Zeb deserved infinitely better than to have anything to do with someone as broken and abject as Alexsandr. It was unspeakable for Alexsandr to expect Zeb to give him whatever it was he so desperately longed for. ![]() In Zeb, he had found a place he hadn’t realised he had been searching for all his life.Īnd it couldn’t be. Every time Zeb gave him that fond look, every time his soft, furred hands touched Alexsandr or he even went so far as putting his arms all around him like a friendly cage, every time he so much as talked, upbeat, caring, Alexsandr found shivers running down his spine and a deep instinct making him gravitate towards the Lasat as if magnetised. The comfort of a friend was alien to him, even the comradeship some officers found with their long-stationed colleagues – Commandant Aresko and Taskmaster Grint came to mind, and he had to suppress a shudder at the inevitable memory of their deaths – impossible to maintain for someone as ruthless and efficient as Agent Kallus, ISB-021. He had an almost dangerous disregard for the past, if he was capable of looking past that and offer Alexsandr his friendship so freely.Īlexsandr longed to accept it so much that his whole body ached with it. Zeb had a big heart, somehow still caring and loving despite what had happened to him, despite what he’d had to do to survive after the Purge of Lasan. He certainly had no reason to forgive him.Īlexsandr had recognised the gesture for what it was. He had committed outright murder, yes, but he was also responsible for famines, false trials that would certainly lead to execution, fires, slavery, and so much more. His hands were stained with the blood of millions of people, some of whom he had known to be innocent the moment he had ended their lives. ![]() The Empire’s war crimes were numerous, and Alexsandr had been involved in more of them than most at ISB, most likely. Contrarily, they had only grown stronger, until he had found himself believing that being near Zeb wasn’t torture so much as it was relief, the only moments he had felt he could breathe freely.Īnd then Zeb had changed everything with just three words. And – uncharacteristically –, frequent exposure had done nothing to ease the intensity of the feelings that the Lasat awakened in him. From the moment he had looked Alexsandr up after he had been rescued from the Chimaera – from their truce on Bahryn onwards, even – Alexsandr had steadily been slipping, cracks appearing in his usually infallible composure. No matter what ISB Interrogation and the Inquisitorius had inflicted on him, he had always learnt to withstand it, always knew that the effect would lessen with exposure until he could stare back at his perpetrator as impassively as if they were simply brushing dust off his uniform. He had known from the moment Zeb had found out about and called him out on his desperate refusal to eat the way the Rebellion expected of him that the Lasat was a more powerful form of torture than he had ever been exposed to in the Empire. ![]() Alexsandr’s relentless exercise regimen made sure that he kept himself in top physical shape, at least, but it was his mental resistance that was worrying him. There was a reason why he had shot past his classmates at the Royal Imperial Academy, why he had been handpicked by Colonel Yularen himself to become one of the first to be trained for the newly formed ISB, why he had risen to outrank nearly everyone except the colonel himself in the organisation.Īnd yet, three months of being with the Rebellion was starting to undo all of his hard work. To reach the top of the Imperial Security Bureau – to even survive as an agent for as long as he had – absolute discipline was as much a necessity as proper training and a sharp mind, and he possessed all three of those qualities in abundance. The Empire had expected nothing less of him. ← Previous Work Part 12 of The Honourable Ones Stats: Published: Updated: Words: 5,372 Chapters: 1/2 Comments: 26 Kudos: 61 Bookmarks: 6 Hits: 493Īlexsandr Kallus had always been strict with himself. Pre-Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios.Alexsandr Kallus & Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios.Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios.
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