Title: Dream Within
Author: Restive Nature (aka Bavite)
Rated: NC-17
Disclaimer: All characters within this fiction are the property of Cameron/ Eglee. I just like to play with them.
Timeline: Six weeks after FN.
Pairing M/A
Summary: An unexpected accident causes Max to think about the future in a new way.
Dedicated to Lyra, who was not only my first reviewer at NWP, but also my 100th!!!!! Thank you so much sweetie!
Chapter Twenty
Healing The Bond
Max came back to consciousness slowly. At first, she was swimming in darkness. Sound the only sensation to filter through her being. Voices were murmuring, one familiar the other not quite. Max centered on the familiar voice, somewhat groggily. It took only a moment for her to realize that it was Original Cindy. Once she realized that, her world began to right itself more rapidly. She blinked her eyes open to find that she was still slightly adrift in the vertigo that had claimed her before. She took a deep breath, willing the room to stop spinning. Her eyes fluttered as she carefully turned her head to realize that Cindy was perched on the floor, cradling Max’s head in her lap. She was telling the other voice not to call the ambulance.
"O.C.?" she croaked out. Cindy’s head snapped back around to contemplate her friend.
"Damn girl," Cindy got out in a rush. "Y’all had me scared for a minute there. You okay?"
"Yeah," Max answered slowly. "I fainted?" O.C. nodded her head.
"Ma’am?" the other voice interrupted. Max turned her gaze upon the other voice. It was the salesgirl. "Do you want me to call for an ambulance?"
Max shook her head slightly, wary of any lingering pain that might accompany the movement, but there was none. "I called Alec," OC informed her, then turned to the salesgirl. "Her husband," she clarified. The woman nodded and backed off a discreet few inches.
"Let me up," Max urged. Cindy contemplated her friend for a moment then nodded. She remained still while Max pulled herself upright. Max pulled her legs underneath her, frowning at the feel of the material tugging at her legs. She realized then that she was still wearing the blue dress she’d tried on. Max came to her feet, feeling decidedly ungainly as she took stock of her physical condition. The dizziness had faded, her head didn’t hurt, and all her limbs were in working order. And she seemed to remember the last few weeks. At least she hadn’t lost that, even though the previous months still seemed to be gone but for a few memories she’d already recalled. She rubbed one hand over her brow and glanced down at the dress again. "I’m so sorry," she murmured to the salesgirl, but the woman was already waving it off.
"It’s no problem," she assured her customer. "As long as you are all right." Max nodded slowly.
"I should probably change out of it," Max decided.
"Do you want to wait until Alec gets here?" Cindy asked, a modicum of concern still tingeing her voice. Max shook her head, moving towards the cubicle that held her street clothes. "Will you be okay sugah?"
"I’ll be fine O.C.," Max assured her. "I just want to change and go home." Cindy nodded, letting out a deep sigh. Max could easily read the apprehension in her friend’s eyes. She was a little unnerved herself. But given the reason behind her fainting spell, which she was desperately trying to repress for the moment, it was a completely understandable reaction of her body. She slipped into the cubicle, pressing the door shut behind her. She ignored the mirror, not wanting to yet confront her own haunted features and instead concentrated on lowering the zipper of the elegant gown.
Just as she was pulling on her boots, she heard her husband’s slightly frantic voice calling her name. Cindy called him into the back room. She made sure that the dress was hung properly and turned to open the small door. She stepped out, right into Alec’s embrace. "Oomph, Alec, need to breathe!" she gasped out. Alec, chagrined, stepped back a little, loosening his grip but not letting her go entirely.
"Sorry," he apologized quickly. He tilted his head to the side as he contemplated her. "What happened? Cindy said you fainted." Max nodded, unable to voice the rest of her mini ordeal and settled for resting her head on his shoulder. His hand came up to cradle it gently as he addressed his main concern. "Did you hit your head or anything?"
"Nah," Cindy broke in. "Original caught her afore she went down all the way." Max could feel Alec nodding before he turned his attention back to her.
"Max? Baby?" he spoke softly, the distress and worry over her clear in his eyes.
"Can we just go home Alec?" she asked in a small voice.
"Of course," he acquiesced immediately. Max pulled away from him and turned to her friend.
"Sorry about this," she mumbled. Cindy was already shaking her head.
"Not a problem," her friend asserted, reaching to give the other girl a hug, which was accepted gratefully. "You just make sure and take care o’ yourself boo." Max nodded. She stepped back, linking hands with Alec as they made their way out of the changing area. Max turned back with a small grin at the doorway.
"Oh Cin?" she smiled as O.C.’s head came up. "Get it. Daphne will love it." Laughter erupted from the black woman.
"Aiight, on wit you two," Cindy instructed, waving them away.
Alec held his silence until they were seated in the car. Max waited for him to start it only to find that he’d turned in his seat to face her. Max bit her lip and held back a sigh. She should have known that he’d be unwilling to leave this for long, just like everything else. "What really happened?" he asked quietly.
There was no point in her hiding it, because she did intend to ask him about what she had seen. She just didn’t want to have to face it yet. "Cindy and I were trying on dresses," she began and Alec nodded. He’d figured that out already, but held his tongue. "I had picked out two that I liked. The second one… it reminded me of my wedding dress." His eyes widened slightly, making him look excited, yet apprehensive.
"Did you… remember?" he asked, almost squirming in his need to know. She shook her head.
"Not really," she admitted. "Just had these little flashes of the wedding and the reception… and after."
His lips curled up in a grin. "After? You mean our honeymoon, such as it was?" She shook her head again, the corner of her mouth turning up a bit.
"No, I mean right after the reception," she clarified, her face dropping once again as those dark eyes flashed before her again. "Can we please just go Alec?" she pleaded tiredly. Alec stared at her, trying to recall what might have made her upset enough to faint over the memory. And it seemed to suddenly come to him.
"Damn!" he swore softly. He straightened in his seat and inserted the key in the ignition. "Home is probably the best place for us right now." Max eyed him, wondering at his sudden turnabout. He obviously knew that she was thinking about Tinga and he knew why she was upset about it. But with the memory was a familiar urge to push the problem from her mind. The inability to deal with it in the moment it occurred. Max leaned her head against the slightly cool window, pondering this. She remembered feeling this way before. It was how she’d felt with Logan, dealing with the virus. There were some days when she couldn’t be around him, because neither one had the answer. She couldn’t deal with the uncertainty between them. And she felt like that now. She wanted answers. But she wanted to hold off the darkness for just a little while longer, knowing that the imminent information would hallmark another large change in her life. Her chaotic thoughts swirled around her mind for the entire drive. And Alec’s uncharacteristic silence only plagued those thoughts further; keeping her occupied until they arrived at TC.
Their progress was halted only briefly by a stop at headquarters to let Jiminy know that they wouldn’t be returning to work. They both wore deliberately deceptive carefree smiles and as they left, Max could hear the suggestive comments being bandied back and forth good-naturedly about the leaders. Normally she would have gotten huffy, but better they were gossiping over that than over Max’s memory problems. She wondered briefly if she wouldn’t have been better off to announce her condition to her people, but instinct had served her well in the distant past. And she trusted that instinct now that told her to keep this on the down low. Alec knew and understood, and that was all that was important.
Max went straight to the couch as soon as she reached their abode, Alec right behind her. She made herself as comfortable as possible, which wasn’t very. Her eyes jumped to the bookcase, where their wedding album rested. In her mind she rapidly went over the pictures she’d rifled through in the pages, but none of them contained Tinga. But that made sense, because she’d seen her sister after they’d left the reception. She put a hand to her forehead again, willing the questions to stop for just a moment as she unconsciously drifted towards her husband.
Alec’s arm came up around her shoulders as he rubbed soothingly at her free hand. "What exactly did you remember Maxie?" he questioned gently. Max’s hand dropped away and she found herself staring at his neck.
"Like I said before," she began slowly, trying to order the sequence of memories, "the wedding, the people who were there. Then the reception just bits and flashes. And then we left… and she was there." There was silence for a moment as they both digested her words. Alec pulled her in a little tighter.
"It wasn’t Tinga baby," he whispered softly to her. Max’s head came up, her eyes wide. "That was X5-657, Tinga’s clone."
"Her clone?" Max choked out, her senses reeling slightly. "Jesus! How many of us were there?" she demanded hotly. Alec chuckled humorlessly. She tried to wrap her mind around this new revelation. It hadn’t been Tinga. Her sister was truly dead. She’d been dead when Max had cradled Tinga in her arms in the missile silo complex so very long ago. And if there were a God, Manticore wouldn’t have desecrated her body. But with the example they had shown her with Zack, there was no guarantee there.
"We found that out a while ago," Alec’s voice brought her back to the moment.
"Found out what?" she asked, still a little startled.
"Everyone had or was a clone," Alec shrugged. Max pulled away from him. He looked a little relieved to be discussing something of a now still personal nature, but on a lesser scale.
"Huh? What does that mean exactly?"
"Sorry, everyone in the X5 series," Alec continued. Max gaped at him. Alec rolled his eyes slightly and pushed her jaw shut. "Yeah, that’s about the same reaction you had the first time.
"How did we figure that out?" Max demanded.
"Just general consensus," Alec shrugged. "A bunch of us got together and we were comparing stories. You were there and whenever a designation came up that was close to one of your siblings, you’d say so. Pretty soon we’d accounted for clones of almost half your unit."
"What about the rest?" she asked quietly, hesitantly.
"Well, we didn’t know everyone in Manticore, obviously," he sighed. "So Logan looked into it. Managed to find some of the older program records."
"What’d they say?" Max queried. She was interested in discovering what else Logan might have discovered, but she could check into that later.
"Well apparently, it wasn’t until the X5 series that they were able to perform the cloning," Alec explained. "So of course, Manticore figured they’d get more bang out of their buck if they doubled all the viable embryos. But while they’d improved the cloning, it didn’t prevent genetic drifting."
"So some of the embryos were fallible," Max concluded. Alec nodded a look of disgust crossing his face. It wasn’t a pleasant subject for either of them.
"Some of them made it to birth and more defects were discovered," Alec went on morosely. "Whatever couldn’t be fixed, was terminated. Others developed defects down the road and were dealt with then." Max could hear the coldness creeping into his voice and immediately wormed her way back into his embrace. He smiled down at her, knowing what she was at, but Max didn’t care. Just as she had come to rely on the comfort and strength he gave her, she knew that he would appreciate it too. There was a moment of silence before Max nudged him gently, prompting him to continue. "From what you’d said about your unit’s designations, it looks like all the surviving twins, the lower numbers were put into one unit. And the rest…"
"What happened to them?"
"From what we could figure, they were scattered into other units," Alec shrugged. "No more than two twins of yours per unit and they tried to put us in with clones whose lower designation twins didn’t survive."
"How could they do that?" Max demanded, slightly outraged. "I mean without us recognizing each other?"
"There were a lot of early deaths Maxie," Alec sighed. "When we finally saw some numbers, all of us, well it was a shock, to say the least." Max nodded slowly, ingesting this information. But then another thought occurred to her.
"Wait, this doesn’t make any sense," she protested, sitting up again. His brow furrowed as her train of thought veered from a different path than his. "Lydecker," she said simply.
"What about him?" Alec asked warily.
"He was searching for us all those years," Max recounted, her eyes thoughtful. "But we were at an age where our looks were changing rapidly, filling out. Why didn’t he use our clones?" Alec’s eyes widened a little before he burst out laughing.
"Of all the stupid ass things," he grunted. Max chuckled as well. Such a simple thing, something she or Alec would have done, yet it hadn’t occurred to the ordinary soldiers at all. Or had it?
"I mean, the first time we encountered each other, at the genetics convention, he had no idea who I was," Max shook her head, amazed that the Colonel hadn’t used every single resource at his fingertips.
"Yeah, well Lydecker was busted down pretty heavily," Alec surmised. "There were murmurings that it wasn’t entirely the fault of your unit that you ran. Lydecker was blamed for encouraging forward thinking with you guys. He was prohibited from having contact with the rest of the units in case that was true."
"Really?" Max was skeptical. She’d known how important the transgenics were to Lydecker. But when she thought really hard about it, she could never remember a time when he’d talked about any other units. He was always and only concerned about his "kids". Her unit. They were his ticket to redemption within Manticore she realized. He got them back; he’d get back a measure of control. She turned to Alec to say so, but there was a glazed look to his eyes that puzzled and honestly, worried her a little. She rested her hand on his cheek, but it was as if he didn’t see her. "Alec," she said softly, not wanting to startle him.
"He was there," Alec breathed out heavily and he seemed to snap back to himself. He glanced down at her. "When I was thrown into Psy-ops," his voice faltered just a tiny tremor, "when Ben…"
"When Ben was killing?" Max clarified with a wince. He nodded. "Lydecker was there?"
"I didn’t really remember until now," Alec’s jaw was clenched. "The bastard came in when I was strapped down…" Max could see the hint of anguish written more clearly than he would have liked in his eyes. "He just stood there and looked at me." Max pulled him towards her, wrapping her arms around her. It was a strange little teeter-totter they had going, back and forth between the two of them.
"Oh God," she murmured. "That’s probably how he found Tinga so easily in Portland," she realized. "I mean how many bakeries would they have checked? He probably pulled in all the twins and looked at them after he’d gotten Zack. He probably knew from 657 what Tinga looked like, shown her picture to all his soldiers. Everyone else had gotten out but her."
"Rianne," Alec said suddenly. Max frowned at him. "657’s name. It was Rianne." Max nodded slowly until the meaning of those words sank in.
"What do you mean ‘was’?"
"I’m sorry Maxie," he offered gently. "She’s dead."
"How?"
"White."
*****
Max paced the room for at least ten minutes, unable to sit still after that last revelation. Alec simply watched her, letting her work off the vibrating anger that had seized her. He seemed to understand her need to move. Max was getting violently upset. And since White was dead, and she’d sworn to herself that there was no more hitting Alec, she was at a loss as to how to resolve her anger. So she paced. Finally she halted and turned to her husband.
"How many?" she demanded in low, ugly tones. Alec ran a face over his tired face.
"How many what Max?"
"How many of our people did White get?" she demanded. There was no mistaking the cold flat look in his eyes.
"That we know of for up close kills?" Alec grunted rhetorically, but Max nodded anyway. "Seven. Remote, three. Suspected? Eleven."
"So we’ve lost almost two dozen people?" Max growled.
"More if you count all the ones before we made it to TC," Alec sighed. "CeCe, Biggs, Brain, all those that White captured that we weren’t able to get to…" he trailed off with a small shiver."
"And it wasn’t all White, was it?" Max lamented as she made her way back to the couch. She seated herself so that she could look at him. "Tell me about them Alec," she urged.
"Are you sure you want to hear this?" he demanded softly, his eyes searching.
"It doesn’t matter if I didn’t grow up with them," she explained quietly. "But they were my family, your family. I don’t want to hear about how they died. I want to hear how they lived. That they had at least a little freedom, before…" Alec bit at his lower lip and brushed away the tear clinging to her lashes and gave in. He held out his arm and Max snuggled in.
"There was Kit," he recounted, his voice laced with sadness. "She was an X6…"
*****
They had talked all afternoon. Alec telling her tales, Max asking questions. They laughed and cried. Well more Max cried a little and Alec held the sad look in his eyes. They finally broke to eat dinner at Alec’s insistence, though Max didn’t have much of an appetite. Afterwards, he’d pulled their wedding album from the bookcase and they cuddled together some more and went through the pictures. Alec pointed out some more of the people she didn’t recognize. And then she’d finally gotten up the nerve to ask about Tinga’s twin, Rianne. Alec had haltingly told her about Rianne’s arrival in TC just shortly before their wedding. Her anger was easily explained, as when Max had first caught sight of her back then, she’d called her Tinga. Rianne had set her straight and Alec figured that in Max’s disappointment, she’d been more than curt and standoffish with the new arrival. And it only fueled Rianne’s opinion that the ‘09ers were too full of themselves.
But her death was much more poignant that the rest of them. All Alec would say of that was that Rianne had died protecting Max from White. Max had been stunned to say the least. That a woman who hated her would willingly give her life to save her. It eased the ache in her heart that maybe Rianne was more like Tinga than she could have known. And that she’d had some semblance of her sister back in a very strange, distorted way.
They’d finally headed to bed. But Max couldn’t keep from going over the pain filled list of those that they had lost in her mind. And it wasn’t just those that had been killed, but those that had been damaged, if not physically, like Alec and Joshua, those that had been scarred inside from loss. Every one of them, living in TC had been touched in some way by it, whether they acknowledged it or not. Near midnight, Max was still tossing and turning a little, unable to slip into sleep as Alec finally had.
Max sat up eventually. The room was lit by moonlight filtering in. The thought preyed on her mind. That there was so much loss in the midst of their every day lives. And there wasn’t any way that she could fix that. She heard a small grunt and turned to see that Alec had kicked off the bed covers. A small grin took hold of her face. His face looked so boyish, in sleep. Her gaze flickered downwards. But the rest of him was oh so deliciously full-blooded male. Max felt a shiver run through her as she thought on just what he’d done with his body at various times. The strength in his fighting skills, the gentleness he held her with, making love to her.
And to her, it wasn’t that long ago that his touch had filled her with a different feeling. When his skin on hers set her senses to jangling in recognition. Not lust or anything of that nature, but just a moment where she felt the similarity between them. He was one of her own, in the same way she had been one of his. United in the pack of outcasts and freaks. She’d noticed it to a lesser degree with other transgenics. Like those kids she and Alec had rescued from White’s trap just after Manticore blew. Just something in her skin that called out family.
Max sighed softly, remembering her early wonderment over how her body had accepted Alec’s touch with pleasure, even when her mind was confused. Some part of her had remembered him. She glanced down at him again. Just like part of his body remembered the pain he’d endured even long after it had healed. Why he flinched unconsciously, immediately after making a smart remark to her. Why his hip was so sensitive to touch. Max frowned at that. At least he was starting to get over the flinching, but that was because he wasn’t expecting the blows anymore. They were both training themselves to get past that. But Max wondered if there was any way to get over the remembered pain that came from White.
It was so simple, that Max was ready to kick herself. Just as Alec had replaced his initial familiar touch with one of love, all Max had to do was replace the memory association with something better. And there was no better time to start than now.
She scooted down the bed, holding her breath. It would be much better if Alec would stay asleep for this. But she wouldn’t hold her breath that that would last long. When Max was curled against his legs, leaning her head against his thigh, she stole a glance up at him. He was still in his little dreamland. Max pursed her lips and thought a moment. She’d have to start off slow and simple. She let out a little huff of breath and there was no reaction. Max chewed at her lower lip. Then let out a purposeful gust over the taut skin of his hipbone. Still nothing. Encouraged at this, Max peppered kisses along his muscled thigh, moving upwards ever so slowly. The kisses were light, just barely there. But when she finally reached that one spot that drove him impossibly wild, she took more care.
Alec shifted beneath her in his sleep after she ghosted a kiss over the protruding bone and she looked up apprehensively. But there was a pleasant smile adorning his lips. She turned back to her mission, finding herself enjoying it almost as much as any other pleasure she could name. Her lips increased the pressure just slightly; the rest of her body attuned to his response. And so far the reaction was still favorable. Her fingers soon joined in, tracing the outline of his body. Max was enjoying herself enough that she couldn’t resist mimicking the movement with his other hip. Make his body realize that what was good for the goose was good for the gander. She almost laughed at that thought but held it in. But it was a valid idea. If it felt good on one side, then she’d teach the other side that it would be good too.
But as Max moved her lips back and forth between those two little spots, she felt his jutting erection pressed against her cheek. "Always ready," she giggled softly. "God I love you Alec." Since his body seemed so insistent on clamoring for her feminine attention, Max didn’t resist, letting her instinct on this guide her. She licked up the length of his cock with a little kiss at the tip, even as she kept her hands rubbing little circles over her hips. Alec moaned in his sleep, his hips jerking a little, but Max took it as a good sign when she saw the blissful look on his face.
She opened her mouth and drew him in, slowly working her way around the length of him. But as she continued to lick and suck, she found that she was starting to lose focus, her hand consistently returning to steady his erection. Finally she gave up and took him all the way in, the head of his penis touching the back of her throat. Her hands returned to caressing and soon she had to hold him down.
"God Maxie," he moaned and she glanced up at him, pleased to see his eyes fluttering awake. His hand came up to tangle in her hair. "Damn! I love this dream." She released him to let loose a giggle, pure joy flashing through her. He’d realize it wasn’t a dream soon enough, but hopefully, he wouldn’t notice her hands still pressed against him. With that in mind she smiled up seductively at him.
"Not a dream Alec," she whispered and bent her head back to him. He hissed as she once again swirled her tongue around him, her left hand moving to massage his more tender flesh. He almost whimpered when she brought her head up, poised at his tip, before thrusting down again, taking in as much as she could. She kept that up, keeping him on the brink as he writhed beneath her.
"Damn Max!" he gasped, his neck arched back. "Quit teasing!" She grinned around him and complied, taking him all the way, forcing her muscles to swallow around him as she sucked. The simple motion set him off and she could hear the string of curses murmured under his breath as he erupted in her mouth. She pulled back until only the tip remained in her mouth, swallowing convulsively as the hot liquid coated her wet cavernous mouth. And the whole while, he never even noticed the pressure she’d exerted on the damaged hip.
When she finally let him loose, Alec had one arm thrown over his eyes. Max chuckled and he suddenly threw his arm to the side and sat up, startling her a little. He hauled her up into his arms and kissed her thoroughly. When he pulled back, he cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Couldn’t sleep?" he asked cheekily. She shook her head. "And let me guess. You didn’t want me to sleep either?" She shook her head again.
"Oh you can sleep all you want to," she teased. "I can always have my wicked way with you."
"Yeah, any time baby," he teased right back. She shifted a little as she felt his penis starting to react again. She wiggled her hips, nudging it with her hip, seated on his lap as she was. But when he grunted, he didn’t seem pleased. It took her only a second to realize. "Oh your hip! Sorry!"
"It’s okay," he assured her quickly as the grimace faded. Max shook her head and pushed him back to recline against the pillows. She pushed off him and before he could protest had turned and thrown one leg over his thighs.
"Maybe you’d like it better if I sat this way," she suggested with a purr in her throat. He moaned in response as she moved suggestively over him.
"You know me," he grinned, making himself comfortable, propping his head up with his arms underneath so he could watch her. "I like it any way, any time."
"I know you do," she taunted, her head coming down to nip at his chest. She was extremely pleased with herself. She just scored a victory that he had no idea about. For now that he wasn’t paying close attention, she could touch him everywhere, the good outweighing the bad. And even if it took many more nights of work, it was a sacrifice she was oh so very willing to make. "I love you Alec."
"I love you too baby."
Chapter Twenty-one
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