(no subject)
Title: You've Got My Face
Fandom: Dark Angel (wtf, I know.)
Pairing: Ben/X5-494 (Alec, okay?)
Notes: Typing X5-494 instead of a name is really annoying. But I think it helps if you consider the fact that this is Jensen x Jensen. Seriously. Weird. Now excuse me while I writing-hibernate for the next six months.
He’s in his barracks when he senses that he is no longer alone. Puma DNA does wonders for the peripheral senses. A slight tilt of his chin, back still to the intruder. He is unmoving, calm. Plotting.
The other speaks, first. A voice not unlike X5-494’s own, maybe slightly rawer, as if he’s been sentenced to the chastisement of swallowing sandpaper. Not uncommon with X5s - the shared traits, not the punishment. There are only so many ways to be perfect.
“You’ve got my face.” The other says, an odd hollow quality echoing in his voice that X5-494 doesn’t understand.
“No.” He retorts definitively, turning slowly on nimble feet. “You’ve got mine.”
.
He has a common name. ‘Ben.’ A gift, he says. X5-494 doesn’t ask from whom. His classification is X5-493, his barcode not unlike X5-494’s. A clone, although X5-494 immediately decides never to think of that again. He’s no one’s clone.
He could scream, he says. The guards will be here within seconds. Ben smiles, slowly. “And who will they take, soldier? Who’s X5-494, you or me?”
X5-494 blinks and then dejectedly reminds him that he could simply impair him. Ben continues to smile.
He watches X5-494 intently, and X5-494’s own eyes stare back. His distress quickly turns to wonder; he doesn’t understand how the same eyes manage to look so different. He hopes that his own convey a little less weakness, that he’s not as human. He’s not like him.
He is a lion. This Ben is merely a house cat.
.
X5-494 thinks of him the next morning during field training. He has this unsettling feeling that he’s looking into a mirror whenever he sees Ben, and it bothers him so deeply that he can't clear the image of him. He freezes on a mental snapshot and curiously examines (Does my hair really look like that from the back? My biceps are bigger, right?), which only causes him to misstep the drill and fall out of pace.
Renfro has him sent back to Psy-Ops for evaluation; soldiers simply don't make mistakes.
.
It’s a fortnight before he sees him again.
The lights have gone off and X5-494 is resting, the unfulfilling sleep of a soldier, senses still active and alert.
He hears the metal door slide and bolts upright, aware in an instant.
The distressing mirror stares back. “Don’t ask questions,” he hisses, brutally quick and piercing, like fangs breaking skin and leaving poison.
He stalks silently to the bed and lowers himself; the expression curiosity killed the cat resounds in the walls of his quarters without X5-494 actually having to say it.
Their shared voice begins then, Ben explaining what X5-494 thinks might be the entire universe.
.
It’s so unlike anything that X5-494 has ever heard. He wants to hiss back; ‘bullshit’ is on his tongue, a phrase picked up from colloquial speech training.
This Ben. He’s X5-494 in physicality and no other way. The moon slips between the bars of his tiny windowpane and silvers Ben’s hair, brightens the freckles that embrace the bridge of his nose and lights those eyes so that they glow lucent green in the darkness. Cat’s DNA, useful for night stalking.
He speaks calmly, without emotion. He tells X5-494 that he’s been to the outside. That he has returned, one of the few who had escaped. He stares at X5-494 as if he’s made a rather poignant statement, waiting for something that X5-494 thinks might be the kinship that he’s seen in human families. He does, however, fail to mention why he’s telling him any of this.
Ben smiles, slow and feral. The confusion on X5-494’s face is almost endearing. Almost.
He whispers one last phrase, barely audible in the void of noise that Manticore projects at night. “You’ve got my face.”
As if that’s the answer.
.
Against his own good judgment, X5-494 doesn’t ask questions. In part, this is because he doesn’t want to know the answers to what he has to say, but it’s also because the curiosity pulses through his veins like blood now. One wrong step, and Ben may be gone. His answers may be gone.
He is, however, cunning. Suspicious. Crafty. Maybe even a little catty, if colloquial terms are to be used. He smiles at his own inner joke before his facial muscles slacken again.
Ben wants something. There’s a piece missing from this puzzle, and X5-494 plans to decode what it is. An escaped X5 would be instantly killed when caught, a fact that basic training taught them. And yet, Ben is alive. X5-494 prides himself in his logistical skills, and so that can only mean one thing.
He opens his mouth to ask one night, to free one of the questions plaguing him. Ben has returned again as he does each evening, little more than a shadow lurking on these premises.
Ben repeats the words tolerantly, as if speaking to an X7. “You’ve got my face.”
X5-494 briefly considers stealing one of Renfro’s voice recorders to save Ben the trouble of speech.
.
Like all felines, X5-494 is prone to vanity. He’s a proud animal, an independent one. Sometimes, he finds himself oddly attracted to this parallel image. He rationalizes - it’s Ben’s stories of the outside that are so appealing, or maybe the possibility that two halves becoming whole will finally complete him; then again, maybe he’s just a beautiful man. Everyone is bound to find him attractive.
He finally figures out a question that he doesn’t think can be answered with Ben’s favourite phrase. “Do you love me, Ben?” He states it with a sort of innocence and naivety, an obvious lack of any real handle on the depth of the concept of his question. Love is something that he had learned on outside missions, a human emotion that X5-494 understands without being able to apply.
Ben smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and leans in. He presses his lips to X5-494’s in an act of human affection, licking so that X5-494 thinks again of their feline DNA. When he pulls away, X5-494 can taste his own flavor, twice as strong in the confines of his mouth now.
It’s a surprisingly pleasant taste.
.
It’s raining out, the first night that Ben doesn’t return.
X5-494 waits, telling himself that he’s not waiting. For this X5; for his brother. No. Human thoughts, an infection that Ben has brought with him. X5s are alone, together. He is alone.
’Plough a lonely furrow’ is an idiomatic phrase that he wishes he had never learned he thinks, as the sun rises to expose a nearly empty cell and all X5-494 hears is the pounding of his heart and the steady rhythm of his breathing.
.
X5-494 learns how to forget, with time. Soldiers are good at forgetting. He simply pushes everything inside of him down into the locked box, the one that he’d discovered as a child.
His safe place, and as long as all of the bad things inside him are enclosed in it, he’ll be fine.
He always is.
He forgets the name Ben, even when he’s given one of his own. Alec. When Max mistakes him for Ben, he plays naïve, as if the name is foreign on his tongue. He doesn’t ask about Ben, doesn’t ask why he failed to return. Max would only prey upon his weakness; X5s are all opportunistic beings.
He spends a night in a prison intended for Ben, a fact that’s hard to deny. The cold radiating off of the concrete walls feels too tangible, as if it’s crawled underneath his skin and settled into his bones. He imagines a thin layer of ice forming over his skin, droplets at first that quickly freeze and crackle as they coat him.
It’s nothing new. For once, the way that he feels physically and emotionally meet. For once, he feels whole in his emptiness.
Fandom: Dark Angel (wtf, I know.)
Pairing: Ben/X5-494 (Alec, okay?)
Notes: Typing X5-494 instead of a name is really annoying. But I think it helps if you consider the fact that this is Jensen x Jensen. Seriously. Weird. Now excuse me while I writing-hibernate for the next six months.
He’s in his barracks when he senses that he is no longer alone. Puma DNA does wonders for the peripheral senses. A slight tilt of his chin, back still to the intruder. He is unmoving, calm. Plotting.
The other speaks, first. A voice not unlike X5-494’s own, maybe slightly rawer, as if he’s been sentenced to the chastisement of swallowing sandpaper. Not uncommon with X5s - the shared traits, not the punishment. There are only so many ways to be perfect.
“You’ve got my face.” The other says, an odd hollow quality echoing in his voice that X5-494 doesn’t understand.
“No.” He retorts definitively, turning slowly on nimble feet. “You’ve got mine.”
.
He has a common name. ‘Ben.’ A gift, he says. X5-494 doesn’t ask from whom. His classification is X5-493, his barcode not unlike X5-494’s. A clone, although X5-494 immediately decides never to think of that again. He’s no one’s clone.
He could scream, he says. The guards will be here within seconds. Ben smiles, slowly. “And who will they take, soldier? Who’s X5-494, you or me?”
X5-494 blinks and then dejectedly reminds him that he could simply impair him. Ben continues to smile.
He watches X5-494 intently, and X5-494’s own eyes stare back. His distress quickly turns to wonder; he doesn’t understand how the same eyes manage to look so different. He hopes that his own convey a little less weakness, that he’s not as human. He’s not like him.
He is a lion. This Ben is merely a house cat.
.
X5-494 thinks of him the next morning during field training. He has this unsettling feeling that he’s looking into a mirror whenever he sees Ben, and it bothers him so deeply that he can't clear the image of him. He freezes on a mental snapshot and curiously examines (Does my hair really look like that from the back? My biceps are bigger, right?), which only causes him to misstep the drill and fall out of pace.
Renfro has him sent back to Psy-Ops for evaluation; soldiers simply don't make mistakes.
.
It’s a fortnight before he sees him again.
The lights have gone off and X5-494 is resting, the unfulfilling sleep of a soldier, senses still active and alert.
He hears the metal door slide and bolts upright, aware in an instant.
The distressing mirror stares back. “Don’t ask questions,” he hisses, brutally quick and piercing, like fangs breaking skin and leaving poison.
He stalks silently to the bed and lowers himself; the expression curiosity killed the cat resounds in the walls of his quarters without X5-494 actually having to say it.
Their shared voice begins then, Ben explaining what X5-494 thinks might be the entire universe.
.
It’s so unlike anything that X5-494 has ever heard. He wants to hiss back; ‘bullshit’ is on his tongue, a phrase picked up from colloquial speech training.
This Ben. He’s X5-494 in physicality and no other way. The moon slips between the bars of his tiny windowpane and silvers Ben’s hair, brightens the freckles that embrace the bridge of his nose and lights those eyes so that they glow lucent green in the darkness. Cat’s DNA, useful for night stalking.
He speaks calmly, without emotion. He tells X5-494 that he’s been to the outside. That he has returned, one of the few who had escaped. He stares at X5-494 as if he’s made a rather poignant statement, waiting for something that X5-494 thinks might be the kinship that he’s seen in human families. He does, however, fail to mention why he’s telling him any of this.
Ben smiles, slow and feral. The confusion on X5-494’s face is almost endearing. Almost.
He whispers one last phrase, barely audible in the void of noise that Manticore projects at night. “You’ve got my face.”
As if that’s the answer.
.
Against his own good judgment, X5-494 doesn’t ask questions. In part, this is because he doesn’t want to know the answers to what he has to say, but it’s also because the curiosity pulses through his veins like blood now. One wrong step, and Ben may be gone. His answers may be gone.
He is, however, cunning. Suspicious. Crafty. Maybe even a little catty, if colloquial terms are to be used. He smiles at his own inner joke before his facial muscles slacken again.
Ben wants something. There’s a piece missing from this puzzle, and X5-494 plans to decode what it is. An escaped X5 would be instantly killed when caught, a fact that basic training taught them. And yet, Ben is alive. X5-494 prides himself in his logistical skills, and so that can only mean one thing.
He opens his mouth to ask one night, to free one of the questions plaguing him. Ben has returned again as he does each evening, little more than a shadow lurking on these premises.
Ben repeats the words tolerantly, as if speaking to an X7. “You’ve got my face.”
X5-494 briefly considers stealing one of Renfro’s voice recorders to save Ben the trouble of speech.
.
Like all felines, X5-494 is prone to vanity. He’s a proud animal, an independent one. Sometimes, he finds himself oddly attracted to this parallel image. He rationalizes - it’s Ben’s stories of the outside that are so appealing, or maybe the possibility that two halves becoming whole will finally complete him; then again, maybe he’s just a beautiful man. Everyone is bound to find him attractive.
He finally figures out a question that he doesn’t think can be answered with Ben’s favourite phrase. “Do you love me, Ben?” He states it with a sort of innocence and naivety, an obvious lack of any real handle on the depth of the concept of his question. Love is something that he had learned on outside missions, a human emotion that X5-494 understands without being able to apply.
Ben smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and leans in. He presses his lips to X5-494’s in an act of human affection, licking so that X5-494 thinks again of their feline DNA. When he pulls away, X5-494 can taste his own flavor, twice as strong in the confines of his mouth now.
It’s a surprisingly pleasant taste.
.
It’s raining out, the first night that Ben doesn’t return.
X5-494 waits, telling himself that he’s not waiting. For this X5; for his brother. No. Human thoughts, an infection that Ben has brought with him. X5s are alone, together. He is alone.
’Plough a lonely furrow’ is an idiomatic phrase that he wishes he had never learned he thinks, as the sun rises to expose a nearly empty cell and all X5-494 hears is the pounding of his heart and the steady rhythm of his breathing.
.
X5-494 learns how to forget, with time. Soldiers are good at forgetting. He simply pushes everything inside of him down into the locked box, the one that he’d discovered as a child.
His safe place, and as long as all of the bad things inside him are enclosed in it, he’ll be fine.
He always is.
He forgets the name Ben, even when he’s given one of his own. Alec. When Max mistakes him for Ben, he plays naïve, as if the name is foreign on his tongue. He doesn’t ask about Ben, doesn’t ask why he failed to return. Max would only prey upon his weakness; X5s are all opportunistic beings.
He spends a night in a prison intended for Ben, a fact that’s hard to deny. The cold radiating off of the concrete walls feels too tangible, as if it’s crawled underneath his skin and settled into his bones. He imagines a thin layer of ice forming over his skin, droplets at first that quickly freeze and crackle as they coat him.
It’s nothing new. For once, the way that he feels physically and emotionally meet. For once, he feels whole in his emptiness.