Fic: Gotham City Remix (5/7)
Fic: Gotham City Remix (5/7)
Summary: Gorden Walker has taken Sam Hostage. To save him, Dean and Chloe go into the heart of darkness: Gotham City.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural/DCU
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg for language and minor violence.
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #61 winter. The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
By Sam's estimation, they'd reached Gotham. His first clue was that the driving had shifted from the constant, easy speed of long haul to the start/stop driving that you found in a city. He considered breaking out of his restraints, and using one of the tools in the trunk to brain Gordon when he opened the hatch.
But he’d been folded up in the trunk for a while now, and he couldn’t feel his legs. So he didn’t think he could get away in time. Which meant that he’d probably have to wait for feeling to come back into his legs, scope out the new situation, and then make his move.
As predicted, Gordon pulled him out of the trunk just as soon as they’d stopped. The shorter hunter took him into an abandoned warehouse and tied him to a pole.
“Boy, your brother knows how to pick some messed up towns, Sammy.” Gordon chuckled. “They’ve got freaks here bigger than you.”
Sam refused to let himself be baited by Gordon’s words.
“Curious thing - I can’t find anything to hunt in the whole place. It’s like the evil here has infected the regular population. It’s so bad that the demons and vampires and ghosts steer clear of it.”
He shrugged. “I think maybe - when I’ve taken care of you and Dean, I might hang out for a bit. See what this city has to offer. There’s some big-time evil here. I feel it in my bones.”
Sam shrugged.
“Any reason why Dean would’ve given himself up here?” Gordon asked.
“Not really,” Sam said. “Gotham - hasn’t really come up before.” Now that Gordon mentioned it, it was kind of odd that Gotham hadn’t come up before. Chloe had said that the place was weird - even by super-hero standards. “I can’t ever remember Dad bringing us around for a hunt anywhere near here.”
Gordon was watching him curiously.
“I met your dad once. He pretty much ignored me.”
“Dad was always focused on the hunt. He didn’t have a lot of time for much else,” Sam said.
“You guys didn’t get along, did you?”
“A lot of kids don’t get along with their dads.”
“I got along with mine,” Gordon said. “Of course, I haven’t talked to him in years. He wouldn’t understand.”
Sam chose not to say anything. Part of the reason that Gordon gave him the willies, is that in Gordon, he could see the same darkness that had almost consumed Dad and Dean. Slipping down that road was easy. All you had to do was ignore the millions of shades of gray that complicated hunting.
But neither Dad nor Dean had done that. They’d both known that the Yellow Eyed Demon had plans for him. And yet they’d both made the choice to save him. Dad, additionally, had given up a major asset to their side in the form of the Colt in order to save Dean.
Sam looked at Gordon with pity in his eyes, and wondered what Gordon might have been like if he’d chosen to let his sister live. He didn’t know if she could have chosen right from wrong. But Lenore’s bunch of Vampires did. Even if their special brand of morality was based on survival rather than right and wrong. The fact that their ethical code matched up with his was enough.
Sam, Dad and Dean believed in Justice. Gordon believed in Just Us. And he’d lumped the Winchesters and all their allies into the same group as the things he’d hunted. Which was really, in a way, what Meg and the rest of the demons wanted: the hunters divided and fighting amongst themselves.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Gordon said angrily. Sam turned his head and looked out the window.
“You’ve got no idea what’s coming, do you, Gordon?” Sam whispered.
“What are you talking about?”
“Those plans that the demons had for me? That was just the shot heard round the world.” Sam turned and fixed Gordon with a pleading expression. “We’re at war, Gordon. And it’s escalating. Dean and I - we’ve done everything we can to end it. But before too long - we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
Gordon stared at him incredulously. His mouth worked - fishlike - open and shut. Finally he smiled.
“You and Dean. Good one, Sammy.”
“What?” Sam frowned.
“I know all about you and Dean. About how the two of you let an army of demons escape.”
“What?” Sam blinked in confusion.
“Way I hear it tell: you two boys were there when it happened. So my question is: if the great and mighty Winchester boys, God’s gift to hunting, were there, how come we’re faced with a demon army? What the hell did you guys do to stop it? Did you do anything at all? Or are you some kind of Benedict Arnold who held the door open for the demons?”
“The hell?” Sam shook his head. “I didn’t prove to be the Hitler that you thought I was, so now I’ve got to be a Benedict Arnold?”
“If the noose fits, Benedict,” Gordon said. “It shouldn’t be too long before Agent Hendrickson shows up.”
“I thought that you were going to turn me into the police.”
Gordon grinned at him. “Nah. I’ve got my own police record for grave desecration. I’d hate to have a couple of sticky questions asked about it. So . . . Be seeing you, Sam. Oh, wait. I guess I won’t.” With a chuckle, he turned and walked away.
As Sam listened to Gordon’s footsteps recede in the distance, he thought about Dean. It would be just like his brother to turn himself in to the FBI to make things right. But Dean had been with Chloe, and Sam was pretty sure that she could keep her head when Dean was losing his. Between the two of them, they had to have a plan.
Still, there was no way Sam was going to let himself be used as leverage against Dean. Not again. Never again. It was time he stepped up to the plate. Time that he was the one to protect his family. He scanned his immediate surroundings to find something to facilitate his escape.
When that proved useless, he sighed. This was worse than the time that Dad had been possessed back at the cabin.
Think your way out of this, psychic boy.
He paused. Psychic boy.
He shook his head, ruefully. He’d used those telekinetic powers to escape once before. Why not try again? Although - trying to untie a knot was a lot different than trying to push a button. The latter only required a single solid force in one direction. The former - multiple pressure points, squeezed simultaneously, and then pulled. While other pressure points held in place. And he had to determine which ones to pull, and which to hold stationary. And he couldn’t see the knots that he was pulling.
He sighed. This is going to take a while.
***
As soon as they were back at League headquarters, Chloe ripped the mask off of her face.
Batman followed her as she walked back to the conference room, threw the mask onto the table, and began picking spirit gum out of her eyebrows. She was so absorbed with getting the sticky resin off of her face that she completely failed to notice that Dean was standing there.
“Holy leather hot pants, Batman!”
They paused, and Chloe turned to see her boyfriend leer at her. Dean had this expression on his face that gave her the impression that he thought Christmas had come early. He turned to Batman with an expression of gratitude. “Did you give her that?”
Beneath the cowl, Batman snorted and shook his head. “I think it’s her official uniform as Watchtower.”
She shut her eyes, and shook her head. “No, my official uniform is bunny slippers and a flannel nightgown. Which is what I’m usually wearing at three A.M. when I get called to talk you hero-types through the lay-out of some crime boss’s secret lair o’ death.
“That’s the official term, by the way,” Batman said. “Secret lair o’ death. She coined it in the beginning, and it worked into our vocabulary.”
“Now?” Chloe frowned at Batman. “You’re making with the funny now?”
“Sorry,” Batman said, sounding not-at-all sorry. “I’ve got to go call a meeting. I’ll be in touch when I know something, Watchtower.”
Once Batman had left, Dean turned to her with an appreciative stare. “So how long have you had this little number?”
“Too long,” she shook her head.
“Oh, I don’t know.” He stalked toward her, his expression softening with desire. “I think you should definitely hang on to it.”
She smiled at him in amusement, shifted her weight, cocked a hip and put her hand on it. “I wanted to burn it back when Ollie gave it to me in South Dakota.”
He reached out with both hands, snagged her hips by the belt loops, and pulled her to him. “So why is Oliver Queen giving my girl kinky leather uniforms to wear?” His lips hovered over hers.
“Because I told him I wasn’t ever wearing tights? It’s supposed to be some kind of attempt at cyberpunk.”
“You look like this really hot cross between Lara Croft and Trinity.”
“And I’m definitely salting and burning this thing now.”
“Over my dead body,” he pulled her closer as his lips crashed down over hers. Chloe sighed and leaned into his kiss. She let him back her up against a wall and she leaned against it. The wall took the brunt of her weight as she lifted one leg to hook around him. She’d always thought that he was a good kisser, but now she was finding out that he had talented hands, too. She let him work her out of her jacket, and then run feather-light kisses over her collarbone as he ran those hands up and down her back.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was trying to remember why she’d thought that they shouldn’t be more intimate yet. But at the moment she couldn’t tell you her own name if you’d asked.
Just as those hands were working their way under her skin-tight shirt and across her navel, she thought she heard Dean’s phone ring.
“Sonofa --” He swore softly as he reached for the cell phone. “It’s Ellen.”
Chloe, meanwhile, had slipped out of his grasp and moved so that the conference table was between them. She leaned weakly against it, looked at him, and nodded. She was so screwed. Or she would be, if she weren’t more careful.
As Dean turned to speak with Ellen, Chloe hurried from the room, over to the CRAY. Because the massive computer gave off so much heat, the room was kept at near-arctic levels of cold. She felt like she needed that right now, with the way Dean left her feeling so overheated. Quickly, she shrugged back into the leather jacket, and zipped it up to her neck.
She needed a bigger distraction. Because if she kept thinking about the way Dean’s lips felt on hers, she wasn’t going to be able to cool down.
It occurred to her that she still hadn’t told Dean about Laney. But given the way he’d jumped her practically the moment he saw her, she wasn’t surprised. She’d just have to tell him before his lips got in the way again. Plus, they still had to keep looking for Sam.
Chloe opened a new window on the computer’s interface and started searching for new pings off of Gordon’s credit cards. Immediately, she registered two within the space of an hour. The first was a gas station down near crime alley. The second was a pizza joint in old Gotham.
Found you! she thought triumphantly.
“Ellen wanted to check on our progress.” Dean stuck his head in the door.
“He’s here,” she said without looking up.
“Ellen? We got a lead. I’ll call you when we know more.” Dean clicked the phone off, and pulled up a chair next to hers. All pretext of seduction had been replaced by the focused seriousness of the hunter that Chloe always felt was lurking just beneath his skin.
She pulled up a map of Gotham, and marked off the old quarter and crime alley. “Here and here. With an hour in between. And judging by the receipt, he’s only buying enough food for one.”
“Which meant that he dumped Sam off somewhere, instead of turning him into the cops,” Dean said angrily.
Chloe nodded in agreement. She refused for a moment to even consider the possibility that Gordon Walker had done something more permanent to the younger Winchester.
“Given the time between pings, it’s safe to say he spent some time in a central location.” She keyed in a rough circle over the map, with the two pings at either end. “We can rule out hotels or apartments - no blip on the computer to tell me he bought a room. Problem is - there are too many other buildings in that area that you could hide someone. And in Crime Alley, no one really cares. They’re too busy minding their own business and not getting shot.”
“Fantastic little city,” Dean said sarcastically. “I vote that we get Sammy and get the hell out of town.”
“Seconded,” Chloe nodded. “I’ll start compiling a likely-list of buildings. You know Walker. You can go through them, and tell me if any of them fit his MO. Then we’ll get Batman to case the place.”
“Why can’t we go case the place?” Dean said petulantly.
“Number one, you’re supposed to be in prison. Number two, I don’t swing that way.”
“Huh?” Dean gave her a funny look.
“From buildings, Dean. I don’t swing from buildings.” She rolled her eyes. “Around here, the best way to get around if you wear tights - is from the rooftops.”
“And again I say, this is a messed up town.”
“No arguments here.”
Summary: Gorden Walker has taken Sam Hostage. To save him, Dean and Chloe go into the heart of darkness: Gotham City.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural/DCU
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg for language and minor violence.
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #61 winter. The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
By Sam's estimation, they'd reached Gotham. His first clue was that the driving had shifted from the constant, easy speed of long haul to the start/stop driving that you found in a city. He considered breaking out of his restraints, and using one of the tools in the trunk to brain Gordon when he opened the hatch.
But he’d been folded up in the trunk for a while now, and he couldn’t feel his legs. So he didn’t think he could get away in time. Which meant that he’d probably have to wait for feeling to come back into his legs, scope out the new situation, and then make his move.
As predicted, Gordon pulled him out of the trunk just as soon as they’d stopped. The shorter hunter took him into an abandoned warehouse and tied him to a pole.
“Boy, your brother knows how to pick some messed up towns, Sammy.” Gordon chuckled. “They’ve got freaks here bigger than you.”
Sam refused to let himself be baited by Gordon’s words.
“Curious thing - I can’t find anything to hunt in the whole place. It’s like the evil here has infected the regular population. It’s so bad that the demons and vampires and ghosts steer clear of it.”
He shrugged. “I think maybe - when I’ve taken care of you and Dean, I might hang out for a bit. See what this city has to offer. There’s some big-time evil here. I feel it in my bones.”
Sam shrugged.
“Any reason why Dean would’ve given himself up here?” Gordon asked.
“Not really,” Sam said. “Gotham - hasn’t really come up before.” Now that Gordon mentioned it, it was kind of odd that Gotham hadn’t come up before. Chloe had said that the place was weird - even by super-hero standards. “I can’t ever remember Dad bringing us around for a hunt anywhere near here.”
Gordon was watching him curiously.
“I met your dad once. He pretty much ignored me.”
“Dad was always focused on the hunt. He didn’t have a lot of time for much else,” Sam said.
“You guys didn’t get along, did you?”
“A lot of kids don’t get along with their dads.”
“I got along with mine,” Gordon said. “Of course, I haven’t talked to him in years. He wouldn’t understand.”
Sam chose not to say anything. Part of the reason that Gordon gave him the willies, is that in Gordon, he could see the same darkness that had almost consumed Dad and Dean. Slipping down that road was easy. All you had to do was ignore the millions of shades of gray that complicated hunting.
But neither Dad nor Dean had done that. They’d both known that the Yellow Eyed Demon had plans for him. And yet they’d both made the choice to save him. Dad, additionally, had given up a major asset to their side in the form of the Colt in order to save Dean.
Sam looked at Gordon with pity in his eyes, and wondered what Gordon might have been like if he’d chosen to let his sister live. He didn’t know if she could have chosen right from wrong. But Lenore’s bunch of Vampires did. Even if their special brand of morality was based on survival rather than right and wrong. The fact that their ethical code matched up with his was enough.
Sam, Dad and Dean believed in Justice. Gordon believed in Just Us. And he’d lumped the Winchesters and all their allies into the same group as the things he’d hunted. Which was really, in a way, what Meg and the rest of the demons wanted: the hunters divided and fighting amongst themselves.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Gordon said angrily. Sam turned his head and looked out the window.
“You’ve got no idea what’s coming, do you, Gordon?” Sam whispered.
“What are you talking about?”
“Those plans that the demons had for me? That was just the shot heard round the world.” Sam turned and fixed Gordon with a pleading expression. “We’re at war, Gordon. And it’s escalating. Dean and I - we’ve done everything we can to end it. But before too long - we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
Gordon stared at him incredulously. His mouth worked - fishlike - open and shut. Finally he smiled.
“You and Dean. Good one, Sammy.”
“What?” Sam frowned.
“I know all about you and Dean. About how the two of you let an army of demons escape.”
“What?” Sam blinked in confusion.
“Way I hear it tell: you two boys were there when it happened. So my question is: if the great and mighty Winchester boys, God’s gift to hunting, were there, how come we’re faced with a demon army? What the hell did you guys do to stop it? Did you do anything at all? Or are you some kind of Benedict Arnold who held the door open for the demons?”
“The hell?” Sam shook his head. “I didn’t prove to be the Hitler that you thought I was, so now I’ve got to be a Benedict Arnold?”
“If the noose fits, Benedict,” Gordon said. “It shouldn’t be too long before Agent Hendrickson shows up.”
“I thought that you were going to turn me into the police.”
Gordon grinned at him. “Nah. I’ve got my own police record for grave desecration. I’d hate to have a couple of sticky questions asked about it. So . . . Be seeing you, Sam. Oh, wait. I guess I won’t.” With a chuckle, he turned and walked away.
As Sam listened to Gordon’s footsteps recede in the distance, he thought about Dean. It would be just like his brother to turn himself in to the FBI to make things right. But Dean had been with Chloe, and Sam was pretty sure that she could keep her head when Dean was losing his. Between the two of them, they had to have a plan.
Still, there was no way Sam was going to let himself be used as leverage against Dean. Not again. Never again. It was time he stepped up to the plate. Time that he was the one to protect his family. He scanned his immediate surroundings to find something to facilitate his escape.
When that proved useless, he sighed. This was worse than the time that Dad had been possessed back at the cabin.
Think your way out of this, psychic boy.
He paused. Psychic boy.
He shook his head, ruefully. He’d used those telekinetic powers to escape once before. Why not try again? Although - trying to untie a knot was a lot different than trying to push a button. The latter only required a single solid force in one direction. The former - multiple pressure points, squeezed simultaneously, and then pulled. While other pressure points held in place. And he had to determine which ones to pull, and which to hold stationary. And he couldn’t see the knots that he was pulling.
He sighed. This is going to take a while.
***
As soon as they were back at League headquarters, Chloe ripped the mask off of her face.
Batman followed her as she walked back to the conference room, threw the mask onto the table, and began picking spirit gum out of her eyebrows. She was so absorbed with getting the sticky resin off of her face that she completely failed to notice that Dean was standing there.
“Holy leather hot pants, Batman!”
They paused, and Chloe turned to see her boyfriend leer at her. Dean had this expression on his face that gave her the impression that he thought Christmas had come early. He turned to Batman with an expression of gratitude. “Did you give her that?”
Beneath the cowl, Batman snorted and shook his head. “I think it’s her official uniform as Watchtower.”
She shut her eyes, and shook her head. “No, my official uniform is bunny slippers and a flannel nightgown. Which is what I’m usually wearing at three A.M. when I get called to talk you hero-types through the lay-out of some crime boss’s secret lair o’ death.
“That’s the official term, by the way,” Batman said. “Secret lair o’ death. She coined it in the beginning, and it worked into our vocabulary.”
“Now?” Chloe frowned at Batman. “You’re making with the funny now?”
“Sorry,” Batman said, sounding not-at-all sorry. “I’ve got to go call a meeting. I’ll be in touch when I know something, Watchtower.”
Once Batman had left, Dean turned to her with an appreciative stare. “So how long have you had this little number?”
“Too long,” she shook her head.
“Oh, I don’t know.” He stalked toward her, his expression softening with desire. “I think you should definitely hang on to it.”
She smiled at him in amusement, shifted her weight, cocked a hip and put her hand on it. “I wanted to burn it back when Ollie gave it to me in South Dakota.”
He reached out with both hands, snagged her hips by the belt loops, and pulled her to him. “So why is Oliver Queen giving my girl kinky leather uniforms to wear?” His lips hovered over hers.
“Because I told him I wasn’t ever wearing tights? It’s supposed to be some kind of attempt at cyberpunk.”
“You look like this really hot cross between Lara Croft and Trinity.”
“And I’m definitely salting and burning this thing now.”
“Over my dead body,” he pulled her closer as his lips crashed down over hers. Chloe sighed and leaned into his kiss. She let him back her up against a wall and she leaned against it. The wall took the brunt of her weight as she lifted one leg to hook around him. She’d always thought that he was a good kisser, but now she was finding out that he had talented hands, too. She let him work her out of her jacket, and then run feather-light kisses over her collarbone as he ran those hands up and down her back.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was trying to remember why she’d thought that they shouldn’t be more intimate yet. But at the moment she couldn’t tell you her own name if you’d asked.
Just as those hands were working their way under her skin-tight shirt and across her navel, she thought she heard Dean’s phone ring.
“Sonofa --” He swore softly as he reached for the cell phone. “It’s Ellen.”
Chloe, meanwhile, had slipped out of his grasp and moved so that the conference table was between them. She leaned weakly against it, looked at him, and nodded. She was so screwed. Or she would be, if she weren’t more careful.
As Dean turned to speak with Ellen, Chloe hurried from the room, over to the CRAY. Because the massive computer gave off so much heat, the room was kept at near-arctic levels of cold. She felt like she needed that right now, with the way Dean left her feeling so overheated. Quickly, she shrugged back into the leather jacket, and zipped it up to her neck.
She needed a bigger distraction. Because if she kept thinking about the way Dean’s lips felt on hers, she wasn’t going to be able to cool down.
It occurred to her that she still hadn’t told Dean about Laney. But given the way he’d jumped her practically the moment he saw her, she wasn’t surprised. She’d just have to tell him before his lips got in the way again. Plus, they still had to keep looking for Sam.
Chloe opened a new window on the computer’s interface and started searching for new pings off of Gordon’s credit cards. Immediately, she registered two within the space of an hour. The first was a gas station down near crime alley. The second was a pizza joint in old Gotham.
Found you! she thought triumphantly.
“Ellen wanted to check on our progress.” Dean stuck his head in the door.
“He’s here,” she said without looking up.
“Ellen? We got a lead. I’ll call you when we know more.” Dean clicked the phone off, and pulled up a chair next to hers. All pretext of seduction had been replaced by the focused seriousness of the hunter that Chloe always felt was lurking just beneath his skin.
She pulled up a map of Gotham, and marked off the old quarter and crime alley. “Here and here. With an hour in between. And judging by the receipt, he’s only buying enough food for one.”
“Which meant that he dumped Sam off somewhere, instead of turning him into the cops,” Dean said angrily.
Chloe nodded in agreement. She refused for a moment to even consider the possibility that Gordon Walker had done something more permanent to the younger Winchester.
“Given the time between pings, it’s safe to say he spent some time in a central location.” She keyed in a rough circle over the map, with the two pings at either end. “We can rule out hotels or apartments - no blip on the computer to tell me he bought a room. Problem is - there are too many other buildings in that area that you could hide someone. And in Crime Alley, no one really cares. They’re too busy minding their own business and not getting shot.”
“Fantastic little city,” Dean said sarcastically. “I vote that we get Sammy and get the hell out of town.”
“Seconded,” Chloe nodded. “I’ll start compiling a likely-list of buildings. You know Walker. You can go through them, and tell me if any of them fit his MO. Then we’ll get Batman to case the place.”
“Why can’t we go case the place?” Dean said petulantly.
“Number one, you’re supposed to be in prison. Number two, I don’t swing that way.”
“Huh?” Dean gave her a funny look.
“From buildings, Dean. I don’t swing from buildings.” She rolled her eyes. “Around here, the best way to get around if you wear tights - is from the rooftops.”
“And again I say, this is a messed up town.”
“No arguments here.”