This is the final part to 'Get Ready To Live'. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed these past two years (almost :) and to those who haven't - there is still time to :D. I would never have continued writing this seemingly-never-ending saga without the kind words from you all, advice and gentle urges to keep writing. I hope you have all enjoyed it immensely, and have loved being part of the Dark Angel fic communities at Agora, Nuns With Pens, Gumboot Mafia and Broken World.
Sadly this is the last Dark Angel fiction I will be writing, but will still be making new music videos, so keep an eye on my site for latest releases (the videos have been moved to the 'Anarchy Entertainment' section).
Thanks again,
Vokal
DISCLAIMER: I don't own DA, Alec or anything of the like. They belong to people who don't appreciate them.
MY EMAIL: vokalangelhotmail.com
WEB ADDRESS: http:/destined.to/prodigy
CHAPTER TWELVE – ASCENSION
The last thing he remembered seeing were her eyes - her brilliant green eyes gazing down at him, tears welling in slow motion and the mist of grief clouding their immeasurable depths.
He felt himself drawn into them, floating, dissolving into their primeval protectiveness. In her eyes he saw the Space Needle towering proudly, bruised and battered but maintaining its unending sentinel over the broken world below.
He saw Manticore - glass shattering as the windows exploded and fired licked at the prison walls.
He saw Terminal City - its spawn raising a tainted flag high, and he saw Max, the breeze lifting her hair as she watched a friend laid to rest beneath the city's radioactive soil.
No-one saluted, no last shots were fired. No trumpet sounded. Alec would not die a soldier - but a friend.
Alec felt himself leaving them. He was rising now, higher than the space needle, higher than Joshua's painted flag, and into the velvety depths of a sky lined with fragments of pure light.
He was joining them - joining the stars in the high place.
But he lurched, tethered to the ground by an ethereal thread.
"I love you". He whispered softly to the woman holding him.
She held him tighter. "Don't leave me.."
"I'm free." Alec asked her to release him.
Antigone saw the distant look in his eternal eyes.
He smiled at her one last time.
It was one of the most beautiful things Antigone had ever seen, and one of the saddest at the same time.
She smiled too, she couldn't help it - Alec's smile had that infectious effect.
On the day of the war, in a dark alley by Terminal City, she smiled and cried over the body of her dead lover, her tears falling softly on his youthful face, washing him gently away from her, and into forever.
Antigone stayed cradling his lifeless body in her shaking arms, her fingers brushing through his hair listlessly as the war raged around them.
Max stood beside her silently, standing vigil over a hero, long cold in death, but a hero nonetheless.
Antigone sobbed. He had died for her - a stupid, worthless, imperfect human.
He had seen the worst of her, and had loved her anyway, and that had made him perfect to her. She wiped at her tears.
And now he was gone.
He had spent his entire life fighting. But it was over now. It had ended.
He would be able to watch from the high place in peace.
He could watch as Antigone battled sleepless nights and seemingly never-ending days, screaming herself hoarse at rallies, lobbying politicians and exposing the Familiars to the world.
Because that night, underneath the expansive sky of a changing world, as she clasped his cold, dead hands in her own, she promised him she would live his belief - that she was more than an imperfect human, that she was worth something - worth dying for.
She gripped his hands tightly and promised him she would never give up. And she never did.
Max watched the human girl rocking the dead body of her closest friend and she felt like something had burned her inside.
He was dead.
That moment of realisation would play over in Max's head for many years to come. His lifeless figure, the bright moon, the blood. She watched with sorrowful eyes, stained with a sadness that would never leave them after that night.
"It's over", she had remembered saying. "HQ has been taken, the soldiers are bearing down on us. This is the end."
"No Max. This is just the beginning". Antigone let go of Alec's hands and stood slowly.
She looked up to the sprawling night sky and could swear she saw a cocky smile mirrored in the incandescence of the stars.
"This is just the beginning".
Decades later people would still talk about that night. The night Terminal City fell and the transgenics fled. The night that hope was lost - but a new hope forged. The hope that if two beings - one human, one transgenic - could escape the narrow confines of fear and hatred and emerge into a realm of love, maybe the world could too. That if an assassin - a killer, a man raised behind dark walls of torture, and an elitist, a puritist, a woman with no thought of cause nor consequence, could love, then maybe there was hope for us all.
"There's always hope", Alec had said many years ago. Standing at his grave 25 years on, Max knew he had been right.
Even after he was gone, there was hope. Even after their kind had been hunted, chased, driven from their homes, captured, tortured, and almost completely wiped out, there was hope. As long as they were living, breathing, and fighting, there was hope.
Finally they had done it. The battle wasn't over, but it was a huge step. Transgenics, transhumans and their offspring were legally citizens of the United States and had been for three whole days.
The few of Alec's friends who had survived the long years of persecution stood at his graveside.
Joshua was gone, Gemma was gone, and Sketchy had been shot down by police at the Transgenics Rights Rally of 2033.
They were with Alec now in the high place, resting.
But Max was still fighting. Older and battered but standing by his resting place, head held high and as proud as ever. Logan stood beside her, solemn as Max poured Alec a scotch and placed it at his gravestone.
"If you don't pay me back for this..." She choked through suppressed tears. "...I'll kick your ass."
She drew a breath sadly.
"You should have been there. She did a'ight, your boo." Max looked proudly to Antigone, whose face was awash with fresh tears.
"You should have been there". Max reiterated softly.
Normal moved up from behind them and placed a set of boxing gloves on the tombstone, patting them affectionately. "Bought you these golden boy. Signed by Burge The Beater. He's a new fighter, half transgenic, cheeky as hell - you'd like him. You would have liked him." Normal sighed.
Original Cindy kissed two of her fingers and placed them gently upon the cold stone. "We love ya boo." She nodded and backed into the crowd so that others could pay their respects.
People kept coming all through the night, transgenic and human alike, even those who had never known Alec, but who heard of him and known of him only as a hero of a past age, dutifully remembered.
As the night wore on, two people remained at Alec's side, just as it had always been. Max and Antigone, their tiny, ageing frames outlines against the starry sky. The two women Alec had loved.
"What do we do now?" Antigone whispered almost to herself.
"We rest." Max placed a hand gently on her shoulder before turning and walking slowly away.
As she turned one last time she whispered softly. "Goodbye Alec, goodbye Antigone".
Antigone had visited his grave often - as often as she could. It was one of the only reminders that he had ever walked this earth at all. He owned very little, Alec, and the fractional amount of things he had owned had been destroyed during the siege on Terminal City so many years ago. Antigone had often wished he had left something behind, something to remind her of the way he smelled or felt, and just as often Max would remind her that she was Alec's legacy - the one thing he left on this earth - the person he loved, the person he had died for.
But Antigone knew that she would soon leave this life, and there would be nothing to remind the world that Alec was ever a part of it.
Antigone laid down beside Alec's grave, rubbing her hands through the soil.
As her eyes closed, Alec sidled up to her at the bar, a wide grin spread across his face.
"Can I buy you a drink?" He beamed up at her, one eyebrow arched.
"Sure..." She smiled back at him. "Absolutely."
Antigone lay her head down on the damp soil beside Alec's grave. "I love you." She whispered.
"I love you too." Alec answered as the bartender put two drinks in front of them and Alec wrapped an arm around Antigone affectionately, kissing her softly on the forehead. "I love you too".
The stars shone brightly over the two dead lovers that night and into the fabric of time, long past the Year Of Citizenship, past the time when even Max took her seat beside Alec in the high place and into an era where Max, Alec and Antigone were merely the stuff of legend. Into a new world full of hope and promise.
But one night every year, the descendents of the Manticore Transgenics visit the monument at Freedom City, leaving flowers and promises at the base of the large white stone, and trace their fingers over the worn inscription, its context long forgotten but its message as clear as the desperate night it was spoken. There is always hope. Always.
THE END