Welcome to Gaia! ::

There had been a trial. A strange place where he’d been nothing but a letter and a colour – Delta blue – and where he’d been stripped down to his most basic self without memories or any solid concept of self. He remembered a lot of murder, a lot of sheer survival and brutality. He’d thrived in the strange setting and it had been more vivid than any dream he’d ever had. Fred normally slept light, a vivid dreamer who was prone to night terrors, sleep paralysis and other sleep disorders, but in the pod it had been the deepest sleep he’d ever experienced.

Waking up he became aware of a low thrum, he was comfortable but he couldn’t really remember where he’d even gone to sleep. There had been an agreement, a contract, a promise to be part of a cause and a goal for a new life, fighting monsters of all things. He remembered that much, but he couldn’t remember how he had ended up here.

The dream after the trial had contained rabbits. Lots and lots of black rabbits. He could already feel it slipping away from him.

He opened his eyes with a sharp gasp and there was a sound of a quiet, insistently beeping alarm.

Fred's vision cleared, only to realise that right outside his pod stood someone he'd been certain he'd never ever see again. Tom was dead, he knew that much and had been dealing with it for too ******** long. In a daze he found himself wondering if he was dead, only for this to be disregarded as bullshit. What he could see and feel was real and right now he felt real enough.

That meant that Tom was real, that he was alive and that he'd just ******** with him all this time and let him fall so ******** low that he never thought he'd get back up again.

Snarling he shoved open the automatically unlocked lid and with surprising reflexes for someone who'd just woken up, lunged straight for the other man.

"You ********."

"I didn't ******** leave! I didn't die! I'd ******** never leave you, you left ME." He called out, hardly able to believe that he had hold of his brother again. He was not longer the thin sickly figure he'd wasted away to during his addiction years but instead was fit and strong, in a new prime. And yet once he was pinned on his back he couldn't overturn Ros, even though he should have been able to. He was ******** strong and it made no sense that he was.

"How are you even alive?! I came here because you were gone!" He wriggled furiously. "Get ******** off me Tom you stupid p***k!"

Fred had no option but to calm down and talk, thrown off his game by how strong the other man was. “I don’t know!” he said, a little strained. “I don’t KNOW if you’d fake your death. You left before, why would this be different? Run off with your rich sugar daddy, wouldn’t surprise me.”
He still wriggled under Tom, not at all happy to settle down, willing to fight him right down to the wire even when it was hopeless. He tried to shove Tom off of him but had little effect. “Then TALK. Why are you here?”

The betrayal Fred felt at the thought of all of this was intense. They’d just taken a contract to work for some shadowy company for ever without even a thought of the implications. Tom had gone along with it without thinking even for a split second about who he’d leave behind. Even if they’d thought it was nothing but a retreat the callousness of all of it was like a sharp blade twisted into his chest.

“Just a gimmick. Didn’t even drop me a note you were running off somewhere far away, just did it.”

“And no I WONT.” he snarled at the request to stop struggling and deliberately swung a punch at the other man’s gut. It didn’t even seem to touch him, hurting his fist more than anything else, he didn’t understand it.

“What did they ******** do to me?” he said, suddenly fearful that whatever had happened to him in the pod had left him frail.

--

Roswell felt the blow, but Gil caught it for him.

"I'm not going to give you my daily itinerary!"

Roswell said, incredulous.

"But I would have warned you, if I truly thought magic was real and I was going away forever," he admitted grudgingly. Quietly, he answered the other, "It's not what was done to you. It's what was done to me. If you've still got your knife on you, you should try using it."

--

Fred immediately sought for his knife, not to use it but to simply see if it was there. He came up empty handed. “It’s gone. And like I’d USE it on you anyway. You think I didn’t learn my lesson? I’ll knock hell out of you but I won’t do that, and I don’t know how you could be as ******** shitty as to suggest it”

He finally slumped back, defeated.

“Would you have even told me?” he said.

--

"If I thought I was leaving forever, yes," Roswell clipped, "I would have given you THAT courtesy." In spite of the very little courtesy he'd received from Fred, at any point in time.

"Oh, so now it's off-limits?" Roswell asked, indignant. "Anyway. You couldn't hurt me. It just goes through. It doesn't matter. Lysander's here too. I want you on your best behaviour, Fred. These bosses aren't like our old ones. They don't have a sense of humor. You act like you want to leave, they take all your pay. You screw up, they throw you somewhere nobody will ever find you."

"Don't punch me," Roswell said, easing off him. "We can fight later, if you have to. I don't want to hurt you. And that isn't me being arrogant. You have to...oh, it's too stupid to explain. I don't even know where to start. I'll keep it simple. I'll take you to a cave. You'll get magic powers. We'll have the same magical advantages that lend strength, stamina, and protection from harm."

Roswell dusted off his clothes, bristling.

"Most of them would have docked pay for mistakes and killed you for leaving. Don't go near Lysander."

Roswell glowered. Fred knew his feelings on this particular subject.

Which was, very adherently, for his entire life: it was nonsense. There weren't ghosts. There weren't monsters. Magic, God, and Santa Clause did not and could not exist, and it was ridiculous to consider for even a fraction of a second. When you died, you rotted into the earth. Everything could be recorded. Proof occurred in a demonstrable fashion, or not at all.

He wasn't out to ruffle feathers, it was just the fact of the matter, like trying to explain to a particularly obtuse person how gravity worked.

He was not surprised that Mary thought it was obvious to anyone within a few days that magic existed. It had been obvious to the Heaven's Gate cult that a meteor meant their ticket to another existence was rapidly closing, and suicide was the only way to get there. It had been obvious in Waco Texas that setting their own building on fire was the best strategy forward. And it was obvious that throughout human history, people persisted in believing that obviously impossible and stupid things were true, especially in a closed setting without outside input.

It was just, in this instance, it was true.

And Roswell resented every moment of it with every fiber of his being.

"It has taken me a while to come to terms with it," Roswell grated. "And what I do to you will be a crime. Don't bother him, Fred, I mean it." And admitting more than he had admitted to anyone else, "I never bothered yours."

"Nothing," Roswell said, "Both of our pays are suspended, indefinitely. And I'm not gay. I've told Lysander this a lot more times than I should have to. I know you've always had a lot of insufferable hang ups about it, but I don't share them. I'm bisexual. I was just always too busy for dating, when we were younger."

Apparently, he still was too busy for dating.

"And I am comparing the two."

He turned around, irritation running all the way down his spine. "Walk while you talk, please. Magic. Cave. Etc. I expect I'll need to fill out forms."