Chapter 4

"And the things that are keeping you here are not keeping me here,
And the things that are keeping you here will keep me away."

-Dashboard Confessional, Drowning

The second they returned to the apartment, Alec sank to the floor and covered his eyes with his hands. Max stared at him, her mouth falling open at the profound sadness that seemed to fall over him. She didn't let it soften her.

"What were you thinking?" She demanded, hands on hips and eyes fiery.

He didn't look up. She waited, but he didn't answer either.

"Alec!" Max shouted, resisting the urge to drag him to his feet and force him to look at her. "What the hell was going through your head when you decided to take on six guys over a stupid game of pool?"

If she had been anyone else, the glare he shot her would have been enough to freeze her in her tracks. Even for a genetically engineered soldier she had trouble meeting his eyes.

"I could've taken them," Alec hissed.

"That's not the point!" Max shouted, her fingers itching to shake him until his head rattled. "You may have been able to win the fight—and that's a big maybe, considering you can't track six guys at once no matter how trained you are—but even that would've had consequences. Or did you forget that White wants your head on a platter?"

Suddenly, he was on his feet and bearing down on her. She took an involuntary step back, and then tilted her chin in defiance. She wouldn't cave; she wouldn't let him scare her again.

"Who the hell do you think you are, huh?" Alec demanded, his words frighteningly clear and calm. They were a complete contrast to the hurricane howling in his eyes. "Who are you to save me?"

"I'm—" But she found she had no answer to that. She was what? His friend? Not likely; she'd said herself dozens of times that they weren't friends. So what, then? His family—his sibling? No, those weren't right, either.

"I'm all you've got," She said finally, knowing that this, at least, was true.

His lips opened and stretched, but she couldn't call the grimace he wore anything close to a smile. "Who says I need anyone?"

"Yeah, that's why you stayed in Seattle when you could have gone anywhere else," She scoffed, gaining confidence as she spoke. She knew she had him on this point, even if she wasn't sure of anything else. "Because you're desperate to be alone."

"God, I hate you," Alec breathed, shaking his head roughly. A thousand resentments existed in those three words. "Do you even know how much?"

Max was surprised by how deeply the words sliced into her; she half expected to have nicks on her bones. She licked her lips and steeled herself. "I don't care. Do you hear me? I don't care how you feel. I'm not letting you get yourself killed!"

"Why bother?" He asked, honest incredulity sneaking past the fury swirling around him. "You don't even like me!"

"Because—" Because you look like Ben, her mind finished when her lips couldn't. Because you look like Ben and I let him die, and letting you die would be like living it all over again.

He didn't know the story surrounding Ben; couldn't know about that hellish day in the woods. Still, he must have known enough to read her expression.

"It's him, isn't it?" Alec asked, voice low. He didn't specify; she didn't need him to. "You hate me for the same reason you can't let go of me. It's because I look like him."

"No," she said, and was surprised when the denial felt honest. "I hate you because you've screwed up and let me down over and over, and I can't let go—" She stopped, too afraid that if she repeated his words, it would sound like she was claiming him. "And I keep helping you," she amended after a moment, "because like it or not, we're the same."

The ferocity that flooded his face was unexpected, and she flinched back from it. "We're not the same. You have no idea what it was like."

Manticore. He was talking about Manticore. She felt stirrings of morbid curiosity, but she forced them back down. Alec didn't need an interrogation right now; he needed someone to listen. Even if he didn't know yet that he wanted to talk.

"Then explain it to me." Max challenged, taking a step toward him. The way he tensed reminded her of a threatened cat, back arched and fur standing on end.

He looked for a moment like he might attack her, and she quickly prepared herself for the first blow. Then he whirled around and marched to the kitchen. She followed him, lips tightening as she watched him pull out a bottle of scotch. It was fine quality and she didn't have to wonder how he got it.

He took his time pouring the drink, and then looked up at her again. The expression on his face was frighteningly hard. "I would, but you wouldn't get it. You can't understand, because you ran."

Not once had she ever regretted the escape. It had freed her, and even if she'd fought her entire life to keep that freedom, she'd at least escaped Manticore's cage. For the first time, however, she realized how it might look to him.

"We didn't do it to abandon you," she defended, avoiding his gaze for the first time that night. "We just wanted—"

"You think I don't know why you did it?" Alec interrupted scathingly. His glass sat untouched on the counter, and she wondered distantly why he'd poured if he wasn't going to drink it. "It doesn't matter. You left us."

"Maybe," Max said, because she couldn't deny it. "But I'm still transgenic. I still know what it's like to—"

"Bullshit," He interrupted, knocking the glass of the counter with a quick swipe of his hand. It shattered, sending shards of glass scattering across the floor. "You might be one of us, but you still think like them."

She felt hot anger flood back into her, like the second attack of a hurricane after the quiet lull that existed in the center. "That's bullshit! You think I don't know what it's like to be hunted—to be hated? I may not have grown up in Manticore, but I'm not normal, either, Alec. I know what it's like to be different!"

"That's not what I mean," He said tightly, turning away from her. "I haven't forgotten the day we met."

It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. Then the memory crashed into her, and she closed her eyes against it.

"You were real understanding about assassinations back then, Max," Alec continued mockingly. She didn't need to see his face to know that it looked like stone.

"It wasn't the same," Max argued, but it was pointless. She couldn't defend herself without explaining the terrible despair and loneliness she had felt when she'd been recaptured by Manticore; she couldn't defend herself without telling him about Ben and Zack all of the other people who had died instead of her.

Hell, she had to try anyway. "You don't understand how it looked to me. You were cocky and arrogant and you didn't give a damn—"

"I know," He said, and for just a second he looked desperate and lost again. "I wish I could go back—but it won't go away and I—" He broke off, and for a moment his ragged breathing was the only sound in the room.

"Like I told you, you can't understand," he finished finally, sounding composed and almost normal. But the composure was a lie, like catching your balance just before you fell off the edge of a cliff. You avoided the initial fall, but it only took a strong gust of wind to send you teetering again.

"Alec," she said, slowly and clearly. "What did you do?"

The unwavering sadness shrouded him like a blanket again, and his eyes slid closed. Yet, despite the utter vulnerability he was showing her, his jaw clenched in determination. "No."

She wanted to howl in frustration, but she knew it would do as much good as shouting at a mountain to move. Even in his supreme misery, he wasn't letting her get through to him; in fact, he was fighting her tooth and nail. If the pain of whatever he was going through wasn't enough to weaken his resolve, she didn't think anything could.

Unless…

She ground her teeth together in denial. No. She wasn't telling him—she couldn't.

But he needed someone to understand, and maybe the shock of it would lower his defenses. She closed her eyes and shook her head, everything in her wanting to walk away. But everything in her also wanted to stay and help him—maybe because he looked like Ben or maybe because she just couldn't let him drown. She opened her eyes, took one more look at the sorrow that was so familiar to her, and then said the three words that had the power to affect the fractured transgenic.

"I killed him."

His reaction was even stronger than she'd expected. He froze, his head shooting up and his eyes widening until they seemed to take up half of his face. He had already been pale, but bewilderment and wariness robbed his skin of what little color he'd had left.

"What?"

She'd wanted to do this calmly, straightforwardly, but the grief was already gathering into a ball in her throat. "Ben. I killed him."

"No," he said, his denial for her instead of him this time.

She nodded, trying to keep her eyes from flooding. They did anyway. "He was a murderer—you know that. I wanted to stop him, help him, but I—" Her voice broke, and a few tears trickled passed her lashes. "Manticore was there, and they were closing in. He couldn't make it out on his own and I couldn't carry him—he didn't want to go back."

"Max," Alec whispered, but she could see through her own emotional haze that he wasn't there yet. Sympathy but not empathy—close but not close enough.

"He asked me to," Max continued, her voice clearer now. "How can you say no when someone you love asks you something like that? I felt his neck break in my hands."

"I'm sorry. God, I'm so—" He broke off, and she knew the sudden spark in his eyes was dangerous. "Why are you telling me this?"

Suspicion, wariness—everything she'd expect from a good soldier, and all in a split second. She felt the small opening she'd had to reach Alec slip away like sand through her fingers.

"Trying to show you that I understand," she said honestly, but it was too late. What she'd done had come too close to manipulating him, and he knew it.

He didn't answer her for a moment, and the silence that settled around them reminded her of the crest of a wave just before it crashed back into the ocean floor.

"Get out." Alec said suddenly, the words nothing more than a growl from deep in his throat.

"Alec, I—"

"Get out!" The explosive anger was back and right up on the surface. The way he looked just then, his features twisted and furious, she almost didn't recognize him.

She wanted to stay. She really did, and that in itself scared her. Why did she care so much what happened to him? It wasn't her job to save him, especially if he didn't even want to be saved. Why did she keep trying?

"Fine," She said after a moment. Still she hesitated, hoping he would change his mind and also hoping he wouldn't. His face remained stony, however, and it didn't matter what she hoped. He wanted her gone, so she'd leave him alone.

For now.