A/N: I'm sorry to say I only recently started watching Dark Angel on Netflix. I loved it right away and was sad to discover it was only on for two seasons. What the heck's up with that? Anyway, out of all the great characters on that show, Joshua instantly became my favorite the moment he first appeared in Season 2. He's just so freaking adorable! Imagine my disappointment when I discovered how few fanfiction stories feature him. And none of them that I've seen have a Joshua/OC pairing! C'mon, people! Don't genetically engineered dog-men deserve love, too? Well, I think so, so I have written this, the first (but hopefully not last) Joshua romance. Let me know what you think.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dark Angel or any of that show's characters. They belong to James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee, geniuses both. No disrespect is intended to either of them in the writing of this fanfic.

NOTE: This story takes place after the end of Season 2 and the novelizations by Max Allan Collins (if you haven't read them yet, you darn well should).

"Pain is a phantom of the mind." -Ames White

2002

I was five when they learned about my defect.

My mother and I lived in one of the nicer neighborhoods, with perfect lawns in front of the houses, a school where the students weren't subjected to mandatory weapons checks, and an idyllic little park where families spent their afternoons picnicking, tossing frisbees with their dogs, or clambering on the playground equipment. I was playing tag with some other kids my age that fateful day. I remember I was "it" at the time and was chasing the others all around the park. I cut across the sandbox to head off my chosen victim when I tripped and fell forward. My arms shot out to catch myself and my right hand landed on a half-buried broken bottle some wino had left there one night. My mother came running at the sounds of my screams and found me sitting in the sandbox holding my injured hand out to her. She thought all the noise was because the sight of the blood frightened me.

She carried me into the public bathroom and ran my hand under the faucet, saw the cut wasn't all that deep and decided to take me home and bandage it instead of going to the hospital. I sniffled and cried the entire walk home. She thought I was just doing it to get more attention.

At home, my mother sat me down at the kitchen table and dug out the first aid kit. I'd taken cuts and scrapes before, but never anything this serious. So when she applied the cotton ball soaked in disinfectant, I wasn't prepared for the sting. I cried out and jerked my hand away. My mother blinked in surprise. "Why'd you pull away, sweetie?"

I didn't know hurt. It was a word that didn't exist in my little world. "I don't like it," was all I could say while fresh tears rolled down my cheeks.

And my mother's face fell as she finally realized the awful truth; I was in pain.

She finished bandaging my hand and sent me out into the living room with my coloring books. I'd calmed down by then and didn't think anything more of it, but I did notice how my mother just sat there for a long time, staring at nothing. It was weird and made me a little uncomfortable. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but at the same time I didn't want to go near her while she was like that. Finally, she got up and picked up the phone from the kitchen counter. I didn't know who she was talking to or what was said, but her voice sounded upset. A few minutes later she hung up and came out into the living room. Her eyes were red like she'd been crying, but her cheeks were dry. She smiled down at me.

"Hey, how'd you like a nice big bowl of ice cream?"

My eyes widened and the anxiety I'd felt instantly disappeared. "Yeah!"

She fixed me her special sundae, something she usually only did on my birthday or on holidays. I wolfed down the treat with typical five-year-old enthusiasm, forgetting all about my injured hand and my mother's strange behavior. When I finished, she wiped the smeared chocolate sauce from around my mouth and said, "Now we need to go visit someone."

"Who?"

"Someone very important. A doctor."

I perked up. "Doctor Wollencroft?" I asked, referring to my pediatrician, who I liked.

My mother shook her head. "No a different doctor. I told him about what happened to you at the park and he wants to make sure you're alright."

"Will he fix my hand?"

A strange expression flitted across her face. "We'll see."

Just before we pulled out of the driveway, she turned to me with the saddest look I'd ever seen in her eyes and said, "No matter what, I want you to remember that I'm doing this because I love you."

I didn't understand, so I gave the automatic answer, "I love you, too, Mommy."

She looked as if I had punched her in the chest.

It was the same hospital I'd always gone to, but this time the nurse led us down a different hall and ushered us into an examining room I didn't recognize. Doctor Wollencroft's room was heavily decorated with cartoon characters and always had a cozy feel to it. Here the walls were sterile off-white and the air felt chilly. My mother continued to grip my uninjured left hand in hers. She seemed just as uneasy by these unfamiliar surroundings as I was. Thankfully, we weren't kept waiting long. A man in a standard white lab coat marched in and stood before us. He was an older man with steel gray hair and equally steely eyes set in a severe face. He made me nervous, like I'd done something bad and he knew it.

"Fe'nos tol," he said in an emotionless voice.

"Fe'nos tol," my mother responded.

"From our ancestors. For our children's children."

"From my mother before me. For my daughters." My mother's hand squeezed mine.

"Tell me what happened."

My mother told the scary doctor about my accident and how I reacted to the disinfectant. Her voice shook the longer she talked and pretty soon she fell silent altogether. I looked up at her and saw that she was fighting tears. This frightened me even more than the doctor's cold stare.

The doctor pressed his lips together until they almost disappeared. "Put her on the examination table," he ordered.

My mother hurried to obey. The table's thin paper cover crinkled under me. I hunched my shoulders to try and hide inside myself.

"Sit up," the doctor barked. I straightened instantly; there was no disobeying that tone of voice. The doctor walked over to a set of cabinets and reached into a drawer. He then came over to me. I couldn't look away from those steely eyes of his, which was why I didn't see the needle until I felt it pierce the skin of my thigh. I jerked away with a shriek and buried my face against my mother's chest, sobbing in fear and confusion.

"Mommy, don't let him do that again! I don't like it!"

My mother pressed her hand to her mouth for a second, then said in a shaky voice, "It's okay, sweetie. It was just a test." She glanced at the doctor who nodded once and went to a glass-fronted cabinet full of different vials and pill bottles. He selected a small vial full of brownish liquid and filled the syringe he'd jabbed me with earlier.

"The...the doctor's going to give you something so you won't hurt anymore."

"Hurt?" I asked.

My mother nodded. "That's what you felt. That was pain. It hurt you."

The doctor approached with the filled syringe. I eyed him and it warily. "And that's gonna make it stop?"

Both adults nodded. The scary doctor took my wrist and straightened my arm out. I wanted to pull away, but the look in my mother's eyes stopped me. I'd never seen her so sad. Not even when my father died.

I whimpered as the needle pierced my skin again. The doctor pushed the plunger and the syringe's contents entered my bloodstream. When he was done my mother came over and urged me to lie down. "You should be getting sleepy pretty soon," she said, stroking my hair.

"And when I wake up I'll be better?"

She smiled at me, but her eyes were still sad. "That's right. You won't hurt anymore." She kissed me on the forehead.

I closed my eyes and waited to fall asleep, just like at nap time. Minutes trickled by, but I didn't feel any sleepier. The chilly room and the hardness of the examination table didn't help. Also the tense silence of the two adults in the room, waiting. I finally couldn't stay quiet any longer. "Mommy? Should I be sleepy now?"

I heard a faint gasp and opened my eyes to see my mother and the doctor both staring at me, mouths open in shock.

I sat up. "Did I say something wrong?"

2022

I knew something was up the minute Nathan Barnett called me into his office. Nate was the executive editor of Modern Events, a blandly-titled post-Pulse weekly magazine that also happened to be the second most popular periodical in the nation, right behind the indefatigable Time. He only handed out the really plumb (and risky) assignments himself, leaving the everyday stuff to his managing editors. In the two years I'd worked for Modern Events, Nate had sent me and my trusty camera to cover every hot and deadly happening no one else had the nerve to touch. I've interviewed Saudi soldiers on the front lines of the Oil Wars, gotten up close and personal with a notorious South American guerrilla leader in his hidden base camp, and managed to take the only known photographs of the dying victims locked away in African genocide camps and smuggle the pictures and myself out in one piece. My articles and photos were a large part of what made Modern Events famous (Nate's claim, not mine) and won me enough awards to take up an entire wall of my apartment.

"What's up?" I said, plopping down in one of the plush chairs situated in front of Nathan's desk.

Nate picked up a newspaper from his desk and held it up for me to see. It was a copy of the New World Weekly, in popularity, the tabloid equivalent to M.E. Its front page showed a badly developed picture of dozens of grotesque man-like creatures wearing party hats and big screaming yellow letters emblazoned over their heads proclaiming FREAK NATION CELEBRATES FIRST BIRTHDAY! EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS INSIDE!

"You seen this?"

I snorted, "No. You know I don't read that garbage."

Nate let the paper drop back onto his desk. "Well, about five million bored housewives and conspiracy nuts do, and thanks to this rag's exclusive arrangement with Terminal City, that readership's been steadily growing over the last few months."

"Well, people do love a freak show," I shrugged, "What's your point?"

His handsome face sported a smug grin. "Guess who managed to get in touch with Max Guevara."

Max Guevara, known back in the Manticore days as Designation X5-452, liberator of and poster girl for the Transgenic race.

"I talked to her about doing an exclusive four-part series about Terminal City," Nate continued, his grin widening, "She and her little council of mutants agreed, provided you're the one who's given the assignment."

My jaw fell open. It wasn't an act; I was genuinely shocked. Ever since the Transgenics established their own community in Terminal City, every TV station and news publication had tried to get past those guarded walls for the scoop on the genetically engineered mutants. When flattery, begging, and bribery didn't work, some of the less scrupulous newshounds tried trickery. One idiot even had a barcode tattooed to the back of his neck which got him through the front gate, only to almost drop dead when he came in contact with one of the deadly biological agents that earned Terminal City its name, and which only Transgenics were immune to. New World Weekly was the only publication that was able to feature any kind of inside information on the semi-reclusive Transgenics, and that was only because one of their writers was apparently friends with Max Guevara.

"Are you telling me I'm gonna spend the next month in Terminal City?" I couldn't stop my voice from rising. I wasn't sure if it was excitement or anxiety or repulsion. Knowing myself like I did, probably all three. A perverse part of me was always thrilled with the prospect of getting into potentially dangerous situations that normal people shied from. But at the same time, this meant getting up close and personal with Transgenics, and I had some seriously mixed feelings about that, to say the least.

Nate held up his hands to stave off whatever protests I might throw at him. "Before you get all worked up about it, I've been told the risk of exposure to something nasty is fairly low so long as you're only there for short periods of time and avoid the more heavily contaminated areas. The freaks should give you plenty of warning of where not to go." He cleared his throat, a nervous habit. He knew I could refuse this assignment if I didn't think it was worth the risk to my safety. It was in my contract.

I mulled it over. I wasn't worried about all the biohazards I might encounter. It was the thought of coming into contact with all those Transgenics that made me hesitate. While I was curious as hell, I also had more than a few misgivings. And even if I did decide to accept this assignment, there was no guarantee that certain higher powers would let me go through with it.

"Can I think about it and get back to you?"

Nate shrugged nonchalantly. "Sure, long as I get your answer by tomorrow afternoon."

I nodded and left the office. Instead of returning to my own cluttered desk, I decided to take a walk. My watch beeped a reminder to me as I was exiting the building and I groaned. Dammit, my appointment. I changed direction and headed for the parking lot where my tiny beat-up Ford waited. Traffic was fairly light, not counting the sector checkpoints. Twenty minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of the hospital I'd been coming to every other month since I moved to this city. No waiting room for me; the nurse showed me to the usual room the second she saw me. The room was located in a special wing of the hospital. Not just anybody was allowed there. The doctors, the staff, the patients, all were Familiars. The only outsiders allowed were those who were paired up with Familiars for breeding, and they were kept ignorant of everyone else's true natures.

The routine was old hat by now. As soon as the nurse left me alone I stripped out of my clothes and put on the hospital gown that was left out for me. As usual, the room was too damn cold for comfort. Maybe doctors were afraid their patients would spoil if left out in the heat too long. Once the gown was on I lay myself down on the examination table and put my feet up in the stirrups. I wasn't being helpful; I just wanted to get this over with as fast as possible.

I glanced at the door as it swung open and a tall, dark-haired man in the usual white lab coat came in. While his hair didn't show any signs of graying, his severe features were creased from years of scowling. He reminded me of the scary doctor I saw when I was five. His name was Jackson, a renowned fertility expert. He stared at me in my vulnerable position without a hint of emotion.

"Fe'nos tol."

"Fe'nos tol," I answered, hoping he'd skip the formalities this time around. No such luck.

"From our ancestors. For our children's children."

"From my mother before me. For my daughters." Though I kept my expression neutral, I couldn't quite hide the sarcasm from my voice when I recited the last part. Doctor Jackson squinted at me, but decided not to bother with a reprimand. I could get away with the little things, as long as I cooperated.

Jackson seated himself on the stool situated between my legs and started the usual pelvic exam. At least his hands were warm, unlike everything else about the place. When he finished, he called a nurse who brought in the syringe. This one didn't have a needle on the end. Instead, it had a long thin tube. Inside was the donation from the latest candidate they hoped might be compatible with me. I didn't bother asking who it might be. Jackson wasn't going to tell me, and I didn't really want to know. This way was slightly less humiliating than forcing me to fuck a series of strangers like some prostitute, but it still left me feeling like a piece of meat. I stared up at the perforated ceiling tiles while the doctor injected the sperm into me and then adjusted the bed to lift my pelvis a little higher. I'd have to stay in that position for a while to give the little wigglers a chance to reach my fallopian tubes. Then I'd leave and the merry cycle would repeat itself two months later.

The doctor stood and removed his latex gloves, tossing them into the waste receptacle along with the spent syringe. "Have you any information you wish to pass on to the Conclave?" Jackson was a member of the Familiars' ruling body, though not as high ranking as some. When I became a journalist and started doing all these high-risk international stories, the Conclave, through Jackson, started ordering me to gather intel for them. What they did with the information, I had no idea. I wasn't about to push my luck trying to find out.

"My editor offered me a new assignment," I said.

Jackson didn't look up from the chart he was scribbling on. "Yes?" he muttered absently.

"It's in Terminal City."

That got his attention. He turned his intense stare on me. "You will be allowed contact with the Transgenic filth?"

"That's the idea. It's a four-part special. I'll be interviewing all their higher-ups, including Max Guevara."

I could see the wheels turning as he considered the implications. "Have you accepted the assignment?"

"Not yet. I thought I should see what the Conclave thought about it first."

"A wise decision," he said in that condescending way I hated worse than his cold indifference, "Take the assignment. Find whatever weaknesses we can exploit. The Conclave will be in touch should more be required of you."

I nodded, my face expressionless. I was a little surprised he agreed so quickly. Either he thought it was worth the risk, or he didn't believe I'd get pregnant from this latest insemination anymore than I did.

The doctor headed for the door. "The nurse will let you know when you may leave. Fe'nos tol."

"Fe'nos tol."

As soon as I was outside the hospital, I dug my cellphone out of my pocket and called Nathan. "It's Skye. I'll take the assignment."