ukan | IC CONTACT

"It's not just how I feel - it's true. Except for Taura, everyone else there is human. Everyone else there made a choice, and everyone else was expected to walk away at some point." B is the notable exception to this too but he doesn't specify that now; B joined the army before he was taken to become the Winter Soldier, and wouldn't have been if he'd stayed a civilian. The criteria stands.

He searches for a follow up for a few moments, trying to pin down this deep rooted, complicated ache nestled in his gut. What he comes up with, the only thing that feels like traction, is two words: "Stolen valor."

"I sometimes look at the difference between you and them as a difference between survival and sacrifice. They weighed their options, found what they were willing to give up for a short time, and gave it. That is noble, I respect someone who is willing to do it.

"But it's a vastly different scale than having no choices and still finding a way to choose to keep yourself." The thing he first fell in love with is that: Alec kept himself when everyone else couldn't. Alec didn't just survive, didn't become a shell. For a moment his voice is low, melodic. It's intense whenever he speaks of Alec; then his voice is fierce, deep-vein admiring.

"It's almost a mirror image...except that what you had to do tested every part of you. They still have vast unknowns, things they'll never learn because this was the hardest thing they ever did and they'll never try to do anything harder. They'll never have to." He looks at Alec a moment. "I understand what you mean. As much as I can without being any kind of soldier. If I was in a room again full of people who went through no pain, no trauma to be a wolf...it might be a microcosm of what you must feel."

He feels he's talking too much, has too much to say and it's going to crowd out Alec's voice, so he falls quiet and gently tips his foot toward his husband without touching him. Your turn.

It's a testament to how comfortable they've become between the two of them, that last gesture; Alec is much better at casual, affectionate touch than he's ever been in his life these days, but he'd still slide out of reach just now. Just now, he listens, and whatever piece of him it is that fought so hard to marry this man knows it was the right decision, loves him more, the longer he listens.

He glances at the few inches that separate them, and shakes his head.

"It's more than that - it's... almost like if someone could wear being a wolf as a costume. Something they saw one day and thought oh, I want to do that - or oh, that can help me do something with my life. That's the best option I have so I'll do it. But then when it gets too hard, or they've had enough, they can take it off again and walk away. They can be something else again."

Alec has, from day one, said that being a soldier is something others do; but soldier is what Alec is.

"We can't. But the time they wore it gives them the idea that they can say 'Me too. I've been there too.'"

Lark has met other wolves here. Taura, those teenagers. And he likes Taura a lot, but she isn't what he is. Unlike her, Lark did choose to transform himself into a wolf. And unlike the teenagers, Lark has suffered, has given up everything in his old life, to be what he is. Ever since he's changed it has been a balancing act between trusting his pack to do what he asks, and watching to see which one will turn on him. He has no friends at home who are wolves and he never will.

He does here--Iris and Warren--but they are a different sort of pack. He doesn't rule them. And those natural dynamics are something no one here could fully understand.

"If you could, if you can imagine being like them, would you stop being a soldier?"

"No," Alec answers immediately, firmly, as he always has.

"This is who I am. That's the whole point."

He nods. It's what he'd known Alec would say but it's still somehow a relief to hear. "Would you have gone if Ben was there? Or Biggs?"

"I..."

But he stops there, because even now, even years later, his relationship with other transgenics is difficult. Complicated. Full of pitfalls he can't explain.

He shrugs. "Maybe. I don't know. Those two in particular feel closer to other x5s than I ever have."

He knows Alec has always been different from the others. It's why he knows he could never have loved any clone Alec had. But he also knows that on some level it disquiets Alec, and he's never known quite how to ease that. Lark is different from other wolves, but he has never minded it.

"Even though you had a vastly different experience than they did...and even though it seems they feel like imposters," at least in part. "Do you feel there's nothing you can gain from being around them?"

Alec has had years to think about that, knowing the truth of it, seeing it in the pack and the way they react to him. The difference, he's decided, is that being unique is an advantage in Lark's world, where adaptation at any cost is survival. In Alec's world, being an individual was something forbidden and deadly.

He shakes his head, pushing at a nailbed with his opposite nail idly.

"There's always something to gain, something to learn." They've agreed on this pretty much from the beginning. "It's just... disappointing."

This is a weak word to summarize everything, but it's what he has.

Something in his chest goes tight hearing that.

"If there is anything I can say about the Barge it's that eventually, there will be someone who understands better what you were looking for," he can only offer. Such a thought would have once filled him with dread, that this one thing he can't give Alec would lead to a fracture they can't repair. That fear is gone. "Someone who also doesn't take off what they are when they hang their uniform up at night."

Alec smiles, but it's not a reassured one. If anything it's a little ironic because he's never wanted anyone to be able to know where he's coming from as having suffered it too. That and there's a whole population of them alive and well in Citadel, but he doesn't have a place there either.

He nods, acknowledging, appreciative nonetheless, still trying to prod and resolve whatever it is that keeps him sitting where he is instead of stretching out beside Lark.

"Sometimes I think about what would have happened if they'd ever once asked me." His relationship with Lark sets a sobering bar for those possibilities. "If they'd treated me like the X6s instead. I was mad for them, you know? And at them."

Edited 2021-05-16 21:53 (UTC)

"If they had ever treated you like you matter, I don't know if you would have come home with me," he points out quietly. Alec has a loyal streak that, once earned, doesn't yield. He's just learned not to hand it to anyone who would ever use it to control him, and given his talents, that list is nearly nonexistent.

"But what, specifically, did you see them doing with the X6's?"

"I know. I thought that too. I'm happy with where I've landed and what needed to happen along the way for that." This he can say with absolute certainty, because this isn't regret speaking. He doesn't do regret.

"But I resent that some things weren't... Easier. That's what it was for the next series: easier. They'd fail a test and get more training and a second try, not PsyOps and a death threat. They didn't get yelled at as much. Their standards were lower to meet, with more down time, less discipline."

He understands adapting methods. But they'd made the X6's stronger and faster, then demanded less of them. It's a warped way of doing things, and he's angry on Alec's behalf. If he could destroy everyone associated with making that program, he would, and he'd do it slowly. It's only because Alec doesn't want it that he doesn't try.

If only they knew they're only spared because of a man they systematically tortured for twenty years.

Alec knows the high, strict bars he'd had to clear were what made him who he is now, what gave him the skills he still practices. So that isn't what Lark focuses on.

"That's why I try so hard to spoil you," he says, a soft smile at the completely understated phrase. It isn't spoiling, it's something much more personal.

Those skills - that absolute freedom he has now because of them - are why he doesn't regret everything he worked hard and found a way to survive. He loves who he is. He loves where he's landed.

He chuckles and pats his stomach, which no rational person would call soft, but still lacks the single minded definition and adds a few healthy pounds from when he was twenty. "You're doing an enviable job of it," he assures Lark, warmly.

"There's nothing I'd do differently."

"I know. And I'm glad." Regrets aren't something either of them hold onto for long. Life has too much to learn and too much to offer. But he does hope that someday there will be someone Alec can turn to who simply understands, however it is that Alec still yearns after.

"I wouldn't blame you if you don't go back to the group. But I'll also support you if you do."

He considers that, trying to make a decision now. Trying to make a choice to drop it and let it go, or at least stop thinking about it. This is where he finally starts to unfold his legs, twisting to ease down on his back beside his husband, looking up at their ceiling, one hand behind his head.

"I miss my unit," he says very, very quietly.

He can't bring them back and he isn't sure Alec would if he could. They've only touched the topic very lightly in all these years.

But he can help stave off their second death. "Tell me more about them?"

Alec thinks of them often, keeps them alive in his crystal clear memory of them, but the combination of his self imposed conditioning never to betray their confidence and his own practical mindedness has been too powerful over the years to let him actually talk about them. For it to even occur to him to talk about them.

He starts to say something but it doesn't make it easily now either. He swallows and tries again, thumb tip tapping against the pillow.

"I was closest to Evan," he finally manages. It's not a name he's mentioned before.

He doesn't look at Alec, he just listens the quiet way he does whenever Alec's past comes up.

"What was he like?"

"Clever." He can picture his brother as readily, as accurately as he could the tile he's staring through.

"He was the first to work out any puzzle we were given. You think I'm fast with a rubix cube? I'm full seconds behind his fastest time. But he was quiet, too. Not shy, not stupid. Just quiet."

The obvious question is what happened to him, but that isn't what Lark wants to know. Maybe not ever; it's not the important thing to learn. "What was he like when he did talk?"

He's grateful for that; grateful too for the space Lark makes for him, that lets him ease this out of his own mind as painlessly as possible.

"He talked to me most, but it was always to the point. It was the only time he'd say anything, and he'd say what he meant, and that was it." He notices his tapping thumb and stills it, lips quirking faintly. "'Stop overthinking, Knox.' He was a bossy little shit but usually right. 'You know what to do, so do it.'"

He feels so nauseous his mouth waters in response; he ignores it. It's just the conditioning.

Lark isn't looking at him but he knows Alec's voice so well that he can all but see his expression. Both the faint smile and the nausea.

"You said you were closest to him?" Gently prompting for more, for whatever comes to Alec's mind.

Alec is quiet and still for a long, long moment. Possibly so long it might seem he's not going to answer.

But finally, swallowing again, voice flat just so he can say anything at all, "He said I made him feel safe." A beat. "He made me laugh for the first time."

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