Chapter Text
The dinner plates had been cleared. The warmth of the living room was thick with the scent of coffee and quiet conversation. Eleven-year-old Summer, Sarah Lane's daughter, sat right next to Cal Roberts, tho on a separate couch. while Sarah stood near the kitchen doorway, ostensibly cleaning up with Nicole, her sister in law, and joy, her niece. But her focus was absolute, a tight, suffocating spotlight on Cal.
Summer, clearly bored, initiated the conversation, asking him what he liked to do when he was a kid. He had mentioned living with none other than Steve himself, their prophet.
“Hmmh, I'm not sure I remember everything,” Cal said, leaning forward slightly, his expression warm but a little distant, as if viewing a faded photograph. “But we.... We were close, you know. Like... well, he was my adoptive father, so I guess as close as you and Eddie are.”
Summer nodded, interested. “And what did you two do?”
Cal tapped his fingers on his knee, thinking. “He taught us things. He taught me how to paint, for one.” He paused, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his face. His voice raised a little so Sarah could hear him, like he was reminiscing on the good old days. ”Do you remember, Sarah? That small room at the lodge? We used to paint in there.”
Sarah froze, the cloth in her hand dropping silently into the sink. The Lodge. Cal was only about five when his father first took him to Steve, she knew that for the longest time, but what she had only learned recently from Cal's mother was the sick, predatory reason Steve had been so close to Cal and made sure he stayed after his father tried to leave the movement. And Cal, her friend if nothing more, had blocked it out completely. He only remembered play.
The ‘small room’ Cal was talking about was the tent. His mother confirmed it. That’s where it happened about thirty years ago. And he’s talking about it like it’s a happy memory, a footnote about a hobby. The air suddenly felt too thin to breathe. Sarah wanted to collapse right there on the linoleum, a silent, wrenching sob for the little boy who wasn't allowed to live the innocence of a childhood.
Cal, sensing the silence, quickly corrected himself, his tone shifting to a gentle jest. “Or... Maybe he didn't teach you. You were already a good painter. Always so talented.” He smiled warmly at her after the rambling. “Just like Summer,” he added, turning to the giggling girl.
“What else?” The young girl asked.
Cal squinted upwards, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. “We used to.....” The pause was long, an absolute silence that Sarah’s heart beat against. He’s searching deep in there for a safe, replacement memory despite his brain's efforts to erase everything. And he finally found something, “Watch films. Movies.”
“Really! What kind of films?”
“Oh, you know...” He waved his hand vaguely. “What kind of films? I don't really remember.” He chuckled, a self-deprecating sound. “My memory is ghastly. Been failing me lately.” He smiled to Sarah's father who's sitting opposite him in an armchair, jokingly hinting he and the older man shared the same problem. Though Cal wasn't even forty yet. Hank returned the smile and waved his hand dismissively, “Oh, tell me about it, Cal.”
Sarah’s stomach churned. She knew why his memory was ‘Ghastly’, and oh, the casual joke about being old and demented? He really had his brain working overtime. Not only erasing the memories for him as a defense mechanism, but filling the gaps where the trauma had been as well.
You could lie to him about his childhood and his brain will hold onto the lie if it painted the right picture.
He was laughing at the wreckage, at the psychological walls his mind built around his trauma to survive, and it is the most heartbreaking thing Sarah has ever witnessed, she didn't know how long she could last hiding her knowledge before the pressure would be too much.
“We did some roleplay, I think,” Cal continued after squeezing his mind, still fucking smiling. “Or maybe we used to play with dolls?” he second guessed himself, and Summer burst out laughing.
“Hey!” Cal said, mock-defensively. “You asked!” He blushed a little. “Well, I was playing with dolls, he was just trying to entertain me. Maybe little Cal liked to play with dolls, I don't know.” He shrugged, amused, not that embarrassed, just a teeny tiny bit.
“It was one of them, or both,” He shrugged again, he doesn't remember. “We didn't label things, you know.” He tried to clarify, “It was all so.... Um,” He looked for the word. “Casual.” He said and gestured vaguely with his hand as if that explained everything.
Sarah gripped the counter. Casual. The things Cal described as casual were the precise, horrifying activities Steve was manipulating him into thinking it was all they were doing. He doesn't remember the fear or the pain. He only remembers the closeness, warped into the shape of a normal father-son activity. The casualness is the terrifying lie he told himself. Her nails dug into the wooden edge, trying to ground herself in the pain, but the grief for his lost innocence was suffocating, and the guilt for her very conscious decision of inaction was catching up to her.
“We also played sports, I think,” Cal said, then frowned a little. “I'm not sure which ones. We played outside a lot but also sometimes inside.” He trailed, then he looked back at Summer, and silence took place for a few seconds.
He smiled and then ruffled the girl's hair, remembering her painting at the restitution day. “You're a smart girl, Summer. Really talented too. You have to be, you’re your mother’s daughter.” Cal said, turning to Sarah again for confirmation, his eyes searching hers with lost, desperate innocence. “We used to have these.... Um, these.... painting contests, didn't we? Didn't we have those contests, Sarah?”
Sarah's father, sitting in the armchair, jumped in before she could form a reply. “Oh, she used to win all the time.” He said proudly to his granddaughter, “Your mother won everything.”
“There you go,” Cal said to Summer, satisfied he got this one right. “She looked a lot like you when we were your age, too. Especially around the eyes.” He gestured to her beautiful, angelic eyes.
“I'm turning eleven,” Summer informed the man proudly. “Eleven?” He blinked. “Really? woah. I thought you were a lot younger.” He gently pushed her golden locks behind her ear, “You're growing up so fast, kid.” Summer beemed before standing up. “Let me show you my paintings!”
As Summer disappeared, Cal gave a deep sigh of contentment while watching her go, he then shared a look with her grandparents. “Quite passionate too, isn't she?” They all shared a warm smile, although his was a little shy. “Oh, yes, she is.” Gabby, her grandmother, said proudly.
“Am I getting a bit too comfortable in here?” Cal joked when the silence started to feel too thick. “No, dear. You're fine.” The older woman gave him a pat on the shoulder and a warm look which he immediately returned. “It's pretty lovely.” He swallowed before continuing, “The home you've built for your family.”
Noticing the hint of sadness in his eyes, she contemplated pulling him into a hug, telling him he's welcome, but felt it might be too soon for that, she settled on reminding him of the community he's building, “Oh, Cal. you're building a lovely home for the entire movement.”
He nodded thoughtfully at that, “Yeah, maybe I should go outside a bit more.” He half-joked, trying to get the comfortable air back. Fuck his loneliness for now, it didn't matter when he was surrounded by this warmth, he could cry or drink himself to sleep in another night, not tonight.
“I'm back!” summer came back running towards Cal with a stack of canvases. She eagerly showed them to him picture after picture, and he matched her excitement with his reactions, deliberately showing her he really liked them, commenting and noticing details.
One of the pictures was of her family, which he found very beautiful, then two pictures of her brother, Hawk, once with short hair and once with long hair, she put them next to each other for comparison.
“He kinda looks like you now, doesn't he?” Summer asked while pointing to the buzzed hair on the painting, “Yeah, I guess he does.” Cal muttered as he felt the back of his head. Then she showed him a painting of a fancy, pink car.
Sarah was watching them, her throat tight, she was trying to push aside her internal struggles and live the comfort of these precious, safe moments. Even decided to join the conversation to reach that sense of ease and normalcy everyone else was seeming to feel. “Her dream car,” She informed him from the kitchen doorway.
They both looked up at the source of the sound, then back at the painting, “Well, now it's my dream car, too,” Cal declared jokingly as he raised the painting out of the girl's reach.
“But it's pink!” Summer protested, her short arms stretching while trying to reach the painting. “Pink is a beautiful color.” He countered and got a laugh from the family. But when she frowned and crossed her arms, he immediately folded and gave it back. Which she found funny because she was only faking. He playfully rolled his eyes at her.
Then finally, Summer showed him the last one, a painting of a smiling old man in all white and what seemed to be two kids beside him, a girl and a boy. But before Cal could ask who they all were, Summer immediately explained, “Mom said,” She started, pointing at the slightly sad girl in the picture, “That she was a little bit jealous when you were kids. She said she was sad that Steve liked you better than her.”
The sense of ease Sarah was trying to reach immediately shattered and her widened eyes locked with Cal's. The truth of her jealousy was about to collide with the horror of his reality. If he knew his reality like she did, that was.
Cal's smile vanished, replaced with a sad expression. He's had conflict with her about the leadership before, but he hadn't known she was jealous of him when they were kids. His response was immediate, like trying to gather a shattered glass right after it had fallen and been broken. “No, no. He loved us all equally.” He corrected urgently, his hands to everyone in the room, showing his palms as if he were giving one of his lectures.
“He was just my adoptive father because I had a difficult relationship with my parents. That’s all. He loved us all equally.” He specifically told the kid that, everyone else probably knew about his parents and how Steve stepped in.
Sarah felt a cold wave wash over her. He loved us all equally. Cal had no idea how that statement twisted the knife in her guts. Steve did love him better, or at least preferred him for the most awful, ill reasons. He was rewriting the reality to make it palatable, not just for the child he was, but for the man he was now.
His mind was desperately trying to give him an innocent origin story, like as if Steve heroically ended his suffering, his suffering that was just his parents' alcoholism and abuse. And that lie was his anchor. If he pulls it up, he drowns. And she, standing here, was helpless to stop him from clinging to his perfect, terrifying illusion. So what if she was the only one who knew? It wasn't her call to make.
Cal’s eyes fell to the detail in the picture. The drawn figures were simple, but unmistakable, little Cal was holding Steve's hand. Little Sarah was standing next to Steve, her hands at her side.
Cal chuckled as he pointed to himself on the painting, the tension breaking slightly. “You think that's what I looked like as a kid?”
Summer started to defend her drawing, but Cal cut her off with a grin.
“No, no, seriously. Look at me!” He showed the others the picture. “I had hair.” he said mock defensively, “You think a kid would have a stubble and a receding hairline?” He looked at Sarah, begging for a laugh she never gave. “No, I had beautiful, beautiful hair. More beautiful than your mother’s! And, and... Hawk's!”
Summer giggled. “I doubt that.”
Cal leaned close to her, lowering his voice conspiratorially, yet intentionally loud enough for the whole room to hear. “I doubt that too.”
The room was immediately filled with laughter and Sarah’s body felt leaden. She was physically present, having fun with her family, but her mind was entirely isolated, screaming a silent eulogy for the boy standing next to her in the picture.
“And where did all the hair go now?” Summer asked boldly, looking genuinely curious. Cal paused, the easy humor fading slightly. He felt the back of his head again, running his hand over the short cut. He didn't know why, but he just felt safer with short hair. Sarah watched his hand trace the shaved line at his neck.
A lightning-fast, silent memory of a strong hand gripping his curls flashed in his mind. “It just had to go,” he said softly, cutting the memory short. He was playful again, raising his eyebrow and leaning a bit closer to Summer. “I'm going for this.... This serious look. Is it working?” She laughed and pushed his face away. “You're not scary.”
“Not to you, I'm not.” He said before his tone became jokingly firm. “But I can be when I need to be.”
Sarah forced a thin smile, but inside, she was screaming. The memory gaps, no, no, the one, big memory gap, the instant, protective dismissal of the past, it was all proof of the sad truth. The truth she couldn't bring herself to believe was staring at her, casually joking on her sofa.
The man entertaining her family was a hollow shell built on a lie, and every pause, every joke, every casual shrug, is a brick in his fortress of denial. Her grief for him was so profound it felt like her own heart was being cut out with a dull knife, silent gut-wrenching grief for a little boy nobody cared to save that now mixed with her guilt. A grown man nobody cared to save either.
Her vision started to blur, the cheerful lights of the living room fracturing into stars as a searing pressure built behind her eyes. She bit the inside of her cheek, tasting blood, using the sharp pain to anchor herself, to hold back the torrent. Her jaw locked so tightly it ached, but the dam was failing.
She couldn't look away from Cal's easy, oblivious laughter. And that was when the thin smile Sarah wore finally broke, and the silent scream she’d been holding inside finally rose, vibrating in her chest, pressing against the very back of her throat, demanding release. The tears, hot and heavy, finally spilled over, tracing two immediate, devastating paths down her cheeks.
The ‘silent’ scream wasn't so silent anymore, she could tell because everyone's eyes snapped to look at her in horror.
“Sarah!!”