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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"Anything Electrical." He stretches his hands and clenches them leaving the lights in the room to flicker, "...I operate in shadows and darkness."

He smiles a nasty smile before he shakes it off, "...I don't want to but. Anything. Electrical or anything that requires a spark."

He tugs at his shirt before adjusting his glasses and looking back at her, "Clothes first. Than I can tell you where we go."

Post breakfast and purchasing a shirt and tie he leads her to a small french village and orders her to stop in front of a small shop - throwing a hand across her chest just as the car stops.

"We're too late."

"What?" Alex just blinks at him as the car stops, and he says that they're too late. "I don't understand. What are we too late for, Richard?" Panic starts to crawl along her insides, shifting and pulling along her veins as Alex breathes like Dr. Bernier taught her too. She's trying the counting thing because if she panics, then she knows that she's not going to be any good to anyone.

Despite the hand on her chest, Alex looks at the building, tilting her head and leaning forward in order to see the building through the windshield. It looks like a normal small shop that you'd find in any small village. It doesn't seem like there's anything out of the ordinary to her, but she does trust Richard, and she does think that he wouldn't have her stop for no reason. "What's going on?"

"...They've been here." He swallows and his eyes darken to black. He slowly pulls away from her and hisses. It was a family. It was a family and the child who wasn't handling it well...Who was struggling with the demon inside of her...

"...Don't go in there."

He clenches his fists, "We should turn back."

The door creaks open blowing in the wind, revealing the darkness beyond.

"I might be able to help them. Whoever's left inside." Alex's voice is soft and her eyes fixate on the door as it blows open in the wind. "I might be able to help them." It's probably a trap, and Alex is aware of it, but the picture of Sebastian sticks in her mind for a long moment.

Once it would have been Simon, but Alex still thinks that he set her up for all of this, and it's starting to become even more evident considering that Richard needs her to remember to how to be human as well as how to find humans.

Her hand is on the door handle already, and Alex's other one undoes the seatbelt that she was wearing.

"Don't."

He sounds sad. Genuinely sad.

"There's a lot of blood. Maybe this was a mistake." He hesitates, "Maybe I shouldn't have you help because I-"

He cocks his head to the side, "...He's still here." His gaze alights on the forest and he looks at her, staring through her, "...He. He's waiting for us."

His mention of blood makes her frown, and Alex can't help but to remember the scene when she and Nic had found Maddie Franks' body. The nightmares from that day had intermingled with the way that the demons had so sometimes Alex didn't know where one ended and the next began. It's not something that Alex ever normally wants to think of all.

But, she was supposed to be there, and she was supposed help him. So, Alex just lets out a deep breath before she softly asks: "who's inside? Is it Simon?" Because blood and Simon seemed to make sense, even if the other details of it didn't really fit with what he'd do.

But there was another question. "What does he want?"

"...Me." a pause, "And you."

He points, "It's not Simon. It-"

His eyes open and fade to black almost instantly, "...It's someone holding Simon hostage."

Alex just lets out a very shaky and shuddering breath at that, her eyes closing and opening for a moment. This isn’t what she had in mind when she started all of this. When it started to go sideways even she had never imagined that Richard would be a demon, that they would end up in the middle of nowhere France staring at a house filled with blood.

A house filled with blood that's definitely bait for the two of them. Because of course it was.

Peering into the house as if she could see who had Simon, Alex's hand still twitches against the door handle. She wants to open it. While Alex may not have much of a sense of self-preservation, she does have some and she knows that this is probably a terrible fucking idea. But more than that, Alex has empathy and Simon has been someone who'd she'd thought was... maybe not a friend but someone who was helping her out and who had her (and the world's) better interests at heart.

Which is why Alex just says: "we can't just leave him in there."

"...If we go in there I might have to fight for him."

Did he read her mind? That she's worried about Simon? It's hard to tell. It's open to consideration, it's something Richard when he was fighting his demon side would have called apophenia.

Now he braces himself and his skin pales a visible shade as his eyes go black.

"There is something...lingering there. But we're not going in the house." He turns his gaze to the forest before looking at her with that unsettling black demonic gaze. His lips press together, "...It'd be stupid to tell you not to come with me. Just - if we can get him away. Get justice. Be ready to run."

Alex just frowns at him, all of the things that they'd gone through and done in the last twenty-four hours--in the last two years there in the haunted darkness of her eyes. This story had changed her, and it had changed him, she thinks. Or at the very least she did from the demon and man who were always in conflict to the hybrid that he was today.

A hybrid who was very much the person that this thing wants. Alex isn't an idiot, she's aware that her place in all of this is only because she'd forced her way inside of it, practically with some sort of crowbar. Even if she's one of the kids (which Alex still doesn't know if she believes) she doesn't have the Strand name, and the Mantle of the Dragon and everything else that he does. He's got fifty years fighting a demon before Richard gave up because of her.

And now he's saying something like this. Alex just shakes her head quickly, her concern evident. She just takes a deep breath for a moment and then her frown hardens even further, because Alex Reagan is definitely stubborn if nothing else. "No. 'Getting justice' sounds entirely too much like goodbye. They're expecting us to come in all guns blazing, right? They're prepared for a fight?"

"Yes."

His hands clench and he turns back to the forest, "I would suggest we run, but if you think-"

He wants to run. He wants to run off toward the forest and kill, to sink his teeth in and rip and fight and the desire is so strong he grips the car and squeezes at it. It is powerful.

Reason. Richard Strand would use reason. Richard Strand would not howl and run into the forest with claws drawn and teeth out.

"Alex."

His voice is small and soft.

"...will you hold my hand?"

He doesn't open his eyes.

"This needs structure and reason and if I go now I'll rip the bastards apart."

Alex just reaches over, her fingers slowly slotting themselves between his own as she holds his hand. Her voice is soft. "They're going to be expecting you, Richard. They're not going to be expecting me to try and go up there alone. You said it yourself, this needs structure and reason and you can't go in there like this, ready to rip them into pieces. That's what they want. That's what they're expecting of you."

Her hand is soft on his cheek. "The best thing that you can do when it comes to any of this stuff is be unexpected. Warren never thought that you would fuse Richard and Azazel, right? He expected Azazel to win." Because of course Warren would, there was no way he'd think that Richard would have won, or worse, that he would have done this where the two of them have come into an entirely different balance.

"If we go up there together, charging like we're trying to save Simon's life, it puts whatever we're dealing with in a position of power. The last thing that it needs is more than that when it comes to us."

His fingers squeeze hers because he can see it, and the boy is still alive. Still alive but barely and some part of him wants to make sure he survives so that he can find some sense of peace the same way he had because...

Is this peace? He doesn't know. He relaxes by hairs before opening his black eyes to look at her.

"...So you're suggesting we make them come to us?"

Because he is very confused.

"I'm suggesting you let me go and try and get him out first." A pause and then she just adds softly: "alone." Is Alex bracing for Richard to argue, of course she is but. She also thinks she might be right about it. "They want you way more than they want me, Richard."

Alex just sighs. "I'm not a general, I wasn't supposed to lead any armies, I'm just a pesky reporter who stumbled into all of this. But the one thing I can do is talk. And maybe I can talk whoever this is out of whatever just long enough for Simon to bilocate out."

Every time he thinks about it he wants to say no. To tell her to hang back. Richard wouldn't however. Richard would let Alex at least stand beside him. Hell, she'd be leading him in. And he was Richard.

He was just...redefining himself. Teeth bared (and do they seem a little sharper?) he looks back at the woods.

It's probably her imagination.

He hasn't let go of her hands before he nods mutely, "I'm going to walk with you." He pauses, "Not...physically. But I'll biolocate to where you are if you need help. Or you need me."

A wind rustles through the trees and Richard lowers his head to her shoulder, "I don't want you to get hurt."

"I'll do my best to try not to, Richard. I promise." Which was about the best that Alex could do really, considering who she was. And how reckless she always tended to be especially when it came to things like this. After all, being reckless had lead to him becoming who he was now, and Alex thought that maybe that might have been something that was worthwhile.

But she knows he's worried, and Alex just rests her cheek against his head as she keeps a hold of his hands. "I'll be okay. Really." Alex almost believes it, and she's a little relieved that he's going to be there with her, even if she can't see him. Somehow she thinks that she'd always feel him when he's around though. She doesn't know why, but Alex just does.

Her voice is soft when she asks: "are they still there and waiting?"

"Yes."

He can see them. Simon in the middle of a bloodied circle, beaten and lying on the forest floor. The woman - and it is a woman - has a gun trained on him.

His throat works.

"...I love you."

"I love you, Richard Strand." Alex catches his face and kisses it softly, but it's not a goodbye kiss, because she doesn't believe that this is goodbye. Instead, it's a kiss of seeing him soon, because she's going to get the three of them out of this.

After she kisses him, Alex pulls away and steps out of the car. She tries to straighten everything out, but she'd still not gotten her normal makeup, so the shadows are bright below her eyes, and her clothing wasn't quite herself, even if it was a version of it. But in her ballet flats, Alex steps into another wood. She follows the pull of something that she can't describe and she doesn't even look to her side for him. Nope, no one here but us chickens as Alex steps into the clearing.

"Leave Simon alone." Her voice is authoritative, but because she's Canadian, or just because she's Alex, she adds, "please." At the end of it.

The woman standing over Simon raises a cocky eyebrow, nudging at the body in front of her, "I expected Azazel. Sorry. Richard. You keeping him aside is too funny. Eventually he's going to do something to remind you that he's no longer human and I have to wonder if you'll stand by him then."

She kicks the young man in the circle, "Like this one. He set you up and set...Richard up - all nice and simple. Then Simon fought Crowley."

Her eyes fade to black and her teeth are sharp.

"Alex Alex Alex. Are you going to save him?"

"He already did." Alex said of Richard, and she stepped closer into the circle where the woman kicked Simon. She'd gotten used (well, okay not used to exactly, but it didn't shock her as it would have before) seeing the eyes of someone she was looking at go black, and the sharpness of his teeth reminded her of Richard's in the car.

"Is Simon still in there? My Simon, I mean." Alex asks and doesn't realize that she'd named Simon as hers, but it was just the idea of that it was the one who she knows. "Even if he did set me up, he doesn't deserve this."

When she comes closer, Alex can feel the power radiating off the woman, and how it's a bit different than Richard's felt. "Who are you?"

"Baphomet." She straightened, proud and bright, her hair hanging over her shoulders, "I have shed my human name and I would have served beside my general but it's clear that Tiamat will need a new General. And I will fill the role since ...Richard has forsaken his destiny."

She rolled her eyes and waved it off, "I don't know, Simon? are you in there? Have you killed Crowley?"

Simon groaned, spitting blood across the floor, "You can have him if you'd like. I was hoping to bring Warren and Tiamat your Richard's head on a pike but."

She shrugged, "It's a fifty fifty toss up. He could join us...or he could kill Crowley completely...hmn." she kicked him one more time, "Have you seen what we can do? Have you seen what Richard can do now?"

She laughs than, high and shrill and nasty, "Oh Alex. Oh alex! If you had only seen what we're capable of."

The shadows crawl up the trees, wind picking up to whirl leaves around Simon's body - blowing anything around them back against the trees.

Another archdemon. This was entirely fine. All of it. She's going to be a general in an army of a war that Alex can't possibly win and now she's trying to defend both her Richard and Simon as well. And she's taking the place of one Richard Strand who had given in to the demon so that it didn't hurt her. This was fine.

But Alex Reagan doesn't run from things, or from people. She's not Richard. So she moves towards the woman who is threatening her, and she moves towards the heap that is Simon Reese. "I get it. You're a demon. This is terrible." Alex just kneels down by Simon before the leaves swirl. Bringing one hand up to her face in order to protect her eyes from the wind, Alex is thrown backwards, landing in the dirt and the base of a tree with a soft thud. Just letting out a whimper of pain, Alex scrambles onto her hands and knees looking for Simon.

Simon's eyes are white in his head as he moans. Curling over on his side he pukes and when the wind blows his body is blown back against a tree with a loud crack.

Something seems to change in that. The air shifts around them and Simon shoots a hand out to put it against the dirt trying to stand.

"Alex..."

He gasps out her name, "Alex. Alex help me stand." His throat works, "Please."

Alex's eyes are wide and wild, and she just looks to Simon and then looks back to the woman in the clearing. Baphomet, the demon who apparently the Knights Templar had worshiped. Crowley, another demon and of course Richard himself. This is like something of a nightmare, being surrounded by all of these demons at what's probably the end of the world. This is fine.

Instinct kicks in, propelling Alex forward on shaky legs. It's Simon and he's hurt it's Simon and he probably was to blame for where all of them had ended up at this point. Alex never would have confronted Richard, which never would have led to his confronting Azazel which never would have led to... Well, she knows the rest, it's all still fresh and beating in her mind--a series of two days that also seem unending.

But.

But. Leaving Simon on the ground and running would go against everything who she is as a person, and everything that she stands for. Where Alex hits the tree protests as she slips her arm below his shoulders. His weight is slight, and she can't help but to remember Richard's words about how he was a sick kid who was malnourished. How he probably hadn't been taking care of himself since he'd escaped Three Rivers.

And how he might not even be in there in the first place.

Simon stirs at her touch, tears running down his cheeks as he leans into her touch. The faster she pulls him out the closer she'd see Richard Strand, standing at the edge of the clearing with his shirt rolled up over his forearms and his eyes blackened. His features are pale and he sports his own sets of teeth.

His hands clench.

Get. Behind. Me.

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