Chapter Text
Rotation kicks a piece of rubble down the street. It shoots off, skittering down the weed-choked concrete. It’s back to aimlessly drifting through the city for him, after the amusement park had been a bust.
Most likely, this is just another situation Rotation has no one to blame for besides himself.
It’s his fault, he chose to split off from the group. Again.
But he’d needed to get away, not— not forever, only long enough to clear his head.
Except he’d gotten lost on the way there, twisted around in these stupid streets that all looked the same. And then she showed up, when he passed by the ocean wharf. By the time he’d finally found the amusement park, where they’d promised to meet, the sun had started streaking across the sky and Grayleigh and Meagon were nowhere to be found.
He wonders if they’d waited a long time for him, before they thought Rotation’s absence meant he wasn’t coming, and he’d skipped out on them for real.
Or maybe they had also been late, and he was the one who should have waited longer, instead of assuming the worst.
But Rotation has never been good at waiting. If there was one thing that was ingrained into the very fiber of his being, it was to keep moving, always, always, always. Anything else meant certain death.
So now he’s returned to roaming the streets, revisiting all of the locations his last living friends might have gone to.
Rotation knows he shouldn’t be looking for them. He knows should be distancing himself, taking his dead weight out of the equation before the infection in his blood leaves him nothing more than a shambling corpse and another person winds up dead.
But he can’t help it. He doesn’t want to be alone.
Will Meagon and Grayleigh even take him back? He keeps doing this, running away and then crawling back like a lame stray cat. And he knows, all too well, that peoples’ patience for his bullshit always has a limit.
It’s only a matter of time before they grow tired of him, too. If that hasn't already happened. For fuck’s sake, he’d made both of them cry last time.
When he’d told them Mike was dead.
In the end, what else was new? The sky was blue, the grass was green, and Rotation was once again digging himself an ever deeper hole.
Nice going, Rotation, can’t you ever do something right?
A round of coughing stops him in his tracks, forcing him to lean against the rusted hood of a car for support. When it passes, he checks his palm before wiping it off on his jeans. Good. No blood this time.
Rotation takes the moment to look around and reassess his course. Some of these buildings are actually starting to look recognizable. He’s pretty sure he’s near that one group— the hostel. Even if Meagon and Grayleigh aren’t there, someone might know where they are.
With a destination set, he starts moving again.
As Rotation walks, the only signs of life are the sounds made by his own footsteps, and the wind softly rustling through wild, overgrown foliage.
The streets have been weirdly quiet. Not that he’s ever seen them busy, per say, but even in this post-apocalyptic no-man’s land, Rotation usually runs into at least a couple of the city’s other survivors.
Yet it’s just been him, alone.
It was like that last night too. Before he’d split off from Grayleigh and Meagon, when they’d stopped at the church. The smaller one, not the… other one.
Rotation had felt like there should have been more people. But they’d only seen that guy with half a face, and his companion, then that other man wearing a green scarf, and the bleach-blonde lady who had the dangerous eyes like a hawk.
Not for the first time, he wonders where everyone else could have gone. Maybe they were simply busy, or holed up wherever the fuck. Or maybe they were dead.
Whatever. Rotation didn’t care.
The hostel isn’t very far now, just a block away. And to his surprise, just as he gets close, he finally sees another human being. Someone leaving the barricaded entrance. It’s that one woman, who Meagon called Nobody.
He doubts that’s her actual name. But maybe it is, maybe she also picked something when she was a stupid kid and it stuck.
When she finally sees him approaching, she calls out, “Oh my god! Rotation! You’re here!”
He blinks, cautiously slowing his pace. He didn’t know she knew his name.
“Uh… hi?” he says, more a question than a greeting.
She smiles, relief on her face. “It’s so good you’re here, he’s been waiting for you, and none of us knew where to start looking for you.”
Hold on.
They were looking for him? No, wait. Scratch that— Someone was waiting for him? Who could possibly—
Oh.
That white-haired scientist. He was with this group, wasn’t he?
And Rotation had overheard him, last time they’d crossed paths. He was trying to find someone to experiment on, to research a cure.
The realization washes over him, a heavy weight sinking in his stomach. How did he know Rotation was infected? He thought— he thought the only people he’d told were Grayleigh and Meagon. They wouldn’t have told, would they?
“Oh, uh. Really?” He awkwardly clears his throat into one fist.
The woman nods, “Yeah, you should really go up and see him. I think he’s been in a room on the seventh floor.”
“...Right.”
A part of him is screaming that he needs to cut his losses, screw finding out if Meagon and Grayleigh were here, he has to back out and run right now.
His feet stay rooted to the ground.
Rotation’s panic must not show on his face, because she simply continues, “When you go in, give him a chance to explain things first, okay? He’s had a really rough time of it.”
Huh?
Again, his expression must be blank. There’s no reaction.
The woman then looks side to side, before adding softly, like she’s sharing a secret:
“And, uh— Don’t tell him I told you, but I can tell he’s missed you the most. He was absolutely devastated that no one’s seen you. The whole thing’s just been so awful… it’s… Well. It’s just really great you’re here.”
There’s an uncomfortable pause after that.
Oh. She’s waiting. He needs to say something.
“Okay… um… thanks, I guess?” Rotation manages to fumble out.
And that’s—
Well. At least that was better than nothing.
Another point for Rotation’s unbelievable social skills.
It must be enough, because the woman nods before allowing him to escape past her and this conversation, and into the building.
That was really weird. That was really, really weird.
Is the scientist guy really that desperate to get Rotation to work with him? There’s no way he’s the only infected person in the city. Him, and well… Grayleigh. Maybe everyone else was just better at hiding it. Rotation thought he was, but evidently not.
Or maybe the scientist decided it’s not worth his time to try getting them to cooperate. That it’s much easier to goad the orphan kid with no one to miss him into doing his tests. And he’d be right.
The way Rotation sees it, he has two options here. First option: he can turn around and leave, but then he has to explain to the woman outside why he showed up here, only to immediately ditch.
Or. Second option.
He can go find the scientist.
Maybe… he thinks, maybe that’s not the worst idea.
If the cure is real, and this is how it needs to be discovered, it could fix a lot of people's lives. People who have families and friends, who don’t get them killed and then see their ghosts around every corner.
At the very least, Rotation can go talk to the guy. It can’t hurt, now that his infected cat’s out of the bag. And he wouldn’t force Rotation to submit to the testing, would he?
Probably not.
Right. Okay. He’s actually going to do this. The woman said it was the seventh floor, if Rotation remembers correctly.
Heading for the stairwell, he begins to climb. One, two, three, fou—
“That scientist,” a familiar voice says from behind him, “He’s not going to be able to fix what’s wrong with you.”
Rotation freezes on the landing.
He knows Venus won’t be there, but he looks over his left shoulder anyways.
Nothing. He grips the railing tighter and grits his teeth.
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Then why are you still here?” The invisible spectre asks him, “You don’t know how long you have left, before you turn into one of those things. Are you trying to get someone else hurt?”
He pushes forward, and takes the steps two at a time. Five, six.
“Then I’ll just ask him to put me out of my misery, and he can have my body after. Scientists do that, right? Run tests on corpses, cut them up and shit?”
She hums thoughtfully, “I think it’s called dissection.”
Rotation ignores her correction. It doesn’t matter if she’s right or not. After all, Venus only knows what he does.
He’s reached the seventh floor, according to the scratched up plaque on the wall. There’s only a couple rooms here, and the doors were all left unlocked.
As he pokes through them, none of the rooms really fit the description of a science lab. Not that he’d actually know what an active laboratory looks like. No one would ever let someone like him near a place like that.
Rotation figures he’ll know it when he sees it. And he hasn’t seen any science-y shit yet. Just a couple of bedrooms, a couple less dusty than the rest.
The white-haired scientist is also nowhere to be found. Had that woman told him the wrong floor? He goes back to the stairs, and tries the next floor.
“You’re wasting your time here, Rotation.”
There she is, sitting on a windowsill, kicking her feet against the wall. There’s nothing and nobody on this floor, either. He ignores Venus, and goes up again.
“How many people do you think you need to save, to make up for letting me die? For letting Mike die?”
“I’m not trying to make up for anything,” he bites out, finally cracking. “I can’t. Everything that happened was my fault.”
“Hm. Yeah— well, admitting it won’t change what happened to us.”
Venus is on the top step, elbows on knees and chin propped in her hands. Rotation stops halfway up the stairs, making glaring eye contact with her ghost. Her empty eyes are flat and dead.
“Cool!” he snaps, “And next time, tell me something I don’t already know!”
When there’s no reply, Rotation scowls and demands, “Is Mike around here too? Is he gonna be waiting for me on the next floor?”
“I don’t know,” she says idly, “You tell me. After all, we’re your hallucinations.”
When he blinks, Venus is gone.
Rotation keeps searching, because what else is he doing here? He slows down only when a new wet cough starts bubbling in his chest. This time, there’s a smear of blood on his palm to wipe off.
The next flight of stairs doesn't lead to another floor. They lead to the roof. There’s nowhere else the scientist could be, he’s gone through every floor. And the man’s supposed to be here, waiting for Rotation. So this has to be it.
He pushes the heavy doors open, and steps back into the outside air. And finally, there’s someone here.
Between the garden beds, standing by the railing, is the scientist. He’s looking out over the city, with the white-haired back of his head facing the doors.
Rotation steps closer.
“Um. Hello? You, uh… wanted to see me?” he calls out.
The man turns around.
That’s not the scientist.
This is the rooftop.
Of course.
Goddamnit, this is the rooftop, he should have seen it coming.
Venus was only the warning.
Rotation’s hands clench into fists, like it will stop them from trembling.
Mike just stares at him. The top half of his skull is a brilliant, gory red. He’s standing right at the edge.
“No— No!” Rotation cries, shaking his head. “You don’t get to do this to me. Not again!”
This time, Rotation doesn't move, doesn't run to try to stop him. If his eyes squeeze shut tight enough, maybe this ghost will disappear too.
He can’t watch again.
…
“Rotation?”
What.
“Rotation… what are you talking about, ‘Again?’”
Mike’s ghost doesn’t talk.
It’s never talked, even when Rotation begged it to say something. Anything.
He opens his eyes, blinking behind his glasses.
The thing shaped like Mike is closer now. He looks worried, and it’s holding Mike's hands out.
“Rotation?” it says his name again, “Are you okay?”
“No—! Of course I’m not—” Rotation takes a step back, his heart a racehorse in his chest. “I mean. What? No— Why are you talking?”
“Why am I—?” The other takes a step forward, closing the gap. “Dude, Rotation— Hey, uh. I think maybe you should really take a deep breath and—”
Two hands land heavy on either side of Rotation’s arms. They feel like burning iron brands through the leather of his jacket. Whatever else it said is lost to static.
No ghost of his has ever once touched him.
They’re nothing more than smoke in the air.
“Oh.” he says, “You’re real.” Like a stupid idiot.
Mike looks at him. “I, uh… Yes?”
Rotation back looks at him. Really looks at him.
The bright crimson against his white hair, it’s not blood from his busted open skull.
It’s a red scarf, tied around his head. He isn’t wearing his jersey either, the white decals stained dark and gory. It’s been replaced by a pullover two sizes too big, in a soft, faded gray that spoke of a past as blue or even purple.
Mike’s face isn’t blurry, his features are in the right places and shapes, not lost down the drain of Rotation’s memory. There’s dark rings under his eyes, and his bottom lip is all dry, peeling skin like it’s been chewed up over and over.
“Oh,” Rotation says again, like a skipping record, “Oh, okay.”
The shock of everything has left Rotation’s mind empty and at a standstill. He doesn’t know what to feel.
“Rotation,” Mike rambles, keeping his hands locked in place on the shorter boy’s shoulders, weighing him down to the present. “I’m so happy to see you’re okay. Did you find Grayleigh and Meagon? Are they okay? I’m so sorry. I didn’t want that to happen to you, I hope you don’t think it’s your fault. I just— I tripped, and then—”
Rotation cuts him off, his voice still hollow with disbelief, “How are you alive? Or wait, no. Obviously, you’re fucking alive. How didn’t you die?”
He’d seen how far down that drop was. After— when he’d looked, he hadn’t even been able to see where Mike had landed. He couldn’t have survived that fall. Had Rotation hallucinated that too? It’s the only explanation he can think of, for how Mike is here and real and talking to him.
Mike’s gone rigid. Rotation didn’t even notice it, caught up in his own thoughts.
“Mike?” he prompts, sounding as small as he feels.
He isn’t meeting Rotation’s gaze. Rotation can feel his grip shift, as he hunches into himself.
“I did die.”
“What?”
Rotation misheard. He must have.
Mike swallows, nervous. “I died, Rotation. The fall. It— it killed me.”
That’s not true.
Rotation shakes his head in disbelief, throwing the other’s hands off of him, “No, but you’re here, you’re really here, talking to me— I’m not— I’m not—”
Mike catches his wrist before Rotation can back up and flee.
“Wait—! I’m.. not lying.” There’s an edge of desperation in his voice. “Here. Look.”
With his free hand, Mike pushes the red scarf further up on his head, revealing the marred skin that had been hidden underneath.
A long, jagged ridge carves along his forehead, traveling from high on Mike’s scalp all the way across to the opposite temple.
“My skull— it used to be cracked open, right here. I touched my brain, Rotation. The rest of my body, too. All of my bones— they were shattered. And now it’s just—”
He stumbles in his explanation, struggling for the right words, as Rotation listens in horror. “It all fixed itself, I watched it happen. I died, and then I got up again, completely fine. I don’t know why, or how, just please— believe me. I’d never lie to you about this.”
It’s unbelievable. Even in a dead city where bloated corpses shamble in the streets, something like this is simply asking too much from reality.
But Mike looks as sick to his stomach as Rotation feels, and that’s how he knows his story is the truth.
Carefully, he pulls his wrist from Mike’s grip.
“I believe you,” he tells him, “I promise.”
Mike retracts his hand to clutch around his own shoulders. He looks away again, taking a steadying breath.
“…There’s more, too. Whatever this is, it hasn’t stopped. When they were getting me out from… down there, I cut my palm up on a piece of metal, super deep, but now…”
He shows his hand back out to Rotation. The pale skin of his palm is perfect and unblemished. There’s not even the faintest shadow of a scratch.
“That scientist, Saparata, he says he can help figure out why this is happening to me, why I’m like this.”
Pausing, Mike bites down on his lip, worrying the corner before he finally finishes, “It’s just— There’s something wrong with me, and I don’t know what to do, man.”
Now that Rotation knows he’s searching for it, the evidence of his friend’s anguish is clear as day.
Mike sounds miserable when he speaks. His voice is frail and scratching, like he’s broken it past the point of exhaustion.
The way he’s been holding himself this whole time has been different too, lacking all of the self-assured boldness Rotation has come to expect from the elder of their pair. Instead, Mike seems to be doing his best to stay folded up, as though he’s afraid of what might happen if he moves too quickly or takes up space.
And Rotation— He doesn’t know what he needs to say to make it better. This is an impossible situation, an impossible reality.
He tries to grasp what Mike is feeling. His own body is the one thing that has always been his, that Rotation could always rely on, even when he was just a tiny kid brawling for dumpster scraps.
Imagining what it would be like, to have his control twisted unnaturally away from him and lose even that, is the stuff of his literal nightmares.
Though actually, come to think of it, pretty soon Rotation might not just have to imagine it.
So, like always, he goes and puts his damn foot in his mouth.
“Well, that’s okay,” he tells Mike, “There’s something wrong with me, too.”
The questioning look Mike gives him is all Rotation needs to full send the reveal before he can overthink it and wuss out.
“…I’m infected. I— I got bit. After you— uh. Fell. And I don’t think I have very long left, it’s probably only a couple of days.”
He’s aiming for a false, casual flippancy. But that doesn’t land in the slightest, based on the way Mike’s entire face drops.
“Oh, Rotation,” he cries.
Mike surges forwards, gathering Rotation up in a long-armed hug before his younger friend can even try to weasel out of it.
Rotation’s gut-punch reaction is to freeze like ice at the sudden contact, until he hears Mike start to sniffle wetly right next to his ear.
Slowly, he brings his own arms up to match the embrace, and as the tension unfurls from his body, Rotation slumps into the comforting hold.
“I’m so sorry.” Mike grieves, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
The crush of guilt is another feeling Rotation knows all too well. He’s hurting Mike again, if he lets him take this blame for his own mistake.
Rotation’s words fester and die in his throat once more. But he tries anyway.
“Mike, it’s… this isn’t your fault, okay?”
“But I—”
He pulls back, looking Mike in the eyes. “If me getting bit was your fault, then it’s my fault that you fell. That’s fair.”
Mike furrows his brow, “I don’t think that’s how that works—”
“No,” Rotation insists, wedging in, “that is how it works.”
He’ll lie through his teeth as many times as it takes, if it means Mike never looks this miserable again. Rotation’s a no-good, rotten friend any way you slice it; white lies can’t damn him further.
And it works.
Mike frees Rotation from one of his octopus limbs only long enough to wipe the back of his sleeve-covered hand over his face with a damp sniff.
“Okay, you’re— You’re right. That’s how it works. I’m sorry.”
His eyes, when he withdraws from their hug to look at Rotation, are red and teary, weighed down by the bruise-like circles underneath. But they’re also bright and alive, and that’s enough to leave Rotation a little less haunted.
“Of course I am,” he berates Mike, “And stop apologizing already!”
Things aren’t okay, by a long shot. They’re still trapped in a city full of people and monsters who are all out for the kill. Mike still died, yet simply got up and walked away. Rotation is still infected, is still a curse to everyone he’s ever cared about. Grayleigh and Meagon are out there, unaware that Mike had come back and Rotation hadn’t meant to leave.
It’s not over for any of them, not even close.
Rotation knows he won’t be getting out of this without getting someone else hurt again— it’s inevitable. His curse only ends when he joins his ghosts for good.
But right now, none of that matters, because he finally doesn’t have to do it alone.