After Life -- Chapter 11: This Is How It Feels

[parallax23]

Chapter 11: This Is How It Feels

“Alec?” Zack called as he knocked on the apartment door. 

He hadn’t been much of a knocker until he moved into Terminal City.  Since his arrival he had seemed to have the worst timing when barging into his siblings’ apartments.  Aside from bearing witness to Max and Alec’s morning after, he had managed to catch Jondy while changing her clothes, and Syl and Krit in the middle of going at it.  Zack was a fast learner, and decided that safe was better than sorry around this place. 

Still, it was taking every ounce of restraint Zack had not to just break in and drag Alec out of the apartment.  This wasn’t the time for formalities in Zack’s book, but he continued to pound on the door, shouting Alec’s name.  The guy was probably still asleep or something, and Zack was just about to take matters into his own hands when the door swung open and he was greeted by Kaia in Alec’s T-shirt, who looked less than happy to see him.  Evidently, Alec was planning on keeping up the benefits package until he actually split.  Whatever.  That wasn’t Zack’s problem. 

“Kaia, where’s Alec?  It’s emergency,” Zack told her impatiently and tried to push his way past her into the apartment. 

Though he had only seen Alec a few hours ago, it felt like the world had collapsed in on him and he had no patience left for anything. 

“Zack?” Alec asked as he came out of his bedroom, wearing only a pair of jeans but he was pulling on a T-shirt in a rush to see what the commotion was about.  “What’s wrong?” 

“Your phone’s off!  Max is in the hospital.  She and Jondy went out last night and some thug shot her.  I need you to cover my shift at Command so I can get over there,” Zack told him more as an order than a request. 

It took Alec a moment to truly process what Zack had said.  Max must have been in a really bad state if she had been taken into a hospital instead of being brought home to Terminal City.  In spite of everything that had gone wrong between them over the last few months, there was no way he’d leave her on her own.  It always took hell and high water for them to show they felt about each other, and this was a little bit of both. 

“No, get Mole to cover it.  I’m going with you,” Alec said without hesitating. 

He didn’t even acknowledge the annoyed look crossing over Kaia’s features.  He knew she would want to know why he’d demand to go see the woman he didn’t get along with, but he couldn’t care less what she thought.  Or what Zack ordered.  His relationship with Max was a complicated one, while at the same time it was the deepest relationship he had ever shared with anyone.  They never left each other behind.  Never.  And screw what anyone else thought. 

“Fine.  Meet me at the gate in ten minutes or I’m leaving without you,” Zack replied and took off down the hallway. 

Zack could tell that Alec would have argued with him and then gone off to find Max on his own anyway, so Zack decided to save them both the trouble.  Besides, he was too busy being angry at himself for not being able to protect Max.  It was like hearing Jondy say she’d fallen through the ice all over again.  That was why he hadn’t thought to look for her all those years.  He hadn’t gone through Lydecker’s torture, working for Normal, and giving her his heart to lose her now.  Ever since that day she started getting the shakes at Manticore, he’d done everything he could to save her.  The escape was so that she couldn’t disappear like Jack had.  Why couldn’t he keep her safe?  Why did things always have to be so hard for him when it came to Max? 

“Alec, you’re not seriously going out there?” demanded Kaia as he searched for his cellphone.  “The two of you can’t go two minutes without wanting to kill each other.” 

“Hey, Mole?  Remember that favor you owe me?  I need you to take over Command ASAP for Zack.  He and I have something we need to do…  Great, and I know I’m a disgusting ordinary reject, but I’m your disgusting ordinary reject,” Alec said into the phone, then ended the call.  He turned his attention back to Kaia, whose expression of mild disdain was teetering on the edge of full on fury. 

“Yeah, the funny thing about caring about someone?  Makes you wanna kill ’em and kill for ’em at the same time,” Alec said. 

Kaia knew he didn’t care either way if she bothered to go with him.  If there was one thing that Alec McDowell could be counted on for, it was his inability to leave Max alone.  Kaia knew there was some history between them, she would be an idiot not to.  It was a stroke of luck that the virus had been cured, sending Max straight back into the open arms of Logan Cale and giving Kaia her chance with Alec.  Everything had been going so well until Max had decided to show up sans Logan and acting all kinds of strange, causing Alec to turn his attention back to her.  He was also acting a little more distant these days as well. 

If there was one person Kaia couldn’t stand it was Max.  But it wasn’t like she wished ill on her.  Well, nothing fatal anyway.  The last thing she wanted was to give Alec an opportunity to play a knight in Max’s stupid court of sycophants.   

At Manticore, they weren’t allowed to fraternize much.  But still Kaia had seen 494.  He was trouble – that was how he became the poster child for what happened when you decided your personal agenda trumped Manticore’s.  He was what happened when you were stupid enough to even form your own personal agenda.  His pretty face wasn’t enough to make Kaia forget that.  Then Manticore burned to the ground, and suddenly he was traipsing around Seattle like he owned the place, like he had been waiting for this all along.  Alec was blending in, making contacts and companions.  Kaia couldn’t help but be impressed.  From day one, Alec had made it pretty clear that he didn’t have room in his heart for anyone but Max and Joshua.  They were it for him. 

Kaia wanted to be more to him than another casual late night roll in the sheets, which was why she had taken to being by his side whenever she could.  But she wasn’t sure what it was that she wanted from him.  Something similar to what he saw him share with Max and Joshua?  The only thing she did know was that whether she liked it or not, Max still meant a hell of a lot more to him than she did at the moment and she wasn’t about to let it go any further. 

“I’m going with you,” Kaia said, scurrying about the apartment to collect as many of the clothes she had arrived there with. 

“Whatever.  Meet us at the gate in five minutes,” Alec said, walking out of the apartment.

______________________________________________________________________________

Half an hour later, Zack and Alec burst through the hospital doors with Kaia half-heartedly trailing behind them.  They didn’t waste time in spotting a distraught Original Cindy sitting in one of the waiting room chairs, while Jondy was pacing back and forth the length of the waiting room.  The strained expressions on their faces didn’t help the situation.

When Jondy looked up to see Zack standing there, she changed her destination and rushed him.  Squeezing him into a tight hug, she let him shoulder some of her weight before letting the tears fall.

“We just went out for a walk.  No big deal.  How could this happen?” Jondy choked out with a sob.

“What were you thinking?” snapped Zack, pushing her back so that he was gripping her by the shoulder so she would face him.

“Forget that.  We can play courts-martial later.  How bad is she?” Alec asked.

Jondy’s head turned away from Zack to see Alec.  She hadn’t noticed that he had come with Zack.  She also registered Kaia on that list.  Well, Jondy had been wondering how the situation could get any worse and here it was.  Had the universe set out to make that evening a prime example of Murphy’s law at its finest?  Her gaze shifted to Cindy to see if maybe she had an idea how to talk her way out of this.  Original Cindy’s eyes darted to the floor.  No such luck.  Well, it looked like Jondy would have to bite the bullet on her own. 

“Jondy, what aren’t you telling us?” asked Zack, his voice remaining stern but full of concern. 

Swallowing all of her fears, she replied, “She’s not too bad, not too much blood loss.  They haven’t figured out what she is yet either, her friend Dr. Shankar is with her…  But there’s a complication…” 

Somehow it was one of those moments when all of the right words were there, but there was no right way for them to come out so that they didn’t tilt the world on its axis. Or make Jondy break her word to Max that she would keep her secret. 

“She’s pregnant.” 

Logan’s voice stopped the whole room dead in its tracks.  Two simple words, well one word and one contraction, had crumbled any sense of control they could have imagined having over the situation.  All eyes in the room turned to Logan, who had silently come back from his trip to the coffee machine, but his vision was limited to only one other person.  Alec met his challenging stare, unsure what it was about except that he wasn’t about to waver under anyone.   

Letting go of Jondy, Zack seemed to flash over to Logan and put him into the same vice-like grip he liked using for interrogation. 

“You left her while she was pregnant?” growled Zack.  To think that he had once thought Logan worthy of his baby sister, he couldn’t believe how foolish he had been.  He also couldn’t believe that he had missed something so glaringly obvious with Max. 

Logan looked him dead in the eyes, completely unafraid.  “I didn’t leave her.  She left me.  The kid’s not mine.” 

At that revelation, Zack quickly slackened his grip on the other man.  If what he said was true, that meant…  All eyes instantly turned to Alec, each pair saying something different.  Kaia’s were horrified, Jondy and Cindy looked guilty as sin, Logan’s was discerning but of what Alec could only guess.  And Zack?  Zack was unreadable. 

For the first time in his life since leaving Manticore, Alec did not have a snappy comeback for the situation. 

“Guess she didn’t bother to tell you either.  But how didn’t any of you notice?  It’s not like she hasn’t started showing,” Logan said. 

Alec’s hands clenched into fists while trying to process what he had been told, and figure out who or what he was supposed to pummel into the ground.  So that was why she had been acting that way towards him.  How could she keep something like this from him?  How didn’t he see it?  All the signs seemed so obvious now.  If he hadn’t been so busy plotting his exit strategy, he would’ve seen what was right in front of him.  He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to feel besides anger and betrayal. 

Then he remembered why he was standing in a hospital waiting room.  Max, who was pregnant with his kid, had been shot.  He could have lost them both.  He still very well could.  The longer Alec stood there, the more thoughts assaulted him.  Questions and worries and fears.  For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.  The whole room seemed to be closing in on him.  Wasn’t this his worst nightmare?  Being caged in again? 

Taking his cues from the animal instincts, he knew there was only one thing to do.  Fight or flight. 

Just as Alec had burst into the room, he stormed out of it.  No one went after him. 

Kaia silently crumbled into the closest chair she could find, but everyone else remained planted where they were. 

“Jondy?” said Zack, approaching her more gently than before.  “Look, we’ll deal with this later, but how bad are Max… and her baby?” 

His little sister sighed.  “We don’t know yet.  She’s stabilized.  That’s all they’re saying for now.” 

“What happened?” Zack asked.  He wanted to yell and punish them for running off by themselves, but he had been hit in the face with the realization that Max and Jondy were full grown adults.  Yelling wouldn’t solve anything. 

Jondy looked at the floor then around the room, hoping to spot a good explanation for Zack.  There wasn’t much of one.  They knew that it was dangerous to go outside of Terminal City, and even stupider not to tell anyone where they had gone.  “Max just wanted to get away.  We go out all the time, how was this night supposed to be any different?” 

“Oh, let’s see.  Max got shot.  And she was knocked up,” Zack pointed out, running his hand through his hair in frustration.  He let out a sigh.  “Why didn’t she say anything?  How long did she think she could keep it a secret?  It’s not like eating the last slice of pizza.  It’s a kid!  How could she keep something like this from me?” 

“You?  She didn’t even tell Alec and it’s his kid,” Jondy shot back.  “I tried to get her to tell you but she was just too ashamed.  She was hurting so much.  Her entire world had fallen apart on her and she just wanted some semblance of control instead of everyone looking and whispering behind her back.” 

“I’m her brother!  I would’ve been there for her,” Zack said angrily.  His voice was not hiding the hurt that Max didn’t trust him with such a big secret.  “We would have figured it out.  You couldn’t have at least told me?  Talked some sense into her?” 

It was in that moment that Jondy finally snapped.  She wasn’t some little kid who took orders from her big brother anymore.  Who was he to play the victim in all of this?  First Max couldn’t stop wallowing about losing Logan, Alec and Max couldn’t stop quarreling, and then some stupid kid had to just go and shoot Max, and Zack was the victim? 

“Yeah, and what would you have done?  I told her not to keep hiding from it, that it would only make things harder for her.  I could care less what you felt about it.  You know why she wouldn’t tell you?  Because she imagined you’d hand her her ass for being stupid enough to get into this situation.  She didn’t want to hear about liabilities and responsibilities like she didn’t know the first thing about it.  Believe it or not, it’s not an easy thing to tell someone you care about that you betrayed their trust and feel like you failed everyone.” 

Zack didn’t say anything.  He just stood there, trying to imagine what Max must have been going through all those weeks.  He vowed the moment that the moment he could see her, he’d take her in his arms and promise her that everything would be all right.  He wanted to stroke her hair and let her know that she shouldn’t feel ashamed, that he loved her no matter what and she shouldn’t have doubted that. 

Then Jondy turned to Logan, who had been quietly taking everything in.  “She missed you.  She didn’t mean for things to be this way, but tough luck – the world is what it is.  Deal.” 

Suddenly, Zack realized that there was a room full of people waiting to take Max up in open arms.  They had made peace with the emotional turmoil that came with keeping secrets that were pointless to keep.  If he had felt so betrayed by Max, how must Alec have felt?  No one had thought what this all meant for him.  No one also knew that he’d been planning to leave. 

“Zack, where are you going?” asked Jondy when she saw him making a beeline for the door. 

“To find Alec,” he answered.  “Since I can’t tell Max what a fool she’s been, I’ll go take it out on him."