[ao3 mirror]
~1200 words
chris/michael
summary: when they regain their souls, he's still missing something.
notes: this started as venting through the medium of michael arkwright, and ended up working along the idea of his crest - since he was the only one who got his amped up by tron - becoming more linked to his numbers than chris or thomas'. and then canon kind of happened to the end of it. oops. (canonical character death, sibling incest, self-harm)
Wrong? No, that’s not quite it.
Empty, perhaps. Missing something important.
He dreams of fire burning in stripes across his body, and wakes to a hollowness in his chest and to blood on the back of his hand; to flesh and blood beneath his nails where he’s clawed at where it ought to be. Where he’s marked up the skin, even if he can’t mark it with what’s supposed to be there.
Neither of the others feels the same. He asks them about it, and sees in their eyes before they even answer that neither of them knows what he’s feeling.
I can speak to tousama, Chris tells him, and nothing has ever sounded more terrifying.
No, he breathes, no, no, and Chris drops it but doesn’t drop it; Chris will wait, and he’ll say nothing for now, but he’ll be watching now and too many hints of something wrong will send him straight to their father.
(their father? is he?)
So he draws in on himself. Hides it.
Aren’t they all broken, to the last? What difference does it make how that shows?
He hears Chris pacing in the night. He hears Thomas screaming when he wakes from his nightmares – or perhaps it’s IV, because he sees the way his brother’s mouth twists whenever someone calls him by his name.
He sees Tron, and he…
Well. Tron is his own disaster, isn’t he?
IV, Thomas, whatever he is he won’t look at Tron. Barely even says two words to him, unless he has to.
(is this really the family they were fighting for?)
In the end, he has to tell someone. So he turns to Chris – better to let him hear exactly what’s happening, isn’t it, than to let him draw his own conclusions.
I need the Numbers back, he tells him, and he claws at where the crest used to sit until Chris moves forward to pull his hands apart, to wash and dress the mess he’s made of his hand.
I’m missing something.
When they went away I think they took my soul.
He’s not soulless, Chris tells him. Weren’t they all without their souls? Didn’t they all awaken, souls intact?
Not intact, he thinks to himself. Present, perhaps, but not intact.
He wonders if it’s worth saying something. Decides against it.
Settles, instead, for pressing his lips to Chris’.
I’m empty, he insists. Take it away. Fill me up again.
Chris can’t do that, really. Not when the emptiness is so very deep, like a rot to the core.
But Chris tries, and there’s that. Protests at first but is so easily convinced to try to fill the gap physically, at least. To use mouth and fingers and cock until there’s at least a momentary reprieve from the emptiness in the sharp, high moments where his orgasm blanks it all out and leaves him, briefly, complete.
So it goes on, and he pretends.
Yes, niisama, he says, it’s better now. You’re helping.
He’s not, but what difference does it make to lie? Telling the truth would only hurt Chris.
So he pretends, yes. Sleeps with a thick glove on his hand, so that he won’t claw at where the crest was. Fakes smiles and tries to remember to eat as much as he’s supposed to, to sleep and clean himself and just live when he feels like there’s a hole in his chest.
They do things, together. Try to reclaim the family that even he can see now is far beyond their reach. And once upon a time that would have cut him to the core but now he only views it distantly, dispassionately; what need does he have for a family when he doesn’t even have all of his soul?
So when they go out together, when they visit places or eat dinner together or all of the other things families are supposed to do that don’t involve their father stripping their souls from them or using them as pawns, he plays at family like the rest of them do. He smiles until his cheeks hurt and Thomas-IV-Thomas deigns to look at Tron a few times and Chris bites his lip until it bleeds so as not to get angry at anyone.
It’s family. It’s what they fought for, and it makes him sick.
(after one outing he finds his skin darkening with a tan, except for the stripes that cover his body that remain as pale as anything, and it takes everything in him not to scrub himself until all of his skin is pink and raw and the stripes blend into the rest of it even if they’re not really gone away)
And then it all begins again, and truth be told it’s hardly unexpected. Had any of them really expected to ever escape all of this?
So they wait, and they watch, and they don’t save Astral but when Yuuma is alone Chris sends him out, finally. Decides, finally, that it’s time for them to move.
He’s sent off with kisses and touches and made to promise that he’ll stay as safe as anyone can in the midst of this all.
Yes, niisama, he promises in soft exhalations into Chris’ neck, I’ll do my best.
And perhaps he doesn’t mean it. Perhaps he doesn’t quite intend to make it out of this. But a war is a war and when they count the casualties, nobody ever stops to wonder which of them walked too fast into the line of fire.
He doesn’t mean it, but he’s been pretending to live for long enough that he thinks he can pretend he wanted to when his end comes.
And then, stood before him, Yuuma hands him his Numbers. His Numbers, and nothing has ever felt so right in his hand.
Yuuma gives him back his numbers and gives him back what he lost, and for the first time since he woke up he feels truly awake. Feels truly alive.
He’s alive again, whole again, and he’ll fight for it and mean what he promised Chris.
And he does. He fights, inasmuch as he can. He’s there for Yuuma, really present, and with his Numbers in hand he burns so bright in every way that he can. There’s so little that he can do, in the end, but he throws himself into it nonetheless. Yuuma gave him his life back and so he throws that life into doing what he can for Yuuma.
When it comes, the end, he sees it coming. It doesn’t take Chris to tell him that they’re heading to their deaths.
He should be afraid. He knows that. But he’s not. Can’t be, not really.
He goes to his death with Chris at his side and Yuuma protected by their sacrifice, but more importantly he goes to his death from a life that burns bright again and so he does not, cannot, regret it.
(let’s go see Thomas, he thinks at the end, and though their hands never quite touch he knows that Chris is reaching back towards him when he reaches out in the face of the final attack, and somehow that’s enough)
