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"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."

"Even here, you don't think there could be?" He asks, but he asks it carefully. He can hear Alec breathing, he knows how close to old tripwires they are. They don't scare him the way they once did; now it's just a matter of not wanting to cause Alec pain.

And indeed, they're still there: still buried deep enough that it takes work to find them but real enough that Alec feels his throat close when he opens his mouth to answer, completely unbidden. He feels heat behind his eyes and closes them.

"Where do I stop, Lark?" he asks, quiet, pained. "If I start, how long do I keep it up? Whose choices do I undo and whose do I respect?"

Lark is both selfish and calculating; they both are, but it's deeper in Lark. So he's quiet, thinking about that and trying not to make it fit his own terms.

"I know," he says, because he does. It's a dam that would never stop flowing if it cracked in the wrong place. "But what choices did she have a chance to make?"

This is always a strange concept, too, when it comes to transgenics: choice. Alec in particular is very, very discerning about how he defines choices and usually much different from everyone else. This is where he pulls away, where he rolls over to his feet because it's old, old habit and almost reflex to put distance between himself and everyone, everything, when this particular sore spot is touched.

"Plenty," he says, firmly, almost snaps. "I know it doesn't seem like much to anyone else, but the small choices we could make on a day to day basis? To do one more push up or trust it was good enough? To address a CO or stand silent? To... save one unitmate -" Brother, sister. "- or save the rest? Those mattered."

Lark watches him, not moving closer, not moving away. One hand rests on his stomach; he doesn't think to move the other away from where Alec left it.

"I know," he says. He was never in the hell Alec was, but he had his mind warped. He knows he never would have broken free without the tiniest victories first. He almost asks something and then doesn't.

"We followed a script, we toed a line, but each of us chose how to do it. Each of us chose when enough was enough. And I don't know what choices Shila made that landed her in that chair - maybe someone else sold her out, maybe it was the only way she could see to make it to the next day, maybe she decided she was done halfway through a routine session." He has momentum now - the old anger, the one that never really cools, never really fades - and it's easy to let it have him.

"She taught us that. She never let us be victims. Why would I take that from her?"

He lets Alec speak, listening to the words as much as to the undertow in them. "You're right," he says, believing it. The reasons behind Alec's choice always made Lark curious, but now that he has them he can't imagine arguing against them.

He looks away then, absently touching the ring on his finger. It isn't the real one but it's a habit at this point. "I'm glad you had her to teach you that."

Alec can keep his anger going indefinitely; he can fan his temper to a searing breaking point, he can hold it just so for as long as he feels he needs it to keep going, as long as he needs its protection.

None of that is this; this is Lark, who does not rise to challenge him or dismiss him, whom he does not need to protect himself from anymore. So instead his anger is just that - just anger because it's always there, just frustration at this entire unsavory situation - and he swallows it down with effort, to keep himself here, keep himself thinking, keep himself listening. He nods.

Then he sighs, and reaches up to rub the corners of his eyes, to pinch the bridge of his nose. "That doesn't make it any easier. Not knowing," he admits, clarifies. "But because I don't know, I have to go with what she taught us. Right?"

"I think," Lark says slowly, considering his words, the delicate situation. "That risking breaking a choice she made is worse than anything else you could do. Worse than not knowing. ...But that doesn't mean not knowing isn't its own sort of hell."

There are things he knows he can never help Alec recover from, and that those things sometimes trip them up even now. But again: knowing that doesn't mean that watching Alec struggle isn't hell.

It's not a good answer, but it's the same answer Alec has already come to; it's the only one he can see as satisfying, as well as any one answer can, every need the choice presents. But that's the thing about choosing to do nothing: it's a choice that must be made, over and over, and that dies the moment a different one is made.

He squeezes at the corner of his eyes one more time, and forces himself to sit down on the edge of the bed. He doesn't apologize - years into their relationship, even when he can admit he's in the wrong for something, he so rarely apologizes - but he does give that much ground anyway.

"That's how I feel, too. That's what I know - but I still wish it were different." This time he does not offer the qualifier of sometimes.

"I do, too." It's why he's brought it up in the past, and why he did now even though he knows it doesn't help anything. "After seeing how Biggs and the others adjusted to Citadel, I can't help wondering. Wishing something else could have happened."

He isn't attached to the idea of family, and his idea of what that is doesn't match other people's anyway. Neither does Alec's. But those people mattered to Alec, and so they come to his mind now and again. All the potential there, not just to see how they'd flourish with freedom, and all the reasons it will never be met.

They mattered to Alec. They mattered. And the day he looked Shila in the eye for the last time before he put her down once and for all was one of the hardest he's had to face without actually dying, and it sticks with him still in a memory known for its clarity and longevity.

He's looking at the back of his hands when he asks, soberly, "Please don't ask me again about Shila and deals. It's hard enough already."

He doesn't apologize. He rarely ever does about the deep questions, the ones that cut. Instead he can offer a promise: "I won't."

He listens to the quiet. "I don't regret anything that brought me to where I am now. I think that's the same for you. I hope it is."

"It is," he can say with confidence.

"This isn't regret. It's just..." Useless.

"It's just what's left."

"Grief," Lark guesses, because he can smell and hear a lot of emotions but he's never had much to grieve himself. No one who qualified as family, or who he would spend time on the Barge trying to bring back.

"When we're done here, I'll be done with wondering what if." It's just so hard to be in a place like this and not think about it. Especially for Lark, who is insatiable when it comes to opportunity. "It's the thing I miss most about being home. I know the roads we've taken there, I know where they can take us."

"It's one of the things I love about you." Alec has no shortage of creativity in a very particular way, but Lark is miles outside of his league in ambition and vision. Alec isn't even in the game by comparison.

"I just need you to trust me about the roads that begin and end with Manticore." He twists, glancing over his shoulder. "And I know you do. It's just a place better left dead."

Lark nods once, solemn. "All right." But the topic is around them now and he thinks for a moment. "Tell me something we'll do when we aren't working."

It's not even really a diversion; Lark struggles heavily with turning off 'work', especially here where the distractions are brief.

It's around them now, so switching gears from thinking about Shila and Manticore and his lost unit to the two of them - the furthest thing removed from his former life - takes him a moment and not an easy one. He glances back over his shoulder and tries to think of what Alec Tennant would say, how he'd flirt, what scandalous thing would come out of his mouth.

Instead, he forces himself to lay back - he'll feel it again soon, but for now this is what he has - and lets his head rest against Lark's hip.

"Are we working now?" he asks.

"No." He's not sure what to call it. They fall together like this often, just stretched out on the bed touching or not, talking until somehow hours have passed. Lark doesn't have this with anyone else, and can't think of anyone else he could ask--he will never talk about these moments outside of this room.

"No, it's just us right now."

"Then this, obviously," he jokes even though it's dry, because it's a step back from the ledge he'd been standing beside, a step back towards Lark even if it's not a good joke.

"We should use this opportunity to redecorate. Try out a few new wallpapers, a few coats of paint, see what happens when all we have to do is wish it back the way it was or walk away from it at the end."

"Are we still agreed that nothing with a name like 'Elk Tongue' is a good look?" Lark asks, eyeing the walls. One would think he'd love the name and a color that calls to mind a puddle of drying blood, but no.

"We were never agreed on that in the first place, if I recall correctly." Yes they were.

"You also tried to veto Unicorn Cupcake Swirl."

Edited 2021-05-27 14:11 (UTC)

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