Archive of Our Own

1. MY NAME ISN’T MALEN’KIY PRINTS

It was once, though.

A brief five years in which he was stupid enough to believe that this was what life was going to be for him. Inconsequential. Playing with toys on his bedroom floor, being picked up and passed around and loved by everyone because he was just a child. It didn’t matter if one of the White Death’s goons was currently planning to try and assassinate him—he was young enough that he was just malen'kiy prints to them. Too innocent to be tainted by his gruesome nature, unmarred by the cruelty of his lineage.

And then his sister was born.

And she was malen'kiy prints from then on. Precious, even despite not being what his father wanted. A backup, he had heard him say once, in case their eldest wasn’t good enough. Or maybe just killed along the way. Either was a possibility in his eyes.

He will give his mother this: she loved him. She always loved him.

She just didn’t love him more than she loved his father.

2. MY NAME IS PREPOSTEROUS

Gun to his head, he couldn’t tell anyone what really happened. His memory is foggy. It has been for ten years. Suffocated with drugs because it’s better than remembering anything he’s ever had to actually deal with. Happier that way, too. It’s a win for him, if anybody asks. But if he was pressed about what happened, how he ended up here, he could catch onto fragments. He could make up the things to fill the gaps if they really wanted him to.

He didn’t live at home with his father anymore. Not technically. He had a duffel bag full of clothes and a pocket full of cash and he couch surfed or spent nights in motels to avoid going home. But eventually he always made it back. He needed to. Money runs out.

And he was planning on it. That morning he had woken up half past noon, his head pounding, his wallet almost empty. One more night left in him, if he stretched it, if he was careful.

So he was careful. He was just only careful with the money and nothing else.

He stole food from the cupboards at his friend’s place, scrubbed his face in the sink, sat on the floor beside the washer because his last outfit finally reached a point beyond acceptable wearability and if he didn’t do anything about it soon, people were going to start turning him away.

He killed the hours of the day until he knew he couldn’t go back home. Maybe his father had finally started sleeping at night again, but he wasn’t going to go back without knowing for certain. He needed the safety of daylight, of the guards that always liked him rather than the ones that preferred him on his knees. And night time was better in the city, anyway. Neon lights and laughter and distant sound of music.

And with his clothes dry, with his coat back on, he went down the street to the right instead of left. Away from home. Away from where his mother’s body had been burned to nothing and scooped up into a plastic baggie, sitting inside an ornamental urn worth more than his own life, he’s sure. But he always knew that. Always knew that his mother was the one to be treasured and not broken.

And where did that get all of them?

His father locked up, never leaving, distraught. His sister backpacking around Europe. His mother in an urn. Him at a club.

And see, the things is, he is stupid. Anybody would know that just by looking at him. But he’s never really learned his lesson. Not from running from the cops, not from idiot gangsters that don’t know how to cover their tracks, and certainly not getting wrapped up in a pretty girl’s face telling him she lives close by.

Because really, how many times can the son of the White Death get kidnapped because he followed a girl to her apartment and she gave him something he thought was just a beer but was laced with something that knocked him out?

Apparently at least three times.

He’s sure he’s stupid enough he’ll fall for it again. Pretty girls are pretty girls. They’re hard to ignore. And he’s not really used to being wanted, is he?

He doesn’t really remember the next bit, so when he’s asked, he makes it up based on what he assumes really did happen: they drugged him. They kept him in the warehouse for twenty-four hours before one of the White Death’s thugs paid the Triad their ransom. And then the twins.

He remembers them.

Guns, blood, swords. Hitting the ground, biting his cheek, his tongue. Scraping his face and hands against the cement. Thrown into a car, head rolling, everything blurry. Nothing really mattering. Too loud. Everything too loud.

And then the train.

You seem like a Percy. Young. Sweet. Not all there.

3. MY NAME ISN’T PERCY

It’s a familiar feeling. The need to prove himself. The need to bite back, to show that he isn’t young or sweet, that he can be just as cruel and vicious as his father even if all he has are words. And that’s always the problem, because he has no real power. He doesn’t carry a gun, doesn’t even have a switchblade anymore. Lost somewhere when he was going from one place to the next. But he isn’t sweet, he’s not young, and his name isn’t Percy , but somehow the twins stick to it, saying it like it’s somehow a more ridiculous name than Tangerine or Lemon. 

But all he’s got are useless threats and his hand ziptied to a fucking armrest. Trapped all over again, but probably for the best. He would get off this train if he could. But he’s out of money, lost his bag of clothes, and too tired to try convincing someone to let him stay the night, so all he’d be doing is putting off the inevitable.

When they leave him, he tugs at the restraint, tries to slip his wrist through. The world outside of him speeding by, taking him further and further away from something that felt safer than home, if he can still consider it that. How much time does a person need to spend at a place for it to be considered home?

He’s thinking about this stupid theoretical/hypothetical/rhetorical question of his when it shows up. It, he thinks, because he’s got no fucking clue what it is. Moromon. Or Momomon. Something like that—

Stupid mascot that’s been branding ever train car, bus stop, and billboard for the last year. Blowing up as kid’s shows do when they get traction, which isn’t hard when all it takes is sticking an iPad in a five year old’s hands with autoplay turned on. Look at these bright colors. Look at these stupid plots.

Who gives a shit!

It leans over him, pushing at him and he manages to knock away the arm once or twice, probably because being in a fucking mascot suit isn’t exactly the peak of athleticism. He’s not that skilled at any of this, and he’s got one hand tied down, and maybe he doesn’t know when somebody is trying to kidnap him but he certainly knows when someone is trying to kill him. And he doesn’t even scream. It’s a half-hearted fight, because what does it matter? There’s nothing really left.

But that’s his first thought, and his second thought is this:

If he’s going to die, he doesn’t want it to be by a children’s mascot. He’d at least like to OD somewhere in private, maybe with his favorite shoes on. Not these beat up boots with blood in the treads.

“—fucking Christ—”

He can’t remember which one of them is which anymore, just knows that a person moves quickly, shoves the mascot back. A needle hits the table, rolls across and down to the floor. He yanks his hand back and feels the plastic dig into his skin, feels his fingers and his palm scrape against the armrest and bend at an odd angle just to get free but all he does is get the side of his hand sliced by the edge of a knife pressed under the plastic and cutting him loose.

The other twin grabs him by his collar and pulls him out of his seat, shoving him backward away from the mascot, which flails against the ground trying to get back up again.

“Would you fucking go?”

He blinks back. The taller twin grabs him by the shoulders and spins him around, shoving him forward. He stumbles down the car, slipping out the automatic door. Running/walking/tripping over his own two feet further and further down the line until he’s grabbed by his jacket and shoved into a bathroom.

“Stay here, Percy.”

“My name isn’t Percy—”

The door slams closed. He stares at it, waiting for it to open back up. Expecting it to. He stares at it long enough that he convinces himself that there’s nothing else beyond this flat surface. Just a white nothingness and he’s dead. He should be dead, shouldn’t he?

He steps forward and clicks the lock and sits on the floor. Head between his knees, hands over his ears. Eyes shut.

He should definitely be dead.

4. MY NAME IS OBNOXIOUS

People have never really liked him. Maybe when he was a child he got a free pass, but even children are eventually hated when they don’t grow out of their immaturity fast enough. He had until he was ten years old to stop being a spoiled selfish brat, and it never really happened. There are a few people that work for his father that like him, but they only ever liked him because they knew if the White Death died, he would be a shitty successor, if he even took up the handle at all.

His father liked to preach to him what it would take to become an heir. Like a king and his prince, when really both of them knew he was just a stupid nobleman that would get executed if he made a wrong move.

So he was an obnoxious kid, but he knew from the time he was young what even the most annoying piece of shit could offer someone that people would always accept.

And the first time, it didn’t go so well.

He ran. Out of the bedroom, down the hall, into his best hiding spot that his father hadn’t been able to find yet. Cried as silently as he could manage. Choked himself with the hem of his sleeve when he heard his father’s footsteps looking for him. He got good at hiding though, at being quiet. He was better, though, at hiding the things after he was caught. Scars on his back, bruises on his thighs. Ink weaving over old burns and track marks like they’re part of the vines growing across his body.

Usually, after a while, his father would stop looking. And if he waited longer, he’d forget what he was so angry about. Or, at the very least, his wrath would pull back enough that the punishment wouldn’t be so cruel.

Not that night.

He wasn’t found. He was stupid. He crept out of his hiding spot on his own, needing to go to the bathroom and not willing to wet his pants like he had done a dozen times before because he was too scared. Same old story. Always the same old story.

But his dad caught him, dragged him by his hair into the living room. Forced him on his knees and shoved the barrel of a gun in his mouth.

And he remembers what his father told him, because who would forget?

This is all you have to offer people. You had better learn to give it to them.

His mother was there. Late coming home. Late enough that he was already on his knees crying with the gun in his mouth as she screamed, begging him to stop.

He’s our son.

And what a worthless son he is.

And then his father pulled the trigger, because that’s what he liked to do. Dig the knife in deeper. It wasn’t loaded, but what is it that people say about shitty gifts they receive around the holidays?

It’s the thought that counts.

5. MY NAME ISN’T SLEEPING BEAUTY

He falls asleep. The threat of death really isn’t that new to him, and he can always sleep. It’s one of the only skills he really has. Close his eyes, tell himself that it will pass the time faster, and he’s out. He’s not even sure how long he’s asleep before he wakes to someone smacking the bathroom door, yanking at the handle where it’s stuck in place.

He stands, opens it, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Lemon was right,” he says. “Fuckin’ sleeping beauty over here. We’re getting off the train at the next stop.”

“We’re already at Kyoto?”

Tangerine stares at him. He stares back. Sees the blood on the collar of his shirt. He’s missing his jacket. Probably has a broken nose. 

“What happened to you?”

“Been trying to keep you alive. Harder than I thought. How’d you manage to piss off so many people, anyway?”

“It’s a gift.”

“I can tell.”

The voice clicks on over the speakers, announcing the stop. He follows Tangerine down to the next car, where Lemon is already standing. No briefcase. Blood on his shirt, too.

Probably better if he slept through whatever happened. 

The train slows to a stop, the doors slide open. The three step out. Lemon first, him second, Tangerine just behind him. He moves up close beside him, an arm draped over his shoulder, tugging him close. Lips pressed to his ear.

“If you run off, I’m going to fucking kill you. You got that?”

“You’d be signing your own death warrant,” he replies. “My father wouldn’t be too happy if you killed me.”

“You’ve got a lot to learn, kid.”

6. MY NAME IS AN ALBATROSS

It would be expected of a person to be surprised if their father hired an assassin to kill them.

He’s sitting in the back of a car the pair stole from a nearby parking lot, his hands folded in his lap, pressed against his forehead as they tell him.

The person in the Mogamen costume—

“It’s Momonga,” Lemon says. “Christ, it’s not that hard to remember.”

The person in the Momonga costume was an assassin. The Hornet. Hired to kill him, like she’s done many people before. Poison from a snake. Kills in thirty seconds. Internal bleeding, very painful. So they’re told.

He doesn’t ask how they know it was his father. He decides he doesn’t need to know that. 

Because he has a why, and that’s enough.

Because he was born, and he wasn’t right. Because he’s not good with giving orders, and maybe that would be excusable but he can’t even take them. Because he’s selfish and spoiled and the only thing he was ever good at was getting on his knees before he even learned why people wanted him so badly for it. And even then, he aged out of it in their eyes. Because he’s useless and stupid and not all there.

Because he takes too much money, because he doesn’t have a job, because he does drugs and hangs out with idiots. Because his parents have had to bail him out of jail more times than they can count, because he’s stupid enough to get kidnapped twice. No, three times now.

And because he’s the reason his mom is dead.

No. It’s not really a surprise that his father would prefer him dead. He just doesn’t get why he bothered to pay off the Triad anyway. They would’ve made him suffer a lot more than thirty seconds, and that’s what he would deserve. His mom suffered more than thirty seconds. His father would’ve liked that. To make him feel that tenfold. Stretch it out until there are no body parts left to be chopped off and shipped to his doorstep with ever increasing pleas to pay them what they want.

“What was it?” he asks, looking up. “The ransom?”

“Ten mil.”

“Yen?”

“Yeah, yen.”

He leans back against the seat. Somehow that seems more shocking than the rest of it.

Even the Triad knew his father didn’t value his life that much, but he thought they’d at least up the price on his head. Make it all a bit more worth it.

He puts his hands in his pockets, feels the sticky back of a paper and pulls it out.

Percy.

Not. All. There.

Sure, Lemon got that part right.

7. MY NAME ISN’T KID

“What are we going to do with the kid?”

They aren’t talking quietly, but they are pretending like he isn’t there. Thinking he’s asleep. Sleeping Beauty, of course.

They drove for a long time, switching up cars before crowding into the back of a taxi and spat out in front of a motel. He’s stayed at it before. He knows exactly what to expect when the twins pool together what little cash they have to cover the room for the night. And when they get in, he claims the first bed he can get to, pulling blankets around him, hiding his face against the pillows.

His body aches. Need settling in. Too long since he used and wanting it more with his past hanging around him like a ghost. Nipping at him like a cat begging for food.

And the twins talk. They talk a lot. Ideas and plans formulating, struck down, built back up again.

And then:

“What are we going to do with the kid?”

“Can’t take him with.”

“’Course not.” A pause. “Why?”

“Gonna try and get someone out of the country without his daddy noticing? We’ll be fucked before we even step foot into the airport.”

“And here I was thinking it was more of a getting him clean issue.”

“Not our job to get him clean.”

“Could leave him.”

“Probably best.”

8. MY NAME IS A CURSE

The thing about getting clean that he’s always been told was that people had to hit rock bottom. It had to be their idea. If someone forced it on them, they were just going to relapse. These are the things addicts have to learn for themselves. And sure, maybe that could be true for someone, but it was never true for him.

Because he’s been to rehab. Been to locked basements of his own house. Been forced to go cold turkey, throwing up on cement floors and with skinned knees. He’s been taken off slow, careful doses monitored by someone trusted by the White Death. Or, more accurately, his mom. He’s been at his rock bottom. He’s begged for help. He’s begged for people to leave him alone. He has stood on rooftops thinking it would be easier if he fell than have to deal with it again.

And none of it has worked. He always goes back because he’s always had something to run from, and it’s always been a place to run to. Even when he didn’t have money, he could just lean on who his father is and they’d be too scared to say no. He could trade sex, could threaten them, could convince them it would help pay off a debt they had to the White Death because it seemed everyone had a debt to the White Death.

This time is not any different.

The twins aren’t kind to him, but they aren’t monsters. They take him with when they leave the motel in the morning. They pick up their belongings from a car left abandoned in a garage on the other side of the city, take him to a contact they have in the city. Bribe him into letting the three of them stay with him.

And he can say one thing:

The only thing worse than going cold turkey while locked in a basement left to his own devices is going cold turkey on a boat with two people that would be better off if the withdrawal killed him.

9. MY NAME ISN’T JUNIOR

“You have to eat.”

He doesn’t mean to act like a child refusing to eat their vegetables, but he turns his nose up at the food, curling away. And despite the layer of sweat on his skin, he is freezing. The blanket does little to help. The boat is cold. It rocks, sloshing him back and forth, making everything that is brought to him feel like it is coated in a layer of algae. If he had any appetite to lose, it would be gone the moment the door opens to the cabin and brings with it the smell of salt and fish.

It’s docked somewhere with a dozen other boats, each owner sketchier than the last, and they leave him here alone most of the day. Lemon doesn’t come by often. Better things to do. But Tangerine does. Same thing every day, trying to force him to eat, shoving water bottles in his face. Yelling at him, but in a way that slices right between needlessly cruel and needfully so.

“Don’t be a prick, just fucking eat,” Tangerine repeats. “Or fucking die, I don’t give a shit.”

“You could have left me.”

“I should’ve. Fucking liability, though.” He blows out an exhale. “You know you aren’t the only one with problems in this fucking world, junior.”

“And yet I’m the only one that matters,” he replies.

He is too exhausted to fight the ever present nicknames. Each one making its life and death cycle around the group of three until they eventually tired of using it. Wish he could say the same about Tangerine and Lemon, though, but they seem hellbent on keeping the two of them.

Lemon, though, is very rarely on the boat.

Seasick, he was told, like the boat moves more than a yard back and forth. He thinks it’s probably just easier to devote the task of taking care of the addict to the only one mean enough to still berate him while he’s throwing up.

He hasn’t seen him in a while. It feels empty, almost.

“Lemon dead?” he asks.

“No, Lemon is not dead.”

“He is nicer than you,” he says.

“Not by much.”

“By enough,” he replies. “Is he watching his Thomas the Tank Train?”

“Thomas the—” Tangerine pauses. “Yeah. Sure. Listen, are you going to fucking eat or do you want me to treat you like a toddler and feed you myself?”

He shakes his head. Turns back. 

Tangerine will leave eventually. He always does. The minutes tick by. One at a time before he finally gets up. The food set on the table beside him with a heavy clank before he stomps back out of the boat again. Staying God knows where.

He will try to eat, maybe.

For now, all he can think about is Tangerine calling him junior.

10. MY NAME IS A LINEAGE

He does look like his father, sometimes. When he’s tired, especially. Maybe because he can’t open his eyes completely, and everything is still soft and nightmarish around the edges. Sort of lost behind the dreams. He can see his father’s face imprinted over his own, making up similarities where there are none, erasing every bit of his mother and sister in his features. Thinking of the things he has done that he wishes he had no part in.

Mostly, he just knows he looks like shit, so maybe that’s all there is. Dark circles under his eyes, skin pale. Old wounds healed but he’s certain he can feel the bruising and the scrapes, but that’s like all of them. Sitting at the back of his neck with everything else he’s ever felt.

Just like the need to throw any kind of progress he’s made right down the drain. His father used to tell him progress was an illusion. False poetry told by hopeful fools that will eventually berate themselves when they fall back off a wagon and see what useless steps forward they’ve really made.

He has not made any. He has never made any. He wants to get out of here and go find someone that will sell him something. He wants that blurry blackness of being high to be his reality. It’s better that way.

And it’s certainly better than being called junior.

11. MY NAME ISN’T LUCKY

“So, what should we do with you?”

They’re at a cat cafe. A place he’s never stepped foot inside of and is fairly certain neither of them have, either. But they have a way about them, something that he used to have, of being able to own a place so no one will question the weird foreigners in a Japanese cat cafe. There’s drinks and pastries around the table, separating him to his own side. Lemon tarts and milk tea.

He leans on one hand, shrugs, picks at the orange glazed muffin in front of him.

“No opinion?”

“No.”

“You care if we just leave you on the street then?” Tangerine asks. “Get you off our backs, hm? Because it’ll be a lot easier to get out of the country without having to worry about a dickweed mobster’s kid.”

“You could have left me before.”

Lemon sighs. “Yeah, well, we had to do something while we waited for the White Death to calm down.”

“Fuckin’ lucky is what you are,” Tangerine says. He sniffs and looks behind him at the person that enters. Both of them jumpy, like his father’s going to walk into a fucking cat cafe. He leans back across the table, voice lowered. “We expect a thanks, you know. We got you clean.”

See how long that lasts. 

“What do you want from me?” he asks. “My father is the one with all the money and the power here. I have nothing.”

Before one of them can respond, a phone starts ringing. Tangerine pulls it from his pocket, his screen still cracked from something that happened on the train he’s glad he wasn’t privy to watch go down. He holds up a hand and mutters something, disappearing out the front doors.

Just him and Lemon.

“I don’t know why you care so much,” he says again. Forcing a distance between them that already yawns in its existence. “You didn’t even get paid. It’s your job, isn’t it? To kill people?”

“Mostly,” Lemon says. “But we don’t exactly like innocent lives on our conscience, yeah? Besides—”

He stops and glances out the window. Tangerine is a few yards away from them, beyond the glass. Kicking at something on the ground, dragging a hand through his hair.

“Besides what?”

“You might be stupid,” Lemon says. “But you remind me of him. Reckless and indulgent. But you don’t got a Lemon to knock sense into you, do you?”

“I have a sister,” he says, like it’s the same thing. As if they didn’t grow up fighting. As if she wasn’t the one that taught him more about surviving punches than anyone else in the family.

“But she’s not here, is she? We are. So all we want to do is put you on your feet, yeah? And in return, you help us.”

“With what?”

“Everything you know about the White Death and his operations.” Lemon gives a shrug. “That kind of intel will sell for a lot for people more vengeful than me or Tangerine.”

“I don’t know that much.”

“We went through a lot of trouble to keep you alive,” Lemon says. “So I’ll bet even if you don’t think it, you know plenty to repay that for us.”

He bites the inside of his bottom lip. Hard enough to draw blood. This could get his father killed. It could make a dent in his little group of soldiers and bandits. There are plenty of bases in different countries that he has been shipped off to when his father was too angry to look at him anymore.

But his sister? Would she deserve to be caught in the crossfire? She’s just a kid. Five years younger but not any sweeter. She abandoned him, too. Chose to treat him just like his father did. She didn’t learn to survive it, she just learned to weaponize it.

So he nods.

There is no loyalty in their blood anymore.

12. MY NAME IS A SHADOW

It follows him everywhere.

Even on the passport he’s given by Lemon, he thinks he sees the ghost of it. His given name sitting there, just underneath the surface of the papers, threatening to be read. Threatening to link him back to his father. To the White Death. To his mother. To the millions of stories that he was told in hushed whispers about his grandparents and the secrets woven into the ink on his father’s skin.

His name is nothing. It’s unimportant. But he knows it. It sits on his tongue like poison. Echoing over and over again in his head.

“Nervous flyer?”

He shrugs. He doesn’t look to see which twin says it to him. Instead, he watches the clouds outside the window. Tries to make sense of the shapes outside.

Things might change but nothing is ever forgotten. There is always something that remembers it.

13. MY NAME ISN’T LOVE OR PRINCESS OR BABY GIRL

It’s a leap from Japan to England to Canada. He doesn’t know why they settled in Canada. Tangerine tells him to pretend to be Canadian, to harshen up his vowels. How hard can it be? They’re not that different from Americans. Just pretend like it. Everyone pretends to be kinder than they are.

It’s a whole lot of nothing, is what Tangerine is really telling him, so he chooses not to talk instead. A silent puppy that follows the two of them to baggage claim, to a rental car, to a motel they stay at for one night. In the morning, they drive. A long time, with the landscape blurring together out the window. He’s never been here before, but he thinks even if he had it wouldn’t feel familiar anyway.

Things change when people die.

Everything was different after his mother’s body was cremated and returned to them. The world changed. It didn’t soften, but it blurred. It didn’t gray, but it became lifeless. He didn’t really think anything could get worse. He didn’t think—

He didn’t think he could ever hate her.

But he did. For a while. He hated her for being dead. For leaving him alone with his father. He hated her for giving birth to him, he hated her for loving him, he hated her for not loving him enough to get him away from his father. He hated her for loving him too much and knowing that if they were to leave, the only one between them that would feel the wrath of the White Death was him. So he hated her for that, too. For not hating the White Death and for loving her son enough to go after him whenever she was asked.

“You alright, love?”

“Tired.”

“Sleep, then,” Tangerine says. “It’s another four hours before we get there.”

He nods, like he’s still listening. Like he isn’t thinking about how unfair it is that he spent so much time hating someone who was dead and couldn’t change anything, like she ever really had the power to change any of it anyway. It’s unfair, and Tangerine was right. He is a selfish brat. People have it worse. He’s lucky, all things considering.

And part of him still hates her.

Because the one moment he goes back to, over and over again, was her begging his father not to kill him. Not begging him to leave him alone, to stop letting the cruel men with their sick intentions touch him, but to spare him.

So part of him, he thinks, hates Lemon and Tangerine for that, too.

He doesn’t want to be saved. There is nothing left of him worth saving.

“Wake up, princess. We’re here.”

Tangerine shoves a bag into his arms as he steps out of the car. Lemon already up the walk, jamming a key into the lock. He looks up at the building. Somewhere between a cabin and a rich person’s version of one. A room with large windows, with a sloped glass ceiling. On the other side, thick wooden logs make up the exterior. The windows have small frames, curtains drawn over the glass. Deep blue-black paint on the sills, on the door, on the roof shingles.

And yet it doesn’t look big.

It looks relatively small. Dwarfed by the trees surrounding it, so tall that they cover the peek of the ceiling, disguising the view of the chimney.

“We don’t got all day,” Tangerine says, pushing him forward. Not roughly. Just enough to get his feet moving.

So he moves. Follows the path up the rickety stairs and inside. Past Lemon, who has set his things down on the kitchen floor. Simple white and black checkered tile. Laminate countertops, an old wooden table. The fridge looks to be the newest thing in the room, and it looks like it has been stuck in the same spot for at least a decade now.

The place is covered with a thin layer of dust. Been a while since anyone was here. There’s nothing on the walls besides generic paintings. No family photos. No dog toys or cat boxes. No pets. 

“Your room is down the hall. Last door on the left.”

He nods, leaving quickly. The thought of being alone—actually alone—is such a relief that he immediately starts wracking his brain to remember the last time he was. The boat doesn’t count—Tangerine was always hovering. The bathroom on the train? He was locked in. It was more of a prison. Not a place for himself.

Not even the night before he was taken. He was at a friend’s place. And before that, he slept at a different friend’s. On the floor, face pressed to the carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed in three weeks, at the very least. And at his home, it never felt like he was properly left to himself. Guards wandered those halls constantly. His father would randomly appear, demanding something from him.

So—

He thinks maybe he has never been properly alone.

He wonders if this counts. As he closes the door and sets the bag of things that aren’t his on the ground, as he sits on the edge of a bed that is small with old bedding and scratchy covers, he decides that it has to.

He pulls his coat up around him a little tighter. The last thing left of his life before. The only thing Tangerine and Lemon decided was worth keeping.

He doesn’t know if he wants it anymore, either.

The day passes in a boring lull. Lemon sleeps. He passes by a bedroom with its door left ajar, spotting him sprawled across a bed much bigger than the one he was given. He snores. It is more comforting than hearing his father’s snores through the walls. Less like an alarm dictating whether or not he should turn back and hide in his room again and more like a steady rhythm.

Tangerine isn’t sleeping.

He finds him in the glass room. Moonlight peering in through the ceiling, its soft blue light only broken up by the dim orange glow of a lamp on a couch side table. He watches him through the crack in the door, back pressed into the shadows. The sound of the pages turning a little like a song. A tap of a pen against Tangerine’s knee. A page turned. The pen clicking, a scribble in the margins.

Who writes in books?

“You going to stand out there spying all fucking night, baby girl?”

“Baby girl?” The words blurt out on their own. So foreign that he can’t stop them, and immediately has to find something to cover it up. “I wasn’t spying.”

Tangerine glances up from his book, tilts his head to the side, “Are you coming in or not?”

He bites his tongue. No sense in running away now. Tangerine and Lemon both have this air about them. Like everything he does is going to be manipulated into some embarrassing moment they’ll laugh about behind his back. It’s the same feeling as before. The need to prove himself. Tangerine wants him to walk away, so he doesn’t.

He steps inside the room, letting the door close the same three inches ajar that it was left at. He glances at the shelves surrounding the walls. Carefully put together to follow the exact lines of the roof. Each one packed tightly with novels and series. He can’t tell if they’re organized properly, so he looks away from them before it gives him a headache.

He mimics Tangerine’s tilted head, his eyes moving from his face to the book in his hand. White cover. Little detail, from what he can tell in the dark.

Moon of the Crusted Snow.

“You’re writing,” he says, almost like an accusation.

Tangerine glances to the pages and turns the book to face him. “Drawing.”

Trees, food, cars. They litter the margins like trash on a highway. Lovely.

“You’re not very good at it.”

Tangerine gives a fake smile past a clenched jaw and nods towards the couch, “Sit.”

He does, immediately grabbing for the blanket hung across the back. It’s kept cold in here. Fall having long settled in and no sign of a heater or even a fucking fireplace in this house.

“You sleep a lot,” Tangerine says, turning the page.

“Don’t have much to be awake for,” he replies. “You don’t sleep much.”

“Insomnia.”

“Nightmares?”

Tangerine shrugs and reaches to the table beside him, pulling a book from a stack before placing it back and grabbing another one. He tosses it into his lap without looking. “If you’re staying, you read.”

Like a law.

He picks up the book and brushes his fingers over the cover. Bright pink text on a blue-green background. The Missing Years. It’s thick. The weight of it makes him immediately flip to the back, thumbing past pages of author’s notes and thank yous to find the page count.

“It’s almost four-hundred pages.”

“Almost,” Tangerine agrees. “Just try it, baby girl.”

He says the last bit with a very pleased smile. So full of himself. It makes him want to leave the book and the blanket on the couch and return to his room, but he’s not sure how much more he can sleep right now. So he stays. He opens the novel. He reads the first line. Rereads. Rereads again. 

He keeps stealing glances at Tangerine. Wondering if the smile will appear again.

14. MY NAME IS A QUESTION

It’s a full three days of being in the house before everyone seems to fall back into their own natural schedule. And by everyone, he really means the twins. It’s their place. Apparently one of many. Not always shared by the two of them at the same time. Sometimes they’re forced to go their separate ways to try and throw off people following them. But the two of them have a history of spending a life together, and he didn’t need their clarifications or their comments to know they’re brothers.

He doesn’t have that with his sister. He never quite got into the rhythm of whatever it was that she did. He could never quite understand what he did everyday, either. He would wake at random hours of the day, stay up until he was too tired to stand, and pass out for twelve, fourteen hours. Everything in between blurred together. Just a series of showering, eating, finding someone to get high or drunk with.

He has been reduced to nothing here. His only constant being a new book that appears in front of him at various times throughout the day. Sometimes, he’s not even sure how it gets there. Most of the time, he is completely uncertain of how Tangerine even knew he had finished the last one. He supposes it’s a perfectly reasonable way to spend his time. Venturing into stories rather than reality.

But not tonight.

They sit him down at the table, laptop open, notebook flipped to an empty page. Both poised to take notes.

“Go on.”

Like he’s a dog.

So he tells them everything he can about where his father lives. The size of the house, the number of rooms, the twisting hallways, the construction to extend further back. The construction to destroy one half to put in a pool, and then new construction to encase it in glass again. There’s three floors. There’s twenty-seven bedrooms, but there might be more or less. It just sounded like a good number. There’s a basement. There’s a five-car garage. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but it’s closer to the city than one would think.

He even tells them how to get to it from the train station he always takes back home. He knows that path well. How long it takes to get from the pavement to the rocky path. How much longer it takes if he’s drunk. Halfway there, there’s a good place to break off and sit. There’s a downed tree left lopsided underneath a taller one. He’s slept there a handful of times in the last few months, eager to put off going home as much as he could. Mostly, he had to stay there because his friends got tired of him constantly crashing in their living rooms.

“And your dad?”

“He is exactly what you think,” he says with a shrug. “That’s all.”

“What’s his real name?”

He shrugs again.

“Come on. You don’t know your own dad’s name?”

“No.”

And it’s the truth, isn’t it? He doesn’t know his father’s name. He knows his mother’s nicknames for him. He knows The White Death. He knows Boss and Master and Please, God, please stop--

He doesn’t think any of them are what he was given when he was born. Just things he has adopted since then. Easier to shrug it all off. Easier to not go back to whoever he was before.

“You have to know something,” Lemon says. “Literally anything.”

He feels like his tongue is swollen. He feels like his throat has closed up. He looks at his glass of water and is certain that something was in there to poison him, because he can’t speak. 

His father is a monster. His wrath knew very little boundaries. And he can’t say it. He can’t say any of it anymore. He doesn’t want it to be real. He has never said any of it aloud and now he can’t fathom a world where he opens his mouth to talk about his father without saying all of the rest.

A gun in his mouth when he was fourteen years old. Running from men until he realized if he added enough ink to his skin, if he let random people outside of clubs break his nose and give him a black eye, they wouldn’t want him as much. His father was a monster and people knew him as such, but they never knew about what happened with him behind closed doors.

And they can’t.

“Look, love, we can just start off small—”

He makes a noise. Somewhere between a whine and a scream. He doesn’t mean to. He meant to talk. He feels like his lips are glued together, feels like every word of every language is lost to him.

“What?”

“No.” He manages.

And then he stands and he runs.

15. NOBODY EVEN CHOSE THEIR NAME

He doesn’t know how long he walks. It feels like a while. Further and further into the wooded area behind the house. Twigs and leaves scattered on the ground so thickly he’s not sure if there’s even a real path.  He doesn’t know where he’s headed, but he knows he has to find his way back so he only walks straight. Kicks at everything in his wake to make sure that when he turns around, he won’t get lost.

Fucking Hansel and Gretel in the woods.

He stops only when he hits pavement. A stretch of road that twists around the trees in a large loop. Warning signs for the curve a few yards down. He waits. Wonders how often cars come this way. Enough that they know to take the bend slow? Or maybe someone that won’t care, will risk it because they like to drive fast and don’t like to waste time? Is the speed they’re supposed to drive around the curve fast enough that if he jumped out, it would kill him?

He can’t fucking take this anymore.

He should’ve died on that train. He knows he should’ve died on the train. He should’ve let it happen. But he had that stupid selfish thought that if he were to die, he wanted it on his own terms. 

He brushes tears away from his eyes and feels stupider for shedding them.

He wishes he was dead. He wishes he was high. He wishes his mom was alive. He wishes his sister never thought of him as competition but as an ally. He wishes his father was broken into tiny pieces, mutilated but not enough that he would die, just to know what it feels like to have lungs that don’t work and a heart that doesn’t beat right and a stomach that can’t hold anything anymore.

He feels small. He shrinks down on himself. The grass and leaves wet against his hands as he presses his palms down. Shoving deeper and deeper like he can urge the earth to take him. 

Stupid stupid fucking stupid.

He presses his hands over his ears. Wishing the rush of blood would stop, the thump of his heartbeat in all its broken glory. Never quite knowing how to beat right in his entire life. He wishes he didn’t taste metal in his mouth. Wishes his back didn’t hurt and his arms weren’t itching. Every bit of his pain manifesting like some real thing he could cure in his muscle, but it’s deeper than that. In his bones. Rotting away from the inside out. His entire being just a cavity waiting to be filled.

Stop stop stop.

He pulls his hands away to rub the back of his sleeve across his face. Rough fabric making his skin feel angry and red.

And he hears something, something he didn’t hear before.

Water, he thinks.

Rushing water.

He stands, taking a tentative step forward. Siren call, leading him onto pavement. Further to the railing guarding the curve of the road. Past the trees, where they desperately take root into the small space of land on the edge of the cliff. It drops off, down into a deep cavern. Not that far down, really, but the bottom has large jagged rocks in the middle of the water. There’s even a path on the other side.

Hiking trail.

There’s a vague memory. Distant. His mother took him to a park in the U.S. Outside the gates, a bear with a little meter underneath him. Forest fire outlook. He remembers going into the trees, his mother telling him again and again that actual bears weren’t a real threat. Not around there. But she had spray anyway. Hanging off of her pack like she’d need it.

A beaten trail that twisted around trees. Warning signs about recently burnt down areas. The smell of the smoke still thick in the air despite the fire having been extinguished months earlier. Broken up only by the smell of water. A rushing river that the trail followed like a lost love. Water crashing against rocks. His mother stopping to take pictures. Him reaching out to the surface, wanting to grab a ball that was floating by. Lost by some other kid or stupid teens, it didn’t matter to him.

Her shouting.

Get back from there!

What the fuck are you doing?

No—

He blinks down at the water beneath him. It feels much further now. Closer, too. Like a promise. His hand clinging onto a tree branch as he leans out over the edge of the cliff, looking down at the rocks better. Something else holding onto him.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Not his mother. He stumbles backward, the hand on the back of his coat yanking him to the guard rail. Up and over like he’s a doll. He scrambles against the hold on him, fighting him off. Pushing him back.

Of course it's Tangerine.

He thinks of it like an insult. That Tangerine would stop him. Lemon would, too. Lemon would be just as angry, he’s sure. Maybe not kick-the-guard-rail-and-scream angry but still angry.

“Where’s Lemon?” Better, he’s learned, to bring up the other twin when they’re like this. Something they actually love and care for instead of being angry with him.

“Out looking for you,” he says. “The fuck do you think you’re doing running off like that? And then being that close to the fucking edge? Think you’re Bella Swan cliffdiving for fucking visions or some shit?”

“You read Twilight?”

“I’m going to fucking strangle you,” Tangerine says. “Get in the fucking car.”

He looks at it. Pictures the drive home. Awkward and quiet. Sat down back at the table.

Tell us about your father.

He shakes his head and takes a step back. “I’m fine. I can walk back.”

“Like hell you are. Get in the fucking car.”

“I know the way—”

“Do I look like I give a shit?”

He doesn’t want to look at him. He was. He was watching his fast all twisted in rage, all gritted teeth and fury, but now he’s looking away. Back to the water. The cliff. Those rocks.

“Don’t.”

Tangerine’s hand is on his face, forcing him to look away. But he can’t look at him, so he keeps his eye on his neck. The gold chain hanging there. He wants to grab it. Break it. He wonders if it would make Tangerine angry enough that he’d push him off, over, down.

Down, down, down.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” he whispers.

“Who the fuck are you talking about?”

My dad. No. Too difficult to say.

“The White Death.” Easier.

Easy.

Look at that.

“You joking?”

He shakes his head. “I know that means I’m useless. So—”

“So you want me to kill you or something?” Tangerine scoffs. “Lemon would kill me. He doesn’t like the idea of killing innocents.”

“Not innocent.”

“Civilians.”

“Not a civilian.”

“You correct me one more time and I’m going to blow your fucking brains out.”

He shrugs. “Be over quick then.”

Tangerine’s other hand moves up, forces his chin up. Eyes meeting his. “I didn’t spend an entire night on a train fucking around to keep you alive just to let you die, alright? Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a sunk cost fallacy going on here, yeah? So I’m invested in you. You don’t get to go jumping off cliffs or running out on me.”

He can’t make any promises.

But he thinks--

Isn’t that weird, that Tangerine said running out on me? Not on them. But on him. Tangerine. Like Lemon wasn’t there too.

“You want me alive?”

“Yes. I’d prefer it,” he says. “Look, you don’t want to talk about your dear old dad, but it’s going to happen eventually. It has to. That’s your end of the fucking bargain here.”

He moves back, forcing himself free from Tangerine’s grip, but his hands just move to his waist holding him in place there.

“It doesn’t have to happen now. We can wait. People are always going to want the White Death dead. So we wait. Until you’re ready. But it’s going to fucking happen whether you like it or not. Think of it like therapy.”

“How kind,” he replies numbly.

He feels Tangerine step forward and he looks away from the trees up to him again. Certain that if he keeps looking towards the direction of the water he is going to make a run for it, and he knows Tangerine has a gun on him and he wouldn’t put it past Tangerine to shoot him in the leg or the foot to keep him from going over the edge.

But that’s the thing—

There is always going to be something inside of him that wants his mom. Some part of him that wants to go home to something familiar. That wants his sister to love him. That wants his father to stop being cruel and make up for everything he’s done wrong. Just like there is always going to a part of him that wants to get high or drunk and pretend he exists somewhere outside of his own body. And with all of that, with the realization he will never have any of it ever again, he will always want this instead.

To end it.

“I don’t want to be his son.”

“Then don’t be.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Sure it is. Kill him. In your head, at least,” he says with a shrug. “We’re not flying back to Japan to kill papa anytime soon. So kill him. Get a new name. Become someone else. Always got time for that.”

“Who am I supposed to be?”

“Anybody you want.”

He doesn’t know who he wants to be. He never thought of that before. He only ever looked at it like what he could do to stop being the person he is. He supposes he knows one thing he wants, though. To be someone that other people want.

Tangerine is the first person to ever tell him he wanted him alive. Isn’t that something?

“Who do you want me to be?”

“That’s not important.”

“It’s important to me.”

“Not for this,” Tangerine says. “Trust me, love. Not for this. Now get in the car before I lose my fucking mind, will you?”

The drive back is awkward. Short, but awkward. When they return, Tangerine makes him follow him through the backyard yelling out for Lemon to come back. It takes ten minutes before Lemon appears out of the bushes, annoyed but silent. There’s a look exchanged between the two of them that makes them both settle on silence.

He thinks it’s pity.

When he’s allowed back inside, he shuts his bedroom door. Changes into new clothes. Scrubs the mud off of his face and hands. When he gets back, his bedroom door is open. He closes it before he lays down, but it’s not five minutes later before he hears it open again.

He’s not trusted anymore.

He’s never really been trusted. He doesn’t think he’s ever been trusted by Tangerine and Lemon before anyway. Rightfully so, but still. It makes him feel a little more hollow.

When he wakes again, it’s late. He follows the same path he carved the first night he was here. Lemon snoring in his room. Tangerine in the library. He stays there. Spying, of course. Maybe just a little bit entertained by the way Tangerine taps the pen on his knee. The way he chews at the end of it before deciding what to draw next.

He doesn’t get welcomed in. He doesn’t linger long enough too. But Tangerine isn’t surprised when he opens the door and steps inside anyway. He doesn’t say anything when he sits down on the couch beside him. Too close. He leans up and presses a soft kiss against Tangerine’s cheek. It’s the only time his expression changes. A soft smile. Barely there.

But there.

“The last book you gave me was shit,” he says quietly.

“So’s this one,” Tangerine replies. There are cats decorating the margins of the page. He doesn’t read the words to see if they’re relevant to the plot.

It doesn’t matter to him right now.

“Decide on a name?”

He shakes his head. “Love will do for now.”

Tangerine exhales sharply. Almost a laugh. “Okay, love.”

Okay, love.

Okay.