Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The quiet of Max’s apartment is deafening after the roaring engine and the gunfire. The lamps cast the apartment in soft orange lighting; it’s enough to show the peeling paint on the walls. The acrid scent of the exhaust smoke from her motorcycle follows them inside. 

“Make yourself at home,” she says, the sarcasm feeling clumsy in her mouth. “Don’t break anything.”

Max is still wearing a sensible pantsuit; a necessary evil to pass for a lawyer, but now the clothes are a stifling presence on her skin. The things she said while wearing them makes her burn with shame and a desire to get rid of them immediately. She leaves Alec where he is: staring out the window, at the dark sky and the city lights. Ben never came here. But she imagines he’d look something like this, like Alec’s uncharacteristic brooding.

She sheds the clothes and breathes a little easier when she puts on a hoodie instead. It’s comfortable. 

They talk about Logan. Alec’s concern with Logan’s near-death makes her swallow a lump in her throat. The undeniable truth that he would’ve been there if he could have is staring her in the face in the form of Alec’s parted lips and genuine eyes; no mask of indifference to be seen. Not like hers, when she realized he wouldn’t show up, or when she found out he was in jail. Right before Logan touched her and everything went to hell, Alec said he’s always the bad guy to her. He was right.

She heads over to the kitchen to make some coffee for both of them. The pots and pans glint in the soft light. Her hand brushes the counter; it’s sticky. 

Alec asks about Ben.

She has never recounted the tale before, not like this, describing Ben as a child and Ben when she snapped his neck both. Silent tears roll down her cheeks. There’s a part of her that’s relieved, to have finally spoken the words, and to have done so with Alec—but it’s also terrible, her heart pounding too fast in her ribcage now that she’s confessed her sins. 

She only did so once before, in the confessional of the priest she saved. The priest’s church had been blue all over: the Lady, the windows, the reunion. It hadn’t been the reunion she imagined for ten long years. But it’s happening now, all that she dreamed of back then: Ben’s arms wrapping around her, holding her close. Ben’s lips pressing a kiss to her crown like she’s some fragile thing instead of a highly trained killing machine. Instead of the girl who killed her brother.

“I’m sorry, Max,” and it’s Ben’s voice, but it’s not Ben. It’s not her brother.

It’s Alec, and he’s something else to her entirely, whispering apologies against her hair when she’s been judging him in Ben’s place for as long as she’s known him. The genetic mistake, she called Ben once. The monster in the basement.

I’m sorry for inflicting you on the world, she said to Alec, instead of even attempting to find out the truth. Original Cindy had to convince Max to go get him because of the exposure risk. He got no benefit of the doubt. Max almost left him to rot in prison. She told him to give White who caged and nearly killed him the last time her regards.

All for murders he didn’t commit. An innocent wearing Ben’s face. 

She almost got Alec killed.

And it’s this that turns the silent tears into a breakdown. It makes her turn and bury her face in Alec’s chest, drawing comfort from the fact that it’s Alec holding her—not as a way to pretend it’s someone else, but comforting because he still wants to after what she did. After what she’s been doing. It’s not right.

“It’s not right,” she manages through the crying. When he keeps holding on, one of his hands resting on the back of her head, the other one on the small of her back, whispering platitudes—anger lances through her. Even as it feels—

Well. Other than the fights she gets into, she doesn’t touch a lot of people, and they don’t touch her. It feels like her skin has been hungry for a long time, and this is making it go away. Alec’s arms are strong and confining, and she can feel the warm press of his body, along with the featherlight touches on her back and on her hair. They’re too close. Max can’t remember the last time she was this close to someone. 

She holds on tighter to the anger, though; a familiar response to Alec, ignoring the guilt swirling just as hot as the rage within her.

“It’s not right!” she says again, insistent, pushing him away with all of her strength before she thinks twice about it. He stumbles backwards, not having expected it, and nearly falls on his ass. But he’s got all the same feline DNA as she does and manages to stay on his feet. 

Her traitorous body shifts towards him like it wasn’t ready to let go.

“I know it’s not,” he says, trying to placate her. “You never should’ve been put in that position.”

God, he still thinks this is about Ben.

And why wouldn’t he? She’s the one who’s been making this about Ben from the start. But who is this? Identical to Ben as she last saw him, but not the Ben she spent a decade missing? She gave Alec his name and his freedom. They’ve had each other’s backs. His carefree attitude can be refreshing in contrast to the dread and angst and heartache she feels around Logan more often than not, lately.

So who is Alec? Someone she cares about. And she’ll be damned if she lets someone she cares about put up with this.

“Why are you doing this?” 

His brows draw together in a furrow. He’s getting agitated. “Why?” he repeats with confusion. “What, I can’t try and comfort my friend now?”

“Friends don’t leave friends taking the rap for murder without at least hearing them out,” she says through the lump in her throat. She really did that. She really would’ve left him at White’s mercy. Doesn’t he get that? Isn’t he angry?

He blinks. Comprehension dawns on his face, and then, “Max, I get it.”

Of course he isn’t angry. He’s got to be used to it, by now. When White actually did get his hands on Alec, he tried to tell her. Matter of life and death, he’d said with an hour still left on the clock. Mine. No time for your drama, had been her response. Tried to run your game on a bigger scumbag than yourself, had been what she’d flung at him with so much vitriol, like it hadn’t been simple survival instinct. 

“Don’t,” she says sharply. “You know what I called you, when I was waiting at the hospital and you were a no-show? An unreliable jerk. You were on your way, though. You dropped everything. And then Ben was held against you. Isn’t that the story of your life?”

“Max?” He still doesn’t get it. His face is sickeningly reminiscent of after they got the bomb out of his neck.

I can’t even look at you, she remembers saying, turning around. But the image of him sitting in that chair, looking up at her with wide green eyes, painfully vulnerable, didn’t go away when she faced the wall instead.
 
“Where is your anger?” she insists, seething with rage at both of them. It’s incandescent. It’s making her tremble. “I beat you up in the ring and listed all that pissed me off about you, why don’t you do the same?!”

She stalks forward and gives him a shove. He sees it coming this time, lets her shove him with no threat to his balance. Isn’t that just the summary of their dynamic? Just the thought makes fury unfurl inside her, hot and cold at once.

“Come on!”

Another shove, harder this time.

“Fight back!”

She reaches out to do it again. He catches her wrists.

He doesn’t do anything else. She doesn’t try to pull away. He holds her gaze, pretty green eyes framed by long lashes, and she’s transfixed by this. She could never reconcile this face with the boy who got her through her childhood, anyway. 

“No,” he says simply. 

The battered aluminum kettle shrieks like a banshee heralding their deaths. 

He lets go of her wrists. She walks to the kitchen. The scent of freshly brewed coffee fills the air as she pours it into two mugs. While she pours the second one, he wordlessly grabs one of sachets of creamer she stole once and stirs it into his mug. She doesn’t say anything even as she’s surprised; she’d have figured him for a black coffee kind of guy. She finishes pouring her own mug and the silence between them stretches. It’s annoying: he’s always talking, but the one time she wants him to he’s silent?

When they were stuck in that closet, he wouldn’t shut up. But it wasn’t the talking that had gotten to her. It was his presence. Being in the dark made it easy for thought to linger that she’d never allow the light of day. She’d been there to touch Logan, or to make sure she could again, but in that closet she’d been thinking about the muscles in Alec’s back; how it would feel to run her fingers through his hair; his mouth, and his hands. It got to the point where she wondered if she was in heat and actually hoped for it, because that would be a logical explanation, but she wasn’t. It was just her. The lack of touch had gotten to her, she rationalized to herself. But she was going to fix that, she was going to get the money to get that cure. She just had to get through that hour first.

Not that it matters now. 

Last time Logan had a close call, she went to that chapel in the hospital. Couldn’t help but think of Ben, being in a place of faith like that, lit up by so many candles that the entire room glowed orange. Crucifixes and rosaries. Ben never stopped believing. It’s like his soul belonged to the Lady.

Alec isn’t like that. At least, she doesn’t think so.

“Do you believe in God?” she asks, voice soft. She takes another sip. The mug is cold against her lips, but the coffee is warm and smooth and comforting.

At her question, Alec’s eyebrows are questing for his hairline. 

He regards her for a moment, still infuriatingly silent, and then: “Nope.”

Just that. No joke, no deflection, no affirmative. 

“Why not?” 

He smiles briefly. “You know, you hear all that crap people are saying about transgenics—about us. How we don’t have souls, and God didn’t intend for us to be here, and that’s fine. I don’t care. But Rachel was human.” 

His voice breaks on the name. Her eyes widen, surprised; though she shouldn’t be, with the way they’ve been covering painful subject after painful subject. They’re not entirely different, Alec and Ben. Don’t you get it, you’re killing yourself over and over and kill me, I deserve it—DO IT to match. 

“She was—she was innocent. And she...” He chokes on whatever he was going to say next; clears his throat to try and chase it out. He draws out a breath. “So, no. I don’t believe. How about you?”

“I didn’t,” she says. “But...”

He finishes his coffee, puts down the mug on the counter. “But what?”

“I prayed for Logan,” she says. “Not this time. Another time. When we touched... But after I prayed, it turned out to be a case of chicken pox. Nothing to do with me at all.”

“Doesn’t mean there’s a God,” he says.

She sips the last of her coffee, savoring the warmth, puts the mug on the sticky counter. She sees green: Alec’s eyes and the woods Ben died in. Moss and ivy and rustling leaves. The smell of pine and rotting wood. 

“Ben believed,” she says, and she watches those beautiful green eyes widen slightly. “He believed more than anything. He believed bad things happened for a reason. And you always had to have faith.”

“I think he had faith in all the wrong things,” Alec says. She would have slapped him for that, on any other day. 

“Alec, I’m sorry.”

She looks at his face and she doesn’t see Ben, fallen from grace. She sees Alec in the green of his eyes; the angle of his jaw; the curve of his mouth. He freckles more in the sun, but even here in the soft orange lighting of her apartment she can see a few, spread across his nose. 

He clears his throat. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Next time I go down for murder just make sure you check if I actually did it first.”

She flinches at the casual way he says it. Her own voice rings in her ears. I’m sorry for inflicting you on the world.

“Next time?” she says, trying for a teasing tone.

He shrugs. “There’ll probably be a next time. This is just the kind of shit that happens to me.”

“I do end up saving your ass a lot,” she agrees teasingly, but there’s another twinge of guilt, thinking back to when Original Cindy had to convince her to look into Alec’s case. A full-time job, Max had called it. Like he’s never saved her in turn.

“Of course you do. It’s such a nice one, it’d be a waste not to,” he says, and annoyance cuts through the guilt. She rolls her eyes.

The air still smells like coffee. Her sensitive hearing picks up on music blaring from a passing car outside; Alec must be able to hear it, too. A strong beat, mingling with the engine, and then it’s gone. They move to the couch. Turn on the TV. There’s a pre-Pulse movie playing; some truly spectacularly bad sci-fi. They watch it just to make fun of how bad it is, complaining about the flawed science and groaning melodramatically through the melodramatic monologues.
 
Original Cindy comes home in the midst of one of many commercial breaks. The sight of Max and Alec having a movie night is clearly making her wonder if another mind-controlling transgenic is involved, from the look on her face.

“Yo, Alec, what are you doing here?”

“I was framed for murder,” Alec declares as Original Cindy sits down next to him. Max breathes in the scent of her best friend; beer and nail polish. It mingles with Alec’s; that sweet feline X5 scent, the leather from his jacket, the metallic tang from the prison cell.

“We came here after I busted him out,” Max explains.

“Good thing you were there,” Original Cindy says. Then, to Alec: “You can thank Original Cindy for that, boo.”

“Thank you,” Alec says earnestly, which makes Original Cindy smile at him. 

Original Cindy doesn’t know what Max did. Alec’s not telling her. All the wrong apologies and give Ames my regards. Max swallows down guilt, acidic and vile.

By the time the credits roll, Alec is asleep on Original Cindy’s shoulder. 

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Max comments dryly, though in a whisper, “OC with a man on her arm.”

“Funny,” Original Cindy deadpans, but her brow furrows. “I thought y’all didn’t need much sleep. He looks exhausted.”

“Guess getting framed will do that to a guy,” Max mumbles, but something feels...off. He doesn’t even wake at the sound of their conversation, which is worrisome, but getting accused of your dead twin’s murders probably is exhausting. Not to mention the things Max said in that cell. Her brow furrows.

“Original Cindy’s bed is calling her,” Original Cindy says, startling Max out of her thoughts. Her eyes go wide when Original Cindy moves Alec to Max’s shoulder instead. Original Cindy looks unbothered by Max’s glare. “Good night, sugar. Don’t you brood for too long. Bad for your skin.”

And Original Cindy is out, leaving Max with Alec. For one long moment, she doesn’t move out of sheer stubbornness. 

Finally, she sighs.

Rearranging Alec so that he’s lying down, she moves his head to her lap and it’s... Well, for a moment, her breath catches and she’s in the woods with Ben, but then that memory fades. It’s Max and Alec, in the apartment with the orange lights and the peeling paint, with that metallic scent fading. It’s nice.

Until she pictures his reaction, that is. He can never know, she decides. As long as he never finds out it’s okay. 

The TV stays on, at a lower volume to accomodate the ones sleeping, aka everyone in the apartment except for Max. Infomercials are on, which she unironically enjoys, to Original Cindy’s eternal bafflement. But Max can’t settle down her mind.

There’s a lot of noise at night in grungy Seattle. Arguing from the neighbors, the loud bass of car radios passing by, not to mention those car’s engines and loud honking... It’s always been a comfort. How even at night there’ll be people going about their lives. Not like Manticore, with their rigid schedules; everyone in bed and quiet when it’s early because they had to wake up early, too, at the crack of dawn. Pulled from their sleep with the sirens calling for morning drills.

And when you wake up in the morning, you can stay in bed as long as you—

Yeah.

She looks down, from the TV to Alec. He looks younger when he sleeps. It makes her heart pang. Alec is very pretty. Objectively. This isn’t a new thought, and of course everyone knows it; even Original Cindy pointed it out after first meeting him. 

Giving herself a mental shake, Max forces herself to look back at the screen, the brightest source of light in the dark room. Her life is complicated enough. The last thing she needs is to become fond of Alec.

But when her eyes inevitably travel downwards again, she finds her lips curling up wryly; and a traitorous part of her mind whispers:

Too late. 
 

Chapter Text

When she wakes, she realizes that she must have fallen asleep at some point. She’s still in the same position as before, sitting on the couch, though she ended up using an armrest as a pillow. 

Alec is still asleep. She exhales a sigh of relief at the sight. Carefully, she lifts his head from her lap, stands up, and lays his head back down on the couch.

By the time he wakes, Original Cindy already left and Max is making herself breakfast: eggs, sunny side up. Sizzling in the pan.

“Well, I can’t remember the last time I got that much sleep,” Alec says, joining her in the kitchen, breathing in the scent of food. “How about you, Maxie?”

It’s not the first time he’s called her that. But it is the first time she’s not reminded of all the others who used to: Zack, Lucy, Theo, Ben... She’s beginning to associate it more with Alec, which is nice because Alec is still here. He’s a part of her life, for better or worse, and even though she hasn’t known him as long as her other friends, it’s impossible to imagine his absence. 

She tried, sitting on that couch, his head on her lap. She tried picturing life before Alec took off his shirt and proclaimed himself her breeding partner; life before Alec began to drive her insane in more ways than one. But it felt off. Muted. Troubling.

“Out like a light the whole time,” Max lies in a deadpan.

“Yeah, conversations about God and dead loved ones will do that to ya. Sucks up all the energy.” 

“Like a black hole,” she agrees pleasantly, and he winks at her.

That’s the thing with Alec: going back-and-forth with him is always witty and secretly fun. It used to be that way with Logan, too; smiling as she came up with rejoinders, holding his gaze, their chemistry a palpable presence in the room. Now it seems like those days are long gone.

She avoids Logan as best as she can, but when she stumbles upon a connection between Sandeman and the cult, she has to add it to Logan’s whiteboard. In and out, no big fuss. The lights in Logan’s place are off, but then they’re not. Logan’s sitting by the table with a nearly-empty bottle of bourbon; half-empty glass in his hand.

As Max explains herself, Logan pours himself another drink. He’s sarcastic and scathing; theatrical as he moves towards her, and then he won’t let her leave. Every time she tries, he just places his body before hers, knowing full well she can’t press on unless she’s willing to kill him.

“I can keep you here all night,” Logan says, grinning, and her heart sinks. “At least until I drop dead.” He takes another generous sip of his bourbon.

Once again Max finds herself longing for the old days. Dancing around each other with grins on their faces and unspoken love in their hearts. Little cat burglary here and there, coming with him to a family function and pissing off his snooty relatives, that sort of thing. But that longing for the past also makes something clench inside of her. They can’t go back, anyway, and she’s more of a live in the present kind of girl. 

The present is simple enough. She’s a danger to Logan, and he doesn’t make her feel the way he used to, and enough is enough. She’s tired of repeating the same old arguments, again and again. She’s just tired.

“I’ve said everything I needed to say.”

“I don’t think so.” He takes another slow sip from his glass. “I think there’s something else,” he whispers conspiratorially.

“Logan.” She tries to leave, needs to get out of here, but Logan side-steps her with a reprimanding look on his face. He really won’t let her go. This close, he reeks of alcohol.

“Or is it someone else?”

That cuts through the heartache, makes her alert and ready as if she’s about to be attacked by an enemy soldier. “What?” she whispers.

“I needed to talk to you,” he says, “so I came by your apartment.”

The laughter that follows sounds horrible. Nothing like Logan. He’s drunk, she reminds herself, as her heart still pounds too fast for comfort.

“And I saw him leaving.” It takes a moment for her to realize that him means Alec. Max stares. Logan actually thinks that Max and Alec are together? “I mean, if I’ve got it wrong, just say so.”

Her and Alec? How can anyone draw that conclusion when she would have left him in White’s clutches with no remorse? He’d have been dead and it would have been her fault!

But Logan doesn’t know that. And... This morning. When Alec left, with Logan apparently watching. They were talking, and laughing, and breathing. And it felt like things were going to be alright. 

“Tell me it’s not true,” Logan says.

It’s not. The fact that Logan is actually accusing her of dating Alec is so completely ridiculous, she wants to slap him. Where was this jealousy when she and Alec were stuck in a closet together for over an hour? Nowhere. Logan had just laughed with her and described it as his own worst nightmare. She’d laughed too, said it was worth it, and they’d toasted their fancy pre-Pulse wine. So much for that. 

But of course she knows an opportunity when she sees one. Knows that if she admits this lie, he’ll leave her alone, and he’ll be safe. She’s so pissed off at the drunken accusations she might end up actually killing the guy with a slap. 

She tries to push down her anger. She’s trained to lie for the greater good. Best lies are rooted in truth. She focuses on yesterday evening. Alec’s arms around her, strong and steady. Alec’s mouth pressing a kiss to her hair and whispering platitudes. She told him she killed his identical twin. She’d snapped his neck once before, with her bare hands; but instead of backing away in horror, he’d hugged her.

“I can’t,” she says to Logan.

Most of the lights are off, but the Eyes Only screens are on, casting them both in blue light and shadows. The look on Logan’s face would haunt her if she wasn’t still so blisteringly angry.

Screw this.

“I can’t because it’s none of your business either way. I told you we’re done. I can invite whoever I want to my apartment.”

“Yeah, but Alec?” he demands, and something inside her feels like it’s breaking. All those soft, innocent touches Logan used to give her, the way he made her feel like she mattered Manticore and all, and this is what it’s all led to. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. 

“You saw him leave my apartment and got drunk about it, well guess what. When he didn’t show at the hospital, I thought he bailed on purpose. When he was in jail for murder, I would’ve let him rot there. Turns out it was Ben, coming back to haunt him. But you know what they say about assumptions, Eyes Only.”

Finally that horrible vindictive expression slides away from Logan’s face, making him more recognizable as his jaw slackens slightly. “Max, what—Ben? What are you talking about? What does Ben have to do with Alec?”

She almost laughs as she remembers that Logan doesn’t even know. He never actually saw Ben. Max certainly never told him.

“Ben was Alec’s twin, Logan. Or clone. Whatever you want to call it, it led to identical DNA and a little misunderstanding with the police department.”

Logan’s face reddens, still slack-jawed. Guilt flashes in his eyes. Her thoughts are a jumble of good and not enough and too late. 

“I didn’t...”

“Yeah, that’s right, you didn’t. But this isn’t about Alec! This is about us.”

If she’s sick of the constant fear that the slightest slip-up will get him killed; sick of the same old routine over and over again where they try to make it work but fail; if she’s sick of feeling like poison personified—who is he to insist that they try and try again? Sometimes, they’ll find their old camaraderie like a ghost, but mostly every conversation is just—

Like a black hole. 

“We can make it work,” he says, with a conciliatory tone, like she’s the one being unreasonable.

“Yeah right, after what you just pulled?” She has been nothing but faithful to a guy she always insisted wasn’t even her boyfriend. He sees Alec leaving her apartment once and he just gets drunk? 

“I’m sorry.”

She scoffs. Apologies. She is so sick of apologies. Her own, too. I’m sorry I let you out of Manticore. I’m sorry I inflicted you on the world.

“I’m sure you are, and you’re also drunk. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s over. We danced around each other that first year, we’re doing the same now, only it’s the virus instead of our feelings.” 

She shrugs, unapologetic, feeling like herself in a way that she hasn’t since she got shot and Logan held her in his arms; since she was flatlining and Zack shot himself in the head; since she was forced to relive Manticore for months after a decade of freedom. But just because she and Logan love each other doesn’t mean that they can make each other happy, or that they should be together.

“And I’m done,” she says. “Now I suggest you get out of my way, unless you want to be repairing another one of your windows when I jump out of it.” 

The windows are behind her and she can blur away before he can block her. Manticore 101: always have an escape plan ready. But there’s no need for it. He steps aside, wordlessly. He used to make her feel so loved.

She stalks past him without further comment.

It’s comforting, up on the Space Needle. Something constant while her world is changing so drastically. It isn’t just ending it with Logan. It’s the news coverage on transgenics. But sitting here, as she always has, she can pretend that everything is fine. That she just came from Crash. Loud music, pitchers of beer, fun conversation. Alec beating Sketchy at pool. Max watching and laughing with Original Cindy. 

Max hears footsteps behind her, pulling her out of the daydream. 

“Hey, Max, I thought I’d find you here.”

Alec. For a moment that same old anger flares up inside of her: if he hadn’t been at her apartment, if he wasn’t around to get arrested for Ben’s murders, if she never had to look at his face. Logan wouldn’t have gotten drunk and accusing. It’s not fair. She knows that. She’s rarely ever fair to Alec.

“I come here to be alone,” she says, quiet and dour. Just a simple fact instead of a demand that he leave. She could actually use the company.

He doesn’t disappoint. “Yeah, I know, but considering everything that went down today I figured we could both use a friend right now.”

“Sit down.”

The city is small beneath them; they’re up too high to tell who’s human and who isn’t. Even they couldn’t survive a fall from up here. The wind is cold against their faces. Must be hard, having me around. Some guy with Ben’s face.

They sit in silence for a while, witnessed only by the moon in the dark sky. She feels warmer, but she also feels guilty, still. And exhausted, after that fight with Logan that Alec doesn’t even know about. She wonders how he’d react knowing Logan was jealous. Maybe he’d laugh it off, or maybe he’d be disgusted at the very thought of being with Max. She knows she’s poison. It isn’t just her skin.

“So,” Alec says, finally breaking the silence. She almost snorts; he lasted longer than she thought he would, but it still wasn’t long at all. Silence really is his mortal enemy, White be damned.

He’s about to say more, but she interrupts him.

“You’re not some guy with Ben’s face.”

That takes Alec aback, stopping short.

“I’m not?” he says, sounding doubtful.

“You were in the beginning,” Max says honestly. “But I didn’t know you then. And sure, I do get reminded every now and then... Certain facial expressions can take me back and make me see him instead. But mostly I just see you. The guy who couldn’t kill me to save his own life. The guy who saw a captured transgenic and told me so we could do something about it.”

“Max. Stop,” he says, aggravated. “Don’t make me out to be some kind of hero. My whole life I’ve been a soldier. The things that I’ve done...”

“And do you think you’re alone in that?” she demands, taking a moment to steel herself for what she’s about to say next. 

But here, now, with him, the words come out as easily as breathing.

“Ben and I killed someone together with our unit when we were kids. The things we did to that poor man... It’s what made Ben snap, or part of it, I don’t know. I do know he re-created that same murder, over and over. But we’re not Manticore anymore. Our actions speak for themselves now, and you’ve been more than a soldier. You’ve been a friend.”

There’s no judgement, which doesn’t surprise her; if knowing what she did to Ben wasn’t gonna make him run far away, nothing will. It’s not like it’s anything new to him, either; he knows exactly what it’s like to be forced to take human life by Manticore. Though he’s done so more often than her, she knows it’s not because of any kind of moral failing. It’s simple, actually: she escaped and he didn’t. 

But she still held the assassinations against him when they first met. He wasn’t having it, then. It was my job. You wanna bust my chops about it, go ahead.

Logan called Alec a sociopath once. She caught it with her sensitive hearing, back when they were at Crash and under Mia’s influence, though they hadn’t know that last part at the time. 

“Damn. What’s got you all sentimental tonight?”

Typical Alec—disengaging from the subject when it gets too difficult. It’s what they were both trained to do. Tactical withdrawal. Not this time.

“You’re not a fucking sociopath.” The vehemence of the statement and possible non-sequitur catches him off-guard, maybe even the sudden swearing. She ignores that; keeps going. “You’re not even a bad person. I mean, sure, you’re not perfect, but neither am I.” Softly, she adds: “And I know I’ve taken you for granted.”

“Wow, Max. That might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.” The words are sarcastic, but his green eyes are earnest, holding her gaze.

She elbows him. “Shut up,” she says, and he’s grinning, making her own mouth twitch. His grin turns into something more fond, a soft look on his face that threatens to destroy the walls around her heart. People’s faces aren’t supposed to get soft like that around Max. It takes her aback every time—when Original Cindy started doing it, and then Logan. Now Alec. Perhaps the most absurd one in the list, given their history. 

She closes her eyes and breathes in the cool breeze.

“She wanted to touch Joshua’s face,” he says randomly. “Annie, I mean. To see him. We had her touch mine instead.”

“Probably wise,” Max says.

“Felt weird. I mean, my face was the reason I got arrested. Ben’s face. Then Annie committed it to memory.”

“It’s your face, too,” she says. “You’re not some guy. You’re Alec.” Maybe if she says it enough he’ll believe her.

He lets out a laugh, looking up at the moon. “Yeah. Still think of myself as 494 a lot of the time.”

Her eyes widen slightly. She wasn’t expecting that. They’ve never been one for heart-to-hearts but this is their second one in two days. Not like the Space Needle isn’t the perfect location for it. Something about being up here seems to draw out the introspection. She pictures the city below her: bicycles, homeless people, stray dogs. Water in rain puddles and cigarette smoke.

Ben was up here once, too. The High Place. Just like back at Manticore. She handcuffed Ben inside. A soldier, a hunter, a killer. Thinking about Ben’s bloodstained grin still makes her stomach lurch.

“Guess that’s not a problem you have,” Alec says. 

“We named each other early,” Max agrees quietly. “My unit. My family. Even before we left.”

“I was 494 for two decades. Until you came along.”

She swallows and look away. I’m sorry I let you out of Manticore.

We never should have left. Everything made sense there.

“Suppose I should be glad you gave me an actual name,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Those others you picked were terrrible. Bullet? Zero? Come on.”

She blinks. “Well, sorry I didn’t have a naming handbook handy,” she snarks.

“The only actual name was suggested by me, and you shot it down for being a boys’ name,” he continues blithely. “You.” He raises his brows.

“Alright, alright, I get it,” she says, voice light, but her brow furrows. She hadn’t exactly been in a good headspace back then. Months of reliving Manticore, and she’d spent ten years looking for Zack. Wondering about his life, worrying over his safety. And the ten years before that he was just as constant, only as an actual presence in her life. 

Where Ben kept her dreaming, Zack kept her breathing.

After losing Zack—after he killed himself to save her of all people, taking him away from their family—something in her just... You mouthing off to me? ‘Cause I have zero tolerance for that. Zero.

“I wanted them to break away from Manticore and ended up embodying Manticore when I tried to help them do it.”

“Damn, I should join you on the Space Needle more often. You’re actually self-aware here.”

“Don’t make me shove you off of it.”

“And she’s back.”

Despite herself, she laughs.

Max has never talked to Logan’s fake papers guy without Logan’s involvement before, but she tracks the guy down and gives him a new assignment that will clear Alec’s name. In the meantime, Alec is stuck at Joshua’s place. Neither of them can go out; with one being recognizable as a transgenic and the other being recognizable as a serial killer fugutive. 

So Max gets them groceries and such since they can’t. She sticks around after bringing them, trying to soothe Joshua’s heartache together with Alec: a mix of his jokes to lighten the mood and her compassion to remind Joshua he’s not completely alone. Max also talks to Alec; or she supposes bickers with is more accurate, but for once there’s not a trace of malice behind it, making it more fun.

Except for the part where Alec seems to be languishing in front of her eyes. She knows he’s a social guy and being cooped up isn’t doing him any favors, but still. When she shares these concerns with Original Cindy just before she’s about to head out to Joshua’s, OC says,

“Okay. Look, I wasn’t gonna say anything while he was here, but what is the dealio with you and Alec?”

“What?” she asks, feeling oddly self-conscious. “It’s not like he can go out and get this stuff himself, given the givens.”

“I know that,” Original Cindy says, exasperated. “I’m talking about how when you heard he was in jail, you couldn’t care less—and then later that night you’re letting him sleep on your lap. Don’t give me that look, boo. I woke up and needed to use the ladies’, imagine my surprise at the sight of y’all cozied up.”

“He was tired,” Max defends, hoping her cheeks aren’t bright red. “I’m not heartless.” Except for when she nearly left him practically gift-wrapped for White, but she’s trying to make up for that.

Cindy gives her a look. “Uh-huh. Nevermind that you could’ve left him on the couch and gone to your own bed.” 

”’Cause I’d rather watch infomercials than lie awake in my bed. I don’t sleep much, and neither does Alec, which brings me back to my point. I’m telling you, something is off about him.”

“Changing the subject,” she mutters.

“God, what is it with everyone thinking I got the hots for Alec?” Max says, fed up. “First Logan and now you. Give me a break!”

Cindy’s brows rise high. “Logan thought you and Alec were getting busy?” Her voice is soft and sympathetic.

“Yeah,” Max says bitterly. “He saw Alec leave the apartment that morning and jumped to conclusions. Logan made his accusations while getting in my way. Wouldn’t let me leave, you know, unless I was willing to kill him.”

“Dick move.”

“Exactly!” Max says, gesturing, feeling extremely vindicated. “I always thought Logan and I would work things out, but now... Everything between us has changed. And he almost died. When I’m around him, I’m constantly afraid it’ll be his doom. It’s not healthy!”

“Video-calling is a thing, you know,” Cindy points out. “Texting. Letters if you really wanna get romantic.”

The idea of calling up Logan makes her think of Logan as she last saw him: drunk and petty. Her stomach clenches.

“I know,” she says quietly. “But I just don’t want to talk to him. I don’t like what we’ve become. I can’t forget it.” 

Original Cindy walks over and pulls Max into a hug.  

“No one’s asking you to,” she murmurs. “You ended things. If you wanna move on, honey, you’re allowed.”

“I’m not moving on,” Max mumbles. 

“Uh-huh.” Cindy pulls way, lips pursed meaningfully. “Tell Alec I said hi, would you?”

“Yeah, whatever.” The words come out sullen. When Cindy laughs, Max can’t help but laugh with her. Still, she has to insist: “Me and Alec aren’t like that.” She almost winces at the familiar excuse applied to a different man.

“That’s fine, too,” OC says easily. “You know Original Cindy just wants you to be happy. No matter what. And if you’re single that just means more Max for me. So I’m cool.”

“Damn straight,” Max agrees, grinning at her best friend. 

“But for what it’s worth, I’m glad you and Alec worked things out. In a friendship way or not, whatever, but you’re both transgenic. Makes me feel better knowing you got each other’s backs. Especially now.”

Max smiles.

“Yeah, me too.”

”...are unwanted DNA...”

”...shouldn’t be afforded the most basic human rights...”

”...abominations manufactured in a lab...”

“Why are you watching this crap?”

Max grabs the remote with her free hand, effectively ending Alec’s channel surfing, and shuts off the TV. 

“Just staying informed, Maxie.”

“There’s staying informed and there’s masochism,” she says, putting down the bag of groceries, which include Alec’s hyperspecific request for chocolate-covered pretzels. Joshua is painting yet another rendition of Annie in the other room; he was completely in the zone when she opened the door and asked if he needed anything. He grunted a negative and she reluctantly shut the door behind her.

“You ever think it would get this bad?” Alec asks. He looks tired, shoulders hunched, eyes shadowed. Could be from watching the world rag on transgenics. But she has this feeling in her gut that that’s not it.

“I think it can always get worse,” Max says, squinting at him, trying to figure it out.

“Wow, you just totally jinxed everything.” He grins at her like the general public doesn’t want them dead. He’s always been good at that. How had Joshua put it? Pretty colors on the outside, darkness and confusion on the inside. I’m always alright.

“You don’t look alright,” she points out. Eyebrow lifting, she stares impassively, daring Alec to say the line.

His brows rise. He looks away for a moment, his hand scratching the back of his head, before abrubtly dropping. “Little low on the serotonin after my stint in jail,” he admits.

Her heart does three somersaults. He’s transgenic just like her, of course he’d be dealing with the same design flaw. And yet it never even occurred to her.

“That’s why you slept you so much at my place,” she realizes, everything clicking into place. “Have you seized?”

“Yeah. I got tryp, but it’s back at my place, and I can’t exactly go there,” he says, absurdly flustered. She doesn’t know who she’s angrier at, him or herself.

“You idiot! You should have said something earlier! I could’ve gotten you tryp. I’ll get you some, right now.”

“Just—wait,” he says when she moves to the door. 

She turns back around to face him. Expectant. But he doesn’t say anything else. He’s shaking.

“Now?” she demands.

He winces. “I think so.”

“Okay, lie down,” she says, quietly to make up for how she just shouted; she knows the headache must be killer. “I’ll go grab you some milk.”

“I don’t want your pity,” he says weakly. 

“Good, ’cause you’re not getting any.” He’s not fooling her—she’d be out the door already if he hadn’t stopped her. He doesn’t want her to leave. So she won’t.

She returns with a glass of milk and sees he did lie down on the couch like she told him to; trembling all over. His eyes are unfocused, confused. She feels a pang of empathy—for a moment she’s on a disgusting bathroom floor, curled up in the fetal position until her meds kick in. Her fingers tighten around the glass.

When she has to bring the glass to his lips because his hands are shaking too badly to do it himself, she bursts out, “You should have said something! What made you think keeping this secret was a good idea?!”

He hisses like a cat. “For once—can you just—lay off?” he manages. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, anger vanishing as quick as it came. “Just drink. It’s okay.”

They sit like that in silence, one of her hands holding the glass and the other on his shoulder, as he drinks the milk until the glass is empty. She sets it down on the table. 

She reaches out to clean the corners of his mouth with her thumb, putting it in her mouth so she can use the saliva to clean properly, swallowing the remnants of milk once she’s done and wiping her thumb dry. It’s driven by pure instinct and without any humans in the room it doesn’t occur to her to question it; neither does he. 

“I hate this,” he says, his body moving without his permission. “I hate it, okay?”

The seizures have a tendency of temporarily taking down your walls, she knows that from experience. Having been on the other end is probably the reason why she reaches out to cup his cheek. Unprepared for the gentle touch, he flinches first.

His reaction nearly makes her pull away instinctively as panic floods her, but then she remembers. Her skin is only poisonous to one man, and it isn’t Alec. Her hand stays where it is.

“Trust me, I know the feeling,” she says dryly. “No judgement, what happens during a seizure stays there.”

“Put that on a t-shirt,” he mumbles, curling into himself, shaking with a ferocity that makes Max ache in more empathy. It feels wrong, seeing him like this. 

She moves her hand up to his hair and starts running her fingers through it, because at this point, what the hell. What happens during a seizure stays there, right? 

He melts into her touch, and she’d bet good money that he’s not aware he’s doing it; she knows how far away seizing can make your mind go, sometimes. Something about the way he leans into her fingertips gently combing through his hair brings this pit to her stomach.

Her gaze settles on the red flowers Annie brought Joshua days ago, now sad and drooping in their coffee can. After a minute Alec’s breathing starts to even out again, and she knows the milk is doing its thing. His skin is still too pale but his eyes are no longer unfocused; there’s a flash of fear in them and she knows why. She meant it when she said she knows the feeling. And sometimes she forgets how similar they are; even Logan pointed it out once.

The thought of anyone seeing her like this—vulnerable and seizing—makes her fearful, too. And yet, at the same time, being cared for feels nice. Even through the gut instinct to find some kind of ulterior motive. She’s been on the other end of this and that’s why she knows not to make a big deal out of it. No anger or teasing comments, she keeps it casual.

“You gonna be alright? ’Cause I’m gonna head out and get you some tryp.”

“You’re being awfully sweet, Maxie.”

That was sweet? Man, she’s given him low standards with her constant bitchiness, hasn’t she?

“Yeah, well, seizures are awfully awful,” she retorts.

“True,” he mutters, beginning to doze a little. He hums under his breath, a slow song that’s kind of sad, but also kind of nice. The tune of it stays in Max’s head as she leaves.

The tryp does its work well: when she comes to visit the next day, the sickly pallor seems to have vanished literally overnight, like he never glitched at all. Alec’s in the basement when she pulls up to the house on her bike, playing piano. It’s familiar, the same tune as yesterday. He stops abrubtly at her arrival, before she even walks inside the house. Hearing her coming the same way she heard the music when they weren’t even in the same room.

He looks at her when she enters the basement. Bright eyes, brighter grin, healthy complexion. It’s more of a relief than she’s willing to admit out loud to see it. Doesn’t mean she’s not going rant about the importance of sharing pertinent information. They’re upstairs by the time he interrupts her. He didn’t seem to want to linger.

“Max, please,” he says with way more aggravation than warranted; he’s just dramatic like that. “It all worked out fine, don’t be so dramatic.”

Her jaw slackens at the sheer hypocrisy. He just laughs. Despite her irritation over his carelessness, she brought over some comfort food; the paper bag sits on the table, warm and greasy and mouth-watering. She brought comfort food for Joshua, too, but he declined her offer to eat together today. It hurt, but she left him to it after a hug and a promise that he could change his mind. 

“You should see your face right now. You know, all this starcrossed separation with Logan’s really making you more uptight that you need to be. Maybe if you saw some action once in a while you’d relax.”

She gives Alec a punch on his shoulder. 

Through his shirt she can feel the warmth of his skin on her fist. Her hand lingers on his biceps longer than it should. Resisting the urge to open her fist, she pulls her hand back. 

He frowns at her in mock-admonishment. “Well, you turned into Nurse Ratched quick.”

He crinkles the paper bag, grabbing a burger, taking a bite. He is ridiculous and idiotic and she will not encourage him by laughing.

“I’m not your nurse,” she says, struggling to appear stern while reaching to dig around the crinkled bag. It starts to rain. Drops patter against the windows. 

“Guess I must’ve dreamed yesterday up. Never would’ve guessed you had mother hen in your cocktail.”

“Absurd ideas are a common symptom of delirium,” she says solemnly, eating a handful of fries and savoring the salt. The grease is nice.

“Well, you are welcome to get all close and personal again anytime. Make the dream a reality.” The wink he shoots her has her insides twisting.

It’s obvious to her what he’s doing: distancing himself from the vulnerability he had no control over by making light of it. She’d do the same, only her defense mechanism consists more of bitchiness than jokes. It’s just unfortunate that he looks attractive doing it.

She makes a show of pretending to think about his offer. The rain is coming down harder now.

“I don’t know, Alec.” She feigns regret. “You’ve spent quite some time in the real world now. All that filth and degradation. I wouldn’t want to catch something.”

He lets out a startled laugh, and she shoots him a ketchup-stained grin. They eat the junk food she brought while inhaling the familiar mix of the house’s musty scent and fumes from paint cans. Despite the looming threat, despite the world trying to turn them into soldiers once again in the war for their freedom, there are always days in-between, that are just kinder.

Chapter Text

“To the Lord, they’re not even animals. The individuals that we speak of are manufactured. They’re stamped with barcodes when they come off the assembly line. Since only God can create life, then we must ask ourselves if they can even be said to be alive.”

Her heart is pounding rapidly in her chest. She feels pretty damn alive. 

Alec leaves when Logan interrupts the program with an Eyes Only broadcast: “He’s reaching out to someone, and I’m pretty sure it ain’t me.”

Of course he’s reaching out. He wouldn’t be Logan if he didn’t, proclaiming that transgenics do feel, do hurt. Just as humans do. 

The Eyes Only broadcast ends. Back to the regularly scheduled transgenic hate. They’re freaks, they’re abominations, they’re not of God. She can see some of her coworkers nodding along to the TV, some with fear in their eyes and others with contempt. Normal isn’t shy about where he stands on the issue, either. The broadcast and the sound of her chatting coworkers fade, until it’s all white noise.

The air feels too thin. Like she’s on the Space Needle, high enough that she’s no longer invulnerable, capable of falling to her death.

She’s not the only transgenic here, she remembers in the haze. She’s not the only one going through this. 

She finds Alec by the lockers, with his jaw tense, and eyes framed by generous lashes unreadable. When she puts her hand on his shoulder, he startles. 

“They know about the barcodes now,” he says, running a hand through his hair. She follows the movement with her eyes, watches the strands of hair slide through his fingers, muscles flexing briefly as he tugs. 

“All that crap you gave me about keeping it covered properly, you were right. I mean I had it out in the open when I was wrestling and Normal was right there, do you think—”

“If Normal knows he would have said something already,” she says, coming back to herself in the face of his own panic. “But you’re right, it’s too risky now. We have to do something.”

“Laser them off?” he says, and she nods. 

She tried once. The pain had been indescribable, and then it came back a couple weeks later like it was never gone at all. She never again felt the need—it wasn’t worth it. She never felt like ordinary people would ever look at her as anything less than human.

But at least she got to have that decade. Alec hasn’t even gotten a year. So much for freedom. 

But they’ll survive this. 

“I’ll do yours, you do mine?”

She half-expects a ridiculous comment in response, but he says, so matter-of-factly: ”‘Course. We’re in this together.”

Any and all comments of her own dwindle away, leaving her speechless for a few seconds. There’s a lump in her throat as she thinks of I’m always alright, of telling him to be careful and his answering always. She feels something pass between them, something new and fragile.

“Always,” she says, and despite the circumstances, he smiles at her.

So they take turns lasering off the marks etched into their genetic makeup, and it’s exactly as painful as it sounds. At least she’s somewhat familiar with the sensation, but she could never get used to this feeling; battery acid meeting her skin turned into sandpaper. Logan calls during her turn, but when Alec moves to put down the laser and answer it, Max lets out some very colorful threats and choice words conveying how much she’d appreciate a pause from the procedure that makes her blood feel like molten lava. The call goes to voicemail. 

Alec finishes with the laser and puts it down. 

“Every two weeks, you said? What a treat.”

“It’s this or exposure,” Max says, unimpressed. “Take your pick.”

“I don’t know, it’s a tough one.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” she says, thinking of the villainized transgenic on TV who was really just a victim of police brutality. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Hey, aren’t you gonna give the guy a call back? Seemed like he really wanted to talk.” 

As if on cue, her pager starts to buzz again. She ignores it in favor of glaring at Alec.

“I told you it’s over with Logan, and wether or not I call isn’t any of your business.”

“Sure, if we were all ordinaries living in an ordinary world,” he says pleasantly. “But since we’re not, maybe it could be about the whole exposure thing.”

“If you’re so worried, why don’t you call him?” she snaps.

He shrugs. “Fine.”

As he gets out his phone, panic shoots through her at the thought of Alec and Logan talking. Alec doesn’t know about the way Logan jumped to conclusions. 

“Wait,” she says. “I’ll do it.”

Alec shoots her a strange look, but shrugs again, sitting down while he waits for her to finish. During the call Max doesn’t leave much room for any discussion of feelings, though hearing Logan’s voice when he’s not drunk and petty makes it more difficult to tell him not to call her again. Even when she knows it’s for the best. 

“You seemed like you knew what you were doing,” Alec says after she hangs up.

She blinks at the non-sequitur. “What?” 

“With the laser,” he clarifies. “Not your first time, was it?”

Understanding dawns on her. “No,” she says, her voice coming out soft as she thinks about the last time she talked about this: with Logan, who’d called the barcode their very own mark of Cain, as they’d found out Zack had gotten rid of his to blend in better.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says quickly.

“Come on, Max, it’s something. This doesn’t look like your usual mopey-about-Logan face.”

“I don’t have a—fine, whatever, I was thinking about Zack,” she snaps, annoyance temporarily getting rid of her brain-to-mouth filter. Belatedly she realizes that was probably exactly what Alec was going for, sneaky bastard. 

She sighs, the fight abrubtly going out of her, thinking about Zack and the last time she saw him. It was never just a product of the brainwashing, his interest in her. Logan pointed it out long before Zack shot himself in the head to save her: that Zack loved her, not as a brother. She hadn’t denied it. Of course, when Alec brought up the same thing a year later, she’d called him sick and denied the hell out of it. Partly because it was Alec, partly because what that conversation had that the one with Logan didn’t was the memory of Zack strung up with tubes and wiring while Renfro gloated about her special plans.

“So this is your mopey-about-Zack face. Got it.”

She rolls her eyes, effectively pulled from the difficult memories. “You’re about to get your face rearranged if you don’t shut the hell up.”

“Maxie,” he whines dramatically. “You’d do that? With the back of my neck still... You know, I can’t even find words to describe how shitty this feels and that’s saying something. And hey, the guy did strangle me while you just stood there and had a nice conversation with him, so I think I get to be a tad disgruntled. Besides, there’s no reason to be mopey. I mean I’m sure you miss him and all, but at least he’s alive. And living a nice, normal life; so more than we can say. In fact—”

Should’ve known that ‘shut the hell up’ was too tall an order for him. Watching his face, she stills as something occurs to her. Something that she’s always known, deep down, but never let herself acknowledge before.

“Zack knew,” she murmurs.

He stops in the middle of his sentence. “What?”

“I mean, he must have,” she continues absently. “He said he kept tabs on all of us, all eleven. Ben was killing long before he got to Seattle, with Lydecker cleaning up after him to prevent exposure. Zack knew and he didn’t stop it.”

So much for phony sentimentality. Stopping Ben would have meant killing him, and Zack couldn’t do it.

Alec goes tense at the unexpected mention of Ben, and he searches Max’s face for...something, she’s not sure what. Maybe he thinks she’ll start bawling again. Maybe he thinks she’ll start shoving him again. Either way, he’s looking at her like something is about to snap, and she hates it. She didn’t even really mean to voice her thoughts out loud, but she did, and now they’re out in the open. Stifling in the silence.

“Uh, I mean, I didn’t know Zack all that well...other than the whole strangulation thing,” he mumbles under his breath, ”...but maybe he got sentimental. Wasn’t your unit super close?”

“We were,” she says quietly, mind flashing to all of them briefly. The ones still out there, deep in hiding just like Zack always wanted. The ones who didn’t make it. Tinga in her arms. Ben in her lap. Zack... 

Zack had practised their religion alongside all the rest of them. He was their leader, but when it came to stories and imagination, he let Ben take over with ease, shifting into the role of passive listener. When his baby teeth came out he gave them up just like all of them to make Her heart stronger. Every night Ben would tell them that She watched over them.

But Max still remembers the night Ben doubted.

We BELIEVED in you!

Manticore caught Ben and discovered the High Place that night. Took away all the teeth. Whatever punishment Ben endured, he didn’t tell. He didn’t even seem upset about it. He only rued the loss of their altar and said that they would have to start over; as if he never screamed at the sky with so much raw betrayal in his voice. Ben said he would never lose faith again. 

They escaped that same week. She never saw Ben again, until...

“So he was probably ride or die about it,” Alec says with a shrug, but he’s not hiding his discomfort with the subject well at all. “Unit above all or whatever.”

“You’re making it sound like you’ve never been in a unit yourself, but I know that you have,” Max admonishes, but Alec laughs.

“You really think that Manticore wanted a repeat of that fiasco? No, after you guys escaped, they broke up all the units and rearranged them into new ones, and then they made sure to... strongly discourage any closeness between the members. They made sure we could only ever trust each other as soldiers, nothing more. Or God forbid, they’d have another organised escape attempt on their hands.”

She’s taken aback at the sudden stream of information, and the casual way it’s delivered. She can count the amount of times Alec has talked about Manticore post-escape on one hand and still have fingers left over. But then he can do the same with her and Ben. 

“Clever of them,” she says sardonically, even as she feels a pang of sympathy for... Well, everyone she left behind. It makes her uncomfortable. She never spared it much thought, that whole decade. Too focused on running and staying alive and fitting in—and searching for her unit. They’d been the ones who had mattered to her.

“I know, right?” Alec agrees in a pleasant tone, and she shakes her head. “You know, this whole Ben thing, me getting arrested for murder and all... I think it’s been getting to Joshua. Bringing up some unprocessed grief. I mean, I know that’s like, our thing, but...”

“I didn’t even think of that,” Max says, eyes wide. Ironic, since during the entire incident... It had been the only thing on her mind.

When Joshua defended his twin by citing Manticore as the reason for his madness, all Max could hear was her own voice telling Alec that actually, Manticore is what got to Ben. When Joshua killed his twin... Max felt Ben’s neck snap between her hands. 

But Max is not Ben’s twin. That’s Alec, and Alec’s the one who was holed up at Joshua’s for nearly a week because of his twin’s murders.

“We should check up on him,” Max decides, and Alec agrees. But when they get to Joshua’s place, it’s empty.

When they turn on the news, they quickly realize why. 

The room is lit by several lamps giving off warm yellow light. That light illuminates the myriad of paintings scattered around like Max’s research papers: they all depict the same subject, and they all capture Annie’s kind nature, something Max feels down to her bones despite never meeting the woman who made Joshua hope. 

After the announcement, after Joshua’s piercing howls of grief, Joshua is embraced on both sides: Max burrowed into his side while Joshua’s head is tucked underneath Alec’s chin. Where Max holds Joshua’s hand, Alec’s hand has found its way on top of that, holding hers. But the newscast isn’t finished.

“Once again, the attacker remains at large. And equally disturbing are rumours that trangenics from what is called the X-series, which appear human while possessing extraordinary strength and speed, may have assisted in the creature’s escape,” and suddenly the embrace is just as much for them as it is for Joshua, because their world has changed irreversibly, and none of them are safe. 

The woman on television keeps on talking, really playing up the dramatics, for how safe are any of them if transgenics can mingle without raising suspicion? Yeah, their safety’s really the issue here, Max thinks bitterly, holding onto sweet Joshua framed for Annie’s murder. The tinny voice is abrubtly cut off. Max turns her head.

Alec puts down the remote, his face dark and troubled even as he keeps Joshua in a gentle embrace. The juxtaposition is startling, especially considering that this is Alec, who rarely ever lets that carefree mask of his drop. Photographs flash in Max’s mind, of a girl with long hair and a wide grin, such a far cry from the unconscious girl in the bed with the ashen face and the sunken eyes. Photographs to match the paintings all around them now, saturated with vibrant colors.

Alec is humming that song again.

It takes a while for Max to realize it, lost in thought as she is. Alec warned Joshua, she knows. Predicted being around Annie would get her killed. Joshua disregarded that warning. Annie is dead. It’s not right and it’s not fair, but now more than ever she thinks of the time Alec warned her. We don’t belong with them. We’re a danger to them.

“What... What is that?” Joshua asks, and Max starts a little. It’s the first thing Joshua has said since that broken “Annie” after his howls. 

Alec looks startled, too. Maybe for the same reason, or maybe he hadn’t even realized he was humming.

“Sorry,” he says, alarmed. “I...”

“No,” Joshua says, abrubtly urgent; pleading. “Annie... Annie liked music. All sorts of music.”

Of course she would have. A kind of art you don’t have to see to appreciate. 

“Please,” Joshua says when Alec remains silent and frowning with uncertainty.

After that Alec continues to hum the melody, transitioning into softly singing it, and Max’s eyes have been wide for a while now. She’s not sure what strikes her more; that he decided to sing, that the lyrics of this song are revealed to her, or his voice. Alec hits all the notes flawlessly, and Max should dismiss it as yet another genetically engineered skill, but it’s not just the quality of the voice. It’s the emotion, making it feel like there’s something lodged in her chest.

The soft song comes to an end as Joshua finally loses all that coiled-up tension, relaxing between them even as his eyes stay lost and haunted. When Max tries to get him to get some rest, he doesn’t fight it.

They disentangle their embrace and she finds herself missing the warmth as she leads Joshua to his room. He lies down and she tucks him in. She lingers, thinking she should say something. He’s not looking at her, though. And what more is there to say?

Her mind can’t help but flash to the church, all stained glass windows and candles and teeth. The happy grin on Ben’s face when they reunited. His insistence later that they lost the siblings they did because we weren’t strong enough.

“Get some sleep,” she finally murmurs. “We’ll still be here in the morning.”

It feels right as she says it, the decision to stay instead of heading back to her apartment cementing in her mind.

She heads back to the living room, where Alec still sits on the couch, staring at nothing. She takes a seat next to him, leaving the appropriate amount of distance between them, but after she’s sitting she kind of regrets it. She admonishes herself for that regret but it’s been a really, really long day. Sue her for wanting some physical comfort. She winces at the thought, imagining the kind of comment Alec would make if he’d heard it—but then, not tonight he wouldn’t. No, not tonight.

She bridges the gap: sliding closer until their legs are touching, she puts her head on his shoulder. He responds immediately by putting his arm around her and resting his chin on top of her head. Just as she predicted, there’s no comment at all. 

“What was that song?” she asks, voice soft, like speaking any louder will break this cocoon of grief they’ve created.

“Um... It’s just something Rachel liked.” 

He tries and fails to sound casual about it, and she knows that if Rachel liked it, it wasn’t just anything. She knows that Alec loved Rachel, and that’s enough, but the specifics of the Berrisford incident have always elluded her.

The image of Alec crying by Rachel’s bedside won’t leave her alone all of a sudden; of staring at the back of his head and the denim jacket barely covering his barcode, the heart-shaped locket gleaming silver as he pressed it in Rachel’s unresponsive hand. So much love for the comatose girl that he was choking on it. Max gave them privacy after that, waiting in the hallway for Alec to exit that bedroom with its pink wallpaper and soft lighting and beeping machinery. When he did, his eyes were blotchy, his face red and wet with tears.

There were paintings in Rachel’s room, most notably one of a woman in white on the beach. There are paintings all around them now, all of them of Annie.

“You never told me what happened.” A quiet invitation he doesn’t actually have to take her up on.

But he does, revealing that he’d tried to save Rachel; tried to save her father, too. It doesn’t surprise Max at all. Once, it would have, but she knows Alec better now.

Describing the heat of the explosion and the cold weight of the locket in his hand as he saw the detonator in the hands of his superior, he’s gasping, the kind of gulps for air that could crack a rib if he wasn’t made from stronger stuff. She tightens their embrace like a terrified cat, digging its claws in for purchase, thinking about the locket.

He had the locket in his hands when the bomb went off, and somehow managed to hide it as they hauled him back to Manticore. He managed to hold onto it through reindoctrination. And after that... 

They had ways of making you not care.

Still, he kept it. And he must’ve taken it with him to every mission, because he still had it after Manticore burned down, and he hadn’t known that was going to happen when he left for that final mission. Every interaction they had since—him holding that gun in Logan’s apartment explaining his orders; eating pork rinds and ridiculing her in a perfect display of indifference as she talked to those kids; plunging his knife into the grass instead of her. He had Rachel’s locket with him the entire time.

The gasps turn to shuddering sobs, only his chest isn’t shaking anymore so that can’t be right. Belatedly, she realizes that those choked-out sounds are coming from her. 

She doesn’t know why that detail of all things is the thing to break her, but this has been building up ever since Joshua’s howls of grief and Alec’s gasps, so now it’s her turn, a distant part of her mind supposes as she falls apart. Her turn to be overcome by grief. I’ve got a heart for you and don’t let them take me and everything in-between and before and after. The fear and anger because of that newscast.

She’s probably ruining Alec’s shirt with her tears, again. A third time and he ought to start charging her for it. The thought is enough to stop her from crying, feeling an unexpected burst of dark humor. She wipes at her face until it’s dry.

They sit like that for a while. She wants to withdraw, make some comment, but she has no energy for it. Since he doesn’t either, he’s probably the same. 

“Think it’s time you take your own advice,” he says eventually, “and get some rest.”

“So should you. Don’t think you get to weasel out.” The derision she aims for comes out weak.

But neither of them make any move to get up. They stay. She falls asleep on his chest with his arms gently holding her.

It’s that moment, more than any other, that makes her skip town. Joshua leaving for Terminal City is just the perfect excuse, the final nail in the coffin. But that moment, Alec making her feel comforted when everything had gone so completely wrong, is filled with danger. Being around Alec is dangerous, and she can’t let herself examine why. Everyone will be better off without her.

452 does what she does best. She runs.

It’s probably karma: Max facing the wrath of her twin after she spent all that time treating Alec differently because of his twin. Max’s twin, or clone, or whatever she should call it—she’d go with sister but Sam would probably smack her—is angry. Big surprise there, proof that they’re the same on some level, but it’s still difficult. At least things work out alright for Sam. Her family makes it out alright.

They’re waiting for Alec to secure Sam’s ride, and Sam says, “I’m surprised you and 494 get along.”

Max’s brows rise. 

“He should be as pissed as I am,” Sam adds, and Max swallows. 

We got the worst of it, your twins. Ben escaped and Alec was left behind to deal with the aftermath, same as Sam with Max.

Max swallows. “Well, we’ve known each other longer than I’ve known you,” she points out. “I didn’t know I was twinned. I didn’t know Manticore would...”

“Yeah, whatever. We both know Manticore. You could’ve guessed.”

Max wants to say something—what, exactly, she’s not sure—but Sam’s family is still confused about what happened and they want to talk to her. Max walks away as Sam is saying how she’ll explain everything on the road. Alec gets back, having secured Sam’s ride.

“I appreciate this,” Max says to him. Terminal City is a dump: the air smells like rotting garbage and wet cardboard. Terrible enough for people without sensitive noses like them, but they’re doing their best to ignore it.

“Yeah, no worries. Anything for a friend. Or, you know, a clone of a friend.” Something about Alec’s flippant tone feels forced, but she ignores it for now, heading over to Sam.

“You’re all set.”

It’s still so odd. Looking at her own face like that. They’re different people, but they have similarities, too. The same way that Alec shares Ben’s ability to comfort people; making them feel loved, distracting from hardship. Case in point for Sam’s similarity to Max: the following bitchiness.

“If you’re expecting a thank you, forget about it. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

But it’s well-deserved bitchiness, and Max’s voice is soft when it comes out. “You’re right.”

That’s when Alec joins them. “You know if Manticore hadn’t gone down you wouldn’t even be with them,” he says, nodding at Sam’s family. “You know who took it down?” And it’s Max he nods at now.

Max feels warmth at Alec’s display of loyalty, though she keeps her face impassive. She almost left all this behind. Part of her still wants to run, but she can’t deny that it feels good to be with her friends.

After Sam and her family leave, Max turns to Alec, “Thanks for that.”

“Sure.” That’s all he says, not even looking her in the eye, and it occurs to her that the last time she saw him, he asked her to meet him at Joshua’s. But she left. In more ways than one.

“Sorry,” she says. “I should’ve given you the heads-up that I left Joshua’s place.”

“Yeah, alright. Later, Max.” He walks past her.

She stares at his retreating back, dread settling in her gut. It’s what you do, isn’t it? Run away.

She doesn’t go after him. 

More and more transgenics come to Terminal City. Max continues to work at Jam Pony despite nearly everyone there spouting anti-transgenic propaganda, and so does Alec, but they barely speak. When they do, it’s stilted. She tries telling herself it’s for the best; wasn’t not getting close to Alec exactly what she wanted? This idea of the two of them against the world was never going to last. Once, she’d known better to believe in that kind of thing, the con job of hope. But every time he makes pleasant small talk instead of being his usual annoying self, something inside her clenches.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Original Cindy says after overhearing one of those conversations. “What’s the matter with you two?”

“Nothing,” Max grits out. “Just Alec being Alec. Rude and insufferable and—ugh.” 

Normal shouts after Sketchy about a hot run. Max tunes it out. Her arm brushed Alec’s before he went out.

“All he did was talk about the packages we gotta deliver.” 

“Exactly.”

Her arm is tingling.

“Right,” Cindy says, eyebrows rising high. Max sighs, annoyance fading; it’s squashed by guilt.

“I left, OC,” she says. “I said goodbye to you, so it’s easier for you not to be mad. I said nothing to him.”

“So apologize,” Cindy says, like it’s obvious.

“What if it’s better this way? With everything that’s going down, it might be better not to be too attached. Besides. It’s Alec we’re talking about here.”

The excuse sounds weak, even to herself. Yeah, it’s Alec they’re talking about, with his dumb jokes and the couldn’t-care-less attitude anyone who knows him can see right through—Alec who has become important to her.  

But she doesn’t want to care about Alec, she thinks angrily. Caring sucks. And once you start, you can’t turn it off.

“Exactly,” Cindy says flatly. “Alec. Your friend. Who you hurt, and owe an apology to.”

Max sighs. “Sounds real fun.”

“Look, if your boy is gonna be taking up my Max time, he better be treating you right; but you know that goes both ways, sugar.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says, ignoring the implications. 

So that leaves Max trying to find the right time to bring it up. And of course, that moment becomes near impossible to find. Either he’s in the middle of something important, or she is, or someone is interrupting them. And all the while, everything Sam said keeps echoing in Max’s brain.

I bet you never once stopped to think about what they’d do to the rest of us.

It’s true. When Max and her siblings escaped, they thought themselves so bold, the only ones capable of questioning Manticore and breaking free from following orders. 

You have no idea what they put us through, do you?

She still remembers one of the few times Alec talked about Manticore after ’09. He sounded just like Sam did. You can’t understand. You weren’t there. You ran. You think life was tough when we were ten? Take it from me, later on it got a whole lot worse.

Psy-Ops, Sam said. Alec mentioned Psy-Ops when Max first met him—they put him back there after Ben snapped. Lucky for Sam, Max isn’t a serial killer. Sam would’ve been sent back too and had another reason to hate Max.

Psy-Ops wasn’t a thing before Max escaped. It was when she was stuck at Manticore again after getting shot—it’s how they made her forget that they injected her with the retrovirus. But that was just once. Sam and Alec said six months. And Alec wasn’t just there for six months in ’09, he was there for six months again after Ben started killing. And she knows that Alec must’ve gotten reindoctrinated after he disobeyed orders for Rachel, which makes three times in Psy-Ops, three times when Sam described six months as her life completely ruined. 

It’s just another thing that Max wants to bring up but never finds the right time for, until one night, when the ruckus of Terminal City becomes too much. Max heads up to the Space Needle to clear her mind, but finds it occupied.

In the shadows of the setting sun, Alec sits on the ledge, wearing his leather jacket and an uncharacteristic scowl.

“Guess this is a role reversal,” Max says.

She can hear a hover drone in the distance, but they don’t come up this high; just another byproduct of her sensitive hearing.

“Yeah,” Alec says as Max sits down next to him. “Guess this is the part where I tell you I’d rather be alone.”

“You should know by now that leaving you alone when you tell me to isn’t my strong suit,” she says, tone pitched in gentle teasing. He doesn’t react save for the slight tensing of his jaw. “So what’s eating you?”

He snorts. “You come up here all the time. Why does something have to be eating me? Maybe I just wanted some peace and quiet.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she says evenly, not looking away even as he avoids her gaze. He said it himself, she comes up here all the time. “But maybe not.”

“I should go.”

She startles. “What? Why?”

He gives her a look. “Don’t you come here to be alone?”

“Well, yeah, but we’re here now,” she says, keeping her voice light and breezy. “Might as well talk.”

He looks away. “What do you want to talk about?”

“How about why you’ve been avoiding me.”

“I’m not avoiding you.”

“Right, you’re not,” she says dryly. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with me leaving?”

He shrugs. “Why would it? You left. Didn’t say goodbye. Couldn’t even let me know you weren’t coming to meet me like we planned before you skipped town. I’m over it.”

“Yeah, you sound real over it,” she snaps. Once again, the anger is easier to express than the guilt. It just comes out. Her chest is aching.

“What do you want from me here, Max?” he says, exasperated. “I’ve come to accept that you only come to me when you need me. Hell, not like it ain’t anything new. My whole life I’ve been a tool to be used and discarded and tinkered with. I’m used to it.”

“Don’t say that.” She can feel her heart racing in her chest. “Don’t you say that to me.”

“Why, ’cause it’s true? You could use a little more truth in your life, Maxie.” He uses the nickname to be vicious, trying to hurt her. She grits her teeth and manages to regain hold of her temper. She won’t rise to the bait.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and he lets out a dry sound that might be a laugh. “I am! I couldn’t...”

“You couldn’t what?” His voice softens when he asks, “Why’d you leave?”

She looks at his wide green eyes in the dark and knows he’s got it all wrong. She needs to set the record straight.

“I left because I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Thunder crosses his expression. “You got some impressively backwards logic going there, Max. How the hell was that not supposed to hurt me? I know I always pretend I don’t care, but that doesn’t mean it’s true!”

“I know,” she says quietly. Pleading with him to understand: “But I’m poison, Alec. Everyone around me always gets hurt, one way or the other. I felt like staying any longer would make me live to regret it, and who knows, maybe it will. But I realized it’s not fair for me to leave when I set all of this in motion. I have to stick around.”

“Well, good for you,” he snaps, and she almost flinches, because yeah. Everything she said is true. But there’s something she left out. Something more personal. Another reason to run. And he demonstrates this reason perfectly in what he says next:

“God, Max, do you really think that low of yourself? You? I mean, if you ever try to quote me on this, I will deny it to my dying breath, but I admire you, Max. How much you care about and fight for all the transgenics. How brave you are. And you’re one of the most talented X5s I’ve ever fought, and that’s with you missing out on ten years of training. You’re a force to be reckoned with and you never take any shit lying down and you’re clever, and you don’t ever give up. You’re gonna win this war, say some sassy one-liner, and take off on your motorcycle to live the life that you deserve.”

She looks at him with disbelieving eyes; breathless, speechless. Alec is saying this to her. Alec. 

There’s an urge to run just hearing all of that, but that wouldn’t be fair, either. She stays.

She stays.

“Not like me,” he continues. “I know this only ends one way for me. If I don’t jump off the Space Needle right now out of embarrassment, obviously.” 

His face is red all over, she notices, and normally she would be all over that with the teasing—but unfortunately her perfectly designed brain seems to be short-circuiting. Her own cheeks feel like they’re on fire. It takes longer than it should to process everything he’s said.

“What do you mean?” she asks because it’s easier than formulating a response to—that. He lets out a bitter laugh.

“Come on, you know what I mean. I’m as expendable as it gets. One day White or his men, or hell, humans will kill me and I can only hope it’s when I’m doing something that’ll help us win this war. And that’s it.”

She stares at him, eyes wide. There’s no way she’s going to let it end like that. 

“God, Alec. Do you really think that low of yourself?” she says, lifting an eyebrow. He looks away. “You are making it through this. I’ll save your ass every time if that’s what it takes. You know I can’t help myself.” She lifts an eyebrow, deadpanning: “It’s just such a nice one.”

That makes him look at her and burst out into surprised laughter. It makes her grin, relieved and happy. For a moment the weight of war lifts off of them and they’re just two friends laughing into the night; looking out over the city that wants them dead.

“Okay, Max,” he says when they finally calm down. He holds her gaze. “Okay.”

For a moment, they stay that way, just looking at each other. Silence falls.

“Good,” she says, swallowing. “But since we’re already knee-deep in painful subjects...”

“Oh, great,” he says, final traces of his smile leaving him, which she gets; last time it was him who said that and he’d brought up Ben. “What is it?”

“Psy-Ops.”

She watches him go tense all over. Part of her wants to backtrack immediately, but she doesn’t.

“What about it?” he asks.

“Sam said the twins of all of us who escaped got put through it, and that includes you. I need to know what it was like. I need to know what I set in motion.” Manticore figured since we had the same basic psychological makeup as the twelve of you, we were the greatest flight risks.

For a long moment, he doesn’t speak, and she wonders if he’ll tell her at all. But then:

“It’s not pretty,” he warns.

“I can handle that,” she says, voice even. “You were there three times, right? After the escape. After Rachel. And then when Ben...”

“That’s right. I hold the record, you know. Not a single soldier has been in Psy-Ops for as long as I have. I ought to get myself a medal.”

The record. She swallows.

“But what was it like?” she asks, voice barely more than a whisper. He sighs.

“What do you think? It was awful. Being Psy-Opsed lasted six months for me, every time, which was spent alternating between all sorts of fun activities. Laser searing into your skull... Telecoercion agents and other mind-altering transgenics rooting around in your brain... Deleting emotions Manticore doesn’t like, altering memories to fit their narrative, and so on. Gotta have their obedient little dress-up doll. Blank slate. It’s funny, ‘cause Logan called me true-blue Manticore once, but Manticore always said I was too emotional for that. Needed Psy-Ops to get me back into shape. Ending every night in solitary. You know, in the basement, with the Nomlies. Good times.”

Her heart breaks for him throughout the entire tale, but when he gets to that last part, her heart plummets down to her toes. 

You know what they’ll do to me. Their face in her lap. They’ll put me down there... With them.

Everything Ben was so afraid of. Everything she spared Ben when she killed him. Alec went through it. She couldn’t protect him. 

“Don’t,” Alec says, correctly reading her expression. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“I could have not left,” she points out after swallowing down bile. Her throat still burns with it. “I could have stayed, Alec.”

“Don’t say that. You did what you had to do to survive. I would’ve taken the opportunity to escape in a heartbeat.” He lets out a laugh. “God, we were all so jealous of you twelve. So don’t ever say that. It was good, wasn’t it?” His eyes are wide and pleading. “You met OC and Logan and everyone. You were happy.”

She still feels like she might puke. “I owe you an apology.”

He scoffs out a laugh. “Come on.”

“When we first met,” she says firmly, ignoring his protest, “I saw you as just another soldier. I gave you all that crap ’cause you worked for the bad guys. Like it was a choice. I’m sorry for that. And I am sorry I left. It won’t happen again.”

He looks at her, expression part doubtful, part hopeful; and something inside her just...gives up, but that sounds dramatic. Maybe giving in is more accurate. She rests her head on his shoulder. Of course he mirrors it immediately; leaning against her and wrapping his arm around her middle, pulling her closer. She lets him.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he starts. 

“Then don’t,” she says, voice soft. Every inch of her touching Alec is warmer and happier than she’s felt in a long time.

But of course he ignores her. “Did you get replaced by a different clone? The third version being warm and fuzzy. Enjoys hugs and long walks on the beach.”

“Very funny,” she mumbles, not moving.

“Seriously,” he says, all traces of earlier mirth disappearing. “What is this?”

She looks up at him, finds him looking down, long eyelashes curtaining those green eyes. Something has shifted between them.

“This is me staying.”

Chapter Text

Logan’s place gets shot up and destroyed by White’s men, so he has to resort to crashing at Joshua’s old place now. Alec and Max salvage computer hardware for him, and Alec offers to deliver it. 

Max can’t help but think of the look in Logan’s eyes when he stopped her from leaving; the way he had laughed. The accusations he made before she corrected them. 

Alec doesn’t know any of that.

“Leave it,” Max insists, because she doesn’t want Alec to know, for reasons she doesn’t want to name.

But of course he won’t leave it alone. “What’s your problem?”

She sighs. It’ll be better coming from her, anyway, rather than risk it coming from Logan. This way, she gets to be in control.

“The thing is, Alec... Logan thought we were together,” she admits. “I set him straight but I don’t know. It might be...awkward.”

He’s silent long enough for her to start to worry. “It takes more than that to get me to feel awkward,” he says finally, but his posture is stiff. 

She wants to make it go away. She never wanted to lose his smile. Instead, the words out of her mouth are a warning. “Just don’t make it worse.”

“Always gotta think the worst of me.” There’s his smile, carefree and blinding, the one that’s more like armor to him than anything else. She feels a pang, of loss.

“I just meant...”

He sighs. “Yeah, I know what you meant.”

“He’s in a rough place right now,” she explains for Logan. “This is his way of...making sense of it all.”

He snorts. “No, yeah, got it. I’ll be the bad guy, no problem.”

He takes the bag of supplies and stalks off.

It’s a while before she does anything at all. She should have kept her mouth shut and let Alec deliver the parts without any fuss, let him find out Logan’s belief on his own. What was she even trying to accomplish? Foolish. 

Her hand reaches for her heart—Zack’s heart. The gunshot wound is gone, but a phantom pain haunts her. Just like she can define her life pre- and post-escape, she can define it too as pre- and post-returning. 

She’s at Crash that evening with Original Cindy, trying to keep her mind off of it. Trying but failing. She can’t help but imagine up a dozen different scenarios of how the conversation between Alec and Logan plays out.

She tries not to dwell too much on it, listening to Cindy talk, until the moment that Alec joins them looking as beautiful as he always does. Cindy leaves to give them privacy. Max has a beer in front of her, giving off a strong scent.

Alec doesn’t say anything.

“So?” Max asks, going for casual but not sure she’s managing it. “How’d it go?”

“It went fine.”
 
“Great,” she says, impatient. “Did he...”

He drops the act. “Yep. Told me to take care of you,” he says, with a roll of his eyes. “Doesn’t that just make you want to cry.”

She’s laughing, but she isn’t really. “We both know I can take care of myself.”

Alec doesn’t laugh either.

“But why would he even say it? Thought you set him straight.”

“I did,” Max defends.

He shakes his head with a strange smile on his face. “It’s funny.”

She frowns. “My imploding love life is funny now?”

“Not that, the setting it straight part.”

She gapes at him. “But we’re not...”

He shrugs. “We could be.”

“We could...” She can’t seem to find words. Everything is so loud, all of a sudden: the music, people talking, laughing, cheering, pool balls hitting one another, glasses clinking.

“Why not?” he asks, like it’s no big deal, and finally she manages to say,

“Alec, the list of reasons we shouldn’t is endless!”

“Okay. Give me one.” He lifts an eyebrow.

“I...”

Usually, it’s easy to run from her emotions. Be the female fogbank she hated to be described as, pulling away when they try to get too close. But in this moment, it’s like her brain has decided it’s opposite day. Instead of reasons not to, she can only think about the depth of her feelings for him, which she never let herself acknowledge before. It’d be easier to stop breathing than to get rid of this feeling. 

“Wow, Max, you’re right,” Alec drawls. “You’ve convinced me.” 

“You’re crazy!” she snaps.

Just like that, his entire body stiffens, and just like that, she knows she said the wrong thing.

“Don’t call me that.”

The expression on his face is closed off, but hurt flickers in his eyes even as he looks away from her, and he told her everything—how they tortured him just to make sure that he wasn’t what she just called him, and she could hit herself. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...”

“It’s fine,” he says, body still tense, still not looking her in the eye. She tamps down hurt.

So, he wants to move past it then. Fine by her. Back to the actual subject. “Alec, I just broke up with Logan.”

Alec looks unimpressed. “Broke up? Really? After all your it’s not like that and he’s not my boyfriend, that’s what you’re going with?”

“Shut up, this is none of your business,” Max insists, gripping the anger tight as it surges through her; holding onto it like a lifeline.

“Yeah, except I got dragged into it when Logan decided everything was my fault,” he says. “Really don’t get the appeal. Guess all that homemade pasta and those boring talks about fancy wine gave you some really poor taste.”

“You always have to be such a dick,” she says, voice dripping with derision.

He doesn’t flinch, holding her gaze seriously even as his words are casual: “Why not? It was almost my name once.”

She scoffs out a laugh. Rolls her eyes. Tries to get a handle on the complicated mix of emotions warring inside of her. “I’ll talk to him again. Get it through his head that we’re not...” She swallows. “That we’re not.”

“You do that.” His voice drips with sarcasm. She reaches for her beer, fingers curling around the glass, getting covered in condensation. “What, your barcode wasn’t enough? You’re getting tattoos now?”

She blinks at him, uncomprehending, before following his gaze down to her wrist. There are symbols appearing on her skin, right before her eyes.

Every trace of lingering discomfort over their conversation leaves her. It’s replaced with a wild sort of panic, beating inside of her.

“Oh my god.” Her voice comes out choked and small. He grabs her wrist, taking a closer look.

Every time she thinks she has a handle on her freakshow of a body... 

“Whoa. Hey. Breathe, alright?” 

It’s only then that she realizes her breaths are coming way too fast. She tries to calm down, but her heart still beats against her ribcage like a wild animal trying to escape its cage. She’ll never be free, she thinks, desperately. It’ll never end.

He moves his grip from her wrist to her hand. The warm weight of his hand in hers cuts through the panic. She breathes. His thumb rubs over her skin. She breathes. She holds on tighter. It feels like their hands were made to fit together. For a moment, she lets herself think that they maybe they had.

Maybe they had.

“We’re gonna figure this out,” Alec says, and she breathes.

After the Jam Pony incident, Terminal City is the busiest she’s ever seen it. It’s overwhelming to suddenly be responsible for so many lives, and not all of them are happy about following an oh-niner; at least, that’s what she chalks some of the dirty looks she gets up to, though curiously she gets more from X-series than from transhumans. 

Having Alec to back her up helps: he’s a more familiar face to them than she is, and they respect him. It still takes her by surprise, every time she sees transgenics of any age scramble to attention and calling him sir; not that they don’t call Max ma’am. It’s annoying, and she tries time and time again to explain that this isn’t Manticore and there’s no need for any of that, but the habits are ingrained. Insisting too much to the contrary will only result in chaos and rebellion, Alec said once, after she’d snapped for the umpteenth time that her name is Max. 

It’s not just ex-Manticore soldiers Max is responsible for now, though. There is new life with them, too: Gem’s baby never knew Manticore and never will. But that doesn’t mean this baby is free—that any of them are free. Breeding cult. Humans. One cage after another.

But looking at Gem’s baby, it’s hard to hold onto those cynical thoughts. Max smiles at the girl’s cherubic face. Difficult to believe they were all this innocent once.

“Have you decided on a name yet?” Max asks Gem.

“Not yet,” Gem says, rocking her baby gently while looking at Max with a wry sort of smile. “Names aren’t exactly our strong suit.”

“You’ll think of one.”

“Might’ve been nice to get a second opinion. I mean, from a non-transgenic. Someone whose name isn’t Dix or Mole,” Gem jokes.

“The father...?” Max prods gently. Gem shakes her head.

“X5. My breeding partner.”

“Oh,” Max hears herself say.

Several memories flash in her mind at once: Alec walking into her cell, wearing cammies and Ben’s face, the way he took off his shirt and told her they had orders.

“It sucked,” Gem says. “I didn’t want to be with him and he didn’t want to be with me, but, you know. Orders.”

The contempt in Gem’s voice shakes Max to her core. Alec hadn’t wanted the assignment, either; he’d told her as much, veiled behind his smartass remarks. 

“I said we could just lie, but he said they’d find out eventually when I didn’t get pregnant.” Gem’s voice is shaking. “I didn’t want to do it. But he was so afraid of being sent to Psy-Ops... He insisted.”

That’s sick, Max said. Alec’s response echoes in her mind. 

It’s your own fault. If you and your friends hadn’t destroyed the DNA database...

Max and her fellow traitors, making a stand. The escapees, destroying Manticore for good—really, they were just doing what they did best: making life harder for the ones left behind.

Gem’s baby starts to cry. Gem holds her close.

“But I love my baby girl,” Gem says. “I’ll never let anyone hurt her.”

Hurt her the way I was hurt, she doesn’t say, but it’s so obvious in the look in her eyes. Gem wasn’t the only one, of course. Max had stood amongst rows of soldiers, reporting on their breeding progress. At the time, when Alec lied for her, covering up her refusal to do it, Max had been angry because of the added twice and Renfro’s comment about Logan. Too angry to appreciate the fact that Alec had covered for her.

Looking at Gem, Max knows without a doubt now that she was lucky. If her partner had been someone else, someone more insistent, like Gem’s...

“Aren’t you...”

Max’s voice comes out in a croak. She has to clear her throat.

“Aren’t you angry? I...”

”...I know some are,” Gem finally says, looking at her baby instead of at Max. “But... You fought for me at Jam Pony. You didn’t know what Manticore would do—I know you meant well. If there’s anyone I’m angry at it’s Manticore.”

Max gives a weak smile at that, but the sickening guilt stays with her long after she walked away.

Because Max knows what it’s like, being unable to choose your partner. To have Manticore puppet your body around in a mockery of consent. And because of her, countless soldiers had to go through that same feeling. 

Suddenly, all those dirty looks from some X-series in particular make perfect sense, and Max has no idea what to do with it. How do you even go about apologizing for something like this? Yeah, she’d meant well. Does that actually mean anything? Is that worth anything?

Max is filled with the burning desire to talk about this, get it all out in the open with someone who knows her, really knows her—but her options are limited. Original Cindy isn’t around because of the toxic fumes, and neither is Logan, for the same reason. They’re not the ones she wants to talk to the most about this, anyway. If anyone could understand the subject matter it’d be Alec, but therein lies the problem.

Ever since setting Logan straight, properly this time, Logan has been hopeful again. If she was smart, she’d have let him continue to believe in her and Alec, but because of her panic she didn’t make the smart choice to push Logan away. Logan tried getting her to let go of her resolve, and this went well considering he wasn’t drunk and infuriating anymore but the same old Logan she loves. He photographed the runes on her back and after the flag-raising they held hands—all made possible thanks to latex gloves and bleach. 

All this to say, that ever since these developments with Logan, Alec has been avoiding her (well, as much as that’s possible when they’re both running Terminal City). It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. That’s the thing about Alec: he’s direct, all about action and truth. Not like Logan, who sends people out to do jobs for him while he remains the man behind the curtain. No, Alec made it clear how he feels about Max, and in his eyes it probably looks like she picked Logan. 

She didn’t. They were just...moments of weakness, of nostalgia, of falling back on the safety of her not-like-that boyfriend while she ignored her true feelings. Kind of like how she ignored them with Logan that first year, and look what happened. 

She dreams of being in a different time, a different place. A different life. She’s sitting crosslegged on the floor of her cell because her bed has been commandeered by a smug copy of Ben—only now, that’s the last thing on her mind.

She refused to participate in Manticore’s sick scheme. Alec shrugged and gave her an infuriating smile and told her to wake him up later ’cause he had an hour to kill. 

So she sits on the cold floor, looking around the room, the same kind of room she grew up in as a soldier. She looks up.

Alec is wearing cammies just like she is, and her eyes catch on the light grey of his shirt before they find his face, slack with sleep. Look at him, she thinks. Look how he used to be before I came into his life permanently. But I was never the first to hold Ben against you.

She stands up and walks towards the cot. When she sits down, the world around them shifts. Sunlight streams through the window. 

There’s no window in the cell but there is one here, in this room, nicer than anything she’s ever had but not too over-the-top luxurious. A place where she can have a hot bath without having to boil a pan of water over and over to fill it, where toothpaste isn’t scarce, where she can go outside and humanity will greet her with kindness. 

“Maxie.” She looks at Alec, who is awake. The sunlight catches his hair and his eyes, making them brighter.

A smirk is her only warning before he’s grabbed her, pinning her underneath him. He has both her wrists in his hands. His touch feels like the warmth of the sunlight on her skin, only better. She laughs, surprised, before smirking right back. In a flash, their positions are switched. He doesn’t even try to fight it.

Her hand moves from his arm to his face, on which he has such an open expression that it robs her of breath for a second. She doesn’t move, remaining on top of him. There’s something she wants to do. Something she wouldn’t let herself normally, but in this moment it’s easy. 

She lets herself fall. 

He grunts at the sudden and unexpected weight. With her chin wedged on his shoulder, her nose brushes his hair.

“I’m tired,” she mumbles.

When he chuckles, she feels it vibrating from his chest onto her own. “Then rest.”

Adjusting her position so that he can slip out from beneath her, they’re lying next to each other. The sunlight makes the entire room golden. It’s nothing. It’s everything. 

“Rest,” he murmurs, and she does.

When she wakes, she stares at the ceiling in the dark.

She finds Alec in his apartment. He’s not doing anything, but as soon as she steps in and says “hey” he’s up and moving.

“Hiya, Maxie. I was actually on my way out, so—”

“To do what?” she says, incredulous, getting in his way before he makes his exit. Some honest part of her brain replays all the glances he’s been giving her lately, the longing in his eyes when she accidentally caught his gaze on the roof with Logan, the smile after her speech to the transgenics and he said she was a natural. 

He shrugs. “Things.”

“Things,” she deadpans.

He nods. “Important things.”

“Name one,” she says, quietly smug; as Alec is usually quick on his feet but can’t seem to find an excuse now. “Wow, Alec. Real convincing.”

Her eyes stray to his shoulder, which is still recovering. She thinks suddenly about the previous time he got shot in the shoulder, about Asha giving him first aid after that one; she remembers the two of them walking off into the night together. She also remembers a different moment: back when she came over to his place and Asha was sleeping on the couch, with a blanket draped over her. No question on who had put the blanket there.

He flashes her a wry smile: the Alec-classic, masking what’s really going on on the inside. “Was there something you needed? Besides filling your daily quota of annoying me.”

“Wouldn’t want to miss that,” she says dryly. “Boss might fire me.”

“You mean you.”

“You kidding? I’ve seen what I’m like when I’m pissed off. Best not to risk it.” When she drops the playful smile from her face, she watches him straighten. Like any good soldier about to take their punishment. “I wanted to talk.”

”...Do we have to?” 

She sighs, loudly.

“Alright, alright,” he says. “Don’t freak out on me.”

She startles at the familiar words, easier to place with all of it on her mind: he said that when they first met. In her cell. Explained it away with taking Common Verbal Usage before getting cleared for solo missions. She’d held those missions against him, too, like he was ever an assassin by choice.

“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to the couch with a flourish. He adds sarcastically: “Don’t break anything.”

“No,” she says. “Not here.”

“What’s wrong with my apartment?”

“You mean other than that it’s an apartment in Terminal City which is a dump?”

He laughs. “Don’t let the others hear you say that. Bad for morale, and all. You’re supposed to be our inspiring leader.”

She rolls her eyes. “Let’s go.”

Since sneaking out to her beloved Space Needle is too risky given the thermal scanners and everything else, she settles for the roof with their flag. Same place she sat and held Logan’s latex-covered hand. 

“The roof?” Alec says disdainfully once he realizes their destination. 

“What’s wrong with the roof?”

“Well, it’s no Space Needle.”

“True,” she agrees. “That’s not your problem with it, though.”

What he doesn’t know is that the entire time she sat there, fingers pressed against the cool, rubbery texture of the latex, she felt...nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly. More like acceptance. There was no nostalgia in that moment, there was no doubt, there was just the cold certainty dawning on her that potential cure or not—she and Logan are truly done. 

Max sits down where she sat then, and Alec reluctantly follows. All the times he was on the Space Needle with her, it had been dark already, but here and now it’s barely morning; the sun is still rising, staining the sky red.

They’re partners in crime, allies in war, they’re friends; but she knows that she wants more. She knows what she wants. But she has no idea how to get it. Other than when she’s in heat, pursuing men really isn’t her thing. But the only other option is waiting for him to make a move, and it’s obvious he isn’t going to. Those moments of weakness with Logan were enough for Alec to decide that she’d made her choice.

It’s infuriating. Who is he to assume what she does or doesn’t want? Ever since the flag-raising she hasn’t been around Logan at all, not just because of the toxic fumes or the virus; she avoids his calls when she can and it’s awkward when she can’t. Alec never bothered to ask, so, really, this is all his fault.

And he’s pretty. And he smells good. And his freckles are more pronounced lately, and Max keeps wanting to trace them with her fingertips.

“Well?” Alec prompts when she’s been silent for too long. “Don’t tell me you dragged me up here for nothing.”

“Well if I did I’d be doing you a favor,” Max says. “After all, last time we had a heart-to-heart you went all gooey on me. Declaring your undying admiration and all. Who knows what you’d say this time.”

“I got no idea what you’re talking about,” Alec says. “Think you got me confused with my other clone. Third version, you know, the warm and fuzzy one.”

Max laughs softly. There’s a light drizzle, and they both grimace at being caught in it but neither of them move. “Earlier, I was thinking about when we met,” she admits. 

“Don’t,” he says sharply, and she looks at him in surprise. Gone is that carefree mask, and anger has come to replace it.

“What?” Her voice comes out smaller than she’d like it to in her whiplash. Raindrops slide down her dark hair. Falling one by one.

“I’m not your Logan replacement.”

The rain makes the air smell like earth and grass.

“You’ve never been my—”

“What, so you and lover boy aren’t on the outs right now?”

“He’s not my—”

“Boyfriend, I know.” Alec rolls his eyes. “Please, spare me the it’s not like that.”

“I’m trying to thank you, you asshole!” Max snaps.

“For what?” he says, completely incredulous.

“You lied to Renfro for me when we didn’t even know each other,” she says quietly, watching rainwater trail off the roof. “You didn’t owe me anything. But you did it anyway.”

“Yeah, and then I followed Renfro’s orders to help you escape and get Logan killed,” he says, still looking at her like she’s lost it. “What is your point?”

“The point is...” She looks at the sky. “I never spared that breeding program much thought after I left. But... I mean, what you said, back then. About it being my fault...”

He softens. “Max,” he says. His hair looks darker than usual now that it’s wet. His cheeks are flushed, and his green eyes are watching her solemnly. 

“Don’t,” she says, voice as sharp as his had been. “It was my fault, and I have to live with it. Just like you got things you gotta live with.”

“Please don’t say but we’ll shoulder it together,” he says dryly, effectively lightening the mood.

“Right, I forgot.” She mirrors his smirk. “When the going gets cute, the tough get going.”

He waggles his brows. She shakes her head, letting her smirk fade. 

After a while so does the rain. But the air remains humid. The silence is filled only by the sound of raindrops still sliding down from the roof. It’s pleasant to listen to. She almost doesn’t want to ruin it by speaking.

“He really isn’t, you know,” she says quietly. “Logan.”

He exhales. “Yeah, and we both know whose fault that is.”

She frowns. “What?”

“Come on, Maxie. You said so yourself. Remember?”

Alec in a chair with the back of his neck still bleeding. Looking up at her with wide eyes as she snapped at losing her only chance of a cure. She did say it was his fault, and then don’t think I’m ever getting over that.

I know.

That’s it. That’s all he said, remaining quiet after, as she told him to leave, because she couldn’t stand the sight of his face. She doesn’t like thinking about that moment, never has. The way he just up and took all of it. Absorbing the blows caused by his survival instinct and nothing else.

“Alec, I’m over it.”

He just scoffs. She thinks about his knife glinting silver with the moonlight in the grass as she turned her head to look, her body still twitching with electricity.

“I mean it,” she says. “If we had to do it all over again, I’d still take you to that doctor, I’d still pay him. I’d flush the cure down the drain myself if it meant that you lived. Your life is more important to me than touching Logan. You have to know that.”

After plunging the knife in the dirt instead of her heart, Alec had collapsed right next to her, like his decision had already killed him. For a while, they just lay there, unable to move for different reasons. Her life had overridden that survival instinct. Her gratitude had been sarcastic, back then. It’s not anymore.

“Now who’s getting all gooey?” he says finally. 

“Alec, you moron,” she says, grabbing his face and pressing her mouth to his. 

When he doesn’t move at all, panic floods her, thinking she made a mistake—but then he kisses her back. 

He kisses her back, but not like she would have expected him to, not wild and raw but soft and gentle. He tastes like rainwater and her cherry lipbalm as it smears his lips while they kiss.

When they break apart, he doesn’t say anything. Sunrise colors look good on him, scarlet and lavender bright on his face.

“Huh,” she says.

“What?”

“So that’s what it takes to shut you up.”

“Oh, I can still talk,” he promises.

She stifles a smile. “Yeah?”

He nods. “Yeah. You should probably do something about that. Unless you want to hear me ramble about—”

She shuts him up as requested. He laughs against her mouth. It doesn’t make for a very good kiss, their teeth knocking together, but it doesn’t matter. They don’t stray very far when it’s over, foreheads resting together. 

“I like it when you ramble,” she admits. 

“You’d deny it to your dying breath,” he says, eyes sparkling with mirth.

She can’t seem to stop smiling. “You bet.”

He exhales, turning to look at the sky. While at first the rising sun was like a dying ember, the sky has now exploded into soft hues, reflected on their faces.

“I’d bet,” he says, “you didn’t think it would all end like this, back when you escaped.”

No. This is the place she was supposed to belong. This is the place she was supposed to be free. But she’s the one who set all of this in motion, from the moment she exposed Manticore knowing full well it’d result in that fire.

We’re in this together.

“No, I didn’t,” she says quietly. “But you know what? It doesn’t matter.”

He’s incredulous. “We live in a toxic wastleland and everyone out there wants us either dead or back in our cages, how does that not matter?”

“One way or another, we’ll survive.” And she reaches out to trace constellations in his freckles. “We always do.”