The Flight of the Condor - superdisney
Feb. 19th, 2015 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberdreamsMy second 
super_disney - a story this time. Hope y'all like it!
Title: The Flight of the Condor
Disney prompt: Condorman
Pairing/Gen: Gen
Rating: R for swearing
Word count: ~14,000
Warnings: This probably bears no resemblance to the film, as I've never seen it... It also twists 20th century history a little bit to fit the plot.
Summary: The Winchester family was split asunder in 1961. Mary and eight-year-old Dean were caught on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain when the Berlin Wall went up overnight. Now it’s 1986 and it feels like the Cold War will never end. Sam Winchester is now Samuel Colt, the acclaimed creator of comic book hero Condorman. Sam is a dreamer, so immersed in his fantasy world he sometimes finds the line between reality and his own creations somewhat blurred. He doesn’t realize this is partly because his dreams are real and he’s actually having visions about his brother, Dean, who is one of the USSR’s best spy/assassins.
Reuters Breaking News August 12 1961: Berlin blockaded.
…GDR closed off its borders last night, barricading all crossing points between East Berlin and the West. Implications of this action are yet to be fully understood…US reaction to this latest attempt by the Communist government of East Germany to stem the so-called ‘brain drain’ from the Soviet Block to the West…Germany further divided, families cut off …
Junior diplomat John Winchester scanned the ticker tape with a growing horror as it unspooled. The words - stark black on white - shaped his future in ways he never could have imagined yesterday, when his wife Mary had said she was taking their eight year old son, Dean, to visit a friend for a couple of days. A friend who just happened to be on the other side of the border in East Germany.
John grasped the tape and tore it off, crumpled it in his hand. Running outside, he joined a handful of Germans all headed in the same direction – towards the Brandenburg Gate. By the time he arrived, there were probably a hundred or more people gathered at the eastern edge of the Tiergarten, all of them frozen in shock at the sight of the barbed wire barrier that had sprung up overnight to blockade the gate. Through the openings in the triumphal arch, John could see the German Democratic Republican guards, all heavily armed. Beyond the guards was a handful of East Germans brave enough to have mirrored the actions of their Western counterparts and come to see the new restrictions for themselves.
He couldn’t see Mary and Dean among them, which was perhaps just as well, or he’d have been hard put to restrain himself from trying to climb through those huge coils of tangled wire to reach his wife and child. Only the thought of little Sammy waiting back in their ambassadorial quarters stopped John doing something reckless. Mary would never forgive him if he abandoned their youngest son, even if it was to rescue her and Dean.
John stared with burning eyes at the closed face of the Iron Curtain.
Mary Winchester was resourceful and brave, even more than she was beautiful. Surely if anyone would find a way to return to the West, it would be her?
:::
Five years later, John Winchester had practically given up hope of seeing his wife and son again. No word of their fate had ever come through the barrier between the two Germanys. John had tried every source he knew of, every contact he had in the secret services, but he’d come up with nothing to indicate whether his missing family was alive or dead. In their place was a vacuum, a black hole in John’s heart that Sam had never been able to fill. When Sam was nearly nine years old, John was offered the position as Ambassador to the Sudan. Although he felt disloyal in the extreme leaving his station in Berlin, he thought it was time for him to try and move on. Sam deserved the best life John could give his one remaining child. He accepted the Ambassadorship, and neither of the free Winchesters returned to Germany for many years.
Friday November 3 1986: Los Angeles, CA
Sometimes when there’s no urgency, Sam likes to let the change happen real slow, so he can savour every moment, every nuance. He loves how, from one breath to the next, he feels gravity lessen its hold as his bones hollow; how the skin tightens in the centre of his back in anticipation of his wings forming, the sensation of freedom when he eventually allows his wings to unfurl to their full span, and the way the air caresses each individual feather with the promise of flight.
Tonight there’s no time for any such indulgence, and he can’t help the slight frisson of fear that runs through him as his wings sprout lightning-fast. He snaps them out with an audible crackle of pent-up power and runs forward. He launches himself off the tower without a thought, plunging steeply until the huge span of his wings catches a thermal and he’s lifted high, soaring above the city with every sense alert. There’s no time to linger and savour the beauty of seeing the city laid out below him, a sparkling multifaceted jewel in the night, not when Marishka the Red Bear is on the loose. Tonight he’s determined. This will be the moment when he and the Bear will come face to face and then they’ll finally see who will prevail. Will it be the evil might of Megalomania’s chained Bear, or the courage and ingenuity of the Free World’s Condorman?
Unfortunately, this was not to be the night where Sam found out the answer to that burning question, because even as Condorman alighted and elegantly furled his wings outside the warehouse where the Red Bear had been sighted, Sam was rudely awakened by a loud banging on his door. A banging that was followed by yelling, and Sam knew he’d better get his act together pretty damn quick, or Mrs Whitchurch from number 42 was going to complain to their landlord about ‘noise nuisance’ again.
He groped on the floor for his jeans and dragged them on. Not bothering to put on a shirt, he staggered bleary-eyed to answer the door. He was always extra groggy after a Condorman dream. They left him feeling heavy and slow, as if he’d really just spent a few hours soaring above the city, on the prowl for danger, always searching for and never finding his elusive adversary, Marishka the Bear. At least when he got to write the story in his comics, Condorman had the satisfaction of kicking the Bear’s shapely ass.
He flung the door open and then swayed back just in time to escape Garth’s fist that was headed for another crack at the wood.
“Whoa, dude!” Sam protested, only to have Garth ignore him and barge his way into the apartment. His friend and self-styled manager immediately started talking, before Sam had even had time to close the door and shut out the curious gaze of his nosy neighbours.
“You know how you’re always babbling on about how awesome Yoo Yoothing is? Well, what would you say if I told you I’ve got you a paying gig where you get to meet him?”
“Oh, for… how many times do I have to tell you it’s Yu Yuding, moron, and she’s a woman, not a …wait…what? Get to meet her? In the flesh?”
But Garth was glaring at Sam with his skinny arms folded, and Sam realized perhaps he shouldn’t have called his best friend a moron until he’d at least heard all of what he had to say. Holding up an apologetic hand, Sam offered the one thing he knew was certain to placate Garth – coffee. Come to think of it, Sam could murder a cup himself.
Once Garth was mellowing over a steaming cup of the blackest, strongest coffee Sam could brew, he thought it was safe to open the conversation again.
“So tell me about Yu Yuding. How is that even possible? China would never allow her to visit the decadent West, surely?”
“That’s the beauty of this gig, Sammy boy!” Sam was so eager to hear that more he didn’t even bother to slap Garth down for calling him Sammy. Besides, slapping Garth was kind of like hitting a puppy. “Ever heard of Iron Con?”
“Yes, but they’d never allow Westerners entry, it’s strictly Iron Curtain only…wait, you got me into Iron Con? Oh my god, Garth, you’re a fucking genius!”
“I know, right? But to be fair, it was the Convention organisers who approached me. They’ve decided to open it up to a select few ‘dissolute’ Western artists, and you were top of their list!” Garth even waved some air quotes round dissolute, but Sam didn’t care what the Communist administration wanted to label him, not in the light of this amazing news.
“It’s fantastic! I can’t believe it. What should I take?” Sam leapt to his feet and rushed over to his drawing desk by the window, shuffling through the pile of sheets for his latest Condorman adventure. “I’ve got some new ideas, I could start sketching those to show people. Will I have a panel? Or a Q&A session? Do they even get Condorman comics over there?”
“Whoa, whoa, big boy,” Garth grinned indulgently as Sam flapped in helpless excitement. “It isn’t for a couple of weeks yet, you’ve got plenty of time to prepare. I thought with you usually being so reclusive you might have more reservations about an event like this. You know it’s going to make a huge splash – might even make international news, being such a rare opening up of the Eastern Bloc.”
Sam barely heard Garth. It was true, he usually eschewed publicity, and there were very few people who knew what Samuel Colt looked like, but this was something special, worth coming out for. So to speak.
“Oh man, this is Iron Con, how could I not go? I can’t wait to tell Jess. Samuel Colt, creator of Condorman, is going to be one of the first Western artists to go to Iron Con!”
Garth patted Sam on the back even while he rolled his eyes, as he always did at Sam’s lame pseudonym, which merely exchanged one gun for another. Sam thought it was pretty neat.
“I wish I could take Jess with me,” he said, feeling a sense of deflation at the thought of separation from his beautiful girlfriend and biggest cheer-leader. Garth shook his head.
“Man, don’t get your hopes up. I’ve already made some inquiries, and the Communist authorities are refusing to issue any more visas except for the artists themselves – no entourages were their words. Entourages – I ask you, do I look like an entourage?”
Sam grinned and punched Garth’s skinny arm. “Nope, you look like a dork!”
Their conversation degenerated into an unseemly tussle, which left Garth, as always, the one lying on the floor with two hundred pounds of cartoon artist sitting on his stomach.
“It’s not fucking fair, you hairy great oaf, gerroff me,” Garth sputtered. “Anyhow, luckily I’d already got my visa before they announced the restrictions, so you are stuck with me.” Sam didn’t even notice that his earlier threatening funk had entirely dispersed. Garth had a way of lifting Sam’s mood, which was one reason they’d been friends for so long. He was glad Garth would be coming with him, though he was still going to miss Jess.
Friday November 21 1986: StädtanderwandOsten, German Democratic Republic
Советский Очень Секретная служба (Sovetskiy Ochen' Sekretnaya Sluzhba or Soviet Very Secret Service) agent Dean Akulov, code-name the Bear, formerly known as Dean Winchester, was on leave.
In spite of that, Dean couldn’t help casing the hotel for alternative exits and potential threats as he checked in. Habits of a lifetime, added to being one of the essential requirements of the job, he supposed. Being the SOSS’s premier assassin meant Dean didn’t often get downtime, and he really wanted to make the most of this weekend. There weren’t many of Dean’s colleagues who knew the infamous Akulov the Bear had a passion for comic books, let alone that he had a highly illegal and secret collection of American originals stashed away in a safe behind a small dingy bar in East Berlin.
When Dean had heard that this year’s Iron Con would include Western comic book artists for the first time, and that one of those attending was his all-time favourite artist, Samuel Colt, he’d decided then and there that nothing in this universe was going to stop him taking that weekend off and going to the convention. He’d given his ultimatum directly to the Head of the SOSS himself, Igor Kazakov, who had been surprisingly accommodating. With hindsight, Dean realised that Kazakov’s cooperation should have made him suspicious, but at the time, he was so full of childish excitement at the thought of meeting the creator of Condorman that he hadn’t given it a second thought. He was too busy wondering where he was going to get the right materials for his Condorman cosplay, because that just had to be done, right?
The convention was being held in StädtanderwandOsten’s premier hotel, a former Prussian Imperial hunting lodge the size of a small town, and replete with decaying grandeur. The hotel was rendered even more imposing because of its position, set right atop the edge of the thousand foot cliff over the river that separated East from West in this German Democratic Republic border town. StädtanderwandOsten overlooked its Western counterpart, turning its metaphoric Communist nose up at the decadent StädtanderwandWesten, the single town split into two just like Berlin had been, when the Iron Curtain came down back in ’61.
Although the main convention events didn’t start until tomorrow, the lobby was already heaving with comic book fans, and Dean was finding it really strange to hear so much English being spoken so openly this side of the Iron Curtain. Of course, Dean himself was fluent in English, German, and Russian. He could even muster enough French to pass as native of Alsace at a pinch. In his early years, his mother had made sure that he retained knowledge of his American roots, while also being careful to train Dean to hide just how much of him was still ‘contaminated’ by the West.
Dean grew up fucking awesome at dissembling; he was so good that even Igor Kazukov trusted him enough to send him on missions on the other side of the snappily titled Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart. The GDR government were nowhere near as poetic as Westerners, and Dean really preferred to call it the Iron Curtain. Dean was well aware that the SOSS’s trust was less to do with his ability to lie convincingly and more to do with the fact that Kazukov had Mary Winchester locked up in a cell in a secret location only a few highly placed SOSS officials knew about.
Mary had been taken away when Dean was only eleven years old. From that moment forward, his mother’s plight was all the incentive Dean needed to follow every direction that the Head of the SOSS gave him, and to keep him returning after each mission was complete. The temptation to defect to the USA, to return home to try and find his dad and his little brother was always there, but he couldn’t act on it, not with his mother’s life at stake. Keeping Mary safe had been Dean’s prime directive since he’d become trapped inside East Germany all those years ago, leaving his Sammy and his father behind in West Berlin. You look after your mom, now Deano, had been the last words John Winchester said to his eldest son, and Dean had taken them to heart. Kazukov knew it too, the bastard.
Dean signed the hotel ledger and took his room key, just catching the lift as the doors were closing. The other occupant shifted to make room for Dean and his two bags, nodding amicably in greeting.
“Which floor?” the man asked in English, one long finger poised over the floor buttons, and Dean looked up, and then up some more at his temporary companion. Bozhe moi, but the man was ridiculously tall. And American – probably Midwestern – from the accent. Without thinking, Dean answered in English, sliding easily into another persona, as if he was on a mission.
“Thirteen,” he said, smiling and waving his key. It had a ridiculously heavy red tassel hanging from it, presumably to stop guests from walking off with it. “Hopefully not unlucky, huh?”
The big guy smiled back – beamed, really, dimples and all – and held out a huge hand for Dean to shake.
“Hey, I’m on thirteen too. So you’re American too, huh? That’s awesome. I’m Sam.” Dean didn’t bother correcting Sam. He could be from the good old US of A for the weekend, no problem. It was less of a lie than the truth in any case.
“Dean.”
Sam’s handshake was warm and firm, and Dean was starting to like the American already, even if he was in dire need of a haircut.
“So, you here for Iron Con?” Sam was obviously one of those talkative types, and this hotel’s lift must be as ancient as the building itself, as it was excruciatingly slow. Dean relaxed and settled in for a few minutes of being sociable. It made a pleasant change from killing people, and he was on vacation after all.
In their brief journey to the thirteenth floor, Dean enthused over Condorman and comics in general, admitted he was going to cosplay this weekend, refused to divulge his costume – a man’s gotta have some mystery, right? – and basically did more honest talking about himself than he’d done in years. Something about this amiable giant encouraged sharing. In fact, as the lift door finally pinged in announcement of their floor and the two men disembarked, Dean realised that Sam had hardly had a chance to tell him anything about himself; and more to the point, that Dean wanted to get to know Sam better. For the first time in – well, just about ever – Dean felt like taking a risk and forming a friendship with someone.
And that was dangerous.
Sam waved vaguely in the opposite direction to Dean’s room number. “My room’s down that way,” he said, a hopeful expression on his face. “Maybe you’d like to get a drink from the mini bar?” Dean forced himself to take a step back mentally and physically, and tried to ignore the way Sam’s face fell. “Nah, man, I’m whacked. I’ll just unpack and grab some shut eye before the chaos begins.”
Dean turned and walked away quickly, not looking back when Sam called after him “See you around?” He simply raised a non-committal hand and threw a brief “sure” over his shoulder, glad when he was able to disappear out of view as the corridor turned to the right. He was even happier he had cut off this budding idea of friendship when he entered his room to find Igor Kazukov sitting in an armchair by his bed. Fuck.
“I’m on leave,” Dean said, dumping his bags on the bed. Kazukov leant back, casually crossing his legs at the ankle. The slimy bastard smiled, and Dean wanted to smash his smug face in. So, nothing new there then.
“Comrade Akulov, you and I both know that there are no holidays for any of us when Mother Russia needs us.” Kazukov produced a manila folder seemingly out of nowhere, placing it on the occasional table by the bed. “Your mission, agent. All the information you need is in here.”
Dean opened his mouth to protest, then closed it without bothering to say a word. One glance into Kazukov’s blank eyes told him any protest would be futile. He knew what was at stake, and it wasn’t his life he was worried about. He had no choice, none at all, if he wanted to keep his mother safe. That didn’t stop a shiver running down his spine when he registered the face in the photograph pinned to the front of the dossier. Well fuckity fuck, it was the tall guy from the elevator.
Turned out Sam-from-the-elevator was reclusive artist Samuel Colt, and for some reason, Mother Russia wanted the creator of Dean Akulov’s favourite cartoon character assassinated.
It was official. Dean’s life stank worse than a hundred year old jar of gherkins.
Saturday November 22 1986: 07:02 StädtanderwandOsten, Imperial Hotel. Iron Con II.
Condorman lands silent as a feather behind the dark figure of the Red Bear. Finally he’s going to see the face of his mysterious foe, that infamous femme fatale and bête noir of the Free World. He wonders if she will be as beautiful as he had drawn her. He reaches out his hand to tear away the mask, only to reveal – huh.
That’s unexpected. Even in the non-logical world of the dream, Sam is nonplussed to see the chiselled cheekbones, firm, somewhat stubbled jaw, and wide green eyes of the guy from the lift.
“What the… Dean?” Sam says. “What are you doing dressed as Marishka the Bear? Don’t you know she’s a woman?”
“What’s the matter, Sammy?” Dean says, and grins, teeth flashing white in the night. “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”
Then Dean steps forward and shoves at Sam’s chest and Sam is toppling backwards and falling, falling, falling into the bottomless darkness…
Sam woke with a start. That was weird, even by his own standards. He must be more jetlagged than he’d thought. He stared at the fancy plasterwork ceiling for a moment, trying to shake off the unsettled feeling the dream had left behind.
He checked the clock – a couple of minutes past seven. It was early, but he was too wound up to sleep any longer. He was scheduled for autograph signing for most of the morning, but he was really hoping he’d get a chance to catch Yu Yuding’s panel and maybe get her autograph, or a handshake or something. He showered and dressed quickly, anticipation running through his veins like electricity, his dream momentarily forgotten.
He didn’t eat as much as he normally would at breakfast, as the butterflies in his stomach didn’t really mix well with bratwurst, pickled gherkins and scrambled egg. In fact, he wasn’t sure anything mixed well with pickled gherkins. He scanned the restaurant for the good-looking guy from the lift but there was no sign of him. Sam wasn’t sure why he was looking. After all, the guy – Dean – had blown him off in no uncertain terms last night. Dean had seemed so friendly to start with too. But there was something about that face, that voice, that spoke to Sam on some subliminal level that he didn’t understand. And of course, it had been very flattering to listen to Dean enthusing about Sam’s work, especially as Dean clearly had no idea who he was talking to. None of that explained why Sam had dreamed about him though.
He didn’t have long to brood about his mystery fan, as the Iron Con personal assistant assigned to him turned up with Garth just as Sam was finishing his coffee and ushered him off to the green room. Which was actually mostly blue and gold, not green at all, but it was equipped with several well-padded chaise longues, some uncomfortable-looking Germanic equivalent of Louis XIV chairs, and several ornate tables groaning under the weight of what appeared to be solid silver ice buckets full of Kirschers Pils. There were two middle-aged men with identical buzz-cut hair who had already deployed the bottle openers provided and were making inroads on the Pils, causing Sam to double check his wristwatch. Sure enough, it was still only nine thirty in the morning. The mere thought of drinking beer this early turned Sam’s stomach almost as much as the breakfast gherkins. Garth, on the other hand, was happy to accept a bottle from Buzz Cut #1, and settled down on one of the more comfortable chairs. It looked like Sam’s manager intended to stay there for the duration of the weekend.
“You don’t need me today, do you, Sammy? Ingrid here is going to look after your every need, after all, aren’t you, Inga?”
Ingrid shot Garth a classic East German look of disapproval that didn’t stop Garth wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, but did leave Sam withering in the expectation that she would be turning it on him next. Thankfully, when Ingrid turned her attention to Sam she smiled instead, which instantly transformed her rather broad face from intimidating shot-putter to helpful PA.
“It is Ingrid, not Inga, Mr Colt. But yes, I will take care of you this weekend. Anything you need, just ask.”
“Thank you, Ingrid. I may need your help translating for fans, my German is very rusty.” Garth gave a loud cough and Sam flushed. “Okay, I admit, it’s almost non-existent. But I do have a bit of Russian.” Sam didn’t add that the only reason he had learnt Russian was in case he ever got the chance to cross the border to search for his long-lost mother and brother. Not even Garth knew about that. In actual fact, Sam’s Russian was pretty damn good, and his German wasn’t far behind, but for some reason, he felt more comfortable playing the innocent abroad, at least until he got his bearings.
Ingrid proved a godsend. She escorted Sam through the already crowded maze of corridors into the main hall, steering him unerringly to the section where his signing table awaited. He was both flattered and daunted to see that there was a queue forming for his table, even though there was still half an hour before his autograph session was supposed to start. The boxes of prints for autographs were stacked up next to the table, so it was Ingrid’s lethal-looking pocket-knife that opened the first box, and Ingrid who produced a handful of marker pens out of nowhere for Sam to use for his signings.
Looking at the number of people gathered behind the rope barrier, Sam was starting to wonder if he should have ordered more prints. He was delighted that many of the fans were in costume, and he’d already spotted several Condormen, two rather sexy-looking Red Bears and at least one Hurricane, in amongst the more obvious (and safer) Iron Curtain-approved favourites, like Petia Ryzhik.
Sam scanned the crowd, trying to spot Dean. As he poured a glass of water from the chilled bottle Ingrid had brought him, he pondered on coincidences. Funny he should run into another Dean while he was over here. He hadn’t told Garth, and he certainly never mentioned it to his father, but he’d booked a later flight for his return home, because he was hoping to spend a few days after the convention doing some detective work to see if he could find any trace of his long lost mother and brother. Of course the Dean he’d met in the lift was an all-American boy, so he couldn’t have anything to do with the Dean Winchester who must have been brought up in the GDR or the USSR – could he?
A hand thrusting a well-thumbed comic book under his nose interrupted his musing, and after that he was too occupied chatting to fans in relatively fluent Russian and less fluent German to have time to brood. He never stopped checking each face for Dean though – despite not being able to see much of some people beyond their various cosplay masks. He was impressed at the efforts many of them had gone to. Getting the right materials to create costumes for American comic book characters couldn’t have been easy, especially as the distribution of the comics themselves was semi-illegal and frowned upon by the authorities.
There was no sign of those intense green eyes, though. Sam refused to admit he’d even been looking, let alone that he was disappointed.
Saturday November 22 1986: 08:12 StädtanderwandOsten, Imperial Hotel. Iron Con II.
Dean picked up the manila folder and flipped it open, skim-reading to remind himself of the key facts he’d read over the night before, once Kazukov had left.
SS File R:22/9/ZE18222/c
Samuel Colt, aged 21 (Interesting…same age as Dean’s Sammy…coincidence, of course) first published comic book December 1984 – The Birth of Condorman. Number of copies sold worldwide 1 million 235 thousand. Colt was flagged as a potential security breach by SOSS Cultural Watchdog Feb 1985, when correlation was made between plot element #12 and the foiling of the assassination of subversive politician Victor Valsilyev.
Dean read on with increasing interest.
There were several other instances where storylines in Colt’s comics seemed to follow too closely to real-life incidents, many of them correlating with detail from missions the Bear (the real Bear that is) had undertaken – successfully, Dean might add. It really did look like a security breech somewhere, though Dean couldn’t see how killing the artist would help. Surely the high-ups should be looking for the source, for whoever was feeding information to Colt.
Dean huffed under his breath. That Valsilyev job would never have been botched if they’d kept Dean on that assignment, instead of replacing him at the last minute with that incompetent moron, Kubrick. The real life version of the Bear hadn’t failed a single mission since he was sixteen. How could he fail when his mother’s life depended on his success?
He’d been killing so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to be clean.
Dean stared at Sam’s photograph and thought about strapping on the wings from his Condorman costume and throwing himself from the hotel roof, flying west to freedom. Letting Sam live. It would be so easy. The Bear’s attention to detail meant that every specification of his wing-suit was as functional as he could afford to make it; hell, it was even flame retardant.
He flung the folder down onto the floor by the bed, uncaring that the confidential contents spilled out onto the hotel carpet. Even if Dean decided to run away and let the SOSS kill his mother, it wouldn’t save Samuel Colt. Kazukov would be long gone, that slimy rat never liked to get his hands dirty, but for sure there would be at least one other SOSS agent here, as well as regular KGB and Stasi. If Kazukov wanted Colt dead, there was no way the young American artist was walking out of here alive. It would be better for Colt if it were Dean pulling the trigger. At least that way it would be quick, and as painless as Dean could make it.
Decision made, Dean made quick work of getting dressed in his costume. He’d designed it so that he could conceal weapons in the boots and sleeves, because an assassin was never truly off duty. He’d designed and made the wings himself so that they could be unfurled with just a flick of his wrist. They were super-lightweight, yet strong enough to carry a man… just in case. He went through every check with meticulous care, but all the joy had been stripped away as he zipped himself into the suit was still meticulous but joyless. What was the point of excitement when he was only going to kill the person whose skill and imagination the costume had been created to celebrate?
When he entered the overheated and buzzing atmosphere of the main hall, there was only room for one thought in Dean’s head, and that was looking for the right opening to dispatch Samuel Colt. Which was why Dean was irritated to find that Colt had the longest queue in the building waiting for his autograph, and then further annoyed when some durak dressed as the Red Bear from Condorman tugged at his arm. Dean had no patience with this distraction. She was babbling away in Russian about something or other, Dean really didn’t care.
“Look, dushen'ka,” Dean said, brushing the hand from his arm as firmly and gently as he could, “I’m flattered that you like my gear, but…”
He stopped short, his mouth dropping open as he finally took a moment to look at the person who had accosted him. The comic book Bear was a glamorous, voluptuous red-haired chick. This person, as it turned out, was none of those things. The long auburn hair on closer inspection was revealed as an unconvincing wig, the shiny black bodysuit didn’t really do much to conceal the fact that the person inside it was actually rather well endowed in the lunch-box area, while flatter than two fried eggs in the chest region. Dean had to acknowledge that the guy did have killer blue eyes though. The costumed creature held out a decidedly man-sized hand and Dean shook it automatically. He knew he was staring but he couldn’t help himself. Seeing a man dressed in Marishka the Bear’s costume was – well, bizarre.
“I don’t believe in conforming to gender stereotypical norms,” the stranger said, clearly somewhat put out by Dean’s dumbstruck expression. “My name is Castiel, and I need to talk to you. Privately.” The man still spoke in Russian, so Dean replied in the same language.
“Right, well, that’s great, maybe some other time, if I swung that way. I’m a bit gender stereotypical myself. Nice costume by the way,” Dean said dismissively, his attention already elsewhere, as he turned back around to join the still-lengthy queue. However, the crazily dressed stranger – Castiel – clearly had no sense of self-preservation. He arrested Dean’s progress for a second time in so many minutes with a hand on Dean’s arm, but it was his next words, this time spoken in English, that stopped Dean dead in his tracks.
“I think you need to hear what I have to say, Dean Winchester. I have a message from your mother.”
Dean felt the chill wind of Siberia on the back of his neck at the sound of his real name, but he moved quicker than a thought, before his body could freeze from that memory of ice. He grabbed Castiel’s arm and dragged him out of view behind a wide pillar.
“What the hell are you playing at?” Dean hissed, while keeping a pleasant smile on his face in case anyone was watching. “You must know it’s not safe to talk here.” He raised his voice to a more conversational volume, glancing round casually as if everything was normal. “It’s so hot in these costumes, hey? Looks like the queue isn’t going to move that quickly, let’s go get some fresh air, shall we?”
He didn’t wait for Castiel to reply, or remove his tight grip on the other man’s arm as he moved them swiftly through the crowded hall and out into the hotel lobby. A rapid reconnaissance told Dean that the hotel entrance was too busy for the privacy they needed, and that left only one option open. He dragged Castiel into the lift, then up a service stairway that led to the roof, high up above the river cliff, where Dean could be pretty certain there were no listening devices, either human or mechanical. As an added precaution, he moved them behind a large chimneystack to ensure they were out of any line of sight from the service door before rounding on Castiel.
He didn’t waste time with niceties. “Explain.”
Castiel stared expectantly at Dean’s hand that was still tight round his arm, and Dean let go with a shrug. Castiel was so calm and unruffled by Dean’s rough treatment, it was unnerving, but he seemed willing to talk now. Dean pulled the hood of his costume down, and Castiel took the hint and removed the ridiculous wig. His dark hair was tousled, but a much less bizarre sight.
“I am an Angel, and we have been watching over you and your mother for many years.”
Great, a fucking delusional time-waster.
“Get out of here. Angels don’t exist. Don’t you think I’d have come across one of you before now if the stories were true? They are a wish-fulfilment fantasy for the desperate, a fairy tale for people who want to believe in happy endings. ”
“We are very good at staying out of view, Dean. How do you think our organisation survived Stalin and the regimes that have followed?”
“Fuck if I know and I don’t care. My mother has been imprisoned since I was eight years old, I haven’t been allowed to see her for the last two years – if you do exist, what good has your stupid underground organisation been to me and my family? And why come crawling out of the woodwork now to help me?”
“Why now? Because we have work for you, and because the man you’ve been told to kill is your brother.”
“What?” All the air seemed to be sucked from Dean’s lungs, as if he’d stepped into a vacuum chamber. Castiel was talking, but it was hard to distinguish the angel’s low rumbling words from the rushing of blood in Dean’s head. He tried to focus on the important facts – Samuel Colt was Sam Winchester, Dean’s long lost little brother. Kazukov was trying to get Dean to murder his own brother. By the time Dean had absorbed this news, Castiel had moved to another, equally devastating topic.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t do anything about Kazukov moving Mary to Preispodnyaya after your abortive attempt to get her out of Butugichag Gulag. It took us nearly a year to track her down, and when we finally found her, she was very ill. The Angels managed to get me into Preispodnyaya as a guard, but it was difficult for me to get close to her. Kazukov had her locked down tight, and of course, even when I did reach her, she was reluctant to trust me at first.”
Dean’s knees gave out and he slid to the floor, and not even the warmth of the chimney on his back could chase the cold out of his bones. He knew where this was going and he didn’t want to hear it. He ran a trembling hand over his face.
“I had to try and get her away from Butugichag.” Dean’s voice was quiet, he didn’t know if Castiel could even hear him but that wasn’t important, not really. He was talking more to his mother than to any listening ear. “The moment I found out Kazukov had sent her to Death Valley, I knew I had to do something. The uranium… but then they said they’d moved her though nobody was willing to tell me where, so I’d hoped…”
“I understand, Dean, but there was nothing you could have done. Even if you had managed to free her back then, the radiation had already taken hold; she had been exposed for too long.”
Dean tried to take a steadying breath through the growing pain in his chest, but it shuddered as he exhaled.
Mom. She had been the only family he had left, the one person in this world who loved him. He’d been tasked with protecting her and he’d failed spectacularly. It didn’t matter that he’d only been a child when he had been taken away from her. He’d had one job to do, and he’d failed his charge, and failed her.
There was no point in asking Castiel if Mary had suffered, hoping for platitudes, because Dean knew full well that radiation poisoning was not an easy death. The tight material of his Condorman suit felt suddenly constraining. His fingers tangled in the fastening at his throat and he tugged at the cloth that was choking him. Castiel was still talking, but that low voice was mere buzzing in Dean’s ears. He had to get a grip; he mustn’t give in to emotion now, because this news wasn’t merely about Dean’s grief. It was about the potential for freedom. And saving Sam.
But before Dean could get his mind straight, there was one important promise the Angel had made earlier that hadn’t yet been fulfilled.
Dry-eyed, Dean looked up at Castiel. “You said you had a message from my mother.”
:::
super_disney - a story this time. Hope y'all like it!Title: The Flight of the Condor
Disney prompt: Condorman
Pairing/Gen: Gen
Rating: R for swearing
Word count: ~14,000
Warnings: This probably bears no resemblance to the film, as I've never seen it... It also twists 20th century history a little bit to fit the plot.
Summary: The Winchester family was split asunder in 1961. Mary and eight-year-old Dean were caught on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain when the Berlin Wall went up overnight. Now it’s 1986 and it feels like the Cold War will never end. Sam Winchester is now Samuel Colt, the acclaimed creator of comic book hero Condorman. Sam is a dreamer, so immersed in his fantasy world he sometimes finds the line between reality and his own creations somewhat blurred. He doesn’t realize this is partly because his dreams are real and he’s actually having visions about his brother, Dean, who is one of the USSR’s best spy/assassins.
When Sam is invited to a big comic convention in StädtanderwandOsten in East Germany, he jumps at the chance. Not least because he thinks it might be an opportunity to find out what happened to his mother, Mary, and Dean.
Thank you to my lovely beta
firesign10 for helping pummel this into shape - any remaining errors are down to me.
Thank you to my lovely beta
firesign10 for helping pummel this into shape - any remaining errors are down to me.Reuters Breaking News August 12 1961: Berlin blockaded.
…GDR closed off its borders last night, barricading all crossing points between East Berlin and the West. Implications of this action are yet to be fully understood…US reaction to this latest attempt by the Communist government of East Germany to stem the so-called ‘brain drain’ from the Soviet Block to the West…Germany further divided, families cut off …
Junior diplomat John Winchester scanned the ticker tape with a growing horror as it unspooled. The words - stark black on white - shaped his future in ways he never could have imagined yesterday, when his wife Mary had said she was taking their eight year old son, Dean, to visit a friend for a couple of days. A friend who just happened to be on the other side of the border in East Germany.
John grasped the tape and tore it off, crumpled it in his hand. Running outside, he joined a handful of Germans all headed in the same direction – towards the Brandenburg Gate. By the time he arrived, there were probably a hundred or more people gathered at the eastern edge of the Tiergarten, all of them frozen in shock at the sight of the barbed wire barrier that had sprung up overnight to blockade the gate. Through the openings in the triumphal arch, John could see the German Democratic Republican guards, all heavily armed. Beyond the guards was a handful of East Germans brave enough to have mirrored the actions of their Western counterparts and come to see the new restrictions for themselves.
He couldn’t see Mary and Dean among them, which was perhaps just as well, or he’d have been hard put to restrain himself from trying to climb through those huge coils of tangled wire to reach his wife and child. Only the thought of little Sammy waiting back in their ambassadorial quarters stopped John doing something reckless. Mary would never forgive him if he abandoned their youngest son, even if it was to rescue her and Dean.
John stared with burning eyes at the closed face of the Iron Curtain.
Mary Winchester was resourceful and brave, even more than she was beautiful. Surely if anyone would find a way to return to the West, it would be her?
:::
Five years later, John Winchester had practically given up hope of seeing his wife and son again. No word of their fate had ever come through the barrier between the two Germanys. John had tried every source he knew of, every contact he had in the secret services, but he’d come up with nothing to indicate whether his missing family was alive or dead. In their place was a vacuum, a black hole in John’s heart that Sam had never been able to fill. When Sam was nearly nine years old, John was offered the position as Ambassador to the Sudan. Although he felt disloyal in the extreme leaving his station in Berlin, he thought it was time for him to try and move on. Sam deserved the best life John could give his one remaining child. He accepted the Ambassadorship, and neither of the free Winchesters returned to Germany for many years.
Friday November 3 1986: Los Angeles, CA
Sometimes when there’s no urgency, Sam likes to let the change happen real slow, so he can savour every moment, every nuance. He loves how, from one breath to the next, he feels gravity lessen its hold as his bones hollow; how the skin tightens in the centre of his back in anticipation of his wings forming, the sensation of freedom when he eventually allows his wings to unfurl to their full span, and the way the air caresses each individual feather with the promise of flight.
Tonight there’s no time for any such indulgence, and he can’t help the slight frisson of fear that runs through him as his wings sprout lightning-fast. He snaps them out with an audible crackle of pent-up power and runs forward. He launches himself off the tower without a thought, plunging steeply until the huge span of his wings catches a thermal and he’s lifted high, soaring above the city with every sense alert. There’s no time to linger and savour the beauty of seeing the city laid out below him, a sparkling multifaceted jewel in the night, not when Marishka the Red Bear is on the loose. Tonight he’s determined. This will be the moment when he and the Bear will come face to face and then they’ll finally see who will prevail. Will it be the evil might of Megalomania’s chained Bear, or the courage and ingenuity of the Free World’s Condorman?
Unfortunately, this was not to be the night where Sam found out the answer to that burning question, because even as Condorman alighted and elegantly furled his wings outside the warehouse where the Red Bear had been sighted, Sam was rudely awakened by a loud banging on his door. A banging that was followed by yelling, and Sam knew he’d better get his act together pretty damn quick, or Mrs Whitchurch from number 42 was going to complain to their landlord about ‘noise nuisance’ again.
He groped on the floor for his jeans and dragged them on. Not bothering to put on a shirt, he staggered bleary-eyed to answer the door. He was always extra groggy after a Condorman dream. They left him feeling heavy and slow, as if he’d really just spent a few hours soaring above the city, on the prowl for danger, always searching for and never finding his elusive adversary, Marishka the Bear. At least when he got to write the story in his comics, Condorman had the satisfaction of kicking the Bear’s shapely ass.
He flung the door open and then swayed back just in time to escape Garth’s fist that was headed for another crack at the wood.
“Whoa, dude!” Sam protested, only to have Garth ignore him and barge his way into the apartment. His friend and self-styled manager immediately started talking, before Sam had even had time to close the door and shut out the curious gaze of his nosy neighbours.
“You know how you’re always babbling on about how awesome Yoo Yoothing is? Well, what would you say if I told you I’ve got you a paying gig where you get to meet him?”
“Oh, for… how many times do I have to tell you it’s Yu Yuding, moron, and she’s a woman, not a …wait…what? Get to meet her? In the flesh?”
But Garth was glaring at Sam with his skinny arms folded, and Sam realized perhaps he shouldn’t have called his best friend a moron until he’d at least heard all of what he had to say. Holding up an apologetic hand, Sam offered the one thing he knew was certain to placate Garth – coffee. Come to think of it, Sam could murder a cup himself.
Once Garth was mellowing over a steaming cup of the blackest, strongest coffee Sam could brew, he thought it was safe to open the conversation again.
“So tell me about Yu Yuding. How is that even possible? China would never allow her to visit the decadent West, surely?”
“That’s the beauty of this gig, Sammy boy!” Sam was so eager to hear that more he didn’t even bother to slap Garth down for calling him Sammy. Besides, slapping Garth was kind of like hitting a puppy. “Ever heard of Iron Con?”
“Yes, but they’d never allow Westerners entry, it’s strictly Iron Curtain only…wait, you got me into Iron Con? Oh my god, Garth, you’re a fucking genius!”
“I know, right? But to be fair, it was the Convention organisers who approached me. They’ve decided to open it up to a select few ‘dissolute’ Western artists, and you were top of their list!” Garth even waved some air quotes round dissolute, but Sam didn’t care what the Communist administration wanted to label him, not in the light of this amazing news.
“It’s fantastic! I can’t believe it. What should I take?” Sam leapt to his feet and rushed over to his drawing desk by the window, shuffling through the pile of sheets for his latest Condorman adventure. “I’ve got some new ideas, I could start sketching those to show people. Will I have a panel? Or a Q&A session? Do they even get Condorman comics over there?”
“Whoa, whoa, big boy,” Garth grinned indulgently as Sam flapped in helpless excitement. “It isn’t for a couple of weeks yet, you’ve got plenty of time to prepare. I thought with you usually being so reclusive you might have more reservations about an event like this. You know it’s going to make a huge splash – might even make international news, being such a rare opening up of the Eastern Bloc.”
Sam barely heard Garth. It was true, he usually eschewed publicity, and there were very few people who knew what Samuel Colt looked like, but this was something special, worth coming out for. So to speak.
“Oh man, this is Iron Con, how could I not go? I can’t wait to tell Jess. Samuel Colt, creator of Condorman, is going to be one of the first Western artists to go to Iron Con!”
Garth patted Sam on the back even while he rolled his eyes, as he always did at Sam’s lame pseudonym, which merely exchanged one gun for another. Sam thought it was pretty neat.
“I wish I could take Jess with me,” he said, feeling a sense of deflation at the thought of separation from his beautiful girlfriend and biggest cheer-leader. Garth shook his head.
“Man, don’t get your hopes up. I’ve already made some inquiries, and the Communist authorities are refusing to issue any more visas except for the artists themselves – no entourages were their words. Entourages – I ask you, do I look like an entourage?”
Sam grinned and punched Garth’s skinny arm. “Nope, you look like a dork!”
Their conversation degenerated into an unseemly tussle, which left Garth, as always, the one lying on the floor with two hundred pounds of cartoon artist sitting on his stomach.
“It’s not fucking fair, you hairy great oaf, gerroff me,” Garth sputtered. “Anyhow, luckily I’d already got my visa before they announced the restrictions, so you are stuck with me.” Sam didn’t even notice that his earlier threatening funk had entirely dispersed. Garth had a way of lifting Sam’s mood, which was one reason they’d been friends for so long. He was glad Garth would be coming with him, though he was still going to miss Jess.
Friday November 21 1986: StädtanderwandOsten, German Democratic Republic
Советский Очень Секретная служба (Sovetskiy Ochen' Sekretnaya Sluzhba or Soviet Very Secret Service) agent Dean Akulov, code-name the Bear, formerly known as Dean Winchester, was on leave.
In spite of that, Dean couldn’t help casing the hotel for alternative exits and potential threats as he checked in. Habits of a lifetime, added to being one of the essential requirements of the job, he supposed. Being the SOSS’s premier assassin meant Dean didn’t often get downtime, and he really wanted to make the most of this weekend. There weren’t many of Dean’s colleagues who knew the infamous Akulov the Bear had a passion for comic books, let alone that he had a highly illegal and secret collection of American originals stashed away in a safe behind a small dingy bar in East Berlin.
When Dean had heard that this year’s Iron Con would include Western comic book artists for the first time, and that one of those attending was his all-time favourite artist, Samuel Colt, he’d decided then and there that nothing in this universe was going to stop him taking that weekend off and going to the convention. He’d given his ultimatum directly to the Head of the SOSS himself, Igor Kazakov, who had been surprisingly accommodating. With hindsight, Dean realised that Kazakov’s cooperation should have made him suspicious, but at the time, he was so full of childish excitement at the thought of meeting the creator of Condorman that he hadn’t given it a second thought. He was too busy wondering where he was going to get the right materials for his Condorman cosplay, because that just had to be done, right?
The convention was being held in StädtanderwandOsten’s premier hotel, a former Prussian Imperial hunting lodge the size of a small town, and replete with decaying grandeur. The hotel was rendered even more imposing because of its position, set right atop the edge of the thousand foot cliff over the river that separated East from West in this German Democratic Republic border town. StädtanderwandOsten overlooked its Western counterpart, turning its metaphoric Communist nose up at the decadent StädtanderwandWesten, the single town split into two just like Berlin had been, when the Iron Curtain came down back in ’61.
Although the main convention events didn’t start until tomorrow, the lobby was already heaving with comic book fans, and Dean was finding it really strange to hear so much English being spoken so openly this side of the Iron Curtain. Of course, Dean himself was fluent in English, German, and Russian. He could even muster enough French to pass as native of Alsace at a pinch. In his early years, his mother had made sure that he retained knowledge of his American roots, while also being careful to train Dean to hide just how much of him was still ‘contaminated’ by the West.
Dean grew up fucking awesome at dissembling; he was so good that even Igor Kazukov trusted him enough to send him on missions on the other side of the snappily titled Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart. The GDR government were nowhere near as poetic as Westerners, and Dean really preferred to call it the Iron Curtain. Dean was well aware that the SOSS’s trust was less to do with his ability to lie convincingly and more to do with the fact that Kazukov had Mary Winchester locked up in a cell in a secret location only a few highly placed SOSS officials knew about.
Mary had been taken away when Dean was only eleven years old. From that moment forward, his mother’s plight was all the incentive Dean needed to follow every direction that the Head of the SOSS gave him, and to keep him returning after each mission was complete. The temptation to defect to the USA, to return home to try and find his dad and his little brother was always there, but he couldn’t act on it, not with his mother’s life at stake. Keeping Mary safe had been Dean’s prime directive since he’d become trapped inside East Germany all those years ago, leaving his Sammy and his father behind in West Berlin. You look after your mom, now Deano, had been the last words John Winchester said to his eldest son, and Dean had taken them to heart. Kazukov knew it too, the bastard.
Dean signed the hotel ledger and took his room key, just catching the lift as the doors were closing. The other occupant shifted to make room for Dean and his two bags, nodding amicably in greeting.
“Which floor?” the man asked in English, one long finger poised over the floor buttons, and Dean looked up, and then up some more at his temporary companion. Bozhe moi, but the man was ridiculously tall. And American – probably Midwestern – from the accent. Without thinking, Dean answered in English, sliding easily into another persona, as if he was on a mission.
“Thirteen,” he said, smiling and waving his key. It had a ridiculously heavy red tassel hanging from it, presumably to stop guests from walking off with it. “Hopefully not unlucky, huh?”
The big guy smiled back – beamed, really, dimples and all – and held out a huge hand for Dean to shake.
“Hey, I’m on thirteen too. So you’re American too, huh? That’s awesome. I’m Sam.” Dean didn’t bother correcting Sam. He could be from the good old US of A for the weekend, no problem. It was less of a lie than the truth in any case.
“Dean.”
Sam’s handshake was warm and firm, and Dean was starting to like the American already, even if he was in dire need of a haircut.
“So, you here for Iron Con?” Sam was obviously one of those talkative types, and this hotel’s lift must be as ancient as the building itself, as it was excruciatingly slow. Dean relaxed and settled in for a few minutes of being sociable. It made a pleasant change from killing people, and he was on vacation after all.
In their brief journey to the thirteenth floor, Dean enthused over Condorman and comics in general, admitted he was going to cosplay this weekend, refused to divulge his costume – a man’s gotta have some mystery, right? – and basically did more honest talking about himself than he’d done in years. Something about this amiable giant encouraged sharing. In fact, as the lift door finally pinged in announcement of their floor and the two men disembarked, Dean realised that Sam had hardly had a chance to tell him anything about himself; and more to the point, that Dean wanted to get to know Sam better. For the first time in – well, just about ever – Dean felt like taking a risk and forming a friendship with someone.
And that was dangerous.
Sam waved vaguely in the opposite direction to Dean’s room number. “My room’s down that way,” he said, a hopeful expression on his face. “Maybe you’d like to get a drink from the mini bar?” Dean forced himself to take a step back mentally and physically, and tried to ignore the way Sam’s face fell. “Nah, man, I’m whacked. I’ll just unpack and grab some shut eye before the chaos begins.”
Dean turned and walked away quickly, not looking back when Sam called after him “See you around?” He simply raised a non-committal hand and threw a brief “sure” over his shoulder, glad when he was able to disappear out of view as the corridor turned to the right. He was even happier he had cut off this budding idea of friendship when he entered his room to find Igor Kazukov sitting in an armchair by his bed. Fuck.
“I’m on leave,” Dean said, dumping his bags on the bed. Kazukov leant back, casually crossing his legs at the ankle. The slimy bastard smiled, and Dean wanted to smash his smug face in. So, nothing new there then.
“Comrade Akulov, you and I both know that there are no holidays for any of us when Mother Russia needs us.” Kazukov produced a manila folder seemingly out of nowhere, placing it on the occasional table by the bed. “Your mission, agent. All the information you need is in here.”
Dean opened his mouth to protest, then closed it without bothering to say a word. One glance into Kazukov’s blank eyes told him any protest would be futile. He knew what was at stake, and it wasn’t his life he was worried about. He had no choice, none at all, if he wanted to keep his mother safe. That didn’t stop a shiver running down his spine when he registered the face in the photograph pinned to the front of the dossier. Well fuckity fuck, it was the tall guy from the elevator.
Turned out Sam-from-the-elevator was reclusive artist Samuel Colt, and for some reason, Mother Russia wanted the creator of Dean Akulov’s favourite cartoon character assassinated.
It was official. Dean’s life stank worse than a hundred year old jar of gherkins.
Saturday November 22 1986: 07:02 StädtanderwandOsten, Imperial Hotel. Iron Con II.
Condorman lands silent as a feather behind the dark figure of the Red Bear. Finally he’s going to see the face of his mysterious foe, that infamous femme fatale and bête noir of the Free World. He wonders if she will be as beautiful as he had drawn her. He reaches out his hand to tear away the mask, only to reveal – huh.
That’s unexpected. Even in the non-logical world of the dream, Sam is nonplussed to see the chiselled cheekbones, firm, somewhat stubbled jaw, and wide green eyes of the guy from the lift.
“What the… Dean?” Sam says. “What are you doing dressed as Marishka the Bear? Don’t you know she’s a woman?”
“What’s the matter, Sammy?” Dean says, and grins, teeth flashing white in the night. “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”
Then Dean steps forward and shoves at Sam’s chest and Sam is toppling backwards and falling, falling, falling into the bottomless darkness…
Sam woke with a start. That was weird, even by his own standards. He must be more jetlagged than he’d thought. He stared at the fancy plasterwork ceiling for a moment, trying to shake off the unsettled feeling the dream had left behind.
He checked the clock – a couple of minutes past seven. It was early, but he was too wound up to sleep any longer. He was scheduled for autograph signing for most of the morning, but he was really hoping he’d get a chance to catch Yu Yuding’s panel and maybe get her autograph, or a handshake or something. He showered and dressed quickly, anticipation running through his veins like electricity, his dream momentarily forgotten.
He didn’t eat as much as he normally would at breakfast, as the butterflies in his stomach didn’t really mix well with bratwurst, pickled gherkins and scrambled egg. In fact, he wasn’t sure anything mixed well with pickled gherkins. He scanned the restaurant for the good-looking guy from the lift but there was no sign of him. Sam wasn’t sure why he was looking. After all, the guy – Dean – had blown him off in no uncertain terms last night. Dean had seemed so friendly to start with too. But there was something about that face, that voice, that spoke to Sam on some subliminal level that he didn’t understand. And of course, it had been very flattering to listen to Dean enthusing about Sam’s work, especially as Dean clearly had no idea who he was talking to. None of that explained why Sam had dreamed about him though.
He didn’t have long to brood about his mystery fan, as the Iron Con personal assistant assigned to him turned up with Garth just as Sam was finishing his coffee and ushered him off to the green room. Which was actually mostly blue and gold, not green at all, but it was equipped with several well-padded chaise longues, some uncomfortable-looking Germanic equivalent of Louis XIV chairs, and several ornate tables groaning under the weight of what appeared to be solid silver ice buckets full of Kirschers Pils. There were two middle-aged men with identical buzz-cut hair who had already deployed the bottle openers provided and were making inroads on the Pils, causing Sam to double check his wristwatch. Sure enough, it was still only nine thirty in the morning. The mere thought of drinking beer this early turned Sam’s stomach almost as much as the breakfast gherkins. Garth, on the other hand, was happy to accept a bottle from Buzz Cut #1, and settled down on one of the more comfortable chairs. It looked like Sam’s manager intended to stay there for the duration of the weekend.
“You don’t need me today, do you, Sammy? Ingrid here is going to look after your every need, after all, aren’t you, Inga?”
Ingrid shot Garth a classic East German look of disapproval that didn’t stop Garth wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, but did leave Sam withering in the expectation that she would be turning it on him next. Thankfully, when Ingrid turned her attention to Sam she smiled instead, which instantly transformed her rather broad face from intimidating shot-putter to helpful PA.
“It is Ingrid, not Inga, Mr Colt. But yes, I will take care of you this weekend. Anything you need, just ask.”
“Thank you, Ingrid. I may need your help translating for fans, my German is very rusty.” Garth gave a loud cough and Sam flushed. “Okay, I admit, it’s almost non-existent. But I do have a bit of Russian.” Sam didn’t add that the only reason he had learnt Russian was in case he ever got the chance to cross the border to search for his long-lost mother and brother. Not even Garth knew about that. In actual fact, Sam’s Russian was pretty damn good, and his German wasn’t far behind, but for some reason, he felt more comfortable playing the innocent abroad, at least until he got his bearings.
Ingrid proved a godsend. She escorted Sam through the already crowded maze of corridors into the main hall, steering him unerringly to the section where his signing table awaited. He was both flattered and daunted to see that there was a queue forming for his table, even though there was still half an hour before his autograph session was supposed to start. The boxes of prints for autographs were stacked up next to the table, so it was Ingrid’s lethal-looking pocket-knife that opened the first box, and Ingrid who produced a handful of marker pens out of nowhere for Sam to use for his signings.
Looking at the number of people gathered behind the rope barrier, Sam was starting to wonder if he should have ordered more prints. He was delighted that many of the fans were in costume, and he’d already spotted several Condormen, two rather sexy-looking Red Bears and at least one Hurricane, in amongst the more obvious (and safer) Iron Curtain-approved favourites, like Petia Ryzhik.
Sam scanned the crowd, trying to spot Dean. As he poured a glass of water from the chilled bottle Ingrid had brought him, he pondered on coincidences. Funny he should run into another Dean while he was over here. He hadn’t told Garth, and he certainly never mentioned it to his father, but he’d booked a later flight for his return home, because he was hoping to spend a few days after the convention doing some detective work to see if he could find any trace of his long lost mother and brother. Of course the Dean he’d met in the lift was an all-American boy, so he couldn’t have anything to do with the Dean Winchester who must have been brought up in the GDR or the USSR – could he?
A hand thrusting a well-thumbed comic book under his nose interrupted his musing, and after that he was too occupied chatting to fans in relatively fluent Russian and less fluent German to have time to brood. He never stopped checking each face for Dean though – despite not being able to see much of some people beyond their various cosplay masks. He was impressed at the efforts many of them had gone to. Getting the right materials to create costumes for American comic book characters couldn’t have been easy, especially as the distribution of the comics themselves was semi-illegal and frowned upon by the authorities.
There was no sign of those intense green eyes, though. Sam refused to admit he’d even been looking, let alone that he was disappointed.
Saturday November 22 1986: 08:12 StädtanderwandOsten, Imperial Hotel. Iron Con II.
Dean picked up the manila folder and flipped it open, skim-reading to remind himself of the key facts he’d read over the night before, once Kazukov had left.
SS File R:22/9/ZE18222/c
Samuel Colt, aged 21 (Interesting…same age as Dean’s Sammy…coincidence, of course) first published comic book December 1984 – The Birth of Condorman. Number of copies sold worldwide 1 million 235 thousand. Colt was flagged as a potential security breach by SOSS Cultural Watchdog Feb 1985, when correlation was made between plot element #12 and the foiling of the assassination of subversive politician Victor Valsilyev.
Dean read on with increasing interest.
There were several other instances where storylines in Colt’s comics seemed to follow too closely to real-life incidents, many of them correlating with detail from missions the Bear (the real Bear that is) had undertaken – successfully, Dean might add. It really did look like a security breech somewhere, though Dean couldn’t see how killing the artist would help. Surely the high-ups should be looking for the source, for whoever was feeding information to Colt.
Dean huffed under his breath. That Valsilyev job would never have been botched if they’d kept Dean on that assignment, instead of replacing him at the last minute with that incompetent moron, Kubrick. The real life version of the Bear hadn’t failed a single mission since he was sixteen. How could he fail when his mother’s life depended on his success?
He’d been killing so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to be clean.
Dean stared at Sam’s photograph and thought about strapping on the wings from his Condorman costume and throwing himself from the hotel roof, flying west to freedom. Letting Sam live. It would be so easy. The Bear’s attention to detail meant that every specification of his wing-suit was as functional as he could afford to make it; hell, it was even flame retardant.
He flung the folder down onto the floor by the bed, uncaring that the confidential contents spilled out onto the hotel carpet. Even if Dean decided to run away and let the SOSS kill his mother, it wouldn’t save Samuel Colt. Kazukov would be long gone, that slimy rat never liked to get his hands dirty, but for sure there would be at least one other SOSS agent here, as well as regular KGB and Stasi. If Kazukov wanted Colt dead, there was no way the young American artist was walking out of here alive. It would be better for Colt if it were Dean pulling the trigger. At least that way it would be quick, and as painless as Dean could make it.
Decision made, Dean made quick work of getting dressed in his costume. He’d designed it so that he could conceal weapons in the boots and sleeves, because an assassin was never truly off duty. He’d designed and made the wings himself so that they could be unfurled with just a flick of his wrist. They were super-lightweight, yet strong enough to carry a man… just in case. He went through every check with meticulous care, but all the joy had been stripped away as he zipped himself into the suit was still meticulous but joyless. What was the point of excitement when he was only going to kill the person whose skill and imagination the costume had been created to celebrate?
When he entered the overheated and buzzing atmosphere of the main hall, there was only room for one thought in Dean’s head, and that was looking for the right opening to dispatch Samuel Colt. Which was why Dean was irritated to find that Colt had the longest queue in the building waiting for his autograph, and then further annoyed when some durak dressed as the Red Bear from Condorman tugged at his arm. Dean had no patience with this distraction. She was babbling away in Russian about something or other, Dean really didn’t care.
“Look, dushen'ka,” Dean said, brushing the hand from his arm as firmly and gently as he could, “I’m flattered that you like my gear, but…”
He stopped short, his mouth dropping open as he finally took a moment to look at the person who had accosted him. The comic book Bear was a glamorous, voluptuous red-haired chick. This person, as it turned out, was none of those things. The long auburn hair on closer inspection was revealed as an unconvincing wig, the shiny black bodysuit didn’t really do much to conceal the fact that the person inside it was actually rather well endowed in the lunch-box area, while flatter than two fried eggs in the chest region. Dean had to acknowledge that the guy did have killer blue eyes though. The costumed creature held out a decidedly man-sized hand and Dean shook it automatically. He knew he was staring but he couldn’t help himself. Seeing a man dressed in Marishka the Bear’s costume was – well, bizarre.
“I don’t believe in conforming to gender stereotypical norms,” the stranger said, clearly somewhat put out by Dean’s dumbstruck expression. “My name is Castiel, and I need to talk to you. Privately.” The man still spoke in Russian, so Dean replied in the same language.
“Right, well, that’s great, maybe some other time, if I swung that way. I’m a bit gender stereotypical myself. Nice costume by the way,” Dean said dismissively, his attention already elsewhere, as he turned back around to join the still-lengthy queue. However, the crazily dressed stranger – Castiel – clearly had no sense of self-preservation. He arrested Dean’s progress for a second time in so many minutes with a hand on Dean’s arm, but it was his next words, this time spoken in English, that stopped Dean dead in his tracks.
“I think you need to hear what I have to say, Dean Winchester. I have a message from your mother.”
Dean felt the chill wind of Siberia on the back of his neck at the sound of his real name, but he moved quicker than a thought, before his body could freeze from that memory of ice. He grabbed Castiel’s arm and dragged him out of view behind a wide pillar.
“What the hell are you playing at?” Dean hissed, while keeping a pleasant smile on his face in case anyone was watching. “You must know it’s not safe to talk here.” He raised his voice to a more conversational volume, glancing round casually as if everything was normal. “It’s so hot in these costumes, hey? Looks like the queue isn’t going to move that quickly, let’s go get some fresh air, shall we?”
He didn’t wait for Castiel to reply, or remove his tight grip on the other man’s arm as he moved them swiftly through the crowded hall and out into the hotel lobby. A rapid reconnaissance told Dean that the hotel entrance was too busy for the privacy they needed, and that left only one option open. He dragged Castiel into the lift, then up a service stairway that led to the roof, high up above the river cliff, where Dean could be pretty certain there were no listening devices, either human or mechanical. As an added precaution, he moved them behind a large chimneystack to ensure they were out of any line of sight from the service door before rounding on Castiel.
He didn’t waste time with niceties. “Explain.”
Castiel stared expectantly at Dean’s hand that was still tight round his arm, and Dean let go with a shrug. Castiel was so calm and unruffled by Dean’s rough treatment, it was unnerving, but he seemed willing to talk now. Dean pulled the hood of his costume down, and Castiel took the hint and removed the ridiculous wig. His dark hair was tousled, but a much less bizarre sight.
“I am an Angel, and we have been watching over you and your mother for many years.”
Great, a fucking delusional time-waster.
“Get out of here. Angels don’t exist. Don’t you think I’d have come across one of you before now if the stories were true? They are a wish-fulfilment fantasy for the desperate, a fairy tale for people who want to believe in happy endings. ”
“We are very good at staying out of view, Dean. How do you think our organisation survived Stalin and the regimes that have followed?”
“Fuck if I know and I don’t care. My mother has been imprisoned since I was eight years old, I haven’t been allowed to see her for the last two years – if you do exist, what good has your stupid underground organisation been to me and my family? And why come crawling out of the woodwork now to help me?”
“Why now? Because we have work for you, and because the man you’ve been told to kill is your brother.”
“What?” All the air seemed to be sucked from Dean’s lungs, as if he’d stepped into a vacuum chamber. Castiel was talking, but it was hard to distinguish the angel’s low rumbling words from the rushing of blood in Dean’s head. He tried to focus on the important facts – Samuel Colt was Sam Winchester, Dean’s long lost little brother. Kazukov was trying to get Dean to murder his own brother. By the time Dean had absorbed this news, Castiel had moved to another, equally devastating topic.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t do anything about Kazukov moving Mary to Preispodnyaya after your abortive attempt to get her out of Butugichag Gulag. It took us nearly a year to track her down, and when we finally found her, she was very ill. The Angels managed to get me into Preispodnyaya as a guard, but it was difficult for me to get close to her. Kazukov had her locked down tight, and of course, even when I did reach her, she was reluctant to trust me at first.”
Dean’s knees gave out and he slid to the floor, and not even the warmth of the chimney on his back could chase the cold out of his bones. He knew where this was going and he didn’t want to hear it. He ran a trembling hand over his face.
“I had to try and get her away from Butugichag.” Dean’s voice was quiet, he didn’t know if Castiel could even hear him but that wasn’t important, not really. He was talking more to his mother than to any listening ear. “The moment I found out Kazukov had sent her to Death Valley, I knew I had to do something. The uranium… but then they said they’d moved her though nobody was willing to tell me where, so I’d hoped…”
“I understand, Dean, but there was nothing you could have done. Even if you had managed to free her back then, the radiation had already taken hold; she had been exposed for too long.”
Dean tried to take a steadying breath through the growing pain in his chest, but it shuddered as he exhaled.
Mom. She had been the only family he had left, the one person in this world who loved him. He’d been tasked with protecting her and he’d failed spectacularly. It didn’t matter that he’d only been a child when he had been taken away from her. He’d had one job to do, and he’d failed his charge, and failed her.
There was no point in asking Castiel if Mary had suffered, hoping for platitudes, because Dean knew full well that radiation poisoning was not an easy death. The tight material of his Condorman suit felt suddenly constraining. His fingers tangled in the fastening at his throat and he tugged at the cloth that was choking him. Castiel was still talking, but that low voice was mere buzzing in Dean’s ears. He had to get a grip; he mustn’t give in to emotion now, because this news wasn’t merely about Dean’s grief. It was about the potential for freedom. And saving Sam.
But before Dean could get his mind straight, there was one important promise the Angel had made earlier that hadn’t yet been fulfilled.
Dry-eyed, Dean looked up at Castiel. “You said you had a message from my mother.”
:::
Continued in Part 2
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Date: 2015-02-19 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-19 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-19 09:39 pm (UTC)I'll take a look at this, thanks x
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Date: 2015-02-19 09:53 pm (UTC)Edition 3,141
Date: 2015-02-20 04:29 am (UTC)