Chapter 6: This Kind of Machine
by: Mochaije
Disclaimer: I do not own Dark Angel or its characters. Other than that, the story and characters are mine.
Summary: Asha and Logan may be heading for Splitsville after Logan finds out that Max is pregnant and he continues on with Eyes Only despite Asha's protest. Meanwhile, Max's pregnancy present some complications.
Rating: PG 13
Logan's POV
Oh. My. God. Is it it mine? Or is that guy she slept with while she was in heat the father? Ima's being silent, and she hasn't talked to me all day except to ask about where the extra rolls of toilet paper was, and if Max or Asha kept any clothes at the apartment that she could borrow. But I guess she doesn't need to ask some things, seeing as she can violate my mind any time she wants. She lets out a huff from the passenger seat of the Aztek and turns to look out the window at the Sector Cop. I take my pass out of my overhead visor, flash it at the cop, and pull away. She runs her tongue over her teeth and looks like she's going to say something, but doesn't. She instead points to the next apartment building and we pull in. I try to make sense of what happened earlier.
"Look, Asha, it'll just be this one last time, I promise--"
"No, Logan, you promised that yesterday would be the last time. Get Max to run around for you. I don't care if the world is ending and you've figured out a way to stop it, if it involves Eyes Only, count me out."
"Asha, I promise--"
"Goodbye, Logan..."
I sigh sadly. I'll have to talk to Asha later. There's a U-Haul parked at Ben's for some reason. Max's bike isn't there however, and I twirl the steering wheel to direct the car away from the building. I don't want to talk to her, anyway, and she probably isn't even there. What am I going to say? I know I'll probably end up dating her now, if the child is mine, but I haven't got a clue what to tell her. I haven't got a clue about anything. Ima speaks up out of no where.
"If it helps, she doesn't know that you know," she offers. She looks bored out of her mind, like she's itching to get out of town and back to her duties of helping her fellow telepaths and making sure that they don't do stupid things. "Look, I'm sorry. She should've been the one to tell you, but I was getting the idea that she was going to just head out of town without saying a thing to anyone." She fingers the edge of a leather jacket she'd borrowed from Max's small wardrobe in the guest closet. She seems to be in some deep state of concentration, possibly trying to find Max.
A brown-haired woman comes out of one of the first-floor apartments. I poke Ima in the arm hurriedly and clib out of the car. Max notices the Aztek and turns her head, smiling from just beyond a small set of stairs--maybe five or six or so. I walk over, more than a little irked by her overly positive expression. She closes the distance, running down the stairs, putting her arms around me and kissing me hard on the mouth. It scares the shit out of me for a second, but I kiss back eagerly, entangling my hands in her raven curls. She pulls away after a moment, backing off almost two feet.
"Now that I've got your attention," she was a little breathless, but so was I. "Logan, I'm--I'm pregnant.
Max's POV
I tense, tangling my fingers in a thumb-twiddling kind of way. He doesn't say anything, just stands there, looking a bit embarassed. I make a face that practically screams, "Say something, damnit", but he doesn't catch it. He has a lot of nerve not talking, after I worked up the gall to kiss him and tell him I was pregnant. I'm growing impatient and try the whole mind-reading thing. It's pathetically easy. Thank God Ben only took away my regular X5 abilities and not my telepathically-enhanced ones, I don't think I could live without them, now. He's thinking about Asha, I know that. It doesn't seem like they're together anymore... Something about Eyes Only. A wave of nausea hits me and knocks me off my little telepathy pillar.
"Ima told me," he tries to manage something besides confusion and fails miserably. I consider that. I didn't tell Ima, and Ben had sworn that he wouldn't. I decide not to say anything about having my mind read, so that I don't feel like a hypocrite. It would be prety silly to bitch about someone violating my mind when I had just violated Logan's. I lick my lips in the dry, Seattle summer air.
"I probably should've told you earlier but--well--I haven't even been to a doctor yet," I tell him, shoving my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and staring at the ground, at the sky, and at Logan, in some sort of twisted cycle.
"Don't worry about it," he says after a while. We both stare at our shoes, meanwhile trying to stare at each other without being caught. We carry on like that for almost a minute, then I give in. I figure one of us had better do it before we stand there for hours. I'm about to say something when Ben pops his head out the door, and asks if we want something for lunch. We shake our heads and he slips back inside.
"About... Um... Just now..." Oh, here we go again. About the dress, about the car, about whatever. For some reason those sentences always invoke an unintelligent silence or both of us trying to talk at the same time, and then I pull my "Gotta Blaze!" thing. But there's no place to blaze now, is there? I peek at my bike with my enhanced vision, behind a fence in the children's playground. I gotta get rid of it, get a car, get a place, get something. I'll have another baby soon in a couple months, after all. Logan smiles at me.
"Yeah? What about just now? Are we going to have some silly excuse-fight over it?" He grins. I smile back. Ima asks me if we could cut the melodrama and get something to eat and I chuckle out loud. Everything is nice, just right now. Asha seems to be out of the picture, Logan's still interested in me after all of this... And I'm his rebound girl again. Asha's gone, hey, there's Max! She's good looking. Smart. Strong. And Asha will be back, I guess. The thought of being Logan's rebound girlfriend again hits me like a ton of bricks. No, I'm not going to think I'm in love with him and walk in on him and some other chick kissing. Not again. I take off with every bit of power I've got, across the parking lot and over the fence before even Ima can blink. I land on my bike in what is definitely the wrong position and fall off with a painful sigh, in the fetal position. Fuck, that hurt. I get back up, wincing because I just landed on my groin, and straddle my bike properly.
I flick my wrist, revving the big, black, hand-assembled, beautiful motorcycle I'm sitting on. I shift my ankle and tear through the park at an amazing speed. Through the park, the suburb Ben lives in, past a recreation center... It's just a blur. I relax, close my mind to Ima and Ben, and let the bike do the driving. There's a blood test clinic up ahead, just a block or two--Either that or there's been some kind of bloody massacre, from what I can smell. My bike tears pavement as I rip towards it.
I finally arrive and dismount my motorcycle in a more graceful matter than I had mounted it. I realize that my enhancements are going to show up on the blood or urine test, and I duck behind a dumpster and pull the scanner-like object that I'd stolen from Ben out of my backpack. It has a little sticker on the bottom of it, and it reads, "For removal of X5 abilities and telepathic powers administered with a X569894F45-model scanner." Hoping that Ima had used that one, I push my curls form the back of my neck and run the scanner over my barcode. It tingles for a moment, then stops. I try to contact Ima and can't. I try to zoom in on a Volkswagen a hundred metres away and can't. Satisfied, I replace the scanner and strut into the clinic, walk up the receptionist desk. It's one of those big, round workstation things, where two or three people can do bitch work at once. It's also sort of double-decker, with a space for both the patrons to
"Hello, may I help you?" A pretty woman, maybe a few years my senior, looks up from her seat behind the desk. She's got the headset on, of course. I nod.
"I think I'm pregnant, I was just wondering if I could get a blood test or a urine test to confirm it," I say nervously. I don't want to do this. I don't want to know.
"Okay... Do you have insurance or ID or anything?" She asks politely, flashing perfect teeth. I realize my error and tell her that I'll just have to run out and get my I.D. from my car. I leave the office and look around for someone who looks like me, who could possibly be wealthy. I walk down the busy, main street of the suburb, but everyone seems to have straight, blonde hair or looks too poor to have good insurance--Or any insurance at all. One of the blonde-haired women catch my eye as she walks past.
"Syl?" I ask in disbelief. She turns and her face lights up. She looks a little suprised though, and I should've expected that. I'm dead according to her and Krit and quite possibly Lydecker, but the latter wouldn't be a bad thing. Syl covers quickly and hugs me.
"Ohh, I thought you were dead!" She says, pulling away a little bit. I pull away as well, because my lower stomach is cramping up. I smile anyway, because it's Syl. "What have you been doing lately?" We start walking down the street again. I should probably get back to that clinic before they think I'm pulling a nicky-nicky-nine-doors on them, but I don't say anything. Syl didn't know that I was alive, and she doesn't need to know that I'm probably pregnant. We talk for a while about how I got out of Manticore and what happened after she'd left on the morning after Zack was captured. I make up how I got out and leave out any parts about telepaths, of course. We're silent for a moment, then both announce that we have to use the shitter. We giggle like silly teenaged girls as we walk into a small, run-down conveinence store and ignore the shopkeeper's yells of, "You have to a-buy sumtin to use-a the privy!", my troubles forgotten for a little while...
Syl cut in front of me and ran into the bathroom, shut the door. I walked back into the main area of the conveinence store and a small array of pregnancy tests stared at me. There was a recall notice pinned to the shelf they sat on. I tore it from the place it had been taped to and read it. The two brands I'd used have been recalled--That wasn't good. I crumple the sheet and chuck it in the corner, then turn and flip through a magazine when I feel Syl's eyes on me.
"Got a bad case of the preggers, Max?" She asks me. I laugh and excuse myself into the bathroom, feeding her some lame excuse on my way. It smells horrible in the shitter. There's a dead rat in the corner and someone has pissed all over the floor. I hold my breath and do my business. I finish up, wash my hands and all that, and I'm just about to walk out when my beeper unclips itself from my jacket. I bend over to pick it up and notice something in the mirror. There's blood on the ass of my pants. Fuck. That is so not good. Either the pregnancy tests lied and I'm getting my period, or... Actually, never mind "or". I don't even want to think about what could be happening. My lower stomach twists and cramps again and I almost buckle and fall to the ground. I shove some t.p. down my pants to try and soak up some of the blood and poke my head out the door.
"Syl?" I call. She looks over from a magazine with a puzzled expression and I stick my arm out the door, making a come-here motion with my fingers. She replaces the magazine and walks over, a tad suspicious.
"What's up, Max?" She asks uncomfortably. I ask her to switch coats with me and she says okay, a little wierded out. We strut out of the conveinence store, and turn separate ways to leave.
"Um, you know where Logan lives, right? I'll... Um... Give this back to you later," I tell her uncomfortably. And she nods, still uneasy. I turn to leave and she tosses me my pager. I thank her and continue on. It feels really awkward to walk around a in a too-small leather duster, a pair of jeans that are bloody in the ass, and t.p. shoved down your pants. I cower on my way back to the clinic and realize that I still don't have I.D. There's a brunette with wavy hair waiting for a bus across the road and I skip over, faking a bum arm. Thankfully, there's a streetlight in the alley behind her--How wierd is that--and I ask her to come over and take a look at it, then smack her. She's tiny but it doesn't faze her and she fights back, much unfortunate for revved-up me.
"Who the fuck are you?" She yells, tossing me into a large pile of cardboard boxes. This chick is too strong. I remain quiet and karate-chop her in the face with my hand. She crumples and I grab her wallet--and a Maxipad--whispering an apology and dashing down the street to the clinic. I run in there, a little breathless. The receptionist looks a little suprised that I actually came back--it's almost been an hour. She gives me some forms and I remember that I don't know what my name is. I sit down with the clipboard in the waiting area and leaf through the mystery woman's wallet. The only thing she's got is a well-faked driver's license and a sizable amount of twenty-dollar bills. Nice wallet, though. The bummer is that her driver's license says she's 28, and that her name is Anya Scott. I squint a little at the picture, and it's definitely Asha. Calmly I put the driver's license back, use the washroom and put that Maxipad to good use, and go to Logan's. This is just wierd.
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CHAPTER SEVEN PREVIEW
Speaking of Logan, the phone rings. I figure it's either him or someone wanting me to switch telephone companies. I pick it up--it's a cordless that sits in the middle of the table most of the time--and give a polite hello. It's Logan. He says it would be better if we stopped seeing each other. I guess he sees Eyes Only shit as dates. I agree, trying to sound a bit let-down. We're both silent for a moment, then he says goodbye, I respond with the same word, and we both hang up. I put the phone back in it's charger cradle and tap my foot uselessly. Boredom and singleness are probably going to be a combination that ends up with me at Crash, losing at billiards and drinking. I smile at the thought and the phone rings again.
"Hello?" It's one of my S1W buddies this time. We talk in code.
"Jenny's been throwing up all night, Nicole," he tells me. "Could you come by and watch the other kids while I take her to the hospital?" I agree and tell him I'll be there in a bit., then hang up again. Suburban blood clinic has been extorting money from it's patients, it seems. I stop by my equipment room to grab some firepower and head out the door.
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AUTHOR NOTE
Well, I was checking for reviews on FFNET just now and I saw another fic with the word "Eric" in the summary and I was like, "ohmigosh! Ben's her brother, not the guy from when she went into heat back in Ocotber!" Anywho, I felt pretty stupid. And for all you M/L shippers out there, I am going to keep Max and Logan apart for as long as possible, or until I can't think of a reason to keep them apart. :)
