This is short, a oneshot, and my first venture into the Dark Angel category. It's…sort of Max/Alec.
I don't own Dark Angel
She doesn't know when it started. She doesn't know when the shift happened. She's sure that it didn't happen overnight. Nothing with her ever does. She isn't built that way. Never has been. She doesn't believe in love at first sight, hate maybe but not love. She's far too cynical for that.
It's gradual, her own realization of the change. She doesn't take notice at first. She doesn't take notice that her words are a little less biting, that her hits are a lot less hurtful. She doesn't think about the smile that curves her lips when he makes a joke that would have simply pissed her off a few months prior.
She doesn't see the significance of the feelings that well in her when she sees him in pain. She's never been too self aware, never been good at analyzing-or accepting-her own feelings. This time is no different.
Sometime, in the year that she's known him, it happens. She forgets to hate him. She stops seeing Ben and starts seeing Alec when she looks into his green eyes. He does that for her. He sits and listens and doesn't judge, doesn't ever judge.
She starts to get it then. When she looks into his eyes and only sees empathy…and then she looks into Logan's and can't imagine telling him because she's sure all she'll see is disappointment and recrimination.
She starts to get it then but she rejects it just as fast.
Denial. It's default for her. She denies the change. She denies the fact that she doesn't love Logan the way she had before. She denies Alec and everything her changing feelings for him represents.
She does it so much she almost convinces herself.
She tries to ignore the jealousy when she catches him flirting with some bimbo at the bar. It claws its way through her insides, though, and she's even more of a bitch to him afterwards than usual. She tries to ignore the flash of hurt she sees in his eyes. It's only there a second, such a brief glimpse behind his mask that she can almost convince herself that she never saw it in the first place. Almost.
She can't accept it and she knows why, on those nights when she can't sleep at all because of her screwed up genes. She still wants it. She's been praying for normal since she was eight, since she'd broken her way out of Manticore and realized that not all kids were made in labs and trained to fight from the first moment they could walk and talk.
She's been dreaming of normal for so long that it's next to impossible for her to let it go and accepting what she's feeling for him…that feels like letting it go.
It's not until she's forced to give up that dream, when she has to make a choice between continuing to lie to keep it or face up to the fact that she'll never be normal and save her friends, save him that she finally stops running.
Before, she'd expected it to feel wrong. She'd expected it to be disappointing. She'd expected it would leave her even more angry and bitter than she had been before.
She doesn't expect the sense of relief it brings. She doesn't expect feeling a weight lifting itself from her shoulders, a weight she hadn't even realized was there.
She walks easily away from Logan and when she sees Alec again, she looks at him with what feels like brand new eyes. Her vision has never been clearer and he's beautiful in a way that he never has been before.
He doesn't see it but she thinks that's okay too. She'll make sure he does.