Chapter Text
By the time Dean gets his head above ground, Alec is halfway down the alley.
He's walking away, head down, hands in his pockets and his shoulders thrust up around his ears. He doesn't look back, not once, though the girl Max is standing there with a wounded look on her face. She doesn't even react as Dean clambers the rest of the way up the ladder and gets his feet back onto firm ground. "What the hell?" he asks her.
She ignores him. She's twisting her hands together like a little kid. Dean pushes past her and takes a step to follow Alec and she puts one of those hands on his arm, like she's got the right, like she's got the ability to stop him. Dean is about to say something unforgivable when Sam turns the corner at the other end of the alley.
A coffee cup in his hand, of course. He registers Alec coming towards him with a little smile and then that smile turns worried. The back of Alec's head doesn't change at all. Maybe he doesn't even see his own kin. Sam takes a big breath and his mouth is open and he doesn't say anything.
"Hey!" Dean calls. Sam doesn't look his way. Sam stands there like a traffic light and lets Alec walk right by him. He's close enough to touch, close enough their sleeves probably brush together, and Sam does nothing but frown.
The boy keeps walking. He doesn't look back. Sam watches him go for a minute and then turns away, back toward Dean and the girl Max who's still standing there holding Dean back with her big dark eyes heavy. He shrugs her off.
"Don't just stand there, girl: go after him!"
Max doesn't go after him. She brings her hand back up to put it on Dean's arm again. He takes a step, not even really a threat, he wouldn't hit a pretty girl (he thinks), and Sam comes looming up. He doesn't look once at Max, or at the alley behind him. He's all eyes on Dean.
"Dude, no." He puts out both hands into his brother's chest. Dean can feel the warm coffee cup through his jacket, and the steam curls up to his face. "Dude," Sam says again, "no."
"What the hell," Dean asks again, helpless. He would beg, but he won't do it in front of the girl.
Max is shy now she doesn't have Alec at her side. Her all-black clothes look a little ridiculous in daylight, like a Hell's Angel in mourning. It wasn't so obvious underground. Wonder Woman on a bike forces a polite smile and hoiks a thumb over her shoulder. "So. I gotta blaze," she says, and Dean has no idea what that means.
"No you don't," he tells her. "You gotta tell me what just happened."
"I don't know," she says, sarcastic, "I think you traumatized the hell out of him."
"Why didn't he say anything?" Dean protests. "He could have said something before we got down there."
Max's dark brown hair hangs down her back and swishes against her clothes like an agitated tail. "He didn't think you'd believe him," she says.
"I don't," Dean shoots back. "How stupid do you think I am?"
She gives him a mean little smile and he can't help it, he gives it right back to her with interest. Max presses her strong lips together and gives Dean her good looks and doesn't say a word to him. This is pretty much the second when Dean realizes she is Alec's age and thus technically young enough to be his daughter.
He kind of knew that before, just looking at her, but it's right up in his face now, all nimble muscle and her knees like rubber bands.
Sam clears his throat, in case they'd forgotten he's standing there. "So he's not comfortable with hunting?"
"No," say Max as she whips around. Because now she's got somebody else to argue with, and that seems to be her default state. "He thinks it's gross and horrible and he doesn't want anything to do with it."
"Okay," says Sam, as if that's all. Now Dean's the one seething. He half-steps around Sam to go chase down the kid after all, and Sam steps with him and won't let him leave.
"You didn't see him," he appeals to Sam. The weapon he's been planning to give the boy is still in his jacket, warm next to his heart. Dean says, "He's not some delicate flower."
"Would it be so bad, if he were?" Okay, and now Sam is taking Max's side. He sips his coffee like he's at some kind of college class, and Dean just shakes his head and turns away. Sam says to his back: "You pretty much set out deliberately to scare him."
"Nuh-uh."
It's been a long time since Sam's managed to get his brother all the way to nuh-uh. They don't fight like they used to, because they're older or because they're not living out of each other's pockets any more. The things they don't agree on haven't changed over the years, so the same arguments over and over are comforting and a little boring, like following a familiar road home. Dean glances over at Max, who has a funny look on her face. She's also about three paces down the alley, half-gone and not quite able to go. Buttinsky.
"You sounded nuts, dude. Kill kill kill, is that really all hunting is about to you?"
Dean snorts. "Thank you, Arlo Guthrie."
"I'm just saying, you couldn't have made it about the people we've rescued? You came at it all wrong."
"Yeah? When's the last time you had to give that talk?" And Dean realizes how mean it is to say just before he says it: "You didn't even tell Rose. You made me do it."
But Sam doesn't react to that. He's got his hands wrapped around that coffee cup and his head down. Someday he will tell somebody, and he'll make a mess of it, apocalypse-remorse and everything, and start a riot. They both know it's better for Dean to always be the one who does the telling.
They'll have to tell Alec someday, and there's a conversation the kid will want to run away from. Dean lifts his head and there's Max still standing there, listenining on every word. There's something on her face, some kind of confusion, that wasn't there a minute ago. She doesn't even notice she's been caught.
"You find him for me, girl." He points a finger at her. "You know where he hides, right? You go find him and tell him --"
Sam interrupts. "Dean, if you just listened --"
"Tell him --" Dean works his mouth trying to come up with the right thing Alec should be told. But he gets a look at Max and maybe he doesn't have to come up with the right thing. Her mouth turns down and her eyes go big and wobbly like a cartoon character that's about to cry. And of all things he expected out of her, this isn't it. Dean ends up at: "You tell him, girl."
The kind of world Max and Alec grew up in, it's not just hunters' kids that learned stuff the hard way. Her clothes are worn, gray at the seams, bootlaces frayed and re-knotted. She sets her stubborn jaw and Dean swallows down the terrible fact that he likes her, hell, that he respects her, and that maybe she's the one he should have recruited as his apprentice.
"I don't take orders from you," says Max, as if she's read his mind. But he can read hers now, and can tell she's going to follow this one. She straightens herself up like she's got a cape she can swoop around her, and turns to go for real this time.
Dean watches the back of her head, how she doesn't look back even when she obviously wants to. Beside him, Sam sips at his coffee. "Maybe you should just give him some space."
There are a bunch of nasty things Dean could say right now, most of them about Stanford. Clearly he's getting older, because he doesn't say a one of them. When he turns away, back down the alley in the opposite direction that Max took, Sam follows at his elbow without the need to argue over it.
*
Max doesn't dare wait more than a few hours before starting back into the sewers. Just enough to check in with Asha, make sure she'll back their story about the S-1-W in case anybody asks. Just enough to leave five messages on Alec's voicemail. He hasn't answered, and probably won't till he quits sulking or till he completely loses his head and goes to confess all to the Ax Murderers Winchester.
With a groan that echoes off the concrete around her, Max realizes just how plausible a scenario that sounds: Alec's hangups are not to be underestimated. She trots onward to the next ladder through the gloom, and lets herself back up onto the night street. The pavement is shiny-slick, but for now the air is just an icy fog rather than full-on rain. She's not too far from Joshua's house. As Max heads out in that direction, she pulls her cell phone to start in on damage control.
"Original Cindy, the one and only," comes that warm voice out of the speaker.
"Hey," says Max. "It's me. Have you seen Alec?"
"He ain't in your bedroom sniffing your underwear drawer, if that's what you mean." Cindy makes a noise of disgust. "What'd he do this time?"
"Long story. He's not answering his phone and he might be doing something really stupid. Can you check Crash and... I don't know," Max falters. She stares into the dull fog, how it billows between the houses and hides the trash in the yards. "Anywhere else he would go to freak out."
"Girl, you talking like I spend my precious time cultivating his attention." The pause on the other end of the line is cautious, shy. "He like the high spots like you? You gonna make me climb all those stairs up the Space Needle just to see if he's there?"
"No, he's avoiding me." Max is sure of that at least. "He ditched me right in front of that guy you met, that guy with Alec's face only older. Can you talk to Logan and see if he can find out where that guy is staying? Alec might be there."
"Winchester you mean?" Cindy's voice firms: guessed what's going on, or enough of it to know it's serious. "I can talk to Logan. What if I find him?"
"Call me. And, like, the biggest, killingest bruisers you can think of. We gotta scare him off, get him out of Seattle." Max turns the corner and she's on Joshua's block.
The low chuckle in her ear pretty much summarizes Cindy's thoughts on being best friends with a mutant super-soldier. "I'll think of something," she is saying, but Max isn't listening any more.
There are two important things on the block. One is a slim shadow high on Joshua's roof, like a weathervane in the cold still air. He is all in black, as he was last time she saw him hours ago. If it were not so foggy, he would be invisible against the night sky.
The other important thing is Joshua himself, or somebody just as large and hairy, crouched over the square grate in the street. "Joshua, hey," Max calls, the phone still at her ear. "Cindy, uh, forget about that other thing."
"He standing right there and all your worry for nothing?" OC can roll her eyes so you can hear them over cellular channels: it's a true fact.
"I gotta go," says Max, and hangs up. Joshua stands up over the grate with his nose in the air. Max walks closer down the block and resolutely does not look up at the roof. She says, "You find something in the street, big fella?"
"Hey little fella," snuffles Joshua. It is his idea of a stealthy voice. "Saw something down in the sewer." He nods downward, into the square hole in the pavement. It is unlit below, just darkness in the night. Joshua's long hair shines with droplets of fog. She looks him over. He doesn't go underground any more, not since last time, not since all the times before. He can afford to be above ground, so he is. But he's still eyeing that grate even so.
"Pretty cold out. You want to come inside?"
"Big heavy red coat," Joshua says. "She was down there."
Max shakes herself. Well of course she would have headed this way. It's on the shortest route to Terminal City. "You saw Rocky? Uh, did she say hi?"
Joshua frowns. "She ran. Freak scared of a freak."
"She's scared of a lot of people," says Max, weary. She scratches at that spot behind Joshua's ear that he likes so much, and girds herself for another fun concrete adventure. "With pretty good reason."
"Pretty eyes," he says to himself. Max crouches to touch the steel grate: clammy like a melting ice cube. She really is going to spend her night coaxing a wild creature out of her lair. Joshua interrupts this little reverie: "How long is Alec gonna stay on the roof?"
Max turns her face up to him. Joshua's back is to his steep front steps. Behind him, the porch, the overhang, the peak above the second story: shingles and gutters and the cinderblock chimney. The shadow on the roof doesn't move.
"As long as it takes him to learn to come in out of the rain," Max tells him. "I gotta go find Rocky."
"I could make him some cocoa," suggests Joshua, shyly. "I have instant."
The night is young yet. Max sits on the curb and dangles her feet into the grate. "Don't wait up for him." With a shove and a grunt, she hops down, back into the sewer and onto Rocky's trail.
It doesn't really take long, in the end. She might have run from Joshua, but Rocky clearly has Max's scent, and is waiting patiently at a junction just outside the barriers that mark off Terminal City. She's taken off the hood and her gray-brown hair stands out behind her ears. She is filing her little black nails with a piece of sandpaper wrapped around a block of wood, obviously filched from a construction site somewhere.
Max gives her a little shy smile as she steps out of the damp darkness. "Hi," she says. "I guess you're wondering why I stood up for you."
Ears twitching, Rocky flares her black nostrils and gives Max a skeptical examination. She is sitting on her backpack, still zippered closed. It's a wonder what she must have stolen and salvaged and made for herself out of the city's trash. She runs her fresh nails through her hair, smoothes down one eyebrow and then the other. Her nostrils are quivering in the still, cold air.
"Not really," says Rocky. Her lip curls, vaguely contemptuous. "You think I don't know my own kind?"
Blushing, Max stuffs her hands into her pockets. "Oh. Right. Yeah, um --"
That toothy smile again, that she made at old man Winchester. It's a bitter thing. "Even you pretty ones, you're not too hard to recognize."
"Guess not," Max tells her. "Anyway, I'm sorry about... that whole thing. Alec had his head up his ass, and --"
"If you and your brother hadn't been there, the older one would have shot me, right?"
He would have, most likely. Or captured her for further study. So for once Alec's crappy life choices have done somebody some good. "He's not actually my brother."
"If you say so." Rocky shrugs. "Closer kin than me."
Max grumbles, "Not really," and pulls her hands out of her pockets. "You want help carrying your stuff?"
*
Nights are quieter at home: the comforting noises of nature and sometimes a train whistle far away. In the city, the nights are just dimmer, more dangerous extensions of day. Jo seems totally unfazed: this is her city and most of her business happens at night. Sam on the other hand is exhausted and hyperalert at the same time.
"He just walked away," Sam says again, just to say something. "Dean called after him but Alec was so not hearing it."
It's cold, just shy of ice. Jo leads the way, not too hurried but not dawdling. The humid air curls his hair and feels like marshwater in his throat. Fog billows between buildings and Jo says nothing. She nods her head left, and they cross the street. Sam isn't sure whether they're heading someplace specific or just avoiding the cluster of people standing over a trash barrel fire.
"Dean's never walked away from a problem?" asks Jo, ironic.
He gives it the chuckle it deserves. "Sure. But when he's doing that he actually wants you to reach out and stop him. Alec, I think he'd just fight his way out."
"I don't mean to say 'I told you so' but --" Jo begins.
"Yeah, I told him so too." They gaze at each other, a little uncomfortable, but also a little intimate. Sam is as surprised as anybody that he can think of himself as friendly with Jo, all these years later. She shrugs it off after a moment, businesslike.
"So he's S-1-W," says Jo, wary. That's probably a bad sign. "I wouldn't have said he was the type."
Sam privately thinks that it's about as likely as Dean joining the Benevolent Order of Elks. "That girl, Max, she and Alec seemed close. Maybe he's lying to cover for her."
"Maybe. Most of their stuff has been political theatre, kind of Mickey Mouse. The only reason I've even heard of them is Eyes Only took up a couple of their causes last year." She sees some glimmer of skepticism on Sam's face, and shakes her head. "Yeah, I know. Pirate television is so 1999. But sometimes it matters. A lot."
Sam stops in his tracks so that she'll have to turn and face him. Jo is slow to do it, weirdly vulnerable, prepared for argument.
"I guess I've never thought of you as a crusader," Sam tells her, and hopes that she understands it's a compliment.
She smiles a little, just for a few seconds. Then she's off down the block again, her breath streaming behind her. Sam keeps pace with her, and waits for her to say more.
"This fucking city." She is angry, but not in an immediate way. It's something that bothers her but that has become normal. She opens her mouth a couple of times before she gives up caution and says it outright: "Yeah, I've worked for him too. Refugees, mostly. A couple of faked identities. It was at a couple layers remove, so no, I don't know who he is either."
They walk. The night closes in on them, fog obscuring their sightlines. Alec is somewhere in this fucking city, and nobody seems to know where. Sam really hopes that he's the one to find him, not Dean.
"I've seen that tattoo before," says Jo. She doesn't break stride or glance aside to be sure that Sam is there. It's like she's telling the fog, or telling herself something she's reluctant to know.
"He said he'd been in a steelhead gang," Sam says, a little weak. He knows it's a lie, Dean knows it's a lie.
"You ever see that on an actual steelhead? Cause I haven't."
Obviously, it's something bad. Just as obviously, Jo has held off telling till after she's back on better footing with Sam, till a moment when Dean can't possibly eavesdrop because he's on the other side of town. Tired, Sam wracks his brains what could possibly going on with a kid's ugly gothy tattoo. A kid's ugly gothy barcode tattoo, like a library call number, like the thing you used to scan at the grocery store to find out how much something cost. An idea wallops him in the head.
"Oh shit. Oh Jesus." Sam has to stop and bend over, hands on his knees. "Are you talking about child trafficking?"
"What? No." She stands on the sidewalk and waits for him to regain his breath. "I -- probably not."
It's the scenario that makes the most sense. Kids with no family to look out for them, kids from small towns all over the mountain west, kids with no prospects brought into the city and sold as servants. Sam struggles to comprehend it. "He said something that first night, Alec did. He just -- he sounded so cynical."
He can stand up again after a little while, lungs raw.
"Look, it's not --" Jo says, and pauses. Sam turns to her and she is waiting, patient. She looks him in the eye for the first time since they got on this topic. "I don't know what he is. I just think he's more than he's telling you."
"I don't know what that means."
"Yeah, me neither."
She glares at the street and the ramshackle houses all closed up and darkened for the night, respectable houses.
"Could be anything, I don't even know." She starts them walking again. "It could be some kind of gang thing, or a cult, or the second coming of the Teen Titans. There was a conspiracy theory going around this past summer that there were mind-controlled government agents infiltrating the city for a coordinated program of assassinations." She throws up her hands in mock-frustration. It is obvious she's looking for a shift in topic.
Sam is very tired. "Whatever it is, he's not ready to talk about it. Uh. I guess I know the feeling on that one." Jo slows on the sidewalk: they've arrived. Alec may be nearby, still freaking out, and all the superhero powers (or weird government conspiracies) in the world can't help him through that. "Anyway, mind-controlled assassins? Are these the same federales that after eleven years still haven't consistently brought Manning, Colorado back onto the power grid?"
"Yeah, well, like I said: conspiracy theory. They go around, around here. And here we are," says Jo in a low voice.
She gestures towards the end of the block. It's not a bad-looking house, about average for the neighborhood. The foundation is cinderblock, and the siding in dire need of a paint job. It's a steep set of stairs to the wide porch, narrow spindle-rails all around. It's the kind of porch you'd set a chair out on, and say hello to evening friends, the kind of porch off which you'd sweep the leaves in the morning and greet the kids on their way to school. There are bars on the windows, and over the front door. The leaves aren't swept.
"Who lives here?" Sam asks, but Jo shakes her head.
"Windows are painted over. He comes here at least once a week, sometimes with groceries. Always leaves in a good mood." They are whispering, their breath like clouds. Sam isn't sure who started it.
He looks up. The porch light is on, but the first and second story windows are dark. Well, it's closer to dawn than dusk. There aren't many lights on in the whole neighborhood. Balanced carefully on the porch railing, in silhouette under the bulb, a tall narrow cylinder: a closed thermos like an exclamation mark. The eye automatically follows that line upward, and finds another silhouette on the roof.
It's Alec, of course. In the dim starlight, he is ill-defined, just a shadow really, hunched over keeping his pain to himself, obviously a trait he inherited from his father. He might be leaning asleep on the spalled chimney; he might not have noticed yet that he has an audience. No, of course he's noticed. Sam crosses the street to approach the front steps and Jo, wary, follows with him. She keeps her hands in her pockets: disinclined to intervene.
She says, low, "I thought it was visiting a friend, you know, somebody with leprosy or an anxiety disorder, but maybe it's the S-1-W clubhouse." She shrugs. For all they know, it's a central clearinghouse for refugees.
It's possible if they stand here long enough Alec will get tired of it and come down out of his snit. But whatever else he is, Alec's still a Winchester, and will stay up there stubborn till he falls off the roof. It's too cold to be out without a hat and mittens; if Alec isn't feeling it Sam definitely is. Finally he comes to a decision and climbs the house's front steps.
It's forward, a little intimidating. In the country, you don't help yourself to your neighbor's porch without a lot of notice or a lot of affection for having a shotgun pointed at you. The house stays dark and silent, unoccupied or full of terrified fugitives or just packed with good citizens, sleeping the sleep of the just. They make no objection as Sam steps onto the porch, his shadow puddling at his feet. He touches the thermos on the railing. It is is cool to the touch. He opens up the top and discovers it's cocoa inside, still hot. Cap back on, screwed down tightly and the cup overtop, Sam tucks the thermos into his jacket and eyes the support beam that holds up the porch roof.
Sam looks back down the stairs at Jo. She is standing on the sidewalk, hands in pockets. Behind her the street gleams with frost, the sewer grate a dull square glint next to the curb. "Call Dean for me, will you?" He says, low. His voice seems monstrously loud in the night. Well, at least it's fair warning to Alec. "Don't tell him where we are."
He doesn't wait to see whether she does it or shrugs it off or calls in the cavalry. Thermos against his ribs, Sam feels for hand-holds in the cinderblock porch supports. If one person can climb to the roof, it can't be that hard for another, right? He digs in a toe, and starts to lever himself up.
The railing makes a good foothold, but there isn't a gutter on the porch roof to grasp. The concrete blocks are roughing up his hands as he scrabbles, and he makes no progress. Somehow this kind of physical audacity used to make sense, when he was 22 and Dean had already gone clambering up, over, in. Sam heaves himself upward and gains an elbow on the porch roof, then both elbows. His back begins to hurt. One knee up, and a bitten-off curse as his jeans catch on an upraised nail and tear. The burn of the cut alongside his kneecap, and Sam wonders when last he had a tetanus shot.
He is two-thirds on the porch roof, struggling for a foothold, when a light voice comes down to him, "Aren't you kind of old to be climbing roofs?" Sam has practice at startlement, and does not let go but pauses, a little guilty, where he is. A quick thump, and Alec's feet bounce into view. He crouches in front of Sam. He sounds amused. "What are you doing?"
"Looking for you," says Sam, and reaches out for a hand up. Alec gives him a tug, and in a moment Sam is on his back on the shingles, sweaty and blowing. "That used to be easier."
"What made you think I'd be up here?" asks Alex, still with that antic tone to his voice, but tight too. Whatever's in the house, he doesn't want it to be found out.
Sam sits upright. "I keep my eyes on the sky," he says at last. "You're hard to miss."
Alec gives a sarcastic snort.
The thermos is still hard against his ribs, warming from skin-touch. "Oh, and whoever it is lives here left something for you." Sam pulls the thermos out and hands it to Alec. The boy holds it, numb. "It's still hot, I checked," says Sam.
It's only then that Alec unscrews the top to investigate. He sniffs the steam as it escapes. "Cocoa?"
"Guess you've got a friend," says Sam.
Alec doesn't answer, but busies himself by pouring out a capful of cocoa, and hands it to Sam. Fingers on the hot metal, Sam can feel the rawness in his palms from his climbing attempt. He sips at the hot liquid.
"That's not a bad thing, having friends. People who've got your back, come hell or high water." Sam pats the shingles next to him, inviting Alec to sit. He won't sit close, though, and ends up on one knee out of arm's reach. Sam decides not to notice that distance, just holds out the thermos cap as if they're side by side and sharing a drink. Slow, alert, Alec leans forward and takes it.
He's remarkably able to keep things to himself. Alec sips at the cocoa absently, more to have something to do than thirst, and doesn't respond. Sam opens his mouth to explain about Dean, and Dad, and hunting, and everything. And then he closes his mouth again.
He would like to tell about how one of the last things Dad said before he died was that he'd wanted Dean to have a home, and how Dean is over forty and still on the road more often than not. It is brimming in Sam's head, how frustrating Dean can be, his impenetrable loyalty that seems like a demand, when you're young and trying to make your own decisions, but that looks a lot smaller and needier when you're not as vulnerable any more. There's a lot he could tell Alec. All of it is about Sam, and about Sam's perspective on Dean, and none of it is about Alec. He says nothing.
So they just sit there on the roof side by side, the thermos cup passed back and forth between them without a word. They drink down the cocoa till it's all gone and Alec has lost the look of a kid waiting for the next blow to fall. Down on the street the fog is retreating, maybe because it's getting colder. Sam rubs his hands on his thighs and watches the graying horizon. With great difficulty he holds his tongue in case Alec wants to talk.
"You said it's okay to tell him no," says Alec at last. He tells it to the sky, a plume of mist leaving his mouth.
"Yes. Absolutely."
That doesn't break the ice as Sam had hoped it would. The silence begins again, Alec's mouth on the move as he works through some private logic. It's not hard, as part of the campaign not to freeze his ass off, for Sam to move a little closer in case it's something that needs to be whispered.
It doesn't. "But he'll keep on hunting himself, won't he?" He says it out loud, louder than necessary. He says it like an accusation. The look on Alec's face is not different from the look he had the first time he saw his father: the same grim tightening around the mouth, the same helpless dullness in his averted eyes.
"You could ask him to quit." Sam risks it, and puts a hand on Alec's arm. He isn't shrugged off, which is a start. "If you asked him to, he might."
"I can't."
The desperation in that voice. There's no way of knowing what the kid has survived already. Sam covers Alec's hand with his own. "Someday, then. When you can."
Alec doesn't say anything to that, but he takes his uncle's affection, and doesn't push it away.
"He seems like a rigid man, but he isn't really. He'll fold the minute you stand up to him."
"What, like a lawn chair?" Alec reclaims his hand from Sam's grip and chuckles. It's reassuring to see him like that, and a little disappointing too. Sam knows how to play along.
"Like a concertina," he slanders his brother, shameless. "Like a paper fan. Like somebody who just wants you to be happy."
Agile, Alec stands and paces the shingles, unafraid of the height or the edge. He finds the nail Sam tore his jeans on, bends it down with his bare hand. He has not shivered once, though his ears are pinking in the cold. He's obviously not ready to acknowledge the meat of what Sam is saying.
"You want to try and climb down? I don't think you can make it yourself."
That deflective little smile, like his father's.
"You'll let me down easy, right?" asks Sam.
"I'm always easy," says the boy, and extends his hand to help.
*
It's too soon, really. They've only been here eight days, and that's nothing in the life of a twenty-year-old kid. But Dean's had an eye on Sam this whole time, and he's flagging. The city wears him down. He's not sleeping well. It's time.
So they're in the train yard again, dawdling before the all-aboard call goes out. Dean's been talking for the past hour, all advice and funny stories like they won't get the chance again for a long time. Alec just kind of listens and nods absently, which is better than sulking, but the idea of leaving him alone in this shithouse city --
Dean slings his duffel bag down into the cinders at his feet and turns to face the boy. "Trains run twice weekly," he points out. "I can be up whenever you need me. Faster, if I steal a car."
The kid shrugs his shoulders, like he doesn't really think Dean would do that, which is pretty much a big blinky sign of how much Alec's got to learn.
Sam is actually talking to Jo, without that usual rabbitty look on his face, so it's a fact that miracles do happen. Dean reaches out and maneuvers his son in the other direction for a minute of privacy.
"Listen, Sam's birthday's in May." he explains. Alec wrinkles up his eyebrows and ducks his chin. "I head up to the cabin with a gas can, we take the old lady for a spin like old times. The Impala," he adds.
"The car," Alec tells his feet.
"The bitchin car. You should come. Meet your aunt, play with the kids, do all that healthy nature crap, and then take a ride in the sweetest machine ever made in the U. S. of A." Dean reaches out and joshes him on the arm, tough-guy stuff, no mush. "It'll be great."
Alec has his hands in the pockets of his jean jacket and the collar flipped up. It exaggerates how hunched up his shoulders are. "Great," he mumbles.
"Stay as long as you want. Bring your buddy Max, if you want." Dean joshes him again. "That's the thing about family, it's like having a motel room you never have to pay for."
"I heard that," says Sam. Now he's on his way home, he already looks better. Less tense, little smile curling up around the lines on his mouth. Alec turns to him, automatic, like they're made from the same kind of parts. He shines those needy flashlights he calls eyes up at Sam's big shape, direct the way he isn't with Dean. Emo runs in the family like dimples, and just happens to skip certain generations.
Dean tries to keep it light. He flicks a three-pack of condoms at Alec's head, and is pleased to see the kid catch them without a flinch. "And hey, let's make sure I'm not a grandfather any time soon, okay? Max thinks I'm an old man, but I'm definitely not old enough for grandkids." Alec glances at the package without surprise -- so at least he knows what they're for -- and pockets it.
At their feet they've got their duffel bags, full of stuff now, mostly stuff that's impossible to get inland, and that'll keep for the rest of the winter. Dried fruit, canned vegetables, some flower-smelly soap for Rose. Refined white sugar, woolly socks, honest-to-god blue jeans. A couple of wooden toys for the girls, small enough for hiding in pockets. There's too much stuff between them for Sam to carry it all back to Manning himself, so Dean is going there too apparently.
Jo has her hands in her pockets and a cat-like look on her face. She pulls out one hand, and it's a fistful of shiny ribbons in red and green and blue. "I know what little girls like," she tells Sam, and hands them over. He takes them like they're gold, which they sort of are. He and Jo get a nice long look at each other, and maybe all isn't forgiven but at least they're over it. Dean is grinning when she turns to him.
Her other hand pops out. "Wear a hat, you idiot." She tosses a red wool cap at Dean, hits him in the face with it. She tells him, "You'll catch your death someday."
It makes Alec laugh, and that's enough reason for Dean to shut his yap about it. Jo shoots the kid a serious glance and holds his gaze like she's making sure she's okay. With her in town, Dean feels a little better about leaving his son behind in a big, scary city.
There's a pause before Sam opens his mouth and reaches into his jacket. He falters for a second, just long enough for Dean to guess what's next. Sam says, "So, I want you have these," and hands Alec two squares of paper.
The pictures from his wallet, of course. Maggie and Sarah and two dumb little kids from the 1990s. It's the least they can give Alec. Dean realizes suddenly that he is never going to give that boy the revolver from Jo. He probably wouldn't know what to do with it anyway.
The pictures tremble a little in Alec's grip and he studies them all serious. "It's all the way down to Grand Junction to have pictures developed," he says, and makes to hand them back. Sam just shakes his head, and the longer he does it the more he opens up that smile into something big.
"We can always take more pictures." He wraps an arm around Alec, not so much a guy can't squirm free if he wants to. Alec stands still and takes it, but he doesn't go looking for more. He tucks the photos into an inside pocket and heaves in a deep breath and Sam lets him go.
Dean Winchester has never looked that fragile in his life. It would totally crush Alec's ego to get mixed up in some kind of group hug nonsense, so Dean just reaches out to josh him again. "Anything you need, kid." It's a joke, but not a joke too. The pinch of that familiar mouth, the hard planes of his stiff cheeks -- Dean's crooked knuckles tickle through the boy's longish hair and he drags Alec to him. He tucks a roll of cash into a gaping jacket pocket. "Anything, kid."
Alec doesn't complain, doesn't make any noise at all, even when Dean pulls him down to be kissed on the forehead. It's an embarrassing thing to do, and Dean regrets doing it -- well, regrets doing it in front of everybody -- as soon as it's done. That look on the boy's face though, that lonesome unhopeful look, yeah, Dean would kiss a lot of foreheads to make that better.
"Get a haircut," he tells Alec, and then it's time to go.
*
It's slow to start, hauling that much freight. Watch the engine start up and it's like watching the first few seconds of an arm-wrestling match: all that energy spent on no movement. Alec turns before the first car starts to roll. He's got places to be, stuff to do, money to make. He kicks the shards of a broken bottle ahead of him through the dust and cinders, hands in pockets.
He gets halfway across the freight yard before he realizes he's assessing the nearby buildings for sightlines. There's a pretty good one, four stories tall with a flat roof, and Alec's feet detour in that direction without his telling them to. It feels good to climb, cold air in his throat and the churn of his knees as his boots clang off the exterior steel stairs. It feels good to get up high, and look back down on the rail lines and the cars strung together and the one four-engine train just starting to move now, heading south. The connections between cars come tight and groan, one at a time, and each persuades the next to start up and move, on down the line. From where he is, crouched on the black tar edge of the roof, Alec can't tell which cars have people in them and which have fish or strawberries or whatever it is people ship inland. All the boxcars look alike, and the only difference is how many people are sitting on top, hanging onto handles or hinges or dusty ridges in the car's design. All their worldly goods strapped to their backs, probably no ID checks if they're leaving, out of Seattle and on to some other city, some place that isn't as crazy and dangerous and paranoid.
Sparks strike at the wheels, dull friction of steel on steel. The train cars advance south and east along the track. The yard and the train itself are so long that Alec can watch it move for another hour at least. Around his knees, old mashed cigarette butts: maybe the teamsters come up here all the time to watch their work come and go. Maybe they wave good-bye to the strawberries.
Alec shakes himself and makes to stand. It's as he's tightening his knees that he realizes he's not alone, that somebody's managed to sneak up on him, up here, where you don't exactly just wander along. He turns with an unpleasant glee: maybe it'll be a fight, maybe a bad one, and maybe he'll get to throw somebody off the roof and watch them fall four stories to the cinders below. Maybe that will make this day suck less.
But he turns and it's only Max, Max and a dim shadow behind her, the both of them paused mid-stalk. The expression on Max's face is hilarious. Alec barks out a laugh and the person behind her turns just the right amount and the yellowing soda-lights from down in the yard reflect bright off a pair of eyes. Of course. It's Rocky the Raccoon. Who else would it be, come to play and make nice and be forgiven for existing.
He turns back to the train yard. "She told you?" Alec asks, over his shoulder.
"No," answers Rocky, a hard little yip. "I figured it out all by myself."
There are a million mean things Alec could say, and probably only half of them would get him slapped with those formidable black fingernails. He watches the train go and decides not to say anything at all.
Max glances between them, like she'll have to separate them if they start fighting. She's always got the bigger picture in mind. She's so responsible it's sickening sometimes. "Did they say if they'd be back?"
"Of course they're coming back." Alec sneers: "They love me."
"Did they say when?"
"No. I don't know. Spring, maybe, and maybe just Dean. Sam has a house and farm animals and some random shit like that." Alec pauses. He's not sure what it means to him, so he says it neutrally: "I've got cousins."
Max gives him a funny look.
"The one with your face," says Rocky, "he gonna keep hunting us down?"
"I don't know." Alec shrugs his knotty shoulders. "Maybe you should ask him, Max. He likes you."
She makes a face. Alec hasn't told her what Sam said on the roof. Maybe there's nothing to tell. Maybe someday.
He stuffs his hands in his pockets, tense. In the left, the roll of cash Dean was oh-so-subtle about handing off. In the right he finds a matchbook. It takes him a minute to place it: Strip City Deluxe, and the phone number Dean scrawled on the inside the night they first met, back at Crash, back when it was all just some bizarre joke.
"If they do come back, you can still play them," says Max. It's up-pitch, like she's trying for the consolation prize. "It's nice to have allies in a pinch."
"What are the odds," says Alec, sore, "that any pinch we get into won't involve Manticore?"
Max has nothing to say to that. Alec looks one more time at the matchbook between his fingers. Strip City Deluxe, and a phone number on the inside cover. He can throw it away, burn it, give it to someone who cares: doesn't matter. He won't be able to make himself forget the number. A photographic memory sucks sometimes.
"Whatever," he mumbles, and turns away. He's got places to be, games to play. He tosses the matchbook over his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Max snap out a hand and catch it.
He stops. Butter would not melt in her mouth. She pockets the matchbook and adjusts her satchel. Alec starts up again, quick strides to get away.
"Don't follow me," he warns. Rocky bares her teeth, a hiss in her throat.
Max smiles at him, confident, cool. "I don't follow, smart aleck. I lead." And she darts off, hair trailing behind. She is at the stairs before he's had the chance to blink.
Rocky's hiss turns into a chirpy little laugh. "Show-off," she says, under her breath. She nods at Alec and heads out.
*
They are several hours out of Seattle, headed south and east. The mountains are thick with snow, looming ahead of them and guarding the way on their left-hand side. They'll make the crossing in the night, and be at a warmer altitude by morning. Sam can feel the direction of home like a beacon in the dark.
"I told him to come down in the spring," says Dean, offhand. He is staring out the little window in their compartment, arms on the ledge and his chin on his hands. Under his eyes, the pine trees on the downslope flash by. "Told him about the car, the trip we take on your birthday. I figure he'd want in on that."
"Yeah," says Sam. "He should meet Rose and the girls. Maybe stay a while, if he wants."
Dean exhales through his nose, half-chuckle and half-frustration. Sam gives him a look: his strong profile in the window, the late sun on his freckled skin. He squints into the distance, lips pressed together disapprovingly. It's rare to catch him so glum, nowadays when there isn't an apocalypse to worry about. It's rare that Sam has ever had the opportunity to try to josh him out of such a mood.
"Hey, did you want to make a stop in Salt Lake?" he asks. "While they're switching tracks we could visit the genealogical research archive. They've still got everything, even after what the Pulse did."
"What, man, homework?" Dean kicks away from the window and goes to sit on one of the crates.
"Dean. They'll have records. They are awesome about birth and death records. We might be able to track down Wendy from Montana, find out what happened. We don't even know Alec's birthday, and I'm not sure he does either. It's possible he doesn't even know as much about her as you do. Don't you want to be able to give that to him?"
Dean is giving him a peculiar look, the kind of look he gives when he remembers that Sam does not literally share his brain, and vice versa. "Didn't I ever do that with you?" he asks.
"Do what."
"The Wendy's game. I didn't do that with you?" Sam makes a face and Dean turns away, ashamed. "Guess not," he tells the pine trees.
"What about the Wendy's game, then? What's it got to do with Alec?"
Dean sits there thinking for a couple of minutes before he opens his mouth. "Dad and me, when we were on the road. You know how he got sometimes. Right after you left, we were working together, bunch of cases in a row."
Sam stands quiet, one hand on the windowsill, and does not interrupt.
"I got on his nerves so bad. Finally he up and yelled at me, told me to go find a girl or something and get out of his hair. We had that fight in a Wendy's parking lot and he threw a cheeseburger at me and I walked away so I wouldn't take a swing at him. And after that when he wanted me to leave him alone he'd ask, 'Don't you have a hot date with Wendy tonight?' And I'd go off and find something else to do for a couple days before I tried to call him."
Like daybreak, Sam gets a glimmer of understanding and then it flows over him suddenly, piercing. "There's no Wendy from Montana?"
"I have no idea," says Dean, and laughs. It's not quite a bitter laugh, but it's not a happy one either.
Sam thinks this over for a long quiet moment. "Alec knew it was a lie."
"Course he did," says Dean. He shrugs, head down. "He doesn't want to talk about her. I gave him an out and he took it, end of story."
"But --"
"Leave it, Sam, will you? Just give the kid a break."
Sam is unsatisfied, of course. How can you not want to know your own son's birthday? He examines his brother's weathered face, the worry lines around his mouth. There's plenty they don't know, and the only person with the right to tell is Alec. Anyway, without a mother's full name, location, or timeframe, it'll be impossible to find a birth record. There will be no layover in Salt Lake City.
Dean shakes his head a little. "He wants to tell me he was born in a pumpkin patch, or out of a big glass jar in an X-Files experiment, or that his mom was the Queen of Fairyland, I'll nod my head and call him prince."
Sam cracks up. Leave it to Dean Winchester to be seduced by a fairy queen. And then the laugh peters out and he stares at the distant snowcaps on the mountains. Fairyland sounds a lot nicer than most of the scenarios Sam can think of.
"I mean," says Dean into the silence, "what the hell else does he have? I'm not gonna take that away from him."
"No," says Sam. "I get it. Maybe if you told him that --"
"Aw, he knows."
"Maybe," says Sam, slow, "if you told him that anyway."
"Yeah," says Dean, and waves a hand, noncommittal. "Maybe."
They ride the rest of the afternoon in silence.