rude_not_ginger | (no subject)

He stops to face him. "More like defective equipment. They used the word 'destroy'. We said 'put down'. We got it from a guard who was telling another how his wife had had to have their cat put down. So you know, seemed appropriate. I mean, we knew what we were made of." It's all said in a pretty flat matter of fact tone.

"You're not equipment, though," the Doctor's rage couldn't be directed at Alec, which made him frustrated. It was undirectable rage.

"Just destroy a living being because you haven't worked the way they planned? Eliminate evidence? And in the end, for what? So they have a perfect soldier to go out and die some more?"

"Dude, kick a tree or something befor you pop." He could see the frustration, hell he could smell it, but this was how he grew up. Afraid yes, angry, you know it, but also used to it. "We aren't seen as people though. Weapons. Very expensive, highly skilled bio-weapons. And dispite everything, were weren't made to die. I mean, I'm tougher than a god damned cockroach. We were made to take what ever could be dished out and still make it back."

"People aren't weapons."

The Doctor unclenched his hands and tried to regain the bubbly-happy he had moments before. It was gone.

"So tell me, Alec. Who are you?"

"Some people are. I am, and I'm not asamed of it. I'm just more than that."

He spun again to walk backward, head tilting a bit, in the curious cat way he has. "Who am I? X5-331845739494, 494 for short, some name that was taken from me long ago, Lucky Charm, Simon LeHane, Smart Alec, McDowell which I picked out randomly, Winchester by late arrival. A weapon, a protector, a monster, a soldier, husband, brother. Take your pick." He holds out his arms wide. "No one has ever asked me that before."

Edited 2008-04-02 02:58 (UTC)

"You should pick for yourself," the Doctor said. "I did. Stuck with it ever since. It's so much better than when they try to pick for you."

He shakes his head a little. "I'm all of those things. And I don't mind being named by others. Aside from the ill fated Simon, they all saw me when they did it. I was born witht eh designation and barcode, but everything else I earned."

He raises an eyebrow. "So you picked the Doctor? You like to fix things or figure out how they tick?" Or if that isn't a double edged question coming from someone like Alec. But he thinks it's the first. If he though it was the second he'd be gone by now. Also Ruby would have never let the man near he husband.

"Something like that, yeah." At the time, the Doctor remembered liking the prestige of the title. The Master once said it was because he was 'the man who makes people better'. Now, he couldn't tell who was right anymore.

"Where I'm from, when you hit a certain age, you choose your own name. I chose mine."

"When I was growing up names were a secret and a privilage. They provided indeviduality. The X5s? We had names. Not quite sure where they came from. But it was only inside our unit. Alone, our secret, though an open one. Our handlers knew about them. But it was some thing that could be taken. Mine was." Shrugs. "It's been stripped. I don't remember it. Only memory I've ever lost I think." He almost philisophical about it.

"But the others? Dude, having some one name you is like a right of passage to living outside the wire."

"Sounds horrific," the Doctor nodded.

"Having a name meant you were finally free, where I'm from. Free from decades upon decades of schooling. From being told where to go and what to do and how to think. Not nearly to the degree of your childhood, though."

He scratched the back of his head and sighed.

"If you could have that back, that name you were...would you want it?"

"You don't know the half of it. But it was what it was. I learned and did a lot of good things. Did a lot of very bad things to but that'll bite me in the ass when the time is right." No point in worrying now.

"Decades and decades? How old are you?"

He thinks about the man's last question. Really thinks. "No. Who ever that was is gone. Lost in an emptry room somewhere. If I can't remember? Pretty catestraphic, best to let it go."

"Old," the Doctor replied. Old enough that he wasn't even certain anymore. 903, the last time he counted. Which was centuries ago, at least.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean." The Doctor's own name sat somewhere in the back of his mind that even he couldn't pull it out. No matter how much he often wondered.

"Been around a long time? Or just lived hard?" Because it wasn't the same. His family? A lot of them were old and it had nothing to do with age. He felt like a kid next to Dean and Ruby. and it wasn't the years that they've been around.

"Yeah." He ponder that. "I've always wondered how they made me forget. And yet I've never had the guts to look. Kinda funny really."

"Both," the Doctor replied with a nod. Though he did understand Alec. What was it he had told Lazarus? Some people live more in twenty years than others do in ninety. The Doctor crammed a lot of life into his 900 (odd) years.

"Could you access their records?"

"That's a hard way to live, dude. But I bet never boring." That old curse 'may you live an interesting life.'

"Oh I have my file." He rubs at his barcode. "Just, uh, like my lunch. I tried to read it once. Ally and I got fall down drunk after."

"Nope. Nothing slow about my sort of life." Even if he did want that. Sometimes. A life where he could settle down and be happy. It would be a change.

"Well, I'd read it. See what happened to you. Those are bits of your life you'll never get back. Think of it as a story."

"Oh. . .none of it's missing besides that name." Turns and walks beside the Doc. He could see the Lunch Box up ahead. "I just see it all from a distinctly different view point. One that's a bit less coldly clinical and gorey. But nothings missing but that one fact." Again there is that rub at his neck and he doesn't look at the other man.

"Well, you still have the files. Can go through them if you ever decide you want to know," he said.

His own internal files were too full of holes and missing information and long forgotten passwords that there was no way he'd figure out his own name if he had a century to try to remember.

"How did you escape?"

He shrugs. "I didn't. I was outside the wire when things went pearshaped inside. Madame Renfro" Because their handlers will have their titles until the day he dies. "tried to lock the place down as it went up in flames. Maxie let everyone free."

"Maxie? I don't know a Maxie, do I?" He might've, he wasn't sure. He only just knew Dean and Sam and Ruby.

"No, you don't know Max." He grins. "She's a trip. Bitchy, self ritious but a good person. She's one of the other rabel rousers. Gives excelent speeches. The quick 411 on Max is that she and some of her sibs jumped the wire when we were ten. There was fall out on the twins left behind. Lets not go there. Anyway coupke of years ago she got herself captured. Things went down hill for Manticore after that."

Talking with Alec was the equivalent of talking with a 14-year-old Geretratinan without a translator. His colloquialisms made no sense, but he couldn't possibly stop and ask him to translate.

"You'd think capturing a rebel rouser would make it better. Or didn't they just eliminate her?"

"Couldn't just off her. They wanted her to get to he pseudo-boyfriend. Also? There's some fantablous something or other chillin' in her blood stream, that's supposed to save the human race. I'm doubtful on the sanity of some of the people involved in percolating of this plan. Upshot? No killing of the Maxie." It wasn't fair to the Doctor, but his slang and street accent got heavier when he talked about her. He's accent did that. Shifted to match those he was talking about or spendign time with. "Also? The rabel rousing was after."

Edited 2008-04-02 06:29 (UTC)

"Right, sorry, I understood just something short to none of that."

". . .what? Why not?"