Arcanum:

Solitary

by

Kel

Disclaimer: I don't presume to own Dark Angel or any of it's characters. I gain no profit from this fiction, other than pride and joy and hopefully reviews.

Author's Note:This is the sixth fic in the Arcanum series. It takes place at the end of Hello, Goodbye, and is an extension on the scene between Max and Alec on the Space Needle.

Anything in italics is a flashback. (And just in case you're confused, the flashbacks come from HG, and Arcanum fics: Permanence, and Almost a Memory.)

The darkness was alive.

I can't. Couldn't what?

It swirled, twisted, and tightened around her heavy heart.

Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.

Icy, shadowed fingers squeezed crimson tears out of the only part of her that fought to hold on. Because it wasn't really hers.

She wished she couldn't feel it.

Things would have been so much easier if she couldn't feel. If she could have stayed and looked into his eyes, which leaked more pain than tears. If she could have looked into his eyes and been unaffected.

But she had run, just like always.

The darkness reached out toward her. Why should this night be different than any other?

The figure it divulged slid calmly up behind her.

"Hey Max, thought I'd find you here."

"I come here to be alone." Her response didn't hold the energy; the anger that it usually would have.

"Yeah, I know," Alec replied, still slightly behind her and out of eyesight. "But considering everything that went down today, I figured we could both use a friend right now."

A friend. Right. Even if their 'relationship' had even closely resembled friendship, what good would it do either of them? She only hurt the people who cared about her.

She didn't tell him this. Maybe it was selfish of her, but she didn't want to be alone any more than he apparently did. "Sit down," she told him softly.

He eased himself down beside her, exhaling in a clipped sigh. "So," he began. "You got any deep thoughts you wanna share? Any, uh, profound realizations about life?"

Max stared off into the darkness ahead of her - the darkness around her - and she wished she could have said no. She wished she could have claimed ignorance like the people around her did every day. The world's not too bad a place, people are getting gunned down in the streets but it's all good, transgenics are a menace - people were stupid, but sometimes they were lucky. They didn't have to know about being science experiments, or running from super-secret government agencies, or carrying Frankenstein viruses. . . . They didn't have to know the pain that she did, or the one ultimate fact that invaded every corner of her life and that of those who knew her.

"Yeah." In simple terms? "Love sucks."

This was one sentiment that she knew Alec would relate to. After all, was his life not as screwed up as her own? As much as she hated to admit it sometimes, they were a lot alike. The same demons chased their tails every waking moment, even if it didn't show.

He had once told her that things had gotten a lot worse at Manticore after she and the others had escaped. That back there, you did what you had to do, and you tried to forget.

She knew the feeling. It wasn't exactly a walk in the part on the outside either. Where she was alone in everything she did, just as she often was in Manticore. She found comfort in others, or she didn't - more often she didn't. In a lot of ways, their lives weren't that different at all. The pain still hurt, she still bled, and she still had to hide it from everyone around her, lest she seem weak. But she still kept on doing what she had to do, and trying to forget.

Most of the time she couldn't; and she couldn't stop caring either. No matter how many ways Manticore might have had of making Alec not care, she knew he couldn't stop either. It was always there, eating away at them.

That was it exactly. Love was the pain that ate away at them all. Not some notion of evil, or the darkness in man's heart, but love. It stormed its way into your life, made you think you could be happy, then wrapped its fingers around your throat and squeezed.

"Love's not the problem." Alec's voice was so quiet Max almost didn't hear him, and when she did, she couldn't believe what he was saying.

"Oh, is that so?" she snapped. Her voice was infused with disgusted rage. Her voice was loud over the silent city. "Then explain to me why every time we love someone, everything turns to shit."

In the face of her anger, Alec did nothing more than chuckle bitterly. He ignored her impatient glare and stared out toward the lights twinkling in the distance.

Max followed his gaze, fists clenched at her sides. Of course love was the problem. Alec was such an idiot sometimes - what did he know?

She took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself a little. Normally she would have hit him for annoying her, but she was actually curious about what he had to say this time. Alec, who had grown up being taught that emotions were a weakness and who had lost the first girl he ever loved, didn't think that love sucked?

"Even the people down there," Alec began, gesturing to the earth that stretched below them, "Even the ordinaries know that if you get burned enough, you get turned off to the whole concept of love. Most of them get to live through that just as any transgenic would."

"It's different for them," Max stated. It was a fact.

Alec shook his head softly. "No, it's not." Another blast of contradiction. He stood and took a few steps along the edge of the space needle before turning back to her and continuing. "Max, you've spent your whole life trying to be like them."

"But I'll never be like them." She looked up at him, tears shining in her eyes.

"You are like them! We all are! Because what they don't realize - what you can't realize, even after all you've been through, is that love isn't the issue. Probability is what brings us down, Max."

Max stood as well now, facing him. "What are you talking about?" She couldn't understand what he was trying to say. He wasn't sounding like himself . . . but somehow she felt there was a truth behind his words that eluded her. She'd only ever had this feeling once before; the feeling of needing to see something that was right in front of her face, but just out of reach.

The two of them made their way silently to the DNA lab. Upon approaching the door, Zack removed a small jar from his pocket. "Guess there is an eye in team," Max muttered as he scanned in their stolen optical key. "It worked, we're in," she spoke into her communicator.

The door opened, and Zack walked in, but she couldn't follow him. Not yet, not until she knew. Those eyes . . . it was like they were begging her to open her own. She tried to work it out, to figure out the mystery which had left no clues or evidence.

She tilted her head to the side, isolated from what was going on around her.

Zack touched her shoulder. "Come on," he whispered. The mission was her primary objective for now, even if she suddenly felt that her priority list was out of whack. This puzzle in the dark; that was what felt most important to her - but a lot rested on this night's events. Attempting unsuccessfully to suppress her curiosity, she nodded and turned back to something she would more likely be able to accomplish.

Just as before, she could almost feel it crackling in the air, calling to her.

"I'm talking about pain," Alec whispered.

Max remained silent, hoping he would continue unassisted.

"From the minute we're born, or created, or whatever, there are any number of possible futures out there, any number of things that can happen to us. Bad things don't happen because we love, they happen because some hand reached into a hat and hauled out Option Number 47, instead of 20 or 683."

Max nodded at his decidedly uncharacteristic logic. She wasn't quite sure who she was talking to anymore, or where the womanizing pig she knew had gone, but what he was saying made sense to her. "But love is what makes it hurt," she whispered softly.

"It's okay, I won't hurt you." That had been whispered too, when she was much younger.

"Love is what makes us human," Alec corrected.

"We're not soldiers out here." The words came unbidden, but from where, she didn't know.

"It doesn't matter if we are or not. I know first hand, Max. Even as soldiers we were human - victims of chance. We just didn't always know it. When probability strikes, if we don't have love, we're cold, empty shells. I'd rather suffer through a little pain than be like that - be the way Manticore wanted us to be."

"It would be easier though. If we could just stop . . . stop loving."

Why did he keep doing things like that if they hurt so much? The thought was out of sync with the conversation, somehow.

"Haven't you been listening to me at all?" Alec snapped. "Love isn't the problem. Even without it, bad things will still happen. Sometimes love is the only thing that can keep you alive. It makes you strong. It doesn't cancel out probability, but it keeps you going."

"Once, Zack asked our instructor what the word 'love' meant. Jondy had wanted to know, because she heard one of the nurses say it . . . something about it. The officer told him that love is meaningless and can only get in the way. He said it was . . . phony. That it was nothing that a soldier should ever think about, because it wasn't real. He said that love was a made up story that was used to gain advantage."

But that was wrong. She knew that wherever the memory had come from, Alec was right. Of course he was right. Love wasn't phony, and it didn't get in the way. It certainly wasn't meaningless, and no; it wasn't the problem. It just wasn't like that.

She couldn't believe she had ever thought otherwise.

But right now, she didn't know what she had ever thought. Memories flashed through her head - memories that didn't fit. A dark-haired boy in a cold lonely cell that wasn't so lonely anymore. A closeness. It was all so vague. . . .

She had gripped the tail of that great big something, and it was shaking and tossing her around like a rag doll. And she still couldn't see what it was.

"Alec?"

"Yeah."

"Speaking of going." She gave him a pointed look. "I just . . . I need some time to process things. Alone."

"Yeah, whatever." He sighed, and left her with a smile that revealed very little happiness.

Max sat back down, surrounded by her isolation, and tried to piece together what had just happened, and what had happened before. Everything was such a mess. . . .

Far below, the first drops of rain marked Alec's departure, and Max's solitude.

X5-452, known to the world as Max, sat huddled on top of the cold space needle, with her arms wrapped around her knees. She was afraid; for her future, for her past, and for her heart. She was afraid for her sanity; afraid of the thoughts that free-floated in her skull. Thoughts that remained disjointed and unclear. She was afraid.

I can't. Couldn't make any sense of it all. Couldn't think. Couldn't breathe.

She was empty; facing a defeat by her own elusive memories, and by the icy fingers that flexed around her heart.

And she was alone.

In the dark.

Solitary.

Eventually, not even her memories spoke to her.

End.