Chapter 4: When you come back down
Alec woke alone and the world came crashing down around his bed. Her side, the side she'd fallen asleep on, was cold and her lingering scent on the pillow was just that—lingering. Max had been gone for hours. Alec squared his jaw against the pieces of broken world on his floor. She didn't sleep a fifth of the time that he did. Why would she hang around when she woke up, knowing that he would be out for ages? Alec allowed this almost pleasant fantasy to play through his mind for a few moments, followed by the equally pleasing fiction that she'd be back any moment with doughnuts and a kiss saying something saccharine and sarcastic like, "You looked so plum tuckered I figured you'd be out for hours, so I got breakfast."
Alec knew he was being an idiot. He remembered something Max once told him in one of the few moments of pure hopelessness she allowed no one but him to see during the siege. "Hope's for losers, Alec," she'd said softly, her voice thick with emotions. People had died that day. "It's a con job people trip behind until they finally get a grip on reality." She'd gone on about how the ordinaries would never accept transgenics, but that first part had made Alec wonder if she didn't suspect how he felt. For a minute, he thought she was trying to warn him away. He wished now he had taken that warning, whether it was intentional or not. Max was gone. She wasn't coming back. Alec owed her an apology.
He knocked on Max's apartment door fully clothed five minutes later. Straining his ears he heard the shower going. Alec knew Max felt the need to get clean—to wash his scent from every inch of her body—to scrub her skin until it was red and raw and untouched. Alec knew she had been showering for hours, and he didn't question the knowledge. He knocked a little louder and heard the shower turn off. A moment later, she answered the door in a tightly cinched bathrobe. Her eyes went wide when she identified him.
"Good morning," she stammered.
"Hi," he murmured, wondering why he hadn't had the decency to wash her scent away before coming here. It must be an unpleasant reminder, he knew without a doubt that she was remembering.
"Come in," she hesitantly offered and he obeyed. "Coffee?"
Alec declined awkwardly and sat down on her overstuffed, threadbare sofa. Max chose an armchair across from him.
"I'm sorry," she blurt out, pinning him suddenly with her eyes. Alec blinked. This was unexpected.
"I doubt you just decided it would be a good idea to take a little stroll through the park while you were in heat," Alec informed her warmly. If she wasn't going to attack and accuse him, this could be relatively painless. Well, he was having his heart ripped out piece by piece either way, but at least this way they could go back to being almost friends.
"No," Max agreed, "Lila and Shalala had an accomplice who switched out my sedative and I woke up in their apartment, but it was all wrong. I couldn't hold out. I never can," she murmured, no longer looking at him. She paused for a few moments and Alec had no clue what to say. Max swung her eyes back up to meet his again. "I'm sorry because it didn't have to be you," she said, sounding truly apologetic. That was it then, she must know. There would be no reason for her to apologize for really great sex if she didn't know she was ripping his heart out this morning. "You had control over yourself, until I singled you out, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry I took your control away, Alec."
Alec didn't know what to say. She looked small, almost helpless, like she could never outrun Manticore or all of the horrible things it had done to her body. Worse, she looked truly sorry for hurting him, and that little bit of guilt was his fault. There was nothing he could do about that—nothing he could do to make her feel better about any of it. Normally, he would hug her at a time like this, but he didn't think she wanted him to. With the same unquestionable knowledge that told him she was holding back tears no matter how impassive her face was, he knew she expected him to leave now.
"Max," he swallowed the end of her name the way he always did—it was too precious to say aloud—and then he stopped. He would make this right somehow, but he still had nothing to say. Her head drooped slightly and the robe fell open just enough to reveal the bite wound on her shoulder. He swallowed and Max noticed. He'd done that to her. She pulled the robe tighter and rose.
"So, how about that coffee?" she offered, a grinning non sequitor. Her walk to the kitchenette was just a little too measured and he caught her limp that way rather than something more obvious that could only be faked in an X series. He'd done that, too.
"God I'm sorry, Max," he gasped, all air vacating his lungs.
She turned to look at him and he could actually feel the pain inherent in that simple movement. "Sorry for what?" she asked, her sweet smile not fooling him for a second. He rose shakily to his feet.
"I'll make it right," he promised, the words sounding hollow in his own ears. "You just, take the day off…" God, he knew how that must sound to her, but he didn't know how to put it. "You rest," he tried again, and that sounded a little better, "Yesterday was hard for you. I'll do the work thing, you don't have to."
Max nodded impassively. "Never say no to a day off," she told him.
"If I can get you anything, or…" he didn't really know what he was offering, just that he needed to do something to ease this incredible guilt that was tied like a weighted albatross around his neck.
"Go away," she said coldly, stabbing him so that for the first time he could understand what Shakespeare really meant when he said there are daggers in men's eyes.
"Right," he murmured, standing up and moving to the door. "Anything for a friend," he told her with a bitter smile.
The water was burning. After that first, intolerably cold shower she'd fixed the water heater herself. The cold water had done for starters, but everyone knew cold water never got anything really clean and Max needed to be really clean. She could still see him, sleeping like a boyish angel—so perfectly beautiful. Max held her head under the steaming water and scrubbed her hair furiously. Every strand of hair that had slid over his fingers needed to be washed clean with lavender scented shampoo. Her whole body needed to be scrubbed, she needed to be herself again before she could even hope to deal with what had happened. What had happened with Alec, anyway?
Not to say she didn't remember every detail with perfect photographic accuracy that never let her forget the things she was better off not remembering, but she didn't understand. Why Alec? No, she knew the answer to that one, too. Alec was the strongest. It was that simple. That was why he was her 2IC, wasn't it? Because he was the best of the best and willing to take on the responsibility. So maybe a better question—the real question—was why she had the sudden feeling that Alec was awake and unhappy. Max didn't want to think about that question, didn't want an answer to that one at all. She shoved her head further under the streaming water and scrubbed her face, trying to wipe the thoughts away.
There was a knock at the door. She didn't want to answer. It was Alec and he wanted to talk—she couldn't stand to talk right now—couldn't stand to think. She pushed that idea away. Alec was probably still asleep, and even if he was awake, tracking her down for pillow talk was probably not on his daily agenda. Mr. One Night was probably patting himself on the back for bagging the ice bitch and not having to put up with a lot of moony chatter. Max knew she was being unfair and didn't care as she cinched her bathrobe. If it wasn't Alec, she could deal with a visitor.
It was Alec. She managed not to scream or pull her hair out. "Good morning," she said in her nearest approximation to a normal voice.
"Hi," he answered. He wanted to talk. Against her better judgment that told her she would have nothing coherent to say, she let him in. He smelled like her—like last night—and it pulled her into a quick tumble of memories. She offered him coffee, which he declined, which was good because she wasn't entirely sure she actually had coffee. She tried not to wince when she realized that she'd actually offered him something. She never offered him anything—that was one of their things, like him calling her Maxie. It made them, well, them. The fact that it changed without notice made her nervous. Had she ruined everything?
"I'm sorry," she blurted, although she wasn't entirely sure what she was sorry for. She just hoped apologizing might get Alec to say something.
It worked, and she explained about the naturalists. She felt like she was passing the buck, blaming someone else for her mistake, and she tried to make him understand how sorry she was for taking his control away. He was hurting. She could read it all over his face, and even somewhere deeper. She felt it then, a connection that hadn't existed before. It was impossible, but it was there. She was feeling his pain, just the way Syl described it. She'd caused his pain and she was feeling it. She wanted to bash her skull through a window. Blow her brains out and hope it would all go away. She hadn't just taken away one choice, she'd taken away all of them. He would never forgive her for that. Things would never be the same between them. He was going to leave now, and he would never come back, not the same Alec, at any rate.
He said her name, swallowing the second half the way he did sometimes when they were having a really serious conversation and he couldn't really believe she was the one being this open. She tried to sense what he was going to say, but she couldn't feel it. He had to be blocking her. They'd been connected for a few hours and already he'd discovered a way to shut her out. She'd laugh at how typical it was, if it didn't make her want to cry so badly. He swallowed audibly and she realized her robe had slipped, just enough to show the bite mark on her shoulder.
She could tell the sight made him feel even worse; it made it difficult for him to hate her the way he should. Max shut the robe and tried the coffee approach again, she was sure she had some somewhere. He felt guilty. She could smell it like sulfur during a thunderstorm. Monsoons of guilt were falling from him like it was the rainy season, and this was Seattle. He apologized.
She tried to make it easy for him, to get rid of the guilt and go back to the point where he was waiting to leave. She grinned her trademark grin and asked what he thought he had to be sorry for. He stuttered back an answer that had nothing to do with her question. That was when she realized that he knew. She'd been uncertain before, hadn't felt anything definite, but now it was obvious. The guilt, the promises that didn't really promise anything and the offer designed to keep her away from him for a day all added up to an Alec that didn't love Max back.
Max wasn't even going to take the time to deal with the first part of that just now. He was offering to do something for her. Anything she wanted, other than his love, he would give her out of guilt. Having believed she understood this entire time, Max was surprised to suddenly comprehend Alec's statement during the whole thing with Rachel. She felt like throwing it back at him, "I don't want your pity, I want your absence." She couldn't get it out, though. All she could do was tell him to leave.
He had to throw it in her face when he left. She could have made it if he hadn't gone for that last parting shot. "Anything for a friend," it was practically his tag line. He said it nearly every day, whenever she asked him for a particularly annoying favor, or conversely, for something he really wanted to be doing anyway. Not that she often asked him for those sorts of things, but if she ever did ask him to infiltrate a strip club that would definitely be his response.
"Anything for a friend," he said with a twisted, forced grin. Anything for a friend, but nothing for Max. The door shut behind him, and Max began to shake so violently with her tears that she could almost believe her seizures were reoccurring.
It took a long time for her to stop crying. When she finished, she didn't feel better. She didn't feel worse, either, she was just out of tears. It had been a strangely self-pitying hour for the transgenic who spent her life not letting things get to her. It was good, in a weird way, to have the crying part done. Her head resting on her knees she let her thoughts go back to that first thing—the thing she was running away from. She was in love with Alec. It would be nice to be able to say it was all because of her stupid heat, but that was a cop out, if not a straight up lie. Mates were more than just heat, although that was the forge that fused them into the unbreakable and incomprehensible bond. Mates were people in love, and Max was in love with Alec. It got easier to think the more she thought it—not that ease made it any less horrible.
Max was in love with a man who she never had a kind word for. Then, that was why she never had a kind word for him, wasn't it? He was dangerous, he had always been dangerous. He was designed for her, her breeding partner, and when Logan was made permanently unavailable Alec was far too appealing. So Max made him unappealing in her mind, made him her scapegrace and frustrated herself when he always rose above her comments to prove that he was a good man.
He was the best man she knew, she couldn't love him otherwise. There for her, there for all of Terminal City, he always did what he could to help. He didn't always do the right thing. Sometimes he did things motivated purely by vengeance, like beating the crap out of the ordinaries that killed Biggs. Sometimes he did things motivated by greed, like selling steroids. The truth was, Max loved him because he didn't always do everything exactly as the social contract demanded. He was a jerk. He was also a soldier who understood her past, while managing to be anything but an automaton. He did everything with a vivacity that Max couldn't help but respect and adore. She couldn't help but love him, no matter how dangerous that was. No matter what sort of poison she was.
That thought stopped Max short. Alec was dangerous because he was a threat to her feelings for Logan, and for the same reason that her feelings for Logan were so very threatening. Putting your heart on the line was a spectacular way to be hurt, Max knew, but she was equally worried about hurting Alec, and she had no reason to be. Alec didn't love her, so it shouldn't matter if she was poison. The siblings she killed had all shared her feelings, the way Logan had every time she almost killed him. Besides, Max was past that depressed outlook. She was happy with the siblings that now surrounded her and the friends that filled Terminal City. She was done thinking about herself as poison, even if Renfro's words crept into her thoughts from time to time.
It hurt to move physically, but it also hurt to remember the things she'd made Alec do, so Max didn't even twitch when there was another nock on the door. It wasn't Alec, that she knew for certain this time, but she still couldn't answer it. She couldn't move and feel that should-be-pleasant pain in her abdomen. The door opened in spite of the telepathic "Go away" she was sending forcefully to her visitor.
When Jondy saw Max curled in a little ball of hair, skin and bathrobe on her old, threadbare sofa her heart broke. Max's cheeks were stained with dried tears, but when she looked up at Jondy her eyes were empty. Jondy moved immediately to take her sibling in her arms and fend the world away, but Max stopped her with a simple "Don't".
Jondy stood statue still. "Why not?" she asked quietly; she was unwilling to obey without a very good reason.
"He was sitting here," Max murmured. "He was sitting here and it still smells like him, but if you come it will just smell like you and he'll really be gone." Tears broke in Max's eyes, running down her cheeks again as an extremely gentle sob or two racked her already broken body.
Jondy sank into the armchair across from Max, not moving to hug her sister, not speaking until the tears stopped of their own accord.
"Want to tell me about it?" she asked when Max looked up at her again, wiping her eyes with the collar of the bathrobe, which then fell open to reveal an extremely nasty bite mark.
"I love him," Max said, feeling her heart break again saying it out loud. "I love him and he doesn't love me. Oh, God, Jondy, you should have felt his guilt when he realized how I felt. It was like some tangible thing."
"Felt his guilt?" the transgenic asked, trying not to set off the water works as she did so.
"I," Max choked and had to fight for control for a few seconds. It struck Jondy how incredible this was from a woman who could keep an impassive expression when facing down an entire invading army with a spork. "I think he's my mate," she whispered.
"And that's so horrible you've been locked in your apartment crying for hours?" her sister asked very gently.
"He doesn't want to be," Max explained. Jondy cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. "He doesn't. I felt his guilt in a way I doubt you can understand. He doesn't love me, he is my friend, but he doesn't love me. He kept saying it, over and over. Anything for a friend, it will be all right, and every other hackneyed way of saying 'it's not you, it's me' you can think of. He's usually more articulate, but then I doubt he was expecting to wake up mated with me this morning."
"He probably wasn't expecting it," Jondy agreed, "And he isn't in a very good mood, I'll grant you, but I wouldn't have thought being mated with you would be something he'd object to. You're the one I'd guess for going ballistic."
"You've seen him?" Max asked quickly almost missing the rest of the statement. "How is he?"
Jondy hesitated. "He isn't happy," she answered truthfully. "Not the way I'd expect him to be after finding out he'd managed to land you as a mate."
"What is he like?" she asked again, her head coming all the way off of her knees. This was encouraging enough that Jondy decided to just tell the whole truth.
"While you were… with Alec… we were trying to figure out how you got out during heat. No one believed for a second that it was something you intended to do, plus your restraints weren't broken. This morning Alec marched right into headquarters—smelling a little like you, but he'd obviously showered—and told us it was the Naturalists that abducted you. He took Shalala and Lila into custody immediately and somehow managed to get the names of four others who were involved in the plot. There will be a court proceeding, they've already been charged with breaking the Terminal City Pact and there is a lot of discussion about what else they will be charged with. That was pretty much wrapped up an hour ago and he's been at the hospital ever since, talking with the boys he hurt. He's apologizing, I think, but all of the injured have been really good about it." Jondy sighed and looked out the window. "It looks like your Naturalist buddies were right about that much at least. No one except Alec seems at all angry about being compelled to fight or the injuries they sustained."
"He said he'd make it right," Max murmured, putting her head back on her knees, but finding that she didn't feel like crying. "Of course he was talking about getting revenge."
"You don't think it's deserved?" her sister asked curiously.
"I don't know whether it's deserved or not," Max answered. "My judgment is too clouded by the way I want to hurt all of the people who hurt me this way."
"Alec included?" asked Jondy.
Max paused. "No," she said. "It isn't his fault he doesn't love me. I've hurt him enough in the past. I don't want Alec to be hurt anymore."
"Are you sure," Jondy paused and reconsidered, but then asked anyway. "Are you sure he doesn't love you?"
Max looked up at her sister in surprise. That Jondy would ask that was alarming enough, but that she could ask that was almost enough to knock Max off the sofa. Jondy did have a point, though. It was best to be certain and Max realized that while she was probably right, she didn't have any absolute proof. She'd never said she loved Alec and he'd never said he didn't love her. Maybe there was some hope, and the idea that there could be some would destroy her in a way that certainty either way never could. She focused on Alec to be positive.
Focusing on him was like focusing on breathing. Alec was there in the back of her head whether she paid attention or not, and she hadn't been paying any attention, but in focusing on this weird bond between them, she found she could sort of control it as she could her breathing. He was talking with someone he'd hurt. It was the blonde who Alec had punished for attempting to take Max without fighting for her, she knew because he was the only one Alec could possibly feel so smugly apologetic toward. They were laughing together and Alec was feeling a little sheepish, but not horrible. That was good; at least he wasn't too upset about the fight. At least he wouldn't blame her for that for long.
Max wanted to know how he felt about her, though, how he felt about last night. She needed to be completely convinced that he didn't love her. As soon as she wondered about what had happened between them, she felt it. It was as though her wondering about that while focusing on him triggered the thoughts in him. She wondered if he knew what she was doing, and felt sort of sneaky when she realized he might not.
There it was again, the guilt. He very clearly felt very guilty for hurting her. That was enough to make her want to snap out of it, but she really had to know, so she continued to focus on his feelings. Waiting for some real, genuine proof. She heard it, then, like a flashback, only his point of view. Feeling actual words in his head was a trip, though one she would have loved if she'd been wrapped securely in his arms exploring their bond the way people in love were supposed to do. Max knows his voice rumbled through her mind. Then it was her own voice—a memory of looking at her as she sat atop building with him during the siege, looking at the moon. "Hope's for losers," her voice said, "It's a con job people trip behind until they finally get a grip on reality." Alec must know she was there. He'd had just as long as she did to figure out whatever messed up biological thing was happening between them and he was using it to send her a message. A message from herself was one that she couldn't ignore because it answered her real question so firmly. Did she have any right to hope? Apparently, she did not. She tried to tell herself that was okay as she looked up at Jondy.
"He really and truly does not love me," she informed her sister. Jondy looked sadly accepting.
"I really thought," she began, then stopped. Jondy took a deep breath, "The heart wants what the heart wants. I know how it feels when it wants something it can't have, it sucks."
"Yeah," Max agreed. "I said that to him once. We were sitting on the Space Needle, talking. Love sucks was my deep philosophical thought of the day." Max looked at her sister thoughtfully. "I wonder if I'd said something else, explained all the drama that the day had put up between me and Logan, maybe something could have happened with Alec then. Maybe if we'd just started dating and not been thrown this fucking screwball called my life I would have had a chance."
Jondy needed to cut into this rhetoric before her sister started weeping again. "Let's have a girly day. I'll score us some chick flick videos and something with chocolate in it, we can sit around talking about the pre pulse actors and I can tell you how at least you don't have diabetes. What do you say?"
Max frowned. "Pass," she murmured. "I've been doing the self pity thing for like," she looked at the clock, "Six hours since Alec left. It's getting boring. Time for me to wake up and deal with life. Maybe I'm poison and I'll destroy Alec, or maybe his guilt will do me in. I don't know and it doesn't really matter. What matters is Terminal City. I can't believe I'm being this selfish when the code was broken and transgenic law is about to have its first test."
Jondy looked at her sister with even more respect than she usually showed. Whatever anyone said about Max, she genuinely cared about her fellow transgenics. "Are you sure you're up to it?" Jondy inquired. "Alec told you he would handle it."
"My shit isn't important," Max stated firmly. She stood up. "Let me get dressed and we'll go."
"Max!" her concerned sister interjected, giving the transgenic leader pause. "Max," she repeated in a softer voice. "You've always had a tough mouth, even when we were kids. That's how we were raised, but you've always had it worse than the rest of our siblings for one reason or another. Alec can handle this and you kind of deserve a self pity day if you're mated to a man who will eventually feel trapped and unhappy no matter how beautiful you are." Jondy knew her bluntness cut, but Max needed the neck of her bottle hacked away.
Max shook her head. "You don't get it, Jondy. I've found something more important than my own issues. I won't ever abandon Terminal City, I fought too hard for the right to protect it. This is important—it is the first serious infraction of the Terminal City Pact since it was written. I need to be there to make sure the precedent we set is the one that will keep our children safe and free."
"Okay."
Max went into her bedroom to get dressed. She resisted the absurd urge to take a shower as part of her routine. She was clean enough.