Yeah. ::sigh:: I'm really sorry. Obviously, I never meant for this chapter (well, half-chapter, to be precise) to take so long. But a lot has happened, both in the world of Dark Angel, and in the world of Tallera…it's been a pretty rough time, the past few weeks. What with the heart-breaking news of cancellation, my roommate's graduation (yay!) and subsequent departure (sob!), and a host of other things that really aren't worth going into, I've been about as far from 'inspired' as I can possibly be.
So…a compromise. I originally intended this chapter to be much longer (or at least to contain much more…not necessarily the same thing, right?), but my guilt about not posting is starting to get to me, so I'm going to split my original chapter into two. So, here's the new chapter 9. I hope to get my writing processes rolling again over the next few days (aided, of course, by all of your loving reviews? I hope?). The other thing that ought to help will be the entirely unprovoked and unexpected burst of inspiration I had in the shower this morning…weird, I know, but it completely revolutionized my thinking on the plot twists at the end of this story. I'm now definitively planning to do a sequel, and I'm very much looking forward to writing the last few chapters of this…
…but I've got to get through the next couple of chapters first. :-) So, again, with humble and abjectly depressing apologies for the extended wait, here's the next installment…enjoy. And please, don't ever think that I've abandoned this tale (thanks must go out to Nevermore and Hobbes19 for their continued support!!!)—it's the most ambitious story I've ever attempted, and I'm determined to see it through! But trying to tell it when it doesn't want to be told won't be doing me or you guys any favors, 'cuz it'll come out as a pile, steaming pile of hippo crap.
Here's hoping I've continued to avoid that fate… ;-)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
{{Spiral}}
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Chapter 9 - No Strings Attached, Part I
I'll give you countless amounts of outright acceptance if you want
it
I'll give you encouragement to choose the path that you want if
you need it
you can speak of anger and doubts, your fears and freak-outs, and
I'll hold it
you can share your so-called shame-filled accounts of times in your
life and I won't judge it
you can express your deepest of truths, even if it means I'll lose
you, and I'll hear it
you can fall into the abyss on your way to your bliss—I'll empathize
with
you can even hit rock bottom, have a mid-life crisis, and I'll hold
it
and there are no strings attached to it
you owe me nothing for giving the love that I give
you owe me nothing for caring the way that I have
I give you thanks for receiving—it's my privilege
and you owe me nothing in return
this is the only kind of love, as I understand it, that there really
is
and there are no strings attached to it
—@—@—@—@—@—
Logan had to take a moment to just breathe, while his higher brain functions recuperated slightly from the blurring barrage of imagery that had ended the golden dream.
Wow. That was…odd.
He closed his eyes, trying without much success to recapture the fractured memories…
A painted face…barcodes…The Knight…The Loyal…The Unseen…the kiss…
His eyes opened wide again. The what?!?!?
He could almost still feel the gentle, sweet pressure of Asha's lips against his own, and a thousand remembered details, irrelevant and precious, began to bombard his senses. Skin like whipped cream and silk…she tasted like raspberries…
Suddenly, he had to see her. The urge struck him so powerfully that he vaulted out of bed, grabbed his glasses fumblingly from the nightstand, and had his hand on the door, even before the resounding echo of the thought had died away in his mind. Belatedly, he stole a quick glance downwards. Relieved to find himself relatively presentable—if slightly mussed—in his usual nightwear of T-shirt and sweats, he took a deep breath and let himself quietly out of his room.
He padded softly into the living room, preparing to soothe himself with the sight of her lovely face, relaxed and childlike in sleep…except she wasn't asleep on the couch, as he'd expected.
The night was old enough that even the city's many intermittent lights were mostly extinguished, rendering Asha a mere black-velvet shadow against the thinner blackness of the night outside the window, as she stood gazing out over the ragged skyline of Sector 9. Velvet… his inner voice caressed the word. Soft and lush, yet still firm…refusing to be crushed…
His poetic tendencies had a way of taking over his thoughts at the most
inopportune times…
—@—@—@—@—@—
Alec stumbled blindly through a grimy, rain-soaked alleyway, somewhere in Sector 5. He had no idea where he was…who he was…
All he knew was that for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he had hope. He was on his way to Max.
One trembling hand came up to swipe away a sopping, muddy-blond lock of hair plastered to his forehead, more out of habit than out of any real need to see where he was going. He was navigating more by spirit than by sight. He could have been halfway across the World from Max, and in this moment, he still would have been certain of his ability to find her. He was a man trudging painfully through an utterly black space, who was suddenly given a glimpse of a single, distant candle. He might not be able to map out his route, but he could find his way unerringly to that speck of brilliance…the single droplet of hot light in his entire universe of dark and chill.
Max was calling to him…a beacon of hope in a World that had existed without it for far too long. She can find me…I'm lost, and I know she can find me…please…please let her find me…please let me find her…
The heavens themselves wept enormous, stinging tears for the lost and tortured creature weaving his desperate path through the dank and gritty byways of the broken city below. Blinking his eyes against a fresh torrent, Alec struggled onward, unseeing, driving himself mercilessly toward the tiny flame that filled his heart with promises of warmth and healing…amazed at the way that a fire so small and distant seemed to light his entire World…
Resolute, he walked on, heedless of the rain and the darkness.
Max was out there…somewhere.
—@—@—@—@—@—
He knew he shouldn't expect her.
When she told him "tomorrow," it was before his narrow escape from the sewers, before White was on TV, before everybody in the whole city suddenly got scared of things they didn't understand, all at the same time.
Without really noticing, one hand drifted idly to the thin layer of gauze wrapped around the opposite shoulder. The roughened pads of his thick fingertips caught and snagged on the loosely-woven white threads. So white…like a canvas before the paint touched it…an unwritten book…a tapestry unraveling before its story could be told…
He and Max and Alec…they'd watched White on the TV, and it felt like a bunch of lead weights fell into his stomach—big weights, like the black, saucer-shaped ones in the exercise rooms for the upstairs people at Manticore. And suddenly, "tomorrow" wasn't really tomorrow anymore, and maybe it was never.
But that didn't stop Joshua from hoping…wishing Annie would come.
Knowing she couldn't.
Wishing she would, anyway.
He kept remembering a song Father liked to whistle. Father never sang—he told Joshua once that he had too great an affection for music to "disgrace it with his own awful howling." The comment had caught Joshua's attention at the time, because although he and Isaac howled all the time, they'd never heard Father do anything of the sort, and the mental image that idea presented was a bit startling.
But he did love to whistle—commenting often on the irony of a man who should've been born a bird becoming Father to a litter of puppies and kittens—and the song had been one of his favorites. It wasn't until one day Joshua happened to overhear one of the lab techs singing the song softly under his breath that the transgenic realized that the melody had words.
There were phrases he didn't understand, and some of the words blended
oddly in his ears, but the tune floated through his memory as clearly as
if Father were standing next to him, whistling…
The sunnelka mowt tomorrow…
bettcher bottom doller that tomorrow
thell be sun.
Juss thinkenuh bowed tomorrow
clearza way the cobwebs and the sorrow
till there's none…
Joshua's problem was, the song didn't say anything about what you were
supposed to do when tomorrow's blithely-promised sunshine was suddenly
snatched away…
—@—@—@—@—@—
"Couldn't sleep, either?"
She must have heard him come into the room, because when he spoke, she didn't jump. Can't manage to sneak up on any of the women in my life, can I? She didn't turn to look at him, either, but shook her head mutely, keeping her eyes fixed on the hazy blend of midnight and distant orange city-glow beyond the glass.
"I had…a really strange dream…" she said slowly, after a short silence. "It woke me up, and I wanted to…savor it for a while, I guess."
Now she turned away from the view with a self-deprecating shrug. She wouldn't meet his eyes. "It just didn't feel right, to sleep any more."
He inclined his head, watching her appraisingly as she shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Logan honestly could not remember the last time he'd had a conversation with Asha when she didn't look him directly in the eyes. It was slightly disconcerting…and made him wonder.
"Actually, I had a dream, too," he said thoughtfully. He found all thoughts of sleep fleeing, like clouds before a warm spring wind.
Asha finally glanced up at him, and almost allowed herself to smile. His hair was sticking up on one side of his head—casualty of a slight disagreement with his pillow—and it made him look so much like an innocent little boy, she felt her heart melt… And, as she looked back down at the floor between her toes, she half-expected to catch a glimpse of him wearing fuzzy yellow jumpsuit pajamas with the feet in.
At that thought, a small smile did manage to gently curve her lips. Her limbs seemed to move as if of their own accord, and she found herself crossing the space between them with several slow, short steps. The moment stretched out like taffy, sweet and thick, with the surreal quality of movement seen through a syrupy liquid, as her hand lifted to smooth the errant strands of his hair…
She stopped in front of him, and as her arm rose, their eyes met. She shuddered with the force of that contact, as though someone wielding a finely-honed blade had struck straight through her body and slashed open her soul. Her nails lightly scratched his scalp as she combed her fingers through his hair, gently soothing the tangles until they lay flat again. His eyelids fluttered at her touch, although the breath-taking intensity of his steel-blue gaze never wavered. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, but quiet.
"Asha…"
Her eyes widened even farther, if that was possible, and her fingers were still running through his now-tamed hair. "Yes…?"
He took a deep breath, and it shuddered pleasantly in his chest. "I'll tell you my dream, if you tell me yours."
She paused at that, blinking. Then she smiled, in a soft, easy motion.
"Alright…"
—@—@—@—@—@—
Damn shark DNA… Is a decent night's sleep too much to ask, just once in a while?
Max heaved a defeated sigh and rolled out of bed in a single, liquid motion, her bare feet slapping quietly against the chilly floor as she made her way to the kitchen. The catnap she had planned was obviously out—cut short by the rude interruption of that dream—so she would settle for the next-best thing.
Caffeine.
Her hands—hands trained in five different techniques for snapping a man's neck effortlessly—went through the motions of preparing a pot of coffee almost entirely on autopilot. Fill the pot…add the coffee mix…light the burner… The familiarity of the task freed her mind to wander toward matters much less mundane.
Always barriers… She hadn't been able to stop thinking about the dream since she'd woken up from it. The Only, Joshua had called her at first. And later, The Silent.
No matter how hard she tried to deny it, everything that was worth anything in her life always seemed to be about barriers. Roadblocks. Obstacles. Some physical, some imagined, some completely otherwise…
Some barriers she attacked with an almost supernatural fury, as though their destruction was a commandment handed down from some Higher Place by a god she'd never known and didn't believe in—a god who knew that such tasks were better given to creatures created by less-than-divine hands…
Other obstacles she avoided with a matching passion. On better days, she could come within a hair's-breadth of convincing herself that they didn't exist. On the not-so-good days, all she could do was gaze helplessly at their insurmountable height…and sink to the ground at their base, crying hot, futile tears.
On the very worst days, it occasionally occurred to Max that Manticore might have handicapped her even more than she realized…that maybe what she was doing out in the World wasn't really living…that perhaps all she knew how to do, after all, was fight. That she was doomed to claw her way through her allotted years, forever beating down walls no one else could see and bouncing off of barriers that really existed only in her mind…
But that was only on the very worst days.
She hadn't realized it at the time, of course—how could she?—but it had all started with that first window. The shrill chatter of the shattering glass…the sudden rush of frigid air…the controlled tuck-and-roll onto a bed of fresh snow…
Her first victory over obstruction—the one keeping her and her siblings in, and the rest of the World out. Gone, in one determined charge.
Presto…no barrier.
From then on, it was as if she'd found her calling in life. No matter how confusing the World got, no matter how deep she had to hide or how far she had to run, there were always more walls to break down, and Max relished every one of them. The first decade of her life had been regimented, regulated and strictly controlled. Her second decade was informally dedicated to undermining that military philosophy whenever possible.
Except…
Except she never figured out how to fight the obstacles she wouldn't let herself see.
With every package she delivered, the barriers between sectors of the city fell to shreds in her wake. For years, she had been hacking her way into secured computer systems, picking locks, scaling walls, cracking safes, and making off with a vast array of highly secured and extremely valuable items…all in the name of new parts for her baby, or more money to fund the search for her siblings.
The barcode on her neck was a roadblock she skirted daily, an axe she dodged with every step she took into a World that did not want her, that would not permit her presence if it ever realized what she was.
She always told herself that she didn't care. The World had not created her, so it had no jurisdiction over her. She just stuck her tongue out at the World, and kept right on breaking the rules.
Except…
Max sighed again. The Only. Almost without noticing, she'd put the coffee on the stove to heat, and crossed the main room of the apartment to stare blindly at the raindrops coursing steadily down the drafty windowpane.
The Only…and The Silent…
Some barriers were not so easy to break as the combination on a paranoid old man's luggage.
Even when you can see them.
Her two 'titles' from the dream were running around and around in her head, like a computer stuck in a recursive logic loop…or a cat stuck chasing its own tail. The longer she watched the words spin before her mind's eye, the more alike they seemed…
Two halves of the same coin, really, she realized, with a mental shrug. Keep the World at arm's length, and you'll be alone all by yourself. Let the World in, but never really interact with it, and you'll be alone in the middle of a crowd. No barriers broken, just redefined…relocated. The walls she had so carefully constructed around herself, the defenses she prized so highly…they kept shifting…shrinking. Moving inward.
When she first made it out into the World, she almost instictively guarded everything about herself. Partly out of fear that Lydecker might find her, partly out of constant confusion. At the tender age of nine, she burst out into a World for which she had no frame of reference…a World governed by a multitude of rules that everyone seemed to expect her to already know…a World populated by a great many people who wouldn't hesitate to take their own pain and fear out on anyone less able to defend herself. Those first walls were long gone, but there were still days when she could recall them with fondness…
Gradually, she learned how to get along on the outside, and the barriers drew closer…a desperate army forced to retreat ever-farther inward. She found a job…a motorcycle…friends. With each new connection, she was forced to expose more and more of herself…until the only thing left within the confines of the walls was her heart.
And it steadfastly refused to budge.
Ironic, that one of the barriers she couldn't seem to breach was the one she herself had built…
Really, it's no wonder Logan and I never found a way to make it work, she concluded sadly. It wasn't that I wouldn't let him in…it was that I wouldn't let myself out…
That last step…
Thunk-thump…thump. She was startled out of her ruminations by the muffled noise of something bumping unevenly against the front door of the apartment.
In less time than it took her brain to process the sound, she had dropped reflexively into a defensive crouch. Although a part of her realized that it was probably unnecessary caution—White's boys would never be so clumsy…making that much noise before busting in—she crept toward the door with the agile feline silence that had brought down so many walls for her. Pausing a few feet away from the thin wooden barrier, she turned her enhanced hearing on the hallway, listening for any telltale traces of a human presence…
A low muttering…whispering…shuffling of feet.
Definitely not White. His band of merry murderers wouldn't be whispering, for the exact reason that they might be overheard by their keen-eared quarry. They used hand-signals, just as Manticore had trained its soldiers to do.
Gradually, odors began to permeate her nostrils, soaking through the flimsy, permeable wood. Rain…alcohol…fear…and a tangy male scent that was, in her experience, unique to X5's…
Alec.
She braced herself for the onslaught of emotion that his appearance usually heralded, and she was not disappointed. What began as a breath of relief—phew, not White!—was transformed almost instantly into a silent laugh of embarrassment at her own rabid paranoia…which then became an indignantly defensive huff, as she imagined Alec's likely response to her edginess… The hot, comforting embrace of anger was quick to follow. How dare he scare her like that…?!
Max made a blurred grab for the doorknob, yanking it open so fast that
its ancient hinges groaned in protest. Even before he came into view, she
opened her mouth, a scathing comment lying tartly on her tongue.
—@—@—@—@—@—
It's not fair.
The last of the reluctant Seattle daylight had long since faded from its muted smoky greys into the unremitting charcoals of night, and Joshua was starting to get tired of moping.
He contemplated his many canvases of Annie, his thoughts following their familiar route through his mind, the path well-worn by hours of thinking in circles.
It's not fair. She'll never be able to see how pretty sunlight is, sparkling on all the dust. She'll never see how pretty she is.
But if she could see, she would have been like everyone—running, screaming. I would never have met her
But she wouldn't be in danger.
But she'll never be able to see my paintings…
Joshua shook his shaggy head, trying to stop the thoughts that spun and spun and wouldn't stop, like smoking Father's pipe around his motorcycle helmet. The shaking must have jarred something loose, because suddenly, he was having new thoughts.
He was remembering…
~*~*~*~*~*~
Her fingers were soft and smooth, touching very gently over the layers of paint.
"Blue…like the sky."
Her fingertips danced carefully over the splash of cerulean.
He guided her hand lower on the canvas. "And this is green…like your eyes."
Her smile was shy and delighted at the same time. "It's beautiful, Joshua…"
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Beautiful…" He said it out loud to himself, his tone puzzled and his
head cocked to one side, as though hearing the words would help him to
understand…how a word and a touch could bring colors to life, for a girl
who had lived most of her life in darkness…
—@—@—@—@—@—
They sat without speaking, in almost identical positions—heads lowered, elbows resting heavily across their knees—he, sitting in the chair, she, across from him on the couch. They did not look at each other.
Finally, Asha broke the long silence.
"How…how is it possible?" Her voice was no more than a whisper, stretched paper-thin with disbelief. "It isn't…was it…" She broke off in frustration, scrubbing her hands over her face, wiping away the last traces of the tears she had shed as she described her dream. "Dreams don't work like that…do they?" Her tone was pleading, the expressively despairing voice of one who sees her deepest secrets laid bare to all the World, and clings desperately to her last remaining shred of dignity…only to feel it slipping liquidly from her grasp.
Logan, by comparison, found himself basking in an odd sense of…serenity. There was an inexplicable kind of karmic rightness to the entire scene, that he simply could not defy. He had a fleeting idea that none of this was really about him at all—that he was just a random player, chosen to act out a drama conceived by an intellect born of another age, or another World entirely…that the story unfolding around him was at once a parable and a prophecy, both ancient and yet to be written. It was as though the Hand of the Fates had reached between the threads of the tapestry it wove, and tapped him conversationally on the shoulder…a swift, meaningful gesture of forewarning: pay attention, now…this is important…
Then the hand pulled back. The threads snapped taut, and reality returned to its former shape…
But not quite…
—@—@—@—@—@—
Max's anger died like a candle in a hurricane, the instant she laid eyes on him.
Sopping wet, his hair running down his forehead and into his eyes like a muddy waterfall, his shoulders shivering uncontrollably, and his eyes…
Alec's eyes were those of a caged animal. A wild beast imprisoned for so long that all memory of the taste of free air has been long lost. A creature that cannot even recall why it seems so desperately important to break free of its cage, only that it must do so, or die in the attempt.
Those haunted, hunted eyes clawed at the walls around her heart, and somewhere deep down in her soul, a small part of Max recognized the beginning of the end.
"Max…" His eyes fell shut as though weighted with lead, and his voice was a shuddering whisper, almost orgasmic in the depth of relief it managed to convey in the single syllable of her name. His shoulders were slumped with exhaustion, and he appeared none-too-steady on his feet.
She blinked her way past her initial shock, and her eyes widened as her brain finally began to process all the details of Alec's appearance. Max could feel her usual defenses trying to bring themselves to bear…a thousand taunting greetings whirled through her mind, and the urge to cross her arms over her chest was almost overwhelming…
And she shoved it all aside—almost without a thought. God…Alec… The haunted creature caged within his eyes found the one, tiny crack in the walls, and a tiny, verdant tendril of compassion double-helixed with fear wormed its way into her heart—
—one of her friends was suffering, and that was all it ever took for Max to throw any thought of self-protection to the winds.
"Oh, god…Alec, what happened?" She reached out instinctively to support his swaying form, slipping her smaller body beneath his arm, with one hand on his shoulder to guide him into her apartment.
But she was totally unprepared for him to suddenly swoop her into the
desperate crush of his arms, smashing her body against his and burrowing
his head against her narrow shoulder with the shuddering sigh of a shattered
soul…as though he expected her to dissolve into smoke at any second, and
needed to convince himself that she was real.
—@—@—@—@—@—
He stood in front of the painting—an early one, Joshua #10—for a long time, his eyes scrunched tightly closed. An observer might have thought him a wax mannequin from an old low-budget horror flick…Wolfman vs. Dracula, or some such thing.
He stood perfectly still, thinking about Annie… the painting… the dull ache in his shoulder…the words of that odd little song…Father… His thoughts wandered freely, until he realized that he'd been standing with his eyes closed for so long, his mind had lost track of his surroundings. He couldn't remember exactly where in the room he was standing, or which direction he was facing, or how far away from the painting he was…
He was utterly lost in a World of relentless, featureless ebony gloom…a long, chill midnight of the soul, with nary a star to steer himself by…
Annie's World.
The fingers of his right hand twitched…flexed. Slowly, tentatively, he lifted his hand, reaching out blindly before him, groping for the finished canvas he knew must be there somewhere, because it had been there when he closed his eyes, and he hadn't moved…
There. One hesitantly waving fingertip brushed something…a surface, ridged and uneven, with a cool, dry, and faintly slick texture. Joshua let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. That simple feeling of skin on canvas was an almost miraculous sensation…as if the World itself had smiled a rare and lovely smile, to remind him that he was not, after all, alone in the dark. The World was there with him. His head tipped backwards and his mouth fell open wide in a uniquely canine smile of delight.
He wondered, for an instant, whether Annie ever forgot the World was there.
His hand stilled in midair, then slowly retraced its quivering arc until his fingers once again met cool canvas. He spread his hand wide, gently tracing the intermittent humps and ridges of the paint as it swirled blackly before his closed eyelids…
…mountainous knobs of dried paste surrounded by smaller, oddly-spaced bumps, like pimples, where he had flung the pigment wildly at the canvas…
…smoother, gentler swirls, where he had guided the brush with care, each stroke culminating in curling ridges that rose three-dimensionally from the flat surface like ocean waves curling and breaking as they reached the shore…
…sharp forests of rough stubble, where he had jabbed and pounded the tip of the brush into the thick morass of paint, trying to get just exactly the right stippled look…
There was no one directing his fingers as they explored the many-faceted canvas, no one to tell him which colors he was tracing…but this was his painting. He had built it, from the very first spattering of paint to the final stroke of his block-printed signature…and, to his amazement, Joshua found that he needed no guide to tell him one color from another.
"Red…" The word escaped his gaping mouth as an astonished whisper, as one finger traced a long, sinuous ridge that laced and curved back in on itself, toward the right-hand side of the canvas. He knew that line—had painted and re-painted it, in fact, as he tried to perfect its nonchalantly swirling shape—and it was red.
It was red.
"Red!"
As his excitement grew, his other hand came up to join the first in 'seeing' his painting through Annie's 'eyes.' Almost immediately, it came across another smeared glop of pigment he recognized.
"Green!" he bellowed, laughing. "Green…" His exuberance suddenly faded, muted down to a happy glow, and he shivered with the memory…
Green…like your eyes...
It's beautiful, Joshua...
Joshua opened his eyes, blinking at the sudden, feeble light from the floor lamp—tinted slightly blue by his eyes' long disuse. He looked at the painting, then turned his gaze to the hand still resting on its surface. He raised it and turned it slowly in the air, examining it from every angle with an expression of wonder and delight, as if he had never seen his own fingers before. He felt like he had suddenly come to understand something indescribably precious and important.
Even in a World of darkness, there was such a thing as color, and light…and
in some ways, the blind could see more than the rest of the World could
ever hope to…
—@—@—@—@—@—
Logan felt like he was opening his eyes for the first time in his life. Everything that had gone before was suddenly as immaterial as mist, as fleeting as a single flap of a hummingbird's wing. He was nothing but an infant, newly borne into the arms of the World, and as he opened his dewy eyes to catch his first glimpse of the creation that was to be his playground…he was blinded, struck to the core by a bolt of pure, fiery brilliance in the shape of a girl…a woman. Dusky eyes, like starry diamonds in a setting of milky-pale cloud, wreathed in feathery strokes of gold and amber…radiant from within, lit by the iridescent glow of a pure and loyal soul…
An angel, sitting before him.
All along, she's been here…so true…so lovely…and I never saw…
She was speaking, but he couldn't hear…his eyes were so intoxicated with the sudden glory of her that there was no room left in his mind for any of his other senses to intrude. Something about being sorry…not wanting to get in the way…understanding if he never wanted to see her again…
That snapped him out of his daze. To never see her again… The mere thought made his throat ache with frantic longing, and he struggled to make her see…to show her how drastically his entire life had changed, in these last few seconds…
"Asha…" His voice was breathy and strangled, as though her name had been wrung dripping from his throat like soap bubbles from a rag…but it was really just his rising tide of feeling…his soul running over, gushing exuberantly, beyond containment by any wall or barrier, foaming up in his throat like a tangy draught of liquid light, quenching a thirst so parched and ancient that he never noticed the lack it signaled…
And the object of his adoration turned her eyes up to meet his, gazing up through her lashes with unmasked concern as he rose from his seat and moved around the coffee table toward her, with the air of a man who does not believe his feet are touching the earth. Her smoky eyes widened once again, as she sat hunched over on his couch, and he sank to his knees in front of her like a penitent looking upon the face of his god.
"Logan, what…?"
He smiled at her discomfiture, and it was an expression of such tenderness and affection that it sent warm tingles down Asha's shoulders. His eyes never left hers as he wrapped her interlaced fingers in his own, lifting her hands to his lips to press a warm, feather-light kiss to her knuckles. The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled merrily as he smiled up at her.
"Asha?"
"Yes…" The word flew from her lips on the wings of a whisper, as Logan
uttered three quiet words, and Asha tried desperately to convince herself
that she was not still dreaming…
—@—@—@—@—@—
"Oh, Max…" This second time, her name fell from Alec's shivering lips as a dry, wrung-out sob. If she had been anything but a transgenic, the strength and raw desperation in his embrace would have snapped her in two. As it was, she was sure she heard her ribs creak.
She ruthlessly suppressed an almost unbearable urge to ask this man who he was, and what he had done with Alec…
Then again, maybe that's not such a crazy thought…after all, with Manticore, anything is possible…
With gentle care and more than a little discomfort, she pried herself loose from the death-grip of his arms, backing up several steps to peer at him in bafflement. At the loss of her touch, his pleading eyes sought her own, begging for her comfort in a way that transcended all words, defied all challenges…eluded all obstacles. One look into those hurricane eyes, and all of Max's specious little doubts were laid to rest.
One less barrier to hide behind…
Shushing the nagging voice that snickered softly in her head, she took one step toward him again, raising one tentative hand to smooth a soggy lock of hair off his forehead. He astonished her yet again when he turned his head to nuzzle his cheek into her palm, like a housecat begging to be petted.
Or like a tomcat marking his territory…
Max fixedly ignored the little voice, sliding her hand down his cheek in a wordless plea for him to talk to her, feeling the knotted muscle in his tightly-clenched jaw. "Alec…what's wrong?" She put every ounce of her considerable will into an effort to sound like her usual acerbic self. The attempt was a miserable failure—even she could hear the concern in her tone, and it that concern was becoming more and more frantic, as the man standing before her adamantly refused to act like the Alec she knew.
"Are you hurt?" she went on helplessly. "What happened, dammit?!?"
Those haunted eyes were roaming her face, as though they could imprint every detail of her features in their wild depths. They really are the color of the ocean in a storm, the voice in the back of her mind realized idly. Sort of green, but really more grey…and never still…always in motion, changing…
She dropped her hand and blinked rapidly, startled by the small movement of his lips parting as he haltingly began to speak.
"Max, please…" His nostrils flared and the muscles in his jaw shifted as he flailed desperately for the breath to talk to her. "I—I'm lost…please help me…"
His fevered gasps were suddenly a stormwind, rushing in her ears…
~*~*~*~*~*~
Alec, huddled in Joshua's enormous embrace.
Joshua speaks, and there are as many colors in his voice as on his face.
"The Lost." Heavy paws on strong, shaking shoulders…the kindred clasp of a brother. "His World is gone…he is now in the World, but it will not have him. He can make The Silent scream, or he can make her sing…but he is for him. He is beautiful, but he hides…"
The Lost…
Alec, his hands shaking, his eyes haunted…
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Max came back to herself, Alec was still speaking—or rather, babbling dementedly, as if the sound of his own voice were the only thing keeping him sane.
"…out in the World, but I don't know how, and I'm lost in the World…lost world…d'you know there were actually a bunch of movies named that? First there was a book, then a movie, then another movie, and another book, but the first book was much better, and they didn't have to bring back a dead guy in the first two pages to make it work, and…"
Very slowly, and with exaggerated care, Max raised her hand again, this time to lay a single finger over Alec's lips, which stilled at her touch. Gazing frankly into the towering tsunami of his eyes, she smiled…and it was a smile that said many more like it were to follow.
And with that gentle smile, The Silent was no longer so.
"Don't worry, Alec…you found me." Her thumb traced a gentle line along the soft prominence of his cheekbone, as she gazed into his eyes and smiled, and spoke the three most perfect words he had ever heard, even in his dreams…
"Let me help."
—@—@—@—@—@—
Logan's eyes fairly glowed as they burned into her own, lit by the fires of a soul suddenly freed from its bonds and sent aloft on brilliant breeze, to fly into its golden home behind the sunrise. His nostrils flared as he drew in a precious breath, and his soft, pink lips parted, his tongue curling intimately around the syllables he so yearned to say…and as they escaped from his mouth, they flew with unerring precision directly to Asha's shell-like ears, where they became the three most perfect words either of them had ever heard, even in their dreams…
"I see you…"
—@—@—@—@—@—
Alright, if it's not too much trouble, I'd appreciate some feedback on the overall structure of this chapter, with the way I intercut the three scenes. That was a deliberate thing—and very much contrary to my usual, comfy writing style, in which I just babble until the scene ends itself. I was trying to do two things with it: draw some parallels among the three separate storylines, and make it clear that they're all happening at the exact same time (but in different places, obviously).
Did I succeed? Did it make the story harder to follow? It is complete
and utter crap? Inquiring author's minds want to know! So send me a review,
and tell me! :-)
Coming soon!!!!!!!
Chapter 10 - No Strings Attached, Part II