A/N: I haven't watched Season 2 yet, so I don't know much about Alec's character; all that I DO know about his character comes from reading the transcripts of "Designate This" and "The Berrisford Agenda". I just had to write this after thinking about Ben and Alec's relationship as twins, something not all of the X5 kids had, and I hope that you won't hate me for writing something that I don't completely understand yet. This is only my first DA fic; I'm just giving this a shot, so please be gentle when reviewing.
Disclaimer: I own nothing from Dark Angel. Unfortunately.
Different And The Same
Chapter 1: Fork In The Road
I think I remember him.
X5-493.
The two of us were just one of nature's surprises: twins. Two of a kind. Natural clones.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm a clone of 493 or if he's a clone of me.
Maybe he's a clone of me. 'Cause if I were a clone of him, I'd have got his whacked genes.
What does it feel like to have a brother?
I don't know.
The last time I saw 493 was when we were two years old. I remember that.
When we turned three, two men came into our dormitory. One woke me up.
I looked directly across the room; 493's cot was opposite mine, and a man had woken him up too.
He looked confused. I must've looked the same.
We always looked the same.
They led both of us out of the dormitory, holding our wrists.
I remember their shoes making soft squeaking noises on the floor.
493's and my feet didn't make any noise. We didn't have shoes.
We were wearing the grey gowns that all of us were given. The men wore black jumpsuits.
When we stepped out of the dormitory, the man holding 493's wrist turned left. The man with me turned right.
I turned to the man beside me as we walked.
"Where's 493 going?" I asked.
"He's going to be a soldier," the man answered. I noticed that he didn't look at me when he answered.
I was getting tired. The man walked fast, and I had to take three steps to match his one stride.
"But we do everything together," I told him. "If 493's going to be a soldier, then where am I going?"
"You're going to be one too, don't worry. Just not with 493. If you keep relying on each other, your dependence may prove to be a weakness. Do you understand, 494?"
I didn't understand, but I said 'yes' anyway.
"From now on, you don't say 'yes.' You say 'yes, sir.'"
"Yes, sir."
We walked for a long time. I didn't know that my home was this big.
I wondered if 493 was taking a long walk too.
The ladies in the nursery, the ones who taught us how to talk and walk, said that 493 and I always did the same things.
When we were two years old, we realised that we were different from the other children.
None of them looked the same, like 493 and I did.
None of them could feel how other people felt, not like how 493 and I could feel each other.
We liked being different.
We liked being able to know how the other felt without using our mouths to say anything. It was a nice game to see if I could guess how 493 was feeling.
493 would smile at me and tell me that this was our secret.
The ladies told us that a secret was something that you didn't tell anyone else.
Having a secret was fun.
Suddenly, the man stopped. I stopped too, and he knocked on the door in front of us.
Someone opened it on the other side and looked at the man. Then he looked down at me, and at the man again.
"X5-494," the man told him.
The two of them talked for a while, but I wasn't listening.
I saw children inside the room.
There were a row of beds on either side of the door, and there were children standing in front of the beds.
"494." I looked up. The other man was also wearing a black jumpsuit. "Come in."
The man let go of me, and I walked into the room. The other man closed the door.
"Over there." He pointed at a bed in the middle of the left row of beds.
I went and stood in front of it. There was a big metal box with "X5-494" on it. Mine.
We waited. Another man came in.
He wore heavy black boots that knocked on the floor as he walked up and down the aisle between the two rows of beds. He looked at each one of us, staring at our faces. Some of the others looked down, away from his eyes. His clothes were a funny colour, like they couldn't decide if they wanted to be green or black; there were green and black patches all over his clothes.
He went back to stand at the front of the room again after staring at all of us.
"Listen up!" he shouted.
I got scared. I put my hands over my ears. All the others did too. No one had ever talked so loudly to me before.
"Take your hands off your ears! Stand up straight! This is only the beginning! From now on, you are all soldiers! Everyone look around you and remember these faces; they will be your team, your teammates, for a long time to come. You! What's your designation?!" he yelled at the child nearest to him on his left.
"D-designation?" the child asked.
He was scared. Like me. Like everyone else.
I was scared. Where was 493?
"What does everyone call you?!" the fierce man shouted, stepping nearer to the child.
"X5-386."
"Louder!"
He was scaring all of us. Where was 493??
"X5-386." He was a bit louder now.
"I still can't hear you!"
"X5-386!"
"You!" the fierce man pointed at the next child.
"X5-398!"
"You!" to the next in line.
"X5-563!"
"X5-529!"
"X5-839!"
"X5-621!"
"X5-494!"
The fierce man would stand in front of us we shouted our num-…our designations. Then he'd move to the next person. He stopped in front of me when I said mine, but he didn't move on. He waved his hand and the man who had opened the door walked over.
"Yes, sir?" he asked the fierce man.
"This is 494?" the fierce man asked. His voice wasn't so loud now. I didn't understand; if he could talk in a softer voice, then why did he shout at us?
"Yes, sir."
"Where's the other one?"
"Other one, sir?"
The other man didn't know what the fierce man was talking about, but I did. The 'other one' was 493. It had to be.
"Where's 493?" I asked.
The fierce man stared at me.
"You. Will. Keep. Quiet," his voice was soft, but it sounded angry. "Unless you are spoken to!!" he shouted.
And I felt something hit my face.
I fell, and all the children on my left shrank away from me when I hit the floor.
The side of my face hurt. He hit me. It hurt. I started crying.
"Stop crying! You do not cry! Crying is a sign of weakness! Emotion is weakness! Get to your feet, 494!"
I got up quickly and wiped my face on my sleeve. I didn't want to get hit again.
"All of you, do you understand what I just said?"
They all mumbled "yes", but I remembered what the man who had brought me here had told me.
So instead, I said 'yes, sir'.
The fierce man stared at me again.
"Fast learner, aren't you, 494?"
I didn't know how to answer that question.
"Soldiers, we have an example of good conduct here: you will learn from 494; when talking to an officer, you will begin and end every sentence with 'sir'. Is that understood?"
"Sir, yes, sir."
"Louder!"
"Sir, yes, sir!!"
I didn't know it then, but now, looking back, that was kinda symbolic. With that "Sir, yes, sir!!" we sealed our fates.
We became soldiers then. We were condemned to be soldiers for the rest of our lives, at an age when we didn't even understand what a soldier was.
I had twenty-four teammates. Fellow soldiers.
We all attended classes together.
Language classes.
Hand-to-hand combat.
Armed combat.
Field med.
Self-defence.
Stealth and reconnaissance.
We learned to assemble and disassemble weapons. We learned to name every type of weapon that existed and list its capabilities and disadvantages. We learned to use any weapon that the officers threw at us: crossbows, daggers, pistols, rifles, hand grenades, smoke bombs, and tear gas.
When we were all five years old, some of us would shake in our sleep. At first, they were only small shakes. We didn't pay attention to them.
Then, 451 shook really badly in her sleep. The officers came and took her away.
Later, 398 and 529 frequently lost complete motor control.
They were taken away too.
Twenty-two of us left, including me.
They started making us sit in classes where we had to listen to officers and had to sit very still. The officers would flash words at us on a big screen, and they would repeat some things over and over again.
There was one class that we had quite often.
DISCIPLINE"A soldier has discipline!"
DUTY"The discipline to carry out his duty!"
MISSION"A soldier's duty is his mission!"
DISCIPLINE DUTY MISSION"Discipline is required to accomplish the objective of the mission!"
"Failure is not acceptable!"
"Failure means punishment!"
"Failure deserves punishment!"
We turned eight. 551 began intentionally injuring some of us during combat classes. Officers took her away, and 731 too when he started doing the same thing. The officers said that it was psychosis. I didn't know what psychosis was, but it didn't sound good.
It couldn't be good if they took you away and you never came back.
"They give you to the Nomlies."
The thought just appeared in my head.
But the voice…I knew that voice.
493!
I'd forgotten all about 493…now I understood. They gave us these comrades, these teammates, so that we'd forget each other.
493 had a word for the ones that didn't come back…Nomlies.
The twenty of us left, turned nine. I was made CO.
That year, it happened.
One night in winter, an alarm woke all of us. We all sat straight up in our beds. We watched the door, but no one came. That meant that we weren't being mobilised.
"What's happening?" 621 asked me.
I shook my head.
"I don't know."
I got out of bed and looked out the window. I saw soldiers, dressed in black and carrying rifles, running through the snow.
'An escape,' I thought.
Why was that the first thing that I thought of?
My heart started beating fast. Like I was afraid of something.
Afraid of what? Why did I feel this way?
Then I remembered how 493 and I could 'feel' each other when we were younger.
Where was 493?
Strange to think that the last time I'd asked that question was six years ago.
'Where's 493…?' I wondered as I looked out at the snow and the searchlights.
'494…?'
'Where are you?' I asked, even though I was surprised that he'd heard me thinking.
'I'm leaving, 494. Escaping. Our CO says that we have to do it.'
'You can't leave me here, 493!'
'My orders are different from yours, 494. And I'm not 493 anymore. I'm Ben now.'
It was the first time that I'd ever talked to 493 that way. Without using our mouths.
The next day, we had a different kind of class.
They showed us pictures.
Pictures of the ones who ran away.
Their faces kept flashing on a big screen in front of us while an officer told us their designations.
"X5-599!"
Their CO. The word "TRAITOR" appeared on the screen.
"X5-656!"
The word "TRAITOR" again.
"X5-734!"
Traitor.
"X5-452!"
Traitor.
The screen flashed again. Another picture.
When the picture appeared, three of my teammates who were sitting closest to me suddenly rushed at me and pinned me to the floor.
"Get off me!!" I ordered.
"Traitor!" they shouted back. "Traitor!!" the rest of the class shouted along with them.
Some officers pulled them away. They put us all back in our seats.
"Soldiers, this is not 494!" the training officer pointed at the picture on the screen. "He may look like your CO, but this is not X5-494! This is X5-493!"
"Traitor!!" all my teammates shouted.
'Traitor,' I thought. '493 is a traitor. You're a traitor, 493. You're a traitor for running away. You're a traitor for leaving me alone here.'
