SPN/DA: Agents of Fortune (11/?)
Title: Agents of Fortune: Chapter 11
Author: Karasu Yurei
Fandom: Supernatural/Dark Angel
Rateing: PG 13
Spoilers: Yes. Seriously, vague and not so vague spoiler for both series though wildly AU from both. Take that however you want. And also for the Dark Angel written cannon.
Disclaimer: If I owned them Sam and Dean would be hugging more often, or at all.
Warning: John Winchester. He gets his own warning. Mother hen Dean. Biggs haveing an attitude problem.
A/N: Let me first say that you shouldn't let John deter you from ever visiting the tide pools, if you're in San Diego. Cabrillo Point, plus the Coast Gaurd and Naval Base are real. John stole part of my vacation.
Wal-Mart. To quote parody!Boromir: "There is an evil there that does not sleep." I firmly believe this. But I do still shop there. Call me weak.
Biggs and Deck. I know three minutes is a really long time. I meant it to be. This is a true cat fact and Biggs is not a happy camper. Also, on the subject of Alec and seizures, I know that in canonical Dark Angel, Alec doesn't have them. But then again, in season 2, Max doesn't have them either. If it's a flaw that they "fixed", the Dark Angel canon never makes that clear, so I figure that Alec's lack of seizures in the series is an oversight of the show's writers. One that I am happy to correct, because one can never have enough hurt/comfort.
That's it. Done being cryptic.
Chapter 11
"Dean!" Alec's voice was sharp and urgent, and Dean bolted, with Bobby tight on his heels. He got there just in time to see Sam curl up like some sort of unearthed beetle.
"Sam?" He tried to straighten his brother's long frame, tried to see what was wrong, but it was like all of his muscles had locked. The only reply he got was a low whimpering moan. "Come on, Sammy." Dean could hear his own voice edging towards panic as Sam's hands came up and fisted in his hair, pressing down on his temples with bruising force.
Dean turned some of his attention to Alec "What the hell happened?"
"Nothing. He was asleep." Sam made another pained noise, low in his throat. Alec wasn't looking at Dean; he was watching Sam. "I think he's having a vision."
"Dean, he's bleeding." Bobby's voice was low as he crouched next to them. He grabbed a wad of tissues from the box next to the sofa.
"Jesus." Dean looked at his brother's face and the blood streaming from his nose.
"Sit him up," Alec ordered suddenly.
"He won't. I don't think - "
Alec cut Dean off. "Sit him up. Or he'll choke on it. I read the damned file. Sit him the hell up!"
That was all Bobby needed to hear, although Dean was right. It wasn't easy. Sam was a strong kid, even with the way he seemed to have faded to a slip of the teenager Bobby had last seen. In the end, he uncurled enough for them to get him sitting and his head tipped forward.
"It's like he's having a fucking seizure." Dean didn't notice Alec's attention switch to him for a brief second, but Bobby did, and wondered what was going through the X5's head.
Sam had fallen silent, but it was clearly from an inability to make noise, not from any sort of relief. Dean had an arm wrapped around him, and the other was gripping Sam's wrist. Not as though he was trying to loosen Sam's fist, but more like a Winchester alternative to hand holding. Alec was holding the tissues to Sam's nose and pinching the bridge of it at the same time. He was using his other hand to press two fingers to Sam's neck, just under and forward of the hinge of his jaw, clearly monitoring his pulse. Apparently he had shed the sling at some point. "Come on, Sam. Quit it with the frightened rabbit impression." With the sedatives and muscle relaxants leaving his system, his heart was jackhammering in response to whatever was going on in his head. His breathing wasn't much better, but instead of being too fast, to match his pulse, it was like he was forgetting to breathe altogether. Alec wondered when he needed to start panicking. He really had read the file, and certainly hadn't missed the part where Sam had stopped breathing all together.
Then Sam went limp. There was no warning or preamble. Alec breathed a minute sigh of relief as Sam's breathing steadied out, but Dean panicked fully. "Sam! God, Sammy!" He shook his brother before anyone could stop him. He didn't shake Sam hard, but the results were not reassuring. Sam was limper than the proverbial wet noodle.
Bobby crowded in and put a heavy hand on Dean's shoulder. "Steady it out, boy. No good to him if you lose your head." Bobby got a look at Sam's wide, staring eyes, and Sam just wasn't looking at them. Of that he was certain.
Sam came back to himself in a rush. There was a split second of confusion as to where he stood in the universe, as his eyes settled on Alec and his image wavered between now and the future from the vision. He blinked slowly and the other image fell away. Sam opened his mouth to call him by name, but it wasn't right and it stuck in his throat. And then it was gone. Nothing left but pain. A low and, later he would admit, an entirely pitiful moan slipped past his normally iron control.
"I think it's over," he heard Alec say quietly. Or maybe it was just the mile of water that he thought might be between then. Sam curled up, trying to escape the pain by pressing himself into Dean. He knew Dean, no matter what, now. Sam leaned into the comfort. The cool hand on his forehead, the other that rubbed circles across his back. But it was all distant. He hurt. In a way he had never felt before, and it crushed him in so there was no way out. He thought it might be in his head.
"Sure doesn't fucking look over," Dean ground out, as his brother adhered himself to him, like he could make it all better. Like he always tried to when they were younger.
"I'm gonna have to agree with Dean on this one, kid," Bobby put in. Sam was practically writhing in pain, his long fingers clenching down in Dean's shirt.
"I meant the vision. It's not like I'm an expert, but he was looking at me specifically just now, not staring in my general direction." Alec wiped the last of the blood off of Sam's face and tossed the wad of tissues into the trash basket that Bobby had produced. There were a lot of them. They would have a serious problem if these things started happening more often and he always lost that much blood.
"That stupid file say how to help him?" Dean asked over Sam's head.
Alec couldn't hold in the derisive snort. "What the hell have you been ingesting while we weren't looking? It's clearly affecting your thinking."
"I guess we'll assume no, then," Bobby said.
"You could assume that, yeah," Alec said.
"So they did this to him, but didn't have a way to control it?" Bobby asked dryly. He noted that Alec was perfectly balanced and apparently at ease on the balls of his feet. He could feel his own knees and thighs protesting at the mere thought. "Well if that ain't just stupid."
Alec shrugged. "What did they care? It wasn't about helping him, or using his power. It was about figuring out how it worked. Then pulling him apart until they found the right genetic sequence." His tone was frighteningly devoid of emotion. "They didn't give a fuck about how he felt."
Dean finally took his attention from Sam for a moment to glance at Alec. "I think he passed out."
"Good." Alec said. "Most likely the best thing for him." He rested his left arm on his thigh, the injury starting to ping, which meant, for a normal person, that it hurt like a bitch.
Dean really looked at Alec for the first time since the younger man had yelled for him. Some of the other things that Alec had already told them played through his mind, like how he was a Psy-Ops alumni, and how Sam wasn't one of them and couldn't take this abuse. About how Sam wasn't an experiment. If Alec made that distinction, it meant he was on one side of it and Sam was on the other.
Dean looked at the mask of flat acceptance on Alec's face and wondered what sort of damage was hiding underneath it. He hoped he was up to the task of putting both his little brothers back together.
XXXXX
John wasn't sure which annoyed him more: his general inability to deal with modern electronics, this God damned cell phone in particular, or the teenaged girl manning the kiosk next to him trying, ineffectually, to pretend that she wasn't laughing at him and his chronic dysfunction with electronics.
He was sitting at one of the those random table that malls like leaving strewn about, fighting to figure out how his new cell phone worked. It was times like this that he desperately missed Sam. The kid would have picked it up, looked at it for three seconds, and known everything there was to know about it. He would have then explained it to his father in under ten minutes using plain English. Not whatever crap the manual claimed was English.
His old cell phone was what would have been considered out of date, but it had worked well enough for his needs, which amounted to making and receiving phone calls. It was capable of more, but he never used the features.
Unfortunately, the damned thing hadn't survived his last hunt. The entire hunt had been a mess. It had been a mermaid. Not as enchanting as Disney had made them out to be. Or as beautifully tragic as Hans Christian Anderson had portrayed them. This bitch had been more like something out of the original Peter Pan. Vicious, murdering, and hateful. Her human-looking mouth had held teeth which were more shark-like than anything else, and she had only left one survivor. He had been a gibbering mess when John had finally gotten a chance to talk to him. Not that John blamed him. He had been a deep sea fisherman before he and his crew had pulled up something that they wished that hadn't. She had killed them all, except this one poor sailor.
The killings were being ruled as a shark attack. John didn't know how a shark was capable of ripping a full grown man literally limb from limb, leaving clear evidence of clawed hand prints. Or why it would eat the tender organs and leave everything else behind, either.
Near as he could gather from the crewman and the Coast Guard reports, they had hauled her up in their nets, and she had torn them apart before they could even consider turning her loose. Days later, the Coast Guard had found the drifting ship and the bloody massacre. The lone crewman had been barricaded into a storage unit, badly injured but alive.
Then the killings had started along Cabrillo Point, where there was a Coast Guard base and a large area covered in tide pools that drew in tourists. Oblivious, innocent tourists. She had followed the Coast Guard ship in and settled in for what amounted to the monster version of delivery Chinese.
Unfortunately, after a couple of solid hours of research, he still hadn't found a way to kill her, and he hadn't had time to do much more than that. She liked to eat and eat often. He sort of wondered how fat the bitch was.
He had to wing it. He hated doing that, especially when she had the advantage of location. The tide pools were smooth and sometimes slick at the bottom of the surf smoothed cliff. When the tide was out, there was smooth sandstone shelves sloping to the sea with the cliff face at the back. When the tide was in, there was sea and the cliff face. No safe ground for a hunter either way.
He discarded he normal first defense of rock salt. She was a sea creature. Salt would have no effect, or if it did, it would be in her favor. After that, all he had was deductive reasoning and a revolver to back him up. Some legends considered mermaids to be fae, so three of his six bullets were Sam's favored ammo, Winchester Black Talons. There was enough iron to do supernatural damage, and the flaring tips would put a huge hole in her, which would have to hurt. The other three bullets were silver. She wasn't a shifter, but the sea and many of the things in it were ruled by the moon.
He alternated the rounds and figured he would have to shoot her at least twice. If one kind of bullet didn't do it, he would just have to pray that the other did. He also wrapped a plastic bag around the gun and his hand. It made his aim and just about everything else a bit clumsy, but that was better than the gun getting doused in sea water and misfiring.
The fight had not been pleasant. Neither had been salting and burning her in wet conditions on a closed tourist area under the nose of the Coast Guard and within sight of a Naval base while everyone was on edge about the recent murders. The only reason he had made it out undetected was because he had the same training as the people searching for him and then some.
When he had finally made it back to his motel room, he was soaked, dirty, bruised, and bleeding. He cleaned up the teeth marks and tightly wrapped his twisted knee after shedding his sodden clothes and drying off. He had fallen into bed after that and it wasn't until the next morning that he discovered his phone was smashed and waterlogged in the back pocket of his still wet jeans.
Not knowing what else to do, he had found a place in a nearby mall that seemed to specialize in confusing the technologically disinclined and handed the wary sales clerk his smashed phone in a Zip-Lock bag and a credit card, with the statement that he wanted a new phone and his old number. A few minutes later, the man had come back with a small box, his credit card, and something John recognized from the wet baggy. He was told it was his memory card and then it was explained to him, as though he were five, that if he put it in his new phone, he would have access to his phone book and such. John thought he was being a good sport by not punching the man. He almost asked the man to do it himself, but Winchester Pride (and the fact that the man looked terrified of him) made him veto that plan.
This all culminated with John sitting at a table near a sunglasses kiosk manned by a teenaged girl with bad acting skills, ready to pull his hair out. He resisted the urge to sigh and settled for running his tired hand over his face and through his hair. He was more than a little startled when the phone and card were snatched out of his hand. "God, are you deficient?" He looked up at the girl that was now holding his phone like she was born with one in her hand. "Why do you even have it if you don't know how to use it?" She fiddled with it for a moment and then handed it back, memory card apparently installed with ease. "You've got messages."
John was still trying to decide if he wanted to thank her or throttle her, but she had already gone back to her kiosk. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to get to his voice mail, but he managed. He'd be damned if he was going to have to ask the girl for help. He finally bit the bullet and listened to the message from his son.
XXXXX
Sam woke up the next morning hungry. Dean swore that pretty soon he was just going to start at one end of the kitchen and eat his way to the others. "Dude, are you just eating white bread?"
"Bobby's out of peanut butter."
"Because you ate it. Are you pregnant?"
"Shut up. I haven't eaten anything thing in . . . uh, how long has it been?" Sam leaned against the counter and watched Dean, who was jealously guarding his lunch at the table.
"Longer than I wanna think about," Dean said, considering his brother. Sam was skin and bones. He had long since shed anything spare from his frame years ago with his first real growth spurt. What a joy that had been. Sammy had shot up so fast that he had had growing pains that he swore hurt more than broken bones. Dean believed it. The kid had never cried that much at a broken bone. He and their dad had taken turns staying up with him and rubbing his suddenly stork long legs and bony arms. Hell, John had even found a hunt in Arizona. Every place in the valley around Phoenix had a hot tub. Dean remembered sitting on the warm pavement while his brother cooked the aches away, and sometimes finally fell asleep.
The point was that Sam hadn't had any fat to burn, and while they had made sure he had had enough nutrients to keep from dying, it clearly hadn't been enough for him to actually live on. Dean could clearly see how his body had started to eat away at muscle to fuel itself. Baby brother was leaning because he wasn't steady enough to stand quite yet. Dean wasn't going to knock that. At least today he was moving, even if it was like an old man. And while he had mocked Sam about the oddity of just eating white bread, Dean was pretty sure Sam was eating that because he was sure he would keep it down. He had looked positively moss colored when Dean had offered to make him eggs.
Sam's lack of appetite was just one more thing on Dean's growing list of 'things about Sammy that were freaking him the fuck out.' It was a long but appropriate title. Also on the list? Visions. It was its own subcategory. Under it Dean listed seeing the future, the fact that he couldn't remember what he saw (What the hell kind of gift was that?), and the fact that he wasn't home in his own body when it happened. Oh, and had Dean mentioned the excessive bleeding from the nose like his little brother's brain had just broken? No, he thought he hadn't.
He was starting a list like that for Alec too. He was still working on a name for it, because 'Reasons I may have to kill those fuckers that raised him' just didn't have the right ring to it. The list had grown substantially longer during their morning trip to Wal-Mart. To be fair, he couldn't blame Alec for finding the store creepy. After all, he was pretty sure that the chain was the work of the devil. What had creeped the kid out the most? Those stupid yellow smiley faces.
What had creeped Dean out the most was nothing so simple. It was watching how Alec interacted with the normal world. The way he had stood dumbfounded in the men's department, stumped by the available choices. Dean had eventually just grabbed a couple of things. He also hadn't missed the well-concealed twitch of disapproval Alec had made when he had grabbed a plain grey sweatshirt. Dean ditched it and snagged a black one instead. That seemed to get the kid moving.
After that, Dean just stood back and watched. Alec didn't move like he was career military. In fact, his posture and mannerisms loosened up as Dean watched, like he was mimicking the people around him. Learning what was normal by example. If the kid could pick things up that quickly, he figured it wouldn't be too difficult to pass him off as a twin brother. Dean couldn't believe he was being forced to use a cart, but while Alec was flitting around picking out a wardrobe, Dean set about rebuilding Sam's, and there was just too much to carry in a basket. It would be a cold day in Hell when Dean didn't know his baby brother's clothes sizes. After a minute, Dean considered how much weight Sam had lost and tossed in a belt. It was only when Alec dropped a stack of clothes into the cart that Dean realized that no one had gotten any closer than three feet to the X5. If anyone did get within arm's length, Alec deftly shifted position so Dean or the cart was between then.
Dean started his list for Alec with the fact that the kid had actually thought that Dean wouldn't help him when he had been shot. That was followed up by horror, because if Dean digging a bullet out had been the nicest bullet extraction he had ever had, then those bastards deserved to beaten for that alone. Ideally, a person shouldn't even be aware of that kind of rough treatment. If that was the sort of handling Alec was used to, it was no wonder that he had an aversion to contact. Dean didn't even want to touch on the fact that the kid hadn't had a name, which he found weird, since he had known the names of other kids, like the one that Dean had knocked out. Or that he had a barcode branded into his DNA like he was a piece of fucking property.
Dean looked over to the living room as Alec appeared in the doorway. The kid moved like a ghost, dead silent. He supposed saying he moved like a cat would be more appropriate, but since when did Dean care about appropriate? "You hungry?" Dean asked, and stood to get the kid some lunch. He hadn't eaten breakfast, just drank a couple of glasses of milk.
Alec shook his head and went to the fridge. He took out the bottle of milk, eyed the amount left critically, and started drinking it from the bottle. Maybe Dean was seeing things, but he thought the kid looked worse now than he had the day before. His freckles were standing out more against his face. But the kid didn't say anything, and the shoulder wound was fine. Dean had checked it earlier, and it looked like it had been healing and healing well for a week. He paused between swallows to peer out the window. "Someone's here. Delivery, it looks like."
Dean looked out the window and could barely see someone approaching through the screen of trees from entrance of the yard, which was a good ways away. The kid had to have incredible eyesight to even take a guess that it was a delivery person. "Hey, Bobby?"
"Yeah?" The man had set up camp in his office that morning. Helping with research on some nasty son-of-a-bitch or other, for some other hunter. Not everyone came with a father who could put a case together from a breath on the wind and a ten year old rumor, or a brother that had a completely valid account on the LexisNexis and a deep unnatural love of research.
"You expecting a package?"
"Brown uniform with gold is UPS, right?" Alec asked, and Sam nodded.
"No, I'm not." They all heard a book slam closed and a pencil hit the wall in a show of frustration. He made his way out into the kitchen and then huffed at Alec sucking down the last of his milk. "You know, that bottle was full yesterday."
"Not like you can't get another, dude." Alec was entirely unapologetic as he tossed the empty half gallon into the trash. Dean may have been imagining it but he swore he saw Alec's hand shake. They all waited in nervous anticipation as the UPS guy stepped up onto the porch and knocked. No hunter liked getting unexpected packages. Rumsfeld hadn't set up a racket though, so the guy was at least human. That was good to know.
Bobby opened the door and signed for the box, and the man was on his way. The box was only about the size of a average box of tissues. "Who's it from?" Sam had pushed away from the counter to peer over Bobby's shoulder, not difficult with him being nearly eight inches taller than the older man.
"Doesn't say. That's weird." He flipped the box, looking for an identifying mark before he opened it. When he found it, it was on the bottom. A stamp in red of what looked to be a chimera, a Manticore to be precise. "Oh." Bobby's eyes rolled and his tone matched his expression. "Malcolm Sandeman."
He had clearly planned to say something else, but they were all startled by the clatter of a glass falling into the sink, where Alec had just lost it from nerveless fingers. "What did you say?" the nervous X5 demanded.
Bobby shifted the box to show Alec the stamp. "He likes to think he's mysterious and send shit with only a stamp like this. You okay?" The kid was definitely pale now, as his right hand went up to cover his barcode.
"That's home. That's Manticore's emblem. Sandeman is the geneticist that built me." He only blinked when Dean stood, circled the table and pushed Alec into a chair. The dumb cow look the kid was sporting made him nervous. "I saw it once on my file, in Med Lab. One of the techs was bitching that if the head geneticist was going to stick his nose in, the least he could do was not build some . . ." He reached out with his good arm and took the box from Bobby. "How did they find us so fast?"
"This guy a hunter, Bobby?" Dean asked, as he settled a heavy hand on Alec's neck, covering his bar code. He was relieved when the kid's shaking subsided.
"Yeah. Has been for a long time. Mostly research though, like me. Most of the time when he finds a case, he sends it out to the Road House or the like. He hardly ever goes out into the field." Everyone watched anxiously as Sam took a knife out, gently took the box from Alec's loose grip, and sliced through the tape.
"Huh," was all Sam said.
"Huh?" Dean's eyebrows climbed incredulously. "That's all you got?"
"Yeah." Sam reached in and pulled something out. A second later Dean's pendant was dangling from its cord, which was wrapped around Sam's long fingers.
"Huh." Dean just blinked at it.
"Yeah." He extended his arm out to his brother. Dean caught the charm in his palm and curled his fingers around it. Bobby watched with a hooded expression and Sam with an expectant one as Dean closed his eyes for a second.
"Feels okay," Dean said, after opening his eyes. He shrugged and put it on with a sigh, feeling like a warm blanket had just settled on him. Sam nodded once and started pulling other things out. All Dean's to start. His ring and then his bracelets, knots untied. Bobby just shook his head a little as Sam tied them back onto his brother's wrist. The, his own bracelets, also carefully unknotted. Sam held out his arm for Dean to tie them back on, some of the tension finally leaving his shoulders, and then Dean smacked him on the shoulder for good measure. "That's it, I guess."
"Nope." Sam pulled out a six-inch black-handled jackknife. "Guess this must be yours." He held it out to Alec, who took it slowly.
"The Colonel gave it to me when I was fifteen. Right before my first mission." He closed his hand around it tightly.
"Hang on. I think there's something else . . . gotcha!" Sam's fingers finally snagged the last item, which had been hiding in a corner. When he held his hand up, a gold, heart-shaped locket swung from a gold chain. It was clearly a woman's necklace. "Er . . ."
Alec held a hand out for it, palm up. This time there was no mistaking the tremor, even though it was small. "It's mine." His voice was quiet, and Dean knew it would be a while before they knew the story that was behind it. Sam set the necklace in Alec's hand and let the chain pool around the locket.
XXXXX
Lydecker was willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, escape artistry was something that could be found in a person's genetic code. He looked up from X5-494's file. Dean and Samuel Winchester were stacked up to the side. He was on his third cup of coffee and it was only 0900. Standing in relaxed attention in front of him was X5-392. He didn't quite know how the boy managed it. This X5, Biggs, had one of those unruffleable personalities. The sort of personality that was perfect for guard work and pissing off the volatile, because you just couldn't get a reaction out of him. Lydecker made a mental note to contact the White House. He could be slipped seamlessly into the Secret Service. They had a standing request in for personnel to utilize for high risk and high profile engagements, especially on foreign soil, where resources were limited. It had been a difficult request to fill until recently, as the X5's were the first series that could be used in public view, and they were only now old enough that they would not raise suspicion.
None of that was the matter at hand. That was trying to find one of his prized X5s and R&D's walking genetic advancement, namely Sam Winchester. Bravo Unit had been in an absolute uproar when they had discovered their commander missing. X5-112, called CeCe, and Biggs had had everything back to a semblance of order within an hour, and then he had been subjected to the unique joy of dealing with an angry 112. CeCe would snarl at just about anyone if she was pushed enough, and the Colonel was no exception.
Lydecker looked Biggs squarely in the eyes. "Would you care to tell me why X5-494 felt it necessary to jump ship and leave his unit?"
"With all due respect, sir, why don't you tell me?"
"Excuse me?" Deck asked, honestly startled. Biggs was not a unit who usually mouthed off.
"With all due respect, sir, why don't you tell me?" Biggs merely repeated, as though the Colonel may not have heard him the first time.
"Yes, soldier, I heard you. I may not have your enhanced hearing, but I am far from deaf."
"I would never imply such a thing, sir."
No, Lydecker mused, the X5 would merely look over his right shoulder and look annoyingly serene and blank. "Why would you think I would have an answer when you wouldn't?"
"Well, sir, I don't know what happens in Psy-Ops, but I can only assume you do."
"Reindoctrination is just that. It would not breed a desire to leave."
"Permission to be frank, sir? And I would like to request that I be subject to no repercussions for my observations, since you did, in fact, ask for the information, sir." Biggs' tone was careful and neutral. Lydecker that this might be interesting.
"Permission granted on all counts."
"It's hard to know what 494 is thinking when he's returned to us. I don't think what happens to him does anything but scramble him up for a little while. It never really changes anything, sir. It only upsets him. If you haven't noticed that already, sir, then you're inobservant, which doesn't seem like you at all. If anything, I would say you know us pretty well, sir. So putting him in Psy-Ops had to have a different purpose than trying to realign his thinking. It didn't work when he was ten, it didn't work after the Berrisford mess, and I'm still fucking pissed off." Here, for just a moment, Biggs shifted from well-behaved soldier to angry predator. "About what happened to him over 493 going pear-shaped. You let them almost break him. I've yet to figure out how making someone miserable is going to keep them from going off the map. But he still is who he is. No amount of Psy-Ops is going to change that. So, sir, you tell me. Why did he bolt?"
"Why have you never brought up your objections to 494's treatment before?" Lydecker would admit he was curious. This was possibly the most personal and informative exchange he had ever had with Biggs.
"Because he would have taken my head clean off my shoulder for drawing attention to myself, sir," the X5 stated with amused calm.
"Then why do it now?"
"No danger." He shrugged. "I haven't done anything wrong and you need me to hold the unit together without our Lucky Charm here to do it. I'm safe unless I do something really stupid like disobey or undermine you. Which I wouldn't do." He didn't flinch or blink when the Colonel met his eyes. Lydecker found nothing but truth there. The staring contest continued for a solid three minutes before Biggs looked down and away. The Colonel had learned long ago that he could not be the first to look away. It was more than a childish game to his X5s. It was a feline dominance instinct. To look away was to submit.
XXXXX
John resisted the urge to start making phone calls until he was in the privacy of his motel room. He stared blankly out the window into the growing evening as he listened to the phone on the other end of the call ring.
"Singer." Bobby sounded like he really wanted to hang up. John didn't take it personal. Bobby didn't even know who was calling him yet.
"Bobby, I got a couple of messages from my boys saying there was trouble."
"Day late and a dollar short, Winchester." Now it was personal. "I've got them here and am getting them sorted out. It's handled." Bobby hung up. John sat there for a long moment just staring at his phone. It was becoming a habit.
XXXXX
By the time night fell, Sam was actually feeling a lot better. He wouldn't say he was feeling good, but by comparison, he figured not having to ask in all seriousness if his brain was leaking out his ears and keeping all of his food down was kind of like feeling like a million dollars. The guest room, which was more Sam and Dean's than anyone else's, was on the second floor of Bobby's house. He had actually had enough energy to make his way upstairs before crashing for the night around eight PM.
Sam didn't think much of it when he heard a couple of dull thumps from behind the closed bathroom door on his way to the kitchen the next morning. He figured that Alec had just knocked over a shampoo bottle or something. Alec apparently liked to take his showers in the morning instead of at night, like he and Dean did. Sam figured this would wear off after his second late night stint as a gravedigger.
When he got to the kitchen, Dean was sitting at the table reading the newspaper, a mug of coffee in hand. "Anything interesting?" Sam asked, as he poured himself a mug of coffee and diluted it heavily with milk. Bobby had apparently bought more at some point. He took a sip before putting it down on the counter next to the stove, and then pulled a bag of bread out of the fridge. Bobby had bought more of that, too. Dean gave him a look which clearly stated that he should sit his skinny ass down and not be cooking, but Sam was trying desperately to restore a little normalcy to his life.
"You want any toast?" Dean could cook; he just never did anymore. Sam figured that the novelty had worn off when Dean had spent his childhood cooking for Sam. Sam tried to return the favor when he could.
"Sure, and nothing interesting really, though it'd have to be damned mean to make me go after it with Alec not being able to tell his ass from his elbow when it comes to things that go bump in the night." He sipped his coffee and set the paper down, looking up at Sam again.
"We won't be grounded for too long," Sam said with a shrug as he put the bread in the toaster. The fact that he really should be getting back to his classes was a concept he wasn't even going to allow himself to think about for a little while. Now that he was in Dean's company, he wasn't ready to give it up again so soon. Not to even mention the government good squad that was likely on his tail. And then there was Alec. "He's smart and he's already got all the physical training."
"Most of the physical training. I'm betting he doesn't know how to handle a sword for shit." Dean was privately thinking that Alec's lack of knowledge wasn't the only thing keeping them grounded. Dean was sure Sammy hadn't recovered from whatever happened to him in that damned torture chamber, Psy-Ops. Hell, more like. Alec hadn't said much, but Dean didn't think he would turn on his superiors lightly. And they had fucked Sam up badly. Full on psychic visions? Yeah, that was not going into Dean's very short book of happy occurrences. Especially since Sam absolutely refused to talk about it when Dean had brought it up in the safety of the dark bedroom last night. Sam was willing to talk about anything if he was given enough time, but Dean didn't think it was going to be coming up in conversation any time soon.
Even if Sam were healthy and not a walking skeleton, Alec still had a bullet wound and a broken collarbone. Not the sort of thing he wanted to rush. His eyes jumped to the ceiling, wondering where Alec was a little nervously. He didn't know the kid that well, but yesterday he had been up bright and early. Early enough to please even their father, if he had been around. But today it was pushing ten already.
Sam rooted around in the fridge for butter and marmalade. "You can't handle a sword for shit, Dean," Sam said, amused. "You were never very good with anything bigger than a machete."
"There's not much call for needing a sword." Dean shook off his unease and refocused on Sammy, saying it in indignant self defense, like he was just lacking the opportunity to practice. Sam had always been better with blades, though. He had lost enough practice fights that he wasn't stupid or quite ballsy enough to actually imply that he was better than Sam in that one field. Dean took to firearms like a duck to water, and Sam was almost as good, because he learned quickly and well. Dean could almost always beat him at any sort of hand-to-hand, but give Sammy something sharp and pointy, and even as a child he was as dangerous as a full grown man.
"Then why are you worried about him learning how to use one? Overprotective much?" Sam scooped the toast out of the toaster and set it down on two plates. "I'll teach him. If you try, someone will lose a limb, and it'll be someone we like."
"If you try right now, the weight of the sword will just tip you over." Dean raised an eyebrow at his baby brother. "And while that might be hilarious to watch in slow mo, I'd have to pick you up afterwards. Let's face it, I'm lazy. You looked at yourself in the mirror lately, Sammy?"
"It's Sam." After another moment he set a plate down in front of Dean, then used his free hand to grab his coffee and sat down at the table. "Bobby off on a job or is he working on a car?"
"Car. He said to tell you that he had a couple of new books since the last time I was here. He left them out ‘cause he thought you might want to read them. Wards and shit like that."
"Cool. Maybe I'll find some to use on the car."
"You just make sure you don't mess up her leather or paint."
"Yeah, yeah. I know you love that car more than me." He was always careful with her. She was the only home he had ever really known.
"Damned right I do." Dean crunched down on his toast. "Alec up yet?" Worry was making itself known again. "He was already up for a few hours this time yesterday."
"He was banging around in the bathroom when I came down," Sam said, with a shrug.
Dean grinned. "How many graves do you think it'll take for him to start saving the showers for the end of the day?"
"Two, maybe three if he's being stubborn." They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes. "Do you think Dad'll be okay with us, you know . . . keeping him?"
Dean snorted. "You make him sound like a puppy."
"Yeah, well, Dad never let me have one of those either."
"Sam . . ."
"Fine, dude, whatever." He didn't want to argue. "Alec," he said, redirecting the conversation.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's a done deal. He's a Winchester, they copied him from me, and that makes him Mom and Dad's kid. No matter what else they added, they couldn't take that away." Dean was still working on how Alec worked into their somewhat odd family dynamic, but he was sure that they would figure it out. Keeping Sam and his father from killing each other had to be harder.
"Good." Sam nodded. He hadn't wanted to leave Alec alone in the world, and Alec hadn't really showed any inclination to leave them and strike out on his own. "Think he's trying to turn himself into a prune up there?"
"Maybe he knows you're going to start swinging a sword at him," Dean said, and tried to push his concern away again. Sometimes he knew Sam was right and he just got overprotective.
Sam just shook his head. He listened for the shower, but he didn't hear it, so he figured that Alec would be down in a few minutes, and continued eating. No reason to be worried. When he was done, he got up and washed his and Dean's empty plates. Then he sat back down with another mug of coffee and stole half of the newspaper. Dean didn't even bother to argue. Sam had been doing that to him and their father since he was eight.
Suddenly Sam put the paper down, after Dean looked up nervously at the ceiling for the fifth time. "I'm going to check on him." He quickly pushed back from the table and marched back up the stairs. Dean watched him leave.
Sam could see the bathroom door was still closed as soon as he hit the top of the stairs, and he promptly stepped over to it and knocked sharply. "Alec?" There was no answer, but he heard another dull thump. "Alec, are you okay?"
After a long pause he finally got a reply. "Go away."
"Dude, what's wrong?" He knew Alec well enough to know when he didn't sound right. That and whatever it was that had made him nervous enough to come up to check on him. Dean had most likely been right with that first nervous twitch of his. An image flashed through his mind too quickly for him to comprehend, along with a quick jolt of pain. He didn't want to think about the implications of that, nor did he have time. "If you don't come out in the next thirty seconds, I'm coming in."
"Naked."
"You don't have anything I haven't seen before." When he got no answer, he tried the doorknob and found it locked. In about two seconds flat he had a Bic pen out of one of his bags and used his teeth to yank the pen apart. He used the thin ink tube to pop the lock and open the door.
He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what he saw. For starters, Alec wasn't naked. He was in his flannel sleep pants and the loose T-shirt he seemed to favor as sleep wear. Secondly, he was sitting wedged into the corner where the bathtub met the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, arms around his legs, forehead resting on his knees. Sam could hear him breathing heavily, nearly panting. "Alec, what . . ." and before Sam could finish his question, he saw Alec begin to shake and convulse. His hands gripped his knees so hard that they went white-knuckled, and then one elbow jerked harder and cracked into the wall with bruising force, the dull thump was louder now. "Oh God, Alec."
XXXXX
Previous Chapters
Author: Karasu Yurei
Fandom: Supernatural/Dark Angel
Rateing: PG 13
Spoilers: Yes. Seriously, vague and not so vague spoiler for both series though wildly AU from both. Take that however you want. And also for the Dark Angel written cannon.
Disclaimer: If I owned them Sam and Dean would be hugging more often, or at all.
Warning: John Winchester. He gets his own warning. Mother hen Dean. Biggs haveing an attitude problem.
A/N: Let me first say that you shouldn't let John deter you from ever visiting the tide pools, if you're in San Diego. Cabrillo Point, plus the Coast Gaurd and Naval Base are real. John stole part of my vacation.
Wal-Mart. To quote parody!Boromir: "There is an evil there that does not sleep." I firmly believe this. But I do still shop there. Call me weak.
Biggs and Deck. I know three minutes is a really long time. I meant it to be. This is a true cat fact and Biggs is not a happy camper. Also, on the subject of Alec and seizures, I know that in canonical Dark Angel, Alec doesn't have them. But then again, in season 2, Max doesn't have them either. If it's a flaw that they "fixed", the Dark Angel canon never makes that clear, so I figure that Alec's lack of seizures in the series is an oversight of the show's writers. One that I am happy to correct, because one can never have enough hurt/comfort.
That's it. Done being cryptic.
Chapter 11
"Dean!" Alec's voice was sharp and urgent, and Dean bolted, with Bobby tight on his heels. He got there just in time to see Sam curl up like some sort of unearthed beetle.
"Sam?" He tried to straighten his brother's long frame, tried to see what was wrong, but it was like all of his muscles had locked. The only reply he got was a low whimpering moan. "Come on, Sammy." Dean could hear his own voice edging towards panic as Sam's hands came up and fisted in his hair, pressing down on his temples with bruising force.
Dean turned some of his attention to Alec "What the hell happened?"
"Nothing. He was asleep." Sam made another pained noise, low in his throat. Alec wasn't looking at Dean; he was watching Sam. "I think he's having a vision."
"Dean, he's bleeding." Bobby's voice was low as he crouched next to them. He grabbed a wad of tissues from the box next to the sofa.
"Jesus." Dean looked at his brother's face and the blood streaming from his nose.
"Sit him up," Alec ordered suddenly.
"He won't. I don't think - "
Alec cut Dean off. "Sit him up. Or he'll choke on it. I read the damned file. Sit him the hell up!"
That was all Bobby needed to hear, although Dean was right. It wasn't easy. Sam was a strong kid, even with the way he seemed to have faded to a slip of the teenager Bobby had last seen. In the end, he uncurled enough for them to get him sitting and his head tipped forward.
"It's like he's having a fucking seizure." Dean didn't notice Alec's attention switch to him for a brief second, but Bobby did, and wondered what was going through the X5's head.
Sam had fallen silent, but it was clearly from an inability to make noise, not from any sort of relief. Dean had an arm wrapped around him, and the other was gripping Sam's wrist. Not as though he was trying to loosen Sam's fist, but more like a Winchester alternative to hand holding. Alec was holding the tissues to Sam's nose and pinching the bridge of it at the same time. He was using his other hand to press two fingers to Sam's neck, just under and forward of the hinge of his jaw, clearly monitoring his pulse. Apparently he had shed the sling at some point. "Come on, Sam. Quit it with the frightened rabbit impression." With the sedatives and muscle relaxants leaving his system, his heart was jackhammering in response to whatever was going on in his head. His breathing wasn't much better, but instead of being too fast, to match his pulse, it was like he was forgetting to breathe altogether. Alec wondered when he needed to start panicking. He really had read the file, and certainly hadn't missed the part where Sam had stopped breathing all together.
Then Sam went limp. There was no warning or preamble. Alec breathed a minute sigh of relief as Sam's breathing steadied out, but Dean panicked fully. "Sam! God, Sammy!" He shook his brother before anyone could stop him. He didn't shake Sam hard, but the results were not reassuring. Sam was limper than the proverbial wet noodle.
Bobby crowded in and put a heavy hand on Dean's shoulder. "Steady it out, boy. No good to him if you lose your head." Bobby got a look at Sam's wide, staring eyes, and Sam just wasn't looking at them. Of that he was certain.
Sam came back to himself in a rush. There was a split second of confusion as to where he stood in the universe, as his eyes settled on Alec and his image wavered between now and the future from the vision. He blinked slowly and the other image fell away. Sam opened his mouth to call him by name, but it wasn't right and it stuck in his throat. And then it was gone. Nothing left but pain. A low and, later he would admit, an entirely pitiful moan slipped past his normally iron control.
"I think it's over," he heard Alec say quietly. Or maybe it was just the mile of water that he thought might be between then. Sam curled up, trying to escape the pain by pressing himself into Dean. He knew Dean, no matter what, now. Sam leaned into the comfort. The cool hand on his forehead, the other that rubbed circles across his back. But it was all distant. He hurt. In a way he had never felt before, and it crushed him in so there was no way out. He thought it might be in his head.
"Sure doesn't fucking look over," Dean ground out, as his brother adhered himself to him, like he could make it all better. Like he always tried to when they were younger.
"I'm gonna have to agree with Dean on this one, kid," Bobby put in. Sam was practically writhing in pain, his long fingers clenching down in Dean's shirt.
"I meant the vision. It's not like I'm an expert, but he was looking at me specifically just now, not staring in my general direction." Alec wiped the last of the blood off of Sam's face and tossed the wad of tissues into the trash basket that Bobby had produced. There were a lot of them. They would have a serious problem if these things started happening more often and he always lost that much blood.
"That stupid file say how to help him?" Dean asked over Sam's head.
Alec couldn't hold in the derisive snort. "What the hell have you been ingesting while we weren't looking? It's clearly affecting your thinking."
"I guess we'll assume no, then," Bobby said.
"You could assume that, yeah," Alec said.
"So they did this to him, but didn't have a way to control it?" Bobby asked dryly. He noted that Alec was perfectly balanced and apparently at ease on the balls of his feet. He could feel his own knees and thighs protesting at the mere thought. "Well if that ain't just stupid."
Alec shrugged. "What did they care? It wasn't about helping him, or using his power. It was about figuring out how it worked. Then pulling him apart until they found the right genetic sequence." His tone was frighteningly devoid of emotion. "They didn't give a fuck about how he felt."
Dean finally took his attention from Sam for a moment to glance at Alec. "I think he passed out."
"Good." Alec said. "Most likely the best thing for him." He rested his left arm on his thigh, the injury starting to ping, which meant, for a normal person, that it hurt like a bitch.
Dean really looked at Alec for the first time since the younger man had yelled for him. Some of the other things that Alec had already told them played through his mind, like how he was a Psy-Ops alumni, and how Sam wasn't one of them and couldn't take this abuse. About how Sam wasn't an experiment. If Alec made that distinction, it meant he was on one side of it and Sam was on the other.
Dean looked at the mask of flat acceptance on Alec's face and wondered what sort of damage was hiding underneath it. He hoped he was up to the task of putting both his little brothers back together.
XXXXX
John wasn't sure which annoyed him more: his general inability to deal with modern electronics, this God damned cell phone in particular, or the teenaged girl manning the kiosk next to him trying, ineffectually, to pretend that she wasn't laughing at him and his chronic dysfunction with electronics.
He was sitting at one of the those random table that malls like leaving strewn about, fighting to figure out how his new cell phone worked. It was times like this that he desperately missed Sam. The kid would have picked it up, looked at it for three seconds, and known everything there was to know about it. He would have then explained it to his father in under ten minutes using plain English. Not whatever crap the manual claimed was English.
His old cell phone was what would have been considered out of date, but it had worked well enough for his needs, which amounted to making and receiving phone calls. It was capable of more, but he never used the features.
Unfortunately, the damned thing hadn't survived his last hunt. The entire hunt had been a mess. It had been a mermaid. Not as enchanting as Disney had made them out to be. Or as beautifully tragic as Hans Christian Anderson had portrayed them. This bitch had been more like something out of the original Peter Pan. Vicious, murdering, and hateful. Her human-looking mouth had held teeth which were more shark-like than anything else, and she had only left one survivor. He had been a gibbering mess when John had finally gotten a chance to talk to him. Not that John blamed him. He had been a deep sea fisherman before he and his crew had pulled up something that they wished that hadn't. She had killed them all, except this one poor sailor.
The killings were being ruled as a shark attack. John didn't know how a shark was capable of ripping a full grown man literally limb from limb, leaving clear evidence of clawed hand prints. Or why it would eat the tender organs and leave everything else behind, either.
Near as he could gather from the crewman and the Coast Guard reports, they had hauled her up in their nets, and she had torn them apart before they could even consider turning her loose. Days later, the Coast Guard had found the drifting ship and the bloody massacre. The lone crewman had been barricaded into a storage unit, badly injured but alive.
Then the killings had started along Cabrillo Point, where there was a Coast Guard base and a large area covered in tide pools that drew in tourists. Oblivious, innocent tourists. She had followed the Coast Guard ship in and settled in for what amounted to the monster version of delivery Chinese.
Unfortunately, after a couple of solid hours of research, he still hadn't found a way to kill her, and he hadn't had time to do much more than that. She liked to eat and eat often. He sort of wondered how fat the bitch was.
He had to wing it. He hated doing that, especially when she had the advantage of location. The tide pools were smooth and sometimes slick at the bottom of the surf smoothed cliff. When the tide was out, there was smooth sandstone shelves sloping to the sea with the cliff face at the back. When the tide was in, there was sea and the cliff face. No safe ground for a hunter either way.
He discarded he normal first defense of rock salt. She was a sea creature. Salt would have no effect, or if it did, it would be in her favor. After that, all he had was deductive reasoning and a revolver to back him up. Some legends considered mermaids to be fae, so three of his six bullets were Sam's favored ammo, Winchester Black Talons. There was enough iron to do supernatural damage, and the flaring tips would put a huge hole in her, which would have to hurt. The other three bullets were silver. She wasn't a shifter, but the sea and many of the things in it were ruled by the moon.
He alternated the rounds and figured he would have to shoot her at least twice. If one kind of bullet didn't do it, he would just have to pray that the other did. He also wrapped a plastic bag around the gun and his hand. It made his aim and just about everything else a bit clumsy, but that was better than the gun getting doused in sea water and misfiring.
The fight had not been pleasant. Neither had been salting and burning her in wet conditions on a closed tourist area under the nose of the Coast Guard and within sight of a Naval base while everyone was on edge about the recent murders. The only reason he had made it out undetected was because he had the same training as the people searching for him and then some.
When he had finally made it back to his motel room, he was soaked, dirty, bruised, and bleeding. He cleaned up the teeth marks and tightly wrapped his twisted knee after shedding his sodden clothes and drying off. He had fallen into bed after that and it wasn't until the next morning that he discovered his phone was smashed and waterlogged in the back pocket of his still wet jeans.
Not knowing what else to do, he had found a place in a nearby mall that seemed to specialize in confusing the technologically disinclined and handed the wary sales clerk his smashed phone in a Zip-Lock bag and a credit card, with the statement that he wanted a new phone and his old number. A few minutes later, the man had come back with a small box, his credit card, and something John recognized from the wet baggy. He was told it was his memory card and then it was explained to him, as though he were five, that if he put it in his new phone, he would have access to his phone book and such. John thought he was being a good sport by not punching the man. He almost asked the man to do it himself, but Winchester Pride (and the fact that the man looked terrified of him) made him veto that plan.
This all culminated with John sitting at a table near a sunglasses kiosk manned by a teenaged girl with bad acting skills, ready to pull his hair out. He resisted the urge to sigh and settled for running his tired hand over his face and through his hair. He was more than a little startled when the phone and card were snatched out of his hand. "God, are you deficient?" He looked up at the girl that was now holding his phone like she was born with one in her hand. "Why do you even have it if you don't know how to use it?" She fiddled with it for a moment and then handed it back, memory card apparently installed with ease. "You've got messages."
John was still trying to decide if he wanted to thank her or throttle her, but she had already gone back to her kiosk. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to get to his voice mail, but he managed. He'd be damned if he was going to have to ask the girl for help. He finally bit the bullet and listened to the message from his son.
XXXXX
Sam woke up the next morning hungry. Dean swore that pretty soon he was just going to start at one end of the kitchen and eat his way to the others. "Dude, are you just eating white bread?"
"Bobby's out of peanut butter."
"Because you ate it. Are you pregnant?"
"Shut up. I haven't eaten anything thing in . . . uh, how long has it been?" Sam leaned against the counter and watched Dean, who was jealously guarding his lunch at the table.
"Longer than I wanna think about," Dean said, considering his brother. Sam was skin and bones. He had long since shed anything spare from his frame years ago with his first real growth spurt. What a joy that had been. Sammy had shot up so fast that he had had growing pains that he swore hurt more than broken bones. Dean believed it. The kid had never cried that much at a broken bone. He and their dad had taken turns staying up with him and rubbing his suddenly stork long legs and bony arms. Hell, John had even found a hunt in Arizona. Every place in the valley around Phoenix had a hot tub. Dean remembered sitting on the warm pavement while his brother cooked the aches away, and sometimes finally fell asleep.
The point was that Sam hadn't had any fat to burn, and while they had made sure he had had enough nutrients to keep from dying, it clearly hadn't been enough for him to actually live on. Dean could clearly see how his body had started to eat away at muscle to fuel itself. Baby brother was leaning because he wasn't steady enough to stand quite yet. Dean wasn't going to knock that. At least today he was moving, even if it was like an old man. And while he had mocked Sam about the oddity of just eating white bread, Dean was pretty sure Sam was eating that because he was sure he would keep it down. He had looked positively moss colored when Dean had offered to make him eggs.
Sam's lack of appetite was just one more thing on Dean's growing list of 'things about Sammy that were freaking him the fuck out.' It was a long but appropriate title. Also on the list? Visions. It was its own subcategory. Under it Dean listed seeing the future, the fact that he couldn't remember what he saw (What the hell kind of gift was that?), and the fact that he wasn't home in his own body when it happened. Oh, and had Dean mentioned the excessive bleeding from the nose like his little brother's brain had just broken? No, he thought he hadn't.
He was starting a list like that for Alec too. He was still working on a name for it, because 'Reasons I may have to kill those fuckers that raised him' just didn't have the right ring to it. The list had grown substantially longer during their morning trip to Wal-Mart. To be fair, he couldn't blame Alec for finding the store creepy. After all, he was pretty sure that the chain was the work of the devil. What had creeped the kid out the most? Those stupid yellow smiley faces.
What had creeped Dean out the most was nothing so simple. It was watching how Alec interacted with the normal world. The way he had stood dumbfounded in the men's department, stumped by the available choices. Dean had eventually just grabbed a couple of things. He also hadn't missed the well-concealed twitch of disapproval Alec had made when he had grabbed a plain grey sweatshirt. Dean ditched it and snagged a black one instead. That seemed to get the kid moving.
After that, Dean just stood back and watched. Alec didn't move like he was career military. In fact, his posture and mannerisms loosened up as Dean watched, like he was mimicking the people around him. Learning what was normal by example. If the kid could pick things up that quickly, he figured it wouldn't be too difficult to pass him off as a twin brother. Dean couldn't believe he was being forced to use a cart, but while Alec was flitting around picking out a wardrobe, Dean set about rebuilding Sam's, and there was just too much to carry in a basket. It would be a cold day in Hell when Dean didn't know his baby brother's clothes sizes. After a minute, Dean considered how much weight Sam had lost and tossed in a belt. It was only when Alec dropped a stack of clothes into the cart that Dean realized that no one had gotten any closer than three feet to the X5. If anyone did get within arm's length, Alec deftly shifted position so Dean or the cart was between then.
Dean started his list for Alec with the fact that the kid had actually thought that Dean wouldn't help him when he had been shot. That was followed up by horror, because if Dean digging a bullet out had been the nicest bullet extraction he had ever had, then those bastards deserved to beaten for that alone. Ideally, a person shouldn't even be aware of that kind of rough treatment. If that was the sort of handling Alec was used to, it was no wonder that he had an aversion to contact. Dean didn't even want to touch on the fact that the kid hadn't had a name, which he found weird, since he had known the names of other kids, like the one that Dean had knocked out. Or that he had a barcode branded into his DNA like he was a piece of fucking property.
Dean looked over to the living room as Alec appeared in the doorway. The kid moved like a ghost, dead silent. He supposed saying he moved like a cat would be more appropriate, but since when did Dean care about appropriate? "You hungry?" Dean asked, and stood to get the kid some lunch. He hadn't eaten breakfast, just drank a couple of glasses of milk.
Alec shook his head and went to the fridge. He took out the bottle of milk, eyed the amount left critically, and started drinking it from the bottle. Maybe Dean was seeing things, but he thought the kid looked worse now than he had the day before. His freckles were standing out more against his face. But the kid didn't say anything, and the shoulder wound was fine. Dean had checked it earlier, and it looked like it had been healing and healing well for a week. He paused between swallows to peer out the window. "Someone's here. Delivery, it looks like."
Dean looked out the window and could barely see someone approaching through the screen of trees from entrance of the yard, which was a good ways away. The kid had to have incredible eyesight to even take a guess that it was a delivery person. "Hey, Bobby?"
"Yeah?" The man had set up camp in his office that morning. Helping with research on some nasty son-of-a-bitch or other, for some other hunter. Not everyone came with a father who could put a case together from a breath on the wind and a ten year old rumor, or a brother that had a completely valid account on the LexisNexis and a deep unnatural love of research.
"You expecting a package?"
"Brown uniform with gold is UPS, right?" Alec asked, and Sam nodded.
"No, I'm not." They all heard a book slam closed and a pencil hit the wall in a show of frustration. He made his way out into the kitchen and then huffed at Alec sucking down the last of his milk. "You know, that bottle was full yesterday."
"Not like you can't get another, dude." Alec was entirely unapologetic as he tossed the empty half gallon into the trash. Dean may have been imagining it but he swore he saw Alec's hand shake. They all waited in nervous anticipation as the UPS guy stepped up onto the porch and knocked. No hunter liked getting unexpected packages. Rumsfeld hadn't set up a racket though, so the guy was at least human. That was good to know.
Bobby opened the door and signed for the box, and the man was on his way. The box was only about the size of a average box of tissues. "Who's it from?" Sam had pushed away from the counter to peer over Bobby's shoulder, not difficult with him being nearly eight inches taller than the older man.
"Doesn't say. That's weird." He flipped the box, looking for an identifying mark before he opened it. When he found it, it was on the bottom. A stamp in red of what looked to be a chimera, a Manticore to be precise. "Oh." Bobby's eyes rolled and his tone matched his expression. "Malcolm Sandeman."
He had clearly planned to say something else, but they were all startled by the clatter of a glass falling into the sink, where Alec had just lost it from nerveless fingers. "What did you say?" the nervous X5 demanded.
Bobby shifted the box to show Alec the stamp. "He likes to think he's mysterious and send shit with only a stamp like this. You okay?" The kid was definitely pale now, as his right hand went up to cover his barcode.
"That's home. That's Manticore's emblem. Sandeman is the geneticist that built me." He only blinked when Dean stood, circled the table and pushed Alec into a chair. The dumb cow look the kid was sporting made him nervous. "I saw it once on my file, in Med Lab. One of the techs was bitching that if the head geneticist was going to stick his nose in, the least he could do was not build some . . ." He reached out with his good arm and took the box from Bobby. "How did they find us so fast?"
"This guy a hunter, Bobby?" Dean asked, as he settled a heavy hand on Alec's neck, covering his bar code. He was relieved when the kid's shaking subsided.
"Yeah. Has been for a long time. Mostly research though, like me. Most of the time when he finds a case, he sends it out to the Road House or the like. He hardly ever goes out into the field." Everyone watched anxiously as Sam took a knife out, gently took the box from Alec's loose grip, and sliced through the tape.
"Huh," was all Sam said.
"Huh?" Dean's eyebrows climbed incredulously. "That's all you got?"
"Yeah." Sam reached in and pulled something out. A second later Dean's pendant was dangling from its cord, which was wrapped around Sam's long fingers.
"Huh." Dean just blinked at it.
"Yeah." He extended his arm out to his brother. Dean caught the charm in his palm and curled his fingers around it. Bobby watched with a hooded expression and Sam with an expectant one as Dean closed his eyes for a second.
"Feels okay," Dean said, after opening his eyes. He shrugged and put it on with a sigh, feeling like a warm blanket had just settled on him. Sam nodded once and started pulling other things out. All Dean's to start. His ring and then his bracelets, knots untied. Bobby just shook his head a little as Sam tied them back onto his brother's wrist. The, his own bracelets, also carefully unknotted. Sam held out his arm for Dean to tie them back on, some of the tension finally leaving his shoulders, and then Dean smacked him on the shoulder for good measure. "That's it, I guess."
"Nope." Sam pulled out a six-inch black-handled jackknife. "Guess this must be yours." He held it out to Alec, who took it slowly.
"The Colonel gave it to me when I was fifteen. Right before my first mission." He closed his hand around it tightly.
"Hang on. I think there's something else . . . gotcha!" Sam's fingers finally snagged the last item, which had been hiding in a corner. When he held his hand up, a gold, heart-shaped locket swung from a gold chain. It was clearly a woman's necklace. "Er . . ."
Alec held a hand out for it, palm up. This time there was no mistaking the tremor, even though it was small. "It's mine." His voice was quiet, and Dean knew it would be a while before they knew the story that was behind it. Sam set the necklace in Alec's hand and let the chain pool around the locket.
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Lydecker was willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, escape artistry was something that could be found in a person's genetic code. He looked up from X5-494's file. Dean and Samuel Winchester were stacked up to the side. He was on his third cup of coffee and it was only 0900. Standing in relaxed attention in front of him was X5-392. He didn't quite know how the boy managed it. This X5, Biggs, had one of those unruffleable personalities. The sort of personality that was perfect for guard work and pissing off the volatile, because you just couldn't get a reaction out of him. Lydecker made a mental note to contact the White House. He could be slipped seamlessly into the Secret Service. They had a standing request in for personnel to utilize for high risk and high profile engagements, especially on foreign soil, where resources were limited. It had been a difficult request to fill until recently, as the X5's were the first series that could be used in public view, and they were only now old enough that they would not raise suspicion.
None of that was the matter at hand. That was trying to find one of his prized X5s and R&D's walking genetic advancement, namely Sam Winchester. Bravo Unit had been in an absolute uproar when they had discovered their commander missing. X5-112, called CeCe, and Biggs had had everything back to a semblance of order within an hour, and then he had been subjected to the unique joy of dealing with an angry 112. CeCe would snarl at just about anyone if she was pushed enough, and the Colonel was no exception.
Lydecker looked Biggs squarely in the eyes. "Would you care to tell me why X5-494 felt it necessary to jump ship and leave his unit?"
"With all due respect, sir, why don't you tell me?"
"Excuse me?" Deck asked, honestly startled. Biggs was not a unit who usually mouthed off.
"With all due respect, sir, why don't you tell me?" Biggs merely repeated, as though the Colonel may not have heard him the first time.
"Yes, soldier, I heard you. I may not have your enhanced hearing, but I am far from deaf."
"I would never imply such a thing, sir."
No, Lydecker mused, the X5 would merely look over his right shoulder and look annoyingly serene and blank. "Why would you think I would have an answer when you wouldn't?"
"Well, sir, I don't know what happens in Psy-Ops, but I can only assume you do."
"Reindoctrination is just that. It would not breed a desire to leave."
"Permission to be frank, sir? And I would like to request that I be subject to no repercussions for my observations, since you did, in fact, ask for the information, sir." Biggs' tone was careful and neutral. Lydecker that this might be interesting.
"Permission granted on all counts."
"It's hard to know what 494 is thinking when he's returned to us. I don't think what happens to him does anything but scramble him up for a little while. It never really changes anything, sir. It only upsets him. If you haven't noticed that already, sir, then you're inobservant, which doesn't seem like you at all. If anything, I would say you know us pretty well, sir. So putting him in Psy-Ops had to have a different purpose than trying to realign his thinking. It didn't work when he was ten, it didn't work after the Berrisford mess, and I'm still fucking pissed off." Here, for just a moment, Biggs shifted from well-behaved soldier to angry predator. "About what happened to him over 493 going pear-shaped. You let them almost break him. I've yet to figure out how making someone miserable is going to keep them from going off the map. But he still is who he is. No amount of Psy-Ops is going to change that. So, sir, you tell me. Why did he bolt?"
"Why have you never brought up your objections to 494's treatment before?" Lydecker would admit he was curious. This was possibly the most personal and informative exchange he had ever had with Biggs.
"Because he would have taken my head clean off my shoulder for drawing attention to myself, sir," the X5 stated with amused calm.
"Then why do it now?"
"No danger." He shrugged. "I haven't done anything wrong and you need me to hold the unit together without our Lucky Charm here to do it. I'm safe unless I do something really stupid like disobey or undermine you. Which I wouldn't do." He didn't flinch or blink when the Colonel met his eyes. Lydecker found nothing but truth there. The staring contest continued for a solid three minutes before Biggs looked down and away. The Colonel had learned long ago that he could not be the first to look away. It was more than a childish game to his X5s. It was a feline dominance instinct. To look away was to submit.
XXXXX
John resisted the urge to start making phone calls until he was in the privacy of his motel room. He stared blankly out the window into the growing evening as he listened to the phone on the other end of the call ring.
"Singer." Bobby sounded like he really wanted to hang up. John didn't take it personal. Bobby didn't even know who was calling him yet.
"Bobby, I got a couple of messages from my boys saying there was trouble."
"Day late and a dollar short, Winchester." Now it was personal. "I've got them here and am getting them sorted out. It's handled." Bobby hung up. John sat there for a long moment just staring at his phone. It was becoming a habit.
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By the time night fell, Sam was actually feeling a lot better. He wouldn't say he was feeling good, but by comparison, he figured not having to ask in all seriousness if his brain was leaking out his ears and keeping all of his food down was kind of like feeling like a million dollars. The guest room, which was more Sam and Dean's than anyone else's, was on the second floor of Bobby's house. He had actually had enough energy to make his way upstairs before crashing for the night around eight PM.
Sam didn't think much of it when he heard a couple of dull thumps from behind the closed bathroom door on his way to the kitchen the next morning. He figured that Alec had just knocked over a shampoo bottle or something. Alec apparently liked to take his showers in the morning instead of at night, like he and Dean did. Sam figured this would wear off after his second late night stint as a gravedigger.
When he got to the kitchen, Dean was sitting at the table reading the newspaper, a mug of coffee in hand. "Anything interesting?" Sam asked, as he poured himself a mug of coffee and diluted it heavily with milk. Bobby had apparently bought more at some point. He took a sip before putting it down on the counter next to the stove, and then pulled a bag of bread out of the fridge. Bobby had bought more of that, too. Dean gave him a look which clearly stated that he should sit his skinny ass down and not be cooking, but Sam was trying desperately to restore a little normalcy to his life.
"You want any toast?" Dean could cook; he just never did anymore. Sam figured that the novelty had worn off when Dean had spent his childhood cooking for Sam. Sam tried to return the favor when he could.
"Sure, and nothing interesting really, though it'd have to be damned mean to make me go after it with Alec not being able to tell his ass from his elbow when it comes to things that go bump in the night." He sipped his coffee and set the paper down, looking up at Sam again.
"We won't be grounded for too long," Sam said with a shrug as he put the bread in the toaster. The fact that he really should be getting back to his classes was a concept he wasn't even going to allow himself to think about for a little while. Now that he was in Dean's company, he wasn't ready to give it up again so soon. Not to even mention the government good squad that was likely on his tail. And then there was Alec. "He's smart and he's already got all the physical training."
"Most of the physical training. I'm betting he doesn't know how to handle a sword for shit." Dean was privately thinking that Alec's lack of knowledge wasn't the only thing keeping them grounded. Dean was sure Sammy hadn't recovered from whatever happened to him in that damned torture chamber, Psy-Ops. Hell, more like. Alec hadn't said much, but Dean didn't think he would turn on his superiors lightly. And they had fucked Sam up badly. Full on psychic visions? Yeah, that was not going into Dean's very short book of happy occurrences. Especially since Sam absolutely refused to talk about it when Dean had brought it up in the safety of the dark bedroom last night. Sam was willing to talk about anything if he was given enough time, but Dean didn't think it was going to be coming up in conversation any time soon.
Even if Sam were healthy and not a walking skeleton, Alec still had a bullet wound and a broken collarbone. Not the sort of thing he wanted to rush. His eyes jumped to the ceiling, wondering where Alec was a little nervously. He didn't know the kid that well, but yesterday he had been up bright and early. Early enough to please even their father, if he had been around. But today it was pushing ten already.
Sam rooted around in the fridge for butter and marmalade. "You can't handle a sword for shit, Dean," Sam said, amused. "You were never very good with anything bigger than a machete."
"There's not much call for needing a sword." Dean shook off his unease and refocused on Sammy, saying it in indignant self defense, like he was just lacking the opportunity to practice. Sam had always been better with blades, though. He had lost enough practice fights that he wasn't stupid or quite ballsy enough to actually imply that he was better than Sam in that one field. Dean took to firearms like a duck to water, and Sam was almost as good, because he learned quickly and well. Dean could almost always beat him at any sort of hand-to-hand, but give Sammy something sharp and pointy, and even as a child he was as dangerous as a full grown man.
"Then why are you worried about him learning how to use one? Overprotective much?" Sam scooped the toast out of the toaster and set it down on two plates. "I'll teach him. If you try, someone will lose a limb, and it'll be someone we like."
"If you try right now, the weight of the sword will just tip you over." Dean raised an eyebrow at his baby brother. "And while that might be hilarious to watch in slow mo, I'd have to pick you up afterwards. Let's face it, I'm lazy. You looked at yourself in the mirror lately, Sammy?"
"It's Sam." After another moment he set a plate down in front of Dean, then used his free hand to grab his coffee and sat down at the table. "Bobby off on a job or is he working on a car?"
"Car. He said to tell you that he had a couple of new books since the last time I was here. He left them out ‘cause he thought you might want to read them. Wards and shit like that."
"Cool. Maybe I'll find some to use on the car."
"You just make sure you don't mess up her leather or paint."
"Yeah, yeah. I know you love that car more than me." He was always careful with her. She was the only home he had ever really known.
"Damned right I do." Dean crunched down on his toast. "Alec up yet?" Worry was making itself known again. "He was already up for a few hours this time yesterday."
"He was banging around in the bathroom when I came down," Sam said, with a shrug.
Dean grinned. "How many graves do you think it'll take for him to start saving the showers for the end of the day?"
"Two, maybe three if he's being stubborn." They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes. "Do you think Dad'll be okay with us, you know . . . keeping him?"
Dean snorted. "You make him sound like a puppy."
"Yeah, well, Dad never let me have one of those either."
"Sam . . ."
"Fine, dude, whatever." He didn't want to argue. "Alec," he said, redirecting the conversation.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's a done deal. He's a Winchester, they copied him from me, and that makes him Mom and Dad's kid. No matter what else they added, they couldn't take that away." Dean was still working on how Alec worked into their somewhat odd family dynamic, but he was sure that they would figure it out. Keeping Sam and his father from killing each other had to be harder.
"Good." Sam nodded. He hadn't wanted to leave Alec alone in the world, and Alec hadn't really showed any inclination to leave them and strike out on his own. "Think he's trying to turn himself into a prune up there?"
"Maybe he knows you're going to start swinging a sword at him," Dean said, and tried to push his concern away again. Sometimes he knew Sam was right and he just got overprotective.
Sam just shook his head. He listened for the shower, but he didn't hear it, so he figured that Alec would be down in a few minutes, and continued eating. No reason to be worried. When he was done, he got up and washed his and Dean's empty plates. Then he sat back down with another mug of coffee and stole half of the newspaper. Dean didn't even bother to argue. Sam had been doing that to him and their father since he was eight.
Suddenly Sam put the paper down, after Dean looked up nervously at the ceiling for the fifth time. "I'm going to check on him." He quickly pushed back from the table and marched back up the stairs. Dean watched him leave.
Sam could see the bathroom door was still closed as soon as he hit the top of the stairs, and he promptly stepped over to it and knocked sharply. "Alec?" There was no answer, but he heard another dull thump. "Alec, are you okay?"
After a long pause he finally got a reply. "Go away."
"Dude, what's wrong?" He knew Alec well enough to know when he didn't sound right. That and whatever it was that had made him nervous enough to come up to check on him. Dean had most likely been right with that first nervous twitch of his. An image flashed through his mind too quickly for him to comprehend, along with a quick jolt of pain. He didn't want to think about the implications of that, nor did he have time. "If you don't come out in the next thirty seconds, I'm coming in."
"Naked."
"You don't have anything I haven't seen before." When he got no answer, he tried the doorknob and found it locked. In about two seconds flat he had a Bic pen out of one of his bags and used his teeth to yank the pen apart. He used the thin ink tube to pop the lock and open the door.
He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what he saw. For starters, Alec wasn't naked. He was in his flannel sleep pants and the loose T-shirt he seemed to favor as sleep wear. Secondly, he was sitting wedged into the corner where the bathtub met the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, arms around his legs, forehead resting on his knees. Sam could hear him breathing heavily, nearly panting. "Alec, what . . ." and before Sam could finish his question, he saw Alec begin to shake and convulse. His hands gripped his knees so hard that they went white-knuckled, and then one elbow jerked harder and cracked into the wall with bruising force, the dull thump was louder now. "Oh God, Alec."
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