Adaptation

Strength In Numbers

Ch. 15 – Adaptation

Summary: What happens when a group of people are cornered and think they have no allies? What if they do have allies that they just don’t know about?

Pairings: Dawn/Alec, Faith/Biggs, Dean/Buffy, Sam/Cassie

Disclaimer: I definitely don’t own any of these characters. Dark Angel characters belong to James Cameron. BtVS characters belong to Joss Whedon. SPN characters belong to Eric Kripke.

Thank you to my two lovely betas, MaraLiz & Rorylondra, for your invaluable assistance – and arguing with me over sentence structure when necessary…

Note: I have officially posted over 300,000 words on TTH. Yeah! My next goal is to reach 400,000 words by July 1st. Wish me luck!

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Alec’s POV

When Alec woke up in the morning, he could hear the shower already running. That’s strange, he thought. Dawn’s not usually a morning person. He smiled as he pulled her pillow over his face and breathed in his mate’s scent. The last three days had been the happiest Alec could ever remember being, and since he had a photographic memory, he was pretty sure that meant he truly had never been happier. The morning after they had finally consummated their relationship, there was a note taped to their door from Sam and Dean saying that the room was paid up for two more days and they would be back on the third day, so they had better have their hormones under control by then.

He wasn’t sure if they were fit to be in public yet, but their time was up. They had spent their time in bed, eating, and eating in bed. Oh, and in the shower. They really needed to be at least a state away before housekeeping was allowed into the room after last night’s activities in the shower. Alec was pretty sure that he put a hole in the tile when Dawn bit down on his neck hard enough to draw blood.

They hadn’t spent all of their time actually having sex. Dawn needed more sleep than he did and he found it incredibly surreal that he was able to rest calmly—at peace—with Dawn’s gentle breath whispering across his chest. She was the first woman he had ever woken up with and he was positive that she would be the only one who would ever hold his heart in such a way.

He was pulled from his musings as he heard the shower turn off. Dawn was singing some pop song that he hadn’t ever heard before and he could just imagine her dancing around, holding her towel up to keep it from falling down. He smiled to himself as he let the fantasy play out in his mind.

The singing stopped and he fixed his eyes on the bathroom in anticipation of seeing his mate emerge, freshly scrubbed and smelling like the honeysuckle in her shower gel. The bathroom door rattled and he heard Dawn’s unmistakable swearing. One thing he had learned was that Dawn had an incredibly inventive ability to swear, and he was slightly alarmed at how she was using the ones usually reserved for when she needed to get Buffy’s attention, like during the long hours of debate that had ensued in the efforts of integrating the Transgenics into the Slayer/Watcher community.

Heedless of his naked state, Alec leapt out of the bed and over to the bathroom door in two bounds. Anxiously, he called through the door, “Dawn, what’s wrong?”

“Stupid piece of crap motel,” Dawn complained, “I’m stuck in here. The stupid doorknob came off in my hand.”

Alec tried the doorknob on his side and found that it was jammed. He’d have to break the door down. “Okay, there’s not much room in there. You’ll have to stand in the tub so I don’t accidentally hit you with the door when I kick it in,” Alec told her.

He waited until she called out to him that she was ready and planted his foot on the door with just enough force to push the door into the small bathroom without splintering the door itself. Dawn was, as instructed, standing in the bathtub, with the shower door closed and he slid it open, enveloping her in his arms as soon as there were no barriers between them once more. He breathed in her sweet scent and kissed her shoulder in greeting.

“Morning,” he murmured against her skin.

“So they tell me,” Dawn griped. She gave him a playful bump with her shoulder and he knew she wasn’t really irritated, at least not with him. She led him back into the main room as she continued, “First, there was a ton of noise out in the parking lot. Then, that finally calmed down and I thought I would get some sleep, but barely two hours later, I was wide awake. Then, I decide to take a shower and, remember how I bought that new hair gel? Well, they must have changed the formula or something because it just doesn’t smell right. And, to top it off, the stupid cheap-ass motel bathroom door doesn’t even work right. I think it’s safe to say that I’m just not having a good day.”

Alec wrapped his arms around her and held her tight against his bare chest. She was still wrapped in the bath towel and it really wouldn’t be difficult to divest her of that solitary piece of fabric. But, even as he entertained these naughty thoughts, Dawn reached forward and flung open the curtains to see what the weather was like. He looked up at her scream. His brothers were talking past the window just as she opened the curtain and now their faces were ones of horror: Sam, and amusement: Dean. Alec’s hands quickly shot out to keep the towel Dawn was wearing from falling down during her panic attack. He kept one hand on Dawn’s towel even as he tugged the drapes closed once more.

Dawn dove for her bag and grabbed the first clothes she saw, yanking them on as quickly as she could. Alec half-watched her even as he pulled his own clothes quickly on. He wanted to take a shower, but he also knew that Dean would never let him hear the end of it if they didn’t let him into the room within the next five minutes.

When he opened the door, Dawn moved quicker than he thought she could, but he supposed embarrassment would do that to her. She ducked right under Sam’s arm, still managing to grab one of the coffees out of the tray in his hand as she slipped past them and into the parking lot.

Dean rolled his eyes and made his way into the room, but Sam looked torn between going after Dawn and letting her cool off on her own. He held up a bag and the tray with the remaining coffees. “We brought breakfast,” he said weakly.

Alec took pity on him and waved him into the room. “Don’t worry about Dawn. She’s having a bad morning, but she’ll feel better after she downs that vat of coffee she took with her.”

“Hope you two enjoyed your last few days because we’ve got a job,” Dean told him.

Alec plucked one of the coffees from the tray and caught the bagel Dean tossed his way easily. “After I shower,” he replied around a mouthful of bagel. He grabbed some clean clothes and didn’t bother to close the broken bathroom door.

As he turned the water on, he heard Dean comment on the broken door, noting that Alec’s prowess must have come from his DNA. He tuned his brothers out, spending his time in the shower thinking about Dawn and trying to think of something that he could do to help her day get better than it had started.

He was toweling his hair dry when his cell phone rang. Dean tossed it to him from across the room. He looked at the caller id before he answered, “Hey, Biggs. How’s Russia treating you?”

“I’m in trouble, Alec,” Biggs responded. Before Alec could even go on alert, Biggs continued, “It’s Faith.”

“I’m not sure that I can help you with your relationship issues with Faith. I’ve got my own slightly crazy woman to deal with right now,” he told his friend.

“No, seriously, Alec,” Biggs said. “I don’t know what to do. One minute, she’s fine and the next, she’s crying. Crying, Alec! Crying!”

“Dawn’s been like that a little bit, too. Well, not so much crying as cursing, but her hormones are a little out of whack,” Alec commented.

“Is she eating weird things, too, like Faith is?” Biggs asked. “She ate pickled pigs’ feet.”

“Umm…no pickled pigs’ feet, but Dawn’s always eating strange concoctions, so I don’t know if it’s weirder than usual,” Alec informed him.

“And, Faith made someone go cut down a whole bunch of flowers because she decided that they stink. They were the same flowers she had approved for planting two days earlier,” Biggs noted, his voice getting a little hysterical.

“Yeah, Dawn was a little weird about her hair gel this morning, now that I think about it,” Alec commented, starting to become concerned for his mate. Is something going on with her?

“Hey, I didn’t know your mate was pregnant, too,” Biggs commented.

Alec swallowed hard and repeated the one word that had registered, “Pregnant?”

Dean spit coffee across the table and Sam narrowly missed being coated in the beverage; he’d forgotten they were still in the room with him. “Pregnant!” Dean growled. “What did I tell you?”

“Wait, did you say, ‘too’? Does that mean that Faith is pregnant?” Alec asked, trying to focus on his phone call once again even with Dean glaring at him and Sam looking like he wanted to wrap Alec up in the motel blanket and hide him from Buffy.

“Yeah, can you imagine it? I’m going to be a father,” Biggs replied and Alec could hear a both excitement and fear in his voice.

“You’re going to be a great father, Biggs,” Alec told him, doing his best to reassure his best friend even while his own mind was racing to connect the dots with Dawn. “How long?”

“Six weeks,” Biggs answered. “We think it was the night we had that big celebration after the Transgenics decided to join The Council. Faith and I snuck out for a while.”

“Right, I remember that,” Alec grinned despite himself. “Well, don’t worry. Uncle Alec will make sure that your kid knows that he or she was conceived in a coat closet.”

It was finally Sam who was the voice of reason and his cause of relief all at once. “I don’t think Dawn is pregnant,” Sam told Dean. “They’ve only been sleeping together for three days. Even if she is pregnant from that, there wouldn’t be any signs yet.”

Alec’s attention was drawn back into the present. “Hey, Biggs, I have to go. I’ll call you later, okay?” He waited for Biggs’ acknowledgement and continued, “and, congratulations. I’m happy for you.”

He hung up the phone and turned to his brothers. He looked at Sam gratefully, “No, Dawn is not pregnant. She’s not even ovulating.”

“You can tell that?” Sam asked and Alec could see him putting on his ‘geek hat’ as Dean called it.

Alec shrugged, tapped his nose with his index finger and answered, “Biggs didn’t spend as much time around fully-human females as I did once Manticore burnt down. Let’s just say that I was quite a ‘tomcat’ before I met Dawn. I managed to hone my sense of female hormones. I wanted to have a little fun, not create a new generation of mini-Alecs.”

With the question of Dawn’s non-pregnancy answered, Dean apparently was bored with the conversation. He pulled out the information on their next hunt and handed it over to Alec. “Finish getting dressed. We’re on a time-table,” he instructed the younger man. “You can read these in the car.”

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Ten minutes later, Alec was outside loading the Impala with the last of his and Dawn’s belongings. His brothers were already in the car, arguing about the best route to take, so he took a deep breath of air, searching for Dawn’s scent. He followed the scent and found her in the park across the street, swaying side-to-side on one of the swings. He sat down on the swing next to her and held his hand out across the space between them. She stopped swaying and took his hand. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze and pulled her closer so he could kiss her fingertips.

“We have a hunt?” Dawn asked, breaking the silence.

“Yeah, something is terrorizing a small town in Vermont,” Alec replied.

They didn’t move right away, but eventually Dawn sighed and stood up, climbing over the swing so that she didn’t have to release Alec’s hand. They walked back to the Impala in silence. Alec knew he would have enough time on their drive to fill the quiet and he could tell Dawn about Faith’s pregnancy then. He had already told Dean that if he teased Dawn about this morning, he had better be able to function without sleep because he wouldn’t want to find out what Alec had done in the morning if he did fall asleep. Surprisingly, his oldest brother heeded the warning and, as they climbed into the backseat of the Impala, all Dean said to them was that they had better get comfortable because it was going to be a long ride and they weren’t stopping often.

Three hours later, Dawn began shifting around in the backseat, claiming that she couldn’t get comfortable. He tried making her a pillow out of his jacket and laying it across his lap so she could stretch out a little bit, but that had only worked for a few minutes before she was fidgeting again. Dean had asked if she needed him to pull over and she told him “no,” so they were still flying down the highway toward Vermont.

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It started slowly—a shiver every now and then. Alec pulled her closer so she could share his body heat if she was cold. Her bare skin made contact with his and he was surprised to find that she was a little warmer than he expected her to be. Is she getting sick? She seemed fine—physically anyway—this morning.

Ten minutes later, he could feel a longer tremor run through her and he ran a comforting hand down her back. She whimpered so softly that if he wasn’t a Transgenic, he never would have heard her. Instantly concerned, he pulled Dawn’s face toward him so he could see her eyes. What he saw did nothing to alleviate his worry as he took in her pallid face and glossy eyes. He was still looking into her eyes when another tremor hit her, stronger than the last one. Oh, God. I know what’s wrong with her!

“Dean!” he called into the front seat.

“What? Is she okay?” Dean asked.

He knew they weren’t oblivious to Dawn’s discomfort, but it was still nice to hear the concern in his brother’s voice. Dean could be fanatical about a hunt, but it was good to know that he did have priorities.

“No, she’s not,” Alec told him. “I need you to pull in to the first place you see with a convenience store.”

“Okay, sign says it’s five miles up the road,” Dean told him. “Is there anything we can do?”

“Yeah, drive faster,” Alec told him as a powerful tremor suddenly wracked Dawn’s slender frame. He took a mental inventory of Dawn’s body for the last few days. It happened gradually, but he could see what was happening now. She’d become leaner, more muscular, her senses were sharper, she had less need for sleep and the bathroom doorknob had been just fine when he turned it, but if she was suddenly stronger, she wouldn’t know how much pressure to use and that could explain why the knob came off in her hand. How is this possible? She can’t just become Transgenic!

He felt the car accelerate, but it did little to ease his worry. A few minutes later, they were pulling into a mini-mart/gas station. He was now holding onto Dawn as she had a full-blown seizure. He did his best to comfort her and just hoped that she would be able to come through this. Her body was not a Transgenic body; she didn’t heal as quickly as they did, so he wasn’t sure how her body would recover from these seizures.

As soon as the car stopped, both of his brothers were peering into the backseat.

“Shit!” Dean exclaimed. “What the hell is going on?”

“We need to get her to a hospital,” Sam stated and Dean nodded, turning to reach for the ignition again.

“No!” Alec insisted. “They won’t really be able to help her. I know what she needs, but I don’t want to leave her alone to go get it.”

“What do you need?” Dean asked.

“First, I need my toiletry case from my bag in the trunk. Then, I need milk. At least a quart, but a half-gallon would be better,” he instructed them.

“Okay, I’ll get the milk. Sammy, get the case from the trunk,” Dean ordered as he tossed the keys to Sam and slid out of the car.

Sam ran to the trunk and returned a few seconds later with the case. He handed it to Alec, who immediately opened it and began rummaging for his bottle of pills. He finally found it and, after three failed attempts at opening the bottle, he handed it to Sam to open and went back to soothing his mate, whispering to her that he was going to make it better, that he would make the spasms go away. He hated the look of uncontrolled fear in her eyes and would do anything to make that look go away.

“I don’t like this,” Sam told him. “I still think we need professional medical assistance.”

Dean returned, a bag with two quarts of milk hanging from his arm, just as Sam finished speaking. He took one of the quarts out of the bag and opened it, handing it over to Alec, before turning to Sam, “Nearest hospital is ten minutes up the highway. I asked, just in case.”

“She doesn’t need a hospital; they can’t help her. All they can do is what I’m doing now, except with a whole bunch of questions and possibly a dissection,” Alec insisted as he managed to get a couple of the pills into Dawn’s mouth. He lifted her into more of a sitting position and helped her to drink some of the milk, massaging her throat lightly when she had difficulty swallowing.

“What are you talking about, Alec?” Dean demanded. “What is going on?”

“The X-5 series has a little too much feline DNA. It causes a short-circuit in our brains that Manticore was able to control with pills,” Alec began only to be interrupted by Sam.

“But, Dawn isn’t Transgenic.”

He looked over at Sam and knew that there was no real reason why his theory should be real, but he also didn’t have any other explanation for Dawn’s sudden seizure—or for the relief the Tryptophan seemed to be bringing her as the seizures appeared to be slowing down and becoming less intense.

“Look, the best I can guess is that our mating somehow triggered something within her. She shouldn’t be having seizures, but she is,” Alec argued, panic setting in again at the implications.

“But, Faith and Biggs have been mated for weeks and nothing like this has happened to them,” Sam countered.

Alec didn’t have an answer for that. He watched his theory crumble before him and was about to completely panic when Dean broke into the conversation.

“But, Faith isn’t fully human herself. Who knows how Slayer blood affects anything? And, Dawn isn’t really fully human either; she’s supernatural, too. No Transgenic has ever mated with a Witch before,” Dean commented.

“Or the Key,” Sam admitted.

Alec could see the wheels turning in Sam’s mind and let him finish considering the situation while he turned his attention back to Dawn. He managed to get her to drink a little more milk and she was now staring up at him, slightly dazed and glossy eyed, but she wasn’t shaking any longer. He coaxed two more pills down her throat, just in case, and cradled her close. He whispered an apology to her and felt salty tears sting his eyes as she pressed a kiss to his throat in a silent absolution.

He could hear his brothers going over the empirical evidence, but only half-listened to them.

“You know, I don’t remember her being graceful enough to slip in between us like she did this morning,” Dean noted.

“She even grabbed her coffee from the tray and I barely saw it happen,” Sam agreed. “I have a theory, but we’ll eventually need Dr. Henry to look at her to confirm it.”

“What’s your theory?” Alec asked quietly, not taking his eyes off his mate. She hadn’t spoken yet and her eyes were fluttering closed. He knew the strain of the seizures had taken a toll on her and she would have to rest.

“I think her body, whether it is because she’s a Witch or, mostly likely because she’s the Key, is adapting to her mate’s body. She’s becoming what her mate needs because that’s what she needs. The Key is malleable, able to adapt to its environment in order to survive. The Key must have realized that it needed to modify itself on a genetic level. As a consequence, Dawn is also modified—enhanced—in order to be your mate. With the benefits also come the drawbacks,” Sam explained.

Alec felt a tear trail down his cheek, but he wasn’t sure why, whether it was because Dawn somehow had to change to truly be his mate and that was emotionally devastating to him or if it was because he knew that Dawn was still awake and her reaction to Sam’s words was to simply curl closer into his chest and use her depleted strength to cling to him. Despite the pain she had been in today, and the fear that had to go along with not knowing what was wrong with her, she communicated to him, even without words, that it was worth it—that he was worth it.

“Well, if that is the case, we’ll just deal with it,” Dean stated. Alec looked over at Dean when his older brother cleared his throat. “Do you think she can travel? We’re about twelve hours outside of Cleveland, if we drive straight through.”

“What?” Dawn croaked, it was the first word she had spoken in nearly two hours.

“We need to get you back to Cleveland so Dr. Henry can check you over,” Sam told her.

“No,” Dawn protested with as much strength as she could in her weakened state, “hunt.”

“No, Dawn,” Dean argued. “You need medical attention. That comes before a hunt.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Dawn refuted, pushing herself up to look over at Dean. “We’re almost late already and people are going to die. I’ll be fine; I’ll sit this one out in the motel, I promise. And, as soon as the hunt is done, we can head directly to Cleveland and I’ll let Dr. Henry poke and prod to his heart’s content.”

She must have known that Dean was about to protest again because she sighed wearily and told him, “Look, Dean, I really want to go to sleep, but I can’t do that if I have innocent lives on my conscience, so do me a favor and keep driving to Vermont. Besides, you don’t want me depleting the last of my energy with a magical spell that incapacitates the Impala if it deviates from any course that will take it to the hunt.”

“You are such a brat!” Dean told her, but Alec could see acquiescence in his eyes as he glared at Dawn. He exchanged a glance with Sam and then looked back at Dawn, “Okay, we’ll go on the hunt, but you’re not staying alone in the motel either. One of the three of us will be with you at all times.”

“But…”

“No arguments, or we’re headed to Cleveland and you are just outvoted,” Dean declared.

Dawn made a show of zipping and locking her lips, throwing the pretend key across the Impala. Dean rolled his eyes as he muttered, “I wish.”

Dawn settled more fully into Alec’s arms and was asleep barely five minutes down the road. Alec used his time to consider Dawn’s decision. He wondered how much of it was due to Dawn’s desire to really know this hunt was settled and how much of it was because she knew that he would be a mess if he had to choose between staying with her in Cleveland and going on the hunt with his brothers. Either way, he would be worried about whoever he wasn’t with, especially if he knew she was in the Infirmary. He just hoped that she wasn’t jeopardizing her own health for his sanity. Worried, again, Alec curled his arms tighter around his mate and closed his eyes, breathing in the honeysuckle scent as fear clutched at his heart.

TBC

P.S. Any bets on who will win the knock down/drag out that Buffy & Dean will likely have after they finish the hunt and go back to Cleveland so Dawn can get medical care???