part 2 of the "war" series. takes place chronologically before "rebels with fire in their hearts (they'll rule the world one day)". i'll get around to reorganizing them someday.
warnings: discussions about race and racism, discrimination based on how someone looks, mentioned off-screen minor character death.
When he's young, Mac doesn't understand why his neighbors won't play with him. He's their age, he's polite, he does everything his mom tells him to do to make friends.
They keep ignoring him, though, and Mac feels- well. According to his mom, he shouldn't feel anything about it. That he shouldn't care what they think. But his dad looks at him with a disappointed look in his eye, and whenever the kids laugh at him, his dad doesn't speak to Mac for the rest of the day, and that hurts Mac more than the insults that are thrown at him at school and, well, anywhere that there are other kids, his age or not.
(He asks his mom about it, once, about why they look different than everyone else, even his dad. His mom gets a faraway look in her eyes and tells him that she'll tell him when he's older.
She dies before he's older, and his father takes him aside and talks to him, explains that there's something different, not as good, about people that look like he and his mother did. That he's descended, on his mother's side, from Albain, a country far away and across the sea. The Empire takes these people in, lets them live here, but it is a generally accepted fact that they aren't quite as good as the People.
He tells Mac that his mother was one of the few Foreigners that had proved herself to be equal to the Naturals.
Mac asks his father if he's proved himself yet. He hides the hurt in his chest when his father stares down at him and then moves away without speaking.)
His childhood passes quickly after his father leaves. He knows that the only profession that will pay him enough to support his grandfather is to go into the service of the Empire, so he does so.
His grandfather dies early, though, and Mac doesn't know what to do.
He d
r
i
f
t
s.
Jack finds him in the barracks, staring at the ground. The older man- his new partner, assigned to him after his last one had been killed in combat with the Rebels four days ago- clears his throat and tells Mac that they've got a new mission.
Mac's just going through the motions at this point. He's not sure what to do, not sure why he's here, and so, when the choice comes to him of saving himself and allowing Jack to be captured, or vice versa, of course he chooses to be captured.
The opposite would only lead to him being responsible for the death of another partner, and he can't bring himself to let that happen.
He watches as Jack's dragged back by the other soldiers of the Empire, and closes his eyes.
At least he's going to help someone in his life.
He's not expecting the Rebels to give him a recruitment talk, or what amounts to one.
He's not expecting to find himself agreeing to join them, to be their spy. But- it makes sense, he decides. This- this is what he's meant to do.
(And if he gives his life in the service of freedom for all, well, so be it. He won't go out without a fight.)
At the Rebel's camp, while they're working out a plan to get him back into his barracks without suspicion, he makes- friends? Allies? Acquaintances? He's not quite sure, but they seem to like him. And, strangely enough, they're all members of the Natural rank.
They don't seem to like it when he asks them why they're talking to him (like he's one of them, he doesn't add), so he doesn't mention it again. He just enjoys it.
A patrol finds him in the forest, delirious, bleeding, beaten, and drugged out of his mind. They bring him back to the base, and he's held in solitary confinement and given enough medical attention to get him conscious enough to tell them what happened.
He weaves a tale of imprisonment and torture, then being released to die from exposure or the animals that roamed the forest at night. He claims it was sheer luck that brought him in the path of the patrol, and-
They believe him. It's a tale that would require a devious mind behind it, and the Naturals tend to believe that the Foreigners are on the simpler side.
(They don't know that Mac was the one to come up with the tale, the one to convince Riley and Bozer and Patty and Matty to agree to let their soldiers hurt him enough that his story would be convincing, the one that proved himself willing to sacrifice anything and everything of his for the greater good.
The only one to go back into the Empire, to that place where he is looked down on, ignored, trampled upon.
They won't know until it's too late.)
Jack comments on it one day, asks him why he seems so much happier than he was. Mac shrugs, gives an off-hand answer about how it's hard to be sad when you've been given your life back.
(It's true. When you have a purpose for the first time in your life, it's hard not to smile.)