels, and Hagman's doing the same through military and government contacts. They all have instructions to tell Jack if anything seems off."
Sam let out a breath. "Okay," she said, knowing there wasn't much else they could do from here but wishing they had a little more to work with in a situations as bizarre as this one. "Remember--handle the Winchester brothers with caution. If we can avoid force, Daniel, you work on the younger one, Samuel."
"If I'm playing 'good cop,' should I be armed?" Daniel asked, fingering his sidearm.
"Yes," she said firmly. "Samuel's record might look cleaner, but he was raised the same way and has obviously gone back to it. A weapon won't make him ignore academic authority, and if we play good cop-bad cop and work on his brother, he'll turn on us pretty fast."
"The Winchesters will most certainly be heavily armed," Teal'c warned. "It would be wise to keep them separate so they cannot easily work as a unit."
The older one was another story--not one to respond well to academics, certainly, and while his FBI profile said he responded better to orders given as if from someone military, he still mouthed off quite impressively to many federal and local agents. Maybe it was only certain people he took orders from.
"I'll take point on Dean Winchester," she decided. "Teal'c, I need you to take stock of their room, find where their weapons are, whether they have anything SG-related. Be on high alert."
XXXXX
"Sam," Dean Winchester said when he opened the door to a pretty blonde woman, "you expecting someone?"
"What?" Sam's voice called from the bathroom, muffled like he was in the middle of brushing his teeth. Running water sounded. "No. Why?"
The weird thing was, the woman in the door also said, "What?"
"You tell me, lady," Dean said. "You're the one knocking on our door."
Her stance shifted a little, just enough to raise warnings in his mind. This wasn't just a hot blonde to be flirted with; the way she moved said she was probably a hunter or a cop--someone to be careful around. "How d'you know who I was?" she said.
Uh. "What are you talking about?" Dean said.
"You called me by name," she said, sounding annoyed.
"Dean?" Sam said closer from behind him. "Who's, uh..."
"No idea," Dean said, not looking away from the woman. "Sammy--"
"Excuse me?" the woman said at the same time that Sam bitched, "Don't call me Sammy."
The woman looked at Sam and added a, "Oh. Right, of course."
A car door slammed shut from the road, a man in glasses, around the woman's age, walking toward them. "Sam?" Glasses called.
"Yeah?" Sam and the woman both answered.
And then, "Oh," Dean said, and told his brother, "You have a girl's name."
...x...
Lieutenant Colonel Sam Carter was from the Air Force. Dean was pretty sure even his dad had never run into those guys.
"Someone from Harvelle's sent you," Dean echoed when they'd been through their story. Frankly, it was almost comforting--military meant that there was a reason they looked like fighters that didn't necessarily pose a threat to the Winchesters--it wasn't like the military dealt with hunters and grave desecrations--but anyone assigned to investigate demon reports had to be crackpots or burnouts that the government just didn't want to sack completely. Their dad would have known about it if there had been a serious military branch dedicated to the supernatural. "Who's Harvelle?"
Still, if someone had talked to them, whether it was this Harvelle person or someone else, they still had a problem with government snitches. Besides, these guys were carrying poorly-hidden guns in their jeans--Carter was, at least, and while the guy in glasses looked like a schoolteacher, Dean would have been surprised if the guy with the forehead tattoo wasn't armed. Military was nothing to screw with, and even if they were complete crap at combat (doubtful), only an idiot wouldn't think twice about fighting in close quarters with someone as big as Tattoo-head.
And Sam--Dean's Sam, not Carter--was oddly on some sort of high alert. He was supposed to be on 'cute puppy smile' now, not making the freaking government officials nervous.
Actually, Tattoo-head was frowning pretty hard right back at Sam. Dean might have thought that was the guy's status quo, except that Glasses was frowning in confusion at Tattoo.
"Right," Carter was saying. "Harvelle runs a bar. We have a friend who...heard some news coming out of there that he thought we should know. They didn't give us your names, exactly, but they said to look for your car." She glanced out the window. "'67 Impala. How's she run, old classic like that?"
Oh, man. Dean wasn't sure if he should hate her for even suggesting his baby wasn't up to the job, or like her just a little for at least calling the car a classic.
But before either of them could speak, Tattoo stood up. Jesus. Standing, he was even as tall as Sam was and about twice as big in the biceps, and he was still glaring at Sam as he said, "What are you?"
Dean took the distraction to throw holy water on all of them.
...x...
Carter had been a lot prettier, Dean thought a minute later, when she hadn't had her gun pointed at him, wet shirt or no. He was also vaguely insulted that Tattoo was pinning Sam bodily to the ground instead of Dean, because, dude, Dean was obviously the bigger threat.
"Come on," he said, watching Glasses sniff at the holy water on his shirt. "Honest mistake. Seriously. Just let us explain--"
Sam wheezed around Tattoo's arm.
"C'mon, man!" Dean snapped, suddenly scared as his brother's face reddened.
"Teal'c, ease up," Carter said, not looking away. Tattoo--Teal'c--obeyed her anyway. Sam tried to escape and failed utterly. Dean gritted his teeth at the barrel of Carter's gun and realized belatedly that these guys had to be a little more competent than he'd assumed.
"What is this?" Glasses said, frowning, holding his gun in his hand but not using it. "Did you really just throw water on us?" He frowned a little more at the jar that had been holding the water. "Is that a Catholic rosary?"
"For god's sake, Daniel, don't sniff at it--" Carter started, turning just a little.
Seeing his opening, Dean ducked under her aim and tackled her to the ground. She fell with a oomf, but then rose again and hit back, and Dean was just starting to wonder in horror if he was actually about to lose in hand-to-hand with a woman when--
"Off, now, or I shoot!" someone barked.
Dean froze and looked up.
When he saw that Glasses'--Daniel's--gun was pointed at him, not at his brother, he almost ignored it, but that moment of pause seemed to be all Carter needed to stick her knee into his nuts and shove him off herself.
She was pissed now, too. Dean tried not to roll around in pain and glared at her instead.
"You fucking broke into our room," he gritted out. "What the hell!"
"You threw water on us and then attacked Sam instead of explaining," Daniel said.
"You attacked my Sam first," Dean snapped. "And it ain't like you've explained anything, either."
"Colonel Carter," Teal'c said suddenly, "this boy is not Tau'ri."
"Why would I be a bull?" Sam wheezed, and then, "Dean, he's a...I don't..." His fingers clenched on Teal'c's arm. "Why didn't the holy water burn you?"
Carter's eyebrows shot upward. She glanced at the empty jar, though Dean was too aware of Daniel's gun (and Carter's knee) now to consider making a break for it again. "That is holy water, isn't it," she said, sounding surprised. "Since when does blessed water burn people?"
"You speak Latin?" Daniel asked Sam.
"How do you think we bless the water?" Dean said.
"You're not a priest," Carter told him.
"Jesus, lady," Dean said. "I noticed."
"You think we're evil?" Daniel said, glancing again at Teal'c and then at the water jar. "You...ward evil people away with holy water. Well, it's been documented before, but..."
Daniel's tone said he was humoring them. "The hell with you," Dean said. "What school did you just walk out of?"
"I could ask your brother the same thing," Daniel answered, not wavering. "Then again, the incident at Stanford was all over the news in that area."
Well, fine. "How do you know about us?"
"Looked you up," was the unapologetic answer.
"Having government resources is a wonderful thing," Carter added in explanation. "Tell us what's going on with this demon you're tracking, and we'll leave you alone."
"Get off my brother, and I'll tell you," Dean countered.
"Teal'c," Carter said, her tone making it an order. Teal'c looked reluctant to obey. "Teal'c," she repeated, and he finally let him up, though he picked up one of the shotguns on the nearest table and pointed it at Sam.
"He's not a demon, Sam," Dean said when Sam still looked distrustful and almost...scared.
"He's something," Sam insisted.
There were plenty of things that didn't respond to holy water, though, and as much as Dean hated to think about it, Sam's vibes hadn't been wrong yet. They weren't always very useful vibes, but if Sam was worked up about something, there was probably something supernatural going on.
As if these people hadn't been weird enough already, though, Carter recoiled a little and said, "You can tell..." She trailed off.
"Yeah, 'cause the holy water didn't work," Dean reminded them, not sure what kind of creature worked with human military and didn't even know anything about holy water, demons, or hunters.
"Not you," Daniel said. He turned to Sam. "You knew he was... Are you a ghoul?"
Dean squinted at him. What the hell--they were being held at gunpoint by amateurs with badges. "Do you see us eating corpses? Or any of you?"
Carter's face twisted in disgust. "What...what?"
"He didn't say 'ghoul,'" Sam said. He coughed once, scowled at Teal'c, then turned back to Dean. "I think he said...goo-oold."
Dean mentally rifled through their dad's journal and came up blank. He raised his eyebrows at Sam.
"Me neither," Sam confirmed. "What's a goo-oold?"
"He's not," Carter said.
"Indeed," Teal'c agreed.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis inmundus spiritus, omnis satanica potesta, omnis...incursio..." Sam started, then trailed off when nothing happened.
They stared at him. Daniel cleared his throat. "Um," he said, raising a finger, then lowered it.
"Dude," Dean said, exasperated. "I told you they weren't demons."
...x...
Sam and Teal'c were still shifting awkwardly around each other, but the guns had been put down. Dean had no illusions that these crackpots could get to their weapons pretty fast, though, and didn't relax any more than he had to.
"That was Latin," Carter said warily.
"Ecclesiastical Latin," Daniel clarified. He gave the rosary a sideways look, furrowing his eyebrows. "Well, given the...I suppose that...that makes sense?"
"It does not, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said.
"Yeah, not really," he agreed.
"Why's the Air Force care about demons?" Dean asked, making sure Teal'c and Sam both stayed in his peripheral vision at all times.
Carter exchanged a look with Daniel. "You know," she said, "the entities you call 'demons'...they're not really...I mean, they're still just regular..." She paused. "I think you may be operating under some misconceptions. We can help you, though, if you'll let us in on what you know already."
"Lady--" Dean started.
"Lieutenant Colonel," Teal'c corrected him sharply.
Dean scowled, torn between the urge to follow command structure like their dad had taught them and the disdain for any civilians to come in and think they knew what was what.
Okay, not actually civilians, in this case, but amateurs, at best. What serious hunter thought you needed a priest just to bless water? They weren't hunters, that was obvious.
"Whatever," he finally said. "If you think a demon can stand up against holy water, we're talking about different demons."
"The kind you can...exorcise," Daniel clarified.
"That was an exorcism?" Carter said.
"It started with 'exorcizamus te,'" he said. "'We exorcise you.' And, if my guess is correct, judging from the syntax and pronunciation, it sounds a lot like the beginning of a ritual. Exorcisms of demons have been explored in Catholic lore."
"Oh, great," Dean said to Sam, "they've got one of you in the Air Force."
Daniel frowned at him, looking offended. Sam's spidey sense still seemed to be focused on Teal'c too much to take notice.
"Okay," Carter said, holding up a hand. "So, just to make sure we're talking about the same thing...the demons you deal with enter a host and take control of his or her body, correct?"
Sam glanced at him. "Yeah," Dean answered cautiously.
"They take on the mannerisms of the host when they want to, they can access the host's memories, they suppress the host's own will and actions?"
"Yeah," Dean said again, cautiously more interested since she seemed to be serious, and what she was talking about did describe demons pretty well. "Hard to kill, and there's the thing with the eyes..."
Carter raised her chin, looking more interested herself. "Exactly," she said, sounding almost surprised. "They exhibit increased physical strength..."
"...enter hosts through the mouth..." Dean said.
"About that," Daniel spoke up. "Are you sure it's the mouth?"
"Always the mouth?" Carter asked.
"Well..." Dean started. Okay, so they hadn't actually seen it happen more than a handful of times, but... "Mostly."
"But any orifice would work, as far as we know," Sam decided to speak up. "The mouth might be a symbolic thing, or...or maybe it has more significance we don't know about."
"Never through the back of the neck?" Daniel asked.
Sam wrinkled his nose. "Can it get in that way? Well...maybe? Not that we've seen."
The four of them exchanged looks. "Okay," Carter said. "Never mind. What does this demon look like?"
"Today?" Dean said. "About five foot nine, blond. C-cup. Great at pole dancing."
"What is a C-cup?" Teal'c demanded.
Sam's eyebrows shot upward, and he looked almost amused. Carter coughed. "Never mind," she said firmly. "I take it you were at a...what, a strip club?"
"Hey," Dean said, "a man needs his downtime."
Carter looked disgusted. "Just tell me where."
...x...
"Why'd you quit school?" Daniel asked the younger brother once he was pretty sure neither he nor Teal'c was feeling too homicidal.
Samuel Winchester glanced toward the door. He hadn't stopped checking every minute since Sam had left with his brother to look at the strip club. "Needed a break," Samuel said.
"You were talented in classics," Daniel said, remembering the quick conversations he'd had with Samuel's former professors while they'd been doing the background checks. "I hear you're actually fluent in Latin--not a lot of people around these days who are like that."
"You understood Latin on fly," Samuel retorted, "and you don't speak the Vatican's Latin. So that would probably make you a classical Latin academic of some sort, except you're in the Air Force. They give you a weapon, so you're probably not a civilian, definitely not just a consultant."
Daniel tilted his head. "Not bad," he allowed, glancing at Teal'c. "A little off, but not bad. But I guess you'd have to be observant when you're studying to be a lawyer."
Samuel tried not to look surprised. He had a terrible poker face. "Is this a pissing contest?" he finally said, looking toward the door for his brother again. "Because you got a head start on the research."
"It's not a pissing contest," he said calmly. "I know what it's like to have to put aside the things you love--the people you love."
The Winchesters were young, Daniel realized all over again when Samuel swallowed visibly and looked almost like he wanted to answer. "What do you want with us?" the boy said.
"Well, to start with, we really don't care about your arrest record," Daniel said.
"Sure," Samuel said.
"Did you murder anyone?" Daniel asked, and then, remembering the demons, "Anyone human?"
A flicker of surprise appeared in Samuel's expression. "No," he said. "Not..." He stopped.
It was possible that these two were psychopaths who did kill innocent humans on the false assumption that they were demons, but whether they were sane or not, the best course of action was still getting the boys to help get them a glimpse at these demons first. If the demons were Goa'uld, SG-1 would take care of it. If they were humans, SG-1 would take care of the Winchesters.
"Then we just want to help," Daniel told him. "This is our job. We do this all the time."
Samuel squinted suspiciously at him. "I think we would've noticed if the government had been hunting the supernatural," he said.
Daniel didn't correct the assumption about the 'supernatural.' They needed the boys on their side.
"Perhaps you would not have known of us," Teal'c pointed out. "There is a sizeable society of hunters who live as you do, and yet, you do not know of Harvelle's Roadhouse."
"I was sure your father would have told you about it," Daniel said. "He's pretty close to the Havelle family, as far as we can tell."
That shut Samuel up. He scowled at the floor.
Interesting. Daniel wondered if it was the mention of their lack of knowledge or something about the father that had provoked that reaction.
"I still think you're on the wrong track," Samuel said, sounding honest. "How can you not know about exorcisms and holy water? I mean, you don't kill the host, do you?"
"Not if it's avoidable," Daniel said, not adding that it usually wasn't. He and Teal'c carefully didn't look at each other. He didn't think about Sha're's last moments.
Samuel's hands clenched on the chair. "You know that doesn't kill the demon," he gritted out. "Only the innocent person it's inside."
"If it's one innocent person who's being forced to kill or hurt others, sometimes we don't have a choice," Daniel said when Teal'c didn't answer.
Odd, though, that the Winchesters didn't think killing the host worked.
"And it usually does kill the demon," he added, frowning. "If you're not sure, you can also sever the demon itself once it's down and weak."
Sitting up, Samuel said, "You can what? No--no, look, we've got to be talking about different things."
"You and Teal'c reacted to each other," Daniel said, glancing at Teal'c. The Jaffa's hand was still on his weapon. "It makes a sort of sense to us, from Teal'c's end. If you can honestly tell us there's nothing...different about you that might be related to demons, then I'll call it coincidence. Otherwise, that's a connection. I don't know why or how, but it's something. So...is there anything about you we should know?"
Samuel opened his mouth, but closed it, paling.
He wasn't a Goa'uld or a Jaffa. Sam and Teal'c had both confirmed that. But Teal'c was sensing something from him, and Samuel had reacted to Teal'c, too, even without a symbiote in his body.
Infection, Daniel thought, ticking off possibilities. Something like a plague that was related to the Goa'uld but not literally a symbiote. Something spread through humans, maybe, and Samuel Winchester was infected.
Or exposed to...something. Some sort of radiation. Their father was a hunter, and more than one hunter at the Roadhouse had had weapons or charms on them that had confused Sam's naquadah monitors in a way that she couldn't explain without more equipment and access to the objects themselves. Exposure to alien technology might have affected one of the Winchesters and made him sensitive to certain things most humans wouldn't be. If it was Goa'uld-related, he would barely have noticed it until he'd met Teal'c.
Or it could be something genetic. There wasn't enough data to decide whether hunters' tendency to keep things within the family was biological or habitual or dictated by the society in which they lived. But maybe some hunters, like the Winchesters, had been seeded separately on Earth and had some remnant sensitivity to alien biology than most.
Or maybe some Goa'uld here were experimenting, like Nirrti. Psychic abilities caused by technology that some hunter might have thought of as a magical artifact...that could be it.
"What's he?" Samuel said, nodding at Teal'c.
"He's a...a very good friend named Teal'c," Daniel said, barely catching himself. It was odd how he never quite got used to Earthbound missions. Out here, calling someone a Jaffa only brought to mind Middle Eastern cities or cookies. "I could ask you the same."
"Is he human?" Samuel said.
"He talks," Daniel said slowly, "and he can hear you."
"Are you human, Samuel Winchester?" Teal'c asked.
There was a surprised hesitation, just a bit too long, before Samuel said, too insistently, "Yes. Of course."
Huh, Daniel thought. "How do you like hunting?" he said abruptly.
Samuel didn't answer. For all his smarts and all the quick-witted interviews SG-1 had heard of from the police, Daniel suspected the Winchesters had never been trained on how to answer people who knew there was more to their stories than just stories.
But...
"Do you really hunt demons?" Samuel asked. He straightened up a little, then slouched his tall form back down in his chair, as if unsure whether to be attentive or act uninterested.
"We...no," Daniel hedged, exchanging a look with Teal'c. "Not actively. Usually. But we run across them sometimes, and dealing with them is still our job."
"What would you do..." Samuel started, then let out a quick breath of air and leaned forward. "What if you didn't know whether they were evil?"
"Then I'd try to talk to them," Daniel said immediately, wondering what had prompted the question. "We're not here to shoot first and ask later, if that's what you mean."
Something uncertain flickered across Samuel's face, but he turned away again and shook his head. "You can't always reason with them," he said. "Usually, it's more dangerous to try."
Daniel shrugged. "We deal with danger all the time," he said. "Never trying, though...that can get dangerous."
Finally, Samuel nodded. "Yeah," he agreed, still sounding unsure, but agreeing nonetheless. "I guess it is."
XXXXX
The worst part about Dean Winchester was that they needed his cooperation. Sam had learned long ago when a person shouldn't be underestimated, and she doubted any of them would enjoy the results if they tried to do this against one brother's will.
"Why did your brother think my friend was a demon?" Sam asked when he was driving them back from the club, which hadn't turned up anything useful. "Has he...been possessed before?"
A look of panic surfaced on Dean's face before all emotion disappeared.
"I know what it's like," she offered. "Not being able to control yourself. Knowing that someone's using your body, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. And if someone competent tries to stop you, you might end up dead and the...the demon could just escape."
For what could have been the first time Dean gave her a look that wasn't just skepticism or disdain.
"I can't imagine watching that happen to a friend," she added, even though she had watched it a few times before. Not many lived through it. If Dean's own brother had been Goa'ulded...
"Sam's never been possessed," Dean said.
"But you don't think it's just a coincidence that he gets worked up around someone who came asking about demons," Sam said.
Dean's hand twitched. He turned into the parking lot of the motel and pulled into a spot. He pushed his door open and stepped out of the car. "Your friend with the tattoo," he said.
"Yeah. Look," Sam tried again, watching him check the window of the motel room before opening the door. "You did your holy water test. You tried and failed to exorcize us. We're clean. We know you're clean. We're on the same side, here."
That was the wrong tack. Dean's smirk came back. "Long as you got a badge, Lieutenant Colonel," he said, pushing open the door and stepping inside, "we ain't on the same side."
"I have a question," Daniel said, walking toward them. "What would you have done if your brother had become a lawyer? I mean, I'd think the two of you would want to be on the same side, but it doesn't seem likely, what with your credit fraud and the much more serious charges. Or is that why you made him leave school?"
Risky, Sam knew, watching Dean. His Sammy was a touchy subject--it would put him on the defensive, but it riled him the way little else did, and people got sloppy when they were upset. "Stanford's an amazing school," she added. "Most people wouldn't dream of getting in, much less looking at seven years there including law school. I can't imagine what it must've taken to make him leave."
"I didn't make him leave," Dean growled.
Samuel Winchester had had a girlfriend who had been killed at the same time he had left. Sam knew there had to be a correlation there, but there weren't enough facts to determine causation.
"Hm," Daniel said. "Did it have something to do with a demon?"
Sam looked between the Winchesters. The younger one had tensed at the word, and Dean looked ready to start fighting again. Teal'c was still watching and still had his hand on his zat.
Interesting.
...x...
"So," Sam said, speaking softly, well aware that the Winchester brothers weren't far out of hearing distance even if SG-1 was outside and the boys were still inside the room. "So Sammy told you that Stanford had something to do with a Goa'uld?"
"A demon," Teal'c corrected.
"And no," Daniel said. "Not exactly, but he's worried about something that has to do with himself and these demons. And did you see how tense Dean got when we mentioned Stanford? He only does that when demons are mentioned in the context of his brother. Makes you wonder what exactly their experience has been."
Sam hadn't seen that, actually. Still, half of Daniel's leaps of deduction was gut feeling more than anything else, and she had learned when to trust her team's gut feelings. "What are you thinking about the younger one? He could've been exposed to some technology that...increased brain activity in some certain ways. We don't know for sure what make people or Jaffa sensitive to naquadah; maybe whatever it triggers in the brain got turned on in Samuel."
"It could be a genetic trait that confers such ability," Teal'c offered. "Perhaps it also makes the Goa'uld more aware of Samuel Winchester or his family."
"A trait that he doesn't share with his brother," Sam said, but conceded, "which could be possible, too."
"It might explain why he's worried that there's something wrong with himself," Daniel said. "If he seems to be attracting demons' attention more than most, and especially if it played a part in his girlfriend's death at Stanford, it would certainly make them as anxious as they are now."
"All right," she said, glancing back to make sure the Winchesters were still there and still unarmed. "What else do we have?"
"Everything largely matches," Daniel said, "but there are some differences. We already knew these demons switch hosts more often. Sam also seems to think they're telekinetic."
"Hand device?" Sam asked.
"They don't recognize the description, but if these Goa'uld are blending in, they're going to go for 'inconspicuous,' not 'gaudy.'"
"Are you not concerned that they do not believe killing the host would affect the demon?" Teal'c said.
Daniel took another curious glance at the bottle of holy water. "Makes you wonder if these are the same things, after all."
"There is also a bag of salt just inside their door," Teal'c said.
"The crucifixes, the rituals, those could be passed down through Catholic practices," Sam said, thinking, "but the rest..."
"Salt is cleansing in some superstitions," Daniel said. "Did you see the sigils over the door, too? There's a heptagram. I didn't get a close enough look for more detail, but that's probably a protective sigil."
"Not standard for most practicing Catholics," Sam said.
"Not in the mainstream, that's for sure," Daniel said. "And Dean's necklace is a bull, probably a deity of some sort. I'm thinking Mesopotamian, possibly an Egyptian Apis, but I can't tell for certain. I'd bet it's pagan, though."
Sam let out a breath of air. "This doesn't make any sense. These guys don't add up."
A shotgun was racked behind her head.
"Yeah?" Dean's voice said. "Well, neither do you, sweetheart."
Turning slowly, Sam met Teal'c's eyes and saw Samuel behind him with a machete.
Someone had managed to sneak up on Teal'c. Someone had snuck up on all of them.
"Huh," Daniel said, sounding surprised. "Where were you keeping the machete?"
XXXXX
The Air Force team wasn't looking particularly fazed. Sam wished he'd been able to reach his sickle blade; the machete was useful and intimidating, but it had been years since Sam had faced anything that had needed its limbs chopped off. He'd seen these people move, and hesitations were not going to be acceptable.
Dean moved back to give himself the range for his sawed-off. Sam circled around the team to keep them between himself and his brother. Two against three--they'd faced odds a lot worse and come out on top, and at least these guys were human.
Or not, he thought, his eyes drawn again to Teal'c.
Christ, what was that symbol on the man's head? Sam was sure he'd seen it somewhere before. He had a bad feeling about Teal'c. Nothing had made his skin crawl quite like this since he'd watched Max Miller killing his stepmother. There was no way Teal'c' was one of the yellow-eyed demon's kids--too old by at least a decade or more--but there were plenty of creatures that served higher ranked ones. Maybe even demons needed lackeys.
"Hands up," Dean ordered. "Now!"
Sam was not reassured by the fact that Carter was the only one who looked even a little apprehensive; Teal'c's face only seemed to have two settings: calm and angry. Daniel seemed intrigued and hadn't even moved from his relaxed posture leaning against their car. Still, they raised their hands as ordered, and Sam had just a split second to realize that Carter's expression wasn't apprehension but rather anticipation before--
Teal'c's bulk slammed into him almost before Sam even saw him move.
The man was big. He was strong, too--stronger than even his bulk suggested--and Sam knew there was something wrong with him. It was like trying to take on a demon in a fist fight, and even as he struggled to keep his balance and take over the upper hand, he knew it was only a matter of time--
Sam hit the floor and felt Teal'c's arm return to its chokehold around his neck. Instinctively, he tried to gulp in a breath of air, scrabbling at Teal'c's unmoveable arm.
"Teal'c?" Carter called.
"He is restrained, Colonel Carter," Teal'c said.
Through watering eyes, Sam saw both Carter and Daniel in a standoff with Dean, his shotgun against their two Berettas.
Sam really hoped they didn't realize the shotgun was full of rock salt instead of bullets.
"And is he breathing?" Daniel asked.
"Sam," Dean barked.
"Dean," Sam croaked back. He wondered how long it would be before constant strangulations gave him permanent throat damage.
Dean bared his teeth. "Let him go," he growled.
"Put down your weapon," Carter countered.
"You first," Dean said.
"I don't think so," she said. "My brother's not the one being choked."
"Jesus!" Dean burst out. "What the hell do you people want, anyway? You want to get killed by a bunch of smoke with a brain? Fine. Let Sam go and I'll tell you where the demon is."
Teal'c let go. Sam overbalanced and fell onto his hands, scrambling back up to his feet as fast as he could.
"Sammy?" Dean said, urgency threaded through his anger.
"I'm good," Sam answered, coughing experimentally.
"Inside," Carter ordered. Before Dean could talk back, she raised her gun a little and said, "Do you really want to do this outside? What do you think happens when someone hears shots fired and sees escaped criminals shooting at military personnel?"
Fuming, Dean took a quick look around anyway. They couldn't afford attention like that, not with everything going on. "Dean," Sam said. "Dean, just...let's go inside."
"Sam--"
"Dean," Sam insisted.
Dean gave him a dirty look--the kind Sam remembered getting just after Ellicott, or when he'd disobeyed Dad's orders and tried to find him in San Francisco--and kicked the motel door open.
"Thank you," Carter said. She motioned with her gun. "Teal'c first, then you and Sam."
Daniel was the last inside, and he closed the door, looking more embarrassed than bothered about the situation. "So," he said. "Smoke, you said."
"What?" Dean snapped.
"You said this demon looks like a cloud of smoke."
"Never met one that didn't," Dean said, squaring his shoulders. "Don't believe me, feel free to get the hell out of here."
That wasn't it, though. The look that the three were exchanging wasn't one of disbelief, but rather of a sort of near-panic.
"Anubis," Daniel said. "They could be..." He made an upward motion with his hand.
"That's not--" Carter started, but stopped. "No way."
"Why not?" Daniel said.
Carter shook her head. "They wouldn't let it happen. No way."
"Really?" he said. "How sure are you about that? Because it would make every anomaly here fall into place."
"Anubis?" Sam said. They ignored him.
"Not the exorcism," Carter said, but added, "unless they've evolved somehow."
"If they had such power, we would have noticed them sooner," Teal'c said.
"Who's Anubis?" Sam tried again.
"Well, they can't use it," Daniel said, looking frustrated. "Because they'd stop them."
Dean gave Sam a sideways look and reached for his shotgun.
Carter swung her weapon in his direction again. "No," she said. But when Dean stopped, she put her own gun out to the side, too. "Everyone, no weapons. All right? Even us. Daniel, holster."
Daniel flicked on his safety and holstered his gun. Carter followed suit. Dean gave Sam a look and shuffled his foot to say he still had at least one knife in his boot, then held up his hands and backed away from the gun. "Fine," he said. "Me and the sasquatch over there are unarmed. So what the hell?"
"Anubis, like Egyptian-god Anubis?" Sam asked for the third time.
"That's the one," Daniel said. "Well. Sort of. Have you ever heard of the ancients?"
What? "Ancient what?" Dean said. "Demons are pretty ancient."
"It's...just Ancient," Carter said, but sighed. "How about Ascension?"
"Are we...talking about Jesus here?" Sam said, though he suspected he was off. "Because I think you're looking in the wrong direction for demons."
"No, these are beings who...have been cast down from their Ascended state," Daniel said.
Sam held back a sigh. It really didn't seem possible for things to get more cryptic. "Like fallen angels?" he tried.
"Not... It depends on what you think of as angels, I guess," Carter said, which didn't help at all. She took a deep breath. "Look. I think we might be able to help you. How do you usually find these demons?"
"Why?" Dean said, still sounding resentful. "You do know your artillery won't do anything to them, right?"
"Oh, I don't know about that," she said, smiling grimly. "We've picked up a few things over the years."
"Like how to kill innocent hosts," Sam couldn't help adding.
But when she reached into her jacket pocket, she held up something black and metallic looking. It sprang upward in her hand. "Ever see a zat?" Carter said.
"No," Dean said, but his eyes followed her hand as she set it on the table. There was a button on it that had to be a trigger.
"I really don't think we're talking about the same thing," Sam said for what had to be the fourth time.
"Well," Daniel said, "in that case, there's another kind of demon we don't know about that's posing a threat to the...the nation. Trust me, we've got a lot of experience with a lot of things. We can still help."
"But--" Sam started.
"We need to set a trap," Carter said. She gave Teal'c a look. "We need to force their hand and make them try to get out."
"I will begin planning immediately," Teal'c said.
"How exactly do these exorcisms work?" Daniel said, turning to Sam.
An odd sound drew Sam's attention away in time to see Dean pick up the zat and shoot some sort of beam at the nearest empty chair. The chair fell over with a clatter. "Huh," Dean said.
"You really shouldn't--" Carter started, reaching for the zat.
Dean squeezed the trigger two more times.
The chair disappeared.
"Holy shit," Dean said.
"--touch that," Carter said belatedly. "Damn."
Dean turned around with a gleam in his eye. Sam's heart sank. It was the same gleam he got whenever he was allowed to set things on fire. "I want in," he said.
A/N: This was just a bit of fun--it's probably the least complete fic I've ever posted, and I have no idea whether or not it makes sense to people not familiar with both fandoms. Hope you enjoyed it at least a little!