So, this is DA/SPN crossover fic...which kind of came out of the blue one day, but I liked it enough to try and finish it up. The style is just a bit different for me, and the story has never been seen by a beta reader, but I hope some of you like it, too.
Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel, or Supernatural, or really much of anything at all.
"There's nothing in here about you, Max. If there was a file, it's been destroyed."
She tried not to show her disappointment. She would deal with that when Logan wasn't around.
"There is a file on Alec, though," Logan said quietly, distracted.
"What?" She practically draped herself over his shoulder to see the screen. "Logan, what does it say?"
"Maybe we should get Alec in here first."
"No, come on, he won't mind. What's in it?"
Logan opened the file and the two read a while in silence.
"Wow," Max said. "No shit."
"Hey Alec, I got something for you," she said coming up behind him at the bar.
"It's not going to hurt, is it?"
"No, come on." She grabbed him by the upper arm and dragged him outside.
"Ah, something good then. My place or yours?"
She didn't even have to look at him as she dug through her bag to see he was leering at her.
"Shut up." She thrust the envelope at him. "There. Logan and I found a database on Manticore genetic donors. Military database. There was a file marked X5-494. Guess we weren't all test tube babies after all."
Alec looked at the file in her hands like it might bite him, and didn't move to take it. "I don't need that, Maxie. I've got all the family I need right here."
"You don't have any family here," she said. "Just a bunch of freaks. This is real."
"Real like, hey mom and dad, I'm your genetically altered long-lost super-soldier son? No thanks, Max. I'll pass."
Max was sitting on Logan's couch, listening to him talk about boring stuff for Eyes Only. She was considering taking off until he said, "I found some stuff on Alec's family."
She perked right up, but tried to play it off by examining her nails. "What's that?"
"Well, they live in Kansas now, and their other son is considering college."
"Print it off, I'll take it to Alec."
"Here," she said, and thrust another envelope at him.
"What's this? I sort of hoped you were done giving me presents." He didn't take it, barely looked at it.
"It's a schedule for a prospective student visit at Stanford. Logan put out a general search and it came up."
"Am I going to college now, Max? Why are you always looking for ways to get rid of me?"
She sighed, short and huffy. "Just take it. I have to get back to work."
He shook his head and raised his hands, palms out, in protest.
"Fine," she said, and threw it at him before turning and stomping off. He wondered how such a little girl could make such a big noise while he rubbed at his forehead. It would be just perfect if she'd managed to bruise him there.
He looked down at the envelope, looking so innocent, so harmless, down by his feet. He sighed himself and crouched down to pick it up. While he was down there, he turned it over in his hands. Logan's handwriting was on the front. It read "Sam."
He tucked it into his jacket while standing and went to find out if Normal had any packages for him.
He put the two envelopes together on his kitchen counter and ignored them for a month. A month of Max barely speaking to him and Logan giving him curious looks. When it didn't stop, he figured that a family he didn't know was probably pretty close to a family that was pissed at him and opened them together.
A few pieces of paper came out the first one: a record of John and Mary Winchester, a marine and his wife struggling to have a baby when Manticore had stepped in, and a copy of a birth certificate that said "Dean Winchester." There was another document detailing the Winchester's move to Kansas and the birth of their next child: Sam. Manticore, it seemed, had left them alone after John left the military.
The second envelope held a copy of a visit schedule for Sam the next weekend at Stanford.
Alec shoved the papers back into one of the envelopes and went to the bar.
"You know, I've been trying for years to find my family, and suddenly, you're handed yours and you don't even care."
"Max—"
"No, Alec, I don't want to hear it."
His bag was already strapped to his bike outside. He left for California right away.
He didn't care much for Palo Alto. Despite the Pulse, it was bright and sunny there and people walked around with backpacks and drank fancy coffee and looked so normal.
No, he didn't care much for Palo Alto at all.
He spent the week there waiting for Friday to roll around. Some days he sat in on lectures and imagined what Sam would look like, and if they would get along. He liked the classes about technology and music and hated the ones about history and psychology and law. He even sat in on a discussion course about woman's rights and imagined Max rolling her eyes and walking out. He stayed instead and got a phone number.
On Friday, fancy cars rolled in from all over and rich little bright eyed kids poured out of them and stood together while students came and collected them. He found Sam's tour guide, a man named Brad that smirked at him like Alec would smirk at a woman and promised him a wild night while he lead him into an alley. Brad crumpled like a bag of bricks and Alec stole his name tag and the folder marked "Sam."
There was a lone figure on the quad when he got back, and he was tall, much taller than Alec, with longer hair and his brow creased in confusion. Alec looked down at his leather jacket and his motorcycle boots and shrugged. There wasn't anything he could do about it now.
"Hey, Sam, right?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm Alec." Your genetically altered long-lost super-soldier older brother. "Your tour guide."
Sam read his name tag and didn't say anything, and Alec mentally kicked himself for the slip but smiled and led him around campus anyway.
"And this is where they teach, um, something boring. You want to go grab a drink?"
Sam looked back at him, bemused, and said, "Don't you have a copy of my schedule?"
He had two actually, one from Max and one from Brad. "I just thought you'd like to do something fun instead."
"Well, I don't want to miss the meet and greet with the professors, or the dinner tonight. Besides, I have to meet my dad before that."
Dad. Alec's disappointment over the drink was gone.
"Oh yeah, okay. How come your dad didn't come on the tour?"
Sam laughed, and Alec felt himself smiling in response. The boy had an infectious laugh.
"My dad's not real big on the whole college thing. Don't get me wrong, he's supportive and all, I just don't think he likes the idea of me being so far away. He's probably having your drink right now."
They turned to walk back to the quad and Sam asked, "Do you always pretend to be a tour guide, or should I be worried for my safety?"
"Do you feel worried?"
"Maybe a little about what happened to Brad, but otherwise, not really, no."
"Then I think you're good. This was my first time pretending to be a tour guide though. I'll need you to fill out my questionnaire when we get back."
"This is my dad, John."
The older man looked at him suspiciously but held out his hand to shake anyway.
"Pleased to meet you, sir." Alec didn't know where the 'sir' came from. He hadn't addressed anyone like that since Manticore, though Max often almost caused him to slip.
"So, Brad, how do you like it here?"
Sam snickered but didn't bother correcting him. Alec said, "I like it just fine. But I've heard that the University of Kansas is nice, too."
Sam laughed again and finally came between them. "Dad, this is Alec. He's not a student here, just a friend. Brad's um..."
"He couldn't make it so he had me cover for him. No big deal."
Alec went with Sam and John to the dinner because Sam invited him and because he wasn't one to pass up anything free, and especially not food.
He thought he was pretty suave when he mentioned that he had family out in Kansas, but hadn't wanted to make the long trip east by himself. Sam eagerly said that he could travel with them, and Alec only had to think for a few seconds about Max before he agreed.
They traveled slow back to Kansas, and sometimes Sam and him stayed in small towns and just hung out while John disappeared "to see old friends." Once Sam went with him came back limping with a cut on his forehead and a glowering John right behind him and once John left in the middle of the night and Sam met his eyes in the dark and just shrugged. Alec thought it was kind of strange and wondered if maybe John hadn't completely left the military behind after all, but he never said anything and neither did John or Sam.
After two weeks of strange absences, Alec tracked John to the edge of a small town in Colorado where an old woman flickered in and out of the attic window of a deserted house and watched him light a fire. He let curiosity get the better of him and got too close to the flames before he looked up and met John's eyes over them. He blurred all the way to the hotel room and the next morning Sam went out for coffee and John pushed Alec down to sit on the bed and started pacing the room.
"Look, I know that you think Sam and I want you here, but you're wrong. Sam doesn't know what he's doing, so I'm telling you straight: I want you gone. You're not welcome here and soon Sam's going to see that you're a liability he doesn't want around. So as soon as you're able, I want you to get lost. Go back to wherever you came from and stop messing with my family."
Alec sat on the bed and stared straight ahead while John paced and ranted. He thought he'd rather take the lasers to the eyes instead of this any day.
After Sam had come back to the hotel with drinks and pizza and the three had eaten in silence, Sam threw his hands up in frustration, grabbed Alec by the other arm and dragged him off to the bar "so he'd finally stop nagging about that drink" and really to get John and Alec away from each other for awhile.
John sat with the remains of the congealing pizza and tried not to glower too much. He had thought that dinner was a good opportunity for Alec to announce his plans to turn back west. He turned on the TV and tried to distract himself, and then Alec's cell phone started ringing from his back pack. The first time it rang he grumbled and let it be. The second time he got up and stood over it, hoping to intimidate it into silence. The third time it started ringing he grabbed the pack and ripped open the zipper and started digging around for it. The phone fell out the same time as a gun and a pile of papers. He held the phone as it rang the forth time and idly wondered about the persistence of Alec's acquaintances as he studied the piece. It wasn't unheard of after the Pulse to protect oneself, and especially with his work on the side as a hunter he shouldn't have been all that surprised, but it was the fact that this man was with his son and carrying a gun when most days he couldn't get Sam to protect himself that made John the angriest. He was reaching for the piece when his eye caught on the first paper.
By the time he was done reading and couldn't deny the words anymore, he folded in on himself next to the bed and started shaking, only to have the phone go off a fifth time.
"What?" he said gruffly.
"Alec?" It was a woman. "Alec, stay out of Seattle for a while, if you can. I don't know what you've seen on the news, but Logan and Josh and I, we're all safe. We're in Terminal City."
He didn't say anything, just kept breathing, until she said, "Who is this and what have you done with Alec?"
He ended the call and turned it off. He turned it over in his hands as he considered the transgenics and how he had almost went to Seattle to hunt, and now here was Alec, no, Dean, and he was ferociously glad he hadn't made that trip west to hunt his own son.
By the time Alec and Sam got back, it was almost sunrise. John had picked up and put everything back the way it was, except he left the phone off.
In the morning, when Alec went out for a jog, Sam turned to John and said, "He was going to take off, last night. I caught him sneaking out the back. Did he follow you the night before? Because he got back to the hotel room spooked and now he's acting weird."
John nodded stiffly and couldn't meet Sam's eyes. "Yeah," he said, "he followed me out to the Pearson's ranch and saw me burn the old lady's bones. That must be what's got him on edge."
Sam said, "My dad and I, sometimes we hunt things."
Alec nodded. "Yeah, I saw that. Was that woman…? Was she dead?"
Sam said, "Not everything is as it seems."
Alec nodded again. "I get that, man. I get that like you wouldn't believe."
Sam said, "Keep traveling with us."
Alec shrugged and kept nodding.
When the got to Lawrence, Alec was still with them, despite John's warning.
John went into the house first, seeking out his wife and hugging her before she could even manage to say "hello." He gripped her hard and turned his head so he was whispering directly into her ear.
"Mary, just listen to me: there's a man here, he's been traveling with us since Stanford. Sam's going to introduce him as Alec, but it's Dean, Mary. It's Dean, and you have to pretend that you don't know, but I couldn't let you see him without knowing."
He drew back from her and she looked up. "I don't understand."
He placed a hand between them, directly over her belly, over the place where her stomach had been round and he had touched her before Sam, before Dean.
She looked down at his hand, and then took it in one of hers and squeezed it hard. "What did you do, John Winchester?"
They sat down to dinner the night the men had arrived home and the conversation was strained, at best. Sam talked a little about Stanford and John talked about Palo Alto and Alec tried to smile and nod and sure as hell not say anything about Seattle or Manticore, and then Mary beat him to it anyway.
"Oh John, have you seen the news about Seattle? A group of those genetically altered people have barricaded themselves into a part of the city. Innocent people are getting hurt."
Alec stood up from the dinner table and carried his plate to the kitchen. He scraped his food into the trash and wondered to whom his mother was referring when she said 'innocent.' The way he saw it, no one was innocent anymore.
The next day, Sam and Alec were playing video games when Sam said, "I think maybe I should be a lawyer."
Alec grunted and tried not to be frustrated that his avatar couldn't blur.
"I mean, those poor people up in Seattle, I think I could help them."
Alec paused the game. He looked at Sam, who kept looking at the screen. "Which people?"
Sam unpaused the game and shot Alec's avatar. He stared at it in shock.
"The ones my mom was talking about; the ones trapped in that abandoned part of the city. What do they call it?"
"Terminal City."
"Yeah, I mean, I think they could use a few good lawyers."
He stayed for a week and wondered why John never approached him again with threats about his family's safety. And after a week of pretending to be normal he decided that maybe the situation in Seattle was dire enough that Max would tolerate his presence.
"Are you leaving?"
He stood in the guest bedroom and shoved the last of his things back into his backpack. He didn't turn to look at the woman that Manticore had used to bring him into the world.
"Yeah, there's some stuff I gotta take care of. So, uh…" he hefted his pack, "Thanks for letting me stay a while." He turned around and mustered a smile. She didn't return it.
"Sure. You know, you don't have to go. Not so soon at least. Stay for dinner. You could leave in the morning."
John opened the door to the garage and gestured for Alec to follow. There were tools on the walls and boxes in the rafters and junk all around the periphery and a car-shaped lump in the middle covered by a dusty gray tarp.
"My dad gave me this car," he said, and started rolling back the tarp. "It was the only thing I really remember him giving me. He said, 'don't wreck it' and threw me the keys, and he kept it running for me when I joined the service and when he died I came home for the funeral and sat in it and cried like a baby."
Alec stayed in the doorway and watched as John stroked a hand lovingly across the hood.
"I was going to give it to Sam, but he was never much interested in cars; more interested in classes and politics." John looked up at Alec expectantly, and Alec just shrugged.
"It's a nice car," he said, and hoped that was what John wanted; he couldn't remember Manticore ever educating him on the finer points of garage talk.
John said, "Look, I'm not real good with this kind of thing, but, you know, it's yours now," and threw the keys to Alec.
He caught them on reflex and looked at them curiously. "Why are you giving me the car?"
John said, "I know you're Dean. You're my son."
Alec said, "I'm leaving in the morning," and threw back the keys.
After dinner, Sam and Alec went down to a local bar and played pool for a while. Alec was impressed that Sam gave him a run for his money. He wondered if maybe the whole transgenic thing ran in the family. Or maybe it was just the reason they chose the Winchesters in the first place.
"My parents don't want you to go," Sam said at some point in the middle of a discussion on college sports.
"Yeah, who'd have thought?" Alec took a shot at the eight ball, an easy bank into the side pocket and missed. He cursed under his breath.
"Why do you think that is?" Sam asked as he took his own shots and set himself up to beat Alec. Again.
"Because I'm so adorable?"
Sam sunk the eight ball. "Nah, I don't think that's it."
Alec was sitting on his bike the next morning before the sun had even come up. He was about to start it up when a hand on his arm startled him. Mary Winchester, standing outside with only a light jacket on over her nightgown.
"I saw you from the window," she said, and gestured behind her.
He looked behind her, saw John standing in the window now.
"He told you, huh?"
"When you first arrived."
"He told you what I am?"
She frowned a bit, then resolved herself. "My son."
"Not who I am. What I am."
She sighed and tightened her fingers around his wrist. "He told me last night. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't change who you are."
Alec looked down at her small hand.
"It changes everything. I have to leave."
They stared at each other for a while, and she let him go when she started to tear up.
As he was pulling away, he heard her whisper, "Come back to me."
He would never have heard her over his bide if he weren't a transgenic.
Max said, "What the hell are you doing back here?" and smacked him in the back of the head.
Josh gave him a hug and said, "Welcome back, Medium Fella."
Alec said, "Thanks, Josh," and "Can't a guy come home once in a while?"
"What, didn't they handle it well?"
Alec shrugged started looking around the command center in Terminal City. "Pretty sweet set-up you guys have here."
"You didn't tell them." She grabbed his arm and spun him around to face her. "Come on, Alec, this was a big opportunity! You have to go back."
He pried her hand off. "I didn't have to tell them. They knew."
Her eyes got real wide. "They knew you were X5? They didn't take it well, huh?"
"No, they took it fine. They took everything fine. But come on, Max, you didn't actually think that one of us could just go and pretend to be Joe Normal from Kansas, did you? I'm not like them. My place is here."
She crossed her arms and glared at him.
Josh stood looking between the two of them. "Maybe Medium Fella should go back to Kansas," he said.
"Yeah," Max said, with a sharp nod of her head for emphasis. "Maybe Medium Fella should."
She had that tone that always scared him a little.
He reached out and slapped Josh on the back. "Show me Terminal City, okay, big guy?"
They left Max glaring after them. "We're not finished with this, Alec!" she yelled, Alec kept walking like he didn't even hear her.
Two days after Alec arrived back in Seattle, Logan said in a video phone call that there was a man with him who wanted to see Alec.
Alec ignored the message for two more days until Logan said that John Winchester didn't exactly make for pleasant company.
He arranged with Max to make a trip out of Terminal City, and tried to ignore the smug look on her face.
Alec closed the door between the living room and the dining room, even though he knew Max would still be able to hear, and turned to John.
"You're not that easy to get a hold of," John said.
"Yeah, well, a police barricade will do that."
"My wife…" John started. "Your mother. She wants you to come home."
"She's not my mother, and Terminal City is my home."
"She is your mother. I was there when she gave birth to you." He sighed, frustrated. "Look, this is hard for me."
Alec folded his arms and leaned against the wall.
"We were having trouble getting pregnant. Manticore said they could help. Apparently, they did a bit more than encourage natural development."
"Apparently."
"But it doesn't matter. You're still our son."
"You don't even know that. I may not be genetically related to you at all."
"I read the files. The ones you had with you when you came home and some more that Logan showed me. You're our son. Manticore just made some alterations. I never would have let them do that had I known."
"What about Ben?"
John frowned.
"My clone. Mary may not have given birth to him, but would you count him as your son, too?"
John nodded, hesitantly at first, then said, "Where is he? I'd like to meet him."
Alec shrugged and opened the doors, caught Max when she almost fell on him, righted her and then walked away.
She stared at John. "Logan is making dinner. Want to join us?"
Logan was cleaning up when she said, "Ben is dead." She wouldn't meet his eyes.
"Oh," John said. "How did he die?"
"I'm not telling you that to let you off the hook."
John nodded. "I know. He wanted to see how I'd react."
"He wanted to see if you'd leave."
"I'm still here."
"I know." She twirled her wine glass. "Manticore wasn't an easy place to grow up, John. Ben didn't want to go back."
"Go back?"
"A group of us escaped when we were young. Me, and Ben included. Alec grew up there. He's only been out for about a year. They almost recaptured Ben, and I… He didn't want to go back." She finally met his eyes.
"Okay," he said.
Alec came back well after dinner had been cleaned up. Max found him in the kitchen picking through the leftovers.
"He seems like a decent guy," Max said, reaching around him to grab a beer. "A little gruff, but decent."
"Yeah." Alec shrugged and pulled out a dish. Max handed him a fork.
"And?"
"His wife's nice, too. And I like their son. Good kid."
"So what's the problem? The family's nice. They know you're Manticore and are okay with it. It sounds perfect."
"I dunno, Max. Maybe it's just me."
She eyed him for awhile as he picked through his food.
"Then get over it already," she said finally, and wandered off with her beer.
In the morning, John found Alec leaning against the car. His bag had already been thrown into the back seat.
He said, "So what was up with that woman in Colorado anyway?"