After a long period of working on about twenty other things concurrently, finally a breakthrough with this piece. If anyone was waiting for more, apologies for the delay. Concrit appreciated.
Three months drifted past in relative quiet.
Alphonse tried to settle into his new environment as best he could, making himself useful. For the most part he kept himself busy enough that he didn't really have time to think about his situation, running simple courier missions or making adjustments to the attack fighter he'd 'inherited' from a former member of the team. From time to time Wolf had him helping around the ship, sometimes even dragging him back down to the hangar to lend a hand with the Vesp, which was pleasant enough work.
He was even starting to get used to his new team-mates, which was proving a (mostly) enlightening experience. Wolf had been more of a surprise than he'd expected. After all, the media was fond of painting the mercenary as a comic villain, all snarling feral evil and violent sociopathy Though his new captain certainly had his share of angry moments, Alphonse had yet to see him raise so much as a finger against anyone who hadn't attacked them first. About the only thing that seemed correct from the news was his choice of occupation, but even then, it seemed as though the jobs sought him out, rather than the other way round.
Leon, on the other hand... here was someone even the news would only make passing reference to, his reputation an order of magnitude above even Wolf. There wasn't a single survivor of the Lylat War who didn't know about the 'Bloody Scourge of Macbeth' and his encyclopedic knowledge of how to inflict pain. Given that he was the person most often on kitchen duty, it certainly made you look twice at your food.
Beyond that, though, even Leon was nothing like reports described him. Alphonse thought of him mostly as a calm, unobtrusive presence around the ship, who just got on with whatever task was at hand. Given that he was also the ship's unofficial engineer, calmness and steady hands were very desirable qualities. Normally the chameleon kept quiet, only occasionally firing off a sarcastic comeback at Wolf, who seemed to take it all in his stride. For all that Leon seemed somewhat aloof and antisocial, he was often the one who'd come to Alphonse's aid when he was struggling. At such times it was difficult to remember exactly who it was offering that helping hand.
In the end, however, all it took was one brief, unguarded moment to bring the reality of it all into bright, horrid focus.
* * *
It had just been an average morning, in an average week. As he'd become accustomed to, the three of them had gathered for breakfast in the Canteen. This was a ritual of theirs he had fallen into easily: taking his place at the high round table in the centre of the room with Wolf, who'd still be in the process of waking up. Leon was always first in, moving between the two stainless-steel counter tops in the far corner of the room with efficient speed, preparing whatever breakfast concept had caught his fancy at the time.
On this particular morning, his breakfast had been fresh waffles with little caramelised slices of sacho pear. A recent high-paying job and subsequent stop off at a well-stocked market station had allowed Leon to indulge his interest in cookery a little more than usual. The chameleon had set the plate in front of him with care and watched curiously as Alphonse had taken the first cautious bite, turning back with what might have been a smirk of satisfaction when the panther hungrily dug in.
Wolf had been sitting chewing on his toast like a cow chewing grass, arms propped up on the table. It was painfully obvious he still wasn't quite awake yet, wearing nothing but a vest and a pair of baggy, knee-length sleeping shorts, decorated with little Arwing prints. Together with his absent expression and bed-fur, he looked quite puppy-ish. Not that anyone would ever point it out to him, of course, but then there was little point in saying much to Wolf until after breakfast, zombie-like as he seemed until the food kicked in. Leon was just as bad, unfortunately, absorbed in tidying up after himself. Keeping the kitchen area clean was one of HIS little rituals, one it was devilishly hard to turn him from once he'd started.
Alphonse stared out the window above the sink, letting the gentle background hum of the engine and the sound of Leon scrubbing at the dishes wash over him, pondering his day. During their shopping spree at Xerxes Station, he'd finally picked up a decent selection of replacement parts for his Wolven, which he could conceivably spend most of the day fitting and tuning. One of Wolf's stipulations for letting him fly the craft alongside them was that he refitted and tweaked it by hand himself. It made sense to get someone to know their vessel inside out, but it was proving a major task. Whoever had last owned the thing was no engineer and had clearly spent only the barest of effort to keep it running: the engine looked like a pigsty.
Wolf yawned next to him as Leon turned round to fetch the rest of the plates from the table. He felt a yawn of his own rise soon after and stretched out to try and work the stiffness of sleep from his joints, flexing his fingers until his claws peeked from their tips, scrunching up his eyes with the effort.
There was a sudden clatter of plates, at least one shattering on the floor as he sensed movement and felt a large hand suddenly pressed against his chest, pushing him back in his chair.
He opened his eyes again to find Wolf had sprung out of his seat and flung himself across the table, his one hand on Alphonse's chest, the other clamped tightly around Leon's hand. The chameleon had crossed the room and was reaching out towards one of the panther's hands with both his own, one empty, the other grasping the fruit knife urgently.
"Hey..." Though his voice sounded strained, Wolf was desperately trying to keep his tone light and conversational. Like nothing was happening. "what'cha doin', Leon?"
The chameleon's eyes were wide, halfway between terror and fascination, his expression otherwise trance-like. "New knives, Commander O'Donnell..." His gaze was locked onto the curved, polished sharpness of the panther's claws, his voice sounding small and lost. "Do I have to set the blood in motion again?"
"Put those things away now, kid!" Wolf hissed under his breath, barely moving an inch as Alphonse pulled the claws in immediately. "Say... why don't you go get some sleep in the Rec' room? You don't have to use the knives any more... go and rest."
Wolf loosened his grip and the fruit knife tumbled from Leon's fingers to the floor, the chameleon's eyes suddenly becoming heavy as he shuffled out the canteen and down the hallway. There was the distant click of a door being shut and Wolf sat back in his chair stiffly, scrunching up an ear with his right hand.
"What the hell was that?" Alphonse felt rather than heard his voice crack as he spoke, rising in volume all the time as the shock released itself through him in waves. Wolf's eye flicked open and focused on the panther as he pasted a nervous grin on his face.
"Oh, don't be mindin' him, that wasn't-"
"Don't tell me that was nothing!"
The grin fell and died. "Those claws of yours musta set him off, reminded him of knives. He, uh..." Wolf flopped back in his seat and folded his arms across his stomach, fists clenched tight, struggling with words for a moment. "He ain't so good at, uh, dealing with knives."
Alphonse examined the fingers of his right hand for a moment, forcing the claws out again. They were a family trait, unusually straight and sharp as they were. The 'Caluroso Daggers" as his father would have it. Something else from Titus that had nearly got him killed. The thought alone was enough to drain the fight from him, and by the time he looked back up, the anger had been consumed by fear.
"What would he have done if you'd not been here?" His voice was barely a whisper, his stomach churning, too hollow and too full at the same time, imagination already throwing a hundred awful possibilities at him.
"I..." Wolf's gaze flicked away to the side, his voice sounding unhappy and uncomfortable: right on cue, his tail curled up and around his waist tightly. "I dunno, Al. Never know what gets into his head when he's like that." After a moment's silence he pushed himself out of his chair and walked out, expression still troubled.
A minute or two passed before Alphonse reached down and picked up the knife from the floor, turning it over in his hands for a moment before he noticed the streak of blood across the blade. Wolf perhaps, as he'd reached across to clamp onto Leon's hand. He dropped the knife onto the table, another wave of coldness sweeping across him, the burnt sugar smell of his breakfast only adding to the nausea he felt.
What if Wolf hadn't been there?
* * *
The question didn't seem to want to leave him be.
He cleaned the kitchen as best he could (he didn't figure the others would be coming back to do it, and it was something mindless to focus his attention on), dropping the knife into the cleaner before he retreated to his room to get changed.
While he was standing in front of his drawers for suitable attire, so he happened to glance up and catch sight of himself in the mirror. Just for the briefest moment, a fragment of a second, he was startled by his reflection and how strange he looked to himself right now. For the first time since becoming part of the team, he wondered what he might have been doing right now if he were still back at home, what life would have been like if he'd never left. He pressed a finger against the tiny slit of light fur near his mouth, smoothing it out before he shook his head, trying to shake the thought free of his mind.
Re-emerging quickly in a tatty green long-sleeved shirt and black jeans, the first things he could find, he headed down to the hangar as quickly as possible, keen to throw himself into his original plan for the day. Spending a couple of hours up to his elbows in engine parts was more than enough to keep him busy.
The sound of someone else moving around brought him to a halt on the stairs. If it were Leon down there... he wasn't quite sure he was ready to just forgive and forget just yet. He took the remaining steps slowly, his system flooding with relief when Wolf's aimless whistling began drifting through the air.
The captain was already busy, leaning into the cabin of the Vesp with a cleaner, restoring a little hygiene to the interior. He'd not really noticed the first time he'd driven the boxy little yellow craft (he'd had more pressing matters, like keeping alive, in mind), but the previous owner had been one hell of a smoker, from the smell of it. Evidently the smell had finally gotten annoying enough to be dealt with.
Wolf finally noticed him watching and turned off the little hand-held cleaner hurriedly, clambering out of the cabin. As he moved, so Alphonse noticed the thick, messily applied bandages around his left hand.
"Hey, um..." The captain had lost none of his earlier discomfort, it seemed. "How are you doin'?"
"Alright, I guess." the panther kept his tone neutral, gesturing to the bandaged fingers. "You're pretty bad with first aid, I see."
"Yeah... kinda hard to do one handed."
Alphonse felt a little pang of guilt: the wound had been sustained protecting him, after all. With a sigh he glanced around the wide hangar, eyes finally alighting on a nearby table and chairs. He pointed at them and narrowed his eyes. "Go sit."
For a second Wolf looked like he might argue, but then his shoulders slumped and he nodded, walking over, the panther snatching the first-aid box from it's fixture next to the stairs and following, sitting opposite and cracking open the the green metal case.
"You don't have to do..."
"Yes I do." That tone would brook no argument. "Give me your hand."
Looking mildly put out at being corrected, Wolf did as asked, watching in silence as the various knots and loops of his bandage were carefully untied. Alphonse bit back a hiss of sympathetic pain as he turned the hand over and caught sight of the injury. The cuts were across the middle of the two fingers next to the thumb, not deep or especially serious, but the serrated edge of the knife had made them ragged, messy injuries.
"So, doc... I'm gonna live?" Wolf asked with a faint grin, trying for levity.
Alphonse looked up and raised an eyebrow, holding a can of antibacterial spray. "Depends. Did you disinfect this?"
"I, uh..." There was a sudden hiss of aerosol and accompanying stinging. "Hey!"
Wolf felt the beginnings of a snarl deep in his throat, quickly biting it back when he saw the panther start leaning back in his chair, eyes widening in growing panic.
"Sorry, I-I just though, I though if I got it over with quick, I mean..."
"No... I'm the one who should be apologisin', kid. Didn't mean to be all snarly with ya, it just kinda comes natural to me, you know?"
Alphonse nodded slowly, reaching into the box for a roll of bandage, wrapping each injured finger separately, with delicate, cautious care.
"I bet you're real scared of us now, huh. We're turnin' into the monsters you always heard about, right?"
He paused from his bandaging and looked up again. Wolf was staring off aimlessly into the hangar, head turned so that his good eye wasn't visible, just the eye-patch. His voice had been quiet, though, too quiet. Even with his limited knowledge of his captain, Alphonse knew that the question hadn't been an accusation: Wolf tended to wear his worries where his team-mates could see them. He hesitated for a moment to think before he carried on.
"I... not really. I knew what I was signing up for. I've seen as much news about you as anyone."
"Hah... the news. Don't tell me you think we're that bad?"
-Do I have to set the blood in motion again?-
In his mind's eye he could see himself in a darkened room, strapped to a chair or perhaps a hospital gurney, Leon standing to one side next to a table bedecked with knives of all kinds, surgical implements, jagged shards of glass. Leaning over him and making dire promises of suffering and pain, all the fun they could have together, finding out just how much of him still needed to remain for him to be alive, yet still wish to die...
He snapped back to reality to find Wolf looking at him with great concern, uninjured hand resting lightly on his shoulder. It had taken that outside touch to make him realise just how badly he was shaking. He took a deep, shuddering breath and mentally ordered himself to calm down, shouting down the fear in his mind. Gradually, the tremors ceased and he slumped forward in his chair.
"You're nothing like the news says. I mean, not even a little."
"You ain't seen me in a fight yet. I'm a lot more like they say when I'm pissed off."
"But... why?"
Wolf flashed him a brief smile, sitting back in his chair. "We all wear masks, Al. Gotta protect ourselves somehow. I like to keep me an' my anger a long ways apart." He scratched lazily behind an ear. "Besides, I get more work comin' my way, pretendin' to be a big bad than I ever did bein' Mr Nice Guy. Hell, my rep got you signin' on."
That still begged the question, though. "What about Leon?"
Wolf's entire body tensed briefly. "Leon's complicated."
"So what about the stories about him? What about 'The Bloody Scourge of Macbeth', then?"
There was a long, long pause, stretching beyond uncomfortable silence. "Mostly true."
Alphonse felt a tremor go down his spine immediately. He'd been hoping for another answer, for O'Donnell to turn around and say the whole day had been a big joke and Leon was cool, everything was fine, they'd been messing with him for being stupid enough to believe what he heard on the news, har har, stupid new-guy Al...
He knew it could never have been that way. Even the news couldn't invent a monster like Leon Powalski without something awful, something real, to back it up.
"Don't you get scared of him? Even a little?"
"Sometimes... sometimes a lot..." He hung his head, eye closed. "But who else is gonna take care of him, if I don't?"
* * *
Alphonse finished his first aid and the two of them went back to what they'd been doing. The rest of the morning just seemed to drift past without leaving much of an impression, though he had to admit, by the time he ground to a halt and closed up the engine access, that he'd gotten a lot done.
Even then, he'd finished far earlier than expected, and ended up meandering across the hangar to lend a hand with the Vespedrile. With the reek of cigar smoke finally purged from it, the boxy little craft was more pleasant to sit in, and Wolf had already finished with the cabin. As ever, though, the yellow exterior remained filthy, as most ships of this type tended to be.
"Don't you ever worry that all these mods you keep installing are getting noticeable?" He'd asked, inspecting the sides. The standard Vespedrile-class tow-ship consisted of a small, boxy cabin up front and a cargo hold directly behind of equal size, leaving the other half of the ship's capacity for the engine.
"When's the last time YOU ever took a close look at one o' these scruffy-lookin' things?" Wolf had replied, giving the hull a fond pat of the hand and getting a dirty hand for his trouble. This particular ship, thanks to many, many revisions of the engine spec, was probably about three-quarters engine now, the filthy sides dotted with maneuvering thrusters and the engine itself graced with a dozen or more improvements to the basic design.
The two of them spent a further couple of hours tweaking the Vesp's engine, while Wolf told him stories of the various weird and dangerous scrapes he'd gotten himself into with the battered old ship. It was... nice. Soothing. Al was unsure if, prior to joining the team, he'd ever just spent time doing something with someone, just enjoying their company. At least someone who wasn't on his father's payroll and addressing him as 'young sir.'
By the time the ship's clock had ticked over to 19:00, he found himself being pushed gently in the direction of the kitchen. Wolf was certainly not as capable in the kitchen as Leon, but he could still rustle up a decent set of sandwiches when needed. The rumbling of his stomach alerted Alphonse to the fact that he'd completely missed lunch, and he devoured his food double-quick, not really paying attention when his captain ducked out for a few minutes, hungry as he was.
By the time he finished and turned around again, Wolf was already tidying things away.
"You know... you should probably go talk to Leon before you turn in."
"I, uh..."
Wolf turned round and leaned back against the counter. "Look, you can't be scared of him forever. He's probably feelin' shitty about what happened anyway. Just go poke yer head round the door and see what he's got to say."
"But, he's..." What could he say? He's a killer? A psychopath? He'd known the stories before he got here, and he'd been happy enough to let the guy cook him breakfast for three months, lend him a hand when he needed one. If things got nasty, he was at least prepared now, it couldn't hurt to go listen to what he had to say. "I'll go see him now, then." Turning on his heel, he started walking towards the door.
"Al."
He paused mid-stride. "Hm?"
"I ain't saying you shouldn't be careful, but... he ain't what you think." He didn't turn to see, but he could tell from that quiet tone of voice, that note of sadness, that this was serious. "He ain't what anyone thinks he is."
He nodded slowly and carried on, closing the canteen door behind him.
* * *
It took him five whole minutes, standing in the corridor, to work up the courage to actually knock on the door.
"Come in, Alphonse."
He pushed the door open hesitantly. Leon had wrapped a blanket round himself, sitting in the patched up leather recliner in the corner of the room, which was dark save for the flickering images from the video screen on the wall and the beam of his sunlamp. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, hands behind his back holding onto the door handle, prepared for a quick getaway.
"How did you know it was me?"
Leon cocked his head to one side. "Wolf has never knocked on a door in his entire life."
"I, uh... thought I'd just come and see..."
"Wolf sent you." He cut in, voice blunt and monotone, face likewise betraying no emotion. "I've already been informed that I went a little... over the edge this morning."
"I wasn't really expecting it."
Leon nodded, and closed his eyes for a moment. When he spoke again his voice had grown quieter, softer. "You're probably the only person in the whole system who wouldn't."
Sitting in Wolf's big recliner made him look small, a mere sliver of a man. The captain wasn't really musclebound, but he had a certain broadness of shoulder, giving him an imposing frame and letting him fit comfortably in his favourite chair. By comparison, the chameleon looked dwarfed by it, which made it hard to believe that this morning he'd managed to creep Alphonse out so thoroughly it had taken all day to calm himself.
"I just never thought about you in that context."
Leon nodded. "That must be why you and Wolf get on as well as you do. He's another of these people who's always trying to see the best in others."
"So I noticed. He vouched for you before I came in here."
"I said he tried to see the best in people." Leon gave a half-smile. "Not that he was overly smart. He's been looking for the good in me for years." The smile faded to nothing, leaving only that deep-rooted weariness he'd had earlier. "You'd think the big idiot would have figured out it's not there to find."
"Well, he seems pretty confident. Even got me in here after you tried to... I mean, after this morning."
"I can't always control it. I saw those..." the chameleon trailed off, his eyes losing focus for a brief moment before he shook his head a little and forcibly dragged his attention back. "...the claws surprised me."
Alphonse brought one of his hands up absently, spreading his fingers and looking at their tips. "These things aren't all that..."
"Don't! Don't let me see them!" Leon gasped, bringing his arms up to cross them in front of his eyes, the blanket falling from his shoulders. He realised his mistake almost instantly, but as he snatched at the cloth he already knew it was too late to cover it up again.
"Gods..." There wasn't much else to be said.
The chameleon's bare chest, his sides, arms, every visible square inch of him save for his face, all of it was covered in what looked like scars, but unlike any he'd ever seen before. A continuous cover of swirling ridges and grooves, spinning into curls and unwinding in undulating waves across otherwise pale green skin. There was something almost hypnotic about the path of them, leading the eye in ever more unexpected directions.
"Morbid curiosity?" Leon finally asked, when the silence and staring went on too long. Alphonse blinked once or twice and averted his gaze.
"Sorry, I... sorry..."
"Don't worry about it. I'm used to it, that's one of the reasons I lock my door when I'm using my sunlamp."
The panther nodded slowly. He'd already been warned about not disturbing Leon when he was having his sun-time: cold-bloods needed to keep warm, and it seemed chameleons required sunlight, simulated or otherwise, to keep the shifting hue of their hide stable. Or maybe it was just another aspect of his instability, it was hard to be sure.
Gradually, Alphonse found his eyes being slowly dragged to that patterned skin once more, following the path of the grooves as they coursed along his form. "How did you...?"
Leon looked away, expression readable for a moment and most definitely troubled. "A side effect of my former employer's power. He..." he seemed to shrink further into the chair, becoming smaller and more vulnerable. "When he changed me to suit his needs, his power could not be controlled. It marked me."
"He changed you?"
"He broke me so he could rebuild me." He replied, voice blank, as though he were talking about someone else. When Alphonse looked at him expectantly, he shook his head. "I will explain some other time."
The "Bloody Scourge of Macbeth" was reputed to be Andross's creation, something he had formed personally. Perhaps some kind of mind control, brain-reprogramming? The scientist was reputed to be a monstrously powerful psychic, it wasn't outside the realms of possibility that he had found a way. It certainly didn't seem like any normal kind of wound, those gentle, unpredictable swirls...
There was a polite cough and Alphonse realised he'd been staring again. He looked elsewhere again hurriedly. "Sorry..."
"Are these scars really so intriguing to you?"
"It's, I mean, the pattern is astonishing..."
Leon raised an eye-ridge and gave a half-smile. "Astonishing? Never been called that before, probably never again." The smile faded to sadness, then to impassiveness. "Don't be hypnotised by their pattern. They're treacherous."
"I don't under-"
"They used to say..." His voice had gone passive again, flat, like he were relating a story he'd only heard, and not been the cause of. "...that in my days as a torturer, the guards assigned to keep an eye on me would sometimes come in and find me surrounded by nothing but finely shredded gore. The blood would seep into every groove in my body, until every inch of me was nothing but violent red and green lines, without exception. They'd drag me out screaming obscenities, ranting and raving..." He caught sight of the panther's face and stopped, recognising his expression as a sign his imagination had been stirred into horrible overdrive.
"They used you like that?" he finally said, once his thoughts receded from the awful images Leon's story evoked.
"All the time. Throw someone into my cell and hit record, wait for them to start singing the truth. Then they turned off the tape and left me to it. At least until Wolf turned up. The first person who ever came to see me there who treated me like a real person. It would have been rude not to be polite in response."
"He seems to just shake things up for people." Alphonse commented quietly.
"You mean trouble walks two paces behind him wherever he goes..."
A long moment of silence unfurled between them, the panther looking around the room for something that would hold his attention away from the grooves and swirls of Leon's skin, while the chameleon sat in silence, expression once more impossible to decipher. After a moment or two, he got to his feet again, pulling the blanket back over his bare shoulders and heading for the door. The panther scooted to one side to let him past.
"So, uh..."
"You're a good man, so let me give you some advice." Leon paused at his side and looked up at him. "Deep down inside me, there's a monster. I can't help that, but I can tell you that when it bares its fangs... that's not me. Don't ever be fooled into thinking it's me. Or else one day, it's going to catch you unawares and bite your head off."
The chameleon became silent, giving him a curious, searching look, as though waiting for a visible reaction, then nodded, pulling the door open to walk down the hall to his cabin.
Alphonse watched him go, hands balled into fists, but they just wouldn't stop shaking.