AN: I had too much fun writing this chapter, I think. I like having Jazz and Matthew interact, in addition to just liking to write for Matthew. Anyways, we had our chapter to get to know May in all her bitchadtude in DO, so here we have Matthew's chapter! He's pretty freaking weird, you know. And shocking things are revealed! Shocking, utterly shocking (or maybe not, I don't really know- what am I talking about again?).

Wanted

Chapter Nine: Matthew Clayborne

That night, Jazz Fenton found that she couldn't sleep.

Groaning, she got to her feet, stretching a little. It might have been the fact that she was sleeping on a chair, comfy though it was, it was not meant for being slept in. Danny and Sam had taken the couch, finding that they could unfold it into a bed. The redhead paused to look over at them, a faint smile appearing on her face. She had been a bit worried when Danny had suggested it, but it seemed that they were sleeping peacefully.

Her once, it seemed, her brother wasn't bothered by his nightmares. The two raven haired teenagers were close to each other, Danny's arms wrapped around Sam as they shared a pillow. The older girl's smile grew as she moved over to them, carefully pulling the blanket back up, which had been starting to fall off.

Looking around, she wondered if Matthew had come back yet. She didn't seen any sign of the brunette boy and figured he must have still been out. She didn't know what time it was, there was no clock in the room. In fact, the place looked like it had barely been lived in.

Her stomach grumbling, Jazz made her way into the kitchen of the small house and opened up the refrigerator. She paused for a moment, glancing up at the fridge for a second, before she quickly decided against peeking inside. There were some things people were better off not knowing about.

"At least his refrigerator is full." Jazz said to herself, looking in it. There was quite a bit of leftover restaurant food and takeout, and a large amount of beer. It didn't seem like Matthew knew how to cook. She peered in a few of the packages, and eventually settled for pulling out a box of leftover Chinese sticky rice.

Closing the fridge door, she dug through his drawers until she found a pair of chopsticks. She took a seat at the table and started munching on it, peering around the kitchen. Like the living room, it too, was filled with boxes. She reached over to the nearest one and opened the top, peering in. There were a bunch of files in there, all organized by number. She figured they must have belonged to Institute patients.

She shut the box then, not wanting to breach their privacy. There was no way they would know, of course, but it still didn't feel right.

There were, however, two files she did want to take a look at. Her brother's, of course, as well as that Phoenix that Matthew had mentioned. Surly there had to be some way of getting her parents back without having to take his life. She just wasn't comfortable with that. To be honest, Jazz even had a few problems with killing May, but she realized that may have been the only way to handle the problem.

She just didn't like to think that murder could be a means to an end.

"6821." Jazz said aloud, recalling the number tattooed underneath the barcode on her brother's wrist. She paused, taking a look at the book again, and frowned. "Ugh, this is the three hundreds." Taking another bite of the rice, she moved on to the next box. "Four thousands?" She heaved a sigh. "I should have known he had no organization skills."

Jazz continued to peer through the boxes in the kitchen, growing annoyed when she found that none of them were for who she was looking for. She realized as she was looking that she wouldn't be able find Phoenix's file, not if they were organized by patient number. She had no idea what it was.

She paused then, finding a box that seemed to be different. Instead of numbers, it listed people by names. She frowned. "Personnel files?" She asked aloud, crouching down to thumb through it. She paused for a moment, her fingers freezing as they hovered above a file.

Clayborne, Matthew.

Jazz paused, half wanting to read it. It didn't seem quite right though, invading his privacy after he had saved them from being used as Vlad's puppets. Still, she thought, glancing towards the front door, she couldn't deny her curiosity. Chewing on her lip a little, she set down her rice box, sticking her chopsticks in it, and pulled out the file.

She situated herself, leaning against the cabinets and grabbed the rice box again, before she opened up the file. It seemed to be a year old, dating back to 2008. Jazz munched on some of her rice as she read over the first page, a basic sheet of stats. It seemed that he was only nineteen years old- she had thought he would have been a bit older. That was quite the gap between him and his sister.

She flipped over to the next page, and nearly felt herself choke on her rice. Quickly standing up, she grabbed a glass out of one of the cabinets and filled it with water, gulping it down.

"Gah!" She let out a breath, still feeling a burning sensation in her throat. "You're joking right?" She asked herself, taking a seat back on the ground. She looked back at the file again, rereading it again just to make sure. "They can do stuff like that?"

"Yeah, they can."

Jazz's eyes went wide and she dropped the file out of shock, looking over to her side. Matthew was crouching by her, reading over her shoulder. She hadn't even noticed him come in. "Ah!" She closed the file quickly, her face heating up. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry!" She said, holding up her hands.

"It's fine." Matthew smiled at her, taking the file from her and looking at it himself. "I'm not mad or anything." He told her. "You have every right to check me out." He laughed a little. "I know I'm not exactly the least suspicious guy around."

"No, that wasn't it at all." Jazz told him, not looking at him. "It's just that I shouldn't have done that. Violation of privacy and all."

"I'm kind of used to having my privacy violated." Matthew admitted to her, putting the file away. "Why are you up?" He asked, curious. "Couldn't sleep? I saw the other two conked out on the couch." He laughed a little. "I didn't even know that thing could turn into a bed. I guess I just don't pay enough attention."

"Um, yeah." Jazz admitted, kind of glad for the subject change. "The chair in there isn't exactly the best thing to try and have a good night's rest on." She told him. She frowned a little bit, noticing for the first time the dark circles underneath his eyes, and wondered how long it had been since he had a good night's rest.

"Ah, sorry about that." Matthew told her with a smile. "I don't sleep that much anymore, so I kind of never got around to buying a bed for this place." He noticed the rice box she had out then, and quickly changed the subject away from himself. "Oh, you were hungry?" He asked. "I got some more Chinese food on the way home. You want it? It's Sesame Chicken."

Jazz's stomach grumbled at the mention of the food. "I would love some." She paused. "I mean, I wouldn't want to deprive you of your dinner, or anything."

"No, no, it's fine." Matthew grinned at her, fetching it out of a bag. "I've got plenty of stuff leftover in the fridge." He told her, handing it to her. "Mom always told me when you have guests you have to treat them well." There was something on his face that gave Jazz the impression that this was the first time he had ever had guests over.

"Um, thanks then." Jazz took it from him, opening it up. The brunette boy got up, going to the refrigerator and pulled out another box of leftovers, putting it up on the counter, then went for a beer.

"You know, you're underage." Jazz glanced up at him, watching as he popped the top off the beer. "You really shouldn't be drinking that stuff. It isn't good for you."

"Ehhh? But I like it though." He pouted at her, shutting the refrigerator door. It didn't seem like he had even been aware of the drinking limit- or he had forgotten about it. The second one seemed more likely. "Can I really not drink it?" He asked, almost asking her for permission.

"Well, you shouldn't." Jazz frowned. "But it isn't really my place to tell you what to do." She said after awhile.

Matthew grinned at that, setting the bottle down on the floor and grabbed his box of leftovers. He stuck it in the microwave and began to heat it up, humming to himself as he did so.

Jazz glanced up at him as he did, slightly more curious about him than she had been before. He seemed to be entirely different from his older sister, in both personality and looks. She hadn't known May very well (and didn't really want to), but she got the feeling that she wasn't anywhere near as cheerful as her younger brother was. He seemed a little bit off his rocker as well, but that was to be expected, and probably was the result of May.

Although the two both had brown hair and eyes, Matthew appeared to be very unkept and leaned towards darker colors, while his sister favored being neat and like light colors. Jazz frowned a little, her mind straying back again to exactly what it was in his file that had caused her to become so shocked. After a moment's thought, she glanced up at him. "Um, are you really...?" She trailed off, not quite knowing how to put it.

"Hm?" The younger boy glanced down at her. "Oh." He blinked, realizing what she was talking about and grinned. "Yeah, pretty much." He told her, moving to lift up a bit of his shirt. "See, no belly button."

"No way." Jazz sounded surprised. There really wasn't one. The only thing that marred his stomach area were a couple of scars here and there. "I could have sworn that cloning a human was illegal."

"Yeah, my parents had some trouble with that concept." He told her, pulling his shirt back down. The timer on the microwave dinged, and he pulled out his leftovers, opening the box up to reveal some more Chinese food. "Oh man, I love Chinese food." He told her, grabbing his beer and taking a seat on the floor next to her. "I really can't get enough of it!"

"Ah, I see." Jazz blinked, swearing that she could get whiplash from how quickly he changed the topic. She took a bite out of her Sesame Chicken, wondering exactly what else the Claybornes had done at that place, be it May or her parents. She glanced back over at Matthew, who was chowing down on his own Chinese food.

She opened her mouth to ask him about Danny and Phoenix's files, but quickly shut it. He looked hungry, and so was she, so she figured that it could wait until her stomach was full. Taking another bite out of her chicken, she leaned back a bit, trying to relax. It was difficult, so many things had happened in just that one day.

The trio had begun to discuss what to do about Vlad after Matthew had left, but Sam and Danny had tired out early. She couldn't blame them, it had been a rough day. She had let them go to sleep after awhile and had stayed up a bit trying to think things through on her own.

At some point she found herself wishing that she could have noticed something was wrong with Danny right after that accident all those years ago. If she had, and if she had confronted him and tried to help him, would he have still run away? Would things be different if he had stayed at home, or would May have still found him?

She didn't have the answers to those questions. Was there a world somewhere out there, where May hadn't gotten her hands on her little brother, hadn't twisted him into what he was now? Jazz wasn't sure if she believed in parallel universes, but she thought there might be one, somewhere.

"You thinking about something?" Matthew asked her, setting down his beer.

"Hm?" She blinked, looking back over at him. "Oh, yeah. Just a little bit."

"'Bout what?" He asked, tilting his head to the side.

"Just wondering what would have happened if things had been different." Jazz told him with a small smile. "If May had never..." she paused, glancing towards the living room. "Well, had never gotten her hands on my little brother."

"I see." Matthew frowned, taking another swig of his beer. "You guys probably wouldn't be here right now." He looked at his feet a little, he had tossed his shoes off somewhere. "And I would still be her little pet."

There was that, wasn't it? Jazz thought with a frown. In a world where May hadn't gotten her brother, would there have been anything to stand in her way? She had to wonder about that. Maybe the future in that world wasn't exactly as bright as she had seemed to first think. There were so many variables to think about, really. A mountain of what ifs.

"Ah, but nevermind about that." Matthew brightened up instantly, grinning. "You were looking through the files earlier, weren't you?" He asked. "Were you looking for your brother's file?"

"Oh." Jazz nodded, sounding a bit sheepish. "Um, yeah, I was." She told him with a small frown. "Danny won't talk about what happened at that place. I'm worried about him, you know? He's my little brother."

"No, I don't understand that at all." Matthew told her, bluntly. "But I'll get you his file. I was reading over it earlier." He said, getting up and putting his box of Chinese food and beer bottle up on the counter. "But I should warn you, my sister kept meticulous notes on everything." He told her, seeming rather serious now. "You're not going to like reading some of it."

"That's what I figured." Jazz gave him a sad look. "But I have to know. I can't help him if he's just going to keep me in the dark."

"You're a nice person." He told, her grinning. "Really naive, but always really nice!"

"Naive?!" Jazz asked, sounding stunned. "How am I naive?" She asked him, actually just a little bit offended by that. She had spent most of her life studying psychology, and she had been told that she sometimes seemed to know people better than they even knew themselves. Naive? She had never been called that before.

"Well, I guess you'll understand once you read it." Matthew told her, then headed off into the other room. He came back a moment later with her brother's file. "I'll leave you to it, then. It's some pretty intense stuff, so don't say I didn't warn you." He grabbed his food and headed into the next room, leaving her alone with the file folder.

Jazz frowned, setting aside her food for the moment. She opened up the folder, flipping through the pages at first, trying to get a feel for the content and how it was arranged. She found herself pausing, however, on one page, and she understood then.

"Oh god."

Matthew Clayborne sat in one of the empty bedrooms, finishing up his food. He took a swig of his beer, then frowned, finding it was almost empty. Maybe he should have taken another one from the refrigerator before he left the kitchen. He certainly couldn't go back there now, not with that Jazz girl reading up on her little brother. That was the kind of thing you needed to be alone for.

He wondered what it was like to have a sibling that cared about you so much. May had only ever used him as a tool, so that she didn't have to do the dirty work herself if she didn't want to. For a long time, that was all he ever knew.

To be fair, they weren't exactly siblings, though they had been raised as such. Jazz had ever right to be surprised when she stumbled onto his file as his origins were considerably bizarre compared to the normal ones of his sister. Though his parents had wanted another child after May, it seemed that his older sister's birth had ruined their mother's body, and she became unable to birth a child ever again.

So when human biology failed them, they had turned to science. They couldn't just adopt a child like normal people would, no, they had the technology and the knowledge at their fingertips to make a child of their own. Although he was very fond of his parents, Matthew kind of got the feeling that they had weird thought processes.

So, instead of just adopting a child, they had created one from scratch. A literal test tube baby, if you would. Matthew had been constructed primarily using his father's DNA and could almost be counted as his clone. Even their fingerprints were the same, which he had to admit, kind of came in handy in his line of work.

After all, according to government records, his father was dead and Matthew didn't technically exist. Although it might have bothered some other people, knowing that they were somehow fake, it had never really bothered Matthew much. He wasn't really that different from other people and would have grown up to be fairly normal if May hadn't stepped in and changed everything.

His parents biggest mistake was that they didn't just kill her. While it might seem odd in their line of work, they strongly disliked the thought of having to kill anyone. And so instead of just taking the easy way out when May's true nature had been revealed to them, they had just dumped her in the most remote place they could find and hoped that she wouldn't be able to find her way back.

"Mm." Matthew rubbed at one of his eyes, having finished up his food. "Let's not think about the past." He mumbled to himself, getting up to toss the box and bottle in the garbage. "You're still alive, and that's all that matters." He told himself. May was dead and buried now. She could never bother him again.

As morning broke and the sunlight began to filter into the otherwise dark house, Sam groaned, turning a bit in her sleep. "Ugh." She moaned, trying to keep the sunlight out of her eyes. She shifted a bit, feeling something tighten around her body, and reached out to touch it, wondering what it was.

And woke up faster than she ever had in her life. Her face turned bright red as she looked down at Danny's arms, which were wrapped tightly around her chest. "Ah!" She said out loud, trying to work herself from his grip. The raven haired boy protested in his sleep and only tightened his grip, not seeming to want to let her go.

"Danny!" Sam hissed, her face as red as a cherry. "Come on, wake up already!" She groaned, kicking at him a bit.

The demigiest blinked, waking up slowly. He didn't seem to know where he was at first, but soon seemed to recall how he had got here. A small smirk formed on his face, and he pulled Sam closer to him. "No wonder I didn't have any nightmares." He told her. "I had the world's best dream catcher sleeping with me."

"Danny!" Sam huffed, clearly embarrassed. "Come on, let me go, will you?" She turned around, looking over at him. "Seriously, Danny."

"I don't know, I'm pretty comfortable now." Danny smiled at her, before he pulled his head closer, kissing her on the lips a little. The raven haired girl seemed to roll her eyes, but she returned his kiss this time. Maybe it would get him to let her go- damn his strength.

"Now will you let me go?" She asked him, arching an eyebrow. The demigiest just grinned, pulling his hands away from her. "Thank you." She said, getting to her feet. She searched around for her boots and grabbed them, tugging them on. "Ugh, what am I going to do about these?" She asked, looking down at her rumpled clothing.

"You look fine." Danny told her, sitting up on the fold out bed.

"You probably think I would look fine in a gorilla suit too, Danny." Sam pointed out, glancing back at him. "I can't wear the same outfit twice. It's going to start to smell, you know."

"I've got some changes of clothing if you want to borrow some stuff." Matthew said from behind them, causing both of them to jump. They didn't know he had come in. He blinked, tilting his head to the side. "I don't know if they'll really fit you," he said, pointing at Sam, "but they'll do in a pinch."

"Oh, thanks." Sam said, getting to her feet. "I'm actually feeling kind of hungry right now." She said, placing one hand on her stomach. She had just remembered she hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday.

"Ugh, same here." Danny made a face, getting out of the bed and grabbing his shoes, tucking them on. "You got anything to eat in this dump?" He asked, glancing over at Matthew.

"One second." He said, holding up a finger as he headed off into the kitchen. He paused, looking down at Jazz. Sometime during the night, she had drifted off into sleep, it seemed and was curled up on the floor. He paused, reaching down to pick up Danny's file, and tucked it away in the nearest box. He got the feeling the demigiest wouldn't be pleased to know that his sister had read it.

He opened up the refrigerator, looking around in it for a bit until he found a package of bread. He put it in the toaster, carefully sidestepping the sleeping redhead as he grabbed some plates. The brunette plucked them out of the toaster after awhile and headed back into the living.

"Sorry, I don't have a whole lot of breakfast food." He apologized to them, handing them the toast. "Do either of you want coffee?" He asked, having started a pot for himself earlier. If there was something he had in abundance besides beer and Chinese food, it was coffee. He almost needed the stuff to live.

"Ugh, no thank you." Sam's nose crumpled up at the mention, though she took the toast. She had never gotten to like drinking the stuff. "Where's Jazz?" She asked, noticing that the girl was not in the living room.

"Her?" Matthew asked. "I found her conked out in the kitchen. I guess she was having a midnight snack and fell asleep. She looks pretty tired so I thought I would leave her alone." He lied. It wouldn't be good if they went into the kitchen now, after all.

He didn't even need to see her face to know that she had cried herself to sleep. It wasn't something the two needed to see.

"So, do you two have any plans today?" Matthew asked, taking a seat on one of the boxes strewn about the room. Danny and Sam had taken a seat on the fold out bed, after a brief fight in which Danny had tried to convince the raven haired girl to sit in his lip, which she whole heartedly refused to do.

"You mean besides killing Vlad?" Danny asked him, taking a bit out of his toast. The whole thing was simple to him. After all, Vlad was only a human with one little minion. He couldn't touch him.

"Danny, we can't just rush out and do that." Sam eyed him. "I'm sure that just the sort of thing he's expecting you to do. We need some kind of plan."

"Ugh, don't look at me then." Danny made a face. "You and Jazz can come up with a plan. I still say that I should just go in there and kill the guy. I mean, he's only human." He paused, looking over at Matthew. "What? What's with that look?"

"Yeah, about that?" Matthew looked at them, seeming a bit sheepish. He knew he had left something out last night. "Um, that's not really the case. He's kind of also half-ghost. Sorry, I kind of forgot to mention it."

AN: Hm, yeah, that would kind of complicate things, wouldn't it?