He lets her hold his hand for a moment just letting it go in and out, before shrugging. "It wasn't so bad for a while. Manticore took me back, put me through reindoctrination - I couldn't even remember her." He had her necklace and was vaguely aware of why, but not the crushing hurt that came with knowing he was responsible for her being taken from him.
She's not so sure if it's a good thing that he avoided the hurt of it like he did. He likely never had the chance to properly process the information. There's nothing to be done about that now. All she can try to do is be here for him now.
He shrugs slightly. "Sometimes." It helped to talk to her, to explain all the things he didn't get the chance to explain, even if she couldn't understand him and he knew that. "But it doesn't make it any less my fault."
"You may not believe me, but I don't think it's your fault. You weren't in complete control of yourself. Those people, they..." She can't finish the thought. Helen despises Manticore with a deep passion. Speaking about them at all, makes her thoughts cloud with rage for what they've done to the transgenics.
"They gave me orders and I didn't follow them. If I had ... " Maybe she would have died faster death instead of languishing in a vegetative state for years? Is that really any better an option? He pauses for a moment, hands poised over the keyboard, before he glances back at her.
"Look, I get what you're trying to say. Manticore was using us, brainwashing us ... whatever. But the problem is, we still had a choice. We always had a choice. We could have destroyed all of them without a second thought but we didn't. Maybe it was conditioning, maybe it was fear, I don't know what else. I don't feel guilty for a lot of the people I killed for them, because nine times out of ten, whoever it was deserved it. But I feel guilty about her."
"I understand, dear. And you might always feel that way. God knows I have similar regrets in my life." She's killed people. Some accidental, some with complete purpose. She isn't proud of it, but it's part of her now.
He nods for a moment, letting that settle, before glancing back to her with a small smile. "Any requests?" They've talked about enough serious stuff for right now. Time to get back to the music.
Alec's eyebrows climb a bit at that. It's nothing new, his memories have been floating around all day, but he can't help but be curious what it was about. "Probably me, though there's a couple of us floating around with barcodes."
"Are they all 331845739494?" He was curious. "I'm... I'm good with numbers. And remembering the order of them." Something that had helped them get out of the maze.
Alec's eyebrows go up a bit when the kid just rambles his designation number off the top of his head, but then again, a lot of transgenics could do that. Eidetic memories - they came in handy. "No. I mean, yeah. That's me."
He saw that look and licked his lips. He had said he was good with numbers, and it included remembering them. "You were a kid, with a bunch of others, out in the snow and it looked like you were hunting someone down in some kind of game?"
Oh. He saw that. Alec swallows uncomfortably before shaking his head. "It wasn't a game. The people who built us didn't really let us play games. It was a training exercise."
He smirks a bit, before shaking his head. "I was built to be a soldier. I was trained to be one since I was old enough to walk. I didn't exactly have a normal childhood."
"Yeah, I saw some of yours. There was a lot of science, I didn't really get." He glances over at him, not really wanting to push if he didn't want to talk about it.
"Yeah the memory itself was a little hazy, but I have a feeling that when you're looking at it from an outside perspective it can get a little ... clearer." There's no investment in it. No bias.
"How clear?" He could see there was no bias, but Alec was friends with Newt and Alby long before Thomas showed up. If he knew what Thomas had done to them before he was swiped...
He gives a small shrug. He's not giving judgement either way because he knows what experiments like that are like. He lived it himself, once upon a time. "I didn't really understand a lot of it. It was mostly you in front of a computer and people talking about something called WCKD?"
"WCKD were the people that put us all there. Made the maze, ran the trials. And I helped them." He didn't look up. "I don't remember how much, but I know I did."
"Dude, you were a kid." There's a pause as he tries to figure out how to say it. "I'm not saying what you did wasn't wrong, but you weren't old enough to know better."
"No, guilt is fine. Guilt is good." He's probably the only person who would tell him that, but mostly because he needs it to feel human. "But when it comes down to the blame - that's not on you."
He pauses for a moment, before shrugging. "Maybe you should ask the agents about it. Maybe if you get a favor they can provide some kind of ... clarity."
Alec nods for a moment, because he knows that feeling too. He then shrugs, placing a hand on his shoulder gently. "You've got plenty of time to figure it out."
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for helen }
He lets her hold his hand for a moment just letting it go in and out, before shrugging. "It wasn't so bad for a while. Manticore took me back, put me through reindoctrination - I couldn't even remember her." He had her necklace and was vaguely aware of why, but not the crushing hurt that came with knowing he was responsible for her being taken from him.
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"Does it help to talk about her?"
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"Look, I get what you're trying to say. Manticore was using us, brainwashing us ... whatever. But the problem is, we still had a choice. We always had a choice. We could have destroyed all of them without a second thought but we didn't. Maybe it was conditioning, maybe it was fear, I don't know what else. I don't feel guilty for a lot of the people I killed for them, because nine times out of ten, whoever it was deserved it. But I feel guilty about her."
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For better or for worse.
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for thomas }
Alec's eyebrows climb a bit at that. It's nothing new, his memories have been floating around all day, but he can't help but be curious what it was about. "Probably me, though there's a couple of us floating around with barcodes."
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