Author: Restive Nature (aka Bavite)
Disclaimer: The characters and fictional placings of either of these shows do not belong to me. They belong to Cameron/ Eglee (Dark Angel), Joss Whedon (BtVS) and Whedon/ Greenwalt (AtS). Only the story belongs to me.
Rating: 13 (for now)
Genre: Crossover of DA/ BtVS
Type: WiP
Timeline/ Spoilers: Post Season 5 for Buffy. Up to LAtR for DA. Story set in DA time.
Summary: BtVS/ DA crossover. Life brings about so many changes. Especially when one has just risen from the dead.
A/N- Not all of the events that took place in Dark Angel will be present in this fiction. And there may be more time passing between events than it appeared on the show. So I guess that makes this AU.
Chapter Four
May 14th, 2021
The glyphs on Max’s skin continued to come and go. And by this point, there had been a total of seven show up. Including the most recent one, right over her heart. Or as she continued to silently correct, Zack’s heart. The first few glyphs had faded away for the most part. Until Max, who’d been slightly relieved by this, was scrubbing at an ink stain on her palm. Her eyes had been drawn naturally downwards to the new hieroglyph that was positioned underneath where the very first had been. And then she’d glanced cursorily at the blank space above. She was so much more wary of the possibility of a new glyph popping up; much like it had when Biggs had been with her at the bar. And that was when it had struck her.
Instead of finding smooth, caramel colored skin; there was the faintest outline of the old glyph. She’d stared at it, puzzled, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her. But she’d shaken her head to clear it and looked again. But it was definitely there. Just a faint trace of the puzzling mark. Almost as if instead of fading away, it had chameleonized itself and sank into the camouflage of her skin.
She’d said nothing of this to anyone else. It was as good as gone. She, Alec and Logan had already spent enough time trying to figure out what they were, why they’d appeared and what they meant. She hoped that they’d disappear completely, given time. As they had copies of the glyphs both on Logan’s hardrive and what he’d printed out, they were too much of an intrusion on her skin. And it was only when she emerged with her skin slightly raw after a blisteringly hot shower and Original Cindy noticed, did Max realize how much she hated what was happening to her body. It was almost on par with the heats she’d endured.
And so now, Max was sitting at home, alone, wary of going out in public, scared that one of the glyphs would appear in a place much more visible than her hands or shoulders or chest. It was certainly not the kind of exposure any of their kind needed. Because while it was certainly a unique occurrence so far among transgenics, the ordinaries didn’t know that. And if they didn’t know, they usually made things up.
On the days that Max did go out, she did so only in the company of Alec, Biggs or Original Cindy. Alec and Biggs had asked if she’d wanted any other transgenic or transhuman in on this, again going on the assumption that the more eyes working on this, the better. She’d agreed reluctantly, and only because whatever it was rising up on her skin might involve them too. So Biggs had approached a transhuman he knew by the name of Luke. He’d passed along the information but the outcome was just as dismal as their own.
The trio of Biggs, Luke and another transhuman named Dix, working in Terminal City on this had found out exactly the same information as Logan had, albeit at a slightly faster rate. But that was to be expected. Even Logan admitted that he should have thought about turning some of this over to them. His excuse, that he wasn’t used to having a group of brilliant strategists, linguists, polyglots* and computer experts at his fingertips, was totally acceptable. In Logan’s circle of contacts, he was top dog when it came to computers and other things.
Max thought of all this again as her finger absent-mindedly rubbed at the latest glyph over her heart. It was an odd shape, one that Alec had recognized immediately, though she’d had Cindy take the picture of it. He’d memorized all the printouts Logan had made and had only to glance at the camera’s preview screen to tell her what it was. She would have memorized them herself, but didn’t want to drive herself crazy with wondering what might come next. And this one was bad enough.
Sacrifice.
She smiled wistfully as she recalled Alec’s flippant remark about the glyphs not describing an event, but her. Or maybe more accurately, her life. At least some of them had. The first describing the inferno they’d created when Manticore blew, both times. And then the resurrection. When Zack had let her live again. And she had in turn, given a new life, freedom to the others. And Alec had been right, when she felt like it, she did have a hell of a mouth on her. And of course, the last one, the sacrifice. Was it Zack’s sacrifice of his heart and life? Was it hers of giving up her freedom in the name of the same? She could ponder those because at least they had some semblance of meaning behind them.
What puzzled her, all of them really, were the other three glyphs. On the surface they were easy to understand. Offered freely. It had made sense when the sacrifice glyph had shown itself. A sacrifice was only defined so because it was offered freely. That was why she was more inclined to think that it was about Zack. After all, that one had appeared in the most conspicuous spot. But then why had the offered freely glyph appeared when it was already defined later in the sacrifice glyph? That was the puzzling part. The others, "full moon of five" was worked out to be the full moon of the month of May. Pretty basic and strange because it was so straight forward. The one that had followed after was the kicker of them all. "From beneath you it devours". Freaky that the Egyptians had one hieroglyph that said all that. They’d had no idea what that meant, of course. And they’d spent many wasted hours just kicking ideas around.
Max sighed, rubbing her head where an ache was beginning to form at her temple. She just wanted this done. The phone rang, startling her for just a second. But figuring that it was important, she felt she should answer. After all, people didn’t idly call her to chitchat it seemed. "Hello?"
"Max," it was Logan. "Get over here. Bring Alec."
"Wha-!" she gasped. She’d never heard him so impatient before. "Why? What’s going on?"
"I think I’ve figured something out," he went from impatient to exasperated. But Max needed no more impetus.
"I’m on my way," she affirmed. She hung up from that phone call and was dialing Alec’s cell phone with one hand while the other was reaching for her jacket and motorcycle keys.
"Ya got me," he answered cheekily, "now what are you going to do with me?"
"Get your ass in gear over to Logan’s" she instructed without any preamble. To his credit, Alec didn’t waste his breath either.
"Got ya," was all he said.
*****
"You’ve figured it out?" Max asked breathlessly as she rushed into Logan’s apartment. She’d never taken a second to wonder why he’d asked for Alec to come too. They had both individually figured that seeing how Alec had been right in the thick of things and had worked just as hard as they to decipher this problem, he deserved to be in on the final result.
Alec had arrived seconds after her and had quietly followed her up to the corner penthouse. He shut the door behind himself, when she had just left it gaping open. He could understand her relief to get this over and done with. But he didn’t figure they needed any Tom, Dick or Harry passing by and eavesdropping. Not that the people in Logan’s building would. They were all too well bred for that. Or too discreet at it. Alec wasn’t sure which it was.
Logan looked up from an old tattered box he was digging through. "Max, Alec, good. Glad you’re here. Sit down." They obeyed immediately and took in the mess that Logan’s living room had become. Which was completely out of character for him.
Alec gestured around and caught the older man’s attention. "You know Logan, I think we might start worrying about you if you keep this up."
"What do you mean?" he grunted, puzzled. Alec smirked and gestured at the papers on the floor.
"You haven’t been eating," he ticked off on his fingers. "You look like crap. I doubt you’ve left the apartment for days. And now this mess. Tsk tsk. Not like you at all."
"I’ve been eating," Logan grumbled as he ducked back down to dig through the box some more. Alec had to smile as his second admission floated to his ears. "Just nothing gourmet."
"Okay," Alec teased, grabbing at his chest. "I’m truly worried now. Max! Call the doctor!"
"Cut it out!" she snapped back, jumping to her feet as she fixed both of them with a glare. Perturbed enough that even Logan felt the heat of it and pulled his head back up to gaze up at her innocently. "Logan what was so important that we had to come over?"
"Oh, right," Logan nodded and readjusted his glasses. He pulled his hands form the box he’d been digging through and turned to digging through a pile of papers on the coffee table. And then on the floor. And then through where they’d slid off the arm of the couch. Alec sighed and slid from his seat to start gathering up papers strewn about.
"What are we looking for?" he demanded a little tiredly. He’d definitely had enough of straight paper products in the last two weeks.
"Geography paper I wrote when I was a kid," Logan grunted, still scanning the papers he held. "It’s titled something like ‘A Geographical and Historical Comparison of Zaragoza, Spain and Sunnydale, California’." Both transgenics stared at him with something akin to amused horror. He seemed to notice their looks and furrowed his eyebrows together. "What? That was the assignment."
"Okay," Max said slowly as she exchanged glances with Alec. She turned back to Logan. "And can you tell us why this paper is so important that you called us over, acting as if you’d had some big break through on the problem that, even as biased as I am, is much more pressing than this walk through memory lane?" By the time she’d finished her mini-rant, her chest was heaving and her face was flushed. But before she could continue, Logan realized how the situation looked.
"It’s important because like I told Alec, the word Hellmouth kept bugging me," he reiterated. Alec paid no attention as he continued to sort and rifle through papers, pulling some order from the chaos. "And once I remembered where I’d heard it," he paused to gauge her reaction. He’d figured correctly that Alec had filled her in because she waved him on. "Then the word inferno started to bug me. I finally realized that I’d read it before. From this paper I did when I was ten or eleven." He gestured around. "Isn’t it lucky my parents saved everything I did really well on."
"Yeah, great," Max announced unenthusiastically.
"More like obsessive," Alec muttered from his position on the floor, but neither paid him any attention.
"I don’t think it’s here," Logan grumbled as he flipped through another pile. "It’ll be easy to spot, because I drew a bright purple map of Spain and a blue map of California on the front page." Both transgenics stared at him in that same look that was starting to lean away from the amusement and more towards horror. Alec rolled his eyes and commenced rifling even faster.
"Well Logan," Max said quickly to keep the situation from degenerating at all, "why don’t you tell us about it while we look? What was in the report?"
"Oh, it was great," he enthused. "I picked Sunnydale cause my mom’s cousin had just moved there. And we were supposed to find another town somewhere in the world that closely related to the place in the States and write about their similarities and their differences in economics, landscape, history, that sort of thing."
"Wait?" Alec’s head snapped up. "Your mom’s cousin? The same one who…?" Logan nodded happily.
"That was why I picked Sunnydale," he explained. "I really idolized my cousin. I mean my second cousin, and I wanted to know more about where she was living. And when I found out that the town had Spanish roots, I chose Zaragoza. It’s the capital of Aragon," he recalled happily.
"Wait," Max threw in her two cents. "I’m not getting this. What’s the connection?"
"Oh," Logan seemed to suddenly realize that Max and Alec weren’t completely on the same page as he. "Like I wrote, Sunnydale, or the spot that Sunnydale resides in was originally founded by Spanish settlers. But their name for it was la Boca del Infierno. Which translated means-!"
"The mouth of Hell!" Alec translated immediately. He glanced at Max. "Well damn."
"And this is the connection that we’ve been looking for?" Max asked, growing excited. Logan nodded happily. Finally they were getting somewhere. And then he recalled what he’d done with the paper. He jumped up, dislodging the box from his lap.
"I remember now," he smiled. "I put the paper in the study, so I wouldn’t lose it while I went through this other stuff. I’d forgotten there was so much of it." Both transgenics gave him an exasperated look that was so similar that he laughed. "I’ll go get it."
"Yeah, you do that," Alec encouraged with a small growl. He watched Logan amble out of the room and then turned to Max. "Can you believe this?" he chuckled softly as he held up a simple stick figure drawing of three people. A childish hand had written ‘Mommy, Daddy and Me’ in the lower left corner. Max snatched it from his grip, a wistful smile gracing her face.
"I guess there’s something good that comes out of this parental pride," she muttered as she set the paper on a nearby pile.
"What’s that?" Alec asked as he continued shuffling papers together.
"Do you really think that after the Pulse, we’d have had all that information handy about Sunnydale and Zaragoza?" she giggled. Alec ducked his head and smiled as well. Just then Logan returned.
*****
An hour later, they were still arguing.
"I don’t care Alec!" Max snapped for about the dozenth time. Alec ran his hand through his hair, thoroughly disgusted and frustrated with her lack of regard for herself. "I’m going."
"Alec’s right Max," Logan butted in. He’d been watching them go back and forth. And he knew that Alec knew how stubborn Max could be. But he felt the need to at least try once more. "You don’t know what you could be walking into. Just because the glyphs refer to a place and not an event don’t mean that the others are the same. For crying out loud, they even give you a specific time."
"Which I intend to beat," Max explained again. "I go to Sunnydale, check things out and be outta there before the moon even begins to think of getting full."
"There’s nothing to check out," Alec threw his hands up in the air. "Logan’s already said that it’s just a ghost town now."
"So then there’s nothing there that could hurt me," she shrugged simply.
"That’s not true Max," Logan sighed. "What if White’s group have set up camp there and are trying to lure you there?"
"Why would they choose Sunnydale?" she rolled her eyes. "Out in the middle of nowhere, where they’d have to ship supplies in. It’s too far to conveniently get me there with a simple ruse. I really doubt that the Familiars are involved at all." She glared at them both. "I’m going and that’s final."
"Fine," Logan bit off caustically. He and Alec shared a look.
"And we’re going with you," he decided. There was no discussion needed on this point at all. He was long used to looking out for Max when he could. And he knew that though Logan had the full intent of giving her up as his girlfriend, he still wanted Max in his life, even if it was as just a friend.
"You guys-!" Max began, but Alec cut her off.
"No arguments!" he growled menacingly. But Max simply smiled enigmatically.
"I wasn’t gonna," she shrugged.
*****
May 15th, 2021
Max hugged her roommate good-bye. She’d explained the situation to her best friend, who hadn’t cared much beyond the point that her friend was leaving again. Of course both Max and Alec had neglected to tell her that there was a chance Max might not come back from this. But if the trio had their way, they’d be in and out of Sunnydale before the full moon came about. It gave both transgenics, who’d never really dealt with esoteric matters, strange shudders.
Which was why they were going now. It was still a little over a week until the full moon. And with sector checkpoints and whatnot, it would take them a good four days to get there. That was with Logan figuring out contingency plans if they ran into fuel shortages along the way. And in this day and age, it was a very likely prospect. If they went now, and arrived within their planned four days, that gave them two days to scout around and be gone before anything could happen to Max. Alec and Logan didn’t like it, but she was determined. As she’d said to them the evening before, she just wanted it over and done with. Since it was her body being turned into an esoteric chat board, who were they to argue.
Max picked up the bag she’d packed with what essentials she could find. Even going so far as to raid their cabinets for food. Logan had worked far into the night getting the logistics of this trip worked out. Alec had hotfooted it over to the guy they knew that produced forgeries to get hold of travel papers for all three of them. And Max had packed what she could. As they both waved good-bye to Cindy as she rode out for work, Max wondered at what excuse Alec had given Normal this morning.
She figured that as he was the favored employee and a little more inventive in excuses, he should be the one handling Normal. "So what did you come up with?" She stooped to pick up her bags and they headed to where Logan was waiting for them in his car. She saw Alec’s puzzled glance. "About work?" she clarified. He nodded.
"Ah, nothing much," he shrugged. "I told Normal that your skin infection got worse and the doctor was worried that it got into your bloodstream. And of course, with your heart transplant last year…" he trailed off. She said nothing and he finished the excuse. "So I’m taking you to see a heart specialist in Los Angeles."
"He bought that?" Max frowned. She knew that she’d never given any sign of weakness physically in front of her anal retentive boss.
"Infections are tricky things," Alec smiled. "Anyway, he knows that we’ll be gone for two weeks, while the docs out there, run some tests on ya. I’m going for moral support. And because Cindy hates to fly."
"No she doesn’t," Max countered automatically. But then she realized what he’d done and why. "But Normal doesn’t know that, does he?" She grinned, now understanding what Alec and Cindy had been talking about earlier. "And if we’re flying and spending two weeks with the docs, that’ll cover our real travel time by car." Alec threw her an exasperated glance that it took her so long to put it together. She simply gave him a light shove and made for the car.
There was a moment of indecision as she approached. Logan had left the back hatch up and she threw her gear in, next to Logan’s and Alec’s. But as she thrust the door down and listened to it click shut, she wondered about where she should sit. The decision was taken from her when Alec hopped into the front seat. As she climbed in the back, she sighed internally. It made sense for him to do that. After all, she and Logan weren’t together. And she didn’t relish trying to keep her virus-laden body from accidentally brushing against his for four long days. But he could have asked.
*****
They’d been on the road for a few hours, silence pretty much reigning in the car. They’d managed to get through the outer Seattle checkpoint with little fuss. And since no one was really hungry and they all had different tastes in music, there was nothing to provide a distraction. But finally Alec spoke up into the silence.
"So tell us about this cousin of yours," he suggested to Logan. "The one you idolized so much."
Logan glanced at the younger male sitting in the passenger’s seat, wondering if the interest was genuine or if Alec was just reaching for anything to stave off his boredom. But the ingenuous look back that he received convinced him to answer.
"You mean Buffy? Oh, she was great."
*Note- for those who are unaware, linguists are those that study languages. Polyglots are those that speak many languages. (There! A day isn’t wasted if you’ve learned something new!)
Chapter Five
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