Chapter 2: A look of agony
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Max's consciousness struggled to the surface, battling the inner demons threatening to hold her down. She would not give in. A tiny voice inside her whispered seductively to let the soldier out to fight the nightmares. The nightmares that had been so blissfully absent for long weeks and had now reasserted their claim on her dreams, rampaging through her mind.
Throwing memories both real and manufactured in her face, until the pain found voice in long agonised moans. It would be so much easier to fall back on ingrained customs branded into her soul by years of training. Find the threat. Eliminate the threat. As she weakened the soldier grew stronger, battling for ascendance.
'No. I'm not going to give in. I fought too hard. Learned too much to give in.' All the resilience and power of will she had built in the years as a fugitive came to the fore at the bid of their mistress, fighting back nightmares and past alike.
Slowly her senses returned, brown eyes blinking hazily taking in her wrecked room.
What the hell had happened? Nothing was where it had been, little had survived unscathed. It was like a war zone.
Complete with victims.
At the far wall of her room lay Cindy sprawled to the ground like a discarded doll. Bruises were already blossoming on her arms and in what could be seen of her face.
In a flash, Max blurred over, gently turning Cindy on her back, checking pulse and breathing, vastly relieved when both proved to be there. Very faint, but there all the same.
Cindy stirred weakly on the floor and Max raised her friend to a sitting position, cradled against her chest, one knee up to support her back as the girl gulped down panicked bouts of air, a semblance of colour slowly returning to her face.
Slowly Cindy's eyes began to flutter and then open, locking gazes with Max's eyes. Instinctively Cindy tried to get away from the threat immobilising her, arms flailing, hands weakly pushing at her captor.
Max tried to hold her arms down as gently as she could and froze. Her hands perfectly covered the bruises on Cindy's arms. Unceremoniously dropping her friend, she scrambled backwards into a corner away from Cindy, who had to hate her for what she had done.
Tears pooled in Max's eyes as she stared down at her hands, dripping onto a murderer's hands. Renfro was right, she was poison. Destroyed everything she touched. Why weren't her hands red? So much death.
So very much death.
"I'm poison."
Cindy remained lying where Max had dropped her, gasping for breath, frantically trying to suppress the panic. Everything hurt. She hadn't known a single person could hurt that much. Dimly she was aware that Max had retreated once more, but for the moment she just couldn't bring herself to care and see what had changed.
Cindy struggled with her feelings. On the one hand she wanted to run as far away as possible from this thing that had tried to kill her. On the other hand she desperately wanted to help her best friend. The person who had never, not once judged her for what she was, the person that trusted her with the worst secrets and always had her back. She just wasn't sure she would be able to do it, to return the favour. She loved Max like a sister, but she needed time to get over this. She needed help.
Logan would have been the obvious first choice, but out of the question. He had never struck Cindy as being particularly accepting of Max's otherness. Granted he had been the first to know of Max's rather esoteric origins but she doubted Max would have felt the need to trust him with such an integral part of her being of her own volition.
No, phoning Logan wouldn't help at all. It would probably only make things worse. There had to be somebody else. Somebody who understood where Max came from and what she was going through.
'Alec.' Her inner voice prompted. Her first thought was to dismiss the notion. Phone Smart-Alec? Max's not-boy?
'When has he ever not been there for her?'
The thought struck her dumb. She had never thought about it but he was always there. Making Max laugh, guarding her back when Logan sent her off on one of his half-assed missions. Usually getting her out of the thick of trouble. Always there.
Fighting the need to hyperventilate in delayed reaction, she swallowed hard to get her dry throat working again. The first attempt to speak ended in a croak she was glad nobody was in the position to comment on. Clearing her throat she tried again.
"Max?" She was shocked how alien her voice sounded. But being throttled will do that to a person. "I'm phoning Alec, kay? Don't move none, baby boo."
Max appeared not to have heard her, just continued sitting in her corner, all huddled up, rubbing her hands against each other, muttering to herself.
Stumbling into the lounge on weak legs, Cindy dug out her mobile, only to realise that she didn't have Alec's number, despite the thousands of times he had proffered it. Made her wish she had taken him up on it one time.
She was just about ready to cry with frustration when her eyes lit on Max's jacket draped over the sofa. And sure enough her phone was in the left pocket where she always stashed it.
A glance through the contact list showed that Max had Alec on speed dial.
"Why does that not surprise me?" Cindy asked herself.
The phone rang seemingly endlessly and Cindy was just about to give up, when an extremely groggy voice snarled into the phone: "This had better be good Max, or I swear you're dead."
"Alec?"
Silence, then a confused question: "Who is this?"
"It's me Alec, Cindy."
"You sound nothing like Cindy."
"I don't have time for this fool." Cindy snapped.
"Oo-kay. I take it back. What's up?" Faint sounds of movement came from the other end, followed by a yawn.
"It's Max. Something's wrong. I heard these horrible moans, sounded like somebody was being tortured. So I went to check and Max was just sitting in her room." She broke off, as much because of the fear clogging her throat, as for the pain speaking caused in her chest.
"And then what?" Alec coaxed, in a gentler voice than she had ever heard him use, worry clearly apparent.
"I tried to get her to tell me what was wrong and she attacked me!" Cindy squeaked out the last, still in shock at her friend's actions. "She attacked me, Alec. Threw me clear across the room and into the wall. Was just getting ready to finish me off when I must have blacked out. "
Louder noises came from the other end and she heard movement.
"What else?" Cindy was eternally grateful that Alec didn't ask her how it was that she was still alive, fully aware of the fact that by all rights she shouldn't be. And if it hadn't been for the fact that Max had regained her senses briefly, she wouldn't be. Max would be rocking beside a cold dead body by now.
"She came back, but now she's worse than before. She's just sitting there, saying she's poison."
"I'm coming over, Cindy. Sit tight."
The dial tone hit her ear and for the first time since she woke up in terror, Cindy gave in to the hope that everything would be okay. Alec would fix it.
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Alec's thoughts were going a mile a minute as he grabbed his jacket on the way out the door. Max had attacked Cindy. It was inconceivable.
He just couldn't wrap his head around it. Cindy and Max were the best friends he had ever seen in his limited time out of Manticore. It seemed impossible that Max would ever do anything to hurt Cindy and yet for some reason she had.
He drove faster than he ever had before, pushing his bike to the limit. Any other traffic was only peripherally noticed in as far as it was in the way and ignored if it wasn't. Max was in trouble.
It had to be something to do with Manticore. None of them had left that place without some serious hang-ups and Alec knew firsthand how frightening the nightmares could be. More than once in the months since his escape had he woken in a cold sweat, screams and cries ringing in his ears. He had shaken them off, just another thing his frequent bouts in reindoctrination had left him with.
"I just know those bastards are behind it! I'm gonna make them pay!" The words forced themselves past his lips, the threat floating away on the currents of the air, taking on a life of their own. And far away a group of men Alec had never met turned uneasily in their sleep.
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Gasping for breath Alec stormed up the stairs to Max and Cindy's flat, heedless to the noise he was causing at that early hour of the morning. Catching himself on the jamb he knocked loudly. Impatiently shifting from foot to foot, painfully aware of the slightest sound in the darkened hallway, Alec waited for Cindy to open the door. His first thought had been to just ram down the door, but figured patience was the better part of valour for the moment. If Max had come aware in the time it had taken him to get here, he did not want to scare her back into whatever state she had been in.
Slowly the door opened a crack and he could see one of Cindy's eyes, filled with an amount of fear the gutsy brunette had never shown before. In a flash the door was thrown open and he saw her completely, gaze hardening as he took in the dark bruises already forming on her arms, perfectly detailing Max's small hands. There was also a nice bruise forming above her left eye, with just a smear of blood marring the surface. She was lucky to be alive.
He stilled in surprise when Cindy dragged him inside and threw her arms around him in a grip that would have done a transgenic proud. His arms hovered in the air for a second, unsure how to proceed, then wrapped around the brunette. After giving her a moment to compose herself, he asked: "Where's Max?"
Cindy leaned back and nodded to Max's room. Clearing her throat, she added: "Hasn't moved once since I called you."
Disbelievingly Alec watched Cindy fall apart, sobbing into his shoulder. "I don't know what to do! I want to help. I really do, but I can't go in there. I don't see Max." She gulped her terror down. "I know it's not my boo's fault, but I just can't do it."
"It's okay, Cindy. It's okay to be afraid. That's why you called me, right?"
Cindy smiled at him tremulously, shivering when a wail split the air. And just like that she was alone, as Alec blurred to the door, Cindy forgotten as his mind focussed on Max.
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Alec's heart almost stopped in his chest when he first heard the oral expression of Max's pain. It held an eerie quality reminding him of the sounds that used to emanate from the psy-ops wing on the nights when the scientists had had too much time on their hands.
He blurred across the lounge, throwing open the door to Max's room, no longer caring if this might scare her into attacking him - he could probably stop her in her tracks - only wanting to get her aid as fast as possible. In his haste to run to her side he missed the mess she had made earlier that evening.
His foot tangled in the shredded remains of her comforter and sent him down hard to the floor, as if thrown. Slamming into the ground unchecked wrested a groan from his throat and he struggled to right himself.
A soft gasp reached his ear and his head snapped up, gaze locking with a pair of shocked brown eyes. He froze in position, watching with baited breath as one small, pale hand reached towards him from the shadows of the corner in a gesture of need so familiar, he could have sworn he had seen it-
Remembrance hit him like a hammer between the eyes.
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Wary brown eyes met his, one slim hand raised in something he did not recognise having never seen comfort when offered.
"Who are you?"
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"My name's Max. What's yours?"
A soft, derisive laugh in the dark. "Don't have one."
"That wont do. I'll call you Alec. As in Smart-Alec."
"Not that smart looking now, Max."
Silence wrapped them. A whisper of fabric as he moved closer, one hand reaching out to wrap hers.
"Can I call you Maxie?"
"Yes"
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Thrown into the cell, he knew that she was already waiting. Sure enough as soon as the door closed, he found himself enveloped in warm arms, his own rising to drape loosely around her middle. They cried together that night, for the last shred of innocence wrested from their grasp.
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A warm, naked body curled into his. Both knew that their night was once again over. "I don't want to leave you." she whispered, curling tighter into his body, heedless of the pain it caused her as abused muscles screamed in agony. She bit down on the urge to beg him to protect her. They had no chance. No chance to defend themselves against what was being done to them. They could only hold each other while darkness cloaked their cell.
"I'm never going to leave you." He whispered the words in fierce promise anyway, responding to her unspoken plea. "Never. Do you hear me? I'm never going to let you go. I'll take care of you. I promise."
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Alec stared at the figure in the corner. It was her. There was only -
"Maxie?" The words came out as a helpless plea, begging her to remember, too. To prove that it was not all just in his head.
A small cry reached his ears and just as suddenly he found himself with a lapful of warm Max, whose hands were fluttering over his face and arms in a need to check that he was really there. That it was all real and not a figment of her imagination.
She was crying into his shoulder as his arms tightened convulsively around her, holding her tight to his chest, all the forgotten feelings bursting to the surface, making him whole again, making him loved again.
Unbeknown to him tears dripped down his cheeks and onto Max's hair, as the two revelled in the feeling they had never known they'd missed so desperately. A part that had been missing from them so long finally slotting back where it belonged, making them almost whole again.
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Cindy stood in the doorway watching the two lost souls reunite, whatever had caused Max to act so out of character forgotten for the moment. They looked so right and she could only wonder why they had shown no reaction before this, had acted like they had never even met before. And once again, the answer that prompted so many other questions was one word. Manticore.
She wasn't stupid. Could recognise PTSD when she saw it. Once, in a quiet conversation late at night, Max had alluded to some of the things that had been done to them all by those sickos. Making somebody lose their memory was probably the least of it.
The thought made her shiver, which in turn reminded her of how much she hurt. There was nothing she could do for Max at that point, still having to deal with the emotional fallout of being attacked by her friend.
Turning away, she resolved to head back to bed. Alec seemed to have the situation well in hand and she needed the rest. Well that and some Tylenol. Limping slightly Cindy walked away.
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A long hour later, Max and Alec were curled together on her bed, unwilling to be separated by even an inch, as if afraid that if they did, they would be separated once more, forget each other once more. Max broke the silence first.
"I'm sorry, Alec. I'm so sorry. I've been so hard on you. I should have realised." He felt more than heard her start to cry again, hating the fact that they were put in this position in the first place.
"It's okay, Maxie. You didn't know." his arms tightened around her, pulling her in even tighter. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you. I didn't want to leave. I failed you."
Max's head snapped back, a familiar look of fury on her face. "You did not fail me, Alec!" Her voice whipped out. "There was nothing we could do. It was them!" Her voice turned to an ugly hiss. "Manticore." The reason for and bane of their existence.
"Bastards!" Alec stated with conviction. "Good thing we burnt that place to the ground."
Max snorted and nodded.
Gazing up into his face, her demeanour softened as she reacquainted herself with features once again as familiar as her own, more dear to her than even her patchwork family.
"Alec." The emotion in her voice wrapped around his heart, lightening a load he hadn't known was there. "I lost you."
Her eyes filled with unguarded tears, lip trembling with emotion, everything she felt clearly painted on her face for him to see. Unguarded and unafraid.
Alec barely managed to hold back his own tears and say: "Never." With a sigh they came together in the twilight, lips pressed together, bodies intertwining, relearning the feel of each other that was cruelly wrested away from them. Broken souls finally reunited with their mate, becoming one. Soft moans filled the velvet darkness of the room, cries silenced against shoulders, two lovers reclaiming their own, till sunlight pressed against the shutters of the room, heralding the dawn of a new day.
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Cindy turned onto her back painfully slowly, muscles protesting every tiniest increment of movement, unwilling to let her continue her sleep.
'Damn. What the hell happened ta me?'
Her hand went to her throat and she winced as the memory of the previous night reasserted itself. Fear attempted to swamp her but was ruthlessly suppressed. Something was wrong with her boo and she was damn well going to find out what and then she was going to put the smack down on whoever was responsible. Nobody messed with her boos without paying the price.
"Cindy!" Alec's panicked cry tore through the fragile illusive tranquillity of the flat, the morning's peace shattering.
Stumbling slightly Cindy took off at a dead run for Max's room, coming to an abrupt stop as she struggled to take in what her eyes insisted she was seeing.
Alec was trying to subdue a convulsing Max. Cindy could see the deep scratches the girl had already scored into his arms. Fluttering eyelids showed only the whites of her eyes, while spasms bowed her body strongly enough to lift Alec's body with hers. And then there was the blood slowly spreading on the sheet beneath her. A slow pool of red on the white of the sheet.
Alec looked at Cindy with eyes made wide by panic, before clamping down on his emotions. In a precise voice he said: "Left pocket of my jacket. Speed dial two. Tell Dix to prep the infirmary. We're coming in hot and Max is haemorrhaging."
Cindy nodded, desperate to help. For the second time that day she found herself contacting a transgenic in order to gain help for her best friend. And for the second time a groggy voice threatened her with dire consequences.
"Alec! Nothing is important enough for you to wake me up at stupid o'clock. I'm so gonna -"
"Dix! Shut up. It's Max's friend Cindy. Max is haemorrhaging. Alec says to get yo ass in gear and prep the lab. We're coming in."
The snappy voice had the desired effect.
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"Go!" Her finger was already on the off button when she heard: "Gone, ma'am."
Cindy returned to Alec's side. "Done. One question though. How are we gonna get to TC? Don't have a car."
Alec looked at her with blank eyes. "Gonna steal one."
She nodded and managed to hold back a scream, as Alec grit his teeth, mouth set in a determined hard line. Taking a deep breath, he let go of Max and then snapped out a precisely calculated punch that knocked Max out cold and had her slumping back to the sheets.
His shoulders hunched, Alec gently wrapped her unresponsive body in the fairly clean top blanket. He started when Cindy laid her hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly.
She met his haunted look with a steady one of her own.
"You did the right thing. Let's go."
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At that time of day TC was still mostly asleep, a fact Alec was eternally grateful for. It wouldn't do to have to face too many questions. Not that they had any idea what the questions were let alone the answers. All they knew so far was that Manticore had messed with their heads, erasing all memory of their first few weeks together. It did sort of explain however why Alec had always found himself drawn to Max. He'd somehow known that here was the other half of his soul, if he could just find the key.
Although he detested the way in which that key had finally unlocked the missing part of his mind, he couldn't hate it. It had brought him back Max. Though it only accelerated things, he was sure that some way Max and he would have found their way back to each other without external prompting. But that train of thought was obsolete now. Things had moved beyond them.
Tiredly he glanced over at Cindy. After arriving at TC and Max had been wheeled off, she had demanded answers about their weird behaviour. Although not exactly the kind of person to spill his emotions, Alec felt she had the right to know. So he had told her everything he had remembered, right up to the last time he had seen Max. Cindy had first been shocked and then had cried a little for them, hugging him as strongly as she could. Alec had frozen up first and then returned the hug, glad he had a friend like her. At long last though the more or less sleepless night caught up with her and she had stretched out over a couple of chairs and promptly fallen back into an exhausted sleep. He would have to wake her soon as he wanted Dix to check her out, too. See if Max had inadvertently caused more damage than it seemed, although the fact Cindy was still walking and talking spoke for the fact that something had held Max back. If she had been truly insensate, acting merely on instinct, she would have broken Cindy's neck without breaking a sweat.
Dix was still in there with Max, alone after, throwing Alec out an hour before. The hovering had been driving him insane, but he had promised to come out as soon as he knew anything. Alec had made him swear on pain of death.
Just as Alec started his one hundred and fourth round of the room, he heard the door open. A faint noise from the corner showed that Cindy had heard as well and was wearily rousing herself.
Dix slowly walked in the room, knowing full well now what the messenger must feel like when he had particularly bad news.
"Hey, Alec. Cindy." he nodded at the woman.
"Spill. What's up with Max?" Alec demanded, hands fisted at his sides.
Dix swallowed: "Why don't you come on through. We've managed to stabilise Max. Staunched the bleeding. She's lucky this happened after the blood drive last week and that all X-5s are universal donors. Well when I say stabilise I mean that the seizures stopped as suddenly as they apparently started. Which was a very good thing all things considered. Anyway, she's awake now, so why don't you come on through and we can all talk about this together."
"So you found something out?" Alec asked.
Dix shifted uncomfortably. "I would rather discuss this with Max present." He turned and led the way to the little room that had been transformed into an infirmary.
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As soon as she caught sight of Alec Max's eyes glowed as if a candle had been lit from the inside. The vague shadow of sorrow haunting her for the last months was gone. Weakly she patted the spot on the bed beside her and Alec was only too happy to slide in beside her, arranging her so she lent against his chest, one of his arms holding her in place around the waist. Cindy smiled indulgently, successfully masking the uncomfortable feeling she got from being close to Max for the first time since the incident.
Dix looked at the picture presented to him. He had no idea what had changed in the last twenty-four hours. What had happened to turn Max and Alec from close acquaintances with nothing more in common than the shared experiences at Manticore to lovers. Their body language was patently obvious to somebody as well-versed in noting the slightest nuances of emotion as he was. Well, up until ten minutes ago he had only had Alec's behaviour to go on and hadn't that just been an eye opener of cosmic proportions? At first he had wondered if maybe somebody had decided to play a joke on him. The way Alec had hovered anxiously as they stabilised Max's condition was not the behaviour of a casual acquaintance or even that of a close friend. And he had Cindy to compare with.
He had wondered, but the blood tests came up negative for heat hormones, plus he would have noticed it anyway. It didn't affect him the way it did the X5's thank God, but he would have noticed none the same. Gave a nice buzz in his opinion. So something else was responsible and he had the sinking suspicion that it had something to do with the absolutely shocking discoveries they had made while treating Max. And he really wasn't looking forward to what he had to tell.
"Okay, before we go into what happened to Max I'm gonna have at give you some background stuff."
"Is that really necessary, Dix?" Alec asked, impatient to learn what was wrong with Max. Swiftly Max laid her hand on his arm, rubbing in slow circles, the action calming Alec down almost instantly. She smiled up at him weakly and whispered: "It's okay. Dix has his reasons I presume."
Dix nodded. "Yeah. Thanks Max. Anyway the problem is that we don't know a lot about our physiognomies. Not exactly something they were willing to teach us at Manticore. Held those cards really close to their chests. And the database went kablooie with the rest of the base. Couldn't be avoided. The disk you guys brought back from Renfro helped, once we got past the insane encryption. But that's basically just letters. We know why some DNA was spliced in but nobody really wrote in what the effects of interaction would be."
The data dump Eyes Only managed to intercept is nowhere near organised enough for us to use a simple search algorithm. We're basically shooting in the dark.
He sighed: "But that is neither here nor there. And I am not sure it would help us anyway with what happened to you."
"What happened to me?" Max asked fearfully, already feeling the answer, burrowing into Alec's arms for reassurance, fingers interlaced. Cindy also had an idea what might have happened but really, really hoped she was wrong, both for Max's sake and Alec's. It was not as if they hadn't already suffered enough in their short lives. Suffered more than any person she'd ever met or heard of.
Dix swallowed and decided to just come out and say it. There was no easy way to say it anyway. Moving his chair closer to the bed, he let the sympathy and grief he felt for them rise to the surface and colour his tone.
"Max? Did you know you were pregnant?"
Max went deathly-white as Cindy exclaimed in protest, all her worst fears confirmed.
"Was?" Max asked in a tiny voice, begging him to tell her that she had misheard, that he was lying, anything to-
"You miscarried the baby two hours ago. That's what caused the seizure. From what we have established the baby had some genetic flaws, not uncommon in our medical history. You would have lost it sooner or later anyway, but the stress of your episode last night coupled with the emotional trauma accelerated the process and hastened the miscarriage."
Max let Dix's voice wash over her, not one word registering past the fact that she had lost her baby. Had lost their baby.
Dix braced himself. There was more. Reaching out he laid his hand on Max's arm to get her attention, hating himself for having to put even more pain on her fragile shoulders. Having to inflict more agony on two people that he considered friends. But they had the right to know.
"There's more."
"More?" Alec managed to get past the icy fist clutching his insides, that made it difficult to breath, difficult to talk, difficult to do anything bar hold on to the woman in his arms for all he was worth and hope that they would simply wake up in her bed and find that it had all been a dream.
"Yes, there's more. We did an ultrasound and found evidence that Max was pregnant with twins. Another thing not uncommon at Manticore. Most of us have twins. Must have to do with the animal cocktail encouraging multiple births." He barely managed to stop himself from going off on a medical lecture. Going into medical details was his way of coping, that if he could somehow find the right words and make everybody understand he could stop these things from happening. But that was not what Max and Alec needed right now.
"The baby Max lost tonight was twelve weeks into gestation. The remnants we found of the other are nothing else. Just remnants. Indicating that either Max lost it much earlier - unlikely - or that it was removed. I can't tell you how that could be done or if it is even possible, but that is what the evidence points to.
"NO! You're lying!" It burst from Max in a primal wail as she defensively clutched her waist. "No, no, no, no, no. You have to be lying. This isn't happening to us." She turned her ashen face up to Alec's. "Tell him he's wrong. Please." She was caught in the worst nightmare she could have imagined. Not only had she tried to kill her best friend, but she had lost their baby. No babies, plural. One taken from her by nature and the other wrested from her womb unknowing. Her thoughts raced in circles, unable to find a reason or even some form of - something for her to hold onto. Alec. Alec was there and he would know what to do. She needed him.
Alec could only stare down at her beloved face blankly, a thousand emotions racing through him, one worse than the other. He'd failed her. Back in that hellhole he'd sworn he would let nothing happen to her. That he would protect her - his mate. And then he hadn't even managed to hold onto her memory. He'd failed her and their child. No, their children.
Despair welled up in him from a seemingly never-ending source and he couldn't stand it anymore. He'd failed her, failed, failed -
Only just managing to restrain himself, he gently laid Max back on the bed, avoiding her clinging hands and her instinctive move to hold him by her side. Fighting the urge to just hold on and never let go. But he had failed her once already. Staring at Cindy and Dix, both regarding him with confused eyes, he tried to talk, but no words would come. His mouth snapped shut and he stormed from the room.
The last thing he heard was the heartbroken wail of his mate.
"Alec! Don't leave me! Don't leave me again."
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A/N: And this where chapter two ends. Aren't I evil?
Seriously now, onto the stuff I have changed. Obviously almost everything to do with Cindy's injuries. I recently did a refresher First Aid course and was reminded how sensitive a human's neck is. A lot can go wrong if you it the right spot. And I figured that there is no way Cindy would survive Max throttling her, even if it is aborted fairly early. There is just no logical reason for it. So I changed it to her being thrown clear across the room. That way we have shortness of breath and maybe a cracked rib, but nothing as dire as having a smashed hyroid bone (Don't you just love Bones). Probably spell that wrong, but who cares.
Really tough, that is a cosmetic change, nothing more. Same with Dix's medical speech. I am not 100 happy with that as of yet, but so far how to make it better escapes me. I need him to lay out a few things for later. And exposition has to go somewhere.
One big changed is very close to my heart though. And that is the whole nickname thing. If you remember back to the beginning of chapter one, it had Max and Alec standing on the hill and he calls her Maxie, only to be slapped down with her standard 'Don't call me Maxie." In the original version of this (Still available on ffnet, by the way. For a while anyway), Alec calls her princess while they are locked up together. And that is what he calls her when he regains his memories. It didn't really seem to fit though. Something about that always struck me as cumbersome and clunky.
Then, while rewriting this, I though: "What about Maxie?"
It makes much more sense, cause it harkens back to the fact that only family and loved ones call Max Maxie. And this way I could hearken back to that exchange that started chapter one. I like the extra layer it gives their time together at Manticore and shows the differences between before and after.
Incidentally I was going to split this chapter down the middle and end it when he wraps her up in a bundle to take her to TC.
Oh and the punch is new too.
A lot is going to change with this, in large part due to some reviews I have received and some chats with Shay. I realised that there are many, many unanswered questions. So many that this will not end where I thought it would. Which was chapter eight I think. Unwritten Chapter Eight I might add.
I have some ideas I can't lay out here without spoiling things, but let me know what you think about it all. And you never know, you might make me think and change things. Has been known to happen after all.
Oh, yeah and crogos I apologise if I dissapointed you in not killing Cindy. I need her though.