Title: Always With You
Author: jracklesfan77
Show: Dark Angel
Genre: Angst
Pairing: None
Type: Stand Alone
Summary: Sappy, sad little something. Max is cold, so very very cold.


Always With You

The sprawling expanse of greenery does nothing to lift her spirits. Color no longer has meaning. Everything is starkly bleak. Days bleed together, time has no substance, no beginning and no end; it simply is.

Her midnight walk has brought her here. The one place where people find lasting peacefulness and serenity. But sadness is all she can sense. And the hours pass slowly.

Kneeling, she stares at the smooth stone that glistens with dew and the glow of the rising sun. But warmth eludes her, the soft rays skirt around her, leaving her cold.

Always cold. Her heart is frozen. The icy fingers of pain have yet to release her from their grip. The dull days, the sleepless nights. She shivers, tremors shaking her body. But whether from the lack of heat or loss of love, she really cannot say.

There are any number of words to describe the feeling, or lack thereof, that has overtaken her so completely.

Frozen. Frosty. Bitter. Aloof. Distant. Indifferent. Remote. Detached.

These words have come to define her. How she feels, how she is, how she acts.

Total emptiness. Baren. Blank. A bottomless pit of nothingness. Void. Devoid.

Her murmur carries softly on the barest of breezes in the early morning.

"I never thought I'd feel this way. That it could hurt so bad. I never knew; it never crossed my mind. I never thought I'd miss you so much. I never told you…how much I need you. Why did you leave me? Why did they take you away?"

She throws her head back and lets out an anguished cry that pierces the stillness. A broken howl of frustration and pain that rips through her.

Her eyes shut tightly to restrain the flood of tears that threaten to fall. And an angel on high takes pity on the crushed soul below, gently whispering "I'm always with you."

A single leaf falls into her lap, dancing over her thighs. Each time she reaches to remove it, it springs from her fingers and floats on the breeze, teasing her, finally rising with a swift gust to press against her cheek.

A sudden sense of warmth spreads through her, thawing her heart. And she knows. He's there, always, deep inside where memories, love and laughter live on forever.

- FIN -