Title: Breaking
Summary: Zack's deteriorating. Max isn't ready to let him go.
Rating: PG13.
Disclaimer: Cameron and Eglee.
Date: March 18, 19 2001.
Note: Woo hoo! My first Max/Zack pairing. It isn't exceptionally 'shippy, but it's there.
Max rounded the corner cautiously, body held ready for battle. She stopped, his name escaping her in a shocked hiss of air. Max hadn't expected to see Zack again, not after the barely suppressed anger she had felt coiled about him before he and Tinga had departed. Max stamped down on her happiness at seeing Zack -- as much as she cared for him, being with Zack could be agony for her. He couldn't understand the life she had created for herself in Seattle, and Max hated the tension that snapped between them because of that.
Zack sat on her bed, head bowed. A shiver of unease ran through Max when Zack remained motionless. Even amongst friends Zack always stood alert and ready. "Max," Zack greeted her. "I had wondered when you'd get back," he said, his voice utterly without censure. He sounded... muted, a dull white-washed version of the Zack she knew.
Her fingers absently brushed against the neck of her black vest. She had spent the last three hours skulking around and kicking ass for Logan, saving the world yet again. She doubted that Zack would care to hear that, even though Max was sure he had a pretty firm idea of why she had been out. She could still smell traces of other people's blood against herself. "Why are you here, Zack?" Max asked, and her voice came out sharper than she had intended.
"I need you, Max," Zack said and Max bit back a reply. He stood and Max caught sight of Zack's face for the first time that night.
Max took an unconscious step forward. "Zack," she breathed. "What's wrong?" She had _never_ seen such an expression on Zack's face. Anger, determination, worry, pride, quicksilver flashes of pain, never -- Max shied away from placing name to emotion, unable to equate Zack with fear even within the privacy of her own mind.
He smiled slightly, amused by her reaction. The twitch of his lips quickly smoothed back into a set line. He hooked his thumbs through the loops in his jeans, the motion drawing Max's attention to his finely trembling hands. Her eyes widened, jerking back up to search Zack's face. He shrugged and nodded once, slowly. "It's over, Max."
"No!" Max exploded, flying across the distance between them. "You _will_ not!"
Zack caught Max's wild hands by the wrists, held them still against his chest. "This isn't something that _either_ of us can fight, Max."
"You could--" Max began before savagely biting off the rest of her sentence. Zack wouldn't. Once Zack had chosen to break ties with Manticore, the separation had been complete and irreversible. No longer their creators, their teachers or superiors, Lydecker and the rest of Manticore were solely enemies. Max closed her eyes and let her head fall forward to rest against Zack's shoulder.
"I want you to look out for the others, Max. I know we haven't seen eye to eye on strategy in the past, but I think you're the only one who can--"
Max jerked back, pulling her hands free from Zack's light grip. "Don't you _dare_, Zack. I'm not going to have to play leader because I will _not_ let you die, do you hear me!" She was glaring at him, fists clenched at her sides as if simply daring him to disagree.
Zack snorted. "And how do you propose that we stop this, Max? Do you think I wouldn't be trying everything possible to stop this deterioration taking place inside of me if there _were_ anything? I don't want to leave the others to face Manticore alone. I don't want to leave you."
Max ducked her head, dark hair briefly obscuring her face. As was her custom whenever Zack said something that hinted as to the emotions he held for her, Max ignored his final few words. "Logan," Max exclaimed, studiously ignoring the tightening along Zack's jaw at the name of the other man. She was so not getting into all that territorial male bullshit. "He's been looking for me, Zack. Logan must have a line on some of the Manticore doctors. They'll fix you up right fine." Fierce and determined Max kept her narrowed eyes focused on Zack. 'This is one battle you aren't going to win, soldier,' Max thought, full lips narrowing into a tight line.
She nearly cried out in relief when Zack finally nodded.
...~*~...
Zack had spent his life being the strongest, fastest, the _best_. He had despised his Manticore trainers, even before he was truly old enough to know that life needn't be the hell it was within those grey walls. Despite those feelings, Zack had absorbed and clung to the lessons he had learned in his first nine years of life. Outside of Manticore for ten years, Zack still trained himself as arduously as had Lydecker. He refused to mellow, content in the superiority of his manufactured body. He ran, pumped weights, studied new and old fighting techniques alike and pitted his strategic skills in games against former military operatives.
Weakness was something which got you killed. Weakness was freezing to death, opening your mouth to a lung-full of water, tumbling from beams high in the air and screaming to the netless floor. He had grown up being trained to be strong and watching those judged inferior be led away, one by one, small bodies disappearing behind swinging doors. Weakness was not something Zack accepted in himself. Any hint of such a flaw as he perceived in himself, Zack attacked with fierce determination, resolved to defeat his own body or mind's imperfections.
He had never even been at ease with allowing his brothers and sisters to see any hint of weakness. They were under his command, and they needed to be able to depend on him. They needed to be able to trust his judgment and his body's ability to carry out the same tasks he was ordering them to fulfill. And he stood tense and silent in the luxurious home of the normal-strengthed, wheelchair bound man Max had put all of her trust into. The very thought grated at his nerves.
Max and Logan were at the computers, scrolling through every bit of information Logan had collected about Manticore and all related institutions and activities. Zack hadn't been tempted to join them. He had seen the grin on Logan's face when he saw Max and the woman's answering smile. It hadn't helped that Logan's smile had faded when he spotted Zack, or that Max's smile had been tight, nearly automatic and stripped of any real joyous emotions. Max was one weakness he couldn't best, no matter what action he had taken: hiding from her, approaching her, suffering through Logan's presence -- and still he ached with unwelcome but unshakable emotions.
Zack stood at the window, his body partially shielded behind the wall next to it. He still could hear the rise and fall of Logan's voice, Max's quick replies. He had known pain before, more than most people in all likelihood. It had been sharp, sudden physical pain -- never this steady, unseen pain that had settled into his head, behind his eyes, and into his aching muscles. He focused on the dispersed, constant throbbing, learning to endure and defeat this new form of suffering.
...~*~...
Max had hardly closed her eyes for half an hour before she heard Zack rise off the couch. Bare feet slapped against the floor as Zack moved towards the washroom. Max sat up in bed and lowered her feet to the floor. She ghosted through her home and stood in the opened bathroom door. Zack stood before the mirror, spat blood into the sink. He met her eyes in the mirror. "Go back to bed, Max."
She snorted at the order. "I think not. You ain't bossing me around in my own home, Zack." Max paused and shrugged. "I was awake, anyway." She wanted to ask if Zack was all right, but she didn't think that he would appreciate the inquiry, and it was a dumb question in any case. He was spiting blood, was _dying_ -- no fucking way could he answer with a truthful "fine." Max sometimes wished she was the kind of person who bought into meaningless reassurances.
Jeans were a real bitch to sleep in. When they got back from Logan's, Max had scrounged through the boxes of junk she had settled against a wall in the rear of the apartment. Triumphant, she had emerged with a pair of black sweatpants one of her former boyfriends had left in her apartment before her personality and lack of any real interest had driven him towards escape. Bare chested and bare footed, his hair tousled with sleep, Zack nearly looked like someone Max had brought home with her in one of her friskier moods. She banished that thought and took a deep, cleansing breath before abandoning her post in the bathroom doorway.
"Why'd you come to me?" Max asked, claiming the opposite end of the couch from Zack. She pulled her legs under her body, folding one slim arm atop the side of the couch.
Zack's legs were flung out before him, crossed at the ankles. His hands lay clasped against his stomach. It was a casual, comfortable pose. Zack was anything but. He lay his head against the back of the couch, his throat working as he swallowed. "Like I said, I figured you were the best one to take over if I don't make it. You're smart, Max. You're unpredictable." There was a slight undercurrent of bitterness running beneath his words, and Zack was left choking on the truth he knew Max didn't want to hear from him.
Max absently traced designs against the worn fabric of the couch with her glossed fingernails. "I knew that you were out there. I wondered what you were up to..." Max grinned suddenly, "I wondered how the poster-boy for control was doing loose in this fucked up world of ours." She paused, cast a quick glance in the direction of Zack's still face. "I missed you, you know. And I do appreciate all that you've done for us, Zack, don't think that I don't."
He didn't look at her. "Good night, Max."
What _was_ it with him! Max wondered. "What the hell crawled up your butt?" she growled at Zack, stinging at his apparent dismissal of her declared appreciation towards him.
"Don't," Zack warned her, his voice sharp. "You don't want to get into this now. _Ever_," and his words held a snarl.
"Maybe I do!" Max shot back, suddenly too anxious to sit next to him. She rose, stalked several steps away from Zack before rounding on her heels to face him, balled hands on her hips. "Let's just clear all this garbage out of our way. I can't stand this anymore!"
Zack had risen as well, his face carefully stripped of emotion. Manticore face, she thought: show no weakness. "I don't want your _appreciation_, Max. I don't want you to think of me as nothing more than a piece of your past transported into this perfect life you've created for yourself. I don't want you to tell me you care simply because you're grateful that I've been watching your back for my whole fucking life!"
"What else do you want from me?" God, she _hated_ him! Why did he have to make everything so difficult between them? Couldn't he simply understand that things were good the way they were?
Zack's shirt was flung over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, his boots and socks tumbled on the floor next to the table. He grabbed at his shirt. His head disappeared beneath the cloth, his expression chilly when his face was once again exposed to her. "Do you want to know how I spent the years after the escape? I spent them thinking of you. I remembered that you had made me feel human while we were in Manticore. I thought that once I'd found you again, I finally would be free."
"I'm sorry," Max said, her voice low, shocked into softness by Zack's words. "I didn't know."
"I figured." He pulled his boot laces -- tight -- and laced them quickly.
"Zack!" Max cried out when Zack moved towards the apartment's front door. "You can't just leave. Logan's looking--"
Zack shook his head. "I don't need to be here while he looks. I'll stay in touch."
"You're running away," Max accused.
"Strategic retreat," Zack countered. "I can't win with you, Max." No matter what he did -- hid from her, ignored his feelings, revealed them -- she made him weak with need. Max was one weakness he didn't have the ability to best. And he wasn't about to break before her.
"This isn't about winning."
"Not when you're the one who is ahead."
Useless, childish, unprofessional, and Max didn't give a damn. She threw one of the glasses left on the table at the closing door, the shattering drowning out the click of the door as it shut.
~end~