A/N: When I was heavy into reading comics I always found it fun to read the "What If..." comics from Marvel. What if Dan Ketch had been the one to die instead of his sister...and she became Ghost Rider...things like that. The whole idea of multiple universes is fascinating. And if you're a watcher of "Fringe" you know just how twisted things can get.

So this is my own twist on a "What if" tale. this one centers around the idea that Renate, instead of ignoring Carmen completely when she goes into hiding, actually tries to confront her about the trouble she's causing - only to find out her secret. How different would their lives have been? It dovetails into a what if about Cabal's mother never abandoning him and how different life would have been for Cabal.

In addition, the nuclear accident never happened in this version of the Only Half Universe...

So enjoy...please let me know what you think!

What If…

A Formidable Team

Two shadows slipped silently up the emergency stairs of the high-rise. Fifteen stories worth stood before them, but neither was daunted by the idea. They moved at a quick and quiet clip, leaping three and four steps at a time between landings and at a speed that could be matched by no human alive. The two of them only paused when they came to each door demarcating another floor. Almost the same height and build, the men watched both above and below, as well as the emergency exit to the taller one’s left.

They strained their hearing, using battle-honed senses to make sure their presence had yet to be detected on this floor of the building. Beyond the normal visual range of light, both of them were capable of seeing in the dark, and the shorter of the two men had other talents.

“Looks like they gave up on the pursuit, ‘Nate.” He said, feeling the energy swirling up the cement tube leading below. Nothing moved; the pursuit was no longer in the stairwell trying to catch the two of them.

“Fucking, stupid ass mistake, boy. Don’t do it again.”

He narrowed brilliantly blue-white eyes at the other man. “You’re the one who tripped the alarm.”

“You’re the one who failed to warn me that it was there, Cabe. You trying to get me killed?”

“Uh, as much as you irritate me sometimes, no.”

“I’m your father, not necessarily your friend.”

“That’s obvious.” Cabal snorted, pushing his black bangs out of his eyes. The gloved hand followed the rest of the way over his shortly cropped hair to the stubble at the nape of his neck. He was sweating, but couldn’t tell himself whether it was nerves or exertion that had resulted in the perspiration. This was a larger job than the two of them normally took on.

He turned his gaze to Renate, watching as he strained closer to the next level. A messy ponytail of dark brown created a deeper shadow against the studded gray jacket as his hair slipped past his shoulder. He’d opted for the conservative jacket this trip. His other one was adorned with about a dozen chains of all lengths and made a damnable racket.

“Better be glad they were human sycophants though. If they had been vampires, we’d been in a fight already.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know, ‘Nate.”

“Yeah, well, they’ve probably alerted their master.”

“Like we haven’t been in that situation before.” Cabal retorted, retreating to his father’s side.

“Yeah? Doesn’t mean I like it.” Renate said, starting up the next flight.

“We should find one of the abandoned apartments and lay low for a while.” Cabal suggested; one hand already on the butt of the shotgun strung diagonally across his back. “Perhaps even find an alternate way up to the penthouse.”

“We’ve been over the plans for this place. There isn’t another way up there that doesn’t involve a 35 story fall if we fuck up our footing.”

“I thought you had ultimate confidence in your agility and balance, Dad.”

Renate glared at him with dark brown eyes. Rarely did he ever call Renate “dad” and it was almost always to needle him.

Father and son had been a team since very shortly after Cabal reached adulthood – since shortly after Carmen’s death. It had never been an easy partnership – they were too much alike for this pairing to be comfortable. Cabal could remember Renate’s presence in his and Carmen’s lives from the very beginning of his existence.

It had taken the dhampir a while to realize what kind of sacrifice his now vampire father had made in order to provide for them. He’d been human when he hooked up with Carmen, and she had turned him, thinking that she’d been in love, that he was her one.

The Second had abandoned her after that, some tragedy left him unable to return the affection Carmen felt for Renate. When she’d found out she was pregnant, and that she was going to have a child that would only be killed by her brood for being a half-blood, Carmen abandoned the brood in turn.

Renate had yet to explain why he’d sought Carmen out that night nearly fifty years ago, but he showed up at their makeshift home three nights after Cabal’s birth. Immediately making the connection between their tryst in the mountains above Denver and the baby boy the vampiress adamantly protected from harm, the vampire made a decision that even now shocked Cabal.

Some act of chivalry had driven the Second to abandon a known and fairly easy future with Bajnok’s brood. He had chosen a Rogue existence in order to support an illegitimate son of mixed heritage.

Who does that?

For almost twenty years the three of them lived in the same space, but Renate never mated Carmen. It must have taken his father years – the dhampir could still remember arguments over it – to finally make it clear to his mother that he was only there for Cabal. He had no interest in Carmen. The idea that Renate was his father, but wouldn’t mate his mother was like a thorn under his skin, irritating to this day.

Cabal couldn’t begrudge what kind of father Renate had been to him, however. The Second kept the three of them protected from the brood, even when they started hunting him for his practices. He was the reason that none of them would kill in their little renegade band. Renate couldn’t stand it – wouldn’t stand it. And there was another pain behind the practice that his father had yet to share.

With something as virulent as the vampiresella virus in vampire saliva, the broods took notice very quickly. The three of them quickly got tired of being hunted, vowing to rid their little slice of the world of Hunters; human, witch, and vampire alike. They’d only been at it maybe a decade, but already their reputation was growing. Must be the reason some of the Vampire Houses dotting the nation had started taking contracts out on the two of them. That was why Renate and he were here. Who was a House lord to tell other vampires, who did not live under their roof, how to live their lives?

“Let’s just get about five more levels or so and then find a duck and cover.”

“We’re clear.” Cabal started up the next flight, hearing his father in his wake.

On the eleventh floor, they ducked through into the hall and found one of the rooms to hide in. Renate slipped the door into the frame with little sound and then moved straight across to a large bay window looking out to the west. Cabal slipped nearer, peering out at the night skyline that gradually reduced all the way to the water’s edge. Lights glittered and winked, and a waning moon sat tangent on the horizon, its reflection smeared all the way to the beach across the blackened water.

“Quite a view, isn’t it?” Renate whispered. “Haven’t seen the ocean in a while.”

Cabal lowered his gaze from the sea, trying to suppress the shiver. “I just wish there wasn’t so much of it all together.”

“Oh, I forgot.” Cabal didn’t look at him, but his father sounded truly chagrined.

“You know how to swim.”

“Like a fish.”

“Rub it in why don’t you.”

“I’ve offered.”

“No.” He’d never learned and had what Renate called an irrational fear of drowning. It probably was unreasonable – considering his physical prowess in pretty much everything, but there were better things to do with his time than learn how to swim.

Cabal stepped away from the window and moved nearer the door to do his job, keeping his senses open for any searchers. He shut out his father’s presence, something extremely hard to do when there was that damnable link between the two of them. He and his mother’s had been stronger, but when Cabal found himself finishing Renate’s thoughts a few years ago, he realized that to a lesser degree the two of them could get into each other’s heads as well. Made their contracts easier, to be sure, but there were times it was like having two people in one body.

The dhampir tried to find a little peace in his head while they waited for the heat to die down. Pulling his shotgun out of its holster, he double checked the load. He drew back the action of the auto and ensured the chamber was loaded, and another seven shots were in the magazine. Each load was lead shot mixed with silver oxide more loose silver powder packed around the shot, lethal to vampires and did some grand damage to human Hunters as well. He had other weapons at his disposal, hidden here and there in his loose flowing jacket or on the belt across his hips. Two more handguns, and about four knives of various size and purpose. The shotgun was his medium range defense. He’d had to adapt his attacks, because he didn’t have a vampire’s natural weapons – not all of them anyway. No natural claws like his father and mother had. If a vampire got past his gun, then he would worry about using the close in weapons – the knives were his claws.

The dhampir sat that way for well over an hour, simply staring at the door and feeling for people moving beyond it. Renate had learned years ago not to bother him when he got into that mode. He was their early warning system, and Renate’d found out quickly that distracting him from that task could end in disaster.

Another hour passed before he stood up and turned to his father once more. “No activity. We should be good to move again.”

He’d caught his father in the middle of inventorying his grenades. The vampire glanced up, already stuffing them back into the hidden inner compartments of his jacket. “Bout time.”

They headed for a different ladder well than the one they got here by the first time. The task of getting to the penthouse level was a quick one, and soon they were paused at the uppermost door, once more assessing the threat they faced the other side.

What the verdict?

Two just the other side of the door…another five in the anteroom. Looks like six vampires and a human – probably the receptionist. Cabal met brown eyes with ice blue. I would be willing to bet that there is a contingent inside the office beyond. There’s too much between me and it to tell you those numbers.

As soon as we start making noise in here, they’re going to be prepared for us.

We didn’t come all this way to turn around and go home.

How new are the ones outside the door? It was a rhetorical question, Renate could see just as well as he could through the door to the auras beyond. One newbie, the other’s a little longer in his skin.

Think we can compel them? Cabal started to grin, catching where his father was going with the statement.

If they detect the effort they’re going to know we’re standing here.

What, three seconds sooner than if we burst through the door?

Good point.

That mental contact went silent, Renate motioning for Cabal to try the one on his side of the door. Normally this effort was done through eye contact, faster and more effective; however, done right, a visual conduit into their head wasn’t necessary. The technique was one they had been perfecting. They still had moments where they lost control, or their contact was realized by a would-be victim, but it had been very helpful in some of their recent efforts.

These two were still highly susceptible to compulsion and it was almost too easy to bend them to the task.

Soon screams of horror and pain erupted from the anteroom, counterpointing the report of an automatic weapons fire as the guards turned their firepower on their own. Father and son reinforced the drive to kill anything that moved as the soldiers they had been expecting burst forth from the vampire Lord’s office. Though two against a dozen didn’t last very long at all, they did manage to take some of the Lord’s guard with them.

Father and son shared a malicious grin, and then settled in to wait for the confusion to set in some more.

What’re they doing?

Looks like searching the bodies and trying to figure out what exactly happened.

Well let’s not give them time to think too hard on it, Son.

Right. Cabal drew his shot gun and flipped off the safety. Renate already had one grenade at the ready and his pocketed hand surely was curled around a second one. All their backs are too us, good a time as any.

Cabal stepped back and kicked in the emergency door. As the surface flung back and impacted the wall Renate was already leaping forward, taking aim, and lobbing his grenade. Cabal rolled through the door, shooting on of the guards in the face as the vampir realized he was under attack. The screech was momentarily as the silver burned the rest of the way through to his vital organs. The dhampir averted his eyes as Renate’s grenade leapt from the ground and lashed lightning around the room. His father was already dispatching those stunned by the weapon, and Cabal moved to take care of the rest, ducking behind the receptionist’s desk as he went through his eight shots and had to reload. One rounded the corner before he was ready and in a swift motion one of his knives was free. Hamstringing the vampire initially, the dhampir was quick to end the creature’s life.

It wasn’t very long before the cacophony of shouts, screams, and pleading fell silent. The two joined back up, reloading and recovering weaponry as they surveyed the scene.

“Either they weren’t nearly as tough as people had been led to believe…”

“Or we’ve gotten better?” Cabal finished, grinning. “Let’s not have to widen the doors or anything. We may have overestimated our opponent.”

Together they strode through the double doors leading to an opulent office – one much grander than many reception areas in fancy hotels. A lone figure stood behind a desk that dwarfed the owner. The vampire wasn’t even facing them.

“You two are full of surprises.” A droll feminine voice spoke before they’d made it halfway across the expanse of carpet. With a grace imbued with the entire vampire breed, she turned towards them, going so far as to skirt the desk and meet them on this side of the furniture. She was dressed in nearly nothing. A brazier and a pair of thong panties, sewn to which were gauzy falls of see through cloth showing the milky skin of her abdomen, legs, and arms. Her hair was short, reminiscent of the roaring twenties (1920’s), with red curls slicked and styled to cling to her skin in glossy sheen.

“Lady Monique,” Renate said, bowing his head ever so slightly.

“I’m guessing it is too late to say I regret taking out the contract for your deaths.”

“I’m guessing so,” Cabal snarled, earning a heated glare from the ancient. His aim with the shotgun didn’t falter however.

“It was nothing personal, Renate – Cabal.” That she actually addressed the dhampir directly took him by surprise, and begrudgingly his respect for her went up. “Meirakat has ordered your death should you stray into one of the Houses’ cities. Going against his decrees has seen the end of many a vampire reign, you know.”

“Meirakat?” Cabal caught Renate hiding his grimace. “My name’s gotten that far up the list, huh?”

“To the top – both of you.” She smiled, not even seeming concerned that her life was forfeit. “You scare him, both of you do. You two represent everything vampire society wants to subvert – cooperation between vampires and dhampirs – letting your meals live and risking new Seconds.”

“He can’t pass it, Monique.” Renate nodded towards his son. “Doesn’t carry. And you can’t pin a single accidental Burning Blood to one of my meals. As to dhampir/vampire cooperation – they’re our fucking children. We created their race. We should be welcoming them instead of creating formidable enemies by shunning them.”

Cabal found he was at once flattered and insulted by how his father had said that.

“He doesn’t want to see that. Others will not be so cautious as you, Renate, they don’t have the morals for it. The precedent is not one he wants to see become the norm. Surely, you can see his logic.”

“Renate?” Cabal’s single word question said all he wanted to know.

“She lives.”

“Bad idea, Dad.” Cabal snarled, and the glare Renate leveled on him was just as heated as the one the Ancient had graced him with earlier.

“No, she’s got a job to do. You tell that squat, solar burned, gay, Greek son of a bitch that if he wants us dead he’d better come for us himself.” Renate stood straight and then rolled his shoulders forward as he delivered the other half of his ultimatum. “We see any more hit squads after us while we’re here, we’re coming back, and I’ll let Cabal do what he is wanting so desperately to do right now.”

Monique raised her chin.

“You tell him.”

She nodded and then leaned against the desk.

Cabal backed away even as Renate turned towards the far off entry door. He didn’t lower it until half the length of the room stood between him and her. He spun and trailed after his father, mulling the vampiress’ words.

This was going to get very, very ugly.