Disclaimer:  The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on the show (Max, Zack, Logan, etc.), and everything else that has to do with the show belong to their respective owners, not to me.  No money is being made off of this fic.  I only own the original characters (Becky/X6-405, etc.).

Notes:  Spoilers/spoiler-ish stuff for “Female Trouble.”  Takes place sometime between chapter 15 and 20 of “Together,” but after the previous “Missing Moments” vignette.

Jace lay back wearily on her living room couch.  Thank goodness she’s finally asleep.  I don’t know how ordinary women do it.  I’ve only been a mother for a week and I’m already more tired than I’ve ever been before in my life.  She smiled.  But would I give it up?  Hell no!  I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world.  Little Max is the best thing that’s ever happened to me by far.  She’s definitely a little miracle.

She yawned and stretched.  Since I should have at least some time before Little Max wakes up again, I should get up off of my butt and do something.  I actually am kind of hungry so I guess it’s snack time.  Jace got up off of the couch and walked into the kitchen.  There should be something left in the refridgerator.  She suddenly stopped in her tracks and turned around when she heard a motorcycle stop in front of her house and the rider dismount.  Who the hell could that be?  I can count on one hand the people who both know where I live and are home right now!  She quickly made her way back to the living room and yanked open the front door.  Her jaw dropped in surprise.  No way...

Zack smiled.  “Long time no see, little sister.”

Jace couldn’t help laughing.  “You know, I really shouldn’t have been surprised that you would find out where I lived and I’ve got about eight years of training on you if you count the time after I passed my solo ops test.”  She stepped aside so that Zack could enter her house.  “I’m sorry that it’s not neater in here, but I only gave birth last week so I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to clean around the house.”

“You had the baby already?” Zack asked.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you knew that I was pregnant,” Jace said dryly.

“I had an edge.  Max told me,” Zack admitted.  He and Jace sat down on the couch.  “It’s also how I got your location.”

Jace nodded.  “I see.  How’s Max doing?”

“Better now,” Zack said.

“What do you mean?  Did she get into trouble?” Jace asked, worried.

“For awhile,” Zack said.  He re-iterated the past few months events to Jace.  “Now everybody’s out.  Not just us, but every single transgenic ever created by Manticore that’s still alive.  I’m back in touch with the others, even Tinga’s husband and son.”  He sighed and stretched.  “It’s odd how I’m getting my life back in order and it’s almost the same and yet...”

“Join the club,” Jace said.  “I felt similarly after you guys left Manticore when we were kids.”  She blinked away the tears that started to come to her eyes.  “Look, Zack, I’m sorry that I changed my mind at the last minute and stayed behind.  I regretted it so much.  Maybe not immediately after I was released from Psy Ops six months after you and the others bailed, but once that crap started to wear off in the weeks after I was sprung loose, it started to sink in how much I missed you.  You can ask Max how I told her how I’d thought that she’d betrayed us all of us X5s by leaving, but let’s be honest.  I didn’t mean it.  I was just...I don’t even know what I was thinking.  That particular period of my life was a little bit crazy.”

“What happened with you at Manticore once we were gone?” Zack asked.

“It was very tough,” Jace said.  “After I’d been released from Psy Ops, I was re-assigned to Unit 1.  My new C.O., 355, was nice enough to me.  She and one or two others were okay with me right after I’d been transferred to the unit, but it took most of the rest of them much longer even to accept me, much less get along with me.  I remember that it even took years for both 153 and 900 to start treating me as a team member and not as an outcast.  It was the same way with most of the rest of the transgenics in Gillette, too.  I can’t even begin to count the number of glares and cold shoulders that I would get from the threes, fours, and fives.  Even a few of the sixes would give me dirty looks, and they were even younger than us!  Needless to say, I had very few people that I could even talk to for those first couple of years post-escape, and only one or two of them were outside of my unit.”

“Was Becky one of them?” Zack asked.

Jace nodded.  “Oh yeah, she was.  She no doubt handled the trip to Psy Ops the best out of all of the X6 commanding officers at the time by far.  I think out of all of them, and they were still ranked in age order at the time, she was the only one who retained her rank.”  She paused.  “I don’t think even she got out of it completely unscathed, though.  While she did build a reputation for herself as one of the best soldiers at Manticore, she also began to get for herself a reputation as an Ice Queen.  She could be so cold sometimes and was so serious.  She rarely lost her temper, but I also heard that she could be one of the most intimidating people that you could ever come across.”  Jace smirked a little.  “Including Lydecker.”  She sighed.  “I don’t think that was all there was to Becky, though.  I had the feeling that the iciness was just a front.”  Jace looked at Zack and started to say something, but shook her head instead.  “Other than that, I did pretty well back at Manticore.  I didn’t make officer status by the time that I finally decided to get off of my butt and leave, but I was far from the bottom.  When I left, I was ranked sixth in my unit and forty-first in the squad.  I wasn’t doing too badly.”

“Not bad at all,” Zack agreed.  “I’m proud of you for staying strong through everything.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Jace said.  She started to say something else, but stopped when she heard her daughter crying upstairs.  I guess nap time’s over for now.  “I’ll be back in just a sec.”  She got up and left the living room and returned a minute later carrying her baby.  “Zack, I want you to meet your new niece.  Her name’s Maxine, but I call her Little Max.”  She smiled.  “For somewhat obvious reasons.”

“She’s beautiful,” Zack said.  “She doesn’t look that much like you.  I can see it a little bit, but not a whole lot.”

“No, she looks like her father,” Jace said.  “Do you want to hold her?”

Zack panicked, but tried to hide it.  “No, thank you.”

Jace laughed.  “You really haven’t changed that much, big brother.  Come on, get over it and be a man and hold Little Max.”

“Fine,” Zack said.  He glared at Jace, who only laughed more and handed him the baby.  He just looked at Little Max for several moments before he carefully handed her back to Jace.

“She likes you,” Jace said.  “Around most other strangers, she doesn’t stop crying.”  She shifted the newborn in her arms.  “I am so lucky to have her in so many ways.”

“Because of the situation with her father?” Zack guessed.

“That’s one reason,” Jace agreed.  She shook her head.  “Oh, you are not going to like this.  Years ago back at Manticore, when I was about fourteen, they decided for reasons that I still don’t know of to put into place a breeding program pairing the X3s, X4s, and X5s with ordinary soldiers.”

Zack clenched his fists.  “They did what?”  His voice was deceptively calm, but both he and Jace knew better.

“Exactly what I just said,” Jace said.  “Trust me, it wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences.  For about a year, I had to copulate every night with some random soldier.  They gave us females pregnancy tests once a week and we had to give both oral and written confirmation every night of the copulation.  It could have been much worse.  Most of us females, myself included, didn’t get pregnant.  Only a fifth at most did and they didn’t even see their babies after they’d been born.  I dodged a major bullet.  God knows it was bad enough just being with that man every night.”

“Did he hurt you?” Zack asked.  He took a deep breath to calm himself down.

“Physically?  No, he didn’t,” Jace said.  “He wasn’t overtly mean or nasty or violent to me.  I just didn’t want to be there.  Night after night for about a year, I had to force myself to have sex with this strange man and it’s not as if he became any more familiar to me after all of the quality time that we spent together.  It wears on you.  When we got the word that the breeding program had come to a close, it was one of the happiest days of my life.”  She shook her head.  “At any rate, I naïvely thought that I couldn’t get pregnant by an ordinary human, even though a few of us did, so when Victor and I decided to take our relationship to that next level, we didn’t bother to use any protection.”  Jace blinked and looked down at her daughter.  “When I’d realized that I was pregnant with Little Max, I panicked.  I knew deep down what would happen if Manticore found out.  Hell, Max knew it too and she didn’t know about the original breeding program.  I’m so happy that Max helped me get away from Manticore and I guess I have even more reason to thank her now.  Tell her that for me the next time that you see her, will you?”

“I will,” Zack said.

“Are you going to stay for awhile?” Jace asked.

“I’ll be in town for the rest of the day, but I need to leave sometime early tommorrow,” Zack said.  “It’s nothing personal, Jace, but I still have a lot of catching up to do.  I’ll try to get back around to you as soon as I can so we can finish catching up.  I promise.”

“Still as busy as always,” Jace said with a smile.  “Well, since you aren’t going anywhere too far for the next couple of hours at least, make yourself at home.  I was going to make myself something to eat.  Do you want anything?”

“You can cook?” Zack asked, slightly apprehensive.  Please let her be a better cook than Max, Brin, or Syl...

“I’m going to take a wild guess and say that some of our sisters aren’t exactly culinary artists,” Jace remarked.

“You could say that,” Zack agreed.