ARCHIVE: No
By Valjean
Ghosts of Manticore
"Max," Alec said softly, cradling her in his arms on the bed, tenderly kissing her bruised throat. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He rested his forehead against hers and let the tears fall. She was unconscious, but breathing normally, the drug Logan had given her stealing her away for now.
Curling up beside Max, all Alec could do was wait and keep her warm against his body. He was terrified of what she'd say when she finally woke up, but the thought of running, of leaving her, never even occurred to him. He'd made a horrible mistake, the kind that could end a relationship -- now, all he could do was accept the consequences.
Alec did, however, look toward the broken hotel room door, currently barricaded closed with a small couch shoved in front of it so they wouldn't have intruders. Logan was out there somewhere, free, getting farther away. What he'd done to Max ... He'd still die for that, but Alec knew Max had been right. Losing his soul, his sanity, was too high a price to pay for revenge. Cale's death would come in its own good time, in the way Fate decreed. And, if it was by his hand, then it would be while he was sane and rational, not lost in a world of Manticore craziness and at the mercy of his feral genes.
The sun was rising when Max stirred.
"Hey," Alec said as her eyelids fluttered open. "It's all right. You're safe now. It's all over."
"Alec?" she said weakly. Then her eyes widened as memories returned. "Logan!" she gasped, sitting up so fast he couldn't hold onto her. She looked down at her nakedness and clutched the blankets to cover her breasts. Then she shot a glance at Alec. "You killed him," she said. "Logan raped me and you killed him." Another memory surfaced and the look in her eyes changed to pain. "And you tried to kill me."
Alec wanted to deny it, to tell Max she'd gotten things wrong. But he couldn't lie to her.
"Logan's still alive," he said truthfully, giving her the good news first. "You saved him. You stopped me."
"He's alive?" Max breathed, and for the life of him Alec couldn't tell if she was relieved or disappointed, her mind and feelings at the moment completely shutting him out.
"He ran." Alec gestured at the broken door. "We'll have to find him though. You know that."
"I know," Max said softly. And then she was looking straight at him, touching fingers to her throat where the imprint of his hands was emblazoned damningly in dark purple against her golden skin. "You thought I'd betrayed you," she said. "You thought Logan and I were lovers. And you tried to kill me."
Alec looked away. She was waiting desperately for him to deny the accusations, but he couldn't.
"I'm sorry," was the best he could do, the two stupid words as lacking as they always were.
"How could you believe I'd cheat on you with Logan?" Max cried, her hands balling into fists as if she were about to beat on him.
"What I saw ..." Alec stammered. "It looked like ... You weren't fighting him, Max. I couldn't understand why you weren't fighting him. I know now you were drugged, and I should have guessed there was no way you'd ever willingly be with Logan. But I didn't think--"
"No," Max said coldly. "You didn't think. You just acted on instinct. And your instinct was to not trust me."
Alec honestly didn't know what to say to that. There was an awkward silence that seemed to stretch forever. Finally, not looking at Max, staring at the wall, he said quietly, "We have another problem."
"We always do."
"It's Joshua."
That got her attention. "What's wrong? Is he all right? What'd you do now?"
Alec shook his head in cynical disbelief. Even after all they'd been through together, all the time they'd been lovers, Max was still ready to first believe the worst of him ... to blame him. Never a kind word ...
"I told him about Father and his clone army," Alec said levelly. "How Sandeman tried to kill us. He freaked out and ran away. I'm pretty sure he's headed for Calvi which means goin' to the airport here. I should have caught up to him last night, but our only hope now is that Zeb talked him out of doin' something crazy."
Alec expected Max to berate him for telling Joshua about his Father's betrayal. Instead, she sighed and said, "He had to know. And now, maybe he has to find out for himself who to trust." She raised her eyes. "Just like you do."
"Max, I'm so, so sorry ..."
"Shut up," she said softly. "We can worry about the divorce later. Right now help me find my clothes. We've got to get to the airport."
*****
The DC9 was gone when they arrived at the hangar, which left Max and Alec with only one option if they wanted to catch up to Joshua -- a 17 hour commercial flight to Corsica. A quick global cell phone call to Chimera let O.C. know what was happening. Of course she didn't mind watching Brac for a few days.
The trip was long and exhausting, moreso because of the terrible silence between them. It was Max who made the first attempt at repairing some of the emotional damage.
Somewhere over the Arabian Sea, after changing planes in Sri Lanka, Max glanced over at her mate. With his longish hair tousled, dark circles under his eyes, and more than a shadow of a beard, he looked exhausted, and in fact was leaning back in his seat apparently dozing. Somehow, though, she doubted Alec was really asleep. Taking a deep breath she said, "I want you to tell me something, and I want the truth."
"Truth hurts sometimes, Maxie," Alec said flippantly without bothering to open his eyes.
"Cut the act, Alec," Max warned. "Drop the cynical, bastard, I-don't-give-a-shit Manticore defenses and be straight with me."
"'Bout what?"
"I want you to tell me about Manticore."
Alec flinched. The movement was barely perceptible, but Max saw.
"You already know what I was, Max. The things I did. Why the sudden desire for a trip down memory lane?"
"You were an assassin."
"Yeah. It was my job. Nothin' new there." He opened one eye. "What the hell does this have to do with anything anyway? Or are you just lookin' for somethin' else to bust my chops about?"
"How many?"
"How many what?"
"Kills."
"None of your business."
His voice was Manticore cold, and Max knew she had to be careful here. She'd never pressed Alec about his past before, but now his past had just run headlong into his future. He'd almost killed her the night before in a blind fit of rage. That hadn't been Alec in the hotel room. It had been X5-494, and no matter how often Alec swore he wasn't two separate people, that his Manticore self was the same as the person who loved her, she didn't believe it. There were things she now had to know.
"It is my business," she said. "Seeing as how you tried to murder me. "How many solo missions did you go on? How many people did you kill?"
Alec's green gold eyes flickered, the look in their depths shifting from anger to anguish.
"Tell me," Max said harshly. "Tell me or we're through. I need to know what I'm up against here -- what they made you do -- how bad the damage is."
"Four," Alec said levelly, focusing his eyes on the back of the seat in front of him. "Plus Lehane, Berrisford's driver, and ... Rachel ... which I guess makes seven." He glanced at her. "Or should I also count the convicts we ripped to pieces when we were kids, or the soldiers I shot on overseas missions."
"You had four solo away missions before the Berrisford assignment?" Max clarified.
"Short term," Alec said. "Couple of days each. Manticore didn't like its rookie X5's bein' 'contaminated' by the real world. Berrisford was my first deep cover mission."
"And after Berrisford?"
A harsh laugh. "What do you think, Max? The usual. Re-indoctrination, Manticore's oh-so-polite word for torture. Afterwards, when they were done rippin' my body and soul apart, I spent three months in solitary. When I got out they never trusted me on the outside on my own again." He grinned ruthlessly, staring off into nothingness. "But then I never trusted them again either, knew that most of what they'd told me all my life was a lie. At least I came away with that much."
He looked at her then. "I wanted to die after what I did to Rachel, but Manticore wouldn't allow that. I was too valuable a military asset. And after awhile, after surviving all they did to me, I realized that dyin' was too good for me ... too easy. I deserved to live and suffer."
Tears were streaming down Max's face. "Do you remember about any of the others you killed," she whispered.
"Political targets," Alec said with a shrug. "One was military. Two of 'em I didn't even know their names. I just followed orders." He lowered his voice. "They told me they were bad guys, Max -- a danger to Manticore. I thought I was doin' the right thing, even with Lehane and Berrisford at first, although initially I was just sent in to observe on that assignment. You know how Manticore was -- everything revolved around them, your loyalty couldn't be questioned. If it was ..."
"You had to survive, I suppose," Max conceded. "And you did it the only way you could. But they still made you into a killer, Alec. They still stole part of your soul, just like they did mine. We can't ever forget that. The way you were last night -- you were an animal, Alec, something inhuman. Manticore did that to us both, put feline DNA in our bodies and conditioned us to kill -- you moreso than me because you were ten years longer on the inside."
"You're not tellin' me anything I don't already know, Max," Alec said evenly. "I just snap -- go all primitive. Like you said, we have to be aware of it, on guard, but there's really no way to stop ourselves sometimes."
"And that's exactly why I can forgive you," Max said slowly, the revelation surprising even herself. And then she leaned over in her seat and wrapped Alec in a big hug. "One last question," she whispered in his ear.
"Just one?"
"How'd you manage to keep the locket?"
He blinked at that, his mind a second getting up to speed. "Rachel's locket?" A knowing smile. "I put it in my pocket. They never bothered goin' through my clothes, just tossed 'em into my old quarters. It was still there after I got out of re-indoc." He nuzzled her hair. "Afterwards," he said, his voice growing husky, "I always kept it with me as a reminder of what I'd lost ... what they'd taken from me ... and who I really was."
"You were never really Manticore again, were you?" Max said. "You did what you had to do to stay alive, keep them off your back, but inside ... they lost you when that car exploded."
Alec nodded slowly, as if perhaps acknowledging that truth for the first time. "I learned how to fool them," he said. "How to fool myself when I had to. I became a good actor, a good liar, and a good judge of people. I decided I was gonna be in charge of my life. I'd do what I had to in order to stay alive, but I never truly believed anything they said ever again. Eventually, I had everything under control." He drew back so he could look into her eyes. "And then they paired me off with you, and my whole damn world turned upside down again."
Anyone who wants to read "The Best Laid Plans 2: Death and Life" in its entirety is invited to my website: http://www.michaeleaston.com/DA/DAfanfic.html. I also have a number of other DARK ANGEL M/A fanfiction stories there that I've not made available on ff.net as of yet. I even keep an email list of interested readers whom I notify when I post new work on the site.
Also, I'd like to encourage all M/A DARK ANGEL fans to read Max Collins' official prequel novel BEFORE THE DAWN. True, Alec isn't in the story (yet), but there's lots of canon background material in the book that would be pertinent to Alec later on. Plus, Mr. Collins says that Alec and Joshua will be "centerstage" in the DARK ANGEL sequel novel SKIN GAME coming out next February. -- author's note