May 15, 2006, 7:35 am
Alex managed to shower and get out all on her own. She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and noticed it was only Sam and Kris now. He was sitting in one of the chairs drinking coffee and Kris was stirring, sitting up in bed. Alex spotted the coffee, "One for me?"
"Yup, it's for you. It should still be good and warm." Sam held it out to her when she walked over. He glanced over at Kris, "did you want one too?"
Kris shook her head softly. "I'm more of a hot chocolate drinker." She looked kind of sheepish and glanced toward the bathroom. "Anyone mind if I shower. I still feel all dirty from yesterday." She did feel icky still from all the dirt and blood yesterday.
"Go ahead, I just finished." Alex smiled at her sister.
"I don't mind." Sam shook his head softly, "and I'll remember the hot chocolate next time." It was kind of sweet actually, that she liked hot chocolate. Kris smiled back and crawled out of bed and headed into the bathroom, leaving Sam and Alex alone in the room for a bit.
Alex took a sip and smiled, "This is perfect. Where did Nic and Dean go? Is there a new lead or something?"
"No, they just went out for some air. I'm not really sure where we go from here on this one." Sam wished he had some idea, but it really wasn't a demon who left a lot of clues.
"Yeah, that's what always happens. We hang around a few days. No more deaths happen, so we end up driving around finding cases of odd things happening here and there, and we take that on in the mean time. But at least those, we solve something a lot of times. This demon is like never ending." She drank the small cup quickly and sat down on the bed, and shivered slightly.
Sam had pretty much finished slowly nursing his coffee, so he set it down and moved over next to Alex on the bed. "So what are you doing next?"
"I got kind of cranky after our last mission, and so Nic said we were going home. Which I said good to at the time. But now, I'd like to stop home, but hanging out with you guys, it's changed things. I think what we do along the way while following this demon is good, but it's hard, just us. Nic and I get on each other's nerves a lot, but I don't want to be without her. I don't want to go home and have her take off on her own and leave me and Kris behind. But it's hard sometimes it just being us. Kris always ends up trying to keep the peace, but sometimes I think Nic and I just stress her out. But with you guys, it seems nicer." Alex almost asked if she could come along with the guys. But she stopped just short of that.
"Yeah, I know what you mean. You girls have made these last few days a lot better for me. And I doubt Dean would admit it, I think he agrees. I mean..." Sam was hoping maybe she'd just latch onto his drift.
Alex smiled, "I know I don't know your brother that well, but I like him anyway. And he seems like a good guy. Like he maybe doesn't think my sisters and I are big pains. I'd love for us all to keep helping each other, beyond this demon." She finally put words to what they both wanted.
"I'd like for that too. I know you girls aren't 'normal' either. But it's more normal with you than just Dean and I." Sam was feeling hopeful, one sister down, two to go. "Do you think Nic and Kris would go for it?"
"Kris I think would, I can tell she likes you guys, and she likes having you around. Nic, she's hard to read sometimes. But I think she likes you guys and likes having people to share this all with as much as I do." Alex then reached over and hugged Sam. He hugged her back, wrapping his arms all the way around her.
"Are you okay? After?" Sam didn't want to sour a good moment, but he'd been worrying about her at the same time.
"Getting better, it was scary though. It was like living a nightmare." Alex's eyes turned serious, keeping her arms around his neck. Behind his neck she spun the ring that was on her left ring finger.
Sam caught the action out of the corner of his eye. "That ring is really pretty."
Alex pulled her hand from his shoulder and looked at her ring. "It was my mother's wedding ring. I asked my father once about it and if I could keep it. And he let me. He was like that. Gave us anything we asked for. Well, Nic and Kris never asked for much, but..." She didn't finish whatever she perhaps was going to say.
Sam slid his right hand from her back down her arm to her hand and looked at it, "this road life isn't really one that allows for family, like meeting someone and love. Do you think you want a family and all that someday?" He realized after he said it, how odd a question it was. But she was wearing her mother's wedding ring on the proper finger. He wondered if it meant anything besides just being a piece of her family.
"Yeah, of course. I want to fall in love again, and have kids, and that little house with a dog and a cat and all that stuff. Do you?" Alex watched Sam's hand play with her fingers and smiled.
"Yeah, I want to think I can fall in love again. That someday I can be allowed, by myself, and everything, to have that life." He looked up from her fingers to her face, "It's hard in my family though. All my dad and Dean seem to think about is hunting things. Dean's just like okay with never being close to people. But I need to feel like I could get to close to someone again. That I can be happy again. I'm still getting over Jess, but I want at least a little hint of normal in my life."
"It's hard losing people you love. It starts to feel like the universe just hates you and is taking it out on those nearest you. After my dad died, I just felt like I wanted to sink into a hole and die too for a couple weeks. An..." Alex was about to share more, but her voice caught and she found herself unable to say it.
"I still sometimes can't help but feel guilty and responsible for Jess' death. I ignored dreams I had about it. I thought they had to be just dreams. I never told her who I really was, what my family really was. I feel like she died because I loved her, and she loved me and yet I never really let her know all of me. There was a huge part of who I was I never told her about. Because I thought she might not love me anymore because of it, or that it would put her in danger. But I guess just by loving her, I put her in danger." Sam didn't know what possessed him to reveal all of that, he just had to finally get it off his chest to someone. His eyes had welled up a little. Maybe he was remembering what Nic had told him about Alex having been in love and had some demon twist her boyfriend into someone she didn't know.
"I know." Alex nodded looking down after touching Sam's cheek and one of the tears that had slipped down his face.
"Nic mentioned your boyfriend, how long ago was that? And what happened?" Sam was curious. Nic hadn't really elaborated on what happened.
Alex looked a little stunned a moment, "David, he was the sweetest guy, and then over the course of a week, this demon who started stalking us latched onto David and just took everything he was. The person he used to be is like completely gone. It was the end of senior year, like a year ago now. Prom night I found him having sex with like the sluttiest girl in the class. He said what did I expect, when I wouldn't sleep with him. The real David knew I needed to take it slow, he was okay with it. But suddenly he wasn't. He called me a freak in front of everyone at school and told them I was a virgin, which apparently wasn't popular at my high school. Back before he changed, I told him about my mom. I left out the floating in air demon stuff, but otherwise I told him I was little more than a baby and witnessed her being raped and brutalized and killed. And, I never told Nic, I said he beat me up, which he did. But I knew she'd be furious to like a dangerous point if I told her that not just him, but he managed to talk some of the jerkier guys at school into help him, they may have been demon possessed or something, I don't know. But he and four other guys beat me up and raped me one night, on the black top behind the high school. It was after some pre-graduation event the school had." Tears were streaming down Alex's face now. "I know it wasn't really him, but it still looked like him and sounded like him. It's just the things he said and did weren't him. But it, it was hard."
Sam sat in shock for a moment before pulling her to him and hugging her again. "That's horrible, but why didn't you tell your sister? What do you mean she'd have been dangerously furious?"
"She wanted to go after him when she thought he'd just beaten me up. I think if she knew the whole story I couldn't have stopped her from going after him. She wanted to kill him, seriously. But she calmed down, but if she knew..." Alex shook her head against Sam's chest. "I was afraid of the two possible outcomes of them facing each other. I was afraid either she would kill him and I'd lose her. Or that he'd do to her what he did to me. Either way I couldn't have lived with myself. I almost couldn't anyway, but... Sometimes I think it almost would have been easier had David died. Because then he would have still been him. I would have felt horrible, but still felt like he was a good person who loved me. But my last memory of his face was with this wicked look in his eyes, and him hurting me every way he could. Oh god, that's probably a horrible thing to think."
"I don't know." He was still processing the whole thing. Sam could only imagine what that could have been like. "I just don't want to lose everyone I love, but I also want to have some kind of life besides just hunting. But I don't think I can, at least not till I figure out what happened to my mom and Jess. I need answers."
"Too many questions and too few answers." Alex held onto Sam now, feeling comforted by his very presence.
Sam was happy to stay like this, and just feel like he wasn't alone in this feeling. He squeezed Alex softly, holding onto her, "what about Kris? Does she know about what happened to you?"
Alex shook her head while it rested on Sam's shoulder. "No, I didn't want her saddled with that information. Especially if she had to keep it from Nic. So I didn't tell her either."
They sat a few minutes, alone together, before Kris emerged from the bathroom again, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Her hair damp and tussled from towel drying.