A/N: acb: thank you so much for the feedback, I actually go back and read scripts from first season to get Max's and Original Cindy's "voices" right, so it's nice to know that it works. Thanks to everyone, sorry this took so long; I had a bunch of one-shots crowding my mind…I still do, but I decided I had to get this finished.
White is still awake when his phone rings. It's two o'clock in the morning.
"From my ancestors," says the man on the other end when he picks up. "For my children's children."
White has been drinking single malt scotch since he got home eight hours ago. Fortunately, he's biologically incapable of getting drunk.
"From my fathers before me," he replies after a heartfelt mental sigh, "for my sons."
"This comes directly from the Elders. You are the senior Familiar in the area. They require a service."
White listens carefully. If this guy was on the Conclave, he would probably recognize the voice.
"Who the fuck is this?" He can't get drunk, but after eight hours of steady drinking his control might be a little iffy.
The man sounds a little pissed now. "Look, White, I just got off the phone with that transgenic bitch so I'm not in a great mood right now. I apologize for my disrespect, but could you cut the crap?"
White sits bolt upright, shock reverberating through his scotch-drenched nerves. "With who?"
The man sighs. "My name is Richard Sullivan. Will you permit me to explain?"
White lets the quality of his silence speak for him.
"An organization has come to our attention. The Holy-"
White cuts him off. "The Meekers."
Sullivan pauses, startled. "What?" White demands. "Did you think maybe I hadn't noticed the idiots?"
"N-no," Sullivan stutters, "It's just-, that's what 452 called them."
White forces down the anger threatening to overwhelm him.
She is taking over his life.
The scent of her skin comes back to him. The feel of her hands threading through his hair.
He pours another two fingers of Scotch.
"Do you have a point?"
"Ahh, yes. Yes, the conclave has decided that it is in our best interests to exchange information on these alleged saviors of human kind with the transgenics in a collaborative fashion."
Having spent the last eight years working for a bureaucratic government, White has no trouble understanding Sullivan's point.
"You want to share with the freaks?"
"We want you to share with the freaks."
"I see." That should go over well.
"That should make 452 happy. I've only been trying to kill her and hers for the last year."
By the silence on the other end he can tell that Sullivan wants to say something. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"What is it?"
"Sir?"
White pauses, thinking. "She knows, doesn't she?"
"I'm sorry?" Sullivan is starting to piss him off. A lot.
He spells it out like he's talking to a four year old. A normal four year old.
"X5-452 knows that I am the senior Familiar in the area, and therefore the man she would be dealing with in this little exercise in… external cooperation."
He was going to say "exercise in inter-relations", but that made him think of 452 again. And exactly how far he had progressed in "inter-relations" with her.
Sullivan doesn't quite get it.
"Uhh, what? Sir?"
A normal, cognitively challenged four year old.
"Never mind. Why was this decision made? Have the Meekers become more of a problem than I was aware?"
"Yes, sir." Back on familiar ground now, Sullivan's answers come more assuredly. "While the Seattle branch of the…of the Meekers is fairly new, they have existed in other places around the world almost exactly since we were…revealed."
A familiar surge of anger at The Only Free Idiot burns its way down White's throat along with the scotch.
He forces himself to speak past the anger. "And there's reason to believe that the transgenic leadership has valuable information on the subject?"
"Yes, sir."
White sighs. On the list of things he really, really doesn't want to do right now, calling Max is right up at the top.
Wait a minute. Her name is 452. White gets up, taking the cordless phone into the master bathroom with him, and writes it on his mirror in a lip liner that Wendy left behind.
Her. Name. Is. 452.
"Alright," he tells Sullivan. "Is she expecting me to call, or what?"
"She's expecting your call, yes sir."
No way out of this. "Very good. I'll handle it from here." Dear gods, what has he gotten himself into? "Fe'nos tol."
"Fe'nos tol." Sullivan hangs up.
White stares at himself in the mirror for a long moment. He goes back down to his living room for the bottle of scotch.
Then he calls Otto for the number on the phone at Terminal City.
White calls forty minutes after Max hangs up with Sullivan.
Alec comes to tell her himself.
"You gonna be okay with this, Maxie?"
When he started calling her "Maxie" she can't quite remember. She likes it, but she'd eat her own shoes before she told him that.
"I'll be fine."
White is professionally detached on the phone, and with the ever-serious Fil listening in they get through the set-up parameters with a minimum of insults. The call is short, and efficient, and Max is even beginning to think she might get something useful out of this little exchange.
There is nothing in the phone call to make her break into his house.
But she does.
She waits an hour, pacing and fretting and trying to talk herself out of it. She's not sure if he needs to sleep, but it's late, or rather, it's early, and she figures if she's lucky he'll be asleep.
The house is dark when she gets there, no lights on anywhere. She remembers the cameras and slides around the siding to avoid them. She even avoids the reflective globe.
Max climbs a drain pipe and jimmies a window open, all in absolute silence, this may be the most perfect B&E she's ever done.
She slides in through the window, and then crouches on the floor, listening.
And she can hear someone breathing.
She gets up and walks across the room to a chair. It's the master bedroom, full bath, walk-in his and hers closets, and a bookshelf. On the bedside table are a clock radio, and a cell phone, and White's Glock nine.
She stays there for an hour and a half, watching him sleep, refusing to berate herself for enjoying the sight when he turns and the covers slide down to his waist. She allows herself this one, brief reprieve.
When he calls out for Ray, Max feels tears slide down her face. She sits there and cries silently as he tosses in his nightmares until the room lightens slightly and she knows dawn is coming.
And then, thinking he's probably an early riser, she slips back out the way she came, and walks four blocks to where she parked her motorcycle.
It's hard to drive with tears pouring down her face and guilt eating her away on the inside, but somehow she manages to get back to Terminal City.
Where she locks herself in her room and tries to figure out how she's going to get through this.
A/N: 'K so, tell me what you think. BTW, I'm going on the assumption that White is 35, he and Wendy were married for eleven years, and he did three years of law school before going into government service. Just in case you were wondering where I got those numbers. Umm…you guys know this can't end happily…right?