A/N: Thanks for all those lovely reviews! I'm glad you guys are enjoying this so far =D And since the question came up a few times, there are about 18 scenes in total, 14 1/2 of which have already been written. I'll try posting a new scene every two days or there abouts, but my beta is kind of busy with RL, so I might not be able to keep it up. And now on to the story:
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Part One: Down the Rabbit Hole
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Scene Three
~A motel room in the outskirts of Seattle, June 17th, 2007. Yeah. Pretty whack.~
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"Did I ever look that young and innocent?"
The door to the room clicked shut as Sammy and Dean returned from their quest for answers. Alec kept his eyes closed and continued to flex his fingers against the soft bed sheets.
"Sure," Sammy's voice moved from one end of the room to the other, turning off the TV on his way to the bathroom. "If you didn't ruin it by waking up."
"I was watching that!" Alec complained, still refusing to open his eyes.
After the absolutely outrageous revelation about three hours ago, the brothers had left for the local library in order to find out what exactly had happened to Alec and how to get him back where he belonged. Why they thought they were going to find the answers to those questions in a library, Alec had no idea. Under what category were they going to look? Intertemporal mechanics? Magic portals?
Alec was still in a kind of stupor then, not really believing their impossible theory of having gone back in time. And Dean had been right to be reluctant to leave him on his own. He'd had no intention of staying with those freaks. But Sammy had insisted on his brother's company and wrung a promise out of Alec to stay put. It wasn't more than a lip-service, to be sure, but as the pair had left, Sammy had taken a moment to turn on the television and thrown Alec the remote.
Honestly, he just wanted to watch the episode of 'The Simpson' which suddenly played out on the screen, before he was going to blaze. Dix, the tech unit responsible for all things computer back in Terminal City, had managed to download some of the episodes – Alec hadn't even bothered to ask from where; it was safer that way for all parties involved – and they were absolutely hilarious.
When the show was over, he decided there was plenty of time to quickly switch through the other channels, take a look at what else was on before the brothers returned. Most of the channels and programs were unfamiliar, but that fact was quickly shoved to the back of his mind.
Somewhere along the line he settled on a music station and sprawled out on the bed. It was pretty comfy. Better than any cot he had slept on for the last couple of months. When a five minute news program announced the date as June 17th, 2007, Alec was mellowed enough to just go with it. Fine. If these two clowns thought they knew what was going on, he might as well sit back and enjoy the lodgings for the time being. He was too darn comfortable to get up anyway.
"No, you weren't," Dean cut through his lethargic bliss. "Dude, will you stop it with the milk-tread! You're not a cat!"
Milk-tread? Oh. He was still flexing his fingers. Alec had to smile at the irony of Dean's unwitting statement. "But I'm comfy," he all but whined.
"Yah, well, you're on my bed, so don't get too comfy."
Now that was rude. He had been shot, after all. Only when the thought had passed was Alec aware that his mouth had been moving. Huh. So maybe Max was onto something when she accused him that his brain was hot-wired to his tongue, bypassing any of the inhibitions and censors that normal people seemed to have in place.
"And I care about that, why?"
Now Alec opened one eye and smirked up at his counterpart. "Because you think I share your DNA, and it's not socially acceptable behavior to seriously harm your own kin."
A loud snort sounded from the bathroom just before the water was flushed. Dean, on the other hand, had taken on a contemplative look and, half dreading, half hopeful, asked, "Yeah, about that... You never told us your name. It isn't Ben, is it?"
Instantly tensing up, Alec at last gave Dean his full attention. "No," he replied flatly, rising up on his elbows. If this really was 2007 (and he was actually starting to buy that story) exactly what would they know about X5-493? "It's Alec."
"Braeden?"
Resentment quickly made place for bemusement.
"McDowell," Alec replied, frowning in helpless confusion. "And how the hell do you know about my brother?" And for that matter, when had he started claiming Ben as his brother and not just some psycho lookalike?
"Brother?" Dean now looked as befuddled as Alec felt. "Lisa never said anything about a brother."
"Lisa?" He was starting to get sick of these one word sentences of his, but he felt as if he had been thrown into a stage play without learning the script beforehand.
"Ben's mother," the older man told him in a way that suggested Alec really should know that. "She said Ben wasn't mine, but..."
So not his Ben but some kid Dean thought was his. Alec's muscles loosened in sudden relief. Only to tense up all over again. Oh. Oh. Alec really should have seen that coming from miles away.
"I told you," he started exasperatedly, "I know exactly where I come from, and it ain't your family."
Although, if he was going to accept the fact that he had been dumped in 2007, he might also start considering the very real possibility that he was actually facing the template of the human part of his DNA.
"So you were talking about two different people just now, right?" That was Sammy, trying to clear things up. The jolly green giant was leaning against the door jamb to the bathroom, having followed his brother's and Alec's conversation from the sidelines. He ought to start thinking of the younger brother as Sam, really, since 'Sam' had already told him off twice for using the apparently hated nickname before their trip to the library.
His mind was already spinning in a different direction, though, an annoying niggling he hadn't been fully aware of suddenly coming to the fore.
"Hey, wait," he sat up properly in excitement, the dizziness the action caused receding in a matter of seconds this time around. "I do remember the name Winchester. They were serial killer brothers, around two thousand... well, I guess around now. So that's you, huh?"
Sammy instantly went on the defensive, grounding out a fierce "We're not serial killers!" while his brother scowled wordlessly.
"Yeah, whatever." This was so awesome. In a freaky sort of way. "Of course, you're supposed to have died in helicopter crash or something like that." Trying to remember that part more clearly, Alec frowned. "Although they never did recover the bodies, I think, so who knows?" The frown dissolved again in a brilliant smile. "Well, I guess if you didn't do me in by now, you're probably not going to."
"I'm starting to seriously reconsider the option," Dean muttered darkly, but once Alec was on a roll, he usually wasn't deterred that easily. A well-known and annoying trait that had earned him more than one head slap from Max.
"You know, Brother Ben was a serial killer, too. Took the teeth of his victims and offered them to some deity he and his rug-rat brothers and sisters made up. Huh. Maybe the insanity's in the genes after all."
That thought, however, wasn't at all comforting.
Sammy took advantage of his momentary silence and, getting over the serial killer accusation and leaping onto another topic, cut in, "Okay, can I just stop you right there and say how much sense you're not making? You claim you're not related to us, and two minutes later you go on about insanity being genetic!"
Uh, oh. He had let that slip, hadn't he?
"Uh... It's a long story?" he tried. He really didn't want to get into the whole genetically-engineered-life-form thing.
The brothers had a different idea, though. "Well, then you better get started." Dean replied calmly, a familiar smirk on his lips. Max was right, once again. It really was annoying.
"It's a really, really weird story?" Again, no such luck.
"We deal with weirdness on a day to day basis. Try again." Honestly, Alec could believe that. Neither had even batted a lash at the thought that he wasn't from the same year as them.
"You know, you never told me what you found in that library. Did you find out how I got here? And how to send me back?"
"Alec!" Sammy had the audacity to smile in amusement. Alec was liking the guy more and more. "Start talking."
So he did. With a bit of editing.
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to be continued...
