chapter 4: men hey du findes ik' en skid
You leave Cal on the highest shelf in your room after that.
It's easier to have him out of sight than out of mind, and you can't stuff him under your bed, since that's where you keep all your notes for HAL. It's not like the puppet itself has done you any harm—it's just your brain that's trying to attack itself in every possible way.
Your foster parents buy a new family computer, leaving you with the one that you've been coding on for the past year or so. That's something, at least—before, it had been a constant game of chance whether they were going to need it while you were coding, and you'd often end up deleting your files in a panic when trying to eject the floppy in time. Now you can just... have your code on the computer without worrying about them finding it. Still, you can't help but write it down physically as well—the habit's been ingrained in you by now. Besides, you figure it's better to have more backups than fewer.
You stop really posting on the forum, even if you still check up on it once in a while. No one really seems to notice your absence, at least not in the first week. You're grateful for that—the thought that someone might start asking questions, create their own version of events, turn on you because you've abandoned them—it all makes you sick to your stomach.
When the idea creeps into your mind, you start avoiding the site altogether. As you mentally review any personal information, any details too close to home that you might have left for them to jeer at without realizing it, you start feeling jitters just under your skin. You realize quickly that if you can't remember hours, even days of your daily life, then trying to recall exactly what you've posted every day for the past months is going to be impossible.
The spiral of paranoid self-loathing only worsens from there—you can't go check, because then you will, without a doubt, run into the exact thing you're trying to avoid. Even if you already know they're all glad to be rid of you—Jesus, didn't you basically just take control of the forum? You know the majority of people using a forum rarely post—how power-hungry, how self-centered, how pretentious must you look to anyone reading the threads from a distance? How much more so to the people who actually had to put up with you? Why did you ever start posting there in the first place?
WHY DO YOU EVEN CARE WHAT THOSE IDIOTS THINK, Cal adds, IT'S NOT LIKE THEY EVER HAD ANY GOOD MATERIAL, ANYWAY. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FROM A BUNCH OF PUPPET-OBSESSED FREAKS?
You spend a good few days holed up in your room. Dante bugs you to come out at dinner time, and despite yourself you do, leaving hungrier than when you came down.
By morning, your stomach's gotten used to the lack of food again. Eventually, on Saturday, Dante barges into your room holding a plate of buttered toast and apple slices and puts it on the desk before physically dragging you out of bed and into your chair. He sits down on the bed where you had just been lying, arms crossed.
“What the fuck,” you ask, voice hoarse. Has he never heard of privacy? Who the fuck does he think he is, barging into a guy's room like that? For all he knows you could have been bare-ass naked in here—never mind the fact that you aren't, and the fact that you know that he knows that you'd rather die than think about your own body for more than a second. You don't even have your shades on, you realize, blinking against the bright sunlight of the late morning.
“You gotta eat, dude," he says, tone brokering no argument.
You narrow your eyes at him. He raises an eyebrow over his shades. You scowl at the perfect execution of that most singular acknowledgement; that, yeah, he's being an asshole, but what are you going to do about it? Go whine to someone? If you don't master that one day and throw it right back at him, you will have wasted your entire life.
Not that you aren't wasting it already, but it's nice to have goals.
Rather than argue with him, you elect to push the dish away from you. The sound of plastic sliding against wood only makes the silence more deafening. He just crosses his arms, face carved out of stone for all it's moving.
“You don't eat, I'm stayin'. You throw out your food, I'm gettin' you more. You eat it and throw it up later, I'm still gettin' you more,” he says eventually, breaking the standstill.
You don't say anything stupid like what do you care, because of course he fucking cares. He's your brother. You huff, eyes gravitating towards the floorboards rather than having to pretend to look at his face.
“I'm not gonna ask what's going on,” he adds, after a bit, “I just want you to eat.”
You do, eventually, if only to get him to leave your room. The toast's gone cold, and the melted butter has made it weirdly soggy. It's a sensory nightmare. Still, you manage to keep it down, and the confrontation does have you join the rest of the household for breakfast for the next while. Your brother's face lights up when you do, eyes wide with surprise, though it only barely lasts long enough for you to notice it before it's replaced by the usual stoic expression he wears around your foster parents. You decide the nausea is worth it, just for that.
⁙
Eventually you work up the courage to check back in on the forum. It's nowhere near as bad as you'd thought it would be, with only one or two posts even wondering at your absence. There's only a single message in your inbox, from someone with the username InsertLameJokeHere2. You recognize them as a somewhat active user; though nowhere near as prolific as you've become. They aren't one of the more belligerent users, but they usually aren't too chatty either, so you wonder why they've messaged you.
You open the message to find three small lines.
> Hey TT, whats up? You havent been active in a while, wanted to check in.
> If youre just out on vacation or something and see this after, dont even worry about it.
> Cheers from LJH.
Checking the date, you find that it's from about a week ago. You wonder if you should send a reply for the rest of the day. What would you even write? Hi, I'm doing just fine, just had a huge mental breakdown, thanks for asking, probably isn't the best opener to a one-on-one correspondence.
Still, it would be nice. Having an actual friend. You absolutely sound like the saddest little orphan child begging for just a scrap of comfort, please mister guv'nor sir, Oliver Twisting it to hell and back, but you can't deny that it's true. You can't think of a single person who'd actually like you, much less one who'd ever say it out loud. Except maybe your brother, but brothers don't count. They're supposed to.
In a moment of weakness, hour far too late for it to be reasonable, you send back a short message.
> Hey, LJH.
> I'm fine, just haven't been able to use my computer for a while.
InsertLameJokeHere2, or LJH as they sign all their posts with, turns out to be a pretty stand-up person. Without the pressure of being in an open forum, you end up talking a lot more freely, and in the end they convince you to make a Pesterchum account. It's your first experience with an instant messaging client, and your heart ends up beating out of your god damn chest when you start actually chatting with them in real time.
[@InsertLameJokeHere2 ALIAS “LJH” started pestering @tiresiasTechnocratic]
LJH> Oh boy this is going to be a doozy
tiresiasTechnocratic> What?
tiresiasTechnocratic> Oh.
tiresiasTechnocratic> The alias thing, I presume.
tiresiasTechnocratic> Let me set that up.
[@tiresiasTechnocratic set ALIAS "TT"]
LJH> Woah weve got ourselves a whiz
LJH> Didnt realize youve got prior experience with this
TT> I don't.
TT> Just looked up the basic commands.
TT> It's a neat setup they've got here.
LJH> Oh yeah its great
LJH> I know a guy whos done these weird-ass mods hes insane
LJH> Borderline unusable setup if you arent used to it
LJH> Ive got a few of his threads saved hold on
LJH> skaia-net.com/forums/chum/1025136
You start looking forward to talking to them more than you do most other things in your daily life. This is probably very sad, but you can't bring yourself to care. The list of things that make you happy is already short; who are you to deny yourself the one thing that makes you excited to get up in the morning? It's been months since you've had anything like that. You end up intimately familiar with LJH's schedule, and the only reason you manage to keep doing your schoolwork is because you force yourself to keep the same hours. The second they come online, though, you immediately switch over to Pesterchum.
WOW, DESPERATE MUCH? Cal supplies, bright baby blues unblinking on top of the shelf. YOU KNOW YOU'RE GOING TO END UP FUCKING THIS UP, RIGHT? NO ONE'S EXACTLY EAGER TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH SOMEONE LIKE YOU. THIS ASSHOLE'S GOING TO DROP YOU LIKE YOU DROPPED ME, YOU PIECE OF SHIT.
The words sting, (THEY BETTER, YOU TWO-TIMING BITCH!) but you've gotten better at ignoring Cal recently. Talking to LJH keeps you from thinking too much about the whole thing instead of whatever weird new site LJH's found, or trying to figure out new functions for HAL. They ask about your puppeteering sometimes, but you brush it off. Not like it would have amounted to anything in the end.
You learn a few things about LJH in the next few weeks: He's a guy, or he at least claims to be one, and the extent of his actual interest in puppets is minimal; at least when compared to his general interest in exploring whatever odd corners of the net. Apparently he'd only joined to see if there was some euphemism in the “puppet enthusiasts” part of the description, and had been surprised to see that, no, it was genuinely just a forum for people interested in puppeteering. He'd stayed for the hell of it, and to keep up with the user who kept getting banned for his overly-long screeds on the Muppets and their satanic influence on the noble art. You snort at the reminder of that—you spent a good while messing with them whenever they made a new account.
LJH introduces you to anime. You don't really get the appeal of it until he sends you a VHS tape of some Sailor Moon episodes which you play late at night, after you're sure your foster parents and Dante have gone to sleep.
You forget the tape in the player one night, only realizing the next day when your foster father turns on the TV while your foster mother prepares dinner. Your panic quickly dissolves into confusion, and then more panic as the drone of the news washes over the living room and you realize the tape isn't in. The rest of the evening is spent on edge and trying not to show it, desperate for when the others retreat upstairs so you can search for it. Your foster parents don't leave, though, sitting down on the sofa after telling you and Dante to clean up. They stay there, watching some made-for-TV schlock that you can barely stand listening to, much less stay to watch. In the end, you decide to wait until nightfall. When you retreat back into your room, though, you see the tape on your desk. There's a note on it.
figured this was yours. dont worry, im not telling anyone.
The tape stays in your room for a good while after that, and anytime you put it on, you make sure to stash it away again immediately. You end up genuinely invested in the adventures of Usagi and her friends, and though the thought of asking your foster parents to buy more tapes of the series mortifies you, you do manage to catch an episode or two of the dub every now and then.
In turn, you introduce LJH to the various albums you've found throughout your own scourings of the net—you send him Limp Bizkit, Eminem, Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down, the works. You manage to slip in some of the albums your brother's bought for you, too; you rip a few random CDs, and soon enough LJH has his hands on some Eightball & MJG, DJ Screw, and Insane Clown Posse. He likes some of it, though he doesn't really appreciate the slower beats like you do. Still, he at least gives anything you send him a try, even if his taste in music leaves something to be desired in the end.
It's nice. You like it. You like LJH.
⁙
The realization comes a little after that.
You like LJH.
At least, you're pretty sure you do—it's not exactly you have a lot of experience with it, so you don't think you'd know, but you're self-aware enough to realize that it probably isn't normal to get rocketed into this kind of obsession with someone who you barely even know, even if you've been talking for what feels like ages. That's probably something too, right? The fact that you feel like you could just keep talking to LJH forever, that easy, comfortable back and forth.
One afternoon, as you're getting antsy waiting for LJH to come online, you take this all up with HAL.
By now, HAL's less a simulation of the HAL 9000 than some weird reflection of whatever functions you wanted to try implementing—in the end, it's become more like a glorified self-help tool. You end up consulting it whenever you have anything nagging at your mind, getting caught up in faux-conversations with a surprising fervor—it doesn't help that you've managed to link it up with various websites that it keeps pulling posts and articles from depending on the subject at hand. You've managed to capture your own style of typing perfectly, too, which you guess isn't much of a challenge, but it does make it feel more real, for lack of a better word. It helps when you don't have to play out the argument in your own brain. And besides, you quickly find that there's nothing quite like getting sarcastically linked a forum post by something you made to mimic yourself.
You end up closing the line of inquiry regarding LJH fast, because you really, really shouldn't be trying to get any sort of advice on interpersonal matters from yourself. You've already figured there's a reason you got pulled from public school. Your lack of any friends outside of the digital realm is proof positive.
The only other person you know that you could ask, though...
Your brother's probably not going to laugh at you for this, you reassure yourself as you feel your feet digging into the carpet in front of your brother's room. He and your foster parents returned home early today, though you only noticed because you heard your brother loudly slamming the door shut behind him a little after noon. Dante's always been more of a... 'friends' sort of guy, at least compared to you. You're pretty sure he's had a girlfriend. You caught glimpses at him hanging out with others at school, when you still went. In any case, he definitely knows more about actual romance than you do.
You psyche yourself up to knock, but just before you do, the door opens to a Dante that's got one hand on the doorknob and the other rubbing at his forehead. You freeze, all veneer of nonchalance shattered in an instant. He yelps and nearly jumps back when he notices you, barely avoiding the collision course. After a moment of mutual silence and blinking at each other, he speaks.
“Jeez, way to give a guy a heart attack,” Dante says, hand on his chest now, “what's up, my dude?”
“I've, um. If. There's this one,” you keep trying to force the words out, but you don't even know where to start. Your weird not-quite simulation of yourself told you to ask him for help with approaching your online friend? You're such a friendless loser that you barely even know if you're into someone or if they're just the only one that's nice to you?
“Woah, is this gonna be like, a talk talk? 'Cause if it is...” he gestures back into the room with a nod, “how about we do it in there, rather'n out here?”
You nod. It's a weird echo of a few months ago, though it's nowhere near as serious this time. You've been managing. This is just regular, old... getting advice from your brother. He sits down on the chair, and for lack of another chair in the room, you sit on the bed. You take note of the new homemade posters hanging on the walls. Your family printer is nowhere near as good as the one your school had, since it's only good for normal paper sizes, but he's managed to make a couple out of multiple A4s glued together on a larger, blank piece of paper. Some of them are genuinely impressive, like the one for Troll 2, even if they're all in black and white.
“You good there, buddy?” Dante asks, voice tinged with worry. You blink, turning back towards him. Swallowing, you nod, and you know he doesn't believe you.
“I'm fine,” you force out, frustration bursting through before receding into stomach-dropping anxiety, “I'm not gettin' worse, I just... there's some stuff I wanna ask about. Guessin' you know more about it than I do.”
When you glance up at him, he looks utterly baffled by this. Eyebrows furrowed, he crosses his arms and leans back in the chair.
“Dunno, man,” he says, shrugging, “sometimes it feels like you know just about everything. Should be askin' you to do my math for me.”
“You wish,” you deadpan, “do your own goddamn homework.”
“Guessin' it ain't school, then?” he asks, resting one of his elbows on the desk. “Why'd'ya come to lil' ol' me for help?”
“It's...” you squirm, intensely aware of how your brother somehow manages to pin you down without even seeming to try. “It's embarrassin'.”
“Oh,” Dante says. His expression goes past surprised realization into the most insufferable smile you've ever seen with an almost smug slowness. “My guy's got a crush.”
Despite yourself, you freeze up. You absolutely hate it. You must be blushing: your face is burning up—and your brother looks like the cat who got the cream and an extra little treat.
“Who's the lucky gal?” he asks, chin in his hand, smirk still sticking to his face. You look away, crossing your arms and drawing down between your shoulders. Your hands drift towards the duvet, the restless static right under your skin making your muscles twitch.
“Don't know if it's a girl,” you mutter, and when you glimpse at his face, trying to gauge his reaction, you see him do the mental recalculations. His smirk is wiped out. Despite this, you barrel onward—the dam's already broken, what's a few more drops? “Pretty sure it's a guy, actually.”
“What, d'you mean, pretty sure—wait, is it someone online?”
His tone has gone cautious, though not completely closed off. You bristle at that, the implication that the only connection you've felt for years, the only person that you've trusted other than your brother, is suspicious. The implication that you haven't already gone through a million different iterations of that exact thought before you came to him.
“Yeah, it's—listen, I like talking to him, alright? He's the only person I know who I like talking to, and I don't—it's not like I don't know it's stupid, I just thought—”
“Hey, hey,” he says, like he's calming down a horse. For some reason, it works. You take a breath, and before you get to say anything more he cuts you off. “Don't worry about it, yeah? If you're just—”
“He sent me the tape,” you blurt out, after a second.
“What ta—oh, shit, the Sailor Moon one?” He goes from concern to realization in half a second, and you nod. Lacing his fingers together and putting his hands behind his back, he leans backwards on the chair. “Shit, alright, can't be that bad of a dude, then.”
“Yeah, no, he's,” you blink, “he's cool.”
“Still,” he says, after a second, “just... take care, alright? I don't wanna see you on the news 'cause you got into some shady shit.”
You scoff at that.
“I'm not stupid,” you retort, and he laughs.
“Coulda fooled me,” he says. You flip him the bird.
“Anyway, what the hell d'you want my advice for? Not like I've got a lot of experience with, you know,” he gestures vaguely, and you guess he's trying to hint at—what, the idea of trying to ask a guy out? “So if it's that you want help with, you're on your own, sorry.”
“I don't know if he's gay,” you mutter.
He lifts his glasses, squinting at you.
“And you are?” he asks.
You bristle.
“'M a dude who likes dudes. Don't see how it's any more complicated than that.”
“What, you've got more crushes and you haven't told me?” he asks, smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. He lets the glasses fall back down over his eyes with a stupid flourish, and you feel the embarrassed flush run up your face. You hadn't really thought of the possibility.
“A dude who likes a dude,” you correct yourself, because that's the one thing you're at least pretty sure of, looking down at your hands. There's a hangnail you've been working at for days now, and you start picking at it in the silence that follows. When he lets out a small hum, you look up to see him scratching at his cheek, brows furrowed in thought.
“How does that even work, though? 'Cause you're like, you know, you,” he says, hesitating, “you're a guy because you don't like all that girly shit, or like, you don't get it, or whatever, right?”
He gestures vaguely, and you nod, though not without pausing. You wonder, apprehension starting to rear its head, where he's going with this.
“I mean... if you're just a guy 'cause you don't like the stuff that girls do, but you still like stuff like, I don't know, Sailor Moon, and you've got a crush on a guy... how is that any different from—”
He clears his throat, like he's trying to make you guess the question that he's too embarrassed to ask. Something twists under your skin, and the discomfort starting in your toes starts creeping up through your legs. After a moment, he speaks, voice still hushed like he doesn't really want to say it. He still does, though, which is his biggest mistake.
“D, are you sure you're still a guy?”
You stare at him. Right in his stupid god damn face, through his shitty god damn glasses, at the way the question stings at a place you never even knew existed in your lungs. Your brother knows you. He should know. That's why you wanted to ask him, because he knows about these kinds of thing, because he's older than you and you can't ask anyone else.
Your stomach turns, and you stand up too fast—you end up taking a small step just to steady yourself instead of the decisive march out you'd hoped for, hating the way he startles upwards to help you. You snarl, pushing him aside with both your arms. He slams against the desk. The dull thud goes straight up your spine, and you run out—you stumble down the stairs towards the bathroom first, some part of you still keeping track of the way your tongue feels too large, too heavy in your mouth.
You don't end up throwing up, but you stay down there for a good while until your foster mother knocks sharply on the door.
“What happened?” she asks, voice sharp, “Dee, you come out here right this second.”
Your breath hitches just as you'd managed to bring it down. Did he say anything? Oh God, is he going to turn on you? You've fucked it all up, haven't you? There's no coming back from it this time—Dante is going to throw you to the wolves, let you bleed out so that he can escape the sacrificial altar—
“I heard something falling in your brother's room, you know,” she continues, after trying the door.
He didn't tell her, then. The stinging in your eyes threatens to come back full force.
“Nothin',” you mutter into the toilet bowl.
“What was that?” she asks, voice lilting pointedly upwards.
“Nothing happened,” you try, louder this time, but you can't cover the horrible tremble in your voice. You doubt you've ever loathed your own voice more than in that moment, talking to your foster mother and trying not to sound like a whiny child.
“Really? Because it sounded like you and your brother were fighting, D███. Go apologize to him,” she says, letting the order hang in the air between you.
Eventually, she sighs loud enough that it's audible from behind the door.
“Dinner's in an hour, alright?” she says, and you feel more than hear her leave.
After waiting for a moment to ensure that she really is gone, you scurry out and up the stairs to your room again. You dive under your covers, and the pillow is stained by tears and snot within a few minutes.
You don't go down for dinner, even when Dante asks you.
At some point before the sun sets completely, you hear hesitant steps on the floor outside your room. Even through the carpet, there's a texture to the noises the floorboards make depending on who's walking on them. Dante always sounds softer. A dull creak resounds in the sub-zero stillness of the air, and you know he's settled down in front of your door. You stay lying curled up in your bed for another moment, but you can't help it when you get up, slowly making your way towards the door. Your duvet is still wrapped around you, a soft shell keeping your edges from the world and the edges of the world from you.
“I'm sorry, Dirk,” he says, and even though the door muffles the sound of his voice, you're curled up tight enough against it that you can hear the way he swallows, voice faltering. “I... I shouldn't've asked that.”
He's quiet for a while, and you sit in silence, a few inches of wood between you and the only person you ever remember hugging.
“Goodnight,” he says, eventually. You're left sitting up against the door for what seems like hours, as if whatever body heat he left would burn through it and warm the freezing cold running through your core. Still, you eventually crawl back up into bed.
Fuck him, you decide the next day, even as your skin crawls at the idea of facing something like this without your brother. What does he know about the internet, anyway? What does he know about being lonely? What does he know about you?
You end up consulting HAL again, in a last-ditch attempt to stave away having to face your feelings for LJH. In the end, HAL, and by extension, your own brain, has exactly one answer: just tell him, dude.
⁙
TT> Hey. There's something I've been meaning to ask you.
LJH> Whassup
TT> I'd like to have some advice. You seem like the best guy for the job.
TT> One of my friends wants me to do this whole roundabout thing where he's asked me to ask a mutual friend to give a fourth person a message.
LJH> Uh huh
TT> But I think it sounds fucking stupid. The premise is flawed from the get-go.
TT> Like a game of textual telephone.
TT> Why does it even matter that I send the message on to someone else before the actual person who's going to get the message in the end?
TT> How would I even make sure the second link in the chain delivers the actual message?
TT> What's even the point of asking me to do it?
LJH> Whats the message even
TT> It's personal.
LJH> Come on its not like i know anyone involved right
TT> Well...
LJH> EXCEPT you obviously i mean
TT> Thank you for acknowledging your mistake in how utterly pedantic I'm willing to be to avoid the subject.
TT> But I will say that it's something very emotionally driven.
LJH> Ooh i see this is one of your classic ruses isnt it
TT> I have no idea what you're talking about.
LJH> Ok well all im saying is
LJH> This is starting to sound a lot less “hey ive got a friend who needs help” and more like “im about to confess to you in a terribly convoluted way which involves talking about myself like im 3 different people”
LJH> Or 4 i guess
LJH> And im flattered but like
LJH> Im not gay dude
LJH> No offense if you are but im as straight as they come
LJH> If you were a girl id totally be into you
LJH> Wait this isnt one of those situations where it turns out you think ive been a girl the whole time right
TT> You aren't?
TT> Shit.
TT> There go my plans for a flight to New York for a meet-cute where I'm carrying the world's biggest bouquet straight out of the plane.
LJH> Ok wait explain this to me
LJH> In this hypothetical universe where i am a girl that youre flying out solo to meet in the airport
LJH> Would you also just have bought the flowers into the plane
TT> Obviously. It would be a test of my dedication.
TT> Travelling across these great United States of America through the skies.
TT> Hand luggage consisting solely of a bag of water bottles and the pristine bouquet that required new water every hour or so.
TT> Braving such horrors as cabin pressure and young children being loud in nearby seats while narrowly managing to keep the flowers healthy through a Rube Goldbergian series of slapstick routines, which inevitably end up with me arriving in the airport looking like something out of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
TT> The bouquet remains somehow untouched by these various trials and tribulations.
TT> This would have been the magnificently grand gesture through which I could prove myself to you.
TT> In this hypothetical universe in which you were a lady.
TT> Who I'm romantically interested in.
LJH> LOL
LJH> Exactly
LJH> LadyJH would be swooning her ass off
Great fucking job, idiot. What were you even thinking? Of course he isn't gay, why would the universe make anything at all easy for you? You fumble your way through the rest of the conversation only barely paying attention to it, the banter mindless enough that it leaves you with no reprieve from the way embarrassment and dread starts to tie your stomach in knots. Another thought starts to creep in as well, one that's making you pause with every new message you write.
You could just... tell him. That you aren't... physically a guy. It's not like you couldn't send proof, if he insisted on it. You could say it was a test, try to see how far you could fool someone, try and make it into another one of your stupid layered deceptions. The thought makes your head spin. You could make it work. You're sure of it. You could fly under the radar long enough to meet up with him, long enough to start a real relationship, long enough to—
Your mind slams into a wall, stopped dead in its tracks at the thought of anything past that, anything where you'd be touching someone else, someone else touching you, hands all over you, disgusting soft flesh like dough to be kneaded and eaten and—
You turn off the computer before you even say goodnight.
The next few weeks are tense, to say the least. Conversation always ends up petering off, and though you try to cling onto whatever you have left, every letter you write is a reminder that you've chosen the easy way out. If you'd have been strong enough, you could have kept up the charade. Your brother's words echo in your ears as you read back your latest conversation with LJH.
They're shitty, not blind.
LJH> So its like in the end it never got resolved and the site just got nuked into oblivion
LJH> Kind of the worlds first online library of alexandria except just for this obscure weird story someone was writing
TT> Wild.
TT> You would've thought someone would have backed it up somewhere.
LJH> Thats what i thought right
LJH> But no theres no trace of it
LJH> So ive been asking around for it to try and find someone that knows where it might be
LJH> And ive found this forum dedicated to it
LJH> Just me and like 2 other guys so far but
LJH> Its something
LJH> Thought you might be interested
TT> Nah, I've got plenty of stuff on my plate.
TT> Thanks for the offer, though.
LJH> Sure
LJH> Want me to keep you updated or
TT> Alright.
LJH> Will do
LJH might not be shitty, but you know for a fact he isn't oblivious, either.
In the end, your first friendship fizzles out into nothing, and it's entirely your own fault.
Dante turns 16. He's away for hours at the library whenever he can find time in the next few weeks, trying to figure out anything regarding emancipation and whether he could file, possibly with you in tow. He goes into town with your foster father when he leaves for work. This often prompts your foster mother to tag along, though you hear from Dante that she mostly doesn't care much about what he's reading and just leaves him there until right before your foster father's off the clock.
The first two weeks he always greets you with a wary smile on his face. By the third, it starts to fray at the edges. By the time you've hit five weeks after his birthday, his expression is tight, brows furrowed.
“Ain't happening,” he says simply that evening after brushing his teeth and spitting, both of you at the bathroom sink. You look at him in the mirror, trying to breathe slowly, focusing on the scrape of the brush against the gums around your canines.
“Can't drive. Can't get any work 'cause I can't drive. Can't get money 'cause I don't have a job. Can't file 'cause I don't have money.” Every sentence drops heavy in your mind, like stones into a well, raising the water level.
He's quiet for a moment, hand paused in the middle of putting down the toothbrush.
“Don't think I could've brought you with, anyway.”
You can't hear anything Dante says after that, ears filled with the sound of rushing water.
You go to bed. You wake up. You put on clothes. You go downstairs.
“Going for a run,” you say, walking out of the door.
Foot, ground. Foot, ground. Foot, ground. Foot, ground.
Eventually you're back at the front door. Dante's in the living room doing his schoolwork. You shower. You dry off. You get dressed.
You do not cry in front of your brother.
⁙
A few months pass. You turn 14.
You don't really talk to anyone, letting the monotony of the routine seep into your bones. You start thinking, wiping dark flakes off the bathroom floor, that bloodletting might not be as much of a quack science as you've been led to believe. There can't be any other reason you find as much relief in it as you do. Dark ichor running into the drain, pain reminding you that your body has no more control over you than you over it. It doesn't take much to hide it, either. It's probably some kind of tragic that no one notices, you think, but mostly you're grateful for it.
Dante starts spending more time at home. It's only a while later that he actually tells you why, both of you going through worksheets for tapes that your foster parents have started to rely on more and more. Apparently, he'd had enough of their whole bullshit and thrown some sort of shitfit while in the doctor's office. It had been loud enough that someone in the waiting room had called the cops, and the damage control had gone absolutely horrendously.
He tells the story in the cadence of a joke, the punchline being the utter embarrassment of your foster parents, but there's a frustrated tension in his voice, like he's trying to see how long he can keep up the act for. You're sure the actual chain of events was far more humiliating for him than he's letting you know.
After he tells you, you start paying more attention to him, how he acts.
He's so tired.
You've never noticed it before, but now that the thought has entered your mind, you can't help focusing on every single thing that telegraphs his fatigue: the way he rubs at his eyes, the way he keeps hunching over when you play video games. He starts going straight up to his room after dinner. That last one weirds you out the most; you're not used to being left alone with your foster parents, and it's obvious they don't quite know what to make of you, either. Usually it's about a fifty-fifty chance if you'll be asked to help clean up or not, always with a strained smile on your foster mother's face, and a fifty-fifty chance of you then either complying to the request in silence or going back to your room.
You despise it, and, despite yourself, you despise Dante for leaving you on your own. At least they don't have the energy to start screaming at you for the smallest thing, so that's an improvement.
Still, the tension can only lay over the house for so long before shit goes south.
One night, while you're sitting in the sofa, your foster father sitting in the old chair looking with half-lidded eyes at the televsion turned down low, your foster mother doing the dishes, the unimaginable happens.
“How've you been doing?” your foster father asks. He looks over at you with a start as he realizes he's asked it, like he didn't even mean to say it out loud, but knows that now that he has said it, it's only proper to actually express interest in the answer.
It catches you so off-guard that you don't say anything for a good while, just staring at him. The awkward silence streches on long enough for him to start to turn away again before you register that you should be answering.
“Never mind, I—”
“It's—”
He turns back to face you again, and you feel your tongue twist in your mouth. Still, you soldier on.
“It's fine,” you say, “been working out.”
He blinks, visibly reminding himself that yes, his other foster child actually does things when he isn't paying attention to it. It would be comical if it weren't so god damn infuriating.
“That's good,” he manages, “it's good to keep fit.” He says it with the same detachment as you know that there's a country called Afghanistan, something that he's sure he's read somewhere before and accepted as truth of the world.
“Still,” he clears his throat, “I'm sure you've got some girlfriends you've been keeping up with? How are they?”
You note a sharpness from the kitchen—you're sure now that your foster mother has put him up to this. She knows she can't get through to you. He does not actually give a shit about whether you're keeping up with anyone.
“They're good,” you say. You haven't talked to a single person outside of this house for about a year now.
“Good, good,” he nods minutely. “They talk about boys?”
You pause, look over him. He isn't looking directly at you, but there's something in the way he keeps looking over at you, like he's afraid you might jump on him and begin scratching his face off. COME ON KID, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO. You keep still in the chair, even if everything about this is screaming at you to just go up into your room. This is too much of a departure from normality to escape from, lest it grow out of control. Your foster father clears his throat.
“You know, it's a very trying time, and I'm sure your mother would be perfectly willing to answer any questions you might have about—”
He gestures vaguely, and it takes another moment for you to realize he's trying to gesture at you—your body without looking at you.
What?
“Well... ah, when girls go through puberty, it's different from boys,” he starts, awkwardly pushing his way through the words. He keeps looking back into the kitchen, to where your foster mother has stopped making any noise, and you suppress the urge to whip around to see what the hell she's doing.
It turns out you don't need to, because you hear her walking out of the kitchen to stand by the back of the sofa.
“What your dad is trying to say is that if you want any help with your feminine problems,” she says, putting a hand on your shoulder—you flinch at that—with her voice exasperated like your foster father isn't getting the punchline of a joke only the two of you are in on, “you don't have to worry about being a bother or anything like that, alright?”
Oh.
Oh.
You started getting your period around two months ago. If you'd been deliberately starving yourself to avoid it, you doubt you would have enough energy to do your regimen in the first place, so you've had to deal with it despite, well, everything. You haven't asked your foster mother about pads or anything, but she's put them out discreetly after that first morning when you woke up panicking to hide any trace of what had happened.
You absolutely fucking hate it.
You stand up, far too abruptly. Her nails end up scratching your shoulder, and she startles back from the sofa.
“D███,” your foster father warns you, sitting up from where he'd been half-lying in the chair.
“The fuck do you mean,” you hear your voice, high-pitched in panic, “you bitch, don't fucking touch me—”
You run upstairs, and you end up heaving for air outside of your room. Curled up in on yourself with your back against the door, you hear your foster mother following you up the stairs, steps deliberately paced not to startle you. She squats down in front of you, leaning her face down and trying to catch your eye.
“Dee?” she asks, “Dee, look at me, alright?”
You do. There's tears stinging at the corners of your eyes. She reaches over and takes off your shades in one smooth motion, and it's like a bolt of lightning goes through you—you jolt, burying your face in the crook of your elbow.
“D███, look at me,” she says, and you hate the frustration in her voice because she has no fucking right. “Won't you?”
A growl starts in the back of your throat, but you do look up at her. If you try to stand up and run into your room, she's going to grab you. Better to stay on the defensive.
“Dee, I'm sorry for startling you,” she says, voice trembling ever-so-slightly, “I know you and Dante were in a terrible home before we took you in, and both me and your dad have been trying our best to help you.”
“But it really hurts when you do things like that,” she continues, eyebrows furrowed ever-so-slightly. “Calling us names, not telling us anything... just because Dante's feeling bad doesn't mean that we all have to, okay? If there's something that's really, really bothering you, you have to tell us.”
You swallow thickly through the grease filling your throat. Your foster mother inclines her head just so, trying to pry whatever's stuck in your teeth out of you. If she really wants to ask, then... would you really be at fault for telling her?
You're too light-headed to think, so you just open your mouth and let whatever wants to escape come out.
“I don't like being a girl,” you end up saying, the admission feeling like lead in your stomach.
She just looks at you with utmost sympathy in her eyes.
“I know, honey,” she says, and the sound of it grates against your skin. “It's not easy, and I know we haven't been on the best of terms, but... I want you to know I'm always here to help, alright?”
She reaches to hug you, but you immediately shy away from her touch, the tips of her fingers still warm from washing the dishes and leaving burn marks on your upper arm. You struggle for air, and when you look up at her, her eyes are wide in shock.
Your heart stops for a moment, and you're sure she's reeling her hand back to hit you. You steel yourself.
She doesn't.
Your foster mother stands up with a sigh and goes down the stairs again, leaving you in front of the door with no idea of what just happened.
You stand up on trembling legs, managing to get into your room before you collapse onto the floor again. You crawl over the floor to lean up against the bedpost.
They've never tried anything like this before. It scares you. Disconnected shards of thought race through your mind as you try to breathe, never feeling the air entering your lungs.
Are they suddenly feeling guilty about all of this? Is this because they can't get to Dante any more? You don't think your foster mother has ever tried to hug you before, but she was surprised when she pushed you away—is there something you don't remember happening? And, fuck, the way she looked at you—eyes glassy like a fish, like looking in a mirror—you pull at your hair, feeling the tips of your fingers dissipating into fog and filling the room.
She looked at you like you weren't even there.
The thought comes like light through sheer fabric, golden and glowing. Realization, enlightenment, cold calm running up through your feet, spreading into the crown of your skull and rooting you to the floor. Lil' Cal gazes down at you from his place on the shelf, silent.
You are nothing to the people around you. You have failed at every role you've tried to fit into. Your brother thinks you a chore to be handled, your attempts at mimicking manhood will only end in mockery and scorn, and your foster parents want to wipe you clean of everything you've made of yourself. You are less than human, a sinkhole for energy and resources that will never give anything back.
And there is, overlaid in sickening double-vision—
Great going, asshat. Jack Noir's got you in a choke-hold.
Scratch that. It's a double choke-hold reach-around, now that the other Jack Noir's behind the one currently trying to strangle you with cold steel and creating perhaps the world's most strangle-themed conga line. You yelp in as dignified a manner as is possible. It isn't very.
The space between you and your katana narrows to a minuscule gap. You've got a veritable vertical Human Centipede on your hands, which is to say on your neck, and the clock is ticking on how long you can hold Jack's crowbar at bay. Dave is looking over at you, the Welsh piece of shit loose in his hands. You can see him hesitate. He's got an idea that he doesn't like, but if you give him the go-ahead...
You make an executive fucking decision. For once in your life, it isn't built on anything but sheer trust in your brother.
You nod.
You know this is going to be a Heroic death. For Dave, it can be a Just one. Fuck knows the splinter of you that raised him deserves it. Either way, you aren't coming out of this alive if Dave doesn't help you.
And you're pretty fucking sure he's going to do it.
The sound of the katana breaking precedes one of the cleanest decapitations in paradox space.
Stop. Pause this shit.
What the hell is this kid doing here? I'm not letting that near canon. He's barely even me. Get him out of here before you fuck everything up even worse, you hack.
They really just let anyone write anything these days.
—and you heave, the memory-vision heavy on your mind like sand, drowning out everything else.
You turn your head jerkily, touch your neck with unfeeling hands, find it still attached to the rest of you. You breathe, each inhalation louder than the last. You press your palm against your eyes, willing whatever is making its way up your throat to hurry, to spit out the shards of sharp ink and leave you alone, but your traitorous mouth is stuck in place, jaw either unwilling or unresponsive to your silent pleas for release. The sparks behind your eyelids coalesce into a hall of mirrors facing each other—facing inwards, facing you—but when the figures in the glass turn, you find yourself turning with them.
You are not in control here. You are a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, distorted past the point of anything even remotely recognizable, unmade in the aquamarine depths.
You have to get closer to the center. You have to. If you don't, you'll drown in liquid glass and become nothing, see-through and fragile.
You open your eyes.
Your room is the same as ever. Lil' Cal is seated against your bed, across from where you've been huddled for what seems to be a few hours according to the bedside clock. There is something deeply wrong with the sight, but you don't know what, and trying to understand just makes the thought slip through your mind like quicksand, heavy and drowning out everything that isn't the sheer unsettling quiet.
You see your legs unfold, one joint at a time, and you almost eat shit when you stand up because your limbs seem not to brace for the weight of your torso. Your teeth clack against each other, Morse code that you can't decipher blipping through the emptiness like the world's most useless mayday, drowned in the depths. Each step feels heavy, disorienting, like there isn't enough blood in your limbs to carry you properly. As your body drops onto the bed, the vertigo of the fall folds in on itself and leaves you falling endlessly.
You wake up with your heart beating wildly.
Throughout the day, you can't stop looking at the ceremonial greatsword your foster father keeps in the living room. During you and your brother's geography lesson, which mostly consists of zoning out while a tape plays on the T.V., you realize with a start that your eyes keep drifting over to it. You keep thinking about the way you were so sure, so certain that he would wield it true, all your sins forgiven with the passing of steel through your throat. You must have hurt him terribly, for you to believe that was the only way out.
You already have, haven't you? You drag him down with you without ever meaning to, always asking him for more even when he has nothing left to give, even when he's made it clear that he doesn't understand and that he never will.
“Dirk, do you know what—” Your brother pauses in the middle of his question. Out of the corner of your eye, you think you see him move, which is all you need to brace for the hand on your shoulder. You still startle a bit, eyes locked on the sword.
“Derek?”
You blink, and it's as if a spell has broken—a shudder runs through you, and you turn towards him. The face of your brother is overlaid on another's like a really shitty Animorph. It doesn't quite fit into itself, and for a moment you wonder if that's what you look like right now, the skin of someone else stretched around your body. You wonder if he sees someone that isn't there, too.
“What's up?” you manage, voice distant in your own ears.
“I know this shit is boring as all hell, but you can't just go zoning out on me, man,” he says, tone light in a way you know is fake. Looking at him, you feel a wave of guilt wash over you like the tide, slow and certain. It must be exhausting, trying to keep you from breaking down, like you're glassware about to shatter. Treating you the way he hates to be treated because he knows it's born from pity.
“I'm fine,” you tell him, and pointedly turn back to the T.V.
He doesn't say anything, though you have the feeling he wants to.
⁙
This is new, you think.
You look in the mirror again, take off your shades.
You've never paid much attention to your eyes before, but even you can tell that your irises aren't supposed to be bright Fanta orange. You strain up to the mirror, study the irregularity as closely as possible. The bright orange is stark around your pupils, flecks of yellow replacing what was once gray.
It's proof. You realize it in waves: something happened last night, something that you can't turn back. You don't know what it is, but the feeling persists as you look into the mirror—you are missing pieces of yourself, pieces you didn't even realize existed until you felt cold white pain against your throat.
Your mind is already fractured—if there is such a thing as a soul, you are sure yours is hollow. You have tried to fashion those hollow things after yourself, but can a puppet move without strings? Can a program know why it does what it does? If you are nothing, then what use are the shells you layer over yourself? You have so little left, so little that you're certain of, a grain of a shattered whole.
Your name is DIRK STRIDER, and looking at your eyes like the sunset, two facts ring ever clearer in your mind: your brother is going to decapitate you, and if he doesn't, something terrible is going to happen to both of you.
⁙
It's fine. You manage it well enough for a few months, long enough for your brother to turn 17 and ganglier than ever. He sneaks out every now and then. You manage to stay awake long enough some nights that you can hear his bumbling attempts to get back into the house without making any noise. Granted, it's not that he does make a lot of noise—you're just so used to the utter silence of 3 a.m. that any minor disturbance in the house burrows into your eardrums like maggots.
At first, it had startled you—the careful steps across the floor had you wondering, for a terrifying moment, if you were getting worse again, or that someone had broken in—but the soft thunk from across the hallway, followed by your brother's voice hissing out a “fuck,” reminded you that, no, you just had an older brother.
He's sick the next day, and it doesn't take a lot to put the pieces together—your brother's going out to parties and getting absolutely shitfaced. By the way he manages to fall down the stairs trying to get up to his room three nights in a row, you suspect he's getting too drunk for any sort of fine motor control.
Your foster parents don't seem to notice, or if they do, they don't mention it. At most, they comment on the way he keeps getting sick more often, which usually succeeds in keeping him from getting hammered for a week or two. Still, it doesn't work for long.
One day, early spring, your brother knocks on your door. You grab your shades, shutting off your computer.
“What's up,” he says when you open it, and it takes you a second before you process what you're seeing.
He looks... horrible, is the first word that comes to mind.
Scratch that, he looks absolutely wretched.
He's wearing one of his hoodies, fabric slouching heavy around his shoulders. Combined with the way his wrists go way past the cuffs of his sleeves, it makes him look misshapen in a way that's almost cartoonish. You blink up at him. It's only been a bit since you were about the same height, but now the height difference is large enough for you to need to lean your head back to look him in the eyes. Not that you can, really—he's got his shades on, and his hood is pulled up to frame his face.
“Come on,” he says, gesturing over to the stairs with a jerk of his head, “let's go.”
You don't really understand what's going on, but you still nod. As he turns, you note the way he keeps tapping his fingers against the side of his thigh. There's a twitchiness to his every action, like he's expecting to get jumped every time he rounds a corner—you know for a fact he's never been this bad before, even back when you were kids. The paranoia's your thing.
“Was thinkin' we could go out for a walk together,” he says, making his way down the stairs without looking to see if you're following. “Get some fresh air. I hear it's good for you.”
“Not like you don't get enough,” he says after a moment's pause, stopping in the middle of a step, “but. Y'know. Can't hurt to get some myself.”
He laughs, like there's a joke he isn't telling you, and hurries down the stairs. You take measured steps down, your brother already waiting by the door when you get down.
“We're goin' out,” he yells when you're putting on your sneakers, but there's no audible response from your foster parents, or at least none that you hear before you shut the door behind you.
The spring sun is crawling past the zenith, beating down on grass that's about to go dry in about three weeks. The asphalt doesn't help, either, the smell permeating the air. It's one step in front of the other, and you almost fall into the rhythm of a run without realizing it before Dante huffs, grabbing the neckline of your T-shirt. You don't lose your balance, but it's a near thing.
“Sorry, dude,” he says, grin strained, “I ain't exactly up for a run.”
“Wasn't gonna,” you say, huffily.
“Sure,” he dismisses you, leaving you blustering in his wake. You jog up to him again after a moment, falling into step beside him.
It's too warm to really run, anyway. At least without water, which you don't have. You have no clue how Dante's managing in the hoodie—you're wearing a T-shirt, and you're still just about too warm for comfort.
When you look up at him past the hoodie, you realize he probably isn't managing—his forehead is gleaming with sweat, and he's breathing loud enough for you to hear the way he's straining himself with every breath. He's sick, you think. Hungover. If he is, why go out at all? And why drag you with him? Something's going on, something that he's not telling you, and that—that's concerning. Scary, maybe, if you were still the kind of person to call things scary. He keeps stealing looks at you when he thinks you don't notice, but that's all you manage to glean from him past the way he isn't saying anything.
Something happened.
The two of you arrive, after a good while of walking in relative silence, to the park. There's a playground here, and you've somehow managed to arrive at the exact time of day where no one can be bothered to stay outside.
“Oh, shit,” your brother says, “they put new swings up.”
You haven't been out here enough to know if that's the case. Your brother sits down on one of the swings, kicking off so he's going back and forth slightly. He nods over at the one beside him, and you wordlessly sit. After a bit, quiet scrape of the gravel against your brother's shoes filling the air between you, you look over at him.
“What's this about?” you ask. The rubber of his soles against the stones sounds like the hiss of oil against a hot pan.
“Come on, man, what's with you? Can't I just want to hang out with my brother?” he asks, and there's an undertone of desperation that begs you not to pry.
“We don't,” you say, because it's been ages since you've actually done anything together. “Why are we here?”
That shuts him up for a good moment, mouth pulled into a tight line.
“It's one of the few places out here where you can actually hang out without getting hounded about it being private property,” Dante says, like he's repeating something he's heard from someone else, “and there's not a lot of people around this time of day, either, so... probably the best place to talk about shit you wouldn't want someone at home to hear.”
You turn to look at him, but he doesn't meet your gaze, face impassive. It's a careful, studied blank expression.
“So,” he starts, “y'got anything to tell me?”
You freeze, mind gone blank. A vision of your brother—not this one, the other one, the one dressed in red, the heavy weight of regret on your chest at the sight of him—flashes through your mind.
“Dirk.”
You barely hear anything over the high-pitched hum running through your mind.
Whatever you do, do not tell him about needing him to decapitate you.
“Derek,” Dante says, voice inching into panic.
You startle at the sound, blinking to find him reaching over to put a hand on your shoulder. You shake your head mutely, and your chest stings when his hand stops and recedes again.
“No,” you manage, throat still tight, “it's—Dirk's fine.”
You sit, listening to the clink of the chains as you rock on the swing. Your brother, when you look over at him, is staring out at the rest of the playground. His hand is tapping against his thigh, and as it reaches a crescendo, he lets out a breathless laugh.
“You know,” he says, “they had to change the swings 'cause I broke 'em. It was like a month ago.”
“Don't even remember what happened,” he continues, “I blacked out and woke up at 4 a.m. and had to get someone to give me a lift home 'cause I couldn't recognize where I was. Dude was super pissed about it too, since I was a five minute walk away from home. Took longer for him to get here and back than it did for him to get me home.”
He snorts, meeting your gaze.
“Turns out it's a pretty bad idea to lose your glasses when you're legally blind.”
“No shit,” you say, but there's no bite in it. The smile on his face turns sour.
“Fuck,” he says, breathing in shakily and turning to look down at his lap, “I'm sorry, man. I've fucked up bad.”
He runs his hand through his hair and lets out a noise of utter frustration.
“Shit's been going south for—for a long fucking while, and I just—didn't think it was going to happen, I thought, maybe, if I just did things right, if I didn't try to change things this time, they wouldn't—fuck,” he says, hand tapping against his thigh again, “this isn't about you, you're not—shit, maybe I'm the one who's fucked everything up with you, too—”
You're not used to this. Panic freezes you as your brother keeps going, because you don't know how to comfort him, and that's what you should be doing, you idiot, what the hell kind of guy just looks at his brother crying and doesn't do shit about it?
“I don't think you fucked up with me,” you say quietly, and he looks at you, eyebrows jumping up in disbelief. He laughs, high and loud.
“Yeah, right,” he says, mirthless grin plastered on his face.
You think about ice cold steel, an instant severing from everything weighing you down. Looking at Dante, you don't know if you could trust him to do it. You don't think he would. Still, you don't know if there's going to be another chance to ask him.
“Do you ever feel like some things are... supposed to happen? Like... fate?”
The word drops heavy on your tongue, as if put there by someone else.
Your brother goes quiet for a moment, hand clenching around the chains of the swing.
“The fuck are you saying, man,” he says, “you're sounding like a hippie.”
There's a flash of color as he turns his head, and you're not sure whether you're imagining it or not.
“Dante,” you say carefully, “what's up with your eyes?”
“The fuck d'you mean, what's up with my eyes, didn't anyone teach you to respect a guy's disability,” he rattles off, nervous grin still pulling the corners of his mouth up as he shies away from you. “Really, bro? You of all fuckin' people? You'd think—Stop it, come on, what the hell—”
He keeps swatting your hand away as you're trying to grab at his glasses. Eventually you hook them, and Dante yells as he follows the arc of them falling to the ground. Your eyes are fixed on his, though, and even if his expression wasn't wide open in surprise, you doubt you could ever have missed the color of his eyes.
They're red.
He looks just like your—
There's another one of those overlays, and you feel your throat close up around itself. The sunlight only leaves you a moment before he shuts his eyes tight, dropping inelegantly off the swing as his hands come up to his face to shield it from the spring sun.
“Something's wrong,” you hear yourself say, through the high-pitched ringing in your ears, the wind making the chains of the swing rattle. “You're not doing it right. You're supposed to be—”
Your brother, your real brother, is supposed to hate you. He's supposed to hate you or be long dead or release you from the strings and let himself forgive you by seeing you die, not this weird in-between.
“What the fuck do you mean, I'm not doing it right,” he screams from behind his hand, the other one feeling for his shades, “she was going to get hurt if I didn't do it, how is this worth anything if I can't help—”
His jaw clicks shut. His hand finally wraps around the shades, miraculously unbroken.
“How the fuck do you know,” he hisses as he puts them on, “what happened?”
You blink, and you're still sitting in the swing. Dante is looking up at you from where he's lying on the gravel, frown cutting its way across his face like a wound.
“What?” you say, thoughts slow and unclear. All you can think about is how everything's wrong.
“You don't—” his mouth clamps shut again, and he bites his lip, “—you don't know.”
“Something happened,” you say, slowly, “and you aren't telling me.”
He breathes out, relief clear in the way he leans his head back.
“But you don't know,” he stresses, “right?”
You shake your head.
“Which means it worked,” he says under his breath. He grabs the chain of the swing to pull himself up, legs shaky.
“Fuck,” he says, rubbing at his forehead. “I need to—I need to go.”
He turns as he says it, breaking into a run almost immediately. He isn't headed back home, you realize almost immediately, and the thought deters you from following for long enough to know you won't catch up either way.
You look at his back, the vague shape of his hoodie becoming smaller and smaller with every step he takes.
After a while, you realize he isn't going to come back for you.
It's evening when you start to head back, steps heavy with something you can't place. You're exhausted. You cry on and off the whole way, something welling over you every time you think you're out of tears. When you get back, you wipe your face knowing you're just making your face look even worse. You ignore whatever your foster parents say and go upstairs into your room.
You crawl into bed.
⁙
Later that week, your brother offers to help with dinner. He cuts himself when he's chopping the vegetables, hissing out a swear. Your foster mother looks over at him when it happens, but he waves her off. You go over to where he's stationed at the counter, reaching for a glass in the cabinet as you sneak a glance at his hand.
The cut happened. You know it did. You saw the blood on the knife when he went to wash it off.
Your brother's hand is fine.
Ah, you think, feeling the shape of something slot into place in your mind. Soul and body. Red like blood.
As you lie in bed that night, you wonder what you could do, if you tried.
⁙
You're 15.
It turns out you can't do much of anything at all. Not with your soul broken into pieces like it is.
⁙
The day your brother turns 18, you spot him through the doorway to his room packing a backpack. It's a big one, like you'd use for camping. You don't say anything, and it doesn't seem like he notices you, so you watch as he takes down the posters adorning his walls.
When he rolls the last one up and places it besides the ones he's already put rubber bands around and piled in one corner of his room, you go downstairs. You don't taste anything of the cereal you pour for yourself. You turn on the T.V. just to look like you're doing something.
He comes down eventually, though the backpack is nowhere in sight. Ruffling your hair as he walks past you to the fridge, he seems content in a way he hasn't in ages.
Like he's made his decision.
You know what it means, letting the thought roll across your mind as you put your empty bowl on the counter and look over at him, sitting on the sofa with an apple in his hand.
He's going to leave you behind.
You know he is. He's 18 now, he can legally do that, he can just leave and never come back and you have to do this now or—
—or things will go real bad, real fast.
You, Dirk Strider, standing across from your brother, make the executive fucking decision.
There is a desperate half-year of course-correcting afterwards. Your foster parents pour more money into therapy for both of you than they ever did Dante's medical bills and vision aids. A local paper publishes a front-page story about it, but it all fizzes out within a few months. Your foster mother gives breathless interviews to anyone who shows up to your front door, your foster father spends his nights drinking and looking up at the sword still hanging on the wall.
You do not speak to your brother.
Eventually he gives up trying to speak to you.
Two days after you turn 16, you take all the cash in the house and your foster father's car.
You've never been to Houston. You figure there's a first time for everything.