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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:18 am
Malkam looked quietly at the big, too-perfect house, sitting in the middle of a derelict neighborhood beside houses that had not just been run down, but that had been crushed. Streetlight poles were snapped unnaturally. It looked like the aftermath of a tornado that had skipped from spot to spot, sparing some places and demolishing others.
It was big, and nice. There was a yard, which was weird and wealthy enough by itself. When he was younger, he might have imagined living somewhere like it.
"Thanks," he told Lawrence, at least able to give him that, because if not for his reappearance he would never have found Mik.
He gripped the siderail, and in a fit of self-consciousness, tried to push his hair into place, and fix his shirt. He knew he probably smelled musty. He didn't know how long he'd been wearing the same clothes. He took a breath. This was it.
Malkam walked up the stairs, pushing open the door, and asking into the large island house with sun pouring in the windows, "Mik?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:30 am
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.
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 9:52 am
Malkam froze at the answer, and for a while stood in the doorway dumbly, not even sure what to say or do. He'd been there at the funeral. He'd seen the body. It hit him all at once, and again he thought, maybe this isn't real the same way the other thing wasn't, and there was no way to tell, but right now he didn't care.
He pushed himself forward, catching up Mikael up in a tight hug, everything spilling out all at once. The long hours, the failed tests, the nights reading old books, searching rumors of darkweb sites, keeping everything journaled. Every false lead, every weird thing that turned out to be true.
And there had been a lot of weird things. But in the end, the only ones that mattered pointed them in one direction.
His father. Mik. Mel.
"Grandpa Luke and me knew something was up, we knew it wasn't right, we looked and looked... Mel's dead, Mik. They killed her." He said, shaking, "I came. I signed up. To find you. You and...and Mel..."
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:04 am
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."
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:14 am
"I don't know if it's real either," Malk said, thinking the same thing but not letting go, "They took our memories, and put us in gas masks. I got killed. But it wasn't me, it was like they put me in one of the fake bodies. It all felt real. This feels real. I wanted it so bad, for so long, for you and her to be alive again, she didn't deserve for it to happen."
He leaned back, tears really rolling now, to give Mikael his most serious look.
"Wh-what are you saying. That...a*****e did it? He lead them to Mel?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:19 am
"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?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:27 am
"I saw him. He took me to the house. It was all just...excuses, and talking about how everything that happened was everybody else's fault. Yeah. I...did it. Killed people, before they got me. I just knew I had to win. I couldn't remember you, but I knew I had an important reason. Are you hurt?" Malkam asked, looking him over. "Did they...make you kill anybody?"
He felt like a dog at the end of a long trail.
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:35 am
"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."
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:46 am
"You're living in his house? For what, protection? I thought maybe he had a reason for the stuff he did, since nothing was like what it seemed but...but some of the things I wished were different...it doesn't matter. You and Mel are all that mattered."
He didn't want to let Mik go.
"I don't know anything. I don't have any clothes, or...anything. I came straight here."
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 11:37 am
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."
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 1:40 pm
"Who said you were weird?" Malkam asked with an edge of threat in the question. "Look, sometimes you have to fight. If anyone tries to fight you, we'll show them it was a bad idea. You have a family, okay?"
He gripped Mikael's shoulders. "And everybody missed you. We didn't give up."
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2016 2:06 am
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.”
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