Chapter Text
No matter how many they stayed at or passed by, Dana could never call herself a small town girl. There were things to enjoy, for sure. Staying at motels or bumming it in the van with Alex was always going to be cheaper than the rent at her old place. The free soaps and shampoos were a nice bonus, and she was sure those places weren’t going to miss a few handfuls. Maybe the towels they would, but it didn’t really matter when no one would ever see her again.
And it was always easier shopping for one. Alex never needed anything, or even wanted anything, so the little money she managed to make (or take) went a long way. Which was why she was able to be picky, standing in front of a shelf full of mags and brochures.
The convenience store didn’t really live up to its name, being out of the way of anything else in the tiny town. But it gave her a place to park the van and rest up, so she’d take it. There wasn’t anything that interesting to browse - Gold Chains for Old Men…? - but the brochures had some attractions listed. They might as well have some fun while they were there.
She plucked one from the stand, paying at the till for the meagre haul, then ran out waving to Alex, who was leaning against the van.
“Hey, check out what I’ve got!” she called, and thrusted the brochure toward him. “They’ve got something called a ‘Mystery Shack’ up the road a few blocks. These small town attractions are so cute. You want to go?”
He raised a brow, and took a quick look through. “If you want. But it’s not open yet.”
“Not-” She took a second look. Oh. Re-opening in two days. “Good catch. Huh. Recent changes in ownership… Some kind of scandal?” She unfurled it over the hood of the van. “Northwest Manor’s… up there somewhere.” Her finger followed the road - it was a bit too far out of the way. Not that she was that interested in checking out some rich family’s home. No need to call attention that early.
“We’re staying here?” he asked, almost apprehensive. Huh. An apprehensive Alex.
“Just for a week or two. I’m kind of tired of being on the road so much, y’know?” she said, and he frowned. “What’s up? I thought you hated being in the car.”
“I do,” he said quickly. He continued, slower. “I just don’t like this place. Something’s off about it.”
If she waited for him to explain himself, she’d be there all day. “Off?”
He nodded. “When I got out of the van… I don’t know. It’s just weird,” he said, as if that explained anything at all. But if she knew anything about her brother, it was that his warnings were never to be taken lightly.
“Okay,” she said. “But we do have to stop for the night. Unless you’d rather me sleep in the car again.” It wasn’t fair to pull that card on him, but the next town was at least another two to three hours of nonstop driving. Bad juju aside, there was no way in hell she was letting him behind the wheel again.
There was that grimace she was expecting. His internal debate was loud once she got to be able to read his expressions. Of course, he’d cave eventually - of that she had no doubts of. He could never really say no to her. It was a useful trait, sometimes.
“Fine,” he said, eyebrows knitted. Notably, not petulantly. “I’ll keep watch.”
“Well, I have to see what places are open, first,” she said, a frown forming. It was too bad her phone couldn’t use cellular data. That would solve a lot of their problems. “Not everyone is going to take cash.”
“I can do that,” he said, tensing and ready to spring.
She stepped in front of him to stop his advance. “Uh, let me.” With Alex, he only really had one solution to every issue that came up, and she didn’t need the police on their ass right that second. Thankfully, he did stop. But, he didn’t give up.
“I’m going with you,” he said, folding his arms.
“To… talk to the cashier? I’ll be fine,” she said, and pointed through the glass windows of the store she left not too long ago. “You can see through it. I’ll just holler if I get in trouble.”
For a couple seconds, he seemed to mull it over. She could guess his thought process: ‘From here, I can dash in and go all murder monster in one second. But if I’m inside, it’ll take a quarter of a second. Is a second too much?’
“Relax, I don’t think anyone’s going to rob a customer,” she said as gently as possible, as if saying that would ever work on him.
He shook his head. Ah. Yep. “No,” he argued. “I’m coming with.”
An exception to the rules that governed Alex’s behavior, of course, was what he considered paramount to her safety. It didn’t seem to matter if it was a realistic threat or not, most of the time. But having a personal bodyguard at all times wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
“Have it your way,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. “Just don’t start anything, for god’s sake.”
—--------
As it turned out, the town was so small that it really only had one motel. And conveniently, they did take cash, no questions asked. Her back was already thanking her by the time she sprawled out on the bed. Not the most comfortable by any means, but she’d take a mattress over car seats any day of the week.
“No bed bugs,” Alex said, eyes flashing back to their usual colour once he was satisfied with the search. Having a Swiss army knife in the shape of a person around was really quite nice, sometimes.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, snuggling into the covers. Blackwatch could pry real pillows from her cold, dead hands. It was really too bad that Alex never let her use him as one. He was so damn warm all the time that she reckoned she could save a fortune on utility. But, alas.
Once all was said and done, he stood awkwardly near the center of the room, just below the slowly revolving ceiling fan. Every time his eyes swept over her, her skin prickled. That was an instinct never going away. Not since that truth came out.
Sometimes, she wondered what he did when she slept. She didn’t have to wonder that hard, of course - he’d be an open book even if she wasn’t a journalist. But it was more the specifics.
Did he ever try to sleep, too? How long did he spend waiting around her before he wandered off each night? …Did he get bored, hanging around like that?
Impossible questions to ever work naturally into a conversation. Not that any conversation with him was natural to begin with. Despite tutoring him on the art of talking like a normal human being for the past four years, she hadn’t made all that much progress. Still, at least he had left the actual growling and snarling behind. Now, if she could only do the same with that scowl…
After Alex turned out the lights for her, he slid open the window at the far end of the room. Hopefully, he’d close it soon, too. Heavy humidity always made it harder to sleep.
“You heading out?” she asked, not bothering to lift her face from the softness.
“I’m going to scout the town,” he said. Though she couldn’t see his expression in the darkness, his posture was rigid. Something was definitely up.
“Don’t hurt anyone that doesn’t ask for it,” she called. “That includes solicitors. I don’t want a repeat of Winnemucca.” The fact that she had to say it at all (sometimes even multiple times on bad days) made her bury her head further into the pillow. One day, she told herself, one day, he would learn. And that the things she said to him would make an impact. And then, maybe, she wouldn’t have to keep reminding him not to pick a fight with anyone that looked at him funny.
Not every random person on the street was Blackwatch in disguise.
“I won’t,” he grumbled, then took his leave with barely a rustle of the curtains.
Well, either he would, or he wouldn’t. Either way, they’d have to clear out of town before too long.
—--------
Despite how heavy Alex was, he definitely knew how to be light on his toes. So when she woke up to find him reading something, sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, she wasn’t all too surprised that she never heard him come back in.
“Morning,” she said, yawning. He glanced up, then put the book on the floor. “Whatcha reading there?”
“It’s the newest Spider-man issue,” he said. Comics. Of course. Not that she judged - she’d read them too if she had the money to spend on it. They weren’t worth nicking.
“Spider-man? That’s cool,” she said, getting up and stretching. She wasn’t 20 anymore, couldn’t let those bones start creaking when she needed them. “How’d you get it?”
He was silent for a moment. Damnit, Alex. If he really went out of his way to break in-
“I picked it up off the ground while I was out,” he said, interrupting her train of thought. She let out a sigh of relief through her nose. “A man dropped it. I haven’t seen this one, yet.” He added, almost as an afterthought.
Of course he gravitated to anything new. It was a natural consequence that arose from the way he worked. Maybe she could use it to convince him to cut down on his… habits. Though, eventually, he’d always have to do it again.
Everyone had to eat, after all.
“You should probably return it when you can,” she said, going through her morning routine. Clothes. Hair. Teeth. Et cetera. “People in small towns tend to know each other pretty well.”
Shoot. That was the last of the toothpaste, squeezed so thinly that, if she set it outside, the breeze might take it away. Thank god Alex didn’t need any. Though, maybe a shower would do him some good.
“If I find him,” he said, most definitely fully aware that he could just track them like a bloodhound straight to their house. She put a hand on her hip and had half a mind to give him shit for it, but thought better of it.
As she put on new clothes for the day (Washed! With detergent! They smelled of flowers!) with him lifting a hand to block the view, she gave his patrol some thought. Either he didn’t find anything of note last night, or he didn’t deem it a threat. If he did, he would’ve forced her back on the road in her PJ’s, mid-dream. But she could practically hear his answer to her yet-to-be-asked question. Still, small talk couldn’t hurt.
“Did you find anything interesting last night?” Was what she went with, fastening the buttons on her mini-sweater. All done, in less than 20 minutes.
“...Hard to say,” he said, sounding almost… confused? She did a double-take. That was new.
“Care to elaborate?”
He made a frustrated noise. “I don’t… It’s just this…” He waved his arms around, more animated than she’d seen him in a long time. “It’s like this weird field. I don’t know how to describe it. Like we slipped into something. There’s this… fuzziness. Static. I don’t know.”
Well. That was concerning. She needed him at 100% if anything was going to happen. They could never shake Blackwatch off for too long. Was it a weapon? Maybe another Hive Mind? Come to think of it, she never checked for military presence in the region. Gravity Falls never came up on her prior searches for army towns, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, brows knitting together. He didn’t look or act hurt, but like a cat, he was good at hiding it.
To her relief, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “It isn’t affecting me at all, at least physiologically. But it’s just this town. When I went to check outside the border, it stopped immediately. This place isn’t normal.”
The most logical thing to do at that point was to book it out of town and never look back. They haven’t survived that long by being stupid and sticking their nose into businesses that clearly weren’t theirs. …Well, at least, recently. Manhattan didn’t count - that was their business.
But she already had the motel booked for a whole week, and she’d be damned if she slept one more night in the van than she strictly had to. And besides, being next to Alex was the safest place to be in the entire world, bar none. For her, at least.
“It couldn’t be a trap, could it…?” she muttered, knuckle pressed to her mouth. “Is it chemical?”
Again, he shook his head. “Not chemical,” he confirmed. “I don’t sense Blackwatch anywhere. Or military. I only saw some cops during a clean sweep.”
She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or not. At least by seeing them, she could be certain that they were up to something. But if it was something else, something unaffiliated…
“I didn’t feel a Hive Mind, either,” he answered her unvoiced question.
There were only so many things that a “weird static” could be. Among them was radiation. Maybe the place was a dumping ground for waste. Maybe there was some kind of EMP that only affected Alex. It wouldn’t be the first time, but she’d be surprised if the fat cats could predict their movements that accurately when previously, they were just on their tail. It wouldn’t hurt to be careful.
“Keep an eye out,” she said, unnecessary as the warning was. But her dear brother played along, and nodded seriously.
—--------
After an entire afternoon of touring, she came to the conclusion that there just really wasn’t all that much to see in the town. The restaurant was fine - couldn’t complain about a hot meal, even if the waitress could barely hear Dana when she ordered. She would have liked to visit the arcade, but they tended to give Alex migraines, and she didn’t have the heart to leave him outside to wait for her. It was a shame, too - he’d be able to win her just about anything if he wanted to.
There were fair grounds, but no fairs in town. The lake was open for fishing, but she couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less. A museum, a pool, even a mini golf course, but none really appealed. Even though she regretted it the moment she trashed her laptop, waves of further regret surged almost daily. Now she knew how Alex felt all the time with no Infected or Military to fight, or buildings to run across or helicopters to throw around.
To his credit, however, he behaved quite well for the day. He didn’t even complain all that much when pool water splashed on his jacket. A simple tug on his arm cuffs had the same effect as jumping in front of him to save the poor kid that did it. Maybe there was hope for him, after all.
But it really seemed like the Mystery Shack was the only spot worth checking in town. Was it because it was the only spot they haven’t checked, so far? Maybe. But there was still another day to burn, and while she was always content with just lazing about, she was admittedly somewhat curious as to what was going on with the town. She couldn’t help it - she was an ex-investigative journalist, for crying out loud.
The next day, she began with a good ole pen and paper (courtesy of the motel), and had Alex bring her to places she couldn’t reasonably walk to. Inside the town, there wasn’t anything remarkable, but that didn’t mean much. Plenty of small towns in the U.S. were host to cults. Sometimes, the cult comprised the entire town. Based on the way people acted, that could very well be the case.
People would bump into each other sometimes, as if in a daze, and continue walking without so much a word from either party. Their conversations started up and led nowhere. Sometimes, it would be dead quiet for a long stretch of time, then the sound would come back as if nothing happened. None of it by itself was that suspicious (beyond just reminding her of what the good people of Manhattan would do to deal with it when things got bad), but combined with some of the things she and Alex found in the woods outside the town, it started to look a bit weird.
They (mostly Alex) found strange symbols scattered across the woods. Staked into trees, painted over rock. They even found some kind of demon summoning circle with long burnt out candles and flaking paint. While it was more than possible for it to just belong to the teens of the town, she couldn’t rule out the cult theory.
Not that any of that had anything to do with the “weird static-y field” Alex felt. The day a cult was able to get their hands on what was possibly military equipment was the day the town was getting wiped off the map.
With the sun setting soon, she had to ask Alex just one last thing.
“Do you know where the field originates from?”
He raised a brow, as if it was a ridiculous thing to ask. “No,” he said. “If I did, I would have found it.”
“No, no,” she said patiently. “I mean, where’s the epicenter? I’m assuming it’s expanding outward from something in the town.”
He mulled it over for a bit, adopting that blank look he got when he was ‘searching through the library,’ as he put it. Then: “I don’t know.”
So much for that. But before she could announce her intentions of going back to the motel, he continued.
“It feels like I’m walking through water. It’s surrounding me,” he growled. “For all I know, it could be above us.”
It must’ve been seriously unpleasant for him to compare it to water.
“Then, maybe I can find it,” she said, sorting through options in her head. She didn’t have access to her old place or contacts (she doubted Ragland could help with something like that in the first place). All she had was an old phone that had two numbers in it. “If I was able to get my hands on some equipment, I could do some work, too.”
She regretted the sentence before the words even finished leaving her mouth. Moving to speak before Alex could open his mouth, she amended it: “That doesn’t mean you just steal it. Comics and shampoo bottles are one thing, but people are going to notice laptops going missing.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he whined, scowl deepening. “Even if I was, this place doesn’t have what you need.”
Good point. The most modern device she’d seen so far was a VCR telly and the phones the teens carried around. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said. She frowned - it wasn’t fun to pick up an interest then toss it aside the next day, but if the road ended there, it wasn’t the brightest idea to keep driving. “Let’s head back. I’m already missing my bed.”
He nodded, and picked her up. Despite the way she’d seen him punch holes into tanks and trees into splinters, he was exceedingly gentle with her. She supposed he had to be - one wrong twitch, and her limbs would snap.
As he sprinted across grass and dirt at a dizzying speed, she chatted with him. It was a little hard to hear him over the wind rushing by, but he seemed to hear her just fine.
“Hey, tomorrow, let’s check out that Mystery Shack thing,” she said, raising her voice just enough to hear herself speak. With her hair whipping around and smacking her in the face and eyes, she had no choice but to place her head toward his chest - but she struggled to keep it aloft. His chest was the last place she wanted to make direct contact with.
“Sure.”