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Disclaimer: The usual- Fox owns everything. . .
The Rebellion had failed.
Truly, did they really think a small, ragtag group of mutants could withstand the combined hate and fear of 6 billion people?
Back then, they thought they could. Their resolve was strong and bright, their hopes high. Their flag flew proudly from their refuge, and determination was the iron in their hearts and pumped through their blood.
But then they started to die off, one by one, brutally shot down even as they fought for their freedom. As time passed and they continued to be ruthlessly killed off over the long weeks, which stretched into months, and then years, their resolution wavered and faltered. . .
Sketchy was amongst the last to die in Terminal City, weakened by his months there, the radiation taking its harsh, disfiguring toll on his exposed body. When he'd staggered back to the City with some transgenics he'd rescued, bleeding from gaping wounds he'd taken from protecting the others, his weakened body was unable to fight back. He'd died in the rough infirmary, despite desperate efforts to save him.
His body was buried in a rough, shallow grave next to those of countless others, spread throughout the grounds of Terminal City. Normal was later buried near him, afforded the respect he'd earned in his final months. Added to those pitiful graves some days later was the bloodstained body of Original Cindy, killed in vain defense of a small branch of Terminal City, now overtaken like so many other areas. Logan lay with them, his death slipping by nearly unnoticed by many except Max and, to his credit, Alec, as obscure in death as he had been in life.
In the end, faced by overwhelming odds and stained by the blood and shadow of so many deaths, they fled. What few were left slipped out into the snowy night, a heartrending echo of Max's original escape from Manticore with her siblings, so long ago. They scattered desperately throughout the nation, never again to see each other.
They thought they could survive then, scattered out and in hiding. They were wrong.
Mere weeks afterwards, Alec, who had fought the hardest of them all and kept hopes up even during the darkest moments with his acerbic humor and cocky impudence, was shot as he and Max desperately tried to evade a group of humans who were attempting to hunt them down. He lay gasping in Max's arms as she vainly fought to staunch the red blood pouring from his chest and listened to the dwindling noises of their hunters in the undergrowth, still searching for their vanished prey.
As she met Alec's rapidly-clouding eyes, Ben's face forced its way into her memory as it had been during his final moments, and she pushed it ruthlessly away. She refused to think of him right now, not while his twin painfully echoed his brother's dying moments in her arms.
His breath rasping laboriously, bubbling with the blood filling his lungs, Alec raised his eyes to hers, and his bloodstained hand touched her cheek weakly, smearing red on her smooth skin. With the last of his rapidly-draining strength, he breathed to her the words that remained forever etched in her brain and heart with the fiery heat and pain of fire, "I love you. . ." And with that last exhalation, his eyes went blank and he died, unaware of the hot tears splashing on his face, deaf to Max's sobs as the last remnants of her self-control gave out. His dying words had released a floodgate of emotion through her thin frame, and as she cradled his blood-soaked body in her arms, she realized too late the extent of her feelings for him. Logan's death in the midst of their newly-blossoming relationship had crippled her and she had thought herself incapable of loving anyone else. She was wrong, as she had been wrong about so many things... As she sobbed out her grief, Alec cooled rapidly in her arms, his cocky smile and cheerfully insolent nature gone forever, a dismal portent of the rapidly-nearing downfall of the transgenics.
Max buried Alec where he had fallen, and fled. For the rest of her short life, she never returned to that shallow, unmarked grave, deep in the woods, where her lost love lay, forgotten by all except her.
It tore at the shredded remains of her heart to abandon him there, where others would never realize they would be walking over the unmarked grave of one of the bravest soldiers who had ever lived. During the last months of his life, Alec had exposed a side of himself no one had thought existed. Max had sacrificed everything for the Rebellion, but Alec had sacrificed more. Over the long, bloody months, he had been always the one fighting in the front lines, always the one flinging himself into the path of danger to save others' lives, always the one venturing into the very heart of enemy territory to rescue captured transgenics, no matter how great the danger or cost to himself. He had come near death countless times, his body horrifically maimed by wounds inflicted by hateful humans, but each and every time he had fought back and recovered. During the dusk and night hours, he could always be found in the infirmary, tending to the wounded and comforting the dying with his trademark light-hearted nature.
But he was gone forever, and no amount of grieving or remembering could bring him back, or so Max told herself as she traveled further and further away, never returning to his abandoned and lost grave.
It was not until some months later when, nearly overtaken by madness and grief, hunted until she had almost forgotten any other existence, Max stumbled into a farm, exhausted and near death. Collapsing in the filthy hay near the barn, she curled up in a painful ball and stared up at the gray sky, just as Alec, and so many others, had stared up at her during his final, dying moments. As she lay there, she felt the weakened and crippled systems of her body slowly begin to fail constructively and her heart slow down, preparing to release her from the pain of this world. She shut her eyes, blocking out the world and all the grief it had brought her. . .
"Maxie. . ."
Startled, she opened her eyes, and found herself staring into a pair of blue ones.
"Wha. " Her brow furrowed as she took in the brilliant blue eyes, the blond hair, the handsome, rugged face. "What are you doing here?"
He smiled slowly, as he had only done a few times in his all-too short life. "It's all right. Come with me."
Tearing her gaze away, she looked past him, she saw the faces of her brothers and sisters, waiting for her. Behind them stood her steadfast friends Sketchy, Original Cindy, Logan... Alec...Alec, her beloved, who she'd never realized that she had loved until too late. . .who, as she looked at him, grinned at her, eyes alight with love and tenderness, his trademark mockery dormant for the moment.
Her gaze returned to Zack, and she forced herself to face the painful truth she had known from the very beginning. With an effort, she pushed aside the mounting grief that came with the knowledge that by wiping her brother's memory, she had condemned him to death, for he had been the strongest of them all and most capable of surviving the massacre.
Seemingly aware of her inner struggle, Zack held out his hand, still smiling, the rarity of that smile on his usually severe face making it even more wonderful. "Don't worry. It's over now."
Hesitantly, she took his hand. It felt solid and warm. A strange sense of happiness and peace washed over her, and she smiled back at him, taking his hand and rising, joining the ranks of her brothers and sisters and those she had loved. . .
Some months later, the remains of an unknown girl lying in a sodden pile of hay on an abandoned farm were found by a passing traveler, and in a moment of rare kindness, he took a few hours of his time to bury her remains before continuing on his way.
A few years later, thousands of miles away from Max's grave, unmarked as Alec's was, a painfully thin Joshua fell to his knees in a distant, unknown valley. As blood dribbled from his mouth, his head drooped and his mottled fingers scrabbled in the dirt weakly. The last of his vanishing strength giving out, he collapsed, his eyes fluttering before drooping shut, his heart beating slower and slower...until it stopped.
Just as he had been the first, he was the last.
The Rebellion had failed.
Disclaimer: The usual- Fox owns everything. . .
The Rebellion had failed.
Truly, did they really think a small, ragtag group of mutants could withstand the combined hate and fear of 6 billion people?
Back then, they thought they could. Their resolve was strong and bright, their hopes high. Their flag flew proudly from their refuge, and determination was the iron in their hearts and pumped through their blood.
But then they started to die off, one by one, brutally shot down even as they fought for their freedom. As time passed and they continued to be ruthlessly killed off over the long weeks, which stretched into months, and then years, their resolution wavered and faltered. . .
Sketchy was amongst the last to die in Terminal City, weakened by his months there, the radiation taking its harsh, disfiguring toll on his exposed body. When he'd staggered back to the City with some transgenics he'd rescued, bleeding from gaping wounds he'd taken from protecting the others, his weakened body was unable to fight back. He'd died in the rough infirmary, despite desperate efforts to save him.
His body was buried in a rough, shallow grave next to those of countless others, spread throughout the grounds of Terminal City. Normal was later buried near him, afforded the respect he'd earned in his final months. Added to those pitiful graves some days later was the bloodstained body of Original Cindy, killed in vain defense of a small branch of Terminal City, now overtaken like so many other areas. Logan lay with them, his death slipping by nearly unnoticed by many except Max and, to his credit, Alec, as obscure in death as he had been in life.
In the end, faced by overwhelming odds and stained by the blood and shadow of so many deaths, they fled. What few were left slipped out into the snowy night, a heartrending echo of Max's original escape from Manticore with her siblings, so long ago. They scattered desperately throughout the nation, never again to see each other.
They thought they could survive then, scattered out and in hiding. They were wrong.
Mere weeks afterwards, Alec, who had fought the hardest of them all and kept hopes up even during the darkest moments with his acerbic humor and cocky impudence, was shot as he and Max desperately tried to evade a group of humans who were attempting to hunt them down. He lay gasping in Max's arms as she vainly fought to staunch the red blood pouring from his chest and listened to the dwindling noises of their hunters in the undergrowth, still searching for their vanished prey.
As she met Alec's rapidly-clouding eyes, Ben's face forced its way into her memory as it had been during his final moments, and she pushed it ruthlessly away. She refused to think of him right now, not while his twin painfully echoed his brother's dying moments in her arms.
His breath rasping laboriously, bubbling with the blood filling his lungs, Alec raised his eyes to hers, and his bloodstained hand touched her cheek weakly, smearing red on her smooth skin. With the last of his rapidly-draining strength, he breathed to her the words that remained forever etched in her brain and heart with the fiery heat and pain of fire, "I love you. . ." And with that last exhalation, his eyes went blank and he died, unaware of the hot tears splashing on his face, deaf to Max's sobs as the last remnants of her self-control gave out. His dying words had released a floodgate of emotion through her thin frame, and as she cradled his blood-soaked body in her arms, she realized too late the extent of her feelings for him. Logan's death in the midst of their newly-blossoming relationship had crippled her and she had thought herself incapable of loving anyone else. She was wrong, as she had been wrong about so many things... As she sobbed out her grief, Alec cooled rapidly in her arms, his cocky smile and cheerfully insolent nature gone forever, a dismal portent of the rapidly-nearing downfall of the transgenics.
Max buried Alec where he had fallen, and fled. For the rest of her short life, she never returned to that shallow, unmarked grave, deep in the woods, where her lost love lay, forgotten by all except her.
It tore at the shredded remains of her heart to abandon him there, where others would never realize they would be walking over the unmarked grave of one of the bravest soldiers who had ever lived. During the last months of his life, Alec had exposed a side of himself no one had thought existed. Max had sacrificed everything for the Rebellion, but Alec had sacrificed more. Over the long, bloody months, he had been always the one fighting in the front lines, always the one flinging himself into the path of danger to save others' lives, always the one venturing into the very heart of enemy territory to rescue captured transgenics, no matter how great the danger or cost to himself. He had come near death countless times, his body horrifically maimed by wounds inflicted by hateful humans, but each and every time he had fought back and recovered. During the dusk and night hours, he could always be found in the infirmary, tending to the wounded and comforting the dying with his trademark light-hearted nature.
But he was gone forever, and no amount of grieving or remembering could bring him back, or so Max told herself as she traveled further and further away, never returning to his abandoned and lost grave.
It was not until some months later when, nearly overtaken by madness and grief, hunted until she had almost forgotten any other existence, Max stumbled into a farm, exhausted and near death. Collapsing in the filthy hay near the barn, she curled up in a painful ball and stared up at the gray sky, just as Alec, and so many others, had stared up at her during his final, dying moments. As she lay there, she felt the weakened and crippled systems of her body slowly begin to fail constructively and her heart slow down, preparing to release her from the pain of this world. She shut her eyes, blocking out the world and all the grief it had brought her. . .
"Maxie. . ."
Startled, she opened her eyes, and found herself staring into a pair of blue ones.
"Wha. " Her brow furrowed as she took in the brilliant blue eyes, the blond hair, the handsome, rugged face. "What are you doing here?"
He smiled slowly, as he had only done a few times in his all-too short life. "It's all right. Come with me."
Tearing her gaze away, she looked past him, she saw the faces of her brothers and sisters, waiting for her. Behind them stood her steadfast friends Sketchy, Original Cindy, Logan... Alec...Alec, her beloved, who she'd never realized that she had loved until too late. . .who, as she looked at him, grinned at her, eyes alight with love and tenderness, his trademark mockery dormant for the moment.
Her gaze returned to Zack, and she forced herself to face the painful truth she had known from the very beginning. With an effort, she pushed aside the mounting grief that came with the knowledge that by wiping her brother's memory, she had condemned him to death, for he had been the strongest of them all and most capable of surviving the massacre.
Seemingly aware of her inner struggle, Zack held out his hand, still smiling, the rarity of that smile on his usually severe face making it even more wonderful. "Don't worry. It's over now."
Hesitantly, she took his hand. It felt solid and warm. A strange sense of happiness and peace washed over her, and she smiled back at him, taking his hand and rising, joining the ranks of her brothers and sisters and those she had loved. . .
Some months later, the remains of an unknown girl lying in a sodden pile of hay on an abandoned farm were found by a passing traveler, and in a moment of rare kindness, he took a few hours of his time to bury her remains before continuing on his way.
A few years later, thousands of miles away from Max's grave, unmarked as Alec's was, a painfully thin Joshua fell to his knees in a distant, unknown valley. As blood dribbled from his mouth, his head drooped and his mottled fingers scrabbled in the dirt weakly. The last of his vanishing strength giving out, he collapsed, his eyes fluttering before drooping shut, his heart beating slower and slower...until it stopped.
Just as he had been the first, he was the last.
The Rebellion had failed.