SPN/DA crossover fic: Of Desire and the Status Quo (33/38)
Story Title: Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter Title: As He Breaks
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: 6,165
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 XXXIII: As He Breaks
It takes Alec a few minutes to get used to the handling of the Impala, but soon it feels second nature, and it isn’t long before he eases onto the freeway towards home. Not Dean’s home, he knows that with aching certainty-Dean’s home is with Sam; was with Sam-but a base camp nonetheless.
He can only see the road in front of him, the asphalt yellowed in the glare of the headlights, the scenery swathed in blackness. They’d been driving for hours, it seems, but he can’t tell anything else. He can’t be sure whether they’re in Montana or only on the Illinois-Missouri border.
Dean hasn’t wakened, which Alec doesn’t necessarily find suspicious; after all, when Alec knocks someone out, they tend to stay out. But Dean’s face is reflected in the window, and Alec sees his eyes scrunched shut, his muscles in pain as if even in sleep he knows that Alec driving his car is not right, and that Sam is…gone.
He tries to think of things to say for when Dean does regain consciousness, but so far is coming up blank. What can he say? “Sorry your bro was stabbed to death by the same demon who turned him Dark Side”? He doesn’t know too much of Sam, but he’d seen how much the guy meant to Dean. He’d bet Vegas money that Sam’s worth more to Dean than Dean is to himself. Shit, the minute the man had realized he was out of Hell, his brother was the first thing he’d thought of, the first person he’d gone after.
He’d knocked both Max and Cindy unconscious, threw a knife into Alec’s flesh, fought with Rade and Mole and everyone in between…all of it just to get to Sam. Sam had been more important than Bobby, than Bobby’s death. As far as Alec’s seen and heard, Sam had been more important than the entire fucking world.
And now Dean’s has crumbled in upon itself, imploded while taking his spirit with it. He had been able to deal with Hell, with continuous torture and continuous demons hacking away at him piece by piece. He’d been able to deal with anything that came his way, supernatural or otherwise, all with a smirk and a machete. But Sam dying? It’s the one thing Dean can’t deal with. Ever.
It isn’t Sam’s last breaths escaping, or even the tears on Dean’s cheeks that told him such. It was the expression Dean had made when Ruby sunk the knife into Sam’s back. The utter horror, utter shock, utter devastation that had so cruelly twisted Dean’s proportioned features. Alec knows he’s never had that amalgam on his own face before, not even after Rachel and Isolation.
He’d thought that was the worst life could dish out, the most terrible feelings a person could endure. But looking at Dean? Watching Dean have it confirmed that not only had Sam holed up with a demon, but had been murdered as well? Alec knows for sure that’s rock bottom, that absolute emptiness that few have ever had to suffer.
Alec wouldn’t be surprised if Dean never speaks again. And he wouldn’t blame him, either.
He grips the steering wheel harder, the dated leather molding under his hands like a child’s putty. The road stretches endlessly on ahead of them, a never-ending river of depression and barrenness, no finish line in sight, no finale to Dean’s anguish or promise of peace.
Alec suddenly doesn’t know if he should actually bring Dean back to Seattle, back to civilization and to Max (let alone the disaster that’s awaiting them). He’s positive Max would, as soon as they deal with everything else, Mother Hen him, or on the flipside, try to slap him into recovery, but Alec does know that no matter what ventures she undertakes, Dean won’t respond. Not in the way she’d like.
The only thing he’d respond to is Sam coming back to life, returning to Dean to be taken care of like the little brother he’d raised since he was four. But Alec has a sickening certainty that Sam won’t. That whatever anomaly had sprung Dean topside wouldn’t happen to Sam. But then, maybe it’s better, Alec reasons, better that Sam’s not in his own personal Hell anymore.
Because honestly, Alec can’t determine whose was worse. Dean’s, with the physical torture day in and day out…or Sam’s, with the emotional torture day in and day out. Truly, Alec’s amazed Sam had lasted so long without giving in. Thirteen years of not taking his own life just to escape the mental assault of guilt and sorrow, thirteen years of waking up to find the second bed undisturbed, thirteen years of driving without having an annoying brother next to him switching the radio channel without asking, thirteen years of having half of himself wrested away.
Alec’s pretty sure he’d rather be in Manticore again than go through what either Sam or Dean had. Which is saying a fucking hell of a lot.
Alec glances over to Dean’s still sleeping-no, not so much sleeping as out of commission-form and then to the road, sighing. He considers flipping on the radio, but can’t bring himself to do it. He just wants to get back…where, home?
He puts his elbow on the seam between the window and doorframe, resting his head on his fist. The car in unmitigated silence, not even a passing vehicle or hoot of an owl breaking the suffocating interior, Alec drives. Alec drives, but he’s not sure they’re going anywhere at all.
Rade sits on the second gurney in her medical bay, staring at the closed doors through whose handles she’d stuck a broken off chair leg, as she’d been doing for the past she-doesn’t-know-how-long. She can’t hear whatever might be going on outside, and her imagination is running wild with just what little she’d seen. She’d more than once heavily considered going against Max’s wishes and attempt to fight off whatever those things were, but the look in Max’s eyes… Never so clearly had they said, “If this is the one time you follow an order-even if unspoken-follow it now, Rade. Please.”
So she’d stayed. She’d stayed behind her locked and soundproof doors while, for all she knew, her people were being slaughtered. And hell, for all she knows, those things could bust through said locked doors any minute and slaughter her.
What’s worse, while she hadn’t been able to hear or see much through the sliver between the doors she’d allowed herself; only enough to hear Kalinda’s-no, not Kalinda, something else-demand. That Alec and Dean come back only to, she dreads, meet their respective demises. She’d shut the doors and slid the chair leg to secure them once she saw four transgenics she’d known turn their eyes a soulless black.
She has no idea why the black-eyed bitch wants both men dead, but at this juncture, Rade can’t bring herself to give a damn. All that matters now is that they don’t get hurt. For all the shit she gives Alec, she does like the dude. Well, likes him enough to not want him dead. And Dean…so help her, she doesn’t want him dead either. Which she can rationalize is simply because she’d brought him back to the brink of life and she doesn’t want her work to be for naught.
But she does wonder how on God’s green (now mostly brown and gray and broken) Earth Alec and Dean are going to save them.
She has a certain level of faith in Alec’s abilities, and figures she might as well put stock in Dean’s as well-providing, of course, he’s in his non-hallucinating mind-owing to the fact that he’s nearly an exact replica of Alec, she does. But despite their heightened DNA, he isn’t invincible. And those things with the black eyes and the unmistakable promise to kill anyone who so much as move in a way they don’t want won’t, she knows, be inclined to let Alec or Dean anywhere near them.
She looks around the room in hope of finding some sort of weapon that would harm the black-eyed creatures but not her people, but comes up blank. She’s got enough ketamine to bring down an elephant, but no dart guns with which to incapacitate from far away; she’s got a pea-shooter of her own, but doubts it’d do anything more than piss them off; the only benefit she has is her feistiness, but, much as it’s been “revered” by members of T.C., it doesn’t quite come equipped with an M40 sniper rifle.
She’s broken out of her gloomy musings by a groan, and snaps her head to her left. She sees Dix’s shut eyes tight and a shiver run through him, and immediately gets off her gurney and rushes to him.
“Dix!” she exclaims quietly, putting a hand on his arm and carefully avoiding the horrifying amount of injuries on his body. “How’re you feeling?”
He moans again, and then opens one eye, the other swollen shut (and, though she won’t tell him so, likely not ever to be usable again). “G-Great…” he exhales, voice scratchy.
She recalls that the last time she gave him any analgesic was a good hour ago, and though it’s a little soon, though their supplies aren’t unlimited, she pulls some ketamine into a syringe, sticks it in Dix’s elbow, and fills his veins with the numbing agent. She thinks his injuries combined with his fast metabolism are enough to warrant an additional dosage, and she’s sure he’ll appreciate it.
Dix blearily takes in his surroundings, Rade, and then finally the door with the bar through the handles. His thoughts are fuzzy right now, but not so much that he can’t tell something’s amiss.
“Whassat for?” Dix slurs. She notices he doesn’t mention at all the explosion, but decides against commenting.
“It’s…” she trails, not wanting to up Dix’s blood pressure any higher than it is now. She honestly hadn’t expected him to pull through, but he had, and she doesn’t want that jeopardized. “It’s nothing. There was just a little scuffle going on outside, and I didn’t want any of it to come in here while I was working on you. Don’t worry about it.”
Dix doesn’t appear to believe her, but his body’s too tired to argue. He takes a deep breath, glad for the painlessness the drug is slowly bringing.
“Dix…” Rade says, not wanting to ask but feeling it’s necessary, “did you-I mean, before-what did you find?”
Dix swings his good eye over to her, a brief flash of anguish coming over his face as he remembers the event that put him here in the first place. “I-I don’t…” he begins, frowning.
“Forget it,” Rade says quickly. She doesn’t want to cause any more strain on his body. He’s lucky to have a heartbeat, let alone to be talking or trying to remember something that happened right before he got blasted with shrapnel.
“No,” Dix says, his voice shaky but determined. He tries to sit up, but quickly realizes that’s a very bad idea, and lies down again. “I…I hacked i-into the head FBI ag-agent’s files and g-got his notes…I just can’t…I can’t remember…”
“It’s okay, Dix,” says Rade, hiding the disappointment she’s ashamed for feeling. She should be happy he’s simply alive, not disappointed that he has minor amnesia.
Dix looks at her with what would be a glare if he had the energy to do so. “G-G-Get Trinity.”
Rade stalls. She knows why Dix asked for her-Trinity, formerly X5-685, is one of only three ex-Psy Ops units in T.C., and the only one who isn’t irreversibly internally scarred from the job. Theoretically, Trinity could look inside Dix’s mind, his memory, and pick out what he’d seen. She’d be the world’s best hypnotist.
But part of the appeal of T.C. is that it’s a place where transgenic abilities aren’t used for exploitative purposes. None of it had been, granted, specifically stated, but especially in the case of the Psy Ops series, it was an unwritten taboo for them to use their powers. At least for anything malignant.
Which is the only reason Rade is even contemplating this. Surely, Trinity would see the inquiry as having something good come out of it, not something problematic? Surely she would want to do anything she could to help?
All it takes is a glance towards the locked doors once more for Rade’s mind to be made up. Maybe she won’t be able to convince Trinity to mind read, maybe she will. But one thing she knows is that she’s going to do everything she can.
Virtually the only plus side in the whole situation, unfortunately, is that Trinity is in one of the apartments of T.C.; Rade hadn’t thoroughly studied the crowd of transgenics when the black-eyed creatures took over, but she’s sure Trinity hadn’t been there. And since there’s a single small window in the room-albeit one covered in thick bars-it would prevent her from having to somehow not get killed by walking through Command.
She nods to Dix and pats him gently on the arm before moving to the window. The bars are bolted into the concrete, but then, T.C. wasn’t made to hold in transgenics; the bonds would be hard to break, but not impossible. Plus, for all her slight figure suggests, she knows she’s damn strong.
It takes half a dozen forceful tugs for the bars to finally come loose, and she’s glad Command wasn’t able to hear the clang. She gives Dix a last look before hoisting herself up and out the window, pulling the bars back through the hole enough so they appear still intact.
She peers around the alleyway, looking for some sharp object (or dull; she’s really not that picky) amongst the debris and grime. Part of the wall of the building adjacent to the medic room is broken, leaving the innards exposed. Rade walks over to it and jiggles loose a long piece of rebar, thinking it’ll do. She doesn’t intend to run into anyone unsavory, but better safe than sorry.
As it turns out, it was a good decision. She’s halfway to Trinity’s apartment when a man comes out of nowhere, smiling at her with beetle-black eyes. He starts menacingly stalking towards her, but she’s never been one to run from a fight.
Blurring, she stabs the rebar through his chest. She’d anticipated him either not doing anything (a result of his unnaturalness) or dying (a best-case scenario). The reaction that she hadn’t once even envisioned was him screeching, copious amounts of smoke issuing from the wound as if physically burning him.
She stands there for a second in surprise, before smiling herself. She yanks out the rebar none too gently, and he falls to the ground in agony, still smoking. She’d kill him both if she thought she could and she had time, but neither option is viable, and so she instead books it even faster to Trinity’s place.
The encounter wasn’t pleasant, but she did learn something that she has a feeling will be useful: evidently, black-eyed somethings are not too fond of iron.
He can’t pinpoint when his eyes started crossing, but Alec’s conscious notices it just now, the road multiplying into two, the headlights into four, and he’s not sure where the dotted white lines are, or where the edge of the freeway is. He shakes his head violently, and his vision goes back to normal, but he knows it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. Lazily, he regards the car’s clock, and is mildly astounded to see that it’s four-thirty in the morning: ten hours since they’d left Pontiac.
He hasn’t known where they are for a long time, and the old National Park sign they just sped by doesn’t do him any good. He looks over at Dean, still passed out, and part of him hopes Dean won’t wake for a while yet. At least, not until he figures out what he can do or say.
However, that doesn’t mean that Alec won’t sleep. Or, at the very least, try to rest. In the past, he’d gone much longer without sleep, food, water, and light, but Alec’s also never driven ten hours straight-hell, given that the last time he really slept was all the way back in Wyoming, and the next time he’d tried to rest he got seizures for his efforts, he might as well have been driving for forty-eight straight. Not to mention the added stress of emotional battery, death, and exorcisms.
Mentally regretting it, but knowing he’ll probably crash the car if he doesn’t, Alec takes the off-ramp to some hamlet named Wall, presuming that since it had a marker-ish thing, it’s big enough to house a motel. (At this point, Alec would settle for a gravel turnout.) A restaurant would be pushing it, but, unsurprisingly, food is the last thing on his mind right now.
Dean doesn’t stir as Alec pulls up in front of a rundown establishment, getting out of the car quietly and walking to the other side. Alec pulls Dean’s arm over his shoulder and, locking the Impala, hefts the dead weight-pardon the pun-toward the motel.
The lie comes naturally, more naturally than when Alec had done missions of his own, though he finds himself jaded. “My-My brother here had a little too much to drink,” says Alec, mouth fumbling over the b-word. He’s not Dean’s brother, he’s not, and he feels like he’s somehow insulting Sam’s memory by saying so. “Mind giving us a room so he can sleep it off?”
The motel manager disinterestedly pushes a ledger toward Alec, who shifts Dean’s bulk to scrawl some random name. He slaps down a wad of cash, and the manager hands him a key.
Alec doesn’t have the strength to even muster up a thank-you, and simply takes the key, walking down the hall awkwardly and very glad that their room is on the first floor. Getting the door open on the fourth try, he stumbles in and drops Dean on the closest bed, shutting the door behind him.
The room is awful, dreadful, and Alec vows to not take off his shoes for fear of getting tetanus. For the hell of it, he tries the TV, but all he gets is static. The walls are thin, thin enough so that on one side he can hear a couple arguing about anything and everything, and on the other some couple going at it like they’re making some hardcore Hefner flick.
He glances at Dean and pushes him farther up on the bed, finding a mostly clean blanket and putting it over him. Alec sighs and, hoping he’s tired enough to sleep through the noise and the guilt, shuts off the lights, tosses aside the comforter with disgust, and climbs under the musty sheets. He stares up at the ceiling, part of him wishing he’d never decided to go on this stupid trip in the first place. It’d just fucked everything up royally, and Alec doesn’t have any access to workable therapy.
He closes his eyes, praying for some exhaustion respite, and mercifully, he falls into sleep-albeit a restless one-partially awakening every so often, but always going back under again before fully conscious.
In the bed beside him, Dean’s body lays still, his mind is anything but.
When Alec wakes for good, watch reading 8:48 a.m., and looks over to Dean’s side of the room, he shoots up, discovering through his bleary haze that the bed is empty. Untangling himself from the sheets and checking the entire motel room, even the closet, but finding no evidence of Dean whatsoever, Alec runs a hand roughly over his face, breathing heavily.
“Damn it!” he yells, collapsing down on Dean’s bed, shoulders hunched as he looks at the ground.
He’d been so caught up with everything that he hadn’t roused, not even as Dean had obviously made a run for it. He’d just guessed that Dean was too depressed to even function, but he’d apparently underestimated the man once more. Then again, Alec tries to console himself, Dean had made a living out of deceiving people and escaping-regardless of how emotionally battered he was-so why would Alec be any different?
Because you actually thought he cared a little about you and maybe even wanted to stick around.
Alec’s never wanted to punch the lights out of anything this much before, ever, never mind that it’s just an aggravating voice inside his head. Mostly because the voice is right-Alec had grown attached to the guy, and he’d-stupidly, apparently-thought Dean had at least liked him enough not to bolt. But Alec supposes neither of them had anticipated what the blow of Sam dying would have caused.
Still…
“Fuck,” Alec whispers to himself, standing up languidly and reconciling himself to the fact that if Dean had gone, there’d be no way he’d catch him. It’d be like catching smoke in a hurricane. His only choice would be to go back to Seattle, stealing a car along the way because Dean would surely have taken the Impala, somehow save Max and all of T.C. on his own, somehow find Dean again, somehow figure out this thing with White, and then somehow run T.C. with Max for God knows how long. He can handle a lot, but right now, he’s feeling himself come apart at the seams. Fast.
After a minute, he collects himself well enough to put those thoughts carefully on the edges of his mind, and he throws his jacket on, grabbing the motel key on the way. Feeling it’s a fruitless effort but needing to do something, he walks hurriedly down the hallway, slams the motel key on the reception counter while ignoring the owner’s disgruntlement, and strides through the lobby doors.
Not watching where he’s going in favor of looking for a car that would be both inconspicuous to thieve and also not some piece of crap, Alec unintentionally slams into something solid, losing his balance for a moment but not falling.
“Move-” Alec starts in irritation to whomever he’d run into. When he looks up, though, he backpedals. “Dean?”
“Alec,” Dean says, his voice sounding the most normal Alec’s heard in days. “You look like you’re gonna have a heart attack.”
Alec thinks that’s not too far out of the question. “Dean!” he exclaims, putting his hands on both of Dean’s arms. “Where the hell’d you go?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dean says with a shrug. “I mean, this ain’t real, anyway. None of it is.”
Gazing straight into Dean’s eyes, crazily enough praying he’ll just see the same vacancy as before, he’s actually disappointed to see that they’re clear, lucid as can be. Alec had never thought he’d wish for Dean to be depressed, but now…he kind of does. He doesn’t understand. Less than a day ago, Dean was-justifiably-the poster child for Xanax. Now he’s the poster child for a downright chipper vacuum salesman.
“What are you talking about?” asks Alec, gripping tighter onto Dean’s arms, as if to hold in his sanity. Because he’s starting to fear it’s slipping away, quicker than before. “What do you mean this isn’t real? Of course it is!”
“Nope,” Dean says offhandedly, shaking his head. “Not real. I’ve been through this before. You fuckers have put me through this before. Sammy dead, broken, me twisted…it’s old news, buddy. Man, for a second there, I really thought I’d been out of this damn place.”
Alec begins to speak, before realizing with bone-chilling horror that Dean thinks he’s back in Hell. That because he’d seen Sam have the life drained out of him, it was another illusion brought on by demons. He doesn’t want to believe Sam is dead-because that was really the sole motivation for him to hold on-so badly that he’d prefer being in the Pit once more.
But Alec’s not gone this far, not dealt with so much with Dean to lose him now. More than that, he…he can’t. Not like this. “Fuck, Dean, snap out of it!” he yells, not caring if the receptionist in the motel, or any random passerby, can hear him. “You’re not in Hell! We’re in the fucking prairie! Come on, man, just-snap out of it. Please, dude, please.”
Alec wonders if he’s starting to lose it, too, starting to lose his mastery of stoicism. Maybe insanity is contagious-or hereditary, or something. But then again, he’s never been this desperate. “’S too bad,” Dean says, his voice, that horrendously calm voice, remaining placid. “Kinda liked you, kid. Guess your friends decided to make nice this time. Makin’ you look like me, this transgenic stuff, though, haven’t seen that before. Wanna clue me in to what they’re planning? I mean, usually when I figure out this is all your guys’ trick, you follow it up with some torture shit. So what is it this time? Knives, guns, torches, sticks, needles, pliers, water…gimme a hint, huh?”
Alec does the only thing he can think of, an action he’d done more times than he cares to admit in recent days. Coiling up the strength in his muscles, he releases his right arm from Dean, pulls it back, and sends a punch straight at Dean’s face, his knuckles stuttering against hard bone, and then hitting air as Dean falls to the ground. Alec’s hand tingles from the impact, but he drops to his knees, grabs Dean by the collar of his shirt, and shakes him, glaring into green, so lucid, eyes.
“DEAN!” Alec shouts, like in raising the volume, Dean’ll miraculously come back to reality. “YOU’RE NOT IN HELL! Come on, Dean, come on!”
He jars him again, Dean granting him a bloody smile, more viscous fluid running down from a laceration on his cheek. “Pretty light, don’tcha think?” he laughs. “You must be new.”
“FUCK!” Alec yells again, leaning against the wall and staring down at Dean’s resigned, almost relaxed, expression. Acknowledging his utter lack of options, he pulls out his cell phone and punches in numbers with unsteady fingers. She picks up after two rings, and Alec doesn’t wait before commanding, “Max! Look, I know you’re in deep shit where you are, but I really need your help. Please.”
She splutters for a few moments, presumably, Alec surmises, because she’s endeavoring to explain the phone call to whoever is holding her captive without actually explaining anything. But she covers, because she hears the uncharacteristic panic in his voice, his plea for help, and he’s never done that before. She’s got a gun at her head held by a demon, but if there’s one thing she knows about Alec, it’s that he never asks for help. Ever.
“Alec, all right, just calm down,” she says, trying to compose her own voice, even though her heart rate is jacked up higher than when Meg had first appeared. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
Alec can tell she fears the worst, and he can’t inform her otherwise. Because it’s worse than she fears. “It’s Dean,” he says, the words only heightening her worry. “He’s not hurt, he-Max, I-just tell me: how’d you talk B-Ben down? When he was off the deep end?”
Max inhales sharply, and Alec was prepared for it, but he doesn’t have the capacity to care about her reservations right now. “Alec, tell me what the hell is going on!”
“Max!”
She’s completely treading water here, scared at the tone in Alec’s voice. He’d always been so secure…even with Rachel, at least he’d tried to save face, but…the pure terror halts any painful memories brought up, and she blocks out Meg, just concentrates on the small piece of plastic in her hand and the words coming through it.
“I couldn’t save him, Alec,” she says with a hitch, thinking back to when she and Ben had fought, and he’d begged her to save him by killing him. “I tried to talk to him, but he was just…he was too far gone.”
“No!” Alec objects, starting to crunch his own phone. “Dean’s not like that!”
Max shuts her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to even out her breathing. “I said I couldn’t save my brother, Alec,” she repeats, “but you can save Dean. I don’t know what happened with him or with you, and right now I can’t do shit, but…Alec, listen to me. Whatever’s going on, you can bring him back. You haven’t let me down so far when it counts, and-this counts, Alec. Make it count.”
“Max, I can’t! He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t think any of this is real! I don’t know how to fix this!” Alec admits, staring down at Dean, who’s simply sitting on the concrete, apathetically wiping blood from his face. “I can’t help Dean, and I can’t help you, and I can’t-”
“Alec, shut the hell up,” Max interrupts. “You can. I trust you, and I-”
“I think that’s enough cheerleading,” Alec hears another voice come across the line. It has the same oily quality as Ruby’s had, and Alec realizes Max isn’t just trapped by some lunatic, but a demon.
Not that he can inject any concerns, because he’s promptly met with a click and then silence.
“Damn it!” he swears, shoving his phone in his pocket and scraping his nails through his hair.
Trying to imbue strength into himself from words he’d never in a million years thought he’d hear Max say to him, he kneels down next to Dean. “Dean, what-what can I do to convince you that I’m real, that this is real?” he begs.
Dean looks, of all things, amused. “Nothing, half-pint,” he snorts. “Because it isn’t real. Sammy’s not really dead, and you’re not really some freaky version of me, and I’m just wondering when this’ll all change back into the Hell I know and hate.”
“I don’t want to knock you out again, but-”
“Ha!” Dean laughs. “That’s new, too. You don’t want to inflict harm. I guess after two thousand years, you’ve finally come up with some novel ideas.”
Turning away from Dean in frustration, Alec takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says to himself. He tries to think of what Max would do in this situation, but comes up blank. Then he reasons that brute strength probably isn’t the way to go in this. The problem is with Dean’s head; Dean isn’t exactly resisting. Against his will, he thinks of what Psy Ops did to him, but then backs away from that. He neither has one of those lasers-which isn’t to say he’d ever use one even if he had it, let alone on Dean-nor does he think it’d work well anyway.
“All right, so…Ordinary shrinks,” he ponders aloud. He’s never had direct experience in the realm, but while he was still on team assignments, one of their subjects was a psychiatrist. “Go along with the delusion…?” Alec says rhetorically, searching his memory to figure out if that was actually something he’d heard, or just some random shit his brain is fabricating.
But what the hell. Nothing else has worked.
“You got me,” Alec says, turning back to Dean. He’d lowered his voice into something like a growl, and hopes his new expression isn’t still one of worry, but rather intimidation…kinda. “Let’s go, Winchester.”
Dean laughs, but gets up, sighing. “Do your worst,” he chuckles.
Alec literally bites his tongue at Dean’s flippant fatalism, once more in disbelief at how much more awful Dean’s time in Hell must have been than he’d let on. He leans down and, saying a silent apology, hefts Dean up with enough force to bruise and drags him towards the Impala. Alec brushes a hand quickly over the sleek body, glad that Dean hadn’t taken her and split after all, and shoves him in the front seat.
The keys are in the ignition, which Alec takes to mean that Dean had initially intended to skip town, when the psychosis-or whatever it is-struck. Sliding in and locking the doors, Alec starts up the car with a low rumble and peels out onto the freeway, leaving black marks behind him and the scent of rubber and irreparable grief in the air.
Meg watches as Max’s body language changes at hearing Alec’s frantic voice buzzing through the phone, watches as it alters between anger, terror, pain, and a smattering of others. She waits in amusement as she tries to talk the other transgenic through something involving Dean, but soon it becomes tiresome.
“I think that’s enough cheerleading,” she says. Before Max can protest, she grabs the phone, shutting it and cutting off the conversation. She then proceeds to drop the cell to the ground and step on it, digging her heel into the plastic, the device quickly becoming a pile of unrecognizable puzzle pieces.
Max stares at the wreckage in silent panic. Her cell was the last facsimile of hope she had of alerting Alec to…something, anything. Of the ability to even attempt to walk him through something should he need it. She doesn’t expect him to need her aid again, but the fact that she’s physically denied of the possibility to do so incites anxiety.
He’ll save Dean, then he’ll come here and save you, the very feeble shred of optimism inside her head says. He’s strong enough, he can do it. Just have faith.
Not long ago, she would have scoffed at herself, at thinking-and acknowledging that she’s thinking it-Alec could come through in such a monumentally huge way. But now, she doesn’t just need him to set Dean straight, she needs him to save her and dozens of other transgenics’ lives. She doubts he knows the enormity of what he’s about to get himself into, will only find out once he arrives, but hopes, knows, that his training and ability to improvise will work.
It has to.
“You-You sure you wanted to do that?” Max says, swallowing. “He might call back.”
Meg gives her a smile not unlike one someone would give a child who doesn’t understand basic addition. “Oh, I’m not worried about that,” she remarks. “He’ll come no matter what. It’s you who called him, after all, sweetheart.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Meg looks at her for a second as if waiting for Max to say something else, but then, upon realizing Max really meant the question, laughs. She doesn’t, however, elaborate. “So,” she says instead, “what was that about? Deano having a breakdown?”
Max’s cold glare answers in the affirmative.
“He always was a weakling,” Meg reflects. “Always had an Achilles heel for Sammy. I’m betting your freak co-leader’s managed to add himself into that.”
“Did you do something to Sam?” Max demands, feeling her fury rise.
Meg shakes her head. “Nah, not me,” she replies. “But if certain grapevines are to be trusted, well.”
She leaves the sentence dangling, allows Max to fill in the blanks with fear. If something had happened to Dean’s brother…
No, Max coaches herself. Fear isn’t going to do anyone any good. She hasn’t had relations with demons before very recently, but so far, despite Meg’s recounts and reprehensible actions, Max can’t see how they’re any worse than what Manticore had doled out once upon a time. If she takes away the title of demon, just focuses on what Meg’s said and done, she realizes that maybe, just maybe, she can get her head together again.
“Listen here, bitch,” Max says steadily, bringing her eyes up to Meg’s. “You can babble and rant all you want, but fact is, you’ve got only hours before you’re toast. You can smirk and laugh and whatever the hell else, but your ego has worn out its welcome. I mean, really, you need bait and henchmen to even get one of T.C.’s leaders back so you can try to kill him. Pretty sad, if you ask me.”
Meg rolls her eyes, and Max’s stomach doesn’t sink in frustration, because, to be honest, she hadn’t had much stock in Meg falling for her snide comments. “You know,” Meg says exasperatedly, “I really wasn’t going to do this, but you’ve gotten even more annoying than I’d thought possible. So, in that case…”
She holds her hand out, slowly contracting it into a fist. Max feels an invisible vise around her neck and looks up at Meg, who’s grinning once more. The hold is tighter than Dean’s had been what seemed like weeks ago, but has the same end result. Meg’s sadistic face is the last thing Max sees before fading into black, wondering if she’d gone too far and her words actually got through to the demon-if Meg actually is going to kill her.
Right now, she thinks dizzily, it’s pretty damn likely.
Next
Chapter Title: As He Breaks
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: 6,165
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 XXXIII: As He Breaks
It takes Alec a few minutes to get used to the handling of the Impala, but soon it feels second nature, and it isn’t long before he eases onto the freeway towards home. Not Dean’s home, he knows that with aching certainty-Dean’s home is with Sam; was with Sam-but a base camp nonetheless.
He can only see the road in front of him, the asphalt yellowed in the glare of the headlights, the scenery swathed in blackness. They’d been driving for hours, it seems, but he can’t tell anything else. He can’t be sure whether they’re in Montana or only on the Illinois-Missouri border.
Dean hasn’t wakened, which Alec doesn’t necessarily find suspicious; after all, when Alec knocks someone out, they tend to stay out. But Dean’s face is reflected in the window, and Alec sees his eyes scrunched shut, his muscles in pain as if even in sleep he knows that Alec driving his car is not right, and that Sam is…gone.
He tries to think of things to say for when Dean does regain consciousness, but so far is coming up blank. What can he say? “Sorry your bro was stabbed to death by the same demon who turned him Dark Side”? He doesn’t know too much of Sam, but he’d seen how much the guy meant to Dean. He’d bet Vegas money that Sam’s worth more to Dean than Dean is to himself. Shit, the minute the man had realized he was out of Hell, his brother was the first thing he’d thought of, the first person he’d gone after.
He’d knocked both Max and Cindy unconscious, threw a knife into Alec’s flesh, fought with Rade and Mole and everyone in between…all of it just to get to Sam. Sam had been more important than Bobby, than Bobby’s death. As far as Alec’s seen and heard, Sam had been more important than the entire fucking world.
And now Dean’s has crumbled in upon itself, imploded while taking his spirit with it. He had been able to deal with Hell, with continuous torture and continuous demons hacking away at him piece by piece. He’d been able to deal with anything that came his way, supernatural or otherwise, all with a smirk and a machete. But Sam dying? It’s the one thing Dean can’t deal with. Ever.
It isn’t Sam’s last breaths escaping, or even the tears on Dean’s cheeks that told him such. It was the expression Dean had made when Ruby sunk the knife into Sam’s back. The utter horror, utter shock, utter devastation that had so cruelly twisted Dean’s proportioned features. Alec knows he’s never had that amalgam on his own face before, not even after Rachel and Isolation.
He’d thought that was the worst life could dish out, the most terrible feelings a person could endure. But looking at Dean? Watching Dean have it confirmed that not only had Sam holed up with a demon, but had been murdered as well? Alec knows for sure that’s rock bottom, that absolute emptiness that few have ever had to suffer.
Alec wouldn’t be surprised if Dean never speaks again. And he wouldn’t blame him, either.
He grips the steering wheel harder, the dated leather molding under his hands like a child’s putty. The road stretches endlessly on ahead of them, a never-ending river of depression and barrenness, no finish line in sight, no finale to Dean’s anguish or promise of peace.
Alec suddenly doesn’t know if he should actually bring Dean back to Seattle, back to civilization and to Max (let alone the disaster that’s awaiting them). He’s positive Max would, as soon as they deal with everything else, Mother Hen him, or on the flipside, try to slap him into recovery, but Alec does know that no matter what ventures she undertakes, Dean won’t respond. Not in the way she’d like.
The only thing he’d respond to is Sam coming back to life, returning to Dean to be taken care of like the little brother he’d raised since he was four. But Alec has a sickening certainty that Sam won’t. That whatever anomaly had sprung Dean topside wouldn’t happen to Sam. But then, maybe it’s better, Alec reasons, better that Sam’s not in his own personal Hell anymore.
Because honestly, Alec can’t determine whose was worse. Dean’s, with the physical torture day in and day out…or Sam’s, with the emotional torture day in and day out. Truly, Alec’s amazed Sam had lasted so long without giving in. Thirteen years of not taking his own life just to escape the mental assault of guilt and sorrow, thirteen years of waking up to find the second bed undisturbed, thirteen years of driving without having an annoying brother next to him switching the radio channel without asking, thirteen years of having half of himself wrested away.
Alec’s pretty sure he’d rather be in Manticore again than go through what either Sam or Dean had. Which is saying a fucking hell of a lot.
Alec glances over to Dean’s still sleeping-no, not so much sleeping as out of commission-form and then to the road, sighing. He considers flipping on the radio, but can’t bring himself to do it. He just wants to get back…where, home?
He puts his elbow on the seam between the window and doorframe, resting his head on his fist. The car in unmitigated silence, not even a passing vehicle or hoot of an owl breaking the suffocating interior, Alec drives. Alec drives, but he’s not sure they’re going anywhere at all.
Rade sits on the second gurney in her medical bay, staring at the closed doors through whose handles she’d stuck a broken off chair leg, as she’d been doing for the past she-doesn’t-know-how-long. She can’t hear whatever might be going on outside, and her imagination is running wild with just what little she’d seen. She’d more than once heavily considered going against Max’s wishes and attempt to fight off whatever those things were, but the look in Max’s eyes… Never so clearly had they said, “If this is the one time you follow an order-even if unspoken-follow it now, Rade. Please.”
So she’d stayed. She’d stayed behind her locked and soundproof doors while, for all she knew, her people were being slaughtered. And hell, for all she knows, those things could bust through said locked doors any minute and slaughter her.
What’s worse, while she hadn’t been able to hear or see much through the sliver between the doors she’d allowed herself; only enough to hear Kalinda’s-no, not Kalinda, something else-demand. That Alec and Dean come back only to, she dreads, meet their respective demises. She’d shut the doors and slid the chair leg to secure them once she saw four transgenics she’d known turn their eyes a soulless black.
She has no idea why the black-eyed bitch wants both men dead, but at this juncture, Rade can’t bring herself to give a damn. All that matters now is that they don’t get hurt. For all the shit she gives Alec, she does like the dude. Well, likes him enough to not want him dead. And Dean…so help her, she doesn’t want him dead either. Which she can rationalize is simply because she’d brought him back to the brink of life and she doesn’t want her work to be for naught.
But she does wonder how on God’s green (now mostly brown and gray and broken) Earth Alec and Dean are going to save them.
She has a certain level of faith in Alec’s abilities, and figures she might as well put stock in Dean’s as well-providing, of course, he’s in his non-hallucinating mind-owing to the fact that he’s nearly an exact replica of Alec, she does. But despite their heightened DNA, he isn’t invincible. And those things with the black eyes and the unmistakable promise to kill anyone who so much as move in a way they don’t want won’t, she knows, be inclined to let Alec or Dean anywhere near them.
She looks around the room in hope of finding some sort of weapon that would harm the black-eyed creatures but not her people, but comes up blank. She’s got enough ketamine to bring down an elephant, but no dart guns with which to incapacitate from far away; she’s got a pea-shooter of her own, but doubts it’d do anything more than piss them off; the only benefit she has is her feistiness, but, much as it’s been “revered” by members of T.C., it doesn’t quite come equipped with an M40 sniper rifle.
She’s broken out of her gloomy musings by a groan, and snaps her head to her left. She sees Dix’s shut eyes tight and a shiver run through him, and immediately gets off her gurney and rushes to him.
“Dix!” she exclaims quietly, putting a hand on his arm and carefully avoiding the horrifying amount of injuries on his body. “How’re you feeling?”
He moans again, and then opens one eye, the other swollen shut (and, though she won’t tell him so, likely not ever to be usable again). “G-Great…” he exhales, voice scratchy.
She recalls that the last time she gave him any analgesic was a good hour ago, and though it’s a little soon, though their supplies aren’t unlimited, she pulls some ketamine into a syringe, sticks it in Dix’s elbow, and fills his veins with the numbing agent. She thinks his injuries combined with his fast metabolism are enough to warrant an additional dosage, and she’s sure he’ll appreciate it.
Dix blearily takes in his surroundings, Rade, and then finally the door with the bar through the handles. His thoughts are fuzzy right now, but not so much that he can’t tell something’s amiss.
“Whassat for?” Dix slurs. She notices he doesn’t mention at all the explosion, but decides against commenting.
“It’s…” she trails, not wanting to up Dix’s blood pressure any higher than it is now. She honestly hadn’t expected him to pull through, but he had, and she doesn’t want that jeopardized. “It’s nothing. There was just a little scuffle going on outside, and I didn’t want any of it to come in here while I was working on you. Don’t worry about it.”
Dix doesn’t appear to believe her, but his body’s too tired to argue. He takes a deep breath, glad for the painlessness the drug is slowly bringing.
“Dix…” Rade says, not wanting to ask but feeling it’s necessary, “did you-I mean, before-what did you find?”
Dix swings his good eye over to her, a brief flash of anguish coming over his face as he remembers the event that put him here in the first place. “I-I don’t…” he begins, frowning.
“Forget it,” Rade says quickly. She doesn’t want to cause any more strain on his body. He’s lucky to have a heartbeat, let alone to be talking or trying to remember something that happened right before he got blasted with shrapnel.
“No,” Dix says, his voice shaky but determined. He tries to sit up, but quickly realizes that’s a very bad idea, and lies down again. “I…I hacked i-into the head FBI ag-agent’s files and g-got his notes…I just can’t…I can’t remember…”
“It’s okay, Dix,” says Rade, hiding the disappointment she’s ashamed for feeling. She should be happy he’s simply alive, not disappointed that he has minor amnesia.
Dix looks at her with what would be a glare if he had the energy to do so. “G-G-Get Trinity.”
Rade stalls. She knows why Dix asked for her-Trinity, formerly X5-685, is one of only three ex-Psy Ops units in T.C., and the only one who isn’t irreversibly internally scarred from the job. Theoretically, Trinity could look inside Dix’s mind, his memory, and pick out what he’d seen. She’d be the world’s best hypnotist.
But part of the appeal of T.C. is that it’s a place where transgenic abilities aren’t used for exploitative purposes. None of it had been, granted, specifically stated, but especially in the case of the Psy Ops series, it was an unwritten taboo for them to use their powers. At least for anything malignant.
Which is the only reason Rade is even contemplating this. Surely, Trinity would see the inquiry as having something good come out of it, not something problematic? Surely she would want to do anything she could to help?
All it takes is a glance towards the locked doors once more for Rade’s mind to be made up. Maybe she won’t be able to convince Trinity to mind read, maybe she will. But one thing she knows is that she’s going to do everything she can.
Virtually the only plus side in the whole situation, unfortunately, is that Trinity is in one of the apartments of T.C.; Rade hadn’t thoroughly studied the crowd of transgenics when the black-eyed creatures took over, but she’s sure Trinity hadn’t been there. And since there’s a single small window in the room-albeit one covered in thick bars-it would prevent her from having to somehow not get killed by walking through Command.
She nods to Dix and pats him gently on the arm before moving to the window. The bars are bolted into the concrete, but then, T.C. wasn’t made to hold in transgenics; the bonds would be hard to break, but not impossible. Plus, for all her slight figure suggests, she knows she’s damn strong.
It takes half a dozen forceful tugs for the bars to finally come loose, and she’s glad Command wasn’t able to hear the clang. She gives Dix a last look before hoisting herself up and out the window, pulling the bars back through the hole enough so they appear still intact.
She peers around the alleyway, looking for some sharp object (or dull; she’s really not that picky) amongst the debris and grime. Part of the wall of the building adjacent to the medic room is broken, leaving the innards exposed. Rade walks over to it and jiggles loose a long piece of rebar, thinking it’ll do. She doesn’t intend to run into anyone unsavory, but better safe than sorry.
As it turns out, it was a good decision. She’s halfway to Trinity’s apartment when a man comes out of nowhere, smiling at her with beetle-black eyes. He starts menacingly stalking towards her, but she’s never been one to run from a fight.
Blurring, she stabs the rebar through his chest. She’d anticipated him either not doing anything (a result of his unnaturalness) or dying (a best-case scenario). The reaction that she hadn’t once even envisioned was him screeching, copious amounts of smoke issuing from the wound as if physically burning him.
She stands there for a second in surprise, before smiling herself. She yanks out the rebar none too gently, and he falls to the ground in agony, still smoking. She’d kill him both if she thought she could and she had time, but neither option is viable, and so she instead books it even faster to Trinity’s place.
The encounter wasn’t pleasant, but she did learn something that she has a feeling will be useful: evidently, black-eyed somethings are not too fond of iron.
He can’t pinpoint when his eyes started crossing, but Alec’s conscious notices it just now, the road multiplying into two, the headlights into four, and he’s not sure where the dotted white lines are, or where the edge of the freeway is. He shakes his head violently, and his vision goes back to normal, but he knows it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. Lazily, he regards the car’s clock, and is mildly astounded to see that it’s four-thirty in the morning: ten hours since they’d left Pontiac.
He hasn’t known where they are for a long time, and the old National Park sign they just sped by doesn’t do him any good. He looks over at Dean, still passed out, and part of him hopes Dean won’t wake for a while yet. At least, not until he figures out what he can do or say.
However, that doesn’t mean that Alec won’t sleep. Or, at the very least, try to rest. In the past, he’d gone much longer without sleep, food, water, and light, but Alec’s also never driven ten hours straight-hell, given that the last time he really slept was all the way back in Wyoming, and the next time he’d tried to rest he got seizures for his efforts, he might as well have been driving for forty-eight straight. Not to mention the added stress of emotional battery, death, and exorcisms.
Mentally regretting it, but knowing he’ll probably crash the car if he doesn’t, Alec takes the off-ramp to some hamlet named Wall, presuming that since it had a marker-ish thing, it’s big enough to house a motel. (At this point, Alec would settle for a gravel turnout.) A restaurant would be pushing it, but, unsurprisingly, food is the last thing on his mind right now.
Dean doesn’t stir as Alec pulls up in front of a rundown establishment, getting out of the car quietly and walking to the other side. Alec pulls Dean’s arm over his shoulder and, locking the Impala, hefts the dead weight-pardon the pun-toward the motel.
The lie comes naturally, more naturally than when Alec had done missions of his own, though he finds himself jaded. “My-My brother here had a little too much to drink,” says Alec, mouth fumbling over the b-word. He’s not Dean’s brother, he’s not, and he feels like he’s somehow insulting Sam’s memory by saying so. “Mind giving us a room so he can sleep it off?”
The motel manager disinterestedly pushes a ledger toward Alec, who shifts Dean’s bulk to scrawl some random name. He slaps down a wad of cash, and the manager hands him a key.
Alec doesn’t have the strength to even muster up a thank-you, and simply takes the key, walking down the hall awkwardly and very glad that their room is on the first floor. Getting the door open on the fourth try, he stumbles in and drops Dean on the closest bed, shutting the door behind him.
The room is awful, dreadful, and Alec vows to not take off his shoes for fear of getting tetanus. For the hell of it, he tries the TV, but all he gets is static. The walls are thin, thin enough so that on one side he can hear a couple arguing about anything and everything, and on the other some couple going at it like they’re making some hardcore Hefner flick.
He glances at Dean and pushes him farther up on the bed, finding a mostly clean blanket and putting it over him. Alec sighs and, hoping he’s tired enough to sleep through the noise and the guilt, shuts off the lights, tosses aside the comforter with disgust, and climbs under the musty sheets. He stares up at the ceiling, part of him wishing he’d never decided to go on this stupid trip in the first place. It’d just fucked everything up royally, and Alec doesn’t have any access to workable therapy.
He closes his eyes, praying for some exhaustion respite, and mercifully, he falls into sleep-albeit a restless one-partially awakening every so often, but always going back under again before fully conscious.
In the bed beside him, Dean’s body lays still, his mind is anything but.
When Alec wakes for good, watch reading 8:48 a.m., and looks over to Dean’s side of the room, he shoots up, discovering through his bleary haze that the bed is empty. Untangling himself from the sheets and checking the entire motel room, even the closet, but finding no evidence of Dean whatsoever, Alec runs a hand roughly over his face, breathing heavily.
“Damn it!” he yells, collapsing down on Dean’s bed, shoulders hunched as he looks at the ground.
He’d been so caught up with everything that he hadn’t roused, not even as Dean had obviously made a run for it. He’d just guessed that Dean was too depressed to even function, but he’d apparently underestimated the man once more. Then again, Alec tries to console himself, Dean had made a living out of deceiving people and escaping-regardless of how emotionally battered he was-so why would Alec be any different?
Because you actually thought he cared a little about you and maybe even wanted to stick around.
Alec’s never wanted to punch the lights out of anything this much before, ever, never mind that it’s just an aggravating voice inside his head. Mostly because the voice is right-Alec had grown attached to the guy, and he’d-stupidly, apparently-thought Dean had at least liked him enough not to bolt. But Alec supposes neither of them had anticipated what the blow of Sam dying would have caused.
Still…
“Fuck,” Alec whispers to himself, standing up languidly and reconciling himself to the fact that if Dean had gone, there’d be no way he’d catch him. It’d be like catching smoke in a hurricane. His only choice would be to go back to Seattle, stealing a car along the way because Dean would surely have taken the Impala, somehow save Max and all of T.C. on his own, somehow find Dean again, somehow figure out this thing with White, and then somehow run T.C. with Max for God knows how long. He can handle a lot, but right now, he’s feeling himself come apart at the seams. Fast.
After a minute, he collects himself well enough to put those thoughts carefully on the edges of his mind, and he throws his jacket on, grabbing the motel key on the way. Feeling it’s a fruitless effort but needing to do something, he walks hurriedly down the hallway, slams the motel key on the reception counter while ignoring the owner’s disgruntlement, and strides through the lobby doors.
Not watching where he’s going in favor of looking for a car that would be both inconspicuous to thieve and also not some piece of crap, Alec unintentionally slams into something solid, losing his balance for a moment but not falling.
“Move-” Alec starts in irritation to whomever he’d run into. When he looks up, though, he backpedals. “Dean?”
“Alec,” Dean says, his voice sounding the most normal Alec’s heard in days. “You look like you’re gonna have a heart attack.”
Alec thinks that’s not too far out of the question. “Dean!” he exclaims, putting his hands on both of Dean’s arms. “Where the hell’d you go?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dean says with a shrug. “I mean, this ain’t real, anyway. None of it is.”
Gazing straight into Dean’s eyes, crazily enough praying he’ll just see the same vacancy as before, he’s actually disappointed to see that they’re clear, lucid as can be. Alec had never thought he’d wish for Dean to be depressed, but now…he kind of does. He doesn’t understand. Less than a day ago, Dean was-justifiably-the poster child for Xanax. Now he’s the poster child for a downright chipper vacuum salesman.
“What are you talking about?” asks Alec, gripping tighter onto Dean’s arms, as if to hold in his sanity. Because he’s starting to fear it’s slipping away, quicker than before. “What do you mean this isn’t real? Of course it is!”
“Nope,” Dean says offhandedly, shaking his head. “Not real. I’ve been through this before. You fuckers have put me through this before. Sammy dead, broken, me twisted…it’s old news, buddy. Man, for a second there, I really thought I’d been out of this damn place.”
Alec begins to speak, before realizing with bone-chilling horror that Dean thinks he’s back in Hell. That because he’d seen Sam have the life drained out of him, it was another illusion brought on by demons. He doesn’t want to believe Sam is dead-because that was really the sole motivation for him to hold on-so badly that he’d prefer being in the Pit once more.
But Alec’s not gone this far, not dealt with so much with Dean to lose him now. More than that, he…he can’t. Not like this. “Fuck, Dean, snap out of it!” he yells, not caring if the receptionist in the motel, or any random passerby, can hear him. “You’re not in Hell! We’re in the fucking prairie! Come on, man, just-snap out of it. Please, dude, please.”
Alec wonders if he’s starting to lose it, too, starting to lose his mastery of stoicism. Maybe insanity is contagious-or hereditary, or something. But then again, he’s never been this desperate. “’S too bad,” Dean says, his voice, that horrendously calm voice, remaining placid. “Kinda liked you, kid. Guess your friends decided to make nice this time. Makin’ you look like me, this transgenic stuff, though, haven’t seen that before. Wanna clue me in to what they’re planning? I mean, usually when I figure out this is all your guys’ trick, you follow it up with some torture shit. So what is it this time? Knives, guns, torches, sticks, needles, pliers, water…gimme a hint, huh?”
Alec does the only thing he can think of, an action he’d done more times than he cares to admit in recent days. Coiling up the strength in his muscles, he releases his right arm from Dean, pulls it back, and sends a punch straight at Dean’s face, his knuckles stuttering against hard bone, and then hitting air as Dean falls to the ground. Alec’s hand tingles from the impact, but he drops to his knees, grabs Dean by the collar of his shirt, and shakes him, glaring into green, so lucid, eyes.
“DEAN!” Alec shouts, like in raising the volume, Dean’ll miraculously come back to reality. “YOU’RE NOT IN HELL! Come on, Dean, come on!”
He jars him again, Dean granting him a bloody smile, more viscous fluid running down from a laceration on his cheek. “Pretty light, don’tcha think?” he laughs. “You must be new.”
“FUCK!” Alec yells again, leaning against the wall and staring down at Dean’s resigned, almost relaxed, expression. Acknowledging his utter lack of options, he pulls out his cell phone and punches in numbers with unsteady fingers. She picks up after two rings, and Alec doesn’t wait before commanding, “Max! Look, I know you’re in deep shit where you are, but I really need your help. Please.”
She splutters for a few moments, presumably, Alec surmises, because she’s endeavoring to explain the phone call to whoever is holding her captive without actually explaining anything. But she covers, because she hears the uncharacteristic panic in his voice, his plea for help, and he’s never done that before. She’s got a gun at her head held by a demon, but if there’s one thing she knows about Alec, it’s that he never asks for help. Ever.
“Alec, all right, just calm down,” she says, trying to compose her own voice, even though her heart rate is jacked up higher than when Meg had first appeared. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
Alec can tell she fears the worst, and he can’t inform her otherwise. Because it’s worse than she fears. “It’s Dean,” he says, the words only heightening her worry. “He’s not hurt, he-Max, I-just tell me: how’d you talk B-Ben down? When he was off the deep end?”
Max inhales sharply, and Alec was prepared for it, but he doesn’t have the capacity to care about her reservations right now. “Alec, tell me what the hell is going on!”
“Max!”
She’s completely treading water here, scared at the tone in Alec’s voice. He’d always been so secure…even with Rachel, at least he’d tried to save face, but…the pure terror halts any painful memories brought up, and she blocks out Meg, just concentrates on the small piece of plastic in her hand and the words coming through it.
“I couldn’t save him, Alec,” she says with a hitch, thinking back to when she and Ben had fought, and he’d begged her to save him by killing him. “I tried to talk to him, but he was just…he was too far gone.”
“No!” Alec objects, starting to crunch his own phone. “Dean’s not like that!”
Max shuts her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to even out her breathing. “I said I couldn’t save my brother, Alec,” she repeats, “but you can save Dean. I don’t know what happened with him or with you, and right now I can’t do shit, but…Alec, listen to me. Whatever’s going on, you can bring him back. You haven’t let me down so far when it counts, and-this counts, Alec. Make it count.”
“Max, I can’t! He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t think any of this is real! I don’t know how to fix this!” Alec admits, staring down at Dean, who’s simply sitting on the concrete, apathetically wiping blood from his face. “I can’t help Dean, and I can’t help you, and I can’t-”
“Alec, shut the hell up,” Max interrupts. “You can. I trust you, and I-”
“I think that’s enough cheerleading,” Alec hears another voice come across the line. It has the same oily quality as Ruby’s had, and Alec realizes Max isn’t just trapped by some lunatic, but a demon.
Not that he can inject any concerns, because he’s promptly met with a click and then silence.
“Damn it!” he swears, shoving his phone in his pocket and scraping his nails through his hair.
Trying to imbue strength into himself from words he’d never in a million years thought he’d hear Max say to him, he kneels down next to Dean. “Dean, what-what can I do to convince you that I’m real, that this is real?” he begs.
Dean looks, of all things, amused. “Nothing, half-pint,” he snorts. “Because it isn’t real. Sammy’s not really dead, and you’re not really some freaky version of me, and I’m just wondering when this’ll all change back into the Hell I know and hate.”
“I don’t want to knock you out again, but-”
“Ha!” Dean laughs. “That’s new, too. You don’t want to inflict harm. I guess after two thousand years, you’ve finally come up with some novel ideas.”
Turning away from Dean in frustration, Alec takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says to himself. He tries to think of what Max would do in this situation, but comes up blank. Then he reasons that brute strength probably isn’t the way to go in this. The problem is with Dean’s head; Dean isn’t exactly resisting. Against his will, he thinks of what Psy Ops did to him, but then backs away from that. He neither has one of those lasers-which isn’t to say he’d ever use one even if he had it, let alone on Dean-nor does he think it’d work well anyway.
“All right, so…Ordinary shrinks,” he ponders aloud. He’s never had direct experience in the realm, but while he was still on team assignments, one of their subjects was a psychiatrist. “Go along with the delusion…?” Alec says rhetorically, searching his memory to figure out if that was actually something he’d heard, or just some random shit his brain is fabricating.
But what the hell. Nothing else has worked.
“You got me,” Alec says, turning back to Dean. He’d lowered his voice into something like a growl, and hopes his new expression isn’t still one of worry, but rather intimidation…kinda. “Let’s go, Winchester.”
Dean laughs, but gets up, sighing. “Do your worst,” he chuckles.
Alec literally bites his tongue at Dean’s flippant fatalism, once more in disbelief at how much more awful Dean’s time in Hell must have been than he’d let on. He leans down and, saying a silent apology, hefts Dean up with enough force to bruise and drags him towards the Impala. Alec brushes a hand quickly over the sleek body, glad that Dean hadn’t taken her and split after all, and shoves him in the front seat.
The keys are in the ignition, which Alec takes to mean that Dean had initially intended to skip town, when the psychosis-or whatever it is-struck. Sliding in and locking the doors, Alec starts up the car with a low rumble and peels out onto the freeway, leaving black marks behind him and the scent of rubber and irreparable grief in the air.
Meg watches as Max’s body language changes at hearing Alec’s frantic voice buzzing through the phone, watches as it alters between anger, terror, pain, and a smattering of others. She waits in amusement as she tries to talk the other transgenic through something involving Dean, but soon it becomes tiresome.
“I think that’s enough cheerleading,” she says. Before Max can protest, she grabs the phone, shutting it and cutting off the conversation. She then proceeds to drop the cell to the ground and step on it, digging her heel into the plastic, the device quickly becoming a pile of unrecognizable puzzle pieces.
Max stares at the wreckage in silent panic. Her cell was the last facsimile of hope she had of alerting Alec to…something, anything. Of the ability to even attempt to walk him through something should he need it. She doesn’t expect him to need her aid again, but the fact that she’s physically denied of the possibility to do so incites anxiety.
He’ll save Dean, then he’ll come here and save you, the very feeble shred of optimism inside her head says. He’s strong enough, he can do it. Just have faith.
Not long ago, she would have scoffed at herself, at thinking-and acknowledging that she’s thinking it-Alec could come through in such a monumentally huge way. But now, she doesn’t just need him to set Dean straight, she needs him to save her and dozens of other transgenics’ lives. She doubts he knows the enormity of what he’s about to get himself into, will only find out once he arrives, but hopes, knows, that his training and ability to improvise will work.
It has to.
“You-You sure you wanted to do that?” Max says, swallowing. “He might call back.”
Meg gives her a smile not unlike one someone would give a child who doesn’t understand basic addition. “Oh, I’m not worried about that,” she remarks. “He’ll come no matter what. It’s you who called him, after all, sweetheart.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Meg looks at her for a second as if waiting for Max to say something else, but then, upon realizing Max really meant the question, laughs. She doesn’t, however, elaborate. “So,” she says instead, “what was that about? Deano having a breakdown?”
Max’s cold glare answers in the affirmative.
“He always was a weakling,” Meg reflects. “Always had an Achilles heel for Sammy. I’m betting your freak co-leader’s managed to add himself into that.”
“Did you do something to Sam?” Max demands, feeling her fury rise.
Meg shakes her head. “Nah, not me,” she replies. “But if certain grapevines are to be trusted, well.”
She leaves the sentence dangling, allows Max to fill in the blanks with fear. If something had happened to Dean’s brother…
No, Max coaches herself. Fear isn’t going to do anyone any good. She hasn’t had relations with demons before very recently, but so far, despite Meg’s recounts and reprehensible actions, Max can’t see how they’re any worse than what Manticore had doled out once upon a time. If she takes away the title of demon, just focuses on what Meg’s said and done, she realizes that maybe, just maybe, she can get her head together again.
“Listen here, bitch,” Max says steadily, bringing her eyes up to Meg’s. “You can babble and rant all you want, but fact is, you’ve got only hours before you’re toast. You can smirk and laugh and whatever the hell else, but your ego has worn out its welcome. I mean, really, you need bait and henchmen to even get one of T.C.’s leaders back so you can try to kill him. Pretty sad, if you ask me.”
Meg rolls her eyes, and Max’s stomach doesn’t sink in frustration, because, to be honest, she hadn’t had much stock in Meg falling for her snide comments. “You know,” Meg says exasperatedly, “I really wasn’t going to do this, but you’ve gotten even more annoying than I’d thought possible. So, in that case…”
She holds her hand out, slowly contracting it into a fist. Max feels an invisible vise around her neck and looks up at Meg, who’s grinning once more. The hold is tighter than Dean’s had been what seemed like weeks ago, but has the same end result. Meg’s sadistic face is the last thing Max sees before fading into black, wondering if she’d gone too far and her words actually got through to the demon-if Meg actually is going to kill her.
Right now, she thinks dizzily, it’s pretty damn likely.
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