Alexander's Addendum: Mid-Air Collision

Hey, I wrote a fic about the Mahones and the Franklins. 

Title: Alexander's Addendum: Mid-Air Collision
Word Count: 4113
Pairing: Alex/Pam, Miles/Kacee (not really a romance fic)
Rating: PG
Summary: The Mahones are in hiding in Waterloo, Ontario. So are the Franklins. Unbeknownst to Miles and Alex, the women and children become fast friends and set the old enemies on a collision course.
Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, I'm just screwing with them. If they were, people like Lang, Alex, Sullins and Pam would get a lot more screentime.
Notes: Spoilers up to the end of season 3.

( Read here... )

Chapter Three

Bathers bobbed uselessly in the water, splashing and tossing beach balls back and forth and wondering what the hell they were supposed to do in gritty water that only came up to their waists. Reaching the peak of a sun-scorched sand dune, Alex felt like a spectator on the top row of a set of bleachers, surveying the listless sport from above. He and Cameron were taking a day trip to the beach. Pam was currently meeting with a client, but Alex expected her to join them soon.

Cameron had been left behind at the base of the sand dune. Alex could see him fine from where he stood: the six-year-old boy in bright blue bathing trunks was sitting just short of the shore, raking the sand with his fingers. Cam had chosen the spot carefully – not so close to the water that the waves would wash his creations away, but close enough to the breaking foam that the sand was damp and easy to sculpt.

Alex struggled briefly with a breeze as he flung his beach towel over a likely-looking spot on the dune's peak. From the family's beach cooler he took a white t-shirt and pulled it on over his head. Then he settled in to supervise his industrious son.

Again, it was not in Alex Mahone's nature to wait – normally he would have divided his attention with music, or a pulpy beach novel. Nor was it in his nature to be responsible for the safety of another person. It was why he had left Pam and Cameron in the first place: better, he thought, to abandon his wife and son to keep them from harm's way than to stay and endanger them. Ensuring their safety by standing close watch was another concept entirely, and it could not afford distraction.

So Alex sat and watched, as Cameron set about digging a hole in the sand with an expression of grim purpose on his young face. His sculpture began to take shape, starting with a long, rectangular head and stubby lumps of sand for ears.

Out in the water, a skinny African American girl with a long plait of hair down her back ran into the waves. The dark-skinned girl was only slightly older and a couple inches taller than Cameron, and it wasn't long before the strength of the incoming waves buckled her twig-thin legs at the knees. She stumbled, fell, spluttered in indignation. She waded farther into the water until the waves' crowns tickled her chin and threatened to bowl her over. Frustrated, she began hollering for her father in a pitch so particularly grating that Alex diverted his attention for a moment to watch her howl at the undeserving surf.

Thankfully, the girl gave up quickly and splashed back to shore in a huff. Back on the beach, her reliably short attention span kicked in when she noticed Cameron, now etching zig-zag patterns down the sand creature's torso with his finger. She bent down and, with a brief comment to Alex's son, began to arrange tiny shells around the end of the creature's forelimbs. Claws, Alex realized. He hadn't yet figured out what Cameron's creation was supposed to be, but it seemed as though this girl had taken one look at the thing and identified the genus and species without hesitation. Perhaps all children hold the enviable gift of being able to instantly identify their peers' artistic conceptions.

The two children conferred with sober faces on the topic of the sand beast's tail. Cameron's new friend then made a trip back to her family's set-up and came back bearing an impressive arsenal of beach toys. Watching them, Alex had the strange feeling that he was witnessing something that wasn't meant to be seen by parents.

“Dad! Hey, Dad!” Cameron ran barefoot up the dune to his father. “Come see,” he panted. “I made a friend and she's helping me make an alligator outta sand. Come on!” Pam once remarked that the ability to give orders that leave no room for disobedience was a trait inherited down the line of Mahone men. Walking down to the water with his son running along in front, Alex thought there might be something to it.

An alligator! Of course, Alex could see it now. The long, flat head with triangular ears and white pebbles for teeth, the stubby limbs with pearly talons lining the extremities, the zig-zag patterns down a long, thick torso that turned into a curving tail and tapered to a point.

“That's really good, big guy,” Alex said, admiring the alligator from all angles. He clapped his son on the shoulder. “You must've got your artistic chops from your mom, Cam.”

Cameron shook his head. “My artist chops came from me. I got them all by myself.”

Alex watched his stubborn son's expression for a moment, and smiled.

“You sure did,” he said quietly. Alex squatted down in the sand and pointed at the alligator's claws. “I like what you did here with the shells.”

“They're talons,” Cameron informed him. “My friend thought that up. But I made the teeth, see? Little white rocks for teeth.”

“Yeah,” Alex breathed. He couldn't remember a time in the last three years when he'd smiled so often, and so wide. He wondered if he'd paid enough dues that he might be allowed by fate to stay in this moment forever. Sometimes, it seemed almost too good to be real. He gingerly traced the zig-zag pattern on the alligator's back. “Have you thought about using some seaweed, Cam? You could put it along here and -- ”

“My new friend went to get some in her bucket. She has lots 'n lots of toys for the beach. Hey, there she is!” Alex looked over his shoulder to see the skinny girl come bounding up, swinging a bucket filled to overflowing with seaweed in her fist. She swooped in beside Cameron as if she was sliding into home plate, and dumped the contents of the pail in a heap beside the sand creature. Alex sat back, feeling a bit intrusive.

“I got lots of different kinds, Cameron,” she said, sorting through the mess with slippery fingers. “See, there's this bright green leafy stuff and this stuff that looks like rope, and these big darker leaves and – is that your dad?”

“Yeah! Here, but –”

“Hi, Cameron's dad!” The girl beamed at him, and Alex caught his first clear glimpse of the girl's face.

“Hel...” Alex's response was cut off when his breath caught in his throat.

“Gotta let him go, honey. Honey, you gotta let him go.”

It was undeniable, unmistakable this time.

“No!”

“Dede,” he blurted. Alex cursed silently as soon as he'd let the name slip out, but she didn't seem to have noticed. She looked up and smiled sweetly at him.

“Yes, Mister... Mister Cameron's dad?” Dede dissolved into giggles, and Cameron joined in, stamping his feet in the sand.

“My last name's not Cameron's dad!” Cam crowed. “My last name is Ma...”

“Oakes,” Alex managed, still reeling. So it had been Kacee Franklin at the grocery store last week. The implications of this spun through his mind like a drunken fly. If the wife and daughter were here, chances were good that Benjamin Miles wouldn't be too far behind.

“Moakes?” Dede repeated, confused.

“Oakes,” Cameron muttered. He looked at his father and, misinterpreting Alex's obvious bewilderment for anger, blushed in shame. Alex patted his ankle, a voiceless gesture of reassurance.

Alex cleared his throat. “How are you doing, Dede?” he asked. He remembered the last time he had seen her, too tired to even open her eyes and pale, pale like a cup of coffee with too much milk stirred in. He wondered fleetingly if she had been allowed to keep the teddy bear he'd given her – in Franklin's position, Alex would have conveniently misplaced it, apologized and replaced the tainted gift with a new bear.

“'m good,” said Dede, and she was. Happy, strong and healthy, and busy at work placing bits of seaweed at strategic positions just so. Alex stood up and brushed the sand off his damp bathing trunks.

“You kids keep... er, working, I'll be up on the dune. Okay, Cam?” he said, and Cameron nodded without looking round. “You're both doing a great job, keep it up. Maybe when your mom comes she can take a picture of your alligator, how does that sound?”

Cameron may have answered, but Alex was distracted, scanning the area for Dede's parents. There was Kacee, some ways down the beach, dozing on a towel with an open book splayed out over her stomach. Alex remembered Dede's howls and looked to the water, where a distant shape was cutting through the waves with a practised breaststroke, a ways out from the shore.

As he made his way up the hill, Alex wondered why why he was feeling so uneasy. It wasn't as if the Franklins posed a threat, it wasn't as if he had any reason to be worried about Cameron's safety, or his own. He just... he didn't want to go back to before, in any capacity. The Mahones' new life was, up until now, blissfully free of any traces of... of any of it: Shales, the Fox River Eight, Sona, the Company, all that mess he'd left behind. And Alex would give anything to have it stay that way.

Alex forced himself to calmly pack away all the food into the cooler and roll up the beach mats as if nothing was wrong. He wouldn't ask Cameron to leave, he couldn't do that; but it would be better, safer, to stay up here, away from Dede in case Kacee woke up or Franklin...

Franklin was coming into shore.

Dede yelped and went splashing into the water to meet him, waving and gesturing back at the sand alligator. Come look, come see what we made...

Alex took a couple steps down the hill, and hesitated. He was being pulled forward, to Cameron, and backwards, to run like he'd been running since Bill Kim had given him that plane ticket to Panama, all at once. Between the two, he was immobilized.

“Alex!”

It was Pam, trudging up the other side of the dune wearing her favourite flip-flops and Cameron's Finding Nemo beach towel slung over her shoulders. She was carrying a beach umbrella and a small duffel bag.

“Pam!” Alex folded his wife in a clumsy hug and kissed her quickly. “Thank y-- I mean, I'm glad you're here.” His thoughts were screaming at him to bolt. He ran the heel of his palm against his temple, trying to calm the fight-or-flight instinct. Running wasn't as easy as it used to be; looking out for number one was no longer the only thing on the agenda. “Did you, ah... did you bring the camera?”

“Yeah, it's right here,” Pam replied, patting the duffel bag. She tilted her chin up to look her husband in the eye, and frowned. “Is there something wrong?”

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I know this isn't anywhere near done, but I decided not to finish this fic since [SPOILERS]. Hope you enjoyed this story -- or at least the beginning of it.

Ciao, bella.