TITLE: A New Sun
AUTHOR: Mystic25
EMAIL: [email protected]

RATING: PG

SUMMARY: A follow up to "To Feel the Sun is Worth the Price of Freedom" This time from Max's POV as she looks at the flag in "Freak Nation"

DISCLAIMER: James Cameron created a great series and these are his characters. I admit I am poor and I steal them, but I do it out of love:)

A/N: I wasn't going to write another piece after "To Feel the Sun.." but after some deliberation I decided to do this. And since this is Max's POV it's more 'colorful'

*****

"Let the rain come down and wash away my tears,
Let it fill my soul and drown my fears,
Let it shatter the walls for a new sun,
A new day has come"

~Celine Dion "A New Day Has Come"

*****

Sirens, blue red, blue, blur together their colors just beyond the fence. Police block us in en mass, holding us here, waiting to see what will come of this war that we have started.

They are waiting, not knowing our full capability or even why we have locked ourselves inside the walls of Terminal City, seeing it as a death sentence to our kind.

Our kind. For a long time now in my so far twenty years of life on this world I had know idea why in the hell I was created. Deck told us a million times back at Manticore that we were created to be soldiers, designed to be human weapons. But my brothers and sisters and I, we didn't want to be labeled with this ID so we busted out. And in doing so I lost that identity of who and what I was. That first day after the escape I didn't know where I belonged, or even if I did.

That was twelve years ago. Now I know for certain that I belong here, in this Pulse ridden world that I stumbled upon. A place that my big brother Zack tried to drag me away from a million times over, but I refused because it was my home, and I never had that before, not even with him and the others. We lived in a pseudo world at Manticore, being trained on the ways of the world but not the world itself. That was knowledge I had to learn on my own.

This run down mess of a city is home to me, and to hundreds of other transgenics like me who have suddenly been flushed out from their lives because of a panic.

A panic partly created by me. No one had to tell me that, Alec would make a joke of it, and Logan would not allow me to blame myself for the fate of others. But in spite of these things I know what my role in this was, I am not stupid. I didn't just fall off the transgenic truck yesterday.

That police officer knew it too; he told me that the fate of these people rests with me, because I initiated the crusade. I was the one who shouted out that I was through running and being shit scared into never having a real life.

A life was all I wanted after the escape, after the long line of abusive foster care and men who only wanted me for physical attributes. Two years ago I got a taste of that life when I broke into Logan's high-rise. He set me up big time, but it backfired on him. I could tell it by the way he had touched me that first night, wanting to find my Manticore brand on my neck, but their was more to that caress then a man who's only intentions were to gain knowledge. I felt it course through my veins and I was changed forever for it, Manticore training be damned.

They had prepped me to fight with soldiers, not this. Not some incredibly handsome, witty man with a stubborn streak longer then a non-stop trip from California to Hong Kong.

Touch, something that I took for granted has no been taken from me. No one could imagine the agonizing ache created from not being able to simply brush the hand of someone, how it feels like you're on the brink of ecstasy but then your lover pulls back at the last minute and doesn't allow you release. When Logan touched me today, it was with latex gloves, and he was again doing it to gain knowledge. But we had come a long way since that first night of uncertainty.

The hesitation was still there, but this time it had to do with this damn virus that was placed in me. I hate this bugger more then I hated Alec that first night for seeing that it did it's job, or Renfro for taunting me every night while I recovered in the infirmary. But unlike like them, this freak will not go away, it's like the damn Energizer Bunny on steroids. I'm so fuckin' tired of this thing screwing up our lives. Logan and I were so close once to finally being allowed a bit of peace.

Peace is what we want today. The others may not show it with their gun happy exteriors, but it's what they want as well. They just want to live and belong, they want to be accepted. They are as tired of running as I am.

I have wasted my whole life running from the damn black helicopters on my tail and have put enough lives on the line because of me. I just want it to end now, I want to be able to touch the man I love without being afraid that I'll kill him. I want to walk down the street without worrying if I'd have to fight from getting killed by loosers who decided to take the law into their own hands.

Logan reached over and grabbed my hand a few seconds ago, with his leather glove on of course. I squeeze it back, because confined or not I need this contact. My charade of being involved with Alec officially flew out the window after I saw Logan willing to take a bullet intended for me. I never fully gave up on the idea of being with him, even though I wanted to protect him from me. Zack would call it my 'moment of weakness' and he would be right. He is my weakness, and I know that if he had died today instead of CeCe I would beat myself up for all eternity for never telling him the truth that I wanted to tell him as he held me in the woods in Gillette or on that video feed a few days ago. Somewhere along the way of running and trying to survive in a world who doesn't want to say they made me I have fallen in love with this man, but for all my training and knowledge I never had the guts to tell him.

This virus has been one in the list of many convenient circumstances that allowed me the excuse not to act on my feelings. Don't get me wrong, I wish this virus to go to hell with Renfro and let me just touch Logan before I forget what it feels like. But with it here, I have my wall and with it in place I can rationalize my distance and not have to feel.

CeCe, I never really knew her much but I felt the connection. She was like me, she knew where she came from and she wasn't ashamed of it. We may be freaks to them, but at least we know who we are. We are soldiers, we fight as we were trained to do, hard, but we also friends, brothers, sisters, lovers, mothers. Janelle's baby was born during a heated fight, but she still stopped in her moves to cradle the precious life she had brought into the world. Despite how she came into the world the little X5 baby was the center of her mother's world in that moment.

That is something that the world does not want to see, that sense of normalcy. Because if they see us, the "enemy" doing and experiencing things that they do then we are not the freakish adversary, but become like them. If your enemy is like you then you lose the rationalization to fight them, it is our differences that start the wars, and without them war is just slaughter. I have seen too much slaughter already, and this is why I stand here.

I want it all to end, I want to wake up and not be afraid of being thrown into a lab and tortured. I want to be able to touch Logan without the gloves, go all over every inch of him in the darkness until even I am worn out. I want to stand on the beach of Puget Sound or anywhere and just see the sunset without being afraid of what enemy's the night will bring to me.

I want Alec to have been able to tell Rachel the truth about who he was and not risk his neck because of it, and have her be alive because even this cynical pain of a man has a heart and deserves the love of a woman.

I want my Tinga back, standing here with me fighting in this battle just like we did as kids. I want Zack here too, acting all hot headed, but showing how he was made a fighter. I want Brin to realize that she died for the wrong side.

I want the damn slime that lynched Fix to pay with hot poker castrations. And I want to send a message to the rest of them and tell them that we aren't going anywhere. We have gone places all our lives because of what we are and we have had enough. We are 100% made in America, and we have every right to be here, and who the hell suddenly gave them the right to decide what our fate is?

The officer was right; I do hold the lives of "my people" in my hands kind of like a Moses for the transgenic world. And Moses made it to the Promise Land. He had many set backs and struggles along the way, but they got there.

The sun rises over the high buildings in Terminal City. Joshua's flag flies overhead, a very fitting symbol of us, coming out of the dark and standing at the brink. The light is slow to come as the sun moves slowly in the sky, but on this day it seems brighter, a new sun rising from the blood and pain of those we lost like a phoenix coming up from the ashes.

And it reveals the squad cars lined up while they wait to see what the play will be. I couldn't tell them, because I don't really know, but I will go down fighting for whatever it is.

I exist world, and so do they, and we have given up enough for you, so now it's your turn.

So what's it gonna be?

*****

END

I enjoy writing 'mood pieces' because it gives me a chance to use expressive language. The song I referenced here is a very beautiful piece that I'm sure many of you heard.

R/R please and keep up the fight for DA.

peace