Chapter Text
“What do you mean, ‘four more years’?”
Michael’s the first one to break the silence. Alex is standing in front of them all, stoically not allowing his eyes to linger on Michael for any longer than they have to. Everyone else is stuck in stunned silence, looking at Alex like he’s grown an additional head. Or two.
“Precisely that, Guerin,” Alex says calmly. Though he’s nervous about their reactions, he doesn’t let it show. Alex mastered the art of smothering his feelings a long time ago, after all, learned to repress with the best of them.
“But-” Liz is the one that breaks the silence as Michael just lets out a breath and pushes his fingers through his hair, “-but you weren’t going back.”
“You said your enlistment was almost over,” Kyle added, “We’ve talked about it a lot.”
“I know,” Alex answers patiently, though he feels anything but. “There are still things that need to be taken care of and I can do that better from inside than on the fringes.”
“You’re talking about Project Shepherd.”
Michael’s voice is hollow when he speaks and it takes Alex - and the others - by surprise. Ever since Caulfield, Michael’s done everything possible to try and avoid talking about that place, about what happened there. He’s done his best to distance himself from Alex, throwing himself into attempts to make himself happy. Alex can’t deny that it hurts but he understands, even if he would never have done that.
He clears his throat, opening his mouth to answer before thinking better of it and he just gives a sharp, concise nod.
“You can’t.”
Alex’s eyebrows lift as Michael tells him that he can’t go back in and it’s a fight not to cross his arms over his chest and retort hotly that he can do whatever he wants and Michael has no place to tell him not to. Instead, he takes a deep breath.
“It’s the only way.”
When Michael catches him outside as he’s leaving, Alex grits his teeth at the force behind the tugging at his arm. He turns and looks at Michael, wearied and frustrated but not giving in, not giving an inch. There have only been two people in the world able to unravel him down to his bare-bones and both of them have broken his heart.
“Alex,” Michael says and he looks wrecked. “No one asked you to get involved like this. It’s not your fight.”
“Isn’t it?” Alex challenges him now since they’re alone. Just the two of them under the New Mexico night, stars twinkling down in silent sympathy, or judgement. Alex doesn’t really know which. “It’s as much my fight as it is Kyle’s, or yours.”
“Your family killed mine,” Michael says, something in his voice snapping. He looks surprised with himself. Alex flinches a little; he doesn’t need the reminder of what happened at Caulfield. He hasn’t been able to forget. The files just keep pushing him deeper and deeper into the mire and he’s covered in the filth of Project Shepherd so completely now he’ll never get clean. “If anyone should be the one to take it down it should be-”
“You?” Alex asks, voice tight. He can feel his eyes burning a little. He knows Michael notices but he gives zero shits. “Sure, go ahead and dismantle a military operation that’s been running for seventy years successfully with government-sanctioned support. Go ahead and not get yourself caught and stuck in a tube while they run tests on you.”
Michael rises to the bait, just like Alex knew he would.
“Fine then!, Be the hero, the Manes legacy’s a tough one to shake,” he snaps, hardly catching himself when Alex flinches again. It’s minute, but Alex’s expressions have always been like that, repressed and hidden by years of necessity.
He shakes his head and Alex watches his curls bounce with the movement. That one curl that always hangs over Michael’s right eye seems to get stuck on his eyelashes for a moment, tugged down and bouncing up again with extra vigour.
Alex doesn’t get a chance to defend himself, though he’s not sure that he can. Michael’s right. The Manes Legacy is a quagmire. Michael continues to speak, hurt and anger mixed in with confusion as he says, “Knowing you, Alex, loving you has been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Reeling from those words almost like a physical blow, Alex takes half a step backwards. He sees the way Michael’s eyes widen almost comically, the words spat in his direction taking them both by surprise but Alex… Alex knows that he’s right. His family has done dreadful things to Michael’s, and Michael’s life would have been better - in every conceivable way - if Alex had never met him.
He just nods in acceptance and walks away. He decides that he’ll text a goodbye to Liz and Kyle and Maria when he’s on his way to the base in the morning.
Michael, realizing that he’d wanted Alex to call him a miserable liar again and fight him, watches him go. If he’d known then that it was the last time he would talk to Alex, he’d have gotten down onto his knees and begged for forgiveness.