26. Just when I needed you

AN: Yay, hell froze over, indeed. What's worse is that I think - stretches hand out - yeah, it's snowing, too. Only two reviews, but I loved them, so I had to post. Deal with it and dress for winter weather! Lyrics in this part adapted from Bonnie Tyler's "Holding out for a Hero"

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Max and Zack walked down the garbage-scattered street in awkward silence, dodging a rat here or a fly infested carcass there. It had been two days since their crash landing; two days that Max had spent recuperating and Zack brooding over his past, both of them wary of opening up to the other. Deep in thoughts, neither of them really noticed the desolate area they were strolling through or the ragged, hunched figures huddled in damp corners of the alley as darkness fell over the city.

Suddenly, Zack became alert. His jaws clenched together, and he stared intently in the distance, muscles tense, ready for attack. Once again, he looked like an X5 on a mission. He quickly left Max's side and strode to a darker corner of the alley to observe a group of teens gathered around a large upturned metal barrel. Trying to figure out what had caught Zack's attention, Max took in the details of the scene. The barrel looked inconspicuous, once it had probably contained olives. Who knew what else it had been used for since then. The youngster hunched over it was trying to come up with the text to a rather wailing melody and was using the barrel as percussion instrument.

A girl, haggard looking, the unkempt hair and her general appearance a sign that she probably lived on the streets, stood next to him, cheering, clapping and stomping her feet to the tune. At Zack's signal, Max joined him in the dark corner, several yards away from the small group, only to regret it seconds later, when she focused on the text of the song.

"Eyes Only, Eyes Only, watching out, always there,/ Eyes Only, Eyes Only, cyber hack."

"No, no, no!" the girl shouted."'principled and fair'."

Horrified, Max tried to drag Zack away, but her attempt failed. The X5 was unresponsive, completely concentrated on the youngsters across the street.

The kid at the barrel changed the rhythm and the girl jumped in with a cracked voice:

"Day in, day out, he hacked around/ Cops and mayors, thugs and. and."

"Zack!"

The boy supplied:

"Cops and dealers, thugs and mayors./ Baddies running in despair."

"That doesn't rhyme!" The shrill voice of another boy in his early teens interrupted him. He ran toward them, dragging a dirty elderly man behind her.

"We have a guitar, and Cash can play!"

"Zack, we need to go, now!" Max hissed.

The bum settled in front of the bonfire the kids had kindled with old cartons and caught the battered guitar shoved toward him.

"Hey, it's got two strings!" he exclaimed in mock delight. "Can't ask for more."

"Zack!" Still no response. Finally, Max gave up on trying to drag Zack away. While she wished the earth would open up and swallow her whole, there was no way she could leave Zack here alone with whatever flashbacks he was having. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the almost forgotten Manticore brainwash resistance routines.

Lightly strumming the chords, the singer began to silently hum a rocky tune, soon adding in a few words. Here and there, one of the three youngsters would throw in a better rhyme, humming along to the black man's baritone, until the quick melody was sung by deep, raspy voices that had more emotion to them than talent.

Yes, Max, focus on the poor excuse for singing. But it was too late. The singing wasn't half bad and the text had already drawn her in.

"I need a hero,/

I'm holding out for a hero."

Logan's face flashed in front of Max' eyes, purpose driven, cold, hard, all Eyes Only. She tried desperately to remember a smile of his, but every time she thought she did, it would vanish, leaving behind the stricken expression that had appeared when she had told him about Alec.

"and he's got to fight for the right."

And fight for the right he did. And for her, too. If she concentrated enough, she could almost feel his hand in her hair, caressing it. She could almost see his sad smile, how he'd look away when it got too hard. He had always been there for her.

"I would swear that there're blue eyes,/ somewhere watching me."

Max bit her lip. One of these days she'd have to step to the real that there were no such things as ghosts and shared dreams. Manticore must have messed with her brain really badly if she even considered it. Or maybe she had indeed been on the outside too long, forgetting that life didn't dish out happy endings. She thought of the gill girl, as she had silently come to think of her. No, indeed, life didn't make it easy. But it could be done, with help from the right people, from the right man.

".for the poor and the marred,/

I need my hero, Eyes Only."

Slowly, an insane idea began to form in her head as she remembered the hack she once did herself. These people needed Eyes Only. The hero needed to be resurrected. Maybe Sebastian. her thought trailed off as she realized its futility. She bit her lip. Eyes Only was gone for good. Gone, you hear, she silently yelled at herself. The sooner she'd get that through her emotion ridden head, the better for everybody. She had no time for this.

As if to prove her right, an approaching hoverdrone emitted a low, buzzing sound that caught everybody's attention. As the small group of youngsters scrambled away, the song abruptly ended with a whimper from the abused guitar.

Blending into the shadows, Max dared look at Zack again. The arrival of the hoverdrone had sent him hiding in the doorway of a house.

Once the street was clear, Max got herself together and rushed him on, hoping the incident wouldn't have any consequences. "Zack, we need to go. The hoverdrones are beginning to make their rounds."

Zack seemed to have emerged from whatever flashback he had been having. He was more relaxed now, but the look in his eyes was still unreadable. He broke the silence with a question that made her heart pound madly.

"How can I be of any use to you, when I don't even know what's real and what's not? I'm a danger to you!" Bitterness suffused his words. And the he added, as if in an afterthought, "Just like he is."

Max froze in her tracks, acutely aware that they couldn't argue in the street, even if it was dark. She pursed her lips, tempted to brush it all off with a quip, but in the end she remained quiet, unable to offer the reassurance he needed and wary of the implications his words had.

For a moment, his eyes locked with hers, and she held her breath. "Who is he? Who's Logan?" he blurted out aggressively.

That's what she had been afraid of. Max's voice caught in her throat. "Logan?" The last thing she needed right now was to have to explain about Logan.

"While you were unconscious...." He stopped, as if realizing that his listening in could be misinterpreted. Since when did he care about that? Brusquely, he dragged her away from a stray dog that had been eyeing them curiously, and pushed her unceremoniously into the wall of the building.

"You were saying his name. You mentioned him to Lydecker, too." His tone grew more belligerent with every second.

Max feverishly looked for some way of escaping this dreaded conversation, when her apprehensive eyes met his fiery ones again and she was reminded of earlier discussions on the same subject. Damn Zack and his on and off brotherly feelings. She was not about to deny anything, and it was high time they sorted this out.

She didn't realize it, Zack thought bitterly, but in the dark shadow of the entrance porch to a house probably inhabited only by rats and insects, she was quite a sight. Her right hand had somehow found the way to her well- rounded hip, her short, once again curly hair was tangled from the draft and her eyes glowed almost predatorily yellow as she raised her chin and met his eyes in defiance. "He's somebody I cared for."

The words sounded hollow in her ears. There had been so much more to their relationship. Never taking her eyes off Zack, she added, stressing the words rebelliously, "A lot."

Her outburst surprised even herself. Dealing with Lydecker and everything else hadn't left her much time to figure out what to tell Zack. She hadn't thought she'd be ready to tell him, not now, not ever. And yet, here she was, throwing into Zack's face something she hadn't allowed herself to think for a long while.

"You love him, don't you?" The menace in his tone was hidden, but still there.

"He's dead." The words rang in her ears, as if mocking her.

"That's not what I asked." Zack's voice held an urgency, a no-nonsense feel that made Max finally burst out in quiet, cold rage:

"You're someone who'll sacrifice everything to protect the ones you love, Zack. You'll probably understand if I told you I did the same thing."

The words seemed to get to Zack. He closed his eyes and when he opened them, his left one was batting slightly.

"You gave me up. For him!" His arms shot out and pinned her to the wooden door, bruising her still-aching shoulder.

Guilt crept on her face and she lowered her eyes for a moment, only to respond a second later with a well placed kick in Zack's knee, effectively freeing herself from his grasp.

"Between sending my brother away and letting the man I love be killed, I chose the lesser evil. Isn't that standard procedure?" she mocked.

She wasn't prepared for the look Zack shot her, tired, almost desperate, defeated and yet burning her to the core.

Zack was uncertain enough about his memories not to engage in an argument on the street. But he wasn't about to give in; defeat wasn't in his job description. "Was he Eyes Only?"

Max' uninjured hand clenched to a fist as she stopped and turned toward the other X5, giving him a look that unmistakably told him to back off.

"He helped me. Us. He cared. In ways no one ever will again. Anything else you remember is Manticore's doing."

Zack snorted in doubt.

"He crossed their path to help us and they wanted him dead. They succeeded, too." Max continued. Logan was dead, but for some reason it was important to her that Zack make his peace with him.

She stopped for a second, searching for something to end an argument she hadn't been prepared for. What she came up with must have looked pitiful in Zack's eyes, but it was the best she could do at the moment. "Zack, I loved him. I left him, thinking he was my weakness. Turned out he was my strength."

Her words came out softly, in stark contrast to the fierceness with which she had responded to Zack's earlier challenge. Slowly, she detached herself from the shadows of the rundown building and went ahead, while Zack followed through the streets at the outskirts of San Francisco.