Title: Masochism Runs In the Family
Author: Phaedra's Love
Fandom: Ats/Dark Angel
Characters: Max Guevera, Faith and Angel
Disclaimer: This all belongs to James Cameron and Joss Whedon. Please don't sue me.
Max Guevera starts every morning exactly the same.
Shaking knees and quivering fingers jolting her violently from sleep and always exactly twelve minutes before her alarm is set to go off for work. For a full second she ponders the meaning in that before her lips tremble and she draws in more desperate gasping breaths.
i "Be brave Maxxie." Zack's voice is low in her ear and it grounds her, calms her. Despite the harrowing circumstances his slender fingers grasp her's and her brevity grows by tenfold.
It's the worst kind of irony. She's strong, all of the X5s are. A genetically engineered super soldier shouldn't be afraid of a dark basement. If it were any other basement in the world she knew it would be true. She's strong, she's brave, young but still a good soldier. She's also smart and she understands very clearly that monsters are real. Genetic mistakes that Manticore hides away from the world, locked in the dark basement.
The Nomlies. /i
She flings her legs over the side of the bed, feels the flesh of her toes scraping against the cold floor. A groan tries to escape her throat but her teeth are chattering so hard that nothing but another gasp escapes. Tryptophan. She needs it and every single morning she curses herself for storing the drug in the bathroom rather than the nightstand for easy access.
One step across the floor and she's on her knees, shaking on the floor.
i "I wanna go back upstairs." Max protests indignantly as she tugs at Zack's hand. "We can go to the High Place, ask the Blue Lady to protect us."
"We can't go back yet." Zack insists, pulling Max down the dark hallway. "We have to prove to Ben that there's nothing be afraid of down here."
Max knows the truth. There are lots of things to be afraid of in the basement. Max might be young but she knows that when you mess with human and animal DNA you're bound to get a few mistakes in the bunch. Not all of them can turn out as well as she and rest of her unit has.
Slowly she lets go of Zack's hand as he stops and looks around, her heightened senses taking in all of the monsters in all of the cages. For the most part they seem docile, mistakes of humanity and science hunkered down in corners, some wimpering to themselves. Maybe Zack was right...maybe the Nomlies were only scary to look at. Maybe they weren't so bad.
Suddenly she jumps as a man who looks to be part mountain lion rushes against the bars desperately swiping at her with one meaty mutilated hand with claws at the tips of fingers. The sound it makes chills her to the bone, something feral a scream mixed with a gutteral roar. /i
She finally manages to get her hands underneath her, palms stretched against the cool tile as she crawls into the small bathroom. One of her nails snaps at the bed and she knows Original Cindy is going to have a fit over another wasted manicure. Leaving a trail of blood on the white tile from her broken nail she finally manages to pull herself up to the sink. Without stopping to look in the mirror she yanks the medicine cabinet open, fingers fumbling for the familiar bottle.
And then she finally has it in her hand. Tryptophan.
i "She's too pretty to be a Nomlie." Max insists as Zack holds her back from the bars.
"We don't know what she is." Zack says, ever the voice of reason.
Max doesn't know why, but in sharp contrast to all of the other creatures caged in the basement she feels a particular kinship to the small brunette curled up in the corner of this one cage.
"Slayer." The woman finally rasps out, meeting Max's gaze through long strands of dark hair.
Slayer? She wrinkles her nose at that. Is that some kind of soldier? Something different from the X Series? She's not sure and even though the connotations seem just as dangerous to her as they do to Zack she's intrigued, raptly fascinated by the lone dark beauty in a maze filled with monsters. /i
She turns the faucet, feeling the cold water splash up into her face as her shaking hands attempt to maneuver a few white pills from the familiar bottle. It slips from her grip and pills smatter across the floor with little pings and she wants to cry from frustration. Her knees hit the unforgiving tile again, fingers groping blindly for another pill as she chokes back another sob.
i It's over a week later when Max finally walks through the same dark hallway. Her new mission gives her the unforseen strength that she had previously been drawing from Zack. She's alone but she also understands that she never has been. Has known since the first moment she set eyes on the Slayer.
"You're my mother." Max states bluntly as she stands in front of the cage holding the Slayer.
"Yeah." Is the only response she gets as the Slayer finally tilts her chin up so that Max can get a better view of her face in the moonlight. A long moment is drawn out between the two of them in silence.
"What's your name?" Max asks curiously.
"Faith."
So slow it almost makes young Max ache she watches as Faith props herself up, stands and begins walking towards her with a grace and easyness that Max finds confusing for a woman who's probably spent the better part of ten years locked up in Manticore's basement with the other 'mistakes'. Still slowly Faith finally approaches the bars and waits for a sign. Max isn't sure what Faith is waiting for but when Faith's fingers slowly push through the bars and reach to touch the side of her face she's frozen in place.
"You're not a Nomlie." Max whispers jarred by the feeling of warm fingers against her face. "Why did they put you down here?"
"I don't know." /i
Her fingers finally curl around a few pills. She's not even sure how many they are but she doesn't care. Shoving a handful of them in her mouth she finally manages to pull herself up against the sink again. Sticking her head under the tap she gulps in mouthfuls of cool water not caring about the mess beneath her for the moment. Instead she swallows pill after pill after pill because at the end of the day there's just never enough pills to make her feel right.
Never enough to make her forget who she is and where she comes from.
i "You need to leave here, Max. I dunno what they have planned for you but it isn't good. You need to get out of Manticore." Faith tells Max for what must be the tenth time.
Since the night of her discovery Max has wondered down to the basement every single night. Occasionally she manages to sneak a sandwich from the mess hall along with her. She doesn't know much about why Manticore imprisoned her mother in the basement but she does know that Faith like all the other Nomlies are for all intents and purposes forgotten by Manticore. Left to gather dust and rot in the basement.
"Who's my father? Do you know?" Max asks and worries when Faith grows deadly quiet from the other side of the bars. "Who is he?"
Faith bites on her lower lip, alarmed only slightly by the urgency in her daughter's dark eyes. Max can tell that Faith doesn't want to answer the question but eventually she takes a deep resigned breath before lifting her hand, one fingertip pointing to the cage directly opposite of her own.
Max frowns but curiousity piqued she wheels around on her heels and stares through the darkness into the direction where Faith had pointed her. Taking a few cautious steps forward she finally feels more than sees angry yellow eyes glaring at her from the back of the cage. Holding her breath she takes one more step closer and as soon as she does she regrets it.
His face is mishapen, angry ridges rising in the center of his forward, bright yellow eyes glaring through the darkness but most unsettling of all were the sharp pointed fangs decorating his salivating mouth. Her own eyes grow rounder as she recognizes him as a monster. Her father is a Nomlie.
"He hasn't always been that way." Faith pleads with her from across the hallway.
Max isn't listening to Faith anymore, just moves step by tentative step closer to the beast trapped in the opposite cage. Maybe he just looks scary, Max tries to rationalize as she gets closer and closer.
"What happened to him?" Max's voice is uncharacteristically shaky as she approaches the figure.
"I dunno." Faith admits from behind her. "I guess when you fuck with a vampire long enough they're bound to go kinda crazy."
Vampire? Slayer? They're all unfamiliar words to Max, just as unfamiliar as Mother and Father so she approaches still determined to learn the truth about her own existance. Finally the yellow eyes lock directly on her's and she feels a chill running down her spine at the intensity of the gaze.
"It's me." She whispers and just as she does her father rushes to the bars with a feral growl, desperately trying to strain his arm through the bars. His fingers stop just short of her face and Max's eyes grow a little wider because she can finally see him in the dim light. A Nomlie.
Without a second thought she turns on her heels and begins racing for the stairs. The only thing she can hear is Faith screaming her name down the long hallway. /i
Max closes her eyes, resting her head against the wall in the bathroom as the shakes and trembling finally subside and she begins to feel like she should. Like a soldier ready to greet another day full of Normal's sarcasm and Sketchy's wisecracks.
As she pulls herself up from the floor and stairs at her reflection in the mirror she suddenly realizes why it is she keeps the Tryptophan in the bathroom, so far away from her own bed.
i "Max, what's wrong!" Zack practically screams as Max throws herself into his arms, sobs racking her tiny body. "What is it?"
"We need to leave." She finally says, when she regains enough control of herself to pull away from her big brother. "Tonight." /i
She's punishing herself. She knows she'll never forgive herself for leaving Faith in that dark basement.
And every morning she reminds herself of it.