Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter. Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter. Rachel Berrisford, Beloved –
Cold metal met the back of Alec's neck and sent tremors down his spine. But he'd heard the footsteps. He could feel the man behind him. He knew him. He wouldn't shoot.
Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter.
"I told you not to come here."
Rachel Berrisford –
"Are you listening to me, Simon? I told you not to come here."
He was angry. Everyone was angry. Like it was nothing more than the latest botched job, the latest mindless, meaningless obstacle put up by a mindless, meaningless government. Like it was the latest Joshua t-shirt, an affront, an attack, to be avenged or ignored. Or, for the hypocrites, why not both?
"Don't you dare ignore me, you bastard. You killed my daughter. You sure as –"
"Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter."
There was a moment of silence, though not in any way a respectful one. For Robert Berrisford, it was stunned - at the audacity, at his own reflexive pain, at the way his fingers just would not move. The safety was still on.
Alec's silence was dead still, breathless, self-contained. His mind was whirring with a slow but martial panic that wrestled back the thoughts he wanted to think. He couldn't pin down what was so wrong with that phrase, that epitaph, that it made him cringe to read it and compelled to read it again.
He wondered what hers –
"Yes," came finally, "my beloved daughter. The beautiful, beloved girl you killed. And you don't get to stand over her and gloat, because I will kill you, so help me God, I will. You've destroyed us already. That's enough."
He may have gone on, but Alec wasn't listening. His ears were ringing with an absurd triumph. The rest of him was blank – breathless, desperate, but not given to any effable emotion – studiously blank.
"Isn't that selfish?"
His voice was flat. It was an honest question.
Berrisford shut up, perhaps wondering if that was why the damned safety was still on, if he couldn't kill Simon to appease himself, perhaps disgusted, while Alec sank steadily into the realization that 'Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter' was the most goddamned selfish thing any one could ever write on a marble slab. Sum her up in two words, why don't you. And not her words, not words that even meant much of anything at all. They meant nothing to her friends. They meant nothing to him, except that she'd been loved, and he knew that. He had loved her.
He had loved –
Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter. Rachel Berrisford, Beloved. Rachel Berrisford.
And that was it, wasn't it? Rachel Berrisford was everything Rachel Berrisford was. It wasn't hard. It wasn't complicated. She didn't need to be dressed up. She didn't need to be defined. She was Rachel Berrisford and he was Alec McDowell and Max –
And who knew what would be on her –
Goddamnit.
He sat down, hard, trying to breath. Berrisford jumped back, gripping his gun in both hands, but Alec barely noticed. Berrisford could have shot him and Alec barely would have noticed. As it was, the man was talking, shouting maybe, but Alec didn't understand and didn't care.
Max had named him. He was Alec – everything he was was Alec, because he was a smart aleck, because he wasn't X5-494, because Max had named him and he was Max's friend, her 2IC, her reluctant disciple, and her fucking understudy.
And he wasn't blank anymore. He couldn't be blank anymore. He couldn't help the single drop of saline on his cheek, either, not even in front of Berrisford, or, perhaps, especially not in front of Berrisford – but that was shit for Psy Ops pigs.
He had come there for the quiet, for the sacredness of Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter. He had come to worship, to get lost in something better than himself, better than the rest of the goddamned world.
Max had – had had – the Space Needle. She could look down at the world and see things clearly, objectively, from a distance. Brother Ben had had a warped religion, a sort of roaming altar and dictated penance. Convenient, and total,at least, if not discreet.
Alec had a stone and a pit and a corpse, and all of it was wrong.
They'd been like that for minutes, five maybe – Alec at eye level with Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter, just breathing, trying not to wonder what it said on Max's tombstone (Beloved Freak? What a joke.), trying not to think that he should be there, right then, at the ceremony, and Berrisford's handgun catching on the collar of Alec's too-warm leather jacket, catching in the sun – when they both started talking at once.
Berrisford's harsh "that's enough" was swallowed by Alec's harsher "put that away", and then, "put that away".
Berrisford had the gun lowered, at least, when Joshua came jogging up, calling Alec's name. He approached, wary eyes on Berrisford. "Alec?" he asked, and the X5 nodded an okay.
Joshua was not convinced. "He has a gun, Alec."
Stupid bastard. Alec had told him to put it away. "He won't shoot me."
Berrisford made an indignant noise, but shut up and backed off fast when the dog-faced transgenic snarled at him, baring fangs. Joshua turned inquisitively to Alec. Alec didn't say anything. He knew that look, Josh's plaintive 'Why?' look, and the answer to 'Why?' would be 'because the good guys don't shoot people', to which Josh would respond 'but you shoot people', and what could he say to that? Josh thought he was a good guy. He wouldn't understand. And if Josh went the other way and decided that that was why Max didn't shoot people, Alec would have to tell him how fucking stupid that was, and they'd both be back at 'Why?' again. Alec didn't feel like playing that game.
He didn't say anything. He waited, and Josh gave in.
"Mole says it's over now. He says you can stop hiding."
Alec didn't say anything.
"I think he's angry. He says you're the leader. For now. He says you should have been there."
Max Guevera, Beloved Freak. What a fucking joke.
"I said Max will understand. But it's over now. You'll come now?"
Dead people don't understand anything, Josh. They're just dead.
"Yeah," Alec said, trying to be blank again, playing it cool, "I'll swing by in a bit. You get back to TC. And cover your face, huh?"
Joshua watched Alec for a moment, a soft, hurt expression in his eyes. "Alec is not always alright, even when he says." There was a pause, then the transgenic glared at Berrisford, who put his gun away and his hands palm up, eyes wide, and, lifting his hood, Joshua left.
Alec let his head slip down. He stared at the grass, repeating 'I am alright. I'm always alright. I'm not the one who's dead,' to himself just as faithfully as he had 'Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter.' Rachel's father stood a few feet away, not even holding his gun, but still there. Alec wondered distractedly, blankly, if Berrisford thought he could scare the X-5 off on the strength of his presence alone. It ought to have been a funny thought, but Alec was blank again. Blank was alright.
"Why are you here?"
Huh. And that was funny, almost. After all the gun waving and bullshit, an honest question, and a good one. One with too many answers, anyway.
He stuck to the simplest.
"You've heard of Max? Guevera?"
His voice was flat.
"The leader of the transgenics squatting in Terminal City. An X-series. X-5, like you. She was –"
Max Guevera, Beloved Squatter.
"No. None of that. Just Max."
Berrisford shot him a strange look. "I've heard of her."
There was a long pause. Say it. Just fucking say it.
"She's dead."
Berrisford nodded, like he wasn't surprised. "How?"
Lots of answers to that, too.
"Wouldn't take a gun."
Stupid.
Max Guevera, Beloved Idiot.
"So. Why are you here?"
Alec sighed, just breathing. He turned to face Berrisford, and shrugged. "Didn't want to be there."
Berrisford was angry, Alec supposed, angry, but not shocked or outraged or homicidal much, not anymore. That sort of thing wears off in a while, if nothing gets done about it. Shoot or put down the gun. And the gun was down, was gone even.
"I don't want you to be here."
No. "I don't want to be here either," Alec said, and pulled himself to his feet, steady, more or less. "It's selfish, you know. Rachel Berrisford, Beloved Daughter. She was Rachel Berrisford, and she was Beloved, but not just by you."
And Robert Berrisford was outraged at that, but he didn't touch his gun. Too late, too selfish, too Simon. Whatever. Alec walked away.
The Terminal City plot was all the way across the yard, two blocks up from the north border of TC. It wasn't the greatest graveyard in the city, far from it. Rachel was here because her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother were here. Sentimental shit, really. It was nice enough, he supposed. It had trees and grass and a black iron fence. It looked more or less like a graveyard.
Of course, it was also surrounded on its south and east sides by industrial, inner city, and gang turf bullshit. The TC graves, especially, were broken and spray-painted and dug up, eventually, more often than not. The transgenics wanted their own graveyard, inside their own borders, but the City, the politicians, were being pointedly difficult, pulling out business about zoning and non-cooperation. They wanted the transgenics to pay rent, too, on TC, an uninhabitable industrial disaster zone, even though most transgenics couldn't get jobs, couldn't pass for human long enough, if at all.
Alec was dawdling.
He'd followed the fence, instead of walking across, through the rows. He didn't know if he wanted to see, and he sure as hell didn't want to be seen. Alec McDowell was always alright because no one knew when he wasn't. Berrisford might have, if he'd cared. Joshua had, for sure, but he always did. Josh was like that.
He shouldn't have worried. The yard was empty. The transgenics had gone off in clumps soon after the ceremony. It was dangerous to be out there long, or alone. But Alec was X-5, and he wasn't stupid. He had a gun.
Max's stone was easy to spot. It was new and clean and unbroken, though no bigger than the rest. The broken earth was invisible, covered in a mound of flowers (or weeds) and papers and trinkets, weird stuff, like broken clock radios and microscopes. Freakish, really. Just right.
Max Guevera, Fearless Leader, Beloved Friend, Dark Angel.
And Alec swallowed hard and knelt in front of the stone, because that was alright. He liked just Max better, and scratch all the drama, all the pretense, but that was alright. Max would have liked it. She'd have rolled her eyes and snorted, told them all to get real, but in the end she would have liked it. Her friends had chosen it for her. It was alright.
Alec wanted to leave something, like everyone else, but he hadn't brought anything. He hadn't been able to think that far, he'd frozen up. Stupid, he knew. There'd been a lot of that going around. It wouldn't have happened with anyone else.
He could leave his gun, better late than never, but Max wouldn't have wanted it. Besides, he needed it and who knew who would pick it up if he left it here. Stupid plan. He could leave his jacket, but Max wouldn't have wanted that either. It might have gotten an 'Aww' if she were in the mood. And fuck that.
Alec glanced around, making sure he was alone. He kissed his fingertips and let them rest against the grey stone, cool, in the sun. "Stupid," he told it, told her. Then he sat back on a clock radio, and, just for a minute, there with Max, he was not alright.