"A Tangle of Mysterious Prejudices"

By LadyArcherfan

Summary: Alec observes hair styles and contemplates the people around him.

A/N: Title from quote byShana Alexander. Unbeta'd so any mistakes are mine.

Manticore didn't enforce the military standard hair cut for the X-5's past adolescence. At that point, they were being trained for solo missions; they had to fit in with Ordinaries. The women grew out their hair to various lengths, rarely permed and never colored. The males kept their hair short, at a length that could be styled depending on the need. All hair was to be styled or tied back to stay out of the face. Which is why X5-494 was surprised to see the wild locks of X5-452 blowing around in the breeze during combat training and muster.

There was no sound reason to let her hair fly around like that, he mused. It got in the way, blocked vision, even gave the enemy a grip if they managed to get a fistful of hair and pulled. His briefing on her had told him she was fiercely independent – which he could understand to a degree – and that might play a part in her style. What confused him was the fact that the guards and handlers let her get away with it. It wasn't like she had any black market agreements going on; she wasn't that type. The long, flowing locks had to be a not so subtle "stick it to the man" maneuver. Which was ridiculous in his mind.

Even when 494 became Alec and 452 was indisputably Max, he didn't quite understand it all. Military sense might have been outweighed because she hadn't been at Manticore as long as he had been. But she had cat DNA in her, not horse; there was no reason for her to be running around with her flapping around like a flag – flying wild in the breeze or into his face when they worked jobs together. Not that she let it get messy or gross; the cat part of her kept up the grooming at least. He, on the other hand, kept his hair shorter and slightly spiky as he had at Manticore. It kept his vision unobstructed and also seemed to attract the ladies. (The rest of his fantastic body and charming wit only helped in the last department.)

Once he was out in the world, he was proud of what he was. It wasn't like he could deny it, even if he could hide it. And hide it he did, despite the harassment that Max gave him about not covering his bar code and his obvious stage name. (The cage fighting should have been safe enough, because the audiences were always drunk on alcohol, money and excitement, and his opponents all had their heads too scrambled to connect the dots. He just hadn't counted on White. Tactical error, but he had fixed it. Sort of.)

When he walked into Jam Pony, he shouldn't have been surprised. The Ordinaries were determined to prove they were anything but ordinary. Yes, Alec had been out of Manticore before it had blown up, but there was usually a military or business centric feel to the settings. The basic look had been similar from one place to another. Every person at the messenger service was determined to make a statement with their hair.

Sketchy's hair was scraggly and ill kept, reflecting what must have been his general apathy to things in life that took actual work. Original Cindy's personality was big enough alone, but her hair was determined to outdo it. Normal's attempt at professionalism mixed with youthful hipness ended up stiff and slightly awkward. There was almost every color of the rainbow represented at some throughout the messengers' hair at some point in time. Women had crew cuts and men sported dreadlocks. Jam Pony seemed to draw some of the strangest Ordinaries he had ever run across, before or after Manticore.

His hair grew out a bit as time passed; he almost missed the Manticore barbers, for all they were impersonal bastards, they were good. Barbers in Seattle, like everyone else post-Pulse, charged exorbitant prices for their services. There were better things to spend his hard earned – or cleverly stolen – cash on. He still kept it neat, his cat DNA kicking in as much as Max's did for personal grooming, but it lost a bit of the military edge.

And then Sketchy began running around with a camera and hunting down stories on transgenics. Alec got an idea of why Max let her hair long and loose – it covered the back of her neck quite well, her barcode buried in the thick waves. His high collared shirts and jackets only did so much. It might be a good idea to stop looking like a solider, at least a little bit.

He didn't abandon styling and gel, but gave his hair an artfully untidy look. The length pulled it down and it was beginning to fluff around his ears and the back of his neck. Original Cindy mentioned in passing that he almost looked cute, "like Max before Manticore had gotten its claws in her again. Or maybe a kitten, Pretty Boy." Alec wasn't sure if he should be upset, pleased, or worried about the statement.

Strangely, his new hair style and attempts to lie low didn't seem to stop the Seattle PD from nabbing him for his twin's murder spree. The SPD was incompetent like that – finding him when they were looking for a serial killer, neither of whom they suspected to be transgenics.

White turned up the heat on the transgenic search and things really got hairy. Joshua's broken heart, Max's twin appearing and disappearing, the influx of transgenics (some of whom he knew personally from Manticore), and the start of Terminal City as a haven . . . Everything only made Alec, Max and the rest of the Manticore alumni struggle to look more the Ordinaries or stay out of their way. It also made them act more like soldiers and they were constantly on alert. It was a tangled mess.

At the Jam Pony siege, all disguises and pretenses were destroyed. During the chaos and then the following tense stillness, he heard Normal muttering to himself.

"Never suspected. Should have suspected. None of them acted like a transgenic, looked like a transgenic."

And it was ironic, he decided, that both the most ordinary and the oddest looking people in the room were the strangest. No matter what training they had, how hard they tried to blend in, it didn't matter. They were transgenics, Manticore creations. They could take normal jobs and hide their barcodes with clothes and long hair, but they would never fit in.

Strangely, that didn't seem to bother him. But neither did his new hair. He, Max, Joshua, Mole and the rest were all from Manticore, and they could not deny it. But that didn't mean they had to be ruled by the memories of it.

Fin.