DISCLAIMER: Dark Angel does not belong to me.
A/N: This is a short chapter to address the change in the tone and pace of the story because now, Max is awake. This is all from Max's perspective as she deals with living again. And a few other realizations along the way.
A/N2: I know I said that I would only be updating A Darker Angel until it was finished, but…a lot of people wanted to know what was going to happen in this story. And I wanted to know, too. So I sat down today, and wrote this chapter. Never say I don't listen to reviewers. LOL!
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She collapsed again.
Falling helplessly onto the blue mat, she stretched her arms in front of her to break the fall and felt the jarring impact throughout her body. Pain, sharp and searing, tore through her arms and side. For a few moments, she was nothing but a heaving mess on the matted floor. Finally, she managed to push herself up to a sitting position, left hand extended onto the mat, palms down, supporting her weight. Her right hand kept a grip on her side where a bullet had torn through months before.
Physiologically speaking, she was completely patched up. But several months without using most of her voluntary muscles had made her as weak as a newborn kitten. And she was having none of that.
It had only been a week since she had awoken from her coma, but Max was ready to get back into the swing of things. She couldn't bear to sit in her empty hospital room and continue to be haunted by the ghosts of the past.
Eyes flashing, she looked up at Yoon, an X5 with jet-black hair and midnight eyes. He was her designated physical therapist. "Help me up," she demanded, reaching out her right hand to him.
Expressionless, he pulled her up.
Max was grateful that Yoon wasn't one of those cheerful types. His silent observation and quiet support were just perfect for her. She didn't need a damned cheerleader. She needed someone who would let her push herself, but know when to hold her back without ever having to raise his voice.
She knew Alec had assigned Yoon to her, understanding exactly what she needed.
Standing up straight, Max took a deep breath letting all the small aches roll past her consciousness. Her eyes flitted briefly over to the door of the small physical therapy room of the hospital.
"He's not coming."
Max shot a sharp glance over to Yoon. "What are you talking about?" she snapped.
"I don't say much, Max, but I do see a lot. You look out that door everyday. You stare out the window every time we walk past one. And each time the door to your room opens you straighten up and brighten just a little bit until you realize that it's not him." he said, his voice completely deadpan and matter-of-fact.
"I don't know what you're saying," she denied, leaning heavily on the balancing bar to her left.
"Alec's not coming back."
Max compressed her lips together. "I don't care," she whispered. Then she shot him an impatient look. "Let's work on my walking, I don't have all day."
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3:46 am.
It was like the clock was taunting her. The minutes ticked on by, and her shark DNA just wouldn't let her slip into that time machine called sleep. Instead, she had to spend all night with memories that her mind continued to recover.
Max sighed against her window, a small puff of mist fogging it up briefly. Three weeks of intense physical therapy and she was almost sure she could jump out this window and land thirty feet below without breaking a sweat.
She was definitely sure, however, that when she got out of here, her life was not going to be the same. And it was all going to start with the end of her and Alec.
There would be no more fights, no more yelling. No more arm around her should to give her a comforting squeeze in the darkest of moments. No more "Maxie" in that infuriating way he said her name. No more cocky grins and arrogant swaggers.
No more "I love you's" in the middle of the night when he thought she wouldn't hear.
It was really the end. And when faced with the end of things, there was nowhere else left to go but back to the beginning. And with her memories almost fully restored, there was a lot of footage to play back through. There was a lot of Alec in her life. She smiled sadly at the thought.
"Ben?" She remembered the first time she ever really saw Alec. And even then, she had called him by his twin's name.
"What?" His brow had wrinkled a bit, his eyes raking over her curiously.
"You look like someone I used to know." Someone she used to love, Max thought bitterly.
"Well my designation's 494."
"His was 493. You must be twinned." To look so much like him. They had to be identical, sharing the same DNA. Being the same person.
"493. Your fellow traitor. Went psycho." He was so cavalier at the time. It was at that moment that she had started to feel that aliveness that he always incited in her. In fact, she had been furious.
"What do you know about it?" Her eyes had flashed angrily, her voice strident with defensiveness.
"I know that because of him I had to spend six months in psy-ops. They wanted to make sure it wasn't genetic." He had shrugged it off and had carefully masked his pain. And she had never thought to ask what that had been like. To her, it was Ben who had suffered at Manticore's hands. Alec…hadn't even counted into her considerations.
Max blinked rapidly as another memory presented itself to her.
She was in a small cage in a makeshift military camp. Captured. Trapped. Running out of options. Then, glaring light had slipped into the tent as a tall, broad-shouldered frame lifted the flap. "Alec."
"To the rescue. Still wanna kick my butt?" A grin. Mischievous eyes had sparkled with amusement to find her behind bars.
"Maybe later." She'd conceded, not able to help herself but banter with him. Even when they were in the middle of an escape—she'd been amused. He always knew how to make her smile.
He had saved her. He didn't have to turn his car around and come back for her. But he had. And he'd even helped her save the other kids. Funny how she never expected much from him, but he had always come through.
Suddenly, her heart felt heavy, and her eyelids drooped as her mind recovered another stark memory of Alec. She leaned her hot forehead onto the cool window. She was remembering the night that defined their relationship.
"I'm sorry, there's no other way." She could see his anguished face over hers. The effects of the tazer were still wracking her body. She couldn't fight him. She could only whisper his name at the moment. "Alec." Why are you doing this?
"I don't want to die." He whispered, answering her unspoken question. His eyes, green-gold and beautiful, looked down at her. Begging her to understand. Anguished. Tortured. "Don't leave me here. Don't let them take me." Reminiscent of the same golden green eyes looking up at her. Begging her to understand. Anguished. Tortured.
She could only lay back and accept her fate. It was all so appropriate at that moment. She had killed Ben. And now…someone identical to him was going to kill her.
She watched with resignation as the silver blade came down—slamming onto the soft earth next to her face. She heard him roll onto the ground next to her, breathing deeply, resignedly. She still couldn't take her eyes off of the dagger.
Two inches from her face.
He was willing to just die. Ben had been willing to just die. Back then, she had run, she had saved herself. She turned her head to see him looking defeated, the light already dying in his eyes. He looked ashamed of himself, but now also afraid, knowing death was just a few minutes away. And despite her anger and misgivings, she knew one thing: She couldn't let this one die.
The Manticore lab technician removed the tiny explosive just in time. A few seconds later, they both watched the small bomb pop and smoke.
Two inches from his face.
"I owe you, Max. I know I screwed things—" His eyes were sincere. For the first time since she had met him, his eyes were sincere. Like Ben's used to be. And again, she saw how he was Ben. Except that this time, she had saved him.
But Alec wasn't Ben. He would never be Ben. It was still so wrong. She still hadn't saved Ben, no matter how much Alec looked like him. She had lost everything: the cure for the virus, the promise of a life with Logan, and the hope of redemption from herself.
She couldn't bear to see him anymore. Shaking her head, letting her anger ease the pain, she looked at him in hate. She looked at him like she had never looked at Ben.
And that was how she had looked at him for a long time: eyes colored with just a little bit of hate. Just a little bit of anger. And always with resentment. Because she had saved Alec, but not Ben.
"Just do me a favor all right? Go away. I can't even look at you right now."
"I'm sorry, Max…for everything."
Tears streamed silently down her face, falling onto the window, slipping down just like rain. Had she ever forgiven him for not being Ben? Had he known that it wasn't the virus or Logan that had spurred all the anger?
She shook her head as if to clear it. Alec had nothing to be sorry for. She was sorry for everything.
"I'm sorry I let you out of Manticore. I'm sorry I inflicted you out on the world." It was as if all her nightmares had come true. She had hated Alec for not being Ben…but it had been unbearable when she had thought he was just like Ben. She had masked the breaking of her heart with the kind of anger only Alec could ever rouse in her.
"You really think I could do it? You think I could murder someone in cold blood?"
"Yes, Alec, I think you could!" Because they were identical.
"You know, no matter what you think, there's no way it could have been me. The guy was killed over a year ago. I was at Manticore." Her relief had left her speechless. She couldn't say she was sorry, and she couldn't say that she was glad. Either way, Alec had proven once again that he was not Ben.
"Some guy with Ben's face?" she asked her reflection in the dark glass, remembering how he had once referred to himself as just that.
No. Never.
Since that moment in her cell at Manticore, he had only proven to her time and again that he was only Alec. Funny, but even while they were different, they were still identical. It hadn't been a coincidence that Manticore had found Alec to be most compatible with her as her Breeding Partner—she had always known they were a perfect match.
She had always known that she was somehow destined to love him, too. She traced an imaginary figure on the window pane absent-mindedly. She wasn't blown away from this realization. She had always known. And that was why she had never really left his side through all the years, because she couldn't.
But she had never really let herself love him, either. Because she couldn't. Because it just didn't feel…fair to either Alec or Ben. She smiled sadly as she realized that she had drawn the heart of the Blue Lady onto the window pane.
It was exposed and bleeding.
Just like hers. Because what really hurt her was that she was destined to lose both of them.
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A/N3: TO ALL THE READERS AND REVIEWERS, THANKS FOR ALL OF YOUR PATIENCE WITH THIS STORY! (please don't flame me for not resolving anything. It takes me a couple of days to remember the flow of a particular story and recapture the pace and emotion of it. )
