rareslash | Fic: More Like Fate (Max Payne)

Title: More Like Fate (Prologue + Chapter I)
Fandom: Max Payne
Rating: PG-13 for now, I think. Hopefully ARRRR in later chapters.
Pairing: Max/Vlad
Summary: After Mona's death, Max is determined to start a new life. Problem is, he's Max Payne, and thing never go quite as planned for him.
Comments: Feedback would be really great! Also, I'd like to thank Doomsays for being my beta reader.

More Like Fate

Prologue

It had been over a year since my life was sucked into yet another vortex of crime, betrayal and blood.

It seemed more like an eternity.

As if a black hole had consumed my past, leaving nothing but the faint, smoky trail of a bullet-ridden nightmare.

In psychiatric terms it'd most likely be called repression.

I call it survival.

The jury found me innocent. Again. Don't ask me how. Maybe they just couldn't believe that one man could be responsible for so much killing.

I turned in my badge a day later. I wanted nothing more to do with the Force. Wanted to start a new life. A life that Mona, in her death, had breathed into me.

Unfortunately, there's usually a pretty big gap between what you want, and what you get. I could turn my back on my profession, but not on who I was. A killer. A mass murderer, technically speaking. You can't leave hundreds of corpses in your wake and not have it leave a footprint on your soul. If I still had one. I wasn't sure anymore.

Getting a normal job was out of the question. Whatever normal was, I was about as far from it as one gets. It was easier to imagine myself as a Chippendale than working in some stuffed office, having to play along in order to fit in. Becoming a private eye was a predictable, practically inescapable choice, but it was the only one I could make while retaining some fragment of my old self.

I rented a miniature office in the shady area of town, and the respectably shady clientèle was soon to follow. Hookers, bums and lowlifes came in all shapes and sizes, becoming as close to colleagues as I would get. I couldn't complain. When you've lost so much already, concepts such as dignity and reputation stop playing a significant role in your life.

I steered off the big cases, hoping to avoid major bloodbaths. Fat chance of that working out, since 'major bloodbaths in your future' was the fortune cookie I've been forced to chew on my entire life.

Still, for the time being, things went smoothly enough. Nothing grittier than your usual murder here and there. Most of my cases were the kind my clients didn't want to be dug too deeply by the proper authorities. Or the kind proper authorities hadn't dug deeply enough into.

Proper authorities. Now that's rich. With corruption running so deep and so high, 'proper' wasn't a word you could implement anywhere but in a third grader's vocabulary. A word he too would toss away as soon as he came face to face with the harsh nature of reality. I'd strayed far from propriety, balancing on the thin thread of my remaining conscience, on the sidelines of the law.

It seemed to work for me.

Life, while not quite what any marginally sane man would call good, was bearable, which was much more than what I had reason to expect.

Insomnia was the most frequent of my guests. Actually, it was the only one, since I had no friends left, no close relatives, no one who gave the slightest bit of a damn. It was probably better this way. No friends meant no one to disappoint. No one to hurt. No one to lose. Less pain all around.

Insomnia visited me again tonight. Stuck on a middle ground between slumber and wakefulness, I was sprawled on the tattered couch in my new apartment – a bleak, colorless condo in a partially abandoned building. At least it was on the first floor this time, so I wouldn't have to shoot through a dozen floors if, or in my case when, it came down to it.

The radio was playing a worn, mellow country tune. Some redneck wailing and whining about how his wife left him, how he had no reason to live, how he drowned all his sorrows in a bottle. The usual crap.

I wanted to tell him to shut up. Try having your wife, child and then lover murdered, every bullet in New York City penetrate some part of your anatomy, everyone you trust stab you in the back one way or another and then try to drown your sorrows. I decided against it. Communicating with inanimate objects wouldn't do much good for my already questionable mental state.

A knock on the door woke me from my futile musing.

No matter what hole I tried to crawl into, how hard I try to stay under the radar, trouble has a knack for tracking me down. A knock on the door in the middle of the night was trouble's way of letting me know that – surprise, surprise- my short streak of luck had run out.

I made my way to the door as slowly as possible, perhaps in an desperate attempt to delay the hell about to break loose. I kept my gun in my jacket. Didn't want to scare a potential neighbor on a sugar hunt.

...Right.

With a sigh to welcome the inevitable, I opened the door.

A turmoil of unformed thoughts erupted in my brain, fighting for my attention like starved bloodhounds.

In the end, just one surfaced as the undeniable victor.

Have no fear, Vlad is here.

Part I: The Wrong Choice

Chapter I: Dearest of All My Friends

Most people, unless they're the kid from the Sixth Sense, aren't used to having people who're supposed to be dead showing up all of the sudden.

Most people aren't me.

That's right. Dearest of all my friends, Machiavellian Backstabber Extraorinaire, the one and only Vladimir Lem was standing at my doorstep.

I would have added the mandatory 'in all his glory', but that would've been inaccurate.

His plan of reigning in Hell obviously hadn't worked out as he'd hoped.

From the look of things, Hell itself had spat him out.

Someone had gone all Picasso on his face, forming a split lip, a black eye and a healthy assortment of decorative cuts and bruises. The usually slick blond hair was disheveled and draped in some sticky substance. Mud or blood, I couldn't tell. He was unnaturally pale, not quite on a zombie level, but getting there, with a thin layer of sweat covering his forehead. He wasn't sporting one of those James Bond styled suits he favored, either. Instead, his attire consisted of ordinary black pants, a faded white shirt, and a flight jacket.

It wasn't a good look for him.

Strange, but my first instinct wasn't to reach for my gun.

Like a driver trying to get a glimpse of a particularly gruesome car accident when he should be watching the road instead, I let curiosity get ahead of my better judgment.

But since when had Vlad and my better judgment gotten along?

I'd known he wasn't an upstanding citizen when I'd befriended him. Mob bosses rarely are. Still, I'd fooled myself into believing he was different somehow.

Honorable.

What a fucking joke.

It would have been nice if somewhere between “Don't talk to strangers.” and “Just say no.” somebody inserted “Never let the charming gangster convince you that you're friends.”

Not that it would've helped, really.

But it would've been nice.

I waited for Vlad to speak.

Unsurprisingly, it didn't take him long to do so.

“Max, my friend!” the exclamation was made with a mild slur. Vlad only slurred when he was substantially drunk. After a brief pause, he flashed his trademarked toothy grin. It played a strange contrast to his battered face. Grotesque, almost. “How good to see you.”

I couldn't quite return the sentiment.

Call me old fashioned, but when I kill someone, I expect him to stay dead.

Apparently, with Vlad, even that was too high an expectation.

I wasn't sure what the protocol for speaking to someone who had betrayed you was. That's usually where I found bullets to be a much more efficient method of communication.

Thing was, I already had implemented this method with him.

It hadn't gotten through.

And I hated feeling like a mindless rodent running in an endlessly spinning wheel of death.

Instead, I slid into that old routine we had.

The one where we talked in code, really saying nothing. Verbal Ping Pong.

“Hot date again?”

“Sizzling, actually,” he replied, his mouth curving into a familiar smirk.

“Who with?”

“An old friend. I'm sure you'd get along.”

“You have friends all over, don't you?”

“What can I say? I have a magnetic personality.”

“I think the word you're looking for is megalomaniac.”

He made a bemused face before answering, “No, Max. I haven't lost any words. But if I do, I'll be sure to tell you. You're the detective, after all.”

We could have played this game all night.

It was time to be blunt.

“What are you doing here, Vlad?”

“I want to make amends.”

Sure.

And Santa Clause was getting it on with the Easter Bunny.

“That, and...” there was a momentary flash of hesitation in his speech, “I could use some help.”

Who couldn't?

“See, I have this...” he slid his jacket open to reveal a gunshot wound on his left shoulder, a crimson highlight against the dull white of the shirt, “small leakage problem.”

He must have been truly desperate to come to me for help.

Desperate, or completely out of his mind.

Or both.

“Go to a hospital. I hear they specialize in that sort of thing.”

“Hospitals like to play 20 questions, and...” he sighed, “I'm not in a playful mood.”

Well, neither was I.

“You honestly expect me to help you?”

“We're friends, are we not?”

“You have an interesting definition of friendship, Vlad.”

Mine didn't include attempted murder, for instance.

I was funny that way.

“Max, what happened between us - it was pure business, nothing personal. You know that. You got in my way, and I had to... remove you. It's not like I put you in my way. In fact, I did everything I could to keep you out of it. You always take things so damn personally.”

Pure business, nothing personal.

It was a good motto to hide behind.

There were just two problems with it.

One - I wasn't buying it.

Two - It made no difference whatsoever.

“You killed Mona.”

Three simple words.

Three simple words that could once ignite hatred intense enough to consume planets, galaxies.

But as I said them now, I realized they had become hollow, like a bullet shell long after it had pierced your heart.

Now, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't summon up the image of Mona's face in my head. It kept eluding me, like a dream you awaken from too soon. You try to hold on to every piece, every memory of it. You might even succeed for a short while. But in the end, you can't stop it from fading away into your subconscious, leaving nothing but an echo.

Mona had become an echo in my soul. A phantom pain. Just another old scar.

Maybe she had always been nothing but a figment of my fragmented imagination.

Vlad was looking at me, eyes narrowed slightly. Possibly trying to decipher my thoughts.

Even I couldn't do that.

We shared a few seconds of frozen silence.

Finally, he spoke. His tone was calculated. Diplomatic, even. “Mona was a big girl, Max. I support equal opportunities. And you killed Winterson.”

“And that makes us what? Even somehow?” Who knew, in Vlad's twisted view of reality, this formula could actually have been applicable. “Did you even feel anything for Winterson?” it was beside the point, but I was suddenly curious, “Or were you just using her?”

“Of course I felt something. We had some good times together. I liked her kid,” he smiled faintly, “I didn't love her. At least, not your version of love. Not the kind that lasts forever or conquers all. That's fairy tale love, Max. And Winterson wasn't a fairy princess.” At least that was a point we could agree on. “Neither was Mona. She didn't need a knight in shining armor. She would have killed me as easily as I killed her. It was all fair game.”

I wondered if life was just one big game for Vlad.

And if so, who made the rules.

Assuming there were any.

“What about Annie? You called her a princess.”

I must have hit a sore spot.

He looked like a kicked puppy.

Or would have, if crocodiles had puppies.

“Annie...” there was a slight waver in his voice as he said her name. Maybe guilt wasn't a completely foreign word in Vlad's lexicon after all. “She wasn't supposed to die. That was an accident.”

A part of me wanted to believe him.

Another part wanted nothing more than to stick a knife in and twist it.

Hard.

The latter part was winning.

“Sure didn't look like one from where I was standing.”

“It wasn't a part of the plan. Kaufman improvised. Badly.”

“It's always convenient to have someone else to blame.”

“Look, Max – not everything went according to plan,” he looked away, letting out a disgruntled sigh, “Things didn't... work out exactly like I wanted them to,” frustration was becoming prominent in his words, “It wasn't supposed to be this way.”

“Right. You were supposed to be the hero, weren't you?” I recalled his last words.

Well, what would have been his last words, had he actually done the decent thing for once and died.

A harsh, bitter laugh preluded Vlad's reply. “I was. I was, Max. If not me then who? Gognitti?” he practically spat the name out, coating it with scorn, “Woden, maybe?” his voice shifted, turning into pure, unadulterated hatred, “Do you even have the slightest idea what sort of things he was responsible for?” a dim, ghostly smirk passed over his features. “The sort of things I had to do for him?”

His eyes grew dark, displaying some unreadable emotion. After taking a moment to collect himself, he began speaking again, using a disturbingly apathetic tone. “He acted all high and mighty, of course. The perfect politician. Never letting the dirt touch his hands. He had me for that, after all. His own personal garbage disposal man.”

Vlad was growing whiter by the minute. Losing blood. It didn't stop him from continuing his speech, now sounding like he's telling an amusing anecdote. “You know, he called me a 'small time crook' once. Do I strike you as a 'small time crook', Max?”

He wasn't looking for an answer, and I didn't provide one.

Faster than you could say 'emotionally disturbed individual', condensed rage took apathy's place. “I was in the Circle for thirteen years. Thirteen years, Max. Yet they treated me like a doormat,” he sneered, “You do not walk all over me and get away with it. Woden deserved to die. They all did. And I deserved to take his place at the top.”

I found it strangely comforting to know that out of the present company, I wasn't the only one who could have benefited from extensive psychotherapy.

Vlad obviously had some unresolved issues of his own.

“And I would have - but then you had to show up,” he made a dramatic gesture with his hand, “and ruin everything. Max Payne – human action figure with bullet dodging superpowers – how the fuck do you dodge bullets, Max? Did they teach you that at vengeance camp?”

Cute.

“You just had to play hero. You just had to go on your little revenge trip – it's the only thing that gives your life meaning, isn't it? It wasn't even your war!”

The sound of a door opening across the hall brought a Coup de Grâce on Vlad's rant.

“Mr. Payne! Do you know what time it is? This is an outrage!”

The voice, a winning combination of nails against a chalkboard and a banshee shriek, belonged to Ms. Wilkins, the widow who lived next door.

It just wasn't my day.

Vlad didn't seem to appreciate the interruption, either.

He slowly turned his head in her direction. “Dearest miss, you have my sincerest apologies. I'm simply having a highly important conversation with my friend Max here. It's quite literally life and death,” the menacing undertone was hard to miss, “It won't be much longer. May we proceed? With your permission, of course?” he gave her a grin that under other circumstances may have been charming, but now looked like it belonged to a long lost relative of the Addams family.

The sound of a door slamming shut followed.

Then a few moments of blessed silence.

“Well, that was a little anticlimactic,” Vlad muttered.

“You don't say.”

Vlad leaned on the door frame. He looked burnt out. Defeated. A lion without a mane. When he spoke, it was a somber near whisper. “Why did you have interfere, Max? Why did you have to make it your war?”

“You stabbed me in the back, Vlad, what the hell did you expect? A 'thank you and good luck taking over the world' note?”

“I didn't stab you in the back. I shot you in the head. There's a difference.”

It was kindergarten logic.

It just about made sense.

I almost laughed.

“It doesn't matter. You won, I lost,“ he stated dispassionately. A darkly melancholic smile made a brief appearance before clearing away into a blank expression, “and I've lost everything. What more do you want?”

The things that I want, by Max Payne, 2nd edition.

A smoke.

A whiskey.

For the sun to shine.

To wake up in my old bed, with my wife beside me, and find out it the last six years had been nothing but a nightmare. A really long nightmare.

Revenge?

I think somewhere along the line, I must have lost the taste for it.

And I hadn't even noticed.

I had no answer for myself, let alone for Vlad.

Luckily, he had no problem carrying a one sided conversation.

“I don't regret it, Max. I don't believe in regrets. I saw an opportunity and I took it. I'd do it all over again,” he was making a visible effort just to keep his eyes open, but sounded remarkably lucid. “But... I do regret sacrificing our friendship,” he drew a ragged breath, “I am sorry for that.”

If I'd constructed a list of phrases I could never believe him capable of pronouncing, this one would have gone right after 'The Godfather is overrated' and 'Beer is way better than Vodka'.

Then again, with Vlad, 'never say never' was a tailor made catchphrase.

“How the hell am I supposed to believe you?”

He attempted a grin. It looked more like an injured wild animal baring its teeth. “I always tell the truth, Max, even when I lie.”

Scarface.

Fitting.

'Go to hell, Vlad, they must really miss you there,' was what I could have said.

'Have fun bleeding to death,' was another option. It had a nice, simple ring to it.

Or I could have gone with the classic 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.' He would've appreciated the reference.

It was probably what I should have said. I wouldn't have suffered any pangs of guilt over it. He deserved it. He deserved worse. Logic, justice, common sense were all rallied up on my shoulder, frantic little angels pleading with me to make the right decision.

But the world had become complicated again. Life, death, choices, right and wrong. Vlad's presence had the annoying tendency to make white bleed into black until there was no possible way to distinguish between the two.

Maybe it was loneliness manifesting itself in some sick, masochistic fashion. Maybe it was some sense of misguided kinship, a 'for old times sake' gesture. Or maybe, when you're sleep deprived, other parts of your brain awaken. Parts you've forgotten all about. And parts you have never even known to exist.

“You watch too many goddamn movies, Vlad,” I sighed, knowing I was going to regret this. “Try not to bleed on the furniture.”

He gave me an eerie look. I couldn't pinpoint what it held. Surprise? Disbelief? Something else entirely?

“You're a true friend, Max,” his words were accompanied by a crooked smile, but lacked the usual ironic edge.

Right.

A true idiot was a more accurate description.

“Can you walk?”

“Of course.”

'Of course' turned out to be more of a 'sort of' that became a 'not really' after two and a half steps. I had to reach out and steady him, which ended up with us being in a proximity I found disconcerting.

He didn't seem to mind, though.

It's amazing how many things you can perceive in just a split second.

The tip of his nose brushing against my cheek.

The stark contrast between cool skin and hot breath.

The chill shooting down my spine. An electrical surge with a vindictive streak.

The violently rapid heartbeat that I suddenly shared for no apparent reason.

The taste of Vodka, blood and sweat performing a lethal dance on the edge of my tongue.

A startlingly familiar sensation put into a whole new context.

The only problem with split seconds is their habit of coming to an end.

With the dawn of a new second, my brain returned from its momentary slumber.

The realization that Vlad's lips were pressed against mine hit me like an Acme anvil.

I pulled away abruptly.

He made a sound. An anemic hybrid between a chuckle and a cough.

How drunk was he? Or was it the blood loss?

Some kind of psychotic game?

“I'm not your hot date, Vlad.”

“Don't sell yourself short,” his sly smirk resurfaced, “I've had worse.”

I decided taking the fifth was the safest course of action for the moment.

Slinging his arm over my shoulder, I helped him get to the bedroom. The fact that he wasn't saying anything wasn't helping. In fact, the silence was even more unnerving than his nonstop chatter. It was charged with restless static energy, contained too many unwanted implications.

I had to break it.

“Take your shirt off and lie down. You can manage that. I'll go get the first aid kit.”

I made a tactical retreat into the bathroom, not wanting to give him commentary time.

Washing my hands, I inevitably encountered my reflection in the mirror.

It was glaring back at me, wearing the good old 'What the fuck are you doing, Max?' face.

Why, helping the man who'd tried to kill me and killed the woman I'd loved, of course.

What are friends for?

My reflection offered me a mocking, demented grin.

No doubt about it, I was insane.

My only consolation was that there were no Pink Flamingos after me.

Yet.

To make matters worse, there was blood on my lip.

Vlad's blood.

I wiped it away with a swift motion, removing a bothersome bug off the windshield of denial.

I had an entire section in my brain reserved for that sort of thing.

I filed it under repression, where it belonged.

“Still bleeding here, Max!”

Somehow I was getting the feeling that repression was going to get more complicated from now on.

Bidding my reflection farewell, I grabbed the first aid kit and headed back.

Vlad had taken the jacket and shirt off. They formed a heap on the floor, his Desert Eagle crowning it, keeping a watchful eye.

Vlad himself was lying on the bed, his eyes closed and breathing rate erratic.

I pulled a chair next to the bed and mounted it.

I wasn't surprised to find out that while I still held the record for battle wounds, Vlad wasn't all that far behind.

His upper body was a tapestry of scars. Bullet wounds, knife slashes and all in between painted a bloody life story. Most of them were old, but some more recent, like a saber shaped burn on his right side. Probably a reminder of the showdown in Woden's manor.

Some had my signature on them.

A tattoo decorated the center of his chest. It was faded, at least a decade in age. All black, it depicted a nude woman with angel wings and burning flame for hair. She held a rose in one hand, a gun in the other. Two snakes interlaced around her ankle, shaping a sort of twisted S. There was also some writing underneath.

Veni Vidi Vici. The Vs were in bold.

I couldn't help but snort.

“What's so funny?”

“Ever heard of Narcissistic personality disorder, Vlad?”

“If the choice's that and chronic depression, Max, I'll take that. I always thought that swapping those painkillers you like so much for Prozak would do you a world of good.”

Well, now he definitely wasn’t getting any painkillers.

I turned my attention to the gunshot wound. It was clean enough, gone straight through while steering off major arteries. Lady Luck was obviously on Vlad's side. Made sense. He'd always had a way with the ladies.

“Roll over. I'll do the exit wound first.”

He complied.

If only he could play dead just as well.

“Do all your dates end with stitches?” I took out the thread and needle from the kit.

“Only the really hot ones,” he mumbled.

“This is gonna hurt.”

“No pain, no g-” the first plunge of the needle extracted a sharp intake of breath from him.

“You know, that pun is really only funny once,” I drove the needle in again.

“Fuck! Max, are you trying to make this as painful as possible?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Hey, I had to get my kicks from somewhere. Sometimes a needle can be as effective as a bullet.

This was almost fun.

A few more needle prods elicited some fascinating bilingual strings of obscenities.

“Really, Vlad, I'd expected a higher pain tolerance level from a ruthless gangster like yourself. This is a little pathetic.”

“Fuck you, Max.”

“Exit wound's done. Turn over.”

He did, though it took him longer this time around. His movements were getting sluggish.

Before continuing, there was a point I wasn't exactly clear about.

“Say... didn't I shoot you a couple of times and watch you fall to your death?”

“Didn't I put a bullet in your brain and watch the building you were in explode?”

He made a pretty good point.

“It takes more than bullets to kill people like you and me, Max.”

“People like you and me?” now this was interesting. “What kind of people is that, Vlad?”

“Bigger than life,” he made a theatrical pause, “Bigger than death.”

I wondered if he'd rehearsed that line in front of a mirror.

“I had a pretty good death scene, though, didn't I?”

“I've seen better.”

He tried to give me a deadly glare. It didn't work, mainly due to the fact that he could barely focus his eyes on me.

This was definitely fun.

I started working on the entry wound, but the entertainment value had decreased somewhat. Vlad was beginning to drift off, and seemed to be on the far side of pain.

“Who's the girl?” curiosity reared its head again.

“Mmmh?”

“The tattoo.”

The answer arrived with a prolonged delay and a small quirk of his lips, “my guardian angel.”

“She's doing one hell of a job.”

He jerked his head slightly in what was probably agreement.

Finally, I completed the stitches. I pulled out a bandage and began wrapping it around the wound.

“Max... how do you dodge bullets?” he sounded dazed, like he was talking through sleep. Maybe he was. I had no doubt he was capable of performing sweeping monologues in his sleep.

“Spinach and painkillers,” was the first thing that came to mind.

“Huh,” the explanation seemed to satisfy him.

I finished up the bandaging and threw a blanket over him.

Exhaustion finally setting in, I sank into the couch and turned the television on. White noise to block out unwanted thoughts. Which covered just about any thought I was likely to have at the moment.

They were showing a Looney Tunes marathon. An old Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner episode. A timeless classic.

I wondered if things would make more sense in the morning.

I knew they wouldn't.

Between the “Beep! Beep!”s and the faint sound of Vlad's breathing, I drifted into sleep.

To be continued...