Chapter Text
Cleo’s apartment in the near-surface was a cramped little place. She preferred it that way. Built into the cavern wall a short walk from the school she’d restarted over twenty years ago now when she’d barely been old enough to consider herself capable of teaching. It hadn’t been what she’d set out to do, but then, that in and of itself was rather the stretch.
What had she set out to do?
In the early moments of their life, it wasn’t like there was much to seek or remember. She’d been an orphan of the depths, a zombie mutant. Long tangled orange hair, and blue and mint-green skin continuously peeling from their flesh, but strangely that didn’t hurt all too much. Most zombie mutants would have those tears sewn up, giving them their iconic stitches as they matured and their skin tightened and firmed together, stopped giving way so easily as it did in youth. She’d just arrived home from another day at work, wrangling unruly children of all sorts of sub-species, some of whom commuted up from the lower levels to their school. The best in under-city.
The critic in them would say there wasn’t much competition.
But that’s far too cynical.
She dropped their keys in the bowl on the tiny front entryway table and ducked to enter the apartment. The small doorway was more like a hobbit hole entrance, an arch of stone brick that had additional security doors in it, which could seal the entire apartment off from the small entryway if ever necessary. Once upon a time, those precautions had been in frequent use.
The chaos of those days was twenty years ago. There were full-grown adults who roamed this city who didn’t remember it. Cleo was glad for that. Really, she was. To have played a role in bringing about the relative peace of today was one of the highest achievements of their life.
In fact, she’d probably rank it second.
The reestablishment and overhaul of the under-city school system, the fight to make the rail carts and commuting lines safer, and the rush of the first days of revolution could still jitter them all the way down to the bones.
Their loafers were soft-bottomed, making nothing but a gentle padding noise, and she headed into the living room. It was tight, with a sloping ceiling and two tiny hobbit-like doors leading off to one side, to the two bedrooms. A kitchen was crammed into one corner, with barely enough counter space to manage to fit their coffee machine, which had its front lip off the edge. A single well-loved, beaten-up sofa was set on a plush mossy green carpet. He’d picked it out. He loved that color. She could still recall the incredible joy written on his young face when they’d first moved into this tiny little apartment. With its concerning wobbly, narrow, chute-like elevator that he’d insisted was the coolest thing ever.
Honestly, he’d been a ten-year-old in a somehow successful resistance when lawlessness had overtaken the city, and still, the tiniest things had made him light up.
And perhaps that was their greatest achievement of all.
In some small way, she’d given him the chance to see the sun. When maybe he’d have ended up forgotten in the depths or swallowed by the chaos of the implosion of the labs after the director's death. Instead, he’d grown up here with them, and it was still such a ridiculous thing to imagine, even nearly twenty-five years on.
She had just dropped their tote bag onto the coffee table, kicking off their loafers and turning to make an evening espresso, when their phone rang in the back pocket of their jeans. The cheerful clatter of bells was a unique ringtone, and she didn’t even need to look at the screen to see who it was.
She pulled it out and answered, tucking the device to their ear as she began rummaging with the coffee machine.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Mom! You home yet?”
She quirked an eyebrow. “Yes? Do you need something?”
“No, no, I’m fine, I’m uh-I’m great, actually. I was just, y’know, thinking maybe I’d come spend the night and see ya!”
Cleo made a thoughtful noise in their throat. “Uh-huh. And this totally has nothing to do with how I heard from Doc that there’s a blackout near your apartment, does it?”
On the other end of the line, their son gasped and sputtered as if this was some great offense. “What-no! No! Never! I’m a grown man, and I’m perfectly capable of dealing with the dark, thank you very much.”
Cleo couldn’t without the small giggle that slipped out, which triggered another round of pushbacks. “I can hear you laughing!”
“I’m not laughing at you, Bdubs.”
“Oh really?”
“Well, maybe I’m laughing at you a little bit.”
“You, I-I can’t believe…y’know what I was gonna, gonna go by and get your favorite pie from Joel and Lizzie’s on my way up, I even called ahead for it and everything, but maybe I oughtta cancel!”
Cleo laughed harder this time, a loud belly laugh at Bdubs' comical level of distress, but then, this was how he always behaved, and she knew he was acting it up purely for the humor.
Making them laugh helped ward off the dark in its own way.
She wiped a tear of mirth from their mismatched eyes. “Aw, no, don’t do that! I’m sorry, you’re very brave, yes, I’m sure you just want to keep me company in this very brightly lit apartment.”
Because, yes, their apartment was incredibly well-lit. With fairy lights strung thick over the ceiling, two lamps on either side of the couch, a can light built in above the kitchen, and another in the entryway. Plus, little decorative nightlights plugged into each electric socket, still exactly where they’d been when Cleo had first placed them there when the two of them had moved into this apartment together so many years ago.
“Exactly,” Bdubs said the word with gravitas as if his point had been proven before he broke down into a couple of poorly smothered sniggers.
“Ok, I’ll see you in a bit, love you.”
“Love you too, be safe coming up.”
“Will do!”
He hung up.
Cleo smiled down at their phone screen a moment before shoving the device back into their pocket again. The coffee machine was whirring away to make their evening espresso, and she made their way around the apartment. She usually only left one lamp on, but knowing Bdubs was on his way over, she hit the second lamp and plugged in the fairy lights, setting the whole of the small arched ceiling aglow.
Surrounded by light, she went back to the machine to fetch their mug, then to the couch. Plopping down, she turned on the TV and began to browse for something decent to watch, knowing it’d soon be interrupted by a knock on the door.
And she hadn’t thought, as she’d been struggling all that time ago, that she’d ever serve for much of a parental figure. Love had been a foreign concept, and the attitude had always been to save yourself and let the world burn behind you.
What a complete coin flip those few days had been for them.
From a desire to do anything for their own survival to being willing to toss it all away for the sake of a single precious little light.
Twenty-Seven Years Ago
It was a mess.
A right mess.
Cleo dragged themself a few inches further along the trash heap, orange hair long, dirty and tangled down their back. Caught into it were pieces of refuse, all the junk that had fallen down with them. She wore a tattered oversized button-down that might’ve been white in a previous life, but by now was stained with muck and grime. Fitted tight shorts beneath that left their legs open and exposed for the pure reason that it made things for the director easier.
Honestly, Cleo should’ve run the moment they’d seen the officers.
But she’d just been so hungry. And they’d offered food.
It had been impossible to escape after that.
The wardship program had once been a benevolent practice, a way for the labs to help support the abandoned orphans of the depths who seemed the multiply like fleas. Those the most powerful of the city would rather take advantage of or turn a blind eye toward. What had once been kindness had ended up just the same once the current director had taken over.
She was possessed by an insatiable curiosity, and it didn’t take longer than one or two words with the cow hybrid to realize she must be insane.
But she was the most powerful person in the under-city, and Cleo was an abandoned zombie mutant with nowhere else to go. She’d spent several years in the wardship program. It was a brutal education, concepts pounded into their head at a dizzying speed. She had never been the most talented with redstone, so they’d aimed her into other academic pursuits. Maybe she’d have been a lucky one, become an officer of the labs with power and prestige once she’d aged out…if she hadn’t caught the directors attention.
The reasoning she’d never been given. The director didn’t care for that sort of thing, anything unnecessary was tossed away. Names included.
G3 was what Cleo had gone by for those years, but of course, she’d never let go of their name. She knew there were orphans in the wardship program who’d been taken in younger than them who’d never known their names, and so they’d have to come up with their own, or merely accept the numbers stamped to their papers.
Groaning, she strained to reach out, dragging themself another few painful inches forward, a process that had been going on for hours now. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since she’d been gotten rid of.
The director had been working on augmentations to balance some of the mutants who had uneven distribution or otherwise lame limbs thanks to their sub-species. Cleo had been perfectly fine with their legs, thank you, so what if she’d walked with a slight shuffling limp, that was how all zombie mutants were, it hadn’t bothered them any. But it had made them a good test subject, and why them over the dozen other zombie mutants in the program?
Well, Cleo had been about to age out.
In fact, unless she’d lost consciousness for longer than she thought during the operations, today was their eighteenth birthday.
Happy birthday to me…
The cynicism of the thought forced a bitter cry of laughter from their dry lips. The director always wanted to drip every ward dry, and for those lucky enough to keep their heads down and make it through the program without being selected for augmentation, well, that meant someone always had to be the sacrifice. To keep that madwoman’s attention elsewhere.
Elsewhere, in the past few days, had been Cleo.
And she had a malfunctioning augmented leg to show for it.
Their left leg had been removed and replaced from a line of stitching that had once run around their mid-thigh and all the way down. Gleaming metal plates grafted and smoothed to resemble the proper curve of a thigh into a knee socket, calves into the ankle, and a foot.
Small problem being none of it worked.
Cleo could manage to hobble along, but the joints and biotech that should’ve allowed it to function in time with the firing of their nerves were sluggish. To place any weight on the thing for longer than an instant or two completely threw off their balance, pain would spark up their hip and spine, and they’d collapse when the augmented legs knee buckled from the force.
The director had taken a few minutes to watch this. Watch Cleo pathetically attempting to walk on this cruel device forced onto them, and then lost interest.
A failure. Dispose of it.
So she’d been tossed down a trash chute back to the depths where they’d found them.
Leaving them here, lying splayed on the heaps of redstone parts, bits and pieces of junk and equipment from the labs above, and other sorts of garbage, gasping for breath after dragging themself a few more yards away from the chute where she’d landed. Honestly, it was a miracle she’d survived the fall. Zombie mutants were tougher than your average under-city folk, able to take some pretty big hits and keep moving, but even still, a fall from this distance really should’ve killed them. Trash heaps apparently made for good landing pads.
To have snapped their neck and died in the fall, though...maybe that would’ve been a merciful thing.
No way!
Cleo heaved their weight up by the arms again, trembling with exertion as she started moving again. Crawling along dragging the heavy dead weight that was now their augmented left leg was not easy, but after a bit longer, she managed their way off the main trash pile to the wall. Dim redstone circuit lights blinked and whirled along wiring through the walls and ceiling, the direction of the lights would guide them back to the main cavern.
As if anyone there would help them.
Letting out a tremendous heaving moan, she turned over and sat back against the wall, arms and one functional leg shaking. Their stomach gnawed, hunger already beginning to make itself known. She hadn’t eaten anything for probably over a day by this point.
Slowly, she let their eyes wander along the ceiling, which arched upward, dark craggy stone, to the trash chute, a brightly lit column that dared to cruelly imitate salvation. Of course, it had been a one-way trip.
I’m so tired.
It was a mundane thought. Their body was throbbing with aches and pains, exhaustion wore to their bones, beneath teal blue and mint green skin stitched up by biotech gleaming thread by the labs when they’d first taken them in years ago. Back then, it’d seemed like safety.
Safety doesn’t exist…not around here.
She let their head clunk back against the stone behind them and closed their eyes. In some quiet, terrified corner of their mind, where someone hardly removed from childhood cowered, she wondered if she’d ever manage to open them again.
Later
Cleo was awoken by someone shaking their arm. She lolled their head left, stringy portions of orange hair tumbling past mint green shoulders.
“Hey…hey!” A voice wobbly and young was hissing near their ear.
She forced her eyes open. For a moment, their vision was so bleary she could hardly even make out any shapes. Their stomach delivered sharp pangs of hunger, and she found a whimper crawling up their throat and escaping past dry cracked lips.
Then finally, she convinced their gaze to focus.
Kneeling at their side, shaking their arm, was a little boy.
Cleo would guess he was maybe six or seven. Scrawny, with a shock of fluffy dark brown hair spiking up from his head at all sorts of wild angles. His nose was a bit crooked like it had been broken and never properly set. His eyes were dark mossy green, wide and round as they stared into their face. He was positively tiny. Standing up beside them, Cleo still sat slumped back against the wall, he was barely above them. Wearing a ratty old red tee shirt covered with stains and grime, and jeans that were far to over large, cuffed up multiple times over bare feet. He continued to shake their arm.
“You awake?” He asked. His voice peaked sharply against their ears, and Cleo blinked a few times, trying to clear the fog from their head.
“I…am.” She worked the words out, their tongue felt heavy. Shifting, she sat themself back up properly against the wall. Then, she turned their gaze onto the boy.
“Who are you?” She asked.
“I wanted ta ask you that.” He replied.
Fair enough.
She considered because she was rather the oddity here, wasn’t she? After all, the boys' eyes were mostly staying trained on their face, but would occasionally dart down to their augmented leg, stuck out awkwardly.
“My names Cleo. What’s yours?”
“M’Bdubs!” He leaned down and grabbed their hand, which she didn’t have the energy to lift, shaking it a few times. Then, he gently set it down again, recognizing it was little more than dead weight right now.
Cleo was surprised by his thoughtfulness.
“Bdubs…nice to meet you.” She said, their tone stilted, head still swimming.
“What-uh, what happened to yer leg?” He pointed at it.
Well, children were blunt, even those raised by the depths. Not like Cleo knew quite yet if Bdubs was all alone, but considering she’d come from a place not dissimilar to this, probably not all too far away, in the depths as well…it was likely.
She took a rattling breath, trying to come up with some sort of reply, but then Bdubs waved his hands rapidly. “Wait, wait, wait! Never good to try so hard when yer hurt! Are you hurt?”
What?
Cleo didn’t even know what that meant, but she played along. “Ah, I’m not…not hurt really…just…not feeling too good.”
Bdubs nodded sagely, or so she supposed he thought he must look. Then he glanced around and put a finger up. “Wait right here!”
As if I’m planning on moving…
Cleo bit back the sarcasm, considering again this was just a little kid, and watched him go scrambling off along the trash heaps, away into a tunnel opening further down from the wall she’d dragged themself to.
A few minutes later, she could hear his footsteps approaching back, bare feet slapping on the stone, and he rounded the corner. His oversized ratty tee was hanging nearly off one shoulder, and he hurried up to them. He had the front of his tee shirt pulled up to form a hammock, which he lowered to reveal what he’d brought.
Cleo felt their heart sputter, and the burst of energy it gave made them manage to raise a quaking hand.
A plastic bottle of water, and two squarish cookie tins.
As Bdubs dropped to his knees next to them to unload his cargo, Cleo found themself shaking their head.
“Hey, where’d you get that stuff?”
“…found it…stole it…” Bdubs replied idly, like it was no big deal. To be fair, it wasn’t. That was more than expected of a child in the depths, Cleo had been in his shoes a few years ago…but that begged another question.
“Why are you giving it to me?” She asked, and Bdubs looked up at them as he removed one of the cookie tin lids, revealing a sleeve of stale biscuits inside. Those mossy green eyes bored into their expression, but it was only a split-second of hesitation.
“Because yer hungry, duh.” He replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Then he pulled a biscuit out and offered it to them. She tried to raise a shaky hand to take it, and Bdubs shook his head.
“You’ll drop it! Here!” He bypassed trying to hand them to biscuit and instead just shoved it into their mouth. Cleo was surprised by the sudden mouthful of food but would never complain of it. She bit the biscuit in half, chewed, swallowed, and Bdubs pushed the other half into their mouth. Even with just that small bit of food, their head started to settle from the dizzy swimming it’d been doing. Bdubs then uncapped the bottle of water he’d brought.
“Hey, you keep that. It’s already half empty.” She said, and Bdubs gasped as if he were tremendously offended. He shuffled on his knees a bit closer and put the water bottle up to their lips, even as she tried to turn their head away.
Why, exactly, she was trying to refuse was something to unpack later.
Why she’d been willing to do anything to survive, and yet, right here and now, she couldn’t bear to take such precious supplies from a little boy who clearly had nothing to his own name, either.
“It’s not half empty! It’s half full, can’t ya see?”
Cleo felt a bit of that weariness being sloughed off their shoulders at his overblown expression and the way his voice pitched up and down excessively. Like he had to put all the energy he had into making his point.
“…oh, my apologies. Half full, of course, how could I be so stupid.” She found themself mumbling. Straightening their head again, she accepted a few small sips from the water bottle before Bdubs drew it away again.
“Feel better?” He asked as he carefully screwed the cap tightly shut. Large, round, mossy green eyes gazed into Cleo’s face.
She forced a weak smile. “Oh, loads better.”
Now she was lying for the sake of him keeping the rest of these precious things to himself since she knew honesty on their part would result in him trying to give them more.
“You’re being awfully nice to a stranger. Don’t you know that’s a bad idea, down here?” Cleo asked him as Bdubs sealed his cookie tin again. Then, he stacked the two cookie tins side by side with the plastic water bottle against the wall and turned to sit back in front of them, hiding them behind his oversized tee shirt. Cleo didn’t want to imagine how scrawny he was under those frumpy clothes. Far too little for his age, probably.
“Hm. Yeah. But you know you-uh-had yer eyes closed…and you didn’t have nothing good on ya, and you weren’t waking up so…”
“You tried to rob me?” Cleo cut him off, and Bdub’s expression turned frog-like. His lips pulled tightly together, mossy green eyes turned away up toward the ceiling, and he whistled innocently.
Or, well, he tried too.
Rather difficult, considering he obviously didn’t know how to whistle.
Cleo tossed their head back against the stone wall behind them, and against all the odds, she laughed. Loud and hard, till their belly hurt and their cheeks ached, and tears of mirth were burning in their eyes.
Bdubs huffed. “You’re making fun of me!” He exclaimed.
Cleo shook their head hurriedly, as best as she could, considering how exhausted she still was. “No, no, I’m not. I promise.”
“Then why’re ya laughing?”
“…because you’re funny. Thank you, Bdubs. You’re very sweet.”
A few seconds ticked by, and then Bdubs’ eyes drifted to their leg again.
“So what happened to yer leg?”
Cleo snorted again, humor punched out from how fast he’d changed gears.
“Ah…let’s see…”
She considered for a few moments, then, with the regained strength from the biscuit and water she’d just been fed, she raised one hand to roll their fingers a few times in a poor imitation of claws.
“…a super mean, super scary lady took it!” She seized out at the air with the hand before letting it flop back to the ground beside them.
Bdubs gasped. “Oh no!”
Cleo nodded with an expression of played-up graveness. “Oh yes! She took my leg and put this new one on me, but this one is a right mess of a leg, honestly, she did a terrible job!”
“A bad leg repair?”
“Awful. No stars.” Cleo agreed, then carried on.
“And then she decided to throw me down here! So here I am. With this mess of a leg.” She raised a hand to pat at the metal grafting into their thigh on their augmented leg. It was so new she’d barely gotten used to it, the feeling of cold metal against their fingertips.
“That sucks,” Bdubs said, staring down at their leg again, and then he looked around.
“So whatcha gonna do now?”
Cleo sighed heavily. “That’s a good question…I dunno.”
Thought maybe I’d just die.
She nearly said it, but again, she held it on their tongue. This little boy didn’t need to be put under the weight of such a sorry statement.
“You can’t just die, though,” Bdubs said matter-of-factly.
Cleo rolled their eyes.
Right.
She’d dared to forget a little boy down here was very different to one from the near-surface. Even if everywhere in the under-city lived under constant strain, there was nothing that quite compared to these trash chutes and tunnels.
“Who taught you your manners?” She found themself mumbling under their breath, almost to themself.
“Nobody,” Bdubs replied promptly.
Cleo flicked their eyes down to Bdubs. They trailed over his scrawny form. He’d pulled his knees up to his chest and was hugging them. Like he was suddenly thinking too hard, his expression had grown dark and crestfallen.
“What’s it like having someone like that? Who’d teach you manners? Is that what parents do?” He asked, and Cleo gave the smallest shrug.
“I haven’t the foggiest clue…never had any myself.”
“Me neither. Who needs’em, right? I can…be just fine all alone…even in the dark.”
Cleo turned their gaze now up toward the light beaming down from the trash chute and recognized it was starting to dim. The night cycle was approaching, then. Soon it’d get much darker in here.
“You don’t like the dark, huh?”
“I mean, I…it’s not…I don’t not like it! I’m not scared of it or nothing!” Bdubs snapped back, and Cleo clicked their tongue.
“No need to get testy.” She said. “…where do you usually sleep?”
Bdubs fidgeted with the fabric of his oversized jeans, legs still drawn to his chest. “Wherever’s brightest I can find.”
Cleo eyebrow raised, because as the light began to go down, she noticed something. Bdubs’ hair was starting to shift colors. From dark brown, it was lightening in streaks, and his eyes were changing.
Mossy green turned silver.
Brown turned white.
And glowed.
“You’re a glare mutant?” Cleo asked, and he curled into himself tighter but nodded. This sudden turn toward a gloomy mood didn’t suit his overblown personality from minutes earlier.
“Well, no small wonder you don’t like the dark.”
“I didn’t say…” He began, but he was cut off by a large yawn.
Cleo didn’t know much about glare mutants. What she did know was that they were sensitive to the dark, and that they needed a lot of sleep, so they made bad fits for the wardship program. The director had never shown much interest in them, or so she’d assumed, considering she’d never met one in their years as a ward of the labs.
Somehow, strangely, she felt a stab of relief.
Knowing that Bdubs was unlikely to ever come into contact with those blinding white hallways and cold operating tables.
But she’d only just met the kid, so what did she care?
Cleo considered for a moment longer. “Y’know, when it’s scary to fall asleep, I like to sing songs. It distracts me.”
Bdubs’ eyelids were drooping over his now shining silver pupils, they gleamed like running mercury. His hair continued to shift, and more and more brown was overtaken by white, till pretty soon there was none of the darker color left. It was all white. Glowing gently, just enough to illuminate their faces in a half-light as the trash chute began to go dark. Cleo had never seen a night sky, but she'd seen pictures, and videos, and she'd read about it.
So she liked to imagine the light from Bdubs hair and eyes was like moonlight. Faint, yet distinctive, and just enough to trace patterns by.
“What sorts’a songs do you sing?” Bdubs asked.
Cleo noticed how he’d shifted a bit closer to them.
She must’ve been mucky and gross from laying in a trash heap for the past day or so, but to this one little kid, that didn’t matter.
“Hm…lemme think…” As she said this, she faked a yawn and stretched the arm closer to Bdubs up into the air. The minuscule strength that had returned to them gave away quickly now, but it was with a squeak from the boy that she dragged him under their arm, pinning him to their side with its weight.
“Hey, what do you think yer…” He began to put up a fight, but Cleo leaned their head back against the stone again and started to hum.
At first, it was a lackadaisical melody made up on the spot. Then it morphed into words, lines from old lullabies half-remembered here or there, from moments where she’d been able to leave the blinding white halls of the lab under a chaperone, seeing bits of the near-surface for themself.
Some of them she made up. Some of them she remembered. But they cut off Bdubs’ complaint, and he stopped trying to get out from under their arm.
Before long, he’d fallen asleep, head lolling to the side to rest heavy against their chest, and Cleo stared up at the last fading light from the chute she’d been thrown down.
What to do…as a piece of trash?