Chapter Text
"You remember him?"
"Well..." John smiled weakly. "Kinda."
Eden looked up at his older brother from the mattress, his blue eyes full of wonder. "Was he a lot like me?"
"In some ways, sure."
"In what ways?" Eden quizzed him. The young boy loved to ask tough questions. "How was he similar? Different?"
John sighed. "I don't know, okay? I'm tired."
Under the covers of his bed, he turned away from Eden, muttering something.
John lay on one of the two beds in the dark room; their mother was already sound asleep on the other. They were small beds, but they were huge compared to the mattress Eden was on, narrow and just five feet long. Even Eden, only 9 years old, would outgrow it soon.
In the past, that had been John's mattress, while his father had slept on the bed. But when it became obvious that the man wasn't coming back from the warfront, the bed became John's. Eden was still in the crib at that point; it was their other brother who got the mattress all to himself.
John remembered how excited Daniel had been, and the way he said mattwess.
That was a long time ago.
Daniel disappeared the day of his Trial, and by that night the bedroom configuration had changed: Eden got the mattress, and the crib sat empty. A few days later, they sold the crib for a couple days' worth of food. Republic Notes were hard to come by. And by the end of the week, John started looking into labor jobs, or anything that could make some quick money.
So that's what it became, John on the bed and Eden on the mattress. The factory worker got the slightly softer cushions, and the little kid could settle for the twitchy bouncy springs.
John was grateful for the bed. It offered his tired limbs some much-needed comfort after a day with a long shift, which was pretty much any day except Sunday. He did not like his job, but he didn't hate it either. It was better than being dead, or being one of those people who wandered Lake sector in rags until the street police eventually caught up with them and sent them away.
The worst part of his job wasn't the bleeding hands, or the mind-numbing work. Those could be ignored, and once you got used to ignoring them, it was easy to keep your head down and power through a shift for 10 hours or 12 hours or however long it took. No, the worst part was the cold shower after, because when you were in that shower you had no choice but to think, and every single time, that shower reminded John of...
A rainy afternoon. The two of them walking together on some street, Daniel pointing out cameras, and doors with tripwires, and an odd little flower that had grown through crumbling concrete. He was so perceptive, John thought. With that, and his quickness, it should have been impossible for him to fail the Trial. He deserved to pass. He deserved it more than me.
Sometimes, in that freezing cold shower, John would imagine Daniel roaming somewhere, living life in the streets of some city. But he knew it was stupid. Once the Republic took you to their camps, you couldn't come back; nobody ever had. Daniel was gone, and the sooner he accepted that, the better. Eden was his only brother now.
And Eden's Trial was coming up in a couple months...
"Hey, Eden," John whispered.
A pause. "Yeah?"
With one quiet motion, John pulled the thin blankets aside and swung himself out of bed. He crouched down beside that tiny mattress that was once his, then his lost brother's, and now Eden's. Eden, who now sat up, reaching for his glasses.
"Yeah, what is it, John?" the boy asked, confused.
"You wanted to know what was similar," John murmured. "Well, Daniel was a good kid. You're a good kid too."
Then the factory worker put an arm around his younger brother and hugged him tight.
I'm not gonna lose you, he thought. And in the darkness, a few words could barely be heard.
"It's you and me against the world, kid."