bury me — r&v / in every universe
Jan 6, 2024 2:07:14 GMT -5
Post by tick 12a / calla on Jan 6, 2024 2:07:14 GMT -5
Eight. They pick him from a lineup at one of the boarding houses.
It's a rough ones. The wallpaper is peeling and all the children wear clothes that don't quite fit right.
Roe has a black eye. There's a cut along his lip and bruises on his knuckles that match the pattern on the throat of the biggest boy there.
They pick him from a lineup and bring him across the city.
He's a gift.
Not yet, though.
He has a lifetime of lessons to learn in a year. It's weird. It's like school, but it's not. He has a nice room now, and he eats well, and they give him someone who shows him how to throw a punch without actually hurting his hand so much.
That part's pretty cool. He doesn't mind that.
Etiquette is boring, though. And they make him read literature. He has to learn Spanish, and then once he's passable in conversation they start him on Italian. The backtalk never quite leaves, and he bites one of the servers when they go to clear the table, but that was an accident.
He doesn't actually meet Lars until he's mastered holding his breath underwater for three whole minutes.
It feels like a reward.
It's hard to describe what the rest of it feels like.
They grow up together, but it's really just Lars growing up and Roe following along. They're raised in a similar way, but there's a clear line of separation. Lars learns things like management. Numbers. Politics. Roe learns fourteen different ways to kill someone with a pen.
They're not quite equals. Not that it ever really mattered.
Roe sneaks into Lars' room sometimes. He's not supposed to, but he still does. He sprawls out on the foot of his bed and asks what he's supposed to be, if they're not really brothers.
"My best friend." Lars says. "Duh."
And then they sneak out and take one of his father's cars out for a joyride. Crash it into a park bench. Roe ends up kneeling and taking the punishment for the both of them. Lars sneaks dinner in for him late at night and they sit at his window and try to find the stars through the light pollution of the city.
Roe tells him that one day they'll go out to the country, somewhere in the middle of nowhere where they can actually make the constellations out. They'll live there instead.
They show him the body since the failure is technically his.
Lars is dead and waterlogged and shot in all those tender places Roe knows intimately.
He cries about it until he isn't allowed to anymore. He catalogues each of the injuries. He mimics them on dummies and on people. He receives them, one at a time, so he knows exactly what the cost of that softness was.
Too lax. That's what the general consensus is. Roe wasn't ready. A little too young, a little too fresh. Not molded quite right. Not yet.
"Not again." They say.
They don't throw him out. He's not broken, just needs reprogramming. Sharpening.
It's different this time.
A second chance. He seems them once, and then the rest is only pictures. Footage sometimes, if he's been good. There's an entire dossier that he studies religiously. He knows more about Eyvindr than they probably know about themself.
He's a gift again. But this time, perfect.
Not that it matters.
The doors here don't lock.
