Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel so don't sue me. Thanks. :-)

A/N: Oh my gosh, y'all are awesome! So sorry that this update is late, but I'll let you in on a secret. Part 3 of this Trilogy is already almost completely FINISHED! It'll be updated on a regular basis, every Monday and Friday, after this story is up. The last part of this story will be posted tomorrow. Sorry to keep all you loyals waiting!

Ex Multus Familia: Part 2

Chapter 25

Dalton sighed as he stared into the lukewarm depths of the empty fridge. The only stuff less was unspeakably old, and he was afraid that if he took it out of the cold temperature that it would instantly release a poisonous gas that would then proceed to finish off the job that the Cultural Center bombing had started: namely, kill him.

Trust his roommate, Swiss, not to feel any sympathy whatsoever for the fact that Dalton had just gone through a major traumatic experience.

He rubbed his aching ribs; a few broke ones hadn't exactly been a pleasant experience, not to mention the concussion from being flung against cement, and the tiny little cuts all over his face that were still visible as scars right now.

"Damn it, Swiss." He shut the refrigerator door violently. He did not feel like walking all the way to either Gem or Robin's place to beg for food.

"Um, should I come back another time?" Dalton whipped around at the familiar female voice, and found himself looking at Anica, who was watching him with a half-amused expression on her face. And she was carrying a saran-wrapped tray….

"Is that food?" he asked eagerly.

"Teenage boys are so predictable," Anica said, rolling her eyes. But she held out the plate. "But here, I made up a bunch of different sandwiches. I had a feeling you guys wouldn't have much to eat with you gone so long and Swiss staying over at Ida's place a lot."

"So that's why there's no food." Dalton hungrily tore into one of the sandwiches. He was definitely going to need a new roomie. Maybe Twizzler would want to share, even though they had different designations?

After he'd stuffed most of one into his stomach and less than a minute, he gave a sigh of pure bliss. "Anica, these are amazing. You're the best."

"Glad they were well-received." Anica smiled at him, but it was a slightly funny smile. She reached up towards his face, than stopped. "May I?" she asked.

"Errr…sure," Dalton said, realizing what she wanted. He couldn't begrudge the woman who brought him food.

Anica's hand glided lightly over his scars, her fingertips barely touching his skin like the lightest of kisses. Dalton felt himself shiver involuntarily, and he was suddenly caught up in looking at her dark eyes, wondering what she thought of this cut-up version of him.

"Very dashing," she said, giving him a half-smile as she lowered her arm.

"Yeah, that was the look I was going for." His laugh sounded strained, even to his own ears. Suddenly, on what he later considered with some pride a very Alec-like impulse, he caught Anica's fingers in his own and pulled her closer to him.

Very thankful that he'd managed to swallow those last two bites of sandwich before deciding to act on random impulses, Dalton leaned in and kissed her once, quickly. He felt himself go bright red as soon as that was done. Smooth Alec moment definitely over.

"Um…. Yeah, so thanks," he said, quickly looking around for the plate of sandwiches that he'd set somewhere on the counter.

Anica stood beside the counter, fiddling with her thumbs in her belt loops and an uncertain look on her face. "I didn't know that's how you were supposed to say thank you."

Dalton crammed a sandwich into his mouth and shrugged, using the excuse of having a full mouth in order to not embarrass himself further.

Anica slid around the corner of the counter, her eyes darting around to look at the room. "Nice place."

"Pig sty," he grumbled after swallowing the mouthful of sandwich, "Cleaner before…" He let his voice trail off and then he smirked. "Yeah, actually, it was never cleaner."

Anica laughed and shook her head. "Somehow, I can believe that."

They stood there for a moment, and Dalton tried not to stare at her. he couldn't believe that she was actually standing in his apartment, and that he had kissed her and she hadn't run away then and she was still standing there. Maybe there was some truth to that whole scar-face appeal.

"You know," Anica said slowly, turning towards him, "When the news came in that the Cultural Center had collapsed, I was worried about you."

Dalton nearly choked on the sandwich he had just bit into. He coughed violently and grabbed a glass of water that Anica handed him, her face betraying the fact that she was trying to hide a grin. "Y-you did?" he stammered, forgetting that he should have been smooth.

"Well, yeah," she said. She leaned back against the counter. "I mean, we thought everyone in there was dead at first. The whole building was gone, or at least most of it was."

Dalton grimaced. "I know." He had seen the ruins a couple days ago when he had tried to join the clean-up crew. Everyone had yelled at him to go home until Gem had shown up to forcefully drag him back to his apartment, but he still remembered the complete destruction he had seen.

It was amazing that anyone had survived, but they had been saved by the extremely strong support systems that ran throughout the entire building and especially the first floor, where most of the survivors had been. Luckily it hadn't been a busy day at the Cultural Center, so there wasn't an enormous amount of casualties, but the ones who had died were still remembered. Terminal City didn't forget their dead.

"I think I knew you'd survive somehow," Anica said. He realized that she was closer now, pressed right up against his side even though she still somehow wasn't touching him. "You always make it through…"

"I'm good like that," he joked, his scarred face twitching into a smirk.

"I know it seems like I don't care sometimes…"

"We're all like that," Dalton said, shrugging. Where they came from, you couldn't care, it was that simple. Not when who you cared about could drop dead from some internal disorder or be shot at random or die on the practice field.

"But not you." Anica reached up and brushed her hand over his cheek again, letting her hand linger there. "You always seem to care, even if it's something trivial. You didn't let them beat it out of you."

"I guess I was just too stupid," Dalton said, attempting to smile.

Suddenly she was kissing him again, her hands grabbing his arms gently and pulling them so he was hugging her. She was careful, probably because of his injuries, but hell, she was still kissing him! Anica was kissing him, what was this wonderful world he had suddenly entered? His found his hands moving on their on, threading into her hair and resting on the small of her back.

When they broke apart, Anica smiled up at him. "If you were stupid, then I'm glad for it. It's my favorite part about you."

"What?" he said, slightly teasing, "My stupidity?"

"Well, that too," she said, attempting to joke even as she kissed him again.

As he kissed her, Dalton had an amusing thought. If took a building falling on him to get her to kiss him, what painful event would it take to get her to have sex with him? The kiss deepened.

Ah, machine gun toting warrior Familiars, here I come!

Max sat back in her chair, her hands pressed to her temples. This was the first time since the Cultural Center had been bombed that she had been in her office alone. It seemed like for the past couple of weeks that someone was always there to tell her that the press wanted some more 'official statements' or Kenton was here to bother her or that someone else had died from injuries sustained from the bombing. And Logan wouldn't leave her side. He seemed to think that he always needed to be with her, that she might collapse into despair if he wasn't at her side. Truthfully, that might have really been the case at first, but now she just wanted to be by herself.

What was she supposed to do now?

Terminal City was recovering from the bomb with the help of the government and some Ordinaries who just didn't think what had happened to the mutants was right. It was slightly reassuring to see that some of the humans were on their side, but it also reminded Max that it was humans who had done this in the first place. People were injured and dead because of humans…and she could have prevented it.

Why hadn't she just sent Everett and some others in to kill the leaders when she had the chance? It would've been so simple and it had been a possibility from the start; go in, cut the organization off at the head, let it die quickly. It was the best option, and one she should've taken, but she hadn't wanted any Ordinaries to be killed, even though they were threatening her city and her people. She had wanted to show them that they didn't have to fight, that the transgenics weren't there to hurt them; all the transgenics wanted was somewhere to live peacefully.

She had been stupid not to realize that something big was going to go wrong, but she had never thought they would be able to bomb something, especially not something inside of Terminal City. It seemed that they had been able to bribe one of the gate guards into letting a couple of them in during the dead of night and then driving to the Cultural Center. One of her first agreements with the suits after the bombing had been that Terminal City was going to guard itself; no more outside government guards.

One of the bonuses of that was that since the government could no longer hold up that part of the bargain, they'd agreed to let the transgenics pick and choose which missions they did for the government. That would give them a little more freedom, and make most of the transgenics happier. They'd still want the jobs, but they wouldn't have to do them if no one wanted to.

Max sighed as she stared at the plans for the new proposed Cultural Center. It was in a new site, and a lot more levels were underground. She hated that, and she hated the fact that they had to guard themselves and prepare for being bombed and just act like they were in a war in general.

She pushed the plans aside and looked at the paper clipping the public affairs office had brought her. She still couldn't believe they had a public affairs office, but they really did. After last week some of the X6s and a couple X5s had asked to make one. They weren't sure what they could do yet, but they were doing research on it and keeping up on public opinion of the transgenics. It was kind of nice to have them around, actually. And it kept a few more transgenics happy and busy.

Maybe they really should consider establishing different office branches, becoming more organized, so that things could get done without Max having to direct them all the time. It was sorted of headed in that direction already, but at the moment it was much more informal, with her asking whoever she thought could do the job to do it, or some person who thought they could do it volunteering for it. It'd be helpful if people just knew what jobs they should do.

Max made a note of that on her computer, then looked back at the newspaper clippings, even as she heard footsteps approaching the door. Rather loud, it had to be Logan again.

"You work too much."

Max continued reading the article with half her attention; it was currently siding with the transgenics a bit after the whole bombing thing. Unlike the previous one that had decided that the bombing was a transgenic plan to get sympathy.

"Don't have much of a choice," she said.

He moved in and gently pulled the article from her hands. She looked up at them. "Max, really, you don't have to do all this, all the time."

"Well, look what happened when I got lazy," Max said, gesturing at the clippings. They all showed the rubble of the Cultural Center.

She looked away so Logan wouldn't see her tears. "If I had paid more attention, maybe people like Mona wouldn't have died."

Logan sat down on the desk and moved a strand of her hair behind her ears. "It would've happened somehow, or something equally disastrous would've occurred. And some good has come of it. In a sense, the transgenics are freer."

He paused and looked at the articles, considering. "You can't go back and change what's happened yet."

Max rolled her eyes at him and he smirked slightly, "Manticore didn't get as far as inventing a time machine. But… you can prepare for future events, and you can learn from what happened. Maybe having to do that sucks, but it's better than pretending that there's not a threat out there. Look what pretending got America; we never saw the Pulse coming."

Max sighed. "As usual, you're right." She turned back to face him and gave him a slightly wavering smile. "They should have used some of your genes when they made us."

Logan laughed and raised his eyebrows at Max. "Yeah, and how awkward would that have been?"

"Very true," Max admitted.

"And anyways, think how much more of a headache TC would be if everyone here was an idealist like me?"

Max snorted. "I really don't want to imagine."

Logan shrugged. "So we'll get through it. People will get hurt, but that's life. Andin the mean time…" Logan tapped the government correspondence that was lying next to the newspaper clippings, "let's milk the government while they're feeling guilty."

Max leaned back in her chair and looked at Logan. "Speaking of government…"

"Our deep cover team?" he asked, immediately jumping to the right conclusion.

Max nodded. "They've found a few, but they're waiting it out yet because they're pretty sure they haven't discovered who's in charge yet.

"And without the key player, it won't matter." Logan nodded and looked away, obviously going into one of his though-trances.

"Logan…" Max hesitated, drawing invisible circles on the desk.

It took a moment for Logan to come out of whatever plans he was making. "Hmmm?" he asked, looking at her with a slightly still unfocused expression. Oh, Logan. He loved planning more than anything.

"When it comes time…" She stopped and bit her lip. She hated admitting to any weakness, but this recent incident with the Cultural Center had forced her to face at least what was probably her biggest weakness.

"I can't continue to be the leader, Logan. You have to help me find someone else… help me set up a government system, anything. Because when it comes time to kill someone, when it has to be done, I can't do it. Not unless I have a deeply personal reason. I spent so much time avoiding that part of my past that I can't go back. And that's going to cripple us. I won't be able to give the order for the Familiars to be taken out, or the Telic leaders to be gotten rid of, because I just can't ask someone to do what I can't. And we need someone who's willing to make those decisions in charge. Or at least in charge of missions."

By the time she was done, Logan's attention was totally focused on her. He smiled a slow smile. "Somehow Max, you're always in the thick of things that you don't want to be in."

Max waited without saying anything, knowing that Logan wasn't done yet. He took one of her hands with one of his, and squeezed it.

"You don't need to be a killer Max. I love the fact that you are totally uncompromising when it comes to your morals, and for you the world is very much black and white. If you ever became a true killer, you would lose who you are, and then the others wouldn't follow you anyway." He pulled her out of her chair so that she was standing up, and then pulled her against his chest as he also stood up.

"We'll fix up a government system up, I promise. Starting first thing tomorrow." He chuckled. "After all, how could I pass up the chance to get more of you to myself?"

Max smiled and leaned her forehead against Logan's chest. Though she knew Logan had a deep, philosophical side to him, that side came out rarely in their conversations. It was nice to see that he hadn't lost it, and sort of sweet to see what he thought of her. She only hoped that he didn't think too highly of her. She still had Manticore in her, no matter what.

But Max had also been totally wrong. She did need him, even now, when she thought she couldn't bear anyone being with her. Logan brought sense to this crazy world that Max had found herself a part of, and despite the fact that he was a such an idealist, somehow he managed to keep her grounded.

"Love you," she murmured, kissing him softly.

Logan looked taken aback; they didn't say to each other very often at all, and almost never outside of their apartment. He smiled down at her and slipped his hand behind her head to bring her back for another kiss.

"I love you too. And we'll get through this. Promise."

Alec woke up to two things. His son was crying in the next room over, and his mate was already out of bed, shuffling towards the door. He could swear that somehow that woman knew when Aiden was going to start crying before the baby even knew. And Bean was a good crier. Too good, in fact.

"Hey, it's my turn," Alec said, pushing himself up from their rather comfortable bed.

Sidda turned around, her hand on the doorway, and smirked. "It was your turn last time...and the time before that. I think I can handle my own kid, Alec."

He slid out of bed and walked past her, running his fingertips carefully across the t-shirt material over her midsection where she had just gotten the stitches out today. "What was it Sibil said? Oh, yeah, 'take it easy, Sidda.'" Gently, he pushed her up against the doorway. "I know getting up and walking around the apartment with our baby about six times at night is your idea of taking it easy, but let me help, just a little."

Sidda smirked up at him. "How do you know this isn't all just a ploy to make you go get the baby so I can go back to sleep?"

"The thought came to mind," he said, "But then I remembered that you're just insane…"

"How loving," Sidda replied. She poked him in the chest and rolled her eyes before walking away down the hall toward Aiden's room. "Glad you respect me."

Alec followed after her, basically giving up on persuading her to go back to bed. When Sidda wanted to be ornery and contradictory, there was no stopping her and it was best to just let her get it out of her system. When he reached the baby room, Sidda was bending over the crib, scooping Aiden up and cradling him in her arms.

Leaning against the doorway, Alec couldn't help but smile at the simple but sweet tableau the two of them made. His petite mate was wearing one of his well-worn t-shirts, her dark blond hair ruffled and messy but catching the moonlight as she wandered toward the window. Her limp from the wound that had been left by the wooden stake was barely noticeable. In fact, it was most likely that he was the only one who could even tell she had it anymore. Bean stopped wailing immediately after she picked him up and only whimpered for a few moments.

"Guess you're just an attention-hog, not a hungry pig," Sidda told the newborn. She sunk down onto the soft, plushy couch and looked over at Alec. "He's asleep again."

Alec smirked and walked across the room. "He's manipulative. He wants you all for himself." He sat down on the couch and pulled her legs over onto his lap. "Too bad for him, I get you too."

"Hush, you," Sidda said even as she smiled at him, "He's just a baby."

"You're going to be saying that when he's twenty-something and doesn't even live here anymore," Alec said. He brushed his finger along the inside of her foot; she wasn't ticklish there, but he liked testing it every now and then.

"I hope we make it that long," Sidda said after a long stretch of silence.

Alec jerked his head up to look at her. She didn't seem depressed, just thoughtful. He squeezed her foot and threw a grin at her. "Hey, we're going to die old and grey and crabby, got it?"

Sidda glanced at him, her expression wry. "Oh, yeah, 'cause that's how you always wanted to go out."

"I damn well hope we're not fighting anyone when we're decrepit," Alec said. He yanked on her ankles and pulled her toward him, lifting her the rest of the way onto his lap. "And if I am, you won't be."

"Ooo, you gonna take my walker away?" Sidda teased. She was content just to know he wanted to keep her even when she was old and grey, if they lived that long. She kissed him on the jaw, her lips lingering there until she pressed them to his throat and then his collarbone. "I might have to hit you with your own cane if you do that."

Alec tightened his grip around her as she laid her head into the hollow of his neck. 'Oh, yeah, our apartment will be the geriatric battle ground."

"To arms, Grandpa," Sidda mumbled sleepily.

"I'll watch my hunched-over back," Alec said. He snorted and kissed Sidda's cheek while reaching over to rub his thumb along Bean's tiny hand. Right now, he was just happy that his little family, both of them, was alive and strong and safe.