A/N: I'm not usually a humor-fic writer. If anything, I prefer angst. It shows through in this chapter, so be warned. I decided to update part 2 daily, just so you know. If I don't get waylaid by RL that is...

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Part Two: A Life in Passing

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Scene Two

~A motel in the suburbs of, July 1st, 2007~

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Two weeks into their trip, and Alec was packing his bag, what little there was to pack, before the Winchesters could tell him to leave. A spare pair of jeans, two t-shirts, some socks and boxer briefs and the thick cord jacket he had worn on that day when December 30th, 2020 had become June 17th, 2007. He hesitated over the wickedly sharp little dagger with the streak of silver worked into its steel blade that Dean had given him on loan back when he had asked Alec to come along. If this was going to be the only thing he would have left to remember the brothers by, he decided, he could live with Dean's anger when the man found out that Alec had stolen it.

The knock on his door startled him, and he turned to look at the bright green wooden surface for a moment, only to turn back to what he was doing without responding.

After the first two days of traveling together, it was decided that Alec would get his own room in the motels they stopped at. Not because the three of them didn't get along, but because it was getting a little crowded with three adult men in the usually small confines of a double motel room. Well that, and maybe his restlessness that made Sam's fingers twitch with the urge to throw pillows at him until he stopped moving so much.

The door creaked loudly when it opened, but Alec didn't turn to look. Instead, he headed for the bathroom and shoved his toiletries into a small plastic bag.

"What are you doing?" Sam's voice behind him asked, incredulous and just a little pissed off, and Alec thought it ought to be clear what he was doing, after the looks he had received earlier this evening when the two Winchester brothers had finally realized just what exactly they had willingly taken into their midst.

Alec shivered as he remembered the thrill of the hunt, chasing that werewolf through abandoned streets and into the wilderness. It had been exhilarating just letting go, being able to let the predator loose that he was meant to be in order to catch that beast of a wolf.

He didn't remember much of the actual fight. Just a jumbled mess of snapshots, really; sharp yellow teeth, blood-caked, coarse fur beneath his hands, hot foul breath on his neck, the sting of claws scratching his thighs.

What he did remember was coming down from his adrenalin high, dripping with blood (and not his own, not his own, dear God), a chilling smile on his face.

What he did remember was becoming aware of Sam and Dean's stares, wide, frightened eyes on him that cut deeper than the wolf claws.

What he did remember was looking back down at the werewolf; only it wasn't a wolf anymore. It was a young woman, younger than Alec, eighteen, maybe nineteen years old. Her body was a mass of cuts and bruises, and her head... her head had been severed from the rest of the body, torn off when the small silver blade hadn't been enough.

Ignoring the bile rising in his throat once more, Alec pushed past Sam through the bathroom door and threw the plastic bag into the bag on his bed, a canvas one they had bought for him at the same thrift store the jeans and t-shirts came from.

Sam stopped him from closing the latch, large hand squeezing painfully on the cuts on his arm.

He repeated sharply, "What are you doing?"

Yanking his hand out of the tight grip, not able to meet Sam's eyes, not even able to look at his face, Alec tied up the bag with jerky movements.

What he did remember was the uncomfortable, accusing silence on the long ride home and being ushered into his room, into the shower by Dean after making sure no one was watching. He remembered wondering why those looks hurt (so fucking much) more than any of the others he had received (Rachel, sweet, innocent Rachel).

"Alec!"

The bag was forced out of his grasp and thrown unceremoniously into the corner between bed and wall.

Whirling on Sam, Alec snapped, "I saw the way you two looked at me, Sam! You want to tell me I don't freak the hell out of you?"

Up until then, they hadn't realized what he was, not really. Alec had told them about DNA tinkering, making them smarter, faster, stronger, superior. Training them as soldiers. He hadn't mentioned the animal genes or Psy Ops or solo missions or not rating a name, only a designation or firing his first gun at the age of four and bull's-eying the target. They hadn't known. Now they did.

"So you surprised us, and what?" Sam gestured a lot with his hands when he was upset. Usually it was about his brother's stupidity. He was doing it right now. "You're not even giving us a chance to deal, you're just taking off?"

He didn't just sound angry, Alec realized. Sam sounded hurt, as hurt as Alec felt, and why was that? He was only trying to avoid getting kicked out of...

"Deal with what, Sammy? That I was an assassin who killed more people than he wants to remember?"

...the first real family he'd ever known. Crap. When had that happened?

Staring each other down for a few more heartbeats, Alec was the first to deflate. Sam didn't want to back down, didn't want him to leave, he understood that now, even if he didn't understand why. But Sammy didn't know the half of it, and all of a sudden, Alec wanted him to know.

He slumped down on his bed, elbows on his knees, staring straight forward because he didn't want to see Sam's emotions written all over his features.

"What you saw back there," Alec started only to stop again, not sure how to continue, not sure what exactly he wanted to get across to begin with. Taking a deep breath, he gathered his thoughts.

"They spliced cat-genes into our cocktail. And not just some. The X5 DNA-specifications contain up to forty-seven percent feline DNA. It's what allows me to jump so high or see in the dark."

The mattress shifted as Sam set down next to him, and Alec could feel his gaze, not angry or hurt or accusing anymore but curious, and for that he was grateful.

"We inherited some traits that Manticore didn't expect. They took advantage of some and tried to exorcise others."

"The fear of fire," Sam connected the dots out loud, quiet and calm again, and Alec was reminded of how soothing that voice could be.

"And most of our females go into heat."

There were pack instincts too. Take Manticore away and force them to stick together, and you were faced with a bunch of pack instincts even in the loners with feline DNA, or worse, reptilian. But that wasn't important right now.

"The instinct to hunt." Alec looked off into the distance, thinking of another place, another time when he and his unit siblings had been taken out into the woods beyond the wire around their cinderblock and concrete home.

"I was eight years old the first time I killed." Sam started in shock, but Alec kept recounting the 'first-kill-scenario,' as it had been called by his handlers. "Our XO took us into the woods. There was a death-row convict. He was given a gun and told that, if he got past us, he was free. No more prison, no more hiding. Sgt. Parker had us wait ten minutes, then he sent us after that man. We hunted him down, no problem. He never stood a chance. And when he drew his gun on me, I broke his neck."

"You just did what you were told," Sam tried to console him, but it sounded hollow to Alec's ears. And it was entirely beside the point. "You didn't know any better. And he did threaten you."

"You don't understand, Sam! I liked it, we all did! The thrill of the chase, of catching up with him? Hell, it was fun! A lot more fun than we usually had in there."

Alec hid his face in his hands a few moments, then ran shaky fingers through his hair and continued.

"And it was like that every goddamned time. Every time they sent me after a target. And, yeah, I may not have killed any of them if I hadn't been given the orders, but even the kill, once made, felt good! I hardly felt any regret. I was good at what I did!"

And he still felt proud of it on some level. It had been his job, once upon a time, had been all that he had known, and X5-494 had been one of the best, at least where skills were concerned.

Even Max, so rigorous in her belief that they could all be normal, leave the animal in them behind, felt it, that thrill of a good hunt, of getting one up on someone else. That, more than the lack of budget, was why she had become a cat-burglar when she had been alone out there before Manticore had gotten their hands on her again.

Heavy silence fell as Sam digested his words, tried to wrap his mind around them. "So, what changed?" he finally asked.

Alec laughed hoarsely. Indeed, what had changed? Everything. Nothing.

"There was this girl," he began, and while a lot of people back home may have had Max in mind, the truth was that it had started years earlier.

Now it was Sam's turn to laugh, a loud hyena-cackle of genuine amusement. "Why am I not surprised?"

"You wanna hear it or not?"

"Sorry." Properly chastised, Sam motioned for Alec to go on.

"She was the daughter of my last target. I posed as her piano teacher. I fell in love with her."

He smiled, bittersweet memories swimming up to the surface. After three, going on four years, it still hurt, but he wouldn't want to miss a single moment that he spent with her. "I didn't know why I felt the way I did, not back then. But I did know that I didn't want her to die. So when they told me I had to kill them both, I... I couldn't do it. I planted a bomb in her father's car and was halfway off their property, and I just..."

Swallowing, he tried to push against the sudden lump in his throat, the burning in his eyes, distance himself enough so that he could tell Sam the whole story.

"I turned around and tried to convince her she and her dad had to go to ground. She slapped me and ran to her father, and then the bomb went off, and my handlers pulled me into a car and shot me up to my eyeballs with sedatives."

Silence settled once again, both of them lost in thought. Alec didn't add that Rachel had died, didn't need to. For all the good it did her, she might as well have died in that explosion instead of wasting away in a coma for three years.

Finally, Sam sighed. "Alec..." He made to put a hand on his shoulder but thought better of it.

"If you say 'It's not your fault, they made you do it!'..." Alec began scathingly, but Sam shook his head.

"I wasn't going to. You have to come to terms with your past on your own. I don't think anyone can help you with that. But, Alec, the fact that you do feel remorse, now that you've come to know a different lifestyle... I think that speaks for itself."

Alec didn't know how to respond to that. No one who wasn't a fellow Manticore soldier, with the possible exception of Joshua, had ever just accepted him for what he was as easily as Sam Winchester seemed to have done bare seconds ago. Not even Max. Especially not Max.

Leaving the too serious moment behind as if a switch had been flipped, Sam suddenly smiled, a mischievous little twitch turning up the corners of his mouth. When he reached out with his hand, this time he didn't stop until it was wrapped around Alec's neck, over his bar code. Alec allowed it, even as Sam gently shook him to emphasize his words.

"And just to be perfectly clear: Dean and I want you to stay! Tomcat genes and all."

Shaking his head with a rueful but honest smile, Alec felt a sudden warmth wash over him that he had never felt that strong before. In too deep. The expression echoed through his mind, and it was true. It was more than slightly disconcerting how much the brothers'... (he might as well go ahead and spell it out) his brothers' opinion had come to mean to him. But right now, this moment of closeness felt good. Alec felt good.

Which, of course, was the moment when Dean decided to interrupt.

"Is it safe to come in now? You two done with having your chick-flick moment?" he called through the closed door.

Sam harrumphed exasperatedly, completely dissolving the remnants of tension, let go of Alec's neck and called back, "Yeah, Dean, the chick-flick moment's over!"

"Thank God!" was the heartfelt reply. A second later, Dean poked his head into the room, informing Sam, "You've got company, by the way. The bitch is waiting in our room."

Alec's eyebrows shot up at that. While Dean was as much of a player as Alec was, the younger man had never heard him speak so derogatory of a woman before.

Apparently, Sam didn't need any more information than that to know who Dean was talking about, and with a fierce scowl at his older brother (Alec assumed it was for the name-calling) and a pat on Alec's back, he stood up to walk to the room he shared with Dean.

Alec wasn't left to wonder for long how much of the conversation the older Winchester had heard, because as soon as Sam was out of the door, he stepped into Alec's room, first aid kit wedged beneath his elbow and demanded, "Dude, you're part cat? Freakin' unbelievable..."

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to be continued...

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A/N: Some facts about Alec's history at Manticore are either made up, canon, or taken from that awesome page I found. I'd give you the link, but ffnet's editor doesn't like internet addresses, I'm afraid, so you have to type it yourself: alec494 dot egoism dot jp.