elijah garten // d3 fin

(  c r i c k   g a r d e n - e l l o r y  )

Somebody tells the boy he isn't important anymore, the missing leg represents the missing in his heart. The need for validation- there's a reason behind every invention. Necessity births creation in the way god touches man kind, it's an evangelic creation; Crick's always felt the tick, tick, tick of that robotic heart. He out grew the need for parents, he convinced himself, the need for family; maybe this is where we evolve from. 

The more you stripped from the equation, the more prevalent those things that truly are necessary. The blood of his body, the human skin, the heart underneath -- emotions aren't a physical thing. You can live without them, little droid boy, just as you can live without parents, and live without a leg. He's always seen what you can live without, fighting for rations. Fighting for the need to know- he's made do with so little, but he's always needed to know more. 

Hunger in the way the brain can't feed itself, Crick sits on eight stories away from the ground; he's always loved heights. The thrill of facing whatever can kill him (maybe he's a few bolts short upstairs), he pictures it as something manifesting. The way adrenaline pumps in his gut when he zaps wires together as his legs sway above not a threat but a promise- if he jumps he dies, and Crick feels bad ass facing it. 

The grand swimming. 

Fear, in that abyssial way. 

There's twists in the coil of his hair, overalls bagging from a twelve year old's skinny stature, he's always seen science as his greatest friend growing up. The excitement of it, that hunt for knowledge - getting up to dumb shit and the recovery process. Goravich Gardens was a home in the definition at least, Crick wasn't one to over think the way things worked. It was a home in the same sense that he was a healthy kid -- parents or not, he was still a child. 

He wanted to be a robot so bad, but he always knew he was something human. Skateboarding around the orphanage halls, he'd make sound effects as he'd shred the stair case railing until the day where he would make his own sound pad to do it. He called it the Bud Mosiac, 'Bud' being short for budweiser. 

Nah, it was Buddy, but did you believe that? 

Crick has never needed to be important - the craving is there, sure, but he convinces himself it's just hunger pains and moves on. Kids come in and out, he wonders when he'll have to replace the hinges. He had stopped remembering his roommates names, they'd either get adopted or request a room change too often for Crick to continue caring about them; he kept the Bud Mosiac playing all night. Under the covers, prying off the backing and rewiring the trips to replace some of the words. 

"Hey, Hal, you awake?"

"Shut up, shut up, go to sleep, shut-"

He clicked the buttons just for stimulus, but eventually moved onto the pattern, cut out voices from different kids in the orphanage,

"I am-" Miss Grancher's voice, the heron of the Gardens,

"no

"RESPONSIBIL-"

It's cut off from her screaming about responsibility. 

"Four,
Killing?!" 

"Klaus Goravich!"

Bud Mosaic keeping up Crick's humor better than any of the other kids could, "can you believe she would say that, man?"

"I can't believe you're still fucking awake."

He was out the day it finally happened, greasing the rotary metal knee of his right leg while he sat on the curb. Pulling and pushing the skateboard like he could swim on concrete and he kicked the nitro underneath for being out of gasoline. Normally, he would lay on its back and kick start the flame, skateboard shooting down the street and through dark lens goggles he would watch the sky fly back and pretend it was watching him. Fly in his teeth and hands tucked away from the velocity under his shirt, the ramps of three were so vast, and he was so small in its wake. 

Crick was always a small kid, with a burning yearning underneath him. Carrying him through the vast open that the world was, how small he was in retrospect -- maybe this is why he killed the adrenaline. To go against the machine, to do something completely unlike him. To keep people guessing, maybe- he secretly liked it when they worried about him, the other kids at the Goravich Gardens.

But that was before the Ellory's, before real family.

It's crazy in that sense how quick a wound can heal when it's noticed.