I've been stuck in this closet for over an hour to facilitate you having sex.

Things Alec planned to do with his evening:

Get some fresh air - check

Wander in the woods - check

Maybe find someone nice to talk to - check(ish - jury's still out on Stiles)

Things Alec did not plan to do with his evening but wound up doing anyway:

Follow around a creepy guy who wasn't entirely organic because Stiles's "spidey sense" (whatever the hell that is) is tingling

It's not that he's complaining - it's something to do which is always nice, but his thoughts keep swinging around to "why should he care?" He doesn't care about this place, as a general rule, beyond his survival in it, but now he's trying to help protect it? He's still weighing the pros and cons as he leads the way through the woods, keeping up with the trail and trying not to be seen - or let Stiles be seen. He's a nice guy, but about as stealthy as a bag of bricks.

The guy stops, he stops, hiding himself behind a nearby tree, and he glances around it for a moment to make sure the coast is clear before gesturing for Stiles to come closer. Slowly. Quietly. Without drawing undue attention to himself.

Please.

[Set after THIS. Elena is badever, Stefan is somanyadjectives.]

There is really only one good lesson that Manticore ever taught them.

Some lessons were helpful. How to load and reload a gun. The most effective way of picking locks, infiltrating buildings. When he left Manticore, methods of combat and assassination became methods of self-defense, so they were useful, but they weren’t good. Max taught him that when she taught him how to be an actual person. She helped him learn how to fit in in the world, and while her moral compass isn’t necessarily the straightest, it was better than his. Max took the mission imperatives and the brainwashing and turned it into something real. Still there is one good lesson that Manticore managed to teach them, and it was this:

You don’t abandon your unit.

They directed their human instincts, their familial instincts into the other X5s around them. It made them a stronger unit, made it more likely to bring soldiers home and complete their lessons effectively. Maybe in some way they hoped that if they had love for their unit, maybe they wouldn’t develop love for the outside world – it didn’t always work, Alec is living proof of that – but it helped them build faith in each other, and that was enough.

His unit at Manticore shifted to the transgenics in Terminal City, and when he landed in Mystic Falls, that necessity, that need for family transferred to Damon and Elena. They had families of their own, they didn’t need him (though maybe in some way Damon did), but he needed them, and they let him do that. It’s for that reason that he’s grateful. Most people would have wrote him off from the get-go, but they didn’t and that’s a debt he’s never not going to owe them. If he had been left in this world alone by himself, he would have probably lost his mind.

The problem with placing such a strong emphasis on family, and training them to be unstoppable killing machines, is that when that family is threatened, they will use every weapon in their arsenal to make sure their family safe. That’s how Max’s unit escaped when they were kids. After that they tried to wipe it out of them, erase that need to protect and replace it with the fact that their handlers always made the right decision “in the field,” no matter what, but that kind of instinct you can’t truly erase. It doesn’t go away.

And neither does the rage.

(Alec doesn’t make promises to family that he can’t keep, which is why he chose his words to Elena very, very carefully. He said he wouldn’t pick a fight he couldn’t win, but he had absolutely no doubt at all that this is a fight he’s very capable of winning. He’s fought vampires before and won, and he doesn’t intend to kill Stefan. He just needs an outlet for that rage somewhere, and Stefan clearly needs to learn a lesson about why you don’t threaten an X5’s family.

It doesn’t end well.)

See, Stefan? He isn’t family. Damon’s family, maybe, but not Alec’s.

( *** )

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