SEPULCHRE - Kwayera

When she entered his apartment, it was dark. It didn't present a problem for her cat-enhanced eyes, but it was what it signified that bemused her. The room was eerily silent, and nothing moved to disturb the shadows stretching across the floor. The air carried a thick aura of sepulchral morbidity, and it spoke of anguish.

She wasn't entirely sure why she was here, exactly - what on earth could she do to soothe a mourning soul, when she was mourning herself? She lifted a foot and set it down again, carefully, stepping forward without a sound. The shadows of a passing...something...flitted across the floor like a bird flits from tree to tree, starling her from her reverie of contemplation. She shook her head, the movement rustling her hair across her back. A slight sound echoed from the general vicinity of the floor, an exhalation of bated breath that confirmed her suspicions.

She stepped forward once more, making a little sound this time as to not startle the person sitting on the floor. She stopped a few feet away from him, far enough away to dodge an attack and close enough to eye him carefully.

"Alec?"

Her voice was hesitant, tentative. She couldn't help admitting to herself that she was more than a little afraid of the being sitting so motionlessly on the floor. He had had ten years of training on her, and she knew that every time they bickered and sparred that he was withholding his true power. Greatly. It didn't matter that she was genetically perfect – if he deigned to fight seriously with her, she wouldn't last the few seconds it would take her to realize it. The both knew it.

She waited a few minutes before speaking again, this time her voice a little louder, a little stronger.

"Ale-"

"What do you want, Max?" She was interrupted by a harsh voice emitting from the dark figure, and the shadows shifted slightly as he slowly raised his head to regard her with eyes that brimmed with intensity. She didn't say a word, but moved over to his side, sliding down the chair he was leaning his back on to settle herself next to him. She didn't need to look at him to know that he was glaring at her. She reached down between his loosely crossed legs, swiftly grasping the shot glass resting there, and brought up to her face. She took a long swig, finishing off the sharp drink under Alec's disapproving gaze, resisting the urge to wince as the alcohol bit her throat.

"I was drinking that, you know," he said quietly.

"I do," she replied, raising her eyebrows at him. She knew he could see her perfectly, so she didn't waste too much time in verbal rebuttal. He looked away.

They sat silently for a while, but before long she heard a small sniff, followed by a ragged exhale. She was slightly shocked by the sound; he was crying. That was odd. The only other time she had seen him cry was at Rachel's bedside, weeping in grief and despair from love lost. Alec wasn't one to weep for petty reasons - this was serious. A hand tentatively grasped hers from where it rested on the floor and squeezed tightly, holding it like a lifeline.

This was obviously the closest he would come to asking for comfort, she realized, and she gave it without a second thought. She shifted and he moved with her, so his head was buried in her shoulder as she hugged him tightly to her. All his limbs save one (stretched out and prone on the floor, foot twitching in time to his soft exhales) were curled into her body, and she struggled once more not to wail herself in his desolation. She felt his breath against her collarbone and his hot tears sliding down her skin, and she wept too, inside, responding almost in kind to his agony. Her hand came up to caress his hair, ruffling it softly as one would stroke a distressed child. They stayed like this for a long time.

Max realized that this was probably the first time in a long while, if ever, that he had ever sought comfort from anyone, and he had asked her, of all people. That in itself amazed her; why on earth would he want someone who kept calling him an ass and a screw up? He rarely showed any emotion but arrogance and smart ass-ness on his face, and now he was shuddering in her arms, weeping. The only sound he made, however, was soft, shuddering exhales and random mews, like a kitten.

Most people say that cats purr because they're happy or content, but they also purr to comfort themselves or others when they're distressed. Manticore had, for some perverse reason equipped all its X5 series that had cat DNA with the ability to shape their throats so that they could purr; why they did it, no one knows (but more probably, they had let the ability escape their attention to detail). And so this was what Max did now; a soft, calming purr that echoed in Alec's fevered ears and sent him into a deep, restless sleep to the soft melody and the beating of her heart. She kept on purring through her vigil that night; the gentle vibration grounding his fevered dreams and keeping away the demons that haunted his eyes when he was awake.

Many hours later, a change in Alec's breathing patterns alerted her to his current state of awareness, and she looked down to see hazel eyes staring straight back at her, almost in confusion. They asked a silent question; why? It had many meanings that Max could conjure - why did you come? why did you stay? why did you comfort me? why do you care?

She brought her forehead to lean against his as she whispered, "You don't have to hide from me, Alec." She kissed his forehead gently as he squeezed his eyes shut in response, shaking his head minutely in disbelief.

"You aren't a screw up, Alec. You never have been. I needed someone, selfishly, to act as a punching bag and you were always there for me, taking it." She paused, struggling to translate her thoughts into speech. She stroked his barcode in silent apology and he shivered in assent, his eyes sliding shut. Finally she simply settled for a whispered "You don't have to be alone anymore."

He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, his own purr echoing in her ear. She bent down and softly touched her lips to his forehead again, purring lightly in return. It would have appeared a tranquil scene had one not understood its meanings and, had one not known that Alec's best friend and almost-brother Biggs had been brutally slaughtered by the bloodthirsty crowd of anti-transgenic horde gathered at the gates to Terminal City. Alec was not one to normally weep for a fallen comrade, no matter how close - but this was different. Biggs wasn't meant to die. Alec was.

Alec had been the diversion. Alec had been the key. And Alec had been the one sighted by the snipers' rifle. He wasn't even sure exactly what had happened: one minute Alec was playing the typical jeering and dodge-bullet transgenic that the general public loved to hate, and Biggs had been the rescue mission. The next minute Alec was lying on the ground with a bullet in his leg and Biggs was 'laying the smackdown' on a bristling sector cop. They last words that Alec ever heard uttered from Biggs' mouth were, "Run, godammit, RUN!" And so he did, against ever instinct and acting only on the shouted command of his friend, as fast as his injured leg could carry him back to the safe confines of Terminal City, and carrying his small but precious cargo of vaccines, where he watched the sector cop and his cronies throw the beaten Biggs to the merciless crowd, where he was literally torn to pieces.

The sheer brutality of the act had silenced the riots' violent protesting for a day or too; long enough for a few denizens of the City to sneak out and gather the pieces of their fallen comrades' body for burial. Alec had disappeared that night from the grieving headquarters, and a brooding sense of melancholy leaving turbulence in his wake. Max had followed him, of course, to his trashy apartment; found him, protected him against the dragons of death that haunted his dreams. As she held him she stroked his forehead, settling his sweaty hair. His voice came again, haunted, no longer held in sway by her rare touch.

"It was supposed to be me, Max. I was ready to die. But not him. You think yourself poison, but in reality we all are – cursed to kill those that we cherish. Rachel. Biggs." He paused, and she waited mutely, stunned into silence by his ragged admission. "But I couldn't stand it if I lost you, Max."

She pulled slightly away from him to look into his eyes – her own deep brown meeting stormy hazel. She brought a trembling hand up to his temple and he turned his face into her palm, never breaking eye contact. Slowly she nodded, and the moment evolved – suddenly she was leaning forward, touching his mouth with her own as they met in a desperate kiss: all their emotions of despair, anger, desolation, loss and hatred and love, all colliding in the warring of their tongues, confiding in nipping teeth and bruised lips. They broke apart and embraced, joined in their tangles of emotion and even a combined destiny – an antidote to their poison.

They held each other long into the next day, never moving, alone no longer.

FIN

Author's Note: I am aware that this is not how Biggs really dies. The fact that he does die in the series was coincidence – this was written prior to that episode. :)