Helena, Montana faintly puzzled Kara. Not least because she had the oddest comforting feeling of company despite the fact that, as usual, she lived and worked alone. It was getting increasingly harder to find work but easier to find food, as she felt so pathetic it seemed to gleam right through her skin and make people feel sorry for her. Maybe. She was in her eighth month and people were starting to feel suspicious of attractive homeless women in their final months of pregnancy.
She found it pleasant, a lucky city. This was because she'd stepped off the bus only to find a lost wallet at her feet. She'd carefully extracted the money and splurged on a battered portable CD player- green, which was a colour she sorta liked.
Kara, with careful phone calls and research, had found a group home she thought might like to take her baby when it was born. It was one of the few places of its ilk left standing in the midst of suburbia. She'd seen photos- RECENT ones, she was no idiot- and really liked the idea of her child growing up there. It was a much warmer, better-looking place than Manticore had ever been.
But right then, Kara felt cold.
She was sitting outside a corner store, all faded plastic and bright packages of things Kara knew she couldn't afford. Over the eight months since she'd been kicked rather rudely out of a lifestyle she readily admitted to enjoying, Kara had managed to accumulate various bits and pieces of clothing. Because Kara could only take what she could carry around with her from city to city, she tried to amuse herself whenever she got dressed by putting on random bits of clothing in weird combinations, or many at once. She did this in public bathrooms- Kara, used to getting changed with at least one other person nearby, found it weird that Outside people objected so fiercely to her so much as changing her sweater outdoors. Meh. Prudes.
Kara meshed her fingers together and cupped them in front of her face, breathing on them vainly. It was pretty cold.
Out of the darkness came a husky male voice- the speaker obviously had a sore throat. "Hey."
Creep. Kara spoke smoothly over her shoulder. "Fuck off."
"Why?"
"I'll kick your ass."
"Would you?"
"Fuck OFF, tool."
"I wouldn't say that." She could feel the air stir as the speaker reached her, leaned over and spoke into her ear from behind. "331065661418."
With a gasp, Kara turned around. "418?"
The speaker was a man, in his early twenties, with spiky dark blonde hair, sad eyes more cloudy grey than blue and a lip piercing. He was stockily built and muscly, wearing rumpled clothes. He grinned and coughed, clapping her on the shoulder. "Nice to see you, and your new vocabulary- well, damn."
It was one of her group, one of her few great friends. X5-418.
He came to sit next to her, leaning forward. He gave her a brief smile and then stared into the distance. "No, not 418. Dylan. Dylan Murphy."
Dylan?
Kara considered this. The name suddenly seemed to settle comfortably around his shoulders and spark in his eyes, making him a name, a person, from a designation.
Dylan. Yeah.
"You?" Dylan asked.
"Kara Stefani."
"Isn't that just the slightest bit conspicuous?"
"Shut up, Wordboy." She messed up his hair with such force she nearly shoved him over. Dylan glared at her- he was two inches shorter than any of his unit, shorter than all the X5 females. This had been a source of great bitterness in his adolescence. "Holy crap, Dylan. You and your vocabulary."
"It's nice to see you too! Have you got someplace to be, Kara?" he laughed, running a hand through his hair.
Her eyebrows shot up to meet her hairline. "Are you kidding? Everyone's gotten so paranoid of pregnant women I walk through crowds with five feet of elbowroom. Why?"
"Cool, Kara, that you have so much faith in me. I've got an apartment, come by."
Kara could scarcely believe it. "Are you serious?"
"No, Kara, I'm seriously going to let my pregnant sister sleep outdoors. I mean, I know our kind isn't into that whole comfort thing, but I could use some company." He stood up and extended a hand.
She let him pull her up and blew out a tired breath. "Sister? Dylan, I'm not your sister."
"Call yourself what you like, but I think it's got more of a ring than 'fellow unit member'."
They set off down the street. He offered to take her backpack twice and she declined both times. "Wow, you're really taking this whole living-on-the-Outside thing right in stride," she commented.
"Oh, I agree. Sister. Apartment. Name. Shocking."
She rolled her eyes as they passed a group of people around a trashcan fire. She felt their eyes on her back and shivered. "Don't forget that hideous lip thing."
"I like it."
"You'll never get a girlfriend with that little metal dealie hanging outta your mouth. Who did it, anyway?"
Dylan set off into a round of explosive coughing. Kara started and when he finally stopped she gave him a weird look. He smiled sarcastically and said, "Friend of mine around here. There's a surprising amount of our kind in the neighbourhood. Usually my place is crawling with them."
"Body Piercing 101- when did Colonel Hardy allow that class?"
"Not an X-series. An anomaly."
"You're hanging with anomalies now?"
"Sure, don't you?"
A pause. "You are taking this Outside thing WAY in stride. How'd you find me?"
"Don't ask me- I just sort of KNEW someone I knew was here. I could sort of smell you when I got to the street corner."
"What do I smell like anyway? It shits me no end- I can always smell and hear everyone a mile away, but I don't know what I smell like. I just hope it's not, like, gross or anything."
"I'll tell you. Stand still."
Kara stopped in the middle of the smoky night street. Dylan faced her and inhaled deeply, eyes closed. Then his eyes opened and he nodded. "Sort of... like all of us," he said to her.
"Oh, get lost! No wonder they always called you deficient!" she replied in disgust.
The cloudy eyes glowered. "I wasn't DONE yet," Dylan snapped.
"Well? Tell me what my signature is."
He inhaled again, eyes open this time. "You're- different now. There's nothing of your old blankets or the target range. I smell wood and water and soft drinks and highways and crowds. I smell 472-" (Kara winced) "- and... a hospital. And I smell me. There's pregnancy too."
"I smell like pregnancy?"
"Mmm. Starved pregnancy."
Kara chuckled. "Delightful."
"I smell electricity on your hair and tears on your eyes. You've cried," said Dylan importantly.
"Have not," she retorted.
"Have too!" Dylan smiled. "And I smell pizza crusts on your mouth, but they're not recent. D'you like pizza?"
"The crusts aren't bad. One time I was... I was in a park. A couple was on the bench, eating a pizza. In public. I coulda killed them just for the damn pizza. They left the box there and I ate all the crusts. Count yourself lucky it wasn't you, you probably woulda caught the guy's cold."
They started to move off again. "I find it very hurtful when you keep throwing my deficiencies in my face after I was nice enough to tell you what your signature smell is so you could stop worrying it was disgusting."
He had another explosive coughing fit. "What did I tell ya? OK, Dylan, whose pizza have you been stealing?"
"Don't be- such a ham," he spluttered.
"A what?" Kara asked, deeply offended.
"Nothing. How're you holding up?"
Kara rubbed at her forehead to expel all the tension. "Now?"
"No... just- are you OK?"
"Ah." She sighed. "Me being pregnant and all."
"Yeah."
"It's... well, it's a boy," she said lamely. Kara steeled herself. "And I'm giving him up. He'll probably have a happier life without the Man after him."
Dylan nodded. "Oh."
"So how is it on your side of this place? Anti-transgenic feeling, I mean."
"Not good. A bunch of us-" (here Dylan lowered his voice) "- are actually leaving here tomorrow morning. There's a huge community of transgenics in Seattle in a biohazard zone."
"Really?"
"Yeah, they call it Terminal City."
Kara laughed nastily. "They're sitting ducks if they're making it their capital or somethin'."
"You'd be surprised."
She smirked. "Well, Dylan, I've got brains. Good luck to you and the anomaly simpletons- sure I can't convince you to blow them off and head in the opposite direction with yours truly?"
They were silent a few minutes, each with their thoughts raging. Then Dylan's voice cut through the air as they passed a nightclub.
"Are you- are you sure about giving him up? I mean- it wouldn't be horrendous, having a nephew."
Kara put her head on one side. "Dylan, may I congratulate you for being the first person I've ever known to actually SAY the word 'horrendous'?"
"Thanks."
"But I'm sure. I can't be a mother. I'll kill the poor kid before his first birthday, I'm so impatient. You know how much I hate children. Even when I was a child I hated children."
Dylan laughed. "True, sis, but remember that you might be my nephew's only chance of SURVIVING his first birthday."
"How do you figure?"
"Imagine you put the baby in a home. Fair enough. What if he's born with a barcode? What do you think they'll do to him? A baby- even an infamous X10- definitely won't be smart enough to cover up its barcode, Kara."
Kara was silent. She hadn't considered this.
"Or imagine that, OK, there's no barcode. But seizures. You didn't consider seizures, did you, Kara? They won't know what's happening. They wouldn't know what to do for him. Or suppose no barcode, no seizures but the phenomenal intelligence and motor function. What do you think they'll make of a toddler who'll most likely be identified as smart- WAY too smart. They'll get scared with good reason. They'll dispose of him before he even knows the ABCs, and for someone with his birthline, that won't be a very long time."
"You're paranoid, Dylan."
"Am I? Come on, Kara. You know that won't help him, putting him into a Children's Home. Come with me to Seattle tomorrow."
Kara felt wrecked. She shook her head. Dylan was watching her very carefully.
"Can we just concentrate on getting to your place, Dylan?"
"Sure. Can't be easy for you, sis."
She sniffed as he had another coughing fit. "You have no idea."
Kara Stefani thought she was going to implode from exhaustion by the time they reached Dylan's place. It was a few floors up and surprise, surprise- the elevator was out. She collapsed onto the nearest likely looking thing- a couch. "GOD!" she sighed, lying back.
"Well, you're home now," said Dylan from the doorway. "I'll organise us something to eat." He disappeared.
Kara lifted her head a few moments later to look around the place. It was mostly bare, everything having been packed up. Dylan had obviously been preparing to leave very carefully- what Kara could see of the apartment had been cleaned scrupulously, and only two boxes of belongings sat demurely beside the front door- one marked CANS, the other BOTTLES. On closer inspection, one turned out to be full of ammo and grenades, the other had some clothes and small meds, as well as (Kara smirked characteristically) eleven bottles of cough syrup and fifteen packets of throat soothers.
Dylan strode through the front door about fifteen minutes later carrying some boxes of pizza. "Score!" said Kara from the couch, grabbing one.
"Knew you'd appreciate it."
"Better be careful with your lip thing, though. Do you really want pepperoni hanging off there for the rest of your days? Maybe I'd better eat everything. Just to be safe."
"I'll live dangerously," he said, and opened the other box.
Their pizza frenzy had slowed considerably before Kara swallowed some crust (her favourite part of the pizza) and said suddenly, "Tell me about your breeding partner, Dylan."
She thought this would make him uncomfortable. However, he simply looked at her and said easily, "What do you want to know?"
"Anything."
"She was... sweet, I guess. Kind of jumpy. Kind of REALLY jumpy. She was one of the Wyoming group. I never noticed her much before, don't think anyone did."
Kara nodded.
Dylan was frowning as he talked, but not in anger or irritation. "I woke up one night- I'm weird, I've always got to sleep after sex."
Kara pretended to gag. "I absolutely didn't need to know that."
"Do you want to hear this or not?"
"Yeah, sure, but no more horny details. I AM a woman, you know."
"I'm not into horny details that much myself, really."
"I'm so sure."
Dylan's face relaxed as he talked, a slice of cooling pizza in his hand. "She was just staring at me. She looked really small-"
"What d'you mean?"
"Well, that was the best thing about her. She was exactly on eye level with me. I don't think I've ever seen an X5 female that short."
She sniggered. "Manticore probably wanted X10s who could fit into small spaces."
Dylan gave her a very superior look. "Shut. Up. About. My. Height."
"All right, all right."
"She looked really small and... I don't know. Like an overgrown kid. Like me. She was... kind of beautiful."
"Did you like her THAT way?" asked Kara.
"I don't know."
"That's a lot of things you don't know about Mystery Woman, Dylan."
He nodded. "Not that much of a mystery, Kara. I asked her if she was OK, and she said..."
"She said...?" prompted Kara.
"She was fine. She told me to call her Cloe. Of course I didn't see her again after then but- hey, maybe she's in Terminal City. It'd be great to see her again."
"What did she look like?"
"Dark brown hair. Livid green eyes. Sort of this round, thoughtful little face. She bit her fingernails something awful, but she wasn't that time she told me to call her Cloe."
Kara made a small noise of approval. "Cool."
Yet another coughing fit. Kara laughed and swiped his pizza.
"What about you? Where's, uh, your guy?"
"Um... well, what can I say? Tough, quiet, kinda scary. Dark skin and hair. Bad temper."
"How'd he like you, Kara?"
"I'm good at being sarcastic with guys. They don't want the quiet, prissy little things."
"Well, I'd hardly call Cloe prissy. Attractively weird, or weirdly attractive, but not prissy. Guess you're right."
Kara studied her friend as he yawned widely. "Well, I'd better sleep. I've gotta be gone pretty early tomorrow."
"You're tired?" she asked, and slid off the couch and onto the floor with a thump.
He opened one eye. "Odd thing, that. Sex and pizza... only two things that can send me right to sleep."
"Remind me to tell that to all the hit men in this town," she smiled. "Hey, before you slip into a coma, where can I find a pen?"
"I think... in the kitchen."
She stood up laboriously. "Thank you, Dylan."
Kara picked up her backpack from the couch, giving Dylan room to stretch all the way out. She shut off the light and moved off into the kitchen, which was dark. An ashtray on the sink, completely devoid of ashes, instead held about seven biro pens. She selected one.
Sitting down at the little kitchen table, she pulled her notebook out of her bag. She felt like getting something out of her system.
Tapping the pen on a fresh page, she listened to Dylan coughing occasionally and heard his breathing slow. God, he really was sleeping, the wuss.
She considered his proposal to go to Seattle. He was nuts. She loved him as a friend and brother, but he was absolutely insane to even suggest it. OK, so Seattle didn't sound too bad. But with a kid? Someone was bound to find a loophole in the defences of this Terminal City and when they did... it'd surely be better for her son to be killed at the hands of his damned social worker than to have to go like that, in the midst of a smoking battlefield.
Kara used to have nightmares when she was little, that SHE was the one on a smoking battlefield and she was running around in the dark, all alone, falling over the bodies of the others.
She'd hated that particular nightmare.
A message, then. To the kid. About where his mother was. That seemed an OK way to kill some time before she and Dylan had to part ways.
Ten minutes later, she sceptically read aloud what she had so far. "I guess the first thing to do is tell you who I am. This is your long-absent birth mother, and at the moment my name is Kara Stefani. You might have guessed by now there's something special about you and this is it: your parents were transgenics. If by the time you read this the government has swept our existence under the rug, I'll explain. Transgenics are genetically engineered humans born in a covert genetics lab to surrogate mothers and raised as soldiers inside the walls of Manticore. Let me tell you about Manticore..."
And she did not speak again for some time, haphazardly scribbling down everything bottled up inside her since the day she was born. She told him how one of her brothers accidentally shot himself through the head, and how a sister fell into the lake on a training exercise and they'd found her body three hours later, crushed and broken and impaled on a submerged rock. How they'd managed to pull her up and off, but at the sight of the bleeding hole in her chest and her face, which looked mildly surprised more than anything else, one of her brothers had promptly had a panic attack. She told her son about Matt and Dylan, and her sisters 799 and 657. She related her whole existence, right down the birthmark on her finger. Hours passed and the sun had still not risen as she read the final part, feeling oddly emotional.
"... I don't really know how to end this, kiddo. I can't say I love you, because I don't know you. And I can't say I'm proud of you because you could be an axe murderer or a drug dealer for all I know. I can't tell you I didn't want to give you up, because these were the circumstances and dammit, it's an unfair world. I guess all I can say is that I'm sorry for anything less than wonderful that my actions and my past might have brought on you, and that were the circumstances different... kid, I would have loved you until the end of time."
That last part surprised Kara. Would she really love her baby if the circumstances were different?
The baby seemed to respond to this thought by kicking. Kara gritted her teeth. "OK, OK..." she muttered.
She ripped out the notebook pages and folding them in half, she put them into her pocket. Then she frowned, puzzled. Something was going on out in the street.
Ambling to the kitchen window over the sink, she looked out and spotted a small crowd of people down on the street, seemingly talking to each other. One or two carried torches of the burning variety, making Kara sneer. Who did they think they were, extras in a Thirties horror flick?
One looked up abruptly and to Kara's shock, pulled out a handgun and shot at the window.
She yelled in shock, pulling away from the window a split second before it shattered. Her scream seemed to wake Dylan, she heard him say sleepily, "Kara?"
Kara grabbed her backpack and skidded into the front room. "Dylan, wake up! Someone just shot out your kitchen window!"
Dylan swore and rolled off the couch. He resurfaced a second later as Kara stood helplessly in the doorway. She could hear the people out in the street. "Are you sure?" he asked, his voice stretched.
She exploded. "Yes, I'm fucking sure! Come on, we've got to LEAVE!"
Kara made for the door, but Dylan jumped up and grabbed her arm, pulling her back.
"What are you DOING?" he hissed.
"I believe the idea is to keep moving in enemy territory, Dylan!" she snarled, wrenching her shoulder from his grasp.
"I-" Dylan began hotly, and then he froze.
Kara felt afraid and angry. "What?" she asked. "What is it?"
"Get in the bathroom," he said to her quickly. "Now. Leave the door open, there's nothing more suspicious than a closed door." He started to push her along toward his bathroom.
"What? I- no!" she barked.
"Now!" he snapped, shoving her inside.
Barely twenty seconds later the door was broken down. She heard Dylan leave, running for his life, and people running after him. Standing behind the bathroom door, she shivered. Suddenly Helena wasn't the lucky city she'd first thought.
She ventured out. The other residents still slept despite the noise, and she made her way hurriedly down the fire escape.
She came out in the alley and heard sounds of a struggle. Very slowly, she peered around the corner.
There he was. They'd forced Dylan onto his knees, holding his arms behind his back. He didn't scream, didn't waste his energy on fear, just tried to throw his attackers off.
But to no avail. And despite the hopelessness of the situation, Kara's face held no emotion as she watched him struggle.
She did not twitch as one of the protestors drew a knife.
She did not move as the crowd moved, blocking her brother, her Dylan from view.
She had no words, no reaction for what she felt as she silently watched the knife being set to his throat and dragged across, sending him sprawling to the cement.
Kara did, however, move forward slightly, and a pained look flitted across her face before she bit her lip. Hesitantly, she stopped biting her lip and stared once more, at the crumpled form on the ground, pooling with blood. His eyes and mouth were slightly open, and that stupid lip piercing flashed at her as if taunting her.
He was dead. Kara turned silently and walked away.
She walked a long time. As she walked, her expressionless features slowly changed. Her grief began to reflect on her face. Kara's eyes were heavy and shadowed, her mouth hopeless, her skin pale from revulsion. Although her body had only existed in the world a scant twenty-one years, more than anything she felt pained and tired.
Kara couldn't believe he was gone. She remembered the cloudy blue eyes sliding sideways to meet hers as...
...
BANG. A soldier descended on one of their own, her gun had gone off and now there was a smoking hole in the ceiling of the weapons store.
X5-767 giggled spitefully and tossed her gun from one hand to the other.
"No talking!" barked the soldier in her direction. Had 767 the bravery, she might have pulled a face. She wasn't damn talking! She was laughing! There was a difference!
He was so preoccupied with telling off the hapless female he did not notice one of the boys. Everyone heard him cock his gun and there was a pause as their weapons instructor took a breath. They idly stared at the male X5, who was gazing right into the barrel of his pistol.
The weapons instructor yelled something, startling the boy. 600 barely started forward. The boy was dead before he had time to yell, "No, don't do that!"
Kara fought not to cry. She couldn't cry. She hadn't cried in about eighteen years and she certainly wasn't going to cry now.
Dylan had been with her the other day too, hadn't he? And in a weird show of affection he'd actually grabbed her shoulder as they stood, small and resolute on the slippery overhanging rocks as...
...
A scream. 767 batted 418's hand away and the little group of about fourteen looked around uneasily.
"What the hell was that?" barked 494, the leader of their group. He turned around. "Who fell? Who was that?"
One of them was missing. They fanned out, picking their way down the slope of the waterfall. They spread out along the shores of the lake, and spent nearly three hours there until-
Another scream. She crashed over and found them gathered. 494 was about waist deep in water and she frowned, staring at him.
Even X5-767 shrieked when he stood straight. In his arms was the limp form of the sister who'd gone missing, and when he drew closer she saw the blood.
It wasn't fair. It wouldn't ever be fair for her, everyone Kara was close to had to leave her.
And it wasn't right. If that girl (for Kara now didn't hesitate to think of herself and her female unit members as girls or women) hadn't had her life controlled and contained by Manticore, she wouldn't have had to live that whole horrible, short little life with those last few seconds where her feet slipped out from underneath her... and the ground disappeared... and she was plummeting toward the lake... hitting the water... and suddenly her life was pushed right out of her body by the sharp stone shooting through her.
DON'T CRY, her instincts told her. Now it didn't seem like an instinct, but like a threat.
No. Like a dare. Like a child's malicious teasing and provoking. DON'T CRY. DON'T CRY. DON'T CRY.
A shape loomed out of the darkness and she looked at it boredly. "You X5?" it said in a screech. It was a female apelike anomaly wearing a long coat with a hood.
"Uh-huh," Kara said dully.
"Where's Murphy? He was s'posed to be here ten minutes ago."
Kara gulped. "He's- he's dead."
The monkey woman blanched. "Bad form," she chattered. "I liked that guy. Guess we'd better head off soon as the X6s are here. Wouldn't be carrying no X-series if 418 weren't so generous with food rations. He was a good guy."
She turned on her hairy heel and strode over to a battered minivan parked at the curb. A few people-ish forms could be seen inside, but Kara couldn't be bothered to dilate her pupils and focus on them.
Slowly, she pulled the letter out of her pocket and looked at it. Kara called to mind the gunshot and communal gasp, the girl drowned and impaled, Splint trapped in the burning building, Matt weak from those damn drugs Manticore gave him and... Dylan, his throat slit.
She found she was shaking with rage. And still the images stabbed at her mind- the bleeding wound in the girl's chest, the little boy accidentally shooting himself, Splint, her brothers-
I'll be damned, thought Kara, wracked with anger and grief, if I let Manticore ruin someone else's life.
She savagely ripped the letter. Once, then twice, then again and again until it was almost confetti in her quaking hands. She walked over to the monkey anomaly as purposefully as she could. The anomaly was in fact helping two scared-looking X6s (one with her arm in a sling, the other with her head bleeding and bandaged like some sick parody of the Civil War) into the minivan as Kara thumped her on the shoulder.
"Is there room?" she asked harshly.
"Yeah, but my brother'll be pissed. He wanted to put his feet up."
Kara climbed in and sat down as one of the anomalies inside hauled the door closed, his eyes luminous as dawn broke over the lucky city.
She slid open the window, opened her hand and watched her memories and apologies as they were scattered by the morning wind.
* * *
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron. All the songs on the soundtrack belong to their respective owners. Not me. So don't sue.
NOTES: Hee, hee. Sorry about Kara's surname in this chapter. Would you believe I have about twenty surnames in total hanging around in reserve and I chose Stefani for this chapter? I think I was listening to No Doubt or something.
You might be wondering as to why I haven't updated in so long. Oh, believe me, I've wanted to. Let me tell all of you with the utmost sincerity- if the bottom floor of your half-converted-from-a-camping-gear-factory-into-a-family-home house has flooded due to unseasonable rain and your dad's penchant for cutting gigantic holes into the tin roof to serve as windows (but not putting any glass in them), do not I repeat DO NOT assume you can negotiate the biggest, deepest, dirtiest puddle (which happens to be in the centre of the concrete floor of said dad's workshop) wearing too-small, dog-ugly platform shoes and carrying two bottles of milk, just because you were able to do it four days ago wearing study uniform shoes and carrying a piece of paper. You won't be able to do it. Trust me. There's a ridiculously big chance you'll be abruptly flipped over onto your back, put in incredible pain and be condemned to bed for some time.
...
Really, it was my finest performance since the time two years ago when I fractured my ankle falling off a basketball. I mean, I'm not usually a klutz or anything, but every few years I manage to injure myself in the most fantastically weird ways you've ever heard of.
Oh, yeah, and for anyone who doesn't speak Italian (like yours truly- all the ludicrously long and involved strings of Italian in the last chapter were courtesy of an online translator), the words 'Tale Era La Sua Vita' mean approximately 'Such Was Her Life'.
Guess what? I quoted Jessica Alba (not on DA) somewhere in here. And I'm not telling you where. Ha.
Dylan, in case I didn't already say, was Jack's clone, hence the whole thing with the explosive coughing fits. 'Cause, erm, he's got the same genetic makeup as Jack and therefore is deficient in some ways. Like he catches Ordinary diseases, geddit?
Sorry about Dylan's death scene- I am seriously no good at writing suspense. I'm just so desperate to get this chapter out that I rattled it off all in one bit. I might go back and edit it a bit, so if there's any aspect of the killing scene you want elaborated or done away with or whatever, give me some suggestions in a review or e-mail. But only if it's sensible. I won't take especially kindly to being told, "Do away with the whole damn, damn FIC!"
Happy Easter to all who celebrate it! Laters, all!
SONGS FOR CHAPTER FIVE:
Walking To Dylan's Place- 'Mobile' by Avril Lavigne
Writing the Letter- 'Bring Me To Life' by Evanescence
Dylan's Death Scene- 'Soldier' by Eminem
The Grief Flashbacks- 'Things I've Seen' by Spooks
Ripping Up the Letter and Leaving Town- 'Bring Me To Life' by Evanescence (Reprise)
She found it pleasant, a lucky city. This was because she'd stepped off the bus only to find a lost wallet at her feet. She'd carefully extracted the money and splurged on a battered portable CD player- green, which was a colour she sorta liked.
Kara, with careful phone calls and research, had found a group home she thought might like to take her baby when it was born. It was one of the few places of its ilk left standing in the midst of suburbia. She'd seen photos- RECENT ones, she was no idiot- and really liked the idea of her child growing up there. It was a much warmer, better-looking place than Manticore had ever been.
But right then, Kara felt cold.
She was sitting outside a corner store, all faded plastic and bright packages of things Kara knew she couldn't afford. Over the eight months since she'd been kicked rather rudely out of a lifestyle she readily admitted to enjoying, Kara had managed to accumulate various bits and pieces of clothing. Because Kara could only take what she could carry around with her from city to city, she tried to amuse herself whenever she got dressed by putting on random bits of clothing in weird combinations, or many at once. She did this in public bathrooms- Kara, used to getting changed with at least one other person nearby, found it weird that Outside people objected so fiercely to her so much as changing her sweater outdoors. Meh. Prudes.
Kara meshed her fingers together and cupped them in front of her face, breathing on them vainly. It was pretty cold.
Out of the darkness came a husky male voice- the speaker obviously had a sore throat. "Hey."
Creep. Kara spoke smoothly over her shoulder. "Fuck off."
"Why?"
"I'll kick your ass."
"Would you?"
"Fuck OFF, tool."
"I wouldn't say that." She could feel the air stir as the speaker reached her, leaned over and spoke into her ear from behind. "331065661418."
With a gasp, Kara turned around. "418?"
The speaker was a man, in his early twenties, with spiky dark blonde hair, sad eyes more cloudy grey than blue and a lip piercing. He was stockily built and muscly, wearing rumpled clothes. He grinned and coughed, clapping her on the shoulder. "Nice to see you, and your new vocabulary- well, damn."
It was one of her group, one of her few great friends. X5-418.
He came to sit next to her, leaning forward. He gave her a brief smile and then stared into the distance. "No, not 418. Dylan. Dylan Murphy."
Dylan?
Kara considered this. The name suddenly seemed to settle comfortably around his shoulders and spark in his eyes, making him a name, a person, from a designation.
Dylan. Yeah.
"You?" Dylan asked.
"Kara Stefani."
"Isn't that just the slightest bit conspicuous?"
"Shut up, Wordboy." She messed up his hair with such force she nearly shoved him over. Dylan glared at her- he was two inches shorter than any of his unit, shorter than all the X5 females. This had been a source of great bitterness in his adolescence. "Holy crap, Dylan. You and your vocabulary."
"It's nice to see you too! Have you got someplace to be, Kara?" he laughed, running a hand through his hair.
Her eyebrows shot up to meet her hairline. "Are you kidding? Everyone's gotten so paranoid of pregnant women I walk through crowds with five feet of elbowroom. Why?"
"Cool, Kara, that you have so much faith in me. I've got an apartment, come by."
Kara could scarcely believe it. "Are you serious?"
"No, Kara, I'm seriously going to let my pregnant sister sleep outdoors. I mean, I know our kind isn't into that whole comfort thing, but I could use some company." He stood up and extended a hand.
She let him pull her up and blew out a tired breath. "Sister? Dylan, I'm not your sister."
"Call yourself what you like, but I think it's got more of a ring than 'fellow unit member'."
They set off down the street. He offered to take her backpack twice and she declined both times. "Wow, you're really taking this whole living-on-the-Outside thing right in stride," she commented.
"Oh, I agree. Sister. Apartment. Name. Shocking."
She rolled her eyes as they passed a group of people around a trashcan fire. She felt their eyes on her back and shivered. "Don't forget that hideous lip thing."
"I like it."
"You'll never get a girlfriend with that little metal dealie hanging outta your mouth. Who did it, anyway?"
Dylan set off into a round of explosive coughing. Kara started and when he finally stopped she gave him a weird look. He smiled sarcastically and said, "Friend of mine around here. There's a surprising amount of our kind in the neighbourhood. Usually my place is crawling with them."
"Body Piercing 101- when did Colonel Hardy allow that class?"
"Not an X-series. An anomaly."
"You're hanging with anomalies now?"
"Sure, don't you?"
A pause. "You are taking this Outside thing WAY in stride. How'd you find me?"
"Don't ask me- I just sort of KNEW someone I knew was here. I could sort of smell you when I got to the street corner."
"What do I smell like anyway? It shits me no end- I can always smell and hear everyone a mile away, but I don't know what I smell like. I just hope it's not, like, gross or anything."
"I'll tell you. Stand still."
Kara stopped in the middle of the smoky night street. Dylan faced her and inhaled deeply, eyes closed. Then his eyes opened and he nodded. "Sort of... like all of us," he said to her.
"Oh, get lost! No wonder they always called you deficient!" she replied in disgust.
The cloudy eyes glowered. "I wasn't DONE yet," Dylan snapped.
"Well? Tell me what my signature is."
He inhaled again, eyes open this time. "You're- different now. There's nothing of your old blankets or the target range. I smell wood and water and soft drinks and highways and crowds. I smell 472-" (Kara winced) "- and... a hospital. And I smell me. There's pregnancy too."
"I smell like pregnancy?"
"Mmm. Starved pregnancy."
Kara chuckled. "Delightful."
"I smell electricity on your hair and tears on your eyes. You've cried," said Dylan importantly.
"Have not," she retorted.
"Have too!" Dylan smiled. "And I smell pizza crusts on your mouth, but they're not recent. D'you like pizza?"
"The crusts aren't bad. One time I was... I was in a park. A couple was on the bench, eating a pizza. In public. I coulda killed them just for the damn pizza. They left the box there and I ate all the crusts. Count yourself lucky it wasn't you, you probably woulda caught the guy's cold."
They started to move off again. "I find it very hurtful when you keep throwing my deficiencies in my face after I was nice enough to tell you what your signature smell is so you could stop worrying it was disgusting."
He had another explosive coughing fit. "What did I tell ya? OK, Dylan, whose pizza have you been stealing?"
"Don't be- such a ham," he spluttered.
"A what?" Kara asked, deeply offended.
"Nothing. How're you holding up?"
Kara rubbed at her forehead to expel all the tension. "Now?"
"No... just- are you OK?"
"Ah." She sighed. "Me being pregnant and all."
"Yeah."
"It's... well, it's a boy," she said lamely. Kara steeled herself. "And I'm giving him up. He'll probably have a happier life without the Man after him."
Dylan nodded. "Oh."
"So how is it on your side of this place? Anti-transgenic feeling, I mean."
"Not good. A bunch of us-" (here Dylan lowered his voice) "- are actually leaving here tomorrow morning. There's a huge community of transgenics in Seattle in a biohazard zone."
"Really?"
"Yeah, they call it Terminal City."
Kara laughed nastily. "They're sitting ducks if they're making it their capital or somethin'."
"You'd be surprised."
She smirked. "Well, Dylan, I've got brains. Good luck to you and the anomaly simpletons- sure I can't convince you to blow them off and head in the opposite direction with yours truly?"
They were silent a few minutes, each with their thoughts raging. Then Dylan's voice cut through the air as they passed a nightclub.
"Are you- are you sure about giving him up? I mean- it wouldn't be horrendous, having a nephew."
Kara put her head on one side. "Dylan, may I congratulate you for being the first person I've ever known to actually SAY the word 'horrendous'?"
"Thanks."
"But I'm sure. I can't be a mother. I'll kill the poor kid before his first birthday, I'm so impatient. You know how much I hate children. Even when I was a child I hated children."
Dylan laughed. "True, sis, but remember that you might be my nephew's only chance of SURVIVING his first birthday."
"How do you figure?"
"Imagine you put the baby in a home. Fair enough. What if he's born with a barcode? What do you think they'll do to him? A baby- even an infamous X10- definitely won't be smart enough to cover up its barcode, Kara."
Kara was silent. She hadn't considered this.
"Or imagine that, OK, there's no barcode. But seizures. You didn't consider seizures, did you, Kara? They won't know what's happening. They wouldn't know what to do for him. Or suppose no barcode, no seizures but the phenomenal intelligence and motor function. What do you think they'll make of a toddler who'll most likely be identified as smart- WAY too smart. They'll get scared with good reason. They'll dispose of him before he even knows the ABCs, and for someone with his birthline, that won't be a very long time."
"You're paranoid, Dylan."
"Am I? Come on, Kara. You know that won't help him, putting him into a Children's Home. Come with me to Seattle tomorrow."
Kara felt wrecked. She shook her head. Dylan was watching her very carefully.
"Can we just concentrate on getting to your place, Dylan?"
"Sure. Can't be easy for you, sis."
She sniffed as he had another coughing fit. "You have no idea."
Kara Stefani thought she was going to implode from exhaustion by the time they reached Dylan's place. It was a few floors up and surprise, surprise- the elevator was out. She collapsed onto the nearest likely looking thing- a couch. "GOD!" she sighed, lying back.
"Well, you're home now," said Dylan from the doorway. "I'll organise us something to eat." He disappeared.
Kara lifted her head a few moments later to look around the place. It was mostly bare, everything having been packed up. Dylan had obviously been preparing to leave very carefully- what Kara could see of the apartment had been cleaned scrupulously, and only two boxes of belongings sat demurely beside the front door- one marked CANS, the other BOTTLES. On closer inspection, one turned out to be full of ammo and grenades, the other had some clothes and small meds, as well as (Kara smirked characteristically) eleven bottles of cough syrup and fifteen packets of throat soothers.
Dylan strode through the front door about fifteen minutes later carrying some boxes of pizza. "Score!" said Kara from the couch, grabbing one.
"Knew you'd appreciate it."
"Better be careful with your lip thing, though. Do you really want pepperoni hanging off there for the rest of your days? Maybe I'd better eat everything. Just to be safe."
"I'll live dangerously," he said, and opened the other box.
Their pizza frenzy had slowed considerably before Kara swallowed some crust (her favourite part of the pizza) and said suddenly, "Tell me about your breeding partner, Dylan."
She thought this would make him uncomfortable. However, he simply looked at her and said easily, "What do you want to know?"
"Anything."
"She was... sweet, I guess. Kind of jumpy. Kind of REALLY jumpy. She was one of the Wyoming group. I never noticed her much before, don't think anyone did."
Kara nodded.
Dylan was frowning as he talked, but not in anger or irritation. "I woke up one night- I'm weird, I've always got to sleep after sex."
Kara pretended to gag. "I absolutely didn't need to know that."
"Do you want to hear this or not?"
"Yeah, sure, but no more horny details. I AM a woman, you know."
"I'm not into horny details that much myself, really."
"I'm so sure."
Dylan's face relaxed as he talked, a slice of cooling pizza in his hand. "She was just staring at me. She looked really small-"
"What d'you mean?"
"Well, that was the best thing about her. She was exactly on eye level with me. I don't think I've ever seen an X5 female that short."
She sniggered. "Manticore probably wanted X10s who could fit into small spaces."
Dylan gave her a very superior look. "Shut. Up. About. My. Height."
"All right, all right."
"She looked really small and... I don't know. Like an overgrown kid. Like me. She was... kind of beautiful."
"Did you like her THAT way?" asked Kara.
"I don't know."
"That's a lot of things you don't know about Mystery Woman, Dylan."
He nodded. "Not that much of a mystery, Kara. I asked her if she was OK, and she said..."
"She said...?" prompted Kara.
"She was fine. She told me to call her Cloe. Of course I didn't see her again after then but- hey, maybe she's in Terminal City. It'd be great to see her again."
"What did she look like?"
"Dark brown hair. Livid green eyes. Sort of this round, thoughtful little face. She bit her fingernails something awful, but she wasn't that time she told me to call her Cloe."
Kara made a small noise of approval. "Cool."
Yet another coughing fit. Kara laughed and swiped his pizza.
"What about you? Where's, uh, your guy?"
"Um... well, what can I say? Tough, quiet, kinda scary. Dark skin and hair. Bad temper."
"How'd he like you, Kara?"
"I'm good at being sarcastic with guys. They don't want the quiet, prissy little things."
"Well, I'd hardly call Cloe prissy. Attractively weird, or weirdly attractive, but not prissy. Guess you're right."
Kara studied her friend as he yawned widely. "Well, I'd better sleep. I've gotta be gone pretty early tomorrow."
"You're tired?" she asked, and slid off the couch and onto the floor with a thump.
He opened one eye. "Odd thing, that. Sex and pizza... only two things that can send me right to sleep."
"Remind me to tell that to all the hit men in this town," she smiled. "Hey, before you slip into a coma, where can I find a pen?"
"I think... in the kitchen."
She stood up laboriously. "Thank you, Dylan."
Kara picked up her backpack from the couch, giving Dylan room to stretch all the way out. She shut off the light and moved off into the kitchen, which was dark. An ashtray on the sink, completely devoid of ashes, instead held about seven biro pens. She selected one.
Sitting down at the little kitchen table, she pulled her notebook out of her bag. She felt like getting something out of her system.
Tapping the pen on a fresh page, she listened to Dylan coughing occasionally and heard his breathing slow. God, he really was sleeping, the wuss.
She considered his proposal to go to Seattle. He was nuts. She loved him as a friend and brother, but he was absolutely insane to even suggest it. OK, so Seattle didn't sound too bad. But with a kid? Someone was bound to find a loophole in the defences of this Terminal City and when they did... it'd surely be better for her son to be killed at the hands of his damned social worker than to have to go like that, in the midst of a smoking battlefield.
Kara used to have nightmares when she was little, that SHE was the one on a smoking battlefield and she was running around in the dark, all alone, falling over the bodies of the others.
She'd hated that particular nightmare.
A message, then. To the kid. About where his mother was. That seemed an OK way to kill some time before she and Dylan had to part ways.
Ten minutes later, she sceptically read aloud what she had so far. "I guess the first thing to do is tell you who I am. This is your long-absent birth mother, and at the moment my name is Kara Stefani. You might have guessed by now there's something special about you and this is it: your parents were transgenics. If by the time you read this the government has swept our existence under the rug, I'll explain. Transgenics are genetically engineered humans born in a covert genetics lab to surrogate mothers and raised as soldiers inside the walls of Manticore. Let me tell you about Manticore..."
And she did not speak again for some time, haphazardly scribbling down everything bottled up inside her since the day she was born. She told him how one of her brothers accidentally shot himself through the head, and how a sister fell into the lake on a training exercise and they'd found her body three hours later, crushed and broken and impaled on a submerged rock. How they'd managed to pull her up and off, but at the sight of the bleeding hole in her chest and her face, which looked mildly surprised more than anything else, one of her brothers had promptly had a panic attack. She told her son about Matt and Dylan, and her sisters 799 and 657. She related her whole existence, right down the birthmark on her finger. Hours passed and the sun had still not risen as she read the final part, feeling oddly emotional.
"... I don't really know how to end this, kiddo. I can't say I love you, because I don't know you. And I can't say I'm proud of you because you could be an axe murderer or a drug dealer for all I know. I can't tell you I didn't want to give you up, because these were the circumstances and dammit, it's an unfair world. I guess all I can say is that I'm sorry for anything less than wonderful that my actions and my past might have brought on you, and that were the circumstances different... kid, I would have loved you until the end of time."
That last part surprised Kara. Would she really love her baby if the circumstances were different?
The baby seemed to respond to this thought by kicking. Kara gritted her teeth. "OK, OK..." she muttered.
She ripped out the notebook pages and folding them in half, she put them into her pocket. Then she frowned, puzzled. Something was going on out in the street.
Ambling to the kitchen window over the sink, she looked out and spotted a small crowd of people down on the street, seemingly talking to each other. One or two carried torches of the burning variety, making Kara sneer. Who did they think they were, extras in a Thirties horror flick?
One looked up abruptly and to Kara's shock, pulled out a handgun and shot at the window.
She yelled in shock, pulling away from the window a split second before it shattered. Her scream seemed to wake Dylan, she heard him say sleepily, "Kara?"
Kara grabbed her backpack and skidded into the front room. "Dylan, wake up! Someone just shot out your kitchen window!"
Dylan swore and rolled off the couch. He resurfaced a second later as Kara stood helplessly in the doorway. She could hear the people out in the street. "Are you sure?" he asked, his voice stretched.
She exploded. "Yes, I'm fucking sure! Come on, we've got to LEAVE!"
Kara made for the door, but Dylan jumped up and grabbed her arm, pulling her back.
"What are you DOING?" he hissed.
"I believe the idea is to keep moving in enemy territory, Dylan!" she snarled, wrenching her shoulder from his grasp.
"I-" Dylan began hotly, and then he froze.
Kara felt afraid and angry. "What?" she asked. "What is it?"
"Get in the bathroom," he said to her quickly. "Now. Leave the door open, there's nothing more suspicious than a closed door." He started to push her along toward his bathroom.
"What? I- no!" she barked.
"Now!" he snapped, shoving her inside.
Barely twenty seconds later the door was broken down. She heard Dylan leave, running for his life, and people running after him. Standing behind the bathroom door, she shivered. Suddenly Helena wasn't the lucky city she'd first thought.
She ventured out. The other residents still slept despite the noise, and she made her way hurriedly down the fire escape.
She came out in the alley and heard sounds of a struggle. Very slowly, she peered around the corner.
There he was. They'd forced Dylan onto his knees, holding his arms behind his back. He didn't scream, didn't waste his energy on fear, just tried to throw his attackers off.
But to no avail. And despite the hopelessness of the situation, Kara's face held no emotion as she watched him struggle.
She did not twitch as one of the protestors drew a knife.
She did not move as the crowd moved, blocking her brother, her Dylan from view.
She had no words, no reaction for what she felt as she silently watched the knife being set to his throat and dragged across, sending him sprawling to the cement.
Kara did, however, move forward slightly, and a pained look flitted across her face before she bit her lip. Hesitantly, she stopped biting her lip and stared once more, at the crumpled form on the ground, pooling with blood. His eyes and mouth were slightly open, and that stupid lip piercing flashed at her as if taunting her.
He was dead. Kara turned silently and walked away.
She walked a long time. As she walked, her expressionless features slowly changed. Her grief began to reflect on her face. Kara's eyes were heavy and shadowed, her mouth hopeless, her skin pale from revulsion. Although her body had only existed in the world a scant twenty-one years, more than anything she felt pained and tired.
Kara couldn't believe he was gone. She remembered the cloudy blue eyes sliding sideways to meet hers as...
...
BANG. A soldier descended on one of their own, her gun had gone off and now there was a smoking hole in the ceiling of the weapons store.
X5-767 giggled spitefully and tossed her gun from one hand to the other.
"No talking!" barked the soldier in her direction. Had 767 the bravery, she might have pulled a face. She wasn't damn talking! She was laughing! There was a difference!
He was so preoccupied with telling off the hapless female he did not notice one of the boys. Everyone heard him cock his gun and there was a pause as their weapons instructor took a breath. They idly stared at the male X5, who was gazing right into the barrel of his pistol.
The weapons instructor yelled something, startling the boy. 600 barely started forward. The boy was dead before he had time to yell, "No, don't do that!"
Kara fought not to cry. She couldn't cry. She hadn't cried in about eighteen years and she certainly wasn't going to cry now.
Dylan had been with her the other day too, hadn't he? And in a weird show of affection he'd actually grabbed her shoulder as they stood, small and resolute on the slippery overhanging rocks as...
...
A scream. 767 batted 418's hand away and the little group of about fourteen looked around uneasily.
"What the hell was that?" barked 494, the leader of their group. He turned around. "Who fell? Who was that?"
One of them was missing. They fanned out, picking their way down the slope of the waterfall. They spread out along the shores of the lake, and spent nearly three hours there until-
Another scream. She crashed over and found them gathered. 494 was about waist deep in water and she frowned, staring at him.
Even X5-767 shrieked when he stood straight. In his arms was the limp form of the sister who'd gone missing, and when he drew closer she saw the blood.
It wasn't fair. It wouldn't ever be fair for her, everyone Kara was close to had to leave her.
And it wasn't right. If that girl (for Kara now didn't hesitate to think of herself and her female unit members as girls or women) hadn't had her life controlled and contained by Manticore, she wouldn't have had to live that whole horrible, short little life with those last few seconds where her feet slipped out from underneath her... and the ground disappeared... and she was plummeting toward the lake... hitting the water... and suddenly her life was pushed right out of her body by the sharp stone shooting through her.
DON'T CRY, her instincts told her. Now it didn't seem like an instinct, but like a threat.
No. Like a dare. Like a child's malicious teasing and provoking. DON'T CRY. DON'T CRY. DON'T CRY.
A shape loomed out of the darkness and she looked at it boredly. "You X5?" it said in a screech. It was a female apelike anomaly wearing a long coat with a hood.
"Uh-huh," Kara said dully.
"Where's Murphy? He was s'posed to be here ten minutes ago."
Kara gulped. "He's- he's dead."
The monkey woman blanched. "Bad form," she chattered. "I liked that guy. Guess we'd better head off soon as the X6s are here. Wouldn't be carrying no X-series if 418 weren't so generous with food rations. He was a good guy."
She turned on her hairy heel and strode over to a battered minivan parked at the curb. A few people-ish forms could be seen inside, but Kara couldn't be bothered to dilate her pupils and focus on them.
Slowly, she pulled the letter out of her pocket and looked at it. Kara called to mind the gunshot and communal gasp, the girl drowned and impaled, Splint trapped in the burning building, Matt weak from those damn drugs Manticore gave him and... Dylan, his throat slit.
She found she was shaking with rage. And still the images stabbed at her mind- the bleeding wound in the girl's chest, the little boy accidentally shooting himself, Splint, her brothers-
I'll be damned, thought Kara, wracked with anger and grief, if I let Manticore ruin someone else's life.
She savagely ripped the letter. Once, then twice, then again and again until it was almost confetti in her quaking hands. She walked over to the monkey anomaly as purposefully as she could. The anomaly was in fact helping two scared-looking X6s (one with her arm in a sling, the other with her head bleeding and bandaged like some sick parody of the Civil War) into the minivan as Kara thumped her on the shoulder.
"Is there room?" she asked harshly.
"Yeah, but my brother'll be pissed. He wanted to put his feet up."
Kara climbed in and sat down as one of the anomalies inside hauled the door closed, his eyes luminous as dawn broke over the lucky city.
She slid open the window, opened her hand and watched her memories and apologies as they were scattered by the morning wind.
* * *
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron. All the songs on the soundtrack belong to their respective owners. Not me. So don't sue.
NOTES: Hee, hee. Sorry about Kara's surname in this chapter. Would you believe I have about twenty surnames in total hanging around in reserve and I chose Stefani for this chapter? I think I was listening to No Doubt or something.
You might be wondering as to why I haven't updated in so long. Oh, believe me, I've wanted to. Let me tell all of you with the utmost sincerity- if the bottom floor of your half-converted-from-a-camping-gear-factory-into-a-family-home house has flooded due to unseasonable rain and your dad's penchant for cutting gigantic holes into the tin roof to serve as windows (but not putting any glass in them), do not I repeat DO NOT assume you can negotiate the biggest, deepest, dirtiest puddle (which happens to be in the centre of the concrete floor of said dad's workshop) wearing too-small, dog-ugly platform shoes and carrying two bottles of milk, just because you were able to do it four days ago wearing study uniform shoes and carrying a piece of paper. You won't be able to do it. Trust me. There's a ridiculously big chance you'll be abruptly flipped over onto your back, put in incredible pain and be condemned to bed for some time.
...
Really, it was my finest performance since the time two years ago when I fractured my ankle falling off a basketball. I mean, I'm not usually a klutz or anything, but every few years I manage to injure myself in the most fantastically weird ways you've ever heard of.
Oh, yeah, and for anyone who doesn't speak Italian (like yours truly- all the ludicrously long and involved strings of Italian in the last chapter were courtesy of an online translator), the words 'Tale Era La Sua Vita' mean approximately 'Such Was Her Life'.
Guess what? I quoted Jessica Alba (not on DA) somewhere in here. And I'm not telling you where. Ha.
Dylan, in case I didn't already say, was Jack's clone, hence the whole thing with the explosive coughing fits. 'Cause, erm, he's got the same genetic makeup as Jack and therefore is deficient in some ways. Like he catches Ordinary diseases, geddit?
Sorry about Dylan's death scene- I am seriously no good at writing suspense. I'm just so desperate to get this chapter out that I rattled it off all in one bit. I might go back and edit it a bit, so if there's any aspect of the killing scene you want elaborated or done away with or whatever, give me some suggestions in a review or e-mail. But only if it's sensible. I won't take especially kindly to being told, "Do away with the whole damn, damn FIC!"
Happy Easter to all who celebrate it! Laters, all!
SONGS FOR CHAPTER FIVE:
Walking To Dylan's Place- 'Mobile' by Avril Lavigne
Writing the Letter- 'Bring Me To Life' by Evanescence
Dylan's Death Scene- 'Soldier' by Eminem
The Grief Flashbacks- 'Things I've Seen' by Spooks
Ripping Up the Letter and Leaving Town- 'Bring Me To Life' by Evanescence (Reprise)
