Chapter Text
He wakes up still dreaming.
The lighting is warm, soft and hazy. A Sunday morning lie-in, once a rarity, now a luxury of Mother's sudden rise to affluence. No more begging in the streets. No more prostrating at the mercy of those employers who see an 11-year-old boy desperate for work as an opportunity to save a buck. And no more dreading the day his sister turned old enough to do the same.
His eyelids feel heavier than stone. He groans, shifts a little in bed and feels a strain against his shoulder that gives him pause. Somewhere, a million miles away, an alarm starts beeping. Mother's, maybe, though if that's the case it should've been shut off almost immediately. She's good at waking up. Better than she used to be.
(Once upon a time he'd had to climb onto her bed and shake her awake every morning. Right after his father had gone away. She'd been dead to the world, lying on her bed in silent misery, pretending to ignore the crying child attempting to wake her up, asking when Father would be back, when there'd be more food in the fridge, when she was going back to work. That was before he'd learnt to just leave her there. He was the man of the house now; he had to take responsibility.)
The alarm doesn't stop. He wonders idly if Mother had left the house already and simply forgotten to switch it off. She was so busy now, even on Sundays. He didn't know what exactly she was busy doing. Only that she was very smart and very important and that he should be very proud to have a Mother like her.
His shoulder still hurts, and his eyes still won't open. Pain is starting to creep in now, up his arm, across his face and belly, and the room is far too warm. Was he sick? Maybe that was why Mother let him sleep in. He must be ill, so ill he fell asleep and forgot why. And she forgot her alarm because she was too busy taking care of him, getting the water and the medicine and the blankets and anything else he could possibly need because she was such a good Mother.
Far away, a door opens and closes quietly, the way you enter a room when you don't want to wake someone up. He'd done that quite a few times when he was little – sneaking into Mother's room at night when he had a nasty dream, not wanting her to wake up and try to rationalise him out of it, but wanting her physical comfort all the same. Mother wasn't very good at hugging, but it was nice to just exist in the same room as her.
His eyelids are still far too heavy to open, and maybe he should be worried about that, but it's easier to just sit tight and enjoy the calm darkness. There's a voice – "Mr Samsa? Gregor, can you hear me?" – that he doesn't recognise. That should probably worry him too, but everything is so fuzzy, and the simple concept of worry dances out of his grasp before he can properly feel it. More ambient voices talk around him, about him but not towards him. They're a nice soundtrack to drift off to, and he slips quietly back into sleep before anyone can pull him out of this pleasant, half-dream morning.
The LCE employee squints at the machine. Her finger idly taps the monitor, subconsciously keeping rhythm with its incessant beeping. Dante stands behind her and tilts their head as if a little rotation will help them understand what all the coloured numbers and squiggles mean. The employee steps back suddenly, bumps into Dante and jolts at the subsequent train-whistle reaction.
Her eye twitches. Two days so far acting as an attending physician for the LCE; first impressions had been less than stellar. She presses a button on the monitor and the beeping, thankfully, stops.
The clock-headed person whose shoulders she'd helped fix up yesterday has their hands up in an apologetic manner, ticking like an overwound watch and gesturing like they were hellbent on undoing every stitch she'd put into them.
"It's fine. Do you need something?"
They gesture to her patient, their subordinate. It was almost sweet, seeing a manager in the City actually give a damn about someone lower down on the rung than them. Especially someone like Mr Samsa. She'd had a G Corp vet come into an emergency ward once, back when she was doing her medical internship in District 4. He'd been assaulted by some thugs and left in the Backstreets to die once they'd had their fun. It made her sick.
But so did the twitching, crawling insect legs. It was instinctual, that's all.
"Mr Samsa is stable. That machine was beeping because of his accelerated pulse; he was probably close to waking up. Per Limbus Company's request, we're keeping him sedated until the tox screenings come back and confirm his physiology has…returned to normal. I just gave him his next dose. He should be going back under now."
They didn't seem comforted by this. Their face – if you could call that a face – stayed trained on Gregor, watching his chest rise and fall. Deep, drug-laden breaths. He was comfortable, at least. Well, besides the tube down his throat and the bulky restraints around his insectile arm, put there as much for his safety as for the medical team.
Still, he was on enough sedatives that he shouldn't feel much of anything. Enough to be dangerous to a regular person, but G Corp vets tended to need much higher doses. That was why they were keeping him intubated – the exact dosage varied from person to person depending on the extent of the mutations. If the dose was too high, he'd stop breathing. This was, medically speaking, all out of whack; the proper procedure would be to start at a lower dose and titrate up if it wasn't working, but the higher-ups had instructed the medical team to err on the side of caution, meaning it was worth almost accidentally killing him if it meant keeping him asleep.
The LCE employee does not know exactly what happened before Mr Samsa was taken here, and she doesn't want to know. That was another tip you learnt working medicine in the City: never, ever learn what kind of awful shit your patient's been up to. It'll affect your standard of care, even subconsciously. And if you end up letting a patient go because the world might be better off without them in it, and then it turns out they were actually a Little Brother of the Middle, and now the whole hospital's getting put in some arsehole's Book of Vengeance –
The point was, never make it personal. She excelled at that part.
Dante was not used to feeling useless.
That was the nice thing about their role – they were inherently needed. Sinners could die, and agents in other branches of Limbus Company could, and had in great numbers, die, but Dante? Dante was essential. The Company risked everything to keep them…well, not safe, but alive. Kicking and screaming, but alive.
And it was so easy to make it worth their time. All they had to do was rewind the clock. Simple. No training required, though they were starting to take more combat lessons with Outis and Ishmael at the pair's insistence, and no prerequisite knowledge, which Dante was fantastic at not having.
And yeah, it hurt. It always hurt. They're on a daily dose of reasonably powerful painkillers, as good as you can get before cognitive function becomes impaired, and a ready-to-inject dose of morphine with them at all times in case of emergencies (i.e., they are physically unable to continue rewinding), and it still hurts.
They had no right to complain. Limbus Company provided them with free board, safety, and a framework to begin relearning everything they once were, and all they had to do was sit there and look pretty. They'd probably agreed to it before the amnesia. Why else would they have had an IV port pre-installed into their abdomen and augmentations which, according to Faust at least, specifically made their body absorb pain relief medication more efficiently?
It's nice to be useful. Which is why this situation is so annoying.
They couldn't just rewind Gregor. Or – technically they could, but there's no telling what would have happened if he'd been rewound right after the transformation. The Star could consider the damage to the Roach Emperor as injuries to rewind, and then they'd be right back at square one. Vergillius had spoken to upper management about it, and, apparently, all they could do for now was keep Gregor here until they knew for sure the metamorphosis was out of his system.
Which was, in their humble opinion, a bit much. Gregor wasn't a danger anymore. Dante couldn't imagine the figure lying in the hospital bed as a danger to anything. He looked so…vulnerable. The glasses he wore must add a good 10 years or so to his appearance, or maybe his face was just usually weighed down with his own thoughts or nightmares. With the sedatives giving him a presumably dreamless sleep for once, he finally looked relaxed. Content.
There's a nasty little seed of guilt inside Dante. The reason Gregor has to stay like this, why the Roach Emperor will continue to be a potential threat ad infinitum, is because of them. He will find no peace in death. Not until the contract is up. There is nothing Gregor can do to escape the reality of what he is, nothing he can do to make sure he never transforms like that again, because Dante will continue bringing him back to life as long as the company deems him necessary. They wonder what would happen if Gregor simply refused, if he could be strong enough to break the chain as Ryoshu had, and whether his self-loathing alone would be able to fuel such a feat.
But they remember how Gregor acted in front of his mother – reserved, eyes cast down, bitter and fuming but never wilful enough to fight back. He's a kicked dog who's learnt not to bite back. He might complain and sulk and hurt himself in his own private ways, but he will not disobey his superiors. Dante is certain of this, though the thought makes them a little sick.
The person Dante used to be is gone, wholly and completely absent from their mind and memories, but occasionally they suspect their more base instincts, their 'gut feelings', are a kind of muscle memory from their past self. This certainty that Gregor will not fight back is one of those gut feelings. The coldness of the analysis is uncomfortable. Their situations are far from similar, but Dante knows a thing or two about fearing what you used to be – what you still could become.
Dante had expected breaking the news to be a messy affair. As of late they'd begun to appreciate the bonds forming between the Sinners, how far they'd grown from a group of antagonistic, uncooperative strangers. Telling them all that one of their fellow Sinners, their friend, would be held in captivity and sedated until some unknown point in time would be difficult. They'd anticipated backlash, expected to defend a decision they didn't make or even agree with. Maybe even a fight.
That's not how it went.
Some rallied against it. Far, far fewer than expected. Heathcliff, of course, was staunchly opposed to the whole idea and made his opinions clear immediately and deafeningly. Don Quixote too. Right after the news had broken, her facade splintered a little, her slitted eyes glaring daggers into Dante. But she'd deftly reapplied it, speaking at length on injustice and dehumanisation and the unbreakable bond of friendship triumphing over such minor bumps in the road. By the end of the speech, it was unclear whether she was still talking about Gregor. The two of them had stormed off after it became evident no one else was willing to bat for him.
Some were even in favour. Outis in particular seemed satisfied with the plan, and not just because Dante was the one announcing it. Not surprising, but Dante had hoped their experiences in La Manchaland might've softened this particular side of Outis, the side that sorts everyone she meets into boxes according to their usefulness and reorganises them without hesitation. Gregor had been a tool, maybe even an ally – he was now an enemy and must earn back his lost humanity in her eyes.
Meursault had no comment.
Faust, who no doubt had known about this arrangement before Dante, nodded along to their explanation and provided additional reasoning when needed, though it had no effect on Heathcliff or Quioxte's objections. If she had any qualms about it, they didn't show on her face. She was probably just irritated with their length of stay in LCE's headquarters, specifically around Hohenheim; they'd been spending more time together, puzzling out the intricacies of Gregor's condition.
The remaining Sinners seemed…unnerved by the decision, but not against it either. Ishmael most of all; she sat through the debrief with a growing scowl and had left as soon as Faust opened the floor to questions with a muttered "I'm sure the Company's doing what's best." She hadn't spoken about it since, choosing to throw herself into the reconstruction work with a sailor's vigour. Sinclair had a similar reaction. He'd looked unwell throughout the meeting, stayed for the questions but hadn't asked any himself, remaining lost in his own thoughts. When Quioxte had her little rally, she'd specifically looked at him and asked whether young Sinclair, so recently exposed to the dangers of viewing a fellow human as less than, would accept this.
He had averted his gaze. She left not long after.
Rodion's reaction, most of all, had worried Dante. She and Gregor always seemed so close; after all, she'd spoken fondly of him in their one-to-one sessions (though in hindsight, that could've been yet another distraction from talking about herself) and had looked much more shaken than Heathcliff in the aftermath of the incident. Maybe she wouldn't protest it as fiercely as Heath, but they'd been expecting at least some resistance.
She'd made a joke about those poor doctors having to deal with a roach infestation on top of everything else.
The joke, evident from the frigid silence that followed, didn't land. Rodion had frozen, eyes deer-in-headlights wide, coughed and excused herself, complaining that the dust from LCE's ongoing construction was making her sick. That was before everything else kicked off. Dante had tried to pry a conversation out of her all throughout the following week, but she was a brick wall of sarcasm, deflecting any attempt at sincerity or empathy with increasingly cynical quips until Dante became fed up and left. Now, they resolved to let her come to them. Trying to get Rodya to talk about her feelings before she wanted to was like getting blood out of a stone.
Grete is playing the violin.
It's beautiful. He pauses to listen, marvelling at his sister's talent, before vomiting forces his head back down and his attention back on the blood-splattered toilet bowl. The music stops. She is stuck on one particular section, always getting a few notes in before the sound of puking interrupts her. He feels awful. He's a guest in her house. A guest who doesn't pay rent, who sleeps on her couch and stinks of nicotine, eats her food and only has his gratitude to offer as payment, and now he's interrupting her music, her livelihood.
Gregor stays sitting on the bathroom floor long after his episode finishes. She finds him there later, once she's finished her practice, and stands in the doorway with her hands on her hips and an ugly pity on her face.
"Are you alright?" She asks, handing him a tissue.
He pats at the already-dry tear tracks running down his face and nods. Shakily gets up from the floor, ignoring the hand she extends for support. He is gross. He doesn't want to touch her, infect her.
She chews at the inside of her cheek. When Gregor tries to leave (though he's not sure where he'll go. He doesn't have a bedroom; he stinks like vomit and should really shower, but he can't handle looking at his naked body now, not yet) she stays in the doorway, imposing despite the two inches he has on her.
"You know, I bet Mother would refill your prescription. If you asked her."
After the war was over, the surviving soldiers of G Corp had, officially, been prescribed a cocktail of medication meant to ease any potential long-term side effects their mutations may cause. In reality, this was more a luxury than a prescription – the only people who could afford the monthly price tag weren't the sort of people who signed up to be soldiers. Maybe G Corp would have supplied the medication itself, except G Corp didn't exist in any legal capacity anymore. No one bore the responsibility for the soldiers but themselves.
As the months went on, it became evident that pest weaponry was not built to last. Every week another old war buddy who couldn't afford the aftercare meds was dead, bleeding from orifices that were never meant to bleed, seizing nonstop until their bodies gave out, or, for the lucky ones, dropping dead from a sudden, unpredictable aneurysm.
Gregor hadn't been able to afford his medication for a few months now, and the effects were making themselves heard loud and clear. Grete couldn't either – even though she was working, she wasn't earning much, and she was buying food for two.
Which left them both here. Gregor slowly dying, Grete slowly growing to resent her brother; both of them fucking miserable. Getting meds wouldn't fix that.
A tiny voice in his mind speaks up. 'But it might make things easier. You might be able to find a job if you weren't sick all the time. You might be able to provide for your sister, like you're supposed to. You're the man of the house and you can't even do that? You're a failure. A vermin. A roach who deserves to lie down and -'
"I just think you should give her a call."
"Hm?"
"Gregor, are you listening to me?" She's getting annoyed now, a twitch forming below her eye. "Look, shower first, please, but afterwards…I know you got rid of her contact information, but I still have it. Please don't be mad at me. She's our Mother, I can't just—I'm not going to justify it to you. But just call her."
He's about to cut her off but stops. Grete looks annoyed, yes, but underneath that she's terrified. He knows his sister well enough to recognise that, recognise the pinprick tears, and now there's a whole new wave of nausea and guilt. He's doing this. She shouldn't have to sit by and watch her brother die.
"I don't think she'll want to—"
"She misses you, Greg!" Grete practically screams at him. "She said that. She said she misses you. And to tell you she loves you. I know you think she's monstrous, and I understand why, but – give her a fucking chance, won't you? She's our Mother! She's your Mother!"
The scene fast-forwards in a blur, his drug-induced dream-memory skipping past the unimportant parts to get to the real, juicy trauma. It's a slideshow: Grete leaving in tears, him standing numb in the shower, watching blood and hair get stuck on the drain, pulling on the baggy hoodie that hides as much of himself as possible whilst still being socially acceptable to wear outside, falling onto the couch and pulling out his phone. Dialling the number. He might have deleted her contact, but he knows the number off by heart. She'd made him recite it after bathtime every night.
Hermann picks up after the first ring, like always, and he can hear her smile through the phone.
"It's good to hear from you, son. I've missed you so much."