ukan | IC CONTACT

He looks over his shoulder. "I didn't mind the train one. Yunlan and I bashed a few guards' heads in. I learned how to be a proper government protester. It was great fun."

"I have a hard time picturing you as a protestor when you were the government," he muses. "How did you reconcile that later?"

"It wasn't my government. It wasn't anything like my regime," he points out. This is a lie he has told himself that is so deeply entrenched, because it was his first breach, that he refuses to let it go.

"I was pissed at first, but the man on the train was nothing like the radicals in blue shooting up my palace."

Lark can hear the insistence, and he decides not to argue. This time. He'll wait for there to be a thread he can pick at stop Pagan can unravel it himself.

"Who was Yunlan to you then?"

He struggles to think back that far. It was less than a year, but breaches are so vague, and those memories are tricky. He remembers the actions. The rush. The fury. "Friends," he decides. "We were angry together. Angry at the guards who mistreated the prisoners. That sort of thing."

He returns to the couch, settling down, legs crossed.

He smirks. "Seems like a good person to be, as far as any of our breach selves are. Easier to enjoy than the one you just were?"

"I prefer having something to do," he insists. "These sorts of fake family, fake friends, all get along sorts of things don't sit right with me."

"It's the fake families that annoy me most." A small bit of contempt. "At least this time my family members were my actual pack members, but I've never been that lucky before. A lot of people here cling to those attachments after the breach... Which is odd. It's like being in a play, and then trying to drag those characters' fictional relationships into the real world."

He frowns. "I've only had one relationship from the breach that stuck. Rawne. He wasn't a brother, but I took care of him on the train. But that wasn't an attachment carried over so much as it was an interest in someone who turned out to be not so terrible in real life."

He sits back. "The only attachments that don't seem contrived are the ones that are already there. If you and I had been brothers or related or what-the-fuck ever, I wouldn't have such a problem."

He grins. "Well, if I'd ended up having a crush on you instead of Anita, and was too shy to say or do anything about it, I'd have an issue with that. Not having the crush, just being too chickenshit to act."

"Hm. It wouldn't make it awkward coming back and seeing my handsome face?" he wonders with a grin, because Pagan likes to play with fire.

"We're too close in age," Lark quips. "I'm a cradle robber, haven't you seen Alec?"

"So am I," he points out. "At least with men," he laughs. "That's been my normal type. Men that look young and act like selfish brats. But have adorable faces." Which has not served him well and probably is something that needs to change one day. "Women are different."

"They are for me, too. My taste in women is nothing like my taste in men." He has a few guesses as to why, but no idea what it is for Pagan.

"Well, you picked a fine one in Alec," he assures him. "I suppose it doesn't matter now, does it?"

"Not for me, no." He rubs his thumb along his wedding band. "I did love a woman here, though. Before I met him."

"Really?"

Pagan looks skeptical. "I thought you said that females in the pack only make things-- complicated." He remembers the story that he told him when Pagan was complaining about Shen Wei. It wasn't a good one.

"Who was she?"

"She was human. And they do...which is why it never would have worked. I knew that. We were never going to end up in the same place." He looks at his empty cup but keeps it in his hands. "But that didn't stop me from loving her while she was here. Her name was Lisbeth."

He nods, glancing at the cup and then up at Lark's face. "What was she like, your Lisbeth?"

How to even begin?

"Have you ever wondered what a prison shiv would be like if it was a person?" It doesn't sound flattering but his voice is so warm as he says it.

After a pause he takes out his communicator, sifts through buried items, and shows Pagan a picture.

"It's the only one I have of her." And it might be the only picture that exists of her in an unguarded moment.

He takes the picture and smiles before handing it back. She's tough. That makes sense. She'd have to be to keep up with Lark.

"I never wondered that, but I suppose if I was going to put someone with you, it would be that sort of woman. What happened?"

"We ran a few jobs together. Stole things from wardens, since even she couldn't hack into communicators. That's what she was at home with computers...a genius." A literal genius, even if no one in her life gave her the chance to hone it.

"I was a monk then, basically. But the second she decided she trusted me enough to drag me to bed," a shrug. "She was the sort of person you could fear, but if she let you see her as she was... I was helpless."

He puts the communicator away after a brief glance at her face, her piercings, her bare shoulder. "Anyway, then she disappeared one day. The Admiral sent her back to die. And that was the end."

The stutter of a breath, stomach clenching. It's the one thing that Pagan fears -- the Admiral sending him away. He doesn't know if he goes to die or if he goes somewhere else. Maybe he ends up just disappearing off to face the demons of Shangri La. Either way, the notion of simply vanishing at the whims of the Admiral scares him more than he outwardly cares to admit.

He takes a drink.

"Fascinating prison love stories," he says, but his tone suggests something a lot less flippant than his words. "I loved Steve, in my own way. I hate him more, though. And that's what I will end up carrying with me."

"Hate is a more useful tool than love," Lark says, carefully packing Lisbeth away in his mind, focusing instead on his life now. On Pagan. "But would you rather love him?"

"No," he says finally. "No, I think I'll take the hate. I have only truly loved one person in my life and I'd rather keep that emotion unspoiled for her. Because she deserved it."

He hesitates.

"Perhaps that breach was not so useless," he muses softly. "That other poor bastard knew what love was, at least. And he knew it quickly. Right on sight." It was pure and clear. There was no denying what it was like. No years of hate and anger to muddy the waters, diluting affection into something that is so entwined with vitriol that resentment and love become indistinguishable.

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