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FLASHBACK

He had spent his first life working with young people. His goal had been to show them their past so they might have a better reference point for defining their future. Yet for a young man like Damon, whose personal past presented nothing but strife and the absolute worst aspects of the human condition, what relevance would the ancient past hold? His immediate past was the issue, as was Xiang's own.

Getting him to lie still had become something of an exercise in futility. For Damon, inactivity was a privilege, not a simple basic right. As a consequence, the boy really never stopped moving. Even at rest, his nerves were always active, hypersensitive to any and all possible avenues of escape. Freedom as a privilege was also a new concept for him, whether he chose to admit it or not. He had not been born a slave, as Xiang had not, but he had lived as a slave long enough to be well and completely conditioned toward it. Living free was another condition he would have to grow accustomed to.

Xiang hoped it would be soon. Before he accidentally killed the boy out of frustration, trying to get him to stay still.

Xiang watched the boy laugh in sheer hysterics. How long had it been since he had felt so much pure joy?

“I wish… I wish I could have seen his face… when he found out…”

END FLASHBACK

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"Mr. Thorne has left the ship."

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After a minute, Damon's laughter finally dies down but he can't stop grinning. He looks up at Xiang from the recliner, eyes alert, excited, as if he has much to say and no words to put it in.

Finally he stands, paying no heed to the complaints from his lingering wounds. His stomach tells him he's hungry, but his mind can't understand how he can be. He feels spoiled with three meals a day and completely out of place when he asks: "So is it too early for breakfast?" It sounds more like asking for permission than he intended, which also feels awkward since he can't remember the last time he asked permission for anything.

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"So is it too early for breakfast?"

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FLASHBACK
Any meal was a good one so far as Damon was concerned. Xiang could put a raw block of protein down in front of the boy and he would eat it. He still sounded more like Oliver Twist asking, "Please sir, I want some more," but at least he knew to ask.

"I have heard it said that it is never too early for breakfast," Xiang replied, smiling slightly himself with that tiny reminiscence of Robert. He could eat eggs at any time of the day, kneeling down to declare Rowan a Goddess when…

Rowan. Just her name causes him to stop for a moment and remember what it was. To be a friend, husband and lover to such a beautiful creature seems near unfathomable now. Yet that was the joy of his life before. Before he was taken by the Alliance and all he knew was wrested from him. His life, his future, his identity and to the nearest extent, his very soul.

Realizing Damon is staring at him in confusion, Xiang turns and heads for the small kitchen unit to inspect the inventory. Finding what he needs, he begins to turn yellow-colored protein into something resembling scrambled eggs.
END FLASHBACK

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"I have heard it said that it is never too early for breakfast," Xiang replied, smiling slightly.

The change in Xiang's expression is subtle but Damon catches it- a brief flash of... something. He remembers seeing it several times before, while Xiang was cleaning him up on Dis. On most days, the long hours passed in silence, suppressed by dark thoughts and heavy emotions that neither wished to deal with during their precious time away from their enslavers. It was on days like those that Damon sometimes saw it, the distant look in Xiang's eyes. Damon can't put words to the look, but he knows the feeling- usually something that doesn't want to be discussed.

He follows Xiang to the kitchen and watches him pull things together for breakfast. Not knowing what else to do to help, Damon pulls a couple cups from the sink, fills them both with water and sets one down on the counter for Xiang.

"Here's to us, Xiang. To victory..."

He raises his cup and takes a swallow.

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"Here's to us, Xiang. To victory..."

Watching Damon drink from a dirty glass with flourish, Xiang cannot help but respond, He lifted the second glass and tapped it against Damon's as he lowered it from drinking, but did not drink himself. One of the cups had belonged to Templar, and considering his occupation, it would not be entirely beyond the realm of possibility that the cup would have some subversive kind of sedative coating adhered to it. Aside from that, who knew what new manner of diseases could have sprung in the past seven years?

Taking Damon's glass and the other one, he put them back in the sink and took down two new ones to fill, adding ice and processed lemon juice.

"You should think before you drink from a dirty glass, Damon. You never know where it's been."

Turning back to his pan, he finished up the eggs and piles all of it onto a plate, which he set in front of Damon. There was enough for two, but Xiang wasn't feeling hungry. It had struck him in the night - after being awakened by Damon's nightmare - that Robert would have to have a particular reason for sending someone after him now, after all the time that had passed. Robert never did anything for a reason. When he visited the campus on Osiris after being incommunicado for more than six years, he had a reason. When he took Xiang into that room where Ro...where SHE was sitting, he had a reason. When he came up with the plan to get her out of the complex should the Alliance finally invade, there was a reason attached to that too.

Something was about to happen. Xiang could feel it. And he didn't care for it one bit.

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"Victory," Xiang said, trying the sound of the word. "Yinge shengli."

It didn't sound any better in Chinese.

Not wanting to burst Damon's bubble, Xiang nodded. "That must explain why I'm so exhausted. It was a victory hard-won."

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Damon reluctantly releases his cup when Xiang takes it from him.

"You should think before you drink from a dirty glass, Damon. You never know where it's been."

A slight frown of confusion crosses Damon’s face. Are they dirty? He shrugs it off and accepts the new cup. A moment later, Xiang sets a plate of eggs in front of him.

Damon looks up. “You not eating?”

Xiang shakes his head so Damon picks up the plate, fairly convinced Xiang’s nuts for passing up food. Putting his back to the wall, Damon sits down, places his cup on the floor next to him and looks down at the chopsticks on his plate. He picks them up, clicking them together experimentally. It feels like forever since he last used them. But his interest in the chopsticks quickly fades and he sets to work with emptying his plate.

"Victory," Xiang says, trying the sound of the word. "Yinge shengli. That must explain why I'm so exhausted. It was a victory hard-won."

Damon grunts at the understatement and moves the eggs to the side of his mouth to speak. “Impossibly won…” He continues eating, thoughts of where he had been not even four days ago pulling him into silence. Five years- eight including the three at the factory. Even eight sounded so much shorter than he remembers it. But he did it. They did it.

He swallows the last of the eggs and leans back against the wall to look up at Xiang. “Xiang, did you ever…” He pauses, not sure if he even wants to ask. So many of them thought he was crazy for doing this. Just a silly boy with a naïve sense of hope. “Did you ever think about what you would do if you were free?”

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Watching Damon wolf down the eggs, it was obvious the boy was preoccupied with something. More than once he looked up thoughtfully and seemed to have an entire conversation in his head, only to return his attention to his plate. Xiang was about to ask what was on his mind when Damon finally came out and said it.

“Did you ever think about what you would do if you were free?”

Free. What did that word mean? When he was sixteen, it meant eventually leaving home and never having to listen to another row between his parents. When he was twenty-three, it meant being able to take the job at the university in Osiris without having to uproot a family to do it. On his wedding day... well, that meant something else entirely.

"I have wondered if there is such a thing," Xiang replied. He had spoken without thinking about it. "To be free. My condition before we met rendered me unable to recall my past, or to see a future--I was simply Chen. It was you, actually, who started the process that freed me from my conditioning. I saw you fighting the guards and the look in your eyes reminded me... it reminded me of the fire I thought I had lost. Of the will to think on my own. We would still be there and you would likely be dead now if I had not been dusting the paintings in the hallway that day."

The fire had actually brought HER image to the forefront of his mind, but Xiang chose to leave that part out. Instead he lifted a chain from under the collar of his sweater. With it came a silver pendant of the yin yang symbol.

"They let me keep this. I did not know what it was, I only knew I had to wear it. It was given to me by someone... very special. Before I saw you, if my conditioning began to fail, I was programmed to look at it and my condition would be restored. Now I look at it and remember... what was before."

"Yin and yang, darkness and light, female and male, me and you."

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"I am not quite free yet. But when I am, I will find the one who gave this to me and hope I will not end up dead when I do."

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