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Chapter 1: MHC-1
Before Caleb met his adopted sister and love of his life, he was alone in EVER's lab. As children do, he sought comfort where he could. Or: an elaboration on how Caleb learned that affection is earned through pain, and that suffering is the greatest gift he can offer.
Word Count: 1.9k
Relationships: Caleb & researcher OC (non-sexual)
Tags: child Caleb, EVER Facility, EVER researcher, Test subject, Child Abuse (mostly off-screen but it will happen), Emotional Manipulation, Specifically NO sexual abuse or pedophilia, Hurt No Comfort (there's comfort but it comes from his primary abuser), Unethical Experimentation, Vomiting, Mental Instability, Mild Suicidal Ideation, Character Study, It's soft but also really not
Series: Convalescence
A/N: Slowly cross-posting my works to Tumblr. I think the tags say exactly what they need to, but let me remind you to take care of yourself. This story is my exploration of how I think Caleb's time in the lab went, based on behavioural traits I've observed in-game. As such, this is not a happy story, even if there is, at times, a calculated sort of tenderness. Currently up to Chapter 3 on AO3.
Audio: D D D N N N A A A [the most fun a boy can have without ripping his skin off], by Crywolf
Do not repost, translate, or feed to AI any of my works. Likes, reblogs, and comments appreciated 🖤
She’s cutting his hair with scissors blunted against any possible retaliation, the soft snips echoing in the sterile white of the room, the fall of hair against his neck feather-light where it is exposed above the gown. If he closes his eyes, he can feel the tenderness in her hands, unbearable in the way it recalls to him memories he’d tried to bury.
There are some days when Caleb remembers what it was like outside the facility. In truth, he hates those the most, because it’s much easier when it feels like pain is all he’s ever known, much easier than the bittersweet knowledge of its absence.
Hope is a poison, the flinch against the agony. And yet, he cannot help but touch it to his lips every time.
“What do you think, hmm?” The woman’s voice is a soothing hum, deeper than one would expect compared to the delicacy of her features, her petite frame. There’s satisfaction in her tone, genuine care in its depths.
Caleb looks into the mirror, and a part of him hates how reflexively he responds to her requests, how obedience for her is ingrained in him the way it isn’t for any of the other researchers. How easily he allowed it to happen, too.
But her fingers are long and pretty as they tease the ends of his dark hair. “I think it looks good,” she continues good-naturedly. “It’s nice to be able to see your eyes.”
Caleb turns from the mirror to look at her with those eyes, disliking the crane of his neck even as he leans back against her. Those pretty hands go to his shoulders, steadying him, even though he’s been getting better at controlling his Evol to the point where gravity will only let him hit the ground if he wants it to. “Do you like my eyes?” he asks curiously, the question probing.
The researcher smiles, reaching with a hand to ruffle his newly-shorn bangs. A stray hair lands on his cheek. “Of course,” she tells him. “You have such lovely eyes.” With a careful thumb, she brushes the hair from his cheek. His lashes flutter at her touch. “They’re like a beautiful sunset after a day of rain.”
She’s only been here for a few months now, brought in to replace the researcher Caleb accidentally killed in an experiment gone wrong. From the beginning, she was different from the others. Even before the accident, they seemed to fear touching him. They’d performed the tasks of his care with a distinct lack of it, perfunctory in their movements and ever eager to leave the moment they could justify it - a stark contrast to the greed they show during their experiments.
Not her.
She isn’t like that at all. She isn’t afraid to linger. Isn’t afraid to talk to him about something other than his next directive. Whenever he meets a milestone, whenever he performs particularly well, whenever he endures the pain without complaint, she pats his head warmly, a glow of pride in her eyes and encouragement in her voice.
He’s always been an intelligent child, so it hasn’t escaped his notice that her affection is part of a transaction: a commodity he pays for with his flesh and blood and obedience. However, an intelligent child is still a child, and Caleb is thirsty and starved all at once for the scraps of humanity she feeds him with her fingertips.
So when that feeling rises inside him – pitiful yearning and a painful greed for more, more, more – he tries to offer her something she might desire in return. “Do you want them?” Caleb asks shyly, focusing intently on her face.
“Do I want what?” Her eyes are the green of growing things, the green of the outside world he wishes he could forget. If she takes his, will it help the memories to fade faster? He’d suggested it without thinking too much, but now he wonders if it might actually be a good idea.
So, Caleb says it more confidently this time. “My eyes.”
The researcher blinks slowly, and there’s a flash of something in her gaze that he can’t fully understand. But then she smiles again, and her expression is peaceful. “Oh, you’re silly,” she tells him. “What would I even do with them, once you’d given them to me?”
She reaches to the side to grab a hairbrush, her grip gentle but unyielding as she turns his face back to the mirror and begins to brush any loose clippings away.
The brush feels so good, the bristles soft and flexible.
Shame mixes with the tingling pleasure in his scalp. “You said you liked them,” Caleb insists, a little desperately, small hands balling at his sides as he realises that he has made a miscalculation, that his attempt at bartering has failed somehow.
“I do,” the researcher soothes between strokes. “You’re already like a doll – I can only imagine how handsome you’re going to be when you grow up… But I can’t just go keeping your best feature for myself, can I?”
His nose is scrunched at her use of 'doll', protestations already at the tip of his tongue when a revelation shocks through him. I can only imagine how handsome you’re going to be when you grow up… “I’m… going to grow up?” Caleb asks, surprised.
The brush stills. Resumes so quickly he wonders if he’d imagined it. “Of course, you are.” The researcher’s voice is confident. She’s… not lying, he realises with even greater surprise.
He doesn’t know how he feels about this news, exactly, except that his heart is squeezing – with pain or despair or that horrible, horrible hope, everything is mixing so intensely that he can’t tell which is which. “I’m… I’m not going to die here?” Caleb’s throat hurts. His eyes sting.
“We have always hoped for your survival.”
A single sentence, but her words are overwhelming.
Crushing.
Like his Evol, gone wrong.
He'd seen others like him, sometimes for months and others only once, before never seeing them again. He...
He can’t breathe.
The researcher sets down the brush and moves to untie the gown she’d placed around him to collect unwanted mess. When she leans over him, he can smell her perfume: fragrant and sweet, like the distant memories of spring. Like the promise of the future. It's heady, dizzying, terrifying, tempting. After a minute, she quietly asks: “Why did you want to give me your eyes?”
Caleb wants to, but he can’t answer. His throat is still wrong, his chest still tight. He can feel the poison in his mouth and he is too focused on trying not to swallow it down.
But she waits patiently anyway – she is consistently so very patient.
He has never seen her get angry before. Not when he makes mistakes. Not even when he loses control of his Evol. Not even when he cries.
Caleb shakes his head, the feeling just that little bit lighter without the extra hair to weigh him down.
“Is it because you thought you were going to die?” she asks, a little too precisely. Her gaze is watchful, observant. He knows this gaze well: he can feel her taking notes, even without her pen or clipboard.
He shakes his head again.
Something in her seems to ease, shoulders loosening. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay too.”
It’s supposed to be comforting, but the words scratch at him.
Caleb watches in growing panic as she shakes out the gown on the floor before putting it into the laundry bin. Returns to the metal tray filled with tools. She packs them up – the scissors are noticeably absent, because they’d gone straight back into their case the moment she was done with them – before wiping down the workspace with the thoroughness of a scientist. She eyes the room critically as she finishes up. “I think we’re done here,” she says, holding out her hand. It feels like a death sentence. Like the buzzing of the door to his cell before he is summoned for more tests. “Time to go.”
“To… the lab?” Caleb asks, dread rising. Her patient silence is answer enough.
I don’t want to go. Not today. I don’t want to. Their morning together had been so nice. Her hands and voice and face had been so gentle as she gave him his hair cut. He wants to stay in this moment a little longer, wants to wrap it around him like a blanket, a shield against the horrors.
“Can I not go?” His voice is a tentative child’s, thin already and thinning more still as the panic builds, as his entire being recoils. If today is anything like the last time, he’s going to be hurting for days and he hates it. Hates lying in that chair, hates forcing himself to be still and quiet as they unmake and remake him over and over and over. But he prefers that to the nightmare of sedation, to the relaxants they’ll give him when he struggles too hard, the terrifying helplessness of not being able to move no matter how much he wants to scream-
That green gaze is observing him again. “You know we can’t do that. We’ve already set up for you.”
“Just ten more minutes…” The weakness slips out of him and he hates that too. He is ashamed that she has to see him like this, acting like a baby because he is afraid. “Please,” he begs anyway. “I’ll be so good. You won’t even need to tie me down, I promise!”
“Hmm…” The researcher looks thoughtful. “What do you want to do during those ten minutes?”
“I just…” His mouth stutters to a halt. He tries to grasp for something, anything meaningful enough to convince her, but it’s like trying to catch a stray beam of sunlight with his hands as it sneaks into his cell. For somebody who has spent countless days with his every minute managed, the sudden possibility of freedom is paralysing. “I don’t know,” he finally admits, feeling heavy, defeated.
“I see…” She bends down a little, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, I know that these experiments can be very scary and painful, but I want you to know you’re doing such an amazing job.” Her other hand comes to cup his cheek. Her palm is warm and smooth. Her voice is magnetic, somehow, the way it draws him in, and for a moment Caleb wonders if she's managed to copy his Evol somehow, if this isn't just another experiment. “Because of you, we’re going to save so many people. Because of how brave you’ve been, we’re going to be able to make everybody’s lives better.”
People... He nods vacantly, because it’s what she wants, but the conviction has already left him. In the lab, isolated and alone, ‘people’ has become something of a foreign concept. There is only himself, and the researchers, and the occasional subject… and her.
Wait...
She must be included in this mysterious ‘everybody’, right?
Caleb looks at her with eyes the colours of a dying day, and thinks that maybe he could face the darkness for her. “...Can I… at least, have a hug before we go?” he asks, face bared and utterly defenseless. “Just a little one.”
There’s another flicker of something behind her eyes. “How about this?” she proposes, ruffling his dark hair again, “If you’re a brave boy and don’t scream during today's test, you can have a big hug afterwards.”
Caleb thinks for a moment, rolling her promise on his tongue, feeling the poison in his mouth again.
He swallows, throat bobbing painfully, and then holds out his hand.
The researcher smiles serenely at him.
