Hello everyone! Welcome to the fourth and final installment of this series. I would like to thank everyone who read and reviewed my first three stories, I am just eight reviews short of the hundred mark on my last story (hint, hint). This first chapter starts out slow and sad, but I swear on my typing fingers that it will pick up by chapter three. I'm sorry that the story is so delayed, but I'm in finals, and also a gorgeous blue-eyed boy asked me a courtin and put a huge anti-angst smile on my face. Thank you everyone for your support. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Dark Angel, that belongs to Cameron Eglee.
Recap: Please read the first three stories first, for the plot twists and turns mightily. At the end of Under a Dark Blue Sky, Max gets pregnant, everyone gets a tropical vacation that takes a deadly turn, the hostages are rescued at a high cost, and oh yeah and a dead body is found and causes much crying and carrying on.
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"How long has she been like that?" Joshua shakes his head softly at Kate and tugs her out of the room. I guess it isn't polite for them to talk about my condition in front of me. I dip my left forefinger into a green paint cup and dot the color smoothly along the lower edge of the painting. Josh thought it might be therapeutic for me to try painting, to do something other than sit there and stare at the walls.
It's been two short days since we've flown back from the island, a couple of days which have lasted an eternity. Noises grate on my nerves, infuriate me. I don't understand how the world goes on outside when it should have come crashing down with him. How can the children be playing on the dirty green outside, how can others be laughing and talking, I don't understand how the sun can even shine in the mornings.
The funeral is tomorrow. Joshua broke the news to me in his own half-stuttering, half-apologetic puppy voice that somehow wasn't comforting enough for once. My skin feels flayed and swollen from the crying, and now I have a new reason for anger because this morning the tears dried up and all I've been able to produce are sickly, wrenching, dry sobs. I wish in vain for great storm clouds to come rolling over the sky and torrential downpours to wash the earth, but it seems that the sky too has dried up.
"You have a visitor Max." Kate's voice is back to the same firmly reassuring tone that it carried before, not like it was in the moment she told me to say goodbye. I force myself to look up at them, resenting the intrusion on my solitude.
"Thanks." My voice doesn't sound usual at all. It rasps like the hinges of an unused door, and breaks at the edges like frayed flesh. Red, the painting needs more red in it, like a raw cut. I dip two fingers in the red paint and begin smearing it in large trails across the center of the canvas.
"Don't you want to know who it is Max?" She knows that she's taking a risk prodding at me, that I'll probably turn my back on her and return to the painting. Unfortunately she doesn't seem inclined to leave me alone until I show some sign of interest. Drying my hands slowly on a towel I swivel the low stool so that I'm looking at Kate and Joshua.
"Hey Boo. You ain't got time for an old girl?" Cindy looks smaller than I remember, allowing Sketchy the liberty of having his arm around her shoulders. The goofball's face looks grimmer than usual, his face rigidly set and his eyes downcast. I don't remember standing up from the seat, but the next thing I know I'm engulfed in a tangle of arms and bushy hair, mostly Sketchy's, and tears stream down my face, suddenly released again from the font of my eyes.
"I couldn't stop it, oh my god, I wasn't even there when it happened."
"It's gonna be okay Boo, we here for you, gonna be okay."
"I never even told him about the baby. I was so stupid, I thought I had all the time in the world, and he didn't get to know about his daughter just because I was to scared to say anything."
"He loved you girl, that's more than most of us be having in this life. You got to have a love of your life that loved you back, and cared about you, and would have given anything to see to it that you alright now after he ain't here to protect you."
"I'm really sorry Max." Seeing the sincerity in Sketchy's eyes which is usually missing in his day to day screw ups, just makes me bawl even harder. "When Normal heard the news he closed up the business for the day, I haven't seen him look this bad since Seattle went Democrat." He surprises a strangled laugh out of me which results in strong waves of nausea roiling up from my stomach. Every day the baby makes its presence known. It connects somewhere deep inside of me, like a lifeline to something that has been lost.
"Let the girl sit down fool, super soldiers in a family way still got to get their rest." They each take me by the arm and guide me to one of Joshua's dilapidated couches in the corner.
"I don't know if I can do this O.C., not without him, not by myself." She gently strokes the lank strands of hair off my forehead and takes both of my hands in hers.
"You being silly girl. You sure as hell ain't alone in this. Not only have you got me and this fool, but you got dog boy and CeCe and Kate, and a whole lot of other people waiting to help you."