st_x5_494 | Follow the Tracks

Follow the Tracks - Peter

It was 4:30 A.M. in the morning and Alec was already up and dressed. He glanced out of his room to the horizon that wasn't quite yet hinting at the sunrise, but it would be soon. He walked into the other room where Peter slept and crossed his arms over his chest while he watched the teenage boy sleep - it must be nice to sleep so easily sometimes.

He shifted, moving about the room silently as he gathered the needed material and then he suddenly through a set of clothing at Peter's face. "Rise and shine, sunshine. We need to get moving."

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"Tracking with technology is different." A lot easier, though, if he had a choice. He looked at Peter as they headed toward the woods. He had his small black pack slung on one shoulder. He reached into a side pocket and tossed Peter a flashlight. While Alec could see in the dark, he figured Peter couldn't.

"Yeah, I'll show you. Might be without your suit sometime."

Peter catches the light and turns it on.

"You can't teach me now?" he asks. Not that he could really see much more with the light than he could without it.

"I can teach you when we find it's trail. Useless looking now. The last time I found it, it was in the woods." The woods were a little way off now. "You up for this?" Just in case things got 'intense'.

Peter shoots Alec a curious look. Why wouldn't he be?

"Yeah, yeah, of course."

He looked at Peter with a bit of a look as if he wasn't buying it. "And if we have to put this thing down?"

"If it's to keep everyone safe, I'll do it."

There's no hesitation in Peter's voice, his choice of words deliberate. No us or we. Alec knows he'll do it. Peter knows Alec will do it. Alec needs to know that he'll do it too if it calls for it.

"Alright." He wasn't entirely sure if this was true, but Alec was willing to give Peter the benefit of the doubt.

Soon they found themselves in the forest. It was darker here, but Alec found it familiar. "You feeling any better after all that stuff that happened lately?"

"Yeah, it wasn't really great for a few days, but Annie came over and we kinda talked it out." There'd been a lot they hadn't talked about; Tony had separated Annie from the group and she'd gone to sleep after her chat with the man. "She knows now that she's probably not my daughter."

Somehow this made Alec feel even more awkward about the girl... like he had to really, really watch what he had to say now. "And you're... happy about this? Sad? Disappointed?"

Up head, there seemed to be some sort of lump on the ground. It wasn't moving and as they got closer, it was definitely a dead deer.

"I don't know," Peter says. He runs the flashlight over the deer's corpse. Peter understood the circle of life well enough, but it felt purposeless for this deer to die for nothing.

"I guess sad really. I don't know, there's a chance she might be my daughter, but Tony seems convinced she isn't."

Alec crouched by the deer, surveying the claw marks and the blood. "You know, the other X5s. Max always called them her brothers and sisters. We're not actually related, of course. But to her and some of the others, that's what they are." Of course, the duplicated back in Manticore had a lot of 'reprogramming' when their other halves went AWOL. It was hard for Alec to truly forgive Ben - especially since he was a special case which meant even more reprogramming to be 'on the safe side'.

He looked around and then stood up. "Okay. So you want to look around for things like either broken branches, footprints, blood, or anything else that seems out of the ordinary."

Peter runs the flashlight along the ground, trying to spot anything that might be awry.

"Did you consider them your siblings?"

"For a long time I considered them traitors. And then Max came and I considered her a pain in my ass." And he had sold her out on at least one occasion before.

"I'm not close to most of them, but..." He shrugged. "I guess maybe Max... and Joshua." Assuming they'd let him be part of their circle.

"So do you consider them your family?" Peter stops searching the ground and looks over at Alec.

He looked back at Peter and paused. Did he? He gave a bit of a shrug. "Yeah, I guess." Did they him though? Probably not.

Peter turns his attention back to the surroundings and as he moves his flashlight upwards, catches sight of a few broken branches, the ends dangling limply.

"Alec!" Peter says in a whisper. He casts the light up on the branches. "That's what we're looking for, right?"

He nodded, his voice lowering to be quiet too. "Yeah. Looks like it's heading away, too." He gestured to the way the branches were bent, explaining briefly how you can tell it was going rather than coming.

He gestured quietly for Peter to take the lead and headed down the trail. It was definitely big, but Alec wasn't sure what it was, exactly.

Peter moves ahead, treading with care, his flashlight pointed at the path in front of them, then up in search of more broken branches. A few had bent enough to break off completely.

"You don't think it's one of those creatures that attacked the inn before, do you?"

"Don't think so. This thing seems animal. Looks like four legs." Alec gestured to where it seemed there were four. "So you can cross out skeletons and whatever the hell else. Plus I'd like to think we'd notice a big ass dragon if it was around."

That doesn't stop Peter from casting the light up towards the sky. Nothing except some cirrus clouds and the moon.

"Is there any way to know when we're getting close?" Peter whispers as he continues forward. The last thing he wanted was to wander right into the creature's nest or something.

"Sound, usually. Or the trail stops and we're about to be ambushed."

Alec closed his eyes on concentrated. He reached out as best he could with his hearing. There was a faint sound.

"It's up ahead somewhere. Sounds like it's still walking."

"Should we --"

Peter's attention turns away from the space in front of him as he turns to face Alec in an instant.

"Should we ambush it? I mean, we don't even know what it is yet."

When Peter turned around, Alec's eyes remained looking passed him down the trail. "We can flank it, sure. As long as you promise to turn back around and keep your head forward. I don't want to be picking up parts of your body around the forest." And Liz and Stark would never let him hear the end of it.

"You know, I have fought things before." Peter's on the defensive and he doesn't know why he is. Maybe it's because he feels like Alec's treating him like a kid. Or like someone who doesn't know how to fight. Sure he doesn't know anything about tracking and he's just getting his head around group tactics after mostly fighting alone for most of his tenure as Spider-Man, but...

...he could handle it!

Alec's eyes moved to Peter because Peter was being Peter again. Alec wasn't exactly sure where that came from. "Okay?" He stared at Peter. "...So?"

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