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The world is dark, and quiet, and calm.
Calm.
It’s such a difference from the usual glitchy, itchy static that keeps buzzing in Fyra’s brain. Eroding all the data. Corrupting it.
Her memories are always distorted and incomplete, and she has no idea how much she’s lost to the virus. Her thoughts are always scrambled. Sometimes it feels like her brain is trying to rip itself apart.
But not all the data was lost. No. She’s been very careful to keep one thing free from corruption.
Kill Atlas.
Because a weapon has to know its target.
Because then it will end. Then it will stop. Then they’ll finally just leave him alone.
Him?
That’s right. It was scratched, and scuffed, and maybe even fractured, but she remembered.
She’d protected another bit of data, too. It was deep, so the virus couldn’t find it and delete it.
Deus.
The name causes a disturbance. The dark shifts.
Deus. Small. Scared. The little stupid crybaby. Couldn’t the scientists see that?
Deus. Still small. Still scared. Covered in blood. Not a fighter. Didn’t the soldiers get it?
Deus. Big. STILL scared. He acts like he isn’t, but Fyra knows. She knows her stupid precious crybaby of a brother and she may be glitching and hurting and not enough she’s never enough IT’S NOT ENOUGH but she can still see that.
Deus. Even bigger. Burned and bandaged and scared but this time he’s fighting because he’s scared—he’s scared for her—
Fyra claws her way out of the cool, calm darkness and back into the angry, multicolored static.
Atlas kill him kill him kill him now make it stop make it end make it so that Deus is SAFE—
—
Deus sits on the floor beside the cot where Fyra is laid out, inert and unresponsive. Nine gave her quite the conk on the head earlier when they had to get away from the fight with Atlas.
She’s had so much head trauma at this point. How does she manage to keep going?
Deus stares at her.
When they were little, Deus had always thought of Fyra as the big sister. Not because she was necessarily older than him—but because she’d always seemed so big. She talked big and she acted big and she thought big. She’d sassed the scientists and conjured up ice with a snap of her finger and believed she could do anything if she only set her mind to it.
Her mind. The same mind that is now broken and scarred, because he was too much of a coward to step up and protect her. Even though she’d kept stepping up, time after time, for him.
It hits Deus just how small and vulnerable Fyra looks, passed out on the cot.
He’s so much bigger than her now. They’ve both grown a lot over the years, but at some point she stopped while he just kept going.
She’s so much littler than him now.
He leans over, putting his head on his crossed forearms. The piercings on his forehead feel hard and knobbly against his skin.
When exactly did I stop believing in her? How long has she kept going, all by herself?
The cot creaks. Blankets rustle. Deus raises his head.
Fyra’s breathing changes. Deus scrambles to lean over her anxiously.
“…Fyra?” he whispers. “You in there?”
Fyra sits bolt upright and smacks him straight in the head.
—
“W-where is Deus? Where is Deus?”
Fyra comes back to herself in an unfamiliar bed in a drafty building and the first thing she does is hit her head.
Th-that’s happened a lot. Usually b-because the girl with the red hair and the strange eyes is waiting to bean her with a baseball bat again. B-but that’s with a hard thing.
Fyra just smacked into a softer thing. Still hard, but with soft, s-quishy bits?
“OW,” Deus says, holding his nose.
“B-baby,” Fyra says. It’s a kneejerk response, and both she and Deus look surprised that she said it.
“Well…yeah,” Deus confesses.
Fyra ignores him. “W-where’s Atlas?” she demands. “We were fighting—I gotta—”
“Atlas proved too powerful and we had to beat our retreat,” Deus huffs. “Nine and Sete are here. Some girls, too. The redhead and the zombie-eyed one with a ponytail. We’re still looking for Otto.”
“Atlas is s-still out there?” Fyra’s eyes widen. “N-no. No. Nononononono—”
She jerks out of the cot, but Deus grabs her. S-stupid.
“Let me go!” she grunts.
“Fyra, stop!”
Fyra doubles over, grabbing her head. The s-static is taking over. It wants it. It wants to get Atlas. It itches and it s-scratches, and she digs her fingers into her scalp as she keens.
NeedtogethimneedtogethimneedtoproveitneedtoproveIcanprotectDeushe’sgonnagetusgottagethimfirst—
A voice punctures through the grainy, sparking gray. It’s—it’s Deus. D-Deus?
“Fyra,” her brother says. His tone is rough, but she can sense the undercurrents of worry. And sh-shame.
“You don’t—you don’t need to do that.”
His hands are g-gripping her shoulders. It drives away some of the static. She slowly takes her hands away from her head and grabs his wrists instead.
“I told you I’m sorry for thinking that you had forgotten me. And I’m sorry for making you think that you needed to fight for me all alone.”
Fyra’s eyes are closed as she fights with the static chipping away at her brain, but she can picture what Deus looks like. The way his brow is probably furrowed. The way he’s probably avoiding her eyes. The way he’s probably n-nibbling at his lip piercing, because he thinks nobody’s discovered that nervous tic of his yet.
He’d s-said that before, during the battle. Fyra’s still not sure how to respond.
She grips his wrists tighter.
“Y-you’re weak,” Fyra says. “B-but you’re mine.”
“Not anymore, Fyra.”
She cracks an eye. Deus looks angry. But not the usual bleak-angry. This time, he looks determined-angry, with a glint in his eye like hot sunlight reflecting off of metal.
“I’m not gonna be a coward anymore. I’m not going to let you stand in front of me anymore. And I’m not going to let you fight alone anymore.”
He grips her so, so tightly, and she’s gripping him so, so tightly.
Somehow, without her noticing, the static has quieted.
“Okay,” Fyra says.
And she doesn’t stutter.