h u n t e r
by bulletproof (bulletproof_android@yahoo.com)
characters owned by cameron/eglee productions.
max's pov. wall: http://inter-clothing.com/diva/imgs/hunter.html

"How did you deal with Ben?"

/// human-snap, chicken-snap of fragile, brittle neck ///

"Ben's..."

/// last gasp of tenuous breath, last warmth escaping to cold forest air ///

"Ben's dead."

Logan doesn't look shocked, and of anything, of sadness, of anger, of god-damnit-the-man-should-be-shocked, that scares me the most.

"Oh," he simply says, wheeling away to spread the distance between us and I feel it like a slap in the face. He must've felt it too, 'cos he turns back, almost guiltily, "are you OK?"

"Yeah," I shrug. The vibe in here is sub-zero and I play it colder than cold so he can't see that it's touching me, "listen, I gotta blaze."

"Max," he almost reaches out, almost touches me, but something, like the things he ain't saying, like the guilty little secret in his eye, stops him.

"I'm fine." I add, almost as a post-script, foot already out the door.

If Logan wants to play international man of mystery, so be it. Just so long as he doesn't expect me to dance it with him, it's fine by me.

* * * * *

The space-needle isn't doing it for me.

I can see Ben's blood from when he spat it out after my fist met his face. I can see a chain with a blue lady medallion that I swear he must've left there on purpose. Bastard.

I hop on my baby in autopilot and despite myself, despite this afternoon, I find myself at his building and I see that his light, whether or not it was waiting for me, is still on.

The climb is instinctual as it needs to be. I couldn't have taken the elevator or the stairs, knocked on his door ever so politely only for him to ever so politely do and say and do everything but shove me back out of the door. No, the wind needs to be biting at my skin, the sleek, unscalable edges of his building need to be cracking open my fingers, and of course, Logan needs to be living on the sixteenth floor.

The air is calm and crisp up here, making my cheeks red and hollow from its abuse. I'm not really sure what I'm doing up here, but the fact remains that I'm out here when I could be in there, playing a game of chess, drinking a glass of his delicious red wine, and whooping his ass ten to a possible one...but something changed and by the way he's looking at me, the way he doesn't quite know how to look at me, I'm getting the feeling that he somehow found out more about me than he ever wanted to...than I ever wanted to.

Maybe Ben was right. I am a killer, predator, hunter. I mean, I was made that way, right? A genetically-engineered thing that goes bump in the night to take out enemies of the state. So is that Manticore design, patent and trademark or is that me? Am I the sum of their parts or could I be something more?

Maybe. Maybe 'cos my brother's death was more than a kill to me and maybe 'cos it more than bugs me that the man whose apartment I'm now creeping outside of can't bear to look me in the eye.

Funny the things that can define you.

I sneak a look inside and, surprise, surprise, Logan's sitting at his desk, but not typing, not broadcasting, not saving the world.

Huh.

It takes me a while to realise he's even breathing.

And then I see it, plain as day, the images of the thing I've tried so hard not to remember in the past few days, tried so hard not to understand. The photos of the grey november morn when we killed a man and our grim, blood-stained faces afterwards.

How the hell did Logan get a hold of them?

I slip into his penthouse to ask him as much, and even before he's turned around, something deep inside alerts him to my presence cos the hairs on the back of his neck are standing at attention, the way his cute little hunted instincts are coming to the fore. The way my hunter instincts are telling me to attack.

"Nice shots you got there," I throw out and he spins around as best he can to face me. The fear I see there makes me sick, "good enough to frame and mount on your wall, right next to the Rockwell. Where did you get them?"

He flinches and I brace myself for his answer, but I'm still not prepared.

"I was getting worried about you so I set up a meeting with Lydecker..."

"You had a meeting with Lydecker?" I snarl through a hint of fang. Call me crazy, but Logan having a private rendezvous with my own personal Anti-Christ rubs me the wrong way.

I stalk the apartment and balk as he withdraws. Did I mention this is sickening me to the stomach?

"And what did good ol' Deck have to say about me, hmm? That I was a model soldier? That I was designed to kill, maim and torture and to do so with a smile on my face, with a song in my heart?"

"Max..."

"Spare me," I sneer at him, at me, at this whole goddamn situation, "genetically-engineered killing machines don't have feelings, right? They can't afford them."

I laugh low and hollow and see that it cuts through his gut like butter.

"And you know what? He was right. I am a killer, a hunter. I killed my brother today, Logan. I snapped his neck and some sick little twisted part of me got a kick out of it...and I hate it. Everytime I kill someone, everytime I feel a life crumbling underneath my fingertips, my body starts buzzing and I can't control it. It's the way we were made, the way we were, God, brought up."

I snag a chair and drag it to the opposite side, the safe side of the room, away from his eyes that cut and burn and scar.

"Do you know what a nomalie is, Logan? They're the defective monsters in the Manticore basement that bad soldiers got fed to. Pretty childish, right? But that was our reality. Manticore was more than our nightmare, it was our living hell. We didn't know anything else, we didn't have anything else to believe in, so we gave into the beast that lay inside all of us, that drive in our blood that howled for a good kill."

"I thought," I try, feeling a hundred masks, a hundred facades falling around me and I'm suddenly so unsteady, so unsure, "I thought I'd left that behind...that I was more than that...but the way you're looking at me, the way you can't look at me, makes me feel like that's all I ever was. A cold-blooded, warm-blooded, blood-all-over-my-hands kinda killer."

He doesn't say anything and I know, I feel the thought bloom and grow in him and it makes me want to wretch. The bile rises and chokes in my throat, my voice whisper-thin, "Is that all I am, Logan? Was Ben such a bad soldier that he had to get fed to a nomalie?"

I can't look at him 'cos I know he can't look at me so I keep my head low, low, low and wish I was part of the floor. I can't remember a time when I felt this small, when I felt this...still. Everything's moving so fast around me and I'm powerless to stop it.

This is whack. If the high and mighty Eyes Only can't stand the sight of me, then I'll just fucking-well get out of it. I'm not an exhibition, I'm not a display, and unlike the nomalies caged in the Manticore basement, I'm not tied down to this bitch.

"No," a small, audible as air voice stops me, moving past gravel and conviction and fear, "you're more than that, Max. Way more."

I'm halfway off my seat and outside of my body when something replies, something so out of key, so out of touch with me, "How do you know that?"

"Because of this," he says, reaching out to collect a tear from the base of my cheek. It's only now that I feel the damp trail it left behind.

He stretches out to cup my cheek and his voice, his eyes, his touch are suddenly softer than soft, warmer than warm, I want to wrap myself in him, "and despite your Manticore design, despite your killer instincts, your brother died today, Max, and you feel it...inside...and they can never take that away from you."

I finally look up at him, and what I see there touches me deeper than I knew anything could. No fear, no resentment, no cold. Just warm warmth and soft softness and I'm so, so tired, it's all I can do but to collapse into him.

"I'm not fine, Logan, I'm not." The tears start like a torrent, flowing out and out and out of me with his arms the only things holding me upright.

I feel deep and buried things in me move and slip and slide away like rain and I'm back where Ben left me in that deep, silent canopy of forest with his cold, lifeless body. I'm frozen by the irrational fear that still permeates through me and his now closed eyes, that senseless, seamless fear that I understand only too well. We were nomalies at Manticore, monsters of their make, and Ben just gave into the beast, to the fear. He killed beasts that he made in his own likeness by barcode and drive in a sick cycle of repentance: the more he killed, the more he had to atone for, and the more he killed again.

So am I damned to the same fate? Are all the lives I've taken, was Ben's death, just part of the completion of some innate mission Manticore programmed into me? Am I just a monster in the basement?

"No," I hear a whisper in my ear, through my hair, the way his fingers are combing soothingly through my dark tresses, "you're not a nomalie, Max, you're not."

Logan's voice washes over me, worn weary with a hint of desperation underlying his care, and I wonder who he's trying to convince. It's enough, though. The fact that one man knows enough to be repulsed with fear, but cares enough to hold me in his arms and wish the monsters away, it's enough to believe in.

So I'll let him hold me, let him hold my war-weary soul and heavy heart, and be safe in the knowledge that no matter what they do, no matter what they've done, Manticore can't take this away from me.

I leave his sanctuary with a 'Thankyou' that doesn't even begin to describe the gratitude I owe him and ride back to the space-needle, retrieving the necklace from the floor and hanging it from the highest point of the tower.

Goodbye, Ben, I hope you're in the high place now. Remember that you were never a nomalie because you'll always be loved.

END
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