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

Entry tags:

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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."

His hands are so cold it shocks her, but not as much as his saying that does. It kind of hurts honestly. She can't help it, because it's like all the things that she and Richard had been groping towards when they were cuddling and sitting together and the lines that they'd never officially crossed.

Fuck, they didn't even get the proper chance to tell one another that they loved one another. It wasn't fair. None of this was fair.

None of it.

But she just gives his hand a squeeze before she says softly, "it's okay, Richard. Go to sleep."

Alex eats when the food shows up, and she leaves his meal there, with the warmer so that he didn't need to worry about food poisoning. But in the end, it had been a very long... however the hell it was that they'd been doing this. So in the end, Alex just curled up on the other side of the bed from him, covering them both over with a blanket and fell asleep.

He sleeps.

When he sleeps he dreams. He dreams of his father's house and he dreams of Azazel who looks like Richard with black eyes and black veins and huge claws.

You absolute bastard! You knew!

"...I suspected." Richard Strand murmured, "I have also paid a price Azazel. I have ceased to be me. Just as you have ceased to be you."

Then I should be in charge!

"You are in your own way." Richard Strand's head aches, "...I can't deny your more...demonic impulses any longer and the people in my life who matter to me will confront that. And I may lose them."

His demonic self roars and Richard faces it calmly. Rationally.

"Accept it." His voice is soft, "Accept it and we'll kill Warren and you will have your revenge and I will as well. We are united in this. And even you agree - this was unfair to both of us."

His demonic self paced before sitting down.

...You- Azazel growled, You did this for Alex.

"...Yes."

That's wrong. The demon muttered, You understand that right? He gave you free will so you wouldn't have to do this. Don't do things for people when you're not sure they'd want you to.

That made Richard pause, "I-"

You know I'm right. We're right. The demon rose, She loves you. Not the noble romantic you. you. And if she doesn't love you when you and I are a new creature...

"Than I face that." That thought had not occurred to him, "...But I don't regret this. I was tired."

...So was I. The demon offered him a hand, Are you ready?

Their hands touch.

Richard jerks awake and stares wide eyed at everything before looking back at Alex, "...H-"

For the first time in almost three years, since Alex Reagan had first stood in front of a Demon's door in the cabin where Sebastian Torres had been found, she doesn't dream. Normally, her dreams are things that are filled with shadows and demons and things that crawl up her bed and want to possess her in them. But this sleep is dreamless and deeper than she'd gotten in a while as well. It's the kind of sleep that Alex had forgotten that she could get--it's the kind of sleep that Alex had forgotten existed outside of stories, actually.

But just because she got some sleep doesn't mean that Alex isn't still sensitive to things in the room. It doesn't mean that she doesn't feel Richard when he jerks awake. The motion and shifting of the springs of the bed might as well be a rubber band that draws her into a sitting position as well. Alex blinks in the darkness of the room, not quite knowing where she is or when it is but her awareness slams into her all too quickly even if it's the cliff notes version: Strand is a demon and he needs help.

"It's okay." Alex says the words quickly and soothingly, her hand reaching out to take his own. "It's okay. It was just a nightmare."

If there was such a thing as just a nightmare with everything going on.

He blinks, staring at her owlishly before he lowers his gaze.

"...I dreamed..." What did he dream of, "I dreamed."

He reached for her and hesitated, his hand falling, "...I think...I am more at ease." He paused, "Within reason. First things first. Did you sleep all right?"

He looks roguish, "I told you you would beside me."

Alex blinks at him for a moment before she reaches automatically for her glasses, because she is blind as a bat without them and she wants to be able to see him in the low light of the hotel room. She tilts her head a bit, watching him, and wondering what it was that he dreamed, if he didn't remember it.

Either way he definitely looked more at ease, if that roguish look was any indication of how things were, Richard almost seemed like himself. Whoever himself was now. "I slept okay," her voice is soft and tired sounding, but it doesn't have the notes of fear that came with it on her sleep notes. It just sounds normal. "For me okay might as well be great." A little smile follows the word before she just asks: "what did you dream?"

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject