Author's Note: Sorry steph, but I think most of Alec and Jondy's storyline is wrapped up. I've glanced through my remaining chapters and there isn't much left involving those two. My main focus right now is Kay.
Disclaimer: Only Kay and Paige. That works for me.
Black Ice
By Be Boring
Chapter 18: Clearing the Air
Brin waited patiently with her fingers folded in her lap while Max was obviously fighting the urge to pace next to her as they waited for Kay to start. Kay couldn't see them, but in her mind's eye she could guess at what they looked like right now. She didn't account for the hair changes, as she didn't know about them, but her mental image wasn't too far off the mark. She was surprised that Max hadn't given in and started pacing all around near the foot of the bed. I probably shouldn't keep them waiting any longer. It's time to get this over with. She thought she heard someone else in the hallway, but whoever it was didn't come in. She strongly suspected that it was Ben. "Okay, I know you want to hear everything, but first I want to know just what Ames told you. That way I don't just repeat everything he said."
"Well, he told us that you passed out after fighting Thula and that Ray came in and convinced him to take you to the hospital instead of killing you, which was what he wanted to do. At the hospital he found out you were pregnant and he took you into hiding with him, and things went downhill from there. He said you became seriously depressed and even suicidal, but you got better by the end of the pregnancy. I don't want to get something started right away, but I think all of us have thought it at least once since we heard that. Why did things get better?"
Kay knew she didn't need to bother answering that. "You're right, that will probably start a fight."
Max sighed and dropped her eyes to her feet. "So things became sexual again?" Ben's stomach tightened in the hallway. Did he really want to hear the answer to this?
Kay hesitated, but she knew there was no point drawing this out. "Yeah, that started back up again." She paused for a moment, but she got the strong sense that they were waiting for her to continue. "I was five months along when Ames finally got sick of my depression. He had a day off work, and he really chewed me out for how I'd been acting. I wasn't responding to anything he said, so he went a little further. I don't think I really need to finish. It's not like we had a serious relationship, our feelings were no different from what they've always been, we were just using each other to keep from going completely insane."
"You don't have any feelings for him?"
Why did she even have to ask that? Her voice very quickly became tense and angry. "After what he tried to pull with Paige? What do you think? I always knew that he was capable of doing bad things, that's a given, but I never thought that he would do something to endanger one of his kids. I should have gotten out of there a long time ago."
"Would you have come here?" Brin asked automatically. She regretted it almost immediately, maybe this wasn't something she was going to want to hear.
Kay shrugged. "I really don't know. I was in a strange state of mind, so I can't tell you what I would have done. I probably would have come back if one of you came across me somewhere and invited me back, but I don't know if I would have been able to come back on my own." She tilted her head down in Paige's direction. "That's the whole reason I let Ames take me away in the first place. I didn't want any of you to know about my pregnancy."
Brin shook her head in confusion. "Did you think we wouldn't understand? You must have gotten pregnant during your heat cycle, so it was actually Zack's fault. We wouldn't have blamed you. We probably would have had a hard time accepting it, but we would have been there for you. You wouldn't have spent eight months living with someone you hated. You would have been with your friends, you probably wouldn't have been suicidal, and this whole mess might not have happened. We might have been able to see the familiars coming and at least have had a shot at protecting you."
Well, this certainly isn't going in a very good direction. "Are you trying to tell me that I completely fucked up? You don't have to tell me that, I already know, but I don't think you would have taken it as well as you're trying to say. I would have probably been given the whole if-you-hadn't-slept-with-him-in-the-first-place-this-wouldn't-have-happened-at-all routine. Even if I wasn't with Ames, it would have been a lot easier to stay away."
Max gritted her teeth angrily. "Is that what you're planning on doing when you're healthy enough? Are you just going to run off again?"
Kay shrugged again, wishing that she had just been able to get away with Paige in Montana and didn't have to deal with any of this at all. "I don't know. Right now I'm just taking it one day at a time. I know that's not what you want to hear, but I think you'd be even more pissed if I lied to you, so there it is."
Neither Brin nor Max was very happy with that conversation. If they had thought that everything was going to be like it used to be, they were dead wrong. Max shook her head in frustration and swept out of the room, unable to listen to any more. Brin wasn't quite ready to follow, she still wanted to find the old connection she had once had with her sister. Kay tilted her head as she listened to Max's footsteps disappear down the hallway. "Who left?"
"Max did," Brin replied quietly. Kay hated the thought of swallowing her pride, but as long as she was alone with Brin, this was the best time to do it. That interrogation hadn't given her much of a chance to get back into their good graces, so she would have to give it her best shot now.
"Look, I know you guys aren't happy with me, and I can understand that, but you have to know that I really missed all of you. That was one of the worst parts about having to live with Ames, but I was scared that if I went back and tried to patch things up with you that I'd just make things worse. I'm pretty talented at that, as I've discovered over the past year. I just didn't want to completely ruin everything we used to have. Everything used to be so good. I know it was complicated, but that was the happiest I've ever been. It was the first time I got to feel like I had a family, I fell in love, and I was free. How could things have been better?"
Brin sighed sadly. "They could have lasted."
Kay nodded. "Yeah, that would have been better. I know it sounds weird, but that's the reason I don't feel comfortable staying. It's just so depressing when I'm with all of you now and I know that nothing is ever going to be like that again. I don't think we could even manage to come close to that. I just want to leave before things can get any worse."
Brin glanced back at the doorway, which she knew Ben was standing right next to. "What about Ben?" Ben's ears perked up at this. He really had no idea what she would say, and he wasn't sure he wanted to find out, but he couldn't spend the rest of his life being curious.
"That's even more complicated than everything else. When we talked at the big fight and he accused me of basically ruining everything, I really bristled against him and pushed him away, which made everything a million times worse. Do you realize how different things would have been if I hadn't gotten mad or if I had managed to explain things right? I also don't think he should have spoken to me like that, but I can only pretend to go back and change the things I did, not him. If he hadn't left so angry, we might have made up right then. Ames would have come back to kill me and perhaps the Skeptic would have killed him. We might have taken Ray with us and went away somewhere so Ben could recover in peace. I think if it went more like that when I found out I was pregnant, then maybe we would have ignored the fact that it wasn't his baby and we could have just pretended it was his. We would have eventually come back here, and I think the revelation that he was alive would have softened everyone's reaction to me and things would have been okay. Wouldn't that have been a perfect world?"
"Actually, in a perfect world you probably wouldn't have gotten pregnant with White's baby in the first place, but we can't do much about that and I don't think you'd want to, am I right?"
Kay smiled and gave Paige a gentle squeeze. "There's no way I would want to turn back the clock and stop Paige from being born. The circumstances completely sucked, but she's perfect. You have no idea how much time I spent just hovering over her crib right after she was born. I was so scared to give her a bath for the first time because I was scared I would drop her. The labor itself wasn't too bad, it lasted about six hours. The only part I really remember vividly was when I was actually pushing Paige out. I would have given anything for an epidural, but that was too risky because the cult could find out."
"So who delivered the baby?"
"Ames did, but he spent practically the entire time complaining that I was physically the strongest person in the world and I should be able to handle something as simple as having a baby. I bounced his head off one of the kitchen counters and knocked him out for ten minutes. Thankfully I still had over a half hour left, so he was all right by the time I actually had to push. He took her in the other room after she was born so that he could clean her off, and that's when he took some blood from her and had it tested for signs of the virus, which started the whole damn thing. After that, Paige was completely mine."
Brin looked down at the little girl with a faint smile. "At least I'll still get to be around for someone's pregnancy. I can't wait for Jondy to have her baby, that is going to be so great. I'll have a little niece or nephew to play with."
"How's Alec with all of this? I'm sure this was unexpected, so how did he take it?"
"Actually, he completely impressed me. I've never liked the idea of him dating Jondy, but even I have to admit that he genuinely loves her. He's not always so good at showing it, but he's nuts about her. I don't think he even said anything negative about it when he found out. So far he's just being a really supportive boyfriend. Zack took it worse, to tell you the truth, but he didn't really let it show to Jondy. I got to hear all about how difficult this was going to make everything as soon as we were out of her earshot, but at least he didn't share those things with her. She's pretty nervous about it as it is, but I think she's pretty much set. Max and I are going to be all over this baby as soon as it's born, Alec will probably be a fairly decent dad, and Zack will almost certainly be picking it up whenever no one's looking. He's going to spoil that kid rotten, he just hasn't admitted it to himself yet."
Kay grinned, she knew that Brin was right. Zack loved kids, whether he cared to admit it or not. "Are you two thinking about having kids? And what about Max and Logan? You've all been together for a long time, I'm really surprised that Jondy was the first one to get pregnant."
Brin's eyes widened. "Well, I've given it a little more thought since Jondy found out she was pregnant, but I'm not sure yet. I don't think Zack's ready for a baby right now, and to be honest, I'm not either. That's a lot of responsibility. I know someday I'm really going to want kids, and that urge gets a little stronger every time I get to hold Paige, but now is definitely not the time. Of course, I shouldn't say that, because apparently as soon as those words left Alec's mouth, it turned out he had a kid on the way already. As for Max, I think she might wait a little longer. I think Manticore's experiments with breeding humans and X5s kind of freaked her out. I don't blame her, I heard a few horror stories when I was back there for that short time. I guess some of the offspring were deformed, and the rest were completely ordinary."
"But she has to take into consideration the fact that her DNA is different from the other X5s. Look at what happened with me. Ames may not exactly be ordinary, but he's not transgenic either. Nothing's wrong with Paige. My X5 DNA didn't hurt anything with her. Max's DNA may not be like mine, but maybe that difference from the other X5s will make a difference in her baby. I highly doubt she'll have any problems with having kids with Logan. If she's really that concerned, Logan can always track down a geneticist who's familiar with transgenic blood so that they can go over the different possible outcomes and the likelihood of each one. You never know, the outlook may be a lot better for her than for everyone else."
That makes a lot of sense. Maybe that will make Max feel better. It took a few moments for Brin to realize that she had just spent about ten minutes talking to Kay just like they had used to. Not only that, but Kay had already eased her mind about Max and Logan. How had that happened so quickly? She stared at her sister for a moment, then she quickly noticed that Kay's eyelids were starting to droop. "Do you want me to take Paige into Logan's room so you can get some sleep? She's out like a light, she won't be waking up for a while, and you could really use the rest."
Kay's fingers automatically tightened around Paige, but she knew Brin was right. She had been fighting the sleep she could feel coming on for a few minutes now, but it was time to give up. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea." When Brin leaned over to take Paige, Kay reached up and pulled her down into a brief hug. "I know I haven't done a good job of expressing it, but I'm glad to be around you again. I just can't wait to actually see you again."
Brin smiled and lifted up Paige, feeling much better than she had when Max stormed out. "I can't wait, too. You at least need to see my new haircut."
Ben nodded in greeting to Brin when she came out of the room, waited for her to disappear into Logan's room, and slipped into Kay's room while closing the door behind himself. Kay had admitted that she had slept with White, but she made it sound as though it was only to keep herself from going crazy. Even more importantly, she had directly stated that if things hadn't ended quite so badly at the fight, then they might still be perfectly happy together. What was he supposed to think now? He had spent the last eight months hating her because he believed she had deserted him, but maybe it was his fault. She was right, a lot of the things he had accused her of during their last discussion weren't really true, so did that make it his fault? This also led him to believe that if he had gone after her, she would have turned to him, even if she already knew she was pregnant. Reading even further between the lines, it sounded as though she still loved him.
Kay was sure someone had come into the room, but for a while there was no noise. Suddenly, she felt a weight on the edge of her bed. It was the breathing that eventually gave him away. "Ben? Is that you?" Her stomach twisted itself into a perfect figure eight. She had absolutely no clue what to expect from him right now, and she wasn't sure she had the strength to deal with it if it was something bad.
He waited for a long time before he answered, but he eventually had to give in. "It's been a really long time."
Why do I have to be blind right now? Of all the times I've needed to read someone's face, now is the time I'd definitely want to. "Yeah, it sure has. How have you been?"
"That depends on your standards. For me, I've been okay. From someone else's viewpoint, I've completely lost it. How are you feeling?"
"Not bad, I'm just tired and sore at the moment. Listen, I'm too tired to ask you all the questions that I really want to ask, but I at least want to know that you took good care of Paige."
"Of course I did. It took me a little while to get things figured out, but once I knew what I was doing, everything went smoothly enough. She adjusted to me pretty quickly, and I've gotten pretty used to having her around. Since you're tired, I'm not going to ask you a lot of what I want to know, but I need to know where we stand. I heard what you said to Brin before, but that was how you thought things might go eight months ago. That's quite a chunk of time."
Kay pointed her eyes in the direction of his voice, but she really wished she could make actual eye contact right now. That would make things so much easier. "Ben, nothing has changed for me. I feel the same way right now as I did when I woke up from that fever when we first said the words. I'm not the one who felt completely betrayed, even though I don't think you were justified in feeling that way. I think the real question is: how do you feel about me? That's what is going to decide this."
He sat there for the longest time, simply staring at her face and trying to sort out his thoughts. "Don't ask me that right now. I can't give you an answer."
"Then why did you ask me? I hardly think it's fair that you get to have your mind put at ease while I'm left hanging. If you couldn't give me an answer right now, then you shouldn't have asked me right now."
"Don't you think I deserved to know? I'm not the one who's been living with someone else for the better part of the year and who had a baby with them. To me, it looked as though you had moved on. You didn't have to worry about that with me. If my feelings have changed, it's because of you. I just needed some closure."
"Closure? Well, that's an answer all on its own, isn't it? You're not planning on sticking around. Why would you? I'm sure there's a sweet little old Christian lady walking around out there somewhere that you're just dying to take out to the woods for a little game of tag. That's probably so much more inviting than the thought of being around people who you know love you."
He wanted to hit her so badly that it was only the knowledge that the others were in the next room that held him back. She was doing it again, she was becoming snappy and defensive just like last time. She had no right to make fun of his habits. He took a deep breath to calm himself, but that wasn't a much better idea. Because she looked more like a piece of butchered meat right now than anything else, he had been able to keep his mind off the pheromones in the air, but as soon as he took that deep breath, it seemed like his nostrils were filled with them. Without warning, he leaned forward and crushed his lips against her, gripping the back of her head so hard that she felt several hairs rip free. She only managed to emit a squeak of surprise, she couldn't really make much more noise with him kissing her like he was trying to suffocate her. One of his hands moved over to grip her shoulder, which was the last straw. His fingers were digging directly into a deep gash on the back of her shoulder, and her mind was now definitely clear of her heat cycle. She twisted her head sharply to the side to free her lips and gasped, "Ben, cut it out, you're hurting me!"
He pulled his head back and shook it viciously, trying to rid himself of her smell. Why had he been so stupid as to sit on the edge of her bed? Why hadn't he stood across the room like any other person would have done? Kay wiped her lips with the back of her hand, wishing some feeling would come back into them. Her mouth was practically numb. "I think you should leave. Now isn't the time for this discussion." He nodded in agreement, although he knew she couldn't see it, and stood up to head for the door. She was right, he would have to come back when they could both think clearer. Right now he just wanted to be alone again, he could already feel his migraine returning.
When Brin returned to the group in the kitchen, she realized that Max was not in there with them. Zack saw her looking around and walked over to her. "Is something wrong?"
"Have you seen Max? I thought she would have come back out here after she left Kay's room."
He gestured towards the living room. "She's pacing around in the living room right now, but none of us really wanted to ask her why. She doesn't look too happy. Did something go wrong when you were talking to Kay?"
"It didn't start out very well, but after Max left it improved a lot. I don't want her to stay mad, otherwise we'll never get her to change her mind." Zack thought about following her as she headed for the living room, but on second thought, he realized he didn't want to get in the middle of it if they started to argue. That was the last thing he needed to get caught up in.
Just as he had said, Brin found Max striding back and forth across the living room, fiddling with her fingers as she stared determinedly at the floor. "Hey, you left in a pretty big hurry. Are you okay?"
Max paused in the middle of the room, glancing up for only a moment before her eyes returned to the floor and she resumed her pacing. "I just couldn't stand to listen to that anymore. We all used to be so close, and to me it just seems that she is choosing to ignore that."
"Max, she isn't ignoring it. That's why she feels uncomfortable here, all it is is a reminder of how good things used to be. After you left, we started talking just like we used to, and it's pretty clear she misses us. She's just worried about making things worse."
"Why couldn't she have said that while she was telling us that she didn't want to stick around? I would have understood that." Max sighed and ran her fingers back through her long hair. She wasn't really sure what to think anymore. She would have to try and talk to Kay again, but right now definitely wasn't the time. She was tired, confused, and more than anything she just wanted to be alone with Logan. At least things weren't confusing with him.
Jondy walked into the living room, staring at them curiously. "Everything okay?"
Brin smiled quickly. "Yeah, everything's fine. There was just a little bit of a misunderstanding."
Zack poked his head around the corner. As long as everything was sorted out, which had happened a lot faster than he had expected it to, he really just wanted to get home and relax. He followed Jondy's path and walked over to Brin. "Hey, do you want to get out of here?"
She sighed and leaned against him, thankful for how solid he felt. "Yeah, and maybe we can pick up something to eat on the way home. If we eat much more of Logan's food, he'll go broke again."
Max and Jondy both said their goodbyes as Zack and Brin headed out the door, then Jondy sat down on the couch, watching Max stand in the middle of the room as she debated pacing again. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"Yeah, I am, I just think this is all so confusing. Why can't anything be easy?"
"Because we could never get that lucky. I think there's someone sitting up there pointing and laughing at us."
Max had to grin. "Well, isn't that a positive outlook? I guess things could be a lot worse. At this point, because I'm not sure what to do about Kay, I really want to get White out of here. Want to come down with me and see if he'll talk at all about Ray?"
She shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
Ames glanced up when they came down the stairs. At least it wasn't Ben again, he was really starting to get sick of seeing that guy. "And to what do I owe this pleasure?"
"Well, we have Kay back, so all we have left to do is get Ray here too," Max replied, her voice approaching cheeriness just to annoy him.
"Sure, so that you can turn around and cut my throat? That's lots of incentive to start talking, isn't it?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, I'm really not that concerned about Ray. If we don't get him back, we'll just kill you and see how long his current caretaker feels like babysitting a little boy. If we don't get him, he'll probably just end up in a foster home somewhere. He'll be extremely vulnerable too, seeing as how he has that ugly thing on his arm."
Ames glared at her, but he knew she was right. He was going to die either way. Still, he didn't want to share right now. Despite what he had done, he knew his best hope for survival was Kay. He would just have to wait until he got the chance to talk to her.
Author's Note 2: Please read and review!