Disclaimer: Jondy and Zane characterization is mine. And the rest of the characters aren't. Now that we have that out of the way on to the author's note.

Author's Note: Sorry this took so long. I'm on spring break right now and my life is like; I get up go hang out with friends that I haven't seen in two or three months and come home around four in the morning. I then go to bed cuz it's actually five in the morning to me since I'm in a whole new time zone and then wake up around eleven and do it all over again. Yay, I missed home. I'm so much more popular when I'm in Memphis. Everyone, you make me feel loved cuz everyone's like "I love Jondy" and I'm all like "wow" cuz Jondy's a whole lot like me. Woohoo. Fun stuff. She's kind of a bitch in this chapter but I had to do it.

Review like mad!

Comin' to Get You

Chapter 8: That had to hurt

Jondy gnawed on her thumbnail quietly as she peered about the posh apartment and turned to Zane with a roll of her eyes. "Yup, he's a poor bastard," sarcasm fairly dripped form his voice as he whispered to her.

"Yeah, hate to be him." She whispered back smiling at Alec's snort of agreement and Max's glare. Logan, the poor bastard in question, was oblivious; too busy opening a pre-pulse bottle of Champaign.

"I know Max wants to celebrate finally finding her siblings!" Logan was saying with a smile, his eyes sliding over to where Asha sat quietly across from him.

"Thank goodness," Jondy called with a laugh; "I've been wondering where I've been for the last eleven years!"

"Shush," Zane said into her ear smiling. She batted her eyelashes up at him before laughing.

"Must have been how I ended up here the other night, being lost and all."

"I've been meaning to ask…" Logan started as he started to hand out glasses, placing Max's on the counter for her to retrieve after backing away a safe distance. "Why did you break in here the other night?"

Jondy's eyes widened and her mouth dropped as she looked over at Zane trying not to laugh. "We forgot all about that," he hit his forehead softly.

"Bad us…" Jondy blinked turning to Asha with her eyes twinkling. "Sorry about the gun to the head, squeaky one."

"My name's Asha," she said with a scowl.

Jondy just blinked at her and smiled sweetly, "I know." She looked at Alec, "why does everyone keep trying to correct me? It's not like I sit around going, 'I don't know your name, you shall be dubbed squeak toy.'" She shook her head and threw her hands up in the air.

"Are you trying to re-direct the flow of conversation?" Alec asked crinkling his nose when he smelt his wine. The potent smell offending his sensitive nose.

"No…what was the flow of conversation…I seem to have forgotten." She blinked slowly biting back the smile she knew was coming.

"Liar," Zane said tugging on her hair softly. "You know where Zack is…we wanted to know too," he said simply, looking straight at Logan for the first time that night. Even after Logan had dragged Asha over to the pool table Zane had not acknowledged the man unless he spoke directly to him. Logan had attributed it to being something all X5 males seemed to have in quantity: testosterone.

Because both Jondy and Zane had turned to look at Logan they saw the sudden lack of color that washed through his face. "Is that a problem?" Jondy asked her voice coming as close to dangerous as any in the room but Zane had heard it. The untouched glass of wine was placed softly on the counter.

"Somewhat…"

"It's complicated…" Max started when both sets of eyes turned on her. The intensity dimmed but didn't go away completely as they watched her.

"Complicated how?" Zane asked with narrowed eyes.

"He went buggy," Alec supplied pulling himself up to sit on Logan's counter.

"Stop with the annoyingly un-informative three word phrases and spill," Jondy grumbled her bottom lip sticking out in a pout.

"He died…"

"We know he's alive. It's why were here now," Zane interrupted with a scowl.

"Yes, he is. You have to know the background to understand why it's complicated," Logan said taking a gulp of his wine quickly.

"You can't go find him," Max said with a sigh.

"The hell I can't," Jondy growled.

"He shot himself to save me…" Max said quietly to her hands. "I thought he was dead," this time large drown eyes lifted to meet first Jondy's electric blue ones and then Zane's forest green ones. "Then after Manticore was destroyed I found out that he wasn't dead," She swallowed, "most of his internal organs were machines and they had an implant in his brain to put back together his memory, but it requires several pieces of information to call up a specific memory. So when I found him he had amnesia, basically."

"He didn't remember being Zack?" Jondy asked in a small voice and when Max looked up she saw how she had leaned into Zane who had snaked an arm around her waist.

"No, he remembered being X5-599, that's all." She smiled sadly at them, thankful that Alec was keeping quiet though he seemed he wanted very much to talk. "I found him and he started to remember things, some of them he remembered wrong."

"Like what?" Zane asked, his voice strained.

"His relationship to Max for one," Alec said shrugging his shoulders.

"He thought we were…" she couldn't finish it.

So Jondy did, "lovers."

"Yeah." She nodded a thanks before going on. "Zack had been brainwashed while they kept him in Manticore…and so he blamed the mission to take Manticore down going sideways on Logan."

Heads swiveled once again to look at him where he had sat down at his table watching as Max spoke slowly through the ordeal. "He didn't like you anyways, I would assume?"

"That would be correct…" he confirmed.

"Figures," Jondy said with a roll of her eyes and turned back to Max.

"He tried to kill Logan. So I stopped him the only way I knew how, and it wiped his slate clean again."

"Amnesia central once again."

"Yup, and the doctor said that everything would be the same if he regained his memory so we sent him to a farm."

"Please tell me you have him on that farm with a trained psychologist helping him regain his memory…" Zane said quietly.

"He's there so he won't remember anything at all," Logan said quietly.

Jondy rounded on him, "How irresponsible can you be?" Her voice was dangerously low as her eye narrowed, "bet you just loved that you wouldn't have anymore competition where he was concerned."

"Excuse me?"

She turned to Max, "You sent him away because he was an inconvenience?" Her lips pulled back in an unconscious snarl.

"Didn't you hear? He would have killed Logan," Asha spoke up her blue eyes narrowed.

"You could have found a way around it!" Zane said running a hand through his hair.

"So Zack is on a farm, all unaware of his Zack-ly-ness which can end very very badly!" Jondy's fists were clenching as she started to pace. "Think it through, babe, you have a man who is not by any definition normal, trying to pass as normal. He's stronger and faster and smarter and just plain better." She threw her hands up, "he could hurt someone accidentally, because he doesn't know how to control his strength. Or worse…what happens when something sparks a memory and he's left empty because he knows there's more to him than anyone's telling him. Or, hey, thought! The government gets word there's a transgenic at large, all out there in the open, just waiting to be picked up."

"We didn't have a choice!" Max raged trying desperately to defend herself from the accusations hurled at her.

"You always have a choice. You just sent him away. Did it occur to you that we need him?"

"Jondy," Zane put a hand on her arm comfortingly.

She brushed it off, "I need him…"

"We all do," Max said quietly.

"You don't understand…I need him because he wasn't just my brother and you just sent him away."

"Stop it!" Max stood up, her mouth having drawn into a thin line.

"I'm sorry, Max, am I being inconvenient? Maybe you should send me to a farm out of your way."

"Jondy!" Zane yelled, his voice finally cutting through her anger. She turned to him her chest rising and falling with each heavy breath; she looked like an angry leopard ready to pounce. He brushed a hair off her forehead and made a low sound deep in his throat that sounded astonishingly like a purr. "She did what she thought was right…"

"But it wasn't!"

"I didn't say it was, I said what she thought was right. It's not like she could have called one of us to help or anything. Zack's hard enough to handle when he knows what he's doing. Shh." He ran a hand through her hair and down her cheeks slowly. She nuzzled his hand like a cat, tactile contact calming her down more than the words.

With a sigh she leaned her head onto his chest and made a sound that could have been a sob before turning to Max who was looking anywhere but at her. "I'm sorry…" she started quietly the words catching in her throat. "I shouldn't have yelled."

"It's ok." Max said biting her lip and looking at her finally. "You had some points."

"I know," she smiled and rolled her eyes. She looked down at the floor than looked up at her through her eyelashes; "we still sisters?"

"Of course," Max wrapped her arms around Jondy, still slightly stiff with anger. Alec smirked at the expression on Logan's face, which could be perfectly described as green.

"We're still going to find him," Jondy said quietly biting her lip as she pulled away.

"Understood." They nodded at one another before they turned to a different topic; Jondy's new ride, the air still tense.

"I rescued it from a guy who didn't know how to care for such beautiful things as motorcycles." She said with a grin that showed her fangs off nicely.

"Rescued?" Logan asked from his seat at the kitchen table next to Asha.

"Rescued." She shrugged her shoulders. "He was killing her slowly I couldn't let that happen, so I rescued her," she smiled at Zane who snorted.

"Meaning you stole it," Alec said with a grin as she swatted at his leg.

"I rescued her…why can you people not understand this?"

"Because we're all high-minded individuals who don't steal anymore." Max said with a laugh that was close to being bubbly.

Logan glared at her, letting it be known he didn't approve. "It's official all your family are thieves." He said wryly, jumping when Max glared at him.

"All your family are thieves," Jondy mocked and suddenly Logan found himself lying on the ground and Zane was holding her around the waist. "You self-righteous snob," she spit out.

He felt his jaw gingerly as Asha helped him up. He looked over at Max and watched her hand twitch as she held herself back from adding a hand. "What's your problem?" she rounded on her sister.

Jondy ignored her and advanced on Logan having shaken Zane's hands off. She grinned when he shrank back suddenly not trusting any of the other X5s to come to his rescue. "You sit her all high and mighty whining that you're poor now that mommy and daddy's inheritance had run out…but you're still surrounded by priceless pieces of art, you got a kitchen full of food, and pre-pulse champaign coming out the wazoo. Of course, you dress like a bum but that's by choice. You don't know poor." She was staring him in the eye; wild electric blue meeting frightened sky blue ones. She was so close now that he could smell the delicate rose scent of her hair. "I'll tell you what poor is…its waking in the morning on the street because you couldn't find a vacant building to sleep in, its being so hungry you start staring at a fat man wondering if he'll taste good. Being poor is staying with an abusive man because you would rather be hit than perpetually cold and wet." She backed away suddenly baring teeth in an animalistic sneer. "We've all had to claw our way out of a cess pit and you have the audacity to look down on us. I have begged, borrowed, and stolen and I'd do it all again if I had to, pretty boy."

"Jondy," Zane was putting a comforting hand on her harm again, "it's ok. He can't understand, and you'll never be able to make him."

She turned on him, "why not try?" She turned back to Logan; "Every last one of us has had to fight every step of out lives; to keep ahead of Lydecker or some military organization that would love to get a hand on us. You want to understand us? Max's family…let me fill you in on a little bit of my life. You've probably heard some reference to a building being blown up…by me none the less." She flashed a smile that screamed predator and her eye glinted wildly. "What no one, but Zack, knows is that I blew it up on purpose. I sat on a building across the street with a detonator, waiting. Just waiting for Lydecker's men to get inside it. It was a beautiful explosion and I got almost every last one of the team." She leaned in so her face was inches from his, "The only thing I regretted was blowing up my CD collection hat I'd spent a very long time collecting." She smiled down at him; "I didn't really feel sorry for them because they should have expected it. I did what they trained me to and they needed the reminder."

"That's enough," Max said pulling on Jondy's arm.

"You want to be with a man who can never understand you? He's already taken, let it go!"

Max opened her mouth but closed it with a snap when Jondy's words finally hit her, "taken? What do you mean?"

Jondy blinked, taken aback at the sudden look of apprehension over her sister's face, "him and the squeak toy…" Her voice was suddenly small, "you knew about them, right?"

Max turned on Logan, "what's she talking about?"

"Max…"

"You didn't…" Jondy's mouth hung open as she turned to Zane with wide eyes. He just gave her an understanding smile before turning to watch Max.

"How could you?" She turned on her heel not looking at anyone and left the apartment with the slamming of the door.

"Max…"

"You asshole." Alec said quietly, his jaw clenched so hard Zane wondered if it was going to break.

"You played my sister?" Zane asked his voice dangerous.

"Alec," Jondy said quietly, and waited for him to look at her, "go find Max." He nodded and left, jumping off the kitchen counter with a glare at Logan. "I hope the punch bruises," she said sweetly, dimpling.

"I only wish I'd been the one to punch you," Zane added dragging her out the door.

Once outside she turned to Zane with a grimace, "stop me next time I become a psycho bitch."

"I tried to, you just kept going."

"Well, hit me or something."

"Not my style."

"Sure it is," she smiled but it faded when she thought of Max running out of the apartment.

"Jondy…" Zane's voice was soft and hesitant.

"Hmm?"

"What did you mean when you said Zack was more than your brother?"