Last time on Dark Angel:
###Pure, radiant light, beyond a color, fills the space. "The way before you is one filled with pain, and sadness my brother." 494's voice is no longer flat and harsh, but calm and gentle.
"You know what my decision is."
"Then I will take your place in the Grey." He reaches out his hand and takes my own identical one. Pulling gently on my arm, he reverses our positions. "I expect you to take care of her in my stead."
"Always."###
The door slides shut as Kate leaves me alone to say goodbye. Tears flow freely, drenching his shirt. I squeeze them shut to stem the flow; only to start in shock as a broad, calloused thumb traces a line along my cheekbone and brushes away a single tear.
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"You're hurt Maxie." Holding my breath, I squeeze the chilly hand which remains in mine. My heart bursts as his fingers gently squeeze mine in return.
"Is this real?" I still can't bring myself to open my eyes.
"Anything can be real if you want it enough."
"God Alec, you're so full of shit." His laughter stirs my hair, and I feel myself laughing hysterically in return.
"I sacrifice myself for the love of this amazing girl. I protect her with my life, and endure endless amounts of pain for her. I crawl my way back from the dead just to see her again, and what do I get? Verbal abuse. Some things just never change." Warmth fills my chest, burning out the last patches of cold.
"What did you say?"
"About the verbal abuse? Well, even you have to admit Maxie, that you do tend to get carried away with the cursing and hitting."
"Not that you idiot. The part before that, about the love."
"Oh, that. Well, I've had plenty of time to think, and wonder, and worry; and I need to tell you something before we have another emergency." He took my hands weakly, and pressed them to his lips. The heat was so intense, that my body felt as though it were melting, and to think of it, it might be.
"You are the most important thing to me in this whole world Maxie. I could handle the grey, and the loneliness; but not the thought that I would never see you again. The truth is, I love you Maxie. More than life."
Tears welled up in my eyes again, and I grimaced at my own girlish behavior.
"Oh god, I shouldn't have said anything. Are you going to kick my ass? Because I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be up to any rounds of kickboxing with you for at least another three days."
"Shut-up Alec, just do me a favor and shut-up," and with that I dipped my head down, and my lips closed crushingly against his. My eyes sought his, so full of life once again, and gazed questioningly into them. In reply, his long fingers twined through my hair and he drew my lips gently to his.
The feelings coursing through my body went past fire, and into blazing inferno. Tiny electric shudders passed through his lips and coursed through my veins. My hands brushed against his chest, and he let out a half pained, half exasperated gasp. With a start, I remembered how close he had just come to dying.
A loud shriek from the now open doorway brought both of our heads reeling upwards. Again, I'd forgotten Kate's aptitude for volume.
"Well, Kate isn't it? Nice to meet you in the flesh at last. As you can see, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
"How? Who?" Kate gave up on coherent sentences and made small grunts of consternation and disbelief; finally, remembering her capacity as doctor she walked over to the bed and began plugging machines back into the wall. The slow, steady bleeping of his pulse reassured me that Alec was real, and not another wishful dream. The three of us stared at one another in uncertainty.
At last regaining control of her formidable tongue, Kate was the first to break the silence. "So, answers as to the sudden miracle that seems to have happened while I was out of the room?" A shadow passes over Alec's face, and I squeeze his hand. Gathering his thoughts, he clears his throat and begins the tale.
"As near as I can tell, this is how the twelve works. A normal person's personality is divided into an ego, id, and superego. Manticore went beyond genetic manipulation when creating their soldiers; a portion of the training which we went through was also designed to alter our mental states. They strengthened the superego by teaching us to subvert our inner desires, our id. While this mental suppression made us better soldiers, it also created a tendency towards a kind of schizophrenia. Our personalities were split into a soldier made of animal instinct and military training, and a human component with a tendency towards indulging our desires. The different levels of katta, and especially the twelve were created to further subvert our human sides. The difficulty of the twelve is that it allows the soldier to takeover the personality completely. In order for the soldier to take complete control, the human component needs to go somewhere." His voice caught slightly and I wrapped my arms around his chest, supporting him.
"I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but my subconscious created this kind of grey, mental prison. In time, I was capable of changing things, like you would do when you take control of a dream." He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand. "See the soldier cuts himself off from feeling pain by subjugating it to the same place as his humanity. So the pain, it infects the subconscious. With nothing to distract yourself, it becomes unbearable; but eventually I learned how to focus it. By concentrating on the pain, I could make it into a tangible object, and it could be locked away.
I returned to my body once while I was in the grey. Before the switch happened, I was in incredible pain. There was too much of it to focus, and so eventually I allowed myself to let go and feel. As near as I can tell, the key to returning to control of my body was the pain. As soldiers we were trained to ignore pain, to repress it so that it couldn't distract us from our duty. 494 was trying so hard to repress the pain, that he began to regress into our subconscious. When I died, we were both temporarily contained in the grey and I was able to return to control."
"So that's it? I can't believe that Manticore overlooked something so obvious. If they would have just considered killing their soldiers, they would have solved the problem ages ago." Both Alec and Kate just stare at me.
"Is she always like this?"
"Believe me Kate, you have no idea." Alec gazed at me fondly, and Kate took the hint.
"Well I'll just leave you two crazy kids to torture each other. I am trusting you Max, to make sure that this guy stays put and doesn't test this miracle back from the dead act. In the meantime, it seems like I've got some good news to spread around to the troops."
As soon as the door banged shut, he pulled me gently back into the circle of his arms. "You know that this is a long way from being over. Knowing your luck Maxie, someone else will be trying to kill you by the end of the week."
"My luck? Okay mister walking bullseye, how many times have you been shot and otherwise damaged in the past few weeks?"
"Your attitude wounds me Maxie, hits me right here." He points guillessly to his chest, and an ache hits me as I realize that he really had taken a bullet to the heart for me. Tears silently fill my eyes.
"Hey there, look I'm fine see?" He buried his face in my hair and rocked me back and forth in the cradle of his arms. "I promise that whatever bad stuff come next, I'll be right there beside you being a constant pain in your ass."
My breathy laughter musses his hair. "Promise?"
"Always."
End Part One
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Well I hope that you enjoyed my first attempt at fan fiction, it was certainly an adventure for me. I'd like to give big thanks to the following people for their great reviews: Panda007, Megan, Sorrow Reminisce, Black Rose, Peggy, Deb, Willow453, RPGirl17, Drey, Zol, 4J5A2, lynn, lakergirl, em, Emerald, scarlet, Nevermore, Shy-shadow Reckless, Alec's little 3, MM, Lauren, fichic, constar494, and Lorelei (Merci Beaucoup). If anyone is interested I've left plenty of wiggle room for a sequel or two. Tell me what y'all think.
Thanks- SilverRain