Title: White Noise
Author: Lexie Jayne
Fandom: Dark Angel
Characters: Jondy, Zack
Prompt: Enemies.
Word Count: 679
Rating: T
Summary: They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.
Author's Notes: A back story and continuation to my one-shot Let Go. The idea niggled at me. Each part uses a prompt as given by fanfic100 at live journal. My hard drive died and has been replaced, so huffah! Back to regularly scheduled updates.
VI. Enemies
After Adam was born, their relationship was different. They both recognised that, but pushed it aside. There was more to worry about than sex and love when the people who created you were training armies to destroy you.
Jondy's working for their cause harder than ever, laptop close by and gun at her hip. Her hair, dyed back to the deep red that he remembers caught his eye so long ago. But she's not the same person he was so taken with all those months ago. She is a different, harder, most distant girl, and she pulls away from them all. Even Adam, who is crawling, has a hard time cracking the mask she wears.
They lie stiffly next to each other at night, and he wonders when she started sleeping so much. She wonders when he stopped knowing her and hates herself for wishing for a time back before Adam, whose gorgeous baby smiles and giggles are reserved only for his father. She is fucking tired and she wants to walk away so bad now.
Zack's found a pretty X6 with strawberry blonde curls and a coy look perfected from hours of studying Ordinaries. She smiles at him, her whole attention on the Commanding Officer of the X5 unit, and ignores Jondy's glowers from the corner as the little X6 balances Jondy's baby on her hip and rests her hand against Zack's arm.
She throws her unloaded gun against the concrete wall in temper, and cracks the casing, which just serves to piss Max off, and startle Adam, and she wants to scream bloody murder at anyone who crosses her path.
Her salvation is found in Alec, with his hard eyes and sarcastic nature. And for the first time, the man in her life isn't a lover or a brother, just a friend. He drags her out on runs for supplies, taking his sweet time and letting her gulp in the fresh air and take in the space that is outside the underground transgenic hideout. She returns with flushed cheeks, all smiles and energy, and Zack wants to hit Alec for bringing that sort of smile to Jondy's face.
They barely talk anymore. They snip at each other, muttered insults and barbed remarks delivered with poisonous smiles, with their siblings looking on, grim looks on their faces.
It gets worse when Adam gets sick, his face flushed unnaturally, curled in his mother's grip, his little face shiny with sweat. Jondy takes him into the fresh air, wiping his tiny, baby face as he whimpers and cries at her.
"I'm so sorry, baby," she whispers at him, hating herself for not preventing her baby from getting sick, for not loving him more, for not being the perfect mother and for being generally fucked up. He grabs a fistful of her cherry red hair and dribbles down her shirt. She closes her eyes and wishes she knew normal things, like how to bring down a baby's fever, instead of weird things like how to build a nuclear bomb. She claps her cold hand over his forehead and Adam falls into dribbly, baby sleep, so still that her heart pounds loudly in her ears, and losing him is so much worse that she wants to cry for ever wanting him to just not be.
"Shouldn't be out here."
She turns around to see Zack, standing behind her, almost defensively.
"I'm a grown woman, Zack," she half hisses, like the cat she is.
"I'm not talking about you. You're not my problem, Jondy," he replies icily. "I'm talking about Adam. I'm taking him back down."
He plucks their baby from her arms and leaves her standing alone, in a baby drool-covered top, her heart on her sleeve and a deep pain in her chest that they can't even look at each other anymore. Where the fuck did they go wrong?
Zack has taken Adam, and moved the makeshift crib and his things away from hers, and she lies awake all night, alone, and listens to her sleeping boys breathe, so close by.