Prophecy -- Chapter 11

Disclaimer:  The TV shows Dark Angel and Supernatural, all of the characters that appeared on them, and everything else that has to do with the shows belong to their respective owners, not to me.  No money is being made off of this fic.  I only own the original characters (Dylan/X6-175, etc.).

Dylan was sitting on his living room couch later that night, his mind still in a whirl over what had taken place before, when a knock at the front door made him look up.  He sighed, got up, walked over to the door, and opened it.  “Hi.  Come on in.”

“Thanks,” Alec said as he entered the apartment.  “I wanted to check up on you.”

“I appreciate the thought, Alec, but I’m a big boy now,” Dylan reminded him.  He sighed.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to sound like a brat.  I really am okay, though.  Where’s Max?  Is she still at Audrey’s place or did she go back to her own?”

Alec frowned at the abrupt change in subject.  “When I last left Max, she was still at Audrey’s apartment, though Audrey was trying to convince Max that she was going to be just fine by herself for the night.  I’m really not sure how much success she’s going to have.  Trying to convince Max to do something the opposite of what she’s set her mind to rates ‘a snowball’s chance in hell’ on a scale of one-to-ten.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Dylan said.  “Do you want anything to drink?  Want a snack?”

“No, I’m good,” Alec assured him.  He bit his lip as he tried to figure out his friend’s state of mind.  “Are you sure that you’re okay, Dylan?”

“I told you that I am,” Dylan said quickly.  “Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re my best friend.  I’m supposed to worry about it.”  Alec frowned.  “I’ve been worried about you for the last few days.  First you haven’t been sleeping well, and now this…”  He noticed the sudden tension in Dylan’s posture.  “Dylan, what’s going on?  There really is something wrong.  Just tell me what it is.”

Dylan shook his head.  “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Alec repeated.  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

“Because I can’t,” Dylan insisted.

“Now that sounds mature,” Alec remarked.  “You might be a big boy physically, but in the head…that’s another story.”

“Thank you so much,” Dylan said.  “Friends like you are so hard to find.”

Alec sighed.  “Let’s just relax for a few, okay?  I didn’t pop over here just to have an argument with you.”  He decided to try another tactic.  “I might need your help tomorrow with the place that we’re going to be fixing up for the younger kids to stay in.  I’m scheduled for a shift on that project and we might need another couple of hands more than we’ve got listed on paper.  You in for that?”

“Maybe,” Dylan said, shrugging.  “I don’t have a set schedule for tomorrow at this point, so that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.  It would be nice to get my mind off of what happened tonight for a little while.”

This isn’t going to be a picnic.  “I wouldn’t mind that, myself.”

“How are the others?” Dylan asked.  “Who were on the original heist, I mean.  How are they doing?”

“As well as they can be, I guess,” Alec replied.  “Denise had to have surgery for that gunshot wound on her leg, but she should be back in the swing of things in a few days.  Cade’s injury was as minor as Audrey’s so he’s probably back at his apartment sleeping by now.  All of them are shaken as hell, though, whether they’re actually showing it or not.”

“I don’t blame them,” Dylan said.  “I—I’d feel the same way.”  I already am.

“You seemed pretty freaked when we were leaving the alley,” Alec noted.

“Can you blame me?” Dylan muttered.

“I don’t know.  The only person that knows what’s going on inside your head is you,” Alec said.  “What is going on in your brain?”  He frowned when Dylan looked away from him.  “Dylan?  What is going on?”  Still no answer from the X6.  “Dylan?”

“I don’t know what’s going on!” Dylan finally yelled.  He shook his head.  “How can I tell you when I don’t have a clue myself?”

“Then tell me what you know,” Alec suggested.

“No.”

“No?”  Alec felt himself loosing his already weakened grip on his temper.  “This isn’t the fucking time to be stubborn, Dylan.  All right, you want to play this game?  Fine.  Go ahead and play it.  But when you freaking implode and go crazy because you didn’t say anything about it?  Don’t even think about coming crying to me about it because I’m not going to listen to a damn thing that you have to say.”

“That’s real nice of you, Alec,” Dylan snapped, trying to hold back tears.  “You’re such a good friend.  How about you take that attitude of yours and shove it someplace where the sun doesn’t fucking shine, huh?”

“At least I have an excuse for my damn attitude!  I almost lost Max tonight!” Alec yelled.  He briefly glanced towards the door before looking back to Dylan, intending to continue his rant, but any thought he had of yelling at his friend died when he saw the stricken look on Dylan’s face.  “Dylan?”

“It’s my fault,” Dylan whispered.  “This was my fault.  If…”

“Whatever you’re talking about, I’m almost a hundred percent certain that it’s not you’re fault,” Alec said.  “What are you talking about?”

Dylan bit his lip before slowly making his way back to the couch and resuming his previous place on it.  “It’s…you’re going to think I’m crazy, Alec.  You’re not going to believe me.”

Alec sat down next to the X6.  “You won’t know for sure until you actually spill the beans, Dylan.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dylan conceded.  He was quiet for several moments before he sighed and began to talk again.  “I’ve been having trouble sleeping for the past few days.  You know that already.  I’ve been having these…these nightmares.  They weren’t like normal nightmares.  This was like I was there as the event was taking place.  I could see everything, smell everything, hear everything…”  He shuddered.

“Dylan?” Alec said cautiously.  “What was the event?”

Dylan hesitated.  “It was…it was the raid.  The aborted raid.  I mean…I saw Max, Audrey, Mike, Coop, Tank, Denise, Patti, and Cade enter that alley.  Max started to give everybody orders and that’s when White and his people ambushed them.  Coop went down first, then the others until Max was the last transgenic that was still alive.  She was crying and just begging Audrey…”  Dylan had to pause to compose himself.  “…begging Audrey to wake up.  Then White came over to Max, took off his mask, and gloated.  Max tried to get up to fight him, but her leg was too badly injured and White just laughed and he…shot her.”

“Max died in your nightmare?” Alec said.

“Alec, it happened!  It damn near happened for real!” Dylan almost shouted.  “Coop was the only one that was killed tonight and he was the first one that went down in my nightmares.  I looked over and saw his body lying in the exact damn way I’d been seeing it the past two nights.  Everything in the alley was the same.  If we hadn’t gotten there, they all would have died.  If we had gotten there sooner, we could have saved Coop.  They were not nightmares, Alec!  I knew this was going to happen before I looked over the plans and surveillance footage.  This is my fault!”  The teenager burst into tears.  “It’s my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Dylan,” Alec assured him.  He put a comforting arm around Dylan’s shoulders.  “You know it wasn’t.”

“But I knew it was going to happen,” Dylan protested.  “I should have said something sooner.  The only reason I looked at everything at about the last minute was to prove to myself that I was just being a paranoid moron.”

“How were you supposed to know that your brain was trying to send you some screwed-up message?” Alec pointed out.  “You said so yourself: this hadn’t happened to you before the other night.  Dylan, I should be thanking you.  If you hadn’t picked up on everything, then I—we would have lost Max.  We would have lost Audrey, Cade, Mike, Tank, Patti, and Denise as well.  You helped saved all of them.”

“Coop still died,” Dylan said quietly.

“Yeah, he did,” Alec admitted.  “Nobody’s perfect, Dylan.  Just because you apparently developed an Early Warning System doesn’t automatically mean that things do a complete one-eighty the way that you’d seen them go.  Look at what happened with Mike.  Remember when we’d run the Familiars off?  One of them still had the balls to try to take a few shots as he was getting away with what was left of his buddies and one of those bullets came within millimeters of Mike’s neck.”

“You’re right,” Dylan conceded.  He sighed.  “What’s going on, Alec?  Why me?”

“I don’t know,” Alec said.  “But Dylan, and I’m not sure that I want you to have these bizarre nightmares again, but if and when they pop up again, tell me?  Promise you will, okay?”

“I promise,” Dylan told him.  “Just don’t tell anybody about this yet.  I’ll tell people eventually, but not now.  I’m not sure that I can deal with it.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Alec declared, grinning.  His grin broadened a little when he saw Dylan smile a little.

“Yeah.”  Dylan wiped his eyes and sighed.  “I wish Biggs were here.  I could use his help, too.”

“You and me both, kid,” Alec agreed.  The smile turned into a sad one.  “You and me both.”

A pair of dark eyes watched the two young men.  A voice sighed as a presence noiselessly made its way from the apartment, going completely unnoticed by both Alec and Dylan.

“I wish I was there, too.”

TBC