Well, let's see if we can't get Alec on the road to recovery…
Chapter Seven
December
Max sat in front of the fire. She tucked her feet up underneath her and wrapped the blanket around her more tightly. She'd snagged an old one room cabin that had belonged to the forestry service. It had needed some repair work, but it was small, cozy, and most importantly it stayed relatively warm and dry. Hood River was never going to put the warm in warm and inviting.
Snow was falling softly outside the cabin. It was only an inch or two deep at the moment, but it was enough that it would be a white Christmas, only a few days away. It would be a first for most of them. Seattle had produced wet, dirty winters, and Manticore had made sure any snow was immediately cleared so they could continue training, not that Manticore would have acknowledged any sort of holiday anyway.
Almost everyone from Terminal City was now living in the forest outside town. A few of the Transgenics had decided to head off on their own. Since they could pass for Ordinaries, they'd decided to make their own way in the world. The Transhumans, however, had all stayed.
Together they'd either found or built homes for everyone. They were setting up a new system of suppliers and finding the best way to make a life in this new place. The few locals they'd run into had been surprisingly tolerant, especially when they learned they had a population of very strong, very fast neighbors who might look weird, but were willing to help out anyone who asked politely, and who could protect them from anyone or anything dangerous that wandered into the area.
Joshua was sharing a larger cabin not far from hers and he liked to stop by every day just to check in. He was having fun making paints from berries and bark and who knew what else. He came to talk to her, but also to check on Alec.
Max looked across her little cabin to the bed tucked in the corner. Alec was lying in it, covered in mismatched blankets she'd found in the cupboard. He still hadn't woken up. They'd set up a series of regular IV fluids to keep him from completely wasting away, but it wasn't enough and he was getting thinner by the day. His skull seemed to have repaired itself, but he wouldn't wake up and Max had to wonder how badly his brain had been damaged. The lack of oxygen, the swelling from the injury, plus the trauma itself may have been too much.
"You know what, Alec? You're a real pain in the ass," she said out loud. There was no response and she didn't expect one. She'd taken to talking to him quite a bit since moving in. He was a good listener, but a lousy conversationalist.
She didn't have as many people to talk to these days. Luke and Dix had set up a little mini command post where everyone could check in and get any information they needed, but since they weren't being actively hunted at the moment, it wasn't as necessary and Max let them handle it.
"I mean, we get all the way out here, everybody else is working and you're still just layin' around, being all useless. Not to mention, you're still taking up my bed. I've been putting up with it so far, but it's getting old."
Logan had passed a message through Luke. He was doing well in Toronto. There wasn't any TV or phone service outside Hood River, but apparently Eyes Only had been spreading the message far and wide, righting wrongs and holding the people in charge to account.
Max wanted to say she missed him, but it was hard to miss someone she'd barely seen even before they were run out of town. Now there was a vague sort of nostalgia whenever she thought about him, a sad sort of what might have been.
It wasn't going to happen, though, and she had more important things to worry about. She and the others went hunting to keep them in meat. They were setting up a grow operation in an old mill since they were going to need to grow most of their own food eventually, and they'd need it before Spring would allow outdoor planting. Copper and Silver were working on getting livestock: chickens, cows, goats, sheep, etc. Living off the land was sort of the name of the game in these parts and a couple of the locals had been a big help.
"Ya know, if you'd wake up, we could at least play cards or something. I'm gonna end up learning to whittle just to have something to do at night."
She could almost hear him making some sort of flirtatious remark about things they could do while they were cooped up for the winter. Max smiled at the thought. At this point, she'd be glad to hear even that. She'd probably hit him, but she'd be glad.
Max had thought she'd missed him before, when he'd been acting strange. Alec had been so desperate for her to think well of him, or at least not to think any worse of him. Now she knew what it was to be completely without him. She and Logan had been separated so long that it was an old ache, but looking at Alec now, there but not there, was too fresh and it was an ever present wound.
Max sighed. It was dark outside and although she didn't sleep much, she still went through the motions. She stood and folded her blanket. She tossed it over the arm of the well-worn sofa, then walked to the other wall where there was a little kitchenette. It consisted of a single gas burner, a basin and an old crank water pump attached to a cistern, which was the envy of the neighborhood. Not everybody had water readily available. Her bathroom, per se, was an outhouse a few yards from the door. That was fine in decent weather. In weather like this, it was a lot less fun.
Max brushed her teeth and washed her face, tossing the dirty water out the door. She shivered against the blast of cold air, then locked up again and wandered to the cupboard. She pulled out an old comfy sweat-shirt and flannel pants. She changed her clothes, but left her socks on. She might be a genetically engineered super-soldier, but it was cold and she wasn't walking around a poorly insulated cabin in her bare feet.
She threw some extra wood on the fire, then walked to the bed and Alec. "Don't try anything," she ordered, just like she always did.
She could have fobbed off the responsibility of caring for Alec on someone. Joshua would have happily taken it on, but when the time had come, Max hadn't been able to let Alec go despite her tiny cabin barely having room for one.
Max slid into the narrow bed and snuggled under the blankets. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling. The bed barely had enough room for the two of them and her arm rested atop his. She grasped his hand, as had quickly become habit over the past weeks, and intertwined their fingers. She drew his hand up and let it rest against her chest. She could feel his pulse and the warmth of his skin, reassuring her he was still alive.
"We had a big day," she reported. "Dix and Luke are almost done building the dish to get us hooked up to the world again. We've been pretty limited so far, so they're happy. We're still working on the water problem. Mole says it'll probably be spring before we can dig a new well. He's got some ideas though for bringing it from the stream. We're working on rain barrels and stuff like that too, but that's won't be useful until there's, you know, rain."
For a few minutes, she listened to the fire pop and crackle and willed herself to rest, but it was useless as usual.
"You have to wake up. You'd do better with our suppliers and we need you to make the deals. The guy who runs the sawmill is robbing us blind and there's nothing we can do about it."
"Should… break something… in his shop, then offer to fix it."
Max jumped at the sound of Alec's gravelly voice. She was so startled, she jerked away from him, but she had forgotten she was holding his hand and she awkwardly pulled him closer.
Alec grunted, but then turned his head toward her. He raised an eyebrow. "You keep telling me not to try anything," he swallowed and she knew his throat was dry, "but you're the one who keeps latching on to me."
Max immediately let go of his hand and it flopped back to the bed. She sat up and turned so that she was facing him, but that pushed the blankets back and the cold rushed in around them. Alec was naked beneath the covers apart from a makeshift diaper. His dignity had gone by the wayside in her constant efforts to keep him clean, and manhandling a grown man back into clothes had quickly become more than she could bother with after an exhausting day. He shivered and Max did her best to rearrange the covers around him.
For a moment, they simply remained silent, staring at each other. His eyes were open at last and they were watching her carefully, warily. His face was still drawn from malnutrition and his coloring was terrible, but he was awake and that made all the difference.
"Hey," he finally said.
Max felt like crying. If it wouldn't hurt her badass image, she would have. "Hey." She reached to the side table and grabbed a water bottle sitting there. She tried handing it to him, but he was too weak to hold it. She helped him sip a bit. He coughed at first, then accepted the second sip.
"Easy," she said. "Been a while since you've had anything to eat or drink."
He nodded. "How long?"
"Weeks. It's almost Christmas."
"Figured. I lost count… in there somewhere." He coughed again dryly and she helped him with another sip.
"Count?"
"Been awake for a while," he said. "Just couldn't move."
"What?" she yelped. She'd been walking around in her little cabin like she was alone. She'd said anything she was thinking. She'd taken sponge baths in front of him. She'd talked to Joshua. She'd talked about Alec to Joshua. She'd talked to Alec almost non-stop for weeks.
"Couldn't open my eyes," he said. "Pretty frustrating at times." He waggled his eyebrows, or tried to anyway. It was a barely-there movement.
"I, uh… You heard everything?"
She really wanted to crawl in a hole and die. She'd talked about absolutely anything she felt like talking about. She'd talked about cramps, and how sweaty and gross she was after building something with the others, and how much she missed toilet paper. She'd talked about the old days, when she was feeling maudlin about Ben or about Manticore. She'd talk about Logan, and on and on.
She'd talked about him while she was changing the bedding. She'd had to clean him up, bathe him, move him to keep him from getting bed sores and to keep his muscles going. She was often exhausted and had said any stupid thing she was thinking to keep her awake and sane, and she'd discussed all of his physical attributes, and how it was no wonder he was so popular with the ladies. She always went to bed telling him not to try anything, then she'd wake up a couple of hours later latched onto him like a koala. This was mortifying.
"I… the things I said… that I…" She knew she was bright red.
"I didn't hear everything," he cut off her stammering. "I slept a lot." He cast her a sidelong glance. "But yeah. Not much to do, but listen."
"You couldn't move?" she asked and he shook his head. For a moment, she ignored how embarrassed she was and thought about how awful that would be, to be trapped, slowly dying and unable to do anything about it.
"I was grateful for the running commentary." He offered a tired half-smile. "Kept me from going nuts."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." His laugh was dry and raspy. "A TV would have been nice, but you were pretty close."
"Glad I could amuse you," she snapped, embarrassment turning to anger, as was her usual response. She started to get out of the bed, but Alec reached out and grabbed her hand to stop her. His grip was weak and after a second faltered and he let his arm fall back to the bed.
"Really," he said sincerely. "Thank you. I… I thought I was… and I couldn't move and…" He closed his eyes and Max almost opened her mouth to tell him to open them again.
"How do you feel?" she asked tentatively.
"Better." He raised a hand to his head. "Finally quit hurting."
"You took a hard hit in the tunnel. Your brain was swelling, probably caused the paralysis. Must've finally repaired itself."
"Gonna hunt down those smugglers," he grumbled.
"I might help you."
Max gave him another sip of water, then got up and went to her kitchenette. She had some soup left from her dinner. She reheated it on the single burner, taking long enough that she chided herself for stalling.
Max brought a small bowl and a spoon to the bed. She set it aside and helped Alec sit up in bed.
"Well, this is humiliating," he grumbled. He tried to tuck the blankets around himself and the effort was almost too much for him.
"No picnic for me either, you know. But you need to eat. You're gonna waste away. Josh is going crazy worrying about you."
"Didn't really plan," Max shoved a spoonful of soup on his mouth, "on trying to bash my head in."
"At least you can talk. The Big Fella will calm down now."
They stayed silent for a few minutes while she plied him with soup. It was little more than broth which was probably all he could handle at the moment. When he'd managed about a quarter of the bowl, she set it aside. He'd get sick if he ate anymore. Still, his color was already a little better.
"So," she began.
"So," he repeated.
"You've been listening to me talk to Joshua." He nodded. "Were you paying attention?"
He nodded again. "Mostly."
"Did you really think I would, I don't know, throw you out... or whatever, for killing that guy?"
"It doesn't matter." Alec looked down and away. "I broke my rule, Max. I took an assassination job and there's no coming back from that. I... I just have to own it. I am what I am."
"No," Max said vehemently. "You are more than a killer, or an assassin. This was justice for that girl and all the other girls. You helped them and you helped me when we didn't have any other way to get help. I'd given up on the cure, and I bet they'd given up on anyone caring about what that bastard did to them. You also saved every other girl that guy would have raped and the cops would have ignored."
Alec's face was carefully blank, but his eyes were starting to shine with tears. He blinked them away. "Don't make me out to be some hero, Max. I wanted the cure and I killed a guy in cold blood to get it. He... He said..."
"What?"
"He offered to up my price. He said he could offer us... Doesn't matter how much. Point is, for a second, I thought about it. I thought about what we could do with that kind of money."
"But you didn't accept it." That much was obvious.
"No, I killed him like I was supposed to." His voice cracked. "But those moments where I was thinking about taking his offer… Those keep coming back to me as much as anything."
She could see the guilt on his face, that he'd considered taking the money even for a second. The thing was, she knew that if it had been in the months right after he'd escaped from Manticore, he probably would have taken the money. Max also didn't fail to notice he'd said what we could do with the money. He'd thought about what the money could do for Terminal City. Alec had changed so much since leaving Manticore, and he just didn't see it. That what he'd done was bothering him this much was a sign of just how much he had changed.
"When it comes down to it, I'm not a hero," he said, oblivious to her thoughts. "I'm just a merc, Max, a hired gun. That's all."
She took a second to figure out how to say what she wanted. "Yeah, we're mercenaries, in a way. We work for each other though. We take care of each other and that's what you did. That's the payment we get now. It's not like Manticore."
Alec shrugged, and she wasn't sure if anything was helping. After all, he'd heard her and Joshua discuss what happened over and over.
"I've done a lot of things I wish I could take back," she said, and far too many faces flashed before her eyes, "but I can't. We make the best decisions we can and..." She shook her head. "Some work out, some don't. Sometimes people get hurt who deserve it and sometimes it's people who are totally innocent. What you did," she sat closer, willing him to listen, "this wasn't even like that. He was evil and you were helping."
"Yeah, but it was a contract. You didn't take a contract," Alec countered.
"No," she admitted.
"Tell me this." He looked her straight in the eye. "If you'd been the one to go for the cure… would you have killed him?"
Max felt her stomach sink. Could she have killed the guy, even knowing what he'd done? Could she have done it to get the cure? She looked away.
"Yeah," Alec said. "That's what I thought."
"Alec-"
He scooted back down in the bed and pulled the covers around him. "I need to rest, Max."
Max got up off the bed. Guess she was spending the night on the sofa.
We'll wrap it up tomorrow…
