vaznetti | last of five

Earlier lists of five here (SPN, Jericho), here (SPN, XF) and here (Primeval).

And finally... for

celli and

camille_is_here, Five crossovers the Winchesters didn't know they were in. (Alias, Jericho, Primeval, Angel, The Riddle-Master of Hed)

1.

The woman had taken off her wig and cleaned most of the makeup off her face, and now they were leaning back against the wreckage of the bar, keeping an eye on the dead and unconscious bodies scattered through the room. "My extraction team will be here in fifteen minutes," she said. "We can give you a ride out. It's the least I can do -- I'm really sorry about your brother."

"Don't worry about it," Sam said, checking Dean again: still unconscious, still breathing evenly. "I told him you were out of his league."

She smiled at Sam, revealing a pair of dimples that did nothing to change Sam's original assessment, even if the switch from blonde-haired ice queen to brown-haired girl next door had been a little surprising. "I'm married," she confessed, like it was the coolest thing ever. "So, the guys with black eyes, and the thing you did with the Latin..."

"It was an exorcism," Sam said.

"Oh."

"It's kind of the family business." She didn't say anything. "So," he said, "CIA?"

She grinned again. "Family business. But I'm retired now."

"Really?" he asked. "How'd you manage that?"

"It's a long story."

"We've got--" he glanced at his watch, "--at least twelve minutes." He gave her the look that usually made Dean cave in; after all, he figured, he had dimples too.

One of the men on the floor was starting to stir, and she shot another tranquilizer into him. She leaned back again, the smile gone. "My... a man I loved was killed, and I swore I would stay until I could bring the man responsible to justice. That sounds a little over-dramatic, doesn't it?"

Sam shook his head. "I think I understand."

"Anyway, as I went on, I learned things about my mother and my father, and, well, about me and -- this is going to sound crazy, but you kill demons for a living, so..."

"Technically, I just exorcize them. Killing them is... a lot more work."

"Oh," she said. "OK. There was a man named Rambaldi, in the fifteenth century..."

2.

On the phone, the mayor of Jericho is brief. Got their number from the message on their father's phone, has a haunting for them to deal with. It's Kansas, but Dean tells him they'll be there in a couple days. "Who was that?" Sam asks.

"Dad and I did a job there, couple years back," is all Dean says. "Wasn't too bad."

In person, Johnston Green doesn't use many more words: he leads them to the house and smoothes things over with the family, and when they're done he invites them both back for dinner. Tells them, maybe, more than invites them. The surprising thing is that Dean agrees. Green asks where their dad is before they sit.

"We're looking for him," Dean says.

"Good luck finding him. Not too bad a man, for a marine."

Dean half-smiles, like he gets the joke, and then Mrs. Green starts bringing in the food. One of Green's sons is there, a guy named Eric, like Green thinks it's important for them all to meet; no one tells Sam who the other boy in the family pictures is.

3.

"Dude, the only weird thing is that this hasn't happened before. It was only a matter of time before the universe started dumping hot chicks at my feet."

"Hot chicks pursued by dinosaurs?"

"That was just the cherry on top of the sundae, Sammy. We totally destroyed that fucker."

"Yeah," Sam said, "but where did it come from? Dinosaurs are not exactly roaming present-day Virginia, Dean."

"Who knows? You'll figure it out, geek-boy. Hey," Dean looked that the woman's face. "I think she's coming around."

She is: her eyes blink open, she pushes herself up on her elbows. Nice tits, Dean can't help thinking. She looks around at them, the car, the big heap of dead dinosaur at the side of the road. "Nick?" she asks, fancy accent like the TV Sam used to watch on Sunday nights. "Who are you? And where's Nick Cutter?"

"Uh..." Dean says. He can hear Sam behind him, trying not to laugh.

4.

John Winchester is the thing Lilah Morgan likes best about Hell. That isn't saying much: it is Hell, after all, so it's never going to be that great, even for the management. Sex in Hell, for example, is always mediocre, and she spends far too much time filing appeals which will be lost long before they make it to a judge. She explained what she was doing on his behalf the first few times that they met; now she doesn't bother.

Looking back, she isn't sure how it started: it was probably her, probably the way he looked at her like she doesn't exist. When she was alive, she would have said she liked a challenge, but this isn't a challenge, the other name he bites back, the way he rolls off her, or pushes her away.

He thinks she's part of his punishment, and she doesn't bother to correct him; after all, she knows he's part of hers.

5.

It's pitch black and the car slams down, like it dropped five feet to the ground: Sam still feels the vibration in his teeth when the noise starts, high-pitched and panicked, like inhuman shrieking, and he thinks holy shit, I've done it, I got us to Hell for real. Then the headlights flicker on and he sees trees, and white and dark shapes moving in the beams, and-- Pigs. There are pigs, squealing and running through some kind of forest. The headlights flicker off, and the engine dies.

"Dude," Dean says. "Unless this is the opposite of pig heaven, I'm guessing you brought us--"

"I know," Sam says. "I know. I messed up, again." He can barely hear himself over the squealing mass of pigs heaving themselves to their feet, lumbering around the impala; the car shakes as one of them runs into it.

"If there's a dent..." Dean lets the threat trail off. "Shit. How long before you can get us out of here?"

"I'm working on it." Sam reaches for the books on the back seat.

Six hours later, the black is turning dark gray and mist is rising from the ground. Sam is in the back seat, hunched over the books with a flashlight, and Dean is leaning against the hood of the car, taking the occasional shot at the ghosts who appear on the other side of the salt circle they laid down. He gave up on trying to fix the engine two hours ago.

"Sammy," Dean says, a warning in his voice.

"I know, I know," Sam says. "I told you, I don't know why it isn't working."

"Company."

"Shit." Sam scrambles out of the car. There's a group of men on horseback -- eight of them -- and a dozen on foot, arrows ready and pointed at Dean. As he stands, half of them shift to aim at Sam. They're all dressed like the ghosts, out of the middle ages, fur and leather, dark fabric under armor: the archers are in some kind of uniform, pale green and black.

One of the horsemen comes to the front. "Interesting," he says. "A good thing that I was nearby." He's dressed plainly, in rough black wool and worn leather, and is older than the rest, with iron gray hair and a lined face. Sam doesn't doubt for a minute that he's in command here. "What precisely are you two trying to do on my land?"

"Just passing through," Dean says. He's got one hand on the shotgun lying on the hood. "Took a wrong turn, that's all. Sir," he adds.

"You aren't having much success."

"My brother here is working on it."

"Indeed." The man turns his full attention to Sam. Sam holds his gaze as long as he can before looking down, not sure of what he saw there: the black at the bottom of a well, trees that don't exist, bones rotting under the ground, under the snow. He shivers. The man makes a noise in the back of his throat and turns to the horsemen ranged behind him. "Raith," he says, "send for cart-horses."

"Why?" one of them asks. A big guy, wearing fur and armor, but he's already gesturing to one of the other horsemen, passing the order on. The old man ignores him.

"Oh, no," Dean says suddenly. "No. Absolutely not. You are not hitching horses to my baby here."

"You seem to have lost your own," the man says.

"We're fine right here," Dean says. "I told you--"

"Your brother has a great deal of power and very little training. It is conceivable that he will manage to send you both back where you belong on his own, but I doubt it. If you remain here, you will be a disruption to Raith's pig herd as well as to the land-law of An."

"Land-law?" Sam asks.

The old man keeps his eyes on Dean. "No one in my land will harm you or your brother," he says. "I swear it on my name."

"That would be a little more reassuring," Dean says, "if we knew who you were or what this place is."

"You're in Hel," the old man tells him. "A day's ride from the border with An, and three days from Anuin. I am Mathom, king over the Three Portions of An."

The archers twitch as Dean whirls to face Sam. Sam holds his hands in the air. "Hey," he says.

"Bitch," Dean says. "You brought us to the wrong Hell!"

end.

A/N: I kind of dropped the ball on this, since I think the Winchesters know damn well that this isn't quite their own world any more in a couple of these. And I told myself I couldn't use anything in progress, which is why there's so much Sam and Dean and so little John. And I had to cut the last one short at one scene, rather than writing the whole story. Although I might go ahead and write that whole story, since I really think that Riddle-Master is just as natural a crossover with Supernatural as Firefly is. Even though only a handful of people would get the point.

I don't think I've ever needed this many tags on a post!