Part One: Down the Rabbit Hole

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Scene Five

~Same motel room in the outskirts of Seattle, June 18th, 2007~

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'Still hurts like a bitch!'

Grimacing at the pain radiating from his injured shoulder, Alec still rotated the blade a few more times. It wouldn't do for the muscles to become stiff.

As gunshot wounds went, he had been incredibly lucky. The bullet might have nicked the artery, but otherwise had passed straight through. No broken bones, no healing over the foreign body and having his immune system working against him, no need for Sam or Dean to dig the piece of metal out of his flesh. As soon as they had applied pressure, his transgenic healing had kicked in and knitted the torn tissue back together at a speed no other mammal organism could achieve, not even with the help of modern medicine.

At this point, only just over thirty hours since he had sustained the wound, the scab was thick enough to not tear at a bit of a strain anymore, and old enough that it didn't itch anymore either. By the end of the week, only a scar would be left and after another week or two there would remain nothing at all.

"Are you alright?"

Sam, who was sitting at the small table attached to the windowsill, several books as well as his laptop perched in front of him and running the pictures of those Indian symbols through an enhancing program, frowned at Alec when he caught on to what he was doing.

Alec dropped the arm to his side and leaned back on the bed he was sitting in.

"I'm always alright." he smirked.

Huffing, the tall Winchester looked from Alec to his brother, who was sitting on the other bed, busily cleaning an impressive collection of guns and other assorted weapons, and back again. "Now why don't I believe that?"

"Cause you're a suspicious stick-up-the – Ow!" Something hard had hit his head. Carefully fingering the growing lump on the back of his head, Alec looked down on the mattress where the wet stone Dean had flung at him was innocently lying against his folded legs. The glare the transgenic sent Dean's way did nothing but provoke an all too familiar evil grin.

"What? I'm the only one who gets to insult him like that."

"It wasn't an insult." Alec would have felt like pouting if he hadn't been too old for that. "One of my best friends is one too." Cocking his head in contemplation, he added, "Although she usually resorts to violence, as well, if I try to tell her that."

"You tell a girl that she's..." Sam eyed him incredulously before shaking his head. "Never mind," he declared and returned to stare at the computer screen. Alec couldn't help but think that Logan, the infamous cable hacker Eyes Only of future Seattle, would kill for a piece of pre-pulse equipment like that.

Silence descended once again over the trio, the brothers both occupied and agreeing that daytime TV wasn't worth turning on Alec's beloved boob tube for.

Sighing, Alec picked up the wet stone and twirled it in his hand. He tossed it up in the air and caught it with his other hand.

The mouse clicks on Sam's computer and the scratchy noise the brush made with which Dean was cleaning the barrel of a black Glock seemed unreasonably loud.

Sighing once again, loudly, he put the wet stone on the nightstand with a satisfying crack. Over at the window, Sam flinched.

Alec scanned the room, but nothing caught his interest. His fingers itched for the wet stone again and one of those wicked looking knives his lookalike had spread before him, but if Dean was anything like Mole, he wouldn't let a total stranger mess with his weapons.

Besides the feeling of ants running under his skin from this forced inactivity, it rankled Alec like nobody's business that he wasn't able to do anything to get himself back to where he belonged. Sam looked like he knew what he was doing though, and Alec himself wouldn't have the first clue where to start.

"I'm bored!" he finally announced and watched both of Sam's hands fly up in the air, annoyance plainly written all over his face.

"Billions of dollars in research and development, and they couldn't x-out the ADD?"

That was plain unfair. He'd earned all those issues he had, including the apparent attention deficit. Before he could tell Sam so, however, the bone handle of a long hunting knife was stuck right under his nose.

"Why don't you put yourself to use, then?" Dean nodded at the nightstand where the wet stone was still waiting, shaking the knife in his hand a bit to emphasize his point.

Alec grinned at him, the most genuine since stumbling into this world, and took the knife from the older man, carefully sliding it out of its leathery sheath. Reaching for the wet stone, he got to work.

About fifteen minutes later, Alec could honestly say that the silence didn't bother him so much if he was just able to occupy his hands.

He had been vaguely aware of Dean's initial scrutiny, but after the man had made sure his knives were in capable hands, he himself had moved on to the shotgun Sam had pointed at Alec a day (a lifetime) ago.

The familiar rhythm of sharpening a blade was soothing in a way Maxie or Joshua would never be able to understand. For Max, ten long years on the run from their creators (until they caught up with her) and loathing all things Manticore, the task was a necessary evil of the times they lived in. Big, gentle, canine Joshua just didn't have enough experience with any kind of weapons for the task to be even remotely familiar.

For Alec, on the other hand, this had been his life, all twenty years of it, until Max had come along and blown his home to pieces. Sometimes Alec still resented her for it, as much as he understood it was part of the brainwashing Manticore's alumni had all undergone.

He would never say it out loud, but he kind of missed the two of them. The first real friends he'd ever made, even with all the posturing and snarling between him and Max. He even missed Mole and Logan (and some others, but he wasn't going to rattle down the full list), whenever he was consciously aware that they weren't just a call away for the foreseeable future. No pun intended.

He was about to reach for another knife, a relatively short but ugly looking K-bar, when Sam's voice broke the comfortable silence at last.

"Okay, I think I've got something." He pulled some notebook with a stained and darkened leather cover across the table for reference, haphazardly juggling his laptop aside, while Dean and Alec both turned to look at him expectantly.

"Some of it was just too weathered to be any good," he explained, "but essentially, this is a 'Use with caution.'"

"Does it say anything on how to get me back?" Alec asked hopefully.

"Maybe. Back in your time, 2020?" Alec nodded in confirmation. "Was that night a full moon?"

"Yeah, actually." He furrowed his brows in question. "So what?"

"So, I think, to be sent into the past you have to cross the gate during a full moon. And to go back into the future..."

"...you have to cross through during new moon." Dean completed his brother's sentence, nodding as if any of this made perfect sense.

Sam hummed, sprawling his long legs out in front of him and rubbing at his eyes. "If I got this right, yeah." Noticing Alec's alarmed look, he tried to soothe, "I'm pretty sure that I did. But like I said, some of it was too washed out to read."

Taking a calming breath, Alec managed to sound not too doubtful when he replied, "Yeah. Okay."

God, he wished he could talk to Joshua. The big dog always managed to lighten his mood somehow. Thinking about Joshua, however, made him realize another not so little hole in Sam's explanation.

"Wait. Exactly when in the future will I get back to? Will I get dumped on the same day I stepped through first?"

The unsure face Sam made didn't help the sudden knot in his stomach. He really hadn't thought about the consequences of his little adventure much since waking up in this room yesterday afternoon.

"It doesn't say," the younger Winchester answered. "But I got the feeling that there's some consistency to the magic of that gate. The tone of it all suggested that the amount of time you go back or forth is essentially always the same."

Alec glanced back at Dean to see if he understood any of that, but Dean wore an equally confused expression as Alec himself. "In English?" the older Winchester demanded.

Sam seemed used to simplifying his words for his brother. He didn't miss a beat when he clarified, "The gate sent Alec back thirteen and a half years, it will send him forward thirteen and a half years. If he'd gone through December 2019, he would have landed in June 2006, and so on." He shifted a bit to talk to Alec directly, "Now I'm not sure if it will deposit you back from where you started, but I am pretty confident that the worst it will do is add a month to the day you disappeared."

That was an equally comforting and terrifying thought. As glad as the young transgenic would be to be back in his own time even if it was a month too late, it would also mean that his friends in TC would have to wonder for a whole month if he was dead or alive. Captured by White and his stinking Breeding Cult or just up and left for them to fend for themselves. It stung that Max would probably consider that last possibility as serious as any other.

"A month," he parroted gloomily and Sam nodded, apology openly in his eyes. Slumping back onto the bed, Alec closed his eyes in defeat. There really wasn't anything he could do about that. He shot right back up as something else came to his mind.

"A month!" he repeated, incredulous and irritated. "Does that mean I am stuck here for another four weeks before I can go back?"

"Essentially," Sam winced, in sympathy or discomfort Alec couldn't tell.

"Great!" Alec snarled. "And what am I going to do until then?"

He was pretty sure that, if left to his own devices, he would get himself into trouble faster than he could blink in this shiny, seemingly untainted pre-pulse America. He knew himself too well, remembered what it was like straight out of Manticore's sheltering walls and thrown into that exhilarating strange new world. Alec hadn't seen much of the pre-pulse world outside the motel's window yet, but he had no doubt it would feel exactly the same.

The brothers shared a glance for a moment, one of those looks that was packed with a whole conversation without ever using words. Some part of him that he would never acknowledge – except for the darkest, worst, loneliest nights – felt envious, inexplicably longing for the twin he never met.

"You could come hunt with us." Dean proposed at last after an encouraging nod from Sam. "I'm curious about those super-soldier abilities of yours."

"Hunt?" Alec repeated, cocking his head and trying the word on for taste. "Hunt what?"

His lookalike mirrored his move, an amused grin tugging on his lips. "Haven't you ever wondered what we were doing out there in the woods when we found you?" he asked.

"Well, yeah, but..." that wasn't any of my business, he wanted to tell them, but Sam spoke over him, the steely tone in his voice softened by his own amusement, "Or do you still think we're serial killers?"

Well. Arguably, they were still insane, but... they didn't behave like any serial killers he's ever heard of. "No, I guess not."

"Good."

Dean held his hand out, and Sam flung the notebook he had been consulting earlier on over Alec's head. His brother caught it cleanly out of the air and smacked Alec in the chest with it. Grabbing onto the leather bound pages before they fell into his lap, Alec curiously looked at Dean, at Sam and at the book in his hands. It was pretty heavy for such a small thing.

"Then let me introduce you to the things that go bump in the night." There was a decidedly maniacal edge to the excited glint in Dean's eyes.

An hour or three later, Alec still sat, speechless and wide eyed, on the bed flanked by both Winchesters with their Dad's journal lying opened in front of them on the rumpled bedspread. When he finally found words, it was to say, "You two are total freaks, you know that? Nut-jobs, the both of you!"

Nevertheless, he turned another page in John Winchester's journal. If the insanity was genetic, Alec found he didn't care much anymore. This was all too exciting. And besides, there was that magic portal (Devil's Gateway) he had an appointment with in about a month, so who was to say all this other stuff wasn't real? Only one way to find out for sure...

"So how do you kill a wendigo?"

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~ End Part One~

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A/N: So, last chapter for part one. Thank you guys for all the awesome reviews! All of them made me smile and many of them grin like a lunatic =D

The second part is currently with my beta, but she's pretty busy so I don't know when the next installment will be up. If you're still interested after reading this chapter, though, there's this little gadget called story alert ;) Or just keep your eyes open XD

Love, Rachel