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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"...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?"

"Coming together."

He moves to sit, pulling his knees up to sit with a grunt. Heedless of her he moves to pull up his pants leg - there's no bruise and the scrapes on his hands are gone. Satisfied, he stares at the door.

"I was seven years old." The man's voice is soft, "Cheryl had dreams of something in the corners of our room. We both had shared dreams, lucid or otherwise, of the demons that haunted us. Desperate to prove it to my father I videotaped them. I showed it to my father and he beat me senseless. Knocked me to the floor."

Richard's features are passive but there's a hanging sense of cold around him that dissolves, slowly, ever slowly.

"They came on my birthday, because apparently ancient entities are cliche to the point of being boring. It forced itself inside me. The ultimate violation - and I was suddenly saddled with a companion just as Simon is. Chosen unwillingly to be a host for this creature that was supposed to burn me away. That very nearly did."

"I have spent over fifty years afraid of that thing and wanting to be human but I can't.I perhaps never could. I have barely known myself out without the demon that is now a part of me. That has made me someone...different."

He turns to stare at Alex, eyes gray before they fade to black, "Alex. I am not the Richard Strand you knew, but I am his...sense of self. And Azazel's powers and memories and abilities. And his sense of self. What Warren and Tiamat - grasping creatures willing to prey on lost creatures like snake oil salesmen...is the success of lost creatures coming together. There is a lot mankind has in common with both the dark and the light of this world. I see that now."

He dwindles, looking at nothing.

Pulling herself into a sitting position, Alex just faces him, her eyes wide when he tells the story of what happened to him. There's pain there, a pain for him and what he went through, how bad it had been for longer than she had been alive. It's instinct for her to raise her hand to his face to touch him, but she pulls it back, because it doesn't seem right to force her touch onto him when he'd just spoken of what the demon did.

It's harder than watching him even on the night that Coralee had grabbed them before Warren could. It's harder than the story of what Howard had done. It's harder, somehow and in some way than hearing about how he was a demon. Alex just breathes for a long moment, her eyes not looking away from him even though he looks away from her.

Both of them together, and Richard was Richard still in a way, even if it was just the sense of himself that he'd shared with the demon inside of him. "Okay," Alex just says at last, and she puts her hand on his arm. "Then how do we stop them from doing that?"

His hand moves to hers on his shoulder.

"You don't have to come with me." He pauses, "Don't mistake me, I want you to. But it is selfish of me wanting you to be here. I want you here to remind me why humanity is worth it as well as to fight him."

He stares, "Because if there's one thing that I've come to realize - human beings are animals that I could stop."

There's a dark static edge to his voice but he withdraws.

"And I would. But there are good things. I just want to remember what they are. And it begins with trying to find others like me. And like you."

“Like I wouldn’t come with you, Richard.” Because of course she would because this was her story still even if she never got to tell it. Alex Reagan had helped spin the wheels of it, putting it in motion in more ways than one. And even if she hadn’t, even if she wasn’t coming because she was following that thread, there’s no way that Alex wouldn’t have gone to remind him that humanity was worth saving.

It was. It is. And Alex is going to remind him of that as much as she needed to.

But Alex just frowns at him for a moment, not understanding what he’s saying. Alex Reagan was just normal before she’d gotten involved in this and maybe he means it that way? Like other people who are a touchstone for the hybrid’s humanity or whatever. But she has a sinking sensation in her gut that it’s more complicated than that. “What do you mean ‘like me’?”

Richard would lessen the blow.

He is not Richard. Not entirely. Turning to face her he holds her hands and meets her gaze.

"Alex."

He pauses, "How do you think they chose children?"

“What?” Alex just stares at him for a moment her eyes wide behind her glasses and there is fear darkening the pupil there. Her stomach flips over and over, summersaults like she used to do when she was smaller and she just shakes her head.

“No. It can’t be. I can’t be one of those kids. I can’t be. So no, I don’t know how they’re chosen. I thought they just were because someone opened the door for them or whatever.”

Her voice is forceful. “No one did that to me.”

"Count yourself lucky."

He moved to hold her hands tighter.

That doesn't mean the door is gone. No No no, but that means there are things that she should know. He hates himself for it. Holding her hands and swallowing.

"I'm sorry. It just remains to be said. Doors don't go away. You could still be taken."

"What? How do I even have a door anyway? Why do I? That doesn't make any sense, Richard." She's frowning at him and she just looks away for a second then down at their combined hands. Her breathing comes a little bit harder, and a little bit faster as she's trying to process this. Because if she's from one of those kids then...

Then her getting involved in this isn't random. Her becoming obsessed with it isn't random and the connection that she has (had? has?) with him wasn't something that had been forged by the time that they were together just investigating this sort of thing. It means that whatever it was, at least part of it has a sense of predestination and fate to it.

Alex Reagan doesn't believe in fate.

But it makes sense, and there's horror in her voice. "Something wants to take me, doesn't it? It's what my nightmares have been about. It's why I didn't dream when I was here with you last night." Because Alex always jumps to conclusions, so she's doing it here.

He doesn't say anything because honestly his response would be it's ideal.

He's not human. Richard Strand would fight tooth and claw against it as he had, but Richard isn't here anymore. Instead looks to the door of their hotel room.

"Anything can be a temple."

He stares at it.

"Anything can be blessed."

"What?" Alex just blinks at him, her eyes wide and she starts to pull her hands away from his. "What are you talking about, Richard?" He'd asked her before if he scared her, and he'd been scaring her off and on for the last twenty-four hours, but the way he says that sends a shiver down her spine.

"No." It's firm and sharp and she just stares at him. "Don't even think about it, Richard. If I'm supposed to be here to remind you of your humanity, then I have to be human. Besides you don't even know for sure if I'd end up like you and Richard or Simon and his demon. For all you know I could just end up broken and a shadow. Is that what you want?"

"...No."

He shakes it off, tearing his gaze away with difficulty "...No. Of course not. I'm sorry." He runs a hand through his hair, "I apologize. I'll be better. I..."

He breathes, slow, "It would appear that is something I must contend with. As it is, it is better to collect people like you who never had someone open the door - so that you could keep them safe."

He nods, standing up and staring down at his rumpled and scraped and torn suit, "...Think if I ask downstairs I could find something presentable?"

It won't be his normal clothes but he can at least try.

Relief floods her. Alex can’t help it. She’s not wrong when she worries about the fact that she’d would in fact end up losing the battle that Richard had either won or lost depending on the viewpoint that he’s taking right now.

But Alex isn’t an idiot. She knows Richard, she knows what she’d heard from Azazel and Alex knows that what he wants to do is open the door for her anyway if only so he wouldn’t be so alone.

Richard had saved her earlier, and he’s still saving her and a part of it breaks her heart. And a part of her is extremely relieved that at least that piece of him is still there.

Without thinking about it, Alex rises to, her clothing rumpled from travel and from the forest and from sleeping in it. Richard Strand would never be caught dead looking like this and she knows it. It’s just another way that he’s still like himself even if he’s not exactly himself. Alex just puts her hand on his cheek again and without thinking at all about it, or why she’s doing it she just presses her lips to his own.

Azazel understands than.

They understand why the garden happened, why God loved them. Jealousy gave way to understanding. Azazel lets slip a foothold on it's inhumanity and the two souls merge tighter but Richard-

Richard wraps Alex in his arms and kisses her softly, deeply. He nuzzles against her when he pulls back, his forehead pressed against hers.

"I've waited at least two years to do that." His voice is hoarse, soft and hoarse, "Semantics aside, details aside, circumstances aside. No matter what happens. You feel so right in my arms."

When he wraps his arms around her, Alex almost wants to cry with relief. It feels so damned right to be in his arms like this, just as it had felt right to have herself tucked under his arm and her head practically on his chest as he made her watch stupid movies and then told her about how he preferred Star Trek to Star Wars.

This was a line that they're danced near crossing, one step forward, two steps back, their toes hanging over the edge of it like high divers about to leap before they end up chickening out and drawing back. There were reasons for it of course, so many reasons like the show and their professional ethics and everything else.

But none of those matter now, and she just wraps her arms around his neck.

"Yes. We waited too damned long." She knew why. He knew why. But now Alex and Richard don't need to wait. Pressing her lips against his again, she just whispers: "I love you."

I don't know you except he did. And God it felt nice to be needed.

Could he thank his sires? Both of them? One who hated and the other who loved humanity? He shoved it out of his mind. He was Richard fucking Strand. Born to Marilyn and Howard Strand November 1rst All Saint's Day. He wanted to be Spock when he was little and even if he was somehow gifted with demon abilities now-

"I love you too."

-He was him.

"...When this is all over we should go away."

"I think that sounds like a good idea." Alex just laughs softly, and she pulls away with reluctance. "Maybe we'll hit Paris. Or Ireland, Ireland might be nice." But it's something that's going to have to wait and Alex knows it. She knows that they have other things to do first and many miles to go before they can actually take a vacation.

"We can check and see if they have anything downstairs, but I wouldn't hold my breath. There's a larger city about twenty minutes from here, I saw it on the map last night. We should be able to find you some clothes you'd like there and it'd be a good place to regroup."

Remembering how things had gone yesterday, Alex can't help but to ask: "you said Warren knew we weren't on the plane. Can you still sense him? Can he still sense you?"

"He is...distracted."

Cocking his head to the side like an animal, Richard Strand looks up sharply, "...There are people nearby however who would serve our purpose. Including someone like me."

He pauses.

"A failure."

Turning to look at her, "...Here's where I need you. There are pieces of my memory that are returning...are you...is this...if we need to rescue someone. To investigate. You need to walk me through it for now.

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