No infringement intended. This is… something…

This story's over—before it has begun. It's over. Nothing left to tell, nothing left to clarify, to commemorate, to write down. Or is there?

Can you hear the fireworks going off at a distance, tearing at the sky? Can you see the colors seeping like blood out of nowhere, reminiscent of the carnage that is their mutilated bodies? (For Manticore was destroyed, right? Went down in flames?)

The X5s? Max and Alec? And all the rest? Their story has been told. Over and over again. Tons of versions, fun ones, sad ones, lots of angst, millions of gunshot wounds inflicted on their abused bodies.

No one can survive this, the pain, the loss, the angst, the impending doom that is their future. It's too much and never enough. Not for those out there, for US, butchering them in stories, for they are only characters of fiction, not real. Not real.

We can harm them, torture them, see them love and scream and laugh and cry and…

Just because we can.

If they were real?

We would do everything, anything to keep them from harm, keep them from what we are doing to them, to the things they impersonate, to the people they remind us of.

The things we are doing to ourselves. We would hug them, hold them. And not do this:

rob Max of her boyfriend, her friends, her self-chosen family, make her suffer, cry, rage, or fall silent overwhelmed by grief. Make her rejoice in a loving relationship with the one we deem her perfect partner, the infamous, the highly idolized and yet all screwed up Alec. The guy we all secretly—or not so secretly—dream of.

Make her fall for him, make him fall for her…

A kiss, a cocky grin, the warmth of their skin, their lithe movements when they dance around each other; catlike and predatory. Sexual and strong, gentle and furtive…

The bantering, the annoyance in their voices; a smirk, a smile, white teeth flashing, biting, nibbling…

Or cries of pain, and blood, Max holding Alec in her arms, or Alec holding Max. It always boils down to this, and yet it never does. It's all been done before, nothing new. And yet there's still so much to tell, so much to see, to feel.

This story's never over, it will go on and on and on and on.

For there's not just one story; as there is not just one Max, one Alec, one Logan, one Cindy, one Normal, one Joshua, one… everyone

… this story will go on.

And on…

Thanks for reading.