Genre: Drama / Angst / Implied Romance
Pairing: M/A
Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel , it owns me. ;)
Summary: How important are memories? Max and Alec face a new challenge in their changing relationship. Can an unfortunate accident bring them closer together?
Lethe
She watched pretending to still be asleep, laying on her front all caught up in the sheets. Although she was fully dressed she felt cold because of the gloom that hung heavy in the room due to her estrangement with the man in the room with her. He sat by the window staring blankly out into the night , his strong features softened by the dull glow of the city lights. He looked so lost, staring unmoved out at the world. He was ghostly, he had been moving around emotionless and desperate for days now. It was beginning to take it's toll on everyone, despite their efforts to continue as normal they couldn't help but feel the loss of his usual impish charm. Looking at him now he seemed almost angelic although his life-story placed him far from that.
Max had stayed by him every night since it had happened, hoping she would somehow bring it all back to him, bring him back.
"Max?!"
"Alec No!!"
Max squeezed her eyes shut tighter trying to prevent herself from crying again as she remembered how this had all happened. He had gone back in for her but she'd left despite his order not to. Two explosives had been found in a building after suspicious activity was picked up on at HQ. Once neutralised, teams of transgenics began to do sweeps of the buildings in the immediate vicinity in Terminal City. Two blocks away Max and Alec had been securing the old fire-station on the corner when something had grabbed their attention. Alec said he would handle it and that she should stay there and finish the sweep. He had not been gone long when Max caught sight of a scrawny looking man below her through the partially collapsed flooring, trying to sneak away through an opening in the wall.
"Hey!" Max growled. At having been spotted the perpetrator made a run for it and Max chased after him. She came to the window and jumped down as the man slipped out below her. She grappled with him and tossed him down the street into the open then slammed him up against a wall. He wasn't defiant for long shaking with fear as she pinned him with her arm and her glare.
"What are you doing in here? Who do you work for?" She demanded, he shook his head quickly finding it hard to form words. "These your handiwork?" She pushed again shoving the carcass of one of the dismantled bombs in his face.
"Y-yes. Down-loadable instructions, any idiot can build one." Max regarded him in disgust.
"Idiot is right." Max patted him down and removed his wallet taking his ID card out before discarding the rest.
"Now that I know you ... Franklin, of Chapel Street, how about you tell me how many devises you've planted and maybe I won't have to break every bone in your body and send you home in a carrier bag ....Tell me!!" She pushed hard against the wall again.
"Agh, four, we set four."
"Where? Take me to them." She began to force him away from the wall but he latched on to it .
"No, no, it's too late."
"What do you mean it's too late?"
"It's too late, the last device ... i-it's in the old fire-station, it's not like the rest."
"What do you mean?"
"I-it has a different t-trigger, if you neutralise the other three you'll set it off." After that everything happened so quickly. A voice in her ear piece confirmed that a third device had been found. Max tried to tell them to leave it but her transmitter microphone had been damaged when she jumped out of the building after the bomber. She heard Alec's voice in her ear becoming frantic when he couldn't get a reply. That's when she saw him, he was back inside the fire-station. A deep sense of dread settled in her stomach.
"ALEC!!" She shouted, she saw him pause through the window as he tried to locate her voice . He turned and saw her staring at him from afar.
"Max?"
"Alec No!!" Then the building dissolved around him as the base exploded out with such force that it almost took out the entire block.
It was later that she found out that he had caught the other bomber who had told him more or less the same story, so then not being able to reach her had gone back to warn her only to end up barely alive and eventually with a serious case of amnesia. He had no idea who he was, where he was, or what he was and found it so hard to deal with. He had tried to explain it to her describing it as walking in someone else's shoes, shoes that didn't quite fit and there was no way of making them comfortable no matter how hard he tried. He told her how he just wanted to escape from the life he didn't have and the emptiness he felt because of it. That night he had cried, she had watched him much like she was now, helpless as he struggled with the big blank that blocked him at every turn.
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He looked across the room at his only constant. Some girl that called herself Max who was sleeping on the bed she insisted was his. He wanted to remember her more than anything, she had been there for him from the start and for some reason he felt deep down that he could trust her. She was the only one he really spoke to, as with everyone else he was too aware that anything he said would be a disappointment. He felt like a lie so frightened of being exposed, of somehow sabotaging himself without realising. It was so frustrating, this big mess of feelings and emptiness. He had been told so much but none of it helped, he was like an actor learning to build a character rather than learning how to discover himself. He stared hard at his reflection in the glass of the window. He didn't feel like a soldier, or a leader - who was he?
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As Max awoke the next morning she found Alec asleep against the window, his even breath making small clouds of condensation on the cold window pane. She stretched languidly and straightened herself out before she went to wake him. Crouching beside him she stroked a hand up and down his arm, trying her best to wake him slowly and gently. It would be a fatal mistake to startle a transgenic in Alec's confused and cornered state of mind. She whispered his name and touched his cheek with the back of her hand. His beautiful hazel eyes fluttered open and focused. He groaned as the cramp and stiffness in his muscles registered as he slowly stirred from his uncomfortable place of rest. He stretched and cracked the bones of his neck relieving the tension there.
"Morning." Max greeted sweetly smiling warmly for effect. Alec drank in the warming vision of the beautiful sunlit girl next to him but was only able to offer her an awkward smile that didn't reach his eyes. He felt that somehow he didn't deserve her affections, that they were meant for someone else. She helped him up before leaving him to change.
"I have to go into our old place of work today." She called out as she filled the kettle with water.
"Oh" came the muffled reply.
"Delivering packages for Jam Pony."
"Jam Pony." Alec repeated mechanically
"Ring any bells"
" 'fraid not."
"I won't be able to take you with me, but I have this friend who could..."
"Baby-sit me?" Alec emerged dressed neutrally in a black sweatshirt and dark jeans and stood across the room away from her, "I think I can manage thanks." He bit out bitterly. Max looked back down and nodded. Sighing heavily as he watched her, he didn't mean to be so cold, but he was just so tired and frustrated and he didn't want to be treated as an invalid, a pity case. She moved over to him offering him the coffee cup silently.
"So, will this 'friend' help?" He offered in way of peace offering.
"I hope so, he's moved back into his penthouse ... a lot happened there maybe something'll click." She felt like she was treading on eggshells, it was hard to know how to speak to him. Could she treat him just the way she did before? there was no way, what with him being so distant, she couldn't engage him in their usual banter or frivolous arguments, could she? they might spark a recognition but he wouldn't take it, it would just push him further out on the narrow ledge he was on. But then she found herself talking to him like she did to Joshua, it's not like they don't know how to take care of themselves but she forgets when to stop. How could she possibly know what he knew and what he needed to recover? She was so conscious of messing up it made her edgy and the lack of his chattiness unnerved her more. He had become his own antithesis and she missed him. She watched him swirl his coffee around his mug just the way he would with his whisky, and smiled.
"You know, you used to be a lot more chatty to me, in fact you hardly ever shut up." She smiled as he looked searchingly at her "Don't hold back Alec, if you want to say something say it." Alec just stared some more. "Say anything, don't be afraid, in fact the more outrageous, the more maddening and inappropriate the better."
"You know... you really are beautiful." Max straightened uncomfortably, well she had asked for the inappropriate.
"Err ... Alec, I don't think..." She trailed off as Alec laughed lightly, he hadn't laughed like that in the longest time and she completely forgot what she had been trying to say.
"I like you," He said "You're complicated." Max couldn't help but smile back at him, it gave her a renewed hope that it would happen soon.
"Come on, let's go or I'll be late ... well later than usual."
They walked down to the bottom of the building where they had kept their bikes. Alec had once again reverted to being sombre, mulling over why her issues with punctuality stuck in his mind, like he should know this. Max straddled her Ninja and watched him run a hand along the green paint-work of his Bandit,
"Are you cool to ride?"
"Yeah ... sure." He replied distractedly and then he mounted and they were off.
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"Logan?" Max called across the apartment but knew already where she'd find him, hunched at his desk over his computer. The apartment was still in the process of being fixed up but it wasn't a far cry from it's former glory.
"Hey Max ... and Alec." He greeted as he saw them appear at the room partition. Alec just stared at the older man trying to decide where he fit into the mix, he'd been told about a lot of people but he wasn't sure about this one. The way he tenderly spoke Max's name and looked at her like she was some kind of rare butterfly he wanted to collect, made him feel queasy. He looked around making his way around the apartment looking for whatever it was he has been looking for all this time.
"Logan, I've got work. Do you mind if I leave Alec here? I thought this place might help." Logan looked over at the little lost boy that was Alec. He felt sorry for him; forgetting as a transgenic seems to be almost as bad as remembering. Alec was dangerous for Logan in his relationship with Max but now that he had lost his charm and charisma Logan could help but feel glad he could get one up on him. As if hearing his thoughts Alec looked up at him.
"Uh, sure, anything I can do to help..." Logan had been waiting for sometime like this, to be needed by Max, for her to ask for his help again like she used to. Ironically it was Alec who had taken that away from him that was now giving it back. Max smiled gratefully.
"Catch you later Alec." Max mouthed a thank you to Logan and left. Logan sighed glancing back at his new ward who was preoccupied with examining a sculptural arrangement.
Alec tried to keep his head clear and let things jump out at him, to let himself be drawn to things. But it was practically impossible, his brain working at a fiendish speed picking out every detail and analysing every inch of the room. Max had told him about his 'gifts' she said they were traits of all transgenics and Manticore alumni. It saddened him that he knew nothing of something so defining as being genetically empowered. Giving up he slumped into a chair and stared long and hard at this Logan guy as he played with his computer equipment. As if he could feel those dark hazel orbs burning into the back of his head logan turned to Alec. The critical and intense gaze made him feel like he was being stripped bare.
"Who are you?" Alec asked bluntly.
"I'm Logan Cale, aka Eye's Only." Logan shrugged his shoulders in fake modesty then paused apparently expecting a reaction. Alec hated when people did that even more so when it was obvious they wanted to be asked about it. So Alec refused him the pleasure. Though it was true he had no concept of what Eye's Only was or did. It sounded like a fictional private eye or some kind of pen name maybe he was just the owner of a security camera company on a major ego trip. Alec narrowed his eyes and tried a different angle.
"How do you know Max?"
"Well that's a long story. We started off working together on Eye's Only missions. We had a deal: she did some leg work for me, I did some research for her. But now... it's complicated."
"Well un-complicate it for me." Logan shifted uncomfortably.
"My relationship with Max isn't easy to describe. Anyway it's not really important if you don't remember it." Alec felt anger boil up inside him and he stood up
"No it's not important. It's not important if I don't remember if it has ever rained on my birthday, or where I used to go to do my laundry or the colour of panties on the last girl I slept with. They're not life altering things but I'd still like to know. I'd like to be able to walk down a road and know if I had been there before. By your reasoning none of it is 'really important' but I've got nothing..." Alec stopped pacing by the window. He fingered the frame as he tried to calm himself "There must be something, I must have been involved somehow, why else would she bring me here?!" Logan looked moved. He had never thought of Alec as the sentimental type, but then he had always had a streak of prejudice when it came to Alec, the true blue soldier, all brawn and very little brain. But as Max grew to accept and discover his layers so he was forced to recognise them.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything..." Alec looked at him beseechingly and Logan sighed. This was not going to be fun.
A/N: It's me again! I've got three fic's on the go at once but this one is closest to being finished so I thought I'd post. Let me know what you think ... be brutal, I can take it. :)