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Mik was in the living room, busy watching old Disney movies when he heard someone calling his name. At first he assumed it was his weapon before it dawned on him that his weapon's voice always came from somewhere far nearer at hand. He got up with a sing-song

"Comiiiiing."

And half jogged to the front door, eager to speak to anyone who wasn't the usual suspects.

He stopped in his tracks when he saw who it was, looking completely startled. It wasn't who he'd been expecting at all. "Mal?" he asked, looking dumbfounded. "What are you doing here?" And the emphasis on here was enough to imply it the hell he felt it was.

Mik found himself in a tight hug before he knew it and out of sheer reflex hugged back. He hadn't been properly hugged in so long that he had almost forgotten how it felt to even be hugged at all. He had thought about his family so so often since he'd gotten to Deus but he'd never dared mention them to Lawrence because he knew better. Letting slip Maja's new name had been a mistake and it was one he'd bitterly regretted ever since that time. He hadn't dared to hope that he'd ever see Malk again, half fearing that the same fate as Melody had befallen him. He let his guard down anyway.

"He killed her." he said, burying his head against the other boy, finally able to cling to a piece of home, something from the life before, something that tied him back to his mother, to everything before he ended up on the island. "He went..he went back. We are told never. Never ever ever never to go back to family. The monsters follow us, horsemen follow us. They followed him. He KNEW. He wanted to see what happened. She didn't need to be dead. People say he was even working for them once."

He squeezed Malkam tightly. "You see such horrible things here. It's all so horrible. Is it even you? I don't even know any more. But I want it to be. I miss home."

"It's ok." Mik said. "Those are the trials. It's like a big computer game, with people steering not-real bodies. You didn't really kill anyone." he sighed. "I want her to be alive again too." But he didn't add that he didn't want her to end up one of /them/, one of the things they fought all the time.

"And yeah." he said weakly, not crying but only because he felt like he'd taught himself more and more how not to since he got here, that or he'd used his tears all up. "He went on leave and that was where he went. He's not allowed off the island without someone with him. He says he didn't think it would happen, that he didn't know. But what did he think would?"

"He's got a lot of excuses." he said and shrugged. "Some of them you even want to believe sometimes. In the end I don't though, what's the point? It's just lies. It's always lies and that's just how it is. Sometimes I talk to him and he seems like a person and then I just realise the more he's like a person the less of himself he's being." He shook his head. "I don't think I've killed anyone though. I mean, I'd know right?" He wasn't sure if you got a special cutscene or a letter through your door when you killed someone.

"I avoid most missions." he said. "I just stay on the island as much as I can get away with, so maybe I haven't. Dad definitely has, but so have a lot of people here. I don't know it's all weird here. Its not like home, the rules change. Things that weren't okay are, not fighting isn't ok."

Mikael didn't want to let go of Mal at all either, he felt like if he did he'd just vanish away back into the nothing he'd come from. He'd understood. Maybe he was the only person who ever could understand.

There were so many questions he couldn't ask, he couldn't bring himself to ask at all, because there was a huge wall in the way, a wall he'd built around the thought of his mother. If he asked he could bring it down. Somewhere she'd had to grieve his loss and the thought of the pain he'd caused her threatened to crumble him.

"I'm living here because I'm lonely and because... I don't know. Because for a little while it was like a family. Things worked. Melvin was there, Rodney and Melody. We had dinner. It was.. it was almost.." he trailed off.

"Mal I've been so, so lonely. I draw, I make sandcastles, but no one wants to like me, people think I'm weird. I had a friend called Chantelle who looked after me, but she won't talk to me any more either. Its horrible here but... I'm really glad you are here."

It was the mention of “everyone” that finally made the blonde man crumble. He’d been holding back a tide of emotion so long that he’d forgotten it was there and without the dam to hold it back it overwhelmed him. “I’ve missed them too.” He said, and his voice brutally cracked in the middle of the statement, the looming tears audible in his tone. “I missed everyone so much.” And the thought of the years he’d already missed, unable to comfort his mother or to hug his uncle Lars, the Christmases he hadn’t been there for, to the innumerable days sitting in a desolate room alone with nothing but art to console him was too much. With a sob he held the other boy tighter.

“I came here because I thought it would be an adventure. I didn’t think too hard about it, I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t think it would mean I could never see anyone ever again.” They wanted him to do things he’d never entertained doing and the living conditions for so long had been awful. He’d tried not to complain about any of it, even when he’d lain awake at night too cold to sleep and cried for hours but now he could, there was someone he could relate to. “I was all alone for so long, at first dad wanted nothing to do with me, I think he even considered trying to kill me. It was only when I fought him off once that he gave up and tolerated me.” He sobbed. “I miss mor so much, I missed you so much, I miss Lars and my friends in school. Mor loved me, no one here loved me and that hurt so bad. I’d just hide on the beach, building sandcastles and pretending we were all on holiday and one day I’d just be going home.”

He sniffled. “But I’ll never be going home ever again.” He wanted to stop crying but he simply couldn’t, mourning every bad thing that had happened in the last two years, finally feeling safe to do so. He mourned Chantelle distancing from him, even Melvin’s strange behaviour lately which had made him doubt himself all over again. Malkam was here and he understood, he wouldn’t tell him to stop crying the way Lawrence would, not understanding tears or grief in any real way. “I’m supposed to be the big brother.” He said weakly. “But I just want you to protect me. I didnt give up though and I won't now.”