Disclamier: Dark Angel and all it's characters belong to James Cameron but don't deserve to belong to Fox who in their infinite blindness canceled the show. Long live fan fiction.
Alec reflects on Ben and who he was to him.
All of my life I felt that I had this odd connection, like something was missing in my life. I would feel pain where I wasn't hurt or would suddenly be angry or happy for no reason at all. I never knew why this was until a year ago. Manticore knew of course.
I remember as a child, I must have been only five at the time, being placed in a room with glass windows covering one side of the room. Two guards came in and they covered me in sensors to record my nerve impulses. Suddenly I felt a flash or pain in my right arm. The doctors in the room read the print out and made those vague murmuring noises before one of them nodded to the guards and looked away. I knew that I was going to be hurt then, when we were little the doctors always looked away while we were hurt, what they don't see didn't happen even if they ordered it done. One of the guards took my left arm and snapped it. After that I was taken to the med. ward and patched up again. There was another child behind the curtains on the adjacent bed., I didn't see who. Looking back I realize that it must have been 493, Ben, the doctors were testing us, seeing if we could feel the other's pain if we didn't know each other existed.
I always had the feelings even after he and the others escaped I would feel what he felt and most of the time those rare flashes of feeling were happy. Wherever Ben was when he escaped he was happy a lot of the time. But two years ago those feelings were changed I felt pain and confusion, not happiness coming though and I wondered. Then suddenly during a training exercise I felt a burst of pain, searing and my heart stopped for a second. I didn't scream, I just gasped and saw the woods surrounding me swirl about my head. Before I passed out I felt like something had suddenly be cut from me, like I had lost that little thing inside of me that gave me those strange burst of feeling. When I woke up I was in the pych. lab and a group of doctors were conferring over me. That was the start of my six month stay with pych. and the knowledge of the fact that I had a twin brother. A twin brother whose existence I never knew of until after his death. I learnt of what he had done, the tattoos, the murders.
I told Max that the real world must have finally gotten to him to make him snap like that. She told me that it was Manticore. She was wrong it wasn't Manticore, not really, it was me. 493, Ben, was never able to escape Manticore like the rest of them because I was still in it, I was still feeding him my feeling of what they were doing to me. For all of those feeling of joy that he must have sent me I must have sent him twenty times more the feeling of pain and desperation. I never knew that I was doing it, they never told me. Manticore's need to know basis and I never seemed to need to know.
I wish that I had known him, I wish that somehow I could tell him that I'm sorry, that I would have tried to shut off those feelings that I sent him. I wish I could thank him for all of those thoughts that he sent me, the thoughts that stopped Manticore from breaking me. Ben saved my life, he may not have known it but he was the one that kept me human. I still don't really understand why it is that he killed all of those people, what his motive was. If he even had one, but I think I know what set him off. I never told Max but I researched the murders that Ben committed and the dates that they happened. The first murder was exactly one month after I saw Rachel die. I miss my brother.