Chapter Text
Tamesis doesn’t remember where he got his name.
In all honesty, he doesn’t remember a lot of things. He recalls blinding white light and the precise sting of a scalpel on skin; meeting haunted too-green eyes in a room not made to fit the both of them. It’s all in blurry flashes, unfinished halves and swirling colours. Tamesis doesn’t think he’s supposed to exist. A lot of days, it seems like Hugo shares that notion.
Cautious, wary, guarded: his… Brother(? Is that what Hugo is?) spends many of the early months looking upon Tamesis with suspicion. Tamesis isn’t stupid– he can recognise resentment when he sees it, and there’s undoubtedly some within Hugo’s initial flatly polite demeanour around him. He saw somewhere that people are warmer towards that which they are familiar with. Tamesis supposes this doesn’t really apply to the creature wearing your face.
Hugo does warm up to him with time. Tamesis makes a valiant effort to grow on him despite their immediate tenseness, though he can’t help but feel somewhat like a parasite as he does so. He’s persistent, and stubborn, and loud in his affection and his teasing. In time, Tamesis knows Hugo better than he knows himself, but that still doesn’t mean he understands him.
Aside from appearances, they’re almost polar opposites in their interests and attitudes. Tamesis finds companionship with a rat as lonely as he is, Hugo backs away from them both whilst trying to hide his rapidly whitening complexion. Tamesis wears flashy, vibrant colours intended to draw attention away from the genes he stole, Hugo adorns soft, muted shades of green and teal. Tamesis is rowdy and quick to argue, Hugo stays quiet and tries to clean up his messes.
Because Tamesis makes a lot of messes.
The world is still so new to him, even after almost a year of experiencing it. Every new sound and scent lights an excited fire in his chest that he couldn’t quell if he tried, but if Hugo is tired of Tamesis’ relentless awe at it all (which he almost certainly is), he doesn’t show it. Violet mocks him for it, Darian hides his sniggers, Aaron convinces him to eat the inedible. Tamesis learns not to be gullible. He aspires for their level, and before long, he manages to reach it.
(Charlotte seems worried for him, Ava looks upon him with confusion and concern in her wide eyes, Mike appears to pity him. Tamesis doesn’t need their worry, doesn’t need their concern, and he certainly doesn’t want pity. It’s not like he’ll ever be as good as they are anyway.)
Tamesis likes his siblings– most of them, anyway. There are bits and pieces of them that he wants to see in himself, that he haphazardly shoves into his facsimile of an identity like a toddler hoarding toys. Tamesis came into the world at fourteen, body matured and his brain struggling to catch up. Perhaps that’s why Mr Huxley calls him childish so very often.
He admires Cathy’s focus, and Tyler’s confidence, and Izzy’s endurance, and Charlotte’s sweetness, and Violet’s boldness, and Hughley’s optimism, and Felix’s dramatic nature, and Sora’s privacy, and Aaron’s trickiness, and Harvey’s independence, and Linda’s care for Chloe, and Chloe’s nonchalance around being considered an oddity, and Darian’s sharpness, and Door’s strength, and Ana’s chaos, and Ted’s complaisance, and Asahi’s smiles, and Peso’s flamboyance, and Cal’s commitment to what he loves, and Ava’s patience, and Kai’s ability to put on a facade.
…Tamesis tends to forget about Mike. That’s not to say he doesn’t like him, it’s just– Mike is– Tamesis doesn’t–...
Mike usually stays in the shadows. He’s fine with being forgotten, with the idea that he’s just another child in a long lineage of Huxleys. But Tamesis doesn’t even know if he qualifies as one considering how he was made, and despises the notion that he’s just another failed attempt at the perfect heir when he wasn’t even that. He looks in the mirror and he sees Hugo, he looks over his shoulder and catches a glimpse of Mike. Tamesis won’t be forgotten. He refuses to be.
Piecing together the vague dredges of his earliest memories is an arduous and sisyphean ordeal, but he can’t help but try to do so over and over and over again. Tamesis doesn’t remember where he got his name. Once he gains access to the Internet, he decides to look it up.
Dark One, it tells him. His blood rushes through him like a river, dizzying his mind and swallowing his thoughts. The strange sensation of being suddenly plunged underwater envelops Tamesis as his chest constricts and his vision darkens. Dark One.
He rejects that. He rejects everything he’s supposed to be and everything he isn’t, because he’s human , he’s in control, he has to be. He’s not an imitation, he’s not a puppet, he’s not a monster. He’s a person. He’s human.
…Tamesis looks up Hugo’s next.
Hugo is bright. Hugo is intelligence, and warmth, and all the thoughts that come with being born human. Hugo’s the heart, revived but beating steadily, grown in the womb and so much slower than Tamesis’ own. Hugo is light.
It’s not fair, Tamesis thinks as the words glare into his aching eyes. Of course even his name highlights all that is wrong with his existence. Tamesis is a mistake, a parasite, a shadow given sentience. He’s darkness and he’s poison and he’s so, so tired of trying to be a person when he has no idea how to act like one.
Tamesis wants to crawl out of skin that isn’t his own, feeling flames that aren’t there lick at it as though foreshadowing his fate. Invisible blisters erupt in silent agony as his hands thread through tangled hair, and Tamesis wonders why he’s still here. The brightness of his shirt makes his eyes prickle with exhausted tears, or perhaps that’s just due to the torturous twisting inside of his chest. Cans of energy drinks lay crushed and discarded on the floor of Hugo’s room, and for once in his life, Tamesis does all he can to stay quiet. It’s late, the moon providing a thin sliver of light that slithers through the pitch black of the witching hour. Dark one. It makes sense he’s still aware while the rest of the world is wrapped in blissful rest.
Tamesis doesn’t remember where he got his name. But he thinks he can understand why he was branded with it.