ukan | IC CONTACT

Lark knows what the name means to Alec. And maybe there's a chance they'd let him go if he gave it up, but he doesn't. The chances are greater that it wouldn't count; and if it did, Lark couldn't get the thing Alec has and go. And there is the faintest tug, like an ache on a phantom limb, like the remembered pain of breaking his arm as a child; the faintest tug of something else. It's the logic that keeps him quiet, but the rest is still there.

"Don't barter with me," he tells the creature simply. "He doesn't care as long as he can get back."

"Now, perhaps, for now," the creature snaps back, making the hollow popping sound in its throat again. "But that isn't true at all. Is it?"

Alec has straightened back up to his feet by this point, slowly pulling the pack up onto his shoulder; he glances at Lark, too, then back to the creature. They're both right. He knows that.

"No," he replies as simply as Lark did.

"What's the name for it, child? What's the name for the things you feel that would never forgive yourself if you left him here with us?"

A beat, three, weighing his name beside the name he's being asked for; which is more precious to keep to himself, but more importantly which one will give them more weight to get away again.

"Love," he finally answers, cold.

Lark knows. He's known for a while, he's suspected so deeply that it became knowledge. All his evidence has come from comparing the things that he does for Alec, specifically and solely for Alec, and the things that Alec does for him. They're not the same things except that they call for the same sort of sacrifices.

But he never once thought he'd hear the word from either one of them. He looks at Alec, and doesn't look away even when the harpies don't fly off and let them have the treasure.

"You should let him go for that," Lark says softly. Surely that's a truth the harpies can gorge on.

"Nothing to say to him?" One of them taunts.

"You know what I'd say. Obviously." He glances at the creature and then back at Alec. The fact Lark, even soulless, hasn't given up his real name is a confession of its own.

Alec looks back at Lark, and everything that has ever truly sparked him to life, that has made him stand out and appreciate people and connect with them in spite of everything he's lived through and every reason he has to hate them, that still lets him love them, he has left behind with Riley. It's the same face Lark has been looking into over the past several days, not quite emotionless but nowhere near as animated or bright, the only keen light behind his eyes that of calculating intelligence; it doesn't change his memory or his knowledge. It doesn't change the fact that now he knows he's not whole, that part of him is missing, but it does mean he can't currently feel it or remember how it happened.

He doesn't need Lark to say anything back. That wasn't why he chose that answer to give. It didn't have anything to do with Lark, but rather with what he suspects the weight of it is worth to the harpies, that it will be more precious to them than his name, that it will distract them with their tittering and their triumph and maybe they're right. Maybe it will tear them apart later, but later doesn't matter if they don't get out now.

They're too distracted to notice the way he's easing closer to the one at the door, slowly and smoothly enough that he hasn't seemed to have moved at all, but now the wall he was standing with his back to is an arm's length behind him, and he's a foot away from being within range.

"Eleven of my unit are dead. I miss them still, when I let myself think about them, which isn't often," he offers, and now he's watching the harpy instead, digging for something else to feed them, another distraction. "A twelfth was rewritten. She'd kill me without hesitating if the right person gave the order. I'll kill her if I ever see her again so she doesn't have to live like that. She apologized to me when they dragged her away to PsyOps. I pretend I don't know why, but I suspect it's because she sold me out somewhere along the line."

The shrieks of the creatures have turned from anger to joy, and the one closest to Lark pokes at him again, waving the dirty, tattered tips of her wings in his face. "You'll let him do all the talking? Nothing to say, still? Of course we know, but you still have to give it, you still have to say it."

Lark has to keep them distracted so Alec can keep sneaking away. What matters right now is getting the Barge's soul to safety so they can leave, so they can live.

"I stopped feeling anything after Brad died, except avarice," he says, and he can't look at Alec now. "I thought I loved him that much. But I've never loved anyone like I do Alec. It's enough to send a smarter person away." Alec is smart enough to vanish over this.

He's quick to offer something else, something more damning but less vulnerable. "I know a way to take Los Angeles without killing the humans. But I won't do it. It'd be harder, but mostly I just don't want to spare them."

Alec knew the second he drew the knife on the harpy in front of him that he wasn't going to be allowed to leave with the piece of soul in his pack; he hadn't worked out his best case scenario yet when Lark showed up, but now it's simple. Let the harpies keep picking at Lark. Get a break, make a run for it. He can't kill them without dragging the entire population of them down on him; he can't let them have it and expect to ever leave.

He knows the second he hears about Brad - something he already knew in the way that Lark knew about love; inherent and self evident, only nameless - that it's the reason Lark has trapped himself where no one else could. He knows the second he hears about Los Angeles how the Admiral has trapped him on top of that. Neither of these things are useful to him just now.

Lark's feelings for him are, and their shared goal, one Alec knows they agree on without having to say anything at all, flash any signals. They always have. Alec says nothing while the attention slowly swings to Lark.

"Yes, yes, yessss pup," the one nearest him burbles, pleased and greedy. "Tell us the story. Tell us why you'd send us more souls to pluck. Tell us how that felt to find out your heart is broken but not too much to love - just too much to love proper."

Half a foot. Six inches. Alec could chance it from here, and if he sees the scales starting to tip again he will, but he wants to be a little more sure while he can.

He can't hear Alec over the harpies, over his own internal thrashing. But he knows Alec has to be close. And he knows Alec will run and leave him here; but maybe when he reaches Riley he'll find a way to come back for Lark.

He doubts it.

"I want them dead because it's the only way I'll ever be able to truly thrive. I've heard story after story of the apocalypse and the only common thread is that humans cause it. They're a toxic species." He says it without any feeling. Without Naki, all Lark is really missing is the desire to have pack. He still hates, he still desires, and he still feels things he still resists naming.

But he can't fall quiet while Alec escapes, not even to think, so he takes a breath and he forces himself to answer their other question. "It scared the hell out of me. Losing Brad changed me forever. Losing him," Knox, Alec, "I don't know what it will be like. Worse, I think. And I've known that from the moment I knew what I felt."

He's there, by the time Lark has finished answering, by the time the harpy doing most of the talking decides to turn its attention back on him, to feed out this deliciously twisted thread of half truths and lies to oneself and the difficulty that adds spice to drawing it out of them both. How unwilling they are. How vital in the presence of the Barge's soul, here where they aren't supposed to be at all.

"The thief brought you back to us -" it starts, but as its head swings back, Alec makes his move: he blurs forward, right into her space where he bashes the handle of the knife into her face, and then he's dropping back, kicking out, knocking her off balance and into the hallway, out of the doorway at last. This is where he breaks for it. This is where he runs flat out and no one and nothing can catch him.

He leaps for her instead, another blur of movement, swift and precise: he gets a hand wrapped into her hair, uses it to swing and twist, cuts his hand free of it rather than risk getting tangled, and she's tumbled into the harpy between Lark and Alec with a shriek of rage.

"Go! Go! Back the way you came!" Alec calls, rebounding neatly off the wall in a simple parkour maneuver to clear the tangle of two harpies before the one behind him can leap on him and stop them both.

Every instinct in him demands he kill. But Lark doesn't, nor does he stand gaping for more than half a second when he realizes what Alec is doing.

"Run! Get to the Barge!" He hollers, and he hits a harpy hard enough to make his knuckles ache, and then he's racing away. Back the way he came.

He keeps his ears open, though. Alec has the soul; the harpies will go after him before they go after Lark, and he'll turn on a dime to fight them off if they do.

The way Lark came has changed: Alec is in his purest, most effective form without the tangled emotions to distract him, and he glances over halls he can draw from memory with his eyes closed and notes the pieces that don't belong, the ways they've changed. He pelts just ahead of Lark to lead them up stairwells that weren't there, through doors that they have to just hit running and use their combined inhuman strength to break past, and out into the fenced yard of the Manticore compound this piece of hell has become.

This is what Alec was wanting to avoid: the three harpies behind them are alive but regrouping. There are several winged shapes overhead and they almost distract him from the pair that leap down off the roof of the building, talons out and falling like an ambush predator to catch the runaway intruders and their precious treasure.

Almost, but not enough to keep him from twisting hard to a side, giving the seeking talons a grip on his arm and shoulder instead of the pack with its all important cargo.

Lark springs forward and grabs Alec. He sinks his teeth into the harpy's leg, and he may not have fangs but his canine teeth are still sharp and his jaw is still strong enough to break bone. He doesn't hold on, though. He and Alec might tumble but they are both good at finding their feet, at hitting the ground running.

Lark grabs Alec and rolls, bites down; Alec lashes out at the creature as he rolls, too, catching onto whatever he can of Lark to bring him tumbling out with him, to push him clear as well and then all the bodies are breaking apart again but Alec has his feet under him once more and he's lunging off again, barely a hiccup in their retreat.

His breathing barely changes. He doesn't blur but he doesn't need to, eyes fixed ahead on the cover of the forest he used to run drills in, automatically adjusting for the unstable ground under their feet that doesn't always match the way it appears.

Lark has found the same trick: don't look at the ground, just watch the goal, let your feet adjust.

"How far is it from the forest?" He asks this without looking at Alec.

"Two degrees east, two hours at full speed if the terrain doesn't shift," he answers without having to think about it, zooming his vision to check how deep the forest goes - if it's just an illusion that will stop the moment they're in it.

It isn't.

"Once we're under cover, switch me packs."

Lark doesn't answer. It's something to cement into his mind, easy as the instructions seem right now. When they've run under the trees a ways he unfastens his pack and hands it over.

"Where did you find it?"

"Doesn't matter," he replies, slowing ever so slightly to a more sustainable pace for him but not stopping altogether. He's unfastening his pack too, finally glancing over at Lark in preparation to toss it to him.

"The pieces move. They're easy once you've spotted them, harder to catch but eager to be found. What I'm less sure of is if we can even leave without all the passengers accounted for."

"Passengers have been left before." Right now the fewer bodies on board, the better. He knows that thought will change when he has his soul again, though, so he doesn't give it too much attention.

He straps the pack on and takes a second to smell the air around them, to listen for trouble. So far so good.

"Had anyone else found a piece when you were with the souls?" Lark should have asked around when he was there. Riley's distress had distracted him.

"Yes. No way I could find to know how many, or how many are left, just that we didn't have all of them when I was there before," he replies, not a little displeased with the incompleteness of this assessment. It's not his fault though. The Admiral, once again, refuses to make any kind of appreciable sense.

"All you have to do is take the pack back on board. The Barge'll do the rest. I'll distract them as long as I can but you've got to get as much distance as you can from me. They'll know I don't have it when they catch me again."

Lark stops, grabs Alec's arm, turns him. "You're faster. Take it."

Alec is faster. But Lark arguably has greater endurance, so it evens out, and now--now they both know why Lark would try to give the pack back.

"Passengers do get left behind, Alec." He says it like a warning but really it's all he can say to explain why this feels like a bad idea.

Alec has been waiting for this because yes, now he knows. He's quick to snake his arm back out of reach as soon as Lark reaches for it, stopping and rounding on him too.

"Stop that." His voice cracks with authority, the kind he can wield when he sees fit - and hates doing, when he is himself. "I'm faster, which is why I need to be bait. You're the one that can follow the scent either way, and we'll save time if I'm already looking for the next piece."

Logic, tactics, nothing else. "I'm not planning on staying here, alive or dead. End of story."

Authority makes Lark bristle, makes him step closer. "I take the piece to the Barge, and then I come right back out here. I'll distract them while you look."

He hates this plan. He'd be faster on his own, his mind argues and he knows that it's wrong, but still it insists that Alec will get hurt, will be in the way, will die and then what will Lark do? Be stuck out here with the harpies and the ghosts. He wants to be alone, but not here, not in hell.

"If it made sense to do this alone then I wouldn't care, but it's needlessly dangerous and it's a waste of time."

"Yes."

Alec knows that about Lark, of course; if Riley were here with him, he wouldn't be snapping orders to get his way. His confidence in his ability to assess a situation doesn't change no matter what the status of his soul, but how he goes about enforcing it does, and that's where emotion comes in. That's where charisma comes in, what little empathy he has.

None of it useful right now, though Alec's eyes narrow again even as he agrees. Yes, Lark comes back because it doesn't make sense to do this alone. They're proving it right now.

"And the longer we argue, the worse our chances."

"Let's go." As long as it's understood that this isn't the only run they'll be making together. Lark starts running again, double checking direction as he does.

"And don't do that again. Orders just draw this out." If he had Naki, he'd still be annoyed, but it wouldn't be quite this bad. It wouldn't slam up against an instinct that he has little control over, on account of always being the wolf in charge. "You want me to do something just say why in as few words as possible."

"That was the fewest words possible," Alec replies, dismissive, because it's true. Just as Lark has the instinct to rebel against authority, Alec has the instinct to bring it to bear when he's the senior officer in a field mission in hostile territory. Lark, for all the respect Alec affords him for other reasons, is still a civilian by Manticore's measure.

It would be wiser to play on what he heard back with the harpies, what they both admitted to. He doesn't have it in him just now. "We don't have time for hurt feelings. I thought you of all possible people on this ship would understand that."

"My feelings aren't hurt," and Lark says it evenly, despite them running, despite how loud the animal part of him is right now. "I'm telling you I don't have a soul and I'm more wolf than I usually am. And even if I know it makes sense for you to be in charge right now, the wolf wants a reason to fight over it. I just want to bypass the instinctive bullshit and get this done."

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