SSD III: Silver

71. White Lie

"Am I-" he hesitated. Maybe he was being silly, there was no point to worrying like this. But he couldn't help but think maybe he was going about this the wrong way. "Am I doing this wrong?"

"In what way?"

"At this rate, Silver's going to be back to normal next week," he said, "but am I just using that as an excuse?"

"An excuse for what?"

Keenan let his head fall, having to arch his back to let it hit the solid back of the sofa. "When I arrived, Silver tried to show me all the reasons I'd want to stay. What it meant to be free, to be able to make my own choices, to have fun without a threat hanging over my shoulder." Simple things others took for granted: choosing what he wanted to eat based on his own desire and not a group of nutrition rules, being able to race through a forest and not be running from something or hunting someone, to have people who cared because they cared and not because the rules stated they needed to keep the whole team alive. "She didn't have the luxury of waiting for me to figure it out on my own, but I- I don't know where I would even start," he finished, his shoulders rising in a mixture of frustration and helplessness.

Inui hummed, nodding as he tried to properly understand something so alien. "Where did she start with you?"

"She forced me to make a choice for myself," he answered. A simple meal, but her refusal to let it be the standard meal for missions in Japan had pushed him into a difficult position. She demanded it be something he liked and not something he needed and he'd uttered the first thing that came to mind: pasta. And pasta it was.

Maybe that was a good first step to take now too.

"Thanks Inui," he said, the short talk surprisingly helpful. Being waylaid by Hound Dog hadn't been expected, and Keenan hadn't thought it would help sort out the mental whirlwind weighing him down, but it had. And he was grateful.

"You're welcome, now go help our lost pup." Inui's heart really did go out to them, both of them. He also hated that he'd probably just learned more about their lives from Keenan in thirty seconds than he had from the runt of the litter (though she was runt in height alone these days) in weeks of meetings. He thought over the young man's words and found himself hovering over what he said about choice. As children, free choice was not a concept they could have imagined, now, it was important they were given that choice.

It was their lives, and they should be allowed to live them as they decided.

***

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Sex ed."

They were a few days in now and Silver had been a lot less trouble than Keenan first feared. Memory-wise, she'd now completed the two tests that earned her the W and M scars, her smiles and expressions— though even more fake than they'd been before— appeared as real as anything. And aside from a restlessness that came from not being allowed to train for no given reason, she was a strange source of calm.

"I would recommend strongly against telling people about that."

"Recommend?" she repeated. "Is that faith in me I hear, Penis-Brain?" He'd been pretty firm in making sure she understood everything he told her to do was an order to be followed before now, this was different.