In which they do some kidnapping. Or stealing. Whatever.
[Cowritten with smart_alec494. Sam = imnot_likeyou, Dean = hasperkynipples, everyone else is an NPC. Set after THIS.]
"Dude, I told you this was a bad idea."
Dean glanced back at the cot where his brother was stretched out and gave him a glare. "Shut up."
Sam wasn't shutting up. "I told you that trying to sneak in to a covert government facility was a bad idea. I told you that we were going to get caught. I told you that the kid probably didn't want our help. But did you listen? Nope. You just ran in half-cocked, just like you always do, and now we're stuck in a cell in the covert government facility, and we're probably never going to see the light of day again."
Dean turned back to Sam again and gave him more of a look this time. "Dude. Don't be so dramatic. Our exit will be here any minute."
Sam huffed slightly, before lacing his fingers behind his head. "You know, we're not twenty anymore, dude. Are you ever going to grow out of making us run into stupid situations?"
"No."
Sam started to open his mouth, as though he had a prepared response to that, before he shook his head, leaning back against the cot again. "Why do I even bother?"
"Shut up."
Their conversation was interrupted when the door opened. The room held several cells, all of the other's empty at the moment. Two guards came up hauling someone between them. The person was rag doll limp in hospital scrubs and had bare feet. He wasn't quite unconscious though. Though maybe it would have been better if he was. He looked both white with cold and green like he wanted to be sick. "Man, I wish they would either knock them out or leave them with enough sense to at least walk."
"No shit. It's a little creepy. Especially this series. And Christ they're heavy." He opened the cell door next to Sam and Dean's and they deposited their burden on the floor with out any sort of real care. They were careful that his head didn't hit, but they left him in a heap like laundry.
He curled up a bit as the barred door was locked and the guards left. It was pretty clear that he didn't care much about his surroundings. Or much of anything for that matter. He was a far cry from the young man that had given them such a hard time in the sewers.
Sam had managed to get to his feet at that point, hands on the bars next to his brother as he looked around and tried to get a handle on what was going on. When they both saw the kid get dropped in, Dean was about to say something to the guards, but Sam elbowed him in the ribs, cutting him off before he could start. Dean shot him a look, and Sam just rolled his eyes.
"We don't exactly know what's going on, Dean."
"Doesn't mean they have an excuse to not treat him like a person," Dean snapped back, before peering around the edge of the bars towards the kid on the floor. He shifted a bit, trying to get his arm through to see if he could reach him. "Hey, kid. You alright?"
494's eyes tracked up to them, blinked a couple of times and then closed. He didn't want to talk to anyone.
Dean watched him for a minute, before closing his eyes and turning away from the wall. He really didn't blame him for not wanting to talk -- it was probably somewhat their fault that he was here in the first place. He moved to sit down on one of the cots in the cell, before glancing down at his watch. "Where the hell is she?"
"Probably took her some time to get a read on the GPS," Sam said with a sigh. "You know she's not going to be happy when she gets us, right?"
"Yeah, well -- what else is new?" Dean snorted. "She usually finds some reason to smack us around. Girl has no respect for her elders."
From his puddle on the floor 494 made a noise that could have been a sigh, a pained noise, or a snort of amusement. Even he didn't know which it was. He wanted to sleep.
Sam heard the noise and turned his head back towards him, watching him for a moment before trying to talk to him again, because clearly he was listening. "I'm Sam, by the way, since we didn't really get the chance to introduce ourselves before. And that's my brother, Dean."
His eyes were still closed. "String Bean and Old Man. Got it."
Dean rolled his eyes at the wall, as he was now out of view. "I ain't that old. Seriously."
"You called me kid." He didn't think he needed to elaborate more than that. The talking didn't agree much with what ever it was they had fed into his blood stream. He was supposed to be quiet and listen, not talk. He made a low unhappy noise and curled up more.
Sam made a bit of a sympathetic face at the sound as Dean got up again, moving towards the door and sliding his arms through the door of the cell. He exhaled slowly, before starting to glance around again. "Are you sure that thing is working?"
"Yes, Dean, I'm sure. I hit the alarm button as we were getting grabbed, Jen should be here as soon as she gets a lock on the signal."
"Maybe something's wrong with the signal. I mean, this place could have blocking equipment or something."
"Yeah, maybe," Sam sighed, starting to look around. "Maybe not. Either way, we should be popping out of here sometime soon."
494 made a small mental effort to sort out what they were talking about, but it only made his head hurt worse, which made the nausea worse by extension. Maybe he shouldn't try to fight the drugs which wanted him pliant and without thought. He lay there and tried to breath through his mouth and not think about being sick.
Dean was about to say something in response to that when there was a puff of smoke in the cell behind him, and both brothers started coughing at the intrusion. "I," she began, glaring at them as she looked between them, "have a bone to pick with the two of you."
"Can it wait?" Sam replied with an innocent look, to which she glared back at them, before starting to take both their hands in hers, before Dean cut her off.
"Wait!" Dean replied, before reaching forward to grab a hold of the nearest part of Alec he could reach, and turning back to Jen before he could react and shove him off. "Now!"
Jen opted for move first, argue with them later. Teleporting isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world -- kind of like being shoved through a tube that was two sizes two small, and she needed all her focus on that, rather than how pissed she may or may not have been at the Winchesters. When they arrived at their destination, all four of them dropped onto the living room floor a little bit harder than they should have.
494 rolled himself into a tight little ball, his whole being focused on the all consuming nausea and headache. He wheezed, and then mewled. One hand covered his mouth tightly. Somewhere in the back of his head he knew me might have bigger issues. But right now? It was all about the pounding in his head and the rolling in his stomach.
"Uh, he doesn't look so good." Anna had been on the couch when the four people landed in the living room, managing to yank her feet out of the way before the person she didn't recognize landed on top of them. She saw the hand go to his mouth in the universal sign for "I'm gonna upchuck" before she muttered some curses under her breath and reached for a small trashcan that was nearby, placing it down next to him should he feel the need to use it. "First time, huh?" she frowned crouching down next to him with a sympathetic smile. "I totally puked my first time around too."
He grabbed the can, but in all honesty it was dry heaving, which is always somehow worse. But it wasn't like the fed him in psy-ops. That was a good way to have him do something exactly like this, choke and die. Eventually he looked up and around with wide terrified eyes.
"You're in Colorado," Anna said slowly. "Avon, to be exact. You caught a ride with Sam and Dean -- " She gestured back over her shoulder to the two men who Jen was now dragging off by the ear to argue with them elsewhere. " -- on the Jen express, and they brought you out here. You're safe." In the sense that no one here was going to hurt him. It was a simple enough connotation, but she didn't know if he would feel the same way. "I'm Anna," she continued, before gesturing over her shoulder as Mama came into the room, glass of water in her hand. "And that's Mama."
"Just take slow sips, baby," the older woman said as she handed him the glass. "Don't try and over do it too much. Teleporting has a way of really making your head spin."
He didn't take the water but he did move back away from them and shook his head. "This. . .isn't were I supposed to me." It was quiet and utterly horrified.
"Probably because those boys didn't do you the common courtesy of telling you how they were escaping, just grabbed you and yanked you out." Mama shook her head slightly, before placing the glass down on the coffee table and starting to reach for his arm gently. "C'mon, honey. Let's get you up on the couch, and we'll explain it all, alright? Maybe get you something warm to eat?"
Oh no, no one was anyone touching him. No way. He hated it anyway and after psy-ops just. .. just no. He yanked his arm away. "Don't. Don't. Put me back."
Mama held up her hands in surrender, giving him his space, before glancing over at Anna. "I got this," the girl nodded, and Mama sighed slightly, before standing up again, and glancing over at the glass, deciding to leave it there for the time being.
"I'll be in the kitchen if you need me."
Anna nodded, before shifting to sit on Alec's side -- not close enough to touch him, because she'd already figured out that was a no-go, but close enough that she had to turn her head to talk to him. "We can put you back, but it's gonna take a little time. Jen needs to recharge her batteries if you want to go back the way you came, and if you'd rather just drive -- Dean doesn't have his car, and the other two cars are both out on jobs, so it's gonna take some time for them to get back. So you're stuck, at least for a few hours, anyway. But we're not gonna hurt you, and we can explain everything -- you just gotta give us a bit of a chance here."
That was so not what he wanted to hear. "Now. Needs to be now. Before they notice." But he knew it was to late. There were cameras every where. He grabbed the trash can as his stomach turned over again.
Anna frowned slightly at his response, before looking over at the Winchesters as they came back into the room. "Where did you find this guy again?"
Dean shrugged as he rubbed the shoulder that was no doubt the one Jen had whacked him on. "Dunno. Some weird government facility in the mountains."
She processed that for a moment, before giving him a look. "You kidnapped someone from a government facility. Are you asking to go to prison for the rest of your life?"
"Oh, c'mon, I couldn't just leave him there," Dean sighed, glancing over at 494 with softer look. "They were barely treating him like a human being. Besides, how're they going to find us, anyway? It's not like we left a trail to follow. We just went poof! and we were gone."
"This is the government, Dean," Anna replied rolling her eyes, as she crossed her legs, Indian-style, in front of her. "I'm sure they have a way of making sure that they keep track of their interests."
He looked up at Dean and sniffled through his now stuffed nose. He hated have a stuffed nose. He depended on it to much. "Put me back. You can't. . . I don't. Put me back. He huddled up away from all of them. His hands pressed to his temples like it would stop the pounding.
Dean sighed slightly, before looking over at Anna. "Where are the cars?"
"Roxanne and Seth went after a haunting in Chicago, so they're not going to be back for a few days," Anna sighed softly, before placing a hand over her eyes as she thought. "Jen's Prius is in the shop, I'm assuming your Impala is still wherever it was, and the Walkers are on their way in from New Orleans -- they had to take care of some kind of zombie thing for Angeline -- but they won't be here till tonight, at least."
"And Jen's not about to teleport him back -- not until she gets some rest anyway," Sam sighed. "So we won't be able to take him back for a while."
Dean nodded slowly, tapping his fingers against his thighs lightly for a moment, before looking over at the kid again. "Is it gonna be bad, when we bring you back? Even if it wasn't your fault?"
"You stole me." Did that really answer the question? Not really.
"Yeah, I did," he replied sullenly, not exactly sounding apologetic about it. "I do that sometimes. Me and Sammy here lived off credit card fraud for years. That doesn't answer my question."
"I let you steal me." He sounded miserable. And vaguely terrified.
Dean ran a hand over his face, before moving to sit down in one of the chairs near him. "Look, I'm sorry if I got you in trouble, alright? But I figured with the way they were treating you, anywhere was better than there." He paused for a moment, before leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "You really wanna go back, we'll take you back, but we can't do it right this minute."
"Already in trouble. They can treat me how ever they want."
"No, they can't," Dean replied. "Just because they keep you in a cage doesn't mean that you don't also deserve to be treated with respect."
"Gotta be in working order to get that." he huddled and shivered. Psy-ops was cold. Freezing. And it got down to his bones.
Dean started to open his mouth again, and Anna cut him off with a look. "Not helping," she sighed, before turning back to Alec with a sympathetic look. "I get that you're worried about going back, okay? But that doesn't change the fact that unless you intend on walking -- which you really don't look like you're in any shape to be doing -- you're not leaving here anytime soon. So you might as well just relax and enjoy it for a little while. Maybe have something to eat? Mama's a really good cook -- best food I've ever had."
Walking. That was a brilliant idea. Why hadn't he thought of it? He nodded. "I can walk." He pulled himself to his feet and only wavered a little. Determination. He still felt beyond awful, but now he had a plan.
Anna looked up at him from where she was sitting, before sighing and pushing herself to her feet. "Do you realize how far that is?"
"Approximately 337 miles from Colorado's northern border." He took a determined step towards the door.
"That's a lot of walking," Anna replied crossing her arms in front of her chest as she watched him go.
"He's gonna walk how far?" Mama poked her head out of the kitchen at this point. "Oh, no. He's not going anywhere until he's got a proper meal in his stomach. I ain't gonna be responsible for him passin' out on the side of a road somewhere because he didn't eat anything." She paused, before turning to look at Alec and actually speaking to him this time. "We're having steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Finish your plate, and you're free to do whatever you like. It'll take you hours to get wherever you're going anyway, so waiting another hour to eat something won't kill you."
He shook his head. "No." He couldn't stay here. He couldn't. He took another step towards the door.
At that, Mama had one hand on her hip and one braced against the door frame of the kitchen. "Boy, you move another step and I'll beat you with this spoon." He clearly didn't want to be reasoned with, but who said that Mama was trying to reason. She was giving an order and he better listen.
"Mama, I don't think that's helping," Dean said with a sigh. "But she does have a point about walking on an empty stomach."
494 drew himself up to his full six feet, teenaged thin and sick as he looked right now. "You aren't my CO." He took another step.
Mama set her jaw slightly. "No, I'm not. But at the moment, I'm the one who's lookin' out for ya. Your CO ain't here. Maybe you should try thinkin' for yourself for right now as oppose to runnin' back to the people who don't seem to care about your well being."
"That's what got me into this mess. It always. Just. . .let me go and forget you ever saw me. Okay?" This was a bad, bad, bad day. He had to go before his body just stopped on him.
Mama moved over from the kitchen door, moving quickly enough to get in front of him and gave him a soft look. "Can't do that, honey. Wouldn't be able to live with myself if I let ya go and somethin' happened to you. Just indulge a friendly old lady who wants to cook ya a good meal. And if your CO has anything to say about it, he can come down here and deal with me himself."
His eyes widened in horror. "No. Nono." Clearly this was an utterly horrifying option. He didn't want anyone from Manticore meeting this lady. He edged around her carefully. It was getting harder and harder to stay on his feet.
Now that she was closer, she could see he wasn't faring so well. She watched him carefully for a moment, before glancing back towards the boys that had brought him. "Dean -- keep an eye on him."
Dean nodded slowly, before starting to follow him to the door, keeping a close eye on him to make sure he was still steady.
494 wasn't listening. They weren't talking to him so he didn't care. All he cared about was that no one was blocking his path anymore, bare feet silent as he padded out the door.
Dean followed him, hands in his pockets as he waited for whatever Mama thought she saw.
494 walked out of the house and looked up at the sky and then the shadows on the ground until he had the directions sorted out. Then he started walking. Steadily and carefully.
Dean just continued to follow him, watching him as he went to try and figure out what he was thinking.
He isn't thinking much of anything. At this point it's almost and instinctual drive to lessen punishment and conditioning with is to return to base. He walked, and then he wobbled, and then he slid gracefully down the side of a near by tree. And didn't get back up.
Dean smirked slightly as he made his way over, grateful that he was out cold so that he didn't have to haul him kicking and screaming back to the house. He braced himself, before hauling Alec up over his shoulder fireman-style, and making his way back. It wasn't that long of a walk, but it took a little longer with the extra load, but by the time he got there, Mama was standing on the porch with her arms crossed in front of her chest.
"Poor thing. Just put him down on the couch."
Dean nodded, making his way over to the couch and setting Alec down on it as gently as possible, before covering him with a blanket and leaving him there to rest for a while until he recovered.
Chemical unconsciousness eventually faded and blended into the heavy sleep of the badly abused. Eventually he curled up into a ball and tugged the blanket with him. His fingers fisted into the material and tucked it up under his chin as he huddled down into the warmth. His body temperature which has suffered in the cold of psy-ops began to climb until it reached the animal warmth that was his normal.
"Who's that?"
Dean glanced over at the small three year-old from where he was on the floor, spreading out the cars and toys for Blake to play with. The kid was pointing over to the kid they'd been keeping an eye on -- the kid they still didn't have a name for -- and Dean shifted so that he was laying on his stomach before responding. "We -- don't actually know. But he's a friend we're taking care of for a little while."
Blake seemed to take that as an answer, before turning back to look at him again. He studied him for a moment, before turning and walking back over to Dean. He plopped down on the floor, mimicking the older man's position before speaking again. "Kitty."
Dean raised an eyebrow at that one. "Kitty?"
Blake just nodded like he knew what he was talking about, before picking up the car and holding it out to Dean. "Make it make the splodey noises."
Dean took the car, watching the kid for a minute before shaking his head. "Okay then."
It was amazing how quickly some natural tendencies could assert themselves. Like slow waking. Which after another half hour or so he did. Or more accurately, he shifted stretched like a kitten, rolled over, curled up again and fell back into a lighter sleep.
Blake and Dean were busy reenacting a car chase from a movie, complete with car crashes and realistic noises that were followed by little boy giggles as he tried to mimic them. Dean glanced over at the person sleeping on the couch for a moment when he saw him move, but when he didn't wake completely Dean just let him be, going back to what he was doing. A little while later, Mama poked her head through the door of the kitchen, a small smile on her face.
"Dinner time, boys. You can finish destroying Tokyo afterward."
"Alright, little guy," Dean said with a sigh sliding his hands under Blake's arms and hauling him up off the floor and starting to walk them towards the kitchen. "Let's go eat."
"Whadabout him?" Blake asked, pointing back towards the couch.
"We're gonna let him sleep for a little bit longer," Dean said with a nod. "He'll eat later."
"Okay," Blake sighed, resting his chin on Dean's shoulder as they headed into the kitchen.
It wasn't to long after that that 494 woke fully. And was very, very confused. The panic of earlier had faded to a much more practical nervous worry. The nausea had mostly passed and the pounding in his head was almost gone. But the fact remained that he really didn't know where he was, and at this point had no idea how long he'd been there. He sat up slowly and stayed curled in the corner of the sofa, which was by far the most comfortable thing he'd ever slept on, and worried at his bottom lip while he tried to think.
Sam was on his way into the kitchen when he spotted him sitting up on the couch. He still looked a little worried, so Sam gave him his best friendly smile, before starting to make his way over to him. "Hey, you're awake. How're you feeling?"
"Confused." Yeah he was wary. And he'd really prefer if Sam kept out of arms reach.
Sam nodded for a moment, stopping a few feet away from him and keeping his hands in his pockets. "You're just outside Avon, Colorado, at one of the boarding houses on the road. Dean -- kidnapped you. Kind of. He had well-meaning intentions, if it helps. Which it probably doesn't."
"That just great. Seriously. I am overwhelmed by the awesome of this." His sarcasm could stop a freight train. "I'm interested in how you think we're all going to live past this little act of theft?" He raised an eyebrow at Sam, and tried to ignore how damned interesting everything smelled.
Sam stared back at him for a moment, before raising an eyebrow slightly in response. "We have a werewolf in the basement?" Which they did. Most of the time. "And you seemed pretty set on going back, so we were going to take you -- as soon as you had something to eat and were feeling a bit better. You were going to walk back, but you passed out on the way so we figured we should let you sleep."
"Werewolf. Even if I did believe you, it wouldn't really save you." He sighed, rubbed a hand over his face and then over the back of his neck. "Look you take me back and your ass is grass. I go back alone, well I'm fucked no matter what, but there's no reason to bring that down on you." Feeling better was going to be the least of his worries. Spare parts. He shuddered.
Sam smirked slightly at the skepticism, before shaking his head. "Look, me and my brother are a little strange in the respect that we don't back down from a fight easy. We've been fighting too damn long to start now, and if our ass is grass because some military dick doesn't like what we did, then I can think of worse ways to go down. Either way -- you're stuck with us for the time being. And we're not going to let you go in this alone if it's our fault that you got screwed over."
"It's my fault I got screwed over. I could have dealt with you and I chose not to. Therefore I take responsibility for everything you did that affected me. That's how it works. So just. . .back down okay? I make the problem I'll live with the clean up."
"Will you? Live with it?" Sam crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Because the way you're talking, you're making it sound like going back isn't exactly the best option in the world here."
"Why does it matter to you at all?" That's what he didn't get.
Sam looked down at the floor for a minute before shrugging. "Saving people -- is kind of our job. We're good at it." He paused. "It's pretty much the only thing we're good at, actually. And we don't know what you were involved in, or how you got there, but from what we saw back at whatever that place was -- no one should have to do that." He shifted again so that he was looking up at 494 again. "Now, granted, Dean tends to fly by the seat of his pants and do things without really thinking them all the way through, but -- I think he was kind of right on this one. You deserve make your own choices."
He paused, before moving to sit down in the armchair across from him. "Look, I get that we kind of took that away from you ourselves, by forcing you to come with us, and that wasn't fair, but you don't have to stick around here. You want to go back there, we'll take you back. You want to stay, you can stay. It's up to you."
494 just goggled at him for a moment. "Man, are you laboring under a misconception."
"And what's that?" Sam asked, a look saying that he was daring 494 to prove him otherwise.
"Both that I'm a person and that I get a choice." He shook his head. The longer he waited the harder it was to get up and leave. To walk head first into what he knew was waiting for him.
"Everyone has a choice," Sam said slowly. "Trust me, I know that more than most. And you seem like a person to me -- you think, have upper reasoning skills, know the difference between right and wrong. Those all seem like qualities a person has to me."
"How do you know I know the difference between right and wrong?"
"Because you said that you weren't supposed to let us go in the sewer and you did. You have a conscience. Whether or not you choose to actually acknowledge that fact, it's there. You're not mindless."
"You weren't in my mission parameters. I made a judgment error."
"You have judgment. That's another quality that tends to make someone a person," Sam said, letting his hands come to rest on his thighs.
"I just. . . I have to go before I can't anymore." He stood up. "You bring me back you're only buying yourself trouble you can't win against."
"That's not the first time someone's told us that," Sam said softly, watching him as he did. "But Mama's not letting you out that door without at least something to go. And if I were to just let you go before she noticed? I'll get my ass kicked. She scares me more than that Colonel Lydecker guy does."
494 startled at the name. "You've never seen him angry, and I'm not the only one like me there."
"My father is scarier than he is," Sam replied with a sigh. "I've seen little girls scarier than he is. And I know you aren't the only one there like you. But me and Dean are only two people. We can only save one person at a time."
"Think about what it means to have a leash on a weapon like me before you go judging what the Colonel is and is not capable of. And I wasn't talking about you 'saving' us. I was talking about you getting your ass removed and then handed to you.'
Sam paused for a minute before nodding. "That's happened to me before too. Doesn't really slow me down much."
". . . you're insane."
"I've been told that before as well," Sam sighed. "More often than you'd probably think."
"Just let me go before I either lose my nerve of force the issue." He was pleading a little. Dealing with people with out a goal was just not something he knew how to do.
Sam sighed heavily before shrugging. "If that's what you really want, I guess I can't stop you."
"What I want doesn't really play into it." His shoulders tensed like he was heading to gallows, which was pretty close to the truth, and he made his way to the nearest door.
"SAM! SamSamSamSamSam!" The pocket doors of the kitchen blew open and a three year-old blew into the room like a force of nature. He went to go say something to Sam, before he noticed 494 going to the door, and his eyes went wide. "Where's he going? He hasn't had dinner yet. We're gonna have cake."
Sam chuckled slightly, before going to scoop him up and sighed. "I don't think he wants any cake, buddy. He's got somewhere he has to be."
Blake turned and looked at 494 like he had just broken the laws of physics. "But it's cake. Why doesn' he want cake?"
Kids were something 494 had absolutely no idea what to do with. At all. Hell, he'd never even spoken to one really. "Uh. . ." Twenty-three million dollars went into his construction and training. And that's what he came up with.
Blake squirmed slightly, pushing himself out of Sam's arms before running over to him taking his hand gently in his. "C'mon you gotta come see. It's funfetti."
To say that 494 doesn't have any idea on how to deal with this would be an understatement. He just blinks at the kid.
That doesn't phase him the slightest, and he just tugs on 494's hand harder, pulling him towards the kitchen. "C'mon. It's funfetti, with 'rawberry icing, and sprinklies."
He is tugged along, because he is seriously out of his element. Throwing a kid at him was unfair.
Blake led him right back into the kitchen, past whatever was left of the family that was still eating dinner, mainly Dean and Mama. Blake only let go of his hand long enough to pull one of the chairs over to the counter, before climbing up and pointing to the cake, which was indeed iced with strawberry icing and sprinkles. "See? Cake. You gotta have some cake."
And all things are forgotten in the face of curiosity. His head tilts. He sniffs. His head tilts the other way and his eyes narrow a little. "What is it?"
Dean and Mama's heads both looked up from their plates, and Blake looked at him with wide eyes. "It's cake. You dunno what cake is?"
He just shook his head no.
Blake looked over at Mama like someone had kicked his puppy. "Mama, he dunno what cake is."
Mama gave him a small sympathetic smile, before looking over at 494. "You can have some if you want, but you gotta have a real meal first. Are you a bit more in the mood for steak and potatoes?"
He turned to look at the woman and then shrugged a little. His curiosity ate at him like a living thing. He would eat what he was told to eat. That's how his life worked.
She nodded, before getting up to make him a plate. "Have a seat, I'll get the food."
"Alright." He does so, feeling confused as hell. He wasn't sure exactly how he had ended up here.
Blake slid into the seat next to him, pushing himself up on his knees and looking at him intently. Dean chewed on another piece of his steak while he watched the kid for a moment, before shaking his head. "Blake, he's not going to talk to you if you keep staring at him."
Blake glanced over at Dean, before resting his chin in his hands as he looked at 494. "I just want some cake."
Mama ruffled his hair lightly as she placed the plate and utensils down in front of 494. "You can have some as soon as he finished his dinner, alright, baby?"
He sighed. "O-kay."
Now that it was in front of him 494 found that he was starving. Though half the food on the plate stopped him. Steak, yeah he got that, but the potatoes didn't look or smell normal. He was used to a baked potato. That's it. Just a potato. He sniffed. ". . . is there milk in the potato?" Because that was odd. He cut a piece of steak and ate it.
"Mmm-hmm," Mama said with a nod, as she cleared Dean's plate that he'd finished clearing, before gesturing him towards the sink to clean up. "Add some milk and butter to it when you mash 'em, makes 'em a little more creamy."
He used his fork to scoop a tiny bit up, his expression clearly stating that this was pretty weird, and took another sniff and then a lick.
Mama smirked slightly as she watched him, just handing off the pots to Dean as she wrapped up the leftovers, letting him discover the food however he may have wanted to.
He went back to the steak, still trying to decide if he liked the potatoes. Eventually he cleared the plate though. That, apparently, was what he had to do to indulge his curiosity on this whole cake thing.
Blake had been watching the entire time, and as soon as he finished, Blake turned back to Mama with an excited look. "He's finished, he's finished!"
494 gave him a sideways look.
Blake just looked at him innocently. Mama just shook her head before clearing the plate and leaving it on the sink next to Dean. As soon as that was done, she took out a large knife and cut up the cake, placing two slices on the plates and then placing them down in front of the two boys. Blake gave her a big grin before digging into the cake, shoving it into his mouth as best he could.
494 poked it first with his finger tip, because he's never come across something like this. It smelled sweet. Sweeter than the couple of cookies he'd ever had, but not sweet like fruit. He licked at the frosting that stuck to his finger in slow fascination and then ate a crumb of cake. This. . . this was pretty good. Better than the potatoes for sure. He took an actual bite and chewed slowly, savoring it.
Blake looked over at him, and then pointed at the cake. "It's got the sprinklies inside the cake and outside the cake. It's good."
He examined the colored spots in question. "I dunno. It's funny colored." He is clearly suspicious.
"So? That's what makes it cool, silly," Blake giggled, before going back to his own cake, strawberry icing smearing all over his face.
"It is?" He wasn't sure he bought that and ate around one of the spots.
Blake nodded eagerly. "It's like having twice as many!"
"Food isn't supposed to be that color." He reasoned right back.
"But that's what makes it so cool! They're the same color as Popsicles and -- and M&Ms and -- and Skittles -- "
One could guess from the blinking that the kid had lost 494 for some were near the beginning of that.
Blake's hands came up to brace the sides of his cheeks, and he gave him wide eyes. "You don't know what those are either?!?"
494 just shook his head and munch a little more cake.
Blake paused for a minute, before placing an icing covered hand on 494's arm. "I'm sorry." And he really, genuinely was.
494's head tipped as he considered this. "I made it this far. But thanks."
Blake sighed, before going back to his cake quietly. He made it so that he only had a bit of the cake left, before he looked back over at him again as he licked his fork. "Your head sounds like Miss Missouri's kitty." At that Dean turned his head sharply, giving Blake a bit of a look.
"Whadaya mean by that, buddy?"
Blake glanced over at Dean before shrugging. "Miss Missouri had a new kitty. His head sounds the same way the kitty does."
494, who had licked the sticky hand print from his arm and then gone back to his cake, blinked at Blake. "But kittens are young." And 494 wasn't young any more. That was his only confusion on the topic. Well that and the obvious. "How do you know what anyone's head sounds like?"
Blake gave him a bit "I dunno" shrug before Dean took a breath and tried to explain. "Blake's telepathic. It runs in his family, but he doesn't really know how to control it quite yet, so he gets stray thoughts and things sometimes, and he's a smart kid, so he's started figuring out thought patterns and stuff. Though communing with animals is something new."
"And Alice isn't a kitten. She's a biiiiiig kitty. Miss Missouri abopted her from the shelter," Blake gave a well-meaning nod at that one, before continuing to lick his fork.
"Huh." 494 could swallow the idea of a telepath. He knew they existed. Manticore's all were loony or worked for psy-ops. And if Blake had been an adult or done anything intrusive there would have been a problem. But he hadn't even felt a brush from the little boy. He licked frosting off his fork. "Alice sounds like a female, so we gotta be a little different there. And even if she is big. I bet I'm bigger." He used a finger to lift more frosting from his plate. The stuff as incredibly rich and he found he liked it quite a bit. "Though," He mused after a moment. "I bet she has claws. Lucky."
Blake made a bit of a face at that, before shaking his head as Dean picked him up off the chair and placed him in his lap, starting to clean Blake up with a napkin. "Not that much different. Just a little bit."
Dean tilted his head to the side slightly, before giving 494 a bit of a smirk. "You buy telepathy, but not shapeshifters and werewolves?"
"Seth's a bearwolf!" Blake said with a grin. "We have to lock him inna basement on the big moon days, so he doesn't hurt anybody."
494 continued to eat around the colored spots, still unsure about them. He directed his first comment at Blake because of the face he made. "She get you with her claws?" He paused. "How are we different?" Then he directed some attention to Dean. "Uh, yeah. I've dealt with telepaths. It's just quantum physics. Shapeshifters, werewolves? Not so much with the physics."
"More biology than physics," Dean said with a bit of a pointed look. "Shapeshifters are the way they are because of a mutation at birth -- a quirk in the genes. Werewolves? Spread more like a disease. You get bit by someone infected, and they transfer the disease to you."
"She doesn't sound like a person, too," Blake replied, looking back over at 494 once his face was clean. "She just sounds like a kitty. You sound like a kitty and a person. And Alice doesn't have walls in her head."
That sounded alarmingly plausible to 494. "A natural mutation?"
"Alice has most likely doesn't have anything to hide." He ponders that. "Must be nice to just be a kitty."
"As far as we know. Every shifter we've ever talked to say that they were born hideous, and became other people in order to escape that -- some of them went for retribution," Dean said with a shrug. "There's an explanation for most supernatural stuff -- people just choose not to believe in them."
"I dunno. All she wanted to do was sleep," Blake said with a shrug.
"And you think.. . .that wasn't my twin." He said to Dean. "I couldn't. . .I couldn't pick up his scent." Then almost reluctantly. "He should have gone up not down. We always go up. It was weird." He gave Blake a smile. "She wanted to sleep? Sounds like a smart lady."
Blake made a face like that, before Dean spoke up. "Shifters tend to stick to the sewers. They can shed down there and no one will think anything wiser of it, and most people don't venture down there unless they have to."
494 shook his head. "It was him. He knew too much to not be."
Dean sighed before continuing. "Shifters do this -- thing. It's really weird and really creepy, but the reason why they don't just kill you and take you place? Is because they psychically download your memories and thoughts in order to play you better. We ran into one guy that was robbing banks and jewelry stores, and he would tie up the people he was copying, and use them to get all the security codes, access information, everything."
"So. . .you think I still have a twin out there who's crackers. Great. Just. . . great." Double fail. He hunched a little and ate a blue spot like it was some sort of punishment. He was a little disappointed when he didn't just keel over.
"No! Nonononono," Dean shook his head slightly. "That's not what I'm saying. Your twin is probably as normal as he can get. The whole whackjob killing people thing? Was probably all him. Shifters are known for having a drive for something nasty and crazy. I got framed for a guy who built his way from aggravated assault to murder, I met another one who was impersonating characters from classic horror movies and using them to off people -- the crazy was probably all him, not your twin. He just got the information that he needed from him."
"Then why the weird suicidal tendencies?"
Dean frowned slightly at that, confused. "How do you mean?"
494 blinked like maybe Dean was slow. "The tat on ever one of the victims?" The fact that maybe he should be censoring the conversation for little boy ears didn't occur to him. He already knew how to kill when he was the kid's age.
"Oh." Psychology wasn't one of Dean's strong points. And Blake wasn't really paying attention. In fact, he was wriggling out of Dean's arms and running back into the living room, clearly bored with the conversation. "Well -- it could have been just him trying to throw more of the blame onto your twin. Maybe it picked up on something in your twin's psyche and mutated it." He paused for a minute. "I know when one of 'em did me, he picked up on the fact that I didn't really like being alone. And when he was rejected, as me, he used that as motive to attack. Maybe there's something about himself that your twin doesn't like -- and the shifter's just expressing it another way."
"Can you think of another reason why you would slap your identity on someone else and then off them when they weren't good enough?"
"Dude, it could seriously be as simple as your twin having low self-esteem," Dean said with a sigh. "Shifters -- they blow things up. Make them bigger than they already are. You know how nightmares are always more twisted and distorted than the real thing? That's what they do -- they turn feelings and emotions into nightmares."
"It's just. . . " It bothered him and he didn't know how to articulate it.
"I know. It's weird. And it's pretty damn believable," Dean leaned back in his chair and rested his hand on the table. "But I pretty much grew up hunting these things. I know how they think. They can twist a person around -- but they usually get it pretty wrong."
"He got a lot of it right, though." And 494 was the one getting it wrong now. Deserting. A traitor. because he hadn't gone back, and no he couldn't make himself. He thought about it and shook, but didn't stand. The cake and that one blue spot weight heavely in his stomach all of the sudden.
Dean closed his eyes for a minute, before rubbing the back of his neck lightly. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I can try to track your real twin down. We've got networks, we know where to look -- we could probably find him, just to confirm he's not a total nutjob."
"Maybe I'm the crazy one after all." His voice was suddenly quiet. "I shouldn't still be here." He shook his head. "I don't even know what's wrong with me."
"Nothing wrong with wanting to be somewhere that's not there."
"Kinda is. That's where I belong."
Dean considered that for a moment. "Just because you belong somewhere doesn't mean it's where you should be."
"Let me rephrase. I belong to them."
Dean's automatic response to that one was 'People don't belong to people' but he decided to curb that in favor of something less adversarial, for once. "Define 'belong'."
"Own. As in, you own your boots. At least I would assume you do."
"I do own my boots," Dean said softly. "And people don't own people, dude."
"Yeah, well, here's a little secret since things are pretty FUBAR anyway, might as well go for full on pear-shaped. I'm a weapon. Not a person. A very expensive weapon. You think something like this happens in nature?" He raised a skeptical eyebrow. "So, in fact, they can own me."
Dean shrugged. "I'm the kind of person who believes that anything can happen. Now, look -- you've got a heartbeat, you've got a brain, you make choices. You're a person. You may also be a weapon, but that's not the only thing you are. It's not like you're a robot. If you get cut, you bleed, just like me or Sam."
"No one built you Old Man."
"Supposedly God built me, and he's a bit of a dick, so I tend to ignore that end of the spectrum," Dean snorted, before looking over at him. "They didn't put you together like some kind of Frankenstein thing, did they?"
"On a genetic level they did." He finished picking around the spots and eating the rest of his piece of cake. He looked longingly at the rest of it on the counter but made himself stop. You are what you were given and shut up about it, no matter how many days it had been or how hungry you were.
"Okay. So they played with you genes," Dean said with a sigh. "You were still born the way most humans are born, right? Woman carried you for nine months, popped you out at the end?"
"You're thinking tweaking right? Eye color, maybe height. I'm talking the genetic equivalent of a hack saw or something. And she was a surrogate. She wasn't my mother. I don't have a mother."
"Dude. I don't care how much they screwed with your DNA, you were born the way a person is usually born. You're a person. You don't belong to anyone unless you let yourself belong to them."
494 four just shook his head a little and then looked down at his plate and said nothing. He wasn't what Dean thought he was. He just wasn.
Dean paused for a minute, taking his plate and cutting him another piece of cake, before cutting one for himself. He placed the plate down in front of 494, before sitting down and digging in to his own. "Look, kid. In the end, we're not going to keep you here against your will. If you want to stay, stay, if you want to go, go, but if you want to stay -- if you make the choice to stay -- we've got room for you."
"I don't know." He sounded a little desperate. No one had ever asked him what he wanted before. Not in any real way.
Dean moved his hand forward slowly, aiming to rest it on his shoulder, but not moving so quickly that 494 couldn't flinch away if he needed to. "Just think about it. When you decide, let us know."
Yeah, 494 wasn't ready to let anyone touch him yet, except for the very non threatening little boy. No one had ever laid a hand on him in comfort. He hunched away from the hand. "I don't. . ." He stopped bit his lip and took a bite of cake instead.
Dean held his hand back, before getting up and making his way towards the living room, plate in hand. "As I said -- when you figure it out, let us know."
"Dude, I told you this was a bad idea."
Dean glanced back at the cot where his brother was stretched out and gave him a glare. "Shut up."
Sam wasn't shutting up. "I told you that trying to sneak in to a covert government facility was a bad idea. I told you that we were going to get caught. I told you that the kid probably didn't want our help. But did you listen? Nope. You just ran in half-cocked, just like you always do, and now we're stuck in a cell in the covert government facility, and we're probably never going to see the light of day again."
Dean turned back to Sam again and gave him more of a look this time. "Dude. Don't be so dramatic. Our exit will be here any minute."
Sam huffed slightly, before lacing his fingers behind his head. "You know, we're not twenty anymore, dude. Are you ever going to grow out of making us run into stupid situations?"
"No."
Sam started to open his mouth, as though he had a prepared response to that, before he shook his head, leaning back against the cot again. "Why do I even bother?"
"Shut up."
Their conversation was interrupted when the door opened. The room held several cells, all of the other's empty at the moment. Two guards came up hauling someone between them. The person was rag doll limp in hospital scrubs and had bare feet. He wasn't quite unconscious though. Though maybe it would have been better if he was. He looked both white with cold and green like he wanted to be sick. "Man, I wish they would either knock them out or leave them with enough sense to at least walk."
"No shit. It's a little creepy. Especially this series. And Christ they're heavy." He opened the cell door next to Sam and Dean's and they deposited their burden on the floor with out any sort of real care. They were careful that his head didn't hit, but they left him in a heap like laundry.
He curled up a bit as the barred door was locked and the guards left. It was pretty clear that he didn't care much about his surroundings. Or much of anything for that matter. He was a far cry from the young man that had given them such a hard time in the sewers.
Sam had managed to get to his feet at that point, hands on the bars next to his brother as he looked around and tried to get a handle on what was going on. When they both saw the kid get dropped in, Dean was about to say something to the guards, but Sam elbowed him in the ribs, cutting him off before he could start. Dean shot him a look, and Sam just rolled his eyes.
"We don't exactly know what's going on, Dean."
"Doesn't mean they have an excuse to not treat him like a person," Dean snapped back, before peering around the edge of the bars towards the kid on the floor. He shifted a bit, trying to get his arm through to see if he could reach him. "Hey, kid. You alright?"
494's eyes tracked up to them, blinked a couple of times and then closed. He didn't want to talk to anyone.
Dean watched him for a minute, before closing his eyes and turning away from the wall. He really didn't blame him for not wanting to talk -- it was probably somewhat their fault that he was here in the first place. He moved to sit down on one of the cots in the cell, before glancing down at his watch. "Where the hell is she?"
"Probably took her some time to get a read on the GPS," Sam said with a sigh. "You know she's not going to be happy when she gets us, right?"
"Yeah, well -- what else is new?" Dean snorted. "She usually finds some reason to smack us around. Girl has no respect for her elders."
From his puddle on the floor 494 made a noise that could have been a sigh, a pained noise, or a snort of amusement. Even he didn't know which it was. He wanted to sleep.
Sam heard the noise and turned his head back towards him, watching him for a moment before trying to talk to him again, because clearly he was listening. "I'm Sam, by the way, since we didn't really get the chance to introduce ourselves before. And that's my brother, Dean."
His eyes were still closed. "String Bean and Old Man. Got it."
Dean rolled his eyes at the wall, as he was now out of view. "I ain't that old. Seriously."
"You called me kid." He didn't think he needed to elaborate more than that. The talking didn't agree much with what ever it was they had fed into his blood stream. He was supposed to be quiet and listen, not talk. He made a low unhappy noise and curled up more.
Sam made a bit of a sympathetic face at the sound as Dean got up again, moving towards the door and sliding his arms through the door of the cell. He exhaled slowly, before starting to glance around again. "Are you sure that thing is working?"
"Yes, Dean, I'm sure. I hit the alarm button as we were getting grabbed, Jen should be here as soon as she gets a lock on the signal."
"Maybe something's wrong with the signal. I mean, this place could have blocking equipment or something."
"Yeah, maybe," Sam sighed, starting to look around. "Maybe not. Either way, we should be popping out of here sometime soon."
494 made a small mental effort to sort out what they were talking about, but it only made his head hurt worse, which made the nausea worse by extension. Maybe he shouldn't try to fight the drugs which wanted him pliant and without thought. He lay there and tried to breath through his mouth and not think about being sick.
Dean was about to say something in response to that when there was a puff of smoke in the cell behind him, and both brothers started coughing at the intrusion. "I," she began, glaring at them as she looked between them, "have a bone to pick with the two of you."
"Can it wait?" Sam replied with an innocent look, to which she glared back at them, before starting to take both their hands in hers, before Dean cut her off.
"Wait!" Dean replied, before reaching forward to grab a hold of the nearest part of Alec he could reach, and turning back to Jen before he could react and shove him off. "Now!"
Jen opted for move first, argue with them later. Teleporting isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world -- kind of like being shoved through a tube that was two sizes two small, and she needed all her focus on that, rather than how pissed she may or may not have been at the Winchesters. When they arrived at their destination, all four of them dropped onto the living room floor a little bit harder than they should have.
494 rolled himself into a tight little ball, his whole being focused on the all consuming nausea and headache. He wheezed, and then mewled. One hand covered his mouth tightly. Somewhere in the back of his head he knew me might have bigger issues. But right now? It was all about the pounding in his head and the rolling in his stomach.
"Uh, he doesn't look so good." Anna had been on the couch when the four people landed in the living room, managing to yank her feet out of the way before the person she didn't recognize landed on top of them. She saw the hand go to his mouth in the universal sign for "I'm gonna upchuck" before she muttered some curses under her breath and reached for a small trashcan that was nearby, placing it down next to him should he feel the need to use it. "First time, huh?" she frowned crouching down next to him with a sympathetic smile. "I totally puked my first time around too."
He grabbed the can, but in all honesty it was dry heaving, which is always somehow worse. But it wasn't like the fed him in psy-ops. That was a good way to have him do something exactly like this, choke and die. Eventually he looked up and around with wide terrified eyes.
"You're in Colorado," Anna said slowly. "Avon, to be exact. You caught a ride with Sam and Dean -- " She gestured back over her shoulder to the two men who Jen was now dragging off by the ear to argue with them elsewhere. " -- on the Jen express, and they brought you out here. You're safe." In the sense that no one here was going to hurt him. It was a simple enough connotation, but she didn't know if he would feel the same way. "I'm Anna," she continued, before gesturing over her shoulder as Mama came into the room, glass of water in her hand. "And that's Mama."
"Just take slow sips, baby," the older woman said as she handed him the glass. "Don't try and over do it too much. Teleporting has a way of really making your head spin."
He didn't take the water but he did move back away from them and shook his head. "This. . .isn't were I supposed to me." It was quiet and utterly horrified.
"Probably because those boys didn't do you the common courtesy of telling you how they were escaping, just grabbed you and yanked you out." Mama shook her head slightly, before placing the glass down on the coffee table and starting to reach for his arm gently. "C'mon, honey. Let's get you up on the couch, and we'll explain it all, alright? Maybe get you something warm to eat?"
Oh no, no one was anyone touching him. No way. He hated it anyway and after psy-ops just. .. just no. He yanked his arm away. "Don't. Don't. Put me back."
Mama held up her hands in surrender, giving him his space, before glancing over at Anna. "I got this," the girl nodded, and Mama sighed slightly, before standing up again, and glancing over at the glass, deciding to leave it there for the time being.
"I'll be in the kitchen if you need me."
Anna nodded, before shifting to sit on Alec's side -- not close enough to touch him, because she'd already figured out that was a no-go, but close enough that she had to turn her head to talk to him. "We can put you back, but it's gonna take a little time. Jen needs to recharge her batteries if you want to go back the way you came, and if you'd rather just drive -- Dean doesn't have his car, and the other two cars are both out on jobs, so it's gonna take some time for them to get back. So you're stuck, at least for a few hours, anyway. But we're not gonna hurt you, and we can explain everything -- you just gotta give us a bit of a chance here."
That was so not what he wanted to hear. "Now. Needs to be now. Before they notice." But he knew it was to late. There were cameras every where. He grabbed the trash can as his stomach turned over again.
Anna frowned slightly at his response, before looking over at the Winchesters as they came back into the room. "Where did you find this guy again?"
Dean shrugged as he rubbed the shoulder that was no doubt the one Jen had whacked him on. "Dunno. Some weird government facility in the mountains."
She processed that for a moment, before giving him a look. "You kidnapped someone from a government facility. Are you asking to go to prison for the rest of your life?"
"Oh, c'mon, I couldn't just leave him there," Dean sighed, glancing over at 494 with softer look. "They were barely treating him like a human being. Besides, how're they going to find us, anyway? It's not like we left a trail to follow. We just went poof! and we were gone."
"This is the government, Dean," Anna replied rolling her eyes, as she crossed her legs, Indian-style, in front of her. "I'm sure they have a way of making sure that they keep track of their interests."
He looked up at Dean and sniffled through his now stuffed nose. He hated have a stuffed nose. He depended on it to much. "Put me back. You can't. . . I don't. Put me back. He huddled up away from all of them. His hands pressed to his temples like it would stop the pounding.
Dean sighed slightly, before looking over at Anna. "Where are the cars?"
"Roxanne and Seth went after a haunting in Chicago, so they're not going to be back for a few days," Anna sighed softly, before placing a hand over her eyes as she thought. "Jen's Prius is in the shop, I'm assuming your Impala is still wherever it was, and the Walkers are on their way in from New Orleans -- they had to take care of some kind of zombie thing for Angeline -- but they won't be here till tonight, at least."
"And Jen's not about to teleport him back -- not until she gets some rest anyway," Sam sighed. "So we won't be able to take him back for a while."
Dean nodded slowly, tapping his fingers against his thighs lightly for a moment, before looking over at the kid again. "Is it gonna be bad, when we bring you back? Even if it wasn't your fault?"
"You stole me." Did that really answer the question? Not really.
"Yeah, I did," he replied sullenly, not exactly sounding apologetic about it. "I do that sometimes. Me and Sammy here lived off credit card fraud for years. That doesn't answer my question."
"I let you steal me." He sounded miserable. And vaguely terrified.
Dean ran a hand over his face, before moving to sit down in one of the chairs near him. "Look, I'm sorry if I got you in trouble, alright? But I figured with the way they were treating you, anywhere was better than there." He paused for a moment, before leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "You really wanna go back, we'll take you back, but we can't do it right this minute."
"Already in trouble. They can treat me how ever they want."
"No, they can't," Dean replied. "Just because they keep you in a cage doesn't mean that you don't also deserve to be treated with respect."
"Gotta be in working order to get that." he huddled and shivered. Psy-ops was cold. Freezing. And it got down to his bones.
Dean started to open his mouth again, and Anna cut him off with a look. "Not helping," she sighed, before turning back to Alec with a sympathetic look. "I get that you're worried about going back, okay? But that doesn't change the fact that unless you intend on walking -- which you really don't look like you're in any shape to be doing -- you're not leaving here anytime soon. So you might as well just relax and enjoy it for a little while. Maybe have something to eat? Mama's a really good cook -- best food I've ever had."
Walking. That was a brilliant idea. Why hadn't he thought of it? He nodded. "I can walk." He pulled himself to his feet and only wavered a little. Determination. He still felt beyond awful, but now he had a plan.
Anna looked up at him from where she was sitting, before sighing and pushing herself to her feet. "Do you realize how far that is?"
"Approximately 337 miles from Colorado's northern border." He took a determined step towards the door.
"That's a lot of walking," Anna replied crossing her arms in front of her chest as she watched him go.
"He's gonna walk how far?" Mama poked her head out of the kitchen at this point. "Oh, no. He's not going anywhere until he's got a proper meal in his stomach. I ain't gonna be responsible for him passin' out on the side of a road somewhere because he didn't eat anything." She paused, before turning to look at Alec and actually speaking to him this time. "We're having steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Finish your plate, and you're free to do whatever you like. It'll take you hours to get wherever you're going anyway, so waiting another hour to eat something won't kill you."
He shook his head. "No." He couldn't stay here. He couldn't. He took another step towards the door.
At that, Mama had one hand on her hip and one braced against the door frame of the kitchen. "Boy, you move another step and I'll beat you with this spoon." He clearly didn't want to be reasoned with, but who said that Mama was trying to reason. She was giving an order and he better listen.
"Mama, I don't think that's helping," Dean said with a sigh. "But she does have a point about walking on an empty stomach."
494 drew himself up to his full six feet, teenaged thin and sick as he looked right now. "You aren't my CO." He took another step.
Mama set her jaw slightly. "No, I'm not. But at the moment, I'm the one who's lookin' out for ya. Your CO ain't here. Maybe you should try thinkin' for yourself for right now as oppose to runnin' back to the people who don't seem to care about your well being."
"That's what got me into this mess. It always. Just. . .let me go and forget you ever saw me. Okay?" This was a bad, bad, bad day. He had to go before his body just stopped on him.
Mama moved over from the kitchen door, moving quickly enough to get in front of him and gave him a soft look. "Can't do that, honey. Wouldn't be able to live with myself if I let ya go and somethin' happened to you. Just indulge a friendly old lady who wants to cook ya a good meal. And if your CO has anything to say about it, he can come down here and deal with me himself."
His eyes widened in horror. "No. Nono." Clearly this was an utterly horrifying option. He didn't want anyone from Manticore meeting this lady. He edged around her carefully. It was getting harder and harder to stay on his feet.
Now that she was closer, she could see he wasn't faring so well. She watched him carefully for a moment, before glancing back towards the boys that had brought him. "Dean -- keep an eye on him."
Dean nodded slowly, before starting to follow him to the door, keeping a close eye on him to make sure he was still steady.
494 wasn't listening. They weren't talking to him so he didn't care. All he cared about was that no one was blocking his path anymore, bare feet silent as he padded out the door.
Dean followed him, hands in his pockets as he waited for whatever Mama thought she saw.
494 walked out of the house and looked up at the sky and then the shadows on the ground until he had the directions sorted out. Then he started walking. Steadily and carefully.
Dean just continued to follow him, watching him as he went to try and figure out what he was thinking.
He isn't thinking much of anything. At this point it's almost and instinctual drive to lessen punishment and conditioning with is to return to base. He walked, and then he wobbled, and then he slid gracefully down the side of a near by tree. And didn't get back up.
Dean smirked slightly as he made his way over, grateful that he was out cold so that he didn't have to haul him kicking and screaming back to the house. He braced himself, before hauling Alec up over his shoulder fireman-style, and making his way back. It wasn't that long of a walk, but it took a little longer with the extra load, but by the time he got there, Mama was standing on the porch with her arms crossed in front of her chest.
"Poor thing. Just put him down on the couch."
Dean nodded, making his way over to the couch and setting Alec down on it as gently as possible, before covering him with a blanket and leaving him there to rest for a while until he recovered.
Chemical unconsciousness eventually faded and blended into the heavy sleep of the badly abused. Eventually he curled up into a ball and tugged the blanket with him. His fingers fisted into the material and tucked it up under his chin as he huddled down into the warmth. His body temperature which has suffered in the cold of psy-ops began to climb until it reached the animal warmth that was his normal.
"Who's that?"
Dean glanced over at the small three year-old from where he was on the floor, spreading out the cars and toys for Blake to play with. The kid was pointing over to the kid they'd been keeping an eye on -- the kid they still didn't have a name for -- and Dean shifted so that he was laying on his stomach before responding. "We -- don't actually know. But he's a friend we're taking care of for a little while."
Blake seemed to take that as an answer, before turning back to look at him again. He studied him for a moment, before turning and walking back over to Dean. He plopped down on the floor, mimicking the older man's position before speaking again. "Kitty."
Dean raised an eyebrow at that one. "Kitty?"
Blake just nodded like he knew what he was talking about, before picking up the car and holding it out to Dean. "Make it make the splodey noises."
Dean took the car, watching the kid for a minute before shaking his head. "Okay then."
It was amazing how quickly some natural tendencies could assert themselves. Like slow waking. Which after another half hour or so he did. Or more accurately, he shifted stretched like a kitten, rolled over, curled up again and fell back into a lighter sleep.
Blake and Dean were busy reenacting a car chase from a movie, complete with car crashes and realistic noises that were followed by little boy giggles as he tried to mimic them. Dean glanced over at the person sleeping on the couch for a moment when he saw him move, but when he didn't wake completely Dean just let him be, going back to what he was doing. A little while later, Mama poked her head through the door of the kitchen, a small smile on her face.
"Dinner time, boys. You can finish destroying Tokyo afterward."
"Alright, little guy," Dean said with a sigh sliding his hands under Blake's arms and hauling him up off the floor and starting to walk them towards the kitchen. "Let's go eat."
"Whadabout him?" Blake asked, pointing back towards the couch.
"We're gonna let him sleep for a little bit longer," Dean said with a nod. "He'll eat later."
"Okay," Blake sighed, resting his chin on Dean's shoulder as they headed into the kitchen.
It wasn't to long after that that 494 woke fully. And was very, very confused. The panic of earlier had faded to a much more practical nervous worry. The nausea had mostly passed and the pounding in his head was almost gone. But the fact remained that he really didn't know where he was, and at this point had no idea how long he'd been there. He sat up slowly and stayed curled in the corner of the sofa, which was by far the most comfortable thing he'd ever slept on, and worried at his bottom lip while he tried to think.
Sam was on his way into the kitchen when he spotted him sitting up on the couch. He still looked a little worried, so Sam gave him his best friendly smile, before starting to make his way over to him. "Hey, you're awake. How're you feeling?"
"Confused." Yeah he was wary. And he'd really prefer if Sam kept out of arms reach.
Sam nodded for a moment, stopping a few feet away from him and keeping his hands in his pockets. "You're just outside Avon, Colorado, at one of the boarding houses on the road. Dean -- kidnapped you. Kind of. He had well-meaning intentions, if it helps. Which it probably doesn't."
"That just great. Seriously. I am overwhelmed by the awesome of this." His sarcasm could stop a freight train. "I'm interested in how you think we're all going to live past this little act of theft?" He raised an eyebrow at Sam, and tried to ignore how damned interesting everything smelled.
Sam stared back at him for a moment, before raising an eyebrow slightly in response. "We have a werewolf in the basement?" Which they did. Most of the time. "And you seemed pretty set on going back, so we were going to take you -- as soon as you had something to eat and were feeling a bit better. You were going to walk back, but you passed out on the way so we figured we should let you sleep."
"Werewolf. Even if I did believe you, it wouldn't really save you." He sighed, rubbed a hand over his face and then over the back of his neck. "Look you take me back and your ass is grass. I go back alone, well I'm fucked no matter what, but there's no reason to bring that down on you." Feeling better was going to be the least of his worries. Spare parts. He shuddered.
Sam smirked slightly at the skepticism, before shaking his head. "Look, me and my brother are a little strange in the respect that we don't back down from a fight easy. We've been fighting too damn long to start now, and if our ass is grass because some military dick doesn't like what we did, then I can think of worse ways to go down. Either way -- you're stuck with us for the time being. And we're not going to let you go in this alone if it's our fault that you got screwed over."
"It's my fault I got screwed over. I could have dealt with you and I chose not to. Therefore I take responsibility for everything you did that affected me. That's how it works. So just. . .back down okay? I make the problem I'll live with the clean up."
"Will you? Live with it?" Sam crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Because the way you're talking, you're making it sound like going back isn't exactly the best option in the world here."
"Why does it matter to you at all?" That's what he didn't get.
Sam looked down at the floor for a minute before shrugging. "Saving people -- is kind of our job. We're good at it." He paused. "It's pretty much the only thing we're good at, actually. And we don't know what you were involved in, or how you got there, but from what we saw back at whatever that place was -- no one should have to do that." He shifted again so that he was looking up at 494 again. "Now, granted, Dean tends to fly by the seat of his pants and do things without really thinking them all the way through, but -- I think he was kind of right on this one. You deserve make your own choices."
He paused, before moving to sit down in the armchair across from him. "Look, I get that we kind of took that away from you ourselves, by forcing you to come with us, and that wasn't fair, but you don't have to stick around here. You want to go back there, we'll take you back. You want to stay, you can stay. It's up to you."
494 just goggled at him for a moment. "Man, are you laboring under a misconception."
"And what's that?" Sam asked, a look saying that he was daring 494 to prove him otherwise.
"Both that I'm a person and that I get a choice." He shook his head. The longer he waited the harder it was to get up and leave. To walk head first into what he knew was waiting for him.
"Everyone has a choice," Sam said slowly. "Trust me, I know that more than most. And you seem like a person to me -- you think, have upper reasoning skills, know the difference between right and wrong. Those all seem like qualities a person has to me."
"How do you know I know the difference between right and wrong?"
"Because you said that you weren't supposed to let us go in the sewer and you did. You have a conscience. Whether or not you choose to actually acknowledge that fact, it's there. You're not mindless."
"You weren't in my mission parameters. I made a judgment error."
"You have judgment. That's another quality that tends to make someone a person," Sam said, letting his hands come to rest on his thighs.
"I just. . . I have to go before I can't anymore." He stood up. "You bring me back you're only buying yourself trouble you can't win against."
"That's not the first time someone's told us that," Sam said softly, watching him as he did. "But Mama's not letting you out that door without at least something to go. And if I were to just let you go before she noticed? I'll get my ass kicked. She scares me more than that Colonel Lydecker guy does."
494 startled at the name. "You've never seen him angry, and I'm not the only one like me there."
"My father is scarier than he is," Sam replied with a sigh. "I've seen little girls scarier than he is. And I know you aren't the only one there like you. But me and Dean are only two people. We can only save one person at a time."
"Think about what it means to have a leash on a weapon like me before you go judging what the Colonel is and is not capable of. And I wasn't talking about you 'saving' us. I was talking about you getting your ass removed and then handed to you.'
Sam paused for a minute before nodding. "That's happened to me before too. Doesn't really slow me down much."
". . . you're insane."
"I've been told that before as well," Sam sighed. "More often than you'd probably think."
"Just let me go before I either lose my nerve of force the issue." He was pleading a little. Dealing with people with out a goal was just not something he knew how to do.
Sam sighed heavily before shrugging. "If that's what you really want, I guess I can't stop you."
"What I want doesn't really play into it." His shoulders tensed like he was heading to gallows, which was pretty close to the truth, and he made his way to the nearest door.
"SAM! SamSamSamSamSam!" The pocket doors of the kitchen blew open and a three year-old blew into the room like a force of nature. He went to go say something to Sam, before he noticed 494 going to the door, and his eyes went wide. "Where's he going? He hasn't had dinner yet. We're gonna have cake."
Sam chuckled slightly, before going to scoop him up and sighed. "I don't think he wants any cake, buddy. He's got somewhere he has to be."
Blake turned and looked at 494 like he had just broken the laws of physics. "But it's cake. Why doesn' he want cake?"
Kids were something 494 had absolutely no idea what to do with. At all. Hell, he'd never even spoken to one really. "Uh. . ." Twenty-three million dollars went into his construction and training. And that's what he came up with.
Blake squirmed slightly, pushing himself out of Sam's arms before running over to him taking his hand gently in his. "C'mon you gotta come see. It's funfetti."
To say that 494 doesn't have any idea on how to deal with this would be an understatement. He just blinks at the kid.
That doesn't phase him the slightest, and he just tugs on 494's hand harder, pulling him towards the kitchen. "C'mon. It's funfetti, with 'rawberry icing, and sprinklies."
He is tugged along, because he is seriously out of his element. Throwing a kid at him was unfair.
Blake led him right back into the kitchen, past whatever was left of the family that was still eating dinner, mainly Dean and Mama. Blake only let go of his hand long enough to pull one of the chairs over to the counter, before climbing up and pointing to the cake, which was indeed iced with strawberry icing and sprinkles. "See? Cake. You gotta have some cake."
And all things are forgotten in the face of curiosity. His head tilts. He sniffs. His head tilts the other way and his eyes narrow a little. "What is it?"
Dean and Mama's heads both looked up from their plates, and Blake looked at him with wide eyes. "It's cake. You dunno what cake is?"
He just shook his head no.
Blake looked over at Mama like someone had kicked his puppy. "Mama, he dunno what cake is."
Mama gave him a small sympathetic smile, before looking over at 494. "You can have some if you want, but you gotta have a real meal first. Are you a bit more in the mood for steak and potatoes?"
He turned to look at the woman and then shrugged a little. His curiosity ate at him like a living thing. He would eat what he was told to eat. That's how his life worked.
She nodded, before getting up to make him a plate. "Have a seat, I'll get the food."
"Alright." He does so, feeling confused as hell. He wasn't sure exactly how he had ended up here.
Blake slid into the seat next to him, pushing himself up on his knees and looking at him intently. Dean chewed on another piece of his steak while he watched the kid for a moment, before shaking his head. "Blake, he's not going to talk to you if you keep staring at him."
Blake glanced over at Dean, before resting his chin in his hands as he looked at 494. "I just want some cake."
Mama ruffled his hair lightly as she placed the plate and utensils down in front of 494. "You can have some as soon as he finished his dinner, alright, baby?"
He sighed. "O-kay."
Now that it was in front of him 494 found that he was starving. Though half the food on the plate stopped him. Steak, yeah he got that, but the potatoes didn't look or smell normal. He was used to a baked potato. That's it. Just a potato. He sniffed. ". . . is there milk in the potato?" Because that was odd. He cut a piece of steak and ate it.
"Mmm-hmm," Mama said with a nod, as she cleared Dean's plate that he'd finished clearing, before gesturing him towards the sink to clean up. "Add some milk and butter to it when you mash 'em, makes 'em a little more creamy."
He used his fork to scoop a tiny bit up, his expression clearly stating that this was pretty weird, and took another sniff and then a lick.
Mama smirked slightly as she watched him, just handing off the pots to Dean as she wrapped up the leftovers, letting him discover the food however he may have wanted to.
He went back to the steak, still trying to decide if he liked the potatoes. Eventually he cleared the plate though. That, apparently, was what he had to do to indulge his curiosity on this whole cake thing.
Blake had been watching the entire time, and as soon as he finished, Blake turned back to Mama with an excited look. "He's finished, he's finished!"
494 gave him a sideways look.
Blake just looked at him innocently. Mama just shook her head before clearing the plate and leaving it on the sink next to Dean. As soon as that was done, she took out a large knife and cut up the cake, placing two slices on the plates and then placing them down in front of the two boys. Blake gave her a big grin before digging into the cake, shoving it into his mouth as best he could.
494 poked it first with his finger tip, because he's never come across something like this. It smelled sweet. Sweeter than the couple of cookies he'd ever had, but not sweet like fruit. He licked at the frosting that stuck to his finger in slow fascination and then ate a crumb of cake. This. . . this was pretty good. Better than the potatoes for sure. He took an actual bite and chewed slowly, savoring it.
Blake looked over at him, and then pointed at the cake. "It's got the sprinklies inside the cake and outside the cake. It's good."
He examined the colored spots in question. "I dunno. It's funny colored." He is clearly suspicious.
"So? That's what makes it cool, silly," Blake giggled, before going back to his own cake, strawberry icing smearing all over his face.
"It is?" He wasn't sure he bought that and ate around one of the spots.
Blake nodded eagerly. "It's like having twice as many!"
"Food isn't supposed to be that color." He reasoned right back.
"But that's what makes it so cool! They're the same color as Popsicles and -- and M&Ms and -- and Skittles -- "
One could guess from the blinking that the kid had lost 494 for some were near the beginning of that.
Blake's hands came up to brace the sides of his cheeks, and he gave him wide eyes. "You don't know what those are either?!?"
494 just shook his head and munch a little more cake.
Blake paused for a minute, before placing an icing covered hand on 494's arm. "I'm sorry." And he really, genuinely was.
494's head tipped as he considered this. "I made it this far. But thanks."
Blake sighed, before going back to his cake quietly. He made it so that he only had a bit of the cake left, before he looked back over at him again as he licked his fork. "Your head sounds like Miss Missouri's kitty." At that Dean turned his head sharply, giving Blake a bit of a look.
"Whadaya mean by that, buddy?"
Blake glanced over at Dean before shrugging. "Miss Missouri had a new kitty. His head sounds the same way the kitty does."
494, who had licked the sticky hand print from his arm and then gone back to his cake, blinked at Blake. "But kittens are young." And 494 wasn't young any more. That was his only confusion on the topic. Well that and the obvious. "How do you know what anyone's head sounds like?"
Blake gave him a bit "I dunno" shrug before Dean took a breath and tried to explain. "Blake's telepathic. It runs in his family, but he doesn't really know how to control it quite yet, so he gets stray thoughts and things sometimes, and he's a smart kid, so he's started figuring out thought patterns and stuff. Though communing with animals is something new."
"And Alice isn't a kitten. She's a biiiiiig kitty. Miss Missouri abopted her from the shelter," Blake gave a well-meaning nod at that one, before continuing to lick his fork.
"Huh." 494 could swallow the idea of a telepath. He knew they existed. Manticore's all were loony or worked for psy-ops. And if Blake had been an adult or done anything intrusive there would have been a problem. But he hadn't even felt a brush from the little boy. He licked frosting off his fork. "Alice sounds like a female, so we gotta be a little different there. And even if she is big. I bet I'm bigger." He used a finger to lift more frosting from his plate. The stuff as incredibly rich and he found he liked it quite a bit. "Though," He mused after a moment. "I bet she has claws. Lucky."
Blake made a bit of a face at that, before shaking his head as Dean picked him up off the chair and placed him in his lap, starting to clean Blake up with a napkin. "Not that much different. Just a little bit."
Dean tilted his head to the side slightly, before giving 494 a bit of a smirk. "You buy telepathy, but not shapeshifters and werewolves?"
"Seth's a bearwolf!" Blake said with a grin. "We have to lock him inna basement on the big moon days, so he doesn't hurt anybody."
494 continued to eat around the colored spots, still unsure about them. He directed his first comment at Blake because of the face he made. "She get you with her claws?" He paused. "How are we different?" Then he directed some attention to Dean. "Uh, yeah. I've dealt with telepaths. It's just quantum physics. Shapeshifters, werewolves? Not so much with the physics."
"More biology than physics," Dean said with a bit of a pointed look. "Shapeshifters are the way they are because of a mutation at birth -- a quirk in the genes. Werewolves? Spread more like a disease. You get bit by someone infected, and they transfer the disease to you."
"She doesn't sound like a person, too," Blake replied, looking back over at 494 once his face was clean. "She just sounds like a kitty. You sound like a kitty and a person. And Alice doesn't have walls in her head."
That sounded alarmingly plausible to 494. "A natural mutation?"
"Alice has most likely doesn't have anything to hide." He ponders that. "Must be nice to just be a kitty."
"As far as we know. Every shifter we've ever talked to say that they were born hideous, and became other people in order to escape that -- some of them went for retribution," Dean said with a shrug. "There's an explanation for most supernatural stuff -- people just choose not to believe in them."
"I dunno. All she wanted to do was sleep," Blake said with a shrug.
"And you think.. . .that wasn't my twin." He said to Dean. "I couldn't. . .I couldn't pick up his scent." Then almost reluctantly. "He should have gone up not down. We always go up. It was weird." He gave Blake a smile. "She wanted to sleep? Sounds like a smart lady."
Blake made a face like that, before Dean spoke up. "Shifters tend to stick to the sewers. They can shed down there and no one will think anything wiser of it, and most people don't venture down there unless they have to."
494 shook his head. "It was him. He knew too much to not be."
Dean sighed before continuing. "Shifters do this -- thing. It's really weird and really creepy, but the reason why they don't just kill you and take you place? Is because they psychically download your memories and thoughts in order to play you better. We ran into one guy that was robbing banks and jewelry stores, and he would tie up the people he was copying, and use them to get all the security codes, access information, everything."
"So. . .you think I still have a twin out there who's crackers. Great. Just. . . great." Double fail. He hunched a little and ate a blue spot like it was some sort of punishment. He was a little disappointed when he didn't just keel over.
"No! Nonononono," Dean shook his head slightly. "That's not what I'm saying. Your twin is probably as normal as he can get. The whole whackjob killing people thing? Was probably all him. Shifters are known for having a drive for something nasty and crazy. I got framed for a guy who built his way from aggravated assault to murder, I met another one who was impersonating characters from classic horror movies and using them to off people -- the crazy was probably all him, not your twin. He just got the information that he needed from him."
"Then why the weird suicidal tendencies?"
Dean frowned slightly at that, confused. "How do you mean?"
494 blinked like maybe Dean was slow. "The tat on ever one of the victims?" The fact that maybe he should be censoring the conversation for little boy ears didn't occur to him. He already knew how to kill when he was the kid's age.
"Oh." Psychology wasn't one of Dean's strong points. And Blake wasn't really paying attention. In fact, he was wriggling out of Dean's arms and running back into the living room, clearly bored with the conversation. "Well -- it could have been just him trying to throw more of the blame onto your twin. Maybe it picked up on something in your twin's psyche and mutated it." He paused for a minute. "I know when one of 'em did me, he picked up on the fact that I didn't really like being alone. And when he was rejected, as me, he used that as motive to attack. Maybe there's something about himself that your twin doesn't like -- and the shifter's just expressing it another way."
"Can you think of another reason why you would slap your identity on someone else and then off them when they weren't good enough?"
"Dude, it could seriously be as simple as your twin having low self-esteem," Dean said with a sigh. "Shifters -- they blow things up. Make them bigger than they already are. You know how nightmares are always more twisted and distorted than the real thing? That's what they do -- they turn feelings and emotions into nightmares."
"It's just. . . " It bothered him and he didn't know how to articulate it.
"I know. It's weird. And it's pretty damn believable," Dean leaned back in his chair and rested his hand on the table. "But I pretty much grew up hunting these things. I know how they think. They can twist a person around -- but they usually get it pretty wrong."
"He got a lot of it right, though." And 494 was the one getting it wrong now. Deserting. A traitor. because he hadn't gone back, and no he couldn't make himself. He thought about it and shook, but didn't stand. The cake and that one blue spot weight heavely in his stomach all of the sudden.
Dean closed his eyes for a minute, before rubbing the back of his neck lightly. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I can try to track your real twin down. We've got networks, we know where to look -- we could probably find him, just to confirm he's not a total nutjob."
"Maybe I'm the crazy one after all." His voice was suddenly quiet. "I shouldn't still be here." He shook his head. "I don't even know what's wrong with me."
"Nothing wrong with wanting to be somewhere that's not there."
"Kinda is. That's where I belong."
Dean considered that for a moment. "Just because you belong somewhere doesn't mean it's where you should be."
"Let me rephrase. I belong to them."
Dean's automatic response to that one was 'People don't belong to people' but he decided to curb that in favor of something less adversarial, for once. "Define 'belong'."
"Own. As in, you own your boots. At least I would assume you do."
"I do own my boots," Dean said softly. "And people don't own people, dude."
"Yeah, well, here's a little secret since things are pretty FUBAR anyway, might as well go for full on pear-shaped. I'm a weapon. Not a person. A very expensive weapon. You think something like this happens in nature?" He raised a skeptical eyebrow. "So, in fact, they can own me."
Dean shrugged. "I'm the kind of person who believes that anything can happen. Now, look -- you've got a heartbeat, you've got a brain, you make choices. You're a person. You may also be a weapon, but that's not the only thing you are. It's not like you're a robot. If you get cut, you bleed, just like me or Sam."
"No one built you Old Man."
"Supposedly God built me, and he's a bit of a dick, so I tend to ignore that end of the spectrum," Dean snorted, before looking over at him. "They didn't put you together like some kind of Frankenstein thing, did they?"
"On a genetic level they did." He finished picking around the spots and eating the rest of his piece of cake. He looked longingly at the rest of it on the counter but made himself stop. You are what you were given and shut up about it, no matter how many days it had been or how hungry you were.
"Okay. So they played with you genes," Dean said with a sigh. "You were still born the way most humans are born, right? Woman carried you for nine months, popped you out at the end?"
"You're thinking tweaking right? Eye color, maybe height. I'm talking the genetic equivalent of a hack saw or something. And she was a surrogate. She wasn't my mother. I don't have a mother."
"Dude. I don't care how much they screwed with your DNA, you were born the way a person is usually born. You're a person. You don't belong to anyone unless you let yourself belong to them."
494 four just shook his head a little and then looked down at his plate and said nothing. He wasn't what Dean thought he was. He just wasn.
Dean paused for a minute, taking his plate and cutting him another piece of cake, before cutting one for himself. He placed the plate down in front of 494, before sitting down and digging in to his own. "Look, kid. In the end, we're not going to keep you here against your will. If you want to stay, stay, if you want to go, go, but if you want to stay -- if you make the choice to stay -- we've got room for you."
"I don't know." He sounded a little desperate. No one had ever asked him what he wanted before. Not in any real way.
Dean moved his hand forward slowly, aiming to rest it on his shoulder, but not moving so quickly that 494 couldn't flinch away if he needed to. "Just think about it. When you decide, let us know."
Yeah, 494 wasn't ready to let anyone touch him yet, except for the very non threatening little boy. No one had ever laid a hand on him in comfort. He hunched away from the hand. "I don't. . ." He stopped bit his lip and took a bite of cake instead.
Dean held his hand back, before getting up and making his way towards the living room, plate in hand. "As I said -- when you figure it out, let us know."