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.
"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."
Alec is silent for a moment, either listening or considering or analyzing or all three. He's usually an easy read, or at least whatever he means to advertise at the moment is easy to pick up on; he hasn't been ever since they woke up in the land of the dead.
But the truth of it is that no matter what Alec really thinks, no matter how rational Lark's explanation, there's still no time to argue: "Noted," he answers instead, and points ahead.
"I'll lead them that way -" Just a degree off the trajectory for the Barge. "- and cut away the first chance the environment gives me to sell being confused or rattled. You do what you see fit."
He nods, picks his own path. "Stay alive. I don't want to carry your corpse back." He will, but he doesn't want to.
Two hours, Alec said. Two hours there, then two hours back. A lot can happen in four hours; maybe another piece will be found. In the meantime he runs, harder than he probably should, because his muscles are just threatening to start aching when he reaches the Barge.
"Riley!" If she's here, that has to mean Alec is still alive. Right?
Riley is easy to pick out, even easier to find; whatever comfort she can find in knowing that at least this time Alec chose of his own free will to go back out is enough to keep her from the frantic pacing of before - most of the time anyway - but she's still vocalizing. She can't help it. It's instinctive.
So he might hear the distinct high-pitched chirp before he sees her, before he hears her speaking voice. "Lark!" She's kept Naki with her, anyway, and now she comes loping back across the distance to him and bares her teeth when she sees that he's alone. "What happened?"
Alec, she can tell him plainly, is still alive. It's all she can tell him.
"Harpies found him." Which is bad news but not as bad as it sounds. "He figured out how to make them let us go; we just had to tell them truths."
He leads her to the Barge, hoping he will be guided somehow as to what he needs to do. "So we did. We got loose, he gave me the piece, and I told him I'd come back to help him look for more."
Riley can smell what Lark has as soon as she's so inclined; it makes her hopeful in a way Alec would never admit to on his own, because obviously they found each other. Then Lark is talking about harpies and she's pacing him close enough that the side of her ribs brushes occasionally against the outside of his knee.
"Harpies," she repeats, whiskers pulling back. "Put course you did. Of course. Lark, it's foolish yo stay out there too long. We can't sell all our secrets for more time. Not lightly. You know that."
She's silent, then, drops back enough to butt her head against his leg and steer him up to the spot on deck where the group had brought back their piece of soul. What Alec has trapped in the pack has taken the form of a stack of books and they simultaneously weigh down the contents and provide a boost of energy for whoever's holding it; both of those fade almost immediately as the Barge absorbs itself back unto itself, just like the returning bodies do their own souls.
"You know I will," Riley says at last. Whatever else the harpies have drawn out of them both - and it drives her mad to know she doesn't know, she can't feel Alec at all from here or know what he knows - he has to know that much is true. Whatever else they're saying, the deepest part of Alec won't turn on the deepest part of Lark without very, very good reason. "Take more supplies with you. Is he hurt? Are you?"
"I'm not. I'm okay." Lark has sat down, somehow more exhausted by the loss of the Barge's weight than he thought he'd be. His feet are bleeding, though, which Naki helpfully points out with a sarcastic, Sure you are.
He should have kept his boots after he'd changed, back when he first abandoned the group, but he hadn't. Maybe that part of him had thought he'd just stay a wolf forever.
"He might have a cut, but it's just one that I can think of. I'll take antiseptic for him in case." He has some in his own pack but he isn't going to risk hell's version of gangrene by giving it away. Alec made this pack and he made it for Lark, so Lark is going to be the only one who uses it.
Lark gets to his feet with a small hiss, the only concession he gives to pain. "Where can I get supplies?"
She wants to tell Lark to stop, to stay, to not risk it again; she does want to, but she doesn't do it, can't make herself ask him not to do what he wants to do to bring Alec back to her. What she does instead is bump against Lark when he sits down, drops down across his legs and licks briefly at the cuts while he talks, her tongue rough but numbing, soothing after a moment - for her boy, anyway. The moment Lark tenses to move, she stands and moves out of the way.
"He won't admit to being injured but he won't turn away whatever he needs to do to fix it, either. Not like this," she warns, because it's true that Alec has more medical knowledge than almost anyone on board at this point and he'll use it, he'll maintain himself, but he's even less inclined now to admit to vulnerabilities that others don't know about. "This way."
It's the infirmary that Riley leads Lark to, although she waits for him to open the supply room for her; they don't need keys, because Alec doesn't have them normally, though he can and does ask Tiffany to open whatever he needs and it typically happens. There are boxes and boxes of gauze stacked near the floor in the back, and she pulls them out of the way with one paw, claws briefly at the back of the shelf until it moves. Lark will be able to smell the stash of nonperishable items from there, though they're wrapped in several layers of plastic bags, though the outer one is medical grade. It's not much, but it's more than nothing.
"Antiseptic is behind you. The blue bottle is the most concentrated." She knows what Alec knew before they landed.
Lark shares the same instinct Riley has, so even though her tongue is feline, it's welcome. If Alec only knew how many times Lark fought the urge to lick at a cut or a bruise....
When she's done, he smiles at her, and he might be exhausted but it's a genuinely warm expression. He tucks the bottle of antiseptic away, and secures Alec's extra stash, everything he can carry.
"If he's hurt, I'll know," Lark promises her. "And I'll make sure he takes care of it. Even if I have to pin him down and do it myself."
By the time Lark has found Alec again, he's lost the harpies; now that they both have warning of what to look, listen, smell for, it's not hard to stay off their radar a second time, at least not for the time that they spend out here. Alec doesn't try to evade Lark once he realizes he's being followed again, but neither does he welcome him back beyond a quick query if he made it back alright: it's business as usual, as if he never left, as if this is what they do all day every day.
And Alec is bleeding, the four ragged scratches skipping down one side of his chest from the harpy are still open and oozing his blood, but he's wrapped them by now, and he's confident they're not serious; his body will handle them on its own, shallow enough that he expects them to be closed within a day, gone as if they never happened within three. If he's feeling the other effects they don't show, though he is cool to the touch, though he's not keeping quite the same pace he was when they started.
They find another piece of the Barge's soul; they also find Nina, and while Alec normally wouldn't bother himself carting a body along anywhere, he still has a faint conviction that the Barge may not leave until all its passengers are as present as they can be, and it's not that much of a hardship. A little awkward for moving quickly and stealthily, but worth the possibility that he's right, or that it will make it that much easier to leave.
By the time they've reached the cave mouth beside Elysium again, by the time Alec has navigated stepping over, around, past a joyous and once more distressed Riley to deposit Nina near her fennec soul, by the time he's retreated a little ways away from where most of the other people are to sit down and give himself over to Riley's insistent pushing, pulling, clawing, licking, and shoving, he knows he's not going out again. Within a few minutes, his soul settling back beneath his skin with Riley's proximity, warmth sinking back into his muscles and his bones where before there was none, he's shivering hard enough that his teeth are chattering faintly and all he can think to do is hook an arm around Riley's neck and hold her close, forehead to forehead, their breathing in time.
The people Lark would go out there for are already here by that point. Some of them are dead, but they're accounted for. He sits near to all the movement and reunions, but makes no move to greet anyone. He would like to blame his reticence on the lingering effects of having lost his soul, but the soul was nothing. It's the truths he left out there, the ones now shared with Alec, that make him consider vanishing for a while.
That's a truth he kept to himself: he knows at least part of why Alec always vanishes when something happens. Lark wants to do the same thing. He has an instinct that pulls him to socialize, yes, but his personality is such that he would rather take a break than try to talk through his problems. The instinct is not the reason he doesn't. He just can't see a way to disappear on the Barge without calling attention to himself.
He sits down and strokes the inside curve of Naki's tail, even allows her to sting him because her venom is like water to him. His attention is fixed on the mouth of the cave, at least according to appearances. Really, he's listening to Alec and Riley.
Naki drops off his hand and scuttles over when she finally loses patience. That gives way to surprise and concern when she sees the bandages. "Are you still bleeding?"
By the time Naki has come over, Riley has wrapped herself as far around Alec as her long but narrow body can, stretched across his lap with her head pressed against his chest. She desperately wants to kick at the scratches. Even if it were more sensible than the bandages - which it isn't - Alec wouldn't let her.
Scorpions don't have any habits like licking when there's a wound. There's nothing Naki can do at all to try to soothe pain. So she just settles for crawling up on Riley's back.
Lark comes over after a minute or two, having decided that if he stays near Steve much longer, T'Pol will try to kill him. "What happened?" He asks, because he smelled blood well before he's reached them.
After the flood where Alec had to answer everything he saw or thought or heard, he took great pleasure in refusing to answer questions, sometimes even those he would have normally, just to exercise the ability. He wants to do that now, wants to ignore Lark because he has no idea what his thoughts and his body are doing, and he's exhausted. He's cold and he can barely feel his fingertips and he just wants to lie down and sleep for three days and how unusual is that for him?
But with their reunion, Riley once more knows everything Alec does, and she doesn't so much as hesitate while Alec lets his eyes fall closed: "Harpies," she hisses, snarls, ineffectually. "It was harpies, and he still wouldn't kill them."
"He wouldn't be here if he had," Lark murmurs, his hands itching to do something about the blood, about the way Alec seems a moment from falling asleep sitting up. At the same time, he wants to turn around and go back to Steve and pretend nothing ever happened with Alec here.
"Whatever happened to being at peace with what you do to keep going?" Naki says to Lark. "Giving up a few words is not the worst thing you've done to survive."
If Naki says it, part of Lark knows it. But it's a part he can't find just now and he doesn't want to start looking here.
Riley knows Lark is right, but she has also been rattled by how much time Alec spent away from her, by feeling the two of them separate three times in the past week, by knowing that if they are going to survive they don't have much time left here together. She doesn't know what to address first. She almost snarls at Naki and that is when Alec reaches up and lays his hand across her eyes.
"Shhh," he soothes her, rubbing the center of her head with the tip of his thumb, breathing out for them both.
"The difference," he tells the scorpion, "Is being at peace with what you choose to do to keep going. This wasn't choice."
They decided never to speak of it aloud. One more thing taken from the both of them, and it still rings against a part of Alec that feels very brittle and weak.
Naki is more than ready to argue the point, but Lark reaches out and grabs her, and tucks her under the shirt he rummaged.
Part of joining with Naki again means he feels the old familiar pull toward pack. It's a dozen times stronger now that he has been without it, and it's a hundred times stronger toward Alec. And that's exactly why he never would have let himself get close to the girls, never would have taken one as a lover, even if the mental bond issues didn't exist.
He feels hollow and sluggish sitting here beside the person he cares for--loves, if the harpies get that word then he can use it in his own damned head--and to feel a gulf widening steadily between them. Because Alec is right, too: there was no choice. He chose what secrets to share, but that one was always going to come up because there are only a half dozen or so that are greater.
"Tell me what you need," he finally says, just within transgenic hearing. He could mean a bottle of water, or he could mean something much larger, something that treads close to the thing they aren't going to talk about.
And Alec, in his turn, would be lying if he said he didn't feel just a little safer with Lark settled beside him, even if there's some deeply ingrained, reflexive part of him that thinks he's not safe at all now. That they never will be. It's out in the open, and the one thing that can't be proven is intent as long as it's never stated, but now it's stated.
His thoughts keep chasing each other in circles. Riley's tail switches back and forth, her breathing in time with Alec's.
"I don't know," he answers, finally, tired and numb and honest.
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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."
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"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."
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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."
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But the truth of it is that no matter what Alec really thinks, no matter how rational Lark's explanation, there's still no time to argue: "Noted," he answers instead, and points ahead.
"I'll lead them that way -" Just a degree off the trajectory for the Barge. "- and cut away the first chance the environment gives me to sell being confused or rattled. You do what you see fit."
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Two hours, Alec said. Two hours there, then two hours back. A lot can happen in four hours; maybe another piece will be found. In the meantime he runs, harder than he probably should, because his muscles are just threatening to start aching when he reaches the Barge.
"Riley!" If she's here, that has to mean Alec is still alive. Right?
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So he might hear the distinct high-pitched chirp before he sees her, before he hears her speaking voice. "Lark!" She's kept Naki with her, anyway, and now she comes loping back across the distance to him and bares her teeth when she sees that he's alone. "What happened?"
Alec, she can tell him plainly, is still alive. It's all she can tell him.
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He leads her to the Barge, hoping he will be guided somehow as to what he needs to do. "So we did. We got loose, he gave me the piece, and I told him I'd come back to help him look for more."
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"Harpies," she repeats, whiskers pulling back. "Put course you did. Of course. Lark, it's foolish yo stay out there too long. We can't sell all our secrets for more time. Not lightly. You know that."
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"You know I will," Riley says at last. Whatever else the harpies have drawn out of them both - and it drives her mad to know she doesn't know, she can't feel Alec at all from here or know what he knows - he has to know that much is true. Whatever else they're saying, the deepest part of Alec won't turn on the deepest part of Lark without very, very good reason. "Take more supplies with you. Is he hurt? Are you?"
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He should have kept his boots after he'd changed, back when he first abandoned the group, but he hadn't. Maybe that part of him had thought he'd just stay a wolf forever.
"He might have a cut, but it's just one that I can think of. I'll take antiseptic for him in case." He has some in his own pack but he isn't going to risk hell's version of gangrene by giving it away. Alec made this pack and he made it for Lark, so Lark is going to be the only one who uses it.
Lark gets to his feet with a small hiss, the only concession he gives to pain. "Where can I get supplies?"
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"He won't admit to being injured but he won't turn away whatever he needs to do to fix it, either. Not like this," she warns, because it's true that Alec has more medical knowledge than almost anyone on board at this point and he'll use it, he'll maintain himself, but he's even less inclined now to admit to vulnerabilities that others don't know about. "This way."
It's the infirmary that Riley leads Lark to, although she waits for him to open the supply room for her; they don't need keys, because Alec doesn't have them normally, though he can and does ask Tiffany to open whatever he needs and it typically happens. There are boxes and boxes of gauze stacked near the floor in the back, and she pulls them out of the way with one paw, claws briefly at the back of the shelf until it moves. Lark will be able to smell the stash of nonperishable items from there, though they're wrapped in several layers of plastic bags, though the outer one is medical grade. It's not much, but it's more than nothing.
"Antiseptic is behind you. The blue bottle is the most concentrated." She knows what Alec knew before they landed.
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When she's done, he smiles at her, and he might be exhausted but it's a genuinely warm expression. He tucks the bottle of antiseptic away, and secures Alec's extra stash, everything he can carry.
"If he's hurt, I'll know," Lark promises her. "And I'll make sure he takes care of it. Even if I have to pin him down and do it myself."
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"Be careful. The point is all of us leaving."
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And Alec is bleeding, the four ragged scratches skipping down one side of his chest from the harpy are still open and oozing his blood, but he's wrapped them by now, and he's confident they're not serious; his body will handle them on its own, shallow enough that he expects them to be closed within a day, gone as if they never happened within three. If he's feeling the other effects they don't show, though he is cool to the touch, though he's not keeping quite the same pace he was when they started.
They find another piece of the Barge's soul; they also find Nina, and while Alec normally wouldn't bother himself carting a body along anywhere, he still has a faint conviction that the Barge may not leave until all its passengers are as present as they can be, and it's not that much of a hardship. A little awkward for moving quickly and stealthily, but worth the possibility that he's right, or that it will make it that much easier to leave.
By the time they've reached the cave mouth beside Elysium again, by the time Alec has navigated stepping over, around, past a joyous and once more distressed Riley to deposit Nina near her fennec soul, by the time he's retreated a little ways away from where most of the other people are to sit down and give himself over to Riley's insistent pushing, pulling, clawing, licking, and shoving, he knows he's not going out again. Within a few minutes, his soul settling back beneath his skin with Riley's proximity, warmth sinking back into his muscles and his bones where before there was none, he's shivering hard enough that his teeth are chattering faintly and all he can think to do is hook an arm around Riley's neck and hold her close, forehead to forehead, their breathing in time.
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That's a truth he kept to himself: he knows at least part of why Alec always vanishes when something happens. Lark wants to do the same thing. He has an instinct that pulls him to socialize, yes, but his personality is such that he would rather take a break than try to talk through his problems. The instinct is not the reason he doesn't. He just can't see a way to disappear on the Barge without calling attention to himself.
He sits down and strokes the inside curve of Naki's tail, even allows her to sting him because her venom is like water to him. His attention is fixed on the mouth of the cave, at least according to appearances. Really, he's listening to Alec and Riley.
Naki drops off his hand and scuttles over when she finally loses patience. That gives way to surprise and concern when she sees the bandages. "Are you still bleeding?"
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"Yes," she answers before Alec can. "Yes, he is."
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Lark comes over after a minute or two, having decided that if he stays near Steve much longer, T'Pol will try to kill him. "What happened?" He asks, because he smelled blood well before he's reached them.
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But with their reunion, Riley once more knows everything Alec does, and she doesn't so much as hesitate while Alec lets his eyes fall closed: "Harpies," she hisses, snarls, ineffectually. "It was harpies, and he still wouldn't kill them."
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"Whatever happened to being at peace with what you do to keep going?" Naki says to Lark. "Giving up a few words is not the worst thing you've done to survive."
If Naki says it, part of Lark knows it. But it's a part he can't find just now and he doesn't want to start looking here.
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"Shhh," he soothes her, rubbing the center of her head with the tip of his thumb, breathing out for them both.
"The difference," he tells the scorpion, "Is being at peace with what you choose to do to keep going. This wasn't choice."
They decided never to speak of it aloud. One more thing taken from the both of them, and it still rings against a part of Alec that feels very brittle and weak.
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Part of joining with Naki again means he feels the old familiar pull toward pack. It's a dozen times stronger now that he has been without it, and it's a hundred times stronger toward Alec. And that's exactly why he never would have let himself get close to the girls, never would have taken one as a lover, even if the mental bond issues didn't exist.
He feels hollow and sluggish sitting here beside the person he cares for--loves, if the harpies get that word then he can use it in his own damned head--and to feel a gulf widening steadily between them. Because Alec is right, too: there was no choice. He chose what secrets to share, but that one was always going to come up because there are only a half dozen or so that are greater.
"Tell me what you need," he finally says, just within transgenic hearing. He could mean a bottle of water, or he could mean something much larger, something that treads close to the thing they aren't going to talk about.
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His thoughts keep chasing each other in circles. Riley's tail switches back and forth, her breathing in time with Alec's.
"I don't know," he answers, finally, tired and numb and honest.
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