Title: Angel of Death
Author: Nimitz4
Rating: R
Show: DA
Genre: Drama
Pairing: Max / Alec
Type: WiP

Summary: Alec has been captured and tortured by White…how dark will our angel Max allow herself to become?

Authors Note: This is for all the angst addicts out there…I wrote this on a wet grey winters day when I was listening to 'Clubbed to Death' (DJ Rob D) over and over and over again, so the weather and that song set the tone.
Disclaimer: I don't own DA – if I did the show would still be running…

ANGEL OF DEATH

Layer: 001 – Requiem

Alec had been missing for three days.

Three days of worry…three days of searching…three days of pain, fearing his loss.  Now he was found…

Max gasped when she saw his still form, slumped in the steel chair.  The metal binds on his wrists and ankles were the only things keeping him upright.   White's guys had really gone to work on him.  There didn't seem to be a section of his skin unmarked - bruises painted his body like crude tattoos, in mottled shades of purple, red, and yellow.

A terrible dread washed through her as she approached him.  Her body felt heavy, and the air she walked through was like liquid…each step closer seeming to take a greater effort than the one before.

*He's so still…*

"Alec?  Ohhh…please no…"

Her shocked eyes flew over his face, absorbing the details of his bruises, reading the story that they told through his broken skin.  The trembling fingers she had reached out to caress his brow, froze in mid-air…too scared to cause him further pain through her gentle touch.

His skin was a pasty grey colour and Max's throat was thick with fear as she hesitantly pressed her fingers to his throat, praying for a pulse.  She exhaled in relief, unaware that she had been holding her breath, a dreadful anticipation binding her tight.

*Faint…but still there.*  Relieved tears flooded her eyes.

"Stay with me Alec…you can't die on me…"

His handsome face lolled back to one side, and his normally mischievous and playful eyes were closed tight.  The angular beauty of his features were bruised and battered, one eye swollen closed under dark purple skin.  His full lips were split and puffy from having taken countless punches, and she saw the dried paths on his cheeks where his tears had run, unable to stand the unbearable pain.

*It must have been so bad…*

Glancing down she saw the dark blistered burn marks trailing down under the front of his shirt, displaying a terrible path down the skin of his neck to his chest.  The anguish she felt at her failure to be there for him, to prevent his pain, almost overwhelmed her.

"Oh god…Alec…I'm so sorry…"  

It was then that she noticed the dark blood, which had soaked the fabric of his shirt around his shoulders and neck - blood which was now dried and crazing across his throat.   A grave apprehension seized her.  Terrified to witness the damage, and yet unable to bear the unknown, she slowly reached out her shaking hands. 

The normally soft hair framing his face was now matted and filthy with his sweat and blood, and she swallowed in pain, as she felt the thick stickiness of his blood coating his hair at the back of his head.  Taking a gentle hold of Alec's face, she tilted his head forward, towards her, to better see his injury.

Air hissed as Max sucked in a shocked breath through her teeth, and her hand cupped her mouth in involuntary reaction...

Where his barcode had been, there was now a mess of torn, ragged skin.  The incisions had been made with an instrument ill suited for delicate surgery.  It was like whoever had done it had used blunt scissors to cut, and snip his marking away, leaving uneven flesh and ragged strips where beautiful smooth, whole skin had once been.

Max suddenly understood with a chilling clarity that the motivation for this, hadn't been to torture him per se.  This had been an act of sheer defilement.  The hands that had rent his flesh so hatefully had done so in some monstrous attempt to remove the essence of what defined Alec as a living being…what defined him as a transgenic.  With instinctive insight Max knew White had ordered it…and by allowing it to happen, it was as if he had performed this foulness with his own hands.  A deep hatred stirred in the very core of her being.

Max started as she heard a quiet noise, and then she realised that it was the sound of her own sobbing.  Suddenly she couldn't bear the sight of Alec bound to the cold metal frame any more.  Her fingers tore at his binds, working the locks…crying in frustration at her inability to remove them fast enough.

She frantically looked around, seeking a tool to use, when she saw the metal table positioned just off to the side.  It was lined with surgical instruments and torture devices, many now stained with the dark bronze of Alec's dried blood.

A nerve twitched in her cheek, and her face hardened as a raw fury surged through her, almost unbalancing her in its ferocity.

"Fucking…bastards!"

She grabbed the nearest knife, an evil looking tool with a long slim blade, from the selection laid out with a disturbing neatness upon the table.  Sinking to her knees beside Alec she went back to working on his bindings with a renewed determination.

"I'm getting you out of here…Alec, please stay with me…please…" She begged his silent form.

As the last metal band was removed he slowly slid from the chair into her waiting arms.   The sudden weight of his limp body forced her to collapse backwards onto the cold concrete floor.

"Oh god…oh god…" He felt cool to her touch, and there was a barely perceptible rising to his chest.  Her tears were coming freely now, as she cradled his motionless body in her arms.

"Alec…please don'tplease don't die on me…" Her whispered voice cracked as the words choked in her throat, and she was gasping through her ragged sobs.  "I can't …I can't…without you…"

The thought of him extinguished from her life forever was too terrible to imagine.  Max suddenly realised the truth she'd fought to deny all along…she loved him…not as a brother or friend.  A genuine deep love that up till now she'd taken for granted by its constancy, arrogant that it would always be there…that he would always be there.  So she had mistreated it, smothered it in denial, because the thought of owning it openly had scared her like no other.  Now the thought of losing it forever terrified her…

Taking one of his cold hands in hers, she desperately pressed the scraped skin of his knuckles against her mouth, trying to kiss the brokenness away.  Her hands grasped at his, and tried to force his fingers to hold her face, but the heaviness of his unresponsive arm caused it to slide through her fingers, to fall beside him on the ground.

She could feel the cold clamminess of his skin beneath her fingers and she sensed that he was slipping away before her.

"No…no, no…AlecNo!

*Not now…not now!*

Grief stricken she ran her hands across his body, frantically patting and stroking his lean body, as if the act of her touch could awaken him from his unnatural slumber.  With a growing despair she knelt to lean across his still chest and reached out her shaking hands to gently brush her fingers across his face.  She wiped her hand across her wet face, and reached out to gently wipe the caked grime and dried blood from his beaten handsome face with her tears.

"Alec…shhhh….shhhhh…please…. anything…just please…"

Her voice was hoarse through emotion, and she whispered the words like a mantra until her breath ran empty…then just mouthing the words in a desperate silent pleading.

Taking a deep gasping breath, she slowly lowered her mouth to lightly touch her lips to his bruised mouth.  *Please…please…please….  Shaking, she pressed her mouth tighter to deepen the contact, as if she could kiss the life back into him.  She reached out with all her senses…desperately trying to connect with him, to call him back.  Max lifted her mouth from his, and rose up to watch his face.

Nothing…except a sense of warmth escaping him…

With a dreadful fear she reached her trembling fingers to his throat and felt once more for his pulse, her hot tears streamed down her face.

Nothing…

Max sat back on her knees, and blinked her wet eyes in shock.

*This can't be happening…this can't be happening…this can't be happening…*

Gradually her body started to shake as the realisation hit her, her body reacting before her mind had fully processed it yet.

*Gone…* A wordless keening cry escaped her throat.

Max bit down hard on her lip in an effort to contain it…trying to force the pain down deep inside.  She barely noticed the coppery taste of her blood when her teeth broke through the soft skin.

Blindly staring ahead into the darkness of the warehouse…unseeing…only feeling the heavy weight of his still body in her arms, and a cold emptiness washing through her.   She became aware of a terrible pain, deep in her core, as if some vital part of her had been ripped from her body…leaving a wintry bleakness, and an ache like nothing she'd experienced before.

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