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“What is bothering you?” Nac asked.
Tihocan blinked and looked up at his friend, his guardian, his brother in everything but blood. It would have been hard to hide his true feelings from Nac, but he hadn’t been particularly trying anyway.
Thinking about it now, Tihocan had been trying to show he was troubled, in hopes someone would ask.
He huffed in exasperated amusement at his own behaviour. “There are many things bothering me,” he said, wary to be straightforward. Too many people around, young children especially as he’d been playing with them until he’d finally decided to take a break and sit down, and he didn’t want them to hear. He was… ashamed of them finding out. Finding out that he was… considering that step at all.
“There have always been things bothering you,” Nac agreed, “but which one is winning the prize this time?”
“Nothing new,” Tihocan answered truthfully. It was… nothing new. Merely more and more pressing as time went on.
Noticing Tihocan’s hesitation, Nac gestured to him to follow him to the seating area of the spacious building, abandoned as far as official records were concerned. There by the back wall, older members of their patchwork family rested or worked on smaller projects, sewing clothes or repairing scavenged appliances. Some of them looked up, offering a smile before going back to work.
Nac sat on a pillow, leaning back with one hand resting between his head and the brick wall, relaxed but expectant, waiting for Tihocan to start speaking. Tihocan kept standing for a few moments longer, almost started pacing nervously, but with one aborted half-step he simply sighed and sat on the next pillow, hunching down with elbows on his knees.
He sighed again, feeling his chest heave.
“I can’t put it off much longer,” he said quickly, almost at a whisper. “It’s already rousing suspicions, some people have started asking… I can’t put it off anymore,” he mumbled the last part into his palms as he rubbed them over his face.
He looked to the side at Nac. “I will need to go through the procedure.”
Nac didn’t look even half as desperate as Tihocan felt, his expression didn’t actually change much at all. “We’ve known that from the start. The more you were moving forward in your career, the clearer was the need for you undergoing it.”
“But before it was always easy to put off, to explain I have better, more important things to do. Now…” Tihocan pulled at his hair, head hung low again.
He felt Nac’s hand on his shoulder and Nac’s voice was much too chipper: “ Why are you acting as if they were inviting you to your death? It’s quite the opposite, really!”
Tihocan felt the furthest from laughing at that joke.
Nac turned serious – the next time he spoke, there was no levity in his voice. “Tihocan, we have talked about this. You know nothing will really change. Not now.”
“Not now,” Tihocan repeated, “but in time-”
“Everything changes in time,” Nac cut him off. “We know better than anyone in Atlantis how quickly one’s luck can turn. Any one of us might not be here tomorrow. Are you scared watching us grow old and die while you stay young like the rich folks?” Tihocan stiffened at hearing it stated so plainly. “Tihocan, my bright little brother, don’t you think we’ll be happy if we even live long enough to die of old age?”
Tihocan gave him a side eye from behind his now messy hair. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Maybe not better,” Nac allowed, “but also not worse. We die when we die. And I’m sure everyone here will be happy that at least one of us,” Nac mussed Tihocan’s hair further with his hand, “will have a good chance living a long healthy life.”
Tihocan moved up from his slouch only to lean on the wall behind him. “I wish you all would.”
Nac’s smile softened. “You have already done so much for us. With all the money you earn that you’ve decided to share with us...”
“As if I could ever not!” Tihocan couldn’t keep the offense out of his tone. “You’re my family, it is the absolute least I can do for you. You took me in when I lost my parents, you cared for me, you even went with all my ridiculous plans for getting me an education,” he snorted, remembering the anxious but in hindsight ridiculous moments when he had enrolled to school with two older members of their family pretending to be his parents.
It had felt like a miracle that no-one had ever suspected anything, but maybe not so much now – Tihocan had long figured out that confidently faking who you were went a long way in erasing little discrepancies. Especially if such subterfuge wasn’t expected.
“You saved lives when we could buy proper medicine for our sick. We are all healthier with proper food, and blankets for cold nights,” Nac said in earnest. “We’ve always tried to make the best of our lives, but you made it so much easier for us to focus less on surviving and more on living.”
Tihocan could keep neither the smile nor the blush off his face at hearing the praise, but that smile dropped when he remembered his current situation. “Yet what allows me to help us all so much also leads me further and further away from you.” He looked around at the spacious area full of mismatched furniture, carpets, appliances and all sorts of knick-knacks, occupied by people of all ages and genders, just as mismatched when it came to blood relations, but connected by matters of life that lead them here, to the fringes of society. Orphaned at childhood, most of them. Left to fend for themselves to end up the lucky ones for finding others like them instead of dying alone on the streets, cold and hungry.
“I am having a much harder time nowadays to even come here to visit you,” Tihocan continued, uncomfortably aware how his clothing, unassuming as it was to fit in with people outside in the streets, was still much higher quality than of anyone else’s here. A perfect fit and professionally cleaned, stored in dry, pest-free wardrobes. “No-one must learn where I come from or we lose the money I earn, but the same thing that helps you also keeps me away from you.” He sighed. “And now… there is one more thing I’m pushed into that will physically make me different from you.”
“Which isn’t really that important, as we’ve already established,” Nac said.
“Did we?” Tihocan turned to him.
“I did,” Nac grinned in the annoying way only older brothers could. “It won’t really change anything – not in a negative way anyway, unless you’re worried some of us will envy you the procedure.”
Tihocan could think of a few who might, but somehow that didn’t really concern him much. Those who would envy it only because they couldn’t get it themselves, rather than because not everyone could have that access, weren’t worth his sympathy.
He sighed. “So you are saying there are positives?”
Nac gave him a supremely judgemental look, and what was it with him suddenly acting like Tihocan was a little child?
Right, so maybe he was acting a little bit like a stubborn child right now, like a toddler repeating “no” as a response to everything.
He toppled slowly to the side and flopped face down on the pillows around. He let out a whine, fully embracing his current childishness to let some frustrations out, ignoring Nac’s chuckles.
Then he rolled onto his back, trying to recollect his maturity, and pushed himself into a sitting position, his hair undeniably an absolute mess now. He let his fingers run through it and encountered several tangles, wincing at each.
“Very well,” he admitted, “there any many positives.”
“Care to tell me?” Nac prompted.
Tihocan rolled his eyes. “I will be able to get promoted further, even get a job in the government. That will mean more money to give all of you. Living longer will also mean more time to take care of you and any inevitable new arrivals.”
“Very good,” Nac nodded. “And what about something more personal? Not everything has to be about the whole family.”
“I am doing it for the family,” Tihocan frowned.
Nac gave him a look. “Already speaking like a politician, avoiding the truth?”
Tihocan pursed his lips. He felt like sighing again but he was doing it too much recently. “I am doing it also for the family. I still consider it the most important reason.”
“But?”
Tihocan crossed his arms, aware it made him look defensive. Whatever, he really shouldn’t have to pretend in front of Nac of all people. “Is it so wrong to be ambitious?”
“Not in the least,” Nac smiled warmly, “it’s one of your most striking qualities. You’ve never settled for less when you knew you were capable of doing more. Ever since you were a little boy and decided to attend school even if it meant breaking the law.”
Tihocan smirked. “Some laws are stupid.”
“Hurry up and change them then,” Nac poked him in the side.
Tihocan tried to swat the offending finger but wasn’t fast enough. “I would say I’m well on my way.”
“But can you manage to climb that annoying obstacle right in front of you?” Nac poked him again.
“I can, easily,” Tihocan managed to hit his brother’s finger this time.
Nac gave him a wide, blinding smile.
Tihocan huffed. It was not a sigh. He looked at his hand. “I guess next time you try this, I will have to take care not to break your finger.”
“I don’t think the procedure gives you quite so much more strength,” Nac shook his head, considering.
“It does some.”
“Oh well,” Nac shrugged and then quickly poked him again, making Tihocan jerk and glare at him, “the chances are high you will miss anyway.”
Tihocan’s eyes narrowed and he swatted Nac’s shoulder – or tried to, because the older man moved back quickly. Tihocan tried repeatedly, Nac leaning further and further away until he had to shuffle back with his whole body, and Tihocan abandoned his course of action in favour of tackling Nac bodily onto the pillow pile where they started scuffling.
It was oddly freeing to accept that he would go through the procedure. Even if it was inevitable, unless he was willing to give up everything he’d built, the acceptance of it took a weight off his shoulders. He couldn’t help but laugh as he and his brother fought playfully in their home, surrounded by their family.