SPN/DA crossover fic: Of Desire and the Status Quo (14/38)
Story Title: Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter Title: The Shatterer of Worlds
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Summary: In the end, it’s a complete accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XIV: The Shatterer of Worlds
When his senses come back to relative working order, Dean opens his eyes with a snap, ignoring the dregs of sleep sticking to him. He’s in an unknown room, but the weirder part is that it looks like one that might be found in a hospital. Not the sterile creepiness of one, like before, but one that had a barely-mattressed, tiny bed, a lamp, a few bandages on a table next to him, and not much else.
What the hell…?
Dean sits up in the bed, knowing he probably shouldn’t, but Dean’s never been a man of passivity or doing what he’s told, so he ignores the pounding headache, throbbing jaw, and bruised chest as he starts taking stock of his current condition and environment. Thankfully, whoever had brought him here (wherever here is), had left him in the scrubs from before and didn’t redress him into ones less…covering.
He looks around quickly and finds his actual clothes in a pile by the door and quickly pulls them on, the fabric of his tee shirt and jeans rough from years of using cheap detergent and the comfortable, heavy boots sliding over his feet a small but familiar reassurance in his thoroughly unfamiliar surroundings.
The unfortunate thing that he finds out next is that the one window in the place is locked. Not as in Dean can easily pick it, but as in there are steel bars over the glass, teasing him because they’re the only simple exit he can see.
But when has Dean’s life ever been simple? He’s usually always been able to get out of worse scrapes than this. There’s a door off to his left, and Dean makes his way over, pressing his arm over his chest gingerly, feeling like it’s been shot or stabbed or something, and he’s not feeling very pleased about the whole thing.
Cautiously, Dean peers through the window on the door, to find out that it’s a short hallway, with an opening to a large room at the end. There isn’t anyone in said hallway at the moment, though, and Dean takes the opportunity. Hauling open the oddly heavy door, he slips out into the corridor, shivering a little at the cold temperature against his chilled skin.
There aren’t very many places to hide behind, and Dean does his best to just be as quiet as he can. For the most part, he’s able, until he glances over to his left to see if there’s anyone over there, and then back center only to discover that there is no longer empty air, but rather he’s faced with a man who looks like he should be in the “Reptilian Encounters” section of Weekly World News. Either that or he’s some supernatural son of a bitch that Dean should shoot. Where is his sawed-off anyway?
“Sleeping Beauty’s awake,” says the lizard-man around a half-smoked cigar. The man speaks over his shoulder to someone out of Dean’s perspective, calling, “Hey, Fearless Leader, clone’s up.”
Dean doesn’t know who this Fearless Leader person is, but he’s not going to take chances. Summoning his admittedly below-par strength, Dean lands a well-placed kick to the lizard-man’s abdomen, following it up with an uppercut that, with the vast majority of Dean’s previous opponents, would have knocked them on their ass.
This time, however, the lizard-man just ends up being pushed back a step or two and looks monumentally pissed off. Dean gets the annoyed feeling that it’s more to do with his cigar punched to the ground and not Dean’s hits. He brings his fist back again to aim at the man’s face, but, from a combination of the man’s increased strength and Dean’s decreased, his hand catches Dean’s easily and wrenches it behind Dean’s back.
“You really are just like pretty boy,” says the lizard-man. “Fightin’ even though you’re bleeding and weak as a damn kitten.”
“Let go of me, you slimy son of a-”
“Mole!” commands a voice that Dean is, for once, relatively glad to hear. “Mole, for God’s sake, let him go!”
The lizard-man, evidently known as Mole, grunts, but does do as Max demanded. Immediately, Dean takes a step away and tries not to groan at the aching in his chest. He puts his fingers to the wound, and his ribs bend in protest. Perfect. Just awesome.
“Dean, calm down,” Max says, a mix of frustration and relief in her eyes. “You’re in no shape to go picking a fight with Mole here. And Mole,” Max goes on, her attention on the transhuman, “you can’t just try and kill someone we just patched up from injuries he almost died from. Jesus.”
“You tell me I can kick Alec’s ass whenever I want,” Mole counters, “I figure a clone’a his is fair game.”
“He’s not a clone, Mole, he’s human!”
“Touch me again, I’ll kill you,” Dean threatens, attempting to not favor his arm for purposes of not showing he’s hurting all over. “I swear.”
“Promises, promises,” says Mole, taking another cigar from his pocket, lighting it, then turning to walk away from Dean.
Dean is starting to see red, feel his temper boil, feel the heat rising from his skin. He knows in some back part of his mind that he’s being irrational about this, but he is just done with nothing going his way, with him being tossed around like a chew toy, helpless as a baby against…whatever these things are. Dean likes to think he’s a pretty levelheaded guy for the most part, but sometimes, his anger gets the best of him, and he lashes out. Which seems to be his tendency of the day.
Taking advantage of Max’s concern towards him, he whirls around and pins her up against the wall, his body close enough to hers to where she wouldn’t be able to get much leverage. He’d twisted her arms back far enough that he knows her shoulder joints are close to being separated from their sockets, and his forearm is like an iron bar against her sensitive throat, a hair’s breadth away from crushing her trachea.
Max, like Dean had intended, was caught by surprise. She kept underestimating Dean’s training-so far, she hasn’t seen anything to suggest it doesn’t incorporate much of Manticore’s moves, to be honest-and his fortitude, his hatred to be considered the underling. Max also knows very well that she can overpower just about any Ordinary unless she’s heavily injured, sedated, et cetera, and at the moment, she’s perfectly healthy. The problem is that she can’t seem to get the advantage in Dean’s hold. Most people would stand a little too far away from their adversary, their arm not quite tight against the other’s throat, the unwillingness to slowly pop out the person’s joints.
Dean isn’t. He’s using on Max just what she’d been taught; only, Dean’s had much more training in this Manticorean-type of fighting than Max has, and while she’s extremely talented even among transgenics, let alone having the dirty, street-style fighting, she’s never really gone officially up against these kind of moves. She’d fought Alec before, but she always had the feeling he never quite put all he had into opposing her, like it was all a game to him. Apart from that, she’d never had the opportunity to fight another X, to experience their fighting styles, since now she was considered leader of the transgenic nation, and no one exactly wanted to throw down with her. (Not to mention they had more on their plates than playful tussles.)
She won’t say she’s screwed precisely, especially since she’s in a city full of genetically engineered super-soldiers who would come to her aid at any time, but for some reason, she doesn’t want them to save her, at least not right away. The look in Dean’s green eyes is feral, deadly, and sharp, even though there is a certain amount of panic in them as well. Dean’s an Ordinary, but…if Max underestimated him, the other transgenics, in particular those who had a massive grudge or prejudice towards Ordinaries, definitely would. Dean wouldn’t get out of Terminal City alive if the transgenics didn’t allow it, but she has no illusions he wouldn’t at least intend to harm a good amount of them to try.
“Dean, please,” Max chokes, Dean’s arm closing off half her windpipe. “J-Just let me explain.”
“Why?” Dean spits, expression edging towards manic. “So you can push me around like a fucking chess piece some more, stare at me like I’m Charles fucking Manson? I’m not your play toy, Max!”
In the next moment, Max can suddenly breathe free oxygen again, and she coughs and splutters at the abrupt influx of air. Dean is thrown away from her, and slams into the railing that surrounds the main computer terminals with an echoing crunch before sliding down to slump against the concrete. There’s a wide smear of red on the metal rails, a few stray pieces of rebar, and spatters on the ground from where he’d been pulled off.
Max looks up from Dean, to see Alec standing there, furious. His knuckles are bloody and torn, and Max realizes that he’d been the one to intervene. He starts moving menacingly towards Dean’s alive but damaged form-he’s trying valiantly to get up again, but Max thinks he might have a concussion or broken something-with the intention, no doubt, to kill, or at least maim.
Max blurs to stand in front of Alec, her hands unyielding against his chest. “Alec, no,” she hisses, begging him with her eyes to stand down from Dean.
Satisfied for the moment that Alec’s not going to go primitive, she turns back to Dean and kneels down. He’s staring up at Alec, eyes wide and disbelieving. Max thinks that this is worse for Dean, not only because he had never actually seen Alec before, but because he’s looking at someone who is an exact replica of himself about a decade ago. Whereas Alec hadn’t known what he would look like in the future.
The disbelief in Dean’s eyes quickly changes, though, to hatred, and Max puts the pieces together too late. Heedless of his injuries, Dean reaches into his jeans pocket-why did we have to leave his clothes there? Max thinks desperately-and, in a flurry of motion, whips out his switchblade and hurls it through the air. The blade lands squarely in Alec’s thigh, wedging itself through the denim and into his flesh. Alec curses up a blue streak before yanking the knife out and throwing it to the ground, pissed. Everyone in the room except Dean knows it’s more or less a surface wound to an X5, but no one likes getting stabbed.
Dean’s expression turns again, this time from hatred to pure confusion. Max has long since given up on trying to decipher the guy. “But…that blade is silver,” Dean says, staring from the dripping knife on the ground and then to Alec, who is wrapping a piece of cloth tightly around his wound. “You’re…you’re supposed to die.”
“No, I’m not,” Alec seethes, glaring at his double. “What is your glitch, dude?”
“Dean, what are you talking about?” Max asks quietly. Dean’s statement would have been normal enough, had it not been for his unnecessary mentioning of the blade’s metal. “What does it matter if your knife’s silver?”
“’Cause he’s a damn shapeshifter!” Dean growls. “I just don’t know how he’s still standing. Silver kills you fuckers!”
Max feels a shiver run down her spine, as well as the collective, half-puzzled, half-suspicious slow in conversation in the room. Dean’s voice had been directed solely on Alec, but his deep tones reverberated throughout the command center. Transgenics were programmed to be able to deal with unfamiliar and strange circumstances, but not one of the transgenics was taught what to do if an adversary-for that’s what Dean is to them-starts accusing one of their leaders of being a mythical creature.
“Max?” Alec asks her, his tone level enough, but with a hint of apprehension. “Care to share with the class what the hell this guy’s talking about?”
“I-” What do they all expect her to say? She doesn’t have any idea. Dean had vanished from Cindy’s apartment before they’d had a chance to talk to him, and then after getting him away from White, he’d passed out. Max knows as much as anyone else does about Dean Winchester. “Alec, I don’t know.”
“Well, figure it out before he goes all psycho again!”
Max flinches at Alec’s words, not because she doesn’t think Dean deserves it so much as because Alec’s “psycho” comment brought things just way too close to that ultra-sensitive nerve that is Ben. Normally, she probably wouldn’t have done much beyond a glare, but…this is different. Ben feels like a third presence in the room, three lookalikes all oppressing the atmosphere at the same time.
Alec she knows is just as sane as the rest of the transgenics, but she can’t lie and say at the present moment Dean doesn’t remind her of when Ben was so sure he was right and believing in the Blue Lady that he was willing to kill for “Her.” She’s confident that Dean’s got a relatively sound head on his shoulders, but sometimes he lets out this purely animalistic side that she doesn’t know what to do with. That makes her think maybe he really is the Dean Winchester that induced fear in a hell of a lot of people thirteen years ago.
Max leans closer to Dean, ignoring the way her instincts are positively screaming at her to get away. Dean is like a cornered animal right now, injured, in pain, threatened, and disoriented, and, transgenic or no, he could snap Max’s neck like a twig if he were so inclined. His left shoulder is glaringly offset and bloody, not his legs or anger.
“Dean, listen,” she says entreatingly, blocking out everyone except Dean, blocking out even the possible traces she might have before glimpsed of Alec or Ben in his face. Just focuses on Dean, on how she could reach him. The caveat, of course, is that she doesn’t know him. At all. “Dean, Alec isn’t a…a shapeshifter. He’s just like me, and everyone else here. We’re human, Dean. Just a little different.”
Dean’s lips curl, his teeth glinting in the fluorescents. “Freaks. Monsters,” Dean grins, the smile slightly bloody from where he must have bit down upon hitting the wall. “You all deserve to go to Hell. I’ll send every last one of you back there!”
Sounds of fury and disgust rage throughout the room, in various forms of animalistic noises, at Dean’s words. Max doesn’t dare to look around in case of what she knows she’ll see. She feels the sting of Dean’s barb in her gut, and she had been a second from pummeling him herself-they aren’t monsters, they aren’t-but then she catches where his line of sight is going.
Rather, where it isn’t.
Dean’s not looking at Max, he’s not looking at Alec, he’s not looking at anyone. Well, okay, he’s looking, but eerily like that first day Max had met him, Dean is so clearly envisioning something else. Max isn’t sure when his mind altered his perception, but the when isn’t important now. What she needs now is to get Dean the hell out of the command center as soon as she can, and also find out what could have possibly happened in his past that would cause such monumental breaks from reality.
Max turns around to face Alec, her body tense. “Help me move him,” she orders in a tone that leaves no room for negotiation.
“Did you just hear-”
“Alec,” Max intones, her temper flaring. “Now. There’s something wrong with him, something he’s seeing instead of seeing us, and I need to get him out of here before our people decide to tear him limb from limb.”
“No shit there’s something wrong with him!” Alec protests, gesturing at his double. “He’s saying I’m a fucking shapeshifter, Max! They aren’t real.”
Max has had enough. Slowly and menacingly like the predator she was made to be, she stands up and walks over to Alec, stopping just inches from his face. “You help me move Dean now, or so help me I’ll send your ass to White, no return address. Got it?”
A low growl rumbles somewhere deep in Alec’s throat that Max has never heard before, but she hasn’t gotten where she is by backing down. She doesn’t blink as she stares into Alec’s dark eyes, hitting them with a pleading desperation. She can’t handle two feral, expertly trained, alpha-geared males, both with substantial weight and height on her, one pissed and annoyed, the other currently hallucinating and maybe in the throes of psychosis. She’s good, but she’s not that good. It doesn’t help that she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all of T.C. would take Alec’s side over Dean’s if it came down to that. God help her but she wants to save Dean, and his odds aren’t favorable at the moment.
Alec’s mouth is twitching in a snarl, the air around him bristled, but after a few, very tense seconds, his coiled muscles unwind a bit, and Max exhales the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “You’d better be right about this one,” Alec says flatly.
Max nods, acknowledging to the both of them the threat Alec unmistakably placed in his words. She has a feeling Alec would hold it up if he felt so inclined. This time when she walks towards Dean, she hears Alec’s heavier footfalls behind her.
Bending down, she holds out her hand to Dean, trying to make it not shake. “Dean, come on,” Max says imploringly. “We’re just gonna move you to a different room.”
Dean’s eyes snap to hers, but they’ve still got that blank depth to them. “Where?”
“Somewhere safer, Dean,” Max answers.
She realizes instantly that it was the wrong answer. At her response, Dean is in motion, but not in the fluid, quick movements as he’d done to subdue her earlier. Short fingernails grip onto the tile to try and gain purchase while Dean scrambles as hastily as he can backwards from Max, his breathing escalating. He soon runs out of room, though, and his head smacks against the rough concrete, signaling this time he’s been literally backed into a corner. Dean’s left hand reaches up to grab the railing, but he had either forgotten or hadn’t before noticed his shoulder, and it forces him back to the ground.
“N-No…” Dean whispers. “Please don’t take me-”
Max freezes, and she feels Alec behind her do the same. A minute ago, Dean was full venom and loathing, but now, his fear has transformed him into looking all of five years old. His face has lost the tightness that it’s had ever since Max has seen him, and his eyes are glassy with terror. He’s still futilely attempting to back away from Max, but there’s physically no space to do so.
“Please,” Dean begs again. “Stop, just stop, just stop. No-you can’t take Sammy, you can’t. Just…wait, wait! Take me. Not Sammy, not Sammy.”
Max somehow manages to rip her gaze away from Dean in order to look at Alec. His lips are slightly parted, his forehead drawn into a confused frown, and his eyes intense in that way Max had come to associate with him trying to solve a singularly difficult equation. She wants to tell him it’s useless to try to solve Dean; she’s already gone through it, and none of her computations ever add up.
There is one thing, though, that’s perfectly clear in Dean’s pleading, and Max knows Alec gets it, too. That there’s only one “Sammy” to whom Dean could be referring, and there’s a basal factor in Dean’s voice when he speaks of Sam, a factor that’s ingrained in every older sibling. The desire to protect them no matter what the cost, desire to sacrifice yourself for them in any way you can, no matter how bad the outcome may end up for you.
Max still isn’t anywhere near set straight on Dean’s history, but even if she goes by the federal one, even if she goes by the implication that Dean’s a cold-blooded murderer, there’s a fact she can’t ignore, and Dean’s just sealed it. He’s an older brother, killer or no, and his voice is begging Max-no, not Max, whoever it is he’s seeing-to leave Sam alone, to do God knows what to Dean himself instead. And that’s the exact kind of loyalty and devotion Max and her brothers and sisters instilled in themselves from the minute they were put in a unit together.
She’ll figure out what to do with the hallucinating felon in front of her later.
Right now, she’s going to save Sam Winchester’s big brother.
Next
Chapter Title: The Shatterer of Worlds
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Summary: In the end, it’s a complete accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XIV: The Shatterer of Worlds
When his senses come back to relative working order, Dean opens his eyes with a snap, ignoring the dregs of sleep sticking to him. He’s in an unknown room, but the weirder part is that it looks like one that might be found in a hospital. Not the sterile creepiness of one, like before, but one that had a barely-mattressed, tiny bed, a lamp, a few bandages on a table next to him, and not much else.
What the hell…?
Dean sits up in the bed, knowing he probably shouldn’t, but Dean’s never been a man of passivity or doing what he’s told, so he ignores the pounding headache, throbbing jaw, and bruised chest as he starts taking stock of his current condition and environment. Thankfully, whoever had brought him here (wherever here is), had left him in the scrubs from before and didn’t redress him into ones less…covering.
He looks around quickly and finds his actual clothes in a pile by the door and quickly pulls them on, the fabric of his tee shirt and jeans rough from years of using cheap detergent and the comfortable, heavy boots sliding over his feet a small but familiar reassurance in his thoroughly unfamiliar surroundings.
The unfortunate thing that he finds out next is that the one window in the place is locked. Not as in Dean can easily pick it, but as in there are steel bars over the glass, teasing him because they’re the only simple exit he can see.
But when has Dean’s life ever been simple? He’s usually always been able to get out of worse scrapes than this. There’s a door off to his left, and Dean makes his way over, pressing his arm over his chest gingerly, feeling like it’s been shot or stabbed or something, and he’s not feeling very pleased about the whole thing.
Cautiously, Dean peers through the window on the door, to find out that it’s a short hallway, with an opening to a large room at the end. There isn’t anyone in said hallway at the moment, though, and Dean takes the opportunity. Hauling open the oddly heavy door, he slips out into the corridor, shivering a little at the cold temperature against his chilled skin.
There aren’t very many places to hide behind, and Dean does his best to just be as quiet as he can. For the most part, he’s able, until he glances over to his left to see if there’s anyone over there, and then back center only to discover that there is no longer empty air, but rather he’s faced with a man who looks like he should be in the “Reptilian Encounters” section of Weekly World News. Either that or he’s some supernatural son of a bitch that Dean should shoot. Where is his sawed-off anyway?
“Sleeping Beauty’s awake,” says the lizard-man around a half-smoked cigar. The man speaks over his shoulder to someone out of Dean’s perspective, calling, “Hey, Fearless Leader, clone’s up.”
Dean doesn’t know who this Fearless Leader person is, but he’s not going to take chances. Summoning his admittedly below-par strength, Dean lands a well-placed kick to the lizard-man’s abdomen, following it up with an uppercut that, with the vast majority of Dean’s previous opponents, would have knocked them on their ass.
This time, however, the lizard-man just ends up being pushed back a step or two and looks monumentally pissed off. Dean gets the annoyed feeling that it’s more to do with his cigar punched to the ground and not Dean’s hits. He brings his fist back again to aim at the man’s face, but, from a combination of the man’s increased strength and Dean’s decreased, his hand catches Dean’s easily and wrenches it behind Dean’s back.
“You really are just like pretty boy,” says the lizard-man. “Fightin’ even though you’re bleeding and weak as a damn kitten.”
“Let go of me, you slimy son of a-”
“Mole!” commands a voice that Dean is, for once, relatively glad to hear. “Mole, for God’s sake, let him go!”
The lizard-man, evidently known as Mole, grunts, but does do as Max demanded. Immediately, Dean takes a step away and tries not to groan at the aching in his chest. He puts his fingers to the wound, and his ribs bend in protest. Perfect. Just awesome.
“Dean, calm down,” Max says, a mix of frustration and relief in her eyes. “You’re in no shape to go picking a fight with Mole here. And Mole,” Max goes on, her attention on the transhuman, “you can’t just try and kill someone we just patched up from injuries he almost died from. Jesus.”
“You tell me I can kick Alec’s ass whenever I want,” Mole counters, “I figure a clone’a his is fair game.”
“He’s not a clone, Mole, he’s human!”
“Touch me again, I’ll kill you,” Dean threatens, attempting to not favor his arm for purposes of not showing he’s hurting all over. “I swear.”
“Promises, promises,” says Mole, taking another cigar from his pocket, lighting it, then turning to walk away from Dean.
Dean is starting to see red, feel his temper boil, feel the heat rising from his skin. He knows in some back part of his mind that he’s being irrational about this, but he is just done with nothing going his way, with him being tossed around like a chew toy, helpless as a baby against…whatever these things are. Dean likes to think he’s a pretty levelheaded guy for the most part, but sometimes, his anger gets the best of him, and he lashes out. Which seems to be his tendency of the day.
Taking advantage of Max’s concern towards him, he whirls around and pins her up against the wall, his body close enough to hers to where she wouldn’t be able to get much leverage. He’d twisted her arms back far enough that he knows her shoulder joints are close to being separated from their sockets, and his forearm is like an iron bar against her sensitive throat, a hair’s breadth away from crushing her trachea.
Max, like Dean had intended, was caught by surprise. She kept underestimating Dean’s training-so far, she hasn’t seen anything to suggest it doesn’t incorporate much of Manticore’s moves, to be honest-and his fortitude, his hatred to be considered the underling. Max also knows very well that she can overpower just about any Ordinary unless she’s heavily injured, sedated, et cetera, and at the moment, she’s perfectly healthy. The problem is that she can’t seem to get the advantage in Dean’s hold. Most people would stand a little too far away from their adversary, their arm not quite tight against the other’s throat, the unwillingness to slowly pop out the person’s joints.
Dean isn’t. He’s using on Max just what she’d been taught; only, Dean’s had much more training in this Manticorean-type of fighting than Max has, and while she’s extremely talented even among transgenics, let alone having the dirty, street-style fighting, she’s never really gone officially up against these kind of moves. She’d fought Alec before, but she always had the feeling he never quite put all he had into opposing her, like it was all a game to him. Apart from that, she’d never had the opportunity to fight another X, to experience their fighting styles, since now she was considered leader of the transgenic nation, and no one exactly wanted to throw down with her. (Not to mention they had more on their plates than playful tussles.)
She won’t say she’s screwed precisely, especially since she’s in a city full of genetically engineered super-soldiers who would come to her aid at any time, but for some reason, she doesn’t want them to save her, at least not right away. The look in Dean’s green eyes is feral, deadly, and sharp, even though there is a certain amount of panic in them as well. Dean’s an Ordinary, but…if Max underestimated him, the other transgenics, in particular those who had a massive grudge or prejudice towards Ordinaries, definitely would. Dean wouldn’t get out of Terminal City alive if the transgenics didn’t allow it, but she has no illusions he wouldn’t at least intend to harm a good amount of them to try.
“Dean, please,” Max chokes, Dean’s arm closing off half her windpipe. “J-Just let me explain.”
“Why?” Dean spits, expression edging towards manic. “So you can push me around like a fucking chess piece some more, stare at me like I’m Charles fucking Manson? I’m not your play toy, Max!”
In the next moment, Max can suddenly breathe free oxygen again, and she coughs and splutters at the abrupt influx of air. Dean is thrown away from her, and slams into the railing that surrounds the main computer terminals with an echoing crunch before sliding down to slump against the concrete. There’s a wide smear of red on the metal rails, a few stray pieces of rebar, and spatters on the ground from where he’d been pulled off.
Max looks up from Dean, to see Alec standing there, furious. His knuckles are bloody and torn, and Max realizes that he’d been the one to intervene. He starts moving menacingly towards Dean’s alive but damaged form-he’s trying valiantly to get up again, but Max thinks he might have a concussion or broken something-with the intention, no doubt, to kill, or at least maim.
Max blurs to stand in front of Alec, her hands unyielding against his chest. “Alec, no,” she hisses, begging him with her eyes to stand down from Dean.
Satisfied for the moment that Alec’s not going to go primitive, she turns back to Dean and kneels down. He’s staring up at Alec, eyes wide and disbelieving. Max thinks that this is worse for Dean, not only because he had never actually seen Alec before, but because he’s looking at someone who is an exact replica of himself about a decade ago. Whereas Alec hadn’t known what he would look like in the future.
The disbelief in Dean’s eyes quickly changes, though, to hatred, and Max puts the pieces together too late. Heedless of his injuries, Dean reaches into his jeans pocket-why did we have to leave his clothes there? Max thinks desperately-and, in a flurry of motion, whips out his switchblade and hurls it through the air. The blade lands squarely in Alec’s thigh, wedging itself through the denim and into his flesh. Alec curses up a blue streak before yanking the knife out and throwing it to the ground, pissed. Everyone in the room except Dean knows it’s more or less a surface wound to an X5, but no one likes getting stabbed.
Dean’s expression turns again, this time from hatred to pure confusion. Max has long since given up on trying to decipher the guy. “But…that blade is silver,” Dean says, staring from the dripping knife on the ground and then to Alec, who is wrapping a piece of cloth tightly around his wound. “You’re…you’re supposed to die.”
“No, I’m not,” Alec seethes, glaring at his double. “What is your glitch, dude?”
“Dean, what are you talking about?” Max asks quietly. Dean’s statement would have been normal enough, had it not been for his unnecessary mentioning of the blade’s metal. “What does it matter if your knife’s silver?”
“’Cause he’s a damn shapeshifter!” Dean growls. “I just don’t know how he’s still standing. Silver kills you fuckers!”
Max feels a shiver run down her spine, as well as the collective, half-puzzled, half-suspicious slow in conversation in the room. Dean’s voice had been directed solely on Alec, but his deep tones reverberated throughout the command center. Transgenics were programmed to be able to deal with unfamiliar and strange circumstances, but not one of the transgenics was taught what to do if an adversary-for that’s what Dean is to them-starts accusing one of their leaders of being a mythical creature.
“Max?” Alec asks her, his tone level enough, but with a hint of apprehension. “Care to share with the class what the hell this guy’s talking about?”
“I-” What do they all expect her to say? She doesn’t have any idea. Dean had vanished from Cindy’s apartment before they’d had a chance to talk to him, and then after getting him away from White, he’d passed out. Max knows as much as anyone else does about Dean Winchester. “Alec, I don’t know.”
“Well, figure it out before he goes all psycho again!”
Max flinches at Alec’s words, not because she doesn’t think Dean deserves it so much as because Alec’s “psycho” comment brought things just way too close to that ultra-sensitive nerve that is Ben. Normally, she probably wouldn’t have done much beyond a glare, but…this is different. Ben feels like a third presence in the room, three lookalikes all oppressing the atmosphere at the same time.
Alec she knows is just as sane as the rest of the transgenics, but she can’t lie and say at the present moment Dean doesn’t remind her of when Ben was so sure he was right and believing in the Blue Lady that he was willing to kill for “Her.” She’s confident that Dean’s got a relatively sound head on his shoulders, but sometimes he lets out this purely animalistic side that she doesn’t know what to do with. That makes her think maybe he really is the Dean Winchester that induced fear in a hell of a lot of people thirteen years ago.
Max leans closer to Dean, ignoring the way her instincts are positively screaming at her to get away. Dean is like a cornered animal right now, injured, in pain, threatened, and disoriented, and, transgenic or no, he could snap Max’s neck like a twig if he were so inclined. His left shoulder is glaringly offset and bloody, not his legs or anger.
“Dean, listen,” she says entreatingly, blocking out everyone except Dean, blocking out even the possible traces she might have before glimpsed of Alec or Ben in his face. Just focuses on Dean, on how she could reach him. The caveat, of course, is that she doesn’t know him. At all. “Dean, Alec isn’t a…a shapeshifter. He’s just like me, and everyone else here. We’re human, Dean. Just a little different.”
Dean’s lips curl, his teeth glinting in the fluorescents. “Freaks. Monsters,” Dean grins, the smile slightly bloody from where he must have bit down upon hitting the wall. “You all deserve to go to Hell. I’ll send every last one of you back there!”
Sounds of fury and disgust rage throughout the room, in various forms of animalistic noises, at Dean’s words. Max doesn’t dare to look around in case of what she knows she’ll see. She feels the sting of Dean’s barb in her gut, and she had been a second from pummeling him herself-they aren’t monsters, they aren’t-but then she catches where his line of sight is going.
Rather, where it isn’t.
Dean’s not looking at Max, he’s not looking at Alec, he’s not looking at anyone. Well, okay, he’s looking, but eerily like that first day Max had met him, Dean is so clearly envisioning something else. Max isn’t sure when his mind altered his perception, but the when isn’t important now. What she needs now is to get Dean the hell out of the command center as soon as she can, and also find out what could have possibly happened in his past that would cause such monumental breaks from reality.
Max turns around to face Alec, her body tense. “Help me move him,” she orders in a tone that leaves no room for negotiation.
“Did you just hear-”
“Alec,” Max intones, her temper flaring. “Now. There’s something wrong with him, something he’s seeing instead of seeing us, and I need to get him out of here before our people decide to tear him limb from limb.”
“No shit there’s something wrong with him!” Alec protests, gesturing at his double. “He’s saying I’m a fucking shapeshifter, Max! They aren’t real.”
Max has had enough. Slowly and menacingly like the predator she was made to be, she stands up and walks over to Alec, stopping just inches from his face. “You help me move Dean now, or so help me I’ll send your ass to White, no return address. Got it?”
A low growl rumbles somewhere deep in Alec’s throat that Max has never heard before, but she hasn’t gotten where she is by backing down. She doesn’t blink as she stares into Alec’s dark eyes, hitting them with a pleading desperation. She can’t handle two feral, expertly trained, alpha-geared males, both with substantial weight and height on her, one pissed and annoyed, the other currently hallucinating and maybe in the throes of psychosis. She’s good, but she’s not that good. It doesn’t help that she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all of T.C. would take Alec’s side over Dean’s if it came down to that. God help her but she wants to save Dean, and his odds aren’t favorable at the moment.
Alec’s mouth is twitching in a snarl, the air around him bristled, but after a few, very tense seconds, his coiled muscles unwind a bit, and Max exhales the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “You’d better be right about this one,” Alec says flatly.
Max nods, acknowledging to the both of them the threat Alec unmistakably placed in his words. She has a feeling Alec would hold it up if he felt so inclined. This time when she walks towards Dean, she hears Alec’s heavier footfalls behind her.
Bending down, she holds out her hand to Dean, trying to make it not shake. “Dean, come on,” Max says imploringly. “We’re just gonna move you to a different room.”
Dean’s eyes snap to hers, but they’ve still got that blank depth to them. “Where?”
“Somewhere safer, Dean,” Max answers.
She realizes instantly that it was the wrong answer. At her response, Dean is in motion, but not in the fluid, quick movements as he’d done to subdue her earlier. Short fingernails grip onto the tile to try and gain purchase while Dean scrambles as hastily as he can backwards from Max, his breathing escalating. He soon runs out of room, though, and his head smacks against the rough concrete, signaling this time he’s been literally backed into a corner. Dean’s left hand reaches up to grab the railing, but he had either forgotten or hadn’t before noticed his shoulder, and it forces him back to the ground.
“N-No…” Dean whispers. “Please don’t take me-”
Max freezes, and she feels Alec behind her do the same. A minute ago, Dean was full venom and loathing, but now, his fear has transformed him into looking all of five years old. His face has lost the tightness that it’s had ever since Max has seen him, and his eyes are glassy with terror. He’s still futilely attempting to back away from Max, but there’s physically no space to do so.
“Please,” Dean begs again. “Stop, just stop, just stop. No-you can’t take Sammy, you can’t. Just…wait, wait! Take me. Not Sammy, not Sammy.”
Max somehow manages to rip her gaze away from Dean in order to look at Alec. His lips are slightly parted, his forehead drawn into a confused frown, and his eyes intense in that way Max had come to associate with him trying to solve a singularly difficult equation. She wants to tell him it’s useless to try to solve Dean; she’s already gone through it, and none of her computations ever add up.
There is one thing, though, that’s perfectly clear in Dean’s pleading, and Max knows Alec gets it, too. That there’s only one “Sammy” to whom Dean could be referring, and there’s a basal factor in Dean’s voice when he speaks of Sam, a factor that’s ingrained in every older sibling. The desire to protect them no matter what the cost, desire to sacrifice yourself for them in any way you can, no matter how bad the outcome may end up for you.
Max still isn’t anywhere near set straight on Dean’s history, but even if she goes by the federal one, even if she goes by the implication that Dean’s a cold-blooded murderer, there’s a fact she can’t ignore, and Dean’s just sealed it. He’s an older brother, killer or no, and his voice is begging Max-no, not Max, whoever it is he’s seeing-to leave Sam alone, to do God knows what to Dean himself instead. And that’s the exact kind of loyalty and devotion Max and her brothers and sisters instilled in themselves from the minute they were put in a unit together.
She’ll figure out what to do with the hallucinating felon in front of her later.
Right now, she’s going to save Sam Winchester’s big brother.
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