The Storm
"You fell in love with a storm. Did you really think you would get out unscathed?"
― Nikita Gill
"Uhhh, Max," he growled. "I needed you. I've always needed you. Before I knew you I needed you." His voice broke as he slammed his fists against the padded wall.
Max's heart tightened in her chest as she watched him through the narrow slit at eye level. He didn't know that she wasn't actually in the room with him. The delusions had kept him strung out for nearly 36 hours, depriving him of sleep, of rest, of sanity.
"Damn Psy-Ops and their mind games. Hasn't Alec been through enough. Now this," she cursed under her breath.
"I want to love you the right way. I swear I do. I don't know how. Never learned that one. I loved Rachel. Now she's dead. If I love you I might lose you, too. Couldn't take that. I'd rather die." He railed against the imaginary world around him. The drugs the Psy-Ops rogue had blown into his face didn't seem to be wearing off. Max wondered if his psychosis would be permanent. A living hell.
Alec turned his back to the wall and began to slide down it. He slumped in the corner, his long legs splayed out like a dropped marionette. He stared into space, seeing what, no one knew. Tears began to course down his face and his hands lay palms up on his thighs.
"I saw you. Saw you before they shoved me into that cell to be your breeding partner. You still had the fire in your eyes. Manticore tried but they couldn't kill your fire." The pain in his expression made Max want to cry. For the day and a half since the Op had gone south and she'd found him unconscious, white powder all over his face and shirt, she'd been by Alec's side. He'd fought savagely when the other transgenics had tried to help him in Sick Bay. Only Max's voice had seemed to penetrate.
"Ben. You saw X5-493 first. Always Ben first. Manticore, Psy-Ops, they only saw him. I'm not X5-493!" Alec shouted, fists tightening and his face hardening, tears still wetting his face.
"He should have been the assassin, not me! He should be the one paying for Rachel. He escaped, not me! Why me?" he demanded, his voice roaring until it broke again.
Max couldn't stand it anymore. Ben and Rachel had been the cracks in Alec's armor for years. The rogue Psy-Ops tech had finally done something no one at Manticore could. They'd broken Alec. The hallucinogen had seeped into the cracks and ate at his mind like acid.
"Let me in," Max demanded of Mole. The lizard man hadn't been very far away from Alec in 36 hours either. Concern, though unspoken, was the only thing Max and Mole agreed on.
"It took four other X-5's to put him in that cell. You can't go in alone. He'll tear you to shreds." Mole warned, gesturing with his ever-present cigar.
"I don't care. Let me in. Alec needs me." Max's voice came out steadier than she felt. Seeing Alec like this twisted her guts. She knew he'd been alone too long already.
"Okay, but I ain't cleaning up the blood when he eviscerates you." Mole shook his head as he pulled out a heavy key and placed it into the reinforced door specifically designed for out of control Transgenics. Alec was the first to be put in confinement for any reason. And the last, Max hoped.
Max didn't look back as she walked through the door. She didn't flinch when the door shut behind her or at the sound of the key relocking the door. Max knew Mole only locked the door for others' protection.
"Alec," Max spoke normally, trying to gauge his reaction. A lump formed in her throat when he didn't respond or even look at her. Instead he stared into the light coming from a recessed light fixture covered in steel mesh.
"Alec, it's me, Max," she tried again. At the sound of her name he blinked and turned to look up at her.
Okay, that's encouraging, she told herself.
"Who is Alec?" he said softly, almost slurred.
"You are, remember? It's short of for Smart Aleck." On bare feet, she eased toward him. She had shed her jacket and put everything out of her jeans' pockets, unwilling to give him a potential weapon. Not that it would matter to an X-5 if he wanted to hurt or kill someone.
"No, I'm not him. I'm someone else." Alec's brow furrowed in concentration. The keen intelligence and mischief Max had come to know had gone out of his eyes. Instead those jade green orbs seemed cloudy and out of focus.
"X5-494 was your designation at Manticore," Max supplied, hoping to jog his memory, to pull him out of the weird world he now stared into.
"Him I remember," Alec spat hoarsely, but still gazing into nothingness.
"Him I hate."
Max halted halfway to where he sat when she saw the feral snarl transform his face. She never could have imagined Alec as anything other than handsome but now he looked hideous. Rage filled his eyes and his jaw clenched as the cords of his neck and down along his arms stood out.
"It was X5-494's fault I lost Rachel. Him and X5-493. All that time in Psy-Ops because of D5-493. All the solo missions because Manticore couldn't trust them with a team. Afraid they'd escape again like the 09'ers." Alec began to stand up, to find his feet beneath him. Max took a deep breath to prepare for a fight if necessary. She really didn't know if she would win with him this way.
"All that is over now, Alec. X5-493 is dead. Ben is dead. Remember I told you? We burnt Manticore to the ground. Now we're in Terminal City. You, me, Joshua and Mole. All of us. Everything is okay." Max spoke as calmly as she could manage, trying to appeal to his logic instead of using a soothing voice for a child.
"Dead? X5-493 is dead?"
Max breathed easier when Alec's fists loosened and he took a step back toward the corner.
"He was hurting people for no reason. He was out of control and I had to stop him. He begged me to kill him. He didn't want to go back to ... " She paused. "He didn't want to hurt anyone and neither do you, Alec." Slowly, Max stepped closer and closer, until she could reach out and touch him. He stumbled back, the fight gone out of him and slid down the wall once more. Max knelt down beside him. Tenderly, she began to wipe the tears from his face.
"Help me, Max. Please," That voice, that same voice and those pleading eyes had looked up at Max before. It had been Ben asking her to release him from the tortures of his mind.
"I'm here, Alec. I'm not leaving." She settled down on the floor beside Alec and took him into her arms. Weakened, he let her pull him closer.
"I'm going to save you, Alec. I promise." A promise she wished she could have kept for Ben.
Max held Alec and talked to him for hours. He eventually fell asleep to the sound of her voice reciting a book she'd read. Even then, she held him. She stroked his messy hair and studied the sprinkle of freckles across his nose and cheeks. His soft, full mouth relaxed in sleep gave him an innocent, boyish look. Max hoped that when he woke up she'd see the mischievous spark in his green eyes that meant he'd returned to his right mind.
"I wish I could love you the right way, too. I've only ever read about it, seen it a couple times. You deserve to be loved, Alec. We all do." Max whispered against his temple sometime before dawn. A short while later she too fell asleep.
A Few Hours Later …
"Hey, Little Fella. Wake up."
Max woke up to Joshua squatting beside her, his face only a few inches from her own.
"Ugh! Morning dog breath!" she wrinkled her nose and turned away from the eager Nomalie.
"Is Alec better?" Joshua leaned back on his haunches, giving Max and the still sleeping Alec room.
"I don't know yet. It's good that he got to sleep, though." Quickly, she checked Alec's pulse, heart rate and breathing. All normal - for an X-5.
"C'mon, it's time for breakfast." Max couldn't help but smile back at Joshua's lopsided grin over the prospect of food.
"I want to be here when he wakes up. Do you mind bringing something back for us, Big Fella. I know Alec will like that."
Joshua nodded enthusiastically before standing upright and making his way out past Mole.
"Ain't he got enough beautyrest yet?" Mole asked, sticking his head in the door.
Max put her finger to her lips and glared at the lizardman to shut up. Mole rolled his eyes and gave a disgusted snort before leaving. He left the door open behind him; a small vote of confidence that Alec wouldn't go on a murdering rampage.
Ten minutes later Joshua returned with what passed for coffee in TC and a couple of tough sausage patties on crumbling biscuits wrapped up in a clean cloth.
"Sorry, all out of powdered OJ and Twinkies." The last one made Joshua frown.
"Thanks, Josh. This is fine." She gave him an approving smile that wiped the thought, temporarily, of Twinkies out of his mind.
Max felt Alec begin to stir beside her before she could take her last bite of biscuit. Joshua had scarfed his down and moved on to painting. The morning light was perfect, he said.
"Max," Alec whispered, his voice rough.
"Yeah. I'm here." She watched him open his eyes and felt relieved that they were clear and bright.
"What happened?" he managed slowly.
"That rogue Psy-Ops tech blew some kind of powder in your face. You've been out of it for almost two, whole days." Confusion, pain and finally horror crossed his expressive face.
"I tried not to breathe it in. Then everything went fuzzy and nothing made sense." Alec ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to process all the images.
"It must have been designed to work only on transgenics." Max hoped she wasn't lying. She could only imagine what something like that could do to a Normal.
"I remember fighting, remember hurting." He lifted his shirt to look at two marks on his torso where Mole had stuck a cattle prod to him.
"It took Mole, Joshua and four X-5's to get you into confinement." Max didn't want to bring up all the things he'd said about Ben, about Rachel or wanting to love her the right way. His vulnerability haunted her.
"I hurt and I was angry and then you were here, talking to me." He looked up from the marks on his torso and into her eyes. Max hoped he didn't see her feelings in her eyes.
"I felt like killing you. You said my designation and I wanted to kill you. I wanted to kill myself." He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, rocking back and forth.
"It was just the hallucinogen. It warped your mind." She hoped it sounded truer to him than it did to her. Alec's pain had been real and tangible. And scary.
"I could have killed you, Max. What were you doing in here? I was dangerous. You should have shot me. What if it hadn't worn off? What then, Max?" His eyes blazed hot as they bore into hers.
"I'm not about to put you down like a dog like I did ... " The name died on Max's lips.
Alec propelled himself to his feet but swayed dangerously. Max reached him just in time to keep him from falling forward. She pulled his arm around her shoulders and slid hers around his slim waist.
"It wore off and now you're better. Tomorrow you'll be fine." She pushed down the guilt that seemed to live halfway down her esophagus, ready to roil up.
"You did what you had to do with Ben. You should have done the same to me. I could have killed you, Max." She didn't miss the softness in his voice or the way his brow furrowed in concern.
"But you didn't and now it's over." She gazed up into his face, so unguarded. Max had rarely seen behind his "I'm alright" mask.
"I couldn't have killed you, Alec. I couldn't live with it." She admitted, for once letting down her own defenses.
"I love you, Max," Alec said solemnly, his voice tender and honest.
"I love you too, Alec," she responded around the lump in her throat.
"You saved me. Thank you." He used his free hand to brush away an errant strand of her dark hair.
"Always," She smiled, her heart melted and humbled at his honesty; and her own.
Together they walked out of the confinement cell, the storm blown over.
The End.