SPN/DA crossover fic: Of Desire and the Status Quo (30/38)
Story Title: Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter Title: Innocence Is the First Casualty
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Summary: In the end, it’s a complete accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,739
Disclaimer: Same stuff applies as in the first chapter. Oh, and unfortunately I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XXX: Innocence Is the First Casualty
“What’s this thing look like?” Alec asks, walking alongside Dean and peering into the forest suspiciously.
“Shh,” commands Dean in an annoyed growl. “Jeez, you’re worse than Sammy was on his first hunt. At least he wasn’t as loud as a herd of elephants.”
“I just want to know what happens if we find it,” Alec carries on, lowering his voice.
Dean keeps walking, but shoots a glare to his left. “You stay back and shut up, that’s what,” he answers curtly. Sensing accurately Alec’s objection (objection again, rather), he goes on, “If you try to use your super special awesome skills, you’re going to just fuck everything up. You leave this to me.”
“I beg your pardon?” gapes Alec anyway. “Just because I didn’t grow up fighting creepy crawlies doesn’t mean I can’t look out for myself just fine.”
Dean pauses, putting a heavy hand on Alec’s chest. “Look, tough guy,” he snarls, “if you never listen to anything else I say-God knows you haven’t so far-listen to me now. I’m not going to be responsible for you dying. I’m not going to watch you get torn to shreds. I’m not. So don’t ask me to.”
Alec watches as Dean strides further into the trees, wondering how Dean still manages to surprise him; in this case, with the vehemence of emotion behind Dean’s demands. With a long-suffering sigh, he rolls his shoulders and tries not to trip over a branch.
The day wears on, and Max fears Alec’s doing something phenomenally idiotic. “Bastard’s going to get himself killed…” she mumbles to the empty air of her office. “Probably get Dean killed, too. Selfish asshole.”
“Max don’t mean that,” comes a gentle voice from her newly opened door.
Max jumps, astonished at how the hell Joshua had managed to sneak up on her. It isn’t like the dog-man is exactly stealth. She looks up at him in a facsimile of a glare-no matter what Joshua says or does, she can never manage to get legitimately mad at him-in challenge.
“I don’t?” she asks doubtfully. “I really think I do. How dare he just up and leave? Not like I made him my Second to help out or anything.”
She’s sure Joshua would raise an eyebrow if he knew what the gesture was. “Alec confused,” he says. “Alec want to know why Sad Fella look like him.”
“So do I, but you don’t see me running off to God knows where doing God knows what-”
“Alec and Sad Fella go find his Sammy,” interrupts Joshua, as if the answer was as obvious as breathing. Which, Max neglects to deliberate, it kind of is. “Sad Fella want his Sammy.”
She sighs, hating every time she has to disappoint the dog-man. “Josh…it-it isn’t as simple as just Dean wanting to find his brother,” she says slowly. “Dean’s…not right.”
Joshua shakes his head. “Sad Fella just want his Sammy,” he persists. “He not happy, but if he find his Sammy, he can smile.”
It pains her to hear such hope, such raw, unadulterated hope in Joshua’s voice, but it’s unfortunately misplaced. It’s not that she thinks Dean would revert into killing or anything, but she also doesn’t think that locating Sam is his only and ultimate objective. In the days of yesteryear, locating her brothers and sisters was her only objective, but then, those were both simpler-ha, if you can term anything in this time “simple”-and, despite what screwing around Manticore had done with her head, she wasn’t…what? Crazy? Psychotic? Demented? Damned?
Max closes her eyes. Depressed, pitiful, defensive, offensive, misguided…
She doesn’t know what to term Dean as anymore. As fast as he had come into their lives, he’d fucked them all up, too. She thinks she should be happy that the son of a bitch is gone. Even more happy that he’d taken Alec with him. She doesn’t need the X5’s smartass comments anyway. So what if he’s good in a fight and can calm down even the most hostile members of T.C.? He’s still a thorn in her side that she’s glad to get rid of.
“Max just upset now,” observes Joshua. “When Alec and Sad Fella come back, you be happy.”
Despite herself, Max rolls her eyes. Happy? Fuck that.
“And what happens if they don’t come back?” Max bites, the tone harsher than she meant, but the question entirely what she wanted to ask. Joshua cocks his head to the side, like she’d presented him with a quantum physics query. “This isn’t the first time Alec’s up and left. Now he’s got Dean’s bad influence on him, which is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention they’re off on some wild goose chase; you think Sam’s actually still alive? Doubtful. Alec’s already got a target on his back, and now he’s made it easier for White, hell, the police, because he’s halfway across the country in plain sight.”
She’s breathing heavily after her rant, staring at Joshua as if goading him to argue, the tautness in her face not only making her look much older than her twenty-one years, but showing just how close to the end of her rope she is. Though it’d hurt her to admit it, having Alec around to help shoulder even some of the brunt of the T.C. responsibilities had been her saving grace. Now that he’d just disappeared, that strain had come back worse than ever.
“Alec come back,” says Joshua confidently.
“Sure,” says Max sarcastically. “But Dean won’t. And now that Alec’s got this creepy hero-worship thing going on, how much a help you think he’s going to be when he returns? None, that’s what. He’s gonna go back to being a self-centered, out-for-number-one, immature-”
“Max.”
She stops mid-word and lets out the air she’d been inclined to use for another vent. There’s sentences inside Joshua’s one syllable, and she knows what they are. “What do you think I should do, Josh?” she asks, with a vulnerability the likes of which she hadn’t shown since…well, since she told Alec about Ben.
Joshua rubs his neck, unused to people asking him for advice. But in this instance, it’s a no-brainer. “Joshua think Max should wait for Alec, for Dean,” he says. Max realizes belatedly that Joshua had actually used Dean’s name instead of his usual “Sad Fella.” She doesn’t know what to make of that. “They come back when Dean finds his Sammy.”
“Josh, I really don’t think the chances of Sam being alive are-”
“Sammy alive,” continues Joshua. “Dean felt that Sammy is alive, like Max felt others were alive. Dean will find his Sammy. Like Max.”
She really hadn’t thought anything Joshua said would whelm her, but at his latest words, she stops short. She’d considered that Dean’s desire to locate his brother had some similarities to when she wanted to locate her brothers and sisters, but Joshua’s simple statement is, for lack of a better term, eye-opening.
“What do you think will happen?” she inquires. “With…with Alec; and Dean and Sam. Hell if I know why Alec’s so attached, but what if when Dean gets to his brother, he doesn’t want Alec around? T.C. can’t afford to lose him.” I can’t afford to lose him is unsaid, but both fill in the blanks.
Joshua shakes his head. “Don’t know,” he answers. “But maybe Dean want Alec and his Sammy.”
“I hope so,” replies Max. She wouldn’t exactly be ecstatic if, say, Alec brought Dean and Sam back to T.C. because they had no other “home,” but if that’s the only way to keep Alec around, then she’d do it. She’d take the undoubted barrage of complaints from the transgenics over having two Ordinaries join their ranks-however much she thinks the men would grow on them and be able to greatly help on the battle front, unlike, regrettably, Logan or Cindy.
Though even just two days ago she’d say the only reason she’d let the two of them stay is because she wanted to decipher their histories, if she’s honest with herself now, that’s not right. A plus, sure, but at this point, she’s done with complicating her life unnecessarily. It’s already convoluted enough without adding more crap to the mix. Maybe once this shit with White, and Clemente, and the whole damn U.S. population calms down, maybe she’d go into it, ask them about what happened.
But now, she’s just going to unevenly exhale and try and stave off her remaining curiosity. Of course, there’s the part of her that’s afraid Logan’s been at it (regardless of what he’d said about being done with the Winchesters, his thirst for knowledge isn’t easily sated), and that he’ll present her with what he’d found. Moreover, she’s afraid of what that would be.
“You’re right, Josh,” she says. “You’re always-”
She’s cut off, not by Joshua, but by another familiar voice in the doorway. “Um…Max? Could I speak with you out here?” asks Dalton.
Her senses are on rapid alert at hearing the odd color to the normally cocky X6’s tone, never mind that his face is schooled, but not enough to where she can’t see a sheen of pure terror.
Usually, she would have snapped at him for barging in, but now, she stands up warily and steps around her desk. It’s then she spots it. The dim light glints off the silver of what is all too clearly a .38. Pointed directly at Dalton’s head, safety off.
Max swallows, walking forward. She goes to the door, and her mouth drops open. The girl looks the same as last time Max had seen her, except for the fact that she’s holding Dalton’s life in her hands. She flicks her gaze up to Max and smirks.
“Want to join the party, Maxie?” she sneers, still holding the weapon firmly to Dalton’s head.
Max stares, unable to say anything.
She watches in horror as Kalinda’s eyes turn blacker than coal, and finds she can only utter two words in an uncharacteristic, desperate whisper.
“Dean…help…”
Thing is, Dean’s more than halfway across the country, two time zones over, and quite in the middle of something.
As he proceeds to inform Alec. “Hey, Alec,” he says too calmly. “Do me a favor, would you?”
Alec freezes at the strange tone in Dean’s question. He’s never heard it before, and it’s just plain…weird. He doesn’t want to use the term nervous, but… “Sure…?” he replies unsurely.
“Duck.”
Alec’s been too militarized to ignore an order like that-more than that, he’s been with Dean long enough to know this is something different-regardless of how odd the situation, and this time, he’s incredibly glad he had been. Scantly a second after he hits the ground, he feels the air above him ripple, and a stream of dirt coat his hair.
He looks up and sees Dean similarly on the ground, a…thing…on him that Alec supposes is sort of a shadowy, wolfy-ish something-rather, but a fuckload scarier. “DEAN!” he yells, seeing the man’s unmoving and awkwardly-angled form.
He scrambles upright, sprinting over to Dean, his heart pumping faster than it has in a long, long time. It’s been years since he’s felt sheer panic. He feels it now.
“Dean,” he gasps, reaching for his gun and sliding to his knees next to the creature. He aims to fire, but then the creature is shoved off. Alec stares at it, and it’s unmistakably dead. He’d ruminate on it more, were it not for the creature to subsequently proceed to disappear, the only sign that it was ever there being an acrid scent of burnt fur in the air.
“Aww, getting worked up over little ol’ me,” says Dean, sitting up.
And causing Alec to jolt like he’d been electrocuted. “Dean!” he exclaims in shock. That changing quickly to anger, Alec punches him, only barely remembering to lower the velocity behind it at the last second. “You son of a bitch.”
“You have that little faith in me? Well, damn,” says Dean only half-seriously. “You think this is the first black dog I’ve killed? You can’t just gank them on a whim; gotta get ’em pissed first, otherwise they’ll vanish. Stabbed the thing before he got one paw on me.”
Alec raises and eyebrow and points. “Think again,” he observes. “You got nicked, Superman.”
Dean puts a finger up to his hairline and it comes away red. “Ah, shit,” he says in uninterested disappointment. “Sammy’ll never let me live this down.”
Alec doesn’t respond, catching sight of something in the clearing up ahead. Something that looks an awful lot like-
“Um…Dean?” he asks stiltedly. Dean grunts. “Think we’ve got another Cujo-related issue going on.”
Dean twists around, seeing what Alec had with a groan. The dog’s staring at them, teal eyes lethal, but then halts, yelping as if shot. A man and a woman come walking out of the woods, and Dean’s eyes widen, his expression not daring to be hopeful, but settling uncertainly on curiosity.
Temporarily rendered silent, he stands up and takes a few steps forward, Alec mimicking the motions, though keeping a guarded eye on Dean.
Then Dean notices something else. The man’s hand is outstretched, the black dog still yelping and quivering. Dean doesn’t have the enhanced hearing, but Alec does.
“Go ahead,” Alec hears from the man.
The woman strides up and slices the dog’s head clean from its body with some sort of sparking knife. She turns to the man and smiles viciously. He returns it.
He lowers his hand and the dog’s body falls, quickly dissipating like the one Dean had killed. “You cut yourself,” he says.
The woman looks down, her hand indeed lacerated. With another all-wrong grin, she holds it up, and the man closes his mouth over the wound, tasting the blood. Alec winces in revulsion.
He glances over at Dean cautiously. The man turning so his face is visible, Dean recognizes him just seconds before Alec. And in those seconds, Dean’s entire frame seizes up. Alec uses his telescopic vision, downright praying that both he and Dean are seeing wrong, but they aren’t. He’d kept the shaggy brown hair, is still freakishly tall, and wears the same light green jacket as in the surveillance photos. Alec doesn’t have to have seen him in person before to know that the man he’s looking at is none other than Sam Winchester.
Sam Winchester somehow stopping a killer dog in its tracks with nary an effort and then drinking blood from some bitch who, for a reason Alec doesn’t know, is off.
To top everything, Dean’s got an awful mixture of horror and murder in his face.
And that’s just fucking great.
Had Kalinda been an Ordinary, Max-even Dalton-would have disarmed her and had her unconscious in a second flat. But she’s a transgenic, as are they, and she knows the same tricks in the book as everyone else does.
More than that, she’s got…she’s got Dalton. Not that Max would allow anyone else from T.C. to get shot, but…she has kind of a soft spot for the twerp, and she’d go so far as to say Alec thinks of him as a little brother. She’d honestly put the status of her safety up in the air if, while Alec were “away,” she let Dalton get killed. She’d kiss any chances of Alec sticking around as co-leader (or as anything, for that matter) goodbye.
So she follows as Kalinda watches her and simultaneously keeps the gun trained at Dalton’s skull, follows her into the main command center. As she finds out quickly, she’s the last person to know about Kalinda acting all…strange. Everyone else is either in astoundment, in fury, or just plain confusion. She knows each one is trying to think of ways to incapacitate Kalinda without hurting Dalton, but they’d also come to the same conclusion: if they even moved one muscle that Kalinda didn’t like, Dalton’s brains would be spread over the floor. And, like Max, whether they have a fondness for the boy or not, they’re not going to risk his life.
She catches a movement to her right and looks over to see Rade standing by the medical bay doors, her mouth halfway open; Max guesses her words would be something like, “What the fuck is going on out here?” As Kalinda’s temporarily not facing her, Max gives the minutest of head shakes to their sole medic, and Rade, however much she may detest taking orders, retreats into the room. Max breathes a silent sigh of relief. At least if things got hairy out here, which she’d bet the rundown toxic waste dump that they will, their doctor-and Dix, to an extent-would be safe.
Kalinda swivels around and forces Joshua around to her other side with merely a glare. Max, forever the martyr, speaks up. “What are you doing, Kali?” she asks. “What’s wrong with you?”
Kalinda smirks. “Nothing’s wrong with me, darlin’,” she says. “Though I can’t say much for this freak of nature I’m in.”
Max attempts to not frown in total bewilderment. (Key word being “attempts.”) “Excuse me?” she asks, keeping her voice as level as possible. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Laughing, Kalinda does a very furtive glance around the room to make sure no one’s thinking of doing anything she doesn’t want them to. They are, but unfortunately can’t act on it. “You know, for all the brains you freaks are supposed to have, you sure are stupid.” Max stares, and Kali humors her. “You really thought you would come out the Division I favorites in this? As if. Hell, humans won’t either, pretentious bastards. It’s we that will. All of you forgot about us in your little hissy fit of an electromagnet, but we haven’t forgotten. You and all your just-add-water pals are in for a huge treat, Maxie.”
“U-Us?” Dalton whispers.
“Demons,” replies Kalinda with an indulgent tone, as if talking about a long-lost lover.
Max wishes she could break down, perhaps let out a sob, at the simple, horrible irony that not only was Dean right-fuck, he was right-but he could be anywhere. Worse still, with the only other guy that she knows would be able to keep his head. It’s a main reason why she’d chosen him as her Second: he kept her in line, made sure that if she were ever to start to get too invested or emotional, he’d bring her out of it. Now he’s not here, and it’s taking all her willpower not to reduce herself to a crumbling mess.
She’s got all of T.C. trusting her with their lives, has Dalton trusting her with his life, and she’s one breath away from hyperventilating. She can handle a lot, was made to handle a lot, learned to handle a lot, but…but demons? They’re not fucking real! Or…at least…they’re not supposed to be.
Fuck.
“What do you want?” Max murmurs, closing her arms around herself, hoping it can keep her together. It’s not helping. “What do you want from us?”
“Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to get nasty,” sneers Kalinda-no, not Kalinda, some…thing-“not unless you make it difficult.”
“Who are you?” Max asks, knowing whatever the thing’s answer would be wouldn’t make any sense, but would provide some stalling time. In which to do…she hasn’t the faintest, but it couldn’t hurt.
“I got lots of names, you abomination,” the thing replies. Max keeps her stare. “But once upon a time, evidently the name Meg seemed to be a favorite.”
It doesn’t ring any bells-as she’d predicted-but the thing doesn’t appear to care. “And you’re a demon.”
Meg laughs. “More than that, sweetie,” she says. “Turns out I was in just the right part of Hell that your buddies’ little spell got not only your new boy out, but my sweet ass as well. Quite considerate of them.”
Max isn’t sure who her “pals” are supposed to be, but there’s only one other person about whom this thing could be talking. “Where’s Kali?” she asks. The X6 could be often annoying, but Max doesn’t wish her dead.
Meg makes some expression that Max can only describe as pure, soulless evil. “Oh, don’t worry,” she remarks. “Kalinda’s in here with me. She says ‘hi,’ by the way.”
“How long-”
“Since I got out,” answers Meg. Seeing Max’s face of shock, she continues, “Drink it in. It was me who helped you and these transgenic freaks get Dean out of the hospital.”
Max can’t prevent her eyes from widening-she’d guessed that it was Dean Meg was talking about, but hearing her say Dean’s name in such a slimy, almost desirous way, sent chills down her spine. “Why?” she asks quietly.
“What fun would it be if I let him die from some human injury?” she shrugs, jerking the gun a little in annoyance. “Dean and I have got…some bones to pick. It wouldn’t be any fun to kill him right there.”
Max presses a hand over her face, wishing this whole thing were a nightmare, but feeling the…wrongness in the air and knowing it isn’t. “What do you want from us?”
“Let’s just say you’re…bait,” Meg relishes. “I didn’t think that bomb would be enough, so in case, I went ahead with this.”
“You set the bomb?” Max cries.
Meg smiles. “That mutant was going to figure out things that we just couldn’t allow until the time was right. The bomb was all too easy to place. For all your distrust of humanity, you’re remarkably trusting of your own. You’d never suspect cute little Kalinda.” Meg considers for a second, before giving a fake sigh. “Hilarious, really, that you didn’t believe Dean, causing him and your lover to bail, when it turns out that he isn’t buckets of crazy. I’m guessing the word running through that pretty head of yours is along the line of ‘Shit.’”
Actually, yes, that was her thought, up until Meg’s last sentence. Now, it’s more Alec’s not my lover, you bitch. But she’s choosing not to mention that; she doubts it’s out of the realm of probability that her denial would only bolster Meg’s opinion. And protecting Dean would be hard enough for him and Alec without adding a hit on Alec, too.
So, instead, she uses it to find the will she’d had that had allowed her to be able to escape Manticore, to find her siblings, to survive a second stint in Manticore, to lead T.C. She’d dealt with worse than some…hell spawn. As much as it’s still incredibly hard to believe.
“You sound like some child with a temper tantrum,” she needles.
“Max…” Dalton squeaks, frightened.
She tries to portray assurance to him, but doesn’t think it worked very well. “And you know what’s even funnier?” she continues, making extraordinary extrapolations based on nothing but that she hopes are true. “Dean was in Hell since he died, wasn’t he? That’s what, thirteen years? And sounded like time moved different, longer, down there. Yet he didn’t turn into a demon, or however it is you bastards become evil. You’re just a weak, C-list slasher film flunky.”
Max’s sharp vision sees Meg’s eyes tighten the slightest bit, but otherwise, she makes no reaction. She surmises that in Hell-shit, that sounds crazy-you generally get good at hiding emotions.
What’s more obvious is how Meg’s finger tightens around the trigger, knuckles turning white against the silver of the handle. Dalton tries to be stoic, but a muscle in his cheek spasms, and he blinks quickly for a minute.
It’s then that she suddenly views Dalton not as an X6, a deadly killing machine, but a sixteen-year-old boy who was just starting a much greater and fulfilling life (however much it may suck at the moment). She’s barely into her twenties herself, and she knows that if it weren’t Dalton in this situation but, say, Alec, she’d keep up with the antagonism technique. Hell, she knows Alec would, too.
But this is Dalton. She’d never forgive herself if he got killed. She wouldn’t forgive herself if Alec got killed either, but at least he’s always been prepared for risks like this. Dalton hasn’t, isn’t. And fuck if she’s going to sacrifice him just to stall for some solution that’s never going to come. Those only possible ones being hundreds or thousands of miles away.
“Leave him alone,” she sighs, staring Meg straight in her black eyes. “Leave him alone. Take me hostage or what the hell ever, but let Dalton go.”
Dalton looks at her in a mixture of fear and objection, and she loathes that he does. He’s sixteen-he shouldn’t be in this mindset. None of them should be. “Max?” she hears Joshua mutter from behind her. She stiffly ignores him; she can’t lose resolve now.
“Take me,” she repeats, seeing Meg ponder the option. “If you’re trying to get Dean here, it’s me he’s going to care about, not Dalton.”
Meg takes in her words. “Huh,” she says. “All right.”
She shoves Dalton away from her, which under normal circumstances wouldn’t do much of anything, but evidently, as Max finds out, the demon inside Kalinda gave her more than even transgenic strength. Dalton hits what’s left of the computer terminals, and then cries out as, with an accompanying, horrifying squelching sound, a broken piece of railing pierces through his leg.
Max wheels on Meg, scant centimeters from her face. “The fuck was that?!” she screams, her tone and words echoing precisely what every single other Manticore creation in the room is thinking. “You said you wouldn’t hurt him!”
Meg shakes her head with a grin. “I said I’d let him go,” she answers. “Didn’t say nothin’ about not hurting him.” She glances over at Dalton’s body that’s currently being tended to by the transgenics as best they can. “It’s a flesh wound anyway. Hear you freaks have fast healing or some shit. I really don’t feel like giving a damn.”
She moves the gun to Max’s chest, using the barrel to push her back. “Now come on, princess,” she says, directing Max back towards her office. Then she pauses for a second and turns. “Make sure these monsters don’t do anything to mess this up,” she announces.
Max looks at her like she’s crazy-crazier-wondering what the hell Meg’s talking about. Then, however, four of her brethren, two X-series and two transhumans stand up. Their eyes abruptly turn the same pitch black that Meg’s are, and they nod. Max feels her face pale, and sees a similar response in everyone else. Dalton’s face is the whitest, but she thinks that that has more to do with his blood loss. To top all of it off, she doesn’t know if they’ll be able to get Rade in, or if the demons would even let her try and fix him up.
Her world is falling apart in front of her eyes, and she can’t help but regret with her entire being her at-the-time-unintentional kicking out of Dean, and by extension Alec. She’d give just about anything to have even one of them here now.
As she looks with desperation at the scene straight out of a horror movie and then is forced to turn away by the .38 in her back and walk into her office, she prays that wherever Alec and Dean are, they’re safe. Safer than T.C., that is.
Meg commands her to sit on the couch, and with the hand not holding the gun, snatches Max’s cell off the desk and tosses it to her. “Call him,” she says. “Let him know just what’s awaiting if he doesn’t get his and Dean’s ass back here ASAP. I’ll let you figure out the consequences of that one.”
Max shuts her eyes, taking the brief seconds to try and wrack her brain for a scheme, but she knows she’s fresh out of ideas even before Meg snarls another threat at her.
With fumbling fingers, Max presses the number two speed dial, and wars between hoping beyond hope that Alec picks up, and hoping beyond hope that he doesn’t. Most of all, she hopes beyond hope that somehow, some way, Alec would come through, play the white knight to save everyone. Save her.
Next
Chapter Title: Innocence Is the First Casualty
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Summary: In the end, it’s a complete accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,739
Disclaimer: Same stuff applies as in the first chapter. Oh, and unfortunately I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XXX: Innocence Is the First Casualty
“What’s this thing look like?” Alec asks, walking alongside Dean and peering into the forest suspiciously.
“Shh,” commands Dean in an annoyed growl. “Jeez, you’re worse than Sammy was on his first hunt. At least he wasn’t as loud as a herd of elephants.”
“I just want to know what happens if we find it,” Alec carries on, lowering his voice.
Dean keeps walking, but shoots a glare to his left. “You stay back and shut up, that’s what,” he answers curtly. Sensing accurately Alec’s objection (objection again, rather), he goes on, “If you try to use your super special awesome skills, you’re going to just fuck everything up. You leave this to me.”
“I beg your pardon?” gapes Alec anyway. “Just because I didn’t grow up fighting creepy crawlies doesn’t mean I can’t look out for myself just fine.”
Dean pauses, putting a heavy hand on Alec’s chest. “Look, tough guy,” he snarls, “if you never listen to anything else I say-God knows you haven’t so far-listen to me now. I’m not going to be responsible for you dying. I’m not going to watch you get torn to shreds. I’m not. So don’t ask me to.”
Alec watches as Dean strides further into the trees, wondering how Dean still manages to surprise him; in this case, with the vehemence of emotion behind Dean’s demands. With a long-suffering sigh, he rolls his shoulders and tries not to trip over a branch.
The day wears on, and Max fears Alec’s doing something phenomenally idiotic. “Bastard’s going to get himself killed…” she mumbles to the empty air of her office. “Probably get Dean killed, too. Selfish asshole.”
“Max don’t mean that,” comes a gentle voice from her newly opened door.
Max jumps, astonished at how the hell Joshua had managed to sneak up on her. It isn’t like the dog-man is exactly stealth. She looks up at him in a facsimile of a glare-no matter what Joshua says or does, she can never manage to get legitimately mad at him-in challenge.
“I don’t?” she asks doubtfully. “I really think I do. How dare he just up and leave? Not like I made him my Second to help out or anything.”
She’s sure Joshua would raise an eyebrow if he knew what the gesture was. “Alec confused,” he says. “Alec want to know why Sad Fella look like him.”
“So do I, but you don’t see me running off to God knows where doing God knows what-”
“Alec and Sad Fella go find his Sammy,” interrupts Joshua, as if the answer was as obvious as breathing. Which, Max neglects to deliberate, it kind of is. “Sad Fella want his Sammy.”
She sighs, hating every time she has to disappoint the dog-man. “Josh…it-it isn’t as simple as just Dean wanting to find his brother,” she says slowly. “Dean’s…not right.”
Joshua shakes his head. “Sad Fella just want his Sammy,” he persists. “He not happy, but if he find his Sammy, he can smile.”
It pains her to hear such hope, such raw, unadulterated hope in Joshua’s voice, but it’s unfortunately misplaced. It’s not that she thinks Dean would revert into killing or anything, but she also doesn’t think that locating Sam is his only and ultimate objective. In the days of yesteryear, locating her brothers and sisters was her only objective, but then, those were both simpler-ha, if you can term anything in this time “simple”-and, despite what screwing around Manticore had done with her head, she wasn’t…what? Crazy? Psychotic? Demented? Damned?
Max closes her eyes. Depressed, pitiful, defensive, offensive, misguided…
She doesn’t know what to term Dean as anymore. As fast as he had come into their lives, he’d fucked them all up, too. She thinks she should be happy that the son of a bitch is gone. Even more happy that he’d taken Alec with him. She doesn’t need the X5’s smartass comments anyway. So what if he’s good in a fight and can calm down even the most hostile members of T.C.? He’s still a thorn in her side that she’s glad to get rid of.
“Max just upset now,” observes Joshua. “When Alec and Sad Fella come back, you be happy.”
Despite herself, Max rolls her eyes. Happy? Fuck that.
“And what happens if they don’t come back?” Max bites, the tone harsher than she meant, but the question entirely what she wanted to ask. Joshua cocks his head to the side, like she’d presented him with a quantum physics query. “This isn’t the first time Alec’s up and left. Now he’s got Dean’s bad influence on him, which is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention they’re off on some wild goose chase; you think Sam’s actually still alive? Doubtful. Alec’s already got a target on his back, and now he’s made it easier for White, hell, the police, because he’s halfway across the country in plain sight.”
She’s breathing heavily after her rant, staring at Joshua as if goading him to argue, the tautness in her face not only making her look much older than her twenty-one years, but showing just how close to the end of her rope she is. Though it’d hurt her to admit it, having Alec around to help shoulder even some of the brunt of the T.C. responsibilities had been her saving grace. Now that he’d just disappeared, that strain had come back worse than ever.
“Alec come back,” says Joshua confidently.
“Sure,” says Max sarcastically. “But Dean won’t. And now that Alec’s got this creepy hero-worship thing going on, how much a help you think he’s going to be when he returns? None, that’s what. He’s gonna go back to being a self-centered, out-for-number-one, immature-”
“Max.”
She stops mid-word and lets out the air she’d been inclined to use for another vent. There’s sentences inside Joshua’s one syllable, and she knows what they are. “What do you think I should do, Josh?” she asks, with a vulnerability the likes of which she hadn’t shown since…well, since she told Alec about Ben.
Joshua rubs his neck, unused to people asking him for advice. But in this instance, it’s a no-brainer. “Joshua think Max should wait for Alec, for Dean,” he says. Max realizes belatedly that Joshua had actually used Dean’s name instead of his usual “Sad Fella.” She doesn’t know what to make of that. “They come back when Dean finds his Sammy.”
“Josh, I really don’t think the chances of Sam being alive are-”
“Sammy alive,” continues Joshua. “Dean felt that Sammy is alive, like Max felt others were alive. Dean will find his Sammy. Like Max.”
She really hadn’t thought anything Joshua said would whelm her, but at his latest words, she stops short. She’d considered that Dean’s desire to locate his brother had some similarities to when she wanted to locate her brothers and sisters, but Joshua’s simple statement is, for lack of a better term, eye-opening.
“What do you think will happen?” she inquires. “With…with Alec; and Dean and Sam. Hell if I know why Alec’s so attached, but what if when Dean gets to his brother, he doesn’t want Alec around? T.C. can’t afford to lose him.” I can’t afford to lose him is unsaid, but both fill in the blanks.
Joshua shakes his head. “Don’t know,” he answers. “But maybe Dean want Alec and his Sammy.”
“I hope so,” replies Max. She wouldn’t exactly be ecstatic if, say, Alec brought Dean and Sam back to T.C. because they had no other “home,” but if that’s the only way to keep Alec around, then she’d do it. She’d take the undoubted barrage of complaints from the transgenics over having two Ordinaries join their ranks-however much she thinks the men would grow on them and be able to greatly help on the battle front, unlike, regrettably, Logan or Cindy.
Though even just two days ago she’d say the only reason she’d let the two of them stay is because she wanted to decipher their histories, if she’s honest with herself now, that’s not right. A plus, sure, but at this point, she’s done with complicating her life unnecessarily. It’s already convoluted enough without adding more crap to the mix. Maybe once this shit with White, and Clemente, and the whole damn U.S. population calms down, maybe she’d go into it, ask them about what happened.
But now, she’s just going to unevenly exhale and try and stave off her remaining curiosity. Of course, there’s the part of her that’s afraid Logan’s been at it (regardless of what he’d said about being done with the Winchesters, his thirst for knowledge isn’t easily sated), and that he’ll present her with what he’d found. Moreover, she’s afraid of what that would be.
“You’re right, Josh,” she says. “You’re always-”
She’s cut off, not by Joshua, but by another familiar voice in the doorway. “Um…Max? Could I speak with you out here?” asks Dalton.
Her senses are on rapid alert at hearing the odd color to the normally cocky X6’s tone, never mind that his face is schooled, but not enough to where she can’t see a sheen of pure terror.
Usually, she would have snapped at him for barging in, but now, she stands up warily and steps around her desk. It’s then she spots it. The dim light glints off the silver of what is all too clearly a .38. Pointed directly at Dalton’s head, safety off.
Max swallows, walking forward. She goes to the door, and her mouth drops open. The girl looks the same as last time Max had seen her, except for the fact that she’s holding Dalton’s life in her hands. She flicks her gaze up to Max and smirks.
“Want to join the party, Maxie?” she sneers, still holding the weapon firmly to Dalton’s head.
Max stares, unable to say anything.
She watches in horror as Kalinda’s eyes turn blacker than coal, and finds she can only utter two words in an uncharacteristic, desperate whisper.
“Dean…help…”
Thing is, Dean’s more than halfway across the country, two time zones over, and quite in the middle of something.
As he proceeds to inform Alec. “Hey, Alec,” he says too calmly. “Do me a favor, would you?”
Alec freezes at the strange tone in Dean’s question. He’s never heard it before, and it’s just plain…weird. He doesn’t want to use the term nervous, but… “Sure…?” he replies unsurely.
“Duck.”
Alec’s been too militarized to ignore an order like that-more than that, he’s been with Dean long enough to know this is something different-regardless of how odd the situation, and this time, he’s incredibly glad he had been. Scantly a second after he hits the ground, he feels the air above him ripple, and a stream of dirt coat his hair.
He looks up and sees Dean similarly on the ground, a…thing…on him that Alec supposes is sort of a shadowy, wolfy-ish something-rather, but a fuckload scarier. “DEAN!” he yells, seeing the man’s unmoving and awkwardly-angled form.
He scrambles upright, sprinting over to Dean, his heart pumping faster than it has in a long, long time. It’s been years since he’s felt sheer panic. He feels it now.
“Dean,” he gasps, reaching for his gun and sliding to his knees next to the creature. He aims to fire, but then the creature is shoved off. Alec stares at it, and it’s unmistakably dead. He’d ruminate on it more, were it not for the creature to subsequently proceed to disappear, the only sign that it was ever there being an acrid scent of burnt fur in the air.
“Aww, getting worked up over little ol’ me,” says Dean, sitting up.
And causing Alec to jolt like he’d been electrocuted. “Dean!” he exclaims in shock. That changing quickly to anger, Alec punches him, only barely remembering to lower the velocity behind it at the last second. “You son of a bitch.”
“You have that little faith in me? Well, damn,” says Dean only half-seriously. “You think this is the first black dog I’ve killed? You can’t just gank them on a whim; gotta get ’em pissed first, otherwise they’ll vanish. Stabbed the thing before he got one paw on me.”
Alec raises and eyebrow and points. “Think again,” he observes. “You got nicked, Superman.”
Dean puts a finger up to his hairline and it comes away red. “Ah, shit,” he says in uninterested disappointment. “Sammy’ll never let me live this down.”
Alec doesn’t respond, catching sight of something in the clearing up ahead. Something that looks an awful lot like-
“Um…Dean?” he asks stiltedly. Dean grunts. “Think we’ve got another Cujo-related issue going on.”
Dean twists around, seeing what Alec had with a groan. The dog’s staring at them, teal eyes lethal, but then halts, yelping as if shot. A man and a woman come walking out of the woods, and Dean’s eyes widen, his expression not daring to be hopeful, but settling uncertainly on curiosity.
Temporarily rendered silent, he stands up and takes a few steps forward, Alec mimicking the motions, though keeping a guarded eye on Dean.
Then Dean notices something else. The man’s hand is outstretched, the black dog still yelping and quivering. Dean doesn’t have the enhanced hearing, but Alec does.
“Go ahead,” Alec hears from the man.
The woman strides up and slices the dog’s head clean from its body with some sort of sparking knife. She turns to the man and smiles viciously. He returns it.
He lowers his hand and the dog’s body falls, quickly dissipating like the one Dean had killed. “You cut yourself,” he says.
The woman looks down, her hand indeed lacerated. With another all-wrong grin, she holds it up, and the man closes his mouth over the wound, tasting the blood. Alec winces in revulsion.
He glances over at Dean cautiously. The man turning so his face is visible, Dean recognizes him just seconds before Alec. And in those seconds, Dean’s entire frame seizes up. Alec uses his telescopic vision, downright praying that both he and Dean are seeing wrong, but they aren’t. He’d kept the shaggy brown hair, is still freakishly tall, and wears the same light green jacket as in the surveillance photos. Alec doesn’t have to have seen him in person before to know that the man he’s looking at is none other than Sam Winchester.
Sam Winchester somehow stopping a killer dog in its tracks with nary an effort and then drinking blood from some bitch who, for a reason Alec doesn’t know, is off.
To top everything, Dean’s got an awful mixture of horror and murder in his face.
And that’s just fucking great.
Had Kalinda been an Ordinary, Max-even Dalton-would have disarmed her and had her unconscious in a second flat. But she’s a transgenic, as are they, and she knows the same tricks in the book as everyone else does.
More than that, she’s got…she’s got Dalton. Not that Max would allow anyone else from T.C. to get shot, but…she has kind of a soft spot for the twerp, and she’d go so far as to say Alec thinks of him as a little brother. She’d honestly put the status of her safety up in the air if, while Alec were “away,” she let Dalton get killed. She’d kiss any chances of Alec sticking around as co-leader (or as anything, for that matter) goodbye.
So she follows as Kalinda watches her and simultaneously keeps the gun trained at Dalton’s skull, follows her into the main command center. As she finds out quickly, she’s the last person to know about Kalinda acting all…strange. Everyone else is either in astoundment, in fury, or just plain confusion. She knows each one is trying to think of ways to incapacitate Kalinda without hurting Dalton, but they’d also come to the same conclusion: if they even moved one muscle that Kalinda didn’t like, Dalton’s brains would be spread over the floor. And, like Max, whether they have a fondness for the boy or not, they’re not going to risk his life.
She catches a movement to her right and looks over to see Rade standing by the medical bay doors, her mouth halfway open; Max guesses her words would be something like, “What the fuck is going on out here?” As Kalinda’s temporarily not facing her, Max gives the minutest of head shakes to their sole medic, and Rade, however much she may detest taking orders, retreats into the room. Max breathes a silent sigh of relief. At least if things got hairy out here, which she’d bet the rundown toxic waste dump that they will, their doctor-and Dix, to an extent-would be safe.
Kalinda swivels around and forces Joshua around to her other side with merely a glare. Max, forever the martyr, speaks up. “What are you doing, Kali?” she asks. “What’s wrong with you?”
Kalinda smirks. “Nothing’s wrong with me, darlin’,” she says. “Though I can’t say much for this freak of nature I’m in.”
Max attempts to not frown in total bewilderment. (Key word being “attempts.”) “Excuse me?” she asks, keeping her voice as level as possible. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Laughing, Kalinda does a very furtive glance around the room to make sure no one’s thinking of doing anything she doesn’t want them to. They are, but unfortunately can’t act on it. “You know, for all the brains you freaks are supposed to have, you sure are stupid.” Max stares, and Kali humors her. “You really thought you would come out the Division I favorites in this? As if. Hell, humans won’t either, pretentious bastards. It’s we that will. All of you forgot about us in your little hissy fit of an electromagnet, but we haven’t forgotten. You and all your just-add-water pals are in for a huge treat, Maxie.”
“U-Us?” Dalton whispers.
“Demons,” replies Kalinda with an indulgent tone, as if talking about a long-lost lover.
Max wishes she could break down, perhaps let out a sob, at the simple, horrible irony that not only was Dean right-fuck, he was right-but he could be anywhere. Worse still, with the only other guy that she knows would be able to keep his head. It’s a main reason why she’d chosen him as her Second: he kept her in line, made sure that if she were ever to start to get too invested or emotional, he’d bring her out of it. Now he’s not here, and it’s taking all her willpower not to reduce herself to a crumbling mess.
She’s got all of T.C. trusting her with their lives, has Dalton trusting her with his life, and she’s one breath away from hyperventilating. She can handle a lot, was made to handle a lot, learned to handle a lot, but…but demons? They’re not fucking real! Or…at least…they’re not supposed to be.
Fuck.
“What do you want?” Max murmurs, closing her arms around herself, hoping it can keep her together. It’s not helping. “What do you want from us?”
“Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to get nasty,” sneers Kalinda-no, not Kalinda, some…thing-“not unless you make it difficult.”
“Who are you?” Max asks, knowing whatever the thing’s answer would be wouldn’t make any sense, but would provide some stalling time. In which to do…she hasn’t the faintest, but it couldn’t hurt.
“I got lots of names, you abomination,” the thing replies. Max keeps her stare. “But once upon a time, evidently the name Meg seemed to be a favorite.”
It doesn’t ring any bells-as she’d predicted-but the thing doesn’t appear to care. “And you’re a demon.”
Meg laughs. “More than that, sweetie,” she says. “Turns out I was in just the right part of Hell that your buddies’ little spell got not only your new boy out, but my sweet ass as well. Quite considerate of them.”
Max isn’t sure who her “pals” are supposed to be, but there’s only one other person about whom this thing could be talking. “Where’s Kali?” she asks. The X6 could be often annoying, but Max doesn’t wish her dead.
Meg makes some expression that Max can only describe as pure, soulless evil. “Oh, don’t worry,” she remarks. “Kalinda’s in here with me. She says ‘hi,’ by the way.”
“How long-”
“Since I got out,” answers Meg. Seeing Max’s face of shock, she continues, “Drink it in. It was me who helped you and these transgenic freaks get Dean out of the hospital.”
Max can’t prevent her eyes from widening-she’d guessed that it was Dean Meg was talking about, but hearing her say Dean’s name in such a slimy, almost desirous way, sent chills down her spine. “Why?” she asks quietly.
“What fun would it be if I let him die from some human injury?” she shrugs, jerking the gun a little in annoyance. “Dean and I have got…some bones to pick. It wouldn’t be any fun to kill him right there.”
Max presses a hand over her face, wishing this whole thing were a nightmare, but feeling the…wrongness in the air and knowing it isn’t. “What do you want from us?”
“Let’s just say you’re…bait,” Meg relishes. “I didn’t think that bomb would be enough, so in case, I went ahead with this.”
“You set the bomb?” Max cries.
Meg smiles. “That mutant was going to figure out things that we just couldn’t allow until the time was right. The bomb was all too easy to place. For all your distrust of humanity, you’re remarkably trusting of your own. You’d never suspect cute little Kalinda.” Meg considers for a second, before giving a fake sigh. “Hilarious, really, that you didn’t believe Dean, causing him and your lover to bail, when it turns out that he isn’t buckets of crazy. I’m guessing the word running through that pretty head of yours is along the line of ‘Shit.’”
Actually, yes, that was her thought, up until Meg’s last sentence. Now, it’s more Alec’s not my lover, you bitch. But she’s choosing not to mention that; she doubts it’s out of the realm of probability that her denial would only bolster Meg’s opinion. And protecting Dean would be hard enough for him and Alec without adding a hit on Alec, too.
So, instead, she uses it to find the will she’d had that had allowed her to be able to escape Manticore, to find her siblings, to survive a second stint in Manticore, to lead T.C. She’d dealt with worse than some…hell spawn. As much as it’s still incredibly hard to believe.
“You sound like some child with a temper tantrum,” she needles.
“Max…” Dalton squeaks, frightened.
She tries to portray assurance to him, but doesn’t think it worked very well. “And you know what’s even funnier?” she continues, making extraordinary extrapolations based on nothing but that she hopes are true. “Dean was in Hell since he died, wasn’t he? That’s what, thirteen years? And sounded like time moved different, longer, down there. Yet he didn’t turn into a demon, or however it is you bastards become evil. You’re just a weak, C-list slasher film flunky.”
Max’s sharp vision sees Meg’s eyes tighten the slightest bit, but otherwise, she makes no reaction. She surmises that in Hell-shit, that sounds crazy-you generally get good at hiding emotions.
What’s more obvious is how Meg’s finger tightens around the trigger, knuckles turning white against the silver of the handle. Dalton tries to be stoic, but a muscle in his cheek spasms, and he blinks quickly for a minute.
It’s then that she suddenly views Dalton not as an X6, a deadly killing machine, but a sixteen-year-old boy who was just starting a much greater and fulfilling life (however much it may suck at the moment). She’s barely into her twenties herself, and she knows that if it weren’t Dalton in this situation but, say, Alec, she’d keep up with the antagonism technique. Hell, she knows Alec would, too.
But this is Dalton. She’d never forgive herself if he got killed. She wouldn’t forgive herself if Alec got killed either, but at least he’s always been prepared for risks like this. Dalton hasn’t, isn’t. And fuck if she’s going to sacrifice him just to stall for some solution that’s never going to come. Those only possible ones being hundreds or thousands of miles away.
“Leave him alone,” she sighs, staring Meg straight in her black eyes. “Leave him alone. Take me hostage or what the hell ever, but let Dalton go.”
Dalton looks at her in a mixture of fear and objection, and she loathes that he does. He’s sixteen-he shouldn’t be in this mindset. None of them should be. “Max?” she hears Joshua mutter from behind her. She stiffly ignores him; she can’t lose resolve now.
“Take me,” she repeats, seeing Meg ponder the option. “If you’re trying to get Dean here, it’s me he’s going to care about, not Dalton.”
Meg takes in her words. “Huh,” she says. “All right.”
She shoves Dalton away from her, which under normal circumstances wouldn’t do much of anything, but evidently, as Max finds out, the demon inside Kalinda gave her more than even transgenic strength. Dalton hits what’s left of the computer terminals, and then cries out as, with an accompanying, horrifying squelching sound, a broken piece of railing pierces through his leg.
Max wheels on Meg, scant centimeters from her face. “The fuck was that?!” she screams, her tone and words echoing precisely what every single other Manticore creation in the room is thinking. “You said you wouldn’t hurt him!”
Meg shakes her head with a grin. “I said I’d let him go,” she answers. “Didn’t say nothin’ about not hurting him.” She glances over at Dalton’s body that’s currently being tended to by the transgenics as best they can. “It’s a flesh wound anyway. Hear you freaks have fast healing or some shit. I really don’t feel like giving a damn.”
She moves the gun to Max’s chest, using the barrel to push her back. “Now come on, princess,” she says, directing Max back towards her office. Then she pauses for a second and turns. “Make sure these monsters don’t do anything to mess this up,” she announces.
Max looks at her like she’s crazy-crazier-wondering what the hell Meg’s talking about. Then, however, four of her brethren, two X-series and two transhumans stand up. Their eyes abruptly turn the same pitch black that Meg’s are, and they nod. Max feels her face pale, and sees a similar response in everyone else. Dalton’s face is the whitest, but she thinks that that has more to do with his blood loss. To top all of it off, she doesn’t know if they’ll be able to get Rade in, or if the demons would even let her try and fix him up.
Her world is falling apart in front of her eyes, and she can’t help but regret with her entire being her at-the-time-unintentional kicking out of Dean, and by extension Alec. She’d give just about anything to have even one of them here now.
As she looks with desperation at the scene straight out of a horror movie and then is forced to turn away by the .38 in her back and walk into her office, she prays that wherever Alec and Dean are, they’re safe. Safer than T.C., that is.
Meg commands her to sit on the couch, and with the hand not holding the gun, snatches Max’s cell off the desk and tosses it to her. “Call him,” she says. “Let him know just what’s awaiting if he doesn’t get his and Dean’s ass back here ASAP. I’ll let you figure out the consequences of that one.”
Max shuts her eyes, taking the brief seconds to try and wrack her brain for a scheme, but she knows she’s fresh out of ideas even before Meg snarls another threat at her.
With fumbling fingers, Max presses the number two speed dial, and wars between hoping beyond hope that Alec picks up, and hoping beyond hope that he doesn’t. Most of all, she hopes beyond hope that somehow, some way, Alec would come through, play the white knight to save everyone. Save her.
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