Chapter Text
Darlene looks like him.
Elliot’s eyes flit back and forth as they track his sister crossing from one end of his apartment to the other. There’s a stagger to her step; it almost looks like she’s glitching out.
Why haven’t I noticed it before?
She rips the cushions from the couch and hunches over, her hands spread out as she searches for something Elliot can’t see. When she doesn’t find what she’s looking for, she growls out of frustration and stomps to his bed, yanking the sheets away and overturning all of the pillows.
They have the same hair. The same skin tone. They even walk the same way.
She definitely has his temper.
Darlene growls again, pulling away from Elliot’s bedroom and pivoting so she can head towards the kitchen. She digs through all of the cupboards and cabinets, cursing under her breath when she comes up with nothing. Flipper is excitedly trailing behind her, curiously sniffing at her boots.
I guess that means I look more like Mom.
“Darlene.” Elliot heaves a sigh just as his sister whirls around to face him.
“What, what?” Her eyes are alight and her voice is hoarse. “What do you want?”
“You leave right after the preliminary hearing, disappear for four days, and then you show up out of nowhere, break into my apartment while I’m out, and tear the whole place apart.” He sighs again as he gestures at the mess she just made. “What’s going on?”
She’s been like this for two weeks now. She hasn’t been the same since we left the hospital.
Is it the trial that’s stressing her out? It must be. Who wouldn’t be stressed out by it? We’re being tried for some of the biggest crimes ever pulled in human history. We’re looking at life behind bars. We might never see each other again, at least not in person.
I’m running out of ideas. I don’t know what else I can do for her. I don’t know if this is something I can pull her out of…but I have to try.
She helped me. She spent her entire life helping me. This is the least I can do.
“Darlene.” Elliot takes a single, cautious step forward. “You’re not okay.”
She throws her head back to laugh, but there’s no humour to it.
Fuck, she even sounds like him.
“No shit, Sherlock.” The dark circles beneath her eyes are the most prominent part of her face.
“What are you looking for?”
I know the answer to this. I just want to know if she knows.
“I know you have some around here.” Darlene returns to his bedroom and crouches in front of the bookshelf.
“I haven’t done any of that in months.” Elliot shakes his head. “I’m clean.”
‘I’m clean’? He’s been clean. We’ve been clean.
“Doesn’t mean you still can’t have shit leftover.” Darlene’s rummaging around his desk.
“That stuff isn’t gonna help you, Darlene.” Elliot sighs again. “When I got out of the hospital we made a promise to get better - to get better together. What happened to that?”
It’s been a downward spiral since we left the hospital. She comes and goes. She’s a ghost of her former self.
She’s obviously trying to run from something. Something is causing her pain and she’s numbing it by getting fucked up with whatever she can find.
I’ve been there before. I’ve been there way too many times. I know what it’s like.
Darlene shoots back up to full height and half-turns to face her brother. She’s swaying on the spot; it looks like she’s been drinking too. “Do you really think I’m in the mood for a lecture right now?”
Maybe I should try a different approach.
He takes off his messenger bag and zips it open, taking a second to dig through it before grabbing what he’s looking for and tossing it onto the small table in front of the couch. “Look - they printed another one.”
Darlene’s pallid brow scrunches in confusion, taken aback by the sudden change in subject. She turns her head to glance at the magazine Elliot tossed onto the table; the front page is covered with a blown up photo of him hastily walking down a random street, stuffing his face with fries. The words FSOCIETY MASTERMIND COUNTS CORRUPTION, NOT CALORIES are stretched above his head in large capital letters.
She’s been collecting these since the trial started. I thought this would cheer her up once I saw her again.
She cracks a small smile before shaking her head and shuffling over to the couch, briefly bending over to pick up the cushions and return them to their rightful spots before taking a seat. She sighs and leans forward, resting her elbows on her thighs and burying her face in her hands. Flipper dutifully curls up by her feet. “Mastermind.” Her tone is languid, dragging. Defeated. “Ironic.”
He chuckles as he moves to sit next to her. He eyes her exhausted expression, her tangled hair, her pale skin, her chipped nail polish; she’s angled away from him, and her head is bent in an attempt to avoid eye contact. His heart suddenly feels ten pounds too heavy, threatening to plummet straight into his stomach.
I can’t stand seeing her like this.
Is this how she felt when she was trying to help me?
Elliot wrings his hands as he tries to think of something to say. “Darlene, I-”
She flops back against the couch and tilts her head back to stare at the ceiling. “I thought there was something poetic about the world pooling together the money we gave them to bail us out. Now I’m not so sure.”
He blinks at her. “Why not?”
“Because we can’t fucking go anywhere without getting hounded by reporters, paparazzi…” She shakes her head again. “I ran into a few of those fsociety truthers the other day. Tried to convince me that we’re not the ones responsible for everything and we’re just taking the fall for the real leaders so they can keep sticking it to the man while the world is distracted with the trial, or some bullshit like that.” Darlene scoffs. “They were having a hard time believing that a girl co-created the anonymous hacker collective that kicked off one of the biggest revolutions in modern history.”
My sister can code circles around the script kiddies who think they have what it takes to do what we did. “Don’t pay attention to them. They’re not worth your time.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Bailing us out was a good thing. It would’ve been a lot harder dealing with the trial by ourselves, in individual cells, in different prisons.”
“How is this any easier?” She grumbles as she jerks her head towards the window. Elliot can hear the small group of stubborn reporters and faithful fsociety supporters gathered outside. “We’re still holed up in a tiny room with nowhere to go.”
“You haven’t been holed up.” Elliot points out. “You still haven’t told me where you’ve been these past few days.” When Darlene ignores him, he sighs. “I’m worried about you.”
“That’s a first.” She scoffs again and crosses her arms. “It’s usually the other way around.”
Yeah, that hurts as much as you think it does.
But I deserve it. That’s what I get for being such a shitty brother all her life.
There’s a semi-long pause. Elliot drops his eyes to his sneakers, frowning for a second before taking a deep breath. He lifts his head to glance at her. “This isn’t about the trial.”
I always knew it wasn’t about the trial. It was never about the trial.
Darlene turns her head away from him, choosing to stare at his fridge instead. When Elliot deduces she isn’t going to give him an answer, he speaks up again. “C’mon, Darlene - I know what this is about. You haven’t been right since I told you-”
“Stop.” She hisses. Her arms are still crossed; the muscles in her forearms are tense.
She feels guilty. I can see it all over her face.
“You know I never held anything against you for what happened.” The couch groans as Elliot shifts in his seat. “You didn’t even know what was happening. I didn’t want you to know.”
Darlene stubbornly keeps her body angled away from his, but he can see her eyes glossing over. She shakes her head and quickly raises one hand to angrily wipe her unshed tears away, but she continues to give him the silent treatment.
I have to keep trying. She can’t shut me out like this, not when we need each other more than ever.
He sucks in another breath, taking a second to steel himself before reaching out to place a comforting hand on her knee, which has been anxiously bouncing up and down since Darlene took a seat. “I wanted to protect you from him.” He inhales again, slower and deeper than the last. “I didn’t want him to hurt you like…” He falters for a second, swallowing hard. “Like he hurt me.”
If I don’t talk about it, the memories will get suppressed again. I’ll disappear again and I’ll lose control. I can’t keep shit in anymore. I have to open up. I have to let her in. I have to let her know that it’s okay to open up in return, because if she doesn’t she’s going to disappear too. She’s going to leave again and I don’t want that. I don’t think she does either, but she’s sinking into what’s familiar. She’s falling back into old habits because it’s what she knows. It’s comfortable, even if it makes her miserable.
Darlene chokes on a sob, tucking in her chin in a feeble attempt to hide the tears streaking down her cheeks. “I made things worse.” She croaks, and Elliot vehemently shakes his head before scooting a little closer towards her.
“No you didn’t.” He insists, squeezing her knee to emphasize his point.
“Yes I did.” She sniffles. “I fucking left you, Elliot. I left you to deal with Mom and all of that shit by yourself. I could’ve done something. I could’ve…” She shakes her head as her eyes well up again. “I should’ve known. The signs were all there. I should’ve figured it out, but my head was too far up my own ass to see why you did the things you did.” She lurches forward again, covering her face with her hands as she continues to cry. “I bailed on you when you needed me most. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to talk to you, or how to help you, and I couldn’t handle any of that, so I chickened out and ran away like the fucking coward that I am. Fuck, I…” She pulls her hands away, laughing humourlessly through her tears. “I used to get so fucking jealous of you, did you know that? He spent all of his time with you. He’d pick you up from school to play hooky with you for the rest of the day, and I’d be left wondering why he never bothered to pick me up too. When we went to Coney Island, you guys went on all of the rides together while I had to wait with Mom. He’d sit with you for hours teaching you how to code, and I couldn’t even get five fucking minutes with him. I spent so much time trying to figure out what you had that he loved so much, and why I didn’t have it. I couldn’t understand it.” Darlene sucks in a shaky breath. “When he lost his job at E Corp, I was actually…really happy. I thought that meant he’d have more time to hang out with me, but…” Her eyes drop to the floor. “Well, you know how that went.”
Elliot can only stare back in stunned silence, his eyes wider than they already are and his mouth slightly agape.
Our childhood was shitty to say the least, but it never occurred to me exactly how shitty it was for Darlene. I always felt like Mom treated her worse than she treated me, and she’s right about...him acting like she never existed. He ignored her even before he became my monster.
Maybe our parents never wanted her in the first place. They only called the cops after she got kidnapped at Coney Island because they didn’t want the neighbours suspecting anything. If it weren’t for that, I don’t think they would’ve bothered looking for her.
Darlene spent her entire life feeling like no one wanted her around, like she never mattered to anyone. Even I know what it feels like to be wanted by someone. How could I let this happen?
“He spent all of his time with me because I wanted to make sure he didn’t have time for you. If he got the chance to be with you, just the two of you alone, I wouldn’t be able to protect you from him. I had to keep him away.” Elliot frowns. “I needed to keep an eye on him so he wouldn’t get to you.”
“Yeah, and look what happened to you.” She laughs bitterly. “People care about me, and then they either get hurt or killed. I’m fucking poison, Elliot.”
“That’s not true.” He sighs.
“Oh yeah?” She finally turns to meet eyes with him, glaring menacingly. “Then explain what happened to Cisco. To Trenton and Mobley. To…” She swallows. “Angela.”
He can feel a tightness in his chest.
I’m not over it, if you haven’t been able to tell.
I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.
She left an empty space inside of me, and I’m cursed to spend the rest of my life desperately trying to fill it.
“You’re not the only one responsible for what happened to them. I had a part to play too.”
“I recruited Trenton and Mobley into fsociety.” Darlene hisses. “I convinced Cisco to go back to Susan Jacobs’ house to get that tape I left behind. It was my fucking idea to get Angela to plant that femtocell. It was all me, Elliot. All of that was my fucking fault.” She sniffles again and swipes at her eyes. “You should’ve stayed asleep. You should’ve stayed in that stupid dream world where I never existed. Everything was perfect there. You had everything you ever wanted. You were happy, and most importantly I wasn’t there to fuck anything up.”
I told her everything, and I mean everything. I didn’t want us to keep any more secrets from each other, and she deserves to know the truth after everything I - they - put her through in the past year.
But now I’m starting to regret doing that. Maybe it was a bad idea to tell her about the dream. She didn’t really need to know…did she?
No. Of course she needs to know.
“It was nice, but it wasn’t real.” Elliot frowns. “And I didn’t have everything. I didn’t have you.”
“I’m the last thing you need.” Darlene shakes her head. “None of this - any of this - would’ve happened if I didn’t come back to the city.”
“If you didn’t come back, I probably wouldn’t even be here.” Elliot pats her knee again. “You brought me back. I would’ve been stuck in my own head forever if not for you.”
“Just…stop.” She closes her eyes, and more tears trickle down her cheeks. “Stop trying to make me feel better. You don’t have to do this.”
“Of course I do.” Elliot frowns. “You’re my sister, Darlene. I have to look out for you. I want to keep you safe.”
She jerks forward with another violent sob. “Fuck-” Her voice cracks before she collapses into a full on crying fit, and he reluctantly catches her in his arms, pulling her into an embrace as he leans back against the couch.
I don’t remember a lot of things, but one thing I do remember is the day our parents brought Darlene home from the hospital.
I wasn’t there when she was born. They dropped me off at a neighbours’ when Mom went into labour and they picked me up when she was discharged. I remember how tired our parents looked, how Mom just dumped her car seat on the floor like she already didn’t want anything to do with her. He didn’t even look at her; he just took off his shoes and jacket and went away somewhere.
I remember sitting on our living room floor with her car seat right in front of me. She had her tiny fists waving in the air. Her tonsils were the only things I could see. She was crying, probably wondering where Mom was.
Her cheeks were really red. I think I reached out to her, maybe touched one of her hands or something, and she just stopped screaming, and she stared back at me. She stared for a really long time, like she was trying to memorize my face. All I could do was stare back.
I loved her instantly.
From then on, the only way we could get her to stop crying was to have me close by. There was a point where both of our parents gave up and decided to try the ‘cry it out’ strategy, which, looking back on it now, was probably just an excuse they used so they don’t have to deal with her anymore. They eventually moved her crib into my bedroom because she’d sleep longer when she knew I wasn’t too far away.
She was so small, and she cried so much. I think her constant crying came from the fact that our parents never really bothered to look after her the way you’re supposed to look after a baby. It made me lose a lot of sleep, but I didn’t care. I already knew by then that she counted on me to make her feel safe. I was her big brother; I had to look after her. It was just something I knew I was supposed to do. It was second nature. I was also just really happy to have another kid in the house. I couldn’t wait for her to grow up so we could play together. I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.
“Jesus,” Darlene mumbles against his shoulder. “I’m still making it about myself even after everything you told me. I don’t know how to fucking stop, do I?”
“I think you deserve to make things about yourself for once.” He chuckles. “You spent your entire life doing things for other people. You looked after me when we were kids, and then you handled fsociety mostly on your own because I was too fucked up to co-lead most of the time. I treated you like shit. I freaked out on you, I pushed you away, I made you feel like I didn’t want you around…but you stuck by me anyway. You showed up and you stayed.” He tightens his arms around her and presses his cheek against her hair. “It’s about time I do the same for you.”
There was this one time when she was hungry, but our parents were too busy arguing in another room to notice. I knew she was hungry because she cried a certain way when she wanted to be fed, and I was the only one who was around her long enough to figure that out. Imagine four-year-old me grabbing a chair from the kitchen table because I wasn’t tall enough to reach the top shelf in the fridge. I was too young to know I had to warm up the bottle first, but even if I did know I wouldn’t have been able to anyway, so I fed it to her cold. She didn’t take it at first, but I think she got to a point where she was so hungry she was willing to drink whatever I put in front of her.
I was four years old when I learned that she had no one else but me to rely on. Just me and my baby sister against the world.
Then, somewhere down the line, the tables turned and she ended up looking after me. All of a sudden I was the one who needed constant reassurance. I was the one who needed help.
Darlene was always there for me. She never left my side. We escaped our shitty house to hide in movie theatres together. She crawled into bed with me when Mom was being an asshole. She held my hand when I was scared and didn’t know the difference between what was real and what was in my head. She was always there to keep me from drifting too far away. She kept me anchored to reality. She made me feel safe.
I think it’s time I turned things back around. It’s time I start being her big brother again. It’s my turn to be the anchor, the grounding force that keeps her centred so she doesn’t spin out of control.
She needs me.
She swallows hard. “Do you remember last year on your birthday when you told me I was your trigger?” She pauses. “Well, it technically wasn’t you, but you get what I mean.”
I kind of don’t, but this sounds like something one of the…others would say to her. “You are my trigger, but in a good way.”
“I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a good trigger.” Darlene scoffs.
“There is. You were the only thing that could bring me back, and...they didn’t like that. The only reason why you weren’t in my dream was because they knew you’d wake me up. You brought Mr. Robot out because he knew you’d risk bringing me back and ruining his plans. He hated you because he knew what you were capable of doing. He didn’t want me to wake up just yet; he didn’t think I was ready.”
“But are you ready now?” Her voice is muffled against his shirt.
Good question. “Is anyone ever really ready for anything? What matters is that I’m back, and I’m here to stay. I’m not going anywhere, Darlene.”
She sniffles and shakes her head. “You better not.” He can feel her shoulders relaxing.
I think she’ll be okay for now.
“You should crash here tonight.” He pulls away from her but keeps one hand on her shoulder. “This is the safest place for you to be right now.”
Darlene gives him a small nod as she reaches up to wipe away the last of her tears. “I’m not planning on leaving anytime soon.” She plucks her phone out of her pocket, staring at the blank screen for a second before sighing and tucking it back into her jeans.
Oh. This is probably another reason why she’s been so bummed out lately.
Elliot quirks a brow. “Still haven’t heard back?”
“No.” Her voice is wavering again, and her breaths are getting shorter and shallower. “Nothing but radio silence for two and a half fucking weeks. What if Irving lied to us? What if he just said the Dark Army stopped caring because he knew we’d let our guards down, and they-”
“You can’t think like that.” Elliot squeezes her shoulder as a gentle reminder to calm down. “I’m sure she’s fine. You said you spoke to her when we were in the hospital, right? Didn't she say she needed some time to herself?”
“Yeah, but...I dunno.” Darlene shakes her head as her eyes well up again. “It's just...this feeling I have. I can't shake it.”
“She’s fine. She has to be.” Elliot assures her. “Dom's been through a lot; she probably needs the space to process everything.”
She leans forward and runs a hand down her face. “Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she used this as an excuse to cut off all contact. I wouldn’t want me in my own life either.”
She gave me a rundown of everything she and Dom went through together - what she put Dom through, specifically. I guess hurting the people who care about us runs in the family.
“I don’t think it’s anything like that.” He insists. “She wouldn't lie to you. If she said she needed space, that's probably what she meant. Like I said, she's been through a lot - and even if she was laying low in case the Dark Army was for real, she slipped away from them more than once. I don’t think they’d be able to get rid of her that easily.”
“She barely made it out the last time she got away.” Darlene swallows hard. “She almost fucking died because of me, Elliot. She was going to end up like Cisco and all the others.”
“But she didn’t.” He points out. “Just…give it time, okay? Be patient. She’ll reach out when she’s ready.”
He watches her defeatedly flop back against the couch, throwing her hands up as she lolls her head back to stare up at the ceiling. “Yeah. I guess.” She swallows and turns to look away from him again. “Thanks for putting up with me. You already have enough shit to deal with and this is the last thing you need right now. It’s the last thing anyone needs.”
Elliot shakes his head in disagreement. “Like I said, you’re my sister. I want to look out for you, just like how you’ve always looked out for me.” He slowly rises to his feet and gestures towards his bed. “Get some sleep. I know you haven’t gotten much of that lately.”
“I’m not taking your bed, Elliot.” Darlene protests, and she groans when he shakes his head.
“You need it more than I do.” He nods towards his bed. “C’mon.”
She heaves a sigh before relenting and standing up. “Fine.”
He lets her use the bathroom first. Once they’re both washed up and changed, Elliot grabs one of the pillows and a spare blanket from his closet and makes himself comfortable on the couch while Darlene crawls into bed. He lifts his head a few inches off the pillow to glance in his sister’s direction. She’s just settling in, pulling the sheets up to her shoulders before reaching over to the side table to turn off the lamp.
“I love you.” He calls out to her. “I just want to make sure you know that.”
I don’t really know where we’re going to go from here, but I feel a little better knowing that we’re doing this together.
He can hear her sniffling.
“I do.” She sounds a little stuffy. “I love you too, Elliot.”
The corners of Elliot’s mouth curl up in a small smile before he sets his head back down and allows himself to fall asleep.