Winds Colder
Title: Winds Colder
Author: windfallswest
Fandom: Dark Angel
Pairing: Max Guevara, Logan Cale, Shizuru Kuwabara
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: <----
Length: 1.4K
Summary:
Notes: Also at AO3. i. the blue of happy days, ii. Over the mountains.
"Miss Weh," Shizuru greeted Max. Max paused at the entrance to the bridge before going in; she had the feeling Shizuru didn't like her very much. Plus she'd been expecting McHenry. I guess almost everyone has to sleep sometimes.
"Call me Erin, Captain."
"Erin. You've certainly been about lately," Shizuru observed. She turned back to the flight controls.
"Didn't mean to bother anybody," Max said.
"Don't worry about it. What brings you up here at this hour?"
"Space makes me restless," explained Max. "Has since I was a kid. Makes it hard to sleep."
Shizuru leaned back in her chair and expelled a tired breath of air. "Something tells me you're a restless sort of person."
"Well," Max smiled a little crookedly, "I guess you have me there. You zenfully at peace in space, Captain?"
"Herding around this batch of crazy gonads?" Shizuru made an indelicate noise. "Have a seat and knock the title."
Max let herself fall into the co-pilot's chair. It had been a hella long day if only because space really did whack her out and she'd dozed off maybe once since they made the first hyperspace jump. Which was not mentioning Logan and his almost supernatural ability to fill Max with the urge to tear her hair out.
For a while, Max stared out the window while Shizuru made occasional course corrections and kept an eye out for cross-traffic. When Max's brain started twisting too much with the disquieting feeling of squinting through shadows, she watched Shizuru. The leather jacket she usually wore was slung over the back of the pilot's seat. Sensible boots tapped at the decking now and again in vaguely rhythmical patterns. More or less unremarkable all told, trousers, vest and greenish shirt. Long, medium-brown hair and long-ish face with about the same amount of almond-eyed cast as Max's. Long in general, decently fit. Moved okay, but not like a fighter. Damn, but she was tired.
"Do you understand men?" Max asked at last. There was an unattractive plaintive quality to her voice, but she couldn't help it.
"You asking for anything in particular?"
"You want to tell me what your problem is?" Max snapped.
Logan's face went all belligerent and pissy. "I don't have a problem."
Max's laugh almost spiralled up into giggling. Maybe wired, she thought.
"Mostly if they're all mentally defective," Max admitted.
"Yup," Shizuru replied promptly. "Brother problems?"
"You could say that." Their story was that Erin Weh was accompanying her brother Banner to the Core for medical treatment of a skin disease. Hubert (Bling; and really, Hubert?) was nurse-cum-security on the journey.
Logan had tried to talk her out of going all the way to his cousin's with him again today. He still wouldn't shell out where this mystery-cousin was. What was it with rich people and their insanely humungous family trees, anyhow? But in any case, Max had a suspicion it was closer in to the Core than either one of them ought to be if they preferred their asses remain their own.
"I find a lug wrench to the head will generally do the trick," Shizuru offered.
"Really? 'Cause from where I'm standing it looks like you're holed up here brooding about something."
"Well it's not like I have much of anywhere to go," Logan retorted.
"Ohh, that is all kinds of tempting. He's just a broody little bitch sometimes, you know? I don't figure how to talk to him."
"Then tell him to grow up. He's not the first one in the 'verse to have problems, and at least he's on the way to fixing them, " Shizuru said ruthlessly.
Max grit her teeth. "You know, I thought you'd be happy to be back on your feet again, but you've been-"
"What? What have I been?"
"How about impossible? How about blowing this whole thing way out of proportion?"
"Well excuse me if I'm not chipper enough for you, but your body isn't the one being subjected to some sort of psychogenetic freak-show." Logan's lip curled up as he snarled. The blue looked almost black next to his very white teeth.
Max really did have to resist the urge to slap him. "I may not be blue, but in case you forgotten, some yahoo yanked my DNA around pretty good without asking permission first, too.
"Is that what this is about?" Logan practically spat. Max was temporarily taken aback. She'd seen Logan furious; this was something else. This was something poisonous. "You want me to be happy because now we can be freaks together? Forgive me if I'd rather be able to touch people!" Logan grabbed the side of Max's face roughly with one gloved hand. She swatted it away.
"So the universe was a little unfair to your pretty rich-boy ass? I thought you knew that when you started your little crusade."
"Tried that. Hopeless."
Shizuru winced in sympathy.
Logan glared at Max; Max glared back. A spark of honest rage flashed across Logan's face and his jaw set like it did when he was about to start reaming her out with a moralistic rant in that quiet, deadly tone of righteousness.
Max turned around and stalked out. She knew this part of the Argument by heart.
"He's used to doing things his own way." Max scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Maybe getting laid would help. With the sleep issue, at least. Getting Logan laid might solve a whole range of other issues, she'd long thought, but that wasn't going to happen as long as he was sucking the thoughts out of anyone who touched his skin and leaving them comatose.
"Maybe he'll snap out of it once he's better." Shizuru didn't sound very hopeful.
Max smiled a bit sourly. "Maybe." And maybe it was more likely someone would teach fish how to tap-dance than Logan would get better, but neither was about to happen anytime soon.
Max was not feeling less wound up when she left Shizuru on the bridge. She was restless in the slightly dim and slightly yellow light, in a tunnel of sorts, made of various metals and clicking a little, humming its way though hyperspace wrapped in phasic cotton. And the Logan deal was not going away; it was really not going away. Why bother?
One thing no one had ever said about the Shentian GG80 was that it was roomy, and now she felt it closing in. The smell of the metal crept illogically in through her nose to cling thickly to her brain. Her own booted footsteps sounded jarring. And she felt trapped.
Not that Max was usually claustrophobic. Space travel had wigged her out the first time around. It might have been the beagles or the panic, but time in hyperspace still felt like walking through a low grade sonic pulse, no matter what the math said.
Max headed for the cargo hold. Why bother? She might as well just ignore it all while she could, she decided firmly. Nothing was going anywhere. Step outside a ship mid-jump and you'd be smeared across the space-time continuum: little particle-bits hailing down on twenty thousand systems and your unsuspecting parents. Not that stepping out in normal space did wonders for your health, even if you were going stir-crazy. No, it would all be waiting for her whenever they got wherever Logan was dragging them. Nothing going to stop a body being a brat at this point in time. Chill out, Max told herself, in Chloe's voice. Like that was going to work. Better if she could sleep 'til Jarvis, but that was unlikely.
Max stepped into the cargo hold. It wasn't more space, just a bigger box. She smelled metal and sweat and rust and the unmistakeable, lingering odour that came with large quantities of packaged protein and never quite left. Her footsteps were loud with old memories, the kind where everything was multiplied by thirty and there were eyes everywhere.
Something creaked, one of the walkways maybe, and Max jumped, and swore at herself, and headed back to her bunk with her teeth clenched to stop them from chattering. Fucking lovely. She spent the night curled in a corner, trying not to remember the water closing over her head.
Author: windfallswest
Fandom: Dark Angel
Pairing: Max Guevara, Logan Cale, Shizuru Kuwabara
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: <----
Length: 1.4K
Summary:
Notes: Also at AO3. i. the blue of happy days, ii. Over the mountains.
"Miss Weh," Shizuru greeted Max. Max paused at the entrance to the bridge before going in; she had the feeling Shizuru didn't like her very much. Plus she'd been expecting McHenry. I guess almost everyone has to sleep sometimes.
"Call me Erin, Captain."
"Erin. You've certainly been about lately," Shizuru observed. She turned back to the flight controls.
"Didn't mean to bother anybody," Max said.
"Don't worry about it. What brings you up here at this hour?"
"Space makes me restless," explained Max. "Has since I was a kid. Makes it hard to sleep."
Shizuru leaned back in her chair and expelled a tired breath of air. "Something tells me you're a restless sort of person."
"Well," Max smiled a little crookedly, "I guess you have me there. You zenfully at peace in space, Captain?"
"Herding around this batch of crazy gonads?" Shizuru made an indelicate noise. "Have a seat and knock the title."
Max let herself fall into the co-pilot's chair. It had been a hella long day if only because space really did whack her out and she'd dozed off maybe once since they made the first hyperspace jump. Which was not mentioning Logan and his almost supernatural ability to fill Max with the urge to tear her hair out.
For a while, Max stared out the window while Shizuru made occasional course corrections and kept an eye out for cross-traffic. When Max's brain started twisting too much with the disquieting feeling of squinting through shadows, she watched Shizuru. The leather jacket she usually wore was slung over the back of the pilot's seat. Sensible boots tapped at the decking now and again in vaguely rhythmical patterns. More or less unremarkable all told, trousers, vest and greenish shirt. Long, medium-brown hair and long-ish face with about the same amount of almond-eyed cast as Max's. Long in general, decently fit. Moved okay, but not like a fighter. Damn, but she was tired.
"Do you understand men?" Max asked at last. There was an unattractive plaintive quality to her voice, but she couldn't help it.
"You asking for anything in particular?"
"You want to tell me what your problem is?" Max snapped.
Logan's face went all belligerent and pissy. "I don't have a problem."
Max's laugh almost spiralled up into giggling. Maybe wired, she thought.
"Mostly if they're all mentally defective," Max admitted.
"Yup," Shizuru replied promptly. "Brother problems?"
"You could say that." Their story was that Erin Weh was accompanying her brother Banner to the Core for medical treatment of a skin disease. Hubert (Bling; and really, Hubert?) was nurse-cum-security on the journey.
Logan had tried to talk her out of going all the way to his cousin's with him again today. He still wouldn't shell out where this mystery-cousin was. What was it with rich people and their insanely humungous family trees, anyhow? But in any case, Max had a suspicion it was closer in to the Core than either one of them ought to be if they preferred their asses remain their own.
"I find a lug wrench to the head will generally do the trick," Shizuru offered.
"Really? 'Cause from where I'm standing it looks like you're holed up here brooding about something."
"Well it's not like I have much of anywhere to go," Logan retorted.
"Ohh, that is all kinds of tempting. He's just a broody little bitch sometimes, you know? I don't figure how to talk to him."
"Then tell him to grow up. He's not the first one in the 'verse to have problems, and at least he's on the way to fixing them, " Shizuru said ruthlessly.
Max grit her teeth. "You know, I thought you'd be happy to be back on your feet again, but you've been-"
"What? What have I been?"
"How about impossible? How about blowing this whole thing way out of proportion?"
"Well excuse me if I'm not chipper enough for you, but your body isn't the one being subjected to some sort of psychogenetic freak-show." Logan's lip curled up as he snarled. The blue looked almost black next to his very white teeth.
Max really did have to resist the urge to slap him. "I may not be blue, but in case you forgotten, some yahoo yanked my DNA around pretty good without asking permission first, too.
"Is that what this is about?" Logan practically spat. Max was temporarily taken aback. She'd seen Logan furious; this was something else. This was something poisonous. "You want me to be happy because now we can be freaks together? Forgive me if I'd rather be able to touch people!" Logan grabbed the side of Max's face roughly with one gloved hand. She swatted it away.
"So the universe was a little unfair to your pretty rich-boy ass? I thought you knew that when you started your little crusade."
"Tried that. Hopeless."
Shizuru winced in sympathy.
Logan glared at Max; Max glared back. A spark of honest rage flashed across Logan's face and his jaw set like it did when he was about to start reaming her out with a moralistic rant in that quiet, deadly tone of righteousness.
Max turned around and stalked out. She knew this part of the Argument by heart.
"He's used to doing things his own way." Max scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Maybe getting laid would help. With the sleep issue, at least. Getting Logan laid might solve a whole range of other issues, she'd long thought, but that wasn't going to happen as long as he was sucking the thoughts out of anyone who touched his skin and leaving them comatose.
"Maybe he'll snap out of it once he's better." Shizuru didn't sound very hopeful.
Max smiled a bit sourly. "Maybe." And maybe it was more likely someone would teach fish how to tap-dance than Logan would get better, but neither was about to happen anytime soon.
Max was not feeling less wound up when she left Shizuru on the bridge. She was restless in the slightly dim and slightly yellow light, in a tunnel of sorts, made of various metals and clicking a little, humming its way though hyperspace wrapped in phasic cotton. And the Logan deal was not going away; it was really not going away. Why bother?
One thing no one had ever said about the Shentian GG80 was that it was roomy, and now she felt it closing in. The smell of the metal crept illogically in through her nose to cling thickly to her brain. Her own booted footsteps sounded jarring. And she felt trapped.
Not that Max was usually claustrophobic. Space travel had wigged her out the first time around. It might have been the beagles or the panic, but time in hyperspace still felt like walking through a low grade sonic pulse, no matter what the math said.
Max headed for the cargo hold. Why bother? She might as well just ignore it all while she could, she decided firmly. Nothing was going anywhere. Step outside a ship mid-jump and you'd be smeared across the space-time continuum: little particle-bits hailing down on twenty thousand systems and your unsuspecting parents. Not that stepping out in normal space did wonders for your health, even if you were going stir-crazy. No, it would all be waiting for her whenever they got wherever Logan was dragging them. Nothing going to stop a body being a brat at this point in time. Chill out, Max told herself, in Chloe's voice. Like that was going to work. Better if she could sleep 'til Jarvis, but that was unlikely.
Max stepped into the cargo hold. It wasn't more space, just a bigger box. She smelled metal and sweat and rust and the unmistakeable, lingering odour that came with large quantities of packaged protein and never quite left. Her footsteps were loud with old memories, the kind where everything was multiplied by thirty and there were eyes everywhere.
Something creaked, one of the walkways maybe, and Max jumped, and swore at herself, and headed back to her bunk with her teeth clenched to stop them from chattering. Fucking lovely. She spent the night curled in a corner, trying not to remember the water closing over her head.