Arcanum:
Catalyst
by
Kel
This story is an entry in The Broken World's Fiction and Art Awards (competition), which can be found here: x [dot] thebrokenworld [dot] org. I strongly encourage you to check it out, and maybe submit a few entries! It's really awesome, and there is a very wide range of categories for new authors/artists and experienced ones alike. Subjects of entries can be Dark Angel, other fandom, cross-over, and original - everything from Stick Figure Doodlings to Character Spotlight fics.
Catalyst is a response to The Memory Burns challenge (a category in the competition). To find out exactly what this challenge entails, check out the fiction categories at the competition site.
Disclaimer: I don't presume to own Dark Angel or any of it's characters. I gain no profit from this fiction, other than pride and joy and hopefully reviews.
Author's Note: This is the third fic in the Arcanum series, which begins with Interloper. The second fic is called Something Else That Didn't Fit. I recommend that you read those two stories first, if you haven't already. But, if you wish to read this first or don't wish to read them at all, here is some basic info from the series to help you get what's going on.
During AJBAC, as Max and Zack were traversing the halls of Manticore, they encountered an X5 in his cell. He could have brought the facility down on them, but remained silent and let them pass. Later on (somewhere in S2), Max met up with this X5 in a diner and they had a conversation in which he learned why she tried to take down Manticore, and she learned why he let them continue on their mission.
There wasn't really anything special about it; it had just been a brief chance encounter.
All the same, the memory continued to burn within him. He hadn't known much about her then, and he hadn't learned much later, but that chance encounter was enough.
She had left an imprint. She hadn't even spoken a word to him at the time, but she had still managed. It was eery, but she occupied his every thought sometimes. Usually when it was dark; especially when it was dark.
He kept looking off into the shadows and expecting to spot her, creeping toward him.
It never happened, though. The closest thing which had come to that had been when he had spotted her and her friends in that greasy diner. He had just finished eating, and would have ignored them and left, when one of her friends had spoken her name.
From there, he had the chance to finally find out why. Why she had returned, why she had done what she had. "Tired of running," she had said.
Because of her, he no longer had to run either. She had waltzed right back into hell and burned it down, then she had thwarted an entire 1000-year-old psycho cult to set him and all their kind free.
None of them had to run anymore, and possibly they never would have to again.
But sometimes he found himself running from her. She hadn't done anything wrong, but the haunting echo of her face continued to distract him at crucial moments, or even at insignificant ones. He'd be trying to sleep, and her face would float behind his eyelids. He'd be performing a delicate heist, and he'd hear her voice in the room and turn to investigate.
She was becoming an annoyance, to tell the truth.
He thought he had found all the answers when he had spoken to her in the diner, but apparently he had been wrong. He thought their short conversation had been enough. After all, it was that conversation that had made him what he was today.
He had been a shadow with a number and nothing more.
Now, he was Rizzo. A story hidden in the darkness. A mystery, but a person. More than he had been, because now there was a man to find in the shadows, instead of just a soulless automaton.
Perhaps that was why he couldn't seem to get rid of her ghost. She had given him a gift, and in doing so had given him a curse. Not only was there more to him that could be found, but there was more to the world in general.
Life was no longer a mission scenario, with variables, tools, weapons, or strategies. He couldn't just arm himself to the teeth and be prepared for any eventuality, because there was more to it than that. He no longer lived in a world of targets and liabilities; he lived in a world of people. People he couldn't always read like books.
Some might find it hard to believe that a man can live his entire life and not realize people are more than numbers, but that was what he had been doing.
She had been a number, and so had he. Yet she entertained the idea of freedom, and would go to ridiculous and ludicrous lengths to hold onto it. Her life was no longer about security and survival; it was freedom or it wasn't anything at all. Her motivations were not results of concrete facts and figures, they were the result of feelings and ideas.
She had shown him this, and like a disease, it had spread.
"You look much different. In the light, that is."
"Believe me, I looked pretty much the same then. . . . It was just dark."
"No."
"No?"
She hadn't been a number for a long time, and now he wasn't one either. His reality, his very being, had been transformed from the two-dimensional plane of interlocking puzzle pieces into something with an almost frightening amount of depth. Something that quite often made no sense. He wasn't just a soldier, he wasn't just a shadow, he wasn't just a man. He wasn't just anything. She had seen sides of him that he never even suspected to exist.
He had a number. He was an enigma. He was a man, he was a shadow, he was a soldier. He could solve simple and complex problems, but he could also come up with thoughts and ideas that had no bearing on reality. He had a vast reservoir of knowledge, but he knew very little. He was fully grown, but he was both older and younger than he looked. Some pieces fit, but some didn't belong in the same zip code.
This new reality, with its three-dimensional fog of conflicting and interwoven angles, was vastly intriguing. But it was also incredibly frustrating.
There were rules that didn't apply to any of his previous knowledge. Rules like common courtesies and how to behave in certain relationships. Rules like Right, and its ever-present companion, Wrong. The only rule he had ever seen need to follow before had been to obey orders from his superiors.
It was this rule that had made his life one streaming constant. Obey orders, or suffer the consequences. Always. No matter where he was, or what he was doing, the only thing he had needed to know was his orders. They were fact, they were figure, they were truth. They were the voice in his head; the only one.
Damn her; she had invaded every corner of his reality. He could deal with the change of scenery when Manticore burned. He could deal with the lack of missions; the lack of purpose. He could deal with the weird clothing and customs. She could have changed all of that and more (as she had), and he could have accepted it.
But what he couldn't accept was that she had intruded on the most important part of him; the rule that kept his world grounded and gave sense to his hollow existence. She had dared to enter the cold halls of Manticore and defy everything that he knew. The core of his being, obey orders, was nothing to her. She had walked up to the big picture and painted it over.
Obey orders was, to her, the ultimate abomination. It was an alien idea that inspired in her a sick terror. It was wrong, it didn't belong, it was a large square peg trying to fit in a small round hole. It came from the other side of the fine line between sanity and insanity, and it carried a massive eraser.
So she burned it down and cut all the freaks loose from it.
Freedom was a marvelous thing. It allowed people to make their own choices, live their own lives as they pleased, eat in greasy burger joints, steal for their own profit, drive really fast at any time they chose, smile, laugh, and even cry.
Freedom was all things beautiful.
Freedom was whatever it wanted to be.
It was peace, and it was hope.
It was chaos.
It created rules that didn't make sense.
It had no rules.
Freedom was joy; freedom was pain.
Freedom was a hell of a lot nicer when it was almost free. . . . But freedom was never free.
It came at a cost. It was a cost.
The memory of her burned in his mind, as he knew it always would. She had given him his freedom. She had given him a gift, and in doing so had given him a curse.
End