What's Next? -- Chapter 37

Disclaimer:  The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Alec, 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.).

Sasha lay on the couch in her living room the following day, her eyes closed and one hand on her stomach. She suddenly opened her eyes when she heard a key being put into the front door lock and then the door itself opening. She turned her head to see Alec, Biggs, and Brin enter the apartment. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself, darling,” Biggs said. He went over to his wife and gave her a kiss. “Are you doing okay?”

“Both of us are just fine,” Sasha assured him. She sat up on the couch and started to say something, but stopped and sighed.

“It’s done and over with,” Alec said, guessing what Sasha had been about to say. He and Brin pulled up chairs to face Biggs and Sasha and sat down. “Their bodies were sent to the temporary morgue down near the med bay.”

“What’s going to happen with them?” Sasha asked.

Alec scratched the back of his neck before he answered her. “I talked with Diane, Melanie, Randy, and Bryan a little bit ago since they were closest with Brandi and Cam. None of them were actually present when it went down, for that matter neither Biggs nor I were actually in the room when Becky and Mole did what had to be done, but they were all waiting just outside with me and Biggs and all four of them agreed to have Brandi’s and Cam’s bodies cremated. I don’t know exactly where the ashes are going to be scattered, but they all actually said that they would let me know when they figured that detail out.”

“’A soldier always pays his respects,’” Sasha quoted. “Even so, I can’t believe that they’re actually including us.”

“I think the shock still hasn’t worn off,” Biggs said. He sat down next to Sasha. “I know that I’m still at least partly in la-la land.”

“Who isn’t?” Brin said quietly. She looked at Alec’s still-troubled face and softly kissed him on the cheek before taking his hand. “This came out of left field.”

“Yeah,” Alec agreed. “If neither Diane nor Melanie nor Randy nor Bryan could see this coming, then how could anybody else?” Sasha laughed a little and Alec turned his head to face her. “What is it?”

“Just something that occurred to me,” Sasha said. “As screwed up as at least most of us were, we all had at least one person that we considered to be a best friend or at worst somebody that we got along with on a regular basis. Let’s face it, our unit was incredibly cliquish. Think about it. You had me, you, and Biggs in one group and Brandi, Diane, and Melanie in another, not to mention the third trio of Cam, Bryan, and Randy. Dina and Kai were always friends with each other and Ian and Walt got along pretty well. That arrogant little shit Ted somehow was best buddies with Reg and Nikki, Lori, and Lark were friends. It’s too bad that somehow all of us were never able to connect and all get really along with each other when not on a mission, even back before March of ’09.”

Biggs nodded. “That would have been nice. If that had happened, do you think that it would have lasted?” He shook his head. “Somehow I doubt that even if we did get all get along with each other at one point or another that any of them would have been willing to take a bullet for one of us, you know what I mean?” He saw Sasha start to tremble and grew concerned. “Sasha, what’s wrong?”

“She did,” Sasha said shakily. “Rena did take a bullet for me. Damnit, Biggs, Brandi had been trying to kill me! You read the reports from the questioning sessions that they did with Brandi and Cam after they were caught and brought in. Brandi had overheard that we were all going to try to find her to bring her in for the murder in Canada and as always she put the blame right on you and me and Alec, but this time she was going to go the extra mile and actually kill us! If Brandi hadn’t been able to aim properly for shit, then Rena would have died for me! Damnit…” She trailed off and began to cry.

“Rena’s going to be fine,” Biggs said soothingly. “Besides, you know that she’s got no regrets over having been shot instead of you. You know that she has been and always will be willing to take one for the team. She’d do this a million more times for you and then some.” He pulled Sasha into his arms and stroked her hair comfortingly. “It’s going to be okay, baby. It’s going to be okay.” All four of them sat there silently for several minutes until they heard a knock at the door. “Who is it?”

“It’s just me,” CeCe said quietly.

“Come on in,” Biggs said. “The door’s open.” A moment or two later, CeCe entered the apartment. “Hey. Where have you been?”

“Finishing cleaning up Gem’s apartment and getting her things put into temporary storage until we can finish sorting them out,” CeCe said. She snorted. “We never had this problem back at Manticore, did we? Whenever somebody died back there or when out on a mission, they just went through their cells with a fine tooth comb and tossed their crap right out.”

“Good thing they never went through you cell after you got tossed into Psy Ops after the Berrisford mission,” Biggs said to Alec. “I think they would have thought that your spare boots were stink bombs and they’d have had to call in some haz mat teams and shut down our block for at least a week.”

CeCe laughed a little bit. “Gem made a similar remark once to our old unit mate 309. His boots always smelled the worse after exercising.”

Brin looked thoughtful. “How long were you and Gem best friends, CeCe?”

“We were friends for ages,” CeCe said. “We got along with each other as soon as I was brought into the unit when I was two and it wasn’t too much longer after that when we became best friends. She and I always liked to talk about everything. 558 was still our C.O. at the time and he had said that it was about time that we got somebody who liked to talk as much as 849 did.” She smiled. “I remember when I met back up again with Gem after the fire. We didn’t make it out together. I ended up with 722 and she went off on her own after a few months. I was in this supermarket buying food and I see this woman from the back and she’s holding this screaming infant—I think Andrea was only about three weeks old at the time—and trying to get the poor kid to calm down long enough so she could finish her shopping and this jerk who happens to be passing by has the nerve to yell at her to shut the kid up and the woman turns her head and I recognized Gem right away and she gives the guy a look that I hadn’t seen since the time that 259 thought that it would be a good idea to blow spitballs at Gem on a day when she’d just gotten back from a mission that she’d gone on with somebody from Unit 5 that she managed to salvage from the other guy’s screwup. Anyway, Gem gives the moron that look, manages to cover both of Andrea’s ears, and tells this guy off like nobody’s business. She even used that phrase that we picked up from that Italian exchange student that we met when we were on that mission in London together. Remember that?”

“I do,” Sasha said. She laughed. “You know that we only had to scope out the museum at night after it closed so after we got back to our hotel and got ourselves a couple of hours worth of sleep, we pretty much had the entire day free. One day two weeks into the assignment we were having lunch at this little restaurant right near the museum when this guy—an older guy for us, he was almost twenty at the time—comes over to our table and starts talking to us and it turns out that he’s an exchange student from Milan. Anyway, we’re talking and having fun and over the course of our conversation with him he teaches us this really nasty Italian swear that I’m not going to repeat but it’s of the type that involves somebody’s mother. Gem was flirting like hell with that guy.”

“Oh! Remember the time back when we were sixteen and they took our units out to Florida for two weeks so that we could do some training exercises in swamp conditions?” CeCe asked. “Sasha, remember that one run where you and I had gotten paired together and we were working with Gem and Melanie? Gem was this close to throttling the priss that whole time!”

“I know! Whose bright idea was it to pair those two up for that exercise?” Sasha said, laughing. “Melanie would not stop bitching about her hair and bugs crawling up her uniform and one thing after another and Gem finally had to threaten to dismember her and use the parts as alligator bait.” Sasha made a face frighteningly similar to the one that Melanie made when she was disgusted. “’Ew, alligators?’” The others cracked up at the imitation. “And Gem was like ‘Yes, 714, alligators. If you continue to piss me off, I won’t even bother to kill you first before I toss what’s left of you over to them for lunch.’ That finally got Melanie to shut up at least until we finished the exercise.” She sighed. “Gem sure knew how to keep people in line.”

“That she did,” CeCe recalled. She wiped a tear from one of her eyes. “I miss her so much.”

“We all do,” Alec said. “And we all will miss the hell out of her. That’s not going to change.”

“As corny as this sounds, just think of the good things that she’s done and accomplished in her life,” Brin suggested. “Andrea has to be at the top of that list for sure. As horrible as the conditions under which she was conceived were, look how well that little girl has turned out so far.”

“Absolutely,” Biggs said. “Gem was a wonderful mother.”

“No doubt,” Sasha agreed. They were all quiet again for several minutes before Sasha spoke up again, her voice ragged with emotion once more. “This is going to hurt like hell for awhile, huh?”

“Probably,” Alec said softly. He managed a smile. “It could be worse. At least we’ve got each other.”

“Thank goodness,” CeCe said. She also smiled a little.