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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Richard

That bastard.

Richard had to have known. Somehow. Somehow in some way he had to have known that if he surrendered it would do this. And instead of anger there is only a profound sense of loss because this is a new thing here sitting before her.

Rising, he crosses to the cabin, picks up the papers in a stumbling jerky motion before striding back to her...and holding them tight.

"...I don't want to do this."

Richard Strand's voice is here again, "I don't want to do this I shouldn't want to do this but something has gone wrong. Very wrong."

He offers her the folder but it has to be pulled out of his hands and he sits, staring at her like a lost dog.

"...You'll know...How to make my heart stop hurting. And how to make this pain at the thought of hurting human beings go away?"

Alex Reagan is rarely someone who doesn’t know what to say. She’s rarely someone who doesn’t have words for a situation; someone who stays quiet. But right now, what he says shocks Alex into absolute silence. Staring at him as she just pulls the papers away from his hand gently, Alex looks into his eyes.

Something has gone wrong, he says. What does that mean? What has gone wrong and why is he looking at her like he’s a lost puppy dog and she’s got his bone or like she can just fix everything. Alex Reagan is, on her best days, a natural disaster of the highest order: she looks before she leaps, she doesn’t know the meaning of caution, she always jumps to the worst conclusions as evident by god knows how many fights she’s had with Richard Strand.

And now Alex has to tell him how to make it not hurt when she doesn’t even know herself.

But what she does do is reach out and touch his cheek again, resting her palm against it and cupping her fingers around it like she had in the clearing before Richard had gone.

And then she just asks softly, and kindly, the concern in her voice: “can you tell me what went wrong? Please?”

Edited 2020-07-28 03:14 (UTC)

Richard leans into her for a moment before pulling back, "...I'm not...Richard. But I'm not...Azazel because that monster made something new."

He licks his lips and reaches for her hands to squeeze them. He is trembling.

"There is no Richard or Azazel there's just...me and I-" The plane shifts and it's landing and he stands up straight, dropping her hands, "Warren knows we changed course."

Alex just blinks, she can't help it. She wants to think that it's a trick, that he's just doing this fuck with her, but her gut is telling her that he isn't. He's telling her the truth and Alex has no idea what to do with it. How to reconcile it with what's happening and what has happened over the last twelve hours.

But Alex also know if there's someone who would be stubborn enough to do something that messes up a demon, then it would be Richard Strand.

Alex hates to fly and she just shoved her notebook into her bag along with the file and then looks to him again. "So, we need to hide right? Somewhere we can get our bearings." But. "Can he just like... find you? Wherever you are? Because you said he'd summoned you."

"I think I can stop him." His hands clench, "I think I can block him. I think -" The plane stumbles and he falls - catching himself on one knee with a yelp before he pulls himself to his feet. The plane is coasting to a halt as he looks back at her, adjusting his glasses, "I think I can at least lie to him. For a moment. For two. for three."

The plane is still coasting and he looks back at her, staring down at his knee before his eyes fade to black. Electricity crackles in the air around him but it uncurls.

"I don't know."

He slumps and when the plane stops the pilot kills the engine and steps out of the plane. Staggering out, wooden with glassy white eyes, he has a gun drawn in his hands. One foot and than another, one foot and than another before he presses the barrel to his temple.

What can he do? What can he honestly do? What-

"Stop." Richard's voice is cold and commanding, "Stop. Freeze and stand still. Stand there." His chest heaves and he looks back at her.

"What if...what if I send him back? And tell him to lie?"

"Send him to Geneva. Tell him that we're still on the plane, make him believe that we are." Alex can't believe she's doing this, she can't believe she's telling Richard to mess with someone's mind, but it's better than having the pilot's brains spread all over the planes interior. And all over them.

"We needed to make an emergency landing because of..." Alex just thinks quickly. "A faulty fuel gauge. But it's fine now. We never got off the plane. We weren't here long enough too." Which means. Well fuck. After going back to her apartment and packing things and bringing them along...

"It needs to be true. The plane can't be here for more than a few minutes, and our luggage needs to stay on it. Because Warren needs to believe that you're still coming." She doesn't mention bringing her because she's pretty sure that Warren would have vastly preferred that he didn't bring Alex along with him.

Standing, tie and features askew, suit rumpled and out of place - Richard Strand presses his hands to the other man's forehead and holds him there.

The plane drops several degrees. There's a smell of ozone and electricity and the pilot gasps before Richard withdraws his hands before turning to the plane door to tug at it, pulling, frantic, he tugs and tugs on it before tearing at it like an animal.

Out.

He wants out.

"Richard!" Alex says it quickly, moving next to him, trying to get him out of the way. She doesn't even realize that she's called him that at all as she moves to try and make the door work before he does damage to it so that the plane can't end up taking off. Which would undo all of the work that he'd just done and whatever had caused him to lose it like this.

"Let me do it. Hey. Hey." Her hand touches his arm, holding onto it. "Richard. I'll get you out but you have to let me!" She's trying not to yell, but she wouldn't be Alex if her voice didn't raise a little as she tries to stop him.

Get your shit together. He pulls back, staggering and wrapping his arms around himself, Get your shit together. Protect her. Because...

Because we should kill her. We should rape her and take her apart piece by piece...

No. No it's Alex. The man waited for her to get the door open before shoving her aside and throwing himself down the stairs. Three steps above the ground he trips, rolling over himself to splat on the floor and hold himself there because he has deviated.

He's a general damn it. And a scientist. A scholar. He can hold himself together.

He'll be over here trying to stagger to his feet despite scrapes on his hands and arms. His suit is torn and there's a scrape across his head but he - heedless of Alex - heedless of anyone.

Alex doesn't know about the fighting that's going on inside of his head, and she just follows him down the steps of the plane and into the small hanger. Clearly something is wrong, but she doesn't understand what it is or how bad it is. Only that it's bad, Alex knows that it's bad. It's not quite the level of danger that he'd demanded her telling about before, but it's also not something that makes her feel exceptionally safe.

Alex Reagan is pretty sure that safety was a lifetime, three years and eleven calls ago.

Swallowing as she reaches out for him, Alex is trying to help him onto his feet, because they need to get going. Already the crew is moving the portable staircase from the plane and it's ready to take off again. Only a few minutes, that's what this was supposed to be and she doesn't understand what's happening with him right now.

She feels so good beside him. One of Richard's memories - where she sat beside him warm and soft and small. His head aches, it feels like something is pounding against his skill and his brain is twisting into knots.

And his arms hurt. And his legs hurt.

"...If you can get me to a car I can hotwire it, and we can take it...somewhere I..."

His eyes fill with tears as he looks at Alex, "...What am I?" she wouldn't know. And he does. He is the ultimate goal of the experiment. The fusion of a human and a demon. Richard had kicked the process into completion.

All he wants to do is sleep. Instead he squeezes at her, "There's a car around the corner we can take."

She doesn't know what to say to that, but her hand brushes his cheek again, trying to understand maybe? Alex doesn't know what he is anymore than he does, but she can take a guess because he's definitely not the demon, especially if something was broken in the way that it happened. But being here isn't the bless place for them to be talking about it.

"Okay." Alex just tucks herself underneath his arm, and she can't do very much to keep him up considering the difference in their heights, but she can get him to the car if nothing else. Honestly, Alex wants to get her hands on a map because what they really need is a place where the two of them can get their bearings and get a handle on what the hell is happening here.

Guiding Richard to the car, Alex just leans in close to whisper to him so they don't attract any more attention. "Can you hotwire it from the passenger seat? You're in no condition to drive."

He presses his hands to car's interior and there's a jolt of electricity through the car. The engine purrs and he curls himself inward, leaning his head against the glass trying to pull his pieces together.

He is not Azazel, but he has Azazel's memories and Azazel's powers. The ability to manipulate humanity, to influence the world around him, to read minds, to transform if needed.

He is not Richard but he has Richard's psychic power, his ability to find things, his skills, his intelligence, his genius intellect and his human memories.

He is something new and his mind feels like he's cracking. Alex has been driving for awhile when he speaks.

"We need to pull over. I need to sleep."

Alex has been using the car's GPS to navigate the unfamiliar roads, considering the fact that she'd lost her phone even before they'd gotten on the plane and with the state that Richard is in, she doesn't want to ask for his. There's an anticipation in the car that Alex can't describe, and she just keeps driving in the direction as far away from Geneva as she can.

At least until she knew what the two of them were walking into, even if Richard already did from the plans and everything else that was a part of it.

Looking at him and how green he appeared, she just nodded. "There's a small hotel three minutes up the road, can you wait that long or do you want me to pull off to the side of the road?"

"I can wait."

His voice is soft, staring at nothing, "...I am trying to heal myself but I can't. This body is damaged and it will heal...like a human's."

He swallows, "I'm also hungry and thirsty." It's offensive but honestly all he wants is a steak. Or a hamburger. Or samosas. Or...

"...What am I?"

"I don't know." Alex was starting to have some theories though, because Richard was smart, and she wondered if perhaps what he'd done was to bind the demon into his own body as a way of stopping him. Losing the battle, but winning a war in the way. Even if he lost the war anyway because he wasn't here.

"The hotel should have food and water. And I have advil in my bag that will help. Hopefully anyway. I mean, it should if you're experiencing having a body like a human does anyway."

Alex pulled into the tiny hotel with the restaurant in it, and she looked to him for a moment. "Stay here, I'm going to go check us in, alright? I don't want them to think that something's wrong." Even if so many things were. Then she adds, because she remembers: "I'm not leaving. I'm just going to make it easier to get you into the room."

"I want to go with you."

He sets his features in a stubborn arrangement, "You're not leaving me."

Memories assault him. Coralee at Big Sur, other hotels, a hotel clerk flirting with him in - Prague? Yes. Prague. Richard doesn't freeze, instead he straightens despite a slight limp, "Then I'll sleep and eat. it feels like I haven't ever done that."

Because he hadn't.

That thought hits him and he adjusts his glasses. One of the lenses slightly cracked.

"...Lead the way." He will be snooty and fussy and commanding to the end.

Alex just sighs and shakes her head at him before she just walks next to him, trying to make sure that he's not going to fall over on her. Still, her voice is soft when she just says half below her breath. "You look..." Once she might have sugarcoated it for Richard Strand, but right now she's not inclined to do that considering he didn't even trust her to go and check them into a hotel when he's got their transportation. "You look like hell."

But then Alex fixed a grin onto her face as she opened the door, and she spoke quickly in her Canadian French, working to be her most charming self so that she didn't need to fork over a credit card to pay for the room. It was something that Richard looked as bad as he did, and at least that was helpful as Alex explained to the older couple that Richard was her husband and that they'd been mugged in the city that they'd landed in. When she explained about the credit cards and how they might not be working, and then she offered her grandmother's watch (but not the one that Richard had pressed into her hand before he'd sent her out into the night) as collateral. The woman refused to take it because Alex Reagan was charming and brilliant and people wanted to like her.

She asked for dinner to be sent up to the room, and then Alex helped him up the stairs and into the room with it's large bed. Once they were inside, Alex just steered him to the bed. "Sit here. I'm going to grab you some water from the bathroom."

"I like that you speak another language." Richard is curled in his suit. It is a curl, staring at the wall, "You sound like birds singing. That was french right?"

Right? oh God...

He has never called on God for anything and that makes him want to cry. It is like being back in God's good graces except...no. It's not. It never will be.

"I saw the French born. The very first humans carve the language out from cave walls in England. It's not far from here."

It is too much for a human shaped thing he thinks. But Richard Strand was so eager to know. And now the knowledge was his.

"I have memories of that I think. I was born in the Seattle forest. It is not something I saw. Somehow my life feels too short and too long Alex..."

He has taken off his glasses and lay them on the bedside table in an automatic and human gesture.

"...Do you ever feel that? Feel too large and too small?"

Alex does go and grab him water, leaving the door to the bathroom open as she did it. The last thing that she wants is for him to think that she’s tying to leave again. When she comes back out, Alex just perches on the edge of the bed next to him and she digs out the Advil bottle. “Here. This might help. At least with some of the physical stuff anyway.” The rest of it, Alex doesn’t know.

Philosophy has never been Alex Reagan’s strong suit; that was always in the purview of one Richard Strand. Her strong suit is seeing the connections between things and Alex makes another one because they probably weren’t really all that far from the caves at Bath where they’d first gotten the images of what this ritual of Warren’s might entail. It’s something that she files away for later as she shifts on the bed so that she’s half-turned towards him and can look at him.

Born in a Seattle forest that was Richard Strand’s backyard and he doesn’t know how to handle any of it. Honestly Alex feels almost like she’s imprinted on him like some sort of baby duck.

But maybe she’s the only one who can help him because of the way that Richard had demanded that he not hurt her. Unless she leaves or lies. Which is fine.

All of this is fine.

Letting out a soft sigh, Alex just nods to him. “I think everyone feels that way sometimes. Our brains and our thoughts are like infinite but our bodies aren’t. And there’s other things that affect them. Like the world and people’s place in it. What they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be doing. But struggling with it is very very...” Alex can’t say what it is but she thinks that she doesn’t have to because what it is is human to do it.

"I want to be Richard again."

The thing on the bed just kind of curls in on itself, "Because he seemed to understand this was the point in a way that Azazel didn't. Like buying a car and not realizing that the bumper to bumper warranty he sells you is...a lie."

It pauses, "...That the idea was to merge human souls with demonic creatures and somehow erase both." Warren. Warren and Tiamat lied. They took advantage of a vulnerable and weak population of beings lost without their creator and manipulated them and human beings.

The demon is many things, but it remembers human being born.

This is...wrong.

That does not strike the thing on the bed as fair but sleep may help. Looking at Alex the thing shakes itself.

"The idea is to move from hemimetaboly to homometaboly. The full and complete change. Caterpillar to butterfly. Humans named that. How lonely. How desperate." How strangely beautiful, "It just was once upon a time."

Richard Strand isn't blind without his glasses but he's close and the demon can't fix it the same way it fixes bruises and cuts and other things.

"If you want to go than go." The demon-human hybrid (That was the word he was looking for) "I release you. I have to kill Warren. He's lied and he's killed people and he'll destroy the creator's work. all the creator's works. Using vulnerable populations to do his dirty work. I just have to pull myself together. Push through it."

The thing, the man (it doesn't feel right still. Still.) looks at her.

"Before you do. If you want it, if you need it, I can remove your fear. The fear that my kind instilled in you so that you can sleep." the demon chuckles in Richard's familiar voice, "I think that's the very least I can do."

I want to be Richard again.

God, it hurts her heart to hear it. It hurts and the hurt just spreads over herself when the not!Richard thing curls in on itself. She doesn't know what to do. Seeing him hurting, seeing anyone hurting has always been something that Alex Reagan has struggled with. Even now, halfway across the world from where she had started, Alex is struggling with it. The way that he explains what he is, what it is, what is happening only makes it worse. Alex's breath just catches on the lump in her throat, dragging along it as she considers this.

Alex thinks about the kids--all of them-- she thinks of the pictures of Richard at seven with the smudge in the background that Cheryl had shown her. She thinks of the solemn and strange eyes of Sebastian Torres when he told her that it was okay for him to talk about his friend with her because she could see him too. She thinks of the cabin and standing in front of the demonic gate and how she's not had a good night's sleep since then. And she thinks of Simon, staring at her and telling her about Strand being a demon with an urgency that she'd never seen in him before. How he'd actually showed up and let himself be seen. How important this was to him.

How important he wanted it to be to Alex.

Killing Warren, it was something that she'd thought about before, but it was the fantasy of it just something to think on when he'd done something particularly terrible. This, this what he'd done to Richard seems like the worst one of all. As always, Alex has questions, and she just automatically reaches over to brush her fingers over his forehead, to move some of the hair from it to make it better to see his eyes.

"Okay. First, we can talk about that in the morning, but before you sleep, I think I need to know. Are you the only one? The only hybrid that is out there?"

"...No." Azazel knew it's own kind and Richard knew humans but the new human/demon hybrid only saw vague shadows where there had once been solid beings, "I don't...think so. I think I might be one of the few that hasn't lost their mind."

Another chuckle, "Unless I have lost my mind and you're some sort of illusion and I'm dreaming the broad sense of reality I seem to have developed. I just ...fought against it. A person's moral identity is shaped by how they react to power and even at my most- Richard's most asinine I have always wanted to be moral. and to be human. Frightening children and wives isn't really a way to live."

He sounds like himself. God, he sounds like himself so much that it's almost hard to remember that what had happened was that he has become a hybrid between demon and human. She just frowns for a moment, sitting there on the bed next to him with her fingers brushing along the line of his head. It's sort of instinct for her to do it now, and Alex isn't going to sit there and unpack all of that. If she tries she's going to lose her mind even more than she has already.

And she kind of definitely feels like she has.

"I'm not an illusion, which probably would be something that an illusion would say, but I'm here, Richard." It's a deliberate choice to use the name that he'd used over and over, only when she says it this time she means this Richard and not the one that she'd loved.

Loves?

But either way, she just sighs and adds, "and I'm not going anywhere, alright?" Which Alex means, that's clear from the way her chin juts out. "If you're going to go up against Warren, you're going to need help. But we can talk about that in the morning. You should try and sleep."

He gropes - gently - for her hand.

"You deserve so much better than being wrapped up in this." He is drifting away but his hands are ice cold.

"...Whatever happens I want you to know that. I think you're incredible. All parts of me do."

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