SPN Fic: Revisionist History (Gen, PG13, The Usual Suspects)
Yeah, I might have mentioned something about The Usual Suspects bending me a little in how badly it mangled it's own internal logic, right? So obsessing on such things as I am wont to do, I found myself re-writing the ending to make it address some of the things that most irked me -- most of which were the weasy little lawyer gaffes (those were irritants) or even the bending the law as of physics of that fucked up light show (because that did work visually, if not logically); but rather that were the HUGE, GIGANTIC logic errors and the totally fucked up hackneyed way some of the choices were made that I -- not being someone who writes for the show, of course -- think should have been done differently.
And somehow, that turned into a story. A bit of a revisionist history story that kept the episode largely as is, but grabbed on chunk of pivotal dialog and reconfigured it to a completely different implication for an ending beyond what they showed of Dean yearning for his pea soup. An ending that, as fate would have it, actually works for me, addressing all my little logic bitches with the show.
So I thought I'd share it with y'all. Not that I'm saying this is the way it SHOULD have been done, mind you. But fuck if it wouldn't have made a whole lot more sense to ME at least, in terms of the internal logic they established about death omens and duplicate necklaces and all that crap.
So here you go. Obviously, the dialog in the first part is kyped directly from the episode as I am trying to reconfigure their take without changing any more of it than absolutely required, so I used their dialog and just showed the scene from Dean's perspective to give it a little insight I would have otherwise had to add dialog the ep didn't have to accomplish.
Let me know what y'all think.
Title: Revisionist History
Author: dodger_winslow
Genre: Gen
Pairings: None
Rating: PG-13 for Language
Spoilers: The Usual Suspects
Disclaimer: I'm don't own the boys, I'm just stalking them for a while.
Disclaimer #2: I love the writers. I really do. This episode just ticked me off. And yes, I realize "fixing" something they aired is awfully bold of me in kind of an awesomely jackassish way; but hey, isn't that what fanfic is for? To mold the show to our own vision of what we would like it to be, as compared to what it is actually shown, on-air, to be? So I'm molding. Consider this molding. Green fungi and all. If it offend ye, consider it crack!fic molding. Either way, this is the way I wish it would have played.
Notes: This is a reconfiguring of the last section of the episode The Usual Suspects to address as many of the internal logic holes that drove me batty as I could. I've changed the aired dialog as little as I possibly could to still accomplish what I was trying to accomplish. The fact that I didn't feel a need to re-configure the last scene from Sunrise through Dean's snark about pea-soup means you should take it as if that happened here, too; I'm just rejoining events after that particular moment when I make my jump.
Summary: How stupid do you think I am? Evidently, Diana thinks more than just a little.
Revisionist History
The van pulled off the main road and parked under the kind of tree that would have made a great lynching tree back in the day. Dean’s heart accelerated in his chest. Oh he was fucked. He was so, so, so utterly fucked.
"Pee break?" he asked, his mind working a million miles a minute trying to figure a way out of this. "So soon? You might want to get your prostate checked."
Pete shifted the van out of gear, turned it off. He didn’t say anything, just smiled a little smile Dean could see in the rearview, then got out and slammed the door behind him.
Oh, that was so not good. So very, very, very not good.
Dean’s eyes skated around the van’s dark interior, looking for something - anything - he could use to defend himself. Having been designed for transporting prisoners from one secure facility to another, the van was a little short on shit to use as weapons.
"Son of a bitch," Dean swore as keys rattled in the lock on the back door.
When Pete swung the doors open, his expression was so cop cool Dean knew he was more than just fucked, he was dead fucked.
"Hey, I’m cool in the van, man," Dean said, desperate for anything to slow the escalation down, to give himself time to think his way out of this one. But even while he tried, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. He’d been thinking as fast and as hard as he could since Pete showed up without transfer papers and took him over the protests of all the other cops. Because cops don’t do that. Or at least, the ones who play by the rules don’t. The ones who intend to stay on the force don’t.
That was the one thing you could say about cops without being insulting as far as Dean was concerned: the son of a bitches played by the rules. It was their absolute best personality trait, mostly because it made them so much easier to circumvent. Rules made people predictable. And cops were top of the line when it came to predictable. Unfortunately, Dean was pretty sure he could predict exactly where this was going.
Pete was done on the force. That grabbing a prisoner out of lockup and just taking off? That turning off the radio when dispatch is saying "answer or else, you crazy son of a bitch"? Those were firing offenses. He was gone, sayonara, a gold shield on the fast track to a career as a night watchman. And obviously, that didn’t make a damn bit of difference to him. All of which, in terms of laying odds on predictable behavior, meant Dean was so, totally, absolutely fucked right now.
"You go do what you’ve gotta do-" Dean went on as Pete grabbed him by the front of the jacket and threw him out of the van.
He hit the ground hard, rolling with the impact as much as he could, trussed up like a Christmas turkey the way he was. What he wouldn’t give for just a good old fashioned pair of handcuffs right now. But no. They put ankle cuffs and hobble chains on murder suspects. Damn predictable cops.
Pete jerked his tie loose as Dean struggled his way back to his knees. Getting down to it, then. Ready to roll up the sleeves and get it on.
There might not be a damned thing he could do to stop what was happening, but Dean wasn’t going to lie there on the ground like a kicked dog and be shot in the head, either. At the very least, he was going out upright: on his knees, if not his feet. And who knows? Maybe there was still some way to talk himself out of this. Or barring that, maybe Pete would need his vengeance up close and dirty - want to actually see the light go out of Dean’s eyes when he pulled the trigger - and that would make him careless enough to step in close, give Dean a shot at putting him down.
With his ankles cuffed together the way they were, he had absolutely zero chance of running, but if Pete got close enough, he might be able to body block him to the ground and take him out with an elbow to the head. There was about two peas more than a zero percent chance of that happening, but two peas was better than no peas, and that was the only plan he had.
"You are a cocky son of a bitch," Pete said, looking at him like he was the most vile piece of shit on the planet. Dean wasn’t insulted- that’s the way cops always usually looked at him. "You think those people in St. Louis are going to buy what you’re peddling?"
Dean settled into his knees, twisting his feet up under him so they’d be in position to propel him forward if Pete stepped close enough to give this cocky son of a bitch a fighting chance.
"Here’s the thing," Pete went on. "You’re not going to make it to St. Louis. You’re going to die trying to escape."
Oh, original plan there, Sparky. Bet no cop ever, anywhere came up with that one. But even though Dean was thinking it, he didn’t say it because Pete was pulling his gun, bringing it into line. "Wait, wait," he said instead, putting his hands out instinctively, trying to hear himself think through the pound of adrenaline in his veins.
He was fucked. He was so utterly fucked.
Pete was siting down the gun. He was going to do it from where he was, never take even a single step closer to give Dean half a damn chance at zero percent chance. Damn predictable cops.
"Let’s talk about this," Dean suggested, stalling his ass off. "You don’t want to do something you’re going to regret."
Pete smiled a yeah-I-do smile and cocked his gun.
"Or maybe you do," Dean revised, trying to be agreeable, averting his eyes in an effort to seem contrite, or scared or like he didn’t deserve to be shot in the head.
Pete wasn’t buying. He braced himself to pull the trigger. Dean gritted his teeth, doing the only think left for him to do: wait to die.
"Pete!" The sharpness of the woman’s voice made Dean flinch. "Put the gun down," she ordered firmly.
Pete’s gun swung to cover her instinctively, focusing his aim in on the intruder even as he identified her as his partner. "Diana?" He was confused, disoriented for a moment. Dean put one hand to the ground, coiling to take advantage of the momentary distraction; but Pete caught the motion out of the corner of his eye, and returned the gun’s focus to him.
So much for that plan.
"How’d you find me?" Pete demanded.
Dean realized then that Sam was with her. Crap. And yea! And crap. This could go either way; Sam didn’t have a gun and Pete didn’t strike him as the type to leave witnesses behind.
"I know about Claire," Diana said, her gun steady, apparently prepared to blow her partner away.
Pete’s expression twisted. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."
"Put the gun down," Diana repeated.
Pete studied her for a moment, then half smiled. "Nah, I don’t think so. You’re fast, but you’re sure I’m faster."
So? You can shoot me faster than she can shoot you? That still leaves us both dead, Brain Trust. But as much as he was thinking it, Dean didn’t say it out loud. He was still working on contrite, and scared, and not deserving to be shot in the head. Hadn’t worked with Pete, but it might still work with his partner.
"Why are you doing this?" Diana asked.
"I didn’t do anything, Diana," he returned.
Yeah, yet! They’d been two minutes slower, and you’d have killed my ass. But still, Dean kept his yap shut. And they say old dogs can’t learn new tricks.
"It’s a little too late for that," Diana observed.
Yeah, what she said.
"This guy killed Tony and Karen." Pete was almost pleading with his partner to understand. "He tortured and killed at least one girl in St. Louis … they think a lot more. He’s a scumbag, Diana; and he’s going to get away with it again unless I do something this time."
"I know about the money, Pete," she said. "How Tony was scrubbing it for you? How he started getting skittish and wanted to come clean?"
Pete looked confused. "What?"
"It wasn’t your fault," Diana was saying as Dean looked to Sam, saw him getting ready to act. Dean shook his head slightly, saying no. Pete was distracted by his conversation with Diana, but he wasn’t that distracted. "Claire was trying to blackmail you, right? You just panicked. But there’s a way out, Pete. Nobody else has to die over this."
She flicked the barrel of her gun slightly in Dean’s direction. "This Dean kid’s a freakin’ gift," she went on. "We can pin the whole thing on him. No trial, no nothing. Just one more missing scumbag."
"Hey!" Dean objected.
Pete re-focused his attention on Dean, shifted his grip on his gun and taking a more "I am so going to shoot you in the head" stance. Sam was glaring at him with that bug-eyed "what the fuck are you doing?" look he did so well, and Dean had to admit, Sam was right this time. What the fuck was he doing? He extended his hand placatingly, hoping Pete would take that as an "she’s absolutely right, I’m a scumbag, sorry I tried to pretend differently" admission.
"No one will question it," Diana pressed. She indicated Sam with just a slight tilt of her head. "These two won’t talk. They’re wanted felons. And no one else has to know. We just let them go and work this out between ourselves, okay? Pete, please. I still love you."
She lowered her gun then: probably one of those cop show of faiths. Predictable. And stupid.
Pete shook his head. "No," he said, turning his attention back to Dean. "I’m sorry, Diana, but I have to end this here." His finger whitening on the trigger.
And she shot him. The damn lady cop shot her partner.
Well that was unpredictable.
Pete fell to the ground, shouting in protest as he leg was cut out from under him; shouting in anger, in betrayal. Dean threw himself back, rolling away from Pete, getting as much distance between them as he could. Right now, he wasn’t quite sure where anything stood, but the one thing he did know was that when cops start shooting each other, it’s best to be as far out of the line of fire as possible.
Standing behind Diana, Sam looked as stunned as he was. Eyes wide with surprise, he looked from Pete, to Dean, and back to Pete again.
Pete was holding on to his leg, twisting in pain. He was swearing under his breath when his partner lowered her gun and walked close - predictably close - to tell him, her voice rich with poison, "Then why don’t you buy me another necklace, you ass."
With a snarl of anger and pain, Pete threw himself forward - not unlike the way Dean had planned to throw himself at Pete if he’d been stupid enough to get within range - and wrapped his arms around Diana’s legs. His momentum took her down hard enough to jar her gun lose.
Dean started for the gun, as did Sam, but Pete had the advantage of proximity and got there first. Snatching the weapon out of a snarl of leaves and sticks, he scrambled to his feet, hopping a little to spare his wounded leg any weight as he pointed the gun at Sam and ordered, "Don’t do it. Don’t do it."
Sam stopped his approach immediately. He retreated, stepping back, both hands raised in acquiescence. Pete swung the gun on Dean then, and Dean raised his hands too, like he presented any threat at all, still trussed up in chains the way he was.
Coming to the same conclusion, Pete turned the gun on his partner. She was sprawled on the ground, only now beginning to elbow herself upright. His hands were white on the butt of the gun he had pointed at her head. He hobbled closer while she glared at him, her expression ugly with disdain.
"Why?" he asked. "Why did you do this to me?"
But Diana wasn’t looking at him any more. She was staring past him, her features going slack with horror.
The expression was too genuine to be faked. It turned Pete around where he stood. His features fell as slack as his partner’s. Transfixed by whatever he was seeing, he stared at the back of the van like there was something there, his gun hand dropping to hang limply at his side.
Dean followed Pete’s horrified gaze, but he couldn’t see a damn thing other than dusty van. He looked at Sam, and Sam shrugged, as confused as he was.
A gunshot from the backup weapon in Diana’s ankle holster shattered the moment. Pete convulsed, nearly blown off his feet by a bullet that went in under his shoulder blade and came out his chest. It was a perfect heart shot. He was dead before he hit the ground.
*
Diana sprinkled Epson’s salt over Claire’s desiccated corpse, hoping either that or the Morton’s she’d just emptied over the bones would be the right kind of salt to accomplish that putting to rest thing Sam mentioned. Salting bones. What a ridiculous thing for a cop to be doing on the bad side of town in the middle of the night. But better safe than sorry, was her motto. Because seriously, the last thing she needed was Claire coming back to haunt her for the next thirty years. That stupid bitch had been enough trouble when she was alive.
Claire’s spirit was gurgling in the corner, her throat seeping blood and her arm pointed accusingly. It had been unnerving for a while, but Diana was almost getting used to it now. Not that it was anything she’d want to have to eyeball for the next decade or anything, but it wasn’t drop-your-drawers scary like it was the first couple of times Clarie shown up.
Diana decided most things must be like that as she doused the corpse in gasoline and lit it up. Cutting Clarie’s throat was a rush; cutting Tony’s, less so. By the time she got to Karen, the whole thing seemed rather anti-climactic.
The corpse burned fast and hot, and when it was finished, spirit Claire was nowhere to be seen. Just the way Sam said it would go down. Handy having experts advise you about how to bury the skeletons in your closet that just didn’t want to stay buried.
She probably should have taken the whole building out just to be safe, but that would have brought the fire department and the coroner’s office and God knows how many other players into the game; and even she could only keep so many balls in the air at one time. It was better this way: keep it as simple as possible. That was something Pete never really mastered. He always went for the complex motives. It was never as simple as greed or lust or revenge with him. He was always looking for a serial killer in the shadows, or someone running a government conspiracy lurking about in the little boy’s room.
Which, truth be told, was part of his charm. She could do so many things right under his nose just because he trusted her. She was a cop. What possible motive could she have?
Six mill just never really entered into the equation for him. But for her, it had been the sum of all things since the day she pulled the heroin out of lock-up and started wheels in motion she figured would eventually crunch one or two people involved by the time it was all ground out. Given her druthers, she would have preferred everyone make it out alive - she wanted the money, but there was plenty to go around - but Claire was stupider than she’d thought, and greedier, too. And then Tony started getting cold feet, which led to Karen ….
But it was a damn shame the collateral damage expanded so far as to take Pete down, too. When everything was said and done, she was actually going to miss him. He was a good cop, and a good partner. And she really was fond of him, just not as fond as she was of not getting her ass thrown in jail for killing some little heroin whore who really needed killing.
It was too bad he hadn’t been able to follow her lead in palming it all off on the Winchester brothers. What an elegant solution that would have been. Case provisionally solved; suspects still at large. And if Sam and Dean ever did get collared? Who was going to believe them if they started chattering about two cops and a night of vigilante justice narrowly averted?
No one, is who. Which was just the way she liked it. It made a far better escape hatch than putting the whole scam off on Pete did.
Because the whole losing Pete thing aside? That duplicate necklace idea always seemed like too much of a stretch, even though it was only a last-ditch failsafe and not ever likely to be something put to the felt as a viable hand to be played. It was just her escape hatch, her way out if she got cornered and needed a fall guy to take the heat for her.
But still, the whole point of an escape hatch was making it viable enough to work in an emergency. You didn’t want to find yourself on the Titanic without enough lifeboats just because you were so secure in how well you built the ship that you put lifeboats onboard to be safe, but not enough of them to actually save you if it came to that. Because when you need a lifeboat, you really need the fucking lifeboat. So if you’re going to put them onboard at all, better make sure they’re seaworthy, or why even bother?
And that necklace thing always seemed a bit like a leaky lifeboat to her. Pete’s denials would have carried more weight than the word of a suspected serial killer, and him pointing the finger at her would have put some people to thinking along lines better left unexplored even if they wouldn’t hold up in court. But sometimes the court of the blue pool was more relevant to consider than the court of public opinion or a jury of his peers; and Pete had friends on the force who would have had a hard time believing he’d be stupid enough to leave the necklace on Claire’s corpse after he killed her.
Not that he couldn’t have killed her - even Pete’s best friends couldn’t deny that his temper was a wild card that made it impossible to rule something like that out - but more the idea he would have left a custom-designed necklace on the corpse if he did. Pete wasn’t stupid, and him doing something that stupid might have smacked of a setup to his friends. And if did, his friends would have pushed it, pursued it.
Sure, she’d done all the legwork to make sure every possible trail from the jeweler led back to Pete - she’d even used his credit cards to pay for the damn things - but it was still a weak link in the chain. So while it served its purpose of tying Pete to Claire if the corpse was ever found and she needed a fall guy to take the rap, there would always be those who would question Pete being that stupid, and as long as they didn’t believe Pete was the guy, there was always a chance they’d find something that led back to her.
Which is why the Winchester brothers were such a Godsend to arrive when they did. She couldn’t have designed better fall guys if she tried. Then once Claire showed up doing her spooky-ass boo act, they proved useful on other fronts, too.
Death omen. Diana snorted, shaking her head. That just got funnier every time she thought about it.
"Well Death Omen this, you little bitch," Diana said, scooping Claire’s ashes back into the wall, then piling the bricks Sam had broken free in after her. The whole thing looked like a building collapse now rather than an excavated gravesite. And the charring on the bricks from her little impromptu bonfire just made it all that much more realistic.
Probably some homeless guy trying to warm up on a cold winter night. Stranger things have happened.
Diana brushed the soot off her hands and took the shovel back out to her car. Pete’s car, actually. He’d left it to her in his will. Sweet ride it was, too. ’65 Mustang and screw all those elitist pundits who thought that was a girl’s ride. Not that it mattered, since she was, after all, a girl.
Diana ran one hand along the slick, flawless finish. It really was a damn shame Pete couldn’t have played along. They had some good times in this car, and they could have had so many more if he’d just been a little less focused on Tony and Karen.
Although honestly, she didn’t really think that’s what drove him to toss his career in the crapper by taking Dean Winchester out for a ride that night. She was pretty sure it was more the serial killer thing. Pete was like that. He had this big hero streak she’d always found amusing. Most of the time, it served her purpose. It made him easy to nudge this way or that to suit her plans just by appearing a little vulnerable here or a little frightened there.
But that’s probably what bit her in the ass in the end. He might have been able to accept Dean getting away with killing Tony and Karen; but he couldn’t face the idea of letting a brutal freak like the one the St. Louis fax described go free to run amok, wreaking havoc on the innocents of the world.
Especially not the way Dean was goading him. Pete had a temper. And he had a cop’s need to win one for the good guys in the end. If she and Sam had showed up five minutes later, he’d have been burying Dean under that tree and never spent a sleepless night thinking he’d done anything wrong.
And maybe that would have been better in the end. Dead or alive, they could have blamed Dean either way; and Pete could have had his vengeance while sharing in the cush of her newly inherited wealth. Because even though he was a good cop, Pete wasn’t the brightest guy she’d ever met. He would have never figured it out. It was one of the reasons she chose him.
That and his friendship with Tony Giles. Because if Tony got skiddish over Claire disappearing off the map and started talking to people before she had a chance to take care of it, she could count on it being Pete he’d go to. And Pete would come to her.
Because even with all his failings, Pete really did love her.
It was her ace in the hole, and it proved out for her in the end. Because even though she caught Tony before he started making deals with the DA, she would have missed Karen if Pete hadn’t told her the whiny little bitch called him and asked him to come over. He said Karen had found some papers she didn’t understand, wanted him to look at them. Pete even told her he wasn't going until after shift because Karen was enough of a flake he didn’t want to go off the clock if all she wanted was a shoulder to cry on.
Gotta love insider information: made it as simple as going home early to cut Pete off at the pass.
Diana shook herself, pulling her hand off the car and reminding herself that Pete and his affections were disposable commodities. She’d made enough off the heroin deal to live any way she wanted, anywhere she wanted. As soon as the falsified documentation for her rich aunt’s demise came through, she’d blow this popsicle stand in Pete’s sweet ride and find herself another man pretty enough to keep her entertained and devoted enough to keep her safe, even if it meant throwing his own body on the grenade in her stead at some future point in time.
God, she loved that about men. They were so easy to play as long as you knew which buttons to push.
"Give me the keys, lady," a voice sneered from her left.
Frowning, Diana turned to look at the punk kid standing beside her, a nine mill in his hand and the unmistakable glaze of a crack high in his eyes.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," she said.
"Give me the keys! Give me the keys! Give me the keys!" the kid shouted as he waved the gun threateningly in her face.
"All right, all right. Just relax, kid. I’ll give you the keys." Diana reached in her pocket to pull out the Mustang keys she’d just replaced there. Exposed when she moved the blazer aside to get to the keys, the badge on her belt flashed gold in the greasy yellow light from the street lamps.
The kid saw it and panicked. He pulled the trigger twice, then ran away as the echo of gunshots died in the narrow alleyway.
Diana blinked, sat down hard as blood began leaving her body at an alarming rate. She leaned against the Mustang’s quarterpanel, weak suddenly, cold, frightened. Her cell was in the car, but it might as well have been in Nova Scotia for all the good it did her. She tried to yell for help, but her voice was less than a whisper on the wind no matter how hard she tried to raise it.
She saw him then, leaning on the doorjamb, half obscured by the shadows of the room behind him in which she’d burned what remained of Claire Becker’s remains. He smiled when she noticed him, giving her that sex-me-up smile of his that got him into her bed back when they were in narcotics together.
"Hello, Diana," he said.
He sounded just like he had in life; and moved that way, too, when he shouldered himself off the doorjamb and strolled over to crouch in front of her. He was pale, but not inordinately so; and even though she could see the exit wound of her bullet high on his chest, he didn’t look particularly brutalized by it.
In fact, he looked pleased. And just a little pissed in that predatory way he used to have working undercover on drug busts.
"Pete," she whispered, his name gurgling in her chest as she spoke.
"Yeah. Bet you didn’t think you’d be seeing me again, hey?" His smile sank deeper into his features, deeper into his eyes. It was the look he got when he was closing in on an interrogation. It made him look sexy and powerful and dangerous … something he otherwise seldom was. She’d missed that about him; missed the way he’d been when they first met. Missed the way he’d been when it never would have occurred to her to make him her fallguy. "Thanks, by the way," he said congenially, "for keeping me from killing that Dean kid. It would have been a mistake. I would have regretted it. For eternity, in fact."
"Glad I could help," she whispered.
He laughed at that. He’d always found her funny. "Won’t be long now," he told her.
"I’m dying?" she managed around a growing cold in her chest, in her belly.
"What did you expect, Diana?" he asked. "She was a death omen." He laughed again, his eyes looking at her in a way that made promises he usually reserved for the most brutal of perps who’d victimized the most innocent of citizens. He pushed himself to a stand, stepped back to lean casually against the wall like he was waiting for something. "See you in five," he said.
They found her in the alley the next morning, long dead and cold with two bullets in her chest and a lap full of blood that had turned the gold of her badge to a sticky red. She looked scared in a way no one on the force had ever seen Diana look scared when she was alive; and it made them wonder what exactly she could have seen as she sat in the dark, leaning against Pete’s ’65 Mustang, bleeding dry behind 2911 Ashland Street as she stared into the darkened doorway of some old storeroom that still smelled of gasoline and smoke.
finis