Written for the prompt : Dark Angel, Alec, Rachel Berrisford's necklace

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Memento

If he thought long and hard, he'd have to be surprised by the fact that this survived, through all of it. It is so small, so fragile and yet, it is probably the one part of the whole thing to come through unmarked.

He didn't.

Rachel didn't.

In more recent times, he's begun to piece the past together, a slip of memory at a time. He hates the memory of that final meeting but it's there now, stark in the horror it churns in his stomach; fighting his way through her father's men, challenging her on the stairs and telling her the truth, trying to save her, stop her and failing, losing everything.

He doesn't remember the moment he came by her necklace so clearly, but sometimes he imagines she gave it to him as some kind of memento when things were good between them, other times he imagines that he grabbed it as he tried to stop her leaving, that it came away in his hand as she ran to save her father. As he failed to save the one good person in all of it.

All of his memories are faulty, patchy and disjointed. Manticore at its most efficient, being destructive. Like so many things though that Manticore thought they controlled, they'd failed; his memories might never be complete but he'd pieced together enough and he would never stop searching through his mind and trying to fix the puzzle.

He doesn't remember the time he concealed the necklace in his cell before they started work on him, doesn't know how they missed it or how he knew where it would be afterwards. He'd been dragged from the Berrisfords' property, screaming and fighting and they'd thrown him into solitary and somehow he'd known to hide it. One moment of realization that he couldn't account for and he'd done it.

He'd spent weeks in reindoctrination, being analyzed and reprogrammed and analysed again. Torture laid on torture as they tried to destroy every last vestige of Simon Lehane and the 494 who'd been able to become him. Hours became days, days became weeks. For all he knew weeks had become months, but he'd never know now. Manticore and its records were gone and there was no way for him to retrieve that information, figured it was probably better not to even try. What he did remember was bad enough.

Back in his cell, he'd been a shadow of the soldier he'd been before. Weak and failing physically, falling apart, his only memory one of pain or so he'd thought at first. He'd lost track of how long he'd laid alone in his cell before he'd uncovered the necklace. He doesn't know why he looked for it, how he knew to try and find it. How could a memory of such a small thing have survived all that they'd done to him. He doesn't know but it did and when he found it, he had no idea of its significance. For all he knew it wasn't even his but he'd kept it, treasured it. It had been a talisman of sorts.

The memories of Rachel had been slow to come back, not really surfacing until Manticore had gone and he was on the outside. There's been the occasional dreamed flash of something, someone, emotions that he no longer understood, if he ever had really.

Now the necklace is a symbol. It's a symbol of the man he's going to strive to be, of the forgiveness and absolution he will seek to the end of his days, even though he knows it will never come and he'll never deserve it if it did.

The necklace is a memento of the best and the worst of who he is – glitter and shine, pretty on the outside, hard as stone and emotionless on the in.