Not A Real Boy At All
Written for the prompt : Dark Angel, Alec, he is so tired of being thought of as someone else's clone
Fandom: Dark Angel
Character: Alec
Rating : PG-13
Word Count : approx. 430
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Not A Real Boy At All
He'd spent his whole life being one of a set. Part of a unit from his earliest memory. No matter how hard he tried , he remembered nothing before being trained as a soldier. Every moment of his life, someone else's to decide, no control.
It was as life should be, or so he'd thought . . . until Max's unit ran. Part of him resented them for that . . . the other part of him will always just be jealous that they got Ben and he got left behind.
When Max's team ran, he stopped being X5-494 and became the clone of one of the runaways, along with all the others who'd been cloned from the same sources as Max's team. It didn't matter how loyal they'd been, how much they'd strived to be the best as Manticore always urged, they all became 'clones of the escapees'. Even those who'd come first.
He assumed he'd been after 'Ben' as Max called him, given his higher designation or at best simultaneous, probably made him the greatest risk. It'd been a battle to overcome, to try and become X5-494 again, to earn back the trust he'd spent his life working for.
Then Ben had gone off the rails, serial murder with dental work on the side and he'd lost everything he'd ever achieved again. He'd raged inwardly at the injustice of it all, wondering how, when he could ever be seen for his own achievements.
Underneath it all lay the nagging fear, the gut-twisting anxiety that he was only a step away from falling into the abyss that had dragged Ben down. All their tests, all their experiments and tortures and they had no answers; they still watched him like a hawk, subjected him to more psychological testing than his counterparts . . . like they were just waiting for the moment when he lost it all and they had to put him down.
Outside now, it was no better. Max, the only person he could anchor himself to, even though she hated him, and he knew that all she ever saw when she looked at him was Ben.
He'd never be free, never be himself. He wondered if he was a real person at all or if he was just a fucked up toy like they all claimed, a cheap copy of an earlier mistake, flawed beyond redemption and worthless.