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"It's a ridiculous trick," Alec agrees. He's even tried it himself before, of course, and even with his precise control over his body he can't do it like Evan could.

"He even got Shila with it, once."

"She probably needed a good laugh." They all did, but it has always sounded as if Shila had their wellbeing more squarely on her head. "What did he look like?"

It's a difficult question. Alec can list off exactly how tall he was, how much he weighed, his BMI, the angles of his face to a double digit degree. That's not what he looked like, though.

What he looked like was harder because of personal hygiene standards when they were young. Alec closes his eyes, ultimately, trying to find the words to describe him.

"Taller than I was, but lighter built. He might have grown into it eventually, but I remember... long arms, long legs. Dark skin and darker eyes and hair darker still. One of only two models like him for our series."

It fills in a few places in Lark's imagination. He studies the ceiling of their luxurious little bedroom. "What do you think he would have thought of the Barge?"

It's funny how Alec can imagine Evan so clearly, but the moment he tries to put him into more modern context, the memory starts to break apart and fragment.

Actually, funny isn't the word for it. It's not amusing at all, but he tries, opening his eyes again but leaving them unfocused.

"Shila wouldn't let us talk about the world outside the compound much. She wanted us focused, and I helped her. But Evan used to watch the humans more closely than anyone, and if a question came up and any of us at all had the answer, it was probably him. He was watching them as people, not as captors." This, too, is maybe a bit of where Alec gets it. "He'd be good at this. And he'd enjoy the same things I enjoy about it, and never let us take that for granted."

"Makes me want to enjoy it a little more," Lark murmurs. He has always known he was more privileged than most kids, but he's only become aware of the things he took for granted since he met Alec.

Alec makes a small sound of agreement. Then he reaches out to brush Lark's wrist with his fingers.

"I want to tell you about them. It's just old habits die hard."

"I know. You don't have to tell it all at once. I'm not going anywhere." He's waited all these years to learn Evan's name.

He nods and leaves his fingers there, touch light.

"It's the Barge. No one back home knows anything I didn't tell them, and I'm careful what I say because we have to live here. But here it's different."

"Different how?" Turning his head now to glance at Alec, now that he isn't so cautious of breaking up a stream of thought. He knows how, mostly; he just wants to see if Alec has more to say, or needs to say more.

Edited 2021-05-20 16:41 (UTC)

He shrugs, then takes another moment to turn over in his mind what the differences actually are. What roots they have.

"It's common knowledge here that I graduated. That I needed to in order to get out. That none of us are from here. So I can be more honest about what I am without worrying it's going to start something in a place I want to stay."

"I'd wager there are people who either won't believe you if you tell them anything you can do," and he doubts Alec will; neither of them are the type to show their hand, even if someone has seen a few cards. "And others who will test it. Which I would buy tickets to watch."

"Well, you're in luck: you have season tickets," Alec replies drily, because whatever advantages he can glean from being here - and he will; he always will - he would never have come back here if not for Lark. The moment Lark leaves, Alec is gone, too.

"But it's just... like it fits better in a way, almost. Even though it doesn't. Not really."

"Not having to grovel or be someone you aren't goes a long way, no matter where you are." Or how well trained or talented you are at it, he thinks.

"Though I'm a hypocrite for saying that, I know. I'm glad that you're able to not give a fuck here. I meant what I said when I told you I don't want you to stop being Alec Tennant just to appease a few passengers."

It hits a strange chord with him, hearing that name here in a place where he was first and foremost Alec McDowell. Where he was, in a way, more honest than he has ever been in Los Angeles.

Or maybe just different, he thinks as he looks at the warm gleam of his wedding band. Because he is Alec Tennant, too, even if it's only one of a pack of cards he plays on an Earth where he is unique among all things.

Instead of answering, he leans close enough to kiss Lark, lightly.

Lark kisses him back, his thumb stroking Alec's hand and brushing the wedding band.

"Does different mean alone, to you?" he wonders, something he's wondered off and on over the years. Obviously Lark is with him in every way he can be, but he knows full well that they're different species, that there are things they don't--can't--understand without experiencing.

Alone is a complicated concept for Alec, who has lived in the kind of isolation that drives people mad, who has been separate for most of his life even while surrounded by other transgenics, other inmates, other soldiers and monsters. He grew up with a unit. He trained with soldiers. He worked with other passengers. Now he lives with pack and he is as different now as he's always been.

"Sometimes," he admits. "It always has before. I didn't see a reason why it would change."

Lark hasn't felt like he belonged anywhere, except for one watercolor dream where he was a pup. He is convinced now that it was simply Violet's influence and the heady mania of, for the first time in his life, having friends who weren't simply after his influence. Nothing lasting, nothing real. Everything since then has been a useful bit of maneuvering with glimmers of real affection, like flecks of glitter in a strobe light.

Except this.

And he has no idea how to impart that to Alec, or if he has, or if he can.

"How much does that bother you?"

This is, honestly, why he said what he'd said: he had never expected how he felt to change, but it has, at least enough to show him what he's been missing. So much of life with Lark is like that: showing him things he had no idea he'd been without and, now that he knows, never wants to be without again.

In light of that, this is a loaded question as well - or at least a complicated one.

"Not enough to change anything right now," is what he leads with, in case that's in question. "Enough that sometimes... I do wish things could have gone another way here or there."

'Right now' he says, which is what they always say. They almost never speak in absolutes, even if they might think them in the briefest moments when they're most relaxed. Lark does impossible things but he knows those moments are both precious and as childish as looking at clouds and seeing castles.

"Which things?" He might know the answers but he's thinking, he's scheming, he's hoping.

Alec knows his husband, knows how his mind is always working; he gives him a mild look for the question, but that's not what makes him hesitate before answering.

"That Seattle could have been a fight we could win. Shila." Those two items alone are a pretty big ask, and the easiest to summarize.

Lark still thinks Seattle could have been won, but that's only if there were better resources. More help for the transgenics, more strategy in managing the humans. More, more, more of so many things that wouldn't be worth chasing. He doesn't dwell on it because Alec doesn't, and because if he does...well they've seen what he does with an idea that won't let go.

"What was she like before?" He asks instead, tapping a faint promise that he doesn't expect a full answer. Or one at all, if Alec doesn't want to give it. But he's always wondered; Alec's comments on her are rare and little more than a few words.

"Before...?" he wonders, trying to pin down what the question actually is. But of course, there's really only one answer: "Before PsyOps reconditioned her?"

There was no before that, after all. She was always a child placed into an unwinnable fight, who did her very best to win it anyway.

"Stubborn. Whip smart, and that's coming from me," he starts, slowly, like he had with Evan. "Serious. She... they nominated the leaders very early on, and in the home units, it never changed. She was responsible for the performance of all of us, individually and as a group, and she never stopped thinking about that."

Lark met Ben, but barely beyond a nod here and there. He never spoke to him, but he'd watched the network and he'd paid more attention as a new inmate than he ever has in his life. He knows a sketch of Ben. He knows all the ways Ben was not--would never be--like Alec.

The more he hears the more his suspicions are confirmed: that Alec, his Alec, is the only one like him. That no other transgenic soaks up life the way Alec does, that no other transgenic loves and seethes the way Alec does. Perhaps if they did, Lark would have pushed harder to know why Alec has let them lie where they died.

But the more he hears the more he doubts they could adapt to life outside their missions. How could they? How could Shila, who had responsibility chained around her neck?

But even so. He can picture them and knows what he pictures wouldn't resemble their real faces, but with every detail Alec gives him they take on new dimension. So even so. "I wish sometimes I could have met them."

This is where Alec rolls over onto his back again, though he doesn't take his hand back; he leaves it where it is, fingers still loosely tangled with Lark's. He focuses on keeping his breathing even while he tries to picture that: bringing Evan home to see the motorcycles, Teek dangling his feet in the pond water and letting the fish nibble on his toes, Shila and Lark talking over coffee.

He can't quite do it, but he tries for a long, long time before he says, "I wish you could have too. I wish there'd been anything to do for her."

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