[C] Making A Friend

He suppressed a laugh as Derya hissed, eyes glinting a little in amusement.

They quickly darkened as he thought back over his time there.

"Since I was turned." he replied bluntly.

A long, long, long time ago. Some of the wolves he had grown up with had disappeared when they got too powerful. And he was never sure if they had broken out or if...

Well, he didn't really like to think about it.

But some of them were still around. The ones weaker than him mainly, and one or two stronger. He didn't like to socialise with them, nor them him. They didn't trust each other.

Derya had sussed that.

So far not one person he had met here had been a Lycan before they came here. They had all been turned here.

He'd figured out that everyone was turned when they got to the Estate.

"How long ago was that?"

The boy was curious. Curiosity was in his nature.

He caught the boy's unimpressed look and sighed, scratching the back of his head.

"Uhh. A thousand and twenty three years ago." he muttered under his breath.

It was a miracle he had stuck it out really.

He would have thought they might have let him go by now. Traditionally in ancient Greece, slaves were let free after a certain number of years service, but apparently that didn't happen here. Or maybe it was just after a lot longer. He wasn't really sure.

The boy's eyes widened.

A thousand years old?

Wow, that was... wow. "That means you were around back then, right? Back before everything became modern."

The boy leaned forwards, excitement brewing in his silver eyes.

"What was it like?"

"Uhh..."

Describing time periods to people who hadn't been there was so difficult. Where could he start? The scents of different spices in the air? The slightly hotter climate? The way that things which were considered appalling now were just... accepted? The politics, people's attitudes...

So much had changed.

"They treated us better for one thing. Back then slaves were considered part of the family. We still had to do the work, but we were fed better, and even got to socialise with the family. It was completely different."

His voice took on an almost dreamy tone as he remembered. It was the food he missed more than anything. Figs and yoghurt and lamb. Moussaka. Stuffed birds.

Any of that would seem like heaven now.

"What was it like before you became a Slave? How did you live?"

His eyes continued to shine in excitement. He finally got to ask someone that knew what it was like back then. He wasn't going to let this chance slip.

"What were family bonds like? Religion? Personal beliefs?"

He wanted to know anything and everything about how he lived.

"I'm Irish. The way we lived was very different from the Greeks. But we worked harder. A lot harder. Even the wealthier families. People today are lazy. And we hunted, at least once a week."

He paused, fingers playing with a pebble absent-mindedly.

"Families were very close-knit. It was normal to marry your cousin. And some even married their sisters. It wasn't the shock it is today. It was better to keep your women close than risk losing them to a man that might treat them badly. We all lived close, too. Often in the same house."

Rolling onto his back, his eyes turned up to the sky, squinting in the bright sunlight.

"Religion has always been the same. People think that it is only in the last century that we have doubted our Gods. We've always had the cynics, the agnostics. The people who just go along with it because it was the social norm, or just joined in with festivals because they seemed fun at the time."

Derya's lips pursed and his expression dulled a little.

He was telling him about what it was like in Ireland. He had no interest in that.

He wanted to know about Greece. What happened and how people thought in Greece hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. He was sure there'd be some people interested in Ciaran's stories, but he'd been expecting a story about Greece.

This wasn't what he wanted.

"Mhmm," the boy hummed, trying to at least sound a little interested.

Like any other single-minded young man, he was terrible at trying to feign interest in something that he really wasn't interested in.

He could see that the other man's eyes had dulled the moment he mentioned Ireland and it irked him. He had been talking about things that were universal to both Ancient Greece and Ireland when he was there.

"Greece too." he added, dully.

Hopefully that would get the kid to buck up a bit.

The boy's cheeks blazed deep scarlet.

He knew what that dull tone meant. He realised that Derya hadn't really been interested.

The boy bit his lip, eyes dropping to his lap as he ran his hand through his hair, pushing it back out of his face.

"What was it like...being turned?"

His eyes flickered up again, silver dulled slightly in a pained memory. He remembered being turned. The desperation and fear and raw anger. He hadn't know what was happening to him.

Was Ciaran the same?

His eyebrows knit together and his face screwed up a little as he attempted to remember.

He shook his head.

"I don't remember."

He had tried to remember before, but he hadn't been able to. It wasn't unusual for it to be a little hazy among supernaturals. Emotions clouded over your memories, a little like how some people couldn't remember moments like exams.

But it made him annoyed that he couldn't remember. Three of the most important weeks of his life and he couldn't remember any of it.

"Oh... I...see."

He didn't see how the man couldn't remember.

Being turned was the most painful and memorable experience of his life. He couldn't forget. Ever.

But Ciaran was old. His memory probably wasn't as perfect as someone as young as Derya's was. Ciaran had been through more. He was sure the man had a lot of other memories that had just swamped the memory of being turned.

The boy chewed on his lip, trying to think of something more he could say. This was the first man besides Tony and Mark that he had actually talked to. He kinda wanted to be friends with this man. It'd be nice to have friends outside Derrick's immediate circle of friends.

He shook his head in frustration.

"I can remember up to the second I was bitten... and then... there are some hazy memories later on... but I don't know if they're real or not."

Now he was more talking to himself than the other man. It was frustrating, and almost painful trying to remember, and his hand rubbed at his forehead in irritation.

He didn't know how he could forget such an important time in his life. There had been nobody he could turn to afterwards. His Maker had buggered off the moment he had been created so he couldn't ask him.

Plastering on a smile, he turned to the other man. "What about you?"

"I remember everything."

The boy felt small right now. He felt tiny and scared and breakable. Just remembering all that pain and fear and anger...

"I don't want to remember it."

He was...jealous, he supposed. Jealous that Ciaran didn't remember it. He'd give a lot to cast the memory of being turned out of his mind.

"What's your favourite game?" he asked out of the blue, silver eyes inquisitive as he gazed up at the man.

Ciaran shook his head.

"But it changes you. At least you know how you got to who you are now. I just feel like I woke up one day as a completely different person."

To him he would rather remember the pain, know what he had come through, know who he was, than be this creature so different to the human him and not quite know where it came from. It didn't feel like him. It hadn't felt like him for centuries.

"My favourite game? Bulldog."

He had learnt it from one of the English lycans. The chase, the wrestling and the take-down was something that appealed to his lycan side.

"What about you?"

Bulldog.

He hadn't been expecting a game like that. Derya, like many others, had been dragged into a world of games where one didn't need to get up off their ass to play. Knowing people older than him played the old games that he played when he was a child seemed strange to him.

He hadn't played any games like that in years. He'd been such a young child the last time he had played a game of chase.

"Sonic Adventure two," he replied with a little smile. "Just a little different than Bulldog."

A smirk pulled his lips. "But I'm damned good at Oil Wrestling and it's a load of fun." He didn't really see that as a game, though. It was a competitive sport that he'd broken bones over before.