Genre: Drama / Angst / Implied Romance
Pairing: M/A
Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel , it owns me. ;)
Summary: How important are memories? Max and Alec face a new challenge in their changing relationship. Can an unfortunate accident bring them closer together?
Lethe: Chapter2
"That's the funny thing about memories, we are only what we remember of ourselves."
- from the sci fi series 'Aeon Flux' by Peter Chung
Alec had had time to analyse the concept of memory hoping to get behind it, understand his situation better. Memories told you who you were, who you'd touched, who had touched you. It informed your decisions for the future as your own personal copy of the past. It gave life colour, and reason. He had considered the possibility that he would never remember, that his whole life to this point had been lost except for in the minds of those who knew him before. Their memories, their stories, not his. It no longer belonged to him. It was this thought that depressed him more than anything. Listening to Logans stories of battling repression and corruption from the ruthless power-brokers of this millennium seemed to confirm his theory.
"It's a bit early in the day for that, isn't it?" Alec pointed to the handsome dose of liquor Logan had poured himself.
"Is it?" He replied dryly as he took a mouthful hoping that it would dull the ache in his heart that talking about lost chances had brought up. Logan stalled, walking back into the living room then slumped back into his chair whilst Alec just waited patiently.
"So ... There I am thinking all my dreams are coming true when you turn up and inform us I've been infected with a DNA targeting retro-virus and Max is the carrier ... So saying we got off on the wrong foot is an understatement." Alec nodded solemnly.
"It was the same night Manticore was burnt to the ground ... we exposed the location of the project and they tried to cauteries the evidence." Logan paused to see if his words evoked any response but Alec looked unmoved. His mind churned the information over, he even tried to imagine it but the image was empty, void of feeling, of recognition and of reality.
A rage built within him fuelled by confusion, frustration and disappointment. He smacked his fist against the window, the action abruptly stopping Logan just as he was about to continue.
"Aar, Why?" Alec growled punctuating his words with the slamming of his fist into the window pane again, "Why don't I know this?!" At his last words he hit the glass surface with such force his hand smashed straight through it. Slowly he retracted his hand and stared at it in awe as his brain began to register the searing pain. The world vaporised around him, all sound stopped. He could no longer hear Logans questions, the clock ticking on the wall, or the rain drop patter on the window. He stared down at his wounds as blood oozed and spilled slowly down his arm dropping on to the floor. He looked up slowly at the broken window suddenly very aware of the fast beating of his heart. The window transformed before his eyes, becoming tall and the glass became aquatex in texture. An eerie early evening light poured in broken up by the trees outside. Alec could feel the cool outside air caress his face and the warmth of the last rays of sunshine on his flesh through the whole in the glass.
A moment passed and his face filled with strange serenity. Logan watched on, unsure of whether or not to disturb the moment but the smile settling on the younger man's face worried him. It seemed almost masochistic as if he intended to do it again.
The moment faded in his mind with his feeling of peace as he was thrown through innumerable sterile grey corridors, wooded landscapes, crumbling bombed out buildings and mine fields. He squeezed his eyes shut as his senses were assaulted by the stench of death, the feel of cold steel in his grasp and the screams of dying men.
"No." He groaned desperately clamping his hands around his head as another wave of memories once hidden ripped through him. Years of exposure to torture, abuse and experimentation left him breathless as he recalled the excruciating and endless pain he suffered. An image of a brightly lit room filled with unnamed equipment and anonymous 'scientists' appeared and that chair, the one that always smelled like burnt flesh.
"Argh, Stop!" Alec cried dropping to his knees, but the waves were relentless. Face after face appeared cold and lifeless before his eyes. His best friend hanging from a bridge beaten and bloody, a boy with a bandaged neck dropped in front of him, and the last strangled breaths of a piano teacher echoed in his mind.
"No!" His body shook and tears streamed down his face as he saw a solitary figure standing by a piano, made a silhouette by the sun. A pair of beautiful laughing eyes called to him, asked him 'Don't you like me?' Those eyes taunted him, so full of life and innocence. But then they turned to hatred. The sting of her hand across his face resonates in his heart as he chases her.
"NO!" His voice croaks as a car explodes in front of him over and over and over. "STOP!!"
Alec's rage exploded and he picked up the nearest object, a coffee table, and hurled it through the room partition
A/N: not making much sense? Well it should all become clear next chapter. R&R.
