Beautiful Lorien

His Eyes - Cohn

He hates the government. Despises each and every operative that stepped a foot near his cell. His new favorite activity was coming up with cruel and unusual ways to punish the soldiers who made a mockery of him.

He was a Garde, an intergalactic superpower. He should be respected, not bound by a straight jacket. He wasn't a damn psychopath, just 'confused' like some of the allies like to put it.

He touched the scars on his wrist, gently brushing the thin lines that ran up his arms with his fingertips. Fabric burn. Burns from the constriction of the straight jacket that would never fully heal on their own. A permanent reminder that he was always going to be someone else's enemy, even if he changed his ways.

No one wants me here but I stay anyway, Number Five thought, smacking the back of his head against the wall of his newest room. It was a much needed upgrade, with blankets and pillows that actually blocked out the air conditioning of the government facility and a lamp with working bulbs. It still locked from the outside, however; even though the walls were paper thin and a mere punch from him stood between Five and the cool night sky, his pride on that fact alone sometimes stopped him.

He chose his side. What more did they want from him?

The dead eyes always came back to him. They kept him here. He wanted to help, he felt compelled to.

He had a more secret mission. A special one.

While the rest of the Garde were too weak to try, Five knew that a portion of his strengths, the ones that held him back from charging Nine where he stood back in that Chicago safe house and kept Ella alive aboard Ra's vessel, were in his bite.

Those eyes.

Five had groaned right before, he remembers the uncomfortable puff of white his breath had made. He remembers wishing he could slap his face or pinch the skin between his eyes in frustration when the tight, gray cut into his wrists and pulled on his shoulder blades. He was stuck with thrashing or shouting like the other crazies to let out his nervous energy.

He remembers thinking he chose. Five liked to dwell on that, apparently. He had picked his side, why wouldn't anyone see that?

His story wasn't unknown anymore, it felt like Number Five's tale of woes was now everyone's lunchtime gossip, his life reduced to harsh whispers and narrow-eyed glares. He was there, he knew the story well enough without the rumors. His Cepan croaked when he needed the old man's teachings the most and the first man to help him after led him down a darker path somewhere else, somewhere far away. The Mog side.

Under Ra, the Loric were the enemy. Naturally. Once upon a time, the Loric ruined the Mog and now Mogadore was exacting its much needed revenge.

Ella helped him see otherwise.

John was the final push.

Those stupid eyes.

He'd been beaten, he'd been broken. He was defeated, held down in a rotting, frigid holding cell by the Garde he turned back around to save from the monster in New York.

Just for you dicks.

Five wasn't going to let them break him any farther.

After all, Eight's blood was cracked and broken now. It was all over his hands.

For Eight, and for my people. No one else.

Or, so he thought.

For Four.

Six and Marina once mentioned a bond, how they were connected even before they met because their numbers in the kill sequence came so close together. Nine and Eight had it, so strong that Eight still threw his life on the line, in front of the girl he loved, to save the Garde in line behind him.