Stoic
by
Kel
Disclaimer: Okay, here goes. I don't claim any ownership to Dark Angel, and I don't make any profit from this fiction. But there are a few things here I DO own . . . I own any characterizations that were not present in the series itself. I own Moren, but he's in no way integral to this fic . . . I own the plotline . . . blah blah woof woof, you get my drift.
Note: This is the fic I mentioned in Arcanum: Verisimilitude. Oh, and also, it's my first serious Zane or Jondy fic, so feedback would be much appreciated.
Warning: If character death gives you a heart attack or something like that, you might want to skip this fic. Also, this fic is more violent than my previous fics, not due to amount of fighting, but more due to mood and tone and description.
The tearing pain kept his movements stiff and unsteady, but he couldn't stop – not until it was all gone.
He was soaked in sweat and blood and tears, and covered in layers of dirt and grime. His back was on fire, his exposed wound pulling and straining in the open air. His head was light and pounding. Spots swam in his vision. It hurt to breathe. His arms felt like lead from the constant digging, from the fight, and from the loss of blood; but he couldn't stop.
Not until it was all gone.
Or until he collapsed and didn't get up again. A memory of the face in this early grave told him that would be more likely.
How could he possibly forget? The anger, the hatred, the pain. He couldn't. Not ever. All he could do was bury it. Bury the pain, the terror, the feeling that he'd never be clean again – the body. He could make sure the others never saw. He could make sure that they never had to share his burden of knowing.
How would they look at him, if they did find out? He couldn't help but wonder, as he packed the dirt on the unhallowed ground. The air was cold, the ground was cold, he was cold. The shovel was a dead weight in his hands. It didn't matter that he had been attacked. It didn't matter that it was kill or be killed. It didn't matter that he thought maybe it should have been him being buried. Maybe it would have been easier that way.
But it would never be easier; never be better.
Zane shivered, sweat rolling down his neck.
He might as well have murdered his own brother.
This was it.
She again compared the street signs around her to the map she remembered. It was almost too good to be true.
She couldn't help but grin. It was true.
She refused to think about the circumstances leading to her presence outside the dilapidated building that someone called home. Thinking about it would only hurt, and here was meant for happiness.
She wondered briefly if she might play a game. A little mystery; a little game of cat and mouse. The cat being, of course, him. The mouse being a memory. It could work, for a little while. They hadn't seen each other in years, after all. It could even be fun.
But she dismissed the idea. She wasn't much for games. They were a waste of her time; and her time was important to her, now that it was her own. Why put off the joy on his face, when he realized who stood outside his door?
She'd seen it, that joy. Syl had worn it when she'd shown up at her place two weeks ago. Moren had exploded with it when he'd come home to find her killing time in his living room with his weights two months ago. Tinga had been surprised by it when they'd run into each other three years ago, outside a diner in Portland.
Jondy had been surprised with joy that day, too. It hadn't been a mission, then. Just a burst of luck.
Lady Luck hadn't been kind to the escapees of '09 since then, but Jondy refused to think about that right now. She didn't need any ugly, dark clouds hanging over her meeting with Zane. It had been almost twelve years since she'd seen him. Twelve years too long.
She strolled into the building and up to the front desk. The apartment building's manager sat behind the desk on a beat-up stool, rifling through some files and facing away from her. She leaned silently over the desk, and craned her neck to have a glance at his computer monitor, which displayed the building's tenants.
An elderly, pajama-clad man at the candy vending machine across the room gave her a curious stare as she moved away silently.
Second floor. Room 205. Jondy gave a bittersweet smile as she walked to the stairs. Zack would've had a fit.
Never having had much by way of patience, she checked to make sure all backs were turned and took the stairs three at a time. She slowed only when she stood outside his door, giving a nervous-giddy chuckle and smoothing her wavy copper hair behind her ears.
She bounced lightly on her feet, in a futile effort to burn a little of her excited energy, then knocked on the door.
After a few moments of silence, she tested the knob. It turned easily in her hand.
But it wasn't until she pushed the door open, and it crunched and slid over broken glass, that it occurred to her that something was wrong.
The room that uncloaked itself before her was a cesspool of chaos and disorder. Furniture overturned, appliances ripped from their places, the floor littered with dirty clothes and broken glass.
Several untouched meals sat rotting on their plates on a table in the middle of the room. Opposite from the sole chair at the table, two platefuls lay upside-down on the floor.
She could see it play out. The sun rose, and his stomach rumbled with hunger. He made himself some food, sat down. He might not have even known what he was going to eat; he didn't care.
There was no room for his plate in front of him, so he shoved last night's uneaten supper away. Her gaze panned across the table as the sea of meals scraped across it, plates clinking against each other, forks dropping their loads in the fray. A crash and a splatter as a far plate toppled over the edge.
Jondy jumped, even though the room was empty, and the plates hadn't moved in the Blue Lady knew how long. The eyes in her mind watched as he lay the latest plate down, not even flinching at the cacophony in the dead silent room. Then, without word or warning, he pushed his chair out and walked away, not taking a single bite. He wasn't hungry anymore.
She wasn't smiling anymore.
"Zane?" she called, her voice trembling. The disarray she could almost deal with, but the table instilled in her a strong sense of wrongness. It was the passage of time, twisted, perverted, and dissected, then laid out not in numbers and dates, but in meals. She moved to explore the rest of the apartment; she couldn't look at it for one more second.
She found him in the bedroom, sitting in the middle of the crumpled sheets with his back to her. A thin, ratty blanket was draped over his shoulders; presumably a futile effort to guard against the chill in the room, which smelled of blood – both old and new.
"Zane?" she whispered again.
There was a moment before either of them made a sound. The air felt thick, like cold molasses.
"I was hoping you'd think I wasn't here and leave."
Jondy couldn't restrain her shudder. His voice was cold, hard, and empty - but at the same time soft, broken. Most of all distant. Like he really wasn't there.
She tried to say that she was used to letting herself in when no one was home. Clear the tension a little, maybe. The words hit a wall in her throat.
She moved to him instead; afraid to touch him and afraid not to.
X5-210 was, by nature, someone who ran. She had run from Manticore, she had run from Max when she had fallen through the ice, and she wanted to run now. Back to the table, maybe. Anywhere but where she was.
But right now she was just as afraid of running as of staying. What would happen to him then? What had already happened?
A shot, and she dove to the ground.
She didn't mind training with live ammunition. It was efficient. If you had a weapon, you were more threatening to the enemy. You could take them out with greater ease – which was both your advantage and their fear.
Fear kept people in check. That was why she couldn't let herself be afraid – and another reason she didn't mind guns. She wasn't afraid.
The others were; some of them anyway.
Max didn't like them. Brin cowered when one came close to pointing at her. Moren was afraid of being hit, because if you were hit, you were weakened. Krit was afraid his brothers and sisters would be shot.
Zack wasn't afraid of anything, and Jondy didn't mind guns.
At least, she didn't before. Not until she watched Zane fall next to her. She didn't know how he felt about guns, but she knew what he felt for bullets.
What all of them did.
Pain.
She hissed out his name, scrambling to his aid, staying low to the ground.
His jaw was clenched, even as a red stain blossomed on his jacket just below his collarbone.
Jondy was afraid now. It took her a moment to remember that their hearts were on the other side, and that even if they hadn't been, his wouldn't have been hit.
She pressed her hand to the wound and felt the blood seep slowly past her fingers as a tear leaked from his eye. He kept his jaw clenched, his eyes front, and his limbs still. He fought to be brave, even though his eyes gave him away.
It hurt.
And, just as she did, he could try not to be afraid. But he was.
That was what they were trained to do, hide their emotions. The thing with Zane was that he could never seem to make it work, but even still he always tried.
"Why are you here?"
It was strange to hear him like this. The unnaturalness of it made her skin crawl. She had known Zane in the most significant, formative years of his life. She'd seen him through what he had of a childhood; she had grown up right alongside him. The ice that choked his voice just wasn't Zane.
He'd never been able to pull off cold.
"We can't just shoot at them – they're our unit!"
Zane was being disobedient again. Didn't he understand? This was mission time. Krit, Syl, Jace, Tinga, Moren and the others weren't the unit right now. This was the field – their unit was different. The objective was to win, and the others were the enemy.
Zack had ordered him to take up a sniper position in the trees. Jondy didn't want her family hurt, she knew that none of them did. But if they didn't put 110 into carrying out their mission, then more of them would wind up being hurt; being punished.
He didn't even have to kill the others, just a shot to the leg or something else that would slow them down. Soon, they would be pinned down by the approaching team. They needed an advantage, and Zane's precision could be just that.
If he would stop acting like a 'nomlie.
"Soldier, you have been given a direct order . . ."
They didn't have time for this, Jondy knew, even as she stopped listening to Zack's berating. She scared herself with her own thoughts and actions, sometimes. If Zack wanted Zane to listen, why didn't he just hit him? Knock out a few teeth, or break a rib – something!
They all knew what happened when Zane got hurt. He didn't scream, or yell, or get mad. He'd clench his jaw, and maintain eyes front. Even if his eyes were red and streaming and he was shaking with pain, and his voice was trembling and breaking. He tried to be hard, even if you could see he was soft.
And yes, he'd fight to protect himself – to protect any one of them – but once he was knocked down a little, his will left him. Maybe he hoped someone would order him to stop feeling.
When Zane got hurt, he got obedient. So hurt him a little, she silently urged Zack.
How could a person change so much? Even after spending half of her life outside Manticore, Jondy still felt the same. She still knew who she was, and every now and then she still hated herself. The '09ers, from what she had seen, were all solid in who they were.
They adapted well, but it wasn't in their nature to change.
But this Zane was certainly different. What could have done this to him?
"Are you gonna stand there all day, or are you gonna answer my question?" He was getting angry now. Zane never got angry – not at his family.
"I, uh," Jondy cleared her throat, wincing. "I was doing the rounds." She'd taken over the contact number after the raid on Manticore. "You know, uh, checking up on everybody . . . everybody who's left."
She could almost feel the air snap taught with the muscles in his shoulders. "What do you mean?" His voice trembled slightly, fearful but laced with disbelief.
"Ben, Tinga, Brin . . . Zack . . ." She didn't know what to do, with him in his current state. She placed her left hand gently on his back, a sign of comfort. He jerked away from her as if her touch were a blast of flame.
As he moved, the blanket fell from his shoulders, and Jondy was too slow to repress her gasp. "God – Zane, what happened!"
He could see where this was going. He would keep his sullen demeanor, she would ask questions, and she wouldn't stop asking. He'd tell her, eventually, and then what? Poison. She'd look at him like he was poison.
He didn't doubt that she would be right, if that's what she thought. And she would. Jondy often managed to think the cruel thoughts, even if she didn't want to – if she didn't admit that she wanted to.
She used to tell him the things that she thought of. As a child, she'd said that Ben was a psycho. That had been right on the money. She'd told him she sometimes worried that Zack would put Max's life ahead of any one of theirs; maybe even all of theirs. Close enough – Zack was supposed to protect them. He'd killed himself for Max. Even seeing her at her strongest moments, Jondy would say that Brin was weak and afraid. Brin had given in to Manticore.
Jondy was like a witch. That's what he realized, when he'd first read Shakespeare's "Macbeth." She said things, and they came true. Maybe she could foretell things, or maybe just the words spawning in her mind made them happen.
But if she thought that Zane was poison, she would be right. Predicting the future, guessing the past or the present – she was always right.
So he made a decision. He couldn't let her do that to him. He couldn't let himself be what he might already have been. He couldn't stand under the weight of what he had done.
He grimaced, forcing himself to look somewhat ashamed and embarrassed. "I was attacked."
Maybe she was too scared to notice his lie of omission, or maybe she was losing her touch. She bought the act, practically sank her teeth into it for a life line.
It was an X5. He considers us traitors, I guess. Said I'd burn in hell. Nervous chuckle. Kicked my ass pretty good, then ran off. Zane was the victim – the poor, sad, kicked puppy. I couldn't really clean it well . . . Can't reach behind my back, you know? She was puddy in his hands.
So she bandaged up the deep gash in his back. Told him the others were doing fine. Asked why the place smelled like dog. Felt bad when he told her that he'd had one, Kaz, but had brought her to the animal shelter – afraid that he might be attacked again someday and she'd get hurt.
They both avoided the more pressing evidence that indicated undertones that his story didn't explain. He couldn't believe how easy this was.
Bury it. Just bury it all.
But he discovered that, in the dark of his restless sleep, nothing stayed buried.
Night was just beginning to fall as Zane prowled the streets. He wondered sometimes, if his brothers and sisters shared his affinity for darkness. He didn't see any of them much, especially with Zack now gone. Being together was as much of a risk as a luxury.
He had never asked them about the dark. He supposed he didn't have to. They were feline, they were shadow. They were transgenic; they belonged to the night. They owned the night.
He wondered what it would be like – to dissipate, to float where starlight and streetlight could not reach. He wondered what it would be like to stop trying to live and just be. He wondered what it would be like to fly, and to not have to worry about being felled by tazers and guns.
He could jump higher than any normal human being; that would have to do. A grin overtook his features, and it was the night's as well. He had spent half of his life blending into the shadows. He would not fall.
But it was the shadows that stole his grin from him. A chill crawled up his spine. He wasn't alone; he was being followed. His stomach tied itself in dreadful knots of foresight.
He stopped in his tracks, shoulders tensing. There was no sound – but he knew that was not because there was nothing to hear. There was something . . . wrong. The darkness . . . his domain . . . held an interloper.
Interloper.
He heard nothing.
And then, a flurry of motion from behind.
Operating on pure instinct and adrenaline, Zane ducked and dodged to the right. Too slow. A path of flame blazed from his right lower back to his left shoulder. He leaped, with inhuman speed, and caught his assailant between the shoulder blades with a heavy boot, as he lost his balance and stumbled past. Somewhere in the back of his mind, as he dropped lithely to the ground, Zane noted that the attacker was right-handed.
Then all thoughts flew from his mind. All fear, all pain, all darkness. The attacker faced him, and for a moment, Zane allowed himself to grin.
The Zane who dreamed in the present grimaced. He knew what was coming, even if his nightmare counterpart was clueless.
"Krit!"
Zane relaxed. Happy. Carefree.
Then, confusion punched a hole in his ignorant joy. It was probably what saved his life.
"What are you–"
The man before him brandished the deadly knife – which dripped, even now, with Zane's blood – and lunged once more, unleashing a savage snarl.
His opponent was fast; very fast. Zane had to struggle just to keep out of reach. He managed, somehow, to knock the blade from – his brother's? – grasp, and the two of them locked in a deadly dance of hand to hand combat.
They shared a common strength, but their match was an uneven one.
Something was wrong with Krit, that was for sure, but it didn't affect his speed or his cunning. If anything, it enhanced them. He found openings in Zane's defenses before Zane even knew they were there; he delivered hit after hit with brutal force.
Zane hit the ground, blood splattering from his split lip and saturating the back of his denim jacket. For the first time in a long time, he found himself short of breath. "Krit . . ." he gasped, "Why are you–"
But his words only seemed to further enrage his assailant.
Krit kicked out at Zane, hooking his foot under Zane's ribs with a sickening crack and flipping him in the air.
When he hit the ground again, Zane flipped himself to his feet. He was slow and spent, but he moved as fast as he could. He had no other choice.
Krit's bloodlust was insatiable. He tore after Zane like a rabid animal, fangs bared, claws hooked. Zane fell beneath his weight like a rag doll; head bouncing off the cracked pavement, stars bursting in his vision.
Krit punched him in the face, and the stars began to lose coherence and meld together. Krit hit him again. And again. Drawing back his fist for a final blow, Krit finally spoke, calmly and coldly – but when he did, Zane thought he heard a distinctive, uncharacteristic quality in his voice. Maybe he was hallucinating. "You'll burn in hell for what you did, traitor."
Summoning the last of his dying strength, Zane flipped him off. There was no time for thought; he was all out of time.
A flash of light off steel, and he seized the knife. He surged after his hunter; now his prey, and buried the blade to its hilt. He found he couldn't pull it free; the tip was lodged in the pavement. Either the blade was strong or the pavement was cracked, it didn't matter.
Krit gave a shocked, almost-gasp, as his body squirmed and writhed around the unwelcome intrusion of the steel, which crossed his throat at a sickeningly perfect ninety degrees; it was just barely to the side of severing his spinal cord. Crouched on Krit's right, his hand still on the hilt of the knife, all the blood drained from Zane's face. He felt the torn flesh grab and pull at the steel underneath the side of his hand as Krit struggled and blood soaked past the wound.
Their eyes met. "Krit?" Zane whimpered, unable to comprehend the position they were in.
His stomach flip-flopped as he watched Krit's face. Shock morphed to anger, which melted to pain . . . and then Krit was smiling – grinning to be precise. Krit's body shook, rasping laughter squeezing its way past his half-ruined windpipe.
At that moment, more strongly than ever, Zane got the sense that he had no idea who he was looking at. All he knew, was that more than Lydecker, more than Manticore, more than the 'nomlies, more than anything before in his life, that laughter terrified him.
Looking in those cold, sparkling eyes; seeing those straight, perfect teeth, bared in a bloodstained grin; hearing the demented rasps of a man drowning in his own blood, Zane felt something inside of himself snap.
With a roar that echoed off the buildings around them, Zane wrenched the blade to his right, the tip scraping to the left; out of the pavement for a final deathblow. Only then could he release his grip.
A determination that was his only hold on sanity made Zane roll the body over. The beginning of the barcode was torn in halves, and the whole of it was concealed with blood. Becoming desperate now, he wiped and rubbed the skin frantically, until he could make out the last three numbers.
472.
Not 471. Not Krit.
Not relieved, not horrified; no longer anything at all, Zane allowed himself to collapse on his back in the growing pool of blood next to the corpse.
On the blade and in their open wounds, their blood mingled.
Somewhere far below the gutters into which the red water dripped, Zane thought he might have heard the 'nomlies laughing, their deranged cries choking the very shadows in which they hid their grotesque faces.
Blood brothers.
Exhaustion, his saving grace, kept him from laughing too.
"You're not telling me something." The words that woke him from his memory-sleep.
Jondy was staring down at him where he lay in his bed, soaked in sweat. She sat down next to him, her coppery locks surrounding her face like sun rays, from his vantage point in his own private darkness.
"Zane, what happened to you?" she asked softly, tears shining in her crystal blue eyes. She gently brushed a stray strand of hair from his forehead.
"I told you," he snapped. She watched the cages slam shut behind his eyes.
"Zane . . ." she whispered pleadingly. Her tears slipped free.
"No," he growled. "Nothing happened." He sat up abruptly, shoving her out of his way and rising to his feet. His coldness morphed to anger as he moved.
Jondy jumped away from him, her heart trip-hammering.
He stormed across out of the room, grabbing his coat from the couch and shoving it on over his tank top and sweat pants as he headed to the door. He yanked it open and walked out, forgetting his shoes in his wordless haste.
"Zane!" Jondy called after him, blurring to catch up.
Out in the hallway he paused, but kept his back to her. The silence was thick and heavy. "I'm going for a walk." It was meant to come out harshly, but the heat wouldn't come to his voice. He left.
Perplexed, scared, and wondering what the hell she should do, Jondy stood in the doorway until he was long gone. She waited – for days she waited for him to return.
He didn't.
It hurt her. He knew it would. But he couldn't have stayed any longer, not with his guilty insides eating at him as they were. Every second she looked at him, he risked telling her.
Once he was far from home, he stopped at a payphone. Taking a deep breath, he picked up the receiver and grabbed some loose change from his coat pocket. He slipped it in the phone and dialed the number with shaking hands.
The standard greeting came on, and he waited for his chance to speak. "I . . . I'm sorry," he whispered. Maybe he was talking to Jondy. Maybe he was talking to Krit – 472, even. Or maybe, he was talking to himself. To the piece of him that had bled out and been buried in the grave he had dug himself.
As he walked away, he noticed how cold the ground was beneath his feet. Darkness, cold – he belonged to them both. This didn't matter; he owned them as well. So he just kept walking.
And he wouldn't stop until it was all gone.
End.