Missed Cues

Summary: Tragedy strikes Terminal City, leaving Alec and Max with no one to fall back on but each other.

Pardon the delay. Life does tend to sneak up and bite us in the butt sometimes, doesn't it? So, on we go. As I recall, Max and Alec weren't having a great day either…

Chapter Ten

Max fought her way free of the haze surrounding her only to find that, either she was blind, or she was still in the dark. She heard the rumble of a heavy truck and it took her foggy mind a few extra seconds and a jolt from the ground beneath her to realize it was because she was inside one. If she had to guess, she'd say she was in the back of the box truck that had helped run them off the road.

Once she figured out where she was, Max paused to take stock of her own body. To say she was in pain would be an understatement. White had damaged something when he'd punched her. Whatever had been healing was now reinjured, and very likely made worse. She placed her hand over the wound and wasn't relieved at the lack of blood. It just meant the damage was internal and she was in a boatload of trouble, or a truckload as the case may be.

The truck smelled like old fruit and Max guessed it normally carried produce. Beyond that, however, was the smell of blood. Too much blood.

"Alec?" There was no response. "Alec," she tried again, louder. Still nothing.

Max rolled onto her side and was unable to stifle a groan. She heard the faint tinkle of glass as it fell from her hair and clothes, tiny pinpricks of pain flaming to life where it had cut her. She could feel a patch of blood on her cheek, dried in a sticky line back to her ear and into her hair.

Max struggled to her knees, biting her lip to keep from crying out. She didn't know how much of it was damage from the car accident and how much from White's well placed blow to her side, but, more importantly, Max wasn't sure how long she was going to make it without some real medical help.

Max braced herself against the truck's movement as best she could and reached out around her in the darkness. When she didn't encounter anything, she moved forward, still reaching out, and repeated the process until finally, she bumped into something.

Max moved closer and used her hands to tell her what her eyes couldn't. She'd found an arm. She quickly set a hand on the body and realized it was Alec, lying on his stomach. She knew it wasn't his chest because she could feel the jagged shards of glass stabbing into his skin. She moved upward and held her hand close to his face. She nearly wept in relief when she felt the warm tickle of Alec's breath cross her palm. Not another body. She didn't know if her sanity could handle another body, not of someone she cared about.

Max set her hand on his cheek and patted it. "Alec?" When there was no response, she slid her fingers into his hair searching for injuries. Almost immediately, she felt the knot, blood still oozing from it and she remembered seeing the blood on his face as he remained suspended in his seatbelt.

"You picked a great time to check out, you jerk. I could really use some help right now."

"Sry," Alec slurred, and Max jumped. "Tryin'."

"Alec?"

Alec sucked in a wheezing, shuddering breath. Max couldn't see it, but she felt the pain of his effort to breathe ripple through his body.

"Can you... not... poke... head?" Alec asked.

She immediately withdrew her hand from his hair.

"M'I blind?" he asked.

"We're locked in the back of the truck." The effort of remaining on her knees was becoming too much and Max eased onto her side, hissing at the contact with the jittering truck. The position put too much pressure on her wound and she rolled to her back.

The sound of Max's distress apparently did more to rouse him than poking at his injuries. "Y'ok?" he asked, sounding far more awake.

"Probably not," she said through gritted teeth.

She felt Alec move closer to her, grunting through his own efforts. "S'wrong?"

"White. Sucker punched me."

Max's heart skipped a beat when she felt Alec's hand slide across her torso to settle very close to where the bullet had entered. His trembling fingers searched just as hers had for blood. She knew the exact moment when it dawned on him that there was none and what that meant. His hand stilled and then flattened against her side, defeated. "Can't catch a break, can we?"

"Looks like you might have to be the white knight in the story after all," she said tightly, a sharp pain making her let out a sound that she was embarrassed to admit was close to a sob.

"Easy," he murmured. "Easy." Alec settled close to her side, a soothing warmth beside her from head to foot. His hand left her wound and traveled upward, gliding over her chest until it came to rest at her throat. He wrapped his warm fingers around her neck, his thumb brushing across her cheek. He rested his forehead against her temple, his nose just skimming over her skin. "It's ok, Maxie. Just hold on, ok?"

All she could do was nod. She honestly didn't know whether she wanted to scream or cry. She was hurting so badly and, once again, the man she'd hoped to be part of her future wasn't there. It was as if the universe was determined to beat her over the head with it until she finally got a clue. Like it always seemed to be, it wasn't Logan, but Alec at her side. Always touching her, always comforting her, helping her. Always there.

The two men were as different as cats and dogs, literally. Logan was loyal, steadfast, always eager to see her even when she'd been rude to him. He followed trails and helped when he could, was proud when he was able to do some good.

Alec was all feline DNA. Like any cat, he was both standoffish and demanding of attention, pushing himself right in her face to get her to notice him, touch him, albeit without her ever really getting to know the real him. When she refused to play along, it was Alec who elbowed her, patted her on the back, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. Max couldn't really be sure, but he seemed to despise the world at large, yet he seemed attached to a certain few, and was fond of the comforts the world could afford him.

Logan had accepted her limits. He'd acknowledged and worked with her barriers. Either Alec didn't accept them, didn't care, or simply enjoyed ignoring them. She had a feeling it was a little of all three.

And now, with Alec lying quietly beside her, she was struck once again by what she'd somehow ignored. She'd teased him and smacked him around and rolled her eyes at his womanizing. She'd flat out told him to leave and called him every awful thing she could, but always, always, she was the one he came back to again and again.

Maybe it was the other way around and Logan was the cat. Logan had such expectations of her, and he was so disappointed when she didn't quite meet them. Alec had no real expectations. Nothing had ever gone his way, not since birth, unless he made it happen somehow. He knew the odds were against him and he just accepted what was available and made the best of it. He didn't expect anything different of her. He just assumed she was trudging along, doing the best she could like the rest of them, and Alec kept trudging along with her.

Logan wanted her to be a person with a higher calling and Max wanted to be noble, she did. Helping the downtrodden was right up her alley. She knew, however, that she couldn't really afford to have a higher calling. Logan never would have accepted what had happened at Morton's office, but they'd had to act. Questionable methods or not, all Max could do was try to keep as many of her fellow transgenics alive as she could. Alec understood that and accepted the ugliness that was sometimes necessary in their lives. He didn't try to make her live up to a higher standard. He stood at her side in the dirt and mud of the trenches. Alec just wanted to be around her, period, and in that sense, Alec was a much easier companion.

Max placed a hand on his arm where it was resting against her chest. "You know I'm gonna kill you for groping me, right?"

Alec laughed, immediately followed by a gasp. "Ouch."

"You ok?"

"Not so much," he answered, obviously hurting. "Can we just lay here... die in peace... please?"

"Kinda hoping not to die," Max answered.

Alec sighed, his nose gliding over her cheek again in a deliberate movement. "Knew you were gonna say that." He drew away from her slowly. "You think you can get some of this glass out of my back?"

"Sure," Max answered, hoping it was true. She didn't know how long she was going to be conscious, let alone mobile.

"I can tell it's trying to heal, but the bigger pieces are keeping the skin open," he added. It was not an uncommon problem with transgenics. Their accelerated healing meant wounds could heal things too quickly for a doctor to get to the heart of the problem.

Alec groaned as he shifted back onto his stomach and Max gave an answering groan as she tried to sit up.

"You know," Alec said breathlessly, "if we weren't dying, this would be the sexiest sounding time we've ever spent together. Whispers in the dark… heavy breathing… moaning…"

Max sniffed contemptuously. "Please."

"Begging…"

"Alec."

"Calling my name…"

"You want me to hit you?"

"Not really my idea of a fun time," he said, and she could hear the amusement in his voice. "Kind of a mood killer. Always preferred more of a snuggle-bunny, myself."

Max rolled her eyes even though he couldn't see it. "Just shut up, Alec." She sat as close to him as she could and reached out to let her fingers roam across his back. Almost immediately, she bumped a piece of glass and it shifted.

Alec hissed. "Maybe I wasn't… specific enough. Glass out… not in, ok?"

"Sorry," Max said, progressing more carefully, although the movement of the truck was making it nearly impossible.

Alec remained silent as she worked, but she could feel the muscles in the arm that she was pressed against tensing and relaxing as he tried to remain silent through the process. It only took a minute or so to pull out the shards that she could find, but by the end of it her hands were still covered in blood and the scent of it was almost suffocating in the confined space.

"Done," she said, her fingers gliding across his torn dress shirt one last time to ensure she hadn't missed anything.

"Now look who's doing the groping, huh, Maxie? Wondered when you'd get around to it," Alec said, but his voice was tight and she could tell he was just trying to keep up her expectations of him as her favorite perv.

"One, I can put the glass right back in, and two, like I told you before, you should really use that mouth for something more useful," Max shot back. She'd been leaning over too long and her abdomen hurt so badly she thought she might throw up. She sat back and propped her hands behind her, then slid them outward so she could ease herself back to the floor.

"And I told you," Alec said, grunting as he sat up, "I use it for all kinds of useful things. I promise to show you some time."

She heard him moving away from her toward the end of the truck. She wished she could help him with whatever he was up to, but didn't have the energy to do more than lie there.

The truck hit a hole in the road and, without warning, Max bounced up off the bed of the truck and slammed back down. Starting at her stomach, pain rippled outward in a wave. Max distantly wondered how she would know if she passed out, since she was already in the dark.

Alec had been stabbed before, occupational hazard for your friendly neighborhood assassin, genetically altered con man, and thief. He'd never really cared for it, but it had been easy enough to deal with the times it had happened.

This, however… His back was like a thousand little pinpoints of agony, little daggers just beneath his skin, digging in, shifting, stabbing every time he so much as twitched. He'd been shot before and it hadn't hurt this bad. Max had removed the larger pieces, but it had been too late for the smaller ones. His skin had already closed over them and they were going to be in there, scraping him raw from the inside out until someone dug them out or his body eventually managed to expel them. Either way, fun times ahead, and either way, he was too messed up to get the doors to the truck open.

He'd tried to give them an exit, but it just wasn't happening. He was pretty sure he'd passed out at one point, but then concussions were funny that way. In the dark, and with the truck moving, he just couldn't quite get himself together enough to pry the doors open. Alec didn't know how much damage he'd done to his head in the accident, but his brain was close to shutting down whether he liked it or not, and beating himself against the doors wasn't helping the situation. He was pretty sure the steering wheel had left a nice imprint across his chest and it was running neck and neck with his glass encrusted back right now. In short, they were stuck until Alec got himself together or White decided to let them out.

Alec wanted to scream he was so frustrated. Max was dying. He had no doubt. On top of her injuries from the accident, whatever White had done was serious and Max was fading fast. Unfortunately, she had no one to rely on but a guy who couldn't even manage to stand up straight right now.

The truck hit another pothole knocking Alec off his feet and sending him crashing into the side of the truck where he quickly slithered to the floor. He heard Max thump back down after a hard bounce, followed by an agonized whimper.

Alec ignored his body's demands not to move again and managed to sit up against the side of the truck. He reached out and pulled Max to him. He settled her between his legs, her back against his chest, and his arms wrapped around her, keeping her sagging form close to him. It wasn't much, but it would give her some cushion from the rough bouncing of the truck. The pressure on his cracked ribs wasn't doing him any favors, but then he wasn't dying. He had to worry about her first.

"Max?" he asked, his mouth close to her ear.

She groaned again, but roused herself enough to shift slightly in his arms. "Yeah," she wheezed out.

"I can't… get the door open," he said, winded, ignoring that the truck wall was digging into his back. "I'm sorry." And he really was. There was nothing he would like more than to get Max out of this truck, followed closely by gutting White like a fish. He wished like anything for a cell phone, but either he'd lost his in the crash, or White's people had taken it.

"S'ok. Not doin' such a great job myself," she answered, slurring badly.

Alec chuckled, and immediately saw a starburst of colors in front of his eyes, despite the darkness. He had no doubt, that if the lights were to suddenly come on, he would be seeing quite a few of everything.

Time seemed to drift and they remained silent, although Alec knew Max was awake. If either one of them began to nod off, the jostling of the truck on the crappy roads ensured that they were painfully reminded of how bad their situation was. He tried to protect her as best he could from the worst of the bumps, but it was a poor job of it. Alec was barely conscious himself. The only thing that kept him focused was that he could almost feel Max slipping away. She wasn't even bothering to brace against the movement of the truck anymore, perhaps couldn't.

Max shifted and Alec involuntarily tightened his hold. "Max?" She didn't answer and Alec's heart was suddenly in his throat. "Max, what is it?"

"You think I deserve this?" Max asked, barely audible above the sound of the truck.

He leaned his head forward so that his mouth was close to her ear. "Deserve what?" he asked just as quietly.

"I let… I let Logan die because I was too busy. I let half our people die."

"So you deserve to die in the back of a fruit truck?" Alec asked incredulously. "I don't know about you, but I don't think anybody deserves to die in the back of a fruit truck. I know I'll never be able to smell bananas again without wanting to hurl."

"Alec," she said, almost a sob.

"No, Max," Alec answered seriously. He brushed a hand over her hair. "You don't deserve this. You try and you try to help every one of us… even when we're not worth helping. Logan died because we were trying to help people, and we didn't get to him in time. That's all. It was bad luck. It happens." Max's head thumped back, resting heavily in the crook of his neck and shoulder. "Thanks to Logan, instead of all of us dying that day, half of us got out. We're grateful we met you, Max, not sorry."

"They're still dead," she whispered. "And we're still gonna die here."

"And half of the transgenics are still out there somewhere, alive. You did that. I never thought I'd say this, but… sometimes a moral victory is gonna have to do."

Max huffed out a light laugh, wincing at the pain it caused. "Didn't know you knew that word."

"Moral?" Alec put all of his amusement into his voice to be sure Max heard it. "Just you rubbing off on me again, Maxie."

"Alec?"

"Yeah."

"I'm glad it's you."

"Me?"

"Logan… He couldn't have done this," she said, like it was a terrible thing she was admitting. "Morton and… the crash… He wouldn't have survived, and… even if he had… ever since the virus… when we were alone, it was… awkward…"

"Max-"

"No, it's ok," she cut him off. "I love… loved him. It's just you… some things are easier with you."

Alec was silent for several moments trying to work out what he wanted to say, trying to decide if this was even the time and place to say anything. Ever since that moment when Max came out with her new hair and her new clothes and Alec had really looked at her, it was like a lightning bolt had struck, illuminating things he'd never seen before.

Sure, Max was good looking. He'd always acknowledged it in an academic sort of way, but at that moment, it had suddenly become something different. He'd looked and he'd seen a beautiful woman who was more than a co-worker or co-conspirator, or fellow transgenic, more even than a friend who put up with his schemes and his wisecracks. She was all of those things, and so much more. He'd seen Max, and she was a glorious sight to behold.

"I don't need you to say anything," she whispered, sensing his confusion.

"What do you need?" Alec barely managed to force out.

"Just stay with me," she said, noticeably weaker. To the end. The last words hung in the air unspoken.

"I can do that," Alec answered, tilting his head slightly to lean more heavily against hers.

They were both dead and they knew it. Alec doubted he could stand, let alone fight and Max, something was seriously wrong with her. They were caught. They couldn't fight. It was done.

The truck started to slow, and Alec recognized the sounds of a city outside. After several stops and starts, which he guessed were checkpoints, the vehicle came to a halt and they heard the locks on the back of the truck being removed.

The doors flew wide, blinding them with the sudden influx of light. Alec lifted an arm to shield his eyes from the brain-searing glare, but the movement pulled at his chest and back and he couldn't hold back a surprised gasp. Max, too, had tried to move, and he could tell, just from the way she held herself against him that the results had been disastrous.

Alec's eyes took several extra seconds to adjust, but finally he could see, sort of. He'd been right about the seeing-multiples problem. White was standing just outside the truck with several of his goons on either side of him. He was looking very pleased with himself and Alec wished that he could wipe the smile off White's faces, all of them.

"Get them out," White ordered. "And hurry. She looks like she's about to croak and 452 has work to do."

More soon…