aesc: (girl assistant)
aesc ([personal profile] aesc) wrote2009-01-19 10:01 am

.fic: The Old World - SGA/SPN xover (PG13) 1.1

The Old World (PG13) ?John/Rodney; Dean, Sam, Castiel | ~ 10,890
Okay, so I wrote the first version of this ages and ages ago for [livejournal.com profile] randomeliza, but writing gift!fic always alarms me and I never feel quite happy with it. So, I set it aside and let it sit and sit and sit for a very long time, and pretty much forgot about its existence until I was hunting through my Folder of Random Unfinished Things and brought it up from the depths. It seemed sort of sad to let 7,000 words go to waste, so I edited the piece and updated the canon for my own edification and now, I bring it to you!

"The Old World" is, for the canon-savvy, set at some point before the fallout from events in 5.19 in SGA and some time after 4.10 in SPN, although I've tried to set up explanations so you don't need to know canon for both shows in detail... Really, the fic now is kind of an excuse to fuse some of the Stargate canon with scriptural pseudoepigraphia and apocrypha, because I find that way too fun not to do. (One final note: It occurs to me that this has probably been done at least ten times in the vastness of SGA and SPN fandoms. Forgive me?)

The Old World

Planet Earth

She hates the night shift at Darryl's Gas n'Go. She has to work with Ollie, Darryl's screwloose inbred cousin, because Darryl doesn't like her working alone at night and somehow he thinks Ollie is less creepy than the kind of person who drives down a desert back road at two in the morning. She has to pay full price for chips and water. She's never gotten comfortable enough with the quiet to settle down to eight hours of solitaire – too many sudden noises: a dilapidated pickup rattling by, the occasional tractor-trailer, and once in a great while, someone coming in to look at her in her Plexiglass cage and ask for cigarettes. They all look like pedophiles or serial killers, and none of them look like James Dean.

Somewhere around four she realizes she hasn't heard Ollie for a while. Usually he's contributing to the STDs infesting the men's room, hitting on her, and every once in a while restocking the shelves. The hours tend to run into a blur of tedium, taking her memory along with them; the last she remembers of Ollie is him saying something vague about stepping outside for a smoke.

There's only one way into the store, and that's through the one cowbell-equipped door. She sighs, and decides this night is enough like any other that Ollie had probably come in and hit on her and retreated to whack off in the bathroom again and she doesn't remember it – and really, Jenny asks herself, why would she want to?

At last six comes around and Darryl comes slouching in. He grunts a question that sounds like "You seen Ollie?" but she only shrugs and gathers her purse and coat and runs out before Darryl can try to make her stay.

She's twenty feet from the store and a few steps from her car when she sees him, the old man.

"Mister?" she asks. "Mister, you okay?"

Like anyone lying by their potholed stretch of county road would be okay, she tells herself, tightening her grip on her purse and repeating "Mister? Hey, mister, you okay?" like a prayer.

She steels herself and bends close, squinting in the mostly-dark. Even in the poor light man is the guy old, skin crazed and molded to his skull like a zombie's, and wispy white hair that trembles in the breeze, and sunken lids.

"Mister?" she asks one last time, even as she realizes that he's dead, and that there's a terrible red wound that looks like teeth had been on the guy's chest, and that it's Ollie's nametag on his torn and bloody Darryl's Gas n'Go shirt.

* * *


A few days later, James Dean walks into her house.

Well, not James Dean, but a guy with the Nevada state police who isn't lumpy and greasy like most of the officers who stop by Darryl's for coffee and donuts. In fact, she gets two good-looking guys with the Nevada state police, Officer Cease (who looks like James Dean) and Officer Colt (who looks… really tall). She tells them what she told the other officers, about the old dead guy in Ollie's shirt and the huge bloodstain, which is really all she can remember. Officer Colt wears a bad suit and an understanding expression, and asks the questions, some of which are really strange. What's stranger is that he asks them like he thinks the poor old man really is Ollie – had she heard of this happening elsewhere, was there a wound, had there been problems with the electricity, did she see anything else? – and it's the last question that catches her attention.

"Do you think it was Ollie?" asks Officer Colt, his voice dropping carefully.

"You'll think I'm crazy," she tells him, because all the other detectives thought that.

"Look, sweetheart," James Dean/Officer Cease says, leaning in with a confidential look and a glance down her blouse, "everyone is."

* * *


"She's convinced it's him, Dean," Sam says into the frantic whir of the fan. "And that it was a vampire, even without the usual fang marks."

The fan makes Sam's voice modulate weirdly, an up-and-down hum that grates on Dean's nerves almost as much as the fact that Sam's a bit cooler than he is. Their motel is shitty enough – like, they might as well camp out, it's that shitty – that the A/C had spat white-hot sparks at them, followed by a blast of desert air, and then had refused to work. Dean isn't planning on trying to coax it; mostly, he wants to throw it through the motel owner's door.

No, mostly he wants to get the hell out of Sinkhole, Nevada and go someplace civilized, like Vegas. He says this, and adds that the girl was probably hallucinating. Sam reminds him that she'd been in a store all night, she'd hardly had the opportunity to develop heat stroke.

"It might be worth going back to hell just to get away from this fucking heat," Dean grunts, and god, he's starting to bitch like Sammy. He focuses on that thought; it's better, a lot better, than remembering heat searing the skin from his bones, and his bones cracking from the cold. Outside, beyond the grimy window, the gaping crater of the motel's pool (the motel's fucking useless empty pool) gapes tauntingly. The washcloth on the back of his neck is already lukewarm, and Christ, he'd kill for cool air right now.

The A/C unit whines and hisses, and sparks fly from it again. With a lurch that almost breaks it out of its frame, it starts. Cold air, wonderful, heavenly, cold air, belches out of the vent and Dean could weep.

Then a lighbulb pops, and the TV switches onto the static channel.

"Oh, no." Shit shit shit, he reaches under the pillow for his gun and, turning back to aim it and blow whatever-the-hell-it-is out of existence, he realizes it's useless. The washcloth slides to the floor with a pathetic plop. "Fuck no."

"I'd think you wouldn't want to go back to perdition for any reason," Castiel says from his perch on Dean's bed. He looks like he always looks, badly-knotted tie and trench coat, with maybe a bit more tiredness in his eyes, if angels can even feel tired. He doesn't look sweaty, though, only his usual slightly disheveled self. "And we would not let you go back down to hell, even if you really wanted to."

"Yeah, thanks for that," Dean grunts. Castiel inclines his head like Dean really is thanking him, and he's accepting, very regal and angelically proper. "What the hell do you want this time?"

"The woman you spoke to today," Castiel glances at their badges on the TV, and his expression is blank enough that Dean can't tell what Castiel thinks about them breaking all sorts of commandments in the name of duty, "you must kill the creature responsible."

"We must, huh?" Dean leans back into his pillow and tries to put the gun aside as casually as he can. Castiel just looks at him, that unwavering, unblinking stare and a face that can mean pretty much anything Dean wants it to, amusement or irritation or even indifference. It drives him nuts, and the indifference really pisses him off because you just, you do not write off Dean Winchester.

"Is it Lilith?" Sam asks. Dean twitches a bit, because dammit if he hasn't forgotten Sammy. Castiel takes a lot of concentration to deal with. Sam sounds half-afraid, half-hopeful; Lilith owes him a lot, and he's been spoiling to get at her.

"No," Castiel says calmly, "it isn't, but that makes it no less important."

"How ‘bout you enlighten us?" Dean does sit up now; it's a bit easier to handle Castiel that way, even though Castiel doesn't seem to mind that he's shorter and skinnier than Dean, and that Dean probably could have beaten up his vessel's body in grammar school. The angel has a way of seeming much bigger than the confines of his narrow shoulders, bigger than the room, than anything. Dean can't imagine any of the demons giving him crap when he'd gone down into Hell to drag Dean out of it.

Castiel regards him steadily, I'm millions of years old and I watched you climb out of the mud, and also I can destroy you and leave behind only a smoking crater, written clear as day in the lines of his face and tranquil blue eyes. Dean's hackles go up.

"So if it's not the goddamn Apocalypse," Dean growls, "what the hell is it? Or is you telling us against the rules?"

"It is a son of the children of pride." Castiel's mouth goes thin in disapproval; clearly it's a bad thing, even if Dean's still completely clueless, because, yeah a son of the children of pride clears up so freaking much. "End it, Dean."

In the heartbeat Dean needs to glance at Sam, and to think about saying We were going to hunt the goddamn thing anyway, you son of a bitch, Castiel vanishes.

"I hate how he does that," Dean mutters. Castiel gets the last fucking word every single time.

* * *


Millions and millions of light years away

"Colonel Sheppard? Dr. McKay?" Woolsey's expression is more dolorous than usual, which means the news is bad. "Your presence has been requested Earthside for a few days; Stargate Command has a… situation they believe you would be well-qualified to handle." His tone manages to convey more doubt than faith in John and Rodney's abilities.

"Us?" Rodney gestures between the two of them.

"Is there anyone else in the room?" From behind his glasses, Woolsey blinks. When he stares, he looks like a cross between a basset hound and a fish, a sad trout with bags under his eyes and a permanent half-frown. "In point of fact, the SGC's eyes and ears have been receiving some disturbing reports – " Rodney interrupts to ask "About what?" and he's two seconds away from pacing; John resists the urge to grab him and hold him in place. Woolsey sighs, perilously close to the sigh Elizabeth would employ in similar circumstances. "About something that shouldn't exist on Earth."

"What?" Rodney snaps, switch flipped over from anxiety to annoyance. "Unicorns? Basilisks? Jedi?"

"Rodney," John says. Rodney falls silent, but it's a spiky, annoyed silence that shouts itself at the top of its lungs.

"Colonel?" Woolsey says, with a patience that really isn't patience at all. "If I may?"

"You may," John says graciously.

When Woolsey starts explaining why Stargate Command wants them back on Earth, Rodney has a whole new galaxy of things to say, and really, John can relate. He very much wants to say something of his own, like "fucking hell," or "please tell me you're shitting me," but he can't even bring himself to say "crap" around Woolsey. It'd be like cussing in front of his grandmother. Left wordless, he nods along with the information and itinerary Woolsey gives them, and lets Rodney's anger wash over him like water.

Rodney's rant doesn't let up when they leave Woolsey's office, and continues in full spate while they walk to the transporters, picks up again after the transporters and keeps on through to crew quarters. When they part in the atrium, John's radio clicks on and Rodney hasn't missed a beat.

"This is really, seriously bad news," Rodney informs him. In the control area above them, Chuck finishes the encoding and the stargate punctuates Rodney's statement with a whoosh. John sighs; usually, leaving Atlantis means nothing good can happen. "Also, I will not be held responsible for what I may say to Landry when we meet with him."

"It's not really their fault, you know," John reminds him.

"Yeah," Rodney says crossly, "but I have to blame someone."

* * *


The Salt Desert Flats Municipal Library is, first of all, a joke, and second of all, kind of busy. A small herd of kindergarteners has taken over the children's area, and in addition to some people wandering through the stacks a couple of guys are browsing the science- and popular fiction shelves. Dean hunches closer to Sam, who frowns a bit and hitches away, and Dean rolls his eyes and follows, because they have to talk and figure out what's going on.

"Whatever the hell it is, it isn't a vampire, and I don't care what that Jenny girl says about teeth," Dean says while he watches Sam ignore him and mess around with his laptop. "If there was a vampire out here, we'd know about it."

"Yeah," Sam says in the tone of Dean-humoring and not-actually-agreeing-to-anything. A microfiche machine hums next to him, a tattered news article displayed on a screen that's a wrong sort of yellow and makes Dean kind of sick to look at. "The Salt Desert Flats coroner leaked photos to a tabloid. They're saying aliens."

That's one thing they haven't been able to get: access to the body. When they'd played CDC agents for the county coroner, they'd learned that "some people" had been by and whisked the body away. "'Sa Consp-ir-acy, if you ask me," the coroner had said, nodding sagely.

"Alien conspiracy," his assistant had added, to clarify, before shutting the door in their faces.

"So what are we saying?" Dean takes a private, silent moment to curse Castiel and his prohibition on giving useful information. "The son of the children of pride. Seriously, what the hell does that even mean?"

"There's been reports of old people turning up dead ever since Salt Desert Flats was founded," Sam says, shift/bouncing in his seat a bit. He's all lit up, high on research and finding things, like the scrap of Salt Desert Flats Democrat, 1883 edition, on the microfiche screen. Dean's never liked research, but he'd learned to read in a hundred different libraries and had taught Sam to read the same way. "And missionaries to the Paiute in the south said they had a legend about a spirit that stole the lives of its victims. There's a memoir by one of the missionaries, maybe it has illustrations."

"You lost me at missionaries." They're too much like angels, way too holier-than-thou, loser for him. Dean squints at the article anyway, mostly for purposes of humoring Sam. The old man is thought to have been a prospector at Bone Creek, though his confederates among the miners insist they have never seen him. However, it is well to remember miners often quarrel among themselves and bloodshed is not unknown… God, his brain is rotting and his body itching with the need to get out there and find this thing.

"Okay, Oprah's Book Club, what do you think?"

Sam tries to eviscerate him with a pointy elbow. "Maybe a shtriga? Or another type of vampiric creature… Rakshasa? Sidhe?"

"They don't have…" Dean raises one hand, wiggles his fingers like the girl, Jenny Starke, did to demonstrate what she'd seen. "Dude, she saw a handprint with bite marks. Nothing I know of leaves that sign."

"Like a mouth in the right hand?"

Dean almost goes for the gun under his shirt and Sam's twisting in his chair, almost knocking Dean over he moves in that fast tangle of limbs, and goddammit, they're in a library in the back of beyond, and seriously, is he going to shoot his way out?

The guy standing a few feet away looks like he's asking Dean these same questions, telegraphed through a sarcastic smile that puts up Dean's hackles. He's relaxed and authoritative, even with one hand raised, the right one, and Dean can't help checking to see if there's a mouth there. There isn't, of course, and he feels like an idiot, which doesn't help the situation.

"What do you know about it?" Sam asks. He's standing now, towering over all three of them, but the second stranger sniffs and says something about how Ronon's taller.

"Enough," the first guy says, and could he be any more Men In Black? Dean asks him this, and there's that slow, insolent shrug that Dean hates – probably because (Sam will say this later) it reminds him of himself. Beyond that, there's not much similarity – dark, sloppy hair, tall but not as freakishly tall as Sam, eyes that manage a sort of sarcastic amusement – but the shrug and smirk are enough.

"Whatever." The other guy steps up now, looking a lot less worried and more irritated, mouth pulled thin with it. The irritation seems pretty evenly spread between Dean, Sam, and the other guy, and possibly the library in general – Dean had heard him muttering about the dismal selection of Lovecraft. "Sheppard, we need to bring them in."

"Bring us in for what?"

The guy named Sheppard shrugs again and his grin lengthens. "Just to talk."

* * *


"They're going to figure it out," Rodney says – again. He's pacing the tiny office they've appropriated, flipping the cap of his sunblock open and shut. Click-click, snap, click-click, and it's starting to drive John more than a bit crazy. It's already driven the local sherrif crazy, but they'd gotten rid of him. "They're going to figure it out, they're already halfway there – and you know, it took them a fraction of the time than it did the SGC." He pauses. "Maybe we should consider hiring them, since they're obviously much, much better at this sort of thing than the people ostensibly trained for it."

John nods along in time with the pauses in Rodney's rant and tries not to think about a cold shower, or the calm, humid air of New Lantea. Here the air scorches his lungs and clogs them with dust, and Rodney – strung out, sweaty, sunburned and miserable – isn't doing much better.

One of the SGC interrogators, playing dress-up as a local detective, is having a hell of a time dealing with Dean Winchester. On the other side of the one-way window, another interrogator leans on his brother, Sam, but John doesn't need much time to see neither of them are going to fold no matter how long the SGC works at it. Dean looks as solid and dependable as his body is, apple-pie smile that probably has Teldy wanting to slap it right off his face. Sam, big-eyed and guileless, slips and slides and angles around Bates, and butter probably wouldn't melt in his mouth, either.

"They're kind of like you," Rodney says absently, still fiddling with his sunblock bottle. Click-click.

"Would you fucking quit it?" John snaps. "And what?"

"Hm? Oh." Rodney pauses and looks at him, eyes wide and a bit wild, as they've been ever since Woolsey told them there was at least one Wraith back on Earth. He puts the sunscreen down, though. "Well, both stupidly defiant, and with the, uh, the hair." Rodney illustrates this with a complicated gesture possibly meant to indicate either John's cowlicks or his insanity. "Anyway, I lifted the data from Sam Winchester's computer – he is freakishly tall, isn't he? Somewhat unnatural – and there's no doubt. It's definitely a Wraith. The pattern of deaths suggest that it went into hibernation between feedings – it'd move around for a week or so and then go to sleep again for years. Which is good news, because it probably means we're only dealing with one."

"Or a whole bunch that hibernate and wake up at different times."

"Please don't say things like that." Rodney shudders, paces a bit more, and grinds to a halt. His hands keep going, though, marking agitation. "If there were more than one, though, they probably would have bred by now, if they had a Queen. God knows they've had enough time to do it."

"That's very cheerful, McKay, thank you."

"Yeah, well, you started it." Rodney gazes morosely through the window at Sam Winchester, who is still being politely uncooperative. Bates looks like he's about to explode. "He slouches like you, too."

He reaches for the sunscreen again; John intercepts him and gets to the sunscreen first. Rodney's fingers are warm and shaky against the back of his hand.

"We'll find the son of a bitch," John tells him.

"I know," Rodney says, not quite as acerbic as usual. "It's a question of when, though."

A lieutenant comes jogging up, ready with a salute for John and a data tablet for Rodney. Rodney takes it with an impatient "What took you so long?" and the lieutenant, who has clearly never encountered McKay before, goes a little pale.

"I had a team pull the topographical maps," Rodney says, tilting the tablet so John can get a better look. Contour lines and the color-coded swirls of elevations fill the screen, dotted here and there by small white numbers. "There's a whole bunch of abandoned gold mines off to the north over here" - Rodney's index finger describes a wide arc on the upper margin of the tablet. "I'm willing to bet that's where the thing's been... uh, been hibernating."

"I want a team down there," John says softly to the lieutenant. "Get Landry on the phone." The beginnings of adrenaline thump-thump in his blood. It's a mission, it's fighting, getting things done. He makes himself focus and turns back to the pair of interview rooms, where Dean and Sam Winchester are still slip-sliding their ways around two military interrogators.

You have to respect the hell out of that, John decides, and tries to feel at least a little bit bad for Bates and Teldy.

"They'll be in danger if we can't get them the hell out of here," John mutters.

"Stupidity is its own reward," Rodney says.

* * *


Fifty miles and one county town later, they're still on the hunt. Coopersville is large enough to lay low and lick wounds in, big enough that not everyone knows everyone else. They even have a choice of three seedy motels and two diners, one of which might not give them food poisoning. Castiel's been back once, a lot scarier in his impatience than representatives of a top-secret federal agency, even scarier than John Sheppard.

Sheppard's idea of "talking" hadn't really involved talking so much as a lecture about keeping their noses out of other people's business. The woman who told them this, her posture screaming ‘military' even though she'd looked like a detective in street clothes, had scowled when Dean told her he was trying, except he could smell the old fish from here and couldn't help it. She'd kicked them out an hour later, while an entire office's worth of suspicious eyes watched them go.

They'd learned some names, at least. There's Sheppard – John Sheppard, which they'd picked up from eavesdropping on the science fiction geeks, the taller one with the smirk that needs to be wiped off his face. The other one's Rodney McKay, the pissy guy, who'd been yelling at Sheppard about something, and then yelling at someone else over a cell phone. Sheppard, trying to get his attention, had said McKay and then Rodney in a way that seemed especially to infuriate McKay, who'd whipped around and snapped What? like trying to bite off the word and Sheppard's hand at the same time.

Now Sam's folded himself into a plastic McDonald's bench, obsessing over his computer and ignoring the Big Mac congealing in its wrapper. Outside, just under the arches, FREE WIRELESS blinks enticingly, and a bit of tumbleweed drifts by. The Impala glitters black under the sun, and if they'd gotten the third degree from the detective/military people, at least they'd left the car alone.

"So what have you got?" Sam doesn't lean away when Dean hunches close. If there's anything to convince him of government conspiracies, Dean thinks, today would be it. It's something from a B-movie, one of a million he'd seen in hotel rooms across the country before he'd figured out how to rig the TV to get porn free of charge. Only this time, it's a movie with a vampire-ghost-thing instead of little grey men, something that, so far as they can figure out can suck the life out of people.

"Not much, but it's…" Sam tilts the screen but bends over it a little more, sheltering it under the long curve of his body. "Well, it's pretty interesting."

"John Sheppard. Air Force?" Dean chews absently on a fry.

"Major," Sam said. "Or he was. There are a couple of articles online about a friend of his who died outside of Kabul, but he isn't mentioned beyond being at the funeral." Sam's mouth twists ruefully. "I'd offer to hack into the USAF mainframe, but I don't think that'd be a good idea at the moment."

Probably it isn't. They don't need Sam's freaky Shining mind reading/spoon bending/future telling thing to tell them this is something bigger than Ollie Horton's dead, aged body next to a gas station.

"So what about the other guy?"

"There's a lot more." Sam pulls up another window, and yeah, wow. Dean flicks over the search results page, Rodney McKay in bold and usually next to phrases like "groundbreaking work" and "hyperspace tensor currents," other phrases Dean decides are probably made up or straight out of the sci-fi McKay was looking at earlier. "He's an important physicist, or was, until about ten years ago." Sam clicks a link and brings up a page belonging to some scientific journal. "These are all citations to his work, and he hasn't published anything since 1996 or so. It's like he fell off the face of the earth."

"Which we should probably do," Dean mutters, and Sam looks up, still distracted, "What?" still on his lips when he catches sight of Sheppard and McKay climbing out of a dusty pickup truck they've parked right next to the Impala. "Come on," Dean mutters, like there's really anywhere to go or anything to do. They've probably got the motel locked down and they're probably being watched and fuck fuck fuck this is way too big to deal with.

He moves anyway, hustling Sam out the far door even as Sam tries to tuck his laptop into his bag. The desert sun, reaching for its noontime ferocity, hits him like a sledgehammer, blinding now that he's out from behind the shelter of tinted windows – and even fiercer, concentrated like the sun in a magnifying glass, is Sheppard zeroing in on him from the other side of the Xeriscaped garden. The sunlight reflects off dark lenses.

"Fuck, fuck," Dean mutters, hoping that maybe fuck will get them out of this since there's nothing else. Maybe it'll summon Castiel, but if the angel's around, there's no sign of him. No time to hotwire a car, nowhere to run except a town that isn't big enough to hide a manhunt, but he runs anyway. Sam's loping stride lengthens as he starts running too, propelled along by Dean's hand at his back and Sheppard's soft, swift tread behind them.

"I am not running, Sheppard!" McKay hollers after them.

And it's days like today, Dean Winchester thinks as he sees the government-issued roadblock pull up, that it really isn't worth getting out of bed.

* * *


"What the hell was that?" The bass line in his head threatens to make his skull explode, and his entire body races with fugitive shivers of electricity. There'd been one second, the last second before the bright blue light and the blackness swallowing it, that he'd been convinced his heart really was going to stop this time, but it hadn't because the last time he'd died, he can't remember death hurting that much.

"It'll wear off," McKay says from somewhere above him. "Some numbness and tingling for the next day or so, but you'll be okay. You should be." When Dean's vision resolves, McKay's standing by a table, fidgeting with the strings of his hoodie and hovering somewhere between irritated and apologetic. He's pretty spectacularly sunburned, too, and his nose is peeling. "Of course, if you had been reasonable and not, you know, tried to run away – or if you hadn't been stupid and thought that maybe we would have installed a tracer in your laptop and your car – you wouldn't have this problem."

"You fucked with my car?" Dean struggles to sit up, one step closer to going for McKay's throat.

"We attached a tracking device to it," McKay snaps, "we didn't ‘fuck with it.'"

"Look," Sam says, the voice of reason Dean doesn't really feel like hearing, "we're graduate students in American history, researching – "

"See, I thought you were state cops." Sheppard materializes from the shadows of the kitchenette. Dean, still disoriented from the whatever-it-was electric-eel weapon thing, thinks hazily of his father, seeing him again in plaid shirt and worn jeans and boots, lines around Sheppard's eyes that would make him look kind if it weren't for the dangerously casual slope of his body against the wall, something in the way he carries himself that reminds Dean of the military. "That's what the girl – Jenny Starke – said."

"The librarian said you were writing dissertations on the Shoshoni," McKay adds.

"And I like the Black Crowes," Sheppard says.

"Fuck." He has to work to sit up, his spine not wanting to take his weight, but Dean manages it. The motel room swims around him, lime green and dark walnut veneer. "Who the hell are you, and what do you care what we are?"

"Oh, for – " McKay takes a deep breath; Sheppard winces. "You really, seriously have no idea what you're dealing with here, which is no surprise at all, and of course the SGC had to go and screw everything up and now we're stuck haring around the high desert like the goddamn Lone Ranger and Tonto chasing – "

"Rodney…"

"What? What?" McKay draws himself up, and his voice reaches a pitch usually attained by Sam only at his most indignant. "I told Carter and Landry we should be spending our time working on a more effective detection system and figuring out if the Ancients brought any more of – of – " He falters out of his rant and glances at Sam and Dean. "Well, our time would have been much better spent back in Colorado, not playing… playing g-men or whatever."

"Like you could pass for one." Sheppard rolls his eyes. "Tonto."

"Oh, that's rich, coming from Colonel Norm goddamn Abrams." McKay spares Sheppard one last, withering glare before redirecting it to Dean and Sam. "Look, your poking around that gas station? Not a good idea right now. Please, please tell me you have enough of a brain between you to understand this and go somewhere else."

"Duh, no, sorry." Dean offers McKay his best smile, and McKay goes into some sort of convulsion. Sheppard frowns at him but doesn't say anything.

"Whatever it is," oh, good, Sam butting in. Dean wills his brother to shut up, but Sam's got his telepathy turned off. "Whatever it is, it's got to be pretty big to have the military in on it – and an astrophysicist who's been out of the field for ten years."

McKay bristles, but Sheppard steps in before he can say anything.

"You're right," he says, "it is big. How big, we don't know yet." He folds himself into the chair, shoulder resting comfortably against the hand McKay has stationed on the back. The look he fixes on Dean is way too knowing, a lot like Castiel, but more amused, like Sheppard is happy he's got information Dean doesn't. "And you have a few of choices now."

"And those are?" Dean really wants to move. He doesn't handle captivity well, and even though he can take McKay, he isn't entirely sure about Sheppard and the forest of snipers they probably have stationed outside.

"You leave and stay away from Nevada for the next little while." Sheppard ticks this off on one finger. "It's the simplest and the least messy. Second, you stay and we could arrest you, or have the state arrest you and make sure you spend the next several years in prison," this with a smirking, significant look at Dean, and of course they'd have the Winchester rap sheets, and isn't that a chilling thought? "Or, to be on the safe side, we could take you into custody and you won't see the light of day for, oh, how long do you think?"

"Assuming no memory modification?" McKay's sharp blue eyes fix on them. "Maybe never."

"The last…" Sheppard huffs out a reluctant breath, like he'd been looking forward to the memory modification, which freaks the sarcasm right out of Dean, "you've done a lot of the legwork, we think, in determining… patterns." His hands are folded now, and he studies Dean and Sam intently. "But you haven't figured out anything beyond that. Keep it that way, get out of town, and we'll see to some of the lesser charges. We can't do anything about murder – there's only so much a super-secret government agency can do."

"Please don't give me reason to despair over the decreasing intellectual capacity of today's youth," McKay says from his position behind Sheppard's shoulder. "I honestly don't think I could take it."

* * *


Despite himself, John likes Dean Winchester. It really isn't good policy to like someone who might be required to be dead in the interests of homeworld security, or be locked up for the rest of his life (which, like himself, he can't see Dean surviving), but still. He looks out for his people – his brother – and doesn't give up and he likes the Black Crowes, and those are things John can respect.

Next to him, Rodney frets over a jury-rigged life-signs detector. The SGC has been falling over its own feet, not wanting to cause a stir in the towns and hamlets that dot the isolated stretches of Nevada roadways – these are things people near Area 51 know, and the SGC hides in plain sight at Cheyenne, but there's a suspicion and vigilance here that's had a powerful international agency thrown into consternation. So resources have been thin on the ground, and very little in the way of sophisticated technology, or even flyovers.

"I am seriously, seriously pissed right now," Rodney mumbles to the detector. Something blips and the screen comes on. "Seriously beyond belief pissed."

"We do get sucky hotel rooms." The SGC can afford to send people to another galaxy but not to any decent place on their own planet. Not, John supposes, that there are a lot of four-star hotels to choose from in Wasteland, Nevada, but the single room – one king, covered with a bedspread probably half fabric and half bacteria and lice (Rodney's estimation), shag carpet, chipped veneer and a TV with reception that makes the picture look like an acid trip – is really pushing it. "Hey, I raided the ice maker."

"Good for you." Rodney pulls out a micro-screwdriver and makes more adjustments. "Aha!"

"Are you getting something?"

"No," Rodney said, "unless the Wraith is hiding in the bathroom." He glances anxiously at the door, and John has a brief image of the Wraith leaping out from behind the (mold-coated) shower curtain. "I just managed to re-key the detector to pick up on Wraith biosignatures… It's a project one of my teams has been working on."

"So are we going to walk over every square inch of Nevada waving it around?"

"Again, no." Rodney's expression is one of deeply tried patience. "But if you give me a few more minutes, and possibly food so I don't collapse from hypoglycemic shock, I can boost the range."

"Sounds good," John says, and fishes through the take-out menus left by previous unfortunate occupants. Rodney's soft humming and concentration is familiar against the now-strange textures of paper and Formica, and the choking smells of old cigarettes, and is like home.

* * *


Ten miles out of town and they're on another back road, only one of an endless cris-crossing of pitted concrete and gravel. The day's given way reluctantly to night, still holding on at the horizon, and Dean's grateful for the absence of the sun, though his headache's too entrenched even for painkillers to shake.

Sam's dug in, too, muley and refusing to let Dean sleep.

"So we're just quitting?" Demand tightens Sam's voice, and his hands tighten around the steering wheel. Dean tells him not to strangle it; Sam rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Seriously, Dean! When have we ever been scared off the hunt?"

"Those guys weren't small town cops," Dean mumbles. His head won't stop pounding out the rhythm to "Hard Luck Woman" and he really doesn't want to talk about his reaction to Sheppard. "They weren't small town cops or idiot detectives, Sammy. They weren't even feds… They were something else, and I don't feel like dealing with it."

"This isn't Roswell, Dean," Sam scoffs.

"I'm not sayin' it is." The fries threaten to come back up, and Dean ruthlessly swallows them down. His clothes smell like motor oil from being wedged under the Impala to dig out the tracking device, and gun oil from checking the armory. The fries try to make another appearance. "It's just – "

"That guy, Colonel Sheppard, he remind you of someone?"

"No," Dean says shortly, and god, why does Sam have to do this?

"Castiel told us we need to keep hunting this thing." Sam isn't looking at the road, not too dangerous because it's Nevada and the blacktop is straight as an arrow, but Dean feels the throb in his head spike anyway. It doesn't help that Sam's all over the fucking conversational map. "And I was doing some work earlier, and I think I found out what the children of – "

"Since when do you do what Castiel wants anyway?" Pressing his head against the window turns out to be a mistake; the vibration of the glass on his temple only makes things worse. "You haven't been this fucking starry-eyed about angels since you first met one."

"Hey, don't get pissed off at me," Sam says. One of his hands waves indignantly; it hits the wheel and the Impala careens into the other lane before Sam can right it. Once they're back on the right side of the road, Sammy takes a deep breath, preparatory to the bitchfest/lecture Dean knows is coming. "You've been an ass all day, like, even more than usual, and I – "

Dean's halfway through figuring out how to change the conversation when he sees it.

"Shit! Sam!"

Sam's already on it, swerving hard. The Impala's tires screech in protest, rubber and asphalt and oh man that's going to leave a mark, and Dean's heart pounds to the growl of the engine and the adrenaline of having just missed something.

"What the hell was that?"

"Looked like a ghost," Sam says. He loosens his grip on the wheel and glances at Dean. "Definitely some kind of presence. You okay?"

"No, I'm not." Dean fights with the seatbelt, wins finally, and climbs out. The desert has switched to ‘freeze' and he shivers. The headache clings with fearsomely sharp claws as he tries to orient himself to the cold and the wide, dizzying wasteland. There's starlight but no moon, and the world yawns huge and empty around them. "Come on."

Sam's already half-buried in the trunk, fishing out the sawed-offs and extra salt pellets, holy water, his knife, an extra for Dean. Dean has his own knife, the demon-killing one, at his belt already. The flashlight Sam produces last doesn't do much to cut the blackness; when he shuts the trunk, all there is is the faint illumination of stars that turns Sam into an odd silver-lined, shadowy giant holding beam of light that leads out into the brush and red sand.

"You're sure you saw something?"

"Yes," Sam says testily. "You saw it too. Maybe it's a haunting? Someone killed along this stretch of road."

"A haunting and a bunch of mysteriously aged, dead people turning up? Not – " He pivots to follow the flash in the periphery of his vision, bang bang as the gun goes off and nothing as the salt pellets go right through it as though the twisting hallucination of light – white laced with blue and red – wasn't even there.

It isn't there, he wants to say to Sam, who's still tracking something, the flashlight beam swinging back and forth. Sam's soft muttering: I know you're there, I know you're there, and then three sharp reports at –

"There's nothing there Sam!"

"I hit it," Sam insists. "Twice."

"And they went right through," Dean says, and he can barely make out Sam's confused nod. His ears still echo with the shots, and his head throbs a mean bass counterpoint "Let's get back to the car; no way we're doing this without finding out more." Because ghosts don't do this, and at the least the salt should have dispersed the whatever-it-was, not go through it like going through air.

They turn and start running back, Dean running half backwards, staring back into one darkness as his feet take him to the car. And he's used to this, how the supernatural can screw with the mind. He's had his read, probed, lived in by people other than himself, his secrets dug up and handed to people who shouldn't ever have to know them, he's been in hell, his sins torn out and exposed along with his guts and it should take more than lights and shadows to freak him out, but goddammit it is freaking him out, and it's an act of will to keep looking back and stay aware of Sam running next to him.

He trips on a rock and catches himself against the suddenly-still strength of Sam's body, looks up and sees the thing from Jenny Starke's nightmare.

"Sam – !"

Sam's firing, first the rock pellets, which stun the creature into pausing, but then it shakes its head like shaking off flies. Okay, the rational hunter-part of Dean's brain thinks, not a ghost or demon. Sam takes a step back, firing one-handed, the other reaching for Dean, who pulls himself up and has his own gun now, loaded with consecrated rounds, the weight of it in his hands steadying him.

The… thing, whatever it is, wears – okay, he's going insane, because he wants to laugh – "Are those fucking jeans?" Yeah, they are. Jeans and a t-shirt with a blood-ringed rip in the center of the chest, right where the fabric would cover the breastbone, where the rip had been on Ollie Horton's shirt, and where the hole in his chest had been.

He's seen that same wound on the chest of Gilbert Brockley in photos taken ten years before, Edith Williams, Catherine and Carlton Scragg, all the way back to Alger Lowe in 1890, the first person for whom there was photographic evidence of how he'd died. They'd all gone missing at the same time the bodies of old people had mysteriously surfaced. Police and coroners identified the bodies as simply "unidentified men and women," or thought they'd been long-buried corpses exposed by wind and rain.

And maybe they, Sam and Dean, will be the next poor bastards to turn up old and dead, and Sheppard and McKay will gloat over their corpses.

Or maybe not. He pushes himself up, makes sure of the extra rounds in his pocket. Sammy has his automatic out, the spare clip in his hands already. It'd be a good time for Castiel to show up, or an actual fucking guardian angel for once, for anyone, because the bastard just isn't going down.

Dean keeps firing, mind pacing to the rhythm of the gun in his hand, bang bang bang, the reports piling up in the hugely silent and empty sky. But the thing keeps coming, pausing now and then, staring down at its own chest as greenish skin ripples and shifts to cover bullet holes, and there's this low, awful sound, like a laugh.

"Humans," it hisses. "You are… humans. You are food."

"Fuck me, this is a B-movie" Dean mutters, and if he didn't remember what Ollie Horton looked like, desiccated and mummy-like with a hole in his chest, he'd laugh. Because, really, food. "Sam, how you doing?"

"Reloading," Sam says tightly, one hand busy with the extra clip. He ejects the old one, jams the new one home, and still no difference.

"Maybe," Dean says, and he's going to say something else – maybe we're screwed this time, maybe there's no way out, maybe you should run – but then there's this low thunder, a swift thop thop thop that isn't the wind and isn't the B-movie alien in jeans and isn't his own heart.

It's a helicopter, military, a dark and fast-moving spot against the night, and the thing is lit up in the glow of its lights, corpse-green with long white hair and every bit as monstrous as any creature Dean's ever faced, and it bares fangs that are translucent yellow. One hand comes up to block its vision and Dean sees what made Jenny Starke think she was crazy: on the right hand, a small fanged mouth, curving along the palm.

Dust kicks up, stinging eyes and skin before Dean can shove Sam and himself out of the way. The B-movie alien is stunned, a green vampire rabbit in the headlights, backing up but not trying to run. Not that it can, anyway: through eyes mostly shut against sand and the whirl of wind from the helicopter's blades, Dean sees the assault rifles swing into position and then the desert explodes with noise. He has a half second to fling himself against Sammy and try to flatten both of them against the desert floor, temple pressed to the worn material of Sam's jacket.

Even though it's probably a bad idea, he turns his head, squints his eyes until they're barely open, and watches.

The alien jerks, back arching as though suspended by the bullets piercing it, jerking and dancing for what seems like minutes but what Dean knows is only seconds. And nothing living – the thing, Dean's pretty sure, is alive – could survive a pair of M240 machine guns. Blood and… and shit what the hell is that, alien guts? pulp and splatter and some of it ends up on Dean's face, warm, sticky, silding down his cheek.

Not much of the alien makes it back to the ground in one piece, but the second it hits the dirt – still twitching, holy fuck, and Dean can hear Sam muttering amazement next to him – there's Sheppard catapulting out of the cockpit, worn old clothes gone and replaced by military black, McKay behind him, and both of them are armed. In the light from the Blackhawk's search lamps, they're shadows.

Sheppard fires a few rounds into the twitching pile. McKay keeps his weapon trained on it, although he doesn't fire, face grimly determined and pale, and he doesn't move even when what looks like blood smears across his cheek.

When the echoes finally stop, Sheppard steps back. Everything's still now, the copter's rotors slowing and the dust settling, even McKay's anxious energy drained. A couple more soldiers have gathered, and Sheppard gives quick instructions that have them gathering the shredded bits of alien into bags – labeled BIOHAZARD, which makes Sam twitch and say something that Sheppard says will have to wait – while McKay is studying something small and plastic-looking.

"Is that it?" Sheppard asks.

"Around here? Yeah." McKay tucks the device into a pocket of his tactical vest and checks the clip of his assault rifle, and Dean wonders what the hell kind of an astrophysicist carries.

"Good." Sheppard relaxes minutely, turns to look at Dean and Sam. "You okay?"

"Fuckin' peachy." Dean wipes at alien glop with his sleeve and looks at the stains the alien glop has left in the sand. Under the copter's floodlights it's puke green and brown; Dean's stomach definitely has something to say about that. He swallows. "You mind telling us what the hell that is?"

"Was," Sheppard says, and sounds bloodthirsty and satisfied.

* * *


Dean Winchester's staring at the splotch of green and reddish-brown gore that used to be the Wraith. There's a still-twitching pinky finger, and John pulls out his utility knife.

He watches Corporal Bradley bag the finger, and tells someone to clean up the blood. The sand will be bagged too, and twenty square feet of desert sterilized as a precaution. He doesn't tell Dean this, but Dean's watching the cleanup like he knows something of it. The rifle in his hand, and the knife in his brother's, says he probably does.

"And I'd like answers," Dean says after a moment. He points at where the Wraith used to be. "That wasn't – that wasn't a ghost, and it wasn't a demon, and it wasn't human. Are there any more of it? And what the hell is it?"

"There aren't any more," Rodney says. He's staring at the spot where the Wraith used to be, as though the Wraith might spontaneously regenerate. "And as for what the hell it is…" He glances at John, who nods.

Sam and Dean, they look like the kind of people used to secrets. Even Rodney, who's prone to disturbingly honest and awkward confessions, can lock down when it comes to talking about classified information. He has the knife wound on his arm – John's seen it, touched it once – to prove it, and also, the best-developed paranoia in two galaxies.

"You know we saw your files," John says. Sam and Dean nod suspiciously, and Dean suddenly goes tense, more watchful than before, "and I read about your dad, what happened to your family. The SGC is pretty efficient like that." Less so when it comes to hunting down a single Wraith, apparently; Rodney still owes several people new assholes for that. "You'll have to sign non-disclosure agreements, but for what it's worth…" He shrugs.

It's not that he trusts them, but that there's enough respect there, earned quickly enough, for him to bring the case to Landry. They'd gotten on the case and stayed on it, and ridden it almost to destruction. They didn't leave it, which is a huge thing to John, not giving up when people who think they know better say you should; he's not sure what Sam and Dean are getting out of it except a rap sheet and a cut on Sam's forehead that needs stitching, but whatever it is, it isn't measured in houses, wives and kids, money in a 401(k).

They deserve to know, Dean's right, and Rodney had backed him on this, loudly and at length when Landry had demanded why they should tell two should-have-been-convicted-long-ago felons anything. They'd been in the Coopersville sherrif's office, and Rodney had been hollering at Landry over the speakerphone, and had probably shouted down the mountain around Landry's head.

"They aren't completely dumb," he'd shouted at Landry. John had wondered what the people in the room next to them were thinking of the conversation they doubtless heard. "And while I know the Trust doesn't have a problem killing people as a pastime, the SGC does, so just send the goddamn agreements with the chopper."

So that's brought them here, Rodney fixing the range on his homemade Wraith detector and the two of them taking long, lazy loops over the sky, quartering across the area Rodney judged the Wraith could cover. And then they'd found it, and John had been able to blow the thing to pieces and looking at the flecks of its blood still smeared on Rodney's face, and feeling it drying on his own the glow of satisfaction is still hot and fierce.

Sam and Dean sign the non-disclosure agreements on the hood of the Impala, and by the side of a deserted road John and Rodney tell them about the last ten thousand years.

So there were these people, the Ancients, who were like humans but different in a lot of ways...

* * *


It really is a B-movie, or a sci-fi TV show, the kind Sam always made him watch because killer alien robots were the only weird things left for a kid who watched his dad go off to hunt ghosts and demons. Crazy talk, Dean says; it's the kind of thing that would put someone either on the best-seller list or in an insane asylum, but it's Rodney McKay, Ph.D. Ph.D and Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard who are telling them this – and even just Sheppard, whose voice is soft and steady and persuasive, is enough for belief.

And really, Dean figures someone who's seen ghosts cross over and stared down into hellmouth can't talk about aliens.

"So the Ancients were this advanced race, they traveled to another galaxy,they lost the war with the Wraith and then came here – returned to Earth, I mean?" Sam, of course, sounding far too interested in ancient history.

"Yes, very good," McKay grunts, sounding reluctantly approving. "You'd make an excellent parrot. Anyway, yes, they returned to the Milky Way, and Terra specifically, but they also brought a captive Wraith with them – at least one, maybe more that didn't survive." McKay's stalking back and forth, trampling over microscopic Wraith bits and kicking at sand. Sheppard's watching, quietly amused, arms folded over the stock of his assault rifle. "It's possible that they brought the Wraith back prior to their departure – that's probably more likely, if you assume they were trying to continue experiments on biological weapons they could use to defeat them."

"But there aren't any more."

"Probably not." McKay shrugs. "But if they're hibernating, it's impossible to detect them, which is why I've been telling people it'd be a good idea to look into more sensitive devices for – "

"There may be more," Sheppard says, breaking in smoothly, with a speaking look that has McKay falling into dissatisfied silence. "And that's where you come in."

"Us?" Dean's only really expected a lecture, the final clearing-up of their involvement in Vampires from Space, wherein we learn that the Wraith are life-sucking beings from another galaxy, created by a now-vanished race as part of experiments in traveling to another plane of existence.

The son of the children of pride. Castiel's words.

"Call it repayment for not locking you up for the rest of your natural lives." McKay crosses his arms and glares at them.

"What Rodney means is, you pieced together information the SGC didn't." Sheppard says it easily, matter-of-fact, and not grudging all. Dean nods, curious despite himself and liking Sheppard's honesty. He doesn't get that, most days, and most government people he's met haven't merited much trust. Sheppard, though, invites it, which is probably dangerous. "You put it together and in that trunk of yours you had the resources to deal with the threat, if you'd managed to get all the pertinent information."

"Like how the Wraith are almost indestructible," Sam says.

"Yeah. So, in the future, if you come across any similar events, or if your research turns up anything, call this number." Sheppard pauses to fish a business card from his breast pocket. Dean takes it: blank, except for a phone number and Jack O'Neill scrawled under it. "Tell them who you are and you'll get what you need."

"And you'll leave us alone." It isn't a question or a request. Being left alone is, for Dean, non-negotiable. He catches Sam looking at him.

"Yeah," Sheppard says, stripped of artifice. "You have my word on that."

"Mine too." McKay nods from his place at Sheppard's right side. "This is… This is important. Yes?"

"Yeah," Dean says, and Sam echoes him.

* * *


"That went well," John says as they slop sand through the corridors at the SGC. "It was cool flying a Blackhawk... ‘s been a long time."

"Good for you," Rodney mumbles. He's already tugging off his vest and unzipping his jacket. "Remind me never to place my faith in the political-military complex ever again."

"So what do you think those guys do?" John asks, before Rodney can start in on how Stargate Command would be a much better place if he were in charge.

"They hunt ghosts and monsters, of course." The look Rodney gives him is just as acerbic as his tone. "What else do you think they do?" John tries to find some other explanation for two guys out hunting around a desert wayside. Rodney sighs. "When I hacked into Sam's computer, I found things that… well, let's just say either I have to re-evaluate my relationship with the occult or we left two extremely unstable individuals at a hotel in Las Vegas. I'm not sure which possibility is more disturbing to me."

"Well," John drawls, "if space vampires exist, I guess ghosts can, too."

Rodney makes a noncommittal noise, then informs John - in case he wasn't previously aware - that the SCG is made up of "hopelessly incompetent morons, and if the Wraith don't turn the population of the Earth into a bunch of AARP members counting their Geritol coupons, it's going to be a goddamned miracle."

John pulls at his own vest, not bothering with agreement. Instead, he listens to Rodney mutter about trained monkeys and having to detour to Area 51 to yell at Bill for falling down on the job, and terrorizing someone into figuring out where the Ancients had stashed the Wraith in the first place, and if there were any more. They'd cleaned out an old mine where the Wraith had been - and that had been sort of disgusting - but no sign of any Ancient facilities that would have kept the creature hostage.

"It's out there, I bet," Rodney mutters. "We didn't find anything in Antarctica that would have kept a Wraith. God, what if there's some huge secret lab complex we haven't found yet?"

"Good work with the detector, Rodney," John says, one last attempt to derail Rodney's spiral into paranoiac hypothesizing, before turning to his own room.

Rodney stops at his door and nods, hesitation and quick smile both at once, before he ducks inside.

John grins and stretches, frowns at the sand that's worked its way into his boots, and wanders down the hall.

* * *


Only slightly crazier than learning about space vampires and being saved by a Blackhawk copter howling down out of the sky is that, in gratitude for "services rendered to the homeworld," the super-secret government agency has put them up in a Vegas hotel. An actual good one, a suite with a bedroom, living room, bathroom, and sheets that are very likely silk.

"So what do you think?" Sam asks. They're already on their next case, reports of a young woman's ghost haunting the Four Corners. No one's been hurt yet, but a few people have been rattled and she seems to be targeting other young women. Sam's been running searches on likely candidates for ghosthood. Dean's been cleaning his gun.

"Well?" Sam asks again, looking away from his computer long enough to take a bite of pizza and smirk at Dean's distraction. Room service pizza. It's vaguely rubbery, but something about calling down for it, and knowing that it's going to be on the world government's tab, makes it the best fucking pizza Dean's ever had.

"About what?" He starts the reassembly.

"You know, the space aliens? Like the one we saw killed today?"

"I think we should probably keep quiet about it," Dean says, "and keep our eyes open, same as we always do."

"They're real," Sam mumbles. "I mean, think of it – a whole other galaxy, Dean. The Voyager craft have just left the solar system, and there are people – " He's falling over himself, klutzy with excitement and too many words trying to spill out. "It would be cool to go there."

"What? And have to deal with life-sucking vampire monster alien things? Like we don't have enough shit to deal with." Dean stares. "You are a strange, sick man."

"Hey, it proves all those hours of sci-fi movies were worth it. I mean, this was totally out of It Came From Outer Space." He snaps his fingers, the weird too-tall geeky kid transmogrifying into Dean's too-tall geeky freak of a genius brother. "You think maybe we could?"

"Sure, Sammy, whatever." The gun goes under his pillow, and Dean wonders if he could possibly ever fall asleep without the smell of gun oil there. He stares at the pillow for a moment, the silk-covered pillow, and contemplates sleeping forever.

"There is still work to do," Castiel says, on top of the whisper-hush of feathers and divine voices that announce his arrival. "But you did well today."

"Thanks, I think." Dean makes himself stand up again, despite his bones very much not wanting to move, and a muscle catching low in his back. Castiel surveys him solemnly, and Dean hopes he doesn't offer a hit of that healing angel-fu, because he's seriously, seriously tempted to accept. Castiel gives him a look that says he knows what Dean's thinking, but is going to be merciful and not make the offer.

"You've learned about what it is you fought today," Castiel says. "A lot of it's ancient history."

Dean decides it's probably a smite-worthy question, but he asks it anyway: "So how do space aliens fit in with the whole ‘God created the world' thing?"

"Do not doubt the multiplicities of creation," Castiel says with utter, frozen calmness. His eyes are large and blue and far too pretty, and right now, far too dangerous. Teasing and mocking Castiel is one thing; God, for all Castiel's very unangelic doubts, is still off-limits. "And there are many names for a thing, if you learn them all."

"The Ancients – the people who built the stargates – those were angels," Sam breaks in, far too smart for his own good. Dean realizes the correctness of that even as Sam says the words, the truth unfolding in his own brain.

Castiel nods slightly, and looks like he might actually be pleased. The pleasure evaporates swiftly; his mouth goes tight in disapproval, one of the few emotions he seems to allow himself. Amusement, Dean can surprise out of him on occasion. Annoyance… that's a lot more typical. Worry seems to be more common lately, with the Apocalypse coming closer every day.

"They were the children of the bene Elohim who fell after the creation." Castiel manages to sound offended and indifferent at the same time. "They consorted with humans, and taught them secret things; Azazel was among them, before he was imprisoned in the pit along with his comrades." Castiel pauses; Dean wonders if it's anger, or sadness, or both – or neither – that he's feeling, but it's impossible to tell. "They were struck down millennia ago by a plague, to punish them. Some fled to another world, but after their own children rose against them in battle, the survivors returned, and brought their creations with them."

"The Wraith," Dean says, and is stupidly, unaccountably happy with Castiel's nod, and the faint flicker of approval.

"The son of the children of pride," Sam mutters, half to himself, half to Dean and Castiel. "The Ancients bioengineered the Wraith… I guess that makes the Wraith their children."

"The Ancients, as you call them, had all the pride of their parents, and they sought knowledge to exalt themselves and win their way back to the heaven that had exiled them. Few good things come from an evil beginning." Castiel's expression softens when Sam looks up and Dean wants to say something, about a helpless six-month-old baby and a demon, and a deal that never, never should have been made, a deal that threatens to turn a boy – Dean's brother – into something evil and too dangerous to live. "Take care, Sam."

"I always do," Sam says stiffly, in that wounded tone that's always had Dean ready to shed some blood because people did not get to do this sort of thing to his brother.

"Dean," Castiel says, inclining his head briefly, "you as well."

He doesn't wait for Dean to glance away to vanish; he just does, slip-flicker of presence that disappears.

"So," Sam says after a heavy moment, staring at the search results page, so obviously pretending interest in the highway hauntings that Dean scowls, "what'd you think of Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard?"

Dean shrugs. "For government-types, they weren't so bad." They didn't send either of them to prison at least, or kill them and divide them up into doggie bags like they did with the Wraith. And Sheppard was… Sheppard, and someone Dean wouldn't mind meeting again. He'd be good to have on a hunt, the guy who can explain away all sorts of horrible things, persuade the reluctant family out of the house. And if that didn't work, McKay would terrify and bitch them out of it.

"Yeah," Sam says, swift grin saying he wants to dig and harass more information out of Dean, but is being kind and letting Dean stew in his own secrets for a while. "Not so bad."

"Shuddup," Dean tells him, not that it ever stops Sammy, but it still needs to be said.

-e-

[identity profile] susnn.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 04:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Truer words were never written than "And Sheppard was .... Sheppard." This makes me want to hunt up DVDs of Supernatural and give it a try. Nicely atmospheric and good use of the minor SGA characters such as Teldy and Bates to set the stage and the mood. Think I'll just go and reread. Thanks.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Yay, thank you so much!! Sometimes John just defies description :D

This makes me want to hunt up DVDs of Supernatural and give it a try.

I don't know if you'll like it, but I can say for myself that I am not really into horror/spooky things (because of how I am normally a huge wuss), but I do like SPN quite a bit :)
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[identity profile] lillian13.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 04:33 pm (UTC)(link)
I firmly believe there should be more SGA/SPN crossovers. Especially good ones, like this. Nice blending of the two universes!

If you ever want to write more...

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Aw, thank you kindly! This is, I think, only the second crossover I've ever done, but it was quite fun to write :)

[identity profile] randomeliza.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 04:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh my, god, for ME? *grabby hands*

Seriously, what a lovely surprise to find on my flist. Now I will go read and love and come back and squee at you.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Ha, yes, finally! I think maybe a year late???? :D

[identity profile] elementalv.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 05:00 pm (UTC)(link)
I love this story, but I love even more the interpretation that Sheppard is a descendant of angels. Excellent!

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you so much! I think if I were to write a sequel, or else something expanding on this, I would deal more with that... John and the other ATA-humans might be kind of problematic from Heaven's point of view :D

[identity profile] melagan.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 05:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Very, very cool

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:27 pm (UTC)(link)
♥ Thank you thank you!
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[personal profile] ratcreature 2009-01-19 05:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Cool way to mix the mythologies. I liked it.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you so much! I was sort of thinking about the Ancients as the "educators" and cultivators of humanity, and there is a bit in the Book of Enoch 3 that talks about some of the fallen sons of God as those who taught the secrets of metalwork, astrology, and astronomy to human beings... It was kind of a natural leap :D

(And we all know the Ancients had a serious ego problem...)

[identity profile] randomeliza.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 05:27 pm (UTC)(link)
*FLAIL*

Oh this was fantastic! Exactly what I wanted out of an SGA/SPN crossover, with bonus Castiel! I love it so very, very much.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Yayyyy thank you! I'm so happy you liked it!! ♥♥

And I guess the good thing about leaving the fic and picking it back up again when I did is that Castiel gets to be in it :D *loves him quite a bit*

[identity profile] luxluthor.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 06:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh-h-h, very nice cross!
Very nice. Yep, and "And Sheppard was .... Sheppard." , cool!

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Hee, there is really no other way to put it sometimes, than "Sheppard is... Sheppard" :D

[identity profile] kesomon.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 06:49 pm (UTC)(link)
fwee, win. ^^ Awesome story.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you so much! I'm happy you liked it!

[identity profile] tex.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)
I love seeing these two fandoms collide. I love Dean being intrigued by John (who wouldn't be?) and how Rodney thinks Sam is freakishly tall! So funny.

But these are the lines I just can't stop thinking about --

"Good work with the detector, Rodney," John says, one last attempt to derail Rodney's spiral into paranoiac hypothesizing, before turning to his own room.

Rodney stops at his door and nods, hesitation and quick smile both at once, before he ducks inside.

John grins and stretches, frowns at the sand that's worked its way into his boots, and wanders down the hall.


I don't know if you meant it that way but I read sex, sex, sex in those few lines. Maybe it's just me - maybe I just see McKay/Sheppard EVERYWHERE. But for me, there are few things sexier than reading a story where John and Rodney are doing their thing, fighting aliens and working in tandem and then, at the end, you realize that they are in love and having hot sex.

I hope you don't mind that I read it that way. But nrrrgh, it was great!

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)
I hope you don't mind that I read it that way.

Ha ha, not at all! (McShep is an infection, you know XD). I didn't really want the fic to be overtly McKay/Sheppard, because I felt it might draw me away from the storyline (which, weirdly, ended up being mostly about Dean and John's reactions to each other), but I definitely wanted to leave the door open for something more if anyone wanted to read it that way ;)

*is possibly Robert Cooper in disguise? :> :>

[identity profile] dragonlady7.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)
This is probably not a typical thing to say, but you really make me wish I watched TV like ever, which isn't something I've ever actually wished at any other point over the last six years.

[identity profile] dragonlady7.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
p.s. Having never seen either show (I assume the non-BSG characters are from a TV show?) it's still a damn good story.
I have never seen BSG either and maybe someday I will, but I think it wouldn't be as good as you've made it sound.

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[identity profile] maychorian.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 09:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, that was very enjoyable. I loved the meshing of it, and Castiel's role, small as it was. The image of the Ancients as fallen angels trying to find their immortality again through ascension was a little chilling, and also explains a lot. Loved seeing Shep and McKay through SamnDean's eyes, and vice versa. The plot was well-paced and interesting, and the dialog was awesome.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you very kindly!! Castiel was not in the original version of the fic (which was started a year ago), but when I found the story again, it was pretty clear to me that he needed to be :D :D

The image of the Ancients as fallen angels trying to find their immortality again through ascension was a little chilling, and also explains a lot.

I've always been squarely in the "the Ancients were a bunch of arrogant douchemonkeys" camp (yes, bioengineer dangerous sentient beings and keep them bottled up on a small planet! Flee when they get pissed off and break free and leave helpless civilizations to their mercy!), so the story of the fall of the Watchers, who were also fairly prideful--and played a role in the development of human knowledge (arcane and forbidden as it was)--seemed to mesh nicely.
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[identity profile] smilla02.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 09:44 pm (UTC)(link)
You, my lovely, made me read a crossover. And enjoy it :D I know I'm missing half of the meaningful stuff - after all, all I know about Sheppard and McKay comes from what you and Ellen told me, plus one episode - but it's a testimony to your writing that I could follow the story without that vital information and love this very much. Such a great case, your characterization of Dean and Sam and Castiel sounds very good to me. It was also nice having Dean and Sam be the ones to be let in a secret. Usually, it's the other way around.
The shameless fangirl in me squeed softly at this: "The Wraith," Dean says, and is stupidly, unaccountably happy with Castiel's nod, and the faint flicker of approval.. :D

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 10:04 pm (UTC)(link)
It was also nice having Dean and Sam be the ones to be let in a secret.

Yes, it usually is the reverse, isn't it? I figure that would drive them nuts for several reasons--Sam because, well, Sam has to know everything and Dean because he sees knowledge as power and really hates it when people know something he doesn't. I think this is why Castiel gets to him so effortlessly :D

The shameless fangirl in me squeed softly at this:

And it was meant to :D :D :D I wrote the story as gen, but there are wee nods to John/Rodney and Dean/Castiel in there, if you are so inclined ;)

[identity profile] lenkti.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 10:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I liked this a lot, especially the way you reconciled the two canons.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-19 11:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you so much! It was fun, figuring out how to bridge the gap :)

[identity profile] bearfairie.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 01:27 am (UTC)(link)
Awesomely awesome! What a great idea! I love the way you blend the mythology from both stories into something smooth, something that makes sense for both shows without compromising either one. Well done!

Would love to read sequel(s)! to this universe... hint, hint... :)

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 01:36 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you very kindly! It was a lot of fun figuring out how to tie the two universes together :)

And as for more, we shall see! :D

[identity profile] insight2.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 02:49 am (UTC)(link)
Oh I was charmed by this story *smushes favoritest characters up together* :)

"Do not doubt the multiplicities of creation," Castiel says with utter, frozen calmness. His eyes are large and blue and far too pretty, and right now, far too dangerous. Teasing and mocking Castiel is one thing; God, for all Castiel's very unangelic doubts, is still off-limits.

In between the soft bits, he is still all smiteful-like and deadly earnest (ASFG;SK;ASD!!! *falls over*)) in your fic- I kind of loved that a lot. I also like your 'few good things come from evil beginnings' fucking up every universe one way or another: though, dude, that kind of makes me sad as well.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 03:11 am (UTC)(link)
*smushes favoritest characters up together*

That's kind of what the fic ended up being, really :D :D :D

In between the soft bits, he is still all smiteful-like and deadly earnest

Smiteful-like! I love it! And I just love that intensity about him, mixed in with the tiniest bit of doubt on occasion. (And also how he can keep Uriel in line... he has really great presence.) What also amuses me in a kind of perverse way is that Dean cannot figure him out, and that annoys/pisses Dean off to no end.

[identity profile] beadslut.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 03:48 am (UTC)(link)
Heee. "freakishly tall" Heee.

Clever. clever use of these characters. Brava.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 03:57 am (UTC)(link)
One might almost say "unnatural" :D Thank you!

[identity profile] bethynyc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 03:55 am (UTC)(link)
Wow. Very nice crossover, and since I love both shows, I thought your voices were spot-on. Castiel's explanation of the Wraith and the Ancients also made total sense within SPN canon as well! YAY YOU!

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 03:58 am (UTC)(link)
Yay, thank you so much! I quite enjoy both of them as well, so it was fun getting to write them at the same time :D
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[personal profile] cofax7 2009-01-20 04:06 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, that was very smoothly done. I enjoyed it.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 04:11 am (UTC)(link)
Woo hoo! Thank you kindly!

[identity profile] wojelah.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 04:52 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, I love this. Coherent specifics require more sleep than I have had, but this is just great.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 05:00 am (UTC)(link)
*hugs!* Don't feel bad... I think coherence is perpetually beyond me, sleep or no sleep :D

[identity profile] not-sally.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 05:13 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, I loved this! It's so weird, because it truly is the perfect fusion between a MOTW SPN episode, and a rogue-Wraith-in-Earth! SGA episode, so it's kinda unbelievable how you manage to pull off both styles simultaneously, and merge them so well.
I also love how you managed to fit the whole Ancients back-story with Christian beliefs. So totally amazing.
But there were so many good parts! Sam geeking over Sci-fi being real, Rodney liking Sam and Dean immediately because they weren't stupid, the fact the Winchesters got Jack's number, the idea of John and Rodney hunting! man, that'd make an awesome AU! The whole "Ronon is taller" comment, and Castiel, being so very Castiel, his voice was totally in character.
Again, loved it. Would pay to see loads of it.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 01:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Hurrah, thank you very kindly!! It was a lot of fun trying to figure out ways to get the two universes to go together, and I think there's just enough ambiguity in Stargate that the Ancients can be played around with a bit. And also Rodney probably has the tiniest bit of respect for guys who can figure out what's going on when the amoebas in SGC/Area 51 are completely helpless :D :D
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[personal profile] siria 2009-01-20 02:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooh, Aitches, this is so much fun! Though now I am left trying to imagine Rodney's reaction if he ever found out that John is part angel :))) Oh dear.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 06:27 pm (UTC)(link)
There would be a very, very long moment of silence born of both disbelief and horror! Probably Rodney's brain will never be ready to cope with this bit of information :D

Come to think of it, would Rodney be an angel by inoculation :?

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[personal profile] grammarwoman 2009-01-20 06:33 pm (UTC)(link)
What a cracking great story! I love the tight plot of this, sweeping us along, and the shifting POVs. I haven't watched any SPN, but know enough of the storyline through fandom osmosis, and I didn't feel shut out of the story at all.

Landry needs to get yelled at more often, for sure. I bow down to your explanation of the Ancients - that is perfection. (One of my favorite short stories is how Lucifer translates to Lightbringer, and that he actually served as Prometheus in bringing fire and enlightenment to mankind.)

Fabulous job. I would greatly enjoy reading of further encounters between the four of them. (And how messed up would it be if Dean were an ATA carrier?)

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 06:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you very kindly! I was hoping that the canon of either show wouldn't be too difficult for non-fans to follow; as you said, I think it helps that there's a good-sized crossover between SGA and SPN fandoms.

One of my favorite short stories is how Lucifer translates to Lightbringer, and that he actually served as Prometheus in bringing fire and enlightenment to mankind.

It's interesting that, in the 3 Enoch version of the fall of the bene Elohim, one of the things the fallen angels do is teach humans warcraft, metalworking, and the various sciences. In SPN, hunters use pretty much what the angels taught humanity (weapons, astrology, astronomy) to find and destroy demons and evil spirits.

(And how messed up would it be if Dean were an ATA carrier?)

Fairly messed! I will clearly have to give further consideration to all this :D
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[identity profile] kashmir1.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
This is just - okay, there are absolutely no words for how much I love this fic. You managed to combine my two favorite worlds not only seamlessly but believably.

It's taken me almost a whole day to be able to come up with any kind of coherent feedback because I just love this SO MUCH.

the son of the children of pride

I LOVE THAT SO MUCH. <3

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Eeeee yay, I am so so happy you liked it!!! ♥♥♥ for you!

[identity profile] pennyplainknits.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 09:44 pm (UTC)(link)
This is wonderful! I love Dean's reactions to John especially.

[identity profile] aesc.livejournal.com 2009-01-20 10:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you kindly! I have to say, it kind of started veering in a Dean/John direction, which totally surprised me :D

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