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Maria moves away and part of Luke goes with her, a part he doesn’t know a name for. Most people, after all, don’t wake up the age he is, don’t have crisp, bright memories of the first face they saw, the first words it spoke. The first eyes that looked into theirs and granted them personhood.
Maria moves away and part of Luke feels a little less real. Like his beginnings have unravelled. Mum and Clyde come the closest to understanding - treat the subject gently, even months after Rani has integrated into the team. Luke is grateful, knows they don’t intend for him to know he’s being handled.
Maria moves away and Luke wants a name for it. It would be easier, he finds himself thinking, if he was in love with her. Clyde would have him believe that love is complicated and confusing, but Luke is all too aware that if he loved Maria in that way, people would understand him better. When you're in love with someone and they move to a different country, no-one thinks you're stupid or selfish to wish they weren't going. It’s excused. Expected, even. More than that, it’s normal.
Maria moves away and for a little while Luke tries to convince himself that this is the case. After all, he reasons, he doesn’t know how this kind of love is supposed to feel, so maybe it feels like this. Maybe that’s what the unravelling is, the hole that seems to grow instead of closing. Maybe it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t want to kiss Maria, has never felt the need to take her hand unless it’s to drag her out of the way of a pursuing alien or as a tether in a darkened tunnel. Maybe these things are just different for different people.
Maria moves away and gets a boyfriend.
Not straight away, or anything. And apparently it’s nothing serious either, because mentions of his name only last for 3 of their weekly Skype calls. But Luke is made aware enough, and reacts little enough, that he can’t even fool himself anymore: he doesn’t like Maria like that, can’t even fathom how.
He doesn’t think about it too much, the ‘fathoming how’ part. He’s an unprecedented case, after all. Years ahead of his peers in some ways, years behind in others.
And in a third category of ways, he’s different entirely. Like having no belly button, no date of birth and no childhood.
So he doesn’t think about it much, but when he does, he comes worryingly close to the conclusion that he’s just broken. That something is wired the wrong way round. Because — and this is something he never planned to say out loud — the truth is that he can come closer to seeing how he’d like Clyde in that way than Maria or Rani or Lucy or Jen.
In the horrifying silence that follows that outburst, Clyde does something remarkable: he shrugs.
“Okay,” he says.
Time stands still for Luke, and in the three weeks that elapse over the next few seconds, Clyde’s mouth folds into a smirk. “I mean, it’s hardly surprising. I’m a catch. Unfortunately for you and many others, I’m playing for the other team, but it’s not like it’s a problem, Luke.”
Clyde tells him it’s not a problem and the whole universe shifts. Not because an asteroid breaches the atmosphere or the Trickster rewrites time, but because something settles inside Luke, something he doesn’t have a name for. But maybe there is a name, after all, because Clyde doesn’t seem to find the idea ridiculous or insulting or repulsive or unthinkable. Maybe he’s even a little flattered, which Luke finds a bit rich, if he’s honest. He never said he actually had a crush on Clyde—
“Just that it’s more of a possibility, alright, I heard you the first time, Professor Love,” says Clyde, pretending to be wounded but with a glint in his eye that speaks volumes louder. He sobers a little. “Don’t take this the wrong way, alright, but apart from the genius thing, you’re not all that different from anyone else. The Bane made you human. You’re part of us, not…an extra.”
“Aren’t I?” Luke looks down at his hands. “The way I — the sort of love I’m thinking of. It would never result in…”
He looks out across the field, beyond the swing set that has become their go-to place for this kind of conversation and out where the younger children are playing. A mother stands, watching over them, joggling a pram absent-mindedly with one hand.
Clyde makes a sort of ‘ah’ sound, an understanding sound. “It would never mean kids,” he says, kicking at a stone. “D’you want kids, then?”
“No,” says Luke. “But that’s the thing. That’s the biological imperative, isn’t it? The purpose of the species. So you say I’m not an extra, but that does mean I’m… not attached to anybody. I’m not blood-related to anyone now and if I don’t have children then I never will be.”
He hears how wrong it is, even before he looks back for Clyde’s reaction. He knows, he knows, doesn’t need to be told that he’s attached to Sarah Jane and to the whole attic family, in ways far more important than blood. But it doesn’t change the science of it all, and Luke is what his chemistry teacher once called a ‘born scientist’. Funny, then, that he’d never been born at all.
“Luke—” says Clyde, like it’s the beginning of a sentence.
Luke waits.
“I’m not — and, like, savour this, because it’s not something I’m gonna say often — I’m not an expert on this,” Clyde continues at last. “But there are definitely ways you could have children, biological - offspring, if you wanted to. But even if you don’t want to, that’s nothing to do with… anything else. There are loads and loads of people who don’t want kids. The thing about carrying on the species is sort of... not as much of a thing now. I mean, we of all people should know that the human race isn’t going anywhere.”
Luke nods.
“I’d let you have it, maybe, if we were down to a few hundred and living in a wasteland, but… ohh, this is a really good point and I only just realised how good, stay with me.” Clyde pushes back and his swing seat flies forward, the momentum gathering in his voice as well. “What did it take to reset the timeline when that happened? Sarah Jane’s parents went off in the car, and we were back to being in the billions. No more brink of extinction, thanks very much. But they died, her parents died. And Aunt Thingy’s dead too. Lavinia. So Sarah Jane’s not blood-related to anyone either, Luke, and would you say she’s extra?”
“No. She’s… without her, we’d all be dead.”
“Hundreds of times over. Not that she owes it to the human race to save our bacon just to make up for not having kids. But it’s a pretty good proof, isn’t it? Even besides mattering to us, she just… matters.”
Objectively, Luke adds in his head, because it's what Clyde means even if the word wouldn't roll off his tongue. And it's true. To them and in spite of them, she matters for all that she is. "Yeah," says Luke. "She definitely does.”
Clyde slows his swing. “Hey. Talk to her about this, hmm? The... boys-instead-of-girls thing. She’s been around the block. Wow, wish I hadn’t said it like that.” He screws up his face. “She’s not a spring chi— there’s just not a good phrase. She wasn’t born yesterday. That one’s alright. What I mean is, she’ll get it.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so.” Clyde sighs. “And this isn’t a pickup line, Luke, but as for being attached, I don’t know what I’d do without you. For one thing, nobody else makes me think this hard.”
Luke smiles and lets it warm him, then quips back, “Usually you don’t think at all.”
“And I’m happier for it.” Clyde sweeps forward in one last swing, and jumps off at the apex. “But once in a while it’s not too bad.”
Luke stands to join him and they walk home to the attic, under the open sky.