Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel. That awesomeness is property of only James Cameron and Charles Eglee. Dang, I wanted royalties…I could use them…college is like cha-ching—mucho dinero, no tengo nada.
A/N: Well, here is the last of the three that I have for now, wait a little bit and I'll have the rest up…I'm thinking two more chapters then it'll be done. I know, sad isn't it? But I'm sneaky…nine chapters…cats supposedly have nine lives, live and die…death…funeral for that which never was…hehehe.
A/N2: Ok, now that I've had my laugh…I hope you enjoy, and I hope it'll hold you until I can finish and post chapter 8. Please read and review.
Funeral for That Which Never Was
Chapter 7: Burial
…When all my resistance will never be distance enough…
Logan had finally taken it too far. Now he was following her around. Max daily grew more irritated with the man. After she had officially had broken their "relationship," he actually had the nerve for a follow-up with her at Jam Pony. She did little more than groan and roll her eyes when he walked in the door. From her place at her locker, Max slumped as if she was holding the collapsed nation on her shoulders.
"What's shaking you, Boo?" OC noticed Max's discomfort at seeing a certain cyber-journalist walk through the door. As far as she knew, the two had broken it off. Well, that's what Max had told her when they were getting ready for work that morning in their apartment, even going so far into detail as to explain her return call—filled with latent hostility.
"You know." Max motioned for OC to follow her. Max stepped around Alec at his locker and headed for the back wall. "It's like he won't leave me alone now. I've stopped answering his calls and his pages—destroyed my pager finally. I even changed the number of the phone at our apartment, for God's sake. Seriously, he must be really thick. I mean, what's it going to take? I've told him I don't know how many times to just leave me alone—I've lost count, it's been so many!" Max tried to keep her voice down, she didn't want Logan to find out where she had gone. She just didn't want to talk to him anymore. She didn't want to try for the millionth time to convince him that they were over. She doubted he would ever believe her.
Max really hoped his persistence wouldn't resort to a need for her to leave Seattle. She loved the city, the Needle, her friends…she just couldn't take Logan anymore. "I just want him to leave me alone." Max leaned her back against the wall.
A locker ahead of them slammed shut. Max looked up and saw Alec head to the dispatch desk where Normal was tossing packages and insults at the crew. Max's eyes lingered on his frame as he grabbed a few boxes from the desk and headed for the door. She would have given anything to go back to the night that they ran away for their little vacation.
She almost growled when Logan tried to stop him by the door on his way out. Stupid. Alec wouldn't take any crap from that guy. He never did like him….he only put up with him because she and Logan had been, well kind of…whatever. The point was Alec didn't have to be civil with him anymore. Even with her transgenic hearing, Max couldn't hear what was said, but she didn't have to. Manticore had also seen fit to train its soldiers with the ability to lip-read.
"Where's Max?" Logan had said, scowling the whole time. He apparently didn't want to have anything to do with Alec, but whatever means got him to his end.
"She's not here. Obviously. And from what I hear, I don't think she's ever going to speak to you again." Alec tried to push past him, but Logan held on to his sleeve. Clenching his jaw, Alec took hold of Logan's wrist and forcefully dragged him out the door.
It was silent, and Max could only guess what was going on between the two of them. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she too headed in the direction of the door. Oblivious to the jumbled conversations around her and Normal's screeching as she passed the front desk, she positioned herself just on the inside of the open doorway. She heard the shudder of corrugated metal as a body was slammed up against the chain-pull side door. Then she heard a voice. "Get it through your skull: She doesn't want to be with you. She doesn't want to talk to you. She doesn't want to see you. Ever." Alec's voice had reverberated against the metal, carrying inside the building. It was menacingly cold, like Ben's had been at a time that she had tried to forget.
This time, though, she smiled. Alec was actually standing up for her. Typically, Alec would let Max handle her own issues, knowing full-well that she was capable of it. She had kicked his ass many times proving the point. But, this time, he had to step in. Max mentally thanked Alec for his intervention. This was something that Max couldn't handle on her own. She had tried, time after time to tell Logan to leave her alone, that they were over and she didn't want to see him anymore. But, like always, he was stubborn—wanting his own way.
Just then a single gunshot rang in the air. The hub of noise in Jam Pony ceased, only to pick up again with haste a moment later. Gunshots were far from rare in the broken world they lived in since the Pulse hit. Now, it seemed to provide a topic of discussion: Wonder who got capped this time? Probably a whack government dude. Naw, I'd say it was an unsuspecting bystander caught in the crossfire of a gang-war. But today, it meant something else entirely to Max.
Her heart froze. The only person who could be armed was Logan. She knew that Alec had abandoned his use of fire arms after being with her on a number of "outings." He had come to respect her aversion to them. He even realized that her physical ability in fighting was better simply because of the fact that she didn't use them, Max relied solely on her own strength and ability to survive in critical situations. She knew that if Alec did have any weapons that they would be locked up in his apartment. He had told her once that he just didn't need them anymore with the new life that he had. Because of this knowledge, Max had to take several slow breaths to calm her stampeding heart. If the only person with a gun was Logan, that meant that if he had hit his mark, Alec could be… crap!
Max hesitated only a fraction of a second before she tore around the door, shoving the thought of having to deal with Logan out of her head. She didn't have the energy to focus on letting him off, again. And if he had done what Max thought he did, there was no way she would be gentle. Verbally or physically, it didn't matter. She would tear him to pieces.
The scene she met was relieving. Alec had deftly dodged the bullet aimed at him, and pushed Logan against the wall once again, cracking his head against the corrugated metal. Snarling in his face, Alec twisted Logan's arm until the older man dropped the gun. The side arm dropped with a dull clunk to the ground at their feet. Max started to breath normally again and cleared her throat to let them know that she was there.
"Oh, Max! Thank God! Alec's trying to kill me!" Logan was close to whining, and the sound grated Max's ears.
"Logan, God, you're so annoying." Max mimicked his frantic petition. She had enough of being nice. She would be as cruel as it took to get him to leave her alone. And to stop threatening Alec. Logan had made a bad choice in doing so to begin with. Alec could snap him in six places in no time, and with no effort whatsoever.
"If you haven't realized it by now: It is o-ver." Max enunciated each syllable of the last statement, hoping that the situation and her clarity of speech would finally get the point across. "I don't want to see you anymore, and I don't want to hear your whiny demanding voice anymore. To be honest, seeing you now is kinda making me nauseous."
Logan's face dropped and his eyes began to water. Was it from the pain Alec had inflicted to his arm? Or had Max's words finally gotten to him? She really didn't care. Logan had ruined her sanity for almost an entire week. For a transgenic, that alone felt like an eternity. Not mentioning the year and a half in which they "danced around the truth." The many times which he disrupted Max's downtime just to fulfill his super-hero tendancies.
Alec shook him, bringing Logan's attention back to the situation. "Understand?"
Logan tried to glare at the male transgenic, but he couldn't pull off one convincing enough with the tears glistening in his eyes.
Max rolled her eyes. She stepped up just behind Alec's shoulder, so she could look Logan in the eye. "Understand?" She asked with the same tone that Alec had used.
The ordinary nodded and hung his head again.
Max turned, heading back inside to go on with her life. She decided that whatever Alec wanted to do with the stupid ordinary he was more than allowed to do so.
A/N: Well, well, tell me…what did you think. Please review and let me know. Chapter 8 is in the works…give me a week or maybe less and I'll have it up and ready for you…maybe even with the final chapter.
