AN: I guess I forgot to say this. The Transgenic thing has been all over the news, so Sam and Dean do know about them. And I guess I should have said that in my world, hunters have already checked out the "lizard man" and "dog man" stories when they first came out in "New World Weekly" and other tabloids and concluded that they were not supernatural. Thanks for pointing it out.

Oh yeah, this fic is probably going to have MA undertones. Either that or neutral, no lovey-dovey stuff. Sorry ML fans. But no Logan-bashing, so don't stop reading.

Chapter 5

The four of them, the two Transgenics and the two demon hunters, filed up the rickety stairs of Logan's house. People in the know had taken to calling it Logan's even though it was still technically Joshua's. Max pushed open the door and let herself in. The others followed suit.

"Hey Logan. You in?"

A thirty-something man with a day's worth of blond stubble appeared. "Yeah. Hey Max. Alec…Oh."

Logan blinked, taking in the man wearing a weathered leather jacket layered over two shirts, the years etched in to the otherwise handsome and familiar face, hair slightly silver at the temples. And blinked again taking in the taller figure behind him with the tired but boyish face and prematurely graying hair. The Winchesters fidgeted under his scrutiny.

Max broke the uncomfortable silence. "This is Sam and Dean. They saved our lives just now and they needed a place to stay, so I told them they could probably crash here, if you don't mind. They can't spend too long in TC, you know, 'cause of the toxins. And Dean's hurt."

The elder Winchester muttered. "It ain't that bad."

Logan broke out of his stupor. "Yeah," he said, picking up his jaw from where it had fallen. "Yeah, sure you can stay here. The spare room has a bed already made and there's a cot somewhere that I can dig out." The exoskeleton whirred as he moved to make his guests comfortable.

"Thanks. You don't really have to do this," Sam started.

Logan shook his head. "No, I want to. Besides, if you saved Max and Alec's lives, then you deserve at least a warm bed and hot food."

"Ya had me at 'food'," Dean grinned.

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While Sam patched Dean up in the bathroom, Logan pressed Max and Alec for details on what exactly had happened while setting some water to boil on the stove. When the story was told, the two Transgenics were surprised to find that Logan was not as skeptical of their telling of the incident as they thought he would be. In fact, he completely believed what they said had occurred, ghosts and all.

At this point, Sam and Dean reentered the room and Dean announced that he was suffering only from a mild concussion and a small cut on his head, and that he was fine, the last part shot at his brother. Sam looked ready to disagree, but kept his mouth shut.

He then proceeded to ask Logan's permission to line the doorway and windows with salt and to carve some symbols in the wood, explaining that it was to keep spirits and various other supernatural evil out, while Dean parked himself down on the couch. Logan had done a fair amount of remodeling and redecorating to add his own touch to Joshua's old home, but to Max and Alec, this would always feel like Joshua's place.

After serving his unexpected visitors cold beers and putting the pasta to cook in the now bubbling water, Logan sat down at his desk and gazed at the elder Winchester with a thoughtful look, taking in the still handsome but weary and scarred face. After about a minute of this, Dean burst out, "Look man, I know I'm pretty, but I don't swing that way."

Alec exploded in laughter, resulting in a scowl from Max, although the corners of her full lips twitched with barely contained mirth. Sam stopped in the middle of pouring salt to look at Logan.

Logan started and stuttered, "Sorry, it's not that. I…do you remember me at all?"

Dean raised his eyebrow. "Ummm…no? Should I?"

"You saved my life, too, right around twenty years ago, here in Seattle, cursed watch. Ring any bells?" Logan looked directly into Dean's eyes.

Max stared. "Wait, you know him? Is that why you believed us?"

"Twenty years ago. That would have been when I was at school, right, Dean? So I wasn't around," Sam put in from the side.

Dean had a thoughtful look on his face, as if remembering something he hadn't thought of for years. "2002. The Cales. Super rich. Old family and all that shit. That watch was solid gold or something. Yeah, I remember you. Kinda scrawny and liked reading, computer whiz. Reminded me of Sammy when he was that age. Heh." Looking around at the equipment, "So," he remarked, lips quirking into a smile, "you're still into computers, huh?"

Logan glanced around at his roomful of electronics and smiled. "Yeah. I'm a cyber-journalist now. You know," he smiled, looking at Dean over the silver frames of his glasses, "you're the one who inspired me to become a reporter in the first place."

At this statement, everyone's eyebrows shot up. Sam snorted. "I'm sorry. Dean conned you into thinking he was a reporter and made you want to be one when you grew up?"

"Shut up, Sammy. I was 23. I looked too young to pass for a Fed and we needed info, so what better way to get it than to pose as a reporter? I mean, people tell you all sorts of shit 'cause they want to get their name in print. 'Specially the girls." Sam shook his head and went back to putting down the salt lines.

Logan laughed. "Actually, that was one of the reasons I wanted to be a reporter in the first place. People tell you things. Anything you want to know, you try hard enough and they'll tell you."

Alec spoke up from his position leaning against the doorway. "Okay. What I want to know is, if you met Dean-o here when he was around my age, why didn't you say anything when I was pointing a gun at you the first time we met? I mean, you didn't really even look that surprised." He shrugged. "Just wondering. And maybe it's just the cat in me, but I'm curious how the guys at Manticore managed to get a hold of Dean's DNA to make me, 'cause I'm guessing he didn't just pop in to donate."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I was wondering that, too. You got it right that I've never donated anything because we've got to be pretty damn careful in our line of work. And besides, how old are you, kid? Twenty-two?"

Alec thought. "Yeah, I think. Almost twenty-three probably."

Dean gave him a hard look and Sam furrowed his eyebrows. "You don't know how old you are?"

The X5 scoffed. "It's not like birthdays were really big where I grew up."

"Most of us chose our birthdays after we got out," put in Max, from her place standing near Logan, arms crossed and a hard look in her eyes.

Dean glanced over at his brother. "Damn. Makes our childhood seem almost normal, huh, Sammy?"

Sam's lips twitched and he grimaced. "Not really, but at least we had birthdays sometimes."

"Well," Dean went on, "the reason I wanted to know was because at the time you were born—you were born right?" Alec and Max nodded. "'Cause it would be weird of you hatched out of eggs or something—Anyway, I was about, what, twenty? So give a few years for all that messing around with the genes and stuff and you get me at like fourteen, fifteen. Now I know I didn't do any donating of bodily fluids around that time, unless you count with Susie Miller under the bleachers—and whew, man, she was something—so how did they get their hands on my freaking DNA?"

"You did spend a fair amount of time in hospitals with the job and all, so I'm guessing that's when and how," Sam mused. "And what did you mean by what you said about pointing a gun at Logan the first time you met?" He directed the latter part at Alec.

Logan answered his question. "He was supposed to kill me, but he didn't. And I didn't say anything about Alec looking like the guy who once saved my life because it would have sounded stupid. I knew for a fact, or so I thought at the time, that that man was dead. I even knew his real name, Dean Winchester, since the name he gave me when I met him was obviously a fake one." Curious eyes turned to the Winchesters.

Max broke the uneasy silence. "What do you mean, dead?"

The brothers glanced at each other, seeming to have a silent argument, judging by their facial expressions. Sam seemed to have won, since Dean sighed and began. "I'm guessing the thing that was all over the news in 2005?" Logan nodded his assent. "That was a shapeshifter. I killed it while it was still wearing my face."

Puzzled silence filled the room. Raising her eyebrows, Max said, "Okay, what's a shapeshifter?"

"It's a creature that can change its appearance to look like anyone," Sam answered in a matter-of-fact tone. By this time, he had finished with the salt and protection sigils and moved over to sit beside Dean.

Alec grinned. "Kinda like that one hot chick in that pre-Pulse movie. X-Men."

"Yeah. Exactly. 'Cept the only way you can kill one is with a silver bullet, right through the heart." Dean's face took on a dreamy smirk that soon appeared identically on Alec's with his next comment. "Man, Mystique was hot." He whistled. "Nothing but blue bodypaint and those little tattoos. Mmmm." He and Alec were practically salivating.

Both Max and Sam now donned the same look of disgust mixed with exasperation. "Get your brain out of the gutter, Alec." "Upstairs brain, Dean."

Logan broke in impatiently. The brothers were turning out to be a veritable fountain of information on the supernatural. "What about the bank robbery in '07?"

Dean raised his eyebrows. "What, were you stalking me or something? That was a shifter, too. And it wasn't really a robbery. We didn't take anything."

Alec did a double-take. "Wait a minute. You walked into a bank and pretended to rob it to get at some shapeshifter thingy and walked out without any extra cash? Geez, you're even worse than Logan with his morals and stealing only from the bad guys thing. Seriously."

At this point, the timer for the pasta went off and Logan rose to drain and serve the spaghetti. Max automatically moved away to keep from accidentally brushing against him. Noticing this, Sam and Dean raised their eyebrows, but said nothing.

Sam put his research face on. "So, what can you tell us about this spirit, Ben? Was he a Transgenic like you guys? We need to know anything you can think of, anything."

Max sighed. "Yes, he was a Transgenic. He was in my unit. A group of us ran away from Manticore in '09. Ben always used to tell us stories. I don't know how they started, but I remember him just telling them. Maybe it was his way of explaining our world to himself in a way that made sense, I don't know."

She told them about the Blue Lady, the sacrifices involved in pleasing her, how being a good soldier put you in her good graces. Voice trembling slightly, she told them about the Good Place, where when you woke up in the morning you could stay in bed as long as you wanted. She told them about finding out about the people Ben had been killing to prove his faith in the Lady, his insanity, how he'd begged her to kill him in the end, and how she'd done as he'd asked.

The four men listened to the low, melodic voice telling them of a beloved brother. The hum of the computer in the background blended with the distant barking of a dog and the sound of sirens nearby.

Alec had already heard the story a couple times, but it still brought up emotions in him that he'd never felt before his liberation from Manticore. He quietly moved to put his arm around Max, to give her what comfort he could offer. She leaned into his touch, her hair swinging into her face, hiding sad eyes.

Sam thought of the stories his own brother used to tell him at night when they were children. They were tales of adventure and the exploits of characters suspiciously like their small family, with Dean or their father as the hero, but all of them with the subtle undertone of "I'll always protect you."

Dean unconsciously moved closer to Sam when Max spoke of how she had followed her brother's wishes to kill him to save him, thinking of the times when he couldn't bring himself to kill Sam, how he would never be able to, even though he'd promised to do so when it became necessary. He admired the strength emanating from the mysterious young woman sitting before him.

Logan felt an emotion he'd often experienced often over the past year and a half, the ache of not being able to hold Max the way Alec was doing now, to ease away her sorrow with a comforting touch, and the pain of realizing that although Max had never told him the whole story, never told him that Alec was Ben's twin, she had obviously confided in Alec.

As Max finished her narrative, the room fell silent, each occupant lost in his own thoughts.

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AN: Well? Angsty enough? Should I do a follow-up fic about Dean saving Logan from the Cales' cursed watch? Please review. I'm addicted to reviews. I get withdrawal symptoms without them. ;P