A/N: Updates, they be cool. Now this seems kinda M/Zish but it's not. Note how I make it very clear that they are brother and sister, heh. I'm sorry, I tried to give the whole romantic thing a chance but red flags keep going up and this little conservative dude in the back of my head keeps screaming "INCEST! INCEST!" Not much I can do about it...
*******
They spent long hours just sitting on the couch, talking about everything and nothing all at once. She once again was drawn to the fact that she'd never seen him so open and happy before, never seen him shed his steely resolve so completely. It was a dramatic change, and a welcome one at that.
As the day wore on and the bottle of wine was slowly emptied, the conversation slowly edged toward the subject around which they were both desperately tiptoeing. Sure, they each wanted to know what truly had happened to the other, but the relaxed and happy mood they presently shared was so rare and cherished that they dreaded the moment it had to end. Still, their precarious position was obvious and it was plain to both of them that their relationship would soon have to turn serious, their acquaintance simply that of two fellow fugitives rather than that of a favorite brother and sister. Always having been the harder and more professional of the two, Zack was the first to fully acknowledge and act on this.
"Look, Max," he said, setting down his glass. She sighed heavily at his tone, the knowledge of the discussion he was initiating sending her glee to hide behind its emotional barrier. "This has...well, this was nice, but we both know that, dreary as they are, there are things that really need to be said and others that, given our situation, really need to be done."
"I know, Zack. I understand," Max whispered with a nod. When he uttered nothing in reply, she lifted her gaze to watch him awkwardly open and close his mouth, terribly uncertain how and where to begin. While words and emotion had poured freely from him moments before, he had retreated back into his shell and now, when confronted with such an emotionally taxing topic, he was confused and having great difficulty finding his voice. Max, quickly picking up on this, took a deep breath and reached over to hold his hand as she, bravely, began her side of the story.
"I woke up tied down...it was a cell, but it looked and felt eerily like a hospital room. The director appeared; didn't know she was the director then, but yeah. She came and she told me not to struggle, cuz I might 'break a stitch.'" She said the last part mockingly and wrinkled her nose in disgust, happy when she noticed Zack smile ever so slightly. "So I was like, 'where am I' and she said she thought I knew, and she walked over to the monitor, and...all this crap about I should feel proud...the heart of a martyr..." She swallowed hard and closed her eyes and willed herself to go on. "She told me you'd killed yourself, Zack. For me. She told me it was your heart keeping me alive." Max lowered her head and fought back the tears, surprised but pleased when her brother squeezed her hand in comfort. It was somewhat an instinctual reaction that he hadn't even thought about, but when he saw Max better collect herself immediately after he was glad he'd done it. He was not glad, however, with the manner in which he'd have to tell her his tale. He had actually been planning to keep from her the entire truth, the fact that he HAD attempted suicide in her name, to spare both her and himself from having to deal any longer than was needed with all these annoying feelings of theirs. Now, though, he felt like he owed it to her to divulge everything.
"I..." he started, "I...unfortunately, Max, that came very close to being the truth."
She looked at him almost accusingly and he hated how he felt. He hated how he had felt at that moment two weeks ago, how he had almost given in to one of the things he had been fighting for all these years. He suddenly felt like crying but he had realized since last he'd wept that seeing him in such a position wasn't good for Max, so he stifled it. He was unable, though, to hide his emotion when he continued.
"I panicked," he squeaked with desperation. "I saw you lying there and I knew what they'd do, how they'd tear you apart and be able to treat you in death like the machine they couldn't make you in life. And it was like it wasn't me, like I was possessed or something. I couldn't let them do that to you, Maxie, and suddenly being rational didn't seem rational at all. I told you to fight and then the gun was pointed to my head and I was the one pointing it and that bitch, that blonde bitch was staring at me and she was so shocked and scared it wasn't just about you anymore, I wanted to pay her back. Oh, she'd be so sorry. So sorry..." He was speaking rapidly and without direction, and to Max it seemed almost more like an attempt at expressing the atmosphere of an intense nightmare rather than the relation of actual events. Beyond that, he had become enraptured; dangerously passionate and Max had to break her hand from his iron grip. "But...but when I pulled the trigger, I didn't feel the pressure at my temple. It was at the back of my head, the base of my skull. I knew immediately something had gone wrong but everything went black so it's not like I could do anything. And then I woke up, and I remember thinking that I shouldn't be here and that, since I was, I had failed. I had failed and failures don't make it in this world. It didn't help that SHE found it her duty to come to me and rub in that fact, telling me they'd knocked me out before I could sacrifice myself." He had calmed down by this point and Max had slid closer. When he finished, his breath was unsteady, his words disjointed and he had to swallow the painful lump in his throat more times than he could count. "Dead...she's dead...and it's all my fault...and that's what she kept telling me...and they were gonna find them...the others...they were gonna break me...but no, cuz I wasn't gonna fail again...not twice...my baby sister..."
Max slipped her arm around his shoulder and tried, non-verbally, to let him know that it was all right for him to cry again. But the tears never came, and after a minute or two of steadying himself he pushed her away and, in dejection, she let him begin to go over the route they'd take to Canada.
*******
Self-induced ends are that much more difficult to achieve when you've mixed yourself up with a band of fugitive military types who have built a strange sort of dependence upon you.
Logan paced back and forth in front of the phone, impatient and quickly running out of emotional steam. He'd spent the day mostly loafing around, hardly bothering to eat and certainly not daring to venture out-of-doors. Max of course was still bouncing off the walls of his mind, urging him to end it all. Lydecker had joined her a few hours ago, whispering that he'd been caught and that now Logan had to do his duty or everything was going to be royally screwed over. The great Eyes Only was losing it, slipping away to be overrun by depression, fear, and worry, and to top it off it was 3:00 in the morning and his "brave" ally still had not checked in.
Finally he couldn't stand it and moved to his little studio, opting to record the damn broadcast and get it over with rather than deliver it live. You know, in case he drove himself a little too crazy and the suicide attempt he was already planning was closer to now than expected. He timed it for release at 12:30, figuring that, being lunchtime, that was when the most people were likely to see it. As satisfied as a man contemplating the taking of his own life could be, he finally retired to his room after a long day of nothing, rolling his eyes as Cindy called for the umpteenth time.
*******
They had traveled most of the night on Max's Ninja, stopping for rest in a run-down and abandoned shack in which Zack had once before taken lodging. It wasn't exactly a five-star hotel, which Max pointed out with a wry comment about it being straight out of 'The Grapes of Wrath,' to Zack's immediate confusion. She explained that it was an old movie she'd watched at Logan's one time, and at the mention of his unspoken rival Zack grumbled and turned away from her, ending the conversation before she could fully explain the reference.
As they readied to move out around 10:30 that morning, Zack suggested that they alter their appearance for added protection...hair dye and colored contacts would do.
"Oh, c'mon Zack," Max protested with a chuckle. "Our faces will still be the same, our bodies will still be the same. Doesn't really do much."
"Well, what do you want us to do? Go all out and get plastic surgery?" he snapped. "At least this way, their descriptions of us will never be accurate enough for a norm to find us out."
Silently admitting that his point was a valid one, she shut up at that and allowed him to hide her in the shadows as he employed his genetically enhanced pick-pocketing skills (sure, they could steal the wanted goods, but it was far easier to catch a shop-lifter than a pick-pocket and any option that might draw extra attention to them was out of the question). They took to a local drug store soon after, each purchasing their choices separately, making the task of drawing a connection between the two of them even harder than it already was. They also went to separate bathrooms in separate buildings to complete their alterations, and any human interaction afforded them the chance to practice their newly acquired aliases, Kris and Jim. It would take some time to get used to them, but eventually it would be as if Max and Zack had never existed, right?
Max...erm...KRIS wasn't so sure. She looked into the mirror above the freshly stained porcelain, her blue eyes catching the light and her red hair dripping crimson water down her back and front, soaking through to her skin. The reflection frightened her and she realized then that leaving Seattle wasn't just traumatic because it meant losing everything and everyone she loved, but also because it meant losing her identity.
She tried to be like Za...Jim and push everything down but the words were mangled with emotion when she whispered them to herself.
"New hair, new eyes, new name. It's like a whole new me."
*******
A/N: Did ya catch the real-life JA reference thingy? Did ya? DID YA?! *insane giggling*
*******
They spent long hours just sitting on the couch, talking about everything and nothing all at once. She once again was drawn to the fact that she'd never seen him so open and happy before, never seen him shed his steely resolve so completely. It was a dramatic change, and a welcome one at that.
As the day wore on and the bottle of wine was slowly emptied, the conversation slowly edged toward the subject around which they were both desperately tiptoeing. Sure, they each wanted to know what truly had happened to the other, but the relaxed and happy mood they presently shared was so rare and cherished that they dreaded the moment it had to end. Still, their precarious position was obvious and it was plain to both of them that their relationship would soon have to turn serious, their acquaintance simply that of two fellow fugitives rather than that of a favorite brother and sister. Always having been the harder and more professional of the two, Zack was the first to fully acknowledge and act on this.
"Look, Max," he said, setting down his glass. She sighed heavily at his tone, the knowledge of the discussion he was initiating sending her glee to hide behind its emotional barrier. "This has...well, this was nice, but we both know that, dreary as they are, there are things that really need to be said and others that, given our situation, really need to be done."
"I know, Zack. I understand," Max whispered with a nod. When he uttered nothing in reply, she lifted her gaze to watch him awkwardly open and close his mouth, terribly uncertain how and where to begin. While words and emotion had poured freely from him moments before, he had retreated back into his shell and now, when confronted with such an emotionally taxing topic, he was confused and having great difficulty finding his voice. Max, quickly picking up on this, took a deep breath and reached over to hold his hand as she, bravely, began her side of the story.
"I woke up tied down...it was a cell, but it looked and felt eerily like a hospital room. The director appeared; didn't know she was the director then, but yeah. She came and she told me not to struggle, cuz I might 'break a stitch.'" She said the last part mockingly and wrinkled her nose in disgust, happy when she noticed Zack smile ever so slightly. "So I was like, 'where am I' and she said she thought I knew, and she walked over to the monitor, and...all this crap about I should feel proud...the heart of a martyr..." She swallowed hard and closed her eyes and willed herself to go on. "She told me you'd killed yourself, Zack. For me. She told me it was your heart keeping me alive." Max lowered her head and fought back the tears, surprised but pleased when her brother squeezed her hand in comfort. It was somewhat an instinctual reaction that he hadn't even thought about, but when he saw Max better collect herself immediately after he was glad he'd done it. He was not glad, however, with the manner in which he'd have to tell her his tale. He had actually been planning to keep from her the entire truth, the fact that he HAD attempted suicide in her name, to spare both her and himself from having to deal any longer than was needed with all these annoying feelings of theirs. Now, though, he felt like he owed it to her to divulge everything.
"I..." he started, "I...unfortunately, Max, that came very close to being the truth."
She looked at him almost accusingly and he hated how he felt. He hated how he had felt at that moment two weeks ago, how he had almost given in to one of the things he had been fighting for all these years. He suddenly felt like crying but he had realized since last he'd wept that seeing him in such a position wasn't good for Max, so he stifled it. He was unable, though, to hide his emotion when he continued.
"I panicked," he squeaked with desperation. "I saw you lying there and I knew what they'd do, how they'd tear you apart and be able to treat you in death like the machine they couldn't make you in life. And it was like it wasn't me, like I was possessed or something. I couldn't let them do that to you, Maxie, and suddenly being rational didn't seem rational at all. I told you to fight and then the gun was pointed to my head and I was the one pointing it and that bitch, that blonde bitch was staring at me and she was so shocked and scared it wasn't just about you anymore, I wanted to pay her back. Oh, she'd be so sorry. So sorry..." He was speaking rapidly and without direction, and to Max it seemed almost more like an attempt at expressing the atmosphere of an intense nightmare rather than the relation of actual events. Beyond that, he had become enraptured; dangerously passionate and Max had to break her hand from his iron grip. "But...but when I pulled the trigger, I didn't feel the pressure at my temple. It was at the back of my head, the base of my skull. I knew immediately something had gone wrong but everything went black so it's not like I could do anything. And then I woke up, and I remember thinking that I shouldn't be here and that, since I was, I had failed. I had failed and failures don't make it in this world. It didn't help that SHE found it her duty to come to me and rub in that fact, telling me they'd knocked me out before I could sacrifice myself." He had calmed down by this point and Max had slid closer. When he finished, his breath was unsteady, his words disjointed and he had to swallow the painful lump in his throat more times than he could count. "Dead...she's dead...and it's all my fault...and that's what she kept telling me...and they were gonna find them...the others...they were gonna break me...but no, cuz I wasn't gonna fail again...not twice...my baby sister..."
Max slipped her arm around his shoulder and tried, non-verbally, to let him know that it was all right for him to cry again. But the tears never came, and after a minute or two of steadying himself he pushed her away and, in dejection, she let him begin to go over the route they'd take to Canada.
*******
Self-induced ends are that much more difficult to achieve when you've mixed yourself up with a band of fugitive military types who have built a strange sort of dependence upon you.
Logan paced back and forth in front of the phone, impatient and quickly running out of emotional steam. He'd spent the day mostly loafing around, hardly bothering to eat and certainly not daring to venture out-of-doors. Max of course was still bouncing off the walls of his mind, urging him to end it all. Lydecker had joined her a few hours ago, whispering that he'd been caught and that now Logan had to do his duty or everything was going to be royally screwed over. The great Eyes Only was losing it, slipping away to be overrun by depression, fear, and worry, and to top it off it was 3:00 in the morning and his "brave" ally still had not checked in.
Finally he couldn't stand it and moved to his little studio, opting to record the damn broadcast and get it over with rather than deliver it live. You know, in case he drove himself a little too crazy and the suicide attempt he was already planning was closer to now than expected. He timed it for release at 12:30, figuring that, being lunchtime, that was when the most people were likely to see it. As satisfied as a man contemplating the taking of his own life could be, he finally retired to his room after a long day of nothing, rolling his eyes as Cindy called for the umpteenth time.
*******
They had traveled most of the night on Max's Ninja, stopping for rest in a run-down and abandoned shack in which Zack had once before taken lodging. It wasn't exactly a five-star hotel, which Max pointed out with a wry comment about it being straight out of 'The Grapes of Wrath,' to Zack's immediate confusion. She explained that it was an old movie she'd watched at Logan's one time, and at the mention of his unspoken rival Zack grumbled and turned away from her, ending the conversation before she could fully explain the reference.
As they readied to move out around 10:30 that morning, Zack suggested that they alter their appearance for added protection...hair dye and colored contacts would do.
"Oh, c'mon Zack," Max protested with a chuckle. "Our faces will still be the same, our bodies will still be the same. Doesn't really do much."
"Well, what do you want us to do? Go all out and get plastic surgery?" he snapped. "At least this way, their descriptions of us will never be accurate enough for a norm to find us out."
Silently admitting that his point was a valid one, she shut up at that and allowed him to hide her in the shadows as he employed his genetically enhanced pick-pocketing skills (sure, they could steal the wanted goods, but it was far easier to catch a shop-lifter than a pick-pocket and any option that might draw extra attention to them was out of the question). They took to a local drug store soon after, each purchasing their choices separately, making the task of drawing a connection between the two of them even harder than it already was. They also went to separate bathrooms in separate buildings to complete their alterations, and any human interaction afforded them the chance to practice their newly acquired aliases, Kris and Jim. It would take some time to get used to them, but eventually it would be as if Max and Zack had never existed, right?
Max...erm...KRIS wasn't so sure. She looked into the mirror above the freshly stained porcelain, her blue eyes catching the light and her red hair dripping crimson water down her back and front, soaking through to her skin. The reflection frightened her and she realized then that leaving Seattle wasn't just traumatic because it meant losing everything and everyone she loved, but also because it meant losing her identity.
She tried to be like Za...Jim and push everything down but the words were mangled with emotion when she whispered them to herself.
"New hair, new eyes, new name. It's like a whole new me."
*******
A/N: Did ya catch the real-life JA reference thingy? Did ya? DID YA?! *insane giggling*