Arcanum:
Regarding Action
by
Kel
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Dark Angel or its characters or plotlines, and make no profit from this fiction.
When your position is compromised and the enemy is closing in from all sides, what do you do?
When your safety zone is shot to hell, and the world is closing in, what do you do?
What do you do?
And just what had he done?
How could it all have gone so wrong? Did he even know it had?
A burst of pain, as his fist crashed into her cheek.
She fell to the cracked pavement, springing back to her feet and leaving a mouthful of blood in her wake.
She wanted to believe he didn't know. Hell, it wasn't even clear to her. Something about friendship; something about family. Something about anger.
Maybe the anger was all he had.
She asked him why. Her voice sounded pleading to her ears, but she had to know.
His eyes bore into her. His breath came out in ragged gasps. "'Why?' You're asking me why?"
He sounded so incredulous, she almost felt guilty.
He wanted to answer her. He wanted to tell her she was an arrogant, self-serving bitch. That her lack of regard for anything other than her own existence had shattered his universe. That it was her fault he was a shell, tearing himself apart at every conflicting seam.
He wanted to tell her how her world had perverted him; destroyed him. He wanted to tell her what she had taken from him.
The words wouldn't come.
He let out a furious roar as his punched her, sending her staggering to her knees.
She was doing it again. Turning him inside out. He couldn't answer her; he didn't think he knew the answer anymore.
Was he angry at what she had done? Was he angry at the world for being so unlike anything he had ever known? Or was he angry that he was too weak to handle it?
When your entire existence is betrayed, what do you do?
It was that time of day he knew would soon be rare; the kind onto which the sun shined without mercy. The light burned his eyes.
When he bothered with thought at all – for there was little need, with the endless days and eternal nights – he would think that the sun's light was the truest. Sinners do not fare well in daylight, and the sun burns all.
Blinding, scorching, relentlessly punishing.
There was no way to stop it; he could duck and hide, he could stand and face the glare, but it didn't go away.
Heaven knew he had done a lot to deserve such punishment; though he knew nothing of Heaven. His days had been spent in limbo, awaiting discipline that never came, for crimes he didn't care he had committed.
He might have longed for happiness, if he had ever truly believed that such a thing existed.
If he looked past the man behind the wheel, and beyond his own cracked rearview mirror, he would have seen that the anger was all that pushed him from neutral to drive.
So he kept his window rolled down, and kept his face to the midday heat, always grateful for the feeling.
The shadows lay solid against the light, and all about him was contrast. Darkness and light, coolness and heat.
Contrast. It gave him a headache; pierced him through the eyes.
What outcome he was hoping for anyway — Revenge? Escape? — he couldn't decide.
If any pair made unlikely traveling companions, it was them. At almost every moment, they managed to remain polar opposites.
Krit, with his ever-present sadness and his ever-present indifference; as if he didn't notice that he felt anything.
Rizzo with his laughter, his oddity, and his millisecond fury.
Despite their differences, the two of them had been on the road together for several days. They had known only their destination; their purpose, as always, remained a little vague. They merely followed the highway signs, neither of them being a stranger to the long road.
Rizzo had believed that when it all came down, the two of them weren't so different at all.
But sometimes he noticed Krit looking at him, and he wondered. He wondered if he really was losing it.
The stars were twinkling clearly overhead by the time they had reached Seattle. He didn't listen to what Krit was saying. Forget the warehouse that had been their base of operations. She'd no sooner go back there than she would have walked back home of her own will.
How well did he know her? Perhaps not well. Perhaps better than she might think.
He drove to the first place he could think of. The diner. He'd find his own way from there.
As he slid from behind the wheel, Krit pleaded with him. They both knew why he had come here. They both knew he didn't know what he'd do next, and still Krit needed to try to protect her.
Not for the first time, Rizzo shot him a heated look. Her family had always managed to bring his emotions forth where he thought he had none. "Don't interfere," he growled, and left.
Into the dark, just as always.
The sky was too clear to match the thunderclouds.
The feeling was rare.
It wasn't often she found herself just letting go and allowing the music to wash over her, but this time she was helpless to resist.
She was in Crash. She was sitting alone at the end of the bar, facing out into the crowd. It was the third in a series of theme gimmicks, designed to haul in new clientele and extra revenue. Not very aptly named, Inferno Night had been going on for 72 hours and counting.
Flamethrowers had been set up all about the bar, and the usual car crash videos had been interspersed with mushroom clouds and balls of fire. While the bar kept to it's tried and true tradition of songs one could dance to, the music had a more hardcore flavour.
It reflected her mood of late.
She supposed she should have been relieved. Relaxed, even. All the chaos of her life as of late had ended, with Manticore, the Familiars, and most of her demons laid to waste.
If she were much of a soul searcher, she might have decided that her mind couldn't take the peace, and was creating some new adversaries for her. Her meager amount of sleep was plagued with nightmares only half-remembered. The shadows rushed at her out of the corners of her eyes.
She found herself missing her family. Tinga was dead, Ben was dead, Zack might as well be dead. Zane had gone AWOL a couple of years back, and as far as she knew, Jondy was still out looking for him. Krit simply hadn't been around at all. She'd seen Brin, Moren, and Syl. . . . But Brin still couldn't seem to figure out who she was. Moren could never seem to be much of a brother; it would be too emotional. Too unsoldierly. And Syl could never stick around very long; it was too stressful. Syl could see Max as nothing more than glass, these days. She worried too much for either of their good.
You could take the X5 out of the flame, but the burns would never properly heal.
The metal that formed her was cool to the touch. The fire burned away the sickness.
As long as Inferno Night dragged on, Max would spend every minute she could here.
Which was funny, because the inferno hadn't even begun.
And when it was over, they found that it had burned clean.
She felt as if her strings had been cut, and she could stop anticipating the next player in her wars to haul her up and jerk her around.
Finally she had found what she'd started searching for with escape: freedom.
In the aftermath, tending to the cuts and bruises they'd inflicted on each other, the clean air felt cool and crisp in his tired lungs.
And he'd realized that their ending had been almost poetic, in the way that the pages had closed by return.
Black stars exploded across the redness of his vision as she gave up the innocent act and gave in to the monster he knew he was really fighting. He spun away from the hit and slammed roughly into the building behind him.
It took him a moment to regain his bearings — a moment of which he was sure she would have taken advantage. She was despicable, and two-faced, and made him feel so –
Angry. Made him feel, made him feel — he'd never felt so angry, except when — except . . . when?
He pushed off the wall, turned, lunged at her — but she kept him back with a vicious, powerful backhand that sent him sprawling into the brick once more.
As spots danced in his vision, his fury melted into despair. "Why didn't you just kill me when you saw me in that cell?" His voice was hoarse. He sunk to the dirty pavement and turned to face her. "Does inflicting pain give you some kind of sick pleasure?"
He forced himself to meet her enraged stare as they panted for breath.
And then it had hit him, harder than she had.
They'd been here before, they'd always been here, hadn't stopped.
She hadn't turned him loose, set him free, or cast him out. They hadn't moved, hadn't ever moved.
Caught in the whirlwind of all the things that had thrown themselves at them, frozen in the eye of the storm as the winds battered everything around them, they'd kicked and screamed and fought and never found the time or strength to leave the path of destruction.
In the face of their broken record anger and broken record blows, he'd finally awakened to where they were, who they were, what they meant to each other.
Because beyond their little battleground, there was a world, one without the treacherous winds and the force to destroy him. One where everything he'd never dreamed of abounded. It surrounded him, and maybe it could fill him.
He thought that maybe, finally, he could be whole.
So once they had gathered up all their individual pieces, he left again.
Because what else do you do when the tides pull in and wash away everything you've ever known, whether it leaves you hollow or clean?
What do you do when you're stricken, or when you're unchained? When you lose yourself, or when your past finds you? When circumstances throw your life together with another, or tear you both apart?
You react.
In previous times of peace, when some part of her knew that the fight wasn't over, Max had longed for action, something to fight for, something to fight against.
But it wasn't about action.
It was about fighting the oppression, answering the call of battle, protecting and defending themselves against their foes.
Life was reaction.
Their war of backlash had been laid to rest. An endless something new lay over the horizon, waiting to act, waiting on what he'd do when it did. He could taste it.
End.
And there you have it - the ending of the Arcanum series, also known as my baby. I was quite nervous about this piece, whether it lived up to the others, its level of coherence . . . feedback would be much appreciated.