 |
Artwork courtesy of Valjean & |
By Valjean
ARCHIVE: No
|
Artwork courtesy of Valjean & |
*****
Max answered the door on the first knock and flung it open. However, wide brown eyes that were begging forgiveness darkened with disappointment when she saw who it was. “Where is he?” she asked.
“Sleeping,” Sam said simply. A sly smile. “I slipped half a dozen sleeping pills into his coffee.”
“Why’d you do that?” she asked, stepping back to let him enter Logan’s apartment. With her beautiful features stained by tears, her long dark hair disheveled, and wearing a flowing black silk robe that clung to her voluptuous figure, X5-452 looked like a tragic heroine of some kind, Sam thought. But the tragedy isn’t hers, his mind added bitterly. It’s my brother’s. This bitch betrayed him.
“So he wouldn’t kill you,” Sam said simply -- the truth. “Not to mention your new lover-boy.”
“Alec would never do that,” Max said adamantly. “He’d never hurt me. He loves me. We have a child together and--”
“You just kicked the shit out of him, lady.”
“I never meant to ... I never meant for him to see me with ...”
“He’d have found out sooner or later,” Sam said. “You know he would have. Better he know now that his woman is a whore than to go on living with your lies.”
Max was stung by the words. “That’s not fair!” she snapped. “We’re in trouble here, Sam, in case you hadn’t noticed. We’re not free like Alec is. I have to do things in order to survive. Logan offered to help me, and one thing led to another. I loved the man for a long time, you know ... before I loved your brother. And Alec ... Dean ... wasn’t even here.”
“He was staying away to protect you!” Sam said loudly. “You know that. It about killed him, trying to not think about you and his son because he was afraid if he did it would make bad things happen to you.” He noticed she was still wearing the pentagram that Dean had given her around her neck and smiled grimly.
Max looked down at the pendant where it hung between her breasts. She fingered the amulet, then her eyes met Sam’s. “I don’t need this any more,” she said quietly, removing the necklace and handing it to him.
“Why?”
“Because I’m only in danger if Alec loves me, and that’s obviously not going to be the case any more.”
He couldn’t argue with her. Shaking his head, he turned to leave.
“Sam!” Max said.
He looked back.
“What’s he going to do?”
“I’m not sure,” Sam said honestly. “But I do know one thing. You don’t wanna corner Dean -- and that’s exactly what you’ve done to him.”
“You mean he’ll be looking for revenge?” Max said, her eyes reflecting something akin to fear.
“I mean he’s probably going to want to bite,” Sam replied, thinking about his brother’s temper that could run the gamut from cool and collected to white hot heat. But then he took pity on the girl. “I’ll try to talk to him,” he said more gently. “Maybe keep Anakin from turning into Darth Vader on your ass. You know, though, I’m really sorry about this, too, Max. I kind of liked the thought of havin’ a sister-in-law, someone to help me handle the thirty percent or so of Dean that I can’t. But after this--” His eyes went to the bedroom door where he could see Logan -- also wearing a robe -- sitting on the edge of the bed holding a revolver in his hand.
“I know,” Max said. “It’s over. But Alec and I still have a child together. Don’t tell me he’ll walk out on Brac too?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said honestly. “Where is he anyway, my nephew?”
“With O.C.,” Max said. “It’s safer for him to stay outside the fence for now. We never know when the military might move on us.” She thought a moment. “Why’d you come here, Sam?”
“To find out the truth so I can tell Dean.”
“And have you?” she asked. “Found out the truth?”
Sam’s eyes met those of the man in the other room. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I’ll tell Dean you’ve made your choice and that this time he loses. I’ll also try’n keep him from unleashing on you and Logan, even though that’s exactly what he wants to do right now. Have a nice life, Max. And ...” He looked down at the pentagram he was now holding in his hand. “Be careful.” He wasn’t referring to Dean.
*****
“I ought to kick your ass for pullin’ a stunt like that,” Dean groused as he sat on the edge of the motel room bed and held his head in his hands. “What were you thinkin’, slippin’ me a mickey?”
“You were on the verge of committing a double homicide,” Sam lectured as he handed his big brother a fresh cup of coffee and a cold washcloth. “Don’t worry,” he added. “No drugs this time. And you should have slept another twelve hours at least with that dose I gave you.”
“Transgenic metabolism,” Dean grumped. “All you did was give me six hours and a hangover. Geez, my head ...”
“Take some aspirin,” his brother said.
“So, what’d she say?” His eyes latched onto the younger man’s. “You did go see Max, didn’t you?”
Sam shrugged. “She was afraid ... felt like she needed protection. The old lover was there while the new one was nowhere in sight. End of story.” He glanced up at Dean. “She’s worried, you know. That you’ll come after them. And the look on your face last night ... let’s just say you scared the shit out of me, too.”
“Was she sorry?”
Sam winced at the question because he knew Dean wasn’t going to like the answer. However, he also knew that only the truth could set his brother’s aching heart free. “I don’t think so,” he said. “She was only worried about the revenge factor.”
“I do want to kill him, you know,” Dean said quietly with just the hint of a smile, the look that Sam feared once again rising in those predatory eyes. “Logan, I mean. Max ... I could never hurt her, but I wanna punish her. Man, that bitch sure knows how to work a guy over.” He glanced up, the smile rueful now. “She’s done it to me before, too -- kicked me in the balls ... cheated. I should’ve known better than to trust her.
“You know, don’t you, that you’ve got something else to worry about.”
Dean nodded, eyes narrowing. “Brac. My son.”
Sam didn’t like the way his brother said that.
“Is he still with O.C.?” Dean asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Sam replied carefully. “Dean, what are you gonna do?”
“He’s mine, Sam. Not Logan’s. Cale has no right to him.”
“You can’t kidnap him,” Sam chided softly. “So get that dumb idea out of your head right now. However, the law’s on your side. You could sue for joint custody and--”
The X5 snorted a laugh. “Look around you, Sammy. I’m a transgenic, remember. I’ve lost the right to even live, let alone have custody of a baby. It’s not like I’m an Ordinary.”
Dean had a point. Sam really didn’t know what to say.
“Come on,” his brother said, standing and reaching for the jacket that was slung over the back of a chair.
“What?”
“I’m goin’ to see my son.”
*****
“Alec, you can’t.” were O.C.’s first words when she saw the X5 on her doorstep. “You can’t take him. I know my Boo done you wrong, but Brac needs his mommy.”
Dean looked beyond where she was bodily blocking the door to the blond two-year-old child in the playpen in the corner of her apartment. “I’m not gonna let Brac grow up callin’ Logan ‘daddy’,” he said quietly. “No matter who Max is sleepin’ with, Brac’s my son.”
“I know,” O.C. said, not quite concealing the tinge of fear in her voice. She knew damn well what an X5 was capable of. “I’m on board with it, but just not right now. He’s a baby, Alec. What you gonna do with a baby out on the road?”
“Good question,” Sam said from beside his brother, his eyes also on the child.
O.C. stepped back. “Come on in and we’ll think this bitch through.”
Dean obliged, his expression softening as he crossed the room to scoop the laughing toddler up in his arms. “What if she hides him?” he said as the little boy wrapped chubby arms around his daddy and giggled. “What if she doesn’t want me to ever see him again?”
“My Boo ain’t like that and you know it, Macho Man,” O.C. said tartly. But then she smiled. “Look at you now Alec, all grown up and rugged and handsome as ever. Jeans and stubble is a good look on you, sweetheart. You know that?”
Dean self consciously ran fingers over the two-day’s growth of blond whiskers on his chin as Brac played with the amulet around his neck. However, the soft humor died in his eyes as quickly as it had arisen. “Don’t change the subject, O.C.,” he said quietly. “Brac’s mine. Not his.”
“No one’s arguin’ that,” the dark-skinned girl said. “I can’t stop you from takin’ him, either. Although you know Max will hunt you down to Hell and back if she has to in order to find him. You don’t wanna start a war do you? With her?”
“We don’t want a war,” Sam said. “Do we, Dean? At least not another one. We’re kinda busy with the battle we already have.”
It’s true, Dean thought. My life’s just this side of Hell already, and to take my baby son into that kind of danger would be unconscionable. He kissed Brac gently on top of his downey-haired head, then set the baby back in his playpen. “Come on, Sam,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “We’re leavin’. We’ve got work to do.”
O.C. let out an audible sigh of relief. Dean then turned to her, fished in the pocket of his jeans, and brought out the pentagram necklace Max hadn’t wanted that Sam had returned to him. “Here,” he said, handing Cindy the amulet. “Keep this near him. It’ll protect him until I can be with him.”
“Protect him from what?” O.C. snorted. “Ghosties and goblins?”
“Evil,” both brothers said at the same time. “And tell Max,” Dean added, “... tell her that I’ll be back.”
*****
For a long time after the two Winchester brothers left, O.C. stood looking out the window at the dirty street below, the sound of the baby playing in the background soothing, but her mind still racing from one corner to another seeking a solution to this mess that Max had created for Alec. However, there wasn’t a solution ... at least not one that would mean any kind of a happy ending for the people she loved.
THE END
