Title : Stolen Memories
Fandom : Dark Angel
Rating : PG-13
Characters : Alec centric – with a little Max
Written for the fic_promptly prompt : Dark Angel, Alec, collection of other people's family photos
Disclaimer : All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Stolen Memories
So he's an accomplished thief, a well-practised cat burglar, but value is in the eye of the beholder and part of the trick is to not get caught. So in other people's lives, they're easy to come by, replaceable at every turn. Other people don't value them like they should in his opinion. They look at them, stick them on a shelf or in a book and almost forget about them. It's not like this is something that he can take when he's looking for an easy profit. There's no profit to be made at all.
He looks at his growing collection, inventing names and places to go with each, a story behind the picture. Ordinaries don't know how lucky they are with their ancestry, heritage and traditions passed from generation to generation and with it love. They don't know what it's like to not have any of that at all.
He probably knows more about his genetic heritage than the average ordinary, but he knows nothing about the real people behind the genetics and more than he'd ever wanted to know about the scientists who cooked up the mix that created him. What he wants though is a family of his own, pictures of things that really happened and really meant something to him. A life.
The day Max walks into his room in Terminal City and sets a bag on the table in front of him and says, "You can stop stealing someone else's now and start to take your own. There will never be a past, but perhaps you can make the record as we create ourselves a new future."
When he takes the camera out of the bag, he knows she's seen his stolen photos. A flash of guilt passes through him, but she sits down in the chair beside him and says, "Alec, you have a family now even if it is nothing like the pictures you stole. All it takes now is for you to accept your place in it."
The camera is new, but Max has already charged the battery and set everything up for him to start taking photos, so it only seems right that the first picture he takes is of his 'sister'. Once he starts, he knows he's not ever going to want to stop.
One by one he replaces the photos he stole with his own family. One by one he returns the stolen photos of other people's families because he doesn't need them anymore.
