Disclaimer: Dark Angel isn't mine, it belongs to Fox, James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee and only God knows who else.
Originally I thought of this as a Valentine fic, something that'd be full of fluff but didn't turn that way. Sorry.
Dedicated to you, who had been insisting me on writing this thing. Posted on you b-day :)
Meant to be
aka Everything happens the way its supposed to
I.
It was too hard.
She had learned she couldn't deny her feelings for Logan, that she couldn't pretend she didn't love him. She told him the truth, he forgave her -not really, because he said there was nothing to forgive, she had nothing to be sorry- and continued to live next to each other for a year and half, without further contact that their gloved hands.
It was too hard, but it worth the suffering.
So Max didn't avoid him when he was in the HQ, she was helping him personally regard to Eyes Only, she never left. Seeing him, talking with him, laughing with him, all that was worthwhile.
And she would not surrender until she met again her lips with his...
0-0-0
A year and a half after the incident at Jam Pony, a year and a half living cloistered in Terminal City, a year and a half of constant struggle to defend their rights, a year and a half later freedom arrived to their lives.
Seattle City Council gave them full ownership for Terminal City, the twenty-block no-man's land, and all, each and every one of the ex-soldiers product of Manticore received an identity. They were people, they were American citizens, with their own piece of land, with a home.
Original Cindy's idea to throw a huge party at the HQ was well received by the still growing Transgenic Community. In that year and a half, there had been more reasons to mourn than to celebrate. In this short, brutal life, you gotta seize every opportunity you can to celebrate, Max reminded Logan saying that, and finally believe he was right.
When a hand took her arm, Max turned and smiled to find that it was Logan, who subtly and slowly pulled her from her conversation with Cindy and Joshua. It wasn't his hand touching directly the bare skin of her arm, but it was something.
It was too good to be true.
"I have a lead on someone," Logan announced, leaning forward to whisper it in her ear. At first, Max got worried and thought of moving, but there was a bigger chance to touch him with a jerk than if she stayed motionless. In addition, his warm breath on her ear was a pleasure that she had rarely held. "He believes he truly can do it, and if not, considers it possible to create more temporary cures ..."
"No, Logan," Max cut him, aware of all the money he had spent already, "we need to find someone who ends this once and for all..."
And now Logan stopped her, putting his covered finger on her full lips. "This is worth it. You and me," he stroked her cheek and drew a line along her jaw, "that is worth it."
If she ever felt an urgent need to kiss him, that was. Of course she couldn't, unless she wanted to see him dying on the floor. And yet, when her lips found his own...
A brief moment they couldn't even consider as a kiss, a contact they didn't even enjoy.
Someone had taken a wrong step backward, a X6. He was not guilty. Nobody was. They were only victims of a cruel joke of fate.
And while his body was being filled with bumps, one of the X5 were working in the Infirmary checked his vitals. The look she gave to Max said it all, there was nothing more to do. Then, with the little life remaining inside of him, Logan, astonished at what he was going to do, as if an energy forced him to, pulled her closer and kissed her for the last time.
0-0-0
The image of Logan dying and the taste of his lifeless lips crossed her head again and again. In fact, there was someone guilty in his death and it was not Manticore, it was not Renfro, it was not the scientist who had designed the virus, it was not the X6, no, none of them were guilty.
It was her.
Max had always known it was too good to be true, that at some point that was going to happen and it was going to hurt and a lot. The tests had been done, they knew that the next time she touch him could indeed be the last. She must have worked hard for that last time would never come.
She had screwed up, and Logan had paid with his life.
II.
If you ever had the chance to start over, if someone gave you the opportunity to do everything again, would you take it?
The smell of fake, almost rotten coffee awakes her and does nothing but remind her that Logan was the last person who gave her the opportunity to drink a real coffee, imported from Colombia or God knows where. Her heart aches, and yet she feels good, like if everything had been just a nightmare, a really bad one. The pain is there, and it isn't at the same time.
The blonde sits on the edge of her bed and places the cup full of coffee at the small table. "Wake up, you lazy." Her husky, sleepy voice says with some concern, because she knows Max never overslept. "Jacinda stopped by to ask you to pick up..."
"Theo's check." she finishes the sentence. At that time Max has stopped listening to the voice but she's sure it belongs to Kendra and she is genuinely surprised to have her there, but more than that, it frightens her. Kendra had run off with Walter two years ago and they have not been in contact ever since. And, out of nowhere, she is there, Kendra is there and she tells her to ask for Theo's check, who had died long time ago.
"Am I dreaming Kendra?"
"Oh no, this definitely isn't a dream. Is more like a nightmare. But if you're still sleeping, please dream of two charming princes, for both of us, who lead us out of this crisis."
"Pinch me." Max inquires. "Ouch."
"You ask me for it," Kendra teases, and then stands, heading back to the small living room.
0-0-0
With the exception of the morning, in which Kendra awoke her, not even beginning to envy Max's lack of need for sleep, the morning runs in the same way her memory recalls. Déjà vu to the nth power. Everything, absolutely everything, dialogs, colors, points of view, feelings, everything she had already lived happens the same way, and yet it seems so new at the same time. Not a dream, that had already been proved, because even in her most vivid nocturnal fantasies Max can't feel anything physically.
"I need a signature," she says to the receptionist and she loses herself in thoughts, focusing on a far shining object. A statue. The Egyptian goddess Bast, the goddess who comprehends all goddesses, eye of Ra, protector, avenger, destroyer... giver of life who lives forever.
She could probably fence it for a couple hundred dollars...
As soon as the idea pops up in her mind, his face appears again. It isn't as clear as she saw it in the morning, is more like a blur, but his face carries a lot of feelings, and she starts reminding what hasn't happened yet, but at least she thinks it is supposed to. His eyes, his voice, he's Eyes Only, he's Logan Cale, her Logan Cale, she remembers, and she feels, as weird as it sounds, that all of that really happen, maybe in a parallel universe, maybe in another life she can't fully understand, but she knows it is true, that she is not dreaming and that she had on her hands the opportunity to fix it, to avoid all the suffering and give him the chance to be happy. No Max Guevara, no Manticore, nothing of that in his life.
But she struggles the idea of stealing the statue. She thinks she maybe can rig the door, so it won't lock and she could come back by the night, but she doesn't do anything. Don't stealing that thing is for the greater good.
For his good.
0-0-0
"I was crazy about you, but you keep everyone at arm's length like you got some great, big, dark something going on. It's just the more I tried to get close to you, the more you pulled away."
She has the same lame conversation with Darren, he gives her the same argument about being under Justine's skirt, and still, Max doesn't reply what she did in her dream or her another life, she doesn't know of what it was. She says she isn't sure of anything, that she'd like to be closer to him, but she can't, there's something inside of her that screams that she shouldn't be with anyone. "I need time to think about us," she finally says, and she really means it. She is truly believing Darren is her best, that she can't find any better right now. What she needs is a normal boyfriend, someone to hang out, to sleep with, who cheats on her but at the end, someone normal, someone whose life is not always on the line, a person who'll never know what she really is, a person she could get a rid off easily.
A person she'll never love.
0-0-0
Though now she has been doing different from what she remembers, Max thinks there's a chance that maybe it is because things are truly different. She leaves Crash -it's a secret her destiny, she says to Original Cindy- and goes with the man who had been helping her, Vogelsang, and tells him to delete every single trace of everything he had sought for her. He frowns and stares at her for a long time, and he can tell it is the first time he really looks at her. She doesn't seem as confident and self-assured as he thought she was -she looks weak, confused, scared. He doesn't give a damn about his customers, but he asks her is that's what she wants, if she's sure. She had spent so much money looking for those kids and that nurse that he wonders if the girl is serious, but she repeats the instructions. "I find a new way," she replies, but he no longer cares.
A couple minutes later he announces it's done, that there's nothing else about them in his computer. All the paper sheets he printed, he gives them to her. "I need something else," Max says and hands him a bunch of money, "Logan Cale. Tell me who he is."
"Doesn't Cale ring your bell?"
"Just tell me what he does for a living, where did he study, his birthday, nothing too hard to find."
"Duh," Vogelsang mocks, "he's a Cale, he doesn't need to do anything for a living but sitting in his couch."
"Am I asking you to give me your opinion?" Her eyes widened, she cuts the man's inspiration, before something appears in the screen. He turns it so she can see what it is.
It is a picture of him.
She stares several moments before realizing there's information in the right side of the photograph. Journalist, Yale, November 11th, among many other things she already knows, despite she had never seen it before. She smiles because it is really him, he's the same guy.
She knows then that don't stealing the statue was the best choice she could ever make.
0-0-0
She is leaving the laundry when another thought invades her brain and she can't shake it. If Logan still is Logan, the same Logan, her Logan, in a couple days Bruno is going to shoot him and drag him into a life of sorrow and loneliness. She never knew how he was before that day, she only had a glimpse, and knowing what will happen only makes her feel bad. But it is actually worse. If she never goes with Logan, he will be shoot and, eventually, his hospital room will blow out, reducing him only to a unrecognizable burnt body.
If she is really making Logan's life better, she must do something about that.
0-0-0
Next morning, Max follows her instinct and does things just as she remembers. She and Kendra give the money to Walter, before going to Jam Pony Jacinda appears on her way and she hands her the check, she talks with Theo, he isn't feeling fine, she goes to Jam Pony and Sketchy tells her he's been cheating on Natalie, and the list goes on.
Nothing changes until the night, when she tells Original Cindy she is not in the mood of going to Crash. Cindy's eyes roll all around her, trying to figure out what is wrong with her, but she doesn't receive any answer from her body, from her gestures. "Tell Original Cindy what's going on Sugah," Cindy offers, waiting for a reply that may never come, because Max is sure that not even her best friend would understand her.
Are nights like this when Max feels, more than nothing else, than her life is far away from normal, and now isn't only being a genetically engineered killing machine, but knowing the future, being sort of a Pythia. Too much.
She just shrugs. Sighing, OC gives up and Max is again alone in the darkness of her living room.
III.
The following night Max is running her Ninja across the city.
She isn't going to Crash. She isn't going to the PI. She isn't trying to go with Logan.
17495 Euclid.
The address sounds like a echo in her head and she wishes, no, she almost prays to don't be wrong in this one, everything had been according to her memories so far and now, with the shooting being almost a morning fact, she can't afford it, not now that his life's on the line. Her reason tries to argue with her, tells her that she shouldn't risk herself, that she had spent a plenty of her life out of the radar and, that even if she's not at danger, that maybe she shouldn't mess with fate and those things. But her heart says the contrary, because, not matter if Logan Cale doesn't meet her in this new life, she still loves him and he worth any risk.
0-0-0
She stands outside the building for a long moment, hesitating. Damn time travel or whatever shit that happened with her. She's afraid of going in and finding something she might don't like, something like the Logan Cale of this alternate universe is not a good guy. But the cable hacks repeat themselves once and again in her head, she sees them crossing her mind as if they were in television. It's his voice, they are his eyes. It is him.
And so are they the bad guys, the ones that tomorrow morning will try to stop him. The lock gives way easily, as if it wanted her to enter. She tiptoes from one side to the other, glancing more than once to the thugs, who are talking and watching a football game or so. There are all there, Bruno and the other guys. Letting out her breath slowly, Max hopes Logan never knows what she's about to do with them.
0-0-0
Though she just saved him, she is not happy at all, still feeling the sound of bones cracking all around her, or the sensation of their blood over her face. She isn't happy because, after all, she killed them. She became them, she became the kind of human she has ever repudiated. There's also the overwhelming feeling that she and him, Max and Logan, will never happen again. It's over, she thinks, she knows. Obviously, she'll have the chance to see him every once in a while. She will see him in the market, buying all he needs to do one of his last minute culinary miracles that stole her heart and stomach, she could even find a way to introduce him a rocking, awesome chick who could make him happy.
She starts crying, and she can't help it. She needs it. She feels dirty, she feels lonely. Like in heat, but with no sex involved.
IV.
Same old routine by the night. Crash, beers, Foosball, pool, whatever they always do there. While ordering the first pitcher, she catches a sight of him in the corner of her eyes, he's with a few other people, both men and women, and she smiles. Even before coming in, she knew he was there, the faint scent of his cologne fills the air of the entrance, and she can't forget it, not even when she is supposed to have never smelled his fragrance. She knows he is there because of his smell -that, and the fact that Bessie is parked in front of the bar.
"Oh, I'm having an orgasm right now."
It's Kendra's voice what brings her back to the reality. A bit surprised by her roommate's spontaneity and imprudence, Max stares back at her, a frown over her face, wondering what makes her behave like that. "The guy over there," Kendra reads her mind, "it's... oh, beautiful, to say the least. He first came here the other night, when you decide to stay home."
And the guy over there is her guy, but she doesn't say it. "Kinda cute."
"Kinda?" The blonde frowns, wondering if Max is seeing the same man she is. "Kinda?" She repeats incredulous.
"Yeah, kinda." Max says coldly. "Not the kind of guy I dream about." She lies, because he's the only man she had ever dreamed about. Not even her brothers. Lydecker, even White, had been there when she sleeps too, more than once, but those aren't dreams, those are nightmares.
A smile spreads across Kendra's face. "You're recognizing you dream about guys every once in a while?"
Max ignores the comment and walks through the crowd, trying at the same time to blend, as in the court, where she went only to be sure nothing would happen. She can't help the feeling to turn around and see him smile, having fun.
She's caught, not by Kendra nor Cindy, but for him, who only stares at her with his deep green eyes and smiles. Max avoids his gaze, covered by a red layer in her face, and that's when Kendra notices it. "You bitch, you said he's only kinda cute, but he's looking at you!"
"Gotta blaze." The words slip from her mouth with no effort and she leaves, pretending to be mad at her friend, but she's mad at herself. She had told herself the last few days he shouldn't meet her, and she knows him, she knows that, if in this moment he likes her, he might not rest until he finds out who she is.
And then they'd be in the same path.
Is that sixth sense she developed with him the thing that makes her know he's right behind her. She turns, half annoyed, half excited because he's there. She tries to put on a scowl on her face, but she can't. Finally, Max surrenders to excitement and smiles, shyly.
He doesn't speak. Neither he can put the right words. "Do I know you?" He says after a while and he shuts his eyes, the kind of look he gave her when he said something he considered stupid or unnecessary.
She laughs. It's a genuine, loud laugh that makes him more embarrassed, but his red cheeks join her in chuckles. She didn't have a huge look into the Logan Cale before his injury, and somehow she confirms he's the same intelligent, idealistic, concerned, shy guy she met. She replies, "No... I... I'm sorry, I don't think so." She restarts her walk, waving her curls with her long, fast steps. She has to go, now. Otherwise, that'll be harder and harder. Every second a part of her struggles to go with him. And every second she believes she needs to.
In the other side of the street, almost reaching her Baby, Max feels safe.
"Yeah, I'd never forget a face like yours," he mumbles, and that's the moment when Max suddenly stops and faces him. The breath is caught in her throat. She surely wouldn't forget a face like his neither.
He is staring absently to the wet street, and after realizing she is no longer leaving, he knows she has listened to his simple, honest words. Slowly, as if scared of what she could do or say, he lifts his face. His green eyes, now looking into her brown ones.
The Universe is right on schedule.
And when he, astonished at what he is going to do, as if an energy forces him to, pulls her closer for a kiss, under the rain, like in those romantic pre-Pulse movies she won't ever admit she watches, she feels safe, she feels happy, and understands that she belongs there, in his arms, with him. Yeah, Mrs. Cale had been right on that thing she taught her son. Everything happens the way its supposed to. It is happening because it needed to happen.
With nothing on her mind but the sweet taste of his lips, she knows all the suffering has been worthwhile.
I know in my heart
I feel it right here
With you and me darlin' I have no fear
When our hearts meet on common ground
Our purpose is clear and our faith is sound
We are meant to be
-Carlene Carter, Meant to be
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