Forgotten... (Alec, Ben... Gen)
Art Title: The good Place (Link coming soon)
Artist: sammycolt24
Rating/Warnings: None
Fic Title: Forgotten
Author: dollysdoodles
Characters: Max, Alec, Ben, Joshua
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, h/c
Summary: Set in the episode where Max saves Alec when he is arrested for the murders Ben committed. When Max shares her memories of Ben with Alec, something happens and Alec is engulfed in broken memories of a past he didn't even know existed..
Author's note one: RL is being a bitch right now and my hard disk crashed last week. I had to write this story again. As a result this story still has a WIP status and the last part would be up in a day or two. Please bear with me!.
Author's note2: Thanks to my amazing artist for being so patient with me. It meant a lot!
Alec wasn’t the comforting types.
He knew how to manage a military unit during an attack, knew how to arrange for food and shelter when none could be found, knew how to make himself scarce, but ask him to deal with an emotionally bereft person, and you’ll see him running in the opposite direction.
But he couldn’t run today. Max wasn’t herself and he needed to make sure she was okay.
When she had realised that Alec had been arrested for the murders Ben committed, she had wasted no time in pulling a quick rescue and bringing him back to her place.
Now, Max was just wandering aimlessly in her apartment. She would pick up things and then forget what she was meant to do with them. She barely answered when Alec tried to talk to her and didn’t even meet his eyes.
Alec knew something was terribly wrong the minute Ben’s name had crept up.
Anything related to his clone of a brother was never simple.
He had spent half of his life at Manticore locked up in a cage, because of Ben.
Ben had been part of the X-5 group that had made a run for it from Manticore nearly a decade ago and been successful in it. Later, he had also been accused of committing ten gruesome murders.
Not to mention, whenever his brother was brought up, Alec felt a strange sense of foreboding, as if he was forgetting something crucial. He couldn’t explain it, the sudden restlessness he felt every time Ben was mentioned.
Needless to say, Alec didn’t like talking about him. But the way Max was behaving, he didn’t see any other option than asking her about him.
Max looked broken and lost. He needed to comfort her. She was his friend after all and they may have fought hundred times a day but at the end of it, Max was the family he never had.
He asked her about Ben and Max told her what his brother was like as a kid. She told him how difficult it was for Ben to survive in the outside world and how terribly he went astray.
Her voice broke several times and Alec could see her shaking with grief.
Seeing Max in this state scared him. Max had always been the strong one, the level headed one of them all, making crucial decisions for them left right and centre.
Today, she appeared to be a badly broken version of her former self.
Max had cornered Ben in some forest he had taken his latest victim too. She managed to save the guy but Manticore was closing in and Ben was hurt. It wasn’t possible for her to take them both to safety. Ben asked her to kill him and she did.
Later, she left him there for Lydecker to find.
Alec could feel the guilt Max was drowning in too clearly.
Max did what she could, there was nothing else she could have done and she needed to understand that to free herself from the guilt. May be he’d talk to her about it someday.
Not today, though. Today, all he could do was lend her a shoulder to cry.
****
Alec couldn’t stop thinking about what Max had told her, about how Ben had died.
It shouldn’t have mattered to him. After all, he had never even met this guy and for more than half of his life, he had been blamed or punished for the things his clone did.
Still, Alec couldn’t stop thinking about him.
The story didn’t seem right. There was something wrong. There was a piece missing.
Still thinking about the happenings of the day, Alec fell into a restless slumber on Max’s couch.
****
The dream was one of the strangest Alec ever had.
It started with broken images of him leading a small unit on a mission back when Manticore was still standing. They were in a lush forest somewhere near Seattle, closing in on their target. The images changed and now he saw himself lying on the ground, his neck bent at a strange angle. He heard his own voice telling someone that he was still alive. Next, he saw himself getting thrown against the glass wall of the Bio Lab at Manticore. Glass shards scattered all around him. The images changed once again and now, he was running through the cover of tress that surrounded Manticore facility. His clothes were stained with blood and he could still see a glass shard sticking out of a deep gash on his cheek. The visions changed again. This time, he was on the bank of a small rivulet that flowed close to base. He was sprawled out on the ground and someone was tending to his injuries. The images changed one last time and he saw himself shooting somebody….
That somebody being himself.
Alec woke up drenched in sweat. His heart threatened to pound its way out of his chest.
What the hell had that been about?
Crazy nightmare? But it had felt so real!
Alec poured himself a glass of water with shaking hands and downed it in a single go.
The earlier unease of missing a piece, of something being terribly wrong returned to him with full force.
*****
The dog boy didn’t have boob tube. That was a bummer. How was he supposed to stay locked in here without his favourite mean of recreation?
Alec asked Joshua the same, who in return thumped a dusty, fat book over his head and asked him to read it and enjoy.
Alec wanted the chuck the book back at Josh and break his dog nose but he figured that to be a bad idea. Since, he had to stay here till the time his name was cleared, infuriating Joshua in the first five minutes of his arrival, though tempting, wasn’t that great an idea.
With an overdramatic sigh, he moved towards food packets OC had brought couple of hours before and dug in.
****
Alec’s heart broke seeing Joshua’s pain. He knew how it felt not being able to be with someone you loved only too well.
He hated himself for making Joshua ask Annie to leave and never to return. But it had to be done. Situation for the transgenics had gotten way too messy with killing of a transhuman in plain public view that morning. They had to be careful from now on, very very careful.
Joshua hadn’t spoken to him since the time Annie left. He had simply returned to his canvas and started painting her likeness with an unparalleled vigour.
Alec needed to distract Joshua. From personnel experience he knew distractions always made dealing with things easy.
Max was busy trying to find out more about the transgenic situation and Alec couldn’t find it in himself to tell her about Joshua’s situation. She had enough on her plate and after last night, Alec knew Max needed some time to herself to deal with some things.
He thought about calling OC. She had a good report with Josh and if anyone could cheer him up at this time, it was most probably her.
Feeling happy with his disaster management skills, Alec asked Original Cindy to come over.
Of course he regretted his skills later on when Cindy put them both on a massive summer cleaning spree. She thought having to work on something other than Annie’s 101 portraits would distract Josh.
It was a stupid idea. How could dusting rusted windows help someone get over a heart break. Stupid girls!
OC chucked a broomstick at Alec hitting him in his face and asked him to get on with the cleaning mission.
Alec stuck out his tongue at her in response.
****
Today was not a good day. Alec had to hide from the police, than the outside people murdered a transgenic he knew back at Manticore. Because of it, he had to make Annie go away. He hated it but Alec said it was important and Joshua agreed.
Alec had tried to cheer him up. He tried telling jokes. He was always telling jokes. Joshua didn’t find them funny today. He didn’t even hear half of them. Outside people were horrible and Annie was gone. Jokes couldn’t be funny today.
Original Cindy came than. Joshua suspected Alec had called her. He knew Alec was worried about him and Joshua was happy he had such friends.
Cindy suggested they cleaned the house and Joshua agreed. Maybe, if he tried to be normal, Alec and Cindy would worry less about him, they already had outside people to worry about. Joshua didn’t want to make it more difficult for them.
They started stripping down the house. The peeled off wallpapers went first, followed by his empty pastel tubes and broken brushes. Cindy wanted to throw away some torn books and broken cardboard boxes too, but Joshua stopped her. He could use those things… In Joshua 157. Annie would have liked it.
He gave a saddened woof and went back to scrubbing the floor clean.
Cindy had asked Alec to start with the basement and Alec grumbled all the way down.
He hated cleaning. May be Joshua should ask original Cindy to let Alec watch his boob tube?
“Alec angry. hates cleaning. Should make him watch-“
A loud bang from downstairs followed by Alec’s scream interrupted whatever plea Joshua was about to make on Alec’s behalf.
They rushed downstairs and found Alec lying unconscious on the cluttered ground. He seemed to have bashed his head against the broken wooden beam.
****
Alec was going to kill himself, for thinking about calling OC.
He really should have allowed Josh to mope around for a few more days.
Alec looked around himself in trepidation, decade’s worth of broken stuff and junk cluttered the room. It would take hours just to move the stuff around, clearing it all out would take centuries.
He cursed loudly and kicked the corroded rods scrambled all over the floor.
In his frustration he didn’t notice when the loose wooden beam above gave way and came tumbling down.
Alec felt a hot jab of pain across his forehead as he stumbled and bashed his head against the beam.
His world tilted and dark spots marked his vision.
Alec tried blinking of the dizziness but he was pretty sure he was losing that particular fight.
Darkness engulfed him and took him to a place his nightmares hadn’t visited for years now.
He was back at Manticore, looking at himself locked behind metal bars of a dingy cell in it’s basement.
He had been locked there too often during his re-indoctrination.
It wasn’t a good place. Horrors of that time still haunted Alec and he wasn’t a wee bit happy about being back here, even if in some sort of morbidly strange daydream.
He looked at his caged self again and felt a jolt of surprise. The cell looked darker and smaller then he remembered it to be. And he was in chains. Heavy, corroded iron chains bound his feet and hands. He was thinner then he could remember, his skin barely stretched on his bones, his eyes sunken and dark circles marking them. His head was shaved too.
Something glistened around his neck. It was a silver chain with its pendent being a cross.
This wasn’t him. This was Ben. His infamous brother.
****
Artist: sammycolt24
Rating/Warnings: None
Fic Title: Forgotten
Author: dollysdoodles
Characters: Max, Alec, Ben, Joshua
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, h/c
Summary: Set in the episode where Max saves Alec when he is arrested for the murders Ben committed. When Max shares her memories of Ben with Alec, something happens and Alec is engulfed in broken memories of a past he didn't even know existed..
Author's note one: RL is being a bitch right now and my hard disk crashed last week. I had to write this story again. As a result this story still has a WIP status and the last part would be up in a day or two. Please bear with me!.
Author's note2: Thanks to my amazing artist for being so patient with me. It meant a lot!
Alec wasn’t the comforting types.
He knew how to manage a military unit during an attack, knew how to arrange for food and shelter when none could be found, knew how to make himself scarce, but ask him to deal with an emotionally bereft person, and you’ll see him running in the opposite direction.
But he couldn’t run today. Max wasn’t herself and he needed to make sure she was okay.
When she had realised that Alec had been arrested for the murders Ben committed, she had wasted no time in pulling a quick rescue and bringing him back to her place.
Now, Max was just wandering aimlessly in her apartment. She would pick up things and then forget what she was meant to do with them. She barely answered when Alec tried to talk to her and didn’t even meet his eyes.
Alec knew something was terribly wrong the minute Ben’s name had crept up.
Anything related to his clone of a brother was never simple.
He had spent half of his life at Manticore locked up in a cage, because of Ben.
Ben had been part of the X-5 group that had made a run for it from Manticore nearly a decade ago and been successful in it. Later, he had also been accused of committing ten gruesome murders.
Not to mention, whenever his brother was brought up, Alec felt a strange sense of foreboding, as if he was forgetting something crucial. He couldn’t explain it, the sudden restlessness he felt every time Ben was mentioned.
Needless to say, Alec didn’t like talking about him. But the way Max was behaving, he didn’t see any other option than asking her about him.
Max looked broken and lost. He needed to comfort her. She was his friend after all and they may have fought hundred times a day but at the end of it, Max was the family he never had.
He asked her about Ben and Max told her what his brother was like as a kid. She told him how difficult it was for Ben to survive in the outside world and how terribly he went astray.
Her voice broke several times and Alec could see her shaking with grief.
Seeing Max in this state scared him. Max had always been the strong one, the level headed one of them all, making crucial decisions for them left right and centre.
Today, she appeared to be a badly broken version of her former self.
Max had cornered Ben in some forest he had taken his latest victim too. She managed to save the guy but Manticore was closing in and Ben was hurt. It wasn’t possible for her to take them both to safety. Ben asked her to kill him and she did.
Later, she left him there for Lydecker to find.
Alec could feel the guilt Max was drowning in too clearly.
Max did what she could, there was nothing else she could have done and she needed to understand that to free herself from the guilt. May be he’d talk to her about it someday.
Not today, though. Today, all he could do was lend her a shoulder to cry.
****
Alec couldn’t stop thinking about what Max had told her, about how Ben had died.
It shouldn’t have mattered to him. After all, he had never even met this guy and for more than half of his life, he had been blamed or punished for the things his clone did.
Still, Alec couldn’t stop thinking about him.
The story didn’t seem right. There was something wrong. There was a piece missing.
Still thinking about the happenings of the day, Alec fell into a restless slumber on Max’s couch.
****
The dream was one of the strangest Alec ever had.
It started with broken images of him leading a small unit on a mission back when Manticore was still standing. They were in a lush forest somewhere near Seattle, closing in on their target. The images changed and now he saw himself lying on the ground, his neck bent at a strange angle. He heard his own voice telling someone that he was still alive. Next, he saw himself getting thrown against the glass wall of the Bio Lab at Manticore. Glass shards scattered all around him. The images changed once again and now, he was running through the cover of tress that surrounded Manticore facility. His clothes were stained with blood and he could still see a glass shard sticking out of a deep gash on his cheek. The visions changed again. This time, he was on the bank of a small rivulet that flowed close to base. He was sprawled out on the ground and someone was tending to his injuries. The images changed one last time and he saw himself shooting somebody….
That somebody being himself.
Alec woke up drenched in sweat. His heart threatened to pound its way out of his chest.
What the hell had that been about?
Crazy nightmare? But it had felt so real!
Alec poured himself a glass of water with shaking hands and downed it in a single go.
The earlier unease of missing a piece, of something being terribly wrong returned to him with full force.
*****
The dog boy didn’t have boob tube. That was a bummer. How was he supposed to stay locked in here without his favourite mean of recreation?
Alec asked Joshua the same, who in return thumped a dusty, fat book over his head and asked him to read it and enjoy.
Alec wanted the chuck the book back at Josh and break his dog nose but he figured that to be a bad idea. Since, he had to stay here till the time his name was cleared, infuriating Joshua in the first five minutes of his arrival, though tempting, wasn’t that great an idea.
With an overdramatic sigh, he moved towards food packets OC had brought couple of hours before and dug in.
****
Alec’s heart broke seeing Joshua’s pain. He knew how it felt not being able to be with someone you loved only too well.
He hated himself for making Joshua ask Annie to leave and never to return. But it had to be done. Situation for the transgenics had gotten way too messy with killing of a transhuman in plain public view that morning. They had to be careful from now on, very very careful.
Joshua hadn’t spoken to him since the time Annie left. He had simply returned to his canvas and started painting her likeness with an unparalleled vigour.
Alec needed to distract Joshua. From personnel experience he knew distractions always made dealing with things easy.
Max was busy trying to find out more about the transgenic situation and Alec couldn’t find it in himself to tell her about Joshua’s situation. She had enough on her plate and after last night, Alec knew Max needed some time to herself to deal with some things.
He thought about calling OC. She had a good report with Josh and if anyone could cheer him up at this time, it was most probably her.
Feeling happy with his disaster management skills, Alec asked Original Cindy to come over.
Of course he regretted his skills later on when Cindy put them both on a massive summer cleaning spree. She thought having to work on something other than Annie’s 101 portraits would distract Josh.
It was a stupid idea. How could dusting rusted windows help someone get over a heart break. Stupid girls!
OC chucked a broomstick at Alec hitting him in his face and asked him to get on with the cleaning mission.
Alec stuck out his tongue at her in response.
****
Today was not a good day. Alec had to hide from the police, than the outside people murdered a transgenic he knew back at Manticore. Because of it, he had to make Annie go away. He hated it but Alec said it was important and Joshua agreed.
Alec had tried to cheer him up. He tried telling jokes. He was always telling jokes. Joshua didn’t find them funny today. He didn’t even hear half of them. Outside people were horrible and Annie was gone. Jokes couldn’t be funny today.
Original Cindy came than. Joshua suspected Alec had called her. He knew Alec was worried about him and Joshua was happy he had such friends.
Cindy suggested they cleaned the house and Joshua agreed. Maybe, if he tried to be normal, Alec and Cindy would worry less about him, they already had outside people to worry about. Joshua didn’t want to make it more difficult for them.
They started stripping down the house. The peeled off wallpapers went first, followed by his empty pastel tubes and broken brushes. Cindy wanted to throw away some torn books and broken cardboard boxes too, but Joshua stopped her. He could use those things… In Joshua 157. Annie would have liked it.
He gave a saddened woof and went back to scrubbing the floor clean.
Cindy had asked Alec to start with the basement and Alec grumbled all the way down.
He hated cleaning. May be Joshua should ask original Cindy to let Alec watch his boob tube?
“Alec angry. hates cleaning. Should make him watch-“
A loud bang from downstairs followed by Alec’s scream interrupted whatever plea Joshua was about to make on Alec’s behalf.
They rushed downstairs and found Alec lying unconscious on the cluttered ground. He seemed to have bashed his head against the broken wooden beam.
****
Alec was going to kill himself, for thinking about calling OC.
He really should have allowed Josh to mope around for a few more days.
Alec looked around himself in trepidation, decade’s worth of broken stuff and junk cluttered the room. It would take hours just to move the stuff around, clearing it all out would take centuries.
He cursed loudly and kicked the corroded rods scrambled all over the floor.
In his frustration he didn’t notice when the loose wooden beam above gave way and came tumbling down.
Alec felt a hot jab of pain across his forehead as he stumbled and bashed his head against the beam.
His world tilted and dark spots marked his vision.
Alec tried blinking of the dizziness but he was pretty sure he was losing that particular fight.
Darkness engulfed him and took him to a place his nightmares hadn’t visited for years now.
He was back at Manticore, looking at himself locked behind metal bars of a dingy cell in it’s basement.
He had been locked there too often during his re-indoctrination.
It wasn’t a good place. Horrors of that time still haunted Alec and he wasn’t a wee bit happy about being back here, even if in some sort of morbidly strange daydream.
He looked at his caged self again and felt a jolt of surprise. The cell looked darker and smaller then he remembered it to be. And he was in chains. Heavy, corroded iron chains bound his feet and hands. He was thinner then he could remember, his skin barely stretched on his bones, his eyes sunken and dark circles marking them. His head was shaved too.
Something glistened around his neck. It was a silver chain with its pendent being a cross.
This wasn’t him. This was Ben. His infamous brother.
****