Seeing Double
Chapter Twenty-One
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When Sam returned, he had the large first-aid kit from the Impala tucked under his arm. He pushed the door shut with his knee and the room went suddenly quiet as the noise of traffic was diminished at the same moment as Alec turned off the shower.
Dean eyed the kit and Sam with equal amounts of distaste. His brother fired back a cool look of his own and set it down on the table.
"I need to get a look at those scratches, dude."
"Alec first." Dean gestured at a damp-looking Alec, who'd just emerged from the bathroom.
Sam opened his mouth to protest that Alec was able to fight off infection more easily than Dean, but shut it again when he caught sight of the angry curl of his brother's eyebrows.
"Alec first." Dean reiterated. It was clearly not open to discussion.
To Sam's surprise, the transgenic slipped off his shirt and sat down immediately.
"Whatever. Well, let's get this over with, huh?"
Sam ran a thumb over the newly washed, pink scar on Alec's forehead with an expression of amazement. Just two hours previously it'd been a jagged gash and the dried smears of blood had done a good job of concealing the speed with which it was healing.
"I heal quick." Alec reminded him, with a cocky grin. "You might want to take a look at my shoulder though; I think wolf-boy left a claw in there. I don't want it to heal over, it's a bitch having to dig crap out later."
He turned his black obligingly, giving the brothers a good view of the deep gashes that ran from the top of his shoulder and cut diagonally across his spine to the bottom of his rib-cage on the other side.
Dean hissed, leaning forwards for a better look.
"Why didn't you say somethin'? These are nasty, dude."
Alec shrugged, turning his face away from the Winchesters as pain rippled across his back.
"I'm okay. It's healing. I told you, I heal quick."
Sam unscrewed the cap on the bottle of holy water. "This might sting," he warned, sloshing it liberally over the gashes. There was a hissing noise and steam boiled from the wounds. Alec flinched briefly and then his impassive mask slid back into place. Manticore didn't encourage its soldiers to react to pain.
"Sorry man." Sam dabbed at the area with some disinfectant. Alec might have great antibodies but there was no harm in being careful. He noted with surprise that where the edges of the wounds were shallow, they'd already begun to knit together; there was no sign of infection apart from one small area low on the shoulder blade. He prodded at it gently, able to feel something just beneath the surface.
"There is something in there... it's healed over."
"Yeah," said Alec. "I felt it snap off. Cut it out."
He felt Sam's hesitancy. "Just cut it out, Sam. It's only gonna get deeper if you leave it."
"You want me to…?" Dean offered.
"I got it." Sam steadied his hand and cut a neat slice under the small protusion, prising free a green/black curved claw. He held it out for Alec's inspection. The transgenic eyed it with distaste and turned away.
"I'll put some stitches in these…" Sam began.
"No. They'll heal better if you fix a light dressing."
Going against every rule he knew, Sam obliged and minutes later Alec was back on his feet, rotating his shoulder carefully under the white dressings.
"What about him?" He nodded in Dean's direction and sniffed dramatically. "I can smell he's leaking all over the place."
Dean glowered at him as he gingerly pulled off his t-shirt to reveal a few claw marks of his own. Sam was in his face immediately with the holy water and a terse snap to his voice. "Really, Dean? How long was it gonna be before you mentioned these?"
His brother shot a death glare in Alec's direction and batted at Sam's antiseptic cream in a bad tempered way. "No mother-henning, Sam."
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Within the space of seven hours, Ames had covered most of the small town on foot, loitering in and strolling through every public place and a few more that were most definitely not public.
The majority of the places had changed very little since he'd lived in town; a little wear and tear and general fading the only indication that time had moved on. He didn't fear recognition. Most of the residents seemed to move in a slow daze of hopelessness, but even so he kept his tinted glasses on his face and his official badge handy just in case questions needed to be discouraged.
Frustration was starting to eat at him; he'd pretty much decided it was time to jack it in for the day and get some food and sleep when he recognised the small, boarded-up house on Jackson Road. He approached cautiously, surprised that something that'd been dilapidated when he lived in town was still standing at all. He'd spent a week there once, holed up away from prying eyes, doing a bit of soul-searching. A haven, temporary and long forgotten.
Ames kicked in the door, the worm eaten frame splintering easily. He moved slowly into the musty air of the interior, pulling off his glasses and gazing around. Empty, apart from the scurry of rats and the flutter of birds in the rafters.
On the back wall, dimly illuminated by the dying sun, Ames could see the faded remains of his name, daubed in a childish graffiti of multi-colored letters. He smiled, sardonic and regretful at the same time and reached out his hand to trace the purple 'A'.
When he finally stopped vomiting long enough to open his eyes, he found himself staring at a man huddled beneath the graffiti. Long, straggly hair and a dark matted beard obscured most of his face. Even as he drew back from the unwashed stench, Ames already knew.
"You're a fucking mess, White!" He snapped, lurching to his feet and delivering a swift kick to the cowering figure.
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Sam was immersed in research, again. Alec wasn't clear on the subject matter, but Sam looked too far too involved to interrupt. Dean was half-hidden behind the sheets of the local newspaper, as he scanned the pages for any news on the recent events on campus.
Bored, Alec jiggled his knee, shifted on the chair, casting his eyes around to find something of interest. There was something of interest, right in front of his eyes; Dean's stubble.
Alec leaned forwards, peering around the edge of the newspaper as he focussed on it with intensity, fascinated by the dark shadows and even patterns of growth that followed and accentuated the bones and hollows of cheeks and jawline.
After a few moments, Dean became aware of the burn of Alec's gaze. He twitched, becoming uncomfortable and then rapidly annoyed. His lip and brow curled into irritated lines as Alec leaned further forwards, staring at the way the growth extended down his neck and then simply faded away.
"What?" Dean demanded tersely, his eyes green slits of annoyance.
Alec shot back in his chair, his eyes flying wide. He flushed. "Nothin'".
"Nothin'? Even chicks don't stare at me like that." Dean firmed his lip. "There's nothin' here you can't see staring in the mirror."
Alec dropped his chin, the flush darkening. "Stubble," he muttered, barely audible with embarrassment.
"Stubble?" Sam questioned, puzzled, torn from his research by the sharpness in Dean's tone.
"Yeah…" Alec gestured awkwardly at his own face, his gaze now directed firmly at the table top.
The puzzlement on Sam's face suddenly cleared as something fell into place. "You don't shave."
Alec shrugged. "Manticore thought it was a waste of time. They fixed it so we don't need to."
Visibly taken aback, Dean squinted at him. "What? You don't shave, like ever, dude?"
"No." Alec looked at them from under his lashes, dropped his eyes again and almost blurred to the door. "I'm gonna get some more ice."
The brothers stared after him. Something dark began to grow in Sam's gut, an implacable hatred against the monster that'd decided to produce an army of useful, replaceable soldiers. Soldiers who didn't have the most basic of human rights, who'd never even have the freedom to choose whether or not to grow a beard.
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The man wriggled, pulling at the bindings on his wrists. Ames jerked the cord around his neck with a vicious tug.
"Keep moving."
"Don't want to…" His filthy double was a whiner, Ames decided. A hopeless, dirty, lost excuse for a human being. He was embarrassed for him, embarrassed for himself. He jabbed his gun into the grime of the man's jacket.
"Move faster. I can always shoot you here."
It was an empty threat but White didn't know. He quickened his pace, skinny knees shaking. The cold violence seeping out of the large man behind him was terrifying. Even more frightening was the way he looked vaguely familiar, giving White an odd feeling that he should've recognised him.
When they reached a quiet residential street, Ames broke quickly into a vehicle and threw White inside.
"Stay still."
White stayed, shaking, as the man hot-wired the car and drove them away into the darkness. Maybe, just maybe, if he did what he was told, he would live to see another day.
Later, Ames pulled the car over behind some bushes. He turned to White, checking the handcuffs securing him to the car door.
"We're going to sleep," he said in a flat voice. "But first, you're going to answer some questions."
White nodded, so nervous he was sure Ames could see the pulse jumping in his throat.
"Right. Let's start with the date…"
.
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By morning, Alec had slipped back into uncharacteristic silence, his brow furrowed as he sorted continuously through the jumping threads of the thoughts that'd kept him awake for most of the previous night.
They were heading back towards Bobby's as soon as Sam finished paying for the gas; that meant hour upon hour with the three of them in the confined space of the Impala. He wasn't sure how to behave. Yet again, he'd made it only too obvious that he was a freak. Not even a freak of nature, just an outright freak. What kind of man didn't need to shave? For that matter, what kind of man ripped a werewolf apart with his bare hands? The answer was simple. He wasn't a man. He was a monster. The same sort of monster that the brothers hunted on an almost daily basis.
Dean's boots scuffed on the blacktop next to him. He slapped Alec on the shoulder, startling him out of his reverie.
"'M tired."
Alec stared at him, bewildered by this unexpected statement.
Dean took a deep breath, gritted his teeth and dangled the car keys under Alec's nose.
"You drive."
He yanked open the passenger door with a howl of metal on metal. "One scratch…" His nostrils pinched in, lips firming. "Just one…"
Alec was still standing there with his mouth open when Sam came out of the gas station store. Only his superior reflexes enabled him to catch the bag of candy that hit him in the chest.
Sam grinned at him, ruffling his hair on the way into the back seat. He dropped a bag of M&Ms onto Dean's lap and settled back with a livid green smoothie.
"C'mon Alec." Dean's gruff growl got him moving. He slid smoothly behind the wheel, eyes wide.
"You like candy, right?" Sam's head appeared between them as he leaned over the bench seat.
Alec nodded, for once finding himself completely without speech. He put the candy on the seat beside him, slid the keys into the ignition and stared at the brothers.
Sam slapped the back of Dean's head with a large hand, earning himself a scowl.
"How come he gets to drive? He's the youngest!"
"'Cause, Sammy, he has superior genes. Don't get any of that green shit on Baby's seat."
Sam huffed, grinning to himself as he settled back. He balanced the smoothie on his knee for a moment, dug around in his jacket pocket and pulled something out.
"Dean!"
Dean caught the object without missing a beat and slapped it down on the dashboard, flicking a tape into life with his other hand.
"Lucky charm," he said easily as he flipped open his dark glasses and settled them on his face.
Alec swallowed and blinked furiously as he pulled onto the highway. The yellow plastic duck on the dashboard regarded him with one shiny black eye. It seemed to be smiling.
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Notes:
Chapter one of my new Spn fic 'The Aspen Spirit' has now been posted if you're interested in checking it out :-)
The yellow plastic duck wrote itself into 'Seeing Double' in much the same way as two of them wandered into my life. One came from a motel in the mid-West, which gave them away to guests along with the complimentary shower gel, with the encouragement to email and let the staff know how far they'd travelled. I never got round to emailing, but the duck with the pirate's eyepatch has come a long way! The second duck had one hell of an adventure. I saw it floating in the sea, almost at the point of sinking and for some reason just had to rescue it. Turned out it had floated, all alone, for five months, having escaped from a duck race on the River Liffey.
Thanks so much for reading and as always, special thanks to reviewers:
Nouri, Iwokeuponthewrongsideoflife, Mckydstarlight, Irreality, lenail125, Donkey, Badwolf40, celinenaville, sadidoche, ngregory763, N0hA, ArtistKurai, OnANickle, NikaDex, MaraDixen413, Dark-Supernatural-Angel, doryshotgun2, G.L Williams.97, Hare in the Moonlight, Minion79, The-Baby-Winchester, Wunjo, artzegrrl6, Eboni, dragonfox123, 1412Kaishin4869, waitingforAslan and Guest.