SPN/DA crossover fic: Of Desire and the Status Quo (20/38)
Story Title: Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter Title: Unlikely Heroes
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: 5,666
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XX: Unlikely Heroes
As Max leaves Logan’s place and gets on the road, the wind calming her nerves, she begins to feel guilty in a way about her behavior. She’s still adamant that Logan had given up too early, that his prejudice towards Alec leached into his lack of desire to help Dean and figure out the whole deal, but she supposes she didn’t have to be so confrontational about it.
She could have, maybe, tried to convince Logan that looking more into Dean could be beneficial by more reasonable ways, talking it through instead of jumping straight to conclusions. That’s not to say she completely regrets her actions, but she probably could’ve chosen a different tack.
Well, that’s all moot now, she contemplates. And she was completely serious when she’d told Logan she was going to continue the Dean researching on her own, even if it meant she’d have to include more people in the loop, when really, she’d wanted to keep it as much on the down low as possible. Wanted to find out herself what Dean’s past really was and where he came from, then decide what to do with it and not risk it leaking out, causing a whole new rumor mill to start. The residents of T.C. are already suspicious enough of Dean-and now wondering about Alec, the second on the command food chain, isn’t that just peachy-without having some presumption spread throughout.
But what choice, really, does she have? By herself, she’s not nearly adept enough to figure stuff out. Sure, she’d found the bits about the fire and Sam’s girlfriend, but that was virtually a dead end, not leading to anything of further use. She needs someone else, and if she can’t have Logan’s help, Dix is the next best thing without going for outside, and therefore sketchier, assistance.
She just wishes, above all, that Dean would talk to her. To somebody. She’s all for the keeping things close to the vest-she’d depended on it for ten years-but this is getting ridiculous. Dean hasn’t given them anything. Just sarcasm and stonewalling. Even Alec was more forthcoming about his life. And, out of everyone, she’d judged him as having just about the hardest.
So, either Dean might as well be a damn CIA agent, or his life was actually worse. And if it were the latter…what kind of hell had he gone through? Of course, as far as she’d told Logan, and honestly does intend to try to lend credence to, Dean actually did go through Hell.
That all being said, she does know that Dix is trustworthy. She wouldn’t have let him be the forerunner of all T.C.’s electronics and communications if he weren’t. It’s that notion that settles her down a little, makes her see straight, so to speak. She knows Dix will be professional about this, she does. And she knows that, if she tells (okay, threatens, if it comes to that) Dix to not inform anyone else, he won’t.
By the time Max reaches the gates of Terminal City, she’s considerably more levelheaded, which in her experience, has always been a good thing. But, as she should have expected, the stasis is not to last. No sooner does she hop off her bike and put down the kickstand, than she’s nearly bowled over by Kalinda, one of the X’s who had gone with her on the hospital raid, the blonde looking almost feverish with anxiety.
“What is it, Kali? Is Dean okay?” she asks, fearing the worst.
“Who?” Kalinda questions. “Oh. The sick dude. I dunno. But it’s-it’s Dix.”
Max’s worry ups a notch…or twelve. “Is something wrong?” Okay, stupid question, Max, she rolls her eyes at herself internally.
“Rade’s taking care of him,” Kalinda answers coldly, both women knowing the severity of the words. “Over your precious Ordinary.”
Max snarls, taking a step towards the younger transgenic. “Don’t you even think of bringing him into this, like it’s his fault.”
The look in Kalinda’s eyes is mutinous, but Max blurs away before Kalinda can tell her, in no uncertain terms, what’s really on her mind.
Max doesn’t know what she’s expecting as she enters Command, but it sure as hell isn’t stillness. She’d expected…she doesn’t know, organized chaos? People scattering to help their fallen comrade, to abandon their posts to assist in any way they can. But apparently, as she finds out, her notion is romanticized. There aren’t any more people in the room than usual, but it takes her a second to realize that they aren’t at their posts.
They’re not helping Dix, they’re…cleaning up? She walks further in, and when she gets a full view of the computer terminal platform, her mouth drops open, aghast. It’s a war zone, at least that’s what it resembles, the salvaged electronics either shrapnel or melted and disfigured. There are remains of two chairs, and most of the railing is intact, but otherwise, there might as well be napalm in the air.
“What…?” she manages, taking in the debris, the shadow on the cement from the explosion, the localized incendiary.
Mole comes up to her, the lizard-man still with a cigar in his mouth, but his surly expression changed into a rarely-seen remorseful and grave one. “Some kind of bomb, we think,” Mole tells her, and thanks very much she figured that one out. “Just…just blew up, caught Dix.”
“He’s not…” Max can’t say it. She won’t say it. There’s no way Dix is dead, he just can’t be.
“He ain’t dead,” Mole says, and a small part of her sighs in relief. “But he ain’t good, either. One of us and Dalton brought him to Rade, we’re still waiting to see what she can do.”
Max nods, reshaping her exterior into the leader that everyone takes her to be, the woman with no personal feelings, just feelings for the good of her nation. In effect, anyway. “I’ll go check,” she announces. “Just try to…just straighten this place up.”
Mole doesn’t answer, but leaves her anyway, and she heads off as quickly as she can without sprinting to the medical bay. Her mind is running rampant with possibilities as to what could have happened to Dix, and if he’ll recover. The fact that Dean was also in T.C. when all this went down doesn’t escape her currently frenzied thoughts, and though she knows Rade wouldn’t let him go without a clean bill of health, she also knows Dean’s persistence might as well get him into the Hall of Fame. And she’s damn sure no one would tell her if anything happened to Dean; they don’t like him much, and don’t fail to make that much crystal clear.
Coming upon the silent medical wing, Max is struck dumb for the second time in the last ten minutes. For, sitting next to the doors like two smarmy Rottweilers, are Dean and Dalton. She’s certain that the only other pairing she’d be more surprised to see just chatting it up would be Dean and Logan. (It would be Dean and Alec as well, but Max has a shrewd suspicion that once they figure all this out, or at least if Dean becomes less morose and Alec less stubborn, they’d be two peas in a pod. Probably.)
But Dalton? He practically hero-worships Alec. And no doubt he’d heard the unfavorable rumors about Dean. Not to mention, at least since Max had met him, Dean has had a grating, dynamic personality. So why in God’s name are they just…hanging out?
Worse still, when Dix’s life is on the line?
“What the hell is going on?” Max demands, glancing quickly at the closed hospital room, and then at Dalton.
He takes a second to answer, but before he does, Max’s eyes catch the shirt that Dean has balled up on his shoulder. Unlike the dark green shirt that he’d used as a towel earlier, this one is a light cream color, and it’s not hard to tell that what’s saturating it so completely that it might as well have been dumped in a vat of crimson dye is more of Dean’s blood.
“Something to tell me?” she snips, glaring at Dean, and instantly realizing she should be glaring at Dalton, given that Dean’s immune to, well, everything.
Dean shakes his head. “Don’t pretend you care,” Dean says sharply, another total one eighty from how he’d looked with Dalton. “You’re just keepin’ me around because you want to find out where I’ve been and what my life story is.”
Max doesn’t respond, mainly because Dean’s not all that far off from Max’s ambitions. Sure, now she actually does care about the damn guy, but the majority of her interest is, as she feels guilty about, intrigue. “Well? You feel like telling me?”
Dean shares a look with Dalton that legitimately escapes Max. She knows Dean wouldn’t have told Dalton, so it must just be a guy thing, but it doesn’t mean that Max is any less annoyed with it. “No,” Dean replies instantly. “And I won’t. The only reason I’m not halfway across the country by now is because you’ve got someone who can help me find Sam. And now apparently he’s practically dead. Come morning, by which time I’ll get your pretty little medic to bandage me up, I’m gone. I’ll find Sammy myself.”
Max sighs, Dean’s emptiness over the loss of his brother pulsating. “Dean, we’ve tried to find Sam, and we can’t,” she answers, feeling like a broken record, albeit one with emotions. “Logan’s tried everything, he-”
“Save it,” Dean interjects. “That stuffy, pansy-ass pencil pusher doesn’t give a shit about me, or about Sam. He thinks I’m whoever that Alec guy is, and he just doesn’t care. That freak with the doc was my last possibility to actually find Sam.”
“So how do you fit into this, Dalton?” Max says stiffly, setting her jaw. “Don’t you have a job to do?”
Dalton holds up his hands, in mock surrender. “Hey, just helping,” he defends, looking at Dean again.
“What, is Dean your new hero now?” gripes Max, knowing she’s being irrationally touchy about it. It only placates her a little that the two boys are sitting on the floor while she’s standing up. It makes her feel a little more empowered. Kinda.
Dalton, however, sees it not this way at all. He looks very much like he’d like to stand up right next to her, but for some loyalty she’s having a hell of a time fathoming, he stays sitting right where he is, in her opinion childishly. She can forgive Dean, she guesses, owing to his butchered shoulder, but Dalton’s just as capable as ever.
“You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know that?” Dalton says steadily, obviously having grown a pair since the last time she’d spoken with him. Or at least this is the first time he’s actually said what he wants to.
Of course, now isn’t exactly the most opportune time, as far as Max is concerned. “I’ll deal with your moodiness later, Dalton,” she says sternly. “I need to check on Dix now.”
That gets both boys’ attention, and they scramble to their feet. Well, rather, Dalton gets up relatively gracefully, and Dean, admirably masking his un-drugged pain, manages to gain upright balance, still holding Dalton’s shirt to his skin. It’s pretty worthless, seeing as how the shirt itself is almost dripping blood, but if it makes Dean feel better, then hey, no skin off Max’s nose.
“Rade’ll chew you a new one,” Dalton advises grimly, knowing the details of her personality.
Dean arguably knows it more, albeit just more first-hand instead of theoretically. Sure, Rade hadn’t won any Bitch of the Year Award with him, but she has a backbone that he can admire. “What gives you priority?” Dean opposes obstinately. “It’s probably your fault anyway that the dude’s incapacitated.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“You’d’a been here, maybe it wouldn’t have happened,” Dean elaborates, finally giving up on the shirt and dropping it to the ground, where it splats and sprays blood in a three-foot radius. Max’s lips press into a thin line, her patience past the breaking point.
“Let’s get one thing straight here, Dean Winchester,” Max growls, stalking toward him angrily. She doesn’t see the post-Hell, thrashing-nightmares, Alec lookalike at the moment, in favor of her knee-jerk reaction from someone mouthing off to her. “I run things around here, and I don’t tolerate back talking. You may’ve had precedence with Sammy or whatever, but in Terminal City, you’re just like Dalton here.”
Dalton, not previously having experience with Dean being confronted by someone else, flicks his eyes between the two alphas, wondering if Max’s super-strength would be enough. “Fine,” Dean replies through clenched teeth, steadfastly ignoring the still leaking laceration on his shoulder. “I’m out the door. Might as well let the bastard who gave me this busted shoulder know that I’m gone, too. He can keep carting around my face without any interruption, if that’s what you want.”
Max opens her mouth to backpedal over her words, suddenly feeling a sense of panic through her haze of anger, a panic of having Dean out of her web of control. But Dean’s not one of her command, much as she’d like him to be, which gives him free rein to disobey her wishes. And he does just that, turning his back on her and pushing his way through the doors to the infirmary. He disappears for a mere fifteen seconds, during which neither Max nor Dalton can hear anything through the thick steel, and then comes out, carrying his green shirt over his arm and studiously ignoring his shoulder.
Sending Max a sarcastic salute and Dalton a nod full of undertones, he remarks icily, “Later, Maxie.”
And Dean vanishes down the hallway, leaving behind a very emotionally confused Max, and a disappointed Dalton.
Meanwhile, not but twenty feet away from the two, Rade is hunched over Dix’s body, keeping it together, though barely. She’s forgotten all about Dean, his shoulder, and Dalton’s interruption-okay, not forgotten, per se, just put to the back of her mind for the moment-in respect to fixing up Dix, who’s by far the worst off of all of them.
One of his legs and arms are broken, the fibula and radius cracked in three places; she’d had to use both her industrial- and precision-sized forceps in order to pull out various pieces of shrapnel (including what looked sickeningly like a piece of a computer chip and desktop screen) and glass from his flesh; she’d had to reset a few joint dislocations, and sew together some ligaments. It all looked even more gruesome after she’d wiped away the copious amounts of blood (thank God for the transgenics’ ability to coagulate quickly). At least the red fluid had masked most of the wounds.
The only somewhat good part in the hellish nightmare was that she’d already procured the necessary medical equipment to best monitor Dix’s vital signs. They aren’t, as her luck would have it, the most accurate of devices she’d like to have, though; Manticore creations and Ordinaries are two completely different species, and multiple times she’d had to remind herself that Dix’s increased body temperature and lower EEG readings (given that Manticoreans were formatted to have their mental functions decrease in times of bodily distress, for risk overheating their control centers) aren’t as deadly as they’d be if, say, they were Dean’s readouts.
The irony that she feels she is more equipped to deal with Dean’s results instead of Dix’s, someone closer to her own DNA mutations, isn’t lost on her. Still, some notifications are better than none, and, as Rade knows, her training has been engineered to study the Manticore creations rather than Ordinaries. She’s okay on that front, once she acclimates herself again. The only thing she’s having massive difficulty with is the patient.
Dean was all right. He’s an Ordinary. He’s a tenacious, sardonic, annoying as all hell bastard. His traits made it easy for her to not (or attempt to not) get attached to him.
But Dix…Dix is one of her own, one of the smartest and steadfast guys she’s known. It makes things a thousand times harder.
By that perception, it does cause her to work that much better in conjunction with wanting to save, as she’d indicated, one of her own. Plus, in that arena, she doesn’t want to have Dix’s death on her hands. Her track record with deaths isn’t lengthy, and in fact she was one of Manticore’s best medics, but that doesn’t mean she’s immune to death taking her patients. Dean’s lucky; a rotator cuff tear, even for an Ordinary, isn’t usually a life-threatening injury. (Although, now that that small piece of her mind thinks about it, she’s still got to fix that up. At worst, it’ll get infected, and that could very well cause septicemia, an Ordinary disease she knows is fatal if not treated.) Dix isn’t so lucky.
She succumbed to taking a seat, much as she had been when Dean was unconscious, but her attention this time is not pure curiosity at the inner workings of an Ordinary’s immune system, not to mention Dean himself. This time, it’s more personal, and she’s begging the skies and her medical knowledge to save Dix, to make the readings normalized and Dix’s eyes open again. In that last vein, that had been arguably the hardest thing, emotionally, to do. She’d had to remove his trademark monocle, which was cracked beyond repair anyway: underneath it was more blood, and although she’s pretty positive he won’t be blind, it didn’t make his petechial hemorrhage any less grisly.
Well aware that she shouldn’t be one to let her sentimentality overcome her so easily, she takes a deep breath, blinks away her suddenly wet eyes, and walks over to the doors to open them. In another context, she’d want radio silence, as they say, but this is Dix, and Terminal City’s residents deserve to see him, wish him well. It’s not to say she’s going to let everyone in, but some people she’ll allow.
Expecting to see Dalton and Dean sitting against the wall, as they’d been prior to her hustling them out-she’d obviously noticed Dean come into the room while she’d been working and grab his shirt, but she hadn’t thought he’d be going anywhere fast-she sees there’s still two people there, but not the two she’d been anticipating. More accurately, the scene is minus one sullen human. Dalton’s standing up defiantly with his arms crossed over his chest, and Max is mostly glaring agitatedly. Rade looks down the hallway, but Dean’s form is nowhere to be seen. There’s a trail of blood drops going down the stone floor, which concerns her, but apart from that, there’s no sign of him.
“Where’s Dean?” she asks tiredly, noting the fatigue and sorrow in her own voice.
“Max banished him,” Dalton replies, annoyed.
“I didn’t ‘banish him,’” Max protests instantly. “He left. But it doesn’t matter now-how’s Dix? Is he all right?”
Rade purses her lips, now noticing the large splattering of what has to be Dean’s blood a few feet from Max’s stance. There’s nothing she can do for Dix now except wait, so she focuses instead on her other, now missing, patient. “What do you mean, he left?” Rade asks sharply. “His shoulder was fucked, and he was bleeding like he’d just gotten his arm chopped off. What did you say to him?”
She looks pointedly between Dalton and Max, their expressions giving nothing away besides annoyance. “God damn it, Dix is not doing anywhere close to well in there, and I have to concentrate now on something else-where the hell is Dean?” she yells, her voice echoing down the hall.
Both Max and Dalton don’t exactly look appropriately chided, more scared at Rade’s words about Dix, but they also know that Rade’s wrath rivals Max’s. “He said something about needing to find his brother,” Dalton offers helpfully, not knowing at all the full story. Or at least as full as Max had gathered about Dean, anyway. “That Dix was his only chance, and now he’s lying injured, so Dean’s going to try and find Sam himself.”
Rade snaps her eyes to Max. “I thought you and Logan were taking care of that crap,” she accuses, her internal anger (of course, her external is still well in effect) fading away quickly to unease.
If any of what Dean had confided to her was true, crazy as it was…she’s sure Dean’s in no condition to be looking all over Creation to find Sam. Especially if he has no idea where to look. She’s of accord that Dix was Dean’s best option in terms of locating a missing person, and she also has to admit that Dean’s likely stubborn enough to go off on his own while gravely wounded, but that doesn’t mean she can’t lay blame.
After all, Dean hadn’t shown any indication that he’d wanted to leave, last she’d spoken to him. And judging by the way he and Dalton were hitting it off (when things start settling down, she’s going to ask about that), it means that something about Max’s admittedly acerbic personality had scared off Dean. Okay, not scared off, probably, but to the same ends.
“I told him that,” Max replies, wondering when exactly it was that Rade got the rights to dictate.
“I believe his words were ‘stuffy, pansy-ass pencil pusher,’” Dalton supplies eagerly, already missing Dean in the current sea of estrogen.
Rade once more can’t really disagree with Dean’s assessment, and neither, she knows, can the vast majority of T.C. It doesn’t make what Dean’d voiced right, but from the looks of it, Dean had felt that Max was challenging him, and, as is the primal rule with a stalemate, one either walks away or attacks. So Dean, sensing his own limitations, chose the route of least carnage.
Tactically, Rade knows, it was the smartest thing to do. Health-wise, however, is a different story. Beyond that, Rade had thought Max wanted Dean to stick around, do the whole due diligence thing. When she easily could have stopped him, Rade’s unsure why she hadn’t. Timorous isn’t an adjective anyone would ever apply to Max.
“And you’re not concerned what he might get into out there?” she seethes. “Last time, he got busted up by White, nearly died, and Alec threw him into concrete. He’s obviously still confused as to what’s going on, and when he’s babbling about dem-” Rade breaks off quickly, not inclined to share with Max what Dean had told her, mainly because it’ll just incite more control issues with Max, and no one wants that. “About all sorts of things. You don’t think Dean might land himself into something hairy again? It’s not like White knows Dean’s not Alec. Who’s to say he won’t just snatch Dean up again and kill him for real this time?”
“Well, you two sure became close in there, didn’t you?” Max sneers, with a cattiness that Rade hasn’t seen before. It’s not quite jealousy or antipathy, but it certainly leans on that side of the fence.
Rade’s not pleased with the assumption. If anything, she and Dean went from antagonistic to…well, not, she supposes. But not friends, either. Dean hadn’t told her enough to make that so. “Retract the claws, Max,” Rade says slowly and articulately. “It’s not my fault you said something to ward Dean away.” She’s about to retreat back into her medical room, but then sighs and stows her irritation for the immediate moment. “Do you want to see Dix? He’s relatively stable for now.”
Dalton steps forward right away, wanting to see the transhuman in a better form than last time. Rade observes Max trying to stow her irritation just like Rade had done, and then nods and walks forward as well. Pushing open the doors, Rade allows the two in, preparing herself to answer a barrage of questions, as well as maybe a few indictments suggesting she hadn’t done her best work. At least those accusations she can handle, though. Those are expected. Accusations that she’d somehow done something to repel Dean, she can’t. Those are just too uncalled for.
As for Dean, once he steps out of the hallway, his rage coming off of him in waves, he sees the destruction of what was erstwhile called the Command Center. He pauses for an instant, taking it in. The Dalton kid was right, it does look like a small bomb went off, albeit a bomb with enough force behind it to blow up computer terminals and a freakish-looking dude. A freakish-looking dude that he’d noticed on his way in (the conscious time), granted, and pegged him as being the most likely option to help him in finding Sam. Dean’s seen enough scenes that look like C-4 resultant, and this one fits the bill.
Dean doesn’t know what caused it; he’s never been a bomb expert, after all. He can’t even say whether it was demonic, though he sincerely doubts it since it looks pretty straight-up kosher, or whether it was done by a whacked-out human. From what he’s seen from his time here, humanity had devolved past what Dean would have thought possible.
Shaking his head at the craziness of it all, as well as the extremely daunting task ahead of him-it’d be made simpler if he had his damn car and necklace, but especially with the former, he’s no idea what the hell happened to it. He guesses maybe with Sam…whom he doesn’t know the location of-he starts walking towards the front doors, aiming to remember where those tunnels are that he’d come through. He does after ten or so seconds, his memory of city and localized layouts refined to masterful from years of having to do so.
He doesn’t get more than a dozen yards, though, before he’s stopped by another blur, and fuck, he’s getting tired of that particular ability. Unlike one of the “normal” transgenics, unfortunately, he’s now face-to-face with his lookalike, the face still boggling to him. Considering the fact that he’d only seen Alec when the man had doomed his shoulder. It makes a guy not really feel favorable towards someone.
“Get out of my way,” Dean snarls, intending to sidestep him, but in his mind knowing it won’t work.
“Where are you going, Winchester?” Alec asks, only a little less uncomfortable with Dean’s face. His character is an entirely different matter, but Alec’s had more time to process Dean than Dean has had to process Alec. Then his eyes flick to Dean’s shoulder, the absence of his shirt attracting the notice. It’s cause for disquiet, not just because of the bleeding, but because of the crisscrossed scars streaked where Dean’s heart would be. Nodding towards it, he comments, “Thought Rade fixed that up.”
Dean shrugs, then straightaway regrets it. But, bearing in mind present company, Dean grinds his teeth and succeeds in not showing anything. Unfortunately for him, the extra little beads of blood from his wound and sweat from his temples don’t lie. “I’m fine, clone dude,” Dean replies, attempting to edge around Alec again. Again, he stops him.
“Hey!” Alec snaps, feeling less off his game, but at the same time a little more annoyed, with Dean. It’s taken a while to get over the fact that Dean looks like he would be in the future, but he’s doing so. (Although, Alec muses, it’s probably worse for Dean, who would be familiar with his past appearance.) “Slow down there, Rambo. What is it exactly that you’re trying to do? Weren’t you staying here for a while?”
“What, you want to share a forty with me or something? Not interested,” Dean rejects, seriously contemplating hitting Alec just so he can feel better. This whole thing is getting taxing, and his immune system is already begging him for mercy.
Alec has dealt with difficult people before, namely Max, but he’s never encountered his own obstinacy. It kinda sucks ass. “Would you quit it?” Alec grouses angrily, wishing to just have his clone-or whatever; they really need to figure out a different word, ’cause with not knowing the truth, the changing semantics is getting old-stop moving for one damn second. “Wait…did Max talk to you or something? Is it because of her you’re leaving?”
“No,” Dean sighs, knowing it’s the truth. “It’s because’a that guy that got blown up. He’s a computer geek, isn’t he? Thought he could help me get Sam, but…he’s no use now for that. And if I know Sammy, which by hell I do, he’s probably switching cities already. It’ll be looking for him in a three thousand mile haystack, but I’ve done it before with people, I’ll do it again.”
Alec almost quirks a smile at Dean’s vehemence. He’s never really had someone as close as a brother before-Mole’s probably the closest, and that’s a little frightening to realize, but he’s still not a brother-but he can recognize devotion when he sees it. Dean’s got it, that want, need, to at least know where a person is because they have a bond with you. He knows Max mainly wants to help Dean because she’s fascinated by him, and maybe even because she wants to know why he and Alec resemble one another, but in Alec’s book, that’s a crap reason. Regardless of who Dean mirrors, Alec feels Max, if she really cares for Dean, should help him just because.
It’s that which makes Alec really see past Dean’s face. Sees past his face. “I can help,” Alec proposes, staring Dean straight into his own eyes.
Dean snorts ungracefully, feeling another pang in his shoulder. “Yeah. Right,” Dean objects. “You’re just some good Samaritan now? What happened to punching my lights out? Please. You’re just like that Max chick.”
“I’m not,” says Alec, not appreciating in the least the comparison. “And hey, you hit a buddy of mine, then threw a knife at me and called me a shapeshifter. It hurts a little, man.”
“I’m still not so sure that you’re not,” Dean says unnecessarily. Contrary to what he’d said, he is sure Alec’s not. Otherwise Alec’d be long dead, the silver running through his bloodstream and stopping his heart cold. “Besides, say I did let you help. What good could you do?”
Alec takes a breath, knowing he has to give Dean something in order to get something back. Basic game theory and military negotiation tactic-tit for tat. He hasn’t told anyone about it, but he wagers Dean’s the person to entrust with a secret, given his background.
“I knew the info on you and Sam first, you know,” Alec offers. “Before Logan the WASP told Max. And I’m one of the best, if not the best, people here who can track someone.”
“Yeah?” Dean asks skeptically, taking in Alec’s form. His twenty-ish-year-old form. And if Dean remembers right, he wasn’t exactly a body builder at that age. Alec doesn’t look much different. “You can track people?”
Swallowing heavily, Alec reinforces himself. “I was a…an assassin, I guess,” Alec confides, feeling a black surge flood him. “Commissioned for sniping. Killing someone before they even knew a bullet was coming towards them. So yeah. I can track pretty fucking well.”
Dean looks Alec up and down, seeing in Alec’s intense gaze that, however blasé he may have said it, indulging even those few sentences took a lot. He’s not feeling sorry for the kid, but he understands struggling with yourself. With your past, and your skills. “Aren’t you some leader person here?” Dean inquires, having seen the way that Max and Alec had manifested some sort of power over the rest of the transgenics. “Gotta hold down the fort, don’t you?”
Alec gives a twisted smile. “Not right now I don’t,” Alec refutes. “All Max would do is insult and yell at me because of Dix-or you-even though it was hardly my fault, and all the rest of T.C. needs to deal with this whole thing by themselves. It’s not like we’re in battle at the moment. Guess White’s taking a break.”
Dean’s blood runs cold. “White, that was…”
“Yeah,” Alec confirms, knowing Dean wouldn’t exactly harbor warm feelings for the guy that tortured him in place of Alec. It causes a mild guilt trip in the transgenic. Alec, obviously, doesn’t know that White’s torture wasn’t anywhere near what Dean’s had in the past, but it still doesn’t mean it was a joy ride for Dean. “Look, um, Dean,” Alec begins, Dean’s name weird in his mouth, given whom he resembles. “I’m part of this, too, you know. You’re not the only one with some person who looks like you. I mean, I don’t know Sam, but…maybe if you find him, you guys can solve this thing. No one else has had luck.”
Dean stares at Alec for a long while, hearing various noises around him indicating the residents still cleaning up, or dealing, or whatever, and sees the sincerity in Alec’s face. He’s well aware that Alec and the rest of them were trained to be great actors, but there’s just something in the guy’s expression that leads Dean to believe that this time, he’s not lying.
And weird as it is, Dean knows he can use all the help he can get. “All right,” he says, feeling he’s going to lament the whole decision. “But Sammy’s my brother, and I’m heading this thing.” Alec doesn’t make any move to respond, which Dean doesn’t know how to interpret, but he’ll deal with that later. He just has one more thing to clarify.
“You any good at field med? ‘Cause my shoulder hurts like a bitch.”
Alec laughs, this time letting Dean brush past him.
And follows.
Next
Chapter Title: Unlikely Heroes
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: 5,666
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XX: Unlikely Heroes
As Max leaves Logan’s place and gets on the road, the wind calming her nerves, she begins to feel guilty in a way about her behavior. She’s still adamant that Logan had given up too early, that his prejudice towards Alec leached into his lack of desire to help Dean and figure out the whole deal, but she supposes she didn’t have to be so confrontational about it.
She could have, maybe, tried to convince Logan that looking more into Dean could be beneficial by more reasonable ways, talking it through instead of jumping straight to conclusions. That’s not to say she completely regrets her actions, but she probably could’ve chosen a different tack.
Well, that’s all moot now, she contemplates. And she was completely serious when she’d told Logan she was going to continue the Dean researching on her own, even if it meant she’d have to include more people in the loop, when really, she’d wanted to keep it as much on the down low as possible. Wanted to find out herself what Dean’s past really was and where he came from, then decide what to do with it and not risk it leaking out, causing a whole new rumor mill to start. The residents of T.C. are already suspicious enough of Dean-and now wondering about Alec, the second on the command food chain, isn’t that just peachy-without having some presumption spread throughout.
But what choice, really, does she have? By herself, she’s not nearly adept enough to figure stuff out. Sure, she’d found the bits about the fire and Sam’s girlfriend, but that was virtually a dead end, not leading to anything of further use. She needs someone else, and if she can’t have Logan’s help, Dix is the next best thing without going for outside, and therefore sketchier, assistance.
She just wishes, above all, that Dean would talk to her. To somebody. She’s all for the keeping things close to the vest-she’d depended on it for ten years-but this is getting ridiculous. Dean hasn’t given them anything. Just sarcasm and stonewalling. Even Alec was more forthcoming about his life. And, out of everyone, she’d judged him as having just about the hardest.
So, either Dean might as well be a damn CIA agent, or his life was actually worse. And if it were the latter…what kind of hell had he gone through? Of course, as far as she’d told Logan, and honestly does intend to try to lend credence to, Dean actually did go through Hell.
That all being said, she does know that Dix is trustworthy. She wouldn’t have let him be the forerunner of all T.C.’s electronics and communications if he weren’t. It’s that notion that settles her down a little, makes her see straight, so to speak. She knows Dix will be professional about this, she does. And she knows that, if she tells (okay, threatens, if it comes to that) Dix to not inform anyone else, he won’t.
By the time Max reaches the gates of Terminal City, she’s considerably more levelheaded, which in her experience, has always been a good thing. But, as she should have expected, the stasis is not to last. No sooner does she hop off her bike and put down the kickstand, than she’s nearly bowled over by Kalinda, one of the X’s who had gone with her on the hospital raid, the blonde looking almost feverish with anxiety.
“What is it, Kali? Is Dean okay?” she asks, fearing the worst.
“Who?” Kalinda questions. “Oh. The sick dude. I dunno. But it’s-it’s Dix.”
Max’s worry ups a notch…or twelve. “Is something wrong?” Okay, stupid question, Max, she rolls her eyes at herself internally.
“Rade’s taking care of him,” Kalinda answers coldly, both women knowing the severity of the words. “Over your precious Ordinary.”
Max snarls, taking a step towards the younger transgenic. “Don’t you even think of bringing him into this, like it’s his fault.”
The look in Kalinda’s eyes is mutinous, but Max blurs away before Kalinda can tell her, in no uncertain terms, what’s really on her mind.
Max doesn’t know what she’s expecting as she enters Command, but it sure as hell isn’t stillness. She’d expected…she doesn’t know, organized chaos? People scattering to help their fallen comrade, to abandon their posts to assist in any way they can. But apparently, as she finds out, her notion is romanticized. There aren’t any more people in the room than usual, but it takes her a second to realize that they aren’t at their posts.
They’re not helping Dix, they’re…cleaning up? She walks further in, and when she gets a full view of the computer terminal platform, her mouth drops open, aghast. It’s a war zone, at least that’s what it resembles, the salvaged electronics either shrapnel or melted and disfigured. There are remains of two chairs, and most of the railing is intact, but otherwise, there might as well be napalm in the air.
“What…?” she manages, taking in the debris, the shadow on the cement from the explosion, the localized incendiary.
Mole comes up to her, the lizard-man still with a cigar in his mouth, but his surly expression changed into a rarely-seen remorseful and grave one. “Some kind of bomb, we think,” Mole tells her, and thanks very much she figured that one out. “Just…just blew up, caught Dix.”
“He’s not…” Max can’t say it. She won’t say it. There’s no way Dix is dead, he just can’t be.
“He ain’t dead,” Mole says, and a small part of her sighs in relief. “But he ain’t good, either. One of us and Dalton brought him to Rade, we’re still waiting to see what she can do.”
Max nods, reshaping her exterior into the leader that everyone takes her to be, the woman with no personal feelings, just feelings for the good of her nation. In effect, anyway. “I’ll go check,” she announces. “Just try to…just straighten this place up.”
Mole doesn’t answer, but leaves her anyway, and she heads off as quickly as she can without sprinting to the medical bay. Her mind is running rampant with possibilities as to what could have happened to Dix, and if he’ll recover. The fact that Dean was also in T.C. when all this went down doesn’t escape her currently frenzied thoughts, and though she knows Rade wouldn’t let him go without a clean bill of health, she also knows Dean’s persistence might as well get him into the Hall of Fame. And she’s damn sure no one would tell her if anything happened to Dean; they don’t like him much, and don’t fail to make that much crystal clear.
Coming upon the silent medical wing, Max is struck dumb for the second time in the last ten minutes. For, sitting next to the doors like two smarmy Rottweilers, are Dean and Dalton. She’s certain that the only other pairing she’d be more surprised to see just chatting it up would be Dean and Logan. (It would be Dean and Alec as well, but Max has a shrewd suspicion that once they figure all this out, or at least if Dean becomes less morose and Alec less stubborn, they’d be two peas in a pod. Probably.)
But Dalton? He practically hero-worships Alec. And no doubt he’d heard the unfavorable rumors about Dean. Not to mention, at least since Max had met him, Dean has had a grating, dynamic personality. So why in God’s name are they just…hanging out?
Worse still, when Dix’s life is on the line?
“What the hell is going on?” Max demands, glancing quickly at the closed hospital room, and then at Dalton.
He takes a second to answer, but before he does, Max’s eyes catch the shirt that Dean has balled up on his shoulder. Unlike the dark green shirt that he’d used as a towel earlier, this one is a light cream color, and it’s not hard to tell that what’s saturating it so completely that it might as well have been dumped in a vat of crimson dye is more of Dean’s blood.
“Something to tell me?” she snips, glaring at Dean, and instantly realizing she should be glaring at Dalton, given that Dean’s immune to, well, everything.
Dean shakes his head. “Don’t pretend you care,” Dean says sharply, another total one eighty from how he’d looked with Dalton. “You’re just keepin’ me around because you want to find out where I’ve been and what my life story is.”
Max doesn’t respond, mainly because Dean’s not all that far off from Max’s ambitions. Sure, now she actually does care about the damn guy, but the majority of her interest is, as she feels guilty about, intrigue. “Well? You feel like telling me?”
Dean shares a look with Dalton that legitimately escapes Max. She knows Dean wouldn’t have told Dalton, so it must just be a guy thing, but it doesn’t mean that Max is any less annoyed with it. “No,” Dean replies instantly. “And I won’t. The only reason I’m not halfway across the country by now is because you’ve got someone who can help me find Sam. And now apparently he’s practically dead. Come morning, by which time I’ll get your pretty little medic to bandage me up, I’m gone. I’ll find Sammy myself.”
Max sighs, Dean’s emptiness over the loss of his brother pulsating. “Dean, we’ve tried to find Sam, and we can’t,” she answers, feeling like a broken record, albeit one with emotions. “Logan’s tried everything, he-”
“Save it,” Dean interjects. “That stuffy, pansy-ass pencil pusher doesn’t give a shit about me, or about Sam. He thinks I’m whoever that Alec guy is, and he just doesn’t care. That freak with the doc was my last possibility to actually find Sam.”
“So how do you fit into this, Dalton?” Max says stiffly, setting her jaw. “Don’t you have a job to do?”
Dalton holds up his hands, in mock surrender. “Hey, just helping,” he defends, looking at Dean again.
“What, is Dean your new hero now?” gripes Max, knowing she’s being irrationally touchy about it. It only placates her a little that the two boys are sitting on the floor while she’s standing up. It makes her feel a little more empowered. Kinda.
Dalton, however, sees it not this way at all. He looks very much like he’d like to stand up right next to her, but for some loyalty she’s having a hell of a time fathoming, he stays sitting right where he is, in her opinion childishly. She can forgive Dean, she guesses, owing to his butchered shoulder, but Dalton’s just as capable as ever.
“You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know that?” Dalton says steadily, obviously having grown a pair since the last time she’d spoken with him. Or at least this is the first time he’s actually said what he wants to.
Of course, now isn’t exactly the most opportune time, as far as Max is concerned. “I’ll deal with your moodiness later, Dalton,” she says sternly. “I need to check on Dix now.”
That gets both boys’ attention, and they scramble to their feet. Well, rather, Dalton gets up relatively gracefully, and Dean, admirably masking his un-drugged pain, manages to gain upright balance, still holding Dalton’s shirt to his skin. It’s pretty worthless, seeing as how the shirt itself is almost dripping blood, but if it makes Dean feel better, then hey, no skin off Max’s nose.
“Rade’ll chew you a new one,” Dalton advises grimly, knowing the details of her personality.
Dean arguably knows it more, albeit just more first-hand instead of theoretically. Sure, Rade hadn’t won any Bitch of the Year Award with him, but she has a backbone that he can admire. “What gives you priority?” Dean opposes obstinately. “It’s probably your fault anyway that the dude’s incapacitated.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“You’d’a been here, maybe it wouldn’t have happened,” Dean elaborates, finally giving up on the shirt and dropping it to the ground, where it splats and sprays blood in a three-foot radius. Max’s lips press into a thin line, her patience past the breaking point.
“Let’s get one thing straight here, Dean Winchester,” Max growls, stalking toward him angrily. She doesn’t see the post-Hell, thrashing-nightmares, Alec lookalike at the moment, in favor of her knee-jerk reaction from someone mouthing off to her. “I run things around here, and I don’t tolerate back talking. You may’ve had precedence with Sammy or whatever, but in Terminal City, you’re just like Dalton here.”
Dalton, not previously having experience with Dean being confronted by someone else, flicks his eyes between the two alphas, wondering if Max’s super-strength would be enough. “Fine,” Dean replies through clenched teeth, steadfastly ignoring the still leaking laceration on his shoulder. “I’m out the door. Might as well let the bastard who gave me this busted shoulder know that I’m gone, too. He can keep carting around my face without any interruption, if that’s what you want.”
Max opens her mouth to backpedal over her words, suddenly feeling a sense of panic through her haze of anger, a panic of having Dean out of her web of control. But Dean’s not one of her command, much as she’d like him to be, which gives him free rein to disobey her wishes. And he does just that, turning his back on her and pushing his way through the doors to the infirmary. He disappears for a mere fifteen seconds, during which neither Max nor Dalton can hear anything through the thick steel, and then comes out, carrying his green shirt over his arm and studiously ignoring his shoulder.
Sending Max a sarcastic salute and Dalton a nod full of undertones, he remarks icily, “Later, Maxie.”
And Dean vanishes down the hallway, leaving behind a very emotionally confused Max, and a disappointed Dalton.
Meanwhile, not but twenty feet away from the two, Rade is hunched over Dix’s body, keeping it together, though barely. She’s forgotten all about Dean, his shoulder, and Dalton’s interruption-okay, not forgotten, per se, just put to the back of her mind for the moment-in respect to fixing up Dix, who’s by far the worst off of all of them.
One of his legs and arms are broken, the fibula and radius cracked in three places; she’d had to use both her industrial- and precision-sized forceps in order to pull out various pieces of shrapnel (including what looked sickeningly like a piece of a computer chip and desktop screen) and glass from his flesh; she’d had to reset a few joint dislocations, and sew together some ligaments. It all looked even more gruesome after she’d wiped away the copious amounts of blood (thank God for the transgenics’ ability to coagulate quickly). At least the red fluid had masked most of the wounds.
The only somewhat good part in the hellish nightmare was that she’d already procured the necessary medical equipment to best monitor Dix’s vital signs. They aren’t, as her luck would have it, the most accurate of devices she’d like to have, though; Manticore creations and Ordinaries are two completely different species, and multiple times she’d had to remind herself that Dix’s increased body temperature and lower EEG readings (given that Manticoreans were formatted to have their mental functions decrease in times of bodily distress, for risk overheating their control centers) aren’t as deadly as they’d be if, say, they were Dean’s readouts.
The irony that she feels she is more equipped to deal with Dean’s results instead of Dix’s, someone closer to her own DNA mutations, isn’t lost on her. Still, some notifications are better than none, and, as Rade knows, her training has been engineered to study the Manticore creations rather than Ordinaries. She’s okay on that front, once she acclimates herself again. The only thing she’s having massive difficulty with is the patient.
Dean was all right. He’s an Ordinary. He’s a tenacious, sardonic, annoying as all hell bastard. His traits made it easy for her to not (or attempt to not) get attached to him.
But Dix…Dix is one of her own, one of the smartest and steadfast guys she’s known. It makes things a thousand times harder.
By that perception, it does cause her to work that much better in conjunction with wanting to save, as she’d indicated, one of her own. Plus, in that arena, she doesn’t want to have Dix’s death on her hands. Her track record with deaths isn’t lengthy, and in fact she was one of Manticore’s best medics, but that doesn’t mean she’s immune to death taking her patients. Dean’s lucky; a rotator cuff tear, even for an Ordinary, isn’t usually a life-threatening injury. (Although, now that that small piece of her mind thinks about it, she’s still got to fix that up. At worst, it’ll get infected, and that could very well cause septicemia, an Ordinary disease she knows is fatal if not treated.) Dix isn’t so lucky.
She succumbed to taking a seat, much as she had been when Dean was unconscious, but her attention this time is not pure curiosity at the inner workings of an Ordinary’s immune system, not to mention Dean himself. This time, it’s more personal, and she’s begging the skies and her medical knowledge to save Dix, to make the readings normalized and Dix’s eyes open again. In that last vein, that had been arguably the hardest thing, emotionally, to do. She’d had to remove his trademark monocle, which was cracked beyond repair anyway: underneath it was more blood, and although she’s pretty positive he won’t be blind, it didn’t make his petechial hemorrhage any less grisly.
Well aware that she shouldn’t be one to let her sentimentality overcome her so easily, she takes a deep breath, blinks away her suddenly wet eyes, and walks over to the doors to open them. In another context, she’d want radio silence, as they say, but this is Dix, and Terminal City’s residents deserve to see him, wish him well. It’s not to say she’s going to let everyone in, but some people she’ll allow.
Expecting to see Dalton and Dean sitting against the wall, as they’d been prior to her hustling them out-she’d obviously noticed Dean come into the room while she’d been working and grab his shirt, but she hadn’t thought he’d be going anywhere fast-she sees there’s still two people there, but not the two she’d been anticipating. More accurately, the scene is minus one sullen human. Dalton’s standing up defiantly with his arms crossed over his chest, and Max is mostly glaring agitatedly. Rade looks down the hallway, but Dean’s form is nowhere to be seen. There’s a trail of blood drops going down the stone floor, which concerns her, but apart from that, there’s no sign of him.
“Where’s Dean?” she asks tiredly, noting the fatigue and sorrow in her own voice.
“Max banished him,” Dalton replies, annoyed.
“I didn’t ‘banish him,’” Max protests instantly. “He left. But it doesn’t matter now-how’s Dix? Is he all right?”
Rade purses her lips, now noticing the large splattering of what has to be Dean’s blood a few feet from Max’s stance. There’s nothing she can do for Dix now except wait, so she focuses instead on her other, now missing, patient. “What do you mean, he left?” Rade asks sharply. “His shoulder was fucked, and he was bleeding like he’d just gotten his arm chopped off. What did you say to him?”
She looks pointedly between Dalton and Max, their expressions giving nothing away besides annoyance. “God damn it, Dix is not doing anywhere close to well in there, and I have to concentrate now on something else-where the hell is Dean?” she yells, her voice echoing down the hall.
Both Max and Dalton don’t exactly look appropriately chided, more scared at Rade’s words about Dix, but they also know that Rade’s wrath rivals Max’s. “He said something about needing to find his brother,” Dalton offers helpfully, not knowing at all the full story. Or at least as full as Max had gathered about Dean, anyway. “That Dix was his only chance, and now he’s lying injured, so Dean’s going to try and find Sam himself.”
Rade snaps her eyes to Max. “I thought you and Logan were taking care of that crap,” she accuses, her internal anger (of course, her external is still well in effect) fading away quickly to unease.
If any of what Dean had confided to her was true, crazy as it was…she’s sure Dean’s in no condition to be looking all over Creation to find Sam. Especially if he has no idea where to look. She’s of accord that Dix was Dean’s best option in terms of locating a missing person, and she also has to admit that Dean’s likely stubborn enough to go off on his own while gravely wounded, but that doesn’t mean she can’t lay blame.
After all, Dean hadn’t shown any indication that he’d wanted to leave, last she’d spoken to him. And judging by the way he and Dalton were hitting it off (when things start settling down, she’s going to ask about that), it means that something about Max’s admittedly acerbic personality had scared off Dean. Okay, not scared off, probably, but to the same ends.
“I told him that,” Max replies, wondering when exactly it was that Rade got the rights to dictate.
“I believe his words were ‘stuffy, pansy-ass pencil pusher,’” Dalton supplies eagerly, already missing Dean in the current sea of estrogen.
Rade once more can’t really disagree with Dean’s assessment, and neither, she knows, can the vast majority of T.C. It doesn’t make what Dean’d voiced right, but from the looks of it, Dean had felt that Max was challenging him, and, as is the primal rule with a stalemate, one either walks away or attacks. So Dean, sensing his own limitations, chose the route of least carnage.
Tactically, Rade knows, it was the smartest thing to do. Health-wise, however, is a different story. Beyond that, Rade had thought Max wanted Dean to stick around, do the whole due diligence thing. When she easily could have stopped him, Rade’s unsure why she hadn’t. Timorous isn’t an adjective anyone would ever apply to Max.
“And you’re not concerned what he might get into out there?” she seethes. “Last time, he got busted up by White, nearly died, and Alec threw him into concrete. He’s obviously still confused as to what’s going on, and when he’s babbling about dem-” Rade breaks off quickly, not inclined to share with Max what Dean had told her, mainly because it’ll just incite more control issues with Max, and no one wants that. “About all sorts of things. You don’t think Dean might land himself into something hairy again? It’s not like White knows Dean’s not Alec. Who’s to say he won’t just snatch Dean up again and kill him for real this time?”
“Well, you two sure became close in there, didn’t you?” Max sneers, with a cattiness that Rade hasn’t seen before. It’s not quite jealousy or antipathy, but it certainly leans on that side of the fence.
Rade’s not pleased with the assumption. If anything, she and Dean went from antagonistic to…well, not, she supposes. But not friends, either. Dean hadn’t told her enough to make that so. “Retract the claws, Max,” Rade says slowly and articulately. “It’s not my fault you said something to ward Dean away.” She’s about to retreat back into her medical room, but then sighs and stows her irritation for the immediate moment. “Do you want to see Dix? He’s relatively stable for now.”
Dalton steps forward right away, wanting to see the transhuman in a better form than last time. Rade observes Max trying to stow her irritation just like Rade had done, and then nods and walks forward as well. Pushing open the doors, Rade allows the two in, preparing herself to answer a barrage of questions, as well as maybe a few indictments suggesting she hadn’t done her best work. At least those accusations she can handle, though. Those are expected. Accusations that she’d somehow done something to repel Dean, she can’t. Those are just too uncalled for.
As for Dean, once he steps out of the hallway, his rage coming off of him in waves, he sees the destruction of what was erstwhile called the Command Center. He pauses for an instant, taking it in. The Dalton kid was right, it does look like a small bomb went off, albeit a bomb with enough force behind it to blow up computer terminals and a freakish-looking dude. A freakish-looking dude that he’d noticed on his way in (the conscious time), granted, and pegged him as being the most likely option to help him in finding Sam. Dean’s seen enough scenes that look like C-4 resultant, and this one fits the bill.
Dean doesn’t know what caused it; he’s never been a bomb expert, after all. He can’t even say whether it was demonic, though he sincerely doubts it since it looks pretty straight-up kosher, or whether it was done by a whacked-out human. From what he’s seen from his time here, humanity had devolved past what Dean would have thought possible.
Shaking his head at the craziness of it all, as well as the extremely daunting task ahead of him-it’d be made simpler if he had his damn car and necklace, but especially with the former, he’s no idea what the hell happened to it. He guesses maybe with Sam…whom he doesn’t know the location of-he starts walking towards the front doors, aiming to remember where those tunnels are that he’d come through. He does after ten or so seconds, his memory of city and localized layouts refined to masterful from years of having to do so.
He doesn’t get more than a dozen yards, though, before he’s stopped by another blur, and fuck, he’s getting tired of that particular ability. Unlike one of the “normal” transgenics, unfortunately, he’s now face-to-face with his lookalike, the face still boggling to him. Considering the fact that he’d only seen Alec when the man had doomed his shoulder. It makes a guy not really feel favorable towards someone.
“Get out of my way,” Dean snarls, intending to sidestep him, but in his mind knowing it won’t work.
“Where are you going, Winchester?” Alec asks, only a little less uncomfortable with Dean’s face. His character is an entirely different matter, but Alec’s had more time to process Dean than Dean has had to process Alec. Then his eyes flick to Dean’s shoulder, the absence of his shirt attracting the notice. It’s cause for disquiet, not just because of the bleeding, but because of the crisscrossed scars streaked where Dean’s heart would be. Nodding towards it, he comments, “Thought Rade fixed that up.”
Dean shrugs, then straightaway regrets it. But, bearing in mind present company, Dean grinds his teeth and succeeds in not showing anything. Unfortunately for him, the extra little beads of blood from his wound and sweat from his temples don’t lie. “I’m fine, clone dude,” Dean replies, attempting to edge around Alec again. Again, he stops him.
“Hey!” Alec snaps, feeling less off his game, but at the same time a little more annoyed, with Dean. It’s taken a while to get over the fact that Dean looks like he would be in the future, but he’s doing so. (Although, Alec muses, it’s probably worse for Dean, who would be familiar with his past appearance.) “Slow down there, Rambo. What is it exactly that you’re trying to do? Weren’t you staying here for a while?”
“What, you want to share a forty with me or something? Not interested,” Dean rejects, seriously contemplating hitting Alec just so he can feel better. This whole thing is getting taxing, and his immune system is already begging him for mercy.
Alec has dealt with difficult people before, namely Max, but he’s never encountered his own obstinacy. It kinda sucks ass. “Would you quit it?” Alec grouses angrily, wishing to just have his clone-or whatever; they really need to figure out a different word, ’cause with not knowing the truth, the changing semantics is getting old-stop moving for one damn second. “Wait…did Max talk to you or something? Is it because of her you’re leaving?”
“No,” Dean sighs, knowing it’s the truth. “It’s because’a that guy that got blown up. He’s a computer geek, isn’t he? Thought he could help me get Sam, but…he’s no use now for that. And if I know Sammy, which by hell I do, he’s probably switching cities already. It’ll be looking for him in a three thousand mile haystack, but I’ve done it before with people, I’ll do it again.”
Alec almost quirks a smile at Dean’s vehemence. He’s never really had someone as close as a brother before-Mole’s probably the closest, and that’s a little frightening to realize, but he’s still not a brother-but he can recognize devotion when he sees it. Dean’s got it, that want, need, to at least know where a person is because they have a bond with you. He knows Max mainly wants to help Dean because she’s fascinated by him, and maybe even because she wants to know why he and Alec resemble one another, but in Alec’s book, that’s a crap reason. Regardless of who Dean mirrors, Alec feels Max, if she really cares for Dean, should help him just because.
It’s that which makes Alec really see past Dean’s face. Sees past his face. “I can help,” Alec proposes, staring Dean straight into his own eyes.
Dean snorts ungracefully, feeling another pang in his shoulder. “Yeah. Right,” Dean objects. “You’re just some good Samaritan now? What happened to punching my lights out? Please. You’re just like that Max chick.”
“I’m not,” says Alec, not appreciating in the least the comparison. “And hey, you hit a buddy of mine, then threw a knife at me and called me a shapeshifter. It hurts a little, man.”
“I’m still not so sure that you’re not,” Dean says unnecessarily. Contrary to what he’d said, he is sure Alec’s not. Otherwise Alec’d be long dead, the silver running through his bloodstream and stopping his heart cold. “Besides, say I did let you help. What good could you do?”
Alec takes a breath, knowing he has to give Dean something in order to get something back. Basic game theory and military negotiation tactic-tit for tat. He hasn’t told anyone about it, but he wagers Dean’s the person to entrust with a secret, given his background.
“I knew the info on you and Sam first, you know,” Alec offers. “Before Logan the WASP told Max. And I’m one of the best, if not the best, people here who can track someone.”
“Yeah?” Dean asks skeptically, taking in Alec’s form. His twenty-ish-year-old form. And if Dean remembers right, he wasn’t exactly a body builder at that age. Alec doesn’t look much different. “You can track people?”
Swallowing heavily, Alec reinforces himself. “I was a…an assassin, I guess,” Alec confides, feeling a black surge flood him. “Commissioned for sniping. Killing someone before they even knew a bullet was coming towards them. So yeah. I can track pretty fucking well.”
Dean looks Alec up and down, seeing in Alec’s intense gaze that, however blasé he may have said it, indulging even those few sentences took a lot. He’s not feeling sorry for the kid, but he understands struggling with yourself. With your past, and your skills. “Aren’t you some leader person here?” Dean inquires, having seen the way that Max and Alec had manifested some sort of power over the rest of the transgenics. “Gotta hold down the fort, don’t you?”
Alec gives a twisted smile. “Not right now I don’t,” Alec refutes. “All Max would do is insult and yell at me because of Dix-or you-even though it was hardly my fault, and all the rest of T.C. needs to deal with this whole thing by themselves. It’s not like we’re in battle at the moment. Guess White’s taking a break.”
Dean’s blood runs cold. “White, that was…”
“Yeah,” Alec confirms, knowing Dean wouldn’t exactly harbor warm feelings for the guy that tortured him in place of Alec. It causes a mild guilt trip in the transgenic. Alec, obviously, doesn’t know that White’s torture wasn’t anywhere near what Dean’s had in the past, but it still doesn’t mean it was a joy ride for Dean. “Look, um, Dean,” Alec begins, Dean’s name weird in his mouth, given whom he resembles. “I’m part of this, too, you know. You’re not the only one with some person who looks like you. I mean, I don’t know Sam, but…maybe if you find him, you guys can solve this thing. No one else has had luck.”
Dean stares at Alec for a long while, hearing various noises around him indicating the residents still cleaning up, or dealing, or whatever, and sees the sincerity in Alec’s face. He’s well aware that Alec and the rest of them were trained to be great actors, but there’s just something in the guy’s expression that leads Dean to believe that this time, he’s not lying.
And weird as it is, Dean knows he can use all the help he can get. “All right,” he says, feeling he’s going to lament the whole decision. “But Sammy’s my brother, and I’m heading this thing.” Alec doesn’t make any move to respond, which Dean doesn’t know how to interpret, but he’ll deal with that later. He just has one more thing to clarify.
“You any good at field med? ‘Cause my shoulder hurts like a bitch.”
Alec laughs, this time letting Dean brush past him.
And follows.
Next