For the next 5 Questions, my muse cannot tell a lie. [1/5]

      Children are born for peace, or so someone once told him.
                  He hears that voice now, the memory of it lingering as little else
                  about the speaker ever has; the words are the only ghost of a
                  a woman he barely remembers, a woman with hair like faded
                  sunlight and kind, weary eyes. Children are born for peace, she
                  said with a tired smile; perhaps you might grow with yours, my boy.

                  But he has not known peace ( not the kind that woman spoke of )
                  for most of his life, would not know what to do with it; find a home
                  or some property out of the way; plants roots and start a family, or
                  take up some other form of employ that dealt with nothing more covert
                  than interdepartmental memos and tax returns. He could trade bullets
                  for boredom, tradecraft for tedium. Or retire properly, take up big game
                  hunting ( for the sort that doesn’t shoot back ), or travel the world and
                  get to visiting the handful of places he hasn’t been yet.

                            (  God, has there ever been anything less appealing?  )

                  It might add a decade or three to his life — or shorten it by a few.
                  Nothing like the humdrum of the mundane to make an active field
                  agent’s skin crawl. He’s been too used to moving, to fighting and
                  running and bleeding, to ever really consider settling in comfortably
                  for a normal, peaceful life.

                 It’s not the years in your life that counts, they say; 
                             what matters is the life in your years.

                             ”It’s not in the cards. Maybe once perhaps, but—not now.
                                   Still, it’s for the best. After all, too much freetime
                                          makes Alec a very, very bored boy.”

                                          ( & children may be born for peace,
                                             ————— but wolves are not.  )