"I do, too." Something he hasn't really admitted to before; the degrees of being alone are never, will never, be comparable between them. But he says it now because the iron grey of it mutes even the vibrant gold-and-blue of his aura. Not for long; it's a sudden, stark darkness and then the colors are back.
"I can trust them not to betray me for another pack. I don't have that in a real wolf pack." It's something he doesn't explain to most people, least of all to Warren. A real wolf pack is pure instinct and lust and gluttony, short lives lived in the red all the while. "But I could never have had this pack, the Barge pack, if not for you."
He doesn't know what he's supposed to say to that, if anything. He grasps after a response for a few moments, then shakes his head.
"You put people together on your own, Lark. People want to follow you and you earn that. You're worthy of that. It doesn't have anything to do with me."
"I wasn't worthy of it before you. I used people. I killed them, I let them die, I did whatever it took to keep them in line and keep them doing what I wanted." He shakes his head. There is some degree of that in Los Angeles, too; but that's because of the dangers in that pack that don't exist here. "That changed with you. You really don't know that?"
He could keep insisting, and part of him wants to, but he's wise to himself; that's a stalling tactic and he knows it, so instead he pushes his shoulders back slightly and breathes out, eyes on Lark.
"Okay," he relents. "How does that relate to feeling isolated between us?"
"There are things we will never understand between us. And it often feels like you assume there are others who do understand me better than you do. There aren't." Just like the other transgenics don't fully understand Alec. "Sometimes I get the sense that you think I can find something with the other wolves I don't find with you."
"Of course I do." His brow furrows, his frown delicate but clear.
"You told me that yourself. You told me about coyotes, and needing pack to stay safe. Needing other wolves." There's no accusation or anger in what is, as far as Alec's concerned, as much fact as them both needing water, needing food. (The green creeps in again, mostly too subtle to see, but occasionally glimpsed drifting a bit separate like oil from water.)
"Which one?" Alec asks, but the quality that keeps him moving all the time - every shade of pink, marbling through the rest in peaks and valleys - means he scoops the orange peel into his palm and stands to get rid of it, only comes back a minute later with a glass of water for them both.
He could say he doesn't know. Certainly it's not unreasonable to have no idea what to say about an aura he's had less than twenty four hours, that may not mean anything at all. But he's Alec, who knows himself well enough to piece back everything about himself that's been broken apart multiple times, who is unsurprised by the way the red heats up and starts to burn away the green the moment Lark draws attention to it.
His voice is calm as a shrug, too calm, despite that: "Fear."
That reaction still surprises him on some level, quicksilver and light. Lark has earned his trust over and over again, painstakingly, painfully, but like the eye closes at bright light, Alec learned young and intrinsically to brace for a very specific consequence to being a disappointment, as much as not to ever flinch when he does.
Answering is harder, and he as reflexively digs into the instinct he trained into himself of anger to make it happen anyway. He doesn't need to direct it. It just is.
"It's always felt like the one thing that might threaten what we have. What I am to you." Not who. What.
"You have it backward. You give me what the pack can't. All the family, that paramilitary family tie you mentioned? You're it. You're my family, you're the one I go into war with. If I had nothing but you, I could survive. It's not that I don't want pack, or that I don't love the one I built here. If I had the pack without you? I would go back to being the thing I was when I first came to the Barge. Having a life with you is what taught me to have more."
The irony in that statement - in how much he does believe it if the opalescent quality being back is any indication, though all that happens outwardly is his lips twitch towards an awkward smile - is enough to choke any number of horses. He looks away a moment, then shakes his head, chuckling, when he makes himself look back.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
no subject
He lets the teal and the blue pave over more of the red unchallenged and admits, "Sometimes."
no subject
no subject
"How?" he asks.
no subject
no subject
The teal goes faintly, darkly more green, but he reins it back towards blue with a thought focused more away from Lark.
no subject
no subject
"Not just the biological makeup of it, but - you seem to trust them more overall as a support system, not just a resource."
no subject
no subject
"You put people together on your own, Lark. People want to follow you and you earn that. You're worthy of that. It doesn't have anything to do with me."
no subject
no subject
"But I didn't make you change how you think, what you do. I didn't even ask you to. You did that on your own."
no subject
no subject
"Okay," he relents. "How does that relate to feeling isolated between us?"
no subject
no subject
"You told me that yourself. You told me about coyotes, and needing pack to stay safe. Needing other wolves." There's no accusation or anger in what is, as far as Alec's concerned, as much fact as them both needing water, needing food. (The green creeps in again, mostly too subtle to see, but occasionally glimpsed drifting a bit separate like oil from water.)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
His voice is calm as a shrug, too calm, despite that: "Fear."
no subject
no subject
Answering is harder, and he as reflexively digs into the instinct he trained into himself of anger to make it happen anyway. He doesn't need to direct it. It just is.
"It's always felt like the one thing that might threaten what we have. What I am to you." Not who. What.
no subject
no subject
"Sometimes, I can't believe I almost missed you."
no subject
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)