Sudden Darkness: Life According to Ben
Author: Kristin aka Kiara Alexis Klay
A/n: This came to me after reading a really wonderful fanfic about Max and Ben titled Living and Dying, something I highly recommend you read. I couldn't get it out of my mind, I've always been fond of Ben, and the Max/Ben pairing. So here is what came out of that.
Pairing: Max/Ben – sorta
Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel, Fox does.
Summary: Like the title said. Life according to Ben. Just a series of short vignettes and mini drabbles that came to me at three a.m. in the freaking morning during a thunderstorm with a trusty spiral notebook and pencil at hand.
Sudden Darkness
"Tell me about the Good Place," she whispers, and the sound, the request, stokes the warm feelings I bear towards her. Even as I can taste the sorrow and agony of those words as they fell from her lips.
The words brought to mind unbidden images that I hadn't dwelt on in years, evoking a return of feelings and thoughts of long ago. The slender woman's above transformed to that of another, more innocent fireball she'd been a lifetime away. A tiny moppet who repeated those words over and over, each repetition etching them in my mind, and heart melted and completely turned to something similar in consistency with the Manticore cafeteria's Jell-o surprise, I would oblige that soft command. Just as I do now. That one voice, that one command I could never resist.
"Where no one ever gets yelled at," I began the familiar refrain, born eons ago out love and desperation to appease my Sweet Goddess of the Night, to take away all the pain and horror of our life from her eyes and heart if only for a moment. Those were the moments I lived for.
Pain blistered up my side, the majority stemming from the very obviously severely injured portion of my body, even through the gradually numbing endorphins that were trying to make base camp along with shock. A broken leg, damaged pride, and shattered heart will do that to a person y'know.
Damn, my Maxie was always devastating when she fought.
Especially so when she was feeling strong emotion, like anger, sorrow, grief, desperation, betrayal, and a royal state of pissed offness that all were very, very apparent even to me.
"Where no one ever gets punished," she picks up the threat of my oft-repeated mantra that had gotten all of us through the terror of our child- no, soldier hood.
An aphorism that had calmed her fears, given her something good to look forward to, to hope for.
Even as I stare out at nothing, I am aware of her, and I smile, my tortured soul finally coming to rest, for I knew what was coming. What she was going to do, and I couldn't have picked anyone else I'd rather have here with me. I accepted it, nay, I craved this closure. Even as I knew what it would cost her. For she was a part of me, my other half, the shard that would make me whole even as it would splinter her into thousands of pieces that may never be reunited with what would happen next.
It wasn't fair to ask this of her. But no one else would have done it, or even understood. They would have tried to 'save' me, to make me pay, to atone. But not her. Not my Max. She would do what was needed in the way it was needed.
Because she loved me. Because deep down, in that darkness of herself that was me just as the lightness of me that was her, she knew. She may never fully comprehend, but she knew.
And not even my reverence for the Blue Lady could outshine what I felt for my Maxie.
It was a little more difficult to breathe through the pain and the expectation, and my heart began to pound as I heard the ominous sound of Manticore coming in, to ruin this last moments of my existence with the only one I'd loved so unadulteredly. Time was running out for my Max if she was going to have a chance to escape Lydecker.
So it was with a wistful look at the woman and the girl who was Max that I repeated the final and her favorite line.
"Where you can sleep in a long as you wan-."
Sudden darkness.