11calls | It's where my demons hide, oh it's where my demons hide.

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It's where my demons hide, oh it's where my demons hide.

In the end it had been Simon. Alex had been aware that Simon was…watching her which sounded a hell of a lot better than stalking her since she’d heard their conversation when she’d recorded her sleep note. What Alex hadn’t realized then is just how much Simon had been protecting her or whatever and how often he’d been around. Sure, joking with Nic about Simon watching was one thing—what else is one supposed to do when you’ve got a dark sense of humor and a creepy bilocating kid with an obsession—but finding out that he’d actually been there and overheard those conversations was another thing entirely.

But in an effort to convince Alex to go to Turkey to meet him and the Horn of Tiamat, he’d come clean. Well, it was as clean as Simon had known how to come given all of his cryptic bullshit but she’d gotten the gist of it nonetheless. Alex had gotten the gist of it, and then she’d tried to hide from it, pulling the blankets over her head for a day and calling in sick and wondering if it could possibly be fucking true. That Strand was a demon and had been the entire time and that she had been friends with a demon, that she’d flirted with a demon, that she’d defended a demon and that Alex had bought into the lies and manipulations of a demon who was using her and her entire show for some untoward purpose that probably was the end of the world.

Honestly it was enough to make anyone take to their beds—even Alex Reagan with all of her bravery.

But it was only for one day, even if Alex did call out of work. Nic was more than happy to give her the time off considering it was Alex asking for it, and calls, texts and emails from Strand went entirely unanswered. The most important thing Alex knew from her investigation was that she needed two things in order to figure this out; to prove it: information and evidence. While Alex may not have been very good at collecting evidence of things (though now she can’t help but to wonder how much Strand and to a lesser extent Simon had sabotaged her efforts toward it) one thing that Alex was excellent at was collecting information and getting people to talk to her. Especially people with whom she’d already had a prior connection too.

Alex didn’t know if it was something in her voice or if it was just a case of it being the right moment but this time when she reached out to Charlie Strand, Charlie did agree to talk to her. Off the record, and Alex didn’t record it but it wasn’t about that. This had gone well past a story to the truth and Charlie told her how when they’d been out looking for Coralee, Strand had changed. It was what Charlie had meant by her not having a father anymore because the man who came back from those woods wasn’t her Dad. There had been moments in Charlie’s childhood where the man masquerading as her father had seemed to come out, but Coralee always managed to fix him. Without her stepmother, there was no hope in turning Richard Strand back into who he had been which was why Charlie was working at the Vatican hoping to find something that would work. So far? She hasn’t.

There was no way for Alex to get in touch with Coralee but there was another person who knew him, and Alex called her and begged in a way that she hadn’t when she’d talked to Cheryl before. Richard had moments of weirdness when they were children, but Howard had beaten it out of Richard. That was until Richie had gone looking for the body of Bobby Maimes that he’d seen within his dreams and came back entirely different.

It had taken a week to try and track these things down, and then Alex couldn’t sit on them anymore. She couldn’t keep pacing and waiting and worrying and talking to herself wondering if who she was actually talking to was Simon. In the end, it’s late when Alex drives to Howard’s house in the middle of a rainstorm. Knocking on his door, Alex just holds her breath not sure who—or what—was going to answer the door.

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He stares at her and shakes his head, "We're going to Geneva. We're summoned there and now that Richard and I are fully one I cannot travel as I could once."

He straightens his tie, "...walking through the forest ruined my suit."

His lip curls as he opens the door for her and holds it before stopping and staring at his hand performing the action, "...Foolish. He has money. He doesn't need - I don't need to hold open doors for people." His lips press together and the Azazel/Richard shakes his head, "Walk quickly."

She doesn't need a bag does she? No. She needs nothing...

But he wants to give her things and he has to wonder if it's Richard and a terrible thought strikes Azazel. What if he's not really gone?

It was such a human fear.

"...there are clothes upstairs for a woman. I will get them for you. You. will stay."

"I am not a fucking dog!" Alex's voice is hot and angry, because that's normally happened when she got angry: she went warm and he went cold and she's had just about enough of all of this.

"Stop telling me to come or to stay. I'm not a pet or a puppy. Stop telling me to walk quickly or slowly." Her eyes are flashing, and his clothing isn't the only one that had gotten wrecked out in the forest. Alex is standing with more than a little bit of a smudge of dirt on her, and her hands have some scratches.

But more than that, Alex is trying to think. She's trying to think why Richard has women's clothing upstairs and if it's Coralee's she's going to throw up. She's wondering if there's a way to get out of going to Geneva. If only she didn't have her passport with her.

"Do you even know how any of this stuff works?"

"I'm not stupid. I've traveled before." The demon's voice reappears and then vanishes before he turns back to her, "...Why do you...are you sad?"

The demon that has become Richard combs through his memories and wishes - once again - for the human to return.

It's a flicker of something and it makes him angry before he raises a hand and cups - plates and glasses - shoot across the room without being touched to shatter on the wall.

That...

Azazel-Richard stares at it before looking back at her in horror.

"I want you to come. What..." Azazel frowns and Richard looks lost, "...What am I doing wrong than? I have done this - I have seen Richard do this before."

"I'm not sad! I'm angry!" Alex flinches when the cups shatter, she can't help it. She's shaking with the emotion, and she's still scared and yes, she's still sad too because this whole thing is a lot and Richard is still gone and they're going to Geneva and Jesus Christ she's going to fucking punch Simon in the face.

She's starting to think that he set her up for this, which seems crazy but also seems right. Both crazy and right have been Alex's natural state for three years; why should this be any different.

"You're treating me like I'm a pet! That's what you're doing wrong. Jesus Azazel, Richard could be an asshole, but he didn't order me around. And who's clothes are they upstairs anyway?"

He'd told her to stay so Alex immediately takes two steps towards him. The fast way to Alex to do something was to tell her that she couldn't do it. And it didn't matter if he was scary or not, if this situation was insane or not; Alex Reagan is still Alex Reagan.

Why does that name sound wrong?

That scares Azazel. It's on the tip of his tongue to correct her I'm Richard but no. He's Azazel. He's better. He is a general. A prince. A king in the making and...and...

"They belonged to my - to Richard's sister." the demon grimaces. His chest hurts. Seeing her angry is upsetting. Richard did that. Richard was touched by Alex's rages. He wanted to see her passionate and happy.

Why is this bothering him?

"...I would like you to come with me to Geneva." the thing wearing Richard's skin tugs at his suit in what might be a painfully familiar gesture, "The clothes upstairs belong to m-Richard's sister."

The gesture is so familiar that it makes her ache. It makes her ache and makes her chest her and it makes her swallow tightly over the knot in her throat that is the unbound sadness and anger and guilt.

But he's having moments where he's like Richard, and it's confuses her, and she doesn't know what's going on. If Alex hadn't seen his eyes turn black, and his mouth open and everything else she'd think that she should be calling a Doctor for him. Did demons have identity problems?

That's a question for another time.

"I don't want things from Cheryl that aren't going to fit me. She's taller than I am. I want my own things. If." And it is an 'if', there's no denying that force that's in Alex's voice. "If I'm going to Geneva with you, I want my own clothing." Even if Alex doesn't know why he wants her to go to Geneva with him in the first place.

Humans! Humans and their needs. Humans and their demands. It wasn't as if Richard had demands...

But he did like his clothes. And the demon liked them. They had agreed on these things, they both liked looking pleasant. Azazel remembered once - at a party - someone had spilled wine on his coat and the man had suffered later.

A demonic smile crosses his features before he looks back at Alex and he looks down at his shoes.

"I...understand the attachment. We shall go to your house and then we will go to Geneva." he pauses, "I have tickets for a first class flight to Warren and when we arrive, you will be safe there."

The last five lines burst out before he gestures, "Go out to my car."

It is a command. He just needs a moment.

Richard had been a seven year old boy who's father had beaten the hell out of him. Alex Reagan was 33, angry and she wasn't someone who didn't know how to just accept anything because someone told her that it was so. If she was then Alex wouldn't be here because her association with Richard Strand would have ended years ago--if it had even began.

People who didn't make demands didn't normally make eleven phone calls to paranormal researchers and their publishers until they got an interview.

Which is why he probably should be suspicious when after her outburst before, when she's got such angry tension in her shoulders that Alex does grab the bag that she'd dropped when Richard told her to run and she does go out the door. But she doesn't go meekly to his car. Instead, Alex runs towards her own, pulling out her keys as she did so. Her phone is dead, her recorder is smashed, but she's still got her car keys.

Which means Alex still has an escape.

There is an idea in his head that confuses him. If Alex goes to Geneva she'll be safe but why? What would he do? If she went to Geneva she'd be sacrificed-

He didn't want Alex hurt.

At the beginning of the evening he wanted her dead. Richard knew that. Richard-

"You bastard." Richard Strand clenched his fists, "You absolute bastard how did you-"

It didn't matter. He turned his attention to Alex in his mind only to find her gone.

That.

He can't just appear but he can move. He can run fast. He's traveled by shadow since falling but now that he was human, fully human...

No. Not fully. He can't travel but -

There's a trickle of ice in her mind.

Alex why are you leaving.

She made it almost to her car. Alex had been about to pull open the door to her car door when she feels it in her mind. When she can feel the words rather than being able to hear them. They're cold, and if Alex had any remaining doubt about him being a demon it was gone now.

"I told you!" Alex's voice is loud and sharp. "To stop treating me like I was your pet. I'm not!" And there was everything else about that whole not really having a choice in this part as well, but Alex isn't going to try and explain that by shouting in his driveway.

Even if people wouldn't hear them from the road or the other houses. If they hadn't heard them in the forest of Richard's backyard then they wouldn't be able to hear them now. But just in case. It wasn't like talking about how he was a demon would help with Alex's sanity if it came down to that.

"Stop ordering me around. I'm not your pet and I'm not your property and I'm not your first concubine or whatever."

Why did his chest hurt.Why did he feel bad?

He shoved it down and sent the unspoken command of freeze - ideally leaving her frozen in place as he strode out of the house, commanding and imposing.

His eyes black.

Striding over to his car, he tugs - and rips the door off without a second thought.

"Do you feel me in your mind?" He pours more ice into her, "Do you? I want you to understand that if you leave. I will kill you."

Alex freezes, she doesn't want to but it's suddenly like all of her muscles in her body don't want to obey her anymore. Her mouth is open, because she'd been about to say something else, and Alex can't even make her lips close. Her nerves are firing, Alex knows that but it's almost as if there isn't anyone who happens to be at home with doing what those nerves should be. She knows that her nerves are, because she can feel the cold there.

But her muscles start to tremble, and she lets out a little whimper when her car becomes basically nothing more than scrap.

Her muscles can't handle the ice that he's adding too her frame, and her knees buckle below the weight of it. The weight is more than just the ice, more than just the car. Her eyes fill with tears making them luminous before they spill down over her cheeks again, and Alex just gasps softly. "Stop." It's as if it took all of the not inconsiderable amount of will that Alex has just to make that sound.

His ribs constrict and Azazel knows something is wrong. Something has gone wrong, something is wrong, he was not told something he was lied to. Richard Strand is dead. But he is also Richard.

I've never known life without you Richard's voice murmurs in his mind, So how do I know where you end and I begin?

He moves toward her, focused, as he moves to touch her - her arms and shoulders and her head.

"...You shouldn't have tried to leave." Richard's throat constricts, "You shouldn't. See? Now you're hurt. You're hurt and that's bad." He presses a hand to her forehead without her consent but he sounds anxious. He sounds worried, "...I want you to be okay."

Richard's Humanity has changed him.

If she wasn't frozen, Alex would have flinched away where he touched her, but she couldn't for a moment before her muscles began to slowly come back online with his concern. The concern is palpable, and Alex can feel it almost like she felt the ice and she doesn't know what to say to that for a moment.

She wants to say something about how making it her fault isn't something that people would do, but she can't. Instead Alex tries to focus on her breathing and on controlling her panic. She uses square breathing and tries to ground herself within her own body but she's reminded of all of her nightmares that she'd had where Richard had been a demon, where he had changed in the same way that he'd done today.

Only not really because in her nightmares Alex could always wake up screaming and then know that he was safe. But Richard hadn't been safe since well before she was born. Since before her biological mother was born. And now he's said that if she left he'd kill her.

Alex believes him.

"I won't. I won't try and leave again." Her voice is low and husky, weaker than normal. "I'm fine." It's a lie, but one that's familiar and one that Alex had been saying for two years. "I'm fine."

"Good."

Is it good? The older man sits back on his heels and stares at her. This body isn't used to his strength yet. Richard and he have never agreed on his abilities. He has denied it. His father beating him had left Richard afraid of...everything. It had frustrated him, trying to control the two of them. The one of them. Control him.

"...Can you walk? do you need me to carry you?"

He pauses. Human nature is filtering in and he knows now. Richard Strand - the being known as Richard Strand is dead - but the being known as Azazel has also died.

He is effectively Richard Strand the demon. Names are important but the only one that comes to mind is Richard and Richard cares for Alex. He cares deeply for Alex. They have memories.

"I give you my word that if you do not leave I will not harm you." He pauses, "This arrangement will...benefit both of us. And I'm...sorry. I am sorry about it."

"I can walk." Mostly because Alex refuses to be carried. She refuses to make it something that makes her appear weak right now. Alex isn't weak and she's not going to let him think that she is.

She rises to her feet and looks at the door to the car again. Honestly, if there was something that convinced Alex that she wasn't coming back here it was this. When she didn't show up, someone would come looking for her, and eventually Nic would think to send them here and when they saw her car what would they think? What did it matter.

"What arrangement?" Alex can't help but to ask, because it's familiar a battleground that the two of them had already gone over more times than she can count. "That I can't leave and we're going to Geneva? That you'd kill me? That Thomas Warren definitely is going to when we get there? How the hell does that benefit me?"

"If you are with me you'll be safe."

Azazel is practical. Richard Strand has - to borrow a phrase from the man - fucked him over. He is not a demon wholly anymore and he is not a human anymore. He is Richard and it is largely thanks to the woman stumbling beside him.

"I know how it sounds but knowing what I am now, and knowing my place in this, why would they harm me? It's a bit of a stretch but the reach of Warren and my brethren is farther than you can imagine. You have never been alone since this began. Discounting...me."

He inhales, looking upward at the sky before looking back to the earth.

"Do you want me to-" Help you, leave, go home, sleep, eat, live.

He struggles, "...Help you sleep."

There.

"I can put you out and let you have a deep sleep."

"What does that mean, that I've never been alone. Discounting you? I don't understand. There were those times when you... I mean he left. When he was chasing Coralee's ghosts around the world. When you definitely weren't around me. And Simon..." Alex feels a little like her legs aren't going to carry her and she just reaches out for him automatically for support.

"Simon set me up, didn't he? He really did set me up." That hurt, because honestly, she'd trusted Simon. She'd felt that he was probably the one person who wasn't lying to her as cryptic as he tended to be. She had thought that he was protecting her by telling her all of this and right now Alex doesn't really feel protected at all. How could she.

"No, I don't want to sleep. I want to go to my apartment and get my things. Especially if..." Alex can't bring herself to say it, but the thought works it's way through her mind. Especially since everything inside of her is telling her that she's not coming back here. Maybe ever.

"For someone who is less...he has certainly ruined things." Richard straightens and tilts his head to study her.

Richard could read facial expressions. For all of his uncaring he knew how to interact with humans but this...

This feels like learning how to do it all over again. Something spasms across his face and he frowns, "especially if what?"

Alex is Alex about the whole thing, and her chin just tilts upwards, the line of her shoulders set with anger and tension. The frown on her face is sharp, and she wants to scream at him about this.

Too bad screaming at Richard Strand had never done anyone a bit of good.

Her voice is harsh though, and forcefully calm even if the angry bite is still present in it. "In case I don't come back. What did you think? It's not like going to Geneva ends particularly well for anyone, Azazel."

He looks genuinely confused for a moment. Another expression Richard has probably never worn on his face before the demon points back outside.

"Get in your car. We're driving to your house than we will get on a plane and go to Geneva."

This is not up for discussion.
---

There is at least a Daeva Corp plane and Alex is directed to a set of overly comfortable seats. There are things that he - that he Richard has to look at.

Because he is Richard. And Azazel.

That becomes clear because the more he reads about the plans he has dedicated himself to the more he realizes he is neither wholly demonic or wholly human.

Casting his gaze skyward he glares. You did this on purpose. You and he both. You and I- You both did this to me. The final punishment for my sins. I thought I could bend humanity to my will and I can't because I am them.

And they are me.

Slamming the folder shut he moves across the plane to Alex and sits across from her. Staring. Intent and scared. For all intensive purposes the last person who knew Richard Strand was on this plane and without Charlie...or Coralee...

The notion of coralee twists something in his chest and he tosses the file aside with a snarl. One thing the two of them could come to an accord on.

He paces to the back of the plane and sits across from Alex, staring at her.

Just. Stares.

Alex didn't want to get on anything that belonged to Daeva Corp, she didn't want to deal with any of this but she couldn't leave him and she couldn't make him stay. In the end, she'd packed her clothing, and she grabbed some of the things from her jewlery box before she'd left a note for Nic, or whoever to find. It was both a lie and it wasn't, just three words hastily scribed on a paper and signed underneath with her A: "Geneva with Strand." Or at the very least with the body of Richard Strand.

Even as he was gone.

She didn't protest as he hustled her onto the plane, or say as the plane left Seattle behind them and Richard ignored her for however long it was. In her purse there was a notebook, one that only had a few pages left in it. Once, Alex had used it for notes when she was interviewing people, when she was interviewing him but right now she was using it for another purpose entirely. Sitting in the plush seat with her legs tucked underneath her, Alex Reagan wrote the narration for a story that would never be finished, never be recorded, for a show that never should have been.

For a long moment, she just ignores the way that he's staring at her, and then Alex doesn't even look up when she just says, "what? Am I supposed to do tricks too?"

"...Do you not want to go to Geneva? Do you really not to?"

It's his voice, it's Richard's voice but hoarse, "...Something really bad will happen if we go. I've known that. But I...don't want it to." His voice is hushed, hoarse.

"I don't want bad things to happen." He breathes, hard and heavy, "I don't want people to get hurt. So I have to know because I'm...I don't want that."

He moves to reach for her, "But I can't die so I don't sense danger anymore and you are a human and you can sense danger. So. Do you sense that?"

Alex just stares at him for a very long moment, watching him as she puts down the notepad. Honestly she kind of wishes that she’d had a spare recorder that she could have grabbed. Recording at the end of the world seems like the right thing to do. And Jesus he sounds like Richard. He sounds like Richard so much that it hurts inside of her chest. Memory sits, painful and sharp against her ribs and her heart as she listens to him say that he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. It’s harder than one would have expected to hear.

Which may be why Alex doesn’t pull away when Richard reaches for her. She lets him take her hands in his and Alex just looks into his eyes for a long moment before she responds.

“Yes. I sense danger. Thomas Warren is a danger and has been for god knows how long. He’s wanted to hurt me for a long time, I think and you bringing me to him practically with a bow is just going to make it easier for him. And you being there is just going to make it easier for him to damn everyone else as well.”

Edited 2020-07-28 00:50 (UTC)

The thing wearing Richard Strand's skin is not Richard. Richard would never have brought her here.

It is not Azazel, who would kill her and happily fly to Geneva like the General he was.

Somewhere Richard Strand smiles and Azazel screams as Richard rises and nods.

"If you have lied to me I swear to you I will hurt you." He points a hand at her before he strides to the cockpit. The pilot is a clean cut military man who turns and stares up at him.

"Doctor Strand sir?"

Yes. Yes. He was Doctor Strand. Richard Strand.

"Turn the plane toward Gilliard France." he pauses, Obey me. Turn the plane around and land it. Than kill yourself.

Outwardly there's a dip and the plan turns, tilting to the side clearly deviating from it's path as Richard braces himself against the wall of the cockpit.

When the plane has righted itself he rises, striding back to Alex and sitting in front of her.

"We're going to Gilliard France." He stares at his shoes, "...This is wrong. We're going to France. But bad things won't happen in France."

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