Just the tiniest of drabbles because the image was in my mind.
CW: Trauma response, references to institutional violence, scarring, guilt/self-loathing thoughts, not much here to warn for but if you see something that needs tagged that I didn’t mention let me know
Tagging Chris’s crew: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @stxckfxck , @slaintetowhump , @astrobly , @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions and @oofowouchies and @orphceus for Antoni (it wouldn’t let me tag your other blog but you requested to be added!)
Takes place simultaneously to the Safehouse Raid, so you’ll want to read the first piece of that series to have context for this
The darkness around them is total, with a soft weight like velvet against Antoni’s skin, pressing from all sides, as he and Leila make their way with bare feet moving soundless against the slightly damp stone.
Who made this tunnel, nobody seems to know, exactly. Nat told them it was here when she bought the house, used to be used to people in the 70′s to do the same thing that Antoni and Leila are doing now.
How many people have crept through this space, holding hands like he and Leila are, gripped tight with cold fingers and clammy palms, unwilling to let go? How many? A handful? Two dozen? A hundred?
The silence is so deep that their breathing seems to echo off the walls. Even adjusted to the dark he can’t see Leila, only feel her leading the way. She is the one who keeps them moving, because Antoni would go back, if she let go. So she never lets him go.
“Chris is still back there,” He whispers, and the sound is like a shout muffled, a cry swallowed by the stone.
There’s a dripping sound, somewhere, ahead or behind he can’t tell. Water condensing in the coolness and running down to the ground. He can feel the damp under his feet as he walks, slippery. Never run in the tunnel, Nat told them when they did their safety drills. Walk quickly, but don’t run.
“I know,” Leila replies, and her voice is flat and featureless. He can’t see her but he knows, anyway, what he could see if there was any light - her short black hair chopped close to her chin, the pale of her skin, the way her eyes would be narrowed and her jaw set in her determined stubbornness. “He didn’t move fast enough.”
Antoni is silent, as they move like specters under the houses of Nat’s neighbors, under streets, a faint rumble of cars above their heads. This tunnel was here before the city came out this far and the houses and lives lived above them came after it.
What was there, in the time when they made this, to run from? Antoni doesn’t know. Maybe he never knew, or maybe it’s part of what he lost when they took his mind and wiped it clean, started over.
“They will hurt him,” Antoni tries again, and her hand only tightens its grip.
“I know,” She says again.
“He must be so frightened, Leila-”
“Antoni.” Her voice is sharp. It cuts through the velvet dark like the flash of light off a knife. “Stop it.”
Antoni feels his composure cracking, the sudden flare of a thousand burns under his clothes. One more sin he can’t atone for, one more betrayal he cannot fix, one more one more one more one more-
“I can’t just leave him there-”
Leila’s hand rips from his and just as suddenly her palms are pressed to either side of his face, pulling his head down close to hers, until their foreheads are touching. He still can’t see her, nothing but the faintest glimmer of her eyes. He wonders if they are as full of tears as his.
“If they take him, there’s nothing we can do,” Leila says, voice fierce and hoarse, thick with rage and grief. “If you were there, they’d take you, too, send you back, we’d lose you. Sometimes-...” She was quiet, and he could hear her breathing, harsh exhales, deep inhales. “Sometimes you lose people, Ant. That’s just how it is.”
“I-I... I can’t accept that. Not for him-... he’s so young, he needs us so much, and what he’ll... what he’ll be sent back to, Leila, you haven’t seen his nightmares-”
“I have nightmares, too! So do you! So do all of us!”
“Not... not like this, not like his, you do not hear what he says in his sleep-”
“Then fucking go back if you want to! Go on! Get caught and go back to your owner but I am never going back to mine! I don’t care who I lose, I don’t care who might have to get left!” Leila loses her careful control, her voice rises to a wail, bouncing back at them off the stone, and Antoni flinches away from the sudden volume.
“We have to get to the bus stop. We have to. Nine will be waiting for us, Nat said, she promised. And Chris is a good hider, maybe he’ll... maybe he’ll be okay. Jake is there, right? Jake would-... would do anything for him.”
“If they take him back, Jake would not go with him, Leila, but if I were there I could... I could go, and we could be together until we were r-refurbished- I could help him know he would not be alone when they erase him-”
Her hand presses to his mouth, forces him to stop speaking, as she gasps in a breath. “Don’t ever say that, Ant, don’t you dare! He won’t get wiped!”
“You know they’ll wipe him, Leila! If they take us back, we get erased again!”
“It’s-... it’s a numbers game,” Leila whispers, repeating something they’ve all heard Nat saying before, murmuring to herself, a reminder every time there’s some news story about someone so happy to reclaim a stray pet, another safe place or shelter lost... “It’s a numbers game. One going back is better than two Maximize the good, minimize the bad. Now come the fuck on.”
She drops her hand and grabs him by the arm, dragging him forward with her down the tunnel, walking now with a determined speed and no attempt to stay silent.
“Listen to me.” She doesn’t stop walking and her nails dig into his arm through his shirt, unknowingly pressing sharp edges into burn scars, lighting them up all over again. “I am going to get you to Nine. We are going to keep walking, here where we’re safe, and if Chris gets put back then I’m sorry, but I can’t help him now, I can only help you.”
“So are we! We’re scared, too!” She jerks his arm and Antoni stumbles forwards. There’s a hint of a slightly lighter enveloping black, maybe even a gray - they might be getting closer to the end of the tunnel, to where they can come up in a small city maintenance shed using a loose few boards in the floor and find the bus stop where Nine should already be idling in his car, waiting and waiting for them, hoping they moved faster than the men and women who pursue them.
“Jake will hide him,” Leila says firmly. “He knows all the dark places, and Chris knows as well as any of us that he’s only safe in the dark.”
She sighs. “Antoni, I don’t think they ever meant to, but... they taught us that the dark is the safest place for us. It's in the light that we die. It’s in the light they can take us and wipe us clean and rebuild. If Jake can get Chris into a dark place, he’ll know not to leave it.”
“And if he can’t? If he cannot get him to the dark places to hide?”
Another pause. It draws and draws and draws and now Antoni can definitely begin to see the outline of Leila ahead of him, the slightest hint of light at the end of the tunnel awaiting them. The air smells cleaner, fresher now. They’re getting closer.
He hasn’t heard anyone behind them. They haven’t found the secret door, or they don’t know what it is, or maybe... or maybe they’re just even quieter than the two rescues and someone will reach out and grab him at any moment, and he’ll hear a low soft voice with an English accent whisper in his ear, hello, love, aren’t you happy to see me?
“Then Chris goes back to the light,” Leila says, and her voice is hard. Uncaring, even as Antoni can hear the lie. “And we don’t. He’s gone and we’re not and that’s all there is to it.”
Nine is waiting for them in a nondescript beige-gray-nothing-color four-door at the bus stop, just like Nat promised. Leila slides into the front seat and Antoni collapses across the back, his chest a twisting mass of guilt that curls inside him, heavy as stone, weighing him down as he curls up on his side.
“I thought there would be three of you,” Nine says, glancing over his shoulder in the direction they’d come from. “Yoder said to expect three.”
“Only two,” Leila answers, crossing her arms across her chest and sitting back against the seat. “The other one didn’t make it.”
“Already, we stop using his name?” Antoni closes his eyes against the rush of guilt and tears.
Chris is going to be gone, again, all the identity he’d built stolen, erased back to factory standards. And it will be Antoni who left him to the death that comes with going back to the white walls, white lights, white floor.
Nine clears his throat. “Are you... are you sure I shouldn’t wait a few more minutes, just in case-”
“Don’t wait.” Leila doesn’t look back at Antoni, and she doesn’t look back the way they came. Leila never looks back at all. “The third one isn’t coming. Just drive. Jake will do what he can.”
Antoni has never felt so small, so mean, so... worthless. “I-I could have-”
“No, you couldn’t. You’d just get thrown back in there, too. Better two saved than two refurbished.”
“I’m... I’m sorry,” Nine says softly as he pulls away. “I know what it means to lose someone.”
Do you, Antoni wonders. Do you even have fucking clue?
If Chris did make it into the tunnel, he’d only come out to nothing and no one waiting to help him, because... because Antoni is a coward.
Because Antoni ran and didn’t stay.
Because he saved himself and left someone else to suffer.
“I will go back tomorrow,” He whispers. “I am going. You cannot stop me.”
“He’ll be gone.” Leila keeps her eyes on the road ahead, but he can see the set of her jaw, the curve of it. Stubbornness, determination. Strength Antoni could never hope to possess. “You know he won’t be there. They’ll take him. You can go back if you want, but Chris won’t be there.”
“I do not care. I will go back for him, even-... even if there is no him to find.”
She snorts. “Have it your way.”
Then, a pause, and she says, a little more softly. “I’m... I’m sorry, Antoni. I know I’m... I know-... I could be softer, but-”
“Not everyone is made for soft,” Antoni murmurs, and though he can’t see her answering hint of a smile, he can feel it.
“If I think about it I’ll lose my fucking mind,” She says, softly. “I have to focus on who I can save, and not who I can’t. You know?”
He can understand. Even if he still feels like as much the monster as any of the ones who had been knocking the door off the hinges when he and Leila stopped waiting and ran.
Silence, other than the low hum of the radio, public news station reporting a story about some kind of law passed about taxes.
After the awkward, tense silence has dragged on and on and on, Nine clears his throat again.
“Hey, uh... what’s your name?”
“Antoni.” Coward. Piece of shit. Ashtray. Whatever you want it to be.
“Great. Yeah, okay. Uh... look. I’ll drive you back here tomorrow. You can take the tunnel back in to check and see if the, uh, the third one is in the house still. Okay?”
Antoni swallows and nods, curling into himself. His skin is on fire, he can feel every burn all at once, lit up like tiny suns digging deeper and deeper beneath the layers, searching for nerves and bone and muscle and vein to damage and destroy.
“It’s not a problem,” Nine repeats, making a left, calming checking his mirrors, driving with absolute caution borne from a need to never ever have his fake ID checked. “You can go back and see if your guy is still there, yeah? Did you have to leave, like... your partner, your-.. your, uh... your bonded? Or-”
“He is not my bonded,” Antoni says, softly. “I will go back for him anyway.”
Please, if there is anything but hell left here on earth, let him still be Chris.
