Disclaimer in Chapter One.
The door swings inward and Valerie is smaller than Max had remembered, or maybe thinner. It's obvious that she hasn't been doing well; there's no need to ask. If this were a social visit, asking would be impolite, and so Max doesn't, unwilling to betray the illusion this soon. The other woman steps back and it occurs to Max that this is one of the few people who admit to having known him. This woman is one of the last remaining ties to him, because written records are no longer true and only memories count. Life is in memory alone, and so this woman is one of the few who keep him alive. In killing her, will he die a little?

It doesn't matter. She will have him, real and complete, in exchange, and her own memories will rush back, and she will create more. Valerie will not be of consequence.

"Max," Valerie says, and as her eyes widen in recognition, in accordance with the name spoken reflexively, Max sees in them a strange fierceness. She doesn't think it was there before, when she saw Valerie outside his apartment building and later, watching her from a vantage point outside the window. These times have changed everyone and Max is glad; she remembers wanting life to be hard for Valerie. She'd felt a sharpness in her stomach, a cold hatred as she'd explained that the woman had only wanted his money, after all. She'd wanted the woman to feel pain, to know what she'd done to him, and now, she thinks, her wishes have come true. Valerie knows, but hasn't she always? Because he left her, not the other way around.

But it's too late for revelations.

"Valerie," Max says. She glances behind her as though she thinks she's been followed, lets her own eyes go wide and dark, fearful. "Can I come in?"

Valerie blinks. "Yes, of course." She closes the door behind Max and crosses her arms over her chest like a petulant child or like she's trying to hold herself together, as though if she grips hard enough, she won't fall to pieces. Max scans the room for potential obstacles. It's dim, candlelit, and papers cover almost all of the available surfaces. Papers. Printouts. Reports. She wonders how many times his name appears. She doesn't see any visitors, any other residents, any witnesses. "It's it's been awhile," Valerie says. She looks nervous and Max can sympathize. "How can I help you?"

Because, Max remembers, that's her business now, helping the helpless and all that. Fighting the good fight. Taking over where her ex left off, as though he bequeathed his quest to her. Max feels a pang of something like jealousy but pushes it away. She's never wanted his burdens, his duties. There's no reason to feel territorial, especially now. "It's about Logan."

Valerie's eyes shift. A shimmer of hope. "Have you heard anything?"

"No, it's just . . . I was wondering what was he like, before." She wonders if this is what she does, her signature. Ben tattooed his identity across the back of their necks; she asks them to think of happier times, as though that allows her to atone for the acts themselves. She is an angel of death, she thinks. Forever eyes dark and final, and she wonders if that was what he meant, if perhaps his words had nothing to do with life and everything to do with its opposite.

Valerie shakes her head, hair glinting copper in the dim light. "I didn't expect that." She sighs and Max moves closer as though they'll be sharing a confidence, something intimate. "He was a force," she says. "A wave. And everything got swept along with him." And Max sees, finally, that she was wrong. There is no peace in Valerie's memories.

She closes the distance between them in one smooth step and her hands slide across skin and hair as she remembers that he was here, first, his hands across her skin. Her fingers tighten around flesh, the graceful lines of the other woman's neck. Valerie opens her mouth to scream and Max wonders if anyone would hear. She slides her other hand across Valerie's mouth and feels hot exhalations across her palm, the woman's breathing fast and panicked. She adjusts her grip, feels tendons tighten as Valerie tries to pull away, tries to run. Because she doesn't know what she's running from. She still thinks she has a chance, that maybe Max is insane, but that all she has to do is make it to the door. The air is thick with her fear, a sudden, sharp smell, and Max moves, the final, bone-deep crack echoing through her own body. Valerie goes limp and Max steps back, drops the body onto the floor and feels bile rising in her throat.

It's over.

She doesn't vomit, and she doesn't cry, forcing herself to assess the situation, the scene. There is no evidence of a struggle; Valerie's followers will assume she's been taken, but they won't know where to look. They won't know anything, and by that time, he will have been returned to her.

She crouches down, hefts the body over her shoulder. Valerie had a car. She will take it as far as she can and will take the shadows the rest of the way.

She backs the car out of the garage and has to stop the car so she can unlock the gate, swing the wires out of the way. But then she is gone, heading down the street with the knowledge that Valerie is dead, a sick weight in the truck, and that she's halfway there. Only a few hours left and he will be hers again, and things will be right. She's paid for this redemption in blood, and it will be hers. His. Theirs.

She'll make sure of it.

The troops don't stop her on her way to the docks and she's not sure what she would have done if they had. She drives through empty streets, headlights barely touching the desolate night glow, and arrives at the shoreline with adrenaline coursing through her veins. She leaves the car door open, lifts the body and blends into the maze of empty warehouses and metal husks, the signal-chime a techno dirge behind her.

She chooses a building, slides the doors open and looks past the rows of boxcars and the stained concrete floor. There is no one else there, no one using the warehouse for shelter. Her boots echo as she crosses the room, passes the apse where the crane operators used to stand and scales the catwalk. There is a loft in the corner, high enough for her to see out of the windows, and she will wait there, looking for signs. Looking for them. Waiting to see him arrive.

She positions the body as far as possible from the loft's edge and almost out of her sight and stands next to the broken glass of the window, peering out into the night, the sky shifting, boiling with a kind of negative presence that hurts her eyes. Soon, she thinks, soon. She has waited this long and her wait has almost paid off.

The hours pass slowly. The sky does not lighten, but somehow it becomes morning. She descends from her tower, sacrifice in hand, ready to deposit the gift at their feet. The morning air is cold and smells of salt and the sea. Valerie's skin is slack against hers and she tries not to remember the water lapping around her feet as she stood by him in the sand. The water, today, is a bitter plateau, unrelenting and extending unbroken to the horizon. She stands with her back to that expanse, the body at her feet. If they betray her, she thinks, if this is an ambush, if he's dead, there will be no reason for her to have a ready escape. If he's dead, she will take as many of them with her before she joins him.

She takes comfort in the thought that this isn't likely. She's of greater value to them alive, when they can have her do their errands.

The van arrives at precisely zero-seven-hundred. She watches it come towards her, deceptively clean black edges and a silent engine. He is inside. He has to be. The van stops next to her and the driver unrolls his window, dead-lightbulb glass sliding away to reveal bottomless eyes. She doesn't blink and doesn't look away. "Your price," she says, gesturing without looking at the body.

"Yes," the driver says. His voice is unfamiliar and she's not sure if he is her contact. There's no way to be sure, and she's not sure why it would matter. The back doors of the van open and four men leap smoothly to the ground. They are supersoldiers. It's obvious in the familiar way they move, the familiar confidence and grace. They are like her. Three of them come to something like parade rest while the fourth man bends down and retrieves the body, tossing it over his shoulder. He nods to his companions and they return to the van, marching in a single line. They are like her and she will never be like them.

The driver closes his window and she forces herself to stay still, to stand unmoving. The back doors open again and she lets her gaze drift in that direction, watches as they toss him out, as they fling him to the pavement. The doors close and the driver pulls past her, circles around and disappears the way he came. She waits until she can no longer see the van before crossing the short distance to his body.

To him.

She crouches beside him and sees that his hands are bound with rope, its coarse edges rubbing against his skin. His eyes are closed, dark shadows deep amongst so many planes, so many edges. His eyes are closed, but he's breathing and she can hear his heartbeat, and she lifts him gently, her cautious motions strange in their distance. She hasn't been this careful in a long, long time. She stands, feeling the eyes of the ocean at her back, and walks past the warehouse in which she waited. Valerie's car is still there, she sees, and she quickens her pace, arriving quickly so that she can see that the car door is still open and the battery is dead.

He is here. That doesn't matter.

She continues on, past the car, to the city shrouded as with mist. She carries him through the streets, past the patrols and the ruined buildings. She carries him through the streets, and she takes him home.

xxxxx

His eyes glint in the darkness. It's past midnight and he's given up trying to sleep, just as she's given up pretending that there's anything she can do about this. They're watching the city, drinking pre-Pulse wine and watching the destruction from the sanctity of his home. Box seats at the end of the world. "I was just thinking . . . it started on a Monday."

She meets his gaze and recognizes the humor as necessary. "Yeah, it did."

"Apt," he says. His hands strong around the stem of his glass, cautious lest it shatter. The death toll is rising and the citizens have been banned from the streets. They'll be released later, the report said. They'll be allowed back out. It's just for a little while, a nationwide quarantine so that the authorities can clean things up, fix what's been broken.

"Yeah." Stretching, feeling her muscles tighten. Some animals die in captivity, unable to adapt. Forced into cages, locked within walls, they collapse and refuse to get up, to move. They will themselves to die. Suicide. She bites her lip. He raises his glass to his mouth and she watches the troops moving in the streets.

It started on a Monday and neither of them want to ask when it will end.

xxxxx

The Compass is bathed in the early morning shades of red and gray, a pale version of the vivid colors of apocalypse and evening. RAF Kitty opens her door as Max passes in the hallway; she must have been waiting, listening for Max's return. She steps from her unit and her eyes widen as she sees Max's burden, Max's gift. Max nods to her and continues up the stairs. "Oh my God," Kitty says to her back and Max doesn't bother to return the sentiment. She doesn't have time to explain; she needs to get him upstairs, up to her unit, so that she can see the extent of the damage, see what they've done to him and what will happen when he opens his eyes. If he will know her, and if he will remember.

She doesn't release him, doesn't lower him as she unlocks the door, unwilling to lose even those few seconds of contact. His clothes are torn and dirty, but they're not the ones he was wearing when he disappeared. She kicks the door closed and deposits him gently on ice-cold sheets. His spare pair of glasses are on the bedside table and his wheelchair, left behind when he was taken, waits silently in the corner. She does not need to turn on the light to see and she doesn't want whatever additional clarity it would bring. His face is bruised only lightly and she touches his arms gently, raising the sleeves, and notes the marks along his arms. A patchwork of bruises from both hands and restraints, and the marks of needles. She steps back, swallowing an ocean of rage, and covers him with a threadbare blanket. There is nothing to do but wait.

A knock at the door. She turns from her careful study and crosses the room. Kitty is standing in the hallway, arms crossed over a faded t-shirt. "Who is he?" she asks.

And how can Max answer that?

"Mine," she says. She meets Kitty's eyes, Logan's eyes, and wonders if her own are as ancient, as tired. "He's . . . the one I lost."

Kitty nods knowingly. "That's what I thought." She uncrosses her arms, shoves her hands in her pockets. One of her rings glints in the light. "Do you need anything?"

Max shrugs. "I'm waiting," she says. "To see."

"Let me know," Kitty says. She tilts her head, one corner of her mouth moving in something like a smile. "See you around, chica."

Max nods and watches her disappear down the stairs. She closes the door, dividing her worlds, and returns to her vigil, stands by the window and makes sure that no one is coming after him, after them. The clock is measuring night by the time he stirs, shifts underneath the blanket and blinks as he tries to focus without his glasses. He pushes himself into a sitting position, moving as though the action pains him. She does not turn to look at him, using only the changes in his breathing to sense his position.

He swallows and when he speaks, his voice is rough and tired. "Which one are you?"

"The original," she says, wondering how many there have been. Did the first one fool him? Did he think, so long ago, that she'd come to save him? She wonders how long it took for him to stop believing.

She hears his breath catch and then he sighs, and it is only then that she turns from the window. He's pale and his eyes are bright, and she wonders how she could have thought that Kitty resembled him. He is so much more real, based on so many more dreams. "Max," he says. "How've you been?" His tone is dry and it doesn't match his eyes, their watercolor expressions, but she doesn't see how it could. How anything could.

"Good," she says. She leans against the wall, but that casual posture is no longer second nature, and she straightens. "Fighting the good fight."

"Got a long way to go," he says, and maybe it's not an understatement. Maybe what they have to believe, because if they don't know where the end lies, how will they know where they're headed?

She shrugs. "One step at a time," she says.

"One step at a time," he agrees. His gaze is dark and deep. She feels a sudden warmth and thinks that she owes it to him to be more than everyone else, more than something quick and dirty and hard, more than grasping hands, a desperate fuck in the name of life. She owes it to him to be herself as he will remember. To be Max. For him.

"What happened?" he asks, and there is no way she can tell him everything. There is no way he could hear it all, and no way she could make it real.

"Things changed," she says, because she has to say something. "And to you?"

His laugh is harsh and unexpected. He looks away. "I survived."

She closes her eyes and wishes she hadn't asked. But she would have had to, eventually, and it's best that it happens now. "I thought . . . I didn't give up. I got you out."

He nods. "You did. Thank you." And she doesn't want his gratitude. It's what she had to do. What kept her alive, but how can she tell him this?

She nods, feeling hot tears at the back of her throat. "I had to kill."

He nods in acceptance. "I know."

Her breath shudders, but then she's okay, making steady eye contact. "I'm sorry it wasn't sooner."

He shakes his head. "It was in time." He doesn't say what she was in time for, though, and she doesn't know if he's unsure, himself, or if he is protecting her. She wonders if her contact knew, if her contact was trying to save him from that fate or if the timing is entirely coincidental. Logan looks at her without speaking and she looks back, feeling a connection deeper than anything she can remember. She doesn't look away until his eyes close again and his breathing is deep and steady.

Outside, something slices through the air, a crisp wind and then an explosion. He doesn't flinch, doesn't awaken, and an alarm begins to scream somewhere in the distance. But it's only background noise and she listens to the more immediate sounds, the retreating footsteps, static and barked orders. Once the curfew stillness is restored, she lets her eyes drift shut and revels in the anodyne closeness of life.

We were there at the beginning, you and I. We were there at the beginning and now the world is ending around us, and we will watch it together.

xxxxx

"October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find. 'It is simply a matter,' he explained to April, 'of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.'" - G.K. Chesterton

Thanks to SeenRed for intermittent beta and for the under-thirty requirement, and thanks to those who've left feedback along the way.