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A casual hand, only slightly uncoordinated, brushed away a flurry of brown and chemical orange debris from Mitzi’s. Themmy’s. Anathema’s lap. Dressed in Mitzi’s black knee high skirt and a rather expensive peplum top. Not the lowest cut option available at his base, but perhaps the most casual. He hadn’t kept too many of her outfits, but there had been a hesitation in his hands when he’d gone to bag them up. But those were thoughts for another time.
If they actually minded the apparel, Themmy didn’t think a thing about it. Hadn’t said a word about it, saving their mouth for far more important bullet points on the agenda.
They had shoved one too many barbeque chips into that mouth at once and were now steadily chewing their way through the rest of the bag with the attention of a long time admirer meeting their hero. Savoring the crick crack crunch between their teeth. Savory salt and sharp, brittle texture and Richard could see the satisfaction on Mitzi’s. Anathema’s expressions on her face.
Building up to try and address any of the questions looming up ahead of them.
Richard didn’t want to rush anything. The search for snacks and clothing had provided a decent excuse not to address the tap dancing elephant in the room.
The chips had been a lucky find, stashed away in one of the smaller, cheap plastic bins where Richard stored bottled water and emergency food. Non-perishables. Dried toaster pastries and baggies of chips. Anathema’s flavor preferences hadn’t transferred over, it seemed. Richard couldn’t stand the fake smoke additive, so there were plenty left from the multipack.
Plenty for them to munch on.
Sitting beside Richard on the low cot while Daniel hovered, cross legged just to his side. At a slight angle that let him observe both of the formerly dead heroes he used to watch on tv. People he had admired. Who Josh had. Hadn’t.
Every single thought in his head going so fast it would have required nuclear winter for Richard to even have a chance at really slowing them down long enough to latch onto any. Too many whizzing by at break-neck speed towards the. Towards them. Beaming direct and uncut into Richard’s brain.
Was it really Anathema? Hadn’t they died during—well. They had said Sidestep died then, too. Died and both of them were buried at the same funeral that he had crashed. What had happened that neither mind had…was it really Anathema’s mind in there and how had it survived in Richard and what were they going to be like and would it be the same as when they were ‘alive’ and what. Richard gingerly closed the shutters against Daniel’s thoughts. It didn’t do a damn thing to stop the rapid shadows, but at least the heat of them was stymied slightly.
But.
Now the both of them were sitting side by side in relative silence, considering where to. How to begin. Whatever few edges had been there while they had both been…well. What could remain? What had developed?
One final thought of Daniel’s knocked softly on the door. Rapped gently against the windows, wingbeats fluttering until they tap tap tapped would part of him survive inside Richard, too, if something ever happened to him wiggled through a crack in the window frame, an innocent insect, building itself a fragile web of curiosity. Not yet revealing any markings that could label it insidious. Flapping its wings, showing off the potential for threatening owl eye blotches. Threatening future worries and conversations and did Richard know that Anathema was inside his head circled back around for a second chance at bat, aiming to hit a home run.
That had been an interesting conversation. That Richard had long suspected something, someone, else had been influencing his thoughts. More than usual.
Something that had always felt just beyond the reach of groping fingertips. Just one step further into the blackness. One more moment longer spent in the blood wrenching blizzard, letting a few more icicles crystalize in the spaces behind his eyelids. But he’d thought it was only Heartbreak and whatever else had been left behind by the Farm’s tinkering and toiling. And instead it had been.
The lighter thoughts, the ones urging him towards something better. He’d never taken the time to examine where the push came from, when he said the things that he needed to say and thought he was too cowardly to get out on his own.
As unwanted as Daniel’s thoughts came a question of Richard’s own: what all had Anathema been able to do while in his mind? What all of Anathema was still actually them? How much of the person sitting next to him was built out of his perceptions and memories and how much would they differ and.
First things first. Anathema balled up the thin, crunching plastic and launched it with a little sound from the back of Mitzi’s throat up. It missed the trashcan against the far wall and Richard couldn’t stop the snort.
“Your aim’s even worse than mine,” quieter than he meant for it to be, but any louder and it felt like his voice would start shaking again. A well known and too casual flutter of his diaphragm, taking off its shoes and socks and loudly wondering when dinner would be served so it could get down to the business of making him cry again.
“Hey! I’ve been a ghost for nearly a decade,” not much of a retort, but it was said with the same playfulness. Enough to keep those tears at bay. For the moment. He was able to dodge the elbow to his bicep, leaning out of the way of the telegraphed move easily. Not designed to hit, just the slight thrill of touch again after so long without it. Richard watched his own arm, the good one, move to settle around their shoulders and pull them in closer. “What’s your excuse?” not pulling away, not resisting the pull in against his chest. Rolling their eyes. Not the way they once were. Not entirely. A different color and a different angle and. But.
But the shine in them was the same. That slightly shy glint that was politely escorted to the side to make way for a friendlier gleam. Desperate for connection in a way that Richard felt pushing at his nail beds. Pushing up cuticles.
“Lost a cat fight,” threatening to choke him from the inside out. Themmy’s eyebrows, not as manicured as Richard had always kept them, Mitzi had her eyebrows threaded every other week but the staff had reasonably decided there were more important things to attend to, rose.
“Oh shit, really?” the surprise was genuine, sliding into Richard’s head. It felt. Familiar. Familiar but old at the edges, fraying at the edges. From disuse, the threads pulling thin with age. An echoing reverb, less and less with every passing second but.
Something slippery and terrifying wrapped itself around his throat. Sweet, tight constriction around his windpipe. Clench flinch breathe breathe, breathe. In. Out. Less.
Less like another mind and much more like feeling his own thoughts coming from someone else’s head. His own voice whispering through the door. His own words. A ghost, not wearing his face but still speaking with his tongue. Almost could feel the syllables bunching up, back behind his molars. Shifting his teeth to make a more palatable smile.
Were they ever his own words? How much had been her? How many had been them? How much of him was him and how much of him had been himself before Heartbreak and death and.
There was a flinch, barely noticeable, and not meant for where his mind had wandered. Meant for. Right.
“Really,” he nodded. “It…it must have been after you were,” a vague gesture to his own head, spider fingers waggling in the periphery as he brought his arm back from around them. Let them have some space to breathe. They wanted that right? Or was that him? Or. “It got my right shoulder—sliced some nerves in the arm, but the doctor said only time would tell how many I would get back,”
They’d offered surgery. To go in and try to reattach lines, tiny modifications that could help the healing and help motion and they could try to see if his body would tolerate the. He’d declined. Took the risk down the road that if things didn’t heal right they may have to. A slightly dead arm could be dealt with all the way until it couldn’t. That was a problem for future Richard. Another bullet point on the ever growing list. Talk to Chen about…maybe ask Daniel to talk to Chen about. Or Ricardo.
“Yikes,” Themmy hissed out between their teeth, the snake sound dragging Richard back. “Glad to see you all made it out,” sincere, worry pulling at the edges of their eyes. Deep brown eyes, not the ones that they had had when they were alive, drifted over to Daniel to offer him the most awkward smile Richard could remember seeing on a human’s face. “Um. Speaking of all of you, glad to finally meet you in person,” the smile was real, the honesty in it feeling too much like his own. The humor in it. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” the laugh was all them though, every single fluctuation. Mitzi’s vocal chords, but Anathema’s cautious giggle.
A very heavy stone, without an inch of mossy terror but with quite a lot of lichenous borderline humiliation, dropped from Richard’s throat down to his ankles. How much of their. Well. Certainly it…it could have been all of it, couldn’t it? He only saw Themmy when he was near death but that didn’t mean they couldn’t see. Had they felt? Every kiss. Any kiss. Any.
Ah, beans.
His cheeks caught on horrified fire at the same time that Daniel offered back: “It’s good to meet you,” hesitation coating every word. Enough to slightly tug Richard away from the sharp drop of potential. Of. Someone could have been watching the entire time they were. Even if it wasn’t their fault. Even if. It wasn’t like the scientists back at the Farm. But it was too close for comfort, even if it was Themmy. “I’ve heard a lot about you, too. From um. Well, you know,” A fluttering thought of how damn weird this all was, face slipping into a blush. “I guess you already know my name and everything?”
No kidding, lover boy. Everything indeed. But at least Daniel’s trepidation served as a good distraction, nearly as good a one as him landing and taking those few steps over to offer a hand to shake. Bridging a gap.
That hadn’t gone away.
The slight curl to their fingers, cautious with their touch to ensure it wouldn’t sting. Wouldn’t do worse. Wouldn’t. Melt burn liquify slip dripping down like so much sizzling acrid burning god the smell the way their fingers sunk in through bone and.
Out before he could stop them, the pile up behind his teeth finally knocking something loose enough to begin streaming out. “I’m sorry,” and there was the shiver from his core, furious at having been sidelined for so long. Snapping both Danny’s and Anathema’s attention back to him. “I said that I,” he would save them. That he would try to save them. That even though they were untouchable, invulnerable, that he would…and he hadn’t. Instead, he had screamed and run and hadn’t waited to see if they were. Christ, if they had. Somehow his hand had made it up to his mouth, pressing in against his lips hard enough to hurt his teeth. As if he could force the words back inside, “and I didn’t,” muffled by his fingertips. “Anathema, I,”
“I know,” cutting him off, but not like a blade. The edges and vowel rounded and only an edge because it served as a line of demarcation. Something softer still, on the other side of it, even if they couldn’t seem to make themselves look at him. Instead their eyes focused in hard on their own palm. For a split second there was a tension in the forearm, bringing their hand up to their own. To Mitzi’s face and pressing their fingertips in against the flesh. Meeting resistance and. A fleeting, wailing moment of shock in their mind. Before the hand shot back down to their lap. “I’m sorry, too,” in a different way. A private one. Sorry that it had happened at all.
Sorry for the spaces and places in between and oh, there was heat. Danny’s hand pressing between his shoulder blades. More comfortable interrupting this than when Richard and Ricardo had their heart to hearts. He knew Anathema from the news reels. From Ricardo and Chen’s and Richard’s own stories and memories. Richard could feel a familiar flutter—the same that Daniel had made no efforts to hide when they first met. When he first met his hero. A little more subdued now, but still there. The admiration, tempered with a great deal more…of something that Richard couldn’t bring himself to feel grateful for.
Something lacking in the way his thoughts lifted. As if they didn’t rise quite as high as they could have.
Richard felt the guilt like sticky arthritis in his joints. That extra weight, that anchor weighing him down, was all his fault. But now was not the time.
“You do, don’t you?” quiet but firm. In that strangely gentle and unyielding way he had when he had set his sights on something. Richard could feel the internal calibration. Aiming his mind at something and. Didn’t even have to be in his head to feel the sudden slip of gravity pulling at his ears as Daniel’s mind dove. “Can I ask about that?” glancing between the two of them.
Asking permission when before he would have struck first and begged forgiveness afterwards. Always better to ask forgiveness. Something clicked inside Richard’s head that he didn’t have time to acknowledge. “I know it’s…all of this is happening suddenly, but were you really in his head?” not the way he wanted to ask it, unsure of a better way besides laying out for the both of them. Anathema nodded. “What all what were you able to see?”
A pause.
“Not your butt, if that’s what you’re worried about,” breaking the tension easily with a huffed out laugh.
“It’s not!” cheeks darkening sharply, the hand on Richard’s back raising up, palm up as if to declare his innocence. Cross his heart and hope to. Nope. The smile curled his lips before Richard could fight it back.
“I was,” Richard heard his voice admitting and. Warmer comfort. Bitter, warmer comfort. Heated vinegar. Apparently that was just his mouth deciding to say shit when he wasn’t paying attention. At least it wasn’t someone else saying it. He could start drafting suspension letters to his tongue without having to feel any guilt about blame shifting. Anathema snorted more breathily.
“Nope. No butts. Nothing,” a sidelong glance, tight before it loosened on Richard’s face. He felt the coil unwinding around his throat, breathing coming easier. The pressure lingered. The unspoken dreadful unknowing of what they had seen. “Nothing like that,” how many drunken nights and fumbling fingers, slipping on the knots. Slipping over veins.
They cleared their throat. Hard. “It was. It was hard in there, sometimes. To keep myself as myself,” voice fading like fog under a heavy sun. Richard felt their eyes pointedly avoiding him. Thoughts doing their best to slide and slither away from his cold mind and into somewhere sheltered and warm. And to do it without hurting his feelings. “I don’t know that I always did a good job at that,” staring down at their hands.
Harmless, soft hands. Hands that couldn’t hurt beyond all the damage that normal hands could do. That both they and Richard knew normal hands could do.
Letting that admission take root in the cold, barren earth between them. Trying to send up cautious green shoots.
They withered and cracked in the face of the chill running down Richard’s spine, reaching his stomach and beginning the process of freezing the duct works. His kidneys ached as the trickling terror made its way further down to his ankles.
A slow breath in. A shakier breath out. A much more visible wince from Anathema. A much more present, god it was warm, hand running up and down his back. Daniel’s heat pouring in. A break in the cloud cover, highlighting how frigid he felt while softly melting down a little bit more. Just at the edges. Inches and degrees.
“What do…Do you,” struggling to get the words together, to string them into something like a sentence that. That could even begin to try and capture what they might mean by that. Pressed his lips painfully thin and pressed forward again and. “Do you think you lost parts of yourself?” agony to put it to works, scalpel thin ice against his tongue, cutting deeper and deeper.
“Or do you mean you were making Richie do things?” like a shotgun blast to the temple, Richard’s head jerking hard on a swivel to look up at Daniel. There. There was a slip of anger there, redirected. Defensive. Danny didn’t know Anathema. Not really. Only as much as he had known Sidestep and Sidestep had turned into Mad Dog and Mad Dog had tried to kill him out of envy. “Encouraging him to do them because it’s what you would--,”
“No.” Body tensing up tightly next to him on the cot. Pain and fear and doubt in the word. Wanting it to be true. Hoping it was true.
Unsure if it was.
It answered more than one question. If they had been making choices for him, they hadn’t meant to. Warmer comfort than the fact that his mouth still apparently was striking out on its own as an independent contractor, because there it went again with
“Anathema. Do you think…do you think you’re…all of yourself?” great job mouth, way to really work in the creativity.
They blinked at him. Processing, taking in an equally unsteady breath, face folding before they found what they wanted to say. “I don’t know?” Looking down at the body that wasn’t theirs before looking up at the head that had housed them for years. That had tried to freeze them out, the opposite of the body using a fever to burn out an infection.
Had it been their whole mind, their whole being that had slid into his head? And if so, had his eternal winter gotten to any pieces of them? Were their frostbitten appendages littered throughout his mind, waiting for a spring thaw that would never come?
Richard was treated to the entirely unwelcome and unwanted perspective of his mind from someone who had tried to live in it. Tried to stay alive in it.
Their shoulders shook hard, once. Violently. But only once before they shook their head again. “I don’t think so,” grim. The tone ill suited for the voice, but it carried enough of the weight. Enough of the reality. “But I don’t think I was…I don’t think all of who I used to be made it into you,” a quiet thing, shivering and naked in the stark light being shown on it. “I still don’t even know how that…,” trailing.
Exhaling again.
“I can already feel myself forgetting things about it,” an unsteady hand reaching to curl into Mitzi’s hair. Not something Anathema had ever done. Stroking into their own hair. “Being in you,” and back again was the tooth tight expression. “Like a bad—,” stopping short.
“Like a nightmare,” Richard could only imagine. Like something you couldn’t wait to bury and forget.
A nod. A heavy wince. “Sorry,”
“I’m sorry it was so bad,” attention pinned on the way they moved their fingers through the straight hair and seemed to struggle with how much longer…the muscle memory expecting something shorter.
“Not as bad as you might think. Not all the time, I mean,” trying to relax the grimace spreading over their face. Shifting back, trying to shift back with a huffed laugh and a glance up at Daniel. “It certainly started improving quick when you came around. Made the place nearly livable,” muttering the ‘I think’ so they didn’t ruin the compliment. Daniel heard it, Richard could feel him hear it, but it didn’t stop the blush from taking over his cheeks.