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More Like Fate	By : FantasticPants Category: +M through R > Max Payne Views: 1411 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Max Payne, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter
III: The Morning After

“Do
you even have clean shirts, or do you wear the same one all the
time?”

Vlad's
words greeted me into wakefulness, along with a dull muscle ache
spread like a spider web throughout my body. I wasn't sure which of
these was worse.

Vlad
was still talking, obviously, “I know it's your favorite look,
but I prefer my shirts free of blood stains and bullet holes.”

I
turned my head in the direction of his voice. My neck was firmly
opposed to the idea, and forced me to pause in mid-turn and suppress
a groan. A grim greyness, the only constant in my world, peered at me
apathetically from the window, supported by the dim, steady drumming
of rain against the thick glass. I finally forced my neck to do my
bidding and looked at Vlad.

He
was standing by the bedroom door, casually leaning against the wall.
He looked better. Still pale, but no longer likely to be pegged as a
B-movie extra. The gashes on his face were healing nicely, and he'd
gotten himself cleaned up, also changing the bandage on his shoulder.
The Desert Eagle was sticking out of his belt now, somewhat awkwardly
due to the gun's considerable size. A lit cigarette dangled from his
mouth with the loose nonchalance of a bored acrobat, integrating
smoke into the apartment's already limited atmosphere.

He
was still lacking in the shirt department, though.

Images
from my recent dream flooded my not quite conscious mind, coloring
the waking world in hazy paint. Looking at Vlad now, I couldn't help
beginning to notice different things about him. Instead of the scars,
I was seeing the lean muscle and the sharp, well defined lines that
shaped him. These weren't the sort of things I was supposed to pay
attention to, or particularly care about. But my mind had other
ideas, like picking me up by the collar and tossing me into the
lion's den.

Where
the hell was repression when you needed it?

Noticing
either my overly lingering stare or my lack of responsiveness, Vlad
gave me a quizzical look. He kept the cigarette balanced in the
corner of his mouth, nearly Bogart-like in efficiency, as he spoke,
”What's the matter, Max? Bad dream?” a hint of a smile
played on his features, providing a teasing context for his question.

Bad?

That
was one word for it. 'Disturbing', however, covered it far more
thoroughly. And not the 'catching your parents in bed' brand of
disturbing, either. Not even the 'watching a David Lynch marathon on
LSD' kind. This went far beyond that.

There
was only one thing I could think of that was more disturbing.

Reality.

Vlad
was still waiting for a reply. “You killed the Road Runner,”
I informed him.

“Road
Runner?” he furrowed his brow contemplatively, pausing to
remove the cigarette from his mouth and exhale a dramatic puff of
smoke, “'Beep Beep'?”

“That's
the one.”

He
seemed to consider this. “I don't think so. I never liked that
cartoon much - it's depressing, and the Russian version is much
better. Besides,” he stuck the cigarette back in his mouth, “I
have an alibi.”

He
always did.

“What's
that?”

“I
was too busy doing target practice on that Tweety bird,” he
illustrated by pointing two fingers then raising them in a lazy
pantomime of firing a gun, “Now that's one annoying bitch.”

“Tweety's
a guy,” I felt compelled to point out.

“Really?”
he shrugged, using his good shoulder only, “If you say so,”
tilting his head sideways and raising one corner of his mouth, he
concluded, “I stand by my statement.”

There
was a swarm of unanswered questions buzzing in the air around us, and
the silence following Vlad's speech made it all the more deafening.
We were both clearly well aware of this, but for now, it was easier
to play at normality. Well, our own special breed of normality, at
any rate.

“Shirt,
Max?”

That
was a good idea.

“Under
the bed.”

Wasn't
that where all normal people kept their clothes?

“Obviously,”
sliding a wry smirk on, Vlad separated himself from the wall.
Locating an empty pizza box, one of many I had scattered around the
place, he crushed his prop cigarette against it. “Why didn't I
think of looking there?” he muttered reflectively, letting his
gaze hover over me for several moments as he headed for the bedroom.

I
used the little free time to stretch out, quickly bringing my body
back from its lethargic state. My mind wasn't quite as good a sport,
though. It was still stuck on replay, forcefully pulling me to places
I had absolutely no desire to go, then or ever. The relentless
badgering weighted down on me, stifling any rational thought I
attempted to form.

Vlad
finally emerged from the bedroom, carrying my old Hawaiian shirt, to
which I had been holding on with the clingy sentimentality of an
overzealous Jewish matriarch. “That's all I could find,”
he held it out, looking at it in the manner one would look at
bloodied corpse. Had this one not been a cold hearted killer,
that is. “Your revenge shirt.”

“That's
all there is. The rest are in dry cleaning,” I told him. They
weren't, but he didn't need to know that. I was still feeling
vindictive.

“Of
course they are,” he muttered under his breath, sending a
highly skeptical look in my direction.

Where
was the trust?

Effectively
masking his discontent with an aura of flippancy, Vlad slid the shirt
on, doing this slowly, which, if I knew him at all, was very
deliberate, “You know, Max, I've always wondered-” he
began buttoning it up, chin tilted down but eyes set firmly on me,
“was making this...” producing a small snort, “shirt
the last thing your enemies saw,” he paused, closing the top
button then spreading his arms and flashing a 'Ta da!' expression.
Strangely, and rather annoyingly, it looked good on him. Completely
out of place, but good. “Was that a part of your revenge?”
he went on, knitting his brow into a mock frown before breaking into
a broad grin, “that seems almost too cruel.”

“I
like that shirt,” I shrugged, suppressing the sudden and
unnerving urge to mirror his grin, “and it was more of a
tactical decision. Blinding your opponents never hurts.”

The
sound of screeching tires invaded the apartment, a loud, sharp
reminder that there was still a world outside. A grimace made a
short-lived but telling stop on Vlad's face.

“Hangover?”
he was doing an impressive job hiding it, but I wasn't a detective
for nothing.

His
only response was an irritated look, which was all the answer I
needed.

“I
thought you never got hangovers,” it had always been a
particular point of pride for him, complimenting his ability to drink
300 pound goons under the table. More often than not, alcohol had no
visible effect on him whatsoever.

“I
don't,” his irritation persisted, to my dark amusement,
though it was filtered through a thick layer of sarcasm, “as a
rule. I do tend to make exceptions for cases there's more alcohol
than blood in my body.” Sparing me the need to retort, he
quickly juggled on to a different subject, “Do you have
anything to eat?”

I
doubted it. “Check the fridge,” I dragged myself up from
the couch and made my way to the bathroom, hoping to escape Vlad's
presence temporarily.

That
feeble hope was extinguished before it even had a chance to ignite.
Vlad's presence had already extended itself throughout the place,
leaving its calling cards all over. The bathroom was a poor refuge.
The air was still stiflingly humid inside. Vlad clearly liked his
showers blazingly hot. Fumes gathered on the mirror, thoroughly
camouflaging the clear surface, so at the very least I'd been spared
another encounter with the mentally unstable stranger who had made it
his home.

I
opened the tap and let the water run for a while, waiting for it to
turn from one extreme to another. Splashing the now freezing liquid
over my face, I prayed for an illumination. Something to shed some
light on the situation. But there was no one up there to answer my
prayers, or even smile and nod, pretending to listen. I was stuck, as
usual, with the shadowy dimness of my own mind.

I
decided to skip my morning shower - who knew what Vlad had left in
there, and stuck to brushing my teeth instead. Concluding this
mechanical action, I exited the suffocating room.

Vlad,
as I expected, wasn't successful in finding anything to his
satisfaction in the humble interior of my refrigerator, which he was
currently staring at with a disgruntled expression. He glanced at me
as I shut the bathroom door behind me and closed in, “I don't
understand you, Max. You can have any kind of food you want. Any
kind. And you choose these canned-” he paused, glancing
back into the fridge, displaying a mix of wonder and barely contained
revulsion, “-I don't even want to know what they are.”
Truth be told, I wasn't a hundred percent sure, either. “You
really need to overcome this masochistic streak of yours,”
injecting flimsy hope, he asked, “Any coffee, at least?”

“All
out,” that much was true. I could have used some myself,
desperately.

“Alcohol?”

“On
the wagon,” now that was a lie, albeit a wishful one.

Shaking
his head dejectedly, he noted, “Amazing.” Eventually
settling for a battered bottle of Coke that was nearly as old as the
refrigerator itself, he hauled it over to the table and scanned the
area for glasses. Finding them at an unlikely location, he grabbed
two, and, twirling them between his fingers, placed them by the
bottle, then proceeded to pour the liquid menace. He did this with
the practiced expertise of a veteran bartender. Rather belatedly, he
remembered to ask, “You want some?”

Coca
Cola was the embodiment of the American Dream. A black-souled, sticky
substance sugarcoated with false promises and lies. An empty label
devoid of anything resembling a meaning. Which of course never
stopped anyone from consuming it mindlessly, myself included.

Vlad's
looked at me strangely. “I have to admit, Max, I've never
thought about it quite like that,” he arched a brow. Had
I said that out loud? My mind was in a miserable condition indeed.
“Sometimes a soft drink,” he held out a glass to me,
smiling vaguely, “is just a soft drink.”

Could
be. But Vlad was never just Vlad. He always dragged complications
along for the ride.

With
a cerebral sigh, I accepted the glass and sipped the drink warily.
The taste was predictably awful- bubble deprived, sugary goo, but
there was a refreshing quality about that awfulness.

It
couldn't get any worse.

This
optimistic thought served as a focus point for my mind. The buzz was
now becoming impossible to ignore, or dance around. It was time to
begin addressing all those unanswered questions. I placed my glass on
the table, locked my gaze on Vlad and flipped that little switch
inside my head, turning my inner detective on.

He
picked up on it immediately, automatically adopting the posture he’d
always used during police interrogations. Laid back to a callous
degree, but with a mental wiriness ready to spring at you at any
moment.

Some
things never changed.

“Where
have you been?”

He
took a casual sip off his drink, scowling at the taste. “When?”
the levity of his tone was grating. Was he trying to play dumb? It
didn't suit him.

“You
know, since you died.”

He
exhaled slowly, his expression entering a more serious zone. He took
the rest of the drink down in the same manner one would have drowned
a shot. It might have been a Pavlovian reaction, or maybe he was just
attempting to circumvent the taste. His glass joined mine on the
table. He took his time before replying, with obvious reluctance,
“The Motherland.”

There
was only one subject that I knew could cause Vlad to speak in
monosyllables. 'The Motherland' was it. A verbal Kryptonite of sorts.
He'd always been keen on avoiding the topic like a highly contagious
STD. I'd brought it up in one of our conversations, long before the
whole mutual-killing ball had begun to roll, and he had told me that
he had nothing but bad memories there, closing the topic
indefinitely.

“Really?
What were you doing?” while I wasn't normally in the habit of
poking at old wounds, I had absolutely no qualms about it now.
Hurting his feelings was exactly a consideration. “Catching up
with more old friends?”

He
clenched his jaw. It was a barely noticeable gesture, and lasted no
longer than a second, but it failed to pass by me. “Being
invisible,” he forced the flippancy back into his voice,
absent-mindedly tapping his fingers against the table surface.

“That's
not your strong point.”

“I
never needed it to be,” his smirk contained a tint of
bitterness.

“Times
change,” I called to his attention.

Making
generalized, abstract statements was never a smart thing to do around
Vlad. It prompted him to slide into his philosophical realm, which
often guaranteed either an instant headache or an excruciatingly long
debate, with a headache for dessert. This time he was mercifully
concise about it, at least, “People do, too.”

“So,
you've changed?” I maxed out the sarcasm meter, and
still doubted it conveyed even half the amount of skepticism that I
felt.

“I
didn't say that,” he grinned in a true ear-to-ear fashion, “You
should pay more attention, Max.”

No,
clearly he hadn't changed one bit. For some reason, it was better
this way. More real. The devil you know, if you were in the mood for
clichés. Vlad always was. I allowed a smirk brief entry rights
to my face.

I
was about to formulate the next question when my deja vu flavored
spidey-sense went off, igniting a silent alarm in my head. Whatever
it was that ticked it off - a subtle shift in the air current, a
faraway whistle or just the acute feeling of sudden wrongness, I
acted on it without a blink of hesitation.

The
bullet traveled an inch away from from my ear as I lunged myself at
Vlad, tackling him towards the floor. Pieces of shattered glass
followed, raining down savagely. Most of them finished their short
lifespan harmlessly on the floor, but a few relentless ones decided
that burying themselves inside my flesh was a more amusing outcome.

I
was not amused.

Once
Vlad and I hit the floor, several thoughts went through my head with
startling speed, racing each other to the finish line. The first was
that the next time I looked for an apartment, I'd be sure to choose
one that had no windows. Anywhere.

The
second was that maybe I should have just shouted at him to get down,
instead of performing a cinematic tackle. Or let his own reflexes do
the dirty work. Or maybe just watch the bullet pierce his skull.
Well, not that. Not really. Now that for some reason he wasn't dead,
I knew I intended on keeping him that way.

The
last thought was that getting half a dozen glass shard stuck in your
back could be a real mood killer.

I
had no illusions that helping Vlad would come back to bite me in the
ass, but I hadn't considered how little time it would take, and how
close it would come to manifesting itself literally.

God,
I hated narrative devices.
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