Hi! Not dead, but I was sick. Then I went on a trip, got sick again, started school, and went another trip.
Lisa frowned as she examined the report on her desk. Percy's team had raided Cadmus and now she had to figure out what she was supposed to do with the projects they had confiscated. Well, at least she could keep them on ice until she figured it out.
Bree woke up abruptly. Or she tried to anyway. She had fallen asleep in a Miami Motel room and was now sitting on a giant mushroom. Not-Bree appeared above her, slowly fading into existence, grin first.
"Somebody's been traumatized." she said in a sing-song tone.
Bree scowled. "That's what happens when you watch someone die."
"But Clara wasn't exactly a someone." Not-Bree replied. "She was "some" of a "one" but it was impossible for her to become anything more than a piece of a greater whole. The whole could be saved, but the pieces always die."
"What are you talking about?" Bree demanded.
"If the whole had been their there you would have saved her, but the piece wasn't important enough on it's own so it died." Not-Bree explained.
"She!" Bree corrected angrily. "She died and there wasn't any way for me to save her!"
"Oh, but there was." Not-Bree told her, tossing Bree a small bottle. "You just forgot about it."
Bree stared at the bottle in her hands.
"Phoenix tears." she whispered. "I forgot, how could I forget."
"I made you forget." Not-Bree proudly declared. "You can't ignore your own mind, and you can't trust it either."
"Clara was supposed to meet the Doctor!" Bree shouted.
"And she did." Not-Bree stated. "Or she will, just not that Clara, there are others you know. We know about other Claras. Incomplete Claras. There was one at the Dalek Asylum and she saved the Doctor and she died. There was another one in old London and she met the Doctor and she died. Then there's the one in modern London. She met the Doctor, and lived on to travel with him."
"How can their be other Claras?" Bree asked despairingly. "It doesn't make any sense."
"We didn't get that far before the worm was removed." Not-Bree replied. "Maybe you should take a look at those journals if you really want to know. In the meantime why don't you take a look around inside your head. There's a leak in here that needs fixing."
The pond Bree had seen the last time she'd been drawn into her own mind had grown into a lake, complete with a sandy beach.
"Okay. So the beach is new, but not really all that alarming. I mean, I did love swimming as a kid." Bree stated.
"If you say so." Not-Bree replied. "It is your mind after all, but if your not careful you might just lose it."
Bree gave her a look. "I thought we'd already decided I was insane."
"Yes, you are insane, but losing your mind is something completely different. Especially if you lose it to someone else." Not-Bree warned.
"And why should I believe you? You already made me forget." Bree pointed out angrily.
Not-Bree's grin widened. "You're learning. With the way things have been twisted you can't always trust your own mind. No one can really, memories can lie, but your mind was designed to lie to you. Remember reading Batman comic books and watching Doctor Who on the BBC? Lies, lies, lies. The worm designed your mind in a way meant to lie to you, and now that it's gone, you need to be the one shaping your own mind before someone else takes the job."
Bree woke up in her Miami motel room with the knowledge that she couldn't trust her own mind. It made her start laughing until she cried.
"What am I supposed to do? What the hell am I supposed to do now?" She muttered angrily as she clutched her head.
After Bree had composed herself "Shauna" went out in a loose fitting purple tank top, tight skinny jeans, lace up black ankle boots, and aviator sunglasses, with her bandanna as a head band.
Nate Westen wasn't anything special, just another gambling addict with more debt than he could handle so he was left alone, save for the occasional reminder that his debt hadn't been forgotten. The local operation the Bree had contacted had been waiting for Nate to get his hand on something interesting before calling him on his debt. Nate Westen wasn't anything special. His brother Micheal on the other hand... He was a bit too much for the local outfit to handle until "Shauna" came to town and called in reinforcements.
The first step was letting Nate know he still wasn't off the hook. Stealing his T.V and leaving a nice note in it's place did the job quite nicely.
The bar was a nice open place that served tropical drinks. Bree had ordered a Pina Colada and found herself a nice table under an umbrella. A nervous looking dark haired man in an ugly shirt sat down across from her.
"Are you Shauna?" he asked.
Bree smiled widely. "You must be Nate. I've been looking forward to meeting you."
"Yeah, look, this is all I have right now." he said, putting a few hundreds on the table. "I can get more, but it might take some time."
Bree picked up the money, counted it, and pocketed it. "Oh Nate, I know you can do a lot better than this. Didn't you ever wonder why we left you alone for so long? It was one part letting the interest pile up, two parts waiting for you to get something valuable, harassing you before you had something profitable would have been a wasted effort."
"But I still don't have anything!" Nate protested.
"Well it's not you, but I heard that your brother is in town, and he has a valuable set of skills. I'm sure he'll be able to get a lot of money in a short amount of time, and if he's not able to come with any ideas, well, I'm sure I can do something to inspire him." Bree said sweetly.
"This is just between you and me, alright? There's no need to get my family involved." Nate told her.
"But you just said you don't have anything and it would take you awhile to get more money, and I'm on a schedule, so I don't really have time to wait." Bree replied. She wrote something on a napkin. "Here's my number. Call me when you work something out with your brother. I like to be kept informed."
Bree didn't have to wait long for Nate to call her. "Hey, it's Nate. My brother has got this job lined up. It'll get us a couple thousand."
Bree frowned. "That's not going to be nearly enough. You know that Nate."
"Yeah, I know, but it's a start right?" Nate replied. "A few more jobs like this and we'll have the money."
"How long do you think that will take?" Bree asked.
"I don't know. Maybe a month or so." Nate replied uncertainly. "Mike doesn't exactly have a steady income. You kind of have to wait for the jobs to come in on their own."
"Uh, yeah, that's not going to work. I have a schedule to keep, remember?" Bree stated. "I lost a lot of time between here and New Orleans, and I have a little less than a week before I start to fall behind, then I'll have to start getting creative. You don't want to see me getting creative Nate. Trust me."
"Okay, okay. I'll talk to Mike, I'm sure we can come up with something." Nate said.
"Good." Bree replied. "Oh, but I should warn you, I do have standards. No slavery. Almost anything else goes, but if you get involved in that and I will make you wish I'd killed you."
The second step was getting some leverage to make negotiating with Michael Westen easier.
Bree was lounging on the plush couch in a high end apartment when her burner phone rang.
"What did you do with my mom?" a male voice demanded as soon as she answered
"You must be the older brother." Bree replied. "Didn't your mother teach you any manners?"
"Right let's start over. Hi. How are you?" Micheal answered with false pleasantness. "Where are you keeping my mom?"
"She's fine. Don't worry." Bree told him. "I just thought you needed a little incentive, that's all."
"It's only been two days." Micheal responded.
"Nate did mention my schedule right?" Bree questioned. "You have no idea how important my schedule is to me."
"The amount of money you want will take time to get. In the business you're in you have to know that." Micheal stated.
"Tell you what." Bree began. "I'll talk to my bosses, see if I can work something out for you, then I'll call you back."
"Okay. But if I could just talk-"
Bree hung up.
"He's going to find you, you know." Madeline Weston, an older woman with short white hair, told her.
She smiled. "Maybe, but the guys who want to capture and interrogate me haven't caught up with me yet and I really need something to occupy my time with since I watched a friend die a few days ago."
She got up and smoothed the wrinkles out of her yellow sundress.
"I'll be out on the balcony. I have calls to make. Watch her." She told the men Cartwright had sent down from New York.
"Hey, boss!" one of Cartwright's men, a brown haired wall of muscle named Johnny, called from the doorway to the balcony. "The lady wants a smoke."
Bree sighed. "Bring her out here, but make it clear that if she screams she gets shot. Not fatally, just somewhere it'll hurt a lot."
Johnny came out with Madeline a couple of minutes later.
"You should be ashamed of yourselves, treating a poor old woman this way." she complained.
"What do you mean? You're not in the trunk anymore, we get you what ever food you want, we're even letting you pollute the air with your cancer sticks." Bree replied.
"You're one to talk." Madeline muttered angrily. "You think I don't see you with that flask?"
Bree frowned. "Hey, what I drink only goes in me, with those cigarettes of your the smoke goes everywhere. Anyway, you shouldn't complain, I've tried to you my own experience to make this as comfortable as possible for you. But if you don't like it I can always get you a mattress, a bucket, and a storage container in the middle of nowhere."
"This is fine." Madeline replied.
"That's what I thought." Bree stated before going in and calling Michael.
"Micheal, it's me again!" Bree greeted cheerfully.
"Shauna, hi." Micheal replied. "You know, I think we got cut off before. If you could just let me talk to my mom that would be great."
"She's out on the balcony, smoking." Bree told him. "You must be pretty worried about her. You should be, after all, she is in the care of a mentally unstable young woman who recently saw a friend die. And I have a gun."
"If you hurt her-"
"You'll hunt me down and blah, blah, blah." Bree interrupted. "Relax, the guys upstairs have ordered me not to hurt her unless I absolutely need to. You know, Nate is really lucky to have a brother like you."
"What do you mean?" Micheal asked.
"You're Micheal Westen!" Bree exclaimed. "The Micheal Westen. I've heard a lot about you. The ex-spy with the ex-seal buddy and the ex-IRA ex-girlfriend. My bosses are very interested in you. They're willing to wipe away your brothers debt and let your mother go unharmed in exchange for you doing them a favor."
"What kind of favor?" Micheal inquired, sounding suspicious and unhappy.
"No idea." Bree answered. "See, the bosses aren't that focused on Miami right now, and well, you're pretty much stuck here. They just want you to owe them a favor so that when something comes up they can call you and you'll do whatever job they want. Then you never have to hear from us again. Of course you don't have to agree to that and can just get the money instead. But if you choose that option then I get to do whatever I think is necessary to motivate you."
"Your not really giving me much of a choice here." Micheal replied.
Letting Madeline Westen go was as simple as letting her walk out the door to the apartment. Of course, they had to pack up immediately in case Micheal came looking for them and then took measures so that if he did he wouldn't find anything, no matter where he looked.
Bree was celebrating her little victory with a rum punch she'd gotten for free by wearing a teal v-neck with spaghetti straps and a pair of low rise jeans when all the emergency sprinklers in the bar went off at once, leaving Bree soaking wet and looking like herself. During the rush to get out the door, someone grabbed her arm.
"Covers blown kiddo." A gruff voice told her. "Better come with me unless you want all these people to get hurt.
It was pretty amazing what magic could do. Just a few seconds and a couple of spells was all it took to make it so that no one would pay any attention to the alley where the screaming was coming from.
No matter how many times you've experienced it, screaming is really the only response one can have to the Cruciatus.
"That was pretty clever, faking your death back in Gotham. Too bad that life debt is still in effect otherwise it might have worked." Bree's torturer, a middle-aged dark haired man, said after releasing the curse.
The guy who'd picked Bree up up the bar, a feral looking redhead that Bree strongly suspected was a werewolf, was holding her up and keeping her arms behind her back.
Bree smirked. "How is Draco? He must be getting a pretty big head without anyone to manage that attitude of his."
"Such an arrogant little mudblood. Someone should teach you a lesson." the man said, tilting Bree's chin up. "My fellows prefer using the Cruciatus as their main means of punishment. I prefer using methods that leave a mark."
He punched Bree in the face. Her head snapped to the side. He hit her a few more times in the face and stomach and even kicked her in gut once.
"That should be enough for now." He stated. "The real fun will start once we're somewhere more private."
Suddenly Bree was on the ground and the Death Eaters attention was elsewhere, fighting someone off.
"Run!" someone shouted.
Bree got up and stumbled away. Each move was painful, but she kept moving, leaning against buildings. No one took a close look at her. They assumed she was drunk and had just come out of a bar or a club. That suited her just fine.
Mama's medicines took care of the bruising and bleeding and the stuff from Urahara got rid of the post- Cruciatus shakes, but Bree was left with a tingling feeling all over.
Bree hummed as she examined a map. She was at a restaurant in Nassau, masquerading as a latina with long dark hair and wide hips. She had decided to wear a loose white, jeans, knee-high brown boots, and dark eye-shadow with her red bandanna as a headband.
"And really bad eggs. Drink up me hearties, yo ho." She sung under her breathe before taking of sip from a tall glass of dark rum.
"Alright." Dean began after climbing into the driver's seat. "No one finds out that we almost got taken out by a killer rabbit."
"You." Alice corrected. "You almost got taken out by the killer not-rabbit."
"Al-mi'raj." Sam said.
"And you screamed like a little girl." Alice continued, ignoring Sam.
"I did not." Dean argued.
"Yeah you did." Sam replied
"Whatever. The job is over, let's never talk about it again." Dean insisted.
His cell phone rang.
Sam and Dean's friend, Bobby, an older bearded man with a bit of a beer gut, was in a coma for no discernible reason. The hospital had tested for everything the staff could come up with and had gotten no results. They went to Bobby's motel to see if his affliction was "job related." It only took a couple of minutes to find the pictures and newspaper clippings taped to the back of the closet. Dean took down a picture of a white flower.
"Silene capensis" he read. "Which of course means absolutely nothing to me. Alice, did this thing ever show up in your big book of plants?"
Alice looked at the picture and thought for a moment. "I remember this. African dream root. It's illegal to use it in potions."
"Illegal? Why?" Dean questioned.
"Potion makers were experimenting with it when it was first imported out of Africa and people didn't always wake up after testing a new mix." Alice replied.
"Here. Obit." Sam said as he picked up a newspaper clipping. "Dr. Walter Gregg, 64, university neurologist. Went to sleep and didn't wake up."
"Any antidote for this dream root thing?" Dean asked.
"No." Alice replied.
"All right, you two stay here and see if you can figure out what Bobby was hunting." Dean instructed.
"What are you going to do?" Sam questioned.
"I'm gonna look into the good doctor myself." Dean answered.
"So what does African dream root do on it's own?" Sam asked.
Alice shrugged as she read from one of the books she'd brought in from the Impala. "Lucid dreams. Dream walking. All other information is blacked out in the older books and just isn't present in the newer ones. All I can figure out is that someone did something with it that resulted in something so bad that no one wants anyone to know about it. Or more than one, it's hard to tell."
"Maybe Bobby found out more." Sam replied.
They went back to the hospital to meet Dean in Bobby's room. Dean was already there, sitting net to Bobby's bed.
"How is he?" Sam asked.
"No change." Dean replied. "What you got?"
"Well, considering what you told me about the doc's 's wall is starting to make a hell of a lot more sense. Has been used by shaman and medicine men for centuries." Sam replied.
"Let me guess. They dose up, bust out the didgeridoos, start kicking around the hackey." Dean interrupted.
"No." Alice said. "Dreamwalking Freddy Kruger style. You can get inside people's heads and change dreams into nightmares."
"And killing people in their sleep?" Dean questioned.
"For example." Sam answered. "So let's say uh, let's say this doc was testing this stuff on his patients, Tim Leary-style."
"Somebody gets pissed at him, decides to give him a little dream visit, he goes nighty-night." Dean finished.
"But what about Bobby?" Sam asked. "I mean, if the killer came after him, how come he's still alive?"
"That would be a question for the guy that did this." Alice pointed out. "We just need to find him."
"Could be anyone who knew the doctor, had access to his dream shrooms." Dean replied.
"Maybe one of his test subjects or something?" Sam suggested.
"Possible." Dean answered. "But his research was pretty sketchy. I mean.. I don't know how many subjects he had, or who all of them were."
Sam sighed. "In any other case, we'd be calling Bobby and asking him for help right now."
"You know what? You're right." Dean agreed.
Sam gave him an incredulous look. "What?"
"Let's talk to him." Dean replied.
"Sure. But I think we might find the conversation a bit one-sided." Sam responded.
Alice caught on to what Dean was suggesting. "Not if you use the Dream Root."
"Exactly." Dean agreed.
Sam still looked incredulous. "You wanna go dreamwalking inside Bobby's head?"
"Yeah. Why not? Maybe we could help." Dean replied.
"We have no idea what's crawling around in there." Sam told him.
"Unless you have a better idea this might be the only way to get any information that can help Bobby." Alice stated.
"One problem though. We're fresh out of African Dream Root, so unless you know someone who can score some..." Sam trail off as Alice grimaced and looked away. "You know someone?"
"Well, yeah, maybe. I'd have to call him, but he's pretty reliable with that sort of thing." Alice answered.
Dean clapped her on the shoulder. "Well, what are you waiting for? Call him up."
Alice hadn't wanted to use Sam or Dean's cell phones so she went out, bought a burn phone, and demanded that Dean drive to the other side of town before making the call.
"Are we going to have to worry about being wacked after you make this call, because we've got enough trouble with the fuglies." Dean said.
Alice scowled. "No. Leo's the guy who get's stuff where it needs to be, and some places where t doesn't. He's doesn't order hits."
"How do you know this guy?" Sam asked as Alice dialed.
"He's my adopted brother." She replied. The phone rang twice before Leo answered.
"Hi Leo it's Alice... I'm fine, but I need your help with something. I'm in Philadelphia and I need some African Dream Root... No, it's not for me, I'm got a couple of friends that need it because their friend is in a coma and they want to know what happened to him, so dream root... ... 'Kay. Don't take too long. I want to ditch this phone."
Alice hung up.
"So uh, what's the word?" Dean questioned.
"He's going to make a few call and see if any of his contacts can get us some dream root today." Alice answered. "He'll call back when he knows."
"So do you have any idea who this contact of your brother's is?" Dean asked sometime later. Leo had called back and instructed them to wait in a parking garage on the level with the least amount of cars.
"Some woman woman named Bela." Alice replied.
"Bela? As in Bela Talbot?" Sam asked.
Alice shrugged. "He didn't mention any last names."
A brunet in a dark trench coat emerged from the elevator. "I think we have our answer." Dean stated as he got out of the Impala.
"Bela. Wasn't expecting you." he said.
"Just doing a favor for a friend." Bela replied.
"That's funny since you don't have any friends." Dean responded.
"At least wait for her to hand over the dream root before you get snippy." Alice chided.
"You must be Leo's little sister." Bela stated with a predatory smile. "Adopted little sister that is. It's funny, you look a lot like his cousin, the one who died."
Alice smiled. "You know, people who ask probing questions don't get far in this business." she warned. "So do you have the dream root or not?"
Bela took a jar out of her handbag and handed it to Dean. "Nasty stuff, not easy to come by."
"Not if you want it quickly and discreetly. You can order this stuff off the internet, if you don't mind waiting." Alice replied.
Sam and Dean had passed out almost as soon as they had drank the foul smelling yellow tea they'd brewed from the dream root leaving Alice alone with their unconscious bodies and a pen.
Alice woke up to Dean shouting, though she'd expected that when she'd graffitied his skin and had made him snuggle with Sam.
"Shut up, people are trying to sleep!" she reprimanded.
"No! Why would you do that!" Dean exclaimed.
"Dean if you were bored and sober in a room with two unconscious people and a pen, what would you do?" Alice asked.
Dean paused for a moment. "Okay, but net time you're coming with us just so I don't have to wake up to this."
"There's going to be a next time?" Alice asked.
"...I'm going to go scrub all of your "artwork" off." Dean announced before storming into the bathroom.
"What are these symbols?" Sam asked as he examined one of his arms. Alice sat up in bed and looked.
"Um, alchemic symbols, some runes and uh..." she tilted her head to the left. "Some bits of Gallifreyian."
"Gallifreyian?" Sam repeated.
"Uh, it's a um... made up language from an old sci-fi show." Alice replied awkwardly.
"You learned a fictional language?" Sam questioned with an amused smile.
"Not me, no." Alice replied.
Sam's smile fell. "Right, so... what does it say?"
"Nothing really, it's just random syllables." Alice replied. "I was just filling space with whatever I could think of."
Dean came out of the bathroom, his face and arms red from scrubbing. "Sam go get cleaned up, Alice get dressed, we're going to see Bobby."
One of Dr. Gregg's test subjects, a college student named Jeremy, was responsible for the attack on Bobby. Sam had gone to see if he was still at his dorm, leaving Alice and Dean to hang out with Bobby and one of his files.
"So you're the one the Trickster made to stop the Apocalypse." Bobby said.
"Something like that." Alice replied.
"So how's that going?" Bobby asked.
Alice shrugged. "Well there haven't been any signs of the biblical Apocalypse yet, so pretty well I guess."
"That's good." Bobby replied.
"Yeah, but it means I have to stay with Sam and Dean or the Trickster will kill everyone I care about and you." Alice replied.
"Me?" Bobby repeated, glancing at Dean.
"Well, you know, the Trickster wanted to me sure that we would keep Alice around." Dean explained.
"And you didn't think I needed to know that?" Bobby questioned.
"Uh, well- Oh look it's Sam. Hi Sam." Dean said.
Sam had just walked in. He shot a confused look at Dean. "So, uh, stoner boy wasn't in his dorm. My guess is he's long gone by now."
"He ain't much of a stoner." Bobby stated.
"No?" Dean said.
"No." Bobby replied. "His name's Jeremy Frost. Full-on genius. Hundred and sixty IQ. Which is sayin' some, considering his dad took a baseball bat to his head." He handed Sam a picture. "Here's Father of the Year. He died before Jeremy was ten."
"Looks like a real sweetheart." Sam commented.
"Injury gave him Charcot-Wilbrand. He hasn't dreamt since." Bobby continued.
"Till he started dosing with the dream drug." Dean said.
"Yep." Bobby agreed.
"How'd he know how to dig up your worst nightmare and throw it at you?" Dean asked.
"Hey, he was rooting around in my skull. God knows what he saw in there." Bobby responded.
"Yeah. How'd he get in there in the first place? Isn't he supposed to have some of your hair, your DNA, or something?" Sam questioned.
"Yeahhhh." Bobby began slowly. "'Fore I knew it was him, he offered me a beer. I drank it. Dumbest frigging thing."
"Oh, I don't know. It wasn't that dumb." Dean told him, laughing nervously.
"You did the same thing, didn't you?" Alice questioned.
"I was thirsty?" Dean answered.
"That's great. Now he can come after either one of you." Sam replied angrily.
"Well, now we just have to find him first." Dean said.
"And until you do neither of you can sleep." Alice stated.
Two days later and despite their best efforts, they weren't any closer to finding Jeremy. Sam and Dean were out searching. Bobby was working the phone, talking to contacts. Bela had reappeared and offered her help, with limited success and the magical solutions Alice was able to find were either dangerous or outrageously expensive.
"You know," Bela began after Bobby had gotten off the phone with Dean "I'm sure that we'd be able to find Jeremy easily if we could get in touch with some of your mother's business partners."
Alice looked up from her book, An Encyclopedia of Divination, and glared at Bela. "Maybe, but I don't know how to contact any of them."
"No, but you could call your mother and I'm sure she would be happy to help you out." Bela replied.
"That is a last resort option." Alice told her. "An absolutely final last resort option."
"Are you really going to let two people die just because you don't want to talk to your mother?" Bela questioned.
Alice frowned. "She never does anything unless she has something to gain from it."
"I'm sure she'd be happy to do a favor for her daughter." Bela insisted.
Alice shook her head. "No. If I called her she would do it and happily pretend she was doing me a favor with no cost. But it would be a lie because there would be a cost and it wouldn't be for me."
"Then why would she help?" Bela asked.
Alice sighed. "Have you ever had someone look at you, and it's like they're trying to find someone else inside of you and they're so disappointed that they can't find them? Because whenever I talk to someone that met her first they don't see me, they see her. But I'm not her and when people see that... When people see that I'm not her they don't start seeing me. They just see a bad copy of her. So, you see, my mother wouldn't help me for my sake, she'd help be for her sake and I can't- I just- just can't."
She put up her book in an effort to shut out the world. Bobby decided that it was best just to leave her alone for awhile and told Bela as much.
Bobby left to get dinner which meant Alice and Bela were alone in the motel room.
"It's been two days, you must be getting tired of reading about different kinds of divination." Bela said. "Maybe you should take a break."
"I guess you're right." Alice replied, putting down her book on cartomancy and picking up "Compulsion: Understanding Criminal Behavior" instead.
"That's not what I meant." Bela stated. "Don't you want to get out of this room and stretch your legs a bit."
Alice smiled. "Only if you come with me."
"I thought I'd stay here and consult the cards again." Bela responded.
"Then I guess I'll have to wait until Bobby get's back." Alice told her.
"Why?" Bela asked. "Don't you trust me?"
"Now that you mention it..." Alice began. "No. But then Sam and Dean don't trust you either, so I don't know why you'd even ask that, unless you're trying to manipulate me into leaving, in which case, I trust you even less. So why don't you just cut to the chase, because I can tell when people are trying to manipulate me.
"Alright." Bela replied, drawing a gun a aiming it at Alice. "Sam and Dean have something I need."
Alice smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Ah, now see wasn't that much easier? Apologies in advance."
"What are-" Bela began, but crumpled to the floor before she could finish.
"Envenerate."
Bela struggled almost as soon as she woke up, but found herself stuck in the chair Alice had placed her in.
"What did you do, glue me to the chair?" she demanded.
"No, I magicked you to the chair." Alice replied, wiggling her fingers. "Just because you didn't see my wand out didn't mean I couldn't do any spells... So here's the thing, you've pointed a gun at me and tried to steal something that doesn't belong to you and I was thinking that I should leave you like this until Sam and Dean get back, unless you can come up with a good reason why I shouldn't"
"The Winchesters have a very rare gun." Bela answered. "It's worth a lot of money. Let me go and I'll give you fifteen percent."
"Sam and Dean would be pretty upset with me if I did." Alice pointed out.
"So don't stick around. You have no attachments to them, no reason to travel with them. You can just go." Bela told her.
"Yeah, here's the thing, I kind of... can't." Alice said, shrugging in a "what can you do" sort of way. "Five points for effort though."
"What do you mean you can't?" Bela asked.
Alice sighed. "There you go, asking questions again."
"What do I have to do for you to give me that gun?" Bela questioned.
"Why not just get a convincing fake?" Alice asked.
"They'd know." Bela answered.
"Too bad for you." Alice said dismissively.
"You can't honestly want to live like this. Traveling the country with two men you barely know with nothing to look forward to but cheap motels and bloodthirsty monsters. Help me and I can help you." Bela offered.
"If I wanted help I would have asked my brother." Alice replied.
Bela smirked. "We both know that's a lie. If you were to get help from your brother then your parents might be able to find you, and you don't want that, do you?"
"This life I have now, traveling the country, killing monsters, it's not all that different from the life I had planned." Alice said, ignoring Bela's question. "I was going to meet up with my cousin and travel the world, but she died before that could happen, and well, I can't go back to my family, not after the fight I had with my mother, it was bad."
"You're not the first teenager to fight with their mother." Bela told her condescending. "What was it about? Boys? Curfew? Grades? I know teens like you. Always thinking that insignificant little problems are the end of the world."
"Someone's resentful." Alice replied. "You know, you remind of someone. Manipulative, willing to break the rules to meet her own ends, didn't care about the consequent of her actions... You don't get that way unless you're damaged somehow, and she was damaged. Mostly mentally, though there was the time she was kidnapped and tortured, and then the time she went and poked around something she shouldn't have and ended up with a copy of herself."
Alice paused for a moment to let her words sink in. "It's that last bit that matters the most by the way, since that act led to every single problem I've ever had in my entire life, because without her- without her going off on an adventure and poking around in a place she really shouldn't have been, I wouldn't be here with you. So let's take a moment to frame the situation you're in alright?"
She didn't wait for Bela to respond before continuing. "See, she had this way of dealing with people she didn't like. She'd try to break them. It was a game. It was always a game. She harassed a family for years and finally left them alone when they couldn't fall any further. She drove one of her teachers to drink. Toyed with another one before having her disposed of because it wasn't fun for her anymore. And she would talk about it with so much pride in her voice." Alice sounded wistful.
"And then she died, but her left her copy behind. She left me behind. I have seventeen years worth of memories in my head, but only two of them are my own." She explained. "Because I'm a copy. A doppelganger. I'm trying to be my own person, but it's not that easy. It's like being an alcoholic who's trying to get sober. Only there's always liquor right behind them wherever they go, and they try to ignore it but it's always right there and they know it would be much easier just to turn around and pick up the bottle."
She sighed. "It would be so much easier just to ignore the two years and just be Bree, but I've been doing really well and it's getting easier to ignore my impulses. Bree's impulses. I do it mostly by being more empathetic to the people around me, but I'm still trying to work out which instincts I want to keep and which I should ignore, it's not like I can shut out fourteen years of development. But then you just had to show up."
She frowned. "Bree would be trying to break you by now. She'd get all the information she could and then continue to break you until she was sure you would never try to threaten her again."
"I don't break that easily." Bela said defiantly.
"Of course not, you're already damaged, that makes you more resilient." Alice replied. "But I'd just have to find a crack that has yet to heal and poke at it until your mind shatters, and I have resources that most people don't have. There are potions that I've read about. Ones to make you forget, others to make you remember. There are plenty of spells that effect the mind that I haven't had the chance to try yet. And I really would like to experiment a bit more with my illusions. I've mostly been replicating the real world, but I'd like to try some nightmarish stuff."
"Sam and Dean wouldn't like that." Bela pointed out. "They're too nice."
"Sam and Dean aren't here." Alice responded.
"But Bobby will be back soon. He'll-"
"He already came back." Alice interrupted, smiling. "I moved you into a different room, they just all look the same. Bobby thinks we ate dinner and then went to bed. So we have all night to play together. But that's something Bree would do, so I'm just going to wait for Bobby to get back, then go see the guy Leo recommend for Veritaserum."
"You said Bobby was already back." Bela stated.
"I lied." Alice said. "That's something completely un-Bree-like, by the way. She was creatively honest, but she didn't like lying."
"What was the point of telling me all that?" Bela demanded.
"Well, I just thought you should know that I'm inclined to respond to shoves with hammers, so you'd better think thrice before pushing me." Alice said cheerfully.
"Well that makes all my previous threats seem completely useless." Alice said irritably, leaning back in her chair. "Nothing I could do to you would ever measure up the threat of hell."
Alice had gotten the whole sick story out of Bela. Her father had abused her for years and her mother had called Bela a liar after her daughter had tried to get help.
Alice looked over to where Bobby was sitting in horrified silence.
"I am so completely done with this." Alice told him. "So call Sam and Dean and decide what to do, because I'm just-just done."
"You wanted to know." Bela said snidely.
"Yeah, but there's this thing called "TMI" and you just committed it." Alice replied. "I am going for a walk, a long walk, because there is no way to accurately quantify the amount of done I am with this." She gestured to the entire room and walked out.
Once she had walked about a block she took find all the vicious, protective, don't-you-dare-touch-what's-mine parts of Bree and then shoved them down deep. She loves Bree, really she does. Bree was the first person who ever tried to protect her. And she knows that Bree loved her, because how can you not love the only person you've ever met that truly understands everything about you? But Alice knew Bree, and it was a lot easier to see every crack and sharp edge when you were looking at it from the outside.
She covered up her own cracks with paint and lacquer (smile, Bree rarely smiled, so smile), smoothed out her sharp edges (don't insult, don't lash out), and hid up the parts of herself that belonged to Bree (all of them). What pieces she couldn't cover up she swept into a deep dark hole and ignored. Because she loved Bree, she really did, but looking in from the outside she could see what Bree was and how she affected people, and while she loved Bree, that didn't mean that she wanted to be anything like her.
X-overs: Burn Notice, Supernatural.
Trivia
1. Alice has an anti-possession tattoo on her right shoulder.
2. Alice remembered the flower from researching sleeping potions that would get rid of nightmares.
3. Things are about to get bad for Bree.