Chapter Text
III wakes up all at once.
If he had to describe it, then he would describe it as feeling like his soul suddenly rushing back into his body and his mind rapidly trying to fill in the empty void of time he spent unconscious.
He had failed. He clutches his head as his temple throbs and smiles. He had failed. But at least he hadn’t hurt Yuma.
“III,” comes a soft gasp beside him. “You’re awake.”
V smiles across at him, like a weight has finally, after all these years, been lifted from his shoulders.
For a second, III feels like everything has slotted perfectly into place.
And then IV doesn’t wake up.
V had woken up with him - in the same, sudden fashion - but it was easy, for the first few hours, to convince themselves that IV was only lagging behind. Catching up on his beauty sleep, their father had joked with a tight smile on his face.
As the hours passed though, it became harder to explain.
Still, the empty rooms of the manor set III’s teeth on edge. There’s a sort of eerie wrongness whenever he’s alone.
He finds V and his father standing over IV’s bed.
“... On paper,” V begins hesitantly. “There’s nothing wrong with him.” He swipes across a medical chart on his D-Pad and turns it to show their father. “Technically, he’s awake.”
Their father drops his face into his hands and lets out a shaky breath. Below him, through the sheets, III watches the muted pulsing of IV’s crest glowing.
III’s temple throbs again.
It’s then that V notices him, meeting his eye from across the room and across IV’s bed. Quietly, he walks across to them and gently lays a hand on their father’s shoulder.
III has never seen their father cry. He’s not crying now either but, when he turns to look back at him over his shoulder, III’s heart sinks when he sees his eye. Red-rimmed, yes, and not quite how he looked before, but not quite Tron either.
III lays his other hand on IV’s arm through the sheet - maybe, if he’s awake, he’ll be able to tell that they’re there, that they’ve saved their family.
Immediately, III’s hand begins to ache.
Only a few hours later, in the dark of his bedroom, III breaks through the skin on the back of his hand, his nails absentmindedly attempting to scratch an itch just below the surface. Through the blood, his crest begins to glow.
The emptiness is less painful during the night. It’s quiet, but in all the ways that the night should be quiet. III dresses quickly, like he’s off to war. The throbbing ache running through his veins is agonising now - the same agony he felt when his crest was taking control. When his crest was running rampant, III felt like his very blood was on fire. And at least he was conscious, aware of his actions. He needed Yuma to save him - and, if IV is experiencing even a fraction of the pain he did, then III can’t bear to sit idle. He makes to leave his bedroom, before hesitating. Despite the peaceful house, something drives him to sheathe his estoc at his hip. As if in response, his crest throbs, and III enters into the dark corridors of the house with a new resolve.
When he reaches IV’s bedroom, he finds their father leaning back asleep in a chair next to the bed. His feet hang, still in the dead air of the room. They don’t reach the floor.
The sheet on IV’s bed has folded slightly, exposing his arm, and the dim glow of IV’s crest is the only thing attempting to illuminate the room.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” III whispers, reaching out to take his hand. “And I don’t know if there is anything I can do to help… but I needed someone to save me. You’re my brother-”
They touch - IV’s skin is so, so warm. So warm that it’s almost suffocating. So warm that the night seems to swallow them both up.
Michael wakes up on the floor of a dark, dark room. It’s nowhere in the manor, nowhere he recognises at all, even. There’s nothing in there, or at least nothing he can see, bar a door identical in height to him.
He reaches for the door knob and hisses as he makes contact. The metal is scalding, the air that floods in as the door opens even more so. The new space he enters is just as barren as the one before it, but now the air is almost claustrophobically heavy around him. He feels choked out, lightheaded, like he can’t quite get the air in his lungs.
He pushes forwards.
The room splinters off in two directions, seeming to wrap around. Some kind of labyrinth, maybe. Who knows how far it could lead him.
Suddenly, he hears a dog barking and a flash of white fur out of the corner of his eye and impulsively he chases after it, weaving around corner after corner until the narrow pathways open back up again.
Immediately, Michael has to shield his face with his arm. In front of him, spewing out plumes of smoke and flames, is a burning building.
The dog is nowhere to be found but Michael can still hear its urgent barking pounding inside his head. He focuses.
And spots him.
Inside the building, is a boy.
Michael rushes towards him then hisses in pain. With his blood beading along the surface, he can see them now: tiny transparent strings like spidersilk but as sharp as broken glass criss-cross through the room, separating him from the boy. Michael wipes the back of his hand against his cheek, and feels the blood smear with it.
“Hey!” He shouts, his throat raw from the smoke. “It’s not safe!”
The boy doesn’t hear him - or ignores him, perhaps. His attention is fixed on the depths of the fire, reaching inside. If anything, the immediate danger makes him stretch further more determinedly.
Above him, the timbers creak and splinter, and Michael knows there isn’t time. He unsheathes his sword and rushes forward, hacking through as many of the strings as he can. He still feels the majority snag at him, tearing delicate lacerations through the fabric of his sleeves and the flesh of his arms. The very last slicing a fine cut along his right eyebrow.
But finally he breaks through and, crouching, he makes contact with the boy’s shirt and wrenches him free and into his arms as he dives away in a forward shoulder roll. Behind them, Michael hears the building collapse in an almighty cacophony of billowing flames.
He takes a shaky breath. Then, he unfurls the boy from the safety of his arms.
He’s a little bit worse for wear, his right eye gummed shut with his blood. He looks around seven or eight. And he’s Thomas.
Thomas eyes him suspiciously, his burnt, bloody fingers and caked fingernails clutching around what he rescued from the building. A little blue doll.
Michael’s stomach immediately twists, watching Thomas’ fingers comb her hair back into place. The faceless little ragdoll is a perfect approximation of Rio Kamishiro.
Thomas is still glaring at him. “You got in my way,” he huffs. “Who are you, anyway?”
For a second, Michael is taken aback. “I’m… III.”
“I’m Thomas Arclight,” Thomas says haughtily, as if Michael ought to know it already (and, well, he supposes he does). “You look a lot older than three.”
That surprises a laugh out of him. “I guess I feel a lot older, too. Do you mind me asking what you’re doing here?” He produces a handkerchief from his pocket and gently reaches over to start blotting away the blood from Thomas’ face. “You shouldn’t play somewhere so dangerous.”
“You’re like my mother,” Thomas says dismissively, but still leaning into the attention. “Or my brothers. Besides, things are always burning.”
Michael’s hand stills. He points at the doll. “Is that why you saved her?”
Thomas is quiet for a second. “It wasn’t her fault she was there…” He trails off. Then, suddenly, he’s sharper. “I’m not like you though, I don’t save people.”
Michael watches him hug her a little tighter, and resumes cleaning his face.
“You said I’m like your mother. I don’t-” He breathes out. “I don’t really remember my mother.” Thomas is looking at him now, but Michael can’t meet his eyes. “...What was she like? Your mother, I mean.”
Thomas childishly flops onto his back. “She was always making me stand up straight and forcing me to read.” He holds the ragdoll into the air. “She liked dolls. All types.” He sits up then, grinning with mischief. “Even the creepy ones. She used to make fun of me, all the time…” For a second, Michael is taken aback, but then Thomas continues, “as if it’s my fault that I was always around my little brother. She kept giving him to me!”
Michael tries to hold back his smile. “Sounds like you were good with him, though, if she kept trusting you with him.”
“Ugh, no one should trust me with anyone,” he scoffs. And then, “hmm. You look like her.”
Michael pulls the handkerchief away, folding it up and shoving it back in his pocket as he blinks the first pricks of tears away. He can’t think what to say.
Luckily, he doesn’t have to. Thomas kicks him - not hard but not gentle either, something Thomas was frequently told off for when they lived in the orphanage. Whenever Thomas’ teasing would push too far or some emotion would run too wild and he’d lash out. Maybe he would smack him, maybe he’d kick someone else, and his defence would always be ‘but it wasn’t hard’ and he’d always been told ‘but it wasn’t gentle, either.’ He’s always been… volatile… but, during those years, Michael can count the moments in which Thomas was truly violent on two hands. Always, always when someone had been cruel to him.
He wonders if their mother would have been reassured to know how protective he’d been.
Thomas kicks him again. Michael hisses through his teeth.
“People who don’t listen are boring. If you’re boring,” Thomas says disdainfully, “I’ll just leave.”
“Sorry, you were saying?”
“I was saying,” Thomas mocks, with a childish eyeroll to punctuate, “what are you doing here?”
“I’m on a quest to save my brother,” Michael says, rising from the floor and pulling Thomas up with him. “He can’t wake up. I’m wondering if he’s maybe trapped in here, somehow.”
Thomas crosses his arms in faux deep concentration. Then, he walks off leaving the smoldering embers behind them. And then, as soon as they reach a grand looking door, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, he says, “then you’ll need to find the Lion, silly.”