Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

i.

A girl, a gun. Is there really any difference? 

Has she ever been anything but a weapon, a tool to be used? It’s fitting, Niki thinks, that even her act of freedom, of rebellion, is still shaped by them. 

She’ll never get out, will she? Even now, the barrel of a gun warming her hands, blood splattered on her face, and they (ranboo, sneeg, charlie, vinny, ethan, austin) are staring at her like she’s something they've never seen before. Even now, red lights blaring and they need to get out right fucking now. Even now she’s still what Showfall made her.

Her tears are gone but makeup still streams down her face. She’s no longer sobbing and the cold voice is gone but everything hurts, aches. Every piece of her demands to give in, to sink back into the cold water, back into the dull, placid world. But she doesn’t.

Niki Nihachu, not the Nice because there is no smile, no kindness in her gaze, does not give in. And maybe that’ll make up for all the blood she’s spilled, for all the people she’s killed, all the girls with her eyes and fear who died alone. Maybe, maybe, maybe it’ll be enough but if they get caught, if they get stuck, she’ll never know. 

The gun feels right in her hand and so do the people around her. They run through the facility, faster and faster than they ever have before. Her heart is beating so loudly she can’t hear anything but she knows they’re around her and she wonders. Wonders how many lives they’ve lived together.

And for the first time, with hope that is so soft, so weak, about the life they may get to live. A life that is theirs, a life where they are themselves, not Showfalls.  

Niki Nihachu kills a man and doesn’t feel a single thing but the second they burst out the doors. Charlie and Austin are yanking at Ranboo’s mask, Vinny and Ethan are shoulder to shoulder, eyes on the door, and Sneeg is hovering behind her. The second they taste freedom for the first time in Generation’s Niki laughs.

She crouches low to the earth, arms braced on her stomach, and laughs. It bursts from her throat, wracks her chest, and brings tears to her eyes. Hope is fresh air that smells faintly of cigarette smoke and freshly cut grass. Hope is a cracking parking lot and calloused hands on her shoulders. (and oh she knows these hands, has known them life after life) Hope is freedom and it is so terrifyingly good. 

ii.

It would be funny, it would be fucking hysterical if Niki wasn’t close to having a breakdown in a grocery store aisle because she cannot choose what ice cream to buy. 

Freedom is an odd thing and quite frankly it’s terrifying. Before, and she never likes to remember before but she can't seem to forget, choice was an illusion. Choice was a beautiful diamond necklace, shining so brightly it concealed the jagged edges, the spikes digging into your throat. Choice was a gilded collar tied tightly around your neck, stealing your air and shimmering in the sunlight. 

Here in this world, in that cramped apartment they all share that always smells faintly like hair dye because it’s the only way she doesn’t flinch at mirrors. Here in this trembling, new, terrifying world, they get to choose everything. What clothes they wear. (They all stubbornly avoid red, Charlie cannot stand green, Ethan purple and Sneeg can only wear blue on his best days.) 

What they do in their free time, (Ranboo’s taken to reading, curling up in a chair with chamomile tea. Charlie plays a beat-up guitar Vinny had found, he never told them where and Niki had learned to stop asking. He never did well with quiet, none of them do. Sneeg and Ethan play basketball in the run-down court close to the apartment. They spend hours out there and sometimes Niki will be on a walk and she’ll see them, cocky smiles and sweat-stained faces. Austin writes, she’d find him hunched over a computer at the library, a long document open. Vinny and her run, in literal and figurative ways. Vinny’s gone most of the day, coming back with trinkets in his pocket and that shy smile when he looks at her, a wooden duck tucked in the center of her palm. She runs, runs until the world fades and so do her thoughts.) 

What they eat, which leads her to here, basket already full of various foods, Orange juice for Ranboo, the organic kind, and bread from that specific brand with that purple flower because Charlie is picky as hell. 

Ice cream hadn’t been on the list but it had caught her eye and Niki just wanted to get it. Wanted it like she was ten again and couldn’t stop herself from eating anything sweet, from taking it, and running. Simple desire, wanting for the sake of wanting, had no place in Showfall. No place in that broken world where her blood never quite left her hands. 

Niki had given in, a past her would have been stunned at how easy it was, how easily she gave Showfall another vulnerability to exploit. Except it wasn’t, because Showfall wasn’t here, they had gotten out. And yet sometimes Niki wonders if she did. 

Wonders if any of this is real or if it’s just another game, another play and they are ever the willing actors. It’s a terrifying thought, one that causes her lungs to constrict, fear stealing her air. So most days she doesn’t allow herself to think about it, to even humor the idea. 

But Ice cream is so tempting, and it might be her undoing. Because Niki is gaping at all the options, the door opened wide, and cold air leaks out. It almost hurts her eyes, the bright colors, tub after tub of strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, oreo, mint, mudslide, and on and on. 

So many options and no one, not a single person, can stop her from choosing which one she wants. From choosing strawberry even though she is vaguely allergic. From choosing one in Spanish because it is such a pretty shade of yellow. No one can stop her and that’s a terrifying thought. 

How long had Niki been under someone’s control? How long had she danced to Showfall’s beat, played her part so perfectly? How long has everything she was, everything she did, been nothing more than a puppet dangling on strings? 

What does a puppet do when the strings have been cut, when they are free but do not know how to move on their own? How do you learn to live beyond your purpose?

She’s close to tears, close to hyperventilating, and falling to her knees in the middle of the grocery store because she doesn’t know. Niki Nihachu, who has fought so hard for freedom, does not know what to do with it. And isn’t that so horrifically ironic?

“You should try the teaberry, most people are hesitant but I promise you won’t regret it.” She turns her head, nails digging into her palm, blood welling under her skin, to see a person. They’re tall, lilac-colored hair braided neatly back, and so many rings and necklaces that Niki can’t count them all. 

And they’re looking at her expectantly, their smile so kind, so gentle, Niki wants to respond. “Teaberry? Which one is that?” 

The person kneels down and pulls out a small black container, with pink ice cream on the side. They offer it to Niki with a smile, “I get being overwhelmed, I swear they just keep creating more and more every day!” 

The ice cream is cold in her hands but the stranger's smile is so very warm that Niki finds herself flushing, her cheeks a faint red. “Thank you.” She prays the stranger doesn’t hear how rough her voice is. “It’s just been a long week I guess.” 

“It’s no problem at all! Alex.” The stranger - Alex offers their hand out. The rings, one has a dark blue stone, and one is a snake curling up their finger, reflect the bright lights.

Niki takes it and holds on just a tad too long, feeling how warm her cheeks are getting, “Niki, it’s nice to meet you.” She looks out the large windows to the sun slipping down the sky and smiles regretfully. “I have to get going, thanks for your help.” 

She finds that she means it and Alex thankfully doesn’t look upset, they just smile at her and wave their hand. “Cya around Niki!” Then they’re turning on their heels and walking away. 

Niki stands there for a moment, before swallowing and tossing the ice cream into her basket. Alex, although she is certain they didn’t realize it, helped her immensely. Because this is still a choice, choosing to listen to their suggestion, because it was a kind suggestion. Maybe she didn’t choose it with no help but she chose all the same and that’s enough, right? 

She shakes her head, walking faster toward the register, it’s enough because it is so much more than anything she did at Showfall. It’s progress, Niki is moving forward and that’s enough. 

iii.

Niki sees the dead all the time. On her morning runs, in the mirrors, behind stacks of books at the library. She sees them everywhere and a part of her wonders how bad that is. At least she doesn’t talk to them. 

But she’ll take the seat facing the door because Sneeg with the blue button-up and a fine line drawn across his throat hates having his back to the door. She’ll make two cups of tea, one for herself and one for Charlie who looks like he’s sixteen and still smiles widely despite the rather large hole in his chest. She’ll turn off the fan in her room, the one that sounds like metal grinding itself to bits, because Vinny with his letterman jacket and shattered hands hates the cold. 

Niki remembers his begging, remembers the way her hands turned slippery under all that blood, how she desperately put pressure on his chest. Most of all she remembers how his hands had grabbed wildly at her, desperate clinging fingers and a boy her age repeating over and over again, it’s so cold, why is it so cold? 

Niki doesn’t talk to her dead, she just makes room for them. 

iv.

Somewhere in the middle of everything, before the beginning and ending and every beginning in between, she talks with Sneeg.

There’s blood drying on her torso, sticky and a startling red against the white dress she’s wearing this time. Sneeg’s not in much better shape. The two of them are slumped up against a concrete wall, blood pooling around them, the air a pungent smell.

Niki’s lost track of the generations, though to be fair she never really kept track, never really got the choice. Sneeg, though, was a consistency. It seems even when she lost her mind, lost track of the Generations, lives melding together into a slideshow of pain, Sneeg was always there.

Sometimes he was cruel, but then again so was she. Niki could take kindness, could take a monster, could take a man with her blood on his hands if it meant he was there. If it meant something in this world made sense. 

So here they were, in another story, another life, blood on both their hands. 

“You ever think about what you would be doing if things were different?”

Sneeg laughs at the question, a painful wheezing that leaves him clutching his side and groaning. When he can breathe without wincing he looks at her incredulously, “Kid I’ve seen so much shit I stopped thinking about a different life a long time ago.”

He’s taken to calling her that, kid, even though she’s not much younger than him. With the number of generations I've seen, I’m at least a decade older than you. The Sneeg voice in her head chimes in, same snark, same shark smile. 

Niki huffs, blood trickling down the back of her throat. “But what if things were different, even if they aren’t? Even if they won’t be. What if they were? Where would you be?”

Maybe it’s her pleading gaze or the sincerity in her voice, or maybe Sneeg is just feeling like less of an asshole today, but he gives in. His eyes turn to the ceiling and he contemplates for a while and Niki wonders what world he’s creating, what life he’s making.

“I guess I’d be a teacher.”

“A teacher!” Sneeg turns red and looks away. She quickly continues, “Not that that’s a bad thing I was just expecting, I don’t know something else. Tell me more, please!”

Sneeg looks like he’s regretting everything and that makes laughter threaten to break out, the real sweet kind that bubbles in your throat. But, grudgingly, he continues, “I’d be a teacher to kids, one of those cool ones that teach them the stuff they need to know. I don’t know,” he clears his throat nervously, “I think it would be nice to help them in all the ways I wanted to be helped.”

And that is, ridiculously sweet. Niki has to contain her aw’s because Sneeg would definitely kill her. She holds it alongside that happy, life is good, laughter.

Clearly though, as she bends over coughing, blood spilling down her chin and over her ruined dress, Niki held it in a little too well. Hands rub at her shoulders, holding her lightly, and it hasn’t been long but she’s begun to memorize the way Sneeg’s comfort feels. The way he feels beside her, the shape he takes up in the universe.

When the attack passes and Niki tiredly sinks back against the wall Sneeg is looking at her with concern. She can see it in his eyes and his raised eyebrows, the silent are you okay?

“I’m fine.” That gets her a dubious look and Niki rolls her eyes, “I’m fine, it’s not like it matters much. Let me tell you about my bookstore slash bakery before the show starts.”

Even when her talking becomes rambling, becomes her spilling her dead and dying dreams, Sneeg listens patiently. He doesn’t interrupt, he doesn’t tell her how stupid her belief is, how hope will kill her. 

He listens and when the show starts, when her mind fades and the world becomes a dull thing, there will be something like joy curled under her heart. When her blood is soaking the floors and she is crying just right, a single tear out of the corner of her eye, Niki will remember Sneeg’s hands on her shoulders, the solid line of his body next to hers. And it will make her smile.

Years later, when they’re free, when they leave Showfall far behind and the only time they visit is in nightmares, Niki will remember their conversation. She won’t remember the Generation, the life she lived ever so briefly, but she will remember Sneeg. Will remember the first time Sneeg and brother became synonymous.

v.

The flickering fluorescent lights alongside the acidic smell of nail polish makes her head hurt. Niki’s hands waver slightly above Ranboo’s hand, a shimmering black polish spread across half their nails. “You alright?”

Of course, Ranboo and his endless care for literally everyone but himself notices the one time she winces, and the slight way her hand shakes. Niki looks up and gives them a small smile, a real smile, “I’m fine just a little tired, work and all.”

He gives her a concerned look, his frown pulling on the faint scar lines on his face that form the shape of a mask, a muzzle. “If you need to -”

She cuts him off, squeezing his hand with her free one, “I’m fine, I promised you I would paint your nails and intend to keep that promise.” Niki pulls their hand closer and begins the painstakingly careful strokes. 

Despite what Ranboo thinks it really is the fact that she’s tired. There was something calming about painting nails, her own and others. If Niki were seeing a therapist they would tell her something about repetition and following schedules her entire life and her need for control. And Niki would kindly tell them to fuck off. 

Yeah, when Charlie has suggested therapy she had not reacted well. Niki, to her eternal shame, had a borderline melt down and then ran until she could feel a chill down to her bones. Certainly not the best reaction or idea. She had apologized the second she had gotten back and Charlie with his scars so like hers, forgave her. 

Despite proving that yes she does need therapy, desperatly, the idea of having someone root through her mind again made her terrified. The same animal instinct, heart stopping fear whenever she sees that logo or wakes up in a daze, following the steps laid out for her by them. 

Niki never did well with change but one day she would go, force herself to go. If she was one thing then it was stubborn and fuck Showfall, they didn’t get the rest of her life. She would heal and adapt and run so far from them. Just give her a little more time. 

Her hands stilled and Niki noticed with a little surprise that Ranboo’s nails were done, two sets of black nails. “All done!” 

She began putting away her nail supplies, a few cheap polishes, remover, and wadded-up cotton balls, when Ranboo stopped her. They grabbed a few polishes and at her questioning gaze he spoke, “Just needed to add a few things, my own little touch.” When she tried to look he waved a hand at her before hunching over again. 

Niki patiently looked at the ceiling, counted the tiles and the many, many cracks and stains. She was on her second count when Ranboo let out a small sound of triumph, a subconscious sound of pure joy that made her ache in the best of ways. They blew on their hands quickly before practically shoving them in her face. 

She focused her eyes and realized that not much had changed except for the small dots that covered some of his fingers. Pink, teal, purple, faded orange, yellow, and light green. The shade of pink her hair currently is. The teal, hole-full, worn sweatshirt Charlie always wears. The ever-growing collection of purple bracelets on Sneeg’s wrist. The orange jersey of a team they’d never heard about that Ethan wears over everything. The plastic duck’s that Vinny collects, that he just always comes home with, no rhyme or reason. And finally, the light green coat Austin wears because he runs colder than the rest of them. 

“Do you like it?” Ranboo sides nervous and Niki realizes she must have been staring. But honestly, this kid does things to her heart that make her question how the hell she ever lived in numbness. 

They tear apart her heart and put it back together in the same moment and honestly, it’s quite impressive and incredibly sad. “Do I like it?” She laughs, and God isn’t it lovely to laugh so easily. “Ranboo I fucking love it! Do mine!” Just like he did Niki shoves her hand in his face, “Put them on mine but add black for you. I think it would look good against white!” 

Ranboo nods and of course grabs the nail polishes, he hunches over but Niki can see the smile on his face. Can see the small giddy smile and she swears this kid is going to kill her, and honestly she doesn’t quite mind. 

vi.

On nights like these Niki is glad they have Charlie. On nights like these she wakes up screaming, a sob trapped in her throat, hands clawing desperately at either a monster that’s not there or herself. More often than not she comes away with deep scratches and blood drying under her fingers. 

Like clockwork, once she can breathe without retching, Niki will get up and off her sweat stained sheets. She’ll stumble to the bathroom and turn on the lights, and under the harsh flickering lights she’ll go over the damage. She’ll wash the blood from under her fingernails and gently brush her blood-stained skin, scrubbing until she can see just how deep she dug into this time. 

Then once she’s either put on a bandaid or ten, or in worse cases those gauze’s they definitely did not steal from a hospital, Niki will head to the kitchen. With soft steps, careful to avoid that one step that creaks regardless of how lightly you step on it, or that one sharp edge, she’ll make her way downstairs.

The lights will already be on and Charlie will be there, the same tiredness weighing him down, the same fear keeping him up. Out of all of them, he’s always been the lightest sleeper, he’s also the one whose nightmares are always them, dying or being tortured and everything in between. So when he hears her cut off scream through their very thin walls any chance of sleep for him is gone. So while she, or who ever it happens to be, collects themselves, Charlie will go to the kitchen and make two cups of hot chocolate topped with whip cream and cinnamon.

He hands it wordlessly to her and Niki is grateful for the warmth that instantly sinks into her, warms her to her core. She drinks and it burns slightly but she welcomes it, welcomes anything that proves she’s here, that this is real. Anything that proves that Niki is herself, that she is not Nice, not the Sacrifice, not the Martyr. 

When she’s drained her cup and washed it, the two of them would head to the couch. They would sink into the sofa side by side, tucked under a fuzzy warm blanket, and turn on the tv. Charlie would throw his arm around her and Niki would burrow herself into his side while some dramatic romance show plays and the world becomes just the two of them. Just the two of them and the heart beat she can hear with her head pressed against his chest. Further proof that Charlie’s alive, and so is she, at least that’s how he reassures himself every time her chest rises and falls. 

On nights like these, nights where the two of them cling to each other so desperately, Niki is so thankful that Charlie made it out alive. And as he snorts at a terrible pun and she looks at him with an incredulous stare before they both break down laughing, she supposes there are worse people to have for brothers. 

vii. 

There is a growing number of odd trinkets sitting on her windowsill, hidden behind her fern plants, in them, in front of them. Niki isn’t sure when it first started but Vinny and his hands that are never quite still had taken to giving them things. Little knick-knacks, small odd things that she isn’t sure where he could find them. 

He always seems to know when they need something. When Austin is staring at a book a little too hard and he hasn’t turned a page in the last twenty minutes, he’ll turn and find a miniature typewriter by his drink. When Sneeg wakes up in a mood, flinches from all of them, and spends most of the day outside, he’ll come back to find a wooden puzzle with hidden keys on his bed.

When Ethan’s hands shake and he keeps looking for someone who will never be there, he’ll find a soft tiny plush of a goldfish in his lap. When Ranboo keeps freezing, pausing and staring, hands tap tap tapping, there will be a rubix cube in his hands, and when he solves that a slightly larger one and so on and so on. Until their mood is forgotten because how many fucking rubik cubes do you have Vinny? And why is this one just pictures of a pickle? Vinny? Vinny?!?

And when she doesn’t speak, when her smile is a bit too big, a bit too perfect. When Niki is performing for an audience that isn’t there, the star of a tragedy, Vinny will slid a metal bird into her hand. A hand-carved wooden cat, a tiny metal thimble, a top hit fit for a hamster. Anything and everything that makes her smile fade until it’s real, until her laughter is at the absurdity of where the hell did you find this?

Vinny doesn’t talk much, to them, to her, to anyone. Yet Niki never doubts he cares and the voice in her head that sounds like an echo, like a girl she once was, whispers he’s always there, isn't he?

And Niki will smile and whisper to no one, yeah he is. 

viii. 

Just like any good day she has bad days. And when Niki has bad days, they are really fucking bad. 

She’ll know because the moment she wakes up her skin feels too tight, too perfect, and wrong. Because she’ll look at Sneeg or Charlie or whoever happens to be sleeping close to her and she’ll feel that instinctual animal panic growing. On her bad days all Niki can see is a red-tinted past.

On her bad days, Niki runs. She laces up her tennis shoes with shaking fingers and throws on her jacket and is gone by the time the sun rises. She runs through the city, through the towering buildings that to her are more proof that she’s alive. The skies the limit they say, you are not trapped in a room they say.

She’ll dodge cars and dogs that yip at her when she passes. Niki will smile at the man that runs the deli they get their sandwiches from. She’ll wave at the old woman who feeds all the strays and lean down to pet whichever one is feeling particularly brave that day. She won’t tell the woman or stray that she envies their bravery, the bravery she doesn’t have because she is quite literally running from her problems. 

Niki will run through the city, run and run until she makes it to the park. To the arching, autumn red and yellow trees, to the leaf-littered cobble paths and occasionally bridges. The trees will blur and her word will become a mirage of oranges and yellows and a red that does not mean death. 

She’ll run until her heartbeat matches the fall of her feet against the ground. Until the world fades away, until it’s only her and the ground in front of her and the ground behind her. Then in the heart of the park, deep within the trees and rocks, she’ll stop. 

Sweatstained and sides slightly aching, Niki will step off the path and through the trees, pushing aside branches until she enters the clearing. Until she sees the small stream and its heart, ice-cold water glistening in the sunlight, slipping down the rocks built around it. She’ll dip her hand into the water, and wipe it on her face, and she always imagines that this is what a baptism feels like. 

That this, the cold water on her face and the sun above her, the leaves falling softly and not a human to be found, is the closest to being cleansed. To having your sins wiped clean. Sometimes she likes to think that it does, that every time she comes here she washes herself clean. Clean of Showfall and the effect they still have on her, the hold they have. 

Niki likes to think this is forgiveness, not her forgiveness but the forgiveness owed to her, for what the world did to her, for what it did not stop. The water is dripping down her face and with every drop is an apology, every drop a sorry she never got. 

For a moment, a moment of weakness or strength she doesn’t know, Niki stands in the clearing with water on her face and the sun in her eyes. Then she’s back to running, running until the world and its monsters and the forgiveness it owes her fades away. 

Niki will come home to that beat up apartment when the sun starts to sink and they’ll be there. Sneeg will tease her and Charlie will be her ally and the world has righted itself again. Coming home is as easy as leaving it. 

ix.

Sneeg braids her hair most mornings. His fingers are always so gentle when they comb through her hair, through the tangled mess it always is. The two of them will sit in silence, their only company the slowly rising sun peeking through the blinds. 

Niki will count every heartbeat, every time Sneeg drags his fingers through the strands of her hair. And every time she does is a whisper from girls long dead, from her, we’re alive, we’re alive, we’re alive, it says. 

Sometimes when he’s finished Niki won’t move, she’ll sink back into him and Sneeg will wrap his arms around her. And they’ll stay like that, breathing, living alongside each other. Love, Niki thinks, isn’t grand gestures and deeds, love isn’t dying for some one. 

Love is warm arms around her, kind hands braiding her hand, a kiss pressed to her hair. Love is Sneeg’s heartbeat beating alongside her. Love is being alive with each other. 

Siblings are sometimes the easiest thing you can be. 

x.

The music is playing so loudly that Niki is sure they’re going to get a noise complaint but she doesn’t care. There’s flour everywhere it’s not supposed to be, on her shirt and pants and hair, on every counter top and even the fucking ceiling. Baking cookies, she thinks as she slides on a broken egg, is such a good idea. Great job Niki! 

Cookie batter, dark chocolate chip to be precise, splatters on her face and there are at least three guilty-looking people staring at her. Ranboo boxed in by Charlie and Sneeg, all of them stained with food dye because yes she also suggested food dye. Austin and Ethan are fighting over a spoon, cause it’s not like they have an entire drawer of extras. The only innocent-looking one is Vinny, perched on the counter like a bird, and smiling like he’s won the lottery.

“Really!” Everyone freezes and watches her with trepidation, Niki has her arms folded, putting all her weight on one hip. She’s the picture perfect definition of a pissed off mom and it’s everything she wants. A piece of cookie down slides down her face, slowly, and she smiles. Niki didn’t think their eyes could grow wider, but they do. “You are so fucked!” 

And then she’s launching herself across the kitchen and an egg collides with Sneeg’s head, audible cracking, and yolk splatters across his face. Then they’re all moving, food is being launched everywhere, cookie dough covers the kitchen. No one is safe, not even Vinny who gets blue food dye all over mouth and chest.

Even as they make a terrible mess that Niki knows is going to be a bitch to clean up they’re laughing. Hell Charlie is dying, laughing so hard he’s turning red and close to collapsing to the ground. She’s sliding into Sneeg and wrapping him in a hug that has no ulterior motive like wiping the purple food dye on her shirt onto his, none at all. Ranboo and Ethan seemed to have gotten into a debate about the best methods and Austin is their rather willing test dummy. Vinny cheerfully scores each and every throw by how much gets on Austin. 

Niki’s known pain, she's known suffering that isn’t humane and yet none of it is here. They aren’t okay by any means. She’ll still wake up screaming, and Ranboo will claw at their face, at a mask that isn’t there. Charlie will walk around in a daze, so certain he’s dead. Sneeg will still desperately try to run from a monster they escaped. Ethan will see people that aren’t there and Austin’s hands will shake with no stop. Vinny will still disappear for hours at a time because the very sight of them hurts. 

They will break and shatter and pick up the pieces every time, and then do it again the next day.

The world isn’t a kind place, she knows that from experience. Just like how she knows Showfall is still out there, still lurking in the shadows, still the same monsters of their nightmares. But they aren’t here. 

This life they’ve made for themselves is real. Charlie’s laughter and Ranboo’s nails are real. Sneeg’s hands gently braiding her hair is real. Ethan and Austin doing an entire play in front of them, outfit changing and wigs included. Vinny and his thousand trinkets and his small smile. They are real, this love is real. 

Niki thinks of all the things she had to do to get out, to get them out of Showfall. She thinks of the thousands of girls she was, the thousands of Generations of pain and grief. The voices, every girl she was, even the ones she forgot, whisper, scream was it worth it? 

And Niki looks at Charlie and Ranboo desperately holding onto each other as they slip across the floor. She looks at Sneeg doubled over with laughter and not at all helping. She looks at the thoroughly food-covered Austin tackling Ethan in a hug, smearing cookie dough everywhere. She looks at Vinny, smiling that small smile of his, a plastic duck just sitting on his head, miraculously untouched by any of the mess. 

Niki looks at her family, at the broken people who pulled themselves out of Showfall, bloody and shaking. Niki looks at her family and smiles, it was worth it all. 

This isn’t the End. This is only the Beginning. 

Chapter Text

Niki glares at the bottle in her hands, some old worn whiskey that tastes like shit. God, she thought getting drunk was supposed to be fun. Instead of having a good time she’s glaring at the moon, shivering because the whiskey didn’t warm her like it should have. 

She’s had bad days, and those are usually solved by running, this isn’t a bad day though. This is an "angry at the world and everyone in it" kind of day. And those days are the worst because there is nothing she can do to feel better, nothing to punch and scream her anger at. 

So like everyone else Niki tried to drink away her troubles, it just didn’t seem to be working. She debates breaking the bottle, throwing it against the concrete barrier that lines the apartment building. She thinks the shattering glass might calm her temper but before she can the roof door swings open.

Niki leans her head over the bulky ac and see’s Ethan walking rather determinedly to her. He’s next to her in one blink and maybe she’s a little drunk. Niki raises an eyebrow and decides against starting a fight. She lifts the bottle up and pats the ground next to her. 

Ethan must be having a bad day too because he only pauses for a second before sitting next to her. He sinks into the ground with a groan and when he grabs the bottle from her she notices he’s not wearing that orange jersey of his. Now that is a surprise. 

“You alright Ethan?” Niki prays that her voice doesn’t shake and that Ethan doesn’t notice the way it breaks. 

He rolls his eyes, taking a swig of the whiskey, wincing, and then leaning his head back against the ac. “Nope!” 

At least she’s not alone in the way the two of them are both the asshole type of drunks. But hey, Niki didn’t come here for heart-to-heart conversations, she came here to rage a little without hurting anyone in her wake. And Ethan, well she and him have always been the most alike. 

They can be drunk assholes together. 

The two of them pass the bottle back and forth, wincing every time, barely choking down a swallow. Niki isn’t sure why she thinks it’ll get better the next sip but it never does. And yet they still keep drinking, yeah this isn’t very healthy.  

She sighs reluctantly and it’s more of a groan, the voice in her head that sounds like a mother she can’t remember says you’ve died for him, talking to him surely can’t be that hard. now can it? 

“So,” Ethan looks at her with a glare that could wilt plants that also says, we had such a good thing going on, why’d you have to ruin it? Niki continues without much pause because riling up Ethan is a rather fun pastime. “What brings you up here?”

He slams his head back against the ac and a small smile forms on her lips, dramatic asshole. “Come on Ethan. You know Charlie will kick us out of the apartment if we glare at him one more time. And Ranboo and Sneeg will totally help him throw us out.” She knocks their shoulders together, “Let’s get it over with and finished here.” 

She almost thinks he won't tell her, that he’ll grab the bottle and finish it but Ethan gives in. There was always a level of trust between all of them. Niki suppose that came with the Generations they’ve spent together, and the fact that they got out together. Some things are just formed from blood, and those things tend to last. 

“Do you ever just want to, I don’t know, scream? At the world, at Showfall, at literally everyone. Like an irrational sort of anger?” Ethan grimaces and looks a little ashamed, “I nearly lost my head at Charlie for cleaning up stuff around the house. He moved something of mine and I was so close to screaming at him.”

And Niki, she gets it. Gets it in a way that makes her stomach turn. She gets the anger you can’t control, anger brought on by years of abuse, years of manipulation, years of being controlled. She also gets the irrational bit that only makes you angrier, because even once you’re free they’re still hurting you, still breaking you. She nods her head and Ethan seems to sag with relief. 

There’s always relief in not being alone, even if you’re in hell at least someone gets your pain. 

“Sometimes I think I remember the past.” 

Her head turns quickly, snapping to Ethan as he breaks the silence. “The past?” Niki’s not sure what response she wants. Which is better, seeing your thousands of past deaths, hers, every single member of their broken little family? Or the past past, the before they all had but never seemed to be able to grasp. 

He shrugs, “Like my mom’s voice or how she used to sing me to sleep.” Ethan senses her gaze and laughs lightly, pitifully, “I get that they probably aren’t real, that it’s just my mind trying to cope with the trauma and filling in the gaps. Or whatever other bullshit. But I don’t know, they always comfort me. Especially on nights like these.”

Ethan looks like he’s afraid she’s going to start making fun of him and Niki wants to flinch. Like she could ever be cruel to him. Like Niki could ever hurt one of the people she’d go to hell through, one of the people she’s clawed her way out of hell for. Like she has that level of cruelty in her. 

“I get it. I don’t dream about them, or remember but I want to. It’s one of those things that keeps me up at night; the fact that I don’t know what my mother looks like.” The stars shine above and Niki wonders, like she always does, if somewhere out there a woman with her hair and eyes is still grieving a daughter. 

Sometimes she wonders if that woman is right to grieve. Because the daughter she gave birth to, the daughter she loved, died a thousand Generations ago, lifetime’s ago. Niki still breathes, still lives terribly, but the girl she used to be, the girl she was; well Niki killed her with her bare hands a long time ago. Survival is just another form of death, a thousand little deaths. 

“You ever wonder if we’ll remember one day? Remember everything?”

Niki looks at Ethan, his clenched fists, those bitter, hopeful eyes, and she sees her reflection. So with a kindness that was never directed at her. So with the sort of love she imagines a sister would have she says, “Yeah, we have to. One day something's bound to give.” 

He smiles at her, the anger's not gone but it's simmered down, until the next time it bursts, and she finds so has hers. It helps, sharing it with someone, letting someone else shoulder this burden. Tentatively he offers his hand to her and Niki takes it.

It’s not like Sneeg’s, or Charlie’s. Ethan’s hands are cool and without calluses. And they hold hers just as tightly. 

In that moment Niki is infinitely glad she lied. That she didn’t look Ethan in the eyes and tell him the truth, didn’t say i pray that we never remember, because we won’t remember kindness, we will remember Showfall’s cruelty. That she didn’t say to Ethan whose anger is so like hers but has something she doesn’t, the capability to forgive, to let go, somethings are better left untouched, and this isn’t a grave you want to dig up. 

Ethan hopes and dreams, and Niki, God help Niki, she lets him. He deserves this, deserves a life untouched by Showfall and she can’t give him that but she can let him believe in good, in happy endings. After all, isn’t that a sister’s job, and she’s older than everyone except Sneeg and God that hurts, to carry the world so her brothers remain untouched?

The two of them sit there, the night sky pitch black, the stars startlingly clear, hands still linked. The whiskey bottle sits between them and Niki doesn’t reach for it. Ethan’s looking at the stars, looking anywhere but at her when he speaks. “I uh- I get that we’re not that close compared to the others but I want you to know something. I’d fight for you, just like I would the rest.”

She looks at Ethan, at this boy she doesn’t quite know, but she’d recognize him on sight. She looks at Ethan and the silver scar below his eye, his uncalloused hands, and his angry-tired eyes that match hers. Niki looks at Ethan, looks at her brother, and smiles, “I never doubted that for a second, besides, where you go I go. You know that.”

It’s not a question, not to him, not after everything she’s done for them. Ethan laughs suddenly and it’s with the relief of love, of anger dying and only warmth being left behind. Niki joins him and the two of them laugh under the moon, laugh because they are alive, because they are angry and bitter, laugh because they have each other despite everything.

There was quote she liked, it went something like Family, either a grave or a home. Niki looks at Ethan, their still interlaced hands, his pulse steady beneath her fingertips. She thinks of the others below them, wrapped in blankets, huddled together and sleeping. Niki thinks of it all and then she shakes her head.  

Definitely a home. 

Chapter Text

They’re out at the park when it happens. Some music festival was being held and Austin had demanded they go, practically forcing them out the door. Ethan can hear drums and bass in the background while he wanders around the various trucks and pop-up shops. The others are somewhere around and it’s a testament to therapy and healing that he isn’t having a breakdown without them. 

Yeah, codependency because you escaped a mind-controlling torture facility together was kind of a bitch. But hey, they got through it, and tend to only have one breakdown a week so Ethan counts that as progress. 

The shine of metal catches his eye and draws him to one of the shops, one selling metal sculptures. The tiny, intricate things that Vinny would love to just leave somewhere in the apartment for one of them to find. His fingers drift over cool metal, a bird with spread wings, the stump of a tree with dozens of rings, and a mid-swim fish. They’re beautiful but he keeps coming back to the fish, a small thing with delicate fins, looking for all the world like he could swim through water. 

A smile makes its way on his face, the sort of smile he’s grown to associate with before, with the Generations. With the past he cannot remember. Deja vu but you know it happened, you know it’s real, just like you know it was stolen from you bloody and brutal. 

Ethan buys it and tries to rid himself of the pit in his stomach, the anxiety that comes with remembering. He nearly succeeds as he makes his way to the shade under a large oak tree. It’s comfortable, the subtle buzz of music and the people spread around on blankets, chatting with vendors. He settles under the tree, the only wrongness being the quick way his heart is beating but even that is almost gone.

He’s running his fingers over the fish and it’s small intricate scales when he hears his name. “Ethan?” 

It’s a woman’s voice, soft and hesitant, breathy. Ethan looks up expecting Niki overwhelmed by the crowds, red in the face, and tired after spending an evening around people. It’s not Niki.

She has brown hair, brown eyes, and is staring at Ethan like she’s on the verge of tears. And so is the tall man behind her. 

“Sorry, did you need something?” His hand squeeze’s the fish, metal digging into his skin as the anxiety that just faded comes back in full force. They know him, his mind points out, they know him. 

They know him, isn’t that a revelation in itself? 

She’s moving by the time he finishes his sentence. Ethan’s back is pressed hard against the bark as the woman clutches him with a surprising amount of strength. Her fingernails press into his skin and he feels tears falling on his shoulder. She’s repeating over and over under her breath, almost like a prayer, his name. “Ethan, Ethan, Ethan.” 

The man is still staring, still looking at him like the world is ending and they’re the last people left. Ethan’s looked at people like that, looked at Niki like she was water and he was a man dying. He's held Charlie, arms trembling, body shaking, after nightmares, been the desperate, clinging hands.

And in turn, they had held him just as hard. Early morning games with Sneeg, playing when he flinched at shadows and kept looking at him like he was trying to make sure that Ethan was real. Ranboo and late-night talks when he wasn’t sure if he was good, if he was reedemable.

They looked at him like he was family, the sort you bleed and die for, the desperate bloody hands and bared teeth kind. And Ethan had no idea who they were.

When he comes back to himself, and Ethan means when he can feel the ground beneath him and the rough metal of the fish. When his head is no longer forcing himself away from his body, when it no longer feels like before, like Showfall is controlling him. When he comes back to himself it’s to Austin talking to him about one of the artists and how he loves this one song. 

They’re all there, his family. Sneeg, arms crossed and body a wall in front of him. Austin kneeling beside him, a desperate look as he rambles. Charlie and Ranboo on his left and right, pressed shoulder to shoulder as if to shield him from the world. All that leaves are Niki and Vinny, Niki who is practically snarling at the man and woman from before. Vinny her ever-present right hand, watching them with hawk eyes, ready to launch into a fight before it begins.

“They know me.” It’s a hoarse whisper, his throat terribly dry but it causes Austin to pause in his spiral, Ranboo and Charlie shifting beside him. 

“What?”

“They know me.” He grabs weakly at Austin’s shoulder. “They know me Austin. They’re from before.” 

There’s a stunned silence, Niki still half shouting at the pair. They all knew logically they had a past before, some family who must have missed them,  but none of them thought they would ever find them. They had all forced themselves to be content with each other, with the family made not by shared blood but by shared pain. And yet, here they stand, people from before, family because they look at Ethan like they would tear the world apart for him. 

“Niki,” Austin speaks without looking away from him, eyes searching. She’s moving the second he finishes her name, although not without a nasty glare and Vinny taking her place. Niki falls into place beside Austin, leaning over Ethan in a way that makes him feel safe rather than cornered. She tilts her head with slight confusion and Austin speaks, “They know him, and I have a feeling it’s from before, not from Showfall.”

The idea that they were from Showfall, from some past Generation never occurred to Ethan. Maybe because he would know them, in that instinctual way, in the way they knew each other without knowing. Maybe because they don’t look scared, pained. Maybe because the strangers, or old friends, don’t flinch from everything. 

“Are you sure?” Niki’s voice reveals nothing but just like Austin her gaze is searching.

Ethan takes a breath and nods, “Yeah they knew my name.” At her skeptical look he quickly continues. “The way the man looked at me, how the woman hugged me. You can’t fake that sort of emotion, Niki, I know that.” He knows because Showfall has taught him how to tell, how to pick apart the real and fake because if he didn’t Ethan would lose himself, would slip away until he was nothing but a hollow shell.

Niki gets that, gets him, and so she sighs and gives in. Sneeg comes closer and there’s that worry-protective look and Ethan is surrounded by the people he cares about, safe. “What are you going to do?”  

It’s Ranboo who speaks, voice soft under the thin mask he wore, he sounds so hesitant but there’s a touch of something lighter, hope. Ethan is suddenly reminded of how young Ranboo is, that there’s a good chance his parents are out there somewhere, looking for him, for a son who doesn’t quite exist anymore. “I don’t know? I should talk to them, shouldn’t I?”

Sneeg’s quick to speak, “You don’t owe them anything Ethan, okay? Doesn’t matter if they knew you once, you don’t have to speak with them if you don’t want to.” 

“I know, but I think I want to. I’ve always wanted to know about my past, well here’s my chance.” Ethan looks at all of them and finds the same thing, the slivers of hope mixed with mistrust. Every one of them, even Charlie who has said multiple times that they are the only family he has, wants to know about their past. Even if it’s just to know, to understand who they were, who they might have been if things were different. 

And here’s his only chance. Here are the pair who are still looking at him over Vinny’s shoulder. The woman’s hand is trembling and there is something indescribable in the man's eyes, the sort of pain you cannot name.

Ethan doesn’t owe them anything and maybe this will do nothing but hurt, hurt because he cannot remember them, hurt because he isn’t the person they’re missing. But he has to try, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he owe himself that much? Doesn’t he owe the boy he used to be that much, their Ethan? 

He swallows hard, his resolve growing, “I need to talk to them,” And here’s the part they won’t like. “Alone.” 

“Alone?” Charlie practically shouts, looking at him like he’s crazy. He gets it, none of them tend to go anywhere alone with strangers, especially strangers who claim to know them. 

Austin in sighing from his spot on the ground and Sneeg has that goading look in his eyes. Ethan might be a little stubborn, okay a lot of stubborn. “I can’t have a proper conversation if Niki is mentally gutting them.” She has the audacity to roll her eyes, crossing her arms as if she hadn’t taken out the knife she keeps on her ankle. “Please?”

Ethan looks around and finds an empty pavilion, “We’ll talk there and you can watch from behind the tree like creeps. Okay?”

Charlie raises his head to the sky as if to ask why me? and honestly, Ethan isn’t that bad. But Charlie nods and that’s enough for Niki who steps to the side, not before speaking. “You need anything shout, and we’ll be there.”

He smiles while getting up, squeezing her hand as he passes by. “I know.” 

Vinny takes one look at him, the resolve in his gaze, the way he is sure the others are watching him, and steps aside. The man and woman look more and more stunned as he grows close and Ethan swears the man stops breathing when he’s within touching distance. “Let’s go to the pavilion, we can talk there.” And rather pointedly, “Alone.” 

The man doesn’t move but the woman does, nodding her head rapidly and dragging the man behind her when Ethan walks towards the pavilion. 

“You don’t remember us, do you?” Ethan pauses mid-step at the woman’s voice. He turns and she’s looking at him in a sad, knowing way. Like her question isn’t a question.

He nods his head and she winces, “I thought you didn’t, you don’t look at us like we’re, well us.” She holds out her hand and Ethan pretends not to see it shake, “Amy and this is Mark.”

He takes her hand and it feels odd, a little right, a little new. But looking at them, her hair pulled in a ponytail, the way his eyes soften, they feel empty.

It’s a little disconcerting, the way they - Mark and Amy are looking at him. They look at him like they’re grieving, like they’re memorizing his face, like they know him. 

It’s not like the way Ethan knows how Charlie smiles, or the way he knows exactly how Ranboo ducks his head and curves in on himself. How he knows that when Niki laughs, and true unguarded laughter, she goes bright red and her laugh is more of a wheeze. 

It’s not like the way the others know him. How Niki wasn’t surprised when he joined her on the roof. How Sneeg is ready with an ice pack whenever he gets quiet, when the world is a faraway place and he’s fading. How Austin didn’t flinch when he swung at the first person to look at them wrong.

They look at him like they know him and when Ethan looks at them, he feels nothing.

It’s like looking at a wall, a sort of numb feeling. You don’t care but you don’t hate, it’s just a wall. It’s just nothing.

Ethan remembers his conversation with Niki, how desperately he had wished for his past. For a mother who sang him to sleep and friends who knew his favorite drink and how he laughed. 

He’s finally got that, if Mark and Amy and telling the truth and he thinks-knows they are, but Ethan isn’t who they want.

“So do you have any idea what happened? Or do I need to explain?” They deserve the truth, the people that loved their Ethan deserve to know what happened. Even if thinking about explaining what happened, Showfall and the Generations and losing himself piece by piece, makes Ethan was to curl into himself.

Mark speaks for the first time and it sounds like someone trying to be strong, putting on a front so they don’t break. “No, you were here one day and gone the next. Just nothing. We looked,” his voice breaks slightly, “we looked but there was just nothing.”

Finding out that there were people looking for him, that Showfall took him away from them, stings. Ethan was expecting it but still, there was always that off chance that he had no one, that no one was mourning him. But sometimes he would wish that he was no one, that there was no left to grieve and in turn for him to forget.

Ethan takes a breath and leans back on the wooden railings, Amy and Mark across from him. While he tries to think of how to explain what happened he takes them in. They look like the others in the way they’re braced against each other, side to side, fingers interlaced. They have that same desperate need to be close to each other. Ethan knows from experience that it’s probably the only reason they’re still standing.

“Okay, the first thing you need to understand is that when I say I don’t remember, that I’m not your Ethan I mean it. I don’t remember a single thing of my past, and honestly it’s doubtful I ever will. Okay?” There’s the pained, grieving looks but Amy nods and after gritting his teeth, eyes glinting with tears, so does Mark. 

He takes a breath, “Showfall took me, and then they took away everything I was. I’m what managed to survive. Showfall, I honestly don’t know what they are besides what they did to us, to me and all those people you saw earlier. They wiped my memory over and over again and replaced it with who they wanted me to be that particular Generation. Nice, cruel, funny, dumb. They made me a thousand different people and then they took that away, hurt me, killed me. We got out, all of us, and have been running ever since.”

“What do you mean killed you?” There’s something like rage in Mark’s eyes and Ethan is reminded of Niki.

He shrugs, fingers digging into his thighs, “Showfall had a way of, I guess changing reality, changing your perspective. So they killed me, hurt me in just about every way and then I forgot, then I was playing my part again. It nearly broke me, the constant pull and push, of knowing and then not, of not being able to tell what was real and what wasn’t.”

Ethan laughs a little before nodding towards the others, all staring daggers at the pavilion from the tree. “Still struggle with that today but they help. We all help each other, ground each other in reality. I’ve found it’s easy to lose yourself in fear if you're alone.”

“They’re certainly protective of you. I thought the girl was going to kill me.” Amy laughs lightly but she looks a little scared and Ethan could believe that. Niki didn’t have Sneeg’s or even Charlie’s strength but she had desperation.

When Niki fought she fought like a feral animal, trapped and bloody. She would throw herself at you with everything she had. Even is she didn’t have that knife tucked against her ankle Ethan could believe that Niki would tear out someone’s throat with her bare teeth if she had too. 

Besides he thinks, his lips twitching a little, Niki’s smile was more bared teeth than anything. “Yeah Niki’s a little protective, we all are. When you're constantly being ripped away from each other you tend to get a little over protective.”

Amy attempts a smile and Ethan thinks that she’s a lot like Niki, that she has her bravery, her stubbornness. “Well I’m glad you had each other at Showfall.” She pauses at the last word as if attempting to sound it out, to make it real. 

He quirks an eyebrow, head turned slightly, “You believe me, just like that?”

Her eyes crinkle slightly and it’s not familiar, not the subconscious of course you do that, but Ethan thinks it suits her. Ethan is struck with the urge to know her until it is subconscious, until knowing Amy is as natural as breathing. “Of course I believe you, even if I didn’t, you believe that. It’s your truth and honestly I was starting to believe in Alien abductions because that made just as much sense.”

She steps forwards and there’s a sort of urgency on her step. Amy offers her hand, Ethan’s starting to notice she does that, offers not demands. He grabs her hand and it’s a solid weight against his. “If that’s what you say happened than that’s what happened. If you say you won’t remember than you won’t and we’ll accept that too. If you need us to go then we’ll leave, okay? As long as your alright so are we.”

She attempts a smile but he sees through it, through her and her pain. “If you need us to go, if you are safe and happy with this family of yours then we’ll go.”

Amy must have loved him a lot because she’s offering to leave her not so dead friend if he asks. Ethan looks behind her to Mark and even with the pained, near agonized look on his face that has yet to leave, he nods. He would leave Ethan, the shadow of the person they cared about, behind if it’s what was best for him.

And Ethan finds that it isn’t. That even if he doesn’t know them, he doesn’t want them to go. “I don’t.” Amy inhales sharply, something like hope flickering in her eyes. “Want you to leave that is. But you gotta understand I’m not your Ethan, I don’t rember you or anything from before. That they’re my family and when it comes to it, if I’m hurt I’ll go to them first.”

He steps back, hand falling from Amy’s and this time he’s the one giving her an out. “I’m never going to be the person you loved. You won’t find him here. And I want, I want to get to know you, to learn about everything they stole from me. But it won’t bring him back; and it won’t change me. I won’t be who you loved.”

She’s crying now, they all are but Amy steps forward and raises a hesitant hand. She gives him plenty of time to move back but Ethan doesn’t, he lets her cup his face. She smiles through the tears and he was right, she’s just like Niki, “Oh Ethan, I love any version of you. The one who knows me and the one who doesn’t. The one who dyes his hair and has a protective family that constantly looks like they want to murder me.”

Amy laughs and brushes away a tear falling down him cheek. “I love you, and you’re right. I don’t know you. But I want to know. I want to know who’ve you become and what you like and don’t like. I’m not your family, we aren’t your family,” Mark makes a sound like a wounded animal, “but we’d like to be, like to try. If you let us.”

And Ethan who still dreams of his mother. Ethan who is more hopeful than Niki and harsher than Charlie. Ethan who cradles hope like it’s a flickering candle, who holds it close to his heart. Ethan who is desperately trying not to be what Showfall made him.

How could he ever say no?

He nods and Amy’s hugging him, digging her head into the crook of his neck, holding him tightly. It mimics before but this time he doesn’t fade, this time he hesitantly holds her back. It’s an unfamiliar weight but it’s one he could learn.

Neither of them really want to let go but Amy finally pulls back, face red as she brushes away her tears. She turns and Ethan remembers Mark, Amy is one thing but Mark who looks at him like he’s missing half his heart, like he’s dying. Will that Mark be willing to accept that his Ethan is gone?

And it shouldn’t really matter to him but he wants, wants in a way he rarely does, to know him. Ethan wants to be able to feel the same level of comfortable, of safe with the two of them as he feels with the others. Ethan wants, perhaps selfishly, a family with these two people. But he can’t ask that of Mark, even he isn’t that cruel.

Ethan walks forward until he’s once again within touching distance of Mark. What’s that saying, a leap of faith? “And what about you? Do you want something more?”

He hopes Mark can hear the out, the I won’t blame you if you decide to leave, if it’s too much, if seeing me is like dying all over again. 

Mark doesn’t say anything at first and that flickering candle hope sways. He’s taller than Ethan, stronger too, but he looks like he’s about to fall, to shatter. He looks like a man condemned. 

He can feel Amy by his side and it’s like the world is holding its breath. For once this feels natural, this thing between the three of them, it’s the closest to remembering he’ll get. 

Mark, and Ethan can still the remnants of tears on his face, has an unreadable look on his face. The grief, the pain slipping away into something more calculated, more searching. “You really don’t remember anything, and you won’t ever?”

“No.”

Mark looks down, fists clenched and when he speaks Ethan almost doesn’t hear him. “I’m the reason you got taken.”

“What?” Surprisingly it’s not Ethan who speaks but Amy, she’s staring at Mark stunned. “What do you mean you’re the reason he got taken?”

Mark's jaw trembles slightly and Ethan finally realizes what that look is, alongside the pain is guilt, guilt so thick it consumes him. “We had a fight the night before you disappeared, it was some stupid thing but it got heated. We were shouting and just so upset until you stormed out to cool off. You never came back and I thought-” His voice breaks and Ethan’s never quite seen a man so broken. “I thought you were just on someone’s couch. Amy wanted to look but I told her not. You were gone and I didn’t look for you, maybe if I had we could have found you before they took you.”

He’s crying, tears streaming down his face and Ethan suspects it’s years of guilt, of grief. “I’m the reason they took you. You were alone because of me.”

Mark holds himself like he’s expecting a hit, like he’s bracing himself for one but there isn’t anger. Ethan’s always wondered how Showfall got him, if he was at home, if he fought, and there’s a sort of relief to knowing the truth. Showfall got him because they did what they had always done, they prayed on the lonely, on the vulnerable. And for years this man has carried the guilt of that.

It’s quiet, Mark crying and Amy looking infinitely sad so when he speaks his words ring in the air. “It’s not your fault.” 

Mark looks, well stunned wouldn’t be accurate. He looks like the ground has been ripped out from under him and Ethan wonders how long he’s wanted to hear that, how long he never believed that. When he speaks it scrapes at his throat and without looking he knows Charlie is close to running towards him, but won’t without his say. “It’s not your fault Mark. People fight, friends fight, family fights. You had no idea that Showfall would take, no idea.”

“But -” It’s odd really, how none of them seem to be able understand that what they couldn’t control isn’t their fault. 

“But nothing. Let me ask you something, if you had known what would happen to me that night, would you have left me out there? Would you have gone back to sleep, or would you have looked for me?” Ethan already knows the answer.

“I would have looked for you, wouldn’t have stopped till I found you.” And that’s why Ethan will stay with them even if he doesn’t remember, that loyalty. It’s the sort of loyalty he has with his family, with Niki’s unwavering eyes and Charlie’s care, with Ranboo’s kindness and Austin’s logic, with Sneeg’s protectiveness and Vinny’s devotion. It’s the sort of loyalty you can’t just find, it’s made either through blood, blood spilled not shared, or time. Or sometimes both. 

He grabs Mark’s hand and he doesn’t pull away. Amy steps into their space, tucking herself against Mark with forgiveness on her lips, a hand near Ethan’s. Now this he could get used too, this he could learn to know. “It’s not your fault just like it’s not mine. So do you want something out of this? A relationship even if I’m not who you knew, never will be.”

Ethan holds his breath, Amy tenses and for a moment the doubt creeps in, for a moment he thinks Mark will say no and Ethan will lose something he never quite had. But he doesn’t, Mark nods and there’s tears, the sort of pain that comes with finally letting someone go. But there’s also hope, the same hope Ethan feels. They won’t be the same, they can’t be. But they’ll be something and that’s enough.

Amy’s legs nearly buckle when he nods and Ethan pulls her into a hug, Mark too. The three of them are a tangle of arms, legs and tears but it doesn’t feel bad. It feels new, it feels like the first flower that unfurls above the snow. It feels like hope. 

Ethan meets Niki’s eyes over Mark’s shoulder and she’s smiling knowingly. He knows she’s remembering their conversation on the roof, the past he longed for. He can almost hear her voice, guess you got what you wished for. 

Yeah, he did. 

Ethan smiles a little, nodding, and the others relax as a storm passes, as the fear fades away at his reassurance’s. Trust like this is earned, payed for, and as Amy presses her forehead against his shoulder, as Mark wraps his arm around him, he thinks they too will earn that sort of trust. They will earn the trust and devotion the others have.

Families, Ethan has found, can be made and just as easily found.

Chapter Text

Ranboo liked to think that his parents would be proud of him. That they would see him and this life he built, and be happy. He isn’t sure though, if they could be proud of having a kid like him. He isn’t sure if they could look at him and not see the blood soaking his hands. Isn’t sure if the kid they love even exists anymore.

If they said this aloud the others wouldn’t let it stand. Charlie would tell them of all the good they had done. You got me out, saved me. And you never once stopped trying to save all of us, to get us out even when it would have been easier to let us go. 

Niki’s eyes would flash and there would be that instinctual curl of her lips, the snarl at the thought of Showfall and their tainted kindness. But then it would be gone and she would step closer, hand on their arm, and tell him without hesitation that it was bullshit. Ranboo and I mean this in every way, you are one of the best people I know. You are kind and caring without fault, even when no one could blame you for it, after everything you had gone through. Of course, your parents would be proud of you.

Sneeg would wordlessly hug him, hold him close and simply tell him he was wrong. Ethan would go all factual, and might even make a PowerPoint if he and Charlie collaborated. Vinny would simply shake his head, later that night slipping a stuffed cat into their bed. A cat from the gift shop of the animal shelter they sometimes volunteered at. A comfort and a point. 

Austin though, Austin wouldn’t do any of that. Austin would smile the sad, oh kid, smile they always had around him. He wouldn’t offer words of comfort that felt like ash to Ranboo. He wouldn’t spout endless denials as if that made them feel better, feel good.

Austin would understand because how could he not when he thought the same thing every night.

The others, and they mean it affectionately, and they mean their family. The others never quite understand, not really. Niki’s hands would shake and Ethan would flinch from Mark and Amy. Charlie would go quiet, doing any mundane thing to keep his mind busy. Sneeg and Vinny would be helpful, buzzing in the background, watching them all like hawks.

But in the end, those were their bad days. Because in the end when Niki repeated over and over I am kind because I am, I am good because I am, she believed it. Because in the end Charlie never questioned the fact that he was forced, that he didn’t have any control and therefore fault. Because in the end, Ethan would always welcome Amy and Mark back with joy, never mistaking their smiles or hugs for anything other than genuine.

Because in the end Vinny never once thought about his right to luxurious things, to comfort. Because in the end Sneeg never thought himself a monster, the thing to blame. Because in the end they never doubted their place in this world, but he always did.

Ranboo tried very hard to be a good person, but he never could shake The Hero. Showfall. They could never shake the feeling that nothing they did was of their own accord. That every action, every smile, every gesture was Showfall. And it terrified them.

Their hands had started twitching, ever since getting out, since that wondrous moment in the parking lot when the mask was ripped off and they could b r e a t h e. 

It was just little things, his fingers tap tapping on his leg. Hands shaking just so, fingers trembling. Charlie would hold their hand, pressing it to his until it stopped. Niki said something about trauma and your body's reaction, therapist talk. The others thought nothing of it, but Ranboo’s heart stopped every time.

It was what they could remember as being the only freedom they had while being trapped, frozen, a limp puppet dangling on strings. Their hands tap tapping, the truth breaking through. And now he couldn’t stop doing it, and in the back of his mind was a loop of what if you never got out, what if this is your body's way of telling you, what if you’re right back where you started and this is just a new stage, a new act.

It was the worst sort of fear, the heart stopping, body paralysis fear. What if they never got out? What if this was just Showfall, another cruel reality, hope to take away and crush?

So when his hands tap tapped and Niki smiled a little and Charlie took his hand, Ranboo froze. They took a breath in and out, in and out, and tried to believe this was real. They justified it, every action, every freedom that Showfall surely wouldn’t let them have. That this had to be real because how could it not be?

Sometimes it worked, most times it didn’t.

So Ranboo was still The Hero, still playing his part and what parent would be proud? How do you love a child that isn’t really your child, not anymore at least? The others wouldn’t understand but Austin would, because he got the paralysis fear of never having gotten out, of fighting and it being for nothing.

It’s why Ranboo was here, hidden away in the old vinyl room of the Music Store Austin loved, and worked at. It smelled like dust and old air freshener, stale lemon. And they were currently tucked into a corner, neck aching from being shoved under a shelf, surrounded by tearing, peeling vinyl covers. 

Their phone was silent, an old cracked thing, the blue text message clear, help. vintage room. pls. With that incredibly vague text, Austin would be here quickly. Maybe, they began to think, they should have clarified a little.

Austin burst through the doors, slamming it rather hard against the wall. He glanced around quickly, eyes darting for a threat, for someone to fight, before landing on Ranboo. He was there in an instant, on his knees with his hands wavering just above Ranboo. Touch was always come and go with them, a comfort or a threat. 

“Are you okay?” His eyes were full of concern and Ranboo was starting to realize, for the first time, that even if his parents couldn’t love him he was loved. An odd feeling but true because Austin knew everything, every terrible detail that Ranboo had done, and yet he was here anyway.

Oh, Oh.

Ranboo throws themselves forward, nearly shoving Austin onto the floor. They were taller than him, a mess of long limbs and tears, but still they were nineteen. Sometimes they forgot that fact. Sometimes they also forgot how much a hug helped. 

Want arms hesitantly wrapped around him. It was nice, the two of them sat there, tangled together, for a minute before Austin spoke. “Kid? Ranboo? You alright?”

They were blushing, ears surely red, as they scrambled back. “I’m fine, I was being stupid-” Their words hung in the air and Austin’s eyes narrow. He put’s his hands up, “Okay not stupid, just doubty, I guess?”

“Okay.” The two of them settle more comfortably, Ranboo wrapping his arms around his legs and Austin sitting crisscrossed. “What were you being ‘doubty’ about?” 

“Mark and Amy. I mean they're great, like really good, and they seem to love Ethan a lot. But it got me thinking about my parents, my friends and I just.” Ranboo goes quiet, that fear, that dread swallowing him whole.

“Just what?” There’s no demand in Austin’s voice, nor annoyance is his expression. Annoyance Ranboo is sure anyone else would feel if they were sitting on the ground because some kid couldn’t be on their own for a few hours.

It gives him a little courage, enough to speak, “Just, I don’t think my parents would love me like that. If I found them tomorrow, in the next hour, I don’t think they would love me. I don’t think they can love me, because there’s nothing left of their kid, just The Hero.” They smile harshly and Austin doesn’t look sad, just understanding. 

“You always call yourself that, The Hero. Why?”

Ranboo scoffs, “Cause it’s all I am. I’m what Showfall made me. Everything I do, everything I am is because of them.”

Austin looks calculating, like he’s solving a problem in his head. “So are we what Showfall made of us? Hm? Is Niki The Nice, is she only kind because of Showfall? Is Charlie a monster or stoned idiot? Is Sneeg an asshole just for the sake of it?”

“What? No, of course not.” The idea that any of those things are true is ridiculous. Ranboo has seen Charlie on the early mornings, tea in hand, someone curled into his side. They’ve seen Niki throwing her arm around Ethan on his bad days, pulling him to her side while they laughed fiercely. And Sneeg, Sneeg and his gentle hands painting their nails at two am because he couldn’t sleep, because his hands only stopped shaking at Sneeg’s touch. The idea is ridiculous.

“So why are you what Showfall made you, but we aren’t?” And there it is, the one problem with coming to Austin. He’s a little too smart, and way to smug. 

Ranboo takes a shaky breath, “Cause I’m the Hero, the control they had on me was always flickering, because I could have broken out if I had tried harder. I could’ve saved us so much pain, so much trouble if I had just been stronger. But I wasn’t.”

“Bullshit.” It comes instantly, for once Austin looking stunned, looking angry. “That is utter bullshit Ranboo. Showfall controlled you just as much as it controlled us, the fact that you couldn’t break out of the literally mind control mask strapped to your face isn’t some terrible thing. You fought as hard as you could and you did get out, we all did.” 

“Did I?” The question hands in the air and they refuse to look at Austing. “Did I get out? Because sometimes it feels like I never left, like they’re still controlling me. I am so terrified that Showfall is still here, still controlling me.” 

“Austin what if I never got out? What if I can’t?” He sounds ridiculously like a child, begging and pleading for their mother to tell them there isn’t a monster under their bed. A reassurance for an impossibility that they can’t understand. 

Austin takes his hand slowly and waits until Ranboo looks up. When he speaks he’s serious, the most serious he’s seen of Austin. “You got out, we all did. Showfall isn’t controlling you. They aren’t controlling me, controlling any of us. I’ll tell you that every day if I have too just like I’ll tell you that you aren’t The Hero, you aren’t only what they made you. You’re Ranboo and you love comic books, any you can get your hands on. You’re Ranboo and whenever Niki decides to let you try and braid her hair you somehow tangle literally everything. You’re Ranboo and Charlie has permanently decided your his horror movie buddy because it’s hard to be scared of anything when a six foot six person is hiding behind their hands, literally peeking through their fingers every second. You’re Ranboo and Ethan has started a war against you because you insist on holding things above his head just because.”

Austin smiles at every detail, every thing that is his, not Showfall. “You’re Ranboo and you’re kind, you’re gentle, you care so much about everyone. Showfall didn’t make you good, you did that. I don’t know your parents but I know they would love you, without hesitation, without doubt. I know they would so damn proud not only that you survived but with the life you’ve made for yourself.”

Ranboo, doesn’t know how to feel. Austin, still smiling at him, still terribly smug, still believing every word. “You really thing that?” Child seeking reassurances, he never really grew up did he?

“Course, besides you somehow manage to keep sane sharing an apartment with all of us so that’s a testament to your patience, and endless forgiveness.” He laughs a little at that, unfolding his legs, stretching them out an groaning. Maybe having a near break down on the floor wasn’t the best idea. 

“You ready to get up or you want to stay?” 

They shake their head, “I really couldn’t ask you to stay, I mean I already took up so much of your time because I was being stup-doubty.”

Austin rolls his eyes, “Ranboo, I was doing nothing, you weren’t bothering me. Besides I don’t have to be in here. I can put on some music, let you stay until your ready to leave.”

“If that wouldn’t be too much trouble, please?” Austin stands, dusting off their pants and sighing at the sheepish look he can tell is under the mask. He loves Ranboo but this kid is going to kill him with all that dout. 

He goes over to one of the shelves and pulls out one of the worn vinyl covers. He takes out the record, placing it on the record player, turning it on and placing the needle on the vinyl before walking out. Music fills the room as Austin shuts the doors and a quick glance through the glass windows shows Ranboo, swaying to the music.

Austin smiles, takes one last glance before heading back to restocking the shelves, mouthing lyrics to one of his favorite old songs. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

♬The road is long

With a many a winding turn

That leads us to who knows where

Who knows where

But I'm strong

Strong enough to carry him

He ain't heavy, he's my brother

So on we go

His welfare is of my concern

No burden is he to bear

We'll get there

For I know

He would not encumber me

He ain't heavy, he's my brother

If I'm laden at all

I'm laden with sadness

That everyone's heart

Isn't filled with the gladness

Of love for one another

It's a long, long road

From which there is no return

While we're on the way to there

Why not share

And the load

Doesn't weigh me down at all

He ain't heavy, he's my brother

He's my brother

He ain't heavy, he's my brother

He ain't heavy, he's my brother

Chapter Text

Austin swirls the liquid in his cup around, silently wondering why exactly he had come with Ethan. It was some game night trivia thing except its focus was on basketball which was why Ethan was surrounded by people, all cheering heavily at their win, and he was alone. Sports never was his forte. 

“You always look like that on your night out?” He turned suddenly to see a man his age, with red hair, and a smile, taking the seat next to him. 

Austin turned in his seat, “You always talk to strangers like that?” 

The man laughed a little, “Only the pretty ones. Liam.” He held out his hand and Austin took it.

Liam’s hand was calloused, his grip firm. “Austin." He hesitates to let go, and Liam's cheeks are flushed.

Austin smiles before letting go, eyes still on Liam. Still flushed, still with those flickering eyes and smile, “Well Austin, you here for trivia?"

"I look like I’m here for the trivia?” He’s sitting alone at the bar with a look of utter boredom. 

“No, but I can give you something else to be here for. Like a nice conversation.” It’s awfully tempting, Liam looks sweet and kind. And his smile is certainly charming. 

Austin smiles a little, the sort he knows makes him look good, “Maybe, just what would this nice conversation be?” 

Liam shifts forward, lips curled into a smirk, hand brushing against Austin’s shoulder in a definitely not-friendly way and he flinches back. It’s instinctual, just like the way his stomach drops. Gone in the blush, the happiness that made him warm, that made him smile. Now there’s just shame, and fear. 

Liam backs up quickly, hands raised a little, “Sorry about that, I won’t touch so suddenly again.” It almost makes it worse, how he isn’t an asshole. How he’s charming and kind, good in just about every way. It’s worse because Austin is certain he would have dated him. That past him would have taken him up on his offer for a conversation and that would have led to a date, to a second date, and a third, and so on and so on. 

The Austin of before would have no hesitance when talking to Liam but that's the thing isn’t it, he isn’t the Austin of before. He’s the aftermath of Showfall and everything they did to him.

“I gotta go now, sorry about this.” He’s out of his chair before he finishes the sentence, Liam looking at him like he’s crazy. Austin rushes away from the bar, from Liam and his stupidly cute smile. He walks onto the open and thankfully empty balcony, the city a buzz below him. 

He takes gasping breath after breath, trying desperately to shake the pit in his stomach, the feeling of wrongness that he has long grown to associate with Showfall. Austin isn’t sure why he’s out here, nearly dying after a simple conversation, except that’s a lie, he knows exactly what it is. And that thing is the most stupid part.

“Austin! Are you alright? Did the guy do something?” A hand wavers over his shoulder, Ethan he knows instantly. Ethan who doesn’t touch without permission, Ethan who is too damn caring. Ethan who’s why he’s out here. 

Austin takes a wavering breath, ignoring Ethan’s worried look beside him. He focuses on the sky, traces the stars, and hears the muffled talking, the cars driving below him. He focuses on anything but himself until he can breathe, until it isn’t a struggle. “I’m fine,” Austin breathes out, “I’m alright, he didn’t say anything. I just freaked out.” 

“You sure you’re okay,” He nods but his knuckles are going white from how hard he’s clutching the railing. “Austin,” Ethan sounds so concerned he finally looks up, “What happened?” 

Maybe it’s because Ethan is genuinely concerned, maybe it’s the care in his eyes. Maybe it’s because they’ve known each other for so long, through so much, that some trust is warranted. Maybe, maybe, maybe but either way Austin gives in and the words spill out of him. “I’ve always known who I was, even as a kid who didn’t understand what the words meant. I always knew who I was.”

Austin grips the balcony railing and he can feel Ethan’s eyes on him. “I never cared about other people's opinions, if they believed me, if they didn’t. Because I knew, I knew who I was. That’s all that matters but Showfall took that from me. To even that, my fucking sexuality, they thought themselves entitled. And I don’t know how to move past that.”

He laughs roughly, “It seems stupid really. I mean Showfall tortured us for God knows how long. They wiped our memories, hurt us in every way possible. They have killed us, and the one thing I can’t forget is that they took away my sexuality. Showfall making a mockery of it.”

“It’s not stupid. You were violated in another way, a different way, you’re right to feel bad about it.” It’s the same way Ethan gets that sickly feeling when looking at Amy and Mark sometimes. When he can’t remember them and that’s another thing Showfall took from him. A past that was sweet, kind. A past that had Amy’s smile and Mark’s hug, that had the sort of gentleness he longed for. “You’re allowed to be upset that they used your sexuality, who you are, as the butt of a joke. That they made you punchline while forcing you to die, to go through terrible things for their entertainment. Austin no one can blame you for being upset about any of that.”

“Look,” Austin’s pointedly watching the sky and Ethan lets him. “There is nothing wrong with your pain, your disgust, your hesitance. Showfall marked something you hold dear, and it’s gonna take a while before you can see beyond that. I mean Niki still has to fight the urge to be cruel because being kind is something Showfall tainted. Ranboo second-guesses everything out of fear that Showfall is still controlling him. I still hesitate to talk to Mark and Amy, hell to you guys because I know what it is to lose, to have something given to you just to be taken away.”

Austin wants to say it’s different and suddenly gets the look Ranboo had when he talked about the others. Now he knows what his pointed conversations feel like. 

“It’s gonna take a while for all of us to take back what was stolen, and that’s okay. It’s okay if you struggle, if you fall, just get back up. That’s all that matters, trying.” Ethan’s kinda proud of himself, he managed to make a convincing argument and Austin no longer looks like he wants to drink until he blacks out. So win win.

Austin sighs, shoulder pressed against Ethan’s, “Got all that from therapy did you?”

He smiles, “Yep! Niki hates it so much.” Niki had taken to glaring at him before doing her calming breaths whenever he said anything helpful but also definitely like a therapist. Niki has a grudge against all therapists because of obvious reasons and is currently working on that in therapy. A lovely little conundrum. 

“I figured,” At Ethan’s expectant stare Austin grudgingly continues, “It helped, thanks I guess.”

“Always. Family and all that.” To Ethan it was rather simple, he’d bleed and die for them so helping each other out with mundane things was easy.

“Yeah, yeah.” A comfortable silence fills the air as the two stand under the night sky, shoulder to shoulder. It almost stays that way until Ethan, and that terrible younger brother teasing he somehow got despite not actually being anyone's little brother comes out.

“So that guy was definitely into you. You should talk to him and you know.” Ethan wiggles his eyebrows, a glint in his eyes as Austin glares. Family, so many people to annoy.

He shoves his shoulder, with unwilling laughter, “Ethan!” Family, Austin doesn’t feel as annoyed as he should. 

Chapter Text

“You come here often?” Sneeg looks over to see Ranboo sliding into the wooden pew behind him. He’s wearing a look of utter awkwardness and uncomfortableness, like he couldn’t be more out of place. 

“That’s how you’re gonna start this conversation? With you come here often?” He knows he sounds a little, well assholey but he had come here to be alone, for peace and quiet. With the added benefit that most of the others wouldn’t even think about coming here. To people who’ve been tortured, killed, used, and manipulated, religion tended to be a tricky thing. A touchy subject. 

Ranboo shrugged and Sneeg noticed, with shock, that they weren’t wearing their usual cotton mask. He could make out fine scars, silver lines tracing their jawbone, arching across their face and the bridge of their nose. It was noticeable, not extremely now that it healed but still, Ranboo never left the house without it. 

Ranboo noticed his stare and smiled a little, “Wasn’t that far of a walk, besides it’s late, no one is here. It’s why you came here, right?” 

They were right, the church was quiet and devoid of people, it almost felt holy like that. But on that subject, “How did you know I was here?” 

At his question Ranboo actually looked a little sorry, “So you know how you have a phone.” Sneeg nodded, already not liking their tone and the look on their face. “Well I might have turned on your locations, all our locations on the Find My app. And I might have followed you here because it’s late and you're in a church sooo.” 

“Really Ranboo, really?” Sneeg sighed but there was barely any anger, he was far too tired for anger. And wasn’t that saying something?

Ranboo noticed and there was that worried look. They had a habit of caring so deeply for everyone that Sneeg envied him and was thankful he didn’t feel like that. “Are you okay Sneeg?” 

Sneeg didn’t answer, rubbing at his face with his hands before turning his gaze to the stained glass centerpiece. Christ in beautiful colors, he could only imagine how it must look Sunday morning, the chorus singing hymns. “I must have been religious growing up. Like how Ethan knows certain things about Mark and Amy, the coffee they like, without them ever telling him. How we know each other without knowing. I remember, remember in my bones what it is to feel the ground beneath your knees, a prayer on your lips. I remember faith, the pure devotion to something bigger than you.”

The wood of the pew is smooth beneath his fingers, he can feel scratched-out letters. He can almost see the kid in a stiff suit carving their name with their fingernails, almost see their mother beside them. Her beautiful dress, the pearls falling across her collar bone, dangling from her ear, her ‘fancy pair’. It’s kinda stupid, really, how Sneeg finds himself in every church, every wood pew, every falling apart bible. In a faith that he can barely remember, because he remembers the feeling but it’s like Ethan with Mark and Amy, there’s no connection, it’s there and it’s a wall. It’s nothing. 

He wonders if he lost his faith when Showfall took his memories or in every moment after that.

“Do you ever wonder what happens when you die? And I mean permanent death, grim reaper type not Showfall ripping us apart and putting us back together.” Ranboo’s steadily got a more and more concerned look on his face with Sneeg’s silence and words. Which is fair, given how sudden all this was. For him at least, Sneeg’s been coming to churches, been sitting at this pew, hands folded perfectly for years. Or at least it felt like years. 

“I mean, not really? I never had time to think about permanent death, just what Showfall would do if they caught me. And here.” They pause and Sneeg can see them going over their words, hemming and hawing at every one, a habit. “You know it’s like what Niki said to me, I think one of the first few nights after we got out. It was dark and everyone was sleeping as best they could and I was just having a terrible breakdown. I just kept asking her, ‘What do I do now? How do you survive this?’ And Niki, she was barely dealing with everything too, so she just kinda looked at me and said, ‘Just day by day, you survive day by day and make that enough.”

Ranboo looks at Sneeg and smiles a little, “When you’re living day by day you tend not to think about death, just what you’re making for lunch.” 

Sneeg nods and watches as Ranboo shifts over, pressing their shoulders together. He’s noticed recently, how they tend to do that. To find touch, simple touch, in every way. A shoulder pressed to another, interlaced pinkies, legs thrown over another’s lap while they’re watching a shitty rom-com. He gets it then, why touch starvation is a thing. Why humans need touch like they need air. Sneeg’s not sure he would have survived without this. 

“What’s going on Sneeg?” Ranboo’s quiet, concerned, and Sneeg lets out a harsh laugh.

His head tilts backward until he can trace the wooden beams holding up the ceiling. Without looking he can feel Ranboo’s eyes on him and a part of him, the part that never really left Showfall, wants to tear at his skin. To become anyone but the person whose being looked at. 

“I know so many stories, the type they tell you in bible study and the type said on the preacher's pulpit. But there was one I could never forget even throughout the Generations. It would always be on the back of my mind, just burning me. The story of Isaac and Abraham.”

There’s his mother's voice, or at least he thinks it’s his mother's voice, whispering into his hair. You’ve got a storyteller's heart love, you’ll be up there one day. Preaching to your waiting sheep. Isaac and Abraham take life, “Abraham was unquestionably faithful to God. Enough so that he left his entire life behind to form a nation at His command. In doing so he was promised that from him would come those who inherited the land. They did in the form of Isaac, his first son.”

Sneeg had always wondered if that made it worse. If it had made Abraham hesitate even a little, remembering holding his child for the first time. Holding the tiny baby, eyes wide and innocent, Isaac’s hand wrapping around his finger. He wondered what cruelty it took to remember that and still hold a blade to your son's throat. 

“But you see Abraham’s relentless faith wasn’t enough because one day He told Abraham, ‘ Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’ And Abraham did. He took his son to the mountain, tied him to an altar, and raised his knife to Isaac’s throat, ready to slit it. Of course, God stopped it at the last moment, Abraham had passed his test and proved once more he was faithful.” Sneeg knows he sounds bitter, angry, but he can’t help. Can’t help the anger that Showfall gave him, the anger that never quite left. Can’t help the past that he remembers but cannot connect to, that’s nothing to him despite what he wishes. 

“It’s supposed to be a lesson about trust, trust and faith in God. But all I can think about is Isaac, terrified and pressed to stone. His father with a blade to his throat. I just keep wondering how scared he must have been. And I know Abraham didn’t kill him but you can’t come back from that. I wonder how much Isaac must have hated his father, feared him, and I wonder if the others hate me like that. Like I’m the person they trust and I held a knife to their throat. That I was all too willing to hurt them at Showfall’s orders.”

Ranboo scoffs, shaking their head, “You can’t know that you hurt us like that, wondering about something that might not have even happened does nothing.”

“But I do know, I remember.” Ranboo freezes, whatever he was about to say forgotten.

It’s a whisper, “What?”

Sneeg looks at Ranboo, he owes them that much, even if it hurts. “I remember nearly everything. Maybe not some fine details, but the Generations, everything Showfall made me do. I remember, and I was Abraham. Except I did hurt you, all of you, and I didn’t hesitate.” 

It rings in the air between them, Sneeg remembers. He remembers hurting them. Ranboo isn’t quite breathing and he wonders if that’s betrayal on their face. Because Sneeg kept this from them, because Sneeg’s broken them more than once, even if they don’t remember. 

“What did you do?” There’s nothing in Ranboo’s voice, it’s flat, emotionless. 

“What?” He had been expecting anger, silence, and sadness. Not nothingness. 

Ranboo’s face is blank, his hands curled around the wooden seat in front of them. “What did you do to us? You say you hurt us, how?”

Sneeg almost doesn’t want to answer, doesn’t want to look Ranboo in the eyes but he has to, doesn’t he? Because he owes them this much, owes them so much more. Owes them more than being a coward. “I was your friend, because it’s always so much worse when it’s a knife in the back. Charlie was dumb or kind, so easy to trust. It was usually him, broken at the bottom of the stairs, dead on a hospital bed, in his own house. Niki needed a brother, she was always sad, always needing. So I became her brother and then I became the monster she needed to kill, pushed and pushed until she broke, until she fought back. Ethan was grieving something he lost, so I gave it to him and tore it away. Vinny was always trying to run, so I broke his legs, metaphorically or literally, trapped him somewhere with no escape. And Austin, well Austin always saw things the way they were, so I showed him what happens if you look too closely.”

It’s the simplest explanation of his actions. What Sneeg doesn’t describe is the way Niki sobbed over his corpse, bruises in the shape of his hands on her arms, his blood on her hands. He doesn’t say how Charlie always seemed to figure him out, how he smiled at him despite knowing. He doesn’t describe Ethan tentatively offering him something, the thing he lost, because he knows what it is to want something solid to hold, to remember. Sneeg doesn’t tell Ranboo about Vinny’s sad smiles with chains wrapped around his ankles, with his legs at odd angles, the sad smile that matched his acceptance, his forgiveness. He doesn’t talk about Austin’s bitter, tear-stained hugs, even covered in blood because he saw right through everything. 

Sneeg tells Ranboo about what he’s done but not about what the others did. Their forgiveness even as he broke them. How they were so much better than him. 

“What did you do to me? You mentioned all the others, what did you do to me?” There’s finally something on Ranboo’s face, pain. The grieving, agonized sort.

It’s the same thing Sneeg feels when he speaks, “I died. I was your friend, your family, and then I died in your arms. Every time.”

They look horrified, jaw trembling slightly, knuckles white on the wooden pew. “You died?” It’s a hushed whisper, like Ranboo is struggling to push words past something, like he’s choking on emotions. Sneeg nods and Ranboo takes a shuddering breath, eyes closed as they lean forward, pressing their head to the back of the bench. 

It’s a sad mimicry of prayer, the sort that fits alongside grief soaked hymns. His shoulders shake, rising and falling unsteadily, like he’s sobbing. And Sneeg, he’s confused because anger he got, but grief, grief strong enough to make Ranboo cry, he wasn’t expecting that. 

Tentatively, not sure if it’s welcome or not, he raises a hand to Ranboo. He presses his hand on their back, and feels the length of their spine. He can feel the individual vertebrae and the expanding and exhaling of their lungs, their heaving. Ranboo is shaking beneath his hands and Sneeg almost fears they’d fall apart, become untethered from the grief tearing them apart. 

Ranboo rises suddenly, and Sneeg can see their red eyes, the tears still tumbling down their cheeks, down the scars that frame their face. “None of that is your fault.” It’s a near snarl but it could have been a whisper, either way, Sneeg stops.

He stops breathing, thinking, he stops everything. “What?” 

“None of that is your fault. You had no choice in what you did, Showfall made you.” Their voice trembles and Sneeg can’t tell if it’s from rage or grief, he figures both. “You are not Abraham, we are not Isaac. It’s not your fault.”

His hands are shaking, Sneeg realizes, his hands are shaking, trembling in his lap. And the stained glass mural, Christ and his open arms, his kind eyes, seems so far away. Everything seems far away, the wooden pew beneath him, the worn bible resting on a shelf in front of him. The only thing that exists is Ranboo, looking like the sort of tragic saint you pray to, forgiving him easily. 

“No, no.” His fingernails dig into his palm, denial coming easily. 

“Yes.” Ranboo takes his hands, gently, so gently. The sort of gentleness Sneeg doesn’t deserve. “You are not at fault for what Showfall did, for doing what you had to do. Neither am I, none of us are. We are not what Showfall made us. We are not what Showfall made us.”

He wonders, Ranboo’s hand warm against his own, how many times they had to say that before they believed it, if they do. Sneeg tastes salt, feels the tears carving their place down his face. He’s breaking, shattering into a million pieces, perhaps for the first time since they got out. It’s all coming down on him, the weight of Generation’s of pain made by his hand, of his own pain. 

There are arms around him and he’s being pulled into a hug. Ranboo holds him easily, without thinking and Sneeg doesn’t deserve this sort of love. But he has it anyway, has it because Ranboo is still here, because Ranboo cares so deeply. But he has it because Ranboo is holding him so tightly, because their hands are shaking even as they are pressed against his back, because they are shaking with rage, with grief. With forgiveness. 

Sneeg doesn’t deserve this sort of love, but he has it regardless. Ranboo will make sure he understands that one day, they all will. 

Chapter Text

Vinny doesn’t believe in much, a side effect of being tortured by a reality warping company. But he does believe in his family. 

He thinks he was the first one of them to recognize the fact that they cared for each other so deeply, that they loved each other. Niki was too busy making sure they were all breathing. Charlie was trying to keep them from having a breakdown. Ethan was keeping a hold of Ranboo who was having several crises all at once. Sneeg was watching their backs at every turn and Austin’s also having a breakdown despite Charlie’s best efforts.

So to be fair, having an emotional realization wasn’t high on anyone’s priority list. But Vinny had always been good at multitasking. So while keeping an eye on everyone around them (the woman in blue who looked a little too long but was actually trying to read a sign, the short man who kept trying to take a photo of them was just a plain creep not Showfall creepy) Vinny came to the conclusion that they were a family. 

Now maybe they weren’t a family in the traditional sense. None of them were related by blood and he was pretty sure Niki would maul him if he suggested matching Christmas sweaters. But still after what they had gone through, and Vinny doesn’t want to think about it, can’t without his hands shaking and the urge to run only growing.

After what they had gone through he thinks they deserve a family, even if it’s a little dysfunctional. So while Niki plots and plans and Charlie frets, Vinny gives them things. Small simple, luxurious things. 

He wonders if they remember him doing it during their stay at Showfall, his resistance in the little things he steals. He wonders if they understand the significance of what he’s giving them. Here is our freedom no matter how little, here is something Showfall has no place over, here is something that is only ours. Vinny wonders for all of a day before deciding it doesn’t matter when he sees Ranboo smile at the small plastic cat, rainbow colored, ears perked up and stretching, that he hides in their room. 

Maybe they don’t understand what he’s trying to say but they're smiling, Niki stops holding her breath and Charlie has something solid to hold. Ranboo get's everything he never had and Ethan get's something permanent. Sneeg gets reminders that he's loved and Austin understands that this pain will not last. Maybe they don’t get it but it’s alright because they’re happy, because Vinny lives to make his family happy even if they don’t know they’re a family yet.

It, this feeling of contentment at the mere thought of their happiness, makes him wonder about before, about his before family. Vinny doesn’t want like Ethan, doesn’t ache at Mark and Amy’s names, doesn’t flinch every time he should remember but doesn’t. He doesn’t feel apathetic like Charlie, who for all his care and love truly means it when he says he doesn’t care, that before doesn’t matter. He doesn’t love it and hate it like Niki and Ranboo, like the thought of remembering is a bullet to the chest and a kiss pressed to their head. He doesn’t wonder, not particularly wanting or needing but still wondering, at the thought like Austin. He doesn’t remember like Sneeg, even if he doesn’t feel anything about the crystal clear memories. 

Vinny thinks about his family, the one he must have had before in the life that Showfall stole. When he does there is no bitterness, no hatred, no fear. There is nothing but fondness, of oh how he must have loved them well. Alongside the love, there is simply acceptance. Vinny thinks of his before family and he thinks I’m glad I loved you once, I’m glad you loved me once and that is that. No desperate need to remember, no terrible want that keeps him awake at night. Vinny loves his before family and lets them go just as easily. 

It’s not an act of disloyalty, of choosing his family now over the ones from before, it’s just accepting things as they are. He is not their Vinny, and he never will be. It’s not possible, not with the blood on his hands and his chest and sticking to the back of his teeth. After everything he’s done, everything he’s lived through there is no going back. Because it’ll only hurt him and his before family, because he cannot be who they miss and that’s a sad thing but it is how it is. 

Vinny likes to think that out of all of them, he’s the most well-adjusted, or at least the one that gives in the easiest. The same was true at Showfall. Some would call it cowardice, he calls it survival. Sometimes fighting will do you no good, will do nothing but harm you. Some people, Niki and her bared teeth, Ranboo and their trembling hands, don’t understand that. For them not fighting is worse than death, for them not fighting will break them. He gets that and so he can no more fault them for fighting than they can him for giving in.

Despite what some people believe survival is not just continuing breathing, your heart still beating within your chest. No, survival is the actions you can live with, because the second you cross the line, the second you cannot live with yourself you are as good as dead. Because those who do not wish to live, often do not.

Vinny can live with bending to Showfall, to smiling perfectly with a stolen toy tucked in his pocket. Niki can live with bleeding, a bloody smile and laughter in her eyes because she is not theirs even if she is to die to prove it. Ranboo can live with fighting his hardest, to throwing themselves at Showfall even as it breaks their body because they are their own destruction, even ruin is an act of freedom.

Vinny survives and hides small, perfect things where the others can find them and their smiles are worth everything. Niki survives and every act she does, every kind thing, every smile, every laugh is one big middle finger to Showfall. Ranboo lives and that is his survival, his fuck you is you couldn’t kill me and you did try. Sneeg never raises a hand to them, to anyone, and his gentleness despite his harsh words is his survival. Ethan holds on to them, on to Mark and Amy, on to those he’s lost and those he has and it’s survival, beautiful survival. Austin takes a man out to dinner and blushes at every text message, every white rose tucked into a slowly filling vase, and survival tastes like love. 

They survive, all of them and it’s almost funny, how easily they slip into the role of family. Vinny may be the first to notice but the others still care so easily without a name to put to this act of love. Sneeg lets them slip into his bed after nightmares, he lets them make him a wall between them and the rest of the world. Austin plays music so loudly it fills the apartment, so loud it drowns out their monsters and suddenly it’s three in the morning and they’re dancing to some seventies band instead of having a panic attack. 

Charlie cares for them, he makes them hot cocoa when they wake up screaming, he watches shitty rom com’s because it makes them laugh, every time. Ranboo, awkward and so unsure, distracts them, he paints their nails and rambles about obscure topics until whatever living nightmare is forgotten. Ethan listens to their problems, whatever they may be, and no matter how stupid, or how trivial, he listens. Niki fights for them, fights their fears, she brings them ice cream in the middle of the night, and tells them they aren’t a burden, and to cut that shit out and you can have one hug. 

Vinny thinks she’s going to try and punch a demon, or the living embodiment of a nightmare. He’s almost sure she’ll succeed. 

So they fight in their own ways and crawl their way out of Showfall, and then they live. They love each other in a way he doubts most people would understand, and despite their flaws. Their many many flaws, when it comes down to it they have each other's back. When it comes down to it there are no other people Vinny wishes to have at his back, looking out for him as he does for them. When it comes down to it he’s walked through hell for these people and he’d do it again. They would do the same for him. 

When he gets home Charlie and Austin are actually managing to cook something edible, much to everyone’s surprise. Ranboo and Sneeg are holding food dye in their hands, and looking not at all suspicious. Niki and Ethan are on the couch sharing earbuds and laughing over some song. They glance at him when he shuts the door and Ethan immediately makes grabby hands, ready for whatever Vinny had this particular day. 

With a smile, he throws a rubber duck, one with a basketball and jersey, at Ethan who immediately puts it on his head. Niki with much more grace offers her hand out and tucks her duck, a pink flamingo with a black beak, into her lap.

Ranboo and Sneeg trade the food dyes for their ducks and Vinny is grateful, he wasn’t planning on eating purple chicken tonight. Ranboo seems quite pleased with their duck, it has a crown, just a crown but Ranboo is now duck royalty so it's worth it. Sneeg decides his duck is a stoner whose father is secretly a supervillain because of his evil-looking sunglasses. This is the third kid of a supervillain he’s come up with as a backstory for whatever Vinny gives him. It’s a little concerning at this point.

Charlie and Austin look away from their cooking for a second, they’re working very hard on it okay, to place their ducks on the toaster. The duck holding a guitar and the duck with a monocle that you’d see on one of those old, wilting pictures, hang out together. Austin then immediately gets yelled at by Charlie for adding some spice a little too early and the two are angrily stirring with the same wooden spoon. 

Vinny shakes his head, the smile he had when he entered has yet to leave. He walks to the table that’s half set and beings to lay out cutlery and napkins. It’s calming, and listening to everyone in the background, Charlie and Austin arguing, Ranboo and Sneeg making their ducks fight, and Niki and Ethan singing a song, is one of the best sounds he’s heard. Vinny sits down at the table, in his warm, well-light apartment where his family is, alive and whole and laughing.

He’s lucky, incredibly and terribly lucky. Maybe they don't realize they’re a family just yet but they love each other nonetheless. Vinny takes out his own duck, the simple, original yellow one, and smiles. He places it on the table and it reflects the kitchen lights. He swears it seems almost happier. 

God, it’s good to be home.

Chapter Text

Charlie doesn’t deal with things, at least not like the others. He doesn’t wake up screaming, doesn’t tear at his skin, doesn’t stare blankly at the wall with grief in his eyes. Charlie gets up every morning, early enough that there are warm pancakes on the table for when the others stumble out of wherever they fell asleep. Charlie has memorized the exact amount of time, milk, and whip cream to make the perfect hot cocoa for when someone wakes up screaming and comes to the kitchen with hollow eyes. 

Charlie doesn’t deal with things, he keeps the others afloat and prays that it’s enough, that’ll absolve him of his sins. That it will wash the blood off his hands. 

Charlie doesn’t deal with things, he just lives with them. He lives with the way he can feel his organs spilling from his chest, can still iron trickling down the back of his throat. He lives with the way he’s memorized Niki’s screams as she dies, as she cradles Sneeg’s cooling body and shrieks with grief. He lives with all the terrible things he remembers, the deaths he can still feel, and knows that there is no forgiveness for this.

Not for Showfall or for him. 

Charlie knows vividly what sinking a knife into Ethan’s back feels like. Knows how flesh gives beneath the cold metal, knows how blood trickles over your fingers. He knows what Ethan looks like, surprised and shocked, mouth opening a little before falling to the ground as his spinal cord is severed. Charlie knows what it is to be the monster Showfall required, just as he knows what it is to be the sacrifice. 

He can always feel it, feel the tearing of his torso, how everything just sort of gave beneath claws, beneath metal. He can feel his lungs contracting, pulsing as they’re punctured, fighting for air they can't get. Charlie can feel his heart beating, desperately trying to pump blood throughout his body and failing miserably. Charlie knows what it is to die and he can never forget that. 

So instead of praying for nothing, for a clean slate as his limbs are folded right, his skin melding together, Charlie helps the others. He doesn’t try to pretend it’s not a penance, not his hands pressed together, trembling as he begs for forgiveness. Charlie is many things but he isn’t in the habit of lying to himself. 

He never lets himself speak the words but they’re there, apologies on his tongue. The words are there when he puts on one of the old, cracking records that Austin loves for their imperfections because he can’t breathe. Because Austin is crouched under his desk having a panic attack.

He loves those terrible eighties songs enough that he can hear it over Showfall’s commands, over the ice cold feeling of having your mind stolen from you. Austin awakens to the feeling of Charlie holding his hand, cross-legged on the ground and across from him under the desk, squished in a way that leaves his back aching. He’s singing the lyrics terribly, forgetting half of them and mumbling in place of them. 

Charlie brings Austin back from a place of nightmares, from their personal hell, and pretends that he’s not thinking about Austin, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth. That he isn’t thinking about how Austin’s blood had cooled, how it had congealed on his hands. How even then Charlie couldn’t step back, couldn’t tear his hands from Austin’s torn chest. How he had hummed a song he doesn’t know the name to, and it had filled the deathly quiet room.

Charlie doesn’t think about any of that and instead helps Austin out from under the table. He makes them grilled cheese while Austin gives him a sheepish grin. He pieces Austin back together and pretends that he himself isn’t in pieces. 

Charlie lives with the past and researches the weirdest, most obscure things he can because they’re the only thing that makes Ranboo pause. Because the only thing that drags them from their thoughts, from the blankness and the way their fingers tap tap, is fun facts. When Ranboo doesn’t sleep for three nights Charlie learns that putting Sugar on a wound will help it heal. That, in its pure form, sugar provides a suitable and clean environment for angiogenesis (blood vessel formation, another thing he definitely didn’t need to know) but will also reduce odor. 

When Ranboo has consistently looked through him, when their voice is forcefully level, when The Hero is more than just a name, Charlie learns that the continental plates move at the same rate that your fingernails grow.  When it's Ranboo that wakes up screaming, begging, and pleading to die, Charlie learns that there are more trees than stars in the entire milky way. This sparks an hours long debate as the sun rises over the horizon, Ranboo firmly on the side of the stars and creating a ridiculous conspiracy about the government lying about the number of trees to win a bet with aliens. Charlie doesn’t win because he’s too busy laughing so hard that he wakes up everyone in the apartment and Ranboo is no longer haunted by dreams. 

Charlie brings Ranboo back to this world, to this life they’ve carved out for themselves, and doesn’t think about his torso being torn apart. He firmly doesn’t think about the nights when he wakes up, never screaming, and ends up curled into a ball by the toilet because he wants to throw up, because he can feel his organs being shifted around. 

Because it’s not Showfall or some monster of theirs that he fears, it’s Ranboo’s face and shaking hands, their fear. Charlie pointedly does not think about it and shifts through another article, another wrinkled magazine, and learns that there is a scientific term for brain freezes. Sphenopalatine ganglion neuralgia, yeah he’s going to stick to brain freeze. 

Charlie doesn’t beg for forgiveness he goes to the arcade with Vinny and wins so many stuffed animals that he can't carry them all. Vinny steals for them, he gives for them but on some days even that is taken from him. On some days he shakes from what Showfall did to him and even his rebellion is gone. It’s like watching the sun burn out, watching as his smile fades and his hands tremble, watching as one of the kindest people he knows wilts in on himself. It honestly hurts more than dying, more than blood on his torso and on the back of his teeth.

So Charlie takes him to an Arcade and gives him a little bit of sunshine, a little bit of hope. And it’s worth it seeing Vinny’s smile as Charlie spends half his wallet on a claw machine with stuffed ducks. It’s worth it when he laughs, unguarded and so free, because Charlie got his hand stuck in the little trap doors where you grab your prize.

It’s worth it all because Vinny is happy, because he doesn’t remember the sound his back made as it snapped. As it cracked like old concrete, a snap that made Charlie shiver, made his stomach turn inside out. Because he doesn’t remember Charlie’s hollow stare, the way his head had tilted as he crawled across the floor, paralyzed from the waist down. A bird with broken wings flopping on the floor.  

Vinny smiles, he laughs without a care in the world that doesn’t belong in a place like Showfall. He curls his fingers around a soft plushy and for once it is a gift for him. It is Charlie saying we are free, we are free. At Vinny’s look, a knowing glint in his eyes, he gets it. 

Charlie doesn’t pray to his dead, doesn’t worship them on an altar paved with his blood. He cooks with Sneeg when his eyes go distant, when he gets that guilty look and Charlie knows he’s thinking about killing them. So when the sun is sinking, light barely slipping through their blinds, he takes out the pots and pans. 

Charlie takes out the flour, eggs, olive oil, and salt. Then with Sneeg at his side, their shoulders brushing and a quiet understanding between the two, they make pasta. Charlie adds the ingredients and Sneeg mixes them. The weight of the world slowly slips away as dough forms, as he shapes and folds it, as he cuts it.

Whatever anxiety, the guilt in Sneeg’s eyes, the way he flinched from Ranboo, fades when they make the sauce as the pasta boils. Crushed tomatoes, onions, and garlic mixed with butter and dried basil. As it simmers, as the smell wafts through the apartment, it feels a little like forgiveness.

When they set the table Sneeg no longer flinches from his touch, no longer looks like he’s one wrong move away from begging. Charlie gets the plates, and Sneeg gets the cutlery and napkins. The pasta, and the red sauce doesn’t remind them of blood, it reminds them of good food, sits in a pot at the center of the table. 

The others join them, one by one, crawling out of their rooms or wherever they were. They sit at the table and Sneeg can smile without it being fake. He looks at Charlie and grips his hand, a quick squeeze, a wordless thanks. Charlie nods his head and they eat, and it tastes like home.

Charlie doesn’t wake screaming, for the dead or for the living, but he learns how to play chess for Ethan. It had started somewhere after meeting Amy and Mark, they had gone on a walk to the parks and saw the rows and rows of chess games going on. It had sparked something in him, a delight, a want that Showfall didn’t create. So of course he learned how to play, sat himself down at those tables, and lost and lost until he didn’t. 

So of course Charlie learned how to play because Ethan was smiling, smiling like he was a different person, like Showfall had never taken him. He learns the Danish gambit, white e2 pawn to e4. Black counters e7 to e5, Charlie really isn’t cut out for chess but still. White moves pawns to d4 and c3. Black takes the pawns and White sneaks their king's bishop to c4 and if Black advances to b2 the game is won.

Niki, Ethan, Charlie. Three pawns sacrificed for the King’s bishop. Sneeg lives long enough to die, to keep Austin from living, a final sacrifice. Showfall is confident in their win and Hetch takes over. White wins the game, Ranboo lives and the game is over. No, they all live because this isn’t a chess game. Because they aren’t pawns and bishops, because Showfall has never been in the habit of losing but this time luck isn’t in their favor. 

At least that’s what he tells himself every day, it’s almost enough. 

Charlie doesn’t pray to anyone, doesn’t spend his nights in the confession booth. He watches terrible romance movies with Niki and brings her to the coffee shop where the cute girl with brown hair works. When she wakes up screaming, wakes up tearing into her skin because Niki has never known how not to fight, they watch movies. 

He doesn’t say a word when she wearily takes the hot cocoa, her eyes still with a dull shine. Charlie lets her sink into his side, covered in a soft blanket that isn’t rough on their skin, on their many scars. He throws his arm around her, letting her bury into his warmth. 

She laughs at the rom com, at the swooning protagonist and the kind love interest but he sees the want, the desire in her eyes. Niki wants love, she wants simple uncomplicated love, and who could blame her? It’s some sort of miracle, something holy, having something that Showfall has never touched, being loved, broken pieces and all.

Charlie doesn’t quite understand but for Niki the world. So he watches her blush at movies and turn tomato red at Puffy’s smile, and the way their hands brush when she hands her the drink. He watches, smiling, as she fumbles her way into a date and teases her on the walk home. Life is good. 

He doesn’t try to pretend that he doesn’t know what Niki looks like grieving. Hunched over, digging her fingers into the ground, screaming, no, shrieking. Howling like a dying animal. That he doesn’t know the exact way she looks, glaring at the cameras, mascara staining her face, blood flecks on her clothes.

When Niki is particularly out of it, half asleep and half focusing on the movie they're watching, Charlie will carefully feel her pulse. Lightly place his fingers on her wrist and feel the steady, bum bum, under his fingertips. It’s the most reassuring sound he’s ever heard. 

Charlie doesn’t deal with things, he picks up the broken pieces that make his family. Charlie lives with the past and keeps it in a nice little box, locked up and out of sight. Charlie isn’t sure if he was ever going to get the blood off his hands.

No, that's wrong. He knows he won’t. 

Chapter Text

It’s kinda pathetic really, that all it takes for Charlie to shatter is a broken mug. It’s not even a particularly nice mug. Nobody made it with careful hands, it holds no sentimental value. Ethan had bought it at Target because it was on sale and Niki would kill him if he bought fancy mugs. 

The day Charlie breaks he wakes up off, not from nightmares, just a pit in his stomach. It isn’t fear, just anxiety and the thing about anxiety is that it builds on itself. Is that if you just leave it alone it’ll eventually explode, drown you out. 

But he didn’t get that then so Charlie does nothing. He gets out of bed as the sun streams through the blinds and he can already hear the city coming alive. Car alarms beep and cars honk, as he gets out the pans and pancake mix he can vaguely hear a conversation, a screaming match, in Spanish. All and all it’s a pretty normal day.  

Except, he keeps flinching at shadows, at the light reflecting off the metal toaster. Everything has him on edge, his breathing becomes less of a natural thing and more of a you have to do this to live thing. But it’s nothing because he’s had off days. After all, Charlie’s woken to the feeling of hands around his throat and moved on like it was nothing. So it’s fine, he’s fine. 

He just has to brush it off. What a wonderful idea!

The batter is easy to make even if every time the wooden spoon hits the side of the metal bowl he flinches, his muscles tense and there’s the same rabbit fear of run run run. Charlie forces himself to take a deep breath, to unclench his hands, to stop looking at the door like he wants to burst through it. Everything is fine and he’s being paranoid for literally no reason. 

Funnily enough, the breaking point happens because he decides to make himself a cup of tea because surely chamomile tea will calm him down. He’s reaching up to the top shelf because the rest of their mugs are in the sink and Ranboo sometimes forgets that other people aren’t as tall as they are. Charlie can hear Sneeg and Ethan fighting in the bathroom over the shower and movement in their bedrooms as the others slowly wake up. He stretches his arm, fingers grabbing and wavers on his tiptoes, but his fingers wrap around the handle. 

Then he drops back to his feet a little too quickly and the mug comes flying down, slipping out of his fingers and shattering on the floor. 

The world pauses, the noise from the others stopping so suddenly it’s jarring. “Everything alright?” Charlie unfreezes and forces himself to breathe. 

“Just dropped a mug.” He wonders if the others can hear how strained his voice is, he hopes they can’t.

Charlie drops to his knees beside the broken shards of the mug, and the anxiety is back in full force. There are butterflies in his stomach except they’re angry, except they’re beating their wings against his ribs, except their digging into his lungs and his hands are shaking as he reaches for the shards. Logically he shouldn’t, logically he should at least grab a towel to pick them up but Charlie isn’t thinking logically. 

Charlie is breathing too heavily and his heart is beating so loudly it’s all he can hear. Charlie’s hands are trembling, his whole body is just shaking on the ground. Charlie has been teetering on the edge of a cliff all day and finally got the last, needed shove off. Charlie is drowning in fear, in an instinctual animal-like fear, and he cannot see the world around him, cannot hear anything but the beating of his heart. 

He cuts himself, clenches his hand around a shard by accident, pain flaring through his hand but all Charlie can see is the blood pooling in his hand. It spreads across his palm and drips through his fingers, drips onto the floor, onto the sharp shard of pottery. It’s almost mesmerizing, in a horrific kind of way, how the kitchen light reflects in the red. 

The pain fades away slowly, or maybe Charlie is fading, maybe he’s slipping away. It’s the blood that gets to him, that and the fact that he’s made a mistake. He’d almost forgotten how many times he had bleed for Showfall. How many times he had walked to his death willingly, or as willingly as Showfall let him. Charlie had almost forgotten what it was like to bleed. It’s not a pretty thing.

The skin is torn, a rough, jagged line and there are flickers of pain when he clenchs his fist. Blood covering his fingers and it’s all rather wet, sticky. The kitchen smells unbearbaly like iron and burning, because the pancakes are burning on the stove and oh, he needs to get up.

Charlie pushes himself off the ground, leaving behind one bloody hand print, and staggers to the stove. It’s like walking through the ocean, a constant resistance, like he isn’t really himself and this is someone else’s body. The fear, the anxiety is no longer just a pit in his stomach, it’s consumed him. It makes his head stuffy, his movement slow and Charlie can’t breathe.

But he can turn off the stove and when he takes off the pan a drop of blood lands on the hot top, and it sizzles. Charlie sets it on a stand and his nose wrinkles as he looks at the pancakes, brown, burnt circles. He had one job and he failed at that.

Grief flickers in him and he’s failed, failed, failed. He’s failed again and Charlie isn’t allowed to fail. He needs to, he needs to -

Charlie keeps drawing blanks, not being able to think past the fuzz that’s taken over his mind, the static of fear. He needs to do something but his breathing is more gasps, more heaves than anything. His hand is still dripping blood, still falling onto the floor and he realizes, dully, that he’s going to need to clean that up.

Charlie staggers, he wavers on his feet as he walks to the sink. He tears blindly at the paper towels and blood soaks through it instantly. He grabs more and more, still blinking rapidly, head still reeling. He’s paranoid, instincts firmly tuned into the noise that he can hear over his heartbeat. And so at Ranboo’s gasp, an sharp inhale and a dying sentence, Charlie turns on his heel. 

His hand, his uninjured one, is braced on the sink ledge. The metal is cool on his back and that might be the reason the panic only gets worse at the sight of Ranboo. It’s not their fault, it’s just a collection of things, the blood staining his hand, the flickering pain of being cut open, the cold metal against his back that is just like the patient bed. 

It’s all of those things and Ranboo’s face is just the last straw. Charlie scrambles back, flinching so hard his head cracks against the wall above the sink. He tries to push back regardless of the solid objects there and when that fails he sinks to the ground. His legs giving from beneath him and his back sliding against the cabinets. 

Ranboo is talking, hands raised as they walk forward and that only makes it worse. Charlie must be hyperventilating now, and there’s a wetness on his face and he doesn’t know if it’s tears or sweat. There must be fear on his face because Ranboo takes a step back but it doesn’t matter because all he can see is The Hero. He brings his legs to his chest, the childish idea of if i’m small enough, if they can’t see me they can’t get me. 

Blood is smearing over his pants, staining the gray pants an ugly red tinged brown. It’s going to be a pain to get out. Charlie cannot breathe, cannot think without feeling his organs being moved, fingers curling around his vertebrae and oh, he is such a good lamb. So ready, so eager to offer his neck to the blade. To roll over and die for love.

There’s a word for that, one that belongs in stories of haunted forests with trees that reach for the sky and curl into the ground. It belongs in stories of fallen kings with golden crowns that do not slip below their eyes. It belongs to queens who carry the world like it’s their birthright. 

There’s a word that does not belong in the hands of boys like him. Boys with hollow hearts and even more hollow stomachs. Boys who want and want even as it tears them in two. Boys who shatter themselves on the cold, unforgiving ground because they do not know how to take. They do not know what warmth feels like.

Martyrdom, he thinks deliriously and Charlie cannot force air past his lungs, is such a lovely word.

He was always Showfall’s perfect martyr, the perfect sacrifice. Always dying for something, always dying for them. Charlie is going to die on the kitchen floor, he’s going to suffocate and it’s all because he was Showfall’s puppet, because he never did fight hard enough. Because he can never escape Showfall, no matter how hard he tries.

Charlie nearly falls into another loop of endless wave after wave of fear, of the world being a sharp knife, when someone grabs. By grab he means gently place their hands on his legs but still he flinches back, a handle digging into his back uncomfortably. When he looks up, when he manages to pick up his head, the first thing he see’s is dark pink hair, an almost purple color. 

Niki.

She’s saying something, she must be because Charlie can see her lips moving but he can’t hear anything. It’s all just muffled, the world under water, he’s under water and drowning. With a slow, projected movement, Niki takes his hands from where their clutching his knees. Struggling to breathe, to think, he lets her. 

She unclenches his hand and pulls them closer to her, blood gets on her hands and that makes something pang in Charlie. It threatens to send him over the cliff again, the memories of Niki with blood on her hands, but it’s not quiet right. Before she had always looked fierce, looked like a fire that would burn down the world just to spite someone. Now she just looks infinitely sad.

Niki gently wipes the blood of his hands with a cloth he didn’t see her get. It stings but Charlie has taken much worse and walked it off, all because in the end there never really was a choice. He can’t tell if the cut is bad or not because all he can focus on is Niki.

She’s still talking, words he cannot hear, but she’s smiling lightly as she tends to his hand. He still can’t breathe, still feels like the air is being torn from his lungs, but his heart slows a little. There’s still fear, still the dread building in his stomach, and there the urge to flinch from Niki remains. The urge to scream and shout, do you know what i’ve done? But there’s also love, love because this is Niki, because it’s Niki and he can feel the way her body shakes when she laughs. 

It’s Niki and the thought alone makes the fear recede, just a little.

The red is almost gone now, the cloth is out of sight and white bandages are being wrapped across his palm. The fear is pushed back even more, and Charlie can no longer feel a knife carving into his torso, into his organs. He can no longer see Sneeg’s face twisted in pain, his throat a bloody mess. He isn’t hearing Ethan’s screams, isn't remembering the way blood has spread in a star shape as it soaked through his shirt. 

“...God they are so stupid, aren’t they? But they’re our idiots.” Charlie’s lips press together as he can finally hear Niki, still tense with anxiety, still panting but no longer drowning. 

She must be telling some sort of story because her voice is light, amused as she wraps his hand. Niki always was the best under pressure, she could flourish with blood on her hands and pain in every limb. She was always the best survivor of them all. Charlie picked up the shattered pieces of the others but Niki glued them back together, teeth bared and anger in her eyes, daring anyone to try and stop her. 

He clears his throat, shaking a little at the effort, at how the words scrape at his throat. Oh, Charlie realizes, he must have been screaming. “Niki?”

Her head snaps up the second he speaks, her eyes darting wildly over his face. There’s a relief so strong that Charlie feels terrible, “Charlie? You back with me?” She sounds hesitant, like it’s not the first time she’s asked that. 

He nods and Niki let’s out a shuddering breath, eyes shutting as she pulls him closer. She rests her forehead on his with a force, hand clenched at his collar and Charlie doesn’t resist. He closes his eyes and memorizes her breathing, the steady pattern he’s sure matches her heartbeat. She’s shaking slightly, and so is he. 

“I’m sorry.” Niki pulls back, eyes open and with a look of incredulousness. 

“You’re sorry?” 

Charlie gives her a sheepish smile, still shivering against the cool tile floor. He’s probably blushing, his face a terrible red. He never did well with embarrassment, “Yeah, I don't-I didn't mean to cause such a big mess. Sorry.”

Niki’s eyes flicker with rage and he can’t stop the way his fists clench, a flicker of pain shooting up his hand, and the way he flinches back. Charlie doesen’t think the anger is directed at him but still, he remembers her rage, remembers the one time she tore herself to shreds just so Showfall couldn’t have the honor.

She sees the flinch, of course she does, because hurt flashes across her face. Niki scoots back until there’s a little distance between the two of them. Both of them on the tile floor in between the island and the cabinets. The others must be in their rooms, sent away by Niki, because he can’t see them.

“Why are you sorry Charlie?” Her voice is level, the forceful sort of level, like she’s barely containing her emotions. 

He shrugs, looking anywhere but her eyes and running his fingers over the bandages on his hand. “I made a mess. I ruined breakfast for everyone all over a fucking broken mug. I shouldn’t have freaked out over literally nothing.” 

Niki laughs but it’s not light, it’s not kind. No, it’s like it was forced out of her, like she’s bordering on delirious. “You’re sorry because you burnt the pancakes, because you were having an emotional breakdown?” 

Charlie doesn’t get why she sounds angry, but then again he never really get’s Niki. He gets her anger but not her mind, not how she thinks, “Yes.” 

She’s mirroring him now, legs pressed to her chest, and her arms crosses above them. Charlie can make out her fingers and the idents that show how deeply they’re digging into her arms. “Why are you mad?” He must be more out of it than he realizes because normal Charlie would never dare ask that. Never speak like a petulant child that doesn’t understand their parents emotions. Normal Charlie wouldn’t be here because normal Charlie doesn’t get to break.

“Why am I mad?” Niki’s smiling a little but it’s not happy, it’s half-mad. “Charlie you just told me you were sorry for having a breakdown. You just flinched away from literally all of us. You nearly had a panic attack at Ranboo coming near you and were so out of it that you didn’t realize I was there for a good five minutes. And you’re apologizing for burning the pancakes?”

“You make it sound worse than it was.” He presses his lips together, uncomfortable. There’s nothing like having your issues told so blatantly. 

She scoffs, “Worse than it was? Charlie I’m summarizing it, I’m not going into detail about literally everything. And apparently, or so I’m coming to realize, you think you’re not aloud to have a breakdown. Or have any sort of negative reaction to the years of trauma we endured.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Charlie is struggling to breathe but not because of the fear that’s burning low in his stomach. No, it’s because Niki is saying, for the first time, something he never allowed himself to think about. Because if he did, it made everything, every apology, every penance, so much worse. 

Niki shakes her head, eyes pinning him in place and there’s the fire he loves. “Bullshit. While you were having a breakdown you talked, and by talked I mean hysterical whispers about how you weren’t allowed to have a breakdown, how you had to pay for what you had done. How you couldn’t break.”

Her voice wavers, and it’s the worst thing in the world, the pain in Niki’s eyes, in her voice. The only time he’s heard her speak like that is after nightmares, when blood is still drying under her fingernails. “So please understand why I’m pissed that you think, for some reason, that you aren’t allowed to deal with your trauma out of some misguided attempt at absolution.”

Charlie grits his teeth, taking a deep breath, “It’s not like that, I-”

“Oh really, than what’s it like Charlie? Hm?” There’s a challenge in her voice, in her eyes, prove me wrong she’s saying. 

Worst thing, he can’t, not really. So he tries another route, “You don’t know what I’ve done Niki, what I’ve done to you and the others.”

“You think I care? You think any of us do? Newsflash Charlie, we’ve all done terrible things. We’ve all been used by Showfall time and time again and I have fought like hell to realize that it’s not my fault, it’s none of our faults.” She sounds like she does before she fights and Charlie knows that Niki would. She would fight him to make him believe that it isn’t his fault, argue and argue until he bends.

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t try to stay in a fight he wouldn’t win. Instead he gets up, taking the bloody cloth and picking up the shards of pottery the right way. “What are you doing?”

Charlie doesn’t look up, “Cleaning.” 

Niki closes her hand around his wrist, forcing him to stop picking up the pieces and look at her. “Why Charlie? Why are you so insistent on helping us but not yourself? Why do you keep giving and giving to us but never taking anything back? Why won’t you let us help you, let us love you? Why-”

He cracks a little at every question, then he snaps.“I am trying to make up for what I did!” Charlie doesn’t say, I’m trying to be worthy of love, your love. He thinks Niki hears it anyway.

It’s silent, his words ring in the air and Charlie cannot make his hands stop shaking. His breathing is heavy like before, like he’s on the verge of a panic attack again. Suddenly he gets it, the look of pure animalistic fear on Austin’s face when he curls up under his desk. Why Niki tears at her arms, tears until her fingernails come back bloody.  

“It wasn’t your fault.” Niki sounds gentle now, not the fierce insistence from before. It’s soft in a way it rarely is with her, in a way that she struggles to be but refuses to let this be another thing Showfall took from her. “Charlie, it’s not your fault, none of it is. You were surviving just as much as we were.”

Then the most damning thing, “We forgive you for everything, always.” Charlie shudders and finally looks her in the eye, and there’s nothing but love in them. 

He’s crying now, tears streaming down his face no matter how hard he tries to stop them. “I don’t know how to forgive myself. I don’t-I don’t know how.”

Niki closes the space between the two of them, taking both his hands in hers and there’s the smile just for their family. “I know, we’ll show you. We’ll tell you every day until you believe us.” 

Niki raises as hand to his face and Charlie aches, because there will never be a day where he doesn’t want this, doesn’t need this. Doesn’t need simple touch, doesn’t need his family by his side. Even if he doesn't deserve it. "You’ll be okay, we are all okay. You just gotta find happiness where you are Charlie.” 

It’s a love filled moment and he should be crying more but, “Did you just quote a fucking Moana song at me?”

She laughs and it’s wet, there’s still tears on her face. But Niki smiles, it’s soft and yet still looks vaguely like a snarl. The thought warms him, that Niki is still Niki regardless of what Showfall did to her. 

Her thumb brushes along his cheekbone and it reminds him of familiar love, of an older sister and it fits Niki so very well. “Yeah, I had to get my motivational speeches from somewhere.” She says it like it’s obvious, like Charlie should just know that.

“And you choose Moana?” Everything about this seems ridiculous but to be fair Charlie is having a breakdown on their kitchen floor at eight in the morning so. 

She laughs slightly, and it’s so much better than the half choked sob that caught in her throat. “Disney movies are full of lessons, gotta teach the kids somehow!"

Charlie manages a smile at Niki when she rolls her eyes. Suddenly the past hour or so catches up with him and his arms buckle beneath his weight. He ends up falling into Niki until she’s holding him up. His head on her shoulder, her arms around his neck. 

He, although tensely and still with a slight fear, doesn’t pull away. Niki in turn pulls him closer, she tightens her grip and he can feel her hands flat against his back. Charlie tentatively wraps his arms around her. 

They sit there, the two of them wrapped in each other as the clock ticks. It’s nice Charlie realizes, it’s the sort of thing he had almost forgotten, care.

Oh , the small, achingly young voice in his head whispers, Generations colliding with each other and he will never be that young again, this is what it’s like to be protected, to be loved as deeply as you love. 

Yes , Charlie whispers back, pressing his face into Niki’s hair and he can feel her breath on the back of his neck. Life, sweet, beautiful, precious life in every exhale and inhale. This is what it’s like to be safe, isn’t it lovely?

Chapter Text

Ranboo wasn’t religious in the way Sneeg was. They didn’t try to find themselves in every church. They didn’t kneel before stained glass and clasp their hands together. They didn’t quite believe in God, but that didn’t mean they didn’t believe some of the stories. 

Their favorite, the one they kept coming back to over and over again. The one he ran his tired fingers over and thought; this is holy. The one Ranboo actually got was Joan of Arc; and his faith wasn’t one of devotion, it was one of anger. 

Ranboo thought about Joan of Arc, of the poor maddened teenage girl in a world that didn’t want her. He thought about her and believing in something so much you’d die for it, you’d burn for it. He thought about her and how she fought for the same people who’d kill her, because they couldn’t understand her, because they didn’t want to.

Ranboo thought about loving something so much you’d ruin yourself for it. They wondered if they were just as damned as Joan of Arc. If there was any chance of saving them. 

It’s an old thought, an old problem because they’ve been dying over and over again since they were young. Since before they can remember.

Joan the maid, his head reared at the thought. How even dead and dying they had tried to diminish the sun of a light that Joan was. That they had tried to make her less than, as if a child, a girl like that was something they understood.

Ranboo drew their fingers over rough wood, over Joan of Arc, her head raised high, her eyes piercing, and wondered how much she would have hated it. Wondered how the girl-general who had stared down Kings and armies alike would have scoffed at the icon. At being called a saint by those who burned her. 

Ranboo wasn’t Joan of Arc, he didn’t know what it was to die for a faith that consumed you. But he did know what it was to burn. 

He knew the fear as you are tied down, your wrists rubbed raw and there is a growing realization, a terrible acceptance. Ranboo knew what it was like, death without an escape, death around the corner, death in your heart and there never really was a choice, a chance.

Ranboo hasn’t been a teenage saint, but they have been a martyr. Ranboo has died, tied down and terrified, every bit their age. Ranboo knows what it is to both lose your mind and to know a truth, your truth even as the world calls you mad. 

Ranboo knows what it is to die for something bigger than yourself, for even that death to mean nothing in the end. Ranboo knows, even if only for a fraction of a second, what Joan of Arc felt.

So if Ranboo is Joan of Arc, Patron saint of soldiers, then they must find the others. Sneeg finds comfort and emptiness in a religion that’s in his bones, that he cannot forget. Ranboo finds comfort in saints, in the damned, fragile, humans raised to something higher than life. 

Ethan, Jude Thaeddaeus, Saint of Desperate Causes. Ethan and the way he held memories like water, like they sustained him, like they could slip through his fingers. Ethan and the fire in his eyes, the way even his tears burned. The way Ethan was never like Niki or Sneeg, the way his anger burned and he thrashed, fought Showfall even when it was pointless. Ethan and how he never knew when to give, how even Niki knew when to break her spine, to kiss the ground before Showfall. Ethan and the way his teeth were always bloody, from his blood or Showfall’s. 

Vinny, Anothy of Padua, Saint of Lost Things. Vinny and the trinkets, the flashes of metal hidden in his hands, tucked into their palms. Vinny smiling even as blood splattered across his face, even as his body twitched and stilled. How you would find a rubber duck, a bent keychain, clutched in a death grip under his fingers. Vinny and how they flocked to him, to his endlessly knowing smiles and gentle eyes. How even Niki relaxed, how even Sneeg didn’t spit anger. Vinny and his broken parts, his torn open skin that he healed with calm, careful hands. Vinny and how he was their harbor, how they were the boats rocking against his shore, torn by the wind, by the sea. Vinny and his forgiveness and his love, his safety, and the way they all found their way back to him. Eventually. 

Austin, Raphael, Saint of travelers. Austin and the way he became someone else when music played. Austin losing himself in the beat, in the lyrics, in the safety of losing yourself without destruction. Austin and his restless feet and how he was not like them, not content with a mundane life that Showfall had denied them. Austin and the way his back bent perfectly before Showfall, how he knew his place well. Austin and surviving because of this, the music in his ears and the breeze, because Showfall wasn’t worth dying for. Because Showfall was nothing compared to life. Austin and the way his heart never beat for anything but freedom. 

Charlie, Faustina Kowalska, Saint of Mercy. Charlie and his gentle smile, and even more gentle hands. Charlie and how he loved so easily, how he loved them despite of everything, in spite of everything. Charlie and throwing himself in front of Showfall, of tearing himself to pieces to save them some pain. Charlie holding them while they died, humming to Austin, gutted and empty, brushing back Niki’s hair, broken and shattered. Charlie and being the calm, the eye of the storm. The reprieve of Showfall’s cruelty. Charlie and how even when playing the monster he was kind, how his hands didn’t shake and the knife that carved into them was quick and slid into their heart. How Charlie even evil, even demented and tortured was good, kind. 

Niki, Monica, Saint of Abuse Victims. Niki and how she flinches from everything, from them, from shadows, from her own smile; and how none of that stops her. Niki and her eyes flaring, burning, her teeth bared to the world. Niki and her endless pain, the sort of terror and resignation of having your autonomy taken over and over again. Niki and the way her hands shake when she pets the stray cat, when she picks up a child's toy. Niki and the way kindness, the act of being nice, breaks her and yet she does not turn away. Niki and how she has never known how to turn away. Niki in shattering over and over again but surviving, bloody and cracked but breathing. 

Sneeg, Stephen, Saint of Martyrs. Sneeg and protecting even Niki, Niki and her bared bloody teeth. Sneeg and oh, how he’s familiar with the feeling of dying, of having your body torn to pieces. Sneeg and he never learned how to love half-heartedly. Sneeg and how dying for someone else becomes second nature, how it feels natural to step in front of a blow, to rock on your feet and press your tongue to the spot where your teeth cut into your cheek. Sneeg and how protection tastes like blood, like iron mixing with adrenaline. Sneeg and how blood is warm, how it’s more of a comfort than water. Sneeg and how flowers watered on blood often die, and he is not an exemption from this rule. 

Oh, Ranboo thought, how they played their roles well. He turned pages in a book, saint after saint, martyr after martyr, and wondered if he had to die to matter. If the only way they would make an impact on the world was to die, brutal and bloody, alone and afraid. They wonder if they’re already a saint, if dying but coming back counts. Because they’ve died. 

Ranboo has bared his neck, a lamb on his knees before the butcher, and felt a knife slit his throat. Ranboo has burned, they have felt their limbs twist and their skin peel, muscle melting. Ranboo has walked to death, slipping on blood from the cooling corpses that aren’t niki charlie sneeg austin ethan vinny, not anymore. Ranboo has bowed, the perfect image of submission, Ranboo has played their part well and died. 

Doesn't that mean they’re already a saint, already a martyr? Doesn't this mean they have died a twisted painful death for others to glorify? 

Ranboo doesn’t know but he isn’t sure if he minds, being a martyr boy-saint. They already know how to die, wouldn’t it be worth it if they became immortal? Because saints are not forgotten, saints are carved into wood and stone. Saints are painted in their glory and gore, saints are carved into bone and pressed into skin. Saints live forever because they are beautiful, because they are suffering. 

Would that truly be so bad? 

It’s not that he wants to die, Ranboo hasn’t wanted to die in a long time. No, but they’re terrified of meaning nothing, of being nothing. Of their pain and grief being forgotten, turned to dust and ash. What’s a little more suffering to be known, to never be forgotten?

They never tell the others this thought; of what’s the point of living if you’re nothing, if no one knows your name or your pain. Instead, they ask them, subtly and carefully, what’s the point in living, what is your reason for living? 

Niki, stretched out on the couch, soaking in the sun like a lizard looks over at him sleep-lazy. She tilts her head and Ranboo feels a little like prey, like she’s a lion and she could leap from the couch and tear out their throat. Niki doesn’t, she smiles a little, the snarl smile that they love. She says, soft and warm, “I made cupcakes at three in the morning because I wanted to. I have a date with a pretty girl because I asked her out and she said yes. I made tea and didn’t burn myself. ” Then she lets her eyes slip shut and sinks into the couch, it's that simple to her and Ranboo aches for that sort of belief.

Charlie is making some cinnamon muffins, a new recipe he manipulated out of the PTA moms. Austin has his music so loud it fills the apartment, Niki is on a date with Puffy, Ethan and Sneeg are playing basketball and Vinny is somewhere. It’s nice, it’s a good day. No one woke up screaming, no one has haunted eyes and so Ranboo asks Charlie while he’s stirring batter. Charlie barely looks up, he makes eye contact for a second and says, “You, all of you.” Then he’s mixing in brown sugar and that is that. 

Sneeg gives him that look, that i see through your bullshit but i’ll humor you. He sighs a little and there’s a rom-com playing in the background and Sneeg is willingly scrambling all of Ranboo’s rubik cube. When he speaks it’s familiar, and Ranboo’s heard it before, lives ago. “We live because none of us know how to die easily. None of us know how to give up or when to, not really. We live because we cannot let Showfall be right, and we cannot let them win. We’re stubborn assholes like that.” He twists the triangle rubik’s cube, blue melding with red and yellow and Ranboo picks it up. 

Ethan had been happy, just coming off of a trip with Mark and Amy. There was something light in his step, something that hadn’t been there before. He couldn’t stop smiling, not even when he started talking. “I get to know Mark and Amy all over again, and I’m not their Ethan from before but I’m me. Showfall didn’t take this from me. I get to come home to this apartment,” Ethan shrugs his shoulders, “I just live in every moment, and find beauty in every single one. That’s the point of living. 

Austin was cleaning his records, the few times his hands didn’t shake. He had looked up at Ranboo and saw the way they were fidgeting, the way they both couldn’t look Austin in the eyes and were also trying to analyze him. So he placed the record down and answered honestly, “Day by day. I find something every day to make living worth it and I have yet to not find a reason.

Vinny had laughed, the sort of laughter that escapes you, that you have to tilt your head to the sky to feel. “I have an orange and I have you to split it with. That’s the point of living.” 

A martyr or a life. 

Ranboo looks at them, his family, one average day. They’re fighting for spots on the couch and Charlie is desperately trying to keep a bowl of popcorn upright. Niki is attempting to tackle Ethan whose just shoving her off the couch at this point. Vinny and Austin are fighting over, gummy worms on popcorn? And surprisingly Sneeg is the only calm one, just eating a bag of chips and watching everything go down.

Ranboo looks at his family and there is nothing but love in their heart. 

A martyr or a life, they’ll choose a life. It seems like the better option.

Chapter Text

Some days, and thankfully the days are few, Niki wakes up and she doesn’t want to live. She doesn’t want to die, isn’t ready to throw herself off a bridge, she just doesn’t feel any particular interest in living. Everything is just sort of gray. 

It’s like her bad days, where every action makes her flinch, makes her feel the phantom ice-cold touch and harsh whispers of Showfall. But unlike her bad days, Niki doesn’t feel angry about it, angry with Showfall for haunting her. She doesn’t feel fear when she looks at her family and remembers what it’s like to be hurt for them, by them. There’s no life ending anxiety or heart stopping rage, it’s just nothing. 

That almost scares her more than when she feels everything. Emotions she can understand, emotions she can breathe through and compress. Niki isn’t sure what to do with apathy. 

The others aren’t either, but they do their best. Charlie must have figured it out first, something about how she didn’t reach for the hot cocoa, how she had looked through him. Niki has always felt far too much, far more than what Showfall allowed her and so even her breakdowns are to spite them. Niki always felt too much and so it became very obvious when she felt nothing. 

Charlie noticed first but Sneeg was the first to act. He didn’t leave her alone even when she told him she wasn’t feeling suicidal, he stuck to her like glue and later she’ll admit it was for the best. Maybe it was because Niki had reacted so well, which was to say she hadn’t tried to rip her hair out or his, but whenever these days happened. Whenever Niki woke up, mechanically putting on her clothes and walking to the kitchen, only to stare at Charlie like he was a wall, like he was nothing. Whenever Niki had her gray days Sneeg was there. 

He would take off work and send the others off to their jobs or various hobbies. Then the two of them would do whatever happened to cross his mind. Gray Niki was a very agreeable Niki, she just didn’t have enough of anything to disagree. They went hiking once, through towering dark green trees, all the way up to a white waterfall. Another day, back in the beginning, they binged nearly an entire season of Glee. 

Sneeg would braid her hair regardless of what they were doing. He would paint her nails and try out all the new braids he had found. It often left her hair it nots but Niki had never tried to stop him during the day or after. She’s not sure who it comforted more, the simple touch that proved time and time again that she was alive, that he was. 

Usually, the days were dull, unremarkable days. Niki survived them and little made her feel anything but smog. However, like most times when she was comforted by the familiar, something unexpected occurred.

They had been trying to make a lego set, a pair of potted flowers, because Vinny had “bought” it for them. It was quiet, a peaceful sort of quiet that made your bones a little less heavy. But out of nowhere, Sneeg had looked at her suddenly, something changing in his gaze. A heaviness that hadn’t been there before. 

She had stilled, a green piece falling from her hands. Niki held her breath, although she wasn’t sure for what. Sneeg spoke, a surprisingly flat calm voice for the question.“Do you ever wonder if we’re deserving of what we have?”

Niki paused, her breathing still, her hands felt numb. She didn’t know what she was expecting but it certainly wasn’t this. She looked a little closer at Sneeg, he had been more reserved but not seriously so. Now though, she could see the way his fingers tremble, the way his eyes were slightly hollow, a dazed sort of look. 

She was feeling everything through water, through muffled sand, but something about Sneeg made her want to try. A spark beneath the nothingness, a welcome or a curse Niki didn’t know. She dug her fingers into the carpet until she could feel it against her palm, she took a breath and then another. Finally, when the walls were visible, tangible, she spoke. “What do you mean?” 

He didn’t seem particularly surprised at getting a response, although there certainly wasn’t a flurry of emotions on his face. Niki wondered for a second if he was having a gray day. Before she could ponder on it more Sneeg was talking. “All of this.” He looked at around, nodding at the walls decorated with art, good and bad, Charlie’s and Ranboo’s. The sofa covered in pillows because they all loved soft things with a viciousness. The well-stocked kitchen and the cut bread, bread she had made, sitting on the counter. “Do you think, after everything we have done, we deserve it?” 

Niki paused, okay so this was the hurt Sneeg that had broken in a church with Ranboo. This was a Sneeg who was more like Ranboo than anything, constantly doubting what he deserved. “Who are we? Everything we have done?”

Maybe it helped, her apathy at the moment. There was no flicker of rage, of grief at his words. There was just a logicalness, a calculated approach that would have helped her years ago. Sneeg looked at her, hesitating, before he took in her eyes.

Niki knew, or at least knew from Charlie, that her eyes were a steel gray, like flint. Charlie had said they looked like she could burn them and wouldn’t flinch from the fire.

“Me and you, I suppose.” When Niki didn’t react, when she didn’t glare at him, Sneeg continued. “I mean the others have hurt, been hurt, but you and me have a habit of being the one behind the gun.” He smiled, a little viciously at his asshole humor as she had dubbed it. “We know how to hurt. We’re good at it. Seems like there shouldn’t be a lot of forgiveness for us; or peace.” 

Niki shrugs, and it’s almost funny how easily the gray is fading. How it’s slipping at Sneeg’s pain, no matter how dull, in a way it had never done for hers. Niki always did care about others more than herself. “Why are we so terrible? It wasn’t really us, was it?”

There’s something like care in her voice, a rather telling sign. Only a little though. 

“I mean, isn’t it obvious?” Sneeg carefully, always carefully, even when lost, grabs her wrist. He pushes back the sleeves of her sweatshirt revealing pale skin and a pink scar, a jagged thing that tears across her forearm. “You remember getting that?”

Niki shakes her head, she doesn’t but she’s always wondered. Always wondered about the rhyme and reason of the scars Showfall didn’t take away, the ones they let her keep.

Sneeg smiles, without humor, “I did that, somewhere in the middle of everything. I was coming at you with an ax, and you put your arms above your head to try and protect yourself. It didn’t matter in the end, but they’ve never taken it away. Funny, they take away all the scars they make but not the ones I made.”

He’s jittery in the sense that everything about him isn’t still. Sneeg’s hands haven’t stopped shaking, Niki realizes belatedly, there’s been a tremor since the others left. She wonders what nightmare had to have terrified him so much. She finds she doesn’t want to know. 

“That wasn’t you.” Stick to the facts and not the way your heart beats too slow, not in the way you are constantly dying and constantly failing everyone around you.

Sneeg shakes his head, “Here I thought you were supposed to be emotionless.” He sounds almost disappointed, like she didn’t give him the answer he wanted. 

She doesn’t quite flinch but it’s a near thing. There’s a flicker of something in her stomach, a burning feeling. Niki’s never been fond of being used even if it’s by boys whose souls she knows like her own. 

“Were you waiting for me to be? Like this? Waiting to talk?” Sneeg’s looks surprised, for once something other than pain or blankness on his face. The fire burning in her settles a little at the fact that he hadn’t been waiting for her to be like - this.

Sneeg still chose to talk to her because of her gray day, because of how she’d react. Because even now Niki is still fighting the nothingness, the way she doesn’t flinch like she should at his pain, at her pain. But Niki also understands what it is to be lost, to be nothing. He wasn’t thinking straight and in the end she never could stay mad at him for long.

She takes a breath, trying to make words take shape. They sit on her tongue, cold and solid, like metal, like a bullet. Niki finds that it’s hard to comfort someone when everything she feels is muted, but she tries. “You-we aren’t what Showfall made us, we never had a choice. We aren’t responsible because we wouldn’t do it now. Because you’d cut off your own hand before raising it against me. Because I’d slit my own throat before killing you. We wouldn’t, Showfall would. That’s the difference.”

He laughs, but it’s bitter. This Sneeg, and Niki is slowly realizing that she hasn’t met this one yet, this Sneeg feels unlike her on gray days. There isn’t kindness, warmth. He’s just muted anger where she’s muted everything. Fitting.

“You say that like it’s easy to believe, to think.” Sneeg’s absently tracing a scar on his leg, a long slim burn. “I try, everyday I try so hard to believe that. And it’s like whenever I come close, another memory resurfaces, another terrible thing I’ve done. It’s always followed by waves of grief and pain and everything that Showfall left me.”

The words seem to overflow, and Niki has a feeling that Sneeg’s been thinking about this for a while. Feeling like this. “Every time I gain my footing, every time I think I’m close to healing, it just hits me again. Always new grief, new pain and I’m drowning again. I can never get out, I can never breathe.”

Sneeg looks up at her and the apathy is gone, the gray falling apart so quickly it’s jarring. Niki’s never seen a man so broken, her own jagged edges ache. “I’m so tired of fighting the fucking ocean.”

She inches closer, the carpet rough beneath her. Niki grabs his hand, pulling it from his leg where he was absentmindedly digging his nails into his scar. There’s a moment of silence, one where she’s trying to collect her thoughts and Sneeg is staring at her hand like it’s a miracle.

“I know what it feels like, drowning in everything that happened. I know, Gods I know. But Sneeg,” Niki waits until he meets her eyes, and oh how she’s known this boy since before she knew herself. “I can’t help you if you don’t let me. You’re the only person who can keep yourself from drowning if you push away my hand.”

And Niki isn’t just talking about today, about having this conversation in the one moment where she is the least helpful. She’s talking about his silence, about how the only time he willingly talked about his feelings was when he was having a breakdown. How Sneeg has always been who they leaned on, and how not once he had allowed himself their comfort.

Niki is talking about his too high walls that he’s never learned to let down.

It hits him like a truck, or a moving wall. She supposes they’ve all learned to mince their words, to be quiet, calm. It was learned from both Showfall, from bloody mouths and bruises when you were a little to angry, and from after. From their fragile minds being so close to shattering at anything. 

Somethings though, Niki’s learned, need to break a little before you can fix them. 

He holds her hand tightly, fingertips pressed against her steady pulse. Sneeg pauses, mouth open and eyes watery. Finally he manages to get out, “I don’t know how to let you help me. I - I don’t know how.” He sounds close to begging and Niki burns.

Sneeg was so busy protecting, so busy suffering, that it made sense. Showfall had a habit of finding your pain and using it against you, like blood in shark infested water. Any sign of weakness and they held it across your throat like a blade. 

Niki’s had been her kindness, her care. Showfall had taken it and tainted it, made it something wrong. Something that made her snarl and spit, revolt at what she had once cherished. 

Showfall had taken her kindness and they had taken Sneeg’s support, left him standing against the world alone and without the knowledge of how to ask for help. She’d teach him how too, “You talk to me, to us. You talk and we listen and when it comes down to it we have each others backs. Always.”

Sneeg shook his head, eyes darting to the floor. It was almost jarring, how easily they had switched places, the protector and the protected. Although, Niki supposed, it made sense. It was second nature, loving each other, even when you’ve forgotten how to. 

Sneeg clearly wasn’t going to answer her and it was becoming quite clear how much they had failed him. How much they had left him to drown, so Niki owed him so much more than bearing her soul. “I try so hard to be kind, I’m not sure if it’s working though.”

“What?” That got him looking at her, the watery devastated eyes replaced with confusion. 

Niki smiled a little, not cruel but certainly not gentle. “After everything Showfall made me do, every person they made me be, I find it hard to be kind. Because they have tainted it, marked it and the very act feels like a betrayal. Like I’m stepping into shoes they gave me, like no matter how hard we’ve fought I’ve still come crawling back to them.” 

She lets go of his hand only because of the anger coursing through her blood. Dulled a little by the flickers of pain as she diggs her nails into her palm, a habit that replaced biting her lips only when the taste of bood became uncomfortably familiar. “I know, logically at least, that being nice to someone isn’t some sin. But it feels like it. It feels like no matter what I do, I’m always there. I’m always Showfall’s, always their perfect kind battered girl. I hate it.” 

It’s reliving in a way, finally speaking the truth. It spills out of her, rolls of her, like it’s been waiting forever. Like it was always on the precipice of breaking through, the truth. “I try so hard, so hard it hurts, to not be what they made me and yet. Yet everyday I think I fail at that, and I don’t know what to do with it.”

Niki finally meets Sneeg’s eyes and gone is the confusion, there’s understanding there and a little stubbornness. They never did like being proven wrong, even if it’s not really wrong. She shruggs, rolling her shoulders and pulling at the muscles. She winces a little at the ache, “There, that’s how you ask for help.”

He gains his bearing rather quickly, “You didn’t ask for help.”

“No, but you’re going to offer it because I know you, because all of us would. I just bared my soul to you and you don’t know how not to help. Am I wrong?” She smiles in the knowledge that she isn’t. There isn’t a world in which he sees her crying, breaking on the ground, and doesn’t stop to help her up. 

Sneeg shakes his head again but this time there’s a lightness in the air, they’ve endured the worst of the storm. Now it can only get better, easier, gentler. “You’re one of the strongest people I know, you understand that?” 

That gives her a little pause and so Sneeg pushes on, “Truth is most people wouldn’t survive what we survived, what we lived through. Hell,” He smiles and it isn’t a happy one, “I’m barely surviving as it is. But you, you’re not perfect Niki. You falter and you fuck up. But every time you get up. When you’re drowning and everything you do looks a little red you don’t let it stop you. You’re one of the kindest people I know, and with everything I know you’ve survived, that just makes you a miracle.” 

Niki’s mind blanks a little, none of them really have heart to hearts often but this, this is something else. She flusters for a moment, her cheeks a faint red, but then she gains her composure and looks at Sneeg. “You’re strong too, you know?”

He presses his lips together in a grimace, “I’m not like you, I can’t face what I did, what was done to me with half of your courage.”

“But you survived it. You survived it and that alone means your strong. Everyday that you’re still here despite what happened means you’re just as strong as me. Enduring is an act of survival, just as fighting is.” Their legs are pressed together, a warm line against her own. Niki stares at Sneeg, desperately trying to make him believe her. Because it is the truth, nothing about him is less than her. 

Maybe Sneeg doesn’t unnecessarily and constantly face his trauma because he isn’t a masochist like her but that doesn’t make him any less of a survivor. They share the same scars, the two of them, and no one else has a right to judge what they do with them. “Sneeg, say it. You are just as strong as me, and there is nothing wrong with asking for help.”

She raises her eyebrow at the silence and Niki hopes she gives off an air of I won’t leave without you saying it. They’re both stubborn idiots but she takes the cake, though often that isn’t a reason for bragging. Now it is though. 

Sneeg groans and the sound makes her lips twitch, it’s as familiar as Charlie’s laughter and Austin’s humming. It’s a little like coming home. He huffs, “Fine, I am just as strong as you, and there is nothing wrong with asking for help.” 

Niki gives into her smile, it pulls at her cheeks and aches a little. A rather nice ache. Sneeg knocks their knees together, a fond look in his eyes. His voice gets softer, “I’m sorry about today, and I swear I’ll ask for help in advance. Not when you’re like this, that was wrong of me.” 

“Thank you.” It’s not forgiveness but it’s not anger, Niki has fought hard to remember that you don’t owe anyone forgiveness. Although when Sneeg asks for help, when something comes of this, she knows forgiveness will come. The thought isn’t a bitter one and there’s her improvement, her hard-earned, desperate, clawing hands improvement. 

“I know we should talk some more about -” He pauses and she knows that Sneeg is mentally going over everything that was said or occurred in the past twenties minutes. A long list. “Everything. But honestly, I’m really tired, really really tired. Can we not? Not today at least.”

At his words it hits her, the same tiredness he has. Niki’s gray days always leave her drained, dull, and all these emotions have made it worse. She nods, the situation has been addressed and steps have been taken to fix it. They can afford a little rest. “Another day though, promise me another day.”

Sneeg looks at her when she takes his hand, her grip tight enough that he would struggle to pull back. There is a seriousness is her voice, something close to desperation. The fear that one day one of them won’t come back. It had almost been her a few times, and Niki isn’t sure what she’d do if it was him. Sneeg nods, matching her seriousness. “I promise Niki.”

Her eyes dart across his face, searching for the truth, and she finds it. She knows him afterall, skin and bone and blood. Niki lets go of his hand and leans back, her hands brushing against lego pieces they’d forgotten. She looks around the room and her eyes fall on a dvd case, half open and with a dvd inside. “Want to watch a terrible comedy?”

Sneeg smiles at her, sharp and joyful. “I thought you would never ask.” 

The two of them settle into the couch, tucked under several blankets and surrounded by pillows. They like soft things, sue them. The movie plays in the background, some woman and her friend talking about a plan to ruin a party. It’s cheesy and old and utterly unimportant. The sort of thing you fall asleep too.

She almost is asleep when Sneeg speaks, his voice quiet, a near whisper. “I would never have left you there.” Niki looks over at him and there’s something sad in her eyes. “I would never have left you. I would have fought with everything I had to save you. You have to know that.”

“I wouldn’t have asked you too.” Niki isn’t sure that she’s the sort of person that deserves to be fought for. At least like that. 

Sneeg smiles at that, a little sad, a little fond. “I know but you don’t have to. We’re family right? And that’s what family does. We look out for each other, hell or high water and all that.” So he’s finally picked up a few things from her, at the worst moments.

Niki doesn’t respond, doesn’t tell him about the guilt and her shaking hands. Although she’s certain he'd understand just like she’s certain he already knows. He always did get her, blood or not he was her brother. And when it came down to it Sneeg knew her to her soul. 

Niki doesn’t speak, instead she shifts over, his arm automatically going over her shoulder. She rests her head against his shoulder and sighs slightly at the warmth. The two of them relax, a tenseness leaving them. 

The sun slips down the horizon and she can hear some music playing in the hall. Voices in the kitchen and the clanging of pots and pans. She can make out Charlie and Ethan arguing, Vinny’s distinct laughter and Ranboo’s voice. It’s nice, it’s soft and it’s something she isn’t used to.

Sneeg tightens his hold around her at the voices and she knows what he’s feeling. The guilt, the pain. The two of them always held the world on their shoulders like it was a duty, and they had never managed to drop. Never figured out how.

She speaks and it’s a hoarse whisper, “I’m really happy we got out, both of us.” It’s not enough, words cannot describe the love she has for Sneeg, the relief that they escaped, and the hope she has for this new life. But Niki knows he gets it, in the way he always got her.

Sneeg’s chin is digging into the top of her head, his arms tight around her. His whisper is just as soft as hers, just as hopeful. “So am I.”

Chapter Text

The first time someone called her a nice girl Niki wanted to rip out their hair for two reasons. Their use of both nice and girl, like it was an insult she wasn’t capable of understanding. Like it was supposed to be a compliment. 

It’s a not new experience exactly, Showfall had made sure of that. Showfall had always been a degree of wrong, of pink and frills and smiles because she can never not smile. 

But the condensation, the look of utter disgust barely concealed under care makes her somehow angrier. Showfall were monsters, horrific monsters, but these people were just plain assholes for no reason. That’s somehow worse.

The only reason she hadn’t spit in his face was because he was gone, already walking out the door without a pit in his stomach. Not a thing in the world affected him, his words were nothing to him.

This had only made her anger worse.

People who called her a nice girl, a girl like her, girl (an older woman talking about girls these days and how I’m sure a nice girl like you wouldn’t understand. A man her age looking at her and rolling his eyes, talking about suffering for gain, girls like you wouldn’t get it. A man in a business suit, a mocking turn on his lips and she had just wanted to look at the newspaper, this isn’t for girls, sweetheart.) 

People who called her girl like it was an insult that she wouldn’t understand made her blood run. Niki, and only because she knows how hard it is to get blood off your hands, knows what it is to do irreparable damage, never corrected them. Never got in their faces and broke their nose, never spat I’m angry girl, I guess in their pain twisted faces. 

Niki knows that it’ll never occur to them, the amount of restraint she has to stay gentle. How hard she’s had to fight to be kind. 

It will never occur to them because these people would see her scars, the perfectly circular bullet hole just to the left of her heart because the Puzzler’s hands had shaken. The jagged scar on her forearm from Sneeg's heavy blow. The burns. It will never occur to them because if they saw her scars they would flinch back, they would look at her with a disgust that’s almost worse than pity.

They would scoff at her survival like it made her less - less than human, less than good, less than a girl.

Niki has survived monsters and men, survived the end of the world and yet she cannot let this go. Maybe that says more about her than it does them. 

Or maybe she’s just sick and tired of the world never giving her a break. Because there never is a break, a reprieve from the constant stares, the constant sneers, and a world that spits girl like it’s a curse. 

Someone slips a pill into her drink when they go out to a bar. The music is loud and she looks away for a moment, only because Austin is doing karaoke and he is not at all sober enough to do it. When Niki turns her head back there’s a little white pill dissolving in her drink. 

The powder spirals in the amber liquid, it’s familiar enough in the odd, detached way that anything associated with Showfall is. She curls her lips and gives the drink to the bartender, a pit in her stomach.

Worlds collide in on each other, this world and Showfall’s. The roofie in her drink and the drugs tucked in her food, fully dissolved in her water so much so that it only leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Showfall and stealing her anatomy with ease, like she’s a bad dog that won’t eat her medicine.

And this world, a bastard with terrible intentions and entitlement to rival God.

The girl next to her, brunette and college-age, tells her to get one of the scrunchie drink covers. She holds out her wrist, two scrunchies, pink and purple, on her wrist. She takes off the purple one and hands it to Niki, showing off how it works.

Niki takes it with a smile and then promptly goes to the bathroom and pukes, only partially from the drinks before. 

Somewhere before Charlie loses it and she is forced to face the fact that none of them are okay, and none of them every will be, she gets told to cover up by a woman older than her. Niki had gone to the library, a newer one with tables and chairs everywhere, and surprisingly not a lot of books. She had forgone her sweater, a pale blue with clouds that Charlie had bought her. In doing so Niki had revealed her shoulders, some of her chest, and her sides. What a terrible sin.

She was reading a romantic comedy about a bakery owner and her childhood friend when a woman tapped her on the shoulder harshly. Her head snapped up and the woman, already over stepping her boundaries by touching her, hissed at her that it wasn’t appropriate to wear such revealing clothing in a place like this. That her son was just trying to read and why would she dress like that? 

The son in question was happily playing with a pop-out book in the kid's room, halfway across the second floor. Niki sat there for a minute, stunned by the audacity of the woman, stunned because she genuinely believed she had the right to touch Niki and scold her for wearing a tank top on a hot day. 

The woman, Karen according to the internet that Showfall certainly didn’t let them have, was still awaiting a response. Her arms were crossed, her eyebrows raised all the while she glared at Niki. 

Once she had managed to collect herself, Niki was split between humor and a rage that burned deep inside of her. An anger that wasn’t just at the woman but at every other thing she’s seen both during Showfall and after, every time she was looked down on, every time she was used. 

Instead of giving in to the rage, into balling her fists and driving it into the woman’s nose, Niki smiles so sweetly and raised her middle finger. Then she goes back to reading her book, much to the outrage of the woman. It’s a simple response because Niki isn’t sure if she could handle giving in to her anger. Isn’t sure what would be left of her if she did. 

Niki isn't sure how much of herself isn't anger, isn't spite and rage melding together. How much of herself isn't a desperate spitting, cornered animal?

Somebody tells her that she should wear pink, that girls wear pink and didn’t she know that?

She wants to tear out their throats and ask, blood running down her chin, staining her outfit, if this is a pretty enough pink? 

Niki doesn’t and instead rolls her eyes, her anger growing and growing. And they aren’t even that important, that terrible, but adding sticks to a bonfire is still feeding the fire. They add kindling and her anger grows and grows and never burns out.

A boy tells her once that she’s beautiful while he’s staring down her shirt, that she’s the sort of girl guys would kill for. Niki wants to take the knife from her ankle and press it into his hand. She wants to guide his hand to her bared throat, the cool metal against her skin so familiar it’s almost comforting.

She wants to smile at him, smile too perfectly that it’s wrong, and whisper all sultry and sweet and everything Showfall molded her to be. Go ahead, as soft as a lover under the moon, slit my throat, sever my artery, and bleed me dry. You say you would kill for me, do it. 

Niki wants to watch this boy whose hands are uncalloused, his body without a battlefield of scars, flinch from her. Like those who would flinch from her scars, from the wars she’s won, from the boys who have killed her. 

She doesn’t of course. She never does what she thinks. Niki rolls her eyes, and even that is practiced, even that is perfect. She scoffs and walks away, a slight sway in her hips, her boots tap tapping on the floor.

She is as she has always been, perfect without fault. Showfall’s without flinching.

The worst part though, and there are always worse parts, is that Niki wants it. She wants it all, wants the puffy dresses and makeup, wants pretty and nice, but Showfall has stained it. Had made the want a betrayal and the world has only hammered that lesson in.

Niki wants to want and take and for it to not be some horrific action. She wants to wear skirts and dresses in a lovely shade of pink and not flinch from the mirror. 

But wanting changes nothing, wanting doesn’t reverse the damage, and wanting doesn’t wash her clean. Wanting does not undue the years or decades or centuries of buckling under the weight of Showfall's demands. It doesn’t wipe the blood from the floor, from her split lips and split knuckles. It doesn’t heal the black-purple bruises, the scars that carve apart the Generations. 

Wanting doesn’t change the fact that this is just another thing that Showfall has destroyed. Another thing Showfall sunk their claws into and let poision spread. Another thing that can never quiet be hers. 

Niki was getting real tired of Showfall taking things from her.

She was getting real tired of the world fighting against her every breath. The men and their hungry eyes and it’s such a familiar feeling. She has been the subject of desire and hatred from an invisible audience before but this time they aren’t so invisible.

This time it’s the guy who follows her around the park and only stops when she looses him in the trees. It’s the boy younger than her who cat calls her on the street, who laughed and shoved his friends like he had done something funny. It’s the man on the train in a business suit who tells her that she would be suited for more scantily clad work. 

It’s the echo of Showfall in every man who looks at her like she’s less than human. Who makes her feel like she is - less than human, something to be watched and put on a pedestal and ground beneath their feet. 

This time it’s the world that is built to break her, built against people like her. The college girl with her roofie protection scrunchies in purple and pink. The girl younger than her who approached her on the street like they were old friends and whispered to her there’s a guy following you, want to walk with me? The drunk girl in the bathroom who taught her how to do mascara that never smears, especially when you’re crying! don’t want anyone to see you break. 

Niki lives in a world that would spit her out if it could, she lives trembling from Showfall in a way that no one could understand. Her family couldn’t, and she loves them, Niki loves them with everything she is. Niki would die for them, she would kill for them, she would walk into Showfall for them. But they don’t get it.

Sneeg wouldn’t be able to understand how she both longs for skirts, for dresses and hates them in the same breath. He wouldn’t be able to understand that she doesn’t just hate them because of Showfall, that if it was just because of Showfall she would have moved past it. That it isn’t just Showfall’s fault.

They would try and understand but none of them would ever be able to get it, to get the revulsion and desire for femininity. For something that should have been hers without fear, without hatred, or envy. 

They wouldn’t get it and Niki couldn’t make them.

So she never tells them, she lets them think she just couldn’t care less for skirts, for makeup. Instead, and all her brave desperation is gone now, she watches from afar. Watches beautiful girls in clubs, with shimmering eyelids, and bright lips. She watches girls in the park for a photo shoot in their flowing dresses, the ones that brush your ankles. Instead, Niki watches the girls around her and drowns in everything she feels. 

Niki watches from afar and a hatred grows, a hatred toward both the world and Showfall. It’s rather fitting though, how it’s not bravery that changes things, but anger and hatred hand in hand.

Niki always has been an angry girl. 

She grits her teeth one day, it’s not a particularly special day, nothing out of the ordinary happens, but she grits her teeth and snaps. Niki buys a skirt, a black ruffled skirt, and when it shows up at the apartment she takes it and locks herself in her room. 

Niki lays it out on her bed and stares at the skirt like it might just get up and bite her. Finally after a lot of pacing, and a few worried voices that she can hear despite what the others think, she tries it on. It’s - 

It fits nicely and she doesn’t have an emotional breakdown at the sight of herself in the mirror, there is no wave of disgust, no urge to tear it off and burn it. So all and all Niki counts that as progress. 

Of course, because she has always been the sort of person that pushes herself when there definitely is no need to, she wears it out. There must be a look on her face because nobody comments when she walks out of her room, her skirt swishing around her. 

Niki goes to the library and this time, thankfully, there is no woman with a glare and a child that couldn’t possibly be exposed to shoulders. She settles in a chair and the skirt folds nicely around her, it’s soft on her legs and there is an impossible delight bubbling in her chest. A joy so sharp it nearly hurts.

Niki wears a skirt because she wants to and honestly, that shouldn’t feel like a revelation. But it does. But it is.

Once she’s started, once the agonizing hatred and grief broke a little, she never stops. Niki takes what she is given and runs with it. After all is there anything more in character than taking back what was stolen from her out of pure spite?

She orders more skirts, not pink, not quite yet. Makeup and jewelry, decidedly feminine jewelry that would make certain people scoff at it. Strawberries dangle from her ears and Charlie tells her she looks pretty. It doesn’t feel like an insult. Lily of the Valley’s hang from her ears and they match her necklace, they suit the pale blush on her cheeks. A little girl looks at her, smiles shyly, and with a missing tooth grin tells her they match, pointing at her white skirt. 

A man follows her off the train and Niki curls her fingers over the knife in her pocket and walks into the street light before turning around. This time she lets the hatred, the burning anger wash over the shame. He has no right to make her feel less than and when they meet eyes she lets her anger show, lets the snarling animal that Showfall never managed to kill through. 

He flinches back first.

The one thing that she barely conquers, the one thing that nearly kills her, nearly drags her down, is the world. The sheer amount of horrific things and people in this world that she cannot stop and cannot help. Niki has tried before, standing against mountains, against Showfall even as they tore her mind to shreds. She had been crushed as a response and this time is hardly any different. 

How do you live in a world that would see you, cut ear to ear and rotting in a ditch, and say that it was your own fault? How do you live in a world that fails you time and time again, so much so that you can only rely on yourself? How do you live in an apathetic world? 

Niki tries to find an answer, something that solves this impossible question, and she does when she asks the question to one of the women she met at the community center. Alicia, graying and weighed down by grief, worn by the world.

Alicia sighs and takes her hand, “You’re right about the world as much as I hate it. It will never get any better, there will always be horrible people and a system that looks the other way. But,” She brushes back Niki’s hair, and with the look in her eyes, she wonders how many girls Alicia is seeing when she looks at her. “While the world is not a kind place it doesn’t mean you cannot be. The world will not change so make it. The world is a mountain, so blow it up, so chip at it bit by bit until you can move it.” 

The world will not be kind to you, but that doesn’t mean you cannot be kind. The world will chew girls up and spit them out, so you help them. You pick up the pieces and build something better, so you stop the blow and the bruises before they can be formed. The world will try and break you, but will you let it?

Niki supposes that it’s easy enough to understand in the end, that it’s not fair or right but it’s how it is. Alicia smiles at her, eyes twinkling. “If we don’t help each other, who will?” 

Sisterhood, what a lovely, terribly daunting word. 

Despite how terrifying it is, Niki finds that finding sisters, that making them, isn't hard. It's one of the easiest things she's done.

She bakes bread with Alicia on Saturdays, always ready for the after-Sunday service. She befriends a girl at the coffee shop, a girl who always comes in a perfect outfit and heels that would take Niki out. Rae teaches her how to do makeup that suits her, and makeup that doesn’t. She teaches her how to do whatever makeup she wants and not whatever best suits Showfall’s Niki. If she only buys waterproof makeup then well, that's nobody's business.

Niki compliments a girl's outfit, she doesn’t flinch from the pink in her skirt, and ends up in an hours-long conversation with Puffy. She meets up with Rae and her friends to go to a club in a dress that she had bought months ago and never wore. A guy catcalls them or at least tries to because Rae ends up cussing him out so loudly that he leaves, red-faced and huffing. 

Rae and Puffy meet the others, and Niki trusts so few people with them, with her family. But Rae and Ranboo get on like a house on fire and Puffy ends up cooking with Charlie. By the time they leave her cheeks ache from smiling and this sort of joy is unimaginable in Showfall. 

Niki makes friends, girlfriends, and slowly learns how to live without it being a betrayal, without every action being Showfall-pink. Niki wears skirts and makeup and jewelry and every one of them is one long, drawn-out fuck you to Showfall. Rae sees her scars and doesn’t flinch away, instead, she grabs her hand and smiles. Puffy catches her on a bad day and draws her back from a panic attack, before taking her out for coffee.

Niki lives and it’s not perfect, not by any means, but she lives. She lives and every day she takes something back from Showfall. And maybe it’s with trembling hands, maybe it’s out of spite rather than bravery, but she takes it back nonetheless. Niki lives and watches too many romcoms, while black is her favorite color pink is her second and it doesn’t leave a bad taste on her tongue. Niki lives and lives and lives. 

She lives, and with Rae’s makeup bag spilled across her dresser, and Puffy texting Charlie on her bed complaining about PTA Moms, Showfall has never felt further. 

One day someone calls her girl like it’s an insult and Niki smiles, snarls in response, and says, “Thank you.”

Chapter Text

Her first memories are of him. Ones that are as delicate as silk, that shudder and break under her fingers if she isn’t careful. They shine too like silk, like spiderwebs glistening with drops of water. 

They may not be real, but Rae has found she doesn’t quite care. 

They go like this: the room they’re in is the sort you’d see in tv depictions of mental health hospitals, white walls, chairs, tables and floors. Even their clothes are white. 

Her hair is pulled into pigtails, tied with white ribbon, it makes her look younger than she is. There is no mirror in the room but Rae feels young, sees the world through a childish lense.

This may be one of the few times Showfall allowed them to be young, before, like all those past and future, it was taken away. 

Sykkuno’s young, her age give or take a few years. Baby fat clings to his cheeks and when he smiles at her, shy and hesitant, he’s missing his two front teeth. 

His eyes lack the hollowness she’s seen in the few workers without masks. Relief hits her in waves, relief so strong that it doesn’t suit a child.

Even then she had learned to fear Showfall. Learned well of what they could do, what they would do. Rae was younger than ten, and she already knew to fear for her mind.

He smiled at her, and his eyes had shone. She had known then and there, as she took his hand and they played as children do, that Sykkuno was her best friend. That he was everything. 

The memories spiral from there, breaking under her fingers, fizzling and disappearing, glitching. But the one thing that remains true, even in the memories she cannot trust, is that they are always together. Always. 

Be it a curse or a kindness or simply Showfall seeing how they didn’t fight as hard when the other was there but the two of them were side by side every time. Rae and Sykkuno, Sykkuno and Rae. The Princess and her Guard, the Mage and the Witch, The Hero and The Survivor. The two of them until the bitter fucking end. 

And they were, together at the end. When The Hero, and he isn’t the first but he will be the last, and oh, how terrifyingly amazing that is.

When The Hero and the others, names are etched into her ribs, carved into the very marrow of her. Charlie, Vinny, Sneeg, Ethan, Austin, Niki and finally Ranboo. People they’ve doomed, the two of them. 

The Hero and The Others escape, they get out bloody and broken but alive, but - Sykkuno is bleeding as the lights flare, alarms blaring in the background. She can barely talk, words harsh on her tongue, unfamiliar while ice-cold hands tighten around her vocal cords. Rae can barely talk but she can say his name over and over again, blood red and sticky on her hands.

“Sykkuno.” He’s coughing now, fingers desperately grabbing at his chest, at her hands. At the piece of metal piercing his lungs from the explosion. 

“Sykkuno.” Workers storm past them but Rae doesn’t care, cannot care about anything but the man in front of her. A part of her knows, knows like how she saw Death everytime, perched on their shoulders. A part of her knows that this is the last time, that there is no redemption, no saving them. That this is the end, one way or another, this is the end. 

“Sykkuno.” His hands no longer grasp at hers, they fall limply to his side and his breathing is slowing. Rae doesn’t remember seeing people die but she knows, knows without knowing, that this is the moment before they go still, before they become hollow.

“Sykkuno.” He breathes out, one last time, before his chest falls still. His eyes are visible through the mask and she watches as they fade, as the tiny spark that Sykkuno was flickers and dies like a burnt-out ember. 

She doesn’t say his name, there is no reason to. The dead cannot hear, nor they can be comforted. The lights are still flashing, alarms still blaring, and her hands are still against his chest. Rae, and that’s her name even if it burns her tongue, Rae is all that is left. Rae and the dead body beside her. 

She knows The Hero has gotten out, they all have and a decades long pain ceases. A guilt that threatened to kill her, that she had lived with so long she had forgotten, eases up and Rae breathes like Sykkuno won’t. The others have gotten out and so can she, even if she cannot speak words that haven't been taught to her. 

Rae, Sykkuno had always whispered it to her in the dead of night, shaking and trembling from nightmares. Her name was the only thing that kept him sane. 

Sykkuno is dead, but she isn’t. Rae gets up and her legs do not shake, blood still wet on her hands. With her blood-coated hands she reaches for the mask, an anger that is not sudden or new, that is decades old, burns her. She tears the mask off her face, and it crumples beneath her clenched hands.

She knows the way out, remembers exits, and remembers like the rat they wanted her to be, but first. She kneels once more, for the last time, next to the corpse of - There are no words to describe Sykkuno and what he was to her, no words to sum up their relationship. No word that fits but soulmates is close, the other half of her soul because she had given it to him. Because she had trusted him with the most sacred, vulnerable part of her. 

Rae remembers a phrase though, cut from the same cloth. It’s fitting for the two of them, Rae and Sykkuno, so far from human that they can only be described as two pieces of an object. 

Halves of the same soul. It suits the two of them. 

Rae gently, even if there is no reason for gentle, even if corpses cannot hurt. Sykkuno deserves everything soft and kind in this world. She gently takes of the mask and throws it to the side, let it be forgotten, let it be nothing. 

She brushes the hair from out of his eyes, her fingers catching on a silver white scar. A memory comes to mind, a plate shattering and this was a family sitcom but the family wasn’t perfect and the audience wasn’t laughing. Rae aches suddenly, grief welling in her throat, and she knows how easy it would be to sit down. To lay down next to his corpse and wait until death wrapped its shadowy fingers around her throat. 

It would be nice, to be nothing with him, to rest with him. To be two corpses in the place they grew up. To die in the only home they grew up in. 

But Rae also knows, certainly and without a doubt, that he wouldn’t want that. That Sykkuno’s ghost would be screaming at her the entire time, telling her to get up. That she doesn’t die here.

And Rae has always been helpless when it came to him. She had never been able to not give in to Sykkuno.

Rae gets up, without the mask on her face, and walks to the exit. She does not look back at the bloody floor or cooling body. The dead cannot leave, the dead cannot do anything. 

☽☾

Rae struggles to be human in the aftermath. This last Generation, being less than human, took its toll on her. It fractured something in her that only Showfall could have fixed, if they were still standing. But they weren’t, a bitter triumph. 

It works in her favor at least, the kind nurse and the police think she was tortured for years by some dude in his basement. They think her slow, broken speech, the way she can barely function without orders, everything really is just an effect of trauma. And they aren’t exactly wrong, just off by a lot. 

But Rae uses it, lets them think what they want, and takes the help they offer her. She tries not to feel bad about it, tries to push down the disgust rolling in her when she cannot remember how to work a shower but she knows how to manipulate people like a fine piano. 

She is, as they all were and are, a product of Showfall. In the very beginning, when she’s still in the hospital under the name Jane Doe and surrounded by very curious, concerned nurses, she wonders about the others. About Charlie, a little boy who smiled up at her and followed her without hesitating. About Charlie, Ethan, Austin, Sneeg, Vinny, Niki and Ranboo.

How they must be faring, if they are surviving like she is. Rae never allows herself the thought that Showfall caught them, she cannot think about it. 

(She tries once and it ends up with her being sedated and waking to a new set of scars. Scratch marks tearing down her arms, covered in bandages beneath soft restraints. It takes some work to convince everyone she isn’t a suicide risk.)

After some time, the police turned up nothing about her. No name, no family looking for her, nothing. Rae didn’t expect anything but there was a slight hope that died rather quickly. She gets discharged and the kind nurse helps her find a place to stay and a job. 

The kind nurse, Sarah, gets her a job with a friend, a secretary to some big bank. It’s surprisingly not that hard, Rae had gotten used to doing things at someone's commands, and getting coffee is a lot easier than bringing a cut-up screaming man to a different room. She manages his calender, schedules things, and greets people with a perfect smile. She excels at it. 

The apartment she gets, although with several mysterious stains and a leaky ceiling, is hers and hers alone. It’s perfect and every time she has a little extra cash, when she splurges on an ugly cheetah print rug, a nonsensical painting, her heart heals a little. 

Rae learns how to be human again and it’s a slow, messy process. It certainly isn’t a linear recovery either. There are times when she waits for a command, an order, standing perfectly still for hours on end. Some words are harder to say than others, they grate her throat, burn on her tongue and she babbles like a toddler. 

She gets a speech therapist, at Sarah’s insistence, even if a forty-year-old man teaching her how to say consistent makes her turn bright red. It makes Rae want to ball up her fists and rage like the child she never was, to throw a tantrum about it all. She shouldn’t be like this, she should be better.

Sarah’s voice always rings in her head at these thoughts, “You went through something traumatic and it is perfectly reasonable for you to not be okay. Humans are built to endure yes, but they cannot endure things forever. You have to deal with your problems, you cannot leave them to fester. Of course you will struggle, of course you will fail, but as long as you try that is what matters.” 

It’s always very effective, not surprisingly. 

Talking gets easier, although slowly, and so does life. Her bad days go from happening every other day to only once a week to once every two weeks. Rae survives until she can breathe without suffocating. 

The grief never goes away, it sits beside the guilt and shame. It burrows itself beneath her heart, tucked firmly against the sides of her ribs. It’s always there, pressing on her lungs, stealing her breath. But one day, Rae and Sarah are out for coffee, and she comes to the realization that it doesn’t consume her. 

That the grief is still agonizing but it doesn’t take over her mind, it isn’t a wound bleeding her dry. It’s scarred over. 

She tells Sarah once, and the two of them have quickly become friends, about Sykkuno. Not about Showfall or what happened but about her best friend, about the boy who meant something to her that is better described as holy, as God touched. 

Rae tells her about his quiet laughter and his small smiles. About the one time she managed to make him laugh so loudly, and so long that he turned bright red and collapsed. How it was her proudest moment. She tells Sarah about Sykkuno and the grief shrinks a little, a weight lifting off her shoulders. 

Sarah never pushes or questions, hell she never brings it up unless Rae does, but she knows that Sarah remembers. Rae knows that Sykkuno will be remembered by someone other than just her, that he will never be forgotten. 

And that makes everything a little less dark. 

It’s with Sarah, and the tall Lilian with deep brown eyes, that she reclaims herself piece by piece. It starts with makeup, with Lilian needing a test dummy for some project and Rae offering. She was so stunned by the finished look that she made Lilian teach her how to do it, or at least baby steps.  

Rae does her makeup, mascara, lipstick, foundation, blush, eyeshadow, concealer, and so on and so on. Eventually, it actually looks good on her, not some child playing pretend with their mother's expensive makeup. Rae does her makeup and when she smiles with dark red lips something settles within her, a soothing sort of pain, a rightness that wasn’t there before. 

Clothes are next, she knows nothing about the current style but Sarah and the others, and God she loves her friends, are all too willing to help. In between balancing meetings and guests, Rae learns exactly what is stylish and what looks good on her. Then she spends the money she’s dubbed as for fun on a shopping spree. 

When she looks in the mirror at herself, at the fitted skirt and a loose blouse, the minimal makeup that still makes her look flawless. When Rae looks at herself she sees a girl who goes for coffee with her friends and makes all her choices for herself. Rae looks at herself and she sees someone human, not a Rat. 

A broken bone being shoved back into place, a hurt sort of healing. Showfall’s control over her splutters, like an ember desperately flickering, trying to stay on fire, and failing. 

She masters heels and this, it’s familiar, second nature and she wonders which Generation required heels. Rae pauses for a moment, wavers, breath caught in her throat, but then her anger flares. It rears its head and whispers, hisses why should this be another thing they take from us? Why should it be?

Rae wears heels like they’re flats and every step is hers, Showfall doesn’t have a hold on her. Not anymore.

Rae takes back herself piece by piece, she lives with her friends, with Sarah at her side and Sykkuno burning beneath her heart. She lives every day until she meets Niki at a coffee shop.

If it wasn’t for her years of practice, even if she doesn’t quite remember it, Rae would have frozen. She doesn’t and instead, she watches her. Niki looks good, she looks alive and happy. Light purple hair falls above her shoulders, the black lines of a tattoo are visible by her collarbone, and she’s smiling. Austin is at her side, another name she knows easily. Another person who she knows without knowing.

They’re happy, they’re laughing and Rae is the reason why Showfall had them, the guilt and names etched on her rips don’t lie. She should walk out those doors, look the other way and never see them again. She should - 

Rae walks up to them and compliments Niki’s boots, a heavy metal toe set that looks killer, and she tells her so. Niki smiles, a part of her burns, she smiles and somehow they end up talking over coffee about shoes. About the pains of heels and boots and blisters, about the best socks for everything, and how tight female shoes are. 

She leaves the coffee shop an hour late and with a new contact on her phone. Niki didn’t recognize her, Rae realizes this about thirty seconds into their conversation. There was no anger, no disgust, no pain. 

Niki doesn’t know who Rae is and for once she’s grateful for the mask, because Rae isn’t a rat. Rae is a kind stranger who wears too high heels easily, and that’s all she is. Rae the stranger can be friends with Niki in a way Rae the Rat could never be. 

Rae sends Niki a text and prays that she never finds out who Rae is. 

☽☾

That of course doesn’t end up being true. Niki finds out a few months in and there are tears and breakdowns but of course, she welcomes her back. Every time something happens Rae is constantly reminded of Niki’s infinite kindness despite everything Showfall has done to her. 

In the face of this, she resolves to never tell her about the young boy in green, and how he wore it then, and how he still wears it now. About her punishment that damned them all. It’s not so much out of fear, not really.

The truth is this: She had fought once, and this is a story that even for all her scars Rae will never tell Niki. Some things must remain untouched, some things will break you if spoken aloud.

She and Sykkuno are some of the eldest, although age means very little to Showfall. But they were there the longest, one of the first to be taken and used, the first children brought up under white and black banners.

An experiment from her first breath to her last.

Rae can’t really remember what it was, she can’t remember much from then without her head splitting in two. It might have been a particularly brutal death, Sykkuno bleeding out and holding his intestines in his hands. Or maybe it was how they used her, skin giving way to metal and blood splatters aesthetically across her face. She's always beautiful, always a thing, and not a person.

She can’t remember what but something broke her, something shattered her in two. Something made her fight back against Showfall, and fight she did. 

Rae had broke through their control, pushed past the ice-cold hands and the red lights. Pushed until something broke, until it gave and she was the one who remained standing. She had broken through their control and gave them hell. 

She tore apart their sets, their cameras, their wire-filled workers. Her hands were shattered by the end, swollen, bruised, and bloody masses. But she hadn’t cared. Rae would have killed herself to destroy them.

There was a sick triumph in destroying herself, in denying Showfall her life and death. The few things she could control. 

Rae so thoroughly broke everything, the controls, the sets, the workers, herself, that it took them weeks to fix everything. She knows because they kept her awake, chained to a wall, every part of her body aching. She couldn’t close her hand at that point, her fingers must have been shattered not just broken but no one came and instead they turned an ugly purple and black, twisted at odd angles.

It was worth it, or at least she had thought it was, smiling through blood-stained teeth. 

It was worth it until it wasn’t, until they put her under and except this time Rae could see. This time she was under the surface, begging and clawing, confined in her own mind. She watched her body leave, go to a crowded mall that was teeming with people. A voice, a thousand voices overlapping, a sound she can never forget, filled her head.

Find one and bring them back. 

Rae cannot forget that, they do not let her. She moved even while she screamed in her head, eyes searching the crowd until she found a young boy. He had brown hair and glasses and the same missing-tooth smile as Sykkuno. He had waved when she approached him, when she told him they could go get some ice cream and then she would bring him back right here. No harm no foul.

Even while she sobbed, while she broke before falling silent nothing changed. Maybe her eyes had glazed with tears but the boy, Charlie Charlie Charlie, didn’t notice. He took her hand and Rae walked him to his death, to his destruction.

She had been seventeen when she fought. She never did fight again but she kept leaving and coming back with strangers, some younger and some her age, all damned. Showfall always did make sure the punishment stuck, and it did.

Rae never forgot and she never fought.  

☽☾

Even after the others find out, (Not about her taking just about her existence in Showfall), and all with the same open arms and easy forgiveness. (She still cannot look Charlie in the eyes.) Even after everything Rae never talks to them about Showfall, or more specifically the last Generation. The one they all remember the most.

Because, to simply put it, they couldn’t understand her pain.

It’s not to say that the others haven’t suffered, not by any means. She remembers, if through slightly cracked lenses, the past Generation. Remembers Niki’s screams, although muffled by the mask. Remembers the blood-stained floor and how Austin hadn’t looked human at the end.

They’ve suffered, but their suffering was human. It was a tragedy for audiences to sympathize with, although not enough to stop it. That would be too far.

The others in their pain and beauty were human, she wasn’t. 

And it’s not just the mask, it’s more than that. It’s the subtle looks from everyone, from Austin and his disgust at rats being taught to speak. It’s the Puzzler and the way that when he brushed against her arm he shook his hand after, like she was dirt he needed to get off. 

It’s the way Rae had memorized the cracks on the ground because she wasn’t allowed to look up, because she was always beneath them.

Rae wasn’t human, and maybe, in Generations she cannot remember, she never was. That isn’t something you move past, if you can. 

She never does move on, it’s always there in the back of her mind - the pain. It’s not that she thinks she’s lower, that she’s less than human. No, Rae has long learned, and Sarah certainly hammered it in, that she was human. That she was important and something, that she was herself.

But she can't forget the feeling of being nothing, less than, and on her bad days, her worst days, it's all she feels. It’s suffocating and Rae almost wants to let it.

Niki finds her on one of these days and they end up in her room, music playing and the two of them laying flat on her bed, tracing glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. She’s good at that, Niki, sensing when things are wrong and helping you get past them. 

It bubbles in Rae, the wrongness, a pit in her stomach that makes her sick. There were times when it came close to overflowing, when she nearly spilled everything - the fighting and the punishment and Sykkuno - but barely managed to keep it in. This time though, and it’s a testament to how far she’s come, Rae gives something to Niki.

“I don’t think I know who I am.” A small confession that held the weight of the world. 

Niki looks over and doesn’t seem surprised at the interruption, or the words. She has this terribly annoying habit of knowing things before you say them. She smiled and reached one hand into the space between them, tangling their hands together. “You hate hot coffee, no matter how sweet or watered down, you despise it.”

Rae breathed out, confused, “What?”

She continued like she hadn’t heard her, “You cannot stand red heels, like you have an unhealthy hatred of them.” Rae nearly said something about how glaring they are but at Niki’s unbearably fond look, she bit her tongue. “You only like plaid during the fall and hate Charlie’s creative cooking. You volunteer at the animal shelter and bribed a cat with treats to like Ranboo because he just wanted to pet one.”

She hadn’t even told Niki that one but of course she knows and of course she gets what Rae needs. You are human, you are real, and you are not what Showfall made of you. 

“You are the only person to like Sneeg’s questionable music choices and are his favorite person ever cause of that. You water all of our plants without faltering, I swear you break into our apartment just to water them. You’ve also named everyone.”

Niki’s hand is warm in her own and Rae is cracking apart but it’s the good sort of hurt. Every sentence is warm, it melts the ice-cold feeling of Showfall, of being nothing. 

Niki squeezes her hand, and there is not a lie in her voice or her eyes. “You are lovely and kind and so damn good. You’re Rae, and nobody, including Showfall, has the right to tell you otherwise.”

She believes her, Rae believes her.

Chapter Text

Ranboo is nineteen, that doesn’t change the story.

It never really hits him, the weight of his age, until months have passed. Until they can all breathe without Showfall hanging over their shoulders. It’s Rae who first causes him to actually think about it.

She had brought up colleges, more specifically their campuses and while she and Niki talked about the merits of cherry trees, Ranboo paused. They didn’t remember anything about before, the school they must have gone to, what they must have been taught. Trigonometry doesn’t help you when you're being mind controlled, but he isn’t anymore.

Ranboo got out, he got out and he isn’t sure if he knows how to do math. 

After everything he’s survived, every scar and painful memory, it shouldn’t matter that much but Ranboo can’t get it out of their head. Even after Rae’s left and Niki goes off to meet Puffy at a bakery they’re still sitting on the couch, fingers digging into the cushions, wondering if they ever read Romeo and Juliet. 

Wondering if Showfall took them before they went to high school or during, if they were taught at all during the Generations. Wondering if there is a nineteen-year-old with a dim smile and a faded missing poster in their room, if they’re always looking out the window for someone who's never there.

Ranboo doesn’t know if anyone is out there looking for him but what he does know is that there aren’t any missing posters with his face on them. Charlie had checked The National Missing and Unidentified Person System early on, and nobody was found that matched any of their descriptions. Nobody still desperately searching for them, for any of them.

Ranboo knows how to stitch a knife wound shut and what early stage infections look like. Ranboo knows what it feels like to shatter, to have your mind broken apart piece by piece. They know what it feels like to be nothing, to be a rock on a shore and constantly battered by waves, a relentless hit after hit. Ranboo knows Showfall more than they know of themselves, and that haunts them. 

It’s one of the stupidest things to be having a breakdown over, not knowing math. It’s now three in the morning and Ranboo is hunched over the kitchen table, gripping a pencil between their fingers. The lead is pressed to paper and they keep trying to recall equations, some pointless history fact, something something atom.

The page is blank, pure white with smeared lead on the right side. 

They can’t remember anything, even the muscle memory sort of remembering. A rather familiar anger fills them, yet another thing Showfall has taken from them. Their job, stocking food at a local grocery with an over-sympathetic owner, doesn’t require much but everything else will. 

Every other Job in this world, everything they could be requires at the bare minimum a high school degree, and most likely a college degree. Ranboo has neither. Ranboo cannot walk in this world because Showfall has cut his tendons, shattered his ankles, and left him without any crutches. 

It’s a bitter, anger-filled realization. 

The pencil snaps between their fingers and they barely notice, even if he did Ranboo wouldn’t care. There shouldn’t be anger because this isn’t a big surprise, they just hadn’t been clever enough to see it. Of course Showfall wouldn’t have given him an education, of course the Generation’s have soured his memories of the past, and with them the knowledge he once held. Of course he’s useless, of course he’s only good at being a puppet for Showfall.

They crumple the paper, it tears beneath their hands and finds its way into the trash. There is a bad taste on their tongues, like spoiled food. Ranboo walks out of the kitchen and collapses in his bed. When he sleeps his dreams are full of writing, words that slip just out of reach, that turn to dust under his fingertips. 

X

Niki is twenty two and sometimes she doesn’t know who she is when she isn’t fighting. 

Life for her was always a struggle. Always buckling under the weight of Showfall. Always the bug beneath their feet.

Always bloody knuckles and bared teeth even when her makeup was perfect, even when she fluttered her eyelashes just right. Even when Niki was The Nice, The Martyr, The Heroine, The Dead Girl Walking.

Life is one long fight that you don’t win, a trap that you don’t get out of - until she does. 

Until one day Niki Nihachu is laughing at a joke from her girlfriend, her girlfriend, in her apartment with the rest of her shattered family around her. And they’re happy, they’re smiling and their scars haven’t ached in months.

Until one day Niki Nihachu wakes up panting, clutching the hilt of a knife so hard it diggs into her skin. Until one day Niki Nihachu wakes up and there is no one to fight, no invisible monster and the ice cold feeling of loosing your mind. Until one day Niki Nihachu wakes up and she’s won her war - 

She never quite figures out what to do with that. Never stops flinching from shadows and pressing her ankles together, the covered knife pressed flat to her skin. She never really lets her guard down and it slowly kills her - fighting something that doesn’t exist. 

But who is she if she isn’t fighting? Who is Niki if her teeth aren’t bared, red smeared across the white? Who is Niki if she isn’t shaking with anger, with hatred and all the things girls like her shouldn’t be feeling? Who is Niki if she isn’t Showfall’s, but she isn’t really her’s? 

She never gets an answer to her question and like everything else in this life - the scars and nightmares and the Generations she can’t touch - Niki learns to live with it. 

Learns to live with blood in her mouth from biting her tongue, to keep from screaming, from yelling. Learns to live with callouses on her hands, bruises on her knuckles because she gets into boxing, because she won’t ever be defenseless again. Learns to live by looking at the others, at her family because there is no other word for them that fits, and wondering how hard it would be to take them down. 

That is the one part that makes her stomach sink, but in the end it’s like everything, tainted by Showfall. Niki knows what an axe crashing down on her forearms, meeting bone, sounds like. Just like she knows what Sneeg looks like holding it. She knows what rings Austin likes, and how they feel crashing against her cheekbone. 

Niki knows, or maybe she doesn’t, maybe none of it is real, but it could be. Maybe she knows or maybe she doesn’t, but the one thing she’s sure of is Showfall. Showfall and how they won't hesitate to use them against each other, how they are nothing in their eyes. And she will never, never be their quiet, good victim again. Even against her family. 

Niki doesn’t know how to stop fighting, so she lives with blood in her mouth and on her knucles. It feels right. It feels so very tiring. 

It feels inevitable. 

X

Sneeg is twenty six, and he never thought he would live this long. It’s not the first time he’s thought this, and he doubts it’ll be the last. In his earliest memories, the ones only slightly red tinted, he’s young and wearing a too stiff suit.

There’s a woman, pearls on her neck and dangling from her ears. Her lips are turned down, a deep red that she’s always worn. She smooths out his tie needlessly, there’s a sadness in her eyes and a new age to her. His mother, or at least he thinks that it’s his mother, she smiles at him and whispers, hands still on his chest, “Your Father would be proud.” 

When he walks across the stage for a degree he’ll never use, all Sneeg can think of is how his father only lived to thirty six, and how he’s already half way there. 

He had figured that Showfall would stop finding a use for him, that even the monster, the brute gets boring. And you can only hurt someone so many times, only break them so many times before their pain becomes boring, repetitive. 

Sneeg had thought, this is it, more times than he can count. He had thought it when Niki drove a sword through his torso, just missing his heart. There was music playing in the background and he was bleeding out on the floor, and she had looked so perfect in her armour, the knight who slayed the beast. But then he and Charlie were old friends, and Sneeg was once again torn from death. 

He had thought it was the end, that this time when his eyes slipped shut they wouldn’t open, when Ethan first showed up. It’s how it goes, isn’t it? The new toy to replace the old one. The boy, because he was a boy, Ethan was twenty-one and age never mattered but he was twenty-one and he shouldn’t be that scared. Ethan and the fire they had long put out in Sneeg, Ethan and the way he had held Sneeg’s hand while he died. 

For once, Sneeg had been alright with dying, because Ethan was there. Ethan was holding his hand and it was almost peaceful, almost calming. He had thought, this is the end, i’m okay with that. 

Then he had woken up and the story, it was such an old story, began again. And again and again and again. 

A majority of Sneeg’s life was spent waiting for it to finally stick, for his body to give and this time the skin wouldn’t piece itself together. This time, he thought every time, this time when my heart stops it won’t start again. This time will be the last time I hurt them, the last time Showfall uses me, the last time they look at me with their blood on my hands.

He was never right, not once did Showfall relent. After all, why would they? What does a God care about the ant crushed beneath his boot?

It’s a sign of insanity isn’t it, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So when did Sneeg loose his mind? What death and the tiredness that sunk into his bones. What death and the blood drying under his fingernails and he stopped being able to tell who it belong to a long time ago. What death and the this time will be the last did Sneeg loose his mind?

Maybe it was the second or third or last, or everyone in between. Sneeg never thought he would live this long, Showfall always did have a habit of proving him wrong though. In the worst of ways.

X

Austin is twenty eight and he is terrified that life will pass him by, that it will slip through his fingers. He is terrified that despite his trying, he will never be more than what Showfall made of him.

It’s another consequence of Showfall’s actions, of the Generations that make his bones ache. The Generations that he couldn’t name, nor tell apart, but he can feel the way they destroyed every part of him, can trace the cracks in his skin. Austin is, at his core, Showfall’s. A twisted version of fine China, shattered and glued back together. 

Austin's Showfall, he thinks in a way that the others aren’t, that he wasn’t like them. Ethan and Niki fought, Vinny bent beneath them and Ranboo shattered. But Austin wasn’t predictable, and that makes it worse, Austin switched between perfection, agony buried beneath a spotless smile, and terror, pure human terror. 

He was never Niki and her bared teeth, her body shaking with rage. He was never Vinny and his hidden smile, his long mastered tilt of the head, offering his neck to the knife. Austin was never anything special, he was just there in the background. To be used when needed, and discarded just as quickly. 

That messed him up more than anything, and a part of him is ashamed of it. Ashamed because of the slight envy he feels for the others, even knowing their pain he still longs for their role. Austin longs for importance, to be someone that stays, that isn’t changed to suit the story. 

Austin has spent so long being nothing, fading into the background, that his greatest fear is being nothing in this life. Being nothing without Showfall’s interference, being nothing and proving them right, being nothing because he is nothing. 

The amount they remember is always different, Sneeg’s memories are often perfectly clear, and Vinny’s are close to nonexistent. But the one thing that remains true to all of them is the feeling of the Generations, the echo even if you can’t make out the whispers, the gut wrenching devastation from a memory you cannot touch. 

Austin looks at a guy his age, cute and has the sort of laughter that rings through a room, and a pit forms in his stomach. Someone, tall and with a buzzcut, pays for his drink and Austin retches in the nearest bathroom. 

It’s ironic in a bitter, terrible way, in the Showfall way. Austin wants love so bad it tears him apart, but the act of love, his heart skipping a beat, makes him want to run, to claw at his skin and curl into a corner. 

Austin wants to love somebody, to press a smile, a kiss to skin and be held in return. Austin wants to a live like anyone else, he wants to be loved. But he cannot, because no matter how hard he tried Showfall is always there. 

Death, a dark figure, in the corner of his eyes. It never comes closer, never takes his shoulder and diggs its fingernails into the soft skin. Death never takes him, but it’s always there, always a reminder that while Austin escaped Showfall, he never really left. 

Death - Showfall is always there and Austin cannot quite grasp Life. He can never laugh as much as he wants too because he was never meant to draw attention to himself, never meant to take the spotlight. He can never meet a kind man with warm eyes to fall in love with, because every look, every touch is a jolt of pain and Showfall’s cruel hiss. 

Austin is always, always desperately trying to reach out to Life. He tries to take her hand, to dig his fingers into the soft earth and to smile up at the sun. But every time she slips through his fingers, every time he flinches back and Death takes her place. Every time Austin is reminded that while he got out of Showfall, Showfall never let him go.  

X

Ethan is twenty six but sometimes he still thinks he’s twenty and life is kind. Sometimes he wakes up as the sun rises, light coming through the blinds and dotting the wooden floor. Sometimes Ethan wakes up and before he blinks open his eyes he reaches out a hand expecting to hit a body, to be met with Amy’s swatting hands or Mark’s groan.

Sometimes Ethan wakes up and he almost remembers, the memories just out of reach, just around the corner. They’re so close he could touch them, could cup them in his hand and count the fractures, the golden glow from beneath the cracks.

It’s like a butterfly, orange hued wings, a delicate paper-thin body. But every time he reaches out it flies away, and the memories slip into nothing. 

Ethan opens his eyes and he doesn’t know how Amy looks in the morning before she’s got her coffee. He doesn’t remember how Mark likes to hug her, to wrap his arms around Amy and stay there for a moment. Ethan cannot tell you that their mornings often passed with the three of them in the kitchen. 

Light would flood through the windows and the smell of coffee, cinnamon flavoured, filled the air. Amy would sit the pot on the counter and Ethan would get down three mugs, terrible attempting at funny Christmas-themed ones. They would drink their coffee quietly, and it was such a good quiet. It was pure warmth sinking into his bones. 

He doesn’t remember the other moments where life was perfect. When Ethan couldn’t breathe and Mark pressed their heads together, when he threaded his hands through the hair at the back of his neck and swore they were brothers. When he uttered, like an oath or a prayer or something in between, that they were family and nothing would change that. 

Ethan cannot name the way Amy laughed, delighted and easy. How she had held out her hand and pulled him into the dance floor, music playing loudly from the speakers, the crowd just as loud. How she had giggled when he made a mistake and afterwords yanked him into a hug. As he stood, awkward and bending over but perfectly content within her grasp, he could feel how her chest had vibrated, how laughter racked her body. A hum that sank to his bones, a hum of love and joy. 

Of course Ethan couldn’t tell you that, and he would never ask Mark and Amy. Even now, the memories darting off on the wind, he could never hurt them willingly. 

Sometimes Ethan wakes up and for a split second, like the moment when you wake up and fuzzy sleep still clouds your mind. For a split second he wakes up and nothing bad has ever happened to him. 

Then Sneeg stubs his toe and curses so loudly he can make out the words, and the other Ethan, the young one who smiled brightly and lacked the weight of lifetimes on his shoulders, is gone. 

Sometimes Ethan wakes up and he’s a different person, it never lasts. 

X

Vinny is thirty eight, he is the oldest out of all of them, and that kills him a little. 

It’s not a logical feeling, the urge to look at Niki, Charlie, fucking Ranboo and to tell them that they should never have hurt before him. That he was older and the burden of it all should rest on his shoulders. That if he could he would take their scars because they were always meant for him. 

Age doesn’t matter to Showfall, Rae could tell you that if she could ever speak about her horrors. Age matters very little to monsters and he knows that it wouldn’t have changed anything. That even in the beginning, before he knew these people to his bones, if Vinny had stepped in front of their blank eyes and tense bodies and said, “Let them rest, I am older. Let me carry this.” It wouldn’t have changed anything. 

But he cannot help it anymore than he can help his wandering hands and the trinkets that end up in his pockets. Vinny is older than them all and not a day goes by that he doesn’t look at them, Ranboo’s soft eyes and Niki’s fierce smile, Charlie’s laughter, everyone and he doesn’t wish he could take their pain. 

He thinks it’s from before, although before is simply a word, not a lifetime like it is for the others. Muscle memory, Vinny knows how to tie a knot despite never picking up rope in this life. Why shouldn’t it be the same for memories?

Vinny does not remember his mother, or his friends, any family he might have had. But he does remember a lesson without words, something engrained into his mind, into his very being. Step in front of others, shoulder the blow because you are bigger, because you are older, because you will not watch them break. 

Vinny was raised on it, or maybe the world taught him that, harsh and cruel as she was. It doesn’t matter how he knows it, only that he does. Only that he failed at even that, that he is the eldest of them and yet Ranboo’s face is outlined in scars, and yet Rae traces the white lighting like scars on her hands and some days her fingers can’t move. Vinny is the eldest and he was supposed to protect them but Sneeg carries three long scars across his torso and Charlie flinches from Ranboo on his worst days.

Austin sometimes needs a cane to walk on his own and Ethan can only play basketball for so long before his legs give out. Niki’s shoulder doesn’t work the way it should and Puffy has become familiar with massage therapy, with gentle working over torn muscle that never healed right.

Vinny was supposed to protect them and yet he failed in every way. They all have a collection of scars and logically, God how he hates that word, logically he knows he must have tried. That there is no world in which Vinny just lets them burn before his eyes, that he tried and failed. 

He knows because of all the many times Austin has woken up, panting and tense, and whispered over and over again it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault. He knows that he is just a man and Showfall is something else entirely, Showfall is a place straight from hell and with all the power it needs. 

Vinny knows that he couldn’t have stopped Showfall, but that never stops the guilt. It never stops him from looking at the others, and they aren’t that young but they’re so much younger than him. It never stops him from looking at them and the white scars that decorate their bodies, and the apologies that threaten to burst from him. 

He’s afraid that if he starts apologizing, he’ll never stop.  

X

Charlie is twenty four and everytime he looks in the mirror he sees ghosts. The Generations shatter in front him, spiral out like cracking, spider web glass. In one shard his hair is long and pulled back, a scar cuts across his gray, dull eye. In another he’s young, younger than he had any right to be, young enough that when he smiles he’s missing a tooth. 

The Generations go on and on, a thousand him’s, a thousand lifes given and taken. A million different dead boys and the one that remains.

It’s not remembering, not like Sneeg and Ranboo’s soft whisper of a name Emry, on cracked lips. It’s not a remembering, it’s a haunting. 

Charlie makes breakfast while the birds chirp and a dead boy sits on the counter. He’s young, although not as young as he could be. He swings his legs back and fourth, his green shirt, always fucking green, is stained with blood. It soaks through his left side and trails down his body. 

He’s humming a tune, and Charlie knows it because Austin likes to mouth the words, to play it so loudly you can hear it without putting in his earbuds. The young but not as young as he could be Charlie smiles at him, his glasses just a little bit crooked and the right lense is cracked by the corner. He never says a word, they rarely do, and by the time the pancakes are lovely golden brown he’s gone.

Charlie reads a book in the quiet apartment, the sun high in the sky, and a man sits at his feet. He’s Charlie’s age, that’s always a relief, and there are no obvious injuries on him. His knees are pulled to his chest and he leans his head against the cushioned chair. It’s almost peaceful, he can almost ignore him but then he looks down, the he meets the dead mans eyes.

Or the lack of them. His eyes are gone, nothing but empty, hollowed out sockets. There isn’t blood, isn’t muscle and tissue trailing out. The eyes were cleanly taken at least, although that isn’t much of a comfort. The Charlie who cannot see still wears glasses, and that almost makes him laugh in a terrible, morbid way.

Charlie makes hot cocoa for an exhausted Niki, still in the bathroom rubbing the blood off her hands, from under her nails. Beside him, watching his hands with careful, piercing eyes is a Charlie in a suit, the tie perfectly straight, a lapel pin stark against the suit with a familiar brand. Showfall’s Charlie walks like a soldier, even sure steps. 

Everything about him is sure, his hands do not shake and his gaze never wavers. This is the Charlie that he most hates, that he most longs to be. How easy it must be, to never hesitate in your decisions, the good and bad. How wonderful it must be to be a soldier and not a marytr. How lovely it must feel to be a monster rather than the prey. 

The dead boys, the walking ghosts that follow him around never stay for long. They are there one moment and gone the next, always replaced, always an echo rather than a memory. Charlie isn’t sure if the cold comfort, the dull relief when they return and when they leave, is a good thing. 

Regardless he’s learned to live with his Ghosts, with his dead. 

X

Rae is thirty one and the other half of her is rotting in an abandoned mall. There are certain things, she’s realized, that you can never make peace with. Sykkuno dead on the ground, Sykkuno cold and pale, Sykkuno bleeding out beneath her hands is one of them. 

She escapes them, Showfall and the monster they made out of her, but not all of her gets out. Because Rae can never truly be free if Sykkuno isn’t, if her brother isn’t. And someone would tell her that the dead are more free than any of the living.

Rae with the Generations sewed into her soul, branded into her soul, with death an old friend, Rae would laugh. She would tell them, not kindly, she has forgotten kindness, that the dead are dead, they are gone and they are nothing. They cannot be free, only the living can and her brother died afraid. He died Showfall’s, he died with freedom being a whisper on the wind, a child’s dream. 

Rae is thirty one and in three months and eight days she’ll be thirty two, and a year after that she’ll be thirty three and so on and so on. Rae will be older than her older brother, and that is something she isn’t sure how to live with. 

Rae is thirty one and she’s not sure if she’s alive, or if she’s a dead girl walking. A dead girl stumbling around aimlessly, the other half of her heart cold and frozen in a decaying corpse. 

X

Sykkuno is thirty two and he doesn’t think much these days. The world is gone, everything becomes nothing.

He drifts, drifts through a void and every so often he hears something. A voice. 

He knows the voice, knows like he knows himself. The other half of him.

Rae whispers to him sometimes. She tells him about life, about how she’s so far from Showfall. About how he would have loved it and the others. Rae tells him, softly and gently, that she had made herself a home. 

If Sykkuno could think, he would know she was telling the truth. But he cannot because he is dead, because he is nothing and that is the kindest thing this world can ever offer him.

Chapter Text

Rae slips so easily into family like she was meant to be with them. Charlie thinks that it was sort of inevitable, that people like them, with broken minds and tattered bodies, are bound to find each other. It’s been a few months since she had met Niki, and over a year since they got out. 

Charlie had been surprised when he realized it, the day passing like any normal day. Charlie hadn’t really had the time to look at the calendar when he was still shaking from having his organs rearranged. None of them had, but one day he looked up and a year had come and gone. 

Freedom feels like laughter, like joy and a warm apartment. Freedom feels like his family and dinners with Sarah and the others, Rae’s people. Freedom feels like being alive, Charlie never thought he’d get that. 

The truth is none of them did, not really. None of them expected to get it. They certainly hoped and prayed and longed to get out, but for it to be a reality, for Showfall to be nothing more than a nightmare. That is more than Charlie ever thought they’d get. 

Life is good, life is kind and Charlie believes in it, believes in his family. So of course it cannot last. 

It’s a normal weekend, nobody woke up screaming and he finally got around to making crepes. Rae came over around lunch just as Niki got back from a morning run with Puffy. How running could be a fun date, Charlie didn’t know. But Niki was smiling and Puffy kissed her on the cheek before she left so to each their own.

The apartment was light, there was no other word for it. There was no tension in the air, no heavy looks, and hollow eyes. They were all there, both physically and mentally, and it wasn’t killing them. He should have known it wouldn’t last but Charlie has begun to hope, began to have hope without the fear that it’ll be mercilessly crushed and taken away. 

He was making chicken wraps, an easy task that allowed his mind to go still, to go calm as his hands moved mechanically. Charlie could half hear them in the background, Sneeg and Ethan playing Mario Kart with Austin and Vinny switching rapidly between cheering them on and telling them how terrible they were. Ranboo, Niki, and Rae were talking about skirts, the best ones to wear, and which ones swirled the nicest. 

Everything was good, his heart was steady and his hands didn’t shake. Charlie was breathing and every breath wasn’t a struggle, a desperate fight to stay alive. There were no dead boys, no ghosts haunting him, for once Charlie was himself.

Later he’ll realize that’s what did him in. Charlie was himself without any open wounds to take the blow, to worsen, so when it hit him it tore him open. When it hit him it shattered Charlie, not a Ghost, not a dead boy with an already broken heart. 

He turns and his mind isn’t really there, it’s on a dozen other things, but it all stops when he catches sight of Rae. She’s not doing anything special, not really, but - But her hair is loosely pulled behind her, strands falling down the sides of her face. She’s wearing a light yellow shirt and jean shorts. She looks normal, she looks younger than thirty-one. There are sunglasses in her hair, cherry red, and shining in the light. 

She looks like she did years ago. 

The memory doesn’t hit him, it consumes him. One minute his mouth is slightly parted and he’s trying to ask a question and the next he’s balancing on a bench. Charlie isn’t himself, he’s a child, and that makes him ache in a new, dangerous way. 

His balancing act, arms spread wide, smiling with missing teeth, is the most amusing thing in the world. The mall, a very different mall, a yellow-tinted mall full of people, blurs around him. But the bench is perfectly clear down to the faded pink gum on its side. 

He stumbles, wavers on the bench, tongue sticking out in concentration. There’s a burst of soft laughter, kind laughter that makes him want to look up. He does and she’s there. Rae’s there except he doesn’t know that, doesn’t know her. She smiles at him, eyes a warm brown with something flickering in them. 

He couldn’t name it, he’s a child and she’s just smiling at him, sunglasses holding back her hair. A teen in a mall during the summer. He waves, “Hello!” His parents always taught him not to be rude and the teenage girl looks kind. 

There’s the flicker again, he notices it now, but child him doesn't question it, doesn't care. Her smile grows, tightens, and she looks around. “Are your parents here?”

He shakes his head rapidly, hopping off the bench and landing with a thump on the ground. He only comes up to her waist. “Nope, Mom’s getting something from a store and told me to wait here.” He smiles like it’s a secret and leans closer, she bends down a little and the two of them are instantly playmates. “I get bored easily and I almost got us kicked out last time.” 

Child him giggles and she matches his joy, crouching down until she’s his height. “That sounds like my sort of person. Want to go get some ice cream? I know a perfect place, they have the best strawberry ice cream ever!”

He hesitates, eyes darting to a neon sign with bright letters that Charlie cannot make out. “My mom said not to leave here, and not to go with any strangers.” His feet are already shifting though and her eyes sharpen, like a shark that smelled blood in the water.

“My name's Rae.” She sticks out her hand, “And what’s yours?” 

He takes her hand, “My name’s Charlie. Rae’s a cool name though, like the laser rays from the arcade game, the alien killing one.”

“You’re right Charlie, it’s what my parents named me after.” Her voice is light, it’s so happy that he feels a smile pulling on his lips. He gives in easily, a giggle bubbling in his chest. 

Rae smiles and leans closer as he had before, voice lowered like she’s telling him a big secret. “You want to know something?” He cannot nod quickly enough. “We’re not strangers anymore so we can go get that ice cream, I’ll pay for you and we can get the biggest cup.”

His resolve is faultering quickly and Rae knows, she strikes the final blow. “It’s only a few minutes away. I know moms, they take forever to shop. We’ll be back long before she’s gone.” She holds her pinky out, “Pinky promise!” 

He breaks within the second, linking their pinkies together, a giddy smile on his face. “Okay, okay! Let’s go.” He grabbs her hand, tugging on it and Rae laughs, it sounds nice. She stands up and for a moment her face is blank, for a moment there’s something like devastation in her eyes. Then it’s gone and the teasing smile is back.

She walks forward and he follows, so easily, so readily. His hand so small in her own, in her gentle grip.

The memory slams to an end, shuddering and turning to dust. Charlie’s back in the kitchen, and the conversation about skirts has ended. Ranboo looks confused and Niki has something unreadable in her eyes. Rae though, Rae’s in front of him, a concerned question on her lips but Charlie doesn’t hear it.

Charlie flinches back so violently his back slamns against the counter, the food long forgotten. Rae freezes, and the unreadable look on Niki’s face changes to something closer to knowing. But Charlie cannot decipher it because, because - 

He flinched from Rae, from her outstretched hands and her warm eyes. It’s just like before with Ranboo, the fear he cannot stop, the knowing that he cannot move past. Charlie never wanted to be afraid of Rae and yet here he is - heart pounding at the sight of her, breath coming in short gasps.

All because of the memory, of her, seventeen and sweet, how warm her hand was in his, how they never did get that ice cream.

“Charlie?” She swallows and the apartment is quickly falling silent. He's panting, bordering on hyperventilating, the loudest thing in the room. 

“You took me?” It’s a confused question, something close to pleading, for him to be wrong but Rae denies nothing. Rae looks at him and there is a sudden understanding quickly followed by shame in her eyes, by a pain so sharp it cuts him too. 

Charlie wasn’t wrong, because Rae took him and she’s so God damn guilty over it.

Still the idea is unimaginable, he repeats it again sounding so much like the petulant child he never was because of her. “You took me? You’re the reason Showfall had me?" Then, every word soaked in horror. "I was seven and you took me?” 

He gags, a disgust so strong he has to resist the urge to upend his stomach in the sink. Tears burn in his eyes and Rae is still silent, but tears are falling on her face, her lips trembling. “Charlie I - I.” She wavers and everything but the two of them fades. “I’m sorry. I tried to stop them, I swear. I tried.”

Charlie’s making little sounds, a keening in the back of his throat. Something close to a fucking whimper. “You took me.” It’s no longer a question. It's an accusation. “You took me. I was seven and you took me from my parents.” The tears come and his breathing is more heaving, shuddering gasps. His hands are shaking violently, closer to twitching than anything and suddenly the apartment is unbearably small.

“I - I can’t be here. I can’t, I can’t.” He’s moving before he finishes the sentence and Rae reaches out for him but he brushes it off, flinching from her touch, from the familiar hand. The others are there and he can vaguely make them out through his blurred vision, tears swelling in his eyes. But none of the reach him in time when he storms past them.

The apartment doors slams shut behind him and Charlie isn’t thinking about anything other than the walls closing on him, crushing him. He needs to get out, he needs to fucking breathe. 

He’s moving on autopilot, the door to the roof swinging open. The cold air hits him like a train and Charlie shatters, he breaks. He falls to his knees, the gravel rough even through his pants. He’s dry heaving, crouching over the ground, hands digging into the rocks, the little flickers of pain on his palm forgotten. 

He presses his hands to the cold gravel, his eyes slipping shut and something cruel burning within him. Charlie must sound like a wounded animal, he feels like one. Feels like a bear trap closed around his lungs, like he can’t breathe, like everything hurts.

His vision, when he opens his eyes, is blurry. As he leans back on his knees, hands still clenched around the rocks. His breathing isn’t steady, it’s shaking as he tries desperately to calm down. Nothing works because every time he comes close there is another wave of disgust, of hatred, of fear. 

Charlie is twenty four, Charlie is seven, Charlie is Showfall’s because of Rae. 

A logical voice points out that she didn’t have a choice, that she was young, what seventeen? That she would never do it willingly, the logical voice croons softly and it’s right. It’s right but none of that matters because Rae took him to Showfall, took him from his family. 

Rae is good and kind. Rae makes Niki laugh and throws her arm around Ranboo’s shoulder, smiling so sweetly up at them. Rae is fierce and brutal in a way that is nothing but comforting. Rae is a part of their family, one day she just was and that was that.

Rae is Rae.

Rae held his hand, intertwined their fingers and promised to take him back to his mom after they got ice cream. Rae never took him home, she took him to Showfall.

She was seventeen, she was being mind controlled and tortured. But she took him from his parents, he still cannot remember anything more than the feeling that he was loved. He was loved and she took him anyway. Rae took his life away.

Rae is his sister, his family and she took his life away. 

There’s a loud creaking noise that tears him violently from his thoughts. The roof door swings when it opens, and shuts with a quiet thud. The gravel shifts under someones feet, quiet but sure steps. Niki he knows, Niki.

A hand wavers just above his shoulder and he’s no longer keening, no longer sobbing. Charlie has gone from hysterics to shaking breaths, his fists clenched and a pouding heartbeat. When he doesn’t turn there’s more sound and a figure comes into view. Niki sits across from him, legs crossed, hands flat against her legs. 

For once there are no comforting gestures or softness, Niki looks at him and there’s a new sort of calculating in her eyes. Like she’s trying to figure out how exactly he’s going to react. Like she already knows.

She had looked like that before, when the memories shattered him, when he flinched back from Rae’s touch. Niki had looked like she did with every Generation, knowing.

A horrible realization, an obvious one. “You knew.” Niki doesn’t deny anything, the wind blows through her hair and a strand falls over her eyes. It cannot block the coldness in her eyes, the lack of shame and regret that Rae was full of. “You knew, didn’t you?”

She tilts her head slightly, and it almost looks like she’s offering him a shot. Letting him land a blow to her cheekbone. Niki’s not the lamb willing beneath the blade, but she also believes in fairness. An eye for an eye. A wrong for a wrong when she’s done something that even she knows isn’t right. 

This isn’t a new side of Niki, just one he rarely sees. A side none of them ever really see. This is the Niki that withstood the worst of Showfall, that took it all so someone could remain standing, so their Niki could live. This is the Niki that dug her hands into a mans guts and pulled out wire, without knowing he wasn’t human in the first place. This is the Niki that would use them like pawns if it meant they all got out alive. 

This is the Niki that survived, a soldier long before she’s human. 

When he doesn’t lash out, and how could he ever hurt her? How could he ever hurt any of them? Charlie could never raise a hand to them, not even if they killed him. When he doesn’t ball up his fist and crash his knuckles into her cheek, Niki finally talks. 

“Rae isn’t a good liar, and well, she talks in her sleep. She says your name a lot and when she’s having a breakdown she’s not exactly careful about what she says. I put two and two together.” Niki shrugs and anyone else would think she couldn’t care less about this, Charlie nearly does. But he knows her, even if right now he hates that fact, Charlie knows her and there is rage burning in her eyes, in her tensed fingers, itching for a knife. Rage beneath her cold calculation. 

He wonders what makes her rage worse, the fact that someone took him, or the fact that it was Rae. 

“I didn’t know, though, about how young you were.” It’s little comfort. 

“Would it have changed anything?” Charlie manages to bite out, already knowing the answer.

Niki has the decency not to lie to him. “No.” She’s unapologetic, not the least bit of regret in her voice. She is as she’s always been, as she’s struggled so hard to be. Niki doesn’t do regrets, she lives and survives and would kill anyone who tried to make her apologize for it. 

This isn’t Showfall, isn’t a fight for her life, but Charlie knows that to Niki everything is. That she is a fighter because Showfall made her one, and she’s never learned how to lay down her weapons. How to look at life without seeing war. 

There is no hatred to that fact, to how Niki is. How could he hate her? Charlie and all the burning love he has, all that he’s done to his family and for them. Charlie who's seen Niki break herself for them, raze herself to the very ground in order to save them. Charlie who's seen Niki walk into her own pyre to spare them. How could Charlie hate Niki for her survival? How could he not love her for it?

This time when he speaks it’s softer, this time he’s just Charlie and she’s just Niki. This time it’s the two of them covered in blood, covered in their own sins, in a place where judgment cannot lie. “She’s the reason Showfall got me, maybe the reason for all of us.” 

Niki nods, her fingers tapping absent mindedly on her leg and watching how the light reflects in her rings is a welcome distraction. “I know. She didn’t have a choice, she was Showfall’s. Just like us.”

“I know.” Because what more can he say to that? Because that’s the problem, both of them are right, but where does that leave them?

Rae was taken, maybe as young as he was, and used by Showfall. She was nothing and no one but a tool. She is the same sort of victim as they are. 

Rae took him. Rae took a child who was kind, who was so trusting, and she took him willingly or not. It doesn’t matter if she didn’t have a choice in it, hers was still the hand that slaughtered him. 

Rae was taken and Rae took him and Rae - Rae is his family. 

Niki’s still looking at him, and he’s grateful now for her - not quite coldness - her detachment. Charlie isn’t sure he could take kindness, a gentle hand. He doesn’t need love, he needs the bitter truth. “I don’t think I can forgive her for this. Willingly or not she killed me, and there’s a difference between hurt and being the reason behind it all.”

There is no judgement, no pain. When she needs to be Niki is marble, she is unbreakable. Niki learned a long time ago how to be less than human, and it was a lesson she could never forget. “Nobody, and especially not Rae, is asking for forgiveness. I don’t know if any of us truly know what that is. I don’t forgive, and I don’t forget, but I live with it. Can you?” 

That’s the question, can he look Rae in the eyes after this? Can Charlie live with Rae, hold her when she breaks into sobs in the kitchen? Can he offer her the same comfort he gives to the others? Can he let himself be weak with her, sit shoulder to shoulder on the bathroom floor, and let her trace the scars on his arm? Can Charlie live with the same person who destroyed him?

But that’s not right, because it’s not just anyone, it’s Rae, it’s his sister, his family not by blood but by pain. Can Charlie live with Rae, knowing what she’s done? 

Surprisingly, and not at all, the answer is easy. His heart slows and his breathing evens out. Niki smiles a little, too sharp to be considered kind. She knows, she always does. “Yes.” Yes I can live with Rae despite what she’s done. Yes I can look her in the eyes. Yes I can love her as I have. 

It’s not forgiveness, Charlie is twenty four and he’s buried more people than he can count, he’s covered in scars and full of pain that does not stop. It’s not forgiveness, but it’s acceptance. 

He doesn’t forgive Rae, he doesn’t forgive Niki, but he accepts what they did, and why. That Rae had no choice, and that Niki had very few, that they were two desperate girls who were just trying to survive. That there are some things that change you for the worst and you just have to learn to live with that reality. 

Charlie doesn’t forgive them but he accepts the situation because in the end it changes nothing. In the end no matter how many times they hurt each other, no matter how many times they know what it’s like to bleed at the other’s hand, family is family. In the end he’d stay with them if they killed him. If they led him to his death, smiling obliviously and trusting. 

In the end this is his family, not the ones he cannot remember. But the ones with scars like his, hollow eyes and tense muscles, always with the urge to run, to fight ugly and messy. They are his family and there’s nothing that could tear them apart.

After all, who on earth could understand their jagged edges, their harsh smiles, and their casual cruelty gained from Showfall, other than someone with the same scars cut by the same knife?

Chapter Text

The sky is dark by the time the two of them go back into the apartment, his hands are still shaking. 

Charlie isn’t a good man, although he tries very hard to be. After everything they had done, willingly or not, he was not sure they can be good. They can do good things, Niki holding Puffy softly while they dance, Sneeg braiding her hair, but they cannot be good.

You cannot wash the blood from their hands, no matter how hard you try.

Charlie isn’t a good man, but he is a loving one. By that he means he is full of love, he is all love. He is the desperate sort, the snarl and tense body, the cornered animal willing to rip off its own leg to defend itself, to defend its family. He is the clawing sort, the type that leaves behind scars because he never learned how to let go easily. 

Charlie is all love, terrible, needy love, and that is why when Rae comes to him, the others all mysteriously gone, he does not turn her away. Because even if he hated her, and he’s not sure that he doesn’t, he could no sooner look away from the grief on her face, the pain in the way she holds herself, any more than he could carve out his own heart. 

Niki leaves when, after a beat, Charlie doesn’t lose it and throw himself at Rae. Not because she couldn’t stop him, but because Rae would let him. Another lesson Showfall taught them, mistakes end with punishment, with pain, with retribution, the most human instinct of all. 

What was the saying? An eye for an eye, a life for a life. 

If he decided that the way Rae, the bags under her eyes and the cherry red sunglasses long gone, could pay for what she had done was with blood, then she would let him. They were all too willing to offer their neck to the blade, a lamb walking to its slaughter. 

But, and he isn’t a good man, Charlie couldn’t hurt his family even if they killed him. So Niki leaves with a backward glance and a hand brushing against Rae’s shoulder. It’s quiet, she will not speak first, it is not her place. 

For a moment he hesitates, how do you start something like this? The answer comes easy, and it’s something he’s familiar with, you make tea. 

Charlie walks to the kitchen and get’s out the pot and cups, the tea bags. He starts boiling water and it settles something in him, muscle memory and his mind slips just a little. The water slowly bubbles under the heat and Rae sits at the table, he had forgotten how many nights she had ended up there. How many times they all had. 

Nightmares came with the smell of herbs, sweet and light with a hint of flowers. Nightmares came with a shaky, strung-out body and a warm mug in your hands to soothe it all. Nightmares came with his smile, and an offer, a hand to hold. 

For once though, the nightmare is from him, and it’s not really a nightmare, it’s a memory. Although for people like them, they often are the same thing. 

Charlie pours two cups, one in a mug with sheep on the sides and the other with flowers. Amber liquid swirls in the cup, small bits clinging to the sides. He walks over to the kitchen table and places a cup in front of Rae. He sits across from her, and they have been here a thousand times before. But not quite like this. 

Rae wraps her fingers around the mug, looking at it like the ceramic cup is some sort of holy grail. Or a peace offering, though he’s not sure to who. 

I’m sorry I walked you to your death, hand in soft unforgiving hand.

I’m sorry I look at you and I see a monster, and a sister, although mostly a monster.

He wonders what she sees when she looks at him. A boy with a missing tooth smile and a sort of trust that had long been stamped out. Or him, Charlie with his scars and the way he looks over you for all the weapons you may have while making your tea.

Charlie wonders which one would be worse. 

The quiet is tempting, the warm tea even more so, but this is a conversation that must be had. Even if it tears him apart, even if it shatters her already broken heart. “Were you ever going to tell me? If I hadn’t remembered?” 

Rae takes her breath and in moments like these, he’s reminded of how alike she and Niki are, the same sort of survivor. She braces herself, Charlie can see the moment something slides over her face, over her eyes. The moment Rae becomes marble, becomes unbreakable, at least for this. 

“No.” Her voice doesn’t waver, it doesn’t crack. “I had hoped that like the others, like me, this was something you wouldn’t remember. And there was no point in telling you if you didn’t remember. It would be like kicking a broken bone, unnecessary, painful.”

“And you got to decide that?” He doesn’t try and make his voice less accusatory. Rae is his family, but that doesn’t mean she cannot see his anger, feel it. It doesn’t mean she shouldn’t. 

“Yes, because I remembered, because I always remembered.” That - that gives Charlie a pause. There is a difference between scattered memories, Generations that are fuzzy and tattered, and a memory that always stays. 

It’s easy to put together the pieces, or maybe he just knows Showfall that well. The scars on Rae’s hands, white lighting that curls around her fingers, like she tore them to pieces, are glaring in the kitchen light. Seventeen year old Rae with her cherry red sunglasses and a smile had fresh scars on her hands, scars that had felt rough when they linked pinkies, when she held his hand. 

“It was a punishment.” It’s not a question, and they both know that. “And they never let you forget it, did they?”

Rae nods and Charlie tightens his grip on the mug, a warmth that isn’t close to burning. He’s not sure what it changes, knowing that it wasn’t just Showfall lacking a cast, that it was a reaction to Rae. That it was a reaction to Rae fighting, to seventeen year old Rae, and he can imagine her bloody grin, fighting desperately. 

Under the kitchen light, the mug in his hand, he can almost see her in the shadows. The girl she was before, the girl that Charlie had a feeling died alongside him, the first time at least. 

They take sips of the tea, and quiet falls over the kitchen. Rae lets him think, she doesn’t push. Although with the way she sways before she can catch herself, Charlie knows she can’t. That Rae, like him, is just one sentence away from shattering. 

It’s almost funny, in a bitter tainted way, how alike the two of them are. Broken dolls on strings that no longer hold their weight. Survivors with blood stuck under their fingernails and on their teeth and in the cracks on their palms. 

In the end, though it comes back to the same thing he said when he talked to Niki, Charlie doesn’t know if he can forgive her for this. If this is something that can be forgiven? 

He loves her, Charlie will be cold in the ground before he doesn’t and even then. Charlie loves Rae because they are both what Showfall made them and there is not another person on this world that could get that, besides people like them. Charlie loves Rae, how could he not, and he doesn’t know if he can forgive her.

So where does he go from here?

He isn’t used to this, to standing on unsteady ground, faltering. Rae notices, of course she notices, and she does the painful bit. “They took me when I was a kid too. I know because my first memory is of Sykkuno.” She smiles at his name, but it’s the sad sort.

Rae rarely talks about Sykkuno, or about anything from before. But know she is and suddenly Charlie get’s it. She’s telling him everything because Rae took him, because Rae was seventeen with cherry red glasses and Showfall had her the longest. She’s telling him everything because this is her way of retribution, of fair. 

I took you and there is no going back from that, but here - have my life, have my pain and blood. Here is everything I can offer, given willingly and freely. I lied to you once and now you are getting the truth. Now I will become an open book, and then you can decide. Then nothing is on you, only me. 

Quieter, but the heaviest - I will shoulder it all so you don’t have to. 

“The room they put us in was so damn white, I hated it. They had my hair up in pigtails and a stiff as hell dress. Sykkuno had smiled, and he was missing teeth, the two front ones. But he had smiled and I knew then and there that he was my best friend.” 

His fingers relax, and slowly as Rae speaks, something in Charlie unravels. It isn’t forgiveness but it’s not condemnation. Rae mends the bridge between the two of them with her life, and he never learned how to be cruel enough to turn her away.

“He was always there, always. Whenever I have memories Sykunno is just there. Sometimes he’s in the background, more often though, he’s at my side. It just felt right, you know? Like he and I were, soulmates I guess?” Rae laughs self consciously, a light blush on her cheeks.

Charlie get’s it though, loving another person enough, loving them so much that the lines blur and your limbs intertwine and suddenly you cannot tell where you end and they begin.

Her eyes go distant, focused a little over his shoulder. “I think that’s what did it. What finally made me snap. They killed Sykkuno or they hurt him badly or whatever else they do. I don’t know what it was, just that something happened and suddenly I was just - done. Done with it all.”

Charlie speaks, only because her knuckles are turning white and there’s a painful sort of grief in her voice. “And so you fought them, against everything.”

Rae comes back to him, slinks back from the depths of Showfall. “So I fought them.” Her hands flex against the table, she stretches her fingers and flinches at the pain. “I wasn’t trying to get out, not really. I just, I needed them to hurt even a little bit. I needed to break them like I was broken. So I just tore everything I could apart, it fucked up my hands real bad but God, the look in their eyes, it was worth it for a moment.”

“They kept me locked up, hands still smashed to hell, until they fixed everything and I guess decided on my punishment. They made me nice again, practically dragged me back under their control, and then they sent me to that mall.” She doesn’t say, and then they sent me to take someone, and then I took you. 

Charlie hears it anyway. Rae stops, this part of her story is over and now it’s his turn to speak. A question burns at him, and there is no reason to not ask. “Would you have fought knowing what they would do?”

Because Niki would have, because Sneeg would have. Because they love him so damn much it hurts but that’s how they survive. Because the day Niki doesn’t fight, the day Sneeg gives in, is the day they die. Because, if even for just a moment, they had freedom, they had won, it would have been worth it. It would have kept them alive as Showfall sunk their claws into the very atoms that made them. 

Because not one of them is a good person, just very desperate ones. And it would be easy to say Of course not, I fought and they took you. I wouldn’t do that. But she was seventeen and she never had a childhood, never had any autonomy that wasn’t ripped from her. Because Rae was seventeen and she wasn’t a good person, she was a child.

It would be easy to say No, I wouldn’t have fought knowing what I know. That doesn’t make it the truth though. 

Charlie isn’t sure what hangs in the balance as he awaits Rae’s answer. Not sure if it changes anything, or everything. Just that he needs to know. 

She thinks about it, and some people would hate that but he loves it. He needs the truth, not a hasty assurance. Rae thinks about and her fingers twitch slightly against the table, something close to shaking but more jumpy. Charlie wonders if it only gets bad sometimes, or if they tremor while she puts on makeup. 

Rae thinks and her fingers twitch, after a few minutes he knows she found her answer because her hands go still. Rae looks him in the eyes, and Charlie doesn’t allow himself to look away. “No. Maybe it would have damned us all because it changed everything. Maybe I never would have gotten out. Maybe Showfall would have taken you regardless and nothing I could have done would have stopped it.” A breath. “Maybe they would have used me anyway, but nothing - not even a glimpse of freedom, of control - is worth hurting you. Is worth being used to hurt you.” 

Oh, Charlie swallows and it isn’t often that he’s on the other end of declarations like this, of unconditional love, of i would protect you even if it killed me. 

In the end, like it always does, it goes back to Rae and him, to family in something far more than blood. Rae would give up everything if it meant, and it’s unlikely, that Charlie would have been spared. And Charlie would take her despite his blood still lining her hands. 

He doesn’t forgive her, and maybe one day he’ll learn how to, and maybe one day Charlie will be the sort of person that can forgive her. He doesn’t forgive her, but just as he told Niki, he can live with it all. 

Charlie takes Rae’s hand, and it’s familiar, but this time his hands aren’t unbearably small within her own. He rubs his thumb over the raised scars, and he looks at Rae. They meet eyes and they’re family, and they’d know each other blind, they don’t need to speak to understand each other.

They meet eyes and - 

I love you despite everything.

I know. I love you too, bloody and messy and full of mistakes, but I love you nonetheless.

Chapter Text

Niki didn’t believe in Gods but meeting Puffy had to have been an act of divine interference. An angel shining a little light on her. Or maybe it was penance for everything done to her.

She didn’t give a damn what, nothing mattered if it got her Puffy. 

Puffy was achingly human, she was good, she was both of those things and that alone made her an enigma. 

Puffy would smile, she would look at Niki with those damn eyes, soft and so warm, and Niki would just crumble. 

Puffy was good, she was kind, and she was everything Showfall wasn’t. Puffy brushed her fingers over Niki's warped skin, the burns and jagged edges of knives, the circular bullet hole, and places where the bone was thin. Every touch was one of adoration, of worship. Because there was no other word to describe Puffy kissing the scars that covered the tops of her thighs, and looking up. Their eyes had met and her smile was something that belonged to the Gods, to the holy. 

Niki never thought she would get something that good, but she did. But Puffy proved her wrong every day. She had made a habit of doing that, seeing Niki and all her pessimistic views and laughing, always kindly, in her face.

She would wake up and think the world was ending, could feel it in her bones. A coldness, somehow like Showfall and so much worse, would sink into her skin, into her muscle, into the very marrow of her. Niki would look around and all she would see was Death and her shadow hooded head.

On those days Puffy would meet her eyes, green met blue, and she would smile. When they went on a walk, Puffy would look at the world around them and find the beauty in it all. She would brush her fingers against the soft rose petals, a lovely shade of red that didn’t look like blood anymore, a shade of red that would look perfect in Puffy’s hair instead. 

She would force them to stop at a bakery, and by force, Niki meant Puffy asked and she crumpled like a piece of wet paper. Puffy would teasingly kick her legs and break apart a croissant full of chocolate. Her eyes would fall shut at the smell, and a small smile, a subconscious couldn’t be helped kind, would appear on her face. Chocolate would stick to her fingers when she offered Niki half and the warmth of the croissant, of Puffy legs braced against her own, a hand on her arm, made the cool recede a little. 

After the bakery, after the chocolate-tasting kiss, and the way Puffy always laughed a little when she pulled back, they would head to the park. The trees always looked less daunting, less tall when Puffy was by her side. Their hands intertwined and swinging between them as Puffy pointed out anything and everything that caught her eye. A purple flower, a deep orange tree, branches on another that looked like it was offering you a hug. 

By the time they went home, Niki didn’t think the world was ending, she didn’t see in shades of gray, didn’t hunch over on herself like a cornered animal only thinking of its survival. Puffy helped her look at the world and see it as it was, not some long drawn-out war. She helped her put down her weapons and lower her fists. 

That was everything, and terrifying, but mostly wonderful. 

Puffy was good and kind and so very lovely, but the thing that Niki loved best was that she wasn’t perfect. She was human, she lacked the Showfall smile Niki had most often adorned. Puffy had bad days too, days where she wasn’t there emotionally. 

Days when she looked at Niki like she was looking through her, like she was nothing. The worst part was that Puffy had this idea, and she was so much like Charlie it hurt, that she wasn’t allowed to be anything less than her usual cheery self. So she pretended, even when it was glaringly false, or she ignored Niki’s questions, her concerns. 

In the beginning, it had nearly been the end of them, the strain of the fact that neither of them was perfect. Niki woke up some days wishing she didn’t, she looked at the world like it was either a fight or a grave. Puffy woke up some days and she was just tired, bone-deep, aching tired. 

And they both had the communication skills of a wall, so that certainly didn’t help.

But Niki and her trembling hands, the way she so desperately wanted love. But Puffy and the way she needed care like a flower needed the sun. But the two cracking girls in an uncaring world, fought for each other. And that alone made everything worth it, everything so much more. 

So Puffy reminded Niki that no, the world was not a dark terrible place. Yes, it was bad, yes it could be cruel. But it wasn’t a hell-bound, evil place. She showed her the good, the simple, the obvious that a person so used to looking for monsters in the shadows wouldn’t be able to see. 

And in turn, Niki was her safe place, the place where she could shatter, where she could be less than perfect in. On days when smiling was impossible, when she couldn’t get out of bed to get a cup of water Niki was there, making her food and picking up her dirty laundry. On days when Puffy looked at Niki and there wasn't that spark, that warmth of love, Niki held her until she was alive. And that spark always returned, always. 

Every day, good or bad, kind or messy, Niki would remind herself that she deserved this sort of relationship, that this was hers and not Showfall’s. It was easier to remember on some days than it was on others. 

The hardest thing she had ever had to admit, or somehow the easiest, was loving Puffy. It’s not that loving her was hard, it was so easy, it was inevitable, but acknowledging it. That was where she struggled. Because it meant there was another thing Showfall could use against her.

Voices that are her, but not, that belong to a thousand dead girls, whisper lessons, rules to live by. Never give anything away - Do not let them see you break - Be perfect, be still but never be theirs - Help the others as much as you can - Do not be cruel when you do not have to be - And a thousand more but the most important, the one that is carved into her heart is simple, and damning - Whatever you love will be used against you, to love is to hurt. 

The others, her family that is sewn together not with blood but with echoed screams, with Generations of pain, she cannot help but love them. That sort of love was formed over Generations, fractured memories, and phantom emotions. That type of love wasn’t the sort of thing you could stop, Niki certainly couldn’t have stopped it. 

She, and everyone else, had needed that little bit of good amongst all the bad because otherwise, Showfall would have driven them mad. Otherwise, they all would have ended up swinging from a half-frayed rope, the next Generation quickly approaching. 

That sort of love was as much about survival as it was about love. 

Loving Puffy, it’s nothing close to that. Loving Puffy isn’t out of necessity, out of survival and desperation. Loving Puffy isn’t caused by Showfall, wrapped around her throat and a foot behind her. Loving Puffy is easy, it’s kind. 

Niki loves Puffy because she wants to, because how could she not, because it’s Puffy and she’s Niki Nihachu.

She knew she loved Puffy long before she ever said it aloud, fear always quieting her voice. The first time though, the first time Niki realized that she loved Puffy was so ordinary it was perfect. It was terribly mundane. 

Puffy had split an orange with her. Had peeled back its skin and pulled apart the sweet pieces. Had laughed when juice dripped down her chin and kissed Niki, orange tasting and sticky.

Puffy had once split an orange with her and suddenly she got it, all the poetry about oranges and love. Suddenly Niki understood what it meant to love someone, not in a world-ending way, but in I’ll split an orange with you because I want to see you happy not hungry way.

The next soft revelation happened the first time she slept over at Puffy’s apartment. The two of them were curled together in her bed, beneath so many blankets it was close to sweltering. Niki hadn’t woken up screaming, thrashing, or begging like she had feared. Instead, she woke up to Puffy lazily turning under the blankets, their eyes meeting and with a smile Puffy told her about her dream.

A quickly familiar habit, another thing that made Niki spiral, that made love so much more real. 

She would always start, sleep heavy and sweet “I had this dream-”

I had this dream that we were old and gray, that we were covered in wrinkles and always wore sweaters to keep us warm. Our house was white with red shutters and there was an orange tree, drooping with fruit, in the backyard. There was a little bench under it and we would sit there all day, basking in the shade and the smell of citrus. 

I had this dream that we grew old together, a golden band around your finger, one around mine. I told you I loved you every day, and cut apples because you hate getting your hands sticky. You smiled at me and painted my nails whenever they chipped because my hands could never stay that still.

I had this dream that we lived happily ever after, and you were by my side until the gentle end.

And what’s more lovely than growing old together, than looking at someone and not saying I’ll die for you but rather I’ll live for you and with you. 

The first time Niki said she loved Puffy aloud was after a small breakdown - a fitting thing for her.

They were alone in Puffy’s apartment on her couch, the sun going down and food warm and heavy in their stomachs. She had tilted back her head, hair falling down her back, and in the sunlight, Puffy glows. She looked like an angel, like a painting fit for a museum. The sort that people stare at in awe centuries later, hands pressed to glass as they wonder how love could be so effortlessly shown.

It made Niki ache, it made her want to smile or cry, or simply shudder with the weight of the love she carried. Sometimes Niki loved Puffy so much she isn’t sure what to do with it.

“Why do you love me?” Her voice echoed throughout the room and she hadn’t meant to say that but it was too late to take it back. 

Puffy laughed a little, shifting on the couch beside her, a hand curling a strand of hair behind Niki’s ear. The hand lingered, gently stroking her face like she was something to be held. “They really messed with your head didn’t they?”

Niki swallowed, gritting her teeth. It still felt odd, being the object of someone’s affection, being loved. Being the person that got worried over, that got that protective rage and love and oh, I’d fight them all for you. 

“Why? The others I get, we're the same sort of broken. But why you? I’m no good.” It was the truth, because who could look at her scars and the blood on her hands and love her anyway. 

Puffy met her eyes and she’d never get used to that look, the love full soft one. “I love you because you're you. Because you get this look whenever we’re in the park and the light shines through the leaves. Because you love lilac purple and sage green, and will fight somebody if they say bad word about them.” 

Niki’s hand was resting near the place where Puffy’s shoulder and neck met, a habit because it meant she could feel the way her pulse fluttered. Feel the proof that Puffy was alive, that she was real. And now that same heartbeat was steady, nothing to suggest a lie. 

“You hate chihuahuas and are convinced they’re the devil reborn. You know how I get my coffee and what I like to eat depending on my mood, know all of them. You know that I hate peppermint but love mint chocolate ice cream. You know how I have to be the big spoon to sleep well and that there’s a large, embarrassingly large teddy bear that takes your spot when you’re gone.” 

Puffy pulled her closer, a gentle teasing tug that matched her smile. She pressed their heads together, Niki’s eyes fluttering shut at the contact, at the hand still gently stroking her face. Her voice was a whisper. “You, Niki Nihachu, are one of the best people I know. You are kind and caring, and so protective. Despite all that you’ve endured, all that this world has tried to break you with, you still stand. You have not let them make you into a monster even when no one could blame you. You are good and I’d love you if you weren’t, because you are you. Because I am helplessly, unconditionally, irrevocably in love with you Niki Nihachu.” 

She isn’t sure who leaned forward but their lips met, and Niki could feel the smile pressed against them. For a moment they stayed, Puffy’s pulse fluttering beneath her fingers, a hand against her face and the other tangled in her hair. 

Stars did not burst beneath her eyelids, the world didn’t end and start again. But when they pulled away Puffy sighed a little, her eyes still shut, and when she opened them they were so warm. Niki didn’t hurt, her scars didn’t twinge or spark with pain, she was alive and breathing and utterly content.

The world did not end but it didn’t need to, Puffy was here, that was all that mattered. 

She pulled Puffy close with the hand by her neck, their faces inches apart. With a steady voice that didn’t shake, that didn’t waver because Niki was good at facing things with a stiff lip. Because there was no reason to be afraid. “I love you so much. I - You’re it for me, you’re everything.”

Puffy stared at her, eyes piercing as she looked for something. Looked to see if it was the truth, if Niki believed her, if the broken girl she had met who once couldn’t look her in the eyes had finally accepted love. She must have found it because her smile grew quickly, and Niki heard her murmur, “That’s my girl.” 

Then Puffy yanked her forward, and the two collided, as Niki laughed lips were pressed to her own. Swallowing her laughter with such fierce love and joy the two ended up falling back against the couch. Niki pulled back only when she needed air to breathe, Puffy’s hands flat against her back, Niki's braced on either side of her.

She smiled when Puffy’s face twisted, Niki’s hair slipping off her shoulders and right onto her face. After a moment, full of spluttering and Puffy’s hands attempting to find her nonexistent ticklish areas, Niki gave in. She moved Puffy to the side and laid down on the couch. 

It was way too small but they managed, Puffy wrapping her limbs around Niki, a bear hug that she definitely wasn’t going to be getting out of any time soon. She sighed when they fell still, the apartment the sort of quiet you could live in. As if everything was just sighing, happily, with utter relief. 

“You love me?” One last time as Puffy curled around her, a hand on her waist, the sun slipping down behind the blinds. A child seeking reassurance. Or a child seeking the truth, what they already know just because they can. 

Niki felt the smile in her hair just as she felt the kiss pressed to the back of her head. Then, a whisper said with the sort of reverence that fit an oath. “Of course I love you darling. How could I not?”

Chapter Text

Niki dreams in shades of red.

Some dreams are worse, some are fragmented death, others, though, are softer. Sometimes Niki dreams in rose red, poinsettia red colliding with tulips, the light seeping through the petals and their sap filled veins.

Sometimes when Niki dreams, she dreams of a dead girl.

A different sort of dead girl than she is. Hannah, and the name is soft petals on her hands, thorns digging into her palm. Hannah, a dead girl who stayed dead.

The Generations, and Niki doesn’t know any other word to describe the fraying memories, the past that isn’t quite real. The Generations get blurry the further away they were, her first, nothing but dust and the bitter taste of acetone, the newest, fear thick in her mouth and a bloodied shoulder. 

The Generations vary in clarity, but she’s found that the people in them do not.

She may not remember why but remembers the specific shade of purple, a deep, nearly black purple that Ethan had worn. It was closer to a robe and swished when he walked. Or the clear glasses that sat on Charlie’s face, that didn’t suit him. 

Niki remembers her family, her boys, just as she remembers Hannah. 

She always wore pale pink, not in a revolting way, not like how Niki dug her nails into her palms at the sight of pink. Hannah wore pink and rose folded into her hair, into her braids. The roses were bright red, a red that left her shaking, let cold slink down her spine and freeze her. 

Hannah loved roses and once, this memory has to be real, Niki needs it to be real. Once Hannah had told her in between Generations, in the hollowness and emptiness of toys not being used, without a purpose. She had smiled and leaned close, a whisper clouded by a giggle as if they were children on a playground. “They’ve never thought to take them away, the roses. They think it fits me, or the me who Showfall wants, but they don’t realize why I keep wearing them.”

And Niki on beat, she is so used to following steps perfectly, titled her head, “Why do you wear them?” 

“Did you know that Christians believe Roses were in the Garden of Eden, yet they lacked thorns? Thorns came upon the betrayal of Adam and Eve, Humanity’s evil revealed. Every rose, every thorn is a fight. Every thorn gilded Rose is looking into the eyes of God, and not playing the part you were meant for.” 

They could take sin, they could take hell, if it meant tearing away from the sickeningly sweet fruit. The heavy green trees and the gentle breeze, paradise that almost lulled you to sleep, that almost laid you bare. They could take sin because it was better than a false truth and a God who expected humans, who to them sin was merely a word, to not give in to desires. 

A bitter, broken reality is better than a golden dream. 

Hannah and the roses embroider on her sleeve, how her fingers would dance over the bending stem, heavy with flowers. Hannah and her smile as she met Niki’s eyes, her perfect smile with something hidden in her eyes. 

They believe me to be pristine. They are wrong. 

And Niki would smile, and oh, this is what it means to be known. Maybe that was why Hannah never stayed, or why she never met the others. 

Niki had tried in the beginning, to spark anything, a stray memory, a scratched, broken record that you could still make out the song. But there was nothing, Charlie never sighed, hands chopping subconsciously, and mentioned offhandedly that Hannah had loved strawberries covered in chocolate. Vinny’s hands had never lingered over a metal rose, petals unbreakable, thorns sharp enough to cut and really it would have suited Hannah.

The others, her family, never knew Hannah and that made Niki ache. Because Hannah was the sort of girl that deserved to be known, that after all her pain and suffering, she deserved to be more than something in Niki’s memories. 

Hannah deserved to live, and for all the pain they had experienced, all of them had gotten out. Except for Hannah, for the girl with roses on the hem of her skirt, makeup trailing down her face, and a perfect smile. 

Niki never learned how to let go, or at least not easily, and so maybe that’s why she sees Hannah everywhere. 

In the mirror while she tries on a new dress, pressed side to side with Puffy and Rae on the bed, smiling when their eyes meet. Fingers darting so quickly through Rae’s hair that Niki looks away and when she looks back Rae’s hair is a neat braid. Shoulder to shoulder with Charlie on an early, lazy morning, sprinkling blueberries in the pancakes. 

She doesn’t believe in ghosts, although to be fair they wouldn’t be a far stretch, Niki doesn’t believe in ghosts but she sees Hannah. At least the Hannah with a light purple skirt, roses on the waistband, and a genuine smile she rarely wore, who disappears quickly. Niki shakes her head, grits her teeth, and grounds herself in reality.

By the time she opens her eyes, Hannah is gone and the world has righted itself. 

But she doesn’t just see Hannah in flashes, in hallucinations. Niki sees Hannah in dreams that she knows, knows are memories and they are so much worse. They are worse because instead of seeing Hannah, smiling and alive and living, she sees her shatter. She watches as Showfall breaks Hannah, as they break her, and she crumbles under the weight of the pain, scars, and destruction. 

The dreams are so vivid, so real that Niki can feel the scratchy blankets, the warmth of Hannah’s legs braced against her own. The coldness of whatever facility they’re in now, the gnawing feeling in her stomach because they’re in between Generations, because they’re floating through nothingness and waiting to be used. 

Neither of them could sleep and instead, they would talk amongst the cover of darkness, as if the lack of light could hide them from Showfall. Hannah would tell her, the two of them curled together, shattering, matching parentheses. Her voice would be soft, it would be tired, it would be half dead. “They’ve taken me apart so many times I don’t know who I am, anymore.”

“I can always feel them, hands everywhere. Clawing and tearing, taking and taking. They’ve torn me raw, to my bones and yet they still take more.”

Softer and quieter still, like the rose petals she loved to put in her hair, without the biting thorns. “They’ve ruined me,” Delirious laughter that should have been kind. Would’ve been in a different life. “They violated me in every way they could, nothing too much for them to ruin.”

Niki, her scars burning at every word, the large, growing wound on her heart. Niki didn’t say anything, she pressed their heads together, their hands intertwined. The two of them alone in the world with nothing but their suffering to warm them.

What could she say? 

I understand. I bleed the same as you. I think they’ve tainted me in every way possible. I think they are monsters and there is no limit to their cruelty. 

We are girls and they are men, what more is there to say? My thighs ache and my sheets are stained red, I can always feel them. I can never rid myself of their hands. I'm not sure why I thought we were never meant to feel this pain but I did.

What could Niki say but I know, I am an echo of your pain, a refraction.

So instead of kind words, of apologies and forgiveness that meant nothing, she holds Hannah and lets the Generation fade. 

Everything spirals from there, memories bleed into memories, into lifetimes. Hannah at the center of them all - smiling and bleeding, blood staining her pale pink sweater, welling over her throat, a deep red that doesn’t match the shade of lipstick she’s wearing. Hannah dead, Hannah laughing and holding her hand, Hannah smiling even as it pulls on her split lip, Hannah, Hannah, Hannah. 

A thousand different girls that Niki’s known, that she’s loved, and mourned in turn. A thousand Hannah’s that had their Niki's, and no one else. A thousand girls that she alone carries now, a dead girl forgotten to all but a girl with blood on her hands and the monster that made them both. 

It’s so terrible, so fitting that she wants to burn something to the ground. Preferably Showfall but the world would do. Because she is all that remains now, and not even the others can carry the torch, can prevent a ghost from fading. 

Niki is left with yet another burden, another grave to carry and it makes her so goddamn angry. Angry because Hannah never got out, because she never knew freedom, never tasted its sweetness. Angry because she was broken just as Hannah was, her hands that never still and the scars that still burn. Angry because Hannah is dead.

A part of her tries to be soothing, this is the part that bent before Showfall, that gave in to survive. The part, honey sweet smiles, and a soft, lowered gaze, whispers, “She died brave. She died fighting. She wouldn’t want you to grieve her so.”

And Niki, bloody teeth and bruises and not one bit is pretty, revolts at the idea. That the idea that Hannah died fighting is supposed to be comforting. That Hannah wouldn’t want her to grieve. 

Because what comfort is there in a twenty-year-old dying alone and terrified?

It’s bitter condolences that Hannah died fighting. That she died young, too damn young, with her fists raised and knuckles bloody. Her teeth barred and red, her mouth full of rotting iron.

Hannah died fighting, and Showfall didn’t bring her back. And maybe it was because of the looks the two of them shared. Maybe it was because Niki looked at Hannah and thought, maybe just maybe I shouldn’t give in so easily. Maybe it was because Hannah had looked at Niki and Niki had looked at Hannah and oh it wouldn’t be so bad, to die by your side, to rest hand in hand. 

Maybe maybe maybe - 

Hannah died fighting and Niki lived, broken and bruised, until one day she didn’t. Hannah lived under Showfall’s crushing boot until Ranboo broke the cycle, until they all did.

Hannah died fighting and Niki lived. 

There is no comfort for something like that. 

✦

There is a very different sort of dead girl that only Rae knows. A girl that was forgotten by everyone but her first friend. A girl who was never built to survive something like this, and so she didn’t.

Niki is a feral animal, snarling and hunched over her bloodied body. Rae is a weed, curling through the cracks on the sidewalk, clinging to life because she doesn’t know how to let go. Tina is - 

Tina was kind, she was good and she died for it.

It’s an old story, every story is old to them. Tina was young and Showfall fell over her like an inescapable shadow, like Death. Tina was young and Rae met her, they were all so terribly young once.

Tina was young and so was Rae, and they both craved more than the coldness of Showfall. They wanted love and companionship and the one person who knew you down to your bones and marrow. 

Tina met Rae, Rae met Tina and that was that. 

They fell into each other just as easily as she had with Sykkuno. Like she was always meant to know them, like it was its own sort of fate. 

A beautiful, dangerous thing, isn't it? Fate -

Rae doesn’t believe in much, her faith had been taken from her screaming, but the idea that she was meant to know a person is something she’s willing to risk. Because how else could she describe looking at Sykkuno (missing tooth smile and how shyly he held her hand) looking at Tina (her hair in loose braids that fell over her shoulders, that bounced when she walked, that fell down her back), and knowing them instantly. 

Rae doesn’t allow herself the whispers, the harsh hisses of Showfall, Showfall and their meddling, clawing hands. They’ve taken apart your mind before, your memories and past turned to dust, your life nothing. Why wouldn’t they give you them, people to lose, to take away? 

Rae doesn’t allow herself the thought that the two best things that ever happened to her were just Showfall. She isn’t sure - no, she knows herself. She wouldn’t be able to live with it, so she doesn’t think about it, doesn’t bring it to life. 

So Rae meets Sykkuno, he is first always, whatever they are made of it’s the same thing. She meets Sykkuno first and Tina second, both in a pure white room that hurts her eyes, both with an already fracturing mind. 

Rae meets her best friends, her siblings, she meets her soulmates, and their story is already set in stone. She tangles their hands together, complete for once, and years down the line Sykkuno sighs for the last time in a cold warehouse, and he always hated the cold. She plays a game with Tina, skipping over fading chalk lines, and Generations later two very different girls sit in a room with a gun, a single bullet in its chamber - only one of them leaves. 

Rae meets Sykkuno and it was destiny or fate or the universe shining on her. She meets her brother, not by blood, nothing is hers by blood, she meets her brother and that is that. 

Rae meets Tina, and loves her easily and unconditionally, she meets Tina and something in her shifts, something in her sighs in relief as she is finally whole. Rae meets Tina and - 

She thinks of Adam and Eve and old bible stories told amongst rotting oak and dim lights. Rae thinks of a belief that she’s long forgotten, a religion that feels unfamiliar on her tongue. Were you made from my rib? Or was I taken from you, bloody and screaming and wrong? A scrap of you, forever the reason behind your ache.

She thinks of soulmates and old stories, older than grief and salt-soaked hymns. Rae thinks of soulmates and the cut across her palm stings just as it stung when Sykkuno dragged a knife across it. Rae thinks of soulmates and there is a hollow in her side, and it burns with the familiar feeling of Tina pressed against her. 

Rae thinks of Tina, of another dead girl whose blood is in Showfall’s hands, and dies a little. Rae thinks of Sykkuno, another body rotting in the only home they knew, and she aches. 

Rae thinks of soulmates and how all of hers are dead. 

She thinks of a dead girl and Tina had this habit of tucking her hair behind her ears, of shrinking in on herself, cheeks red with embarrassment. Tina, the skin on her cheekbone pulled tight, bruises covering her face, would make herself smaller to be less of a burden. 

She would not wilt from Showfall, no they merely battered her relentlessly like a wave does the shore. Tina did not flinch from Showfall but she did from Rae, from Sykkuno, as if her act of existence was enough to warrant an apology. 

And that is why Tina died, because she couldn’t bear the weight of survival. Because Niki refuses to apologize for what she did to live, the horrible things a desperate teenager did. Because Rae will not let Showfall take one more thing from her. 

Tina died because she was gentle, and she never learned how to make herself marble. Sometimes Rae wonders if that is a mercy - that Tina died before she became what Showfall made her, before she became like Rae.

Maybe it’s because this is something far too grand to say, it can only be wept. Or maybe it’s because they could never understand, but Rae never tells the others. Their pain is pain, but they don’t know grief like this, like her. 

They all lived, they never had to bury their other half permanently, never had to sink a girl her age who she watched grow up into the cold murky water. Never prayed to Gods that don’t exist because please, someone look after her, someone cradle her in your arms, lift her gently from this world and its pains. 

Her family, and there isn’t another word for what they are, the group of broken, messy people. Her family would never be able to understand and Rae doesn’t need their sympathies, she needs Sykkuno and how his hands fit perfectly around hers. 

Rae doesn’t need their apologies or understanding, the pity in their eyes, she needs Sykkuno, she needs Tina, she needs her dead. She needs to hug them or talk to them, or to sit in silence hand in hand. 

Sometimes Rae, and she’s always hurting herself needlessly, imagines what she would say if Tina was there. If she woke up in the middle of the night, the stars twinkling and moonlight drifting through her curtains, illuminating a dead girl. She would look heavenly, or like the ghost she was. 

If she could talk to Tina, her skin pale, veins startlingly blue and pronounced, eyes wide open and glossy, what would she say? 

I’m sorry for not saving you. I sunk you into a river, the rapids took your body, and your bones sunk to the bottom. I buried you and I buried Sykkuno, I cut out half my heart and sat it, bloody and still beating, into your hand, then I gave the other to him. Every day I fear I’ve mourned you longer than I have known you.

I am so tired, and I am always missing you. Please come back to me, come back as a ghost or a demon, or a naiad to the river that holds your bones. Come back to me angry or grieving, broken or whole, terrified or enraged. Just come back to me. 

What could Rae say to Tina that wasn’t a plea for forgiveness? What could she say that would tell her grief, her pain, her waiting, the empty hollow in her chest where nothing beats? 

Here is the question - How long have I loved you for?

And the answer would come effortlessly, as simple as breathing - Since before I was anything, since before I could remember. Since the beginning of creation and until the death of her.

Chapter Text

There are three truths that Austin knows. Three truths that have been cemented into his mind, engraved into his soul, that are etched bloody and aching into his body. Three truths he’s known since before he could remember. 

One - Showfall is always there, it doesn’t matter how far you run or what you do, they are always there in the shadows and in the cracks of your mind. You cannot outrun them, don’t bother trying.

Two - He has never once looked at a woman the way he has a man. His dreams are never of soft skin and rosy lips, delicate lines, and something inherently other. They are always of lines and jagged edges, sharp enough to cut him open and bleed him dry. 

Three - His family will be both the death of him, and the reason his heart beats. Both of those things can be true, both of those things are true.

The first truth he learns young, Austin learns it before he knows who he is, or after it’s taken for the first time. The ground is crawling with moss and bright purple flowers that burn his fingertips.

He, his name is lost on him then, is wandering around. Hands burned and his mind not shattered, but rather bruised, a mess of hastily glued together scraps. He is nothing, but even then he is Showfall’s.

He doesn’t meet the others that first Generation. All he learns is how to bend before you break, and how Showfall isn’t satisfied with that. He learns how easily a human body turns into ash and dust.

He learns, although later on, how survival is different for each of them. Of course, it’s the air pumping through your lungs, your pulse beating so strongly it rings in your ears. But that’s physically surviving.

There is a very different sort of survival, and that is bending before Showfall breaks him. Laying flat on the ground, and breathing slowly as a boot crushes him.

Austin doesn’t try and fight the ocean, although the others do. Niki does, she revolts against her own skin. Sneeg keeps finding the cracks and expanding them and Ethan ends up tracing names he shouldn’t know, remembering people he shouldn’t remember. 

Maybe it makes him a coward, or just smart, but Austin doesn’t try and fight God. Not then, everything aches and he doesn’t know whose blood that is and iron burns on his tongue, and not now, the apartment is full of light and laughter and it seems like only he can see the shadows creeping along the floor and walls. 

There is no reason too when you’re a puppet dangling on strings.

(Every action, every step and smile, and even the tears falling from his eyes. They are a product of Showfall, carefully crafted by cold metal hands. Austin, and he’s been a thousand different people, is Showfall’s creation. 

Whoever he was before is long gone, long dead and buried under a twenty-year-old who learned how to scream through tightly pressed lips and a perfect smile.)

And there isn’t a way when you’ve escaped but your monster is still out there, still breathing in the rotting smell of your corpse.

The first truth Austin learns, young and bloodied and he can’t seem to stop screaming, is that Showfall is always there. He can never be rid of them.

The second truth is only a truth because of the first. Because Austin could never learn how touch could be sacred, how a hand in his, strong and sturdy and warm, could be holy. Because he could never learn how loving someone is dangerous without Showfall. 

It isn’t funny or ironic at all that Austin learned fear from Showfall. Not the fear of death or pain, although those did come later. No, the fear of kissing another man in broad daylight, a smile that he cannot help, and a joy that bubbles within him, that turns to laughter. 

Showfall had slowly carved away at him, his flesh and muscles giving way to metal. Showfall had taken every piece of him, his smile and the sparkle in his eyes and the freckles that look like stars just above his hip, and ruined it.

Every piece of him is in some way Showfall’s. The worst part is that there are no if’s or but’s. Austin is Showfall’s, even in an apartment with his family around him. He is still Showfall’s.

He goes out to a bar one night, music playing so loudly he can feel it vibrating in his bones. For once he’s almost relaxed and maybe it’s the alcohol or maybe it’s the music or maybe it’s the way the crowd is a living, pulsing thing. 

But for once Austin isn’t alone, isn’t withstanding the ocean by himself, he is surrounded and anonymous. It is the closest to being unafraid that he will ever get. 

Then, there is a buzz in his veins and amber liquid sloshing in his cup, and he sees him. He’s not anything heavenly, but Austin burns at the sight of him. The lights clash well with his dark skin, illuminating it in shades of purples and reds, and yellows, each one a color he wants to touch. 

He’s tall and his face, he has a jawbone that Austin could cut himself on, and God how he wants to. Wants to split open his wrist and see what color he bleeds, if red soaks his tan skin and white stretched scars. Or if it’s something else, if he isn’t as human as he should be. If Showfall really ruined him so utterly.

If they tore him apart and put him back together wrong and off and wrong wrong wrong wrong 

He had a sharp jawbone and an easy smile, that was somehow brighter than anyone else in the room. Austin sees him and he wants, wants more than he’s ever wanted before, been allowed to.

Austin wants, and he burns with the want. It charrs him, causes his ribs to crack and the meaty part of his heart to singe, his blood to boil. Austin sees him and his want makes him human.

He reaches out, across the room before he knows it, but the second he does the fear is back. His calm is gone, ripped from him, and there is a glacier cold slipping down his spine.

Austin had once told Ranboo that they weren’t what Showfall made them. But weren’t they? Wasn’t he?

Austin reached for a man, wanted so desperately it burned, and the cold pain was back. He desired something and Showfall reminded him of his place.

He leaves the bar, leaves the music and the writhing, living crowd. He leaves the feeling of his bones settling and his skin buzzing. Austin leaves the guy that he could have loved, that he wanted. 

He leaves a what if - what if he stayed, what if things were different, what if Austin was the sort of guy who could fall in love easily. 

Austin leaves the life he’ll never get to have, Showfall a step behind him, Showfall curling around his bones and dragging him down. 

Then, after the nightmares and the looks and how much he wants, then comes the third truth. Although he’s not certain when it became a truth. Showfall sinking their claws into him, the thought of another man’s smile, those have been there since before he could remember. 

The first two truths are the staples of his life, the reason he was still breathing when the time came to run. But the third truth, when did that come?

When did the others, the cast members that stayed, become more? Because they weren’t the only ones, a girl in white, a girl with roses wrapped around her throat, a boy with bruised knuckles, and a fight that must have killed him. 

Niki, Ethan, Vinny, Sneeg, Ranboo and Charlie. The people that stayed, that must have been there Generation after Generation because the memories were clear. Because Austin knew them more than just a flicker of a dead girl. 

So the third truth, when did it come to be? When had Austin looked at them, blood slipping down his throat heavy and warm, his hands twitching at his gaping chest? When had Austin looked at them, Niki’s fingers stained red, not with polish or makeup, Sneeg, the largest man in the world? When when when when

When had Austin looked at them, his death in their hands, rotting underneath their fingernails, and forgave them with his last breath? When had he come back choking on it, choking with absolution he couldn’t help but give, and grave dirt?

He wonders what must have done it, what cemented the twisted bond between them all, soaked in blood and pain and so much shame. Maybe it was like in the movies, a single tense moment, the climax of the plot. 

Maybe the show was going perfectly and Niki slipped cyanide into his cup, when she handed it to him he curled his fingers around her own. Maybe he had smiled, and she had smiled back, softer with tears welling in her eyes. 

Maybe she had held him later, even when she was supposed to be gone. Maybe Niki, lace and frills and a white that reeked of bleach, had cradled his head as it spun, as his heart slowed and his body tensed. Maybe she had held him when he seized, never letting him smack his head against the ground. 

Maybe the moment they slipped into family was when Death became kind, when it became a gentle embrace rather than cruelty. 

Or it could have happened over time, a sequence of slips and people falling together. A group of traumatized, broken people who loved each other simply for the fact that they shared the same scars, that they knew the same pain.

Laughing with Sneeg, everything smelling like alcohol, and his hand itches for a match. Cooking with Charlie and it’s a competition, and there is a chopping block, but for a moment it’s fun. 

Stealing a wooden duck for Vinny, later, adrenaline pumping and sweat-soaked, finding one tucked into his pocket. Listening to Ethan ramble on and on about fish, about their colors and migration patterns, the pain fading as koi fish and salmon swim through the air. 

A fashion show with Niki, except they’re not good at it and she cackles, not at all nicely, when he wears an especially ugly cheetah print dress. Playing a record with Ranboo, slumping against their side as exhaustion takes over, music and the steady sound of a heartbeat. 

It doesn’t matter really, however it happened. Whether it was a tense climax, or a slow burn. All that matters is that they are family, that he picks himself off the ground for them, even when they put him there. All that matters is that whenever he bleeds it’s by their hand, and whenever he takes a gasping breath, choking on grave dirt, it’s for them too. 

Because Austin would have killed himself a long time ago if he hadn’t had anything to live for. And even with the blood and the fighting and the pain they are worth it.

Because Austin isn’t human, or maybe he never was, but he feels something like it when the others are there. He felt it during the Generations, the scattered memories and candle flame long lifetimes. He feels it now, in the apartment that is theirs. Their laughter and smiles are almost enough to push back the shadows, to banish Showfall’s figure. 

They are almost enough, but not quite.

Austin knows three truths and they keep him sane. However they do not keep away the nightmares, and they are always the same. 

Niki with bleached blonde hair and a false smile. Sneeg with blood stained blue and a harsh laughter that grates his ears. Ranboo with his gaping jaw and rotting breath. 

Ethan with his twisted limbs, the purple an ugly brown. Vinny with his caved-in head, an eye trailing down his gore-covered cheek, dangling on a fleshy string. Charlie with the green no red no green covered mess on his clothes, his glasses shattered. 

His family, the death of him and the life of him, a thousand Generations falling, tripping over one another. All the people they had been, each and everyone taken away quickly, each and every one a life that was worth less than the dirt beneath your shoe.

His family asked him, “Are you free?”

And he answered, a whisper, an echo, a dead boy walking with his heart trailing behind him. “I really did try to be more.”

Once upon a time, there was a boy who was good and kind, and held a silver crown on his head. The Prince, for he was not yet the boy-King, was a happy child. He had a family, a large family of interconnecting vines. He was loved.

He was so loved.

But then, like all things, in this story at least, this happiness had to come to an end. The Prince grew up, grew into his lengthy limbs and hunched spine, his smile. The Prince grew up and he was happy, although less than he was as a child, but happy regardless.

Then came the darkness, then came Death. The Prince and his family watched in horror as the darkness took over the land, as crops and forests withered, as rivers grew dry. 

They could do nothing to stop it, for how could mortals, humanity sat heavy in his bones, stop darkness?

They couldn’t. 

And so the darkness took everything it could, and even the Prince and his family of twisting vines were not safe. In the end, the only one left was the Prince, although now he was the boy-King. 

The boy-King, the family-less no longer Prince, was left with an empty hollow kingdom. The darkness was satisfied with all that it had destroyed, but the boy-King knew it wouldn’t last.

Hungry things never stop wanting for more.

So he set about to save the last of his kingdom, the empty rooms, and the too-large throne. He searched high and low, in the cracks of rocks older than history, and in the depths of the ocean. 

Eventually, he found an answer, a woman with hollow empty eyes told him, “Go to the highest Mountain, there you will find a cave. At the center of it, the heart of stone, you’ll find light. Only she can stop her brother, darkness.”

The boy-King was desperate and tired but he went on, anything to escape the bones that rested in the palace. He climbed the mountain, his feet leaving behind bloody footprints. He held firm against thundering winds, even as trees bent and broke. He crossed howling rivers, the waters sharp enough to cut.

Finally, he had made it to the Mountain, and to its open mouth. The boy-King knew it was too late to turn back so he held onto his courage and entered the dark. He followed the path, a hand dragging along stone, for what seemed like miles. 

Eventually, when thoughts of giving up grew, he turned a corner and was struck by a light so bright it hurt. The boy-King covered his eyes, he flinched from the warmth. And as he cowered he heard a whisper that echoed in his head, “What are you seeking King?”

The boy-King stood in front of the Goddess, hands covering his eyes, and the rocks hissed the truth, only the truth. He could not lie. 

So instead of saying, “ My family is gone, my people are not. I need to save the rest. Please help, I’ll give you anything.”

Or, “There is a monster and it’s going to slaughter everything, help me save the world.”

Or even, “I am scared, please help.”

The boy-King, still shaking from divinity said, “There is darkness covering my land, I wish to be higher than it.” Unsaid but clear, I wish to be more powerful. 

The light grew, and he could feel her smile. “As you wish, King.” Then the light consumed him, it became him. 

And so the boy-King brought the light back to his people, he ushered the darkness away. As the people sang and danced in the palace halls he stood on the balcony and spread his hands. The light grew, she stood behind him, and then, as if she was always meant to, she sank her hands into the land.

The boy-King with his heavy crown and cracking spine stood on his balcony. He watched as the light spread her golden fingers across the land, across his land. As he did the sun paused, turned, and trickled across him.

The light bent around the crown.

She asked him quietly, a whisper turned scream turned roar, “Are you satisfied King? No one is higher than you now.”

And the boy-King, although King suited him well if you disregarded his still-growing body and the years he had yet to see, he whispered back, “You are higher than me.”

He paused, the light cradling him, holding him so very gently, before turning. The light crawled after him but he was too quick, she lapped at his feet. The boy-King opened the door and took one last look at his kingdom, golden and glowing, nearly hiding the flickering red as wood caught alight. “My shoulders ache. I wish you would take it all back.”

And then because the boy-King learned well enough that wishes are for children, and he wasn’t a child anymore. Or maybe he’d never been. And then because the dead-Princess had warned him when her hands still shook and her heart still beat. And then because he knew that the sun would not, could not change the world. 

The boy-King went back into his palace and wiped the blood from his brow. 

Chapter Text

When Rae was twelve, or at least she thinks she was twelve, she fell and broke her knee. Blood dripped down her leg, the white of a bone could be seen through the red, stained with it, and there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. But the odd thing is that she didn’t cry, just stared in horrific awe. 

It makes her wonder if she’s human anymore. If Showfall had destroyed her so utterly that there was nothing left. If she should be bleeding liquid silver, if the bone should be a darker color and rusting at the edges.

Rae knew a story once - a girl was loved, so loved and so she was taken from her family. (These truths are always connected in her mind - Love and Loss)

A girl was taken by a monster that ruined her, that slaughtered her with a smile, and used her corpse for fun. A girl was taken by a monster and it killed her. 

Rae hasn’t been alive in a very long time. She’s made her peace with this, or at least she’s forced herself to. Sykkuno had once told her, or maybe it had been Tina, or maybe it was another dead kid. Regardless, this person that she loved had told her tiredly, “I’m not sure people like us get to grieve, get to break. We don’t really get the time, do we?”

And then the Generation had ended and the person was gone and their voice was fading and Rae died a long time ago. She had died a thousand times, a thousand little lies of a life all gone the moment their use was done, when the paint had tried and they weren’t shiny anymore. 

When she was twelve she fell and broke her knee, bone had torn through skin and muscle, had stuck out like light in the darkness. It had been gone the next time she opened her eyes, although she didn’t remember closing them, the only trace was a white scar right across her knee.

It had remained throughout the years and sometimes in the night she would trace it, fingers with broken nails and dirt under them crawled across the raised skin. Proof that Showfall wasn’t as powerful as they said they were, that they were infallible. That she broke and despite their best efforts there was still a trace left behind. 

Proof that she was human enough to bleed, enough to hurt. 

There is a scar across her right palm and Sykkuno is whispered in every jagged edge. There is a teardrop burn on her shoulder from Tina spilling hot wax on accident, a candle flame flickering in her hand, illuminating her smile. There is a scar cutting across her knee and her name is threaded through the knotted skin, human it reads like a brand. 

Rae bleeds and therefore she is human, she has to be, has to give the pain meaning because otherwise, she’d break. Otherwise, she would drown in her grief and rage and love. Because she has suffered so much that if it wasn’t worth something, it would kill her. 

She gives a name to her pain and the name is her own, rae. 

✧

Charlie wonders if he ever believed in more than this. He needs to have believed in more than this. 

Because he can take heartbreak, can take having hope once and having it torn away. Because hope is still candle flame light in the midst of the darkness. Because hope is still so very good, so hesitant even when it’s lost amongst the shadows. 

Charlie can take cruelty if it means he was more than the broken glass left in Showfall’s wake. 

In the last Generation, amongst the red and green and always red, Ranboo had dug their fingers into his shoulder. Had clung to him even as the world fell apart around them. Had held him even as every action was marred by violence, by death.

They hadn’t known each other then, but people like them don’t need memories, at least the normal kind. Because he may not have known Ranboo, but he remembered them. Remembered in his bones and marrow, in the wire like scars across his back and the new long streak down their torso. Remembered Ranboo in a way that was deeper than anything, deeper than blood and family and faith.

Charlie knew Ranboo and so even as the teenager cut him open, pain flaring up his body, his spine is shifting and it isn’t stopping, Charlie had loved them. Because love, because Ranboo’s shining eyes and gentle hands, because the light was worth forgiving everything else. 

He believes in love, he believes in his family and all the scars they’ve given him. But a part of Charlie, the selfish part he so rarely indulges, wants for more. There is a child inside him with missing teeth and innocence and he wants more than a blood-soaked love. 

He wants more, the man left standing in the wake of it all, he wants to have wanted more. Charlie wants, needs to have been good once, hopeful, young. Because it means he was capable of being more than what Showfall made of him, because even the kindness in his trembling hands is a product of Showfall. 

Because even his love has been used, had once been made by Showfall. Manufactured and false. 

It’s almost masochistic, seeking an impossible answer that will only give him pain. Charlie can’t remember and when he does it cracks the foundation he’s standing on. And yet - and yet he still wants the memories of the beginning, when it was the worst. 

When the ground was ripped from beneath his feet and cruelty became a feeling, became the blood rotting in your mouth and bruises never leaving your skin. When that round cheek bright eye innocence was torn from him. When the scars started adding up and he learned far too quickly. 

Charlie needs to know that he was something once, that he was more than what he is now. Needs the reassurance to cradle him like the mother he once had. To hold his body tight and whisper into his hair you were sweet and loved and kind without a hand around your throat. 

you were good you were good you were good whispered like a prayer, like a hymn, like salvation to a dying man. 

Charlie wonders if ever believed in more than just surviving, then a pain-made love, then a family that is his death and life and just as shattered as he is. He’ll never get the answer, and the question will be buried alongside the boy who never stood a chance of surviving. 

✧

Sometimes Ethan looks at Mark and Amy, golden and bright and forgiving, and he hates them. It’s not a reasonable thought, nor one brought on by their actions. Other than being there that is. 

It’s a simple hatred, even if it’s not warranted. Mark and Amy love him, they care for him, they look at him and they’re always looking for the person they lost. He can’t even blame them, but he can hate them a little. 

He had told them once that their Ethan was dead and gone, and Amy had responded so easily that she didn’t care. That she loved every version of him, and it’s true. Amy loves him, Mark loves him, but they’re always grieving him and Ethan hates it. 

He hates it because he wants to be the person they’ve lost, because he wants to have laughed so easily with them the one time he had shoved Mark into the pool only to trip and fall in. Ethan hates them a little because he wants so badly it hurts. 

What hurts even worse is the knowledge that it doesn’t change anything. That he can’t want the memories back to life, that even if he could he still wouldn’t be their Ethan. Because their Ethan had never clawed his way from hell, never held Niki while she died, blood spreading across her throat, because he had never killed someone. 

Mark and Amy are so damn good but he can never quite be with them, because there is always a wall and it sounds like Showfall.

Because he hesitates before braiding Amy’s hair, his fingers digging into soft skin and a bone giving way. Because he flinches when Mark is too much in his space, the crack of his head against the wall, his ribs breaking as a boot crushes him. 

Because there are scars on his body that Amy cries at every time. He remembers the first time she saw one of them, his shirt had gotten dirty and wet and he had taken it off while Mark got him another. She had gasped and then there was a hand, hesitant and wavering above his back, a few scars crawling across his spine. 

Ethan couldn’t say he had forgotten them, you don’t forget things like this, but they hadn’t been on his mind. But they were there in an instant, when tears had spilled down Amy’s cheeks and she knew that he was hurt but there is a difference between knowing and seeing. 

She hadn’t talked to him after Mark came back, the night had gone from enjoyable, from light to a heavy thing marred by grief. 

He didn’t blame her, couldn’t blame her for anything, but he hates that they’re consistently reminded of who he is. And they have yet to run.

It would be easier if they were terrible people. Ethan’s lost more people than he could count, he can take pain and grief, but unconditional love? That’s something too bright to look at, to touch, and so he hates them a little for how easily they give it. 

Because they’re good and lovely and Amy laughs like the world is about to end and she doesn’t have a single care. Because they’re kind and caring and Mark constantly hugs him like he’s protecting him from everything, he’s safe in those arms. 

Ethan hates them a little because they love him and they mourn him in the same breath. He does the same.

Nothing changes. 

Chapter Text

Rae and Sneeg sit across from each other at the dinner table and the world sits on their shoulders. It presses into their skin and bone, although the pain has long faded or the two of them have grown so used to it that they just stopped registering it.

Certain people, she’s learned, are just meant to carry burdens, meant to buckle under them but never fall. Certain people are never given a choice. 

The thing is she doesn’t know Sneeg that well, or she does but not in a way she can understand. Rae knows instinctively how when he is afraid he snarls, he snaps, anything but flinches. She knows that he despises the color red, and that his hands are always gentle when they run through her hair, twisting it into a braid. 

She knows him like she knows herself, fractured memories from burning Generations, phantom pain lingering over the years. 

So she can’t say she fully understands him, but Rae knows that the two of them ache the same way, that their love is never there without grief, without agony. It’s how older siblings love and they aren’t the oldest but Charlie had once been able to be completely hidden behind her and Ranboo could curl into Sneeg’s arms. 

They aren’t the oldest but maybe they’re the bravest, or maybe they’re just the sort of people who get up every time they’re beaten down. Maybe they just don’t know how to give up. 

Regardless of the reason, Rae doesn’t fully understand Sneeg but she gets him, and he gets her. So it’s easy to exist together. It’s easy to bring your sins to light with a person who is just as bloody, just as guilty.

She cannot judge him because she’s a monster, because she walked Charlie to Death and probably some of the others. He cannot judge her because he once snapped her arm and twisted just to hear her scream. 

It doesn’t matter if they were being controlled, if they had no choice. Blood is still blood is still drying under your fingernails and in the lines of your palm. Blood is still blood even if you never wanted to shed it. 

So maybe Charlie would be kinder, even if he cannot look at her without traces of hatred, or Niki would be gentler even with her steel-coated truth and the apathy in her eyes. Maybe the others would be softer but Sneeg is - Her.

He’s the reflection in the shattered mirror and they both have the same eyes. And Rae loves him for it, and hates him for it. And ends up sitting here in a silent house contemplating the tragedy of their life, and their horror-filled limbs. 

It’s somewhat therapeutic. 

Sneeg is the first to break the silence, as he always does, as their little routine goes. “I had a new nightmare. It was Austin this time.” 

Rae can fill the gaps, can imagine. Austin smiling, Austin gasping for breath and curling in on himself, a hand pressed desperately to his chest, Austin dying, Austin dead, Austin smiling. And behind it all Sneeg. 

She hums, nails tapping against the table in a slow steady pattern. “Sykkuno used to hold my hand every time I got hurt, as if he could take away the pain.”

And there is their exchange, their way of surviving. Here is my little piece of hell, here are the red-tainted memories I could never tell the others. Here is my soul bared to you and the scars visible in every inch. Here is what I carry, here is what I grieve.

Rae had never told the others about Sykkuno, his name had always died in her throat, stuck like she had swallowed a knife. It’s not that they would be cruel, or that she didn’t trust them. It’s like this, Sykkuno is the other half of her soul, he is good and kind, and everything she wasn’t.

She’s a survivor, she is desperate hands and broken fingernails as she claws her way up from hell. She isn’t a good person and Sykkunno has a bleeding heart, a heart that’s too big for his chest and too big for this life. Sykkuno was a good person, the sort that makes you feel like you are drowning in an ocean and they are the only land in sight. 

Sykkuno was a good person and good people do not survive places like Showfall. People like Rae, people like Sneeg do.

So Sykkuno is the light she keeps close to her chest, that sits in the hollow of her back, in one of her most vulnerable places, and protects her. She can’t share him, because it hurts, because she can barely explain the gaping wound he’s left behind. 

Because only Sneeg holding a too-small corpse, Charlie and Ranboo pressed to his side, only Sneeg could understand what it is to lose your younger brother. Because even if he’s older she was Showfall’s first, she was brave, she was cruel, she was raised fists and bruised knuckles and Sykkuno was hers to protect.

And she failed. And only a person like Sneeg could get that. So only he knows how Sykkuno laughed, loud and in a way that shook his frame, only he knows how she killed him once, a rope around his neck and the creak of a wooden beam. Only Sneeg knows about this sin and in turn, he tells her about his, about the dead boys he carries.

Rae tilts her head, hair falling across her face. She stares at the table intensely, traces the darker wooden lines, the scratches and dents, a faded heart, and the L + M inside of it. All of the tiny imperfections that prove it was used, that food was eaten here, that someone was loved over this table. 

“Do you think it’s possible to make up for what we’ve done? That somehow our love could save us?” Rae meets Sneeg’s eyes, like meets like. Are we irredeemable monsters? Or are we terrible human beings whose love was always stained red and iron? 

There is a scar across the corner of his eyebrow, a pink barely there thing. Ethan had given it to him, with desperate swinging hands and a ring that caught on skin. It hadn’t saved him in the end, it never does. 

Sneeg looks at her, and when he does it feels like he’s trying to see down to her soul, it feels like he is. It feels like Sneeg is seeing every Generation burned into her mind, her singing Charlie to sleep once, another night with Sykkuno pressed to her back and Tina curled into her side, her howling scream at Tina dying permanently, versus the hollow silence when she had sunk a knife into the thin skin of her throat.

It’s like he’s seeing her and in turn, Rae sees him. Sneeg watching Charlie and Ranboo laugh so hard they fall into each other, they bend with the weight of their joy. Sneeg watching, clawing at his mind as his hands snap Charlie’s neck. Sneeg watching as Ranboo breaks, as they shatter into a million pieces, as their mind is stolen from them. Sneeg and all the love he has that cannot save him, cannot save them. 

Rae and Sneeg and all their siblings they could only love, could only ruin with their love, could only lose. 

“I don’t think what we’ve done could ever be forgiven, or forgotten.” His eyes are dark, his voice devoid of anything.

She shakes her head, “That’s not an answer.” Rae knows that a person like her doesn’t get absolution, they don’t get heaven or peace or bliss. She knows that nothing can undo what she’s done, can make up for the people she’s damned and the ones she could not protect.

But it’s still not an answer. 

Could our love save us? Not wipe the slate clean, but could it make us human, could it bring us from the edge and hold us gently? Could love brush its fingers over our scars and the blood on our hands and push back our hair and hold us like we’re children? Love cannot save us, but could it give us a gold-tinted future with clear windows and laughter curling around apple trees.

We can not be forgiven, our actions can not be forgotten, oh but could we be loved despite it all? We cannot be saved but could we find peace, could we make it? 

Rae repeats herself, her fingers trembling with phantom pain and hope, although often they are the same thing. “That’s not an answer.” 

Sneeg sighs, his shoulders tense and something like fondness, or annoyance falls across his face. But, despite it, he actually thinks this time before answering. Then, slowly as if every word is a blow and she needs time to ready herself, “I don’t think love can save us, but maybe we could. Maybe we could make our own peace.”

It doesn’t hit her like a train, or like an ears-ringing punch she knows he’s capable of. It doesn’t hit her, it brushes against her like the breeze, like wind blowing through her hair and drying the sweat on her face. 

Maybe Rae has so desperately wanted to hear it, wanted for it to be true that all she’s need was a confirmation of maybe we aren’t entirely damned. Or maybe she’s learned from those around her, Charlie’s love, Niki’s gentle steel, Ranboo’s care. 

Maybe Rae has learned to be kind to herself.   

She smiles a little, “Finally listening to Niki, I see?” 

Sneeg laughs and Niki has always been better than them, she’s got their feral need for survival but she’s fiercely kept her kindness. “You don’t think I can be insightful on my own?”

Rae isn’t the closest with Sneeg, she doesn’t fully get him but she knows him like she knows herself. She knows him like looking into a mirror and shattering it with her fist. She knows him and she loves him and he loves her and maybe, just maybe they can find peace.

If they fight for it. 

(And they will.)

Chapter Text

Ranboo’s had many lives, and many deaths. One of them goes like this: Red everywhere, the taste of iron sticking to the roof of his mouth, and a tragically beautiful girl who will not live to see twenty-five crying over top of him.

There is a rose stitched along the collar of her shirt, deep red petals fold over each other, cushioned by green leaves and the pitch black of thorns. They’re beautiful and Ranboo wants to tell Hannah that, even as he gasps, as blood slowly but steadily fills his lungs. Even as he dies. 

This Generation had been one of desperate love, more so than usual. It was more than the normal stolen touches, then his brother's shoulder to shoulder with him, then Niki’s slight flush and pinky intertwined with Hannah’s. This time they got everything and Ranboo still doesn’t know if that it made more painful.

Sneeg had laughed freely at their joke, Charlie had smiled the smile that made him look young, look hopeful. They were going through challenges but there hadn’t been the usual blood and gore, the usual grief-stained view. For once Ranboo had felt something like joy. 

He’s still dying in the end of course, but for a moment Ranboo had almost forgotten everything. His scars hadn’t ached, Niki had thrown an arm over Hannah’s shoulder and laughed like she never had a reason to not. Ranboo was eighteen and his scars hadn’t ached.

It didn’t last, good things never do. The darkness had spread, had infected them, had leeched the happiness from their bodies. Niki’s laughter died in her throat and Charlie’s smile was ripped from his face, Sneeg’s scream still wavered in the air. 

The darkness had spread and there was a bullet in his torso, missing a majority of the necessary organs but doing enough damage to kill him. To leave them bleeding out on the ground, gasping for air, as Hannah pressed her hands against their torso. 

Her breath was shuddering cries, tears carved a path down her face, a strand of hair fell across her face and she looked for all the world like she belonged on a movie set. She had always looked somewhat out of place, and Ranboo could feel it settling in their bones, Niki’s grief-filled whisper, grief for a still-living girl, She’s not going to make it out of this, I think they’ve broken her. 

Maybe they were only a teenager and already cracking, maybe they were a little like her too, but Ranboo had a feeling that girls like Hannah don’t survive this. 

A hand brushed against their face and the world came back into focus. She was smiling despite the tears on her face, despite the blood smeared across her cheekbone. “I ever tell you about how I slowly moved everything in Charlie’s room and convinced him that it was Sneeg and started a prank war?”

He shivered, her hand brushing back his hair, Ranboo was dying and Hannah was giving him something to hold on to. Not to save him, or keep him talking until help arrived. No one was coming, and there was nothing she could do. But give him something warm to die with, a golden-shaded memory and her shaking voice.

Hannah was good, they knew then, and good things don’t last.

Ranboo shook his head ever so slightly and managed to spit out, “No.”

Her lips curved slightly, there were roses on her cuffs as well as her collar. “It started because he, Charlie, was being a bit of a prick. He was huffing and puffing and I swear I wanted to punch him. But you know Niki, she keeps going on and on about solving things peacefully.” 

Ranboo managed a slight look of disbelief, the pain was lessening, and breathing was easier. None of that was a good sign but it made curling into Hannah, his head braced against her knees, easier. She laughed, her cheeks a slight red that was always for Niki, “Okay, she might have said something about methodical and subtle mental torture but I was trying to be nice.” 

Hannah moved a lot when she talked, it was a subconscious thing, she swayed and bounced a little. Her hair drifted and Ranboo could see in glimpses the lily of valleys dangling from her ear, the same flowers that Niki softly held because they were her favorite. 

In another life they would have given him hope for love, hope that there was a life beyond this where they grew old and gray together. But Hannah wouldn’t live past twenty-five and Niki clung to life more desperately than anyone he knew. 

There would be no citrus-sweet ending for them. No Sunday afternoon, shaded by flowering orange trees and laughter drifting through the air. There would be no gentle end, wrinkled hand in wrinkled hand. There would be nothing but blood for girls like them, although Death would only take one.

Hannah was still talking, the words settling against his skin like a warm blanket. His thoughts were drifting from the pain and the cold to Charlie’s frustration and Sneeg’s laughter, unaware of the wrath Hannah had acquired for him. “... I swear I had never seen something funnier than Sneeg absolutely doused in purple. Purple paint, purple hair dye, identical purple copies of his clothes that Charlie somehow got? It was amazing. I think his face turned a shade of purple when Charlie laughed at him.”

When Ranboo was younger they had learned what a backhand tasted like, and how to roll with punches so they don’t send you sprawling to the floor. It had been necessary, it had been survival, and really, compared to everything they had been through it was so very little. But there is something about accepting abuse, about adapting to it, about getting used to it that breaks you.

He had been drowning, the darkness had stolen who he was. And so, like they had a habit of doing, Charlie and Sneeg were there. The light that always finds its way back to you. 

Like now blood had been rotting in his mouth, the taste of iron and pain slowly becoming intertwined with each other. You couldn’t have one without the other. 

He had been on the ground, leaning against a locker or something along those lines. The cold metal had pressed against his skin and Ranboo was curling into himself, like a wounded animal hiding in a corner.

Charlie had found him first and much like a wounded, cornered animal, Ranboo had snarled, had lashed out in a mix of fear and desperation. Logically he had known that Charlie wouldn’t hurt him. Charlie was kind, he cared, and even if Ranboo didn’t know him as he knew him now, Charlie wouldn’t have hurt him.

But fear isn’t logical and Charlie is a kinder person than he should be.

So Ranboo had lashed out, all desperation and a splitting, bloody lip, and Charlie had stayed. He had slid down to the ground, and sat across from Ranboo. Far enough that they felt like they could escape, like they weren’t trapped. Then, like Hannah was doing now, he talked. 

Not because words could save them, but because sometimes stories are the only bit of goodness you get. 

Sneeg had come in at some point, surprisingly quiet. He had sat next to Charlie and seamlessly joined the conversation, the two of them had argued like brothers, like they weren’t in a room with a beaten to hell seventeen year old. 

Ranboo had slowly relaxed, had leaned back against the cool metal like it was a balm that could heal his bruises. Their voices had filled the room, had washed over him like the ocean lapping at the shore. 

Maybe it was Charlie’s gentle smile or Sneeg’s near-protective stare, but Ranboo worked up the courage to speak. They had asked some question about a dog Charlie loved and Sneeg thought was the devil. There was a pause, silence with two sets of eyes on them. But before he could freeze, could curl back into himself, Sneeg was desperately trying to convince him that Charlie was “Batshit crazy and had made a deal with a devil dog.” 

The two of them slowly inched closer and closer, as if Ranboo couldn’t see their subtle shifts. But he didn’t say anything, not even when the conversation died out, when a stillness filled the room. Ranboo didn’t say anything, and he didn’t pull away when Charlie gently took his hand and looked over the bruised, fractured knuckles. 

Ranboo hadn’t said anything but he did nod when Charlie asked, all soft and steel, “Is it okay if we clean you up?”

Sneeg got supplies and Charlie looked over him like was cataloging every scrape , every boot-shaped bruise, the cut on his cheek because the person overseeing them had a ring that he refused to take off and he had a nasty habit of back-handing whoever he disliked. Then with just as sharp eyes and careful hands, Charlie had washed the open cuts, the cloth slowly turning a red-muddy color. 

He had paused every time Ranboo hissed, drawing air through gritted teeth and watching the two of them and their every movement. They never once turned cruel, never took advantage of his vulnerable state. They just helped him, as impossible as it seems, they helped him because they wanted to.

Once he must have had a family, must have known something soft, something good. But right now they only knew Charlie’s gentle hands, unwavering as he washed away blood. Right now they only knew Sneeg’s low voice, taking their mind off of what Charlie was discovering with a story about some animal. 

Ranboo must have known goodness before, but the first good thing he remembers is the two of them. So it’s only fitting that Ranboo loves them, that in the same way he can feel Niki’s whisper in his bones, he can hear his own voice, repeating a word over and over again, brothers brothers brothers. 

Brothers - Charlie’s steel softness, his refusal to become a monster under Showfall. His fight in every gentle touch. His hands wiping away blood, a kiss pressed to the crown of their head, a shaky laughter as he collides with Sneeg. 

Brothers - Sneeg holding them, cradling their head like they’re a child, like they’re something to be held like they’re precious. Opening their sleep-heavy eyes and being met with Sneeg’s back because someone has to keep watch, because no one will get to you through me.

Brothers - The three of them connected through blood and pain and grief they couldn’t name. Connected through Generations they couldn’t remember but could feel in their bones. A tangled mess of threads, strings wrapped around their fingers, and all roads would lead to the others.

Brothers - A love that was not made or manufactured, but fate, but destiny, but an inevitability. As easy as breathing. As necessary as breathing.

Hannah’s voice has only gotten stronger, and it rings in their ears. The world has gone blurry at the edges, and Ranboo knows that it won’t be long now. He thinks she does as well because the story dies down and there is a girl staring down at them, and neither of them is going to live long lives.

“You’re a -” Her voice shakes, it gets cut off by a sob. Hannah is good, she cares so much that it’ll destroy her. “You’re a good kid Ranboo. I’m sorry.” 

Because that is the only thing they can offer each other these days, an apology for not being enough. 

They attempt at a smile, her face blurs, “-' okay.” The dark roses on her collar are bright, it’s all Ranboo can see. The sloping lines of the rose, the leaves holding them, the sharp thorns. They can hear Hannah sob, she will not live to twenty five, Ranboo can hear Hannah sob, and then they can hear no more.

Ranboo wakes up with a gasp, a desperate sound dying in his throat. He looks around the room, sweat-soaked and disoriented. He’s not met with concrete walls and red glaring lights. He’s not met with the stench of iron, so thick in the air he can taste it. He’s not in the mall, not in Showfall.

They got out.

They got out.

He leans forward with a shaking breath, rubbing his face with his hands and pushing back his hair. They couldn’t remember their dream, they rarely do. But they could remember the sharp pain, the echo of a voice, and a girl with a blurry face and roses embroidered on her collar.

Ranboo wonders then as moonlight pours into his room, if the girl was real, or if she was just another of Showfall’s tricks.

He gets up after another minute of getting his breathing back to normal. They aren’t going to sleep again tonight, not with the lingering coldness, the sort that sinks into your bones, the sort that comes with dying.

They stumble to the kitchen aimlessly and are met with the low sounds of some movie on the TV. A quick glance tells them that Sneeg and Charlie were asleep, curled under heavy soft blankets and snoring. He quietly walks over, rubbing his hands together as if that would return the feeling to his fingertips.

Ranboo stares at them, Charlie’s glasses on the table beside the couch, Sneeg with an arm over Charlie who somehow has his arms and legs bent so oddly he cannot help but tilt his head and stare. After a moment he gives up on trying to figure out how and why Charlie was sleeping like that. Instead, he heads to the other side of the couch. 

They grab a blanket that was crumpled on the floor, a dark shade of purple with unicorns on it that Ethan unironically adores. Ranboo gets on the couch and leans into Sneeg’s side. They curl their legs beneath them, and a still-asleep Sneeg wraps an arm around them subconsciously.

He buries himself closer to Sneeg, the coldness no match for his warmth. It slowly leaves them, and their body feels like theirs without the terrible feeling of their bones being hollowed out. Sneeg’s chest rises and falls, the room is quiet enough that Ranboo can hear both of their breathing. Charlie’s snore and Sneeg’s soft inhale and exhale.

It steadies something within them, and despite the nightmares, sleep tugs on them once again. This time Ranboo doesn’t fight it, he sighs and shifts closer. There is a word echoing in his mind, carved into his ribs, into the dips of his spine. 

His heart beats and every time it does so with the echo of brothers.

Chapter Text

It’s the oldest story in the book, one anyone can tell. A girl and her gun, a girl who is a gun, and a gun that is a girl. Although sometimes it changes, sometimes you view it through a different tinted glass. Sometimes it’s a knife, sometimes the girl is a ghost is already dead and has been since the beginning.

But in the end, it’s always the same story even when it’s been retold a hundred times. A girl, a gun.

Rae sitting across from him and dragging her fingers across the scars she made.

They are faint things, loving brushstrokes of silver across his pulse line, darting across his radial artery, across the perfect place where fingers could close around his wrist. Each one painstakingly carved, each one a whisper of wrongwrongwrong. 

Charlie isn’t a liar, some were made by his hand and a shaking piece of metal, others by throwing up his arms as if that would save him. But just because Rae didn’t make them, doesn’t mean she didn’t make them.

It doesn’t mean that the reason they’re there isn’t her fault, it doesn’t mean she didn’t tie him to the altar and offer up his skin to mar. It doesn’t mean that Rae is the cause of all of his pain.

Nobody is innocent here, not him and sure as hell not her. Survival ain’t pretty and it ain’t kind, but neither are they. 

She pulls back and a part of him wants to reach out and hold her, a part of him wants to put a sharp thing in her hand and see if he still bleeds red. Charlie doesn’t do either of those things, he grabs his mug, something herbal and sweet, and lets the warmth sink into his bones.

Rae does the same and in the light, he can see her scars, the worst ones. The white lightning, or crack like scars that cover her hands. The scars she got because she fought, the scars that were the precursor to his death. 

Charlie thinks, and tries to keep the bitterness away, that they’re more alike than they realize. He’s not sure if that makes her less of a monster, or makes him more of one. 

Rae looks at him, a strand of hair falling across her face. There aren’t any shadows under her eyes, there are no lingering bruises or blood. She isn’t the girl she was at Showfall, if that’s something you get to shake off.

She tilts her head, “What do you need, Charlie?”

He startles, and the tea sloshes against the inside of the mug. “What?”

“What do you need? You are constantly taking care of us, picking up the broken pieces and placing them together once again. You help us, you’re kind. So what do you need?” 

Charlie blinks, it’s not that it’s the first time that sentiment was expressed. But it was the first time anyone had said it so bluntly. Rae had learned subtlety, had mastered it, but she always preferred the hardness of the truth.

“I’m fine Rae.” She smiles and it isn’t quite kind.

“You aren’t. You’re staring right through me now. You’ve been off for days, Niki’s noticed, Austin’s noticed, even Ranboo has. You don’t have to be the strong one all the time Charlie.”

He grits his teeth, his grip on the mug a little too tight. “Someone has to.” He doesn’t say, we’re all too fragile, we break at the slightest breeze, we snarl and snap our teeth like the animals they made of us. If I don’t keep it together then we’ll all go mad.

She looks sad, almost as if she could hear his thoughts. Or maybe Rae has just seen him splayed open for the world, bloody and flayed, far too many times. Maybe she just knows him in the worst of ways.

“You aren’t our keeper.” He goes to argue and she raises her scarred hand. “You aren’t our keeper Charlie, and you aren’t our protector. You were when we needed you, when we all needed something to hold onto to keep ourselves sane. But we aren’t there anymore. We don’t need you to break yourself saving us Charlie, we aren’t drowning, and we know how to swim.”

There is something uncomfortable growing in him, it’s the same thing that can only be called agony that had spilled from him once on the kitchen floor. Charlie never really learned how to let go of his pain. He felt it, and then he buried it within his chest, under his cracked, fractured ribs, under his scar-ridden scar. He felt it, and then it was gone, burning within him.

He had never learned how to unpack it, to feel it and let it go. And here Rae is, telling him that he’s allowed to hurt, that he’s allowed to be the one shaking on the floor. Charlie wants to snarl, to bare his teeth, and run.

He doesn’t, and maybe because it’s her. Because it’s Rae and his pain isn't pretty, it isn’t kind but she’s the cause for most of it so maybe it should hurt her a little. Because it’s Rae and if anyone can bear pain, it’s her, if anyone can take his hurt, it’s her. Maybe it’s because for a single moment, she’s just Rae and he has never claimed to be a good person. 

Charlie doesn’t run, he unclenches his fingers from around the mug, a red imprint on his palm. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

She doesn’t speak for a moment, he had always liked that about her. Rae was careful with her words, precise. He thinks about the last Generation, about how her voice had been ripped from her except for a few words she was allowed. Charlie wonders if there is a single part of them that isn’t a product of Showfall. 

Rae takes a breath, her fingers gently tapping against the wooden table. Then she speaks, “Why did you never try and find them? We would have helped you, all is us.” She doesn’t need to say who, she knows, and so does he.

It’s an honest question, and for that, he doesn’t lash out despite the question, despite who's asking it. 

The truth is Charlie had asked himself that every day since he remembered, since he knew that there was someone who had loved him. Once. The truth is he was terrified. The truth is he was grieving and he didn’t even know who. The truth is simple, and terrible, but so very simple.

“Their son is dead, he’s been dead for years.” The dead since you goes unsaid but not unnoticed. Rae doesn’t flinch, he had always liked that about her. “There is no need to tear open old wounds for a boy who has long been gone.”

Rae tilts her head, there is a flicker in her eyes, one of remembrance. Charlie wonders briefly what ghost she’s seeing, what dead child with blood on their hands. 

Then the look is gone and there’s steel, there’s something unwavering. He’s reminded again, that despite everything, Rae survived, Rae learned how to survive and that made her just as dangerous as the rest of them. “You aren’t dead Charlie.”

He repeats himself, “Their son is dead.”

“You aren’t.” She doesn’t seem to get that those are two different people, that there is no point in digging up an already settled grave. Charlie points it out to her and Rae laughs a little. “You should know by now that no grave stays unturned. That you can die a thousand times and still breathe. The world will end and you will get up, you will make your tea, and brush your hair. You aren’t dead.”

See he could hurt her here, could spit in her face I am, and it’s because of you. Do you remember taking my hand? Do you remember walking me to my death while I swung your hand the entire time? But it would be cruel, and more than that it would be pointless.

Rae remembers everything, that is the burden she bears. And God help him, Charlie is trying not to be cruel even if he can’t be kind. “What would I tell them? What could I possibly say to them, if they are still alive, that would make sense?”

She taps her fingers along the wooden table, he can see the flash of a ring, one of Vinny’s he assumes. “You could tell them the truth like Ethan had, we have our scars, ones we couldn’t possibly have survived. Or you could simply meet them, a stranger on the street talking to you about flowers and trees and what a beautiful day it is.” 

Rae looks at him, looks him in the eyes and Charlie straightens instinctually. “I don’t want you to find them to bring them peace, call me a monster but I don’t care about their peace of mind. I want you to find them if it’ll help you, if it’ll soothe away some of the pain you carry.” Then she almost whispers, and it sounds like a prayer. “We don’t have to carry this pain, Charlie. We aren’t martyrs and we aren’t saints. Our hurt, all this pain that we have, we don’t have to hold onto it like it’s some sort of repentance. It's not."

There is something welling in him, and it’s the old pain and grief, and for once Charlie doesn’t shove it down. We all have to break right? 

He swallows hard, and he speaks, each word grates on his throat. “I don’t know how to grieve them, how to grieve me. I’m alive and I’m dead and dying and I don’t know how to separate them.” It’s the closest to a plea that he’ll ever get.

Rae reaches out her hand and takes his, this time Charlie doesn’t see the scars, hers or his, he just feels the warmth. “You gotta let it go, all your grief and pain, let it go. You can’t figure out who you are if you are drowning in the past.” 

And for once, he does. Charlie cries, he weeps in Rae’s arms like the child he once was, the child he never was allowed to be.

You see, once there was a woman who loved him well. She cut the crusts off his sandwiches and played dress up with his thousand, terrible stylish ideas. She held him when he had nightmares and smoothed away the hair from his eyes.

She loved him.

And she left him alone in a too-big mall. She left him alone and a girl with blood drying on her newly scar-covered hands approached him. The girl had played her part well, and so did he, even then.

Once there was a woman who loved him well, it did not save either of them. 

Once there was a boy who was too trusting, too kind. Once there was a girl who was damned in the biblical sense, who never stood a chance, who was given no choice but to be a pawn. Once there was a monster, and there were two children caught within its grasp.

Once there was a boy and a girl, and both of them would be dead within a year of meeting each other. Once there was a boy and a girl, and they had scars, and too many deaths and stolen lives to count.

Once there was a boy and he was hurt, a monster tore him to pieces and left him on the ground. The boy was broken, so he took his torn edges and made them jagged, made himself sharp. He forgot kindness, he forgot warmth. But then the boy met the others, the girl and those around her.

Once there was a boy and he made a family through scattered lifetimes and faded memories. He loved and he loved and it didn’t save him, but he lived, but perhaps it kept him from being lost within the darkness. The boy found love in many forms, in many eyes and people with the same jagged edges, he even found it in the girl. But he was still trapped

Once there was a boy stuck within a monster’s grasp, but he was the right amount of smart and lucky, and he got out. He took the others hands and ran, they all ran and they only stopped when their monster was nothing more than a distant dot on the horizon. They ran and ran until they stopped, until they found a place where they could be happy.

Until they found home. 

Once there was a boy and a girl, love didn’t save them. That does not mean this was a cruel story, it wasn’t a tragedy, because he wasn’t dead, because he was breathing, because he got out and maybe that could be enough. 

Charlie would make it enough, he would make it all enough. 

He pulls back, face tear streaked and puffy. Rae doesn’t say anything when he uses his shirt to wipe off his glasses, instead she shrugs. “You know what always makes me feel better after I cry? Ice cream.”

Then she’s up and heading to the kitchen. Rae goes over to their beat up freezer and pulls a tub of strawberry ice cream out. She grabs two spoons and sits back down at the table. He doesn’t flinch when she pulls back the lid and reveals the pink ice cream.

It helps, maybe, that she doesn’t have on red glasses or summer clothes, that she’s wearing a two sizes too big sweater that she totally stole from Sneeg. It helps that Rae looks soft, the sleeves nearly covering her hands. It helps that he can see the beginning of laugh lines on her face, that she isn’t terrified and restrained within her own skin.

It helps that Rae looks like she’s found her peace.

It helps that for the first time, Charlie believes he can find his as well. 

Charlie takes the offered spoon and when she smiles, bright and blinding, he smiles back. The two of them take a scoop from the tub, and when he takes a bite it melts sweetly on his tongue.

It tastes a little like freedom, a little like an echo of laughter, like the woman who sits across from him smiling away. 

It tastes like forgiveness. 

Charlie takes another scoop, and each bite is just as sweet.

Chapter Text

Here’s the truth, even if it’s sad and pathetic and so damn sorrowful it aches to look at, Niki had never wanted to hurt anyone.

She thinks that when she was little she wanted it all, the house and picket fence with a husband who comes home and children with her eyes. She wanted golden-shaded afternoons and lips against her neck, laughter pressed against her skin. She wanted so much love she would get sick of it. 

Those dreams didn’t last long. They faded like Niki had, German stumbling on her tongue and she couldn’t remember if she looked like her mother. Her childhood home had burned to ashes, crumbled the first time she tasted blood in her mouth. 

(It was terrible, how familiar the taste of her own blood became.)

Niki had never wanted to hurt anyone, and then she was taken, and then she died. And then a girl with Lazarus green eyes rose from the dead, something twisted and wrong rose in her place.

See the Generations had killed her, and they had brought her back to life time and time again. It was a twisted form of resurrection, the feeling of her skin melding together, her organs being shoved back into place, the flush of her bloodshot eyes. The Generations were as unholy as you could get - And Niki may have risen from the dead but she was never a saint. 

Instead, she was a girl who came back wrong, and oh, how she had tried to put herself back together. The first time, skin coming apart at the seams, blood dripping from her eyes, she had tried to smile - to gentle herself. Niki had tried to be good even when she could feel Showfall corrupting every inch of her body. 

She had smiled at the boy across from her - purple shirt and a crooked jaw, swollen nose, broken wrong - and tried to be good. Niki had tried to be kind. It’s laughable but she hadn’t known then, she hadn’t learned how Showfall taints everything they touch.

How nothing (not even her, never her) is safe from them.

So she had tried to be kind, a respite from hell for the both of them. And instead, her lips had turned up, her smile had turned nasty. Niki’s mind was ripped from her, her vision turned a shade of red. Blood red.

The boy had died screaming. (They always do.) He had died screaming and she could still recall how warm his intestines had been, wrapped around her hands. 

Niki had tried to be good, once. Then the Show began. 

Charlie never liked to think of himself as good. He could be kind, he could smile and care, and his hands could be gentle. But he was never good. Because good did not exist within a place like Showfall.

It was stamped out like a firefly bumbling around a July afternoon. Lazy on the heat, lazy on life. Torn apart by a cruel boy with cold eyes, wings pulled and pulled until its too-small body was ripped apart. 

Maybe he had been good, once, but you cannot be good when you are being torn apart, when the world is breaking you for the hell of it. 

Charlie was kind, he had fought bloody and brutal to be kind. But he was not good. 

He was not good because he was Showfall's. Because he had covered Niki in bruises, had watched as her ribs cracked and bent inward under his foot. Because Sneeg had cried when he killed him, when he stuck a knife through skin and muscle and sinew into his heart.

Because - blood and death and the final rattling breath before a body goes still. 

Because - A painful smile carved a way onto his face, and so much blood on him that it lingered for Generations.

Because - Because Charlie had done too much to be good, because there were certain things that could never be undone nor forgiven. Because there was no repentance for a sinner like him.

So Charlie would call himself kind, and gentle because he could make himself so. He had learned how to soften himself, soften a blow, and make a strike feel like scattered love. But he could never call himself good.

Good was for people who had options, and choices. Charlie had neither, Charlie wasn’t a person. He was property, and he always bent the way Showfall wanted him to. 

Vinny had never believed in God, but he had always liked Churches. There was something about them, about their contemplative silence, about the openness of the walls and the way the light fell through stained glass. Something about them always seemed like a welcome, like a sanctuary.

He had always liked churches, the wooden pews that creaked when he sat down. (Blood soaked into wood like nothing else, you could never really remove the stain.) They always smelled like old rusting metal, like an iron-made forest. 

Music could be heard sometimes, a chorus practice going late, the echo of an organ in the hollow-hallowed halls. (Austin crouched under a table, a record player scratching away. Black lines crisscrossed over his lips, blood staining them, peeling at the edges.) The music always made him feel a little complete, a little at home.

And then there were the people, the few that came at odd hours. That were like him - different. A girl in a red suit, blonde hair tumbling over her shoulder, smiling so brightly at anything and everything. A pair, the woman with pearls and heels, the man in a suit, and both dead silent. 

(Dead eyes, broken bodies, cruel hands, and the constant screaming-begging-pleasepleaseplease.)

People would come and go, and he would sit at the pew, the cushions crumpling under his clenched fingers. Music would fade in and out, and the light falling through the stained glass would never change. 

God never came.

There are two things Sneeg can remember, can always remember, even when the Generations turn - even when Charlie dies, blood-soaked and gasping, even when he’s more a weapon than he ever was a man. He can remember the lavender perfume his mother always wore, and his sister's laughter. 

Iron stinks, it rots, it fills a room - or a person - and it stays. Sneeg had gotten used to it, had felt it sink into his bones and make a home for itself. He had stopped flinching, stopped gagging and choking. (Even the smell of a decomposing body had become familiar. Eventually.)

But throughout it all he could recall his mother's perfume. Although sometimes the who faded, but the smell never did. Lavender, earthy, and warm, brushing against his face, his head. 

Sneeg would curl into himself, would dig his fingernails into his soft skin, and feel the urge to pull, and he would remember it. And his hands would unclench, and his body would relax. Sneeg would remember it and it would be like coming home. 

And the laughter - the laughter that brought him from the brink of madness, that was the lighthouse amidst the storm, his safe haven. 

Charlie would be screaming, or maybe it was Niki or Ethan, it had stopped mattering. There would be wailing, there would be the rattle of death and a horrible silence, and Sneeg wished to be nothing.

He wished for Death to take him in her cool hands, to take him far from this place. Because the body would soon swell, it would rot, and who knows? Maybe this time they’ll let him starve, maybe this time they’ll see how far he’ll go to survive. 

It was always the silence that got to him, the anticipation, the waiting game. Sneeg had never been patient, and so when it brought him to the brink, to the edge of the cliff. A breath away from falling into the darkness, he would remember. 

Laughter echoing across wooden halls, wrapping around him, warming him. Sweet, beautiful laughter that was not for a place like Showfall. So it had to be real, and Sneeg could let it save him without feeling damned. 

(If he had remembered, truly remembered, then he would have known that there never was a sister’s laughter or mother’s cool perfume - that there was only a bitter, drunk father who wrapped himself around a pole. Showfall always had a habit of taking and taking and taking.)

Ethan knew he loved someone, he knew it in his bones, in the very thing that made him. Just as he knew that he could not be loved in return. 

You see, it was an easy conclusion, it was simple. He had realized it while bleeding, although he always seemed to be bleeding. There was something tugging on his soul, a pull to a place far from here. And he knew - he knew - he wasn’t crazy - he knew that he loved someone so much it destroyed him.

And just like he knew he loved them (two people and two smiles and his soul split into two) he knew they could not love him back. Ethan was a monster, or he wasn’t quite human, or he was a dark, twisted thing that should be taken out back and put down.

It didn’t matter, the technicalities of it all, what mattered was this: Ethan wasn’t the sort of thing you could love. 

He had done too much - too much had been done to him. He was a broken mess of scars and flashes of anger and a grief that ate away at his bones. He was too rough and too desperate, he didn’t know how to love anything without consuming them.

So of course he loved someone, of course, they must be good and kind and smiles and gentle hands, and of course, they didn’t love him back. Ethan didn’t know much, the Generations took that away, but he knew he loved someone, them.

Just as he knew that no one was looking for him. You don’t mourn something like him.

Ranboo has brothers - or at least he thinks he does. He knows that there are people, although they don’t have his eyes, who are kind and good. They love him, they hold him, they care. 

They knew, it was real and they knew it was. He knew one of them wore glasses with a small crack in the corner. The one with glasses smiled more, he held their hand when they were scared.

The other was bigger, tougher, more brittle. But he was still kind, even if he looked more scary. The second brother had gentle hands, he was so careful when he patched them up. He was good. 

They have brothers, they know they have brothers. Ranboo has brothers and he can’t remember their names, but that’s okay, they love him and he loves them. That’s all that matters. 

Ranboo has brothers (Pain and death and so much red. Please don’t! I’m scared, I want to go home. I want to go home. Please let me go home.)

Ranboo has brothers ( Charlie! Charlie, no no no no please don’t go. Don’t leave me. Get up! Get up! Sneeg why isn’t he getting up, where are his glasses? Why isn’t he getting up?)

Ranboo has brothers (Red drenching their hands, stealing their vision, taking their body and hollowing out and please I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go - 

The Hero doesn’t have brothers, The Hero is The Hero and there is no one that loves him. 

Niki smiles despite the blood on her hands, she doesn’t bother with denials anymore.

Charlie cares for them, he loves them so much it aches when he presses his knife to their throat and tears.

Vinny pretends it isn’t real, he dreams and dreams and steps over a rotting corpse when he goes to kneel before Christ.

Sneeg has yet to learn that nothing is sacred, not here, not with Showfall. 

Ethan has let go of all that kept him tethered to this earth, to this world and he has yet to realize that he is drowning.

Ranboo wants, he clings to everything with blood-stained hands, but he can never manage to keep it - them. 

And Austin, Austin watches, he waits, he lives and he dies. Austin watches and no one - God or the devil or people - comes. Austin watches and the Show starts again. (and again and again and again - 

Chapter Text

Three years after the end of Showfall, after they escaped and lived despite it all, Charlie decided that he wasn't quite a boy. Or at least he isn’t totally sure on that front.

It starts with Halloween and some costumes he doesn’t get the reference for. Ranboo in tall heels with a skirt on, laughing manically and surprisingly witch-like as they chase after Ethan like a demon. And Niki in a fitted suit, hair tied up to reveal her new undercut.

It starts with Niki coming out as Gender Queer, throwing the word out casually over breakfast while they nearly fall asleep into their bowl of cereal. And of course, he looks it up, of course, he gets books to go with his growing collection of LGBTQ+ books ever since Ranboo came out.

Of course, Charlie wants to understand what his siblings, his family, not in blood, never in blood, are feeling. He wants to support them as best as he can, only he starts reading and -

Everything in the chapters feels right, feels a little like coming home. It feels like a bone being pushed into a place, like an ache that he’s gotten so used to he stopped registering it finally going away.

Charlie looks at the word Gender-Fluid in bright green letters and oh, oh shit. 

It’s not that he thinks none of the others would accept him, but it’s been three years. Shouldn’t he have figured it out before now? Maybe he’s just copying the others, trying to find that sense of similarity they had at Showfall.

Maybe Charlie is lying to himself, he had gotten so good at that.

(A part of him whispers that he’s being stupid. That every book has said that finding out who you are takes time. That there is no expiration date or time limit. 

He very pointedly ignores that voice. Charlie doesn’t feel very reasonable today.)

Instead he - and it’s he - He gets up and makes breakfast. Pancakes sizzle, batter floating on butter. The air fills with the smell of melting chocolate chips and the Lavender dotting the window sill because Puffy had mentioned something about them helping with nightmares.

Charlie’s hands move automatically, and it’s somewhat funny how he always ends up here - in the kitchen as he has a mild breakdown.

Well more mild compared to the other times this has happened. There’s still a faint red tile from the mug incident, and the apartment had been silent for weeks after the whole Rae thing. So really, he’s handling this well. 

He is not panic making pancakes to avoid thinking about uncomfortable thoughts of change. Because Charlie accepts change, he isn’t utterly terrified of it because of how used he was to the normality and routine of Showfall. He’s fine, everything is fine, it’s all fucking fi-

“What did those pancakes do to you?” Rae’s amused voice, still tinged with sleep, comes from the island. 

Charlie turns from where he was aggressively beating pancake batter to see her, clad in a too-big shirt that isn’t hers and three-year-old sleep shorts that have more holes than swiss cheese. She smiles, her hair still pushed back with a large pink headband and he can see the remains of face wash. They had all gotten so comfortable here in these past few years, they had learned how to breathe.

Usually, he feels a quiet sort of awe at that fact, right now he’s just annoyed that Rae doesn’t sleep in a little longer. He turns away from her raised eyebrow and teasing smile, “This is how I normally make them.”

She snorts, “Bullshit, what’s going on?” When he doesn’t immediately tell her all his problems Rae sighs, “Come on, everyone else is gonna be asleep for at least a half hour. I promise I won’t tell.”

Charlie could dig in his feet, could keep his hands steady as he beats, makes pancakes. And a year and a half ago he would have, two years ago he would have been too busy flinching at shadows and invisible threats to even contemplate this. But it’s not two years ago, and he’s slowly learned how to breathe. 

Charlie could dig his feet in, but the therapist Puffy found for them always talks about how he needs to let himself have good things. That being happy after everything isn’t a crime, and it’s not a bad thing. That despite everything - and she only knows half of it - Charlie is allowed to be kind to himself.

It was one of the first things she got into his head, that suffering for past sins isn’t repentance, it doesn’t change what happened. All it does is invite more bad into the world.

Rae could help him, she would help him figure out the mess of his mind with a smile. And he would be okay, he would be fine.

Charlie sets down the bowl, his shoulders hunched defensively, and when he turns Rae’s gotten serious. Her teasing smile is gone and she’s looking at him steadily, waiting and patient. “I -” He isn’t sure what comes next because both Ranboo and Niki had the sort of courage he lacked, and just randomly dropped the news.

And he isn’t sure, he’s probably lying or slightly crazy so how? Charlie grabs his phone, unlocking it, and clicking to the website that he has yet to delete. Gender-Fluid is still there in bright green letters, practically popping off the screen. 

He wordlessly hands it to her and Rae carefully reads everything. A smile tugs at her lips, one he’s grown familiar with, the sort that makes him feel all warm inside. “Are you, Charlie? Cause I promise you this isn’t the oddest coming out I’ve seen.”

His hands clench and unclench, a nervous habit gained to replace tearing at his cuticles. “I think.” Charlie swallows suddenly, defensive in a way like he has something to prove. “I’m not copying Niki or Ranboo I swear, I think. I don’t know why it’s just now happening but I thought.”

His voice shakes, and it’s something about Showfall and their way of finding vulnerabilities and exploiting them, something about his gentleness being used against him. Rae takes his hands quickly, and it’s been months since he flinched away from her. 

“Hey, hey Charlie. Look at me please, Charlie.” Her hand is soft as it cups his face, “I believe you, of course I believe you.” 

There is a faint white scar on her hairline, although with the years it’s faded. It has been allowed to fade. “You’re figuring yourself out Charlie, there’s not a damn thing wrong with that. Not a thing.”

Charlie swallows, and sounding utterly like a child, “Promise.” 

She nods, “Course I promise you. It’s completely okay to be Gender-Fluid. And it would be completely okay if you changed your mind tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. All that matters is that it feels right to you, whatever that may be.”

There is a flicker of - not pain, or not a new open wound at least, but rather an old ache - on her face. “After everything I think, no I know that we deserve happiness. So Charlie, my lovely, lovely Charlie, find your peace in whatever form that takes. Kay?”

He - they nod and she lets go, “So what are we doing today?” Like it’s that easy, and for Rae it is. Charlie is Gender-Fluid, cool, what pronouns/gender do you want today?

Charlie nearly laughs, filled with the sort of joy that comes from being loved unconditionally. “Um, I think they for today. I’m feeling,” For the first time they try to find words for who they are, because Rae would listen, “Very in between, or like not connected to either one. So I’m kinda floating in the middle of the gender spectrum.”

Rae nods like that makes perfect sense, “Nice, so you gonna tell the others?” A light sparks in her eyes, “Want me to just use they/them pronouns for you and give them no context, and utterly gaslight them and tell them it’s what we’ve always done?” 

Charlie shakes their head, “Rae, maybe messing with people who have a certain sensitivity to memories isn’t a good idea.” Because they all lost their minds at least once per month over their own paranoia and trauma, so even light-hearted fun might - not go well.

She shrugs, “Fair.” Then she raises her eyebrows, waiting for their say. 

They cling to their bravery fueled by Rae’s easy acceptance, “I could just do what Ran and Niki did, just casually drop it over breakfast.”

That gets them a smile, “Always a fun way to go.” Then Rae stands and walks over to them, “Come on, I gotta help you pick up the slack on those pancakes.” They roll their eyes but let her help, and keep a close eye on her to ensure that the apartment doesn’t end up on fire. 

After about fifteen minutes everyone starts to file out of their rooms. Some, Austin and Ethan, cheerfully talking about a show with robots and cats. While others, Niki and Sneeg, look half-dead and still asleep. They fill in at the table and Charlie and Rae pile all the pancakes onto a platter. “Eat up!” 

They sit next to Rae, eating the pancakes and relishing in the way the chocolate chips melt on their tongue. Then they finish their pancake and Rae keeps giving them the side eye. Apparently, she loses her patience because she leans over and whispers, “I got your back dude.” 

Dude had lost any gender a while ago. Particularly after Sneeg had stayed up for too long and started hallucinating, and had an entire hour-long conversation with the fern he solely referred to as dude.  

Charlie clears their throat, and it’s out of place enough that the table quiets, “So I have news.” The words slow in their throat, and not a single person is going to jump at them and accuse them of lying but still.

Rae grabs their hand, squeezing it reassuringly and they’re always going to have her in their corner. “I have recently figured out that I’m Gender-Fluid, or at least that’s the term that fits the best as of now.” And before their courage can leave them, “Today’s a they day, so could you use they/them pronouns for now, please.”

There’s a beat of quiet, they tighten their grip on Rae’s hand, and then Niki cackles. “We’re slowly taking over the group!” She holds out her hand, curled into a fist. “Come on, gender pals!” 

Charlie smiles at their pure excitement and carefully fist-bumps her. Ethan gives them a thumbs up, and Austin knocks their shoulders together. Sneeg and Vinny give them a proud smile and a nod. Ranboo starts to ramble about anything and everything, and you gotta let me do your nails to match mine now, please. And that is that.

The tenseness in them slowly unravels, and really they had no reason to be worried. Charlie loses themself in the conversation until Rae gasps, “Oh my god!” 

They turn to her in slight concern, but the smile on her face is too big for it to last. “Charlie, we’re so gay!”

They pause, and tilt their head, “What?”

“Well you’re you, Ran’s non-binary, Niki’s genderqueer, Austin’s gay, Ethan’s romantically involved with Amy and Mark, Sneeg had that weird thing with the coffee barista. And Vinny’s-” Rae pauses and looks over at Vinny, carving something from a wooden block.

He doesn’t look up when he speaks, “Pansexual.”

Rae nods, satisfied like she definitely bet on that. “Vinny’s pan, and I’m totally a lesbian sooo.” She draws out the word looking far too happy with all the events happening.

When Charlie doesn’t respond, she sighs, “We’re all queer as shit Charlie, bright ass rainbows that They would definitely hate!”

Because in the end, they all live to spite Showfall. They live for more than that, they’ve learned to live for more than that. But Rae’s elation is right, there is a certain feeling of rightness in flipping off Showfall - in any way they can.

Including living as themselves, as anything and anyone besides what they were made. 

They smile, “They would hate it. They would hate this so much.” Then Charlie’s laughing, a bit hysterically but they’ve long earned that right. One by one their family follows them, and they’re alive and happy and Rae said queer as shit. 

And Showfall can go rot in hell.

A week later the city holds a pride parade, the streets a blur of color and laughter. 

Rae looks over, cheeks painted various shades of pink, smiling wildly. It’ll never stop surprising him, how far they’ve come, how far away Showfall is. It’ll never get old, they know that, Charlie will never lose this sense of awe at the world around them.

They’re living, they’re so utterly alive alongside their family and nothing can take that from them. Not now, not ever.

Chapter Text

A year after she meets Niki, a year after Puffy takes one look at the person reading in a soft sweater and combat boots, wearing more rings than should be possible, she has a nightmare. And two minutes later Niki wraps her hands around Puffy’s throat. 

It had been late, some terrible rom-com that took a little too long to end, and when she had suggested that they stay, Niki had. They had fallen asleep in her bed, and as Puffy curled up against Niki, close enough to smell her rose-scented shampoo, she thought about how lucky she was. How she must have done something brilliant in her last life to deserve this. Then she had tumbled into her own dreams.

She had woke hours later to whimpering, to a noise that belonged more to a wounded animal than to a person. Niki was nearly falling off the bed, flat on their back and pressing deeper into the sheets, like they were cowering away.

In that moment it was more instinct than anything, a sleep bleary moment. Puffy had sat up and reached over, gently shaking Niki’s shoulders. She had been mumbling something, a comfort given to her by her mother. Something like It’s okay love, there are no storms, it’s okay. It’s - 

And then in the middle of her sentence, Niki’s eyes snapped open, and there was nothing left of the person she loved. There was a pure, animalistic fear that terrified her. Niki had a look that belonged to a feral, cornered animal. She looked like she was dying.

Before Puffy could realize something was terrible wrong, they were lashing out. Hands shot up, wrapping around her throat, and Niki threw her body up. She shoved Puffy down, hard, her knees slamning down against her side.

The kind hands that had ran through her hair earlier, that had smeared her lipstick a little with a gentle touch, dug into the soft, vulnerable skin of her neck. Niki’s fingernails, a pale purple because Ranboo was on a streak, tore into her neck. Puffy could feel the bite, she could feel the blood welling to the surface.

She choked, barely moving even as the panic set in, because the world had slowed. Because there is no world in which Niki, her Niki would ever hurt and yet. Yet here they would.

It was only when her vision started to blur, black dots swarming her, did the survival instincts that all humans are built with kicked in. Puffy bucked against Niki, forcing them to shift their weight in order to retain their balance. 

The hands loosened slightly and Puffy used that to grab Niki’s wrists, and then she pulled as hard as she could. Niki lost her balance and they fell to the spot beside her, thrashing all the while. Like this wasn’t an unprovoked attack, like this was a fight for her life.

For a moment the bedroom was still, filled only with her panting, and then she heard it. Another thing to break her heart. Niki’s slurred whispers, begging something or someone. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t. Please, I don’t want to forget, please. I won’t do it again. Please!” 

Her hands loosened, because there was no way Puffy could pin Niki down while she was begging like that. There was a blur of movement and she flinched back but Niki doesn’t lunge at her. Instead, she tumbled off the bed. 

They crawled along the ground, backing themselves against the wall. Pressed in the corner of her bedroom, Niki looks so small, so afraid. Something in Puffy cracks open, and she has feeling it won’t ever really heal. 

Her throat hurts, but this isn’t just a nightmare, this is so much more. Puffy slowly gets off the bed, giving Niki space, “Niki? Baby?” Her voice breaks halfway through, but she would take the pain without flinching if only Niki would stop looking at her like that.

Like they don’t see her. Like they’re looking straight through her. Like Puffy is the monster they’re so terrified of.

When she takes an instinctual step closer, the urge to comfort, to hold, to love and love and love, Niki flinches so hard it freezes her in place. They let out a keening sound, a half broken scream, and it takes her a second to figure out what it is. “Charlie! Charlie! Char-” 

Over and over again, falling from a scream to a hoarse whisper, to a fucking prayer. Niki, her partner, the love of her life, the person that she wants to marry and grow old with, is on her bedroom floor howling for her brother to save her. And - 

Puffy wants to tear out her own heart, or kill God. One of the two, whichever one will stop the agony flaring in her. Instead she carefully and quietly grabs her phone from her bedside table, and then, after a look around to make sure there is nothing that Niki can use to kill themselves with, she leaves the room.

She slips through her apartment, small trickles of blood dripping down her neck. And she realizes, with a distant discomfort, that it’s not going to wash out of her silk top. Puffy scrolls through her contacts until she finds Charlie’s name accompanied by all the emoji’s Ranboo saw fit to add.

She calls him, and doesn’t allow herself to think that he might not pick up. It takes two rings, two heartbeats in which Puffy is half convinced she’s dying, and then he picks up the phone. His voice, even stained with sleep, is alert and full of panic. And Puffy doesn’t know nearly as much as she needs to. 

“Puffy? What’s wrong? Did something happen?” There is shuffling in the back, and a noise that she’s half sure is Sneeg. They have a monster, they have a monster and not one of them escaped untouched.

A hand slips to her throat, applying pressure to the slowly bleeding cresents, “Niki had a nightmare. They’re having a panic attack, curled up in the corner of my room and they don’t recognize me.” Her voice sounds like hell and Puffy flinches at a muffled sob.

Charlie curses, and she can hear movement, can hear Sneeg stumbling out of his bed and finding someone else. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Don’t try and touch her!” Then he hangs up before he can hear Puffy’s hollow laughter.

It’s a twenty minute drive from their apartment to hers - Charlie is there in twelve minutes. He has a key, one she never gave him, and he rushes in. He almost sprints straight into the bedroom, Sneeg and Ethan behind him, before he stops when he sees her.

Puffy’s on the ground by the cracked open door, knees held to her chest, and in the moonlight she’s sure her neck looks horrible. And it’s only getting worse by the minute, blood pooling to the surface, outlining finger shaped bruises. She must look so pathetic because something strange flashes across his face.

If she knew him better she would call it pain.

She nods towards the bedroom, her voice a barely there whisper, “She’s in there. Kept calling for you.” The look disappears and Charlie doesn’t hesitate to walk into the room, the door gently shutting behind him.

It seems though that this is a job for Charlie, because neither Sneeg or Ethan try and enter. She wonders then, not for the first time, what their relationship is with each other. Because Puffy knows that they’re family, but she knows it’s not by blood, she knows that Mark and Amy lost Ethan for years. She knows - 

So very little. Puffy has been observing and guessing and filling in the blanks. But in the end, she doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know why Niki is dying in her bedroom, she doesn’t know why her first instinct is to fight and her second is to beg. She doesn’t know why Charlie is apparently the only one who can calm her.

She doesn’t know what sort of monster exists that can give these people, these good people the scars and pain they have. Puffy doesn’t want to know.

Without a word, and what have they survived together to not need words to act, Sneeg heads to her kitchen and Ethan settles on the ground in front of her. He raises his hands to her neck, a question in his hesitant movements. She nods, slowly unwrapping herself and letting her neck be bared to the world.

He carefully tilts her head, a finger tracing the damage. Puffy tries not to cry, not because she’s particularly upset about the bruises or the pain, but because Niki did that, because Niki felt the need to do that. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

After nearly an hour of silence only broken by Niki’s agony Ethan’s voice is a shock. Puffy swallows, it hurts, and nods to the bathroom door. “Under the cabinet.”  

As he walks to the bathroom she can hear clinking in her kitchen. There is a mixture of curiosity and blankness, she half wonders what Sneeg’s doing in her kitchen and the other half couldn’t care less.

Puffy doesn’t have long to wonder because Ethan is back, the white and red box in his hands. He opens it, and with a very practiced ease, uses a wipe to clean out the open cuts Niki’s sharp fingernails left behind. He hums a little, and she relaxes.

Something about it is comforting, and all it does is spark the question - how long has Ethan being doing this? How many times has Ethan cleaned someone up, washed away their blood and tended to their wounds? 

She doesn’t think there is an answer that she’d like.

After the cuts are carefully cleaned and dried Ethan grabs antibiotic cream. He brushes it against her neck, and the cuts won’t be bad but the bruises will be hell. He gives her an apologetic smile every time she winces, but his hands don’t falter.

Finally, and with Sneeg doing something in her kitchen, he finishes and puts everything back into the first aid kit. “Come here often?” Every word hurts but really, if Puffy didn’t try and laugh she would have a breakdown.

Ethan rolls his eyes fondly, his touch so soft she really might cry, “Sometimes when I get late calls at night.” Then he settles by her side and Puffy finally gets to see what Sneeg was making.

In his hand are two cups of tea, steam curling above his hands. He carefully gives the one in the white sheep mug to her, keeping the purple one in his hands. “It’s not as good as Charlie’s but it’s close.” 

She takes a sip, chamomile and honey. It soothes her throat, and the broken piece of her relaxes a little. Sneeg sits across from her, all three of them curled up on the ground and Niki’s sobs have stopped. Puffy can faintly hear Charlie murmuring something but it’s lost in the space between them.

“Drink.” Sneeg’s eyes aren’t as soft or gentle as Ethan, more steel than grass, but there is an undercurrent of kindness in them. Later, when she can collect her thoughts, when everything makes more since in the daylight, Puffy will marvel at the fact that despite all they have endured – the scars without a story and the monster they do not speak of - they still are kind.

That alone is its own sort of miracle. “They’ll be a little while. Niki always crashes harder than the rest of us. She gets pent up, and then destroys herself when the dam breaks.”

Puffy nods, taking a sip and finds herself utterly grateful that Sneeg didn’t apologize for Niki. That he didn’t apologize for the bruises clear as day, for the way she presses herself against the wall like Niki had. Somehow she knows that it would have broken her, and all her carefully placed walls would have come crumbling down around her.

Her hands shake slightly, and neither of them mentions it. Instead, Ethan shifts closer to her until they’re pressed shoulder to shoulder, a fine, warm line against her side. It soothes the bruises on her ribs slightly, her hands still. 

Puffy takes a sip of her tea, and she breathes. In and out. In and out. In and out. In and - 

Chapter Text

It takes an hour, an hour of hearing Niki’s cries turn faint, turned into barely audible sobs, an hour of hearing Charlie’s steady voice, not once wavering. It takes an hour for Puffy to hate the world a little. 

That had always been what Niki loved about her, her belief in goodness, her faith in humanity. But right now it’s gone, even if Puffy knows she’ll find a new reason to believe tomorrow, right now she can only hate. Because something made Niki break like this, something made the people around her with all their scars and their pain and - 

Puffy never quite believed in a God, never had a strong faith for one reason or the next, but she does now because God has to exist to answer for his crimes. Because someone has to pay for this, for this unspeakable crime committed to the good - because they are good despite it all - people around her. 

A few minutes after she finished her tea, it having long gone cold, the door creaks open. They all startle, shifting on the ground and wobbling to their feet as the blood rushes to their legs. It’s just Charlie, shadows under his eyes and he looks so familiar, half broken, that Puffy wonders how she had never seen it before.

He doesn’t even attempt at a smile, he just says, his throat slightly hoarse and dry, “I’ve got her into the bath, she’s safe enough to be alone but I think it’s best if she isn’t.” Charlie looks directly at her and Puffy hears what he doesn’t say, Would you go to her and She needs you. 

But it is unsaid, because she knows on some level that Charlie would never ask this of her. She knows that he would go so damn far for the people around him, but he won’t be like his monsters. He won’t ask Puffy, her throat a new shade of purple and pain, to comfort the person who did it even if that was never her intention. 

Charlie knows, she suddenly thinks, he knows what it’s like to love someone and to be so damn terrified of them your bones ache. This might be one of the few things he’ll never ask of her. So it’s a good thing he doesn’t need to.

She hands her mug to Sneeg, and says just as quietly, “There’s some easy bake brownies that Niki loves in the pantry. Don’t take much effort.” And just as they had helped her, she helps them, she gives them something mindless to keep themselves occupied. Because there is no way in hell any of them are leaving before seeing Niki again.

They all shift, and the relief is palpable in the air. As Ethan brushes past her he pauses, looking at her like he’s trying to find something. Eventually he stops and just says simply, “For whatever it’s worth, Niki loves you so damn much. She let you in, she doesn't do that.” 

Then he’s gone, and once again Puffy is reeling because how does she respond to that? 

So instead of pondering that loaded sentence, instead of thinking of the person she’d die for, kill for, create a better world for, Puffy straightens her back and walks into her bedroom. It’s dark but the light from underneath the bathroom illuminates a strip of space, and her room is a mess. The bedsheets torn off, blankets everywhere, and small things thrown about.

Like an animal, like a terrified feral animal ran through here. She can see it so suddenly it’s almost sickening, Niki desperately clawing her way through the room, looking for an answer, for an escape. The shadows and her nightmares, or were they memories, having turned a safe place into a monstrous one - into a place that needed surviving.

Pain nearly strangles her, or maybe it’s just agony. The pain has nothing to do with her bruises or slightly damaged vocal chords, it’s just sorrow. Puffy knows then that she’ll never quite stop grieving for Niki, for all that was taken from them, for all that they survived and continue surviving. 

She walks across to the bathroom and knocks softly, “Love?” To her credit her voice doesn’t break.

There’s a moment of tense silence, and in it her fear grows that somehow Niki’s managed to jump out of the window or slit her wrists, but then, so quiet she almost misses it, “Come in.”

Puffy slowly opens the door, giving Niki time to change their mind, to tell her to get out. Nothing comes and she slips inside the bathroom. There is a pile of clothes by the door, and Niki is curled in her clawfoot tub, their hair piled on top of their head, the water slipping over their chest.

They meet eyes and Puffy isn’t sure who looks worse, her with the bruises and the shadows under her eyes, of Niki and the scratch lines on the side of her face from clawing it and this haunted look in her eyes. There is a moment in which they take the other in, a moment full of tense, desperate love. And then it snaps - 

The logical part that’s taken seminars on abuse and survivors says she shouldn’t make sudden movements, but the girl that’s in love with Niki can’t help it. Puffy’s across the room in seconds, stumbling into kneeling beside the tub, not touching, not without her say. All that she can manage is a broken, “Oh love.” 

Niki’s face scrunches up like they might cry, but instead they carefully lift their hand up. When Puffy doesn’t flinch back their hands hover above her neck, above the bruises that would fit perfectly against their palm. “Verzeih mir. Sorry, I’m sorry, so sorry.”

Because to Niki the worst thing in the world is hurting the people she loves, is being the reason behind their pain. Puffy doesn’t know what’s worse, that or the reason as to why, the monster she doesn’t know. 

Like Niki, because they both crave touch, both sink into warmth and human connection like it’ll sustain them, Puffy raises her hand. When they don’t shake their head or flinch away she carefully holds their face, her thumb almost immediately brushing back and forth.

Niki leans into her touch, the water lapping against the tub’s edge as she shifts. Puffy’s crying now, because she has a feeling this girl is gonna break her heart, and be the reason why she loves so greatly it hurts. She leans forward, and she’s still kneeling on the ground and the tub’s edge digs into her ribs but Puffy doesn’t give a damn, she’d suffer through hell to hold this girl.

She leans forward, gently resting their heads together, and Niki smells like roses, like her body wash and that’s another way to break her heart. She whispers over Niki’s painful sobs, “It is not your fault, you had a reaction and I have seen enough that I should have thought for a moment before touching you. It is not your fault.”

Niki’s fingers dig into the back of her neck, and she hadn't even noticed her reaching out, Puffy had just felt safe. “I hurt you, I hurt you. I promised I would never do that, not again. I promised myself that I would be better.”

And this, Puffy knows, is a wound that goes deeper than one nightmare and freak reaction. She knows that this is an old sort of hurt, one that she cannot fix with a simple touch. She knows that this is far deeper than a bruise, and she knows from the scars of the boys in her kitchen, from Rae’s stutter and the way she claws at her throat like it was stolen from her, from Charlie’s bad days and the way he had looked at Rae with pure terror on them.

She knows that nothing about this is simple or kind.

So Puffy doesn’t ask or push, she holds Niki close and says over and over again, “I forgive you. I forgive you and I love you. I forgive you.” She cannot save Niki, not from the monsters of Before or the ones that still haunt her now. Puffy cannot save Niki, but she can love her, without hesitation or question.

And love will not save either of them, but it is a kindness they are long owed. 

Puffy kneels beside Niki, bruises fresh on her throat, and the both of them break beneath the weight of their grief and pain. She holds the love of her life, and swears on the Gods she believes in out of anger, that this won’t be the thing that kills them, she won’t let it be. 

Puffy holds Niki, and Niki holds her back. It’s enough, they’ll make it enough.

Chapter Text

On her worst days, Niki woke up and thought about all the ways she could kill herself. 

A bathtub filled to the top, a razor to her wrist, and death in the form of a red-tinted oblivion. A bottle of pills, either the pain meds for Austin or the anxiety for Ranboo. Stepping off a building, the air whipping around her, the feeling of flying before the abrupt end. Stepping off the bridge she passes on her morning run, the feeling of flying and then ice-cold water consuming her.

A bundle of rope, a gun and a burning muzzle, a car in a garage, and carbon monoxide in her lungs. On and on and on, there are so many ways she could go, so many ways she could do it. And Niki has felt almost every one of them.

It's like this - 

The Generations never really come back, not in clear, simple pictures, but they echo. Like Charlie remembering Rae, and how Rae knows what they had looked like as children, or how Ethan knows instinctively what flavor ice cream Mark likes, or Amy’s favorite color. It’s like Sneeg and how churches always ring hollow.

The Generations don’t come back, but they echo, and for Niki, it’s always her pain, always. Hannah’s beautiful eyes, and the way her face contorted with agony and grief the last time she saw her. The feeling of an ax shattering bone and blood, red splattering on Sneeg’s face. And -

Niki remembered her pain, and she remembered her shaking defiance. She remembers fighting and fighting and fighting, and there was always so much blood. She remembers the end of it all, not the first or last end. She remembers deciding to die on her terms, the last act of disobedience she had left.

Because if she couldn't live than God help her, her death would be her own.

She remembers death and how it was her barred teeth and shaking, she remembers death as a refuge and a respite. Now she has to struggle not to sink back into old ways, into the familiarity of slipping into water and how blood blossoms around her. 

Now she has to remember that death is permanent, that they got out and for better or worse there were no second chances. It’s harder than it should be. 

The first time it happened only Austin was home, off in another room and going about his day. She had woken up already half gone, drifting through the apartment like a ghost, a haunting without the dead. Later Niki won’t recall any specific moment that broke through the gray. Later all she’ll remember is the black and white tile on the bathroom floor, and the razor biting into her palm.

Water lapped at her waist, warm enough that it slowly made her body buzz with life. But it wasn’t enough. She had tilted back her head, hair unbraided and soaking with water, and tenderly traced her arm.

The razor had been about to bite in, and Niki was listening for Them. For the beat of footsteps and the hum of electricity, for terrible laughter that was overlaid on top of screams and every one of them was just a pawn. Instead, she got You’ll never get away from the sound of the women that loved you. 

Niki paused, her fingers curled around cool metal, and sat up. Water splashed over the side of the tub, and her clothes shifted to cold rather quickly in the air. She looked around, and there was not the subtle red of Showfall, how it seeped into every crevice and crack. 

There was an empty bottle of Ethan’s hair dye, a light purple this time, a reclamation of sorts. Beside it was Ranboo’s collection of nail polish in a small wicker basket. If she tried hard enough, she could still smell the acidic nail polish remover from where they had spilled it. A small plastic duck with a cowboy hat smiled at her from a top shelf.

Oh, oh. 

The razor dropped into the water from her now numb fingers. Niki stared at the absurd amounts of bottles of hair products and body washes, because they all had different tastes and god didn’t they deserve something nice? She wasn’t, she wasn’t in Showfall, in another refractured, breaking Generation.

They hadn’t gotten out, and Death was very permanent in this world. 

Niki remembered her pain, and in the beginning, it had been instinct. In the beginning, she truly hadn’t wanted to die even as she tried to kill herself. Because what was death to someone who had died a hundred times, a thousand times already? 

She hadn’t wanted to die in the beginning, but then as she started remembering, as the world continued turning and she was seemingly stuck in the past and scars of Showfall, that changed. It was slow, and then it wasn’t. 

It spiraled, and suddenly when she woke up with her body aching, scars she no longer had burning, Niki had to fight the urge to go - To find a way and go, to sink into blissful darkness with the knowledge that there would be no pain again. That she would never wake up, and thus would never hurt again.

She’ll find herself hunched over in her bed, fingers twisted in her hair and tugging, the pinpricks of pain a welcome relief. And as the world burns, as it shrieks and red seeps into the floorboards and the sickening snap of her arm under the ax echoes in the air and -

Muffled laughter, the smell of pancakes and far too expensive perfume. Rough German tripping off the tongue, telling crude jokes, and it’s easy to picture Rae’s head thrown back, hair tumbling down her back and a smile pulling on her lips. A one-sided argument through the walls, Ethan’s voice filled with too much love for him to sound actually angry. 

Her hands slip from her hair, and she breathes in and out.

On her worst days Niki wakes up and thinks about all the ways she could kill herself. And then she forces to breath in and out, in and out. To get out of her bed and brush her hair and tilt back her head and listen to the sound of life - to the sound of her family alive and lovely. 

On her worst days she thinks about how easy, how familiar it would be to go, and then she remembers the things she has to make her stay. Happiness, domesticity and joy seeping into every part of her life isn’t something Niki is used to, it’s not something she knows. Oh, but she could learn.

Ranboo’s nail polish staining the white tiles, and Ethan and her hair dye taking up a shelf. Sneeg’s wooden, worn cross on the wall across from Vinny’s shelf of favorite trinkets. Austin’s cologne and Rae’s perfume dangerously close to mixing, or falling to pieces and making the bathroom permanently smell of mint and oak. 

Yes, Niki could learn to live with this. She could learn to live for this.