Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel, I don't own Jondy and Alec, and it's sad, but I think I'll survive.
A/N: Set after "Proof of Purchase," and set in my Everyday Spinning Timeline, which is only slightly different than the original. Check out my profile for more stories in this line!
Til Then I Walk Alone
My shadow's only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Til then I walk alone
-"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day
Alec slid the back of his hand over his cheek, smearing some of the blood on his face. How was he supposed to know that when you went to Mike "Little Man" Nelson for the first time that you were supposed to bring a hooker, a wad of cash and someone to vouch for you? And if you didn't have all three things you got your ass handed to you by his hyped-up, muscle-bound, totally-on-serious-illegal-steroids lackeys? Which he had way too many of, by the way. And these lackeys ganged up on you like a pack of half-starved German Shepherds on a piece of meat?
Needless to say, Alec had only had two things. The hooker part had thrown him.
Growling to himself for his own stupid mistake, Alec straightened up and looked at himself in the mirror. His face had been a prime target for abuse, so he had a bloody lip and a cut near his right eye, both of which were distracting from the bruises that were starting to form. His shoulder was aching from being thrown against a wall, and there was a nice place on his leg where one of them had got him with a knife. He hadn't looked this bad since Lydecker had thought it would be a good training exercise to throw him into a sparring match with three wolf-type transhumans last year. Alec had survived intact and had come out on top in the end, but it hadn't exactly been an experience he would want to repeat. At least most of the minor wounds would be gone by the morning this time.
There was a knock on the door, and Alec made a face. After getting out of Mike's warehouse, he had ducked into the first public place he had come to, which happened to be through the back door of a bar near the docks. He had slipped into the bathroom, and as far as he knew, no one had seen him.
The person knocked on the door again. "Hey, anybody in there?"
"Yeah, get lost," Alec said, not in the mood to be civil.
"Shithead," the guy outside snapped and kicked the door, "I need to piss!" Alec ignored him.
Scrubbing roughly at his face with a paper towel, Alec berated himself. He had been stupid to go there without the right intelligence. He had thought that Baxter had told him everything, but now he thought that the little twerp had it out for him, the new guy on the block. From now on, he was following his instincts and doing everything himself, including intel. He should've known better than to trust an Ordinary anyway.
Moron.
After he was satisfied that he wasn't going to get suspicious looks from the Sector cops about his face and that he wouldn't look vulnerable to other gangs, Alec opened the door. A scruffy-looking guy with a bulb nose and a red face pushed past him, nearly shoving Alec into the doorframe.
"You're an asshole, you know that?" the man snarled before slamming the door shut.
There was an old metal and plastic chair set back against the wall in front of the bathrooms. Alec snatched it and jammed it up underneath the outward-swinging door's knob. There, since the guy wanted to get in there so bad, he could stay in there with the backed-up toilet, cockroaches and unidentifiable slime.
Satisfied with his revenge, Alec walked through the bar wearing a neutral expression. One of those regular dockside places with old fishing gear and old barrel tables that played out rock-n-roll music, the place was pretty busy tonight. No one noticed him; he was just another face in the crowd, albeit a better-looking face…
He just wanted to get out of here and curl up in some nice, quiet warm place, maybe a nice hotel or some rich person's apartment that had been vacated for the night. His head was throbbing where it had hit the concrete. Yeah, somewhere to rest would be great.
He was almost out the door when he saw her slip into the kitchen from behind the bar, that familiar smile on her face. He didn't stop, knowing that would look suspicious, but he turned to the side and started looking at the flyers beside the door, seemingly absorbed in the protest fliers and lost-dogs. No way. That couldn't be her. She was out of the country or dead by now. There was no way she was bartending at the docks in Seattle.
Was there?
Alec smoothly moved away from the door and headed back to the bar, his eyes scanning the rest of the room as if he was looking for someone. When he reached the stools, he leaned against the bar and turned his attention to the bartenders. There was one guy working the front, and he was busy taking stock of the liquor behind him. He glanced over his shoulder at Alec.
"What'll it be?"
"Scotch," he replied instantly. How he was going to pay for that Scotch… Maybe there was some money in one of his pockets. And then there was his ability to escape and evade.
The bartender poured him the drink with all the enthusiasm of a technician doling out meds before going back to taking inventory. Alec took an obligatory swig of the Scotch and let it warm him up while he waited for the girl to come back out of the kitchen.
A couple moments later and the door swung open, letting out first a slinky black-haired woman with skinny hips and manufactured breasts before the girl walked out. It took all of his will power to keep from jumping off the stool and pinning her against the wall to make sure there was a barcode on her neck that would end in 211. For now, he settled for staring at her, not entirely believing that Charlie had wound up here, in reach.
Her long honey-blond hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail at the base of her neck, leaving her heart-shaped face exposed and her barcode effectively covered. Her lithe, petite body looked a lot better in that short-shorts and black t-shirt get-up than it did in fatigues, but Charlie was Manticore; she could make anything look good. Most of the girls in Manticore fell into four categories: supermodels, movie stars, exotics or other. Charlie had been one of those in the last category; she wasn't as standardly gorgeous as some of the other females, but she made up for it with other ways. When he had gone through cultural training and been taught cultural references, Alec had decided she looked sort of like an elf, small and angular. Biggs always said she had too much cat in her, which usually got him a scowl from the female X5.
Big, wide dark blue eyes glanced at him before immediately looking away. He didn't know what that meant. Maybe she was putting on a good show for the Ordinaries, not letting on at all that she knew him. That'd be like Charlie. She covered all her bases and didn't leave anything to chance when she could help it.
Then again, there was something in the way she moved, something he didn't know…
A moment later, after she poured some old guy a beer, she turned towards Alec and met his eyes with a stare that was completely unfamiliar to him. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
That was not Charlie.
Sure, they seemed identical, but the look in her eyes wasn't Charlie. At all. Charlie always looked controlled and poised, no matter what, and sort of distant, especially for a medic; re-indoctrination had been almost successful with her since she had gone through it so many times. This woman had entirely different eyes. She seemed curious about him, taking in every detail of his face in nanoseconds. Concern and warmth gleamed in her eyes, emotions Manticore would have tried to stomp out of her years ago. There was caution there too, and he guessed it was the kind you gained after being on the run for ten years because the only person this could possibly be was Charlie's clone. One of the 09ers.
X5-210.
She looked away again and moved out among the tables. He could see that she was making sure to tone down her natural gracefulness by occasionally bumping a table or brushing one of the people, not that anyone would notice. She was a really good faker, but he could see by the way the drinks never even wobbled that she was acting.
Alec drained the rest of his Scotch. Okay, so it had been too good to be true, she wasn't Charlie, but now he had found another Manticore Alum. Too bad it had to be another 09er. He was pretty sure that Max was already pushing the limit for his 09er-interaction, but this girl…she looked just like Charlie. He clenched his hands around the glass, wishing it had been his unitmate instead of Max's that randomly showed up in a bar in Seattle.
Of course he wasn't that lucky.
"Your barcode is showing." Charlie's voice whispered, but it wasn't Charlie's tone. How could people be clones of each other and still sound different? Freaky.
This is why he wore turtlenecks. He stood up, wondering what she was going to say to him. The numbers on his neck had to be significant to her; 493 had been her unitmate and fellow escapee, and if Max's reaction to him had been any signifier, 210 wasn't going to be happy with him.
He didn't know what to expect when he turned around, but her half-smile threw him off-guard. "You're taller than I thought he'd be."
Teasing and bold. Charlie was never like that.
"I'm taking that as a compliment," he responded. He looked down at her, and for once he didn't know what to say. Max had been 453's clone, but he hadn't known Sam as well as he knew Charlie. He shifted from foot to foot and sniffed at the cluttered air. Cigarette smoke, beer, and a hint a lavender coming from 210.
"Hey, can I get a drink?" someone called from a nearby table. 210 ignored them. She seemed to reach toward Alec's face, her eyes narrowed, but she dropped her hand and shook her head.
"Get in a fight?" she asked, focusing on the bruises and the scratches. Introductory small talk was obviously not her style. He sort of liked that.
Alec shrugged. "Nah, I just slammed myself into a wall a few times. I was bored."
"Mhmm," she said, her hands going to her hips, just like Max, but she looked genuinely concerned about the scrapes. "You've got a smart mouth for an army brat."
"Huh, Max said something like that too," he replied, grinning at her, "And you're just as tactful as she is."
That caught her off guard. Her eyes widened, and she stared at him. "Max is alive?" The unharnessed hope in that question made him even more uncomfortable.
"Uh, yeah," Alec said, quirking up an eyebrow at her, "You live in the same city, you should know she's still trying to save the world, one block at a time."
210 stepped back from him, the blood draining from her face. "I didn't…they told me…" She looked down at the floor then jerked her head back up to look at him. "Can you come with me, back to my place? Please, I'll make it worth your time, I promise." She started taking off her apron, hastily pulling at the strings.
"Want to tell me your name first?" he asked, "So I know exactly who I'm going home with?" He was half-amused by the turn of events. First he had been beat up by hyped-up Ordinaries, then he thought he had found someone from his unit, and now Max's sister/Charlie's clone was inviting him to come home with her from a bar after a 30-second conversation.
At least life outside of Manticore was never boring.
"One second," she replied before darting behind the counter and into the back room. A few minutes later, and she returned, relief washing over her face as she found him right where she had left him. She looked up at him again, her eyes confused and searching but still warm. "I'm Jondy."
He nodded and smiled. "I guess you can call me Alec. Sounds better than numbers."
A/N: And so they meet! ^_^