eelseason | [DV]

11 Sept. 08 prompt
You don't become a cop because you want to serve and protect. You join the force because they let you carry a gun and a badge. You do it because you get respect.
– Turk, Righteous Kill

Jack didn't go by Jack when he joined the Agency. Leighn didn't go by Leighn. They were Jarec and Lena, her just having settled into a form, him running from his family and Boe-Shayne and an ocean of his own iniquities.

His first day in the academy, where the gunmetal walls closed around him like an artery and the lights were cold and blue as stars, he saw a Chula loping down the hall toward him. She was beautiful and alien, to eyes which had little exposure to aliens, and walked as though she'd created the world and everything in it was to cater to her.

Given the origins of the Agency, it wasn't far from the truth.

Jarec pressed himself back into the wall, and Lena pressed against his legs with a whine low in her throat. The chula passed by without noticing him, lock-necked and heavy-lidded, but her dæmon stopped.

He was long and languid, of a species Jarec didn't know, and he looked over the two of them. Raw recruits, wet behind the ears, lowest of the low.

"You're in the Agency," he said, as though it was his job as dæmon to tell them these things. "Stand up straight and act like a king."

Then he went on his way.

Act like a king.

Many years and aliases later, a man named John stood with his dæmon Liesl, rangier but stronger, both of their heads held high in a planetary Court with kings arrayed before them. The foremost king's dæemon, a coatl with golden wings, screamed from Liesl's jaws.

"It's Agency business," John said, smiling. "I'm sure you understand."

And the king, already trembling, was the one who bowed to him.