Oktoberfest '09: Crossover, by Callie

[callie-chan.livejournal.com]

Title: Crossover
Author: Callie
Beta: Fam
Word Count: 2,572
Rating: R for theme
Character(s): Schuldig, Dean Winchester, Artemis Fowl, mentions of Sam Winchester and Badou Nails
Pairing(s): None
Summary: Some of the other institutes are much worse than Landel's, and some of Martin Landel's escapees will get to discover this firsthand at Kramer's Institute.
Notes: My second attempt at an Oktoberfest fic, this one within acceptable parameters. |D I've, uh, actually crossed over Damned with the Saw franchise, since it is now officially Halloween and I figure that terror and gore is about as Halloween as you can get. I was originally going to do several characters or groups of characters undergoing several different tests(and leaving the outcomes up in the air), but in the end I didn't have any other original ideas - even the one I used isn't hugely new - and I didn't want to just recycle ones that the movies actually use, so I limited it to just writing all the way through the one I started with.

Finally, I sort of used Kes' Oktoberfest fic/picture story as a springboard in regards to the characters being caught and taken to this new institute. :3

The room was small and dark, with one door - no handle, Dean noted grimly, not that this really surprised him. He didn't really know what to expect out of this new institute - though he could definitely cross 'improved living conditions' off the nebulous list - but generally fucking with them in every possible way seemed like as safe a bet as any.

And he got to experience it all with Schuldig, who was still unconscious - and who, he could see, he'd been chained to by collars around their necks. Yeah, this was just awesome.

Actually, the telepath was finally stirring, though when he lifted his head Dean jerked back reflexively in alarm. He couldn't stop staring even as Schuldig realized what Dean had already seen and his hands flew to his lips - someone had actually sewn the guy's lips shut. Even though Dean distrusted and borderline hated the telepath, and had often thought of shutting him up forcibly, this was going too far. And it was unsettingly new - not that he hadn't seen worse, but this was a lot more extreme than anything that had happened at the last institute(outside of the nighttime experiments, at least), and that had some disturbing implications.

As clearly alarmed and infuriated as Schuldig was, something had clattered to the ground when he'd brought his hands up, and after a few long moments during which he clearly came to the conclusion that there was nothing he could do about his mouth at the moment, he picked up what had apparently been tucked into his hand - a microcassette recorder. Meeting Dean's gaze and shrugging, he pressed the play button.

"Hello. You and your friends tried to break into my institute tonight, and failed. Now you are my guests, and my guests learn something about me very quickly: I like to play games. These games are difficult to win, but you will benefit if you're willing to do what it takes, and if you follow the rules.

So here's the game.

I know you, Dean Winchester. I know you're a hunter; that you pursue and destroy the evil and unnatural. I also know that, due to your own prejudices, you're all too ready to decide for yourself what is evil and unnatural. And as someone who identifies as human, your judgment is naturally fallible.

But here before you is a man who embodies everything you distrust and despise. By his own admission, he's done terrible things - he is evil. And the powers he possesses are unnatural to the highest order, even at their most benign. Here and now, he has no more power than you, no advantages...save, perhaps, a lack of scruples.

I also know you, Schuldig. A man with amazing powers, at the cost of incredible suffering. Your abilities have martyred you, but you've used them as an excuse to inflict equal suffering upon the world in general acts of vengeance for everything you've had to endure. You are a victim who endlessly creates more victims.

Now you face judgment, in the shape of a man who knows what you are and, if not what you've done, enough to guess. He is judgmental, closed-minded, defines you by something you have no control over...in short, he is everything you cannot stand about humanity, and he has been given the power to condemn you. You cannot plead your case to him, cannot twist words or thoughts to suit you. You, who loathes and distrusts others, who knows only cruelty, must look to your cellmate for mercy...or you can try to ensure your survival.

Your lives are bound together tonight; the chain between you is attached to triggers on your respective collars. There are retracted blades lining the inside of those collars on a spring mechanism; if a trigger is pulled, however, the blades will extend to predictable result. Detaching yourself from your cellmate will kill them instantly, and free you. After sixty minutes have elapsed, the collars will activate automatically. But there is one way for both of you to get out alive, if you care to look; it's on the tip of your tongue.

Live or die; make your choice."

Dean hadn't been paying much attention to the thick metal collar, other than as an annoyance, up until moments ago, but now it felt like an unbearable weight. Just the thought of those blades so close to his throat made his hands itch with the desire to just...tear the thing off, but he didn't like the sound of 'spring-loaded' (especially as it related to 'blades') and didn't want to mess with it.

"That bastard," he ground out, finally, because he wasn't sure what else to say. Schuldig couldn't answer him anyway...but he really didn't like the thought of a silence during which there was nothing for them (especially Schuldig) to contemplate except setting off the collar around each other's throats. "I wouldn't lose any sleep over killing you, no offense, but I ain't gonna do it to play this freak's sick little game." Glaring at Schuldig, he added, "But I better not see your hand go toward that chain, either. I will kill you if I have to."

Schuldig rolled his eyes, which Dean assumed was his way of communicating 'duh', and slowly got to his feet with a grimace twisted slightly by the thread over his lips...and immediately began messing with it, much to Dean's disgust. "You don't think maybe this's a little more important than getting your mouth open?" he growled, and received absolutely no acknowledgment. He didn't know how this new head doctor or whoever he was had come by all the information about them - maybe the institutes kept in contact with each other or something - but clearly he knew a match made in hell when he saw one.

After the passing of several precious minutes, Dean had honestly begun to wonder if Schuldig had lost it - what good did a free mouth do if they didn't get free before they both died? - when a sudden snapping sound and a deep sigh of relief was quickly followed by the less-than-pleasant sight of Schuldig sliding the stitches out of his own skin before dropping the bloody mess on the floor and...spitting out a key into his hand.

"Sick," Schuldig agreed dryly, glancing up at Dean and displaying the key. "These things must have a lock..."

"Right side," Dean directed, having a much better view of Schuldig's collar than his own. "Watch the chain."

Not even bothering to acknowledge the warning, Schuldig reached around to press the key into the lock - only for a frown to form and deepen as no noticeable progress was made. "It won't turn," he muttered.

It only took Dean a second or two to come to the obvious conclusion. "It's part of the game; he gave you my key."

"Then you must have mine," Schuldig replied, glancing over. "Look around."

"I think I'd've noticed." Still, Dean patted himself down three times looking, and cast around on the floor near him as well; no key. "Sure you don't have both?"

"Too easy," Schuldig replied flatly. "I think there is only one key."

One key - his key - and Schuldig had it. And, as far as Dean could tell, no good reason to give it to him, if there was no way out of his own collar. Oh, yeah, the guy who ran this place was a grade A asshole. The only way out for Schuldig was, apparently, to kill him, and his only way out involved talking the most selfish jackass he knew into being altruistic, or killing him.

"He said there was a way out of this for both of us," Dean said carefully, keeping a close eye on the chain, and on Schuldig's hands. "You're the telepath; can't you just, I don't know - "

"Read his mind? While we're in his institute?" Schuldig laughed. "Are you serious? His mind will be buttoned down tighter than any other. I can't even find it. And do you trust him? He might have been lying just to draw the game out. If it was just a game of who draws first, we'd have both grabbed in the first ten seconds, maybe killed each other simultaneously. Where's the psychodrama in that?"

"Why just have one of us kill the other, though?" Dean asked, trying to move his own hand closer to the chain without being obvious about it. If Schuldig went for it, he either wanted to beat the bastard to it, or at least repay the favor.

"Why any of this?" Schuldig gestured expansively. "Your guess is as good as mine. We just know that this is the way he wanted it."

"Look, just...give me the key," Dean said finally, seeing no reason to beat around the bush any further. "We're running out of time. Either you give it to me, or I have to kill you to take it."

"I could always kill you first, and then the key won't matter," Schuldig countered.

Dean felt muscles in his jaw tighten of their own volition. "Yeah, you could try."

Schuldig gave him a bloody smirk, which somehow managed to be even less appealing than his usual ones. "He's made it so I wouldn't have to try very hard, you realize."

Dean gritted his teeth and would have made some comeback if an image hadn't come to his mind then - nothing more than a thought of what the collar would look like when the blades popped out, which was hard not to think about under the circumstances - but thinking about it from a technical standpoint, without a neck inside, made the solution suddenly obvious. It was simple in the way an optical illusion was simple; once he'd seen it, he wondered how he'd managed to miss it even for as long as he had. "Alright," he said, with as much patience as he could muster knowing that their time was running down(and not knowing how much was already gone; it didn't feel like it had been too long, but how could he be sure?). "I've figured out how we both walk away from this, so listen up."

Schuldig gave him a skeptical look, but kept his mouth shut. Maybe the stitches had helped teach him how.

"You give me the key, right? Then I take off my collar. After it's off, you can trigger it, and that'll unlock yours, or deactivate it, or whatever it's supposed to do. We both live." Dean held out a hand. "So c'mon, before it becomes a moot point."

"And you're sure that will work?" Schuldig looked dubious...but apparently it sounded like a good enough plan for him to judge it worth trying, as he did in fact hold out the key.

"You sure this guy won't kill us both anyway, just for kicks? It's got as much chance of working as anything else." Dean plucked the key from the telepath's fingers and, with some fumbling - the thing was still bloody from Schuldig's mouth - managed to turn it in the lock, at which point the collar hinged open so abruptly that he nearly lost his balance before he could get it off his neck. He dropped it to the floor with a clang and rolled his shoulders; it had to have weighed twenty pounds, maybe more. "Now try yours."

Schuldig clearly didn't need the invitation; walking up to the collar and carefully bracing it with his foot, he gave a sharp yank on the chain, and Dean was immediately treated to a glittering display of what could easily have been the end of his life. "Nice toy's this guy has," Dean muttered, mostly to himself.

A sharp tinkling noise on the floor caused both men to look up as a key - dropped, apparently, through a small grate in the ceiling - bounced to the floor nearby. Dean, no longer tethered, picked it up first and offered it to Schuldig, who immediately fitted it into the lock and dragged his own collar off with impressive speed. Before the echoes of it hitting the floor had even fully died away, a strangely familiar click signalled the opening of the door; while the games the institutes played varied, some things were apparently universal.

"Thanks," Schuldig said finally, and curtly, as they both headed for the door. There was a distinct 'I'll deny this if you ever tell anyone I said it' overtone. "I hope I never see you again."

"Oh, likewise," Dean assured him. Being an ungrateful dick wasn't grounds to kill someone, so he didn't find himself regretting not pulling the chain while he had the chance...but he did kind of miss how nice and quiet Schuldig had been for a few minutes there.

-----

Deeply shaken - as always; Kramer's games never ceased to be inventive, he was beginning to suspect - Artemis staggered out of his 'playground' for the night. One test a night; that was the way it seemed to work. One more night survived, one more night that Schuldig and Badou hadn't come for him. Down the hall, he could see Sam slumped against the wall, covered in cuts from whatever his ordeal might have been; as a rule, most of the subjects didn't talk about their games, since they were usually too traumatic or too personal (or both) to recount. He didn't see many of the others yet; he could only pray that they were still in the midst of their games, and hadn't been eliminated. There was one guy down at the end of the hall, and that red hair looked strangely familiar -

When a hand landed on his shoulder, he nearly jumped out of his skin. "Found you."

Whirling, Artemis' jaw dropped. "Schuldig?" He might have hugged his friend, but the blood and marks around his mouth caught his attention first. "What happened...? Oh, god, you didn't get caught..."

"Unfortunately," he replied with a slight shake of his head. "You've been fielding these tests every night?"

"Yes..." The sight of a familiar face - of one of his family, as they'd been informally dubbed - the boy felt a hysterical breakdown of relief threatening, but mastered it - largely because of the man standing beside Schuldig who looked passingly familiar, and entirely embarrassing to lose control in front of. "Are you...Dean?" he ventured. Oh, Sam would be ecstatic that his brother had been pulled in...Kramer would probably do something horrible to them together the first chance he got.

"Yeah," Dean replied distractedly; he had clearly already seen Sam. "'Scuse me." He was striding over almost before the words had left his mouth, Artemis noticed.

Looking back up at Schuldig, he bit his lip. "I'm glad to see you, but...you know what I mean when I say it's awful you're here. I was expecting you and Badou to rescue me again...did he get caught, too?"

"Probably. But don't worry," he added when Artemis' face fell, seeming largely unconcerned. "We've broken out of one institute already. Just because this one works differently doesn't mean it can hold us any more than the last one did." Still, Artemis noticed, he was rubbing a hand over his bloodied lips.