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This is a future where 1D are still huge, and like all famous people they have their backups in a facility somewhere. In fact, let’s make it so that they don’t even *know* about it. This is a dystopia where Syco/MGMT are evil overlords who provide Entertainment for the masses, bread and games-style, and they put a small-print clone clause in the boys’ contracts. Insurance, innit? Can’t risk the cash cow on something as petty as a missing limb in a terrorist “Resistance” attack or a fucked-up liver from all the booze and drugs the boys are supplied with to keep them pliant. If anything happens to one of the boys, hey presto, here’s another one for spares.
Of course, it also works in case of death - or if one of the boys starts making noise about wanting out, which is not too different. Politicians and activists and celebs ~disappear all the time, kidnapped by the mafia, or the Powers That Be, or the Resistance, and sometimes they reappear. If their eyes are a bit too wide and all their tattoos look too fresh no one really looks twice. It’s a fucked-up world. People are busy trying to survive, they don’t have energy to spare pitying the Entertainment puppets.
Anyway, something happens with 1D that makes them want out, and they start plotting with those of their entourage who have a conscience, Ben and Paul and Lou etc.
One day, they’re at an interview with government-controlled BBC radio and the host, Nick, casually passes them a note hidden in their coffee. It reads: “We know what you’re planning. So do they. Meet us at [Sekrit Location] after the interview.” As it turns out, Nick and the Breakfast Team are actually part of the Resistance, broadcasting on the official airwaves during the day and then doing pirate radio at night and running things behind the scenes.
So the boys meet up with Nick and Fincham – who turns out to be the leader behind the scenes, of course - and they introduce the boys to Aimee, their best extractor, who can help with the disappearing act. But most of all, they reveal the clones business. After all, 1D leaving the stage in a cloud of smoke can only be used by the Resistance if they’re not immediately replaced by 1D Lite a week later.
The boys are all stunned. All, except maybe Louis, because Louis actually read the fine print on their contracts before signing and he knew there was something fishy when they were all asked to provide so much DNA. No one actually needs to give bone marrow for random drug tests. But Louis didn’t say anything because he couldn’t rock the boat - not with his whole family depending on him, not when he’s got new baby siblings. Even so, he surely didn’t expect it to go that far - he thought maybe MGMT had a few jars of lungs and hearts in stock; maybe he knew they had the ability to make full clones if needed. He didn’t expect them to exist already, to have been there all along.
Fincham and Nick and Aimee show them pictures from Fiona, their secret source inside the Facility. It’s uncanny - the clones have the exact same features, the same weight and hair even, like they’re ready to be thrust upon the stage and replace the boys at any moment. All they’re missing are the tattoos. They’re even performance-ready. There’s grainy footage of them in their uniform, the same too-large orphan-grey sweaters, standing on a stage and singing 1D’s songs in front of a sea of other clones - fuck, there’s at least 5 Presidents, and in the corner there Louis can make out a Taylor Swift and a few Katy Perrys.
There are also pictures of clone!1D in cuddle piles that make Louis’ chest hurt like he thought it couldn’t anymore. Things between the boys aren’t too bad but they aren’t exactly good, either. They all got into it because it was a way out for them and for their families, or so they’d been told at the time, and they got to know each other pretty well but MGMT always discouraged them getting really close, despite having them put on a facade of closeness. Louis learnt that lesson the hard way when Harry was busted on the way to his room one night and both their families’ stipends were cut for six months. Louis’ never really forgiven himself, even if it wasn’t actually his doing. He still can’t look Harry in the eyes.
So basically, the years of being run ragged and fed all kinds of drugs have taken their toll on the boys. The cracks are starting to show. Zayn never really got out of his shell to begin with, but it’s getting worse, he keeps isolating himself to talk to his mother. Liam and Niall go quiet more and more often. None of them really feel like singing anymore.
But in the pictures… In the pictures, those people who look just like them sing and laugh and hug, and the way the Harry clone looks at the Louis one, like maybe they got a chance to do things differently there… It’s like looking into an alternate reality.
Louis keeps looking at the pictures, every time 1D manages to sneak away and spend time with the Resistance over the next few weeks. He sees the way Harry can’t stop looking either, and then one day Harry looks right at Louis for the first time in what feels like forever, and his face is a mix of sadness and forgiveness and regret that Louis knows he’s mimicking. He feels something stir in his chest like an old wound being soothed. He also sees the way Nick’s hand tightens on Harry’s shoulder and how Harry’s hand comes up to rest on top of Nick’s. When Nick and Harry excuse themselves to go “set things up for that night’s broadcast” (which everyone has learnt the hard way usually means “find a semi-private corner to make each other come, try and find them at your own risk”), Harry holds Louis’ gaze for a while before he goes, until they both nod at each other like they’ve finally found a truce. Louis feels a bit lighter as he turns back to discuss weapons with Fincham and the rest of his crew.
At night Louis goes to Liam and they get each other off like they have for the past couple years. It’s nothing more than that, a comfort that grew out of physical proximity and their mutual heartbreak over losing track of Danielle and Eleanor in the last wave of riots in England. Louis thinks sometimes, idly, about giving it a real go once they’re free – if they make it. He knows it can’t happen, though. Maybe if the world were different, if they were less damaged. In this world love is just something you sing about, not something you actually get to keep.
Long story short, 1D & co end up joining the Resistance full-time and organize going AWOL and busting out their clones all in one fell swoop, and there are a couple of close calls and fuck-ups along the way that put all of their lives in danger, but eventually they make it. They hole up in a Resistance safe-house, the 5 boys, their friends, and a whole crowd of clones. They’d only planned on getting their own clones out, but somehow they end up with so many more - there’s the Little Mix clones, because the Zayn clone wouldn’t leave without his Perrie and she wouldn’t leave without her friends; there’s someone called Breslin that clone!Niall was absolutely not going to be parted from, and the Harry clone dragged a redhead called Ed with him, who apparently came as a package with one of the Taylor Swifts.
It’s so weird and tense. Niall’s talking with his own clone and the other dude also named Niall - because having two with the same name wasn’t enough of a mindfuck. There are double the Louis to glare and silently worry until they snap at someone. Nothing the shyly smiling Harry clone whispers in his Louis’ ear can make him stop looking at all of them like he’s planning to stab them in their sleep and run away. The Harry clone is slightly heartbreaking in how earnest and open and trusting he is, the way Louis imagines Harry might have been in a different world.
Clone!Zayn and Perrie won’t let go of each other’s hands, and Zayn keeps looking at them both with such sadness in his eyes. Louis remembers 1D being rushed past Little Mix once, at an even or another, but their management teams were adamant they had no time to get introduced to each other.
Perhaps worst of all is Liam, who’s usually so polite and nice but won’t look his clone in the eye, and Louis can’t figure out why - the clone looks like even more of a teddy bear than Liam usually does - until they both lift up their shirts a little and Louis sees the identical scars on their abdomens. He suddenly remembers his Liam’s providential kidney transplant a few years back. He feels sick.
THEN PLOT HAPPENS - they use some of the clones as a diversion while 1D and Nick infiltrate government headquarters to broadcast a call to revolt, and they manage to start an uprising. The Little Mix clones + Zayn go looking for the girls in the real world. Fiona works from the inside so the cloning Facility is exposed and with the help of the Resistance all the clones are freed. (In a real movie, one of the boys would sacrifice themselves to keep their clone alive after a scene where the bad guys capture them both and they argue over who’s the real clone, but this is fic so everyone lives, not necessarily happily ever after but at the very least they get a shot.)
And so the clones adjust to the outside world, and everyone adjusts to them being around. 1.0!Louis and Harry work out their remaining issues with the help of their clones (weirdly insightful drawled talks from clone!Harry, a stern talking to from clone!Louis), and eventually they’re able to have conversations and laugh like they used to; better, even. Nick and Harry are joined at the hip even more than before, having become the new voices of the revolution. The Nialls get into a sort of threesome that people don’t even bat an eyelash at - this is the middle of a revolution, who care who fucks who. It’s not like any of them can deny this whole clone business is intriguing as hell. (There’s a rumor that Fincham sometimes joins them, but people are too scared to ask if there’s any truth to it. Fincham can be really scary. But you can definitely hear piano and guitar duets being played at night sometimes.) Zayn finds his Perrie, and Liam meets this girl in the Resistance who’s called Sophia.
Louis’s not too broken up about it, because he knew what he and Liam had was a convenience thing. He’s busy enough with organizing things around here. Fincham’s pretty much made Louis his second in command, and together they figure out ways to keep everyone out of harm, going over contingency plan after contingency plan until deep into the night, until they’re both satisfied everyone’s as safe as they can be. Clone!Liam keeps finding them and bringing them coffee and making sure they get some sleep, so in the end Louis makes him his deputy, mostly so he’ll stop mothering them but also because he just finds himself trusting this Liam and wanting to rely on him for some reason. It’s slightly scary.
So 2.0Liam starts working on locating everyone’s families and trying to get them to the Resistance HQ safely, and he’s out of HQ a lot, and no, Louis doesn’t mind that he’s on his own. It’s just a bit lonely sometimes, when he looks around the fires and everyone is paired up. Until one evening the Liam clone comes back, with a number of the boys’ siblings and parents in tow, and there’s a moment of indescribable confusion, then elation as everyone gets to hold their loved ones in their arms for the first time in years, then emotion as they all learn of those who didn’t make it. Louis can’t stop holding his sisters and he’s doing his best not to cry all over them, and he does an okay job, he thinks, until they’re settled into their new makeshift quarters and he’s got a minute to himself to try and catch his breath and make sure it’s all real.
He sinks down to the floor and puts his head between his knees and laughs and cries a little bit, and suddenly there’s a hand in his hair and 2.0Liam is kissing him, and when Louis pulls back he sees 1.0!Liam in the background, giving him the least discreet thumbs up ever from across the room where he’s introducing Sophia to his mother, and Louis snorts and makes a rude gesture back and then he leans all of his weight into Liam and closes his eyes and kisses back.
The eeeeend.