December 2009
"So - um - so how has school been going, dear?"
Max did her best to force a smile, wishing she actually had a reason to smile at all. This was the first time she was able to visit with her parents since being taken away from Arcadia Bay. There was so much she wanted to tell them: the initial weeks of anger, horror and frustration. Settling into a routine that was almost-but-not-quite normal. Her continued fear for their safety. How much she loved them, and wanted to keep them safe. How sorry she was for what was being done to them.
If only she could figure out a way - a real way - to make it stop. Or at least get better. Some way better than having to lie to her parents, on top of everything else.
"Uh...great! Everything's great! My classes are all...er...good."
Her mother and father both nodded, smiling pleasantly enough, before turning to Reese, who was sitting in the overstuffed easy chair across from the sofa. It was her father who asked the question, "And um...Mr? What is it you teach, exactly?"
"Vakarian. Harold Vakarian. I teach history. Oh, and phys ed. You know how it is, you don't get away at any school without pulling double duty in one way or another." He did his best to keep his smile natural, wide and even, but was clearly uncomfortable with this whole situation as well.
Her mother lit up, "Oh! Really now? I majored in history. What do you teach?"
Reese paused, "What do I...oh! You know. The slightly more esoteric. Mostly the Dark Ages, with focus on the Middle East during that time period."
Max winced, mostly out of sympathy for the younger man, knowing just how badly he had put his foot in it. She knew exactly what sort of history her mother was into.
"Oh!" she clapped her hands together. "How fascinating. It just so happens that I did my bachelor's thesis on the rise and fall of the Umayyad Caliphate. We should definitely talk about that, after dinner."
To his credit, he did his best to chase away the worst of his dismay. "Yes. Of course. That'd be - uh - lovely."
"I...it's just. With all due respect, Mr. Vakarian, I can't quite remember why you're accompanying Max back home? That seems like an unusual policy." Max's father looked to her mother for confirmation, before settling a suspicious gaze upon the other man.
Before she could respond, Reese jumped in, focusing his attention on them both. "Ha ha, I'm sure you remember. One of the programs we offer at Zion Academy, giving parents the chance to host a teacher of our most gifted first year students, in order to help them understand how we're helping their child fulfil their full potential." He rose up as he began to make his explanations. Resting a hand on each of their shoulders, he continued, "And as I recall, you both jumped at the chance."
There was an eerie stillness; a pause, as each of them assimilated the new reality that Reese was injecting into their memories. Like a record needle jumping out of a stuck groove, and into a new one, the easy smiles returned.
Max looked away. She couldn't stand to watch, and didn't want her parents seeing the tears welling up.
"Right! Ah ha! Right, of course. Gosh, senior moment. How could I forget?" Max's father said.
"No worries." Reese replied, his smile straining with false confidence. "The important part is just to enjoy the holidays. Together, as a family."
Max's mother spoke next. "Well, perhaps we should head to the table for supper?" With that, her parents rose. Reese shot a guilty glance in Max's direction. He'd explained previously, and again right before they came for this short holiday stop, that he had to keep up the illusion that she was attending school on a scholarship, that it was all her parents idea. She'd gone along with it so far, understanding that this was about their protection, and the need to keep Max's powers a state secret; but it chilled her to the bone to see her parents so blatantly manipulated.
She'd hate Reese for doing it, too...if it didn't seem to be freaking him out in his own way as well. After more than a year, she finally came to see that he was trying to save them from a far worse alternative.
But Max couldn't take it any more. She was supposed to spend a full weekend at home, but the thought of them being exposed to any more memory tampering broke her heart. Quietly, after dinner, she took Reese to the corner, and begged him to make up some sort of excuse. Under normal circumstances, she'd want to stay as long as she could, soak up every minute with her parents. But not at this price.
A little more manipulation ensured that their one day stay was accepted, and the pair trudged off towards the non-descript black car they'd driven down to Oregon in.
"That was...that was really messed up. " Max sniffled, finally letting her tears fall freely.
"You're kinder than I would be, kiddo." He shook his head heavily, closed the door, and slumped against the wheel, as if all the energy suddenly drained from him.
They sat together, letting a minute's silence pass between them, before Max asked. "Am I making this worse for them? Will they do better if I just...just stopped? Coming home I mean. Could you mess with their brains less, that way?"
Reese grabbed at his abdomen and groaned; Max noted he'd been doing that a lot lately. "Max, memory is a funny, funny thing. Your presence strengthens it, and causes their subconscious to question the implants I've put in there, but absence makes the heart grow fonder, as the saying goes. If you stay away too long, they start to wonder why you haven't been around."
Max balled her hands hands up against her eyes, pressing tight, and for the millionth time desperately begged to wake up, as she gave up a few more tight sobs.
Damned if she did, damned if she didn't.
She looked out the tinted windows, hungrily staring at home, as it disappeared off in the distance. It was a funny thing; she was at the age where she was desperate to strike out, get away from her parents shadow, find her own identity. Be her own Max, not just the daughter of Ryan and Vanessa Caulfield. But now that she was separated from them, all she wanted to do was get the hell out of the car and spend Christmas with them. Forget everything about Seattle and the Damocles Initiative and everything else that was forced into her life since that day slightly over a year ago.
She didn't think it was possible to feel worse. But she did.
"Wait!" she gulped out. "Wait...just...pull off to the side for a moment. Okay?"
Across the street was Chloe's house. It was curiously dark, and completely bereft of any Christmas ornamentation this year.
Weird. William always loved putting on these super-elaborate displays. Maybe...maybe they went on vacation this year? Like France? Maybe they finally made it to Paris.
So close. And so far. A deep, instinctive need lit inside her. It was all she could do to keep from leaving the car, tearing down the street, and banging on the door, in a distant hope that maybe someone would answer.
She hugged herself tight as she imagined the scene.
The door would open. Chloe would be right behind it, and there would be candles lighting everything up. Hanging up the last of the decorations on the tree, wrapping up the final few presents. Joyce would have cookies and eggnog ready and waiting.
They'd be so happy to see her, all three of them. She'd throw herself into Chloe's arms, snuggling in close, and never let go.
Oh God. It felt so real. For a moment, she swore she could feel the other girl against her.
But none of that was on the table for her. Her lifeclock had been temporarily modified to register any discontinuities and transmit out to Wright, who was stationed just an hour away. If she tried to run, they'd track her down. And even if she could convince Reese to go with her, he'd have to zap their brains. Just like he did to her parents.
She found her voice again, and spoke, louder than she meant to. "Just...just drive, Reese. Okay? Just go! I don't..." She pressed a hand to the window, and watched as 44 Cedar Avenue receded in the distance.
"I can't ever come back here again."
October 2010
It was Lab Rat week.
At least, that's what Max called it. The periods where due to the schedules and deployments of her various instructors, slack time was being taken up not only with the yearly battery of medical test, but also deploying her abilities to help with whatever new experiments the R&D lab had cooked up.
Today's project involved rabbits, for some reason.
These days, the science lab was being largely run by Doctors Jenkowitz and Tilson: respectively, a fat, balding science geek, his greasy black hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a dour, bespectacled woman with frizzy brown hair and an unfortunate resemblance to Sarah Silverman. They weren't mean per se, just unpleasant to deal with. Davies was constantly apologizing for them; while she oversaw and consulted on a lot of the higher end science issues for R&D, the Senior Field Agent wasn't actually in charge of that department any longer, having had to pull back from it in order to free up more of her time for training Max.
It was the way they treated her as just another science experiment, they way they forgot she was actually a fifteen year old girl that got to her. And the damn attitude, like she was too stupid to understand half of what was going on, the way they'd blow her off when she tried to inquire as to what exactly the point of their experiments were. Hell, she was smart. Davies was always telling her what a good student she was, and how she was going to start on some AP level material this academic cycle!
It'd gotten to the point where she'd just give up, grit her teeth, and bare it out. The sooner she got done dealing with these two clowns, the sooner she could go back to more important things; not that her current options of continuing to work on her abs, study intermediate chemistry or field strip an M-16 were much better, but at least she could do them alone, without having to deal with anyone else's stupid-ass shit.
She walked into the lab, dismissively waved to the pair, and murmured. "Alright. I'm here. So what would you little maniacs like to do first?"
This actually got a snort of amusement from Jenkowitz. "Heh-hey! Good one, Max."
She'd never seen the movie the line apparently came from, but Reese suggested trying it. Not that she had any desire to actually be friends with either of them, but maybe getting the pair to see her more as a person and less as a science toy would make her long term situation a bit more tolerable. Not that it mattered much to her, really. Moody and vaguely surly had become her default setting for everyone that wasn't her only three or four friends at Zion.
"So this shouldn't take long!" Jenkowitz began. "I mean, it'll seem really quick to us! Heh. God, I wish you could go back a couple of months, it would really help me figure out this amorphous crystal growth problem I can't quite seem to lick. Bounce you back and forth a few times while we figure it out? Shave years off the research!"
Yeah, and shave years off my life in the process. Thanks a lot, asshole.
Max held out a hand and in a short tone of voice said, "Yeah, right, whatevs. Why don't you hand me the file, tell me what you want from me, and we'll get started?"
Tilson wheeled out a cage, with a laboratory bunny inside. Max immediately threw up her hands in protest.
Max shook her head vehemently, holding up her hands and waving them at the same time. "Whoa! No! We are not repeating the bunny experiment again! Not after what happened last time! Poor guys..."
Damocles had become increasingly interested in the possibility of Max being able to take people along with her for the ride when she rewound time. Animal experimentation so far had shown that the attempt created what Davies eventually referred to as 'neural shock induced by temporal-displacement and discontinuity'. In short, brains that weren't hers had too much trouble handling the disconnect from the normal flow of time. The further she tried to pull someone back with her, the more dramatic the effect, not to mention how potentially permanent it might become.
The rabbits they had her go back a full hour or two with never recovered.
And...and God. The sounds they made afterwards, the ones that did finally emerge from their catatonia. The sharp, piteous creeling...
Davies had once managed to convince her to take her back, just a few minutes. While the older woman tolerated the experience well enough, she soon discovered that this was a happy side effect of her enhanced brain. It did lead her to discover that the higher up on the "complex thought" chain a creature was, the better suited it was to handle the effect.
But no other human volunteer had stepped up to test that theory, so far.
Jankowitz groaned softly, "Maaax. C'mon. Don't be that way. God! It won't be for more than a few minutes at a time. Trust me we're - ah - we're experimenting on some wholly different aspects this time around.
Max didn't even ask for an elaboration past that. She was tired of 'You wouldn't fully understand it' or 'Sorry, that's classified' being the two default answers.
Tilson unceremoniously grabbed one of the rabbits, and stuck it with a needle from the syringe in her other hand. Max frowned. "Hey! Hey, what are you...I thought you said we weren't hurting them today!?" The other woman mumbled, her voice both silky smooth and lethargically monotone. "No one said anything of the sort. But we're not hurting them, we're just putting them to sleep. They won't feel any pain."
Max softened, just a touch. "Oh. Okay then. If you're just knocking them out. What, are you guys trying to figure out if that will protect them or something when I rewind?"
Both of them mumbled noncommittally. Max wouldn't realize until later just how badly she misunderstood the meaning of the term,exactly how Tilson had been using it.
"Okay Max, let's establish our usual baseline." he grabbed the chart from her hands, spent the next minute writing notes in some sort of coded handwriting only he could comprehend - otherwise, she'd be spying on his work all the time - , and then handed it back. "You know the drill. Go back, just a little bit. Please don't pull the usual schtick; it's not going to work this time, anyhow."
Max glanced at her lifeclock, and then smirked. She'd go back alright...
...and add an extra minute to the trip.
It was one of her favorite pranks to pull. To anyone in the 'static' timeline who was observing her, she'd seem to suddenly disappear from one place, and reappear in another. From Jankowitz and Tilson's perspective, it would be as if she popped out of thin air.
"Boo!"
It never, not once, ever rattled Tilson; the woman must have surgically extracted her ability to be surprised. But Jankowitz was an easy mark. Especially when Max timed it right, and he had his back to her when she 'appeared'.
He jumped, crying out, and then turned around, angrily lambasting her. "Damnit, Max! Every fucking time! When are you going to stop doing that? You're going to give me a heart attack!"
"No, that would be the Hot Pockets, tubbo." Max muttered under her breath. Then glanced up at him expectantly.
"Shit, I suppose your sudden appearance means we've already begun our experiment?"
Max smiled sweetly. "A: when it stops being funny. B:when you stop falling for it, even after you swear to me you won't. And yeah, here's your notes."
She handed the file folder back again. People loved this aspect about her powers, that she was a walking, breathing, paradox machine that didn't suffer the the full consequences of causality. When it became obvious to the Powers That Be that she could break into an office, and then rewind back and wipe out the evidence of her entry, they piled on a ton of infiltration, B&E and stealth training on to her curriculum.
"Hmmm. Alright. We're at round one. Baseline achieved. Tilson, I'm assuming 'Bugs' looks as healthy as ever? Yes? Okay, let me just update the info here. Oh, and Max, hang on to this as well, would you?" He grabbed the syringe that Tilson had just used to inject the rabbit, and handed it to her. She glanced at it and made a face.
"Jesus, you can't throw your own trash out?"
"It's all a part of the experiment. Now if you could please go back exactly one minute."
She puffed out curtly."Fine." Then glanced at her lifeclock again. Over the past couple of years, she'd develop and increasingly accurate sense of precision in her rewinds. If she took the time to study the differences between objective and subjective time, and focus, she could usually time her rewind to the second, although that precision drifted the further back she went.
Jenkowitz jumped again. "Damnit, Max! Every fucking time..."
"Hey! That's your fault. I came back to exactly the time you told me to." She peevishly held out the folder to him.
Grabbing the log file and reading through the contents, and muttered to himself. "Huh. Guess we've already started the experiment. Right, okay. It says I'm supposed to ask you to hand back the syringe." He quickly reached over and carefully took it from her hand. Then looked to the rabbit.
He smirked with demonic glee as he regarded Tilson, pointing to the rabbit still in its cage, and then to the syringe. He laughed, high and nasal, "Hahahaahahahaha! Look at that. Look at it! I love it! That never gets old! It's not in the rabbit, it's not in the syringe, the stuff is just gone! Like it never existed" He shook his head, and pointed to Max. "You totally break fucking thermodynamics, kid. You kick it in the dick. That's so awesome!"
Kick it in the dick...
The nostalgia the line brought up dampened her already low spirits considerably, and she bowed her head for a moment.
Tilson murmured, "Hold on. I have to prepare another dose. And get a clean needle." She tossed the old one into a sharps box, then removed the rabbit from its cage, and injected it, as she had done - at least from Max's perspective - once before. The rabbit barely struggled, before passing out.
She grabbed the limp, unresponsive animal, and held it out for Max to take. Jenkowitz did likewise with the file folder.
"Go back about two minutes, please."
Max again double checked her lifeclock against the local time, just to 'lock in' her sense of 'Now', and rewound. She looked down quickly at the rabbit nestled in the crook of her arm.
Poor guy. I hope this isn't hurting you. Maybe sleeping it out will make the ride easier, huh?
"Tilson? Is it me, or did the damn rabbit just vanish from its cage? Oh crap, that means..." he turned around, better prepared this time. "Yes! Of course, Twisted Sister is here. Wow. We must be halfway through our experiment already? I love this! I swear, the amount of time you save me, kid."
Max handed 'Bugs' over to Tilson, who immediately poked and prodded it, checking pupil response, and running some sort of advanced looking scanning device over it. Jenkowitz busied himself with studying, then adding to his notes.
"So how long is that thing going to stay asleep?" Max asked, as she received the updated log file.
Tilson seem positively bemused at the question. "Forever, I should think."
"Wait...wait! What the hell? You said you were just putting it to sleep!"
The other woman narrowed her eyes, looking at her like she was an idiot child. "I didn't but...assuming you're talking about another timeline, and I did...uh, yeah? It's the standard narcotic preparation for animal euthanasia."
Jenkowitz interjected, "Alright Max, I'll get the next specimen out, and then the plan is to have you inject him and see..."
In her anger, Max rewound back. She could fix this, right? All she had to do was rewind, and the poor rabbit they killed would be back. Then she'd tell them to go fuck themselves. Sick, sick fucking experiment!
"Holy shit! Tilson, did you see that? Did that rabbit just keel over and die? What the fuck?!"
The other man glanced over to her, and shook his head, smirking. "Oh, now it makes sense. Let me guess, we're in the middle of something. Huh. Okay, hand me the log file, this should be a real interesting result."
Max glanced over, at the rabbit in it's cage. Still and not breathing. She couldn't understand what happened, why it didn't just go back to the way it was before. Had...did bringing it back with her cause something to break in reality? Take it out of the normal flow of time?
A fury rose up within her, as she roared, angrily tossing the log file back in his face. "You sick assholes!" She turned and ran out of the lab, ignoring the angry shouts behind her. She was tempted to rewind back, spitefully wipe out all of the log entries...but if the rabbit hadn't come back, would the log stay the same? It made her head hurt to think about, and thinking was something she wasn't doing too clearly at the moment anyhow.
She couldn't stand to be around or look at anybody right now. All she wanted was to be alone!
Reese sighed, as he picked his way through some of the darker, cramped piping alcoves in the lower sections of the facility. He'd heard about the situation with Max suddenly running out of the middle of one of her lab experiments, about the same time he was reporting back from a field assignment. Naturally, he offered to take point in trying to track her down.
Gotta hand it to you kid. You've gotten good at figuring out where to hide. Where the temporal sensors won't find you, or at least smart enough not to try and rewind when you're hiding like this. God damnit...poor Max. What the hell did Franken-witz and his girlfriend Igor do now?
He barely heard the soft sobs, above the hum of machinery and flow of fluids. But he knew the sound; he was far too familiar with it for his liking. It didn't take more than a minute to track her down, curled up in a ball and hiding. It was clear, even in the low light, she'd been crying for a while.
"Max? Hey...it's me. It's Meredith. I'm sorry. Whatever happened. I just got back from Dubai, and you know, I wanted to make sure I was the one who found you."
He sat himself down on one of the lower pipes running in parallel with the floor. Sighed hard and gave a pained smile. She was just like his sister Ariel, when she was that age.
Well, maybe not as angry. God knows, she's got plenty of reasons why.
"H-hey, Mere." Max murmured out.
"Hi. So I got some of the story. Jenkowitz was all..." and at this he started doing an impression of the other man's nasally whine, "I don't understand, the kid just flipped out over some weird miscommunication or something! And I'm also an asshole who didn't get laid until he was twenty-nine! Ahhhh uuuurrrrr!"
Max gave a laugh, despite herself. That was good. He liked making her laugh. It was such a rare thing now, or so he gathered. It been over a month since he'd last seen her, field work taking up more and more of his time as of late. Every time he went away, he worried that the girl he first met, the one who enthused about saving the world and helping people, would finally be dead and gone inside, leading an angry, bitter woman-child behind.
"Just...just so fucked up, Reese. They wanted to kill rabbits, and see if...if they stayed dead. Then they wanted me to kill them, and I didn't even know that's what they were doing. Why? Why!? Makes no sense, them doing this!"
Reese's blood went cold. He was sorry to say that the answer came to him, quick and clear, like a bolt from the blue.
Seeing how Max's powers affected creatures that had been killed, and then pulled back through the timestream with her? Properly developed, this sort of thing could make her the world's most effective and frightening assassin.
"Oh my God." he breathed out, face going pale and sickly as he made his realization.
Max saw it, and understood immediately. Now that she wasn't torn up with depression and sobbing, she quickly put two and two together.
"Mere? Are...they gonna make...do you think?" She choked, and then tried again. "Like make me do it to people?! Oh God! Are they going to make me..."
She broke out into more sobs. Sad, angry, smaking her fists against the pipe and the floor. "Fuck! I hate this place!" she shrieked out. "I fucking hate this place and everyone in it!"
It cut him to the quick, to watch what was happening to her. He reached out, meaning to steady her, as he placed a hand on her shoulder. He didn't intend for what happened next. At least not consciously. All he knew was that he saw her in such pain. He wanted to take at least some of it away, the only way he instinctively knew how.
He yanked his hand away, as if burned. She didn't notice. Just dried her eyes off, a bit confused, and then grumbled.
"God. What a fucked up day, Reese. They were killing these rabbits, putting them to sleep, right? And then made me rewind back with them. It was creepy, you know? Holding those poor little guys. But what was the point? They were already dead, like for hours. Like they were cold and stiff already. Sooooo creepy." She narrowed her eyes, angry. "I got so upset. I think Jenkowitz was just teasing me, playing a prank? Not funny. Not fucking funny! Damn asshole."
All he could do was nod.
Oh God...oh God I didn't mean. I did it again. Just like how it happened with Barbara, right in the beginning...
Calming, she rose up and groaned, "Anyhow, I lost my shit and ran here for a bit. But I swear, I hate this place and everyone in it sometimes." She gave her eyes another wipe and murmured, "Geez, why was I crying? Anyhow, yeah, I don't mean you and Davies and Rodriguez, though. You guys are cool."
She started to walk off, glancing backwards when she realized he wasn't following her. Where she found him wincing hard, groaning, clutching just above his abdomen, at the lower edge of his sternum.
"Are you coming? I could really use a friend, when they chew me out." She paused a beat. "You okay?"
Reese tried to quickly compensate. "What? Yeah, no. Fine. Just jet lag. You go ahead, I'll be behind you in a minute."
She nodded and muttered, "Sucks. Sorry I can't take you back with me like I can Davies. That'd probably fix you up." Her voice started to trail off, "See! That would be useful. That'd help people, getting them over jet lag. People could actually do something with that, unlike delivering bunny corpses through time."
With a shaky hand, Reese reached into his jacket pocket, extracting a prescription medicine bottle. Worked the top off, popped two of the pink pills into his mouth, chewed and swallowed, ignoring the sensation of razor blades attacking his upper stomach.
Fuck! I thought it was starting to get better.
He finally rose, and followed after her.
November 2010
Max grinned to herself, chomping contentedly on a bowl of buttered popcorn, as she watched the movie on the big screen of the monitoring room.
"O-M-G. For cereal! This movie is so cool! What do you say this was called? Scott Pilgrim?
"Scott Pilgrim Versus The World. Yeah, I just got it on DVD. Cool, huh? I realize some of the references might be a little over your head though, but still cool right?" Chen smirked at her, snagging a handful of popcorn from his own bowl.
Max nodded emphatically. "No, it's okay. Really! I get the video game references. And I love her hair! Ramona, right? I love it. I wish I had blue hair. It looks, like, super sexy!"
Max never really got to watch movies anymore, not in the theater. Most of the staff except her had lives of their own; homes, apartments, loved ones. She was one of the few folks who actually lived at Zion.
Probably the only one who actually does, for real.
They'd started making her take monitor duty as part of her training, but it was boring as hell. Emergences were always rare, and not getting any less so it seemed. Chen and Villanova - Hubbard retired last year - never complained. It was a cushy job with a fat paycheck and a decent pension for easy work. The American Dream.
Villanova, a shy, socially awkward woman in her late twenties, turned from the screen. "Max, I could do your hair. Like that, if you wanted. You know? If we get them to..."
A throat cleared loudly. All three turned to appraise Agent Wright, who was walking in through the door.
"Fuck is all this? It's called monitor duty, not movie night." She focused the bulk of her ire on Max directly. "You think this is just a game, girl? Sleep away camp, like the three of you are going to paint each others nails and talk about cute boys?"
Chen held up his hand, "Nikki..."
She glared at him, and he backtracked.
"Agent Wright, don't blame her. It was my idea. I mentioned that I had the DVD..."
"...and she no doubt sweet talked you into throwing it up on the big TV and show her, because monitor duty is too damn boring for her spoiled ass."
Max rose up, frowning. "You can hardly talk! I know you sit on your ass doing crossword puzzles all night, talking and listening to music. Why are you giving me shit for how I spend my time..."
Wright cut her off, "Because you're tying up the fucking monitor! World could be coming to an end, PAN-Opticon could be screaming, and the three of you'd never know!"
Villanova raised a hand, and began to speak, in a shy whisper, "Actually, that's not true, the system is designed with a series of overri-"
"Did I fucking ask you?!" Wright turned, pointing an aggressive finger in the other woman's direction, shutting her down hard. Turning back to Max, she continued, "Now you sit your ass down, and you finish up the rest of your shift. Three hours, hardly a thing."
Max glowed, sitting herself back in the chair, and grumbled darkly.
Wright gripped the arms of the chair, and leaned forward. "Oh, I'm sorry, what was that?"
Grabbing a small handful of popcorn, Max tossed it into her mouth, chewed and swallowed, maintaining eye-contact the entire time. She then spoke up.
"I called you a fucking bitch, bitch."
A sharp slap, palm against cheek split the air.
Chen was up on his feet, "Whoa! Hey! Now stand down, Agent Wright! There's no need for that!" Villanova turned away, hiding her face and shirking, as if the entire scene was traumatizing her; given her psychological profile, it no doubt was.
"Don't tell me how to handle discipline amongst my Agents, Chen. I'm the XO of the Alpha Team, I've got the right."
Chen stood his ground, though he couldn't hide the nervousness from his voice. "Yeah, and maybe we can call in Davies, and settle the situation. For Max, I'm sure she'd be willing to be bothered..."
Max rubbing her face and stared hateful daggers at Wright, who had risen back up.
"Just...get your damn head on straight, girl. When they actually send you out in the field someday, won't be any room for error, for screwing around." She then quickly retreated from the monitoring room.
The silence hung, heavy and corrosive, across the room. It was a full minute before Chen said, "Hey Max, why don't we..."
"I wanna finish the movie! Just...just put it back and we'll watch it. Fuck her, she's such a fucking bully! I tried so hard to be friends with her since I got here, and all she does is shit on me!"
Someday, Wright. I swear, some fucking day, I'm going to make you sorry! Shoot you or something. Right between the eyes.
Chen walked over, patted Villanova's shoulder, pausing as the other woman tensed up. Then walked over to Max's chair, and pushed a few buttons. A small screen popped up out of the armrest.
"I'll - I'll shift the feed over to the private display. It's not much but...we gotta take our victories where we can get them, right?"
Max nodded, still rubbing her sore cheek, and favored Chen with a grateful expression, leaning in to give him a soft little headbutt. He then turned back, slumping down heavily into his chair.
He shook his head slowly, and gave Villanova a meaningful look. She reached out a tentative hand, which he took.
"Some days, I don't know what the hell's happening to this place." he softly murmured.
January 2011
"So. Tea huh? That's funny, because I know you don't usually call people into your office for tea and chit chat. At least, not with me."
Wright and Davies stared across the table at each other.
"I just wanted to have an informal talk, is all."
"Right. About what? Or I can guess, I suppose."
Davies narrowed her eyes, fixing a soft but steely gaze on the other woman. "I imagine that you can."
"Okay, look. Stop you right there then. It's not my job to be her fucking friend."
"No, I agree, that's not what we pay you for. But it's not in your job description to make her time here needlessly unpleasant either."
"Someone has to keep her in line. That's what Martinet told me. I'm just following orders. Ma'am. Like a good team player." Wright leaned in and murmured, "Not all of us are allowed to get away with pushing buttons."
Davies did her best to ignore the remark, at least for now. She wasn't blind. She'd sensed that Wright had it in for Max since day one, and even she couldn't figure out why.
"Nicole, I don't get it. This isn't quite...you."
Wright shrugged. Glanced one side, then the other. Put down her cup of tea, and said, "Right. Fine. You want an explanation?"
She nodded "One would be nice."
Wright threw up her hands. "I don't know why! There. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I just...can't stand to be in the same room with her. It's instinctive. Kid sets my teeth on edge. Sound of her voice, the way she used to try and get on my good side, and now the way she keeps trying to antagonize me. Just...all of it. It's like God's declared that we're not going to be buddies, and you don't fight the Man Above."
Leaning back, and screwing up her face into a small scowl, she continued, "Who knows. I'm a Null, and she's...probably the biggest damn Active on the block now. Probably would have caused an Incident if we hadn't taken her away from her home. I don't claim to know how all this shit works with our powers, that's supposed to be what you're trying to figure out. But I'm telling you...it's like magnets you know. Pushing each other apart. So that's my explanation, like it or not. At least until I can put my finger on it better. I just think it's going to end bad is all. Can feel that down in my bones."
Davies didn't respond, not at first. She busied herself, plucking a couple of sugar cubes, and stirred them into her cup of darjeeling. Added a bit of milk. Went to the trouble to slowly spread a dollop of clotted cream on her scone. Took a tiny bite, chewed and swallowed.
"We reap as we sow, Nicole. Sometimes we fly into the flame, swearing blind we're trying to avoid it. Think on that, won't you?"
Wright started to rise to her feet. "Yeah. I suppose I just might." She reached out, snagging a scone for herself, taking a vicious bite out of it as she started to depart. "Thanks for tea."
May 2011
"Twenty-five whores in the room next door
Twenty-five floors and I need more
I'm looking for a can in the candy store
Two thousand Hamburg four"
Camilla couldn't help but smile to herself as she watched Max go through her Thai kickboxing routine, the sound of Sisters of Mercy blaring out over the speakers built into the workout room. Clad in little more than a training top and lycra shorts, she had been at it for almost an hour; these sessions had become as much about working out her aggressions and frustrations as anything else, deprived as she was of the usual teenage social and hormonal outlets. It had become as much of a dance as a training exercise, Max jumping around on the mats and bobbing her head in time with the pounding drumline.
She closed her eyes and gave a soft sigh, a flood of memories rushing up to greet her. She was almost exactly Max's age when this album came out. Not long past her own Emergence, and trying to find her way in the world.
Except Task Force Excalibur gave me all the tools and resources I could ever want or need to reach my full potential. And they didn't destroy my vital adolescent years while doing it, either.
"You've done some really amazing work with her, Alanna. She's progressed much faster than I would have expected."
Rodriguez was leaning against the glass as she looked out at her pupil. "Yeah. She's pretty crazy awesome. She - ah - she cheats a little, you know? I think she sleeps and then rolls back so she can cram extra hours into the day to keep practicing. Combine that with not having any other time to do things other than train, and anyone who has the discipline can get that good."
A deep frown creased her face, as Camilla said, "I know. I've really tried to tell her that she can't go around burning the candle at both ends that way. She's already pushed her temporal discontinuity out six months; she's actually sixteen now, chronologically.
"Madre de Dios" Rodriguez breathed out. She turned around to address Davies directly. "You know, maybe if she felt like she had a little more to actually live for? Stop, slow down, smell the roses. When was the last time we actually let her out of the base? I've been putting in requests to take her out to Seattle. Or better yet, bring her back home for a week."
"With all due respect, we've made those options unattractive to her: they won't let her go outside without Nicole tailing her, and those two can barely tolerate each other at this point. As for Arcadia Bay, she's outright rebuffed any opportunities to let her go back, and I can't say I blame her. The poor girl feels like she's putting everyone she loves in jeopardy if she visits."
"Yeah," Rodriguez muttered darkly. "From us. Don't know what the hell Martinet's endgame is with all of this."
Before she could answer, Reese walked up, interrupting them both. Camilla turned and got a good look at him in the low light: there was a paleness to his complexion, a gauntness to his face that developed over the past few months.
Oh Reese. You came on board right at the turn of the millennium, during the old, true S.O.A.P. days. The organizational transition has clearly been the toughest on you.
"Hey ladies," he said, with a tired note in his voice, but still trying to keep up the front of good cheer. "I've got goodies! Can't believe they actually put a Starbucks franchise inside the base commissary, but hey...smoothies for everyone, right?
He started to hand out drinks, holding a fourth one in reserve, intended for Max, for when she finally emerged from the gym.
Reese paused, listening to the current music track, which had shifted over the past thirty seconds.
"Geezus, that's surreal, watching Max wail on a training dummy in time to...what is that? This Charming Man? Let me guess, you let her into your music collection on the media server?"
Camilla took a sip of her iced chai latte and snorted. "What makes you think it's mine? Just because The Smiths are British?"
"Because not only have I known you over a decade, Cammie, I've seen the actual pictures of you in your goth phase, circa 1992. Anything English and moody, that's all you." Reese gave a half-hearted smirk against the straw in his own drink.
Rodrigeuz's eyes bugged out, and she started to laugh. "Oh! Oh holy...shit, seriously? Damn, jefa! You have to show me sometime, I bet you looked amazing!"
Camilla looked sideways, and hmmmmed. "Perhaps when Halloween rolls around again? We could even push to have a party here at the base; I don't think we've done that sort of thing for at least six or seven years. It might help perk Max's spirits up, if just a little bit, don't you both think?"
"Yes! We have to do that! I've run out of makeup tricks to teach her. This might be the only time she actually gets to show them off."
Reese rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Good luck getting Director Giggles von Laughsalot to sign off on that."
Camilla turned to face him directly. "I can be extremely persuasive when need be, Meredith. You just watch. I'll go and talk to him in the morning. Plenty of time to work out the scheduling and logistics. Catering and...and we'll figure something out."
"Camilla, please. If you can pull that off, I'll get up on stage and willingly sing karaoke."
"Ugh! That's more like a punishment for us, than an embarrassment for you!" Rodriguez chimed, gently punching him in the shoulder.
Reese smirked. "It's why it's an easy bet to lose." Turning back to Max, he gave a low sigh and said. "Well, at least she's getting a decent musical education."
Camilla's lips tugged up in a firm smile. "On that, I must wholeheartedly concur. The music these kids listen to today is appallingly dreadful." She held out a playfully warning finger out in Rodriguez's face, before bopping her on the tip of her nose. The Latina woman was infamous for having a soft spot for Katy Perry and Maroon 5.
Reese stared out into the gym, past Max, out into space. Taking a long, pensive sip of his drink, he murmured, "Would be nice if we could be bothered to let her out of the cage, and have a chance make that decision for herself."
A/N: And lo, did the Heavens align, and make it Black Swan Saturday yet again! Lyta H. hammers out the words, and Cory 4. polishes them up until they sparkle! This week's episode is sponsored by Starbucks! Starbucks: For the day you finally say, "I've stopped giving a fuck about the coffee I drink!"
So I just finished up the draft of...oh gosh, chapter 13 or 14? I can't believe how big the buffer is right now. I'm actually thinking about putting out a Riotgrrls update next week, as well. Depends on the time. The initial plot synopsis is down, and that's always a big first step. But anyhow, Swan Chloe and Max have had what I think is a wonderful Monday - depending on your definition of the word. Can't wait to show it!
Oh, so hey! Shoutouts!
RED78910 has started on a new series, doing what he does best, which is making kickass original characters.
rowanred81 continues stealing the world's supply of words and putting them into All The Stories, All The Time.
NuQueerWarhead has come out with an awesome new story, which you should go and check out now! She also helped pick out a couple of glaring typos so double points to her House! :-D
And finally, I want to say hi to PriestessAmy. I don't think she reads Black Swan, but she's read some of my other stuff, and has been writing some great stories as of late, herself. So check it out.
See you kids next week! Same Swan time, same Swan channel!
