Welcome

[Max Guevara]

It had been a long damn day and instead of going home and straight to bed like she had originally planned to do at about noon, Max found herself on top of the Space Needle once again. It was odd. . .only Transgenics found their way up here and it was in this place that she had found Ben. It seemed so long ago and yet only like yesterday . . .the high place. She wanted to banish the memories from her mind but as she stood there, arms folded against her stomach and the black leather jacket keeping the nipping breeze off her skin, Max felt an obligation to remember. To remember him and what she had done in those woods. . .he had asked her to. Didn't that make a difference? She didn't think that it did. . .she had killed her brother. Although not a sibling by blood Ben had been a brother to her in every way that he could have been and she had snapped his neck. . .left him there for Manticore to find.

She often wondered what they had done to him, if anything. Had they let him rest in peace? Had he finally found what he had been searching for all the years of his life? Max liked to think so. She liked to think that he had found peace and love wherever he was, wherever he had gone. . .if anywhere. She knew that it was not beyond Manticore to bring back the dead. She remembered well what they had done to Zack after he had killed himself for her sake. How could she forget? So many memories. . .so many dead. She swallowed hard, glad that there was noone up here with her to see the weakness that sometimes found its way in beneath the shell of a warrior. It was there all the time, though. Beneath the surface and away from prying eyes.

The fear was constant. So many looked to her for answers and she was constantly afraid that she was leading them wrong, that they should find someone else. . .someone that had lived in their shoes for longer than she had. She had, after all, escaped the life of Hell that they had continued to live when she was nine. It didn't seem fair that they looked to her for answers but maybe that was why. Because she had been in the real world longer, knew the outside world as they could not. . .understood humans better. They needed a leader that knew both worlds and she could admit that was something she understood. Both worlds and yet, neither world. Things were so damned confusing. . .

She shifted on her feet, the city spread out below her like a glittering jewel in the night. Lights on still even at the late hour and she knew that many people would not find sleep on this night. Afraid of the transgenics, afraid of the unknown. . .afraid for no reason at all and yet every reason in the world. So confusing. . .Max sighed quietly and the sound was lost on the night breeze, carried away into nothing to disappear. She kind of wanted to do the same. Just drift away and disappear, away from all this, from the rumors that Manticore survived, that trouble was brewing beneath the surface of a pot already boiling. She didn't think that she could handle anymore complications. She knew she wouldn't have a choice.

Max sighed again and considered going home, going to bed like she knew that she should. Original Cindy would worry, wonder where she was. She might even call Alec and then he would come looking, searching, because that's what he did. She didn't want to disturb Alex's evening when there was no cause for alarm but these days there always seemed to be a cause for alarm. Max kicked a foot against the metal beneath her boots then turned to leave. . .and froze.

[Ben]

The ground was too safe, the voices too many...Eyes darting back and forth, the cool composure a veil for the thoughts that raged within his mind, he made no motion to conceal his power, his gift...It had been given, it had been used, and it would be used time and time again...

Lowering his body into a crouch, one hand pressed against the asphalt, he looked up toward the top, toward the sky, and a silhouetted figure hindered the moon. Raising a brow, he knew that profile and as his eyes darkened, a sinister grin curved his lips, if only for a moment before it faded. Pushing from the ground, Ben burst into the air, catching a rung of the ladder above him and swinging himself upward with practice and ease...

The High Place. It had all turned the same, each and every minaret of the world his playground to view those below him, beneath him...those that would fall to him someday, those that he had been brought back to render justice to...

One more leap and he landed soundlessly on the curved metal surface of the Space Needle, his suspicions confirmed as he saw her standing there, hair blowing in the wind, arms crossed tightly over her slender frame. He looked over her, his sister...And for a moment that none would ever see, the darkness faded from his eyes.

But they had brought him back...They had made him whole...And they had made him the essence of evil, putting their own black blood into his veins. Ah, but he knew none of that. He knew only the instinct, the desire that took over. He had fought and he had won...He had come back and there would be hell to pay.

Lowering his brows, he stood to his full height, his shadow stretching across the rusted surface. One step, then another brought him closer to her. Hands in his pockets, feet slightly apart as he waited, she turned and he smiled...

Just as he thought.

"Maxie...You look like you've seen a ghost..." he told her, the lingering innocence still crowding his voice, the mind of a man that the world destroyed when answers could not be found and faith had fled...

[Max Guevara]

She almost could have mistaken him for Alec but she knew that it was not. And she could not wrap her head around. . .She shook her head slowly and couldn't decide whether to take a step back, forward or to just stay put. She opted for the last one and set her feet apart while her mind reeled. The last time she had seen that face had been in the peace of death, in her arms while she had sobbed in the woods. . .how was it possible? But then. . .it was Manticore. Anything was possible with them because the damned corporation knew no limits, no boundaries. Nothing was sacred to them, not even death. And the fact that Ben was standing right in front of her was proof enough of that. He looked the same as he had before and now. . .now Max could feel something else that was different, below the surface, beneath what the eye could see.

Once upon a time he had been one of her closest friends, her brother. In the darkness of Manticore at night he had painted fantastic stories, stories meant to give her peace and protect her mind when nothing else could. His creation had been her saving grace, had given her strength that she carried with her to this day. Did he even know that? That he had kept her from falling into the brainwashed mindset? She didn't think that he did. And looking at him now, she didn't think that now was the best time to tell him. She was having a hard time reconciling the fact that it was Ben standing there a mere five feet away.

"Ben. . .you could say that," she finally said. "What are you doing here? How. . .?"

She didn't know how in the hell this was possible, or what Manticore might have done to him but she knew that she had to be careful. Surely having been gone for this long could not have done wonders to him and she could still see the tinge of darkness in his eyes that had been there before when they had battled in the woods, when she had looked upon him in this very place, inside the Space Needle. The High Place. . .Now she did take a slight step back, although she turned her body so that it was a step away from the ledge and him. Instinctive, she didn't know why she did but. . .it was the instinct of the cat within her.

[Ben]

Some part of him deep down wanted to walk up to her and envelop her in his arms, to feel her close to him, his sister from days gone by, but the rest...The rest was dark and confused, swirling within a whirlwind of crushed hopes and fading dreams.

"Well, you know how Home Sweet Home is, Maxie...They can do anything, even the irreversible, the raising of the dead."

His last words were clipped, but that was, in essence, what he had become...A man pardoned the natural course of death, raised by the tyrants that had created him, and unleashed on the world. A soldier. An assassin. Wanted...Dead or Alive.

Though his purpose was still unclear, Ben knew that this was where he was supposed to be. Meeting Maxie here, it only further his plan...There was something to be done, a price to pay, but the ones to suffer? Only time would tell...

[Max Guevara]

[font=geneva][size=5]Looking at him with nowhere else to look but the stygian black skyline around them, Max couldn't help the fact that her mind wandered back into the past, back to the time when she had found him in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary in a Catholic church. She had found his offering as well. . .human teeth. Was he still killing? She hadn't read of any murders in the paper but that didn't mean. . .why was she so eager to jump to the worst of conclusions? It was Ben. He was standing right in front of her and she had wished, hoped, prayed, everyday since she had given him what he asked that she hadn't. . .that she had fought harder to carry him out of those woods, to save him. He was her brother. . .he would have saved her. Why hadn't she saved him?

"Ben. . .I'm sorry. . ." she said, and wasn't sure if she was apologizing for killing him or for the fact that Manticore had brought him back from the dead.

She took a step forward, then another one, bringing herself closer to him. The urge to step away remained but she quelled it, quashed it, because what right had she to judge him before she knew what they had done to him for sure? She wasn't going to find out by hiding behind a blanket of misplaced fear. It was fear of the past, she knew. And while an instinct within her cried out for caution her every other instinct wanted to throw herself into his arms and cry out an apology, beg his forgiveness.

[Ben]

Torn...His entire life, since Manticore had first fallen and he had been thrust into a world he didn't understand, Ben had been torn between right and wrong, between simple and complex. Light and Dark. Good and Evil...And standing here now, he was torn between the promise of the present and the memories of the past. His past, right before his eyes...His little sister in all the ways that mattered, and the darkest parts of him couldn't even hold her like he knew she needed to be held, the evidence clearly written in her eyes.

"And just what are you sorry for, Maxie?" he asked, shoulders straightening as she took one step forward and then another. He should have known she would not flee as he had hoped, but rather come to him...Because in her mind, he was still her brother...

But in his own mind, he didn't know who he was anymore. He was...who they told him to be.

[Max Guevara]

What was she sorry for? Max wasn't entirely sure because it wasn't just one singular thing. She was sorry that she hadn't fought harder to save him, sorry that she had killed him even though he had begged her to. . .Tell me about the Good Place, Ben. . . She was sorry that Manticore hadn't left him in the peace he had seemed to find. Once the deed was done, while she held his body and cried, frozen in place even though Manticore was closing in his face had seemed more peaceful than it ever had. She was sorry that she hadn't been with him to protect him, to make sense of the world for him, sorry that she'd been seperated from him during the escape. There was so much to regret that she didn't know where to begin and she found, by the time that she stopped thinking, that she had stepped to within an inch of him. She looked up, tilted her head.

"Every single damn day since. . .that day, Ben, I've wished that I hadn't listened to you. When you asked me to. . .to. . .I hated myself. I still do. And now they brought you back and the only thing I could ever tell myself was that you were finally at peace. . .so I'm just sorry. For a lot of things."

That was the truth. There were many thing in her life that she regretted with everything she had in her to wish that things had been different but she had learned long ago that things did not ever change by wishing them differently. She didn't know why she couldn't just put her arms around him, hug him like she so badly wanted to, but there was still that instinct screaming at the back of her head to stay away, back away and she didn't understand it.