Work Text:
[MEMORY DUMP: Initiate //
… … … … ]
Snow blanketed the quiet town for the first time that season, choking up the roads. School would be canceled for the day but that didn’t mean there wasn’t work to be done. They had to dig out once the blizzard finished come morning and he was probably the only kid in town who was sad about missing a day in the classroom.
But even if he could have gotten to school, he would have been needed at home. Mom hadn’t been feeling well and dad would need all of the help he could get to clear the stuff before it froze in place the next night. He was happy to help even if his siblings could tell he was disappointed – and they mocked him for it, in their sibling-sort of way.
“Always so serious, big brother,” one of them said with a breathless giggle. He shook his head and reached down to form a snowball, looking to prove her wrong, but found his face pelted by a snowball of his sister’s making as soon as he straightened. “Gotcha first!”
Shoveling took much longer with the intermittent snowball fights, but he had forgotten about missing school by the time they were called back inside a few hours later.
He followed the others in, ushering them in with mom so she could help them get undressed and warmed up. He caught his reflection in the glass of the door as he held it for the others, tufts of blond hair poking out from under his earmuffs and hood, his nose red and his brown eyes watering from the cold.
(He looked about fourteen or fifteen years old. He couldn’t remember exactly.)
Everyone else had huddled into the living room by the time he finally managed to shrug off his coat and get changed into something dry. The kotatsu had been turned on – a rare treat, a reward for the good work they’d done – and he joined the others with a happy chorus of hi from the table as he sat.
Mom placed a bowl of soup in front of him and he happily started in on it, not minding as the broth burned his mouth a little as it went down. It warmed him from the inside out as one of his siblings said, “I’d like to live somewhere with less snow.”
It was stated with a pout and earned mixed reviews from the crowd.
“I like the snow,” another said, placing an emptied bowl of soup down on the table. “Kids in towns that don’t get snow never get snow days.”
“I guess,” the first one conceded.
He listened as the conversation continued from there, the merits of snow days weighed against how much shoveling stunk. He was just finishing his soup when one of his sisters looked his way with a grin – ah, she’d noticed he was being quiet.
“What about you, big brother?” she asked, and the others turned their attention towards him.
(He was only a kid, he hadn’t thought much about it…)
“I think I’d like to live in the city for a little bit,” he said simply, shrugging a little. “If I get a scholarship I can go to university in A-City maybe.”
This earned a chorus of ‘oohs’ – none of them had been to the Cities before. He had once with his father, but it had been a few years ago.
“Where would you live?” his sister asked.
He laughed – such an odd sound – and shrugged again. “I dunno, sis. A small apartment probably, like what most students have,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. It was a long shot; a scholarship was no guaranteed thing. But he could dream, right?
“Would you get a pet?” one of his younger brothers piped up.
“Nah,” he said, “Maybe a cactus.”
“A cactus!”
“They’re so ugly, though…”
“I want to live on a cactus farm!”
And now everyone had ideas about what they wanted to do when they grew up.
“I think I’ll stay here with mom and dad,” his sister said, looking at him with a smile. “If everyone else will be leaving, someone needs to stay, right?”
He frowned. “If you like it here, I guess that’d be fine.”
Her smile widened. “I never want to live anywhere else. This town is all I’ve ever known.”
“I’m sure I’ll be here with you, in the end,” he offered, returning her smile. He tried not to sound too bitter about it. “Can’t just let all of you run wild without me here to help look after you.”
Her grin faltered and she shook her head vigorously. “No! You have to go if you get a scholarship. Go and do big city things and come back and tell us all about it,” she said with a renewed smile, cut ear-to-ear.
He was caught off guard by her insistence, but he hummed happily. “Sounds like a plan to me,” he said, reaching out to ruffle her hair.
(How could they have known?)
%%
The mad cyborg had stolen his family from him. The town was decimated: hundreds lost, countless lives that would never be lived. Genos dedicated his future to avenging theirs; their dreams were worth fighting for, even if they were long gone.
%%
Genos woke up.
It was the same as every other morning. He was asleep and then, all of a sudden, he was awake. His eyes snapped open and he found himself staring up at the ceiling of sensei’s place. His sensors always flicked to the dents and cracks here and there, evidence of a livelier existence than the simple apartment betrayed otherwise.
Light was just starting to stream through the balcony window, which meant he was awake a little earlier than usual. He frowned, sighing through his vents.
Saitama-sensei was still fast asleep in the futon next to his, snoring audibly. Genos carefully stepped around the two beds, leaving his on the floor for the moment as he padded over to the kitchen. He was distracted for some reason and he didn’t trust himself to fold the futon up without jostling sensei’s unnecessarily.
He switched on the electric kettle, leaning his elbows on the counter as soon as heard the hot water starting to hiss into steam, resting his head in his hand.
“Stupid dream,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head. He understood that Dr. Kuseno couldn’t make it impossible for him to dream. Sleep was necessary for a human brain, regardless if the body housing it was organic or not. And dreaming was a necessary part of sleeping.
At least they weren’t always nightmares anymore.
Something was bothering him, though. The dream hadn’t been unpleasant, but it was sticking with him worse than usual. He sighed, jerking the switch of the electric kettle off as soon as it started to tick-tick-tick that it was done.
He reached into the cupboard for two mugs, glancing over as he caught the sun streaming through the balcony window again. It bathed sensei’s apartment in a soft light and he sucked in a breath as he realized his hang-up.
The apartment; his dream – his dream. He placed the mugs on the counter, not wanting to drop them as a wave of nausea settled in his core.
This isn’t what he had wanted back then. But: he was happy anyway. Was that fair? How could he be happy when—
“Genos?”
The sound came from the living room, prompting him to stick his head out of the window over the sink. “Good morning, Saitama-sensei,” he said, glad for the distraction even as the guilt was starting to make him feel queasy. Saitama-sensei was sitting up on his futon, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his knees hunched up to his chest. “I’ve started hot water for tea,” he stated, smiling as sensei looked his way, some of the bleariness cured by the promise of something warm to drink.
“You’re the best, you know that?” Saitama said as he hopped up from the futon, stepping over it as he made his way to the kitchen. He stretched and smiled at Genos, rolling his shoulders to rid them of their early-morning stiffness. “I hope I say it enough.”
“Every morning, sensei,” Genos supplied with a muted smile of his own in return. He handed Saitama his mug of tea, glad for the hundredth time that Dr. Kuseno hadn’t deemed blushing a critical component of experiencing a full human life.
“I should say it more than that,” sensei said, kicking his futon to the side until it bunched up into the oversized pillow he liked to lean against in the morning. He plopped back down on it with his tea, squinting at the window with a frown. “I’m glad winter’s ending but the sun rises too early,” he said, yawning again before blowing at the tea and taking a sip.
Genos didn’t have a reply to that; he was caught up in his dream again, because – well. The guilt was eating at him. Living in sensei’s apartment, drinking tea in the early morning, chatting about the weather… He hovered by the counter, feeling paralyzed in such a pleasant place.
What had he done to deserve the happiness that the others had been denied?
Saitama-sensei noticed his silence – as expected of sensei, he thought to himself dourly. “Oi, Genos, did you hear me?”
“My apologies, sensei,” he said, bowing his head. “I missed what you said.”
“You okay?” he asked, squinting at Genos. “Do you need to see that doctor of yours?”
“No, sensei,” Genos replied, shaking his head vigorously. “I just… dreamt about something. And I feel conflicted about it,” he said, wanting to keep it to twenty words or less.
But that didn’t seem to be enough, for once. Saitama-sensei was still glaring at him, as though he could figure out what Genos meant just by staring hard enough. “Conflicted how?” he asked. An implicit invitation to break with their usual brevity.
This wasn’t something he wanted to bother sensei with, even so. “It’s nothing, sensei--,” he started, but Saitama’s glare prompted him to reconsider his words. He sighed, feeling cornered.
“I should go after the rogue cyborg,” he said emphatically, fists balling against his thighs. “I have not yet avenged my family and I spend too much time...” he trailed off, not sure how to phrase it. I spend too much time with sensei, his mind supplied unhelpfully. This time spent was supposed to have a purpose: he was supposed to be getting stronger…
But at some point, he’d started enjoying himself. For the first time since he’d been transformed into a cyborg, he’d caught himself enjoying life.
Saitama was still looking at him intently, as if willing himself to understand. “Do you feel strong enough to beat him?” he asked, apparently uninterested in wherever Genos’ last sentence was ultimately going.
Genos sighed, fiddling with his mug of quickly-cooling tea on the counter. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
Saitama-sensei clapped, jarring Genos from his broody staring contest with the tea. “Well, that’s that then. You can’t go after him until you’re absolutely sure you can beat him,” he said, nodding. “You shouldn’t take chances with someone so dangerous.”
Genos scoffed inwardly at that. He’d never seen sensei in danger, but he supposed he must know how to assess danger when it was described to him. “But, sensei—“ he started to protest, but his field of vision was suddenly filled with Saitama, the man moving faster than he could track to slap a hand over his mouth. The rest of his words were mumbled against a suddenly-there palm.
“No buts. You have to have a one-hundred percent chance of coming back from that fight in one piece before we go looking for him,” he said, grinning at the way Genos’ brows furrowed.
Genos shook his head to free himself of the hand, knowing that Saitama let up as soon as he struggled – he couldn’t have shaken off his grip otherwise. For the second time in less than ten minutes, he was grateful for his total inability to blush. “We?” he echoed, tilting his head.
Saitama scratched at his chin. “Well, yeah. But I’ll let you kill him,” he said, as though that were the cause of confusion. “Don’t want to rob you of that or anything.”
Genos blinked, not sure if he wished they were still talking about the weather.
“Dude, you gotta stop spacing out—“ Saitama started to say, but he was interrupted by an armful of cyborg hugging him about the shoulders. “Oi, Genos, what—“
“Sensei does not need to bother himself with my problems,” Genos said, ducking his head against Saitama’s chest and sighing, mortified. “But I would be grateful for your assistance—“ he said, cutting off as he felt his core pulse funny. “My family would have liked Z-City,” he said quietly, the thought falling out of him before he could stop it.
He didn’t know what he expected in response but a hug back certainly wasn’t it. He jolted as he felt sensei’s arms wrap around his shoulders. “Really? It’s kind of a dump,” he said, his voice sounding like it was everywhere. He sighed when Genos stayed silent still. “Wish I could have met them,” he said simply, and Genos had to forcibly halt his vents from whirring louder, his core in turmoil. “We’ll definitely get that asshole.”
Stated with finality. Genos knew a death sentence when he heard one.
“Looks like you let your tea get cold,” Saitama-sensei said, pulling away from the hug and gesturing to the counter. Funny, how quickly he shifted from topic to topic. “I’ll make some more. Want some breakfast?” he asked, already pulling away and reaching into the refrigerator for the carton of eggs.
Genos nodded, though breakfast was a foregone conclusion anyway if sensei was hungry. “I’ll put the futons away,” he said, unable to help a dazed smile as he reached down to undo the damage sensei had done to his before folding it properly.
He’d still avenge his family; it was okay if he enjoyed life in the meantime. He’d have been dead many times over if not for sensei anyway and—well. The rogue cyborg was living on borrowed time. It wasn’t matter of if, but when.
And until then he was going to enjoy omelets with sensei and make a game out of summarizing problems in as few words as possible and shop for leeks on sale and water the cactus plant he’d wanted ever since he was little.
Living well was the best revenge, after all.