Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel, so on and so forth. You know the drill.

Setting: After FN

A/N: Please review. I'd love any ideas you guys have about what should happen in this story. This is kind of a 'what I would do if I was in Dark Angel' story so feel free to give me some input on that. Thanks.

A Normal Girl

Alec's POV:

I can't help but grin again when I catch her checking me out for the third time. She's pretty cute for an ordinary. Sure, she's not perfect like an X-5 girl, but definitely better than a bunch of the girls I've slept with before. She seems kind of interesting, too. The kind of girl I might actually want to talk to.

I grab the door handle to the apartment complex and pull open the door, holding it for her.

"After you." I say, gesturing for her to go ahead.

After all, it's only fair that I get the chance to check out her ass, too. I'm all about equal opportunity, really.

So far this is shaping up to be a good night. About time, too. Things haven't been too great ever since the Jampony incident. I was never too crazy about this whole 'Transgenics Unite' experiment of Maxie's, but what was I going to do? I mean, it's Max.

"Hey, Alec?" Maleah asks, interrupting my thoughts.

"Mmm?" I ask.

"Where am I going?"

"Oh! Yeah, I live upstairs. This way." I lead her to the stairs and we head up. I glance her and decide that it's about time she answered some of my questions, "So, Maleah, what do you do?"

"Do? Well, nothing great. I'm a waitress." she says.

"Hey, a job's a job, right? I was a bike messenger." I shrug, "Don't you have any friends or anything out there that are going to wonder where you've disappeared to?"

She shakes her, "Like I said, I've never really felt like one of them."

Now, I feel kind of bad for her. Even I had friends out there like Sketchy and Original Cindy. But then, I'm incredibly charming. Not everyone has that kind of lovable personality.

"Well, as long as you don't turn out to be someone trying to kill us, I'm sure you'll make friends here."

"I think that's a stipulation for making friends anywhere." she replies dryly.

I raise an eyebrow. So, she's got my kind of a sense of humor. That's always a plus.

"You would think." I return before opening the door to my apartment, "Here we are."

She heads in, checking the place out with a look of curiosity. I close the door behind me and head into the kitchen area to get us some drinks.

"I've got uh...beer, scotch, and some mystery liquor." I reported after checking my stash, "What can I get you?"

"Mystery liquor?" she asks.

"Oh, you don't want that. It's something one of the guys put together. No one really knows what it is, but it does the trick." I explain as I grab myself a beer.

"I'll have whatever you have." she says.

"Okay." I nod, grabbing another beer and kicking the refrigerator closed.

I toss the can to her and she catches it. I open my own can and make for the couch.

"Was all this stuff here already?" she wonders.

"Some of it. Some stuff we brought in before the whole stand-off thing started." I pat the couch cushion next to me, "Have a seat."

She sits down and opens her beer, taking a sip. I drape my arm across the back of the couch behind her.

"So did the S1W really burn down Manticore?" she asks.

I can't help but laugh out loud at the thought of Asha and her fellow do-gooders trying to take down Manticore. They wouldn't make it past the perimeter.

Maleah's giving me a weird look so I explain, "No, no, the S1W had nothing to do with it. That was a cover story. Max is the real culprit. She's the one who let all us freaks out in the world."

"Why? Wasn't Manticore your home?"

I stiffen. Manticore, my home? Manticore could never be a home and yet it had been. It was very complicated.

"It wasn't exactly a white-picket fence type of place."

I can feel her eyes on me, but I don't want to explain. I don't want to go into detail about what they put us through back there. So, I shake it off and smile.

"Max was never your average girl even back at ol' Manticore. She was always trouble. Never learned not to play with matches, I guess." I joke, hoping to keep her from asking anymore questions about Manticore.

"She's the leader, right?" Maleah asks.

"Yeah, I guess so. She bellows, we find ourselves obeying against our better judgment."

"She's the one who rode the hover drone into that bike messenger place, isn't she?"

I laugh again and nod, "That's her. But I don't want to talk about Max anymore. Talking about her makes the bruises I get from her hurt more. Tell me some more about you."

She smiles softly like she's remembering something funny and takes another drink of her beer. I'm pretty convinced she not a familiar. For one, I've never seen a familiar blush and two, they've never been this good at acting. Either she's a regular girl whose on our side or she's a regular girl working undercover for the government.

"Me? Um...well, I'm not from Seattle. I'm from Spokane. Moved here because I heard there were more jobs. Got to eat, you know?" she leans forward and put her elbows on her knees, "But things are pretty much the same everywhere. Not enough jobs, stupid people, same old stuff no matter where you are. Except..."

"Except?" I prod.

She leans back against my arm and looks at me.

"Except that you're in Seattle. And sometimes I feel like I was meant to come here because the transgenics are here."

This girl has some serious problems. And I'm not exactly the sensitive type. So I don't say anything, I just wait for her to continue.

She sighs heavily and takes a long drink, "And sometimes I feel like I'm just an idiot. But you don't care about that stuff. Uh...what do you want to know?"

"Well, I'm kind of curious how you think you're going to get around the whole toxic fumes thing." I say, trying to steer the conversation into a safe area.

She smiles sheepishly, "I actually didn't think that part through. I was kind of hoping you guys would have an idea."

"I don't, but I'll ask Dix. He might be able to come up with something." I give her my half-smile, "Wouldn't want you to get sick."

She blushes again, something that I can't help but think adds to her appeal.

"Too bad I wasn't made perfect like you guys, huh?" she says, laughing weakly at herself.

"Oh, they made us far from perfect, sweetheart." I inform her, "If we were perfect, they would have stopped with the X-5's. No, they made plenty of mistakes."

I think about Ben, my twin. I think about all the time I spent in Psy-Ops. And I think about...the Berrisford mission. If they'd made us perfect, none of that would have happened and I wouldn't care.

"Could've fooled me."

I snap out of it and glance over at Maleah. She's staring at me with that same concerned and curious look that Max sometimes looks at me with. I curse inwardly at myself for letting enough emotion show through to catch her attention. I'm slipping. So, I grin to through her off the trail and lean closer into her space.

"Don't get the wrong idea about us. We're not some kind of innocent downtrodden heroes. Okay, maybe Max is, but not the rest of us. We're soldiers, killers, we were made that way. We were born that way."

"Are you trying to scare me?" she asks, leaning towards me.

"Why? Are you?" I raise an eyebrow.

"No." she answers just before I close the remaining distance between us and kiss her.

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