"[b]Yeah, we can get our angst out over some nice steak, or, uh, fancy food...I dunno.[/b]" Drake swallowed his pride, and while not quite resorting to the emotional outburst that Alpha so frequently displayed, allowed himself to empathize with her for a brief moment. To him, the entire situation had been a mistake--one of the many large ones of his life--that kept him up at night. For her... she'd truly been through hell. To be emotional after all that was understandable, and far more healthy than his own internalized anger. "[b]Look, you heard what I said,[/b]" he started saying after a brief moment of silence, "[b]Not that it excuses what I did, but I never meant for... any of this to happen to you. I don't care if you don't believe me, but it's the truth. I... was wrong to think that I could trust anyone to have control over your fate, and furthermore I was wrong to assume that I wouldn't get backstabbed by that ASF scum.[/b]" The words felt lighter after they had left his tongue, and the genuine apology inspired a stream of more words to flow from him. "[b]I was too cocky. I believed that by keeping you somewhere that I could see you, that maybe, just maybe, I could protect you from yourself. I didn't trust you on your own, even after all that you've accomplished. And I was a -blam!-ing fool to believe that dealing with the ASF would redeem me.[/b]" There was the old the spite again, bubbling up from the deepest corners of his heart. But, oddly enough, what might have been a face contorted in anger softened, as Drake pushed aside his loathing to focus on somebody other than himself, for once. "[b]But you... I don't think that anybody else could've done what you did, gone through what you did, and come out the other side in one piece. I... -blam!- kid, I betrayed you, and so did he--[/b]" Drake pointed at Sawyer, and then pointed into the distance, "[b]--and so did Winchester, when he ran away on his adventures, and so did Pandora, that -blam!-ing -blam!-, after what she did to some of those anomalies in Amoridia. Alpha, I don't expect you to accept my apology, not now, and maybe not ever. But I'm still offering it.[/b]"