surely goodness and mercy will follow me

by Amyreadsandstresses

Summary:

When the sun rises, Will and Robot walk out of the Jupiter 2. Days later, Will comes back, alive, but not unharmed.

Notes:

Title from the song Through The Valley

This fic is sad, and it's dark. There will be comfort, and a happy ending, but the subject matter is heavy. I'm going to try really hard to handle things delicately, because this is a story about recovering from trauma first and foremost. Still, if you think the subject matter might not be for you, then take care of yourself. I have a much more digestible series on this same fandom if you'd rather.

Chapter 1: Chapter 1

 

So take me down to the river

And bathe me clean

Put me on the back of your white horse to ride

All the way to the chapel, let you wash all over me

These crosses all over my body

Remind me of who I used to be

And Christ, forgive these bones I've been hiding

Oh, and the bones I'm about to leave, yeah 

-Ethel Cain, Family Tree

 

 

 

***

 

He survives savagely. 

 

Don is the one who lives with it.

 

***

 

They have been looking desperately for days. No one has an answer, a hint or a clue. One morning, Will and Robot walk out of the Jupiter 2 to gather samples and explore. When the sun falls, Will is gone. One day, and no one knows where he is. The Robinsons stay up all night waiting for their pair to come home. They don’t.

 

As the sun rises, Penny cries. 

 

***

 

Robot makes it back first, his platting scuffed and scratched. Penny asks if he had put himself back together. He says yes. Judy asks where Will is. He says nothing. Their family spends every day trying not to think about what could tear Robot apart, what could overpower him and steal his boy. What it could possibly want with a fifteen year old. 

 

The group they have scrapped together over their years in space work together, crowds go out searching for the youngest Robinson, calling his name through the forest, past the trees and into the mountains. The scientists theorize, worry, and watch as the sun goes down again and again. The others stay in their Jupiters and pray. 

 

John Robinson leads every search, each morning hopeful it will be the day his son stumbles into them, sheepish and covered in mud. He’ll apologize for worrying them and then he’ll show John the plant he just discovered. As he makes his way through the rocks and fallen logs, John hopes. As he drags his feet back into the Jupiter, unable to face the slowly falling shoulders waiting for him, John dies. 

 

***

 

One day turns into two turns into fifteen. 

 

Will is not found. 

 

***

 

The foolish ones worry about a boy being lost on a planet that isn’t Alpha and isn’t Earth. They ask themselves if Will Robinson is immune to things like hunger and hypothermia after it rains. Some, usually the children, wonder if he has found another alien to befriend. 

 

The smart ones know this planet isn’t strange anymore, not after the three years they have spent on it. They know Will walks the woods around their camp every morning, that he’s smart and curious but still careful. They know nothing but the unspeakable could rip robot and boy from each other’s sides. 

 

Penny Robinson feels at the center of her chest that something terrible is happening every second of every day her brother is lost. She watches Robot stand on the rift of their ship, stars looking outwards, waiting and searching and aching. He is unmovable, strong and firm and so very desperate. 

 

In the morning, Smith stands with him. They say nothing, but wait together. Three beings, only one of them truly good, are bonded by powers beyond human comprehension. One of them is missing.

 

The middle child, usually overlooked, sees the circles grow under Judy’s eyes, the tears hidden in her mother’s, the fear in her father’s smile. At night, she dreams of fire. 

 

***

 

It is day fifteen, the sun will set soon, and there is black snow falling. 

 

***

 

Fear and rage and the sea stir to life in Robot’s heart. Will Robinson. With a certainty that kills, he knows exactly where his boy is, and what has happened to him. He stops just long enough to know he will be followed, then he runs. 

His lights are as red as flaming blood. 

 

***

 

Don is the one who finds a ghost. 

 

***

 

He sees their metallic friend leave. The sentinel that had kept watch by the rift would not move for anything other than Will. Don follows, his jacket too warm for running, his boots with the laces undone. He thinks he should call it in, tell John they will find his son. He keeps running silently because Robot is red and it’s been fifteen days.

 

He fears, more than anything, that Will is long dead. 

***

 

Robot stops in a field. 

 

Panting, Don stands next to him, waiting. He knows better than to question this creature that is his family. When he was as much of a boy as Will is now, Don used to hate waiting. He’d had no family, his brother gone to school and never searching for him. The warm embrace of a group that chooses to have him, to love him, reminds him of Sister Agnes holding him as he cried when his brother left. He doesn’t want to hold Judy as her brother leaves them. 

 

Slowly, quietly, black snow falls over the pair. A gloved hand waits, palm up, for a snowflake to fall, and is marveled at the fact things such as snow exist across galaxies. 

 

When it lands, Don’s thumb spreads it across the leather. It stains.

 

His heart stops when he understands it is not ice, but ash. 

 

***

 

What once was a boy makes its way through the trees.  

 

***

 

Will Robinson lays on the grass, away from the Jupiters and the camp, as he watches the stars. Sometimes, late at night, he swears he can hear them. He knows Robot and he feel them, that they are what give his friend life, what give Will that little spark that takes him beyond man. 

He doesn’t know if Scarecrow hears them too, if he wants to. 

Robot lays by his side, slow and careful, and the boy gifts him with a smile brighter than any sun. 

The two have spent years being one, and often Will thinks he could never go back to being a single entity if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t. There is something beautiful and strange and frightening about the bond they have; he knows if Robot were to die, Will would go with him.

Robot never says it goes both ways. 

 

***

 

“Where is he?”, he asks Robot. There’s no answer.

They stand side by side, ashes falling, waiting. Because they are waiting, this much Don knows.

Eventually there’s a branch breaking, and a huff. Not thinking, just like he never does, the man runs forward. He isn’t followed. 

 

***

 

First there is a lump. Then, Don notices the way it shakes. 

For a moment, he is relieved. There are eyes he would know anywhere. Will’s eyes have always been bright. Now, they are dull and lost and far. 

He skids to his knees by the body of the once-boy, hands shaking in fear and joy both, takes him by the shoulders.

Will starts screaming.

That’s when Don realizes the best of them is covered, head to toe, in blood. Joy dies in his tongue. 

“Kid, hey, it’s ok. Will…”, the words run out. The boy still screams and shakes and growls as he tries to shake the man away. “Will, it’s me! It’s Don!” 

It takes an eternity for the boy to calm, his chest heaving. The blood covering him is dry, brown, stinks of metal. He doesn’t know what to say, if there even is anything to say. Don never stopped talking around Will; the kid laughed at all of his jokes, even the bad ones. This Will meets his gaze with wide, frightened eyes. 

“Hi. It’s ok, it’s me. I found you, it’s me.”

Tears start falling down a pair of pale cheeks. The baby fat that used to make Will’s face round gave way to a sharp jaw and cheekbones about a year ago. Around the time John and he had taught him to shave. Will started referring to him as brother, shortly after. The first day he did, Don went to sleep crying his eyes out. 

Now, a fat tear cuts a path through thick red, showing the bruising underneath. 

In the centuries they have been kneeling here, Don’s hands holding onto a boy that tried to bite, he notices none of the blood is his.

Somehow, that’s worse. 

Will’s lips tremble and move, a word without sound. A name. Mouthed over and over, frantic prayer. Don, Don, Don.

“Yeah, it’s me”, he chokes. 

With a sob, Will’s face falls on his chest. The man holds him tight, whispering nonsense. Heavy footsteps reach them and he sees Robot, standing to the side, now as blue as ever. The kid’s shaking hand stretches, begging. Hesitant, Robot joins it with his own. In a blur, Will flings himself to Robot, clutching at the sharp platting on his chest, and wails. 

 

***

 

On day fifteen, Don West finds what is left of Will Robinson.

 

 

Notes:

Quote at the start comes from Family Tree by Ethel Cain

Chapter 2: Chapter 2

The baby is small, purple, and dying. His parents watch in fear every day as his little chest goes up and down, and up and down. His mother counts his every breath, never stopping, praying he doesn’t either. His father stays by the hall, entertaining his two daughters; for the rest of his life he will say it was the act of a father and husband who wanted son and mother to be together. In his deathbed he will finally admit that was the first time he ran away from them. 

 

One of the sisters waits patiently, never doubting her little brother will make it. The other prepares for the worst. 

 

It is when the mother swears to fight the rest of her life if he does, just this once, that the baby grows strong. Purple skin turns pink, blond hair emerges under a little cap, little fists curl tightly around a scientist’s fingers. 

 

When the family prepares to leave the hospital, the boy alive and well, one of the nurses passes the baby to the mother with an old saying that would turn prophecy. 

 

“Nothing is impossible to a willing heart.”

 

By the end of the week, the baby finally has a name. 

 

Will. 

 

***

 

Judy’s radio comes to life as she’s curled up on her bed. The morning of the fifteenth day, she chooses to stay under the covers. Later she will wonder if part of her knew how badly she would need the rest. Startled, the young woman answers a call, a dark mass curling in her belly. 

 

“Don? What’s wrong?”

 

The man says nothing for too long, breathing on the other side of the line. She jumps to her feet, pulling on her boots and running to the front of the ship. Don is always talking, it was the first thing she loved about him. It is what she cherishes deep at night when no one is watching. 

 

“Don, answer me.”

 

A low rumble crackles through with little interference. Robot. Judy stops cold in the middle of the hub. She has spent her baby brother’s whole life preparing for the worst, starting when he was only a few hours old. It’s a habit difficult to break. He has always been the hopeful one out of all of them. About three days ago, Judy had already decided she would survive him dying if that’s what had happened. 

 

As she waits for an answer, she knows she was stupid to think anyone could survive losing Will. Especially her, who had spent years waking him for school and cooking him breakfast, drying his tears as he dreamt dad came back, kissing his forehead when he feared he was holding them back. Will is as much her son as he is her brother. Burying him would destroy her. 

 

“Please…”

 

Finally, the man she shares a bed with clears his throat, and it is impossible not to hear tears in his voice. 

 

“I found him. He’s alive. I… Judy, Will needs a doctor.”

 

Not you, he doesn’t say. Not the woman falling apart at the seams. Covering her face, Judy forces her heart steady, steel and cold. She can break later, when she is back to being just a girl. Right now, she needs to be the young woman made of ice she became after her dad left them all behind. 

 

“Ok. I’ll ready the infirmary. Get him here, quickly.”

 

Don says nothing before disconnecting. Judy goes to get Penny. 

***

 

The first thing he does after Will quiets down is take his jacket off, swinging it around the boy’s shoulders. Bright orange starks against brown blood. Don tries really hard not to think about it. Not to linger on the fact this boy he loves like a brother left one morning in a jacket and coat and now wears only a short sleeved shirt with some of its seams torn. 

 

Judy will see to him, she’ll make sure he’s ok. 

 

Except he can’t be, can he? Not this silent thing that has run out of tears and now stares at nothing while Robot holds him steady.  The thing that, only minutes ago, screamed himself raw. That sobbed his heart out against Don’s chest and Robot’s metal. The one that, however he managed to do it, saved himself.

 

Because Don is sure the kid had needed saving. A rescue that never came. 

 

Sighing, stuffing all the fear and pain and self-hatred in that little box in his chest, he kneels before Will, trying his damndest to smile. “Will, did you hear that? Judy’s waiting for you.” His own lips tremble, a sob from a grown man at seeing a child so broken after years of watching him grow into the man John and he sometimes dream about. 

 

Will says nothing, blinking still. Sharing a look with Robot, Don slowly reaches for the bony shoulders, aches somewhere deep when he sees how perfectly his own fingertips match the bruises over the pale skin. The kid’s breath hitches, and for a moment Don is sure the screaming will start up again, and doubts he will survive it without curling into a ball and crying on the dirt. But Will stays quiet, his hands shaking just enough to be noticeable. Then he meets Don’s gaze.

 

“Hey”, he smiles wider, “let’s take you home, yeah?”

 

A nod, shy and stiff. It’s enough. Sign of life.

 

Don helps Will to his feet, holding him tight against his side and carrying most of his weight. Robot follows closely, bodyguard and friend and grieving in a way the man doesn’t understand. Yet.

 

***

 

Later, Don West will hate himself for missing those screams. 

 

***

 

Penny is the one who calls him back. John runs over roots and stone, panting and crying and desperate. Victor is left to guide the rest of the search party to camp. If all went well after he left the group, Dahr also alerted Kamal to keep people inside. Give the Robinsons as much privacy as they can get. 

 

John doesn’t care, can’t. His son is alive. Will is coming home. 

 

His feet carry him faster than the wind ruffling his hair. John ignores the pain in his calves, the stutter of his lungs. His son, his baby son, needs him. Penny implied… something. When she radioed, he hadn’t cared to understand anything beyond Will’s return. Now, left as he is to his own thoughts, John regrets not having listened more carefully. 

 

“Judy is setting up”, Penny had said. 

 

Something is wrong. John runs faster. 

 

***

 

Don has never been so happy to see the Jupiter 2. 

 

It took nearly three hours to carry Will back to camp. Both the distance and the many times the kid fell on his knees slowed them down terribly. A little whisper of paranoia is panicking at how close Will was when he found the boy. Surely, with the state he is in, the kid couldn’t have come from very far.

 

Wherever he had been covered in blood, bruised and brought to wailing tears isn’t far at all. 

 

How had they not been able to find him? Where was he? What had been done to him?

 

On and on as he walks, questions and pains and fears turn around in his head. Robot makes no sound, only stopping to hold Will from falling when he trips like a newborn deer learning to walk. 

 

And now the Jupiter, in its gleaming glory, stands before them. Don might just cry. 

 

“Come on kid, just a little more, you can do it.”

 

Will whimpers and sobs against his chest, panting and so obviously in pain Don actually does start crying. The rift lowers and from it both Robinson sisters come running, Maureen right behind them. 

 

“Safe”, Robot chimes in, a fleeting hand on Will’s back. 

 

Judy and Penny carry a stretcher between them and as they reach them his own knees buckle, taking both men to the ground. Don groans, pressing Will to his side to try and take most of the blow from the fall. The kid dangles bonelessly, bending over his own legs, forehead touching the dirt beneath. 

 

“Don!”

 

“Will!”

 

The girls cry out after them. Judy lets go of the stretcher, skidding beside him, caressing his cheek. Behind her, Penny and Maureen slow, rain in their eyes. 

 

“Oh God…”, Penny chokes, whatever she wanted to say gone, and presses her lips into a tight line. She’s looking at her brother, who Don pulls back into his torso, supporting his weight. 

 

“I think he’s passing out”, he tells Judy quietly, “Jude, I can’t hold him anymore.”

 

“Penny, come on. The stretcher.”

 

Whatever turmoil exists within his girlfriend’s heart is pushed aside for later, Doctor Robinson taking the lead. She gently sits before Will, one of her hands slowly reaching for his cheeks, he opens his mouth to warn her when Will flinches away, gasping.

 

“Shh, it’s ok, you’re with me now.”

 

The words, so much like the ones that had left Don’s mouth earlier that day, soothe what’s left of a fight in the kid. Will slumps, and between them, Don and Judy catch him, pressing his face on their shoulders like parents shielding their baby during a storm. 

 

“You’re ok now. I’ve got you. I’ll make you all better.”

 

Not letting go of her brother, Judy motions Penny forward, and now the younger girl walks up to them. Shaky as she may be. They set the stretcher down on the dirt, and Judy nudges Will down with caresses and sweet nothings. For a moment it looks like he’ll protest, and Don leans forward hoping to hear his voice form something that isn’t screaming. But he doesn’t, laying down on his side, holding his middle with one arm and still gripping Don’s wrist with his free hand. 

 

“Don, come on.” 

 

He meets Penny’s eyes above Judy’s head as he stands with them, leaning far too much on Judy, not that she complains. The girl is crying, her pale skin covered in rivers of her own tears, eyes red. He’s sure he’s not doing much better. Will has always been their light, the best of them. The Ultimate Robinson. How is anyone supposed to survive such a robbery of who Will is? How is the kid supposed to do it? 

 

Wordlessly, Robot reaches them and places Don’s weight on his own shoulder, leaving his hand free for Will to keep holding onto. He trips and trembles and drags himself beside the stretcher, unwilling to make the kid let go now that his shaking is almost gone and his consciousness is fading. He’ll let Will hold on until he dies, if that’s what it takes to make sure he never screams like he did in the woods again. 

 

As they go into the Jupiter, Don has enough of his wits left to turn back, an empty space in their group. Quickly, not having the chance to do more than watch, he sees the blurry shape that is Maureen left behind. She kneels right where they had fallen, a hand on her chest and another on the dirt. There are stains, ash and sweat and blood beneath her hand. She’s the one wailing now. 

 

For the first time since his brother abandoned him, Don prays for forgiveness. He will take Maureen’s suffering over Will’s every time. 

 

Then again, he had never been a true Robinson.

Notes:

And that's chapter two. If you're so inclined, kudos and comments are great to know how this is going and what you think of it

Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Notes:

Trigger Warning for mild description of injuries (I purpously didn't go into it much) and vague discussions of rape.

There are words Will never spoke before he was lost. Words he will never speak after he is found.

 

***

 

The first thing Judy does is kick everyone but Penny out. 

 

Will is asleep, or unconscious, or halfway to death, and she can’t have an infirmary full of people while she works on him. Don protests, all but falling over their brother and glaring at her. 

 

“Don, you need to shower. And eat.” He opens his mouth to argue again. “You can’t help him if you’re falling apart.”

 

His mouth slams shut, teeth clacking. She hides her wince, his teeth aren’t as strong as they used to be, not that he would ever admit it; one too many hits to the jaw have made sure of it. Even now that his eyes are closed, Will still hasn’t let go of Don’s wrist, it clenches something fierce in her chest to separate them. But she has to. Don… he won’t want to stay for the next part, and she’s sure Will wouldn’t want to be seen by more people than absolutely necessary. 

 

“Please, babe”, she tries to smile, “I’ll call you back once I’m done.”

 

He is frowning, still leaning heavily on Robot, but he nods. His hands tremble as he gently separates from Will, placing the youngest’s hand softly on the bed, patting it once, twice. He struggles as he raises, leaning on Will’s ear and whispering words that are not for her to hear. Don stops again, placing a soft kiss on the boy’s forehead, nods at her once, both a plea and a demand to make sure Will makes it out of this in one piece -whatever piece is left- and walks away. 

 

Robot, mournful, places his own hand on Will’s and helps Don stay upright. 

 

Judy waits until the echo of their steps is long gone before she turns to Penny. Her sister isn’t crying any longer, though her eyes remain red and puffy. With a nod, Judy moves to the door and has it closed, locked. There will be no extra eyes in this room. Not for this. 

 

“It will be ugly”, she tells Penny, “if you don’t think you can handle it, I need you to tell me.”

 

Steel grows around her sister’s heart, she watches it happen herself. Penny’s kindness, the pain she feels for Will, is pushed down harshly. With a deep breath, she speaks.

 

“If he did, the least I can do now is bear it for him.”

 

And they will. For as long as it takes, as his sisters, they will carry it. The pain, the fear, the horror. Will had survived, and by God will Judy make sure he continues to do so. She will place him on her own shoulders, hold him above water, breathe into his mouth. Whatever is necessary. Anything. Everything. 

 

“Come up here.”

 

Together, the Robinson sisters stand around their little brother, faces unmovable ivory. Forcing her hands still, Judy cleans every wound, stitches the skin back together, adds generous bouts of creams to the bruises. As she does, Penny cleanses Will’s skin with a rag, warm water and soap. They can’t bathe him, not unconscious. But they can free him of the blood and dirt and tears. 

 

On a chart, Judy writes down every injury, trying hard not to sob as the numbers grow beyond two digits. Sprained wrist, countless cuts and scratches, countless bruises, bruised ribs, nearly broken nose, and on and on. Penny starts crying when it becomes clear Will had been choked at least once. Judy joins her when she finishes cleaning a human bite on the back of his neck. 

 

They both stop, holding their breath and drying their tears, before they go below the waist. The horror of his torso, the story the pain carved on his skin tells… they know, no matter how much they wish they didn’t. They know they know they know.

 

Judy knows. 

 

We’ll bear it for him.

 

***

 

Ashes still fall amongst the trees. Black snow. Deep in the woods, where once was violence, there is now the rot of death. 

 

They do not know.

 

***

 

Shaking, Judy undoes the button and fly, notices her brother’s belt is gone. It was black, knitted and ugly, and Smith had made it for him a year ago, on his birthday. To this day, she doesn’t understand them, those two, or the fact that Will used to love that belt. She tries really hard not to understand it is gone, taken, along with so much more. 

 

Penny grabs a new rag, a pile of gray-turned-red cloths at her side. Judy gets a hold of the waistband, ripping out the bandaid, so to speak. Penny holds her wrist before she can.

 

“Do you think…”, the fear in those eyes is an unspeakable beast. So many times they have been scared, each of them tested and terrified. But this? 

 

“Yes”, why bother pretending now, here, “almost definitely.”

 

Yes. Will, their baby brother, the boy Judy had helped raise, has been horrifically tortured in ways they probably can’t even imagine. Yes, he is in pain as he sleeps, and will be in pain when he wakes. Yes, his body, his mind, his heart, everything has been violated. 

 

“Judy, I don’t know if I can…”

 

She sighs. Even after her earlier warning, she can’t blame her sister for this. Judy had been trained for this, she has sat by many a bedside, watched the life fade from her patient’s eyes. She knows brutality in a way Penny doesn’t.

 

“I’ll take care of that part. You clean his legs and feet.”

 

Penny nods, shaky as she has been all day, but swallows the ache down and stands back. 

 

“Yeah, ok.” Judy goes back to the pants, tries her best not to sob as she pulls them down and off. Very pointedly not thinking about it, she gets to cleaning wounds. Scrapes, more scratches, more cuts, worse bruises. Another bite. Penny speaks again, “aren’t there like, hmmm, boxes for this?”

 

“A rape kit.”

 

Whichever one of them whimpered at the word they had been skirting around, Judy doesn’t know. 

 

“Do you have one?”

 

She takes the underwear next and now Judy doesn’t care about hiding her heaving, broken heart. Penny turns around, waiting until Judy is done treating Will so she can cover him up with a hand towel. A small mercy for an unconscious boy’s privacy. 

 

“Usually those are for gathering evidence and are done under the consent of the victim. He can’t consent right now. We aren’t doing anything Will doesn’t want. Not if we can help it.”

 

“Ok. Yeah, you’re right.”

 

Silence falls over them once more. Judy allows herself to be lulled into a semblance of stability as she works. The worst is between his legs, which Judy is both grateful for and disgusted by. She had feared the damage that could have been done to his legs. The assault is the most obvious, but she knows it wasn’t the only cruelty her baby brother suffered. There are traces of other things, in bruises on his cheek, or what was probably a kick to his back. In the cuts on his palms that were, most likely, self inflicted. 

 

In the way he fell on her arms, as the last of his awareness left him, desperate for a bit of kindness. 

 

She places the towel down, gently pats Penny’s arm, and sets back to treat his leg. Her sister stands by Will again, softly patting his skin with the rag, his flesh made of thin ice seconds from cracking. Judy is splinting her baby brother’s ankle, which is also badly sprained, when Penny speaks again. 

 

“Judy… do you know if he…”, she clears her throat, voice wobbly, “he never told me if… with anyone, before.”

 

Oh. 

 

Judy tries to think back. They had been stuck on this planet for three years, since their reunion. She supposes, in that time, Will stopped being the little boy that first went to space. He is as tall as Don now, bound to get even taller, he shaves and his voice has grown deep. No, he really isn’t a little thing anymore. And yet… Judy has never known him to look at anyone, to think about things like romance and kisses, or sex. She always assumed Penny would be the one Will would come to, for those things. Apparently not. 

 

“I don’t know. Would it make a difference?”

 

Penny whimpers again, forcefully wiping her fresh set of tears. 

 

“Guess not.”

 

Maybe Will isn’t like them in that sense. Just another of the many things that set him apart. Maybe he has never cared for teenage love. Or, painfully, he does, or did. And what would that change? Would it be worse, if he hadn’t been a virgin when he was… or would it be better? Is he bound to have even more of him tainted than she expected? Will this change him in a way they will never know?

 

Penny watches as Judy gathers her creams and ointments and treats a burn, spanning most of his left calf. It’s bound to be painful, probably a huge part of why he couldn’t walk earlier. The skin is red and open, weeping. She doesn’t know what caused it. If Judy didn’t know any better, she would say it was fire. 

 

“It’s really bad”, Penny says, still watching in fascinated horror, her hands running circles over Will’s good leg, as if to comfort him after a bad fall. 

 

Yes, it is. As a doctor, Judy knows they’ve only seen the beginning. There will be pain to come, in Will’s body, and in his mind. And she doesn’t think any of them are prepared for it.

 

“Fifteen days is a long time.”

 

***

 

Amongst the stars, a creature of fire and iron rages. 

 

***

 

Smith stands beside the metal guardian of a boy, once child. They stay on the rift, eyes on Maureen who is down on her knees. No words are needed, not between them, not about this. 

 

Will is the best of them. 

 

Will is the good one.

 

They are the monsters who protect him.

 

They failed. 

 

“Do you feel him?”, she asks as they watch Maureen’s tears dry. 

 

She knows he does. How could he not? Smith thinks, maybe for the first time, she can feel too. The pain and rage and confusion and devastation and brutality. It is so much, so loud. Will has always been a quiet thing, easy to miss. This is overwhelming.

 

“Could you feel him before?”

 

The never ending lights stop, frozen. In horror, or shame. Or something else entirely she can never understand.

 

“No.”

 

Somehow, that is the scariest part. 

 

“We won’t lose him again”, she promises, as if she could. As if she had the power to promise anything. 

 

Space doesn’t care, it’s the first thing she learned. There is no mercy, no justice. Existence is a cruel mistress. They are all powerless, stupid little ants, just waiting to be squashed. 

 

Will was never supposed to be squashed. 

 

“Family.”

 

Smith will never be a Robinson. She has accepted that, by now. Maureen tolerates her, Penny is entertained by her, John feels responsible for her. But that boy, and this robot, are different. 

 

“Yours and mine.”

 

The ants will still try.

 

***

 

There is a familiarity to the pain. Two beings, different species bound by soul, now share scars. Pain is an old friend to one, copper and red. Pain is humanity. 

 

The boy that tastes of rain is new to it. 

 

He never will be again. 

 

***

 

The sun is going down by the time he makes it back to camp. So many days of going farther and farther, he had never stopped to think he would need to make it back so fast. Or alone. John, right from the start, had always expected to be the one who found Will. 

 

There is a bitter thing growing deep at the fact he wasn’t. In the end, John Robinson was useless. He always is, it seems, when it comes to his son. 

 

He sees his wife on the ground, sitting with her legs crossed, a hand on the dirt. John runs faster. She should be with Will, she always is. Where is their boy? 

 

“Maureen!”

 

She doesn’t turn to him, simply waits as he reaches her. When he does he sees the dirt she sits upon, dry and brown. Stained. In red, deep red. 

 

“Is that…”

 

“He’s alive”, she interrupts, “Judy won’t let you see him. No one can.”

 

That explains her being outside. 

 

“Why?”

 

“They’re still in the infirmary. Penny is with them.”

 

Still. How long ago had they arrived. In the hours since he had been told of Will’s survival, the hours he spent running like a mad man, had his wife sat here, turned gargoyle. Even if his son lives for now, will he live come morning? 

 

“Maureen, the stains.”

 

She kneads at it, like dough on Christmas morning. 

 

“He was covered in blood.” His breath stutters, mouth running dry.“He seemed confused, almost. Scared, in pain. John…”

 

Now the tears come down both their cheeks. The stains, deep red on the brown earth, is blood. Will’s blood. Will’s stains. John falls on his knees, pressing Maureen to his side, and sobs.

 

“Our baby was covered in blood”, is what she says, voice breaking on every word. 

 

Will, their Will. The little thing he once held in his arms. The boy he taught to drive. The boy he watches slowly become a man every day. 

 

“He’ll be alright.”

 

Maureen scoffs, all tears and snot and sobs. He isn’t much better.

 

“How?”

 

With the fierce stubbornness that runs in them all. With the spirit that makes him a Robinson. 

 

“We’ll help him”, he vows before his wife and the world, “Will’s a fighter, Maureen. He’s always been a fighter.”

 

He’d fought for his first breath. If there was blood, Will fought while he was lost. John has no doubt he will fight again, if that’s what it takes. 

 

Will survives. He always survives. 

 

***

 

What once was a boy floats in a blissful void, where nothing aches and nothing burns. He wrestles the nothingness close, forces it against his chest. 

 

Don’t leave, he begs. 

 

I can’t, he cries.

 

Let it end, he pleads.

 

Stark against the darkness comes an infinity of lights, shimmering things of heat and life. They surround him, wash him clean in their warmth. Stop, he tries to tell them, let me go. They do not hurt, they heal. He hates them for it. There is no saving to be done, no saving he wants. The lights force his chest to rise and fall regardless. 

 

Will, the lights whisper back to him, Will Robinson.

 

So long now he has heard his own name whispered in the night, calling to him from above, and thought himself mad. There is sanity in Robot, nestled by his heart. In Scarecrow hovering in the back of his head. There is only madness in stars that cry out in his stead. 

 

Stars that raged as he screamed, that promised misery and pain as he cried, that lusted for fire and blood as he picked up a knife. 

 

Years ago, Will Robinson flew into the stars’ land. Now they cradle him in their hands as he begs them to let go. As always, the stars don’t care for the wants of man or child, and do as they please. Save as they please. Curse as they please. 

 

Down down down, in a bed, in a ship, Will lives. His body breathes, his heart beats. In infinity he is kissed by lips made of flame and fate. 

 

Not yet, they promise him.

 

Will Robinson is bound to end eventually. 

 

It won’t be when he wants it. 

 

He falls, quick and violent, his stomach lurching. Life seeps back into his bones, raiding its way through. His heart stutters, an unbearable beeping ringing in his ears. The first thing he knows is light, bright and white and condemnation. 

 

In a bed, on a ship, what once was a boy opens his eyes and wishes he hadn’t.

Chapter 4: Chapter 4

Notes:

Usual Trigger Warnings

There is horror written on his naked skin.

 

***

 

Once they find the strength to get on their feet, it is to reach a beggar. 

 

John and Maureen hold the other tight, feet dragging into the ship and past Robot, who waits just long enough for them to go in first before following. They are guarded, now that their son isn’t here for the alien to protect. Like sheep being shepherded inside and safe, where it’s warm. 

 

The Jupiter is quiet, still like it hasn’t been in years. There are no footsteps, no laughter, no talking. Their home feels dead and void, hollow shell. Is this what they will be, from now on? Emptiness and sorrow. 

 

Maureen tightens her hold over her husband’s hand, a man she once came close to leaving behind, that once broke her heart. That now holds her shattered pieces together. Slowly, like they might be intruding, the pair make their way deeper into the ship, they will camp outside the infirmary if their escort lets them. 

 

Only, they stop. Sound surrounds the parents of three, low and aching. Words. Despair like they’ve never heard. John drops her hand, pushes past and runs into the hub, expecting to find his son crying and broken and living. 

 

Instead, the man stands before Don West, brother and friend and family. The man who found Will, the man that loves Judy. The man that now hunches into himself, Smith sitting quietly by his side, with tears running down his face. 

 

Maureen catches up to him, Robot close by, and stares. For a moment, he doesn’t know what to do, the five of them just keep to their roles in this hell, unwavering. Smith even makes a point not to look at anyone.

 

It’s almost frightening, sudden, violent, when Don moves from his seat and falls down on his knees. Head bowed, one hand up, pleading, John realizes. Don, who is loud and brash and arrogant, torn down to a pitiful thing. 

 

“I’m sorry”, he croaks out, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

 

The words become mumbles, whispered into the cold floor and lost into the insides of the Jupiter. Hopefully, to reach a boy that has long been kept from view.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

 

Over and over, almost a mad man’s prayer. Or a poor man’s lifeline. John hopes, against fate, that Don and Will both are not destroyed by this.

 

Fifteen days. Two of their strongest, gone in fifteen days.

 

Maureen takes the shaking hand that still begs, interlinks their fingers, letting her own tears fall. The scientist with little left to prove joins the beggar on her knees, pressing the side of her face to his own.

 

“Thank you.”

 

For finding him, for loving him, for choosing us.

 

“I’m sorry…”

 

For everything that has been. For everything to come. For choosing your screams over a boy’s.  

 

***

 

Ares, brutal and cunning, God of war and forever bound to the only human worth remembering, stands on the roof of his ship and yells at the stars. 

 

They deem him irrelevant, and stay quiet. 

 

Justice has already been served, in fire and rot. 

 

***

 

He has been looking at the ceiling like a moth to a flame. Hurting, refusing to blink, hoping to die. Will doesn’t know how long he has been here, doesn’t know how long ago he was forced back from the gentle warm, right back into his burning flesh. How long he has been forced to breathe because they, the stars and the Robinsons, want him to. 

 

He doesn’t care. 

 

From the corner of his eye, he can see Judy, standing and walking and sitting. Sometimes, she leaves the room and comes back. Once, Penny came with her. He hears them talking, hears the tears in Penny’s words, the burning fear in Judy’s. He decides not to listen. Whatever words they have for their brother never reach the body on the bed. 

 

Will winces when his injuries are cleaned, he feels the tears fall when his bandages are changed, huffs when he is moved and rearranged like a doll. His eyes never leave the ceiling. 

 

Trembling, Judy sits on the edge of his bed and holds his hand. She is asking him for something, maybe even begging. If he knew how, Will would tell her the boy she is talking to is long gone. That he died the same day he wielded a knife. Or maybe before then, when he watched a friend’s neck snap. Or even earlier, when an older man held him down and spread his legs and…

 

No. 

 

None of that. Just the light, on the white ceiling. No words, and no pain, and no body. This thing on a bed doesn’t bleed, doesn’t scream, has never wanted for the death of others. And it doesn’t listen. 

 

Eventually, the words die down, the hand leaves his own, gently setting the pale limb on the sheets. Judy stands, wiping her tears, and moves him again. Her toy, she covers him with a white blanket, fluffs his pillows. Will could almost feel human, if he remembered how. 

 

She whispers into his ear, the murmurs as lost as everything else that has left Judy’s mouth. When Judy stands and leaves, he doesn’t move. When heavy steps reach his door and stand in the hall, he keeps his shields closed. The gentle prodding barely starts before he sends fire at it, the way what once was a boy remembers Crow doing. 

 

He is a thing that has become a flame. A weapon. With eyes stuck to the ceiling. Maybe, if he looks long enough, the lights will burn them off of him. 

 

***

 

Scarecrow gathers his hate, his rage, his pain. All of which were once written on his platting and wiring and now hide in his core. He growls as he makes his way to his ship, fire building in his hands, lava close to dripping; he cannot destroy his ship. Not now. 

 

He fires his engine, holds onto the controls and opens a rift. 

 

***

 

Judy joins them shortly after Don gets off his knees. Now, the man sits on his ass, still hiccuping, with Maureen’s hands between his own and John standing close by, eyes lost on the floor.

 

The girl, who is really more of a woman these days, enters the hub with red eyes and a frown. Looking at her makes Don groan, hiding his face against his chest. 

 

“He’s alive. I’m not too concerned about his physical recovery”, her voice weavers only the slightest bit and Smith can’t help but be surprised, “he has a lot of injuries, some worse than others. One particularly large burn on his calf, and two sprains, wrist and ankle, are what bother me the most. Still, with the proper treatment he should make a full recovery.”

 

“Burn?”, John asks, or doesn’t, the man barely sounds human.

 

“With proper treatment, there should only be a scar”, Judy answers, nodding to herself. 

 

Maureen clears her throat, still holding Don on the floor, “can we see him?”

 

Now, finally, the girl hesitates, face pinching. Smith waits with bated breath, knowing what she hopes to hear, fearing what she might. Will isn’t dead, she tells herself. Even without Judy’s words, Smith knows she and Robot can still feel the boy, and they wouldn’t if he weren’t alive. 

 

“Not today”, she finally dictates, not looking at any of them, “he’s going to need a lot of time. And his emotional healing worries me a lot more than the physical one. We’re gonna have to be patient.”

 

Wretched and half dead, Don makes himself ask. 

 

“What happened?”

 

Judy grimaces, gently shakes her head, holds herself back from apologizing. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

 

“Judy, please.”

 

Now that he has managed to right himself, if only a little, Smith sees how badly West really is. The circles under his eyes, the small black stains that even a shower couldn’t get rid of. On his cheeks, and his neck, and his hands. Especially his hands. 

 

Mercilessly, Judy denies him again. 

 

“He has a right to tell you himself, if ever wants to.”

 

And that’s when she understands, what she has been feeling from the boy until not so long ago, what Judy holds back, what the stains mean. A hidden, hateful thing. One she knows herself, one she held back, years and years ago.

 

“It’s bad”, she hears herself say. Immediately scoffs. That’s one way to put it, sure. Bad. The worst of humanity made it light years into the universe. Just like she always knew it would. 

 

“He has faced a lot of violence, and trauma. That’s all I can say.”

 

Before anyone can protest, Judy walks away. Probably right back to Will. Or to Penny, who ran past them and to her room about an hour ago. Violence and trauma. A sickened, ugly part of her wants to laugh. Violence and trauma, the perfect summary of a life in space. 

 

***

 

The thing on the bed has a second to wonder if tearing all of his skin off and replacing it with metal might help, build himself a sharp armor, spikes along his back.

 

It’s just seconds before the thought flies away, lost as he is. 

 

***

 

When Robot stands outside the infirmary, the rest of his family spread around the ship, it is the nothingness that scares him. 

 

He has felt rage and pain, suffering and grief, guilt and horror. For hours now, he has felt his boy’s. Now it is all covered, drowned in endless white, surrounded by a thick wall. Sometimes, he regrets teaching Will to shield. 

 

His boy has always been loud, the signature like rain often becoming a storm. The human boy was quiet, the boy in stars and mind was unmissable. Now he purposely hides and shuts Robot out like he never has before. Not even when, as he grows, privacy and personal things become more common. 

 

They are one in battle, one in joy, they ought to be one in pain too. 

 

Robot knows his boy, knows not to push. Instead he stands, and waits. He waited hundreds of years before meeting the one worth sharing a soul with. He could wait an eternity if that’s what Will Robinson needs. 

 

When he’s ready, Robot will be here, right out the door. Where he is needed. 

 

***

 

Something like a fly, tiny thing with wings and a stink like death, flies into what was once a home. The little thing flaps and buzzes, unconcerned, never once caring for the red or black on the grass and wood. 

 

It flies over the bodies, charred and starting to bloat. A feast, for this creature. Had it arrived earlier, it would have heard the screams, the wails, the blade beating into another’s head over and over and over. 

 

But this thing lives off death, not cruelty. It flies into what’s left of what once was a room, lands on the butchered one, washes itself in its red and dark. A meal prepared for it by what once was a boy as it turned into a monster. 

 

The creature opens its mouth, small teeth showing, and feasts on the remains.

Notes:

I'm finally back, a part of me wants to vent and make a wild authors note and appease the fanfiction gods, but alas. Here we are. I'm really happy to be back, even if this fic is as sad and dark as it is. I should also get to update my series too, which is not as dark and sad. For now.

Let me know what you think, kudos and especially comments are really appreciated if you feel like it.

Chapter 5: Chapter 5

Notes:

Usual Trigger Warnings.

A mechanic and a smuggler whispers in a boy’s ear. The voice of a man who has become a protector, a brother and a lover. Who once had nothing. He speaks a prayer and a hope to a child who, even when unconscious, can’t help but listen. 

 

“Remember...”

 

***

He dreams of hands reaching for each other over wooden boards. Before they touch, the dream fades, to be consumed by another one.

***

The sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night over a red sky. 

 

Over and over, the sun bleeds over a series of Jupiters grounded in a strange planet that has become home. The days add up, one after the other, until it feels like nothing changes and things such as time are but beautiful lies tied with a ribbon. What weight can time hold, how much does it matter, when the Jupiter 2 stands still?

 

Black snow has stopped falling, and toothy flies have devoured all that was left for them to feast. Time has worked hard to erase the traces of horror in this world. 

 

Still, the horror and pain and violence remain. In a bruised body that never speaks and never moves. In a mother and father who cry themselves to sleep every night. In a pair of sisters that speak to no one but each other. In two monsters who hunger for a battle, a murder that has already been committed even if they do not know it. 

 

In a man, now clean, who hears a boy's screams every second of every day and each time he comes closer to cutting off his own ears. 

***

“Remember you…”

***

It takes another five days for Judy to decide Will isn’t getting any better by staying in the infirmary. It pains her, it does, but the white walls seem to drain him as much as the trauma already has. Her little brother wakes when she shakes him, lets her change his bandages and clean his wounds, allows himself to be washed. And nothing more. His eyes remain on the ceiling and his tears keep flowing and the artificial lights only make him look paler and skinnier than he is.

 

The doctor inside her hopes that the familiarity of his bedroom, the safety and comfort of his own bed, will help bring him back from what he has been forced to face. The sister and substitute mother that raised an imaginative and curious child cannot handle seeing him fade away in that stale room any longer. She wants to hold him in her arms, press his face against her chest and whisper sweet nothings to him like she used to after a little boy had nightmares, after a teenager felt weak or unwanted. 

 

Judy’s own tears have stopped falling, unlike everyone else’s. Unlike Will’s. She becomes ice, strong, impenetrable. Judy Robinson will be unshakable. Once her baby brother stops feeling like a breathing corpse she will allow the salty drops to fall. For now, she breathes, tucks him in one more time with a kiss to his knuckles, and makes her way through the ship.

 

Robot stands in the hall, right outside the door like he always is. Judy gestures and the giant gladly follows. There is a quiet companionship between them now, one that she never imagined they could have. But days playing Will’s sentinels have brought them closer, in their pain and their hope, and their boy. 

 

Together, sister and robot walk to the hub where the rest of their family waits, silent and still, like statues being covered in cobwebs. This is a garden stuck in time, cursed by old gods to rot in its stillness while the world keeps spinning all around. All of them trapped within simply cry and despair and wait for the horror to end. Will has always been the one who ends up saving them.

 

It’s unfair that they can’t help but wait for him to do it this time, too. 

 

Her parents, Penny, Don and Smith sit in the hub. None of them speak, they barely do, lately. Her brother took all the sound with him, when he fell into Don's arms. Everything is always so quiet now. Judy’s voice cuts through like thunder on a peaceful night. 

 

“I’m moving him back to his room.”

 

They all flinch, see her, look away. She wonders if the horror has stuck to her like ash, marked her ugly and unbearable. Sometimes, as she stands under the spray and washes her skin until it goes red and tender, Judy feels tainted. 

 

“Are you sure?”, Penny is the one who dares to ask. Some of the horror is on her too, it’s why they share their words only to each other, and why everyone else runs from them. 

 

“The infirmary isn’t doing him any good. He still needs constant care but… he needs to feel safe as much as he needs his wounds tended. He doesn’t feel safe.”

 

Smith leans back on her chair, arms crossed over her chest. There should be a smirk, insulting and cruel on her face. But even their resident liar can’t seem to breathe easy these days. 

 

“That’s not going to change just because you move him.”

 

Irritation grows sharp in her chest, teeth clenching. If Will didn’t love this woman… what Judy wouldn’t give to be rid of her. “Do you have a better idea?”

 

Smith mulls it over, her tongue pokes at the inside of her cheek as she thinks. Of course, as both a doctor and a sister, Judy hadn’t really been asking. Not that things like meaning and reality have ever mattered to the woman sitting across from her. 

 

“He’s alone when he isn’t with you, right?” 

 

“Listen, Smith…”

 

“No, wait. Just, let’s hear her out  first.” Her mom places a hand between them, smiles apologetically at her daughter. Judy looks around, hoping to find some sort of support in her family, someone else who understands now isn’t the time to hear anyone out. Not when Will is on the line. Instead, she finds her sister already giving Smith her attention, Robot soon following. 

 

Sighing, Judy crosses her arms over her chest and stands back. 

 

“You can’t be with him all the time, no one can. Not even Robot. So let’s take turns. You be there to treat him and someone else can feed him, or read to him, or whatever else we come up with. Let the kid be home, not just here.”

 

“He always liked it when I read to him”, Penny mumbles. Her hands are clenched over the table, a small bit of the edge still stained in black, stark and horrible on the white metal. Penny meets her eyes. “I think Smith’s right. I don’t think it’s good for him to be alone anymore. And it’s not good for you either.”

 

She tries not to scoff, maybe even laugh. Nothing’s funny about this, not their foolish hope, or Judy’s bitterness. Not Will’s pain. But if she doesn’t laugh, she fears she might just start screaming. 

 

“You need to understand it’s difficult to be with him”, Judy starts, still watching that dark stain. “Will’s not responsive, he won’t look at you, he won’t talk to you, he probably won’t move. He won’t react to anything you say or do. He doesn’t make a sound, he just cries.”

 

Silence reigns once she’s done. Don is hiding his face in his hands and Smith has let her arms fall. Her parents are crying again. Judy wonders if they’ll ever stop. 

 

Her father stutters, “that’s not… you said, you said his injuries weren’t severe.”

 

“His brain is fine. But his mind…” 

 

“He didn’t talk to me either, before. Just mouthed my name, but no sound”, Don breaks in, muffled behind his fingers.  

 

Her mom is next, hopeful yet hesitant, like she knows it’s a fool's errand. “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with his throat? Maybe his vocal cords.”

 

As if it hadn’t occurred to her to check. As if she hadn’t broken down heaving over a trash can when all her tests showed minimal smoke inhalation and nothing else. 

 

“It’s not physical. He complains sometimes, when something hurts. Grunts if I move him too suddenly. But those are instinctive sounds. What he doesn’t do is communicate, not meaning to, anyway.”

 

Now it’s her dad who hides, fists against his forehead. Out of everyone, he’s the one most… separated from what’s happening. Her mom cries and Penny sits next to Will from time to time, but her dad just loiters in the back. If Judy didn’t know any better, she would say he is waiting for something. Some miracle, maybe. 

 

When Don clears his throat, it’s almost a relief. 

 

“Does he scream?”

 

A very short lived relief. 

 

Her eyes fall closed, weight settling on her chest where rocks upon rocks have already been piling up. “No, not at all. Why?”

 

Her boyfriend starts shaking his head before she even finishes asking. “Nothing, sorry.”

 

“Don.”

 

A sigh, sob-like, weak and shaking and so unlike the man she knows. More like the ghost he has become since Will came home. 

 

“He… when I found him he… God he just kept screaming, I thought, I don’t know, that he was dying? He wasn’t though, he was just laying on my chest, and then Robot’s chest, and then he was hiding his face behind his hands and he just didn’t stop screaming. ”

 

Judy’s fingers tremble, curling into her sleeves. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard her brother scream, not like that. Not in the same way his stillness now haunts her. “He’s silent now.”

 

Don nods once, firm, closer to the man she loves than he has been in days, even if his voice still shakes. 

 

“Then I can be with him. I can hold his hand like he wanted me to, remember? I can do that and, I don’t know, pray or something.”

 

Penny pats him on the shoulder, “he’s agnostic.”

 

“And I’m an atheist, but what else am I supposed to do?”

 

For the first time in what feels like forever, Judy’s lips tilt up, barely, but they do. 

 

Her mom smiles, wiping her most recent set of tears, “talk to him. He’s always liked it when you talk to him. I think it makes him feel cool, because he thinks you’re cool.”

 

“It’s one of his most glaring flaws.” The sharp words fall flat when Smith can’t even muster up the strength to lift a brow. 

 

Another time. Judy will continue to hate her another time. 

 

“Okay”, she nods to Smith, “let’s make a schedule, so we all know when to be with him. And then we can set up to move him.”

 

Judy sits while Penny takes out a datapad, and pointedly ignores her father while he keeps hiding behind fists and rage. 

***

Charred bones rot amongst the evergreen trees for no one to see. The ground is black and dead and covered in sins. 

***

A creature of fire flies his ship through the rift, seeking. 

 

His core is unbalanced, and had he not been assured by his family, he would believe the boy that tastes of rain to be dead. But he lives and breathes and is safe, or so his brother claims. The human is blocking them, refusing to feel them, to be felt. 

 

Scarecrow remembers a time when he was the same. Too raw, too toxic, to be shared. 

 

His family has warned him to stay away, claiming the boy won’t see him, won’t be helped by being followed. Usually, Scarecrow would listen. Robot has always known Will Robinson better. But this is a matter of which a creature of fire knows. One that Robot does not. 

 

Scarecrow has been torn to pieces and put back together. He has screamed for hours, been caged and used, been broken into. And it was Will Robinson who stretched a weak, breakable hand to the monster in a box. 

 

In his rage and his sorrow he will return the favor. 

***

“Remember you are…”

***

There is a girl who is nothing like him. 

 

Her skin is sickly pale, her face hollow, the long black strands of hair all tangle on her back. Her eyes, most of all, scare Will. They’re… worse than sad. Dead, maybe. 

 

This girl looks like a ghost and it scares him to think he might look the same, after whatever is going to happen finally does. Will isn’t stupid, he isn’t naive, or even innocent. Not the way his family still expects him to be. All these years in space have aged him, hardened him. He knows the men that took him will come back and when they do, they will hurt him.

 

They will hurt the girl, too, he guesses. Probably already have.

 

She sits on her bed, staring, unmoving. Has been since he was thrown in here. The room is stale, wooden, dusty. There are two beds. Hers, and an empty one. It must have been someone else’s, once. Whoever they were, they left the bed undone, covers scrunched up to the side. His bed used to look like that, back on Earth. It still does, sometimes, in the Jupiter 2. 

 

But Will refuses to have this one become his too, refuses to grow familiar with the wooden room. To be like the girl with dead eyes and no words. He’s too much of a fighter for it. Even if he wanted to, he doesn’t think he remembers what it means to surrender. 

 

Sighing, the still-boy walks to the window and waits. There are nothing but trees around, the corners of some building to the left. Occasionally, he has seen people walk by, not many, most of them men. None that he recognized. They were all human, all of them with technology like radios and guns. Survivors of the Resolute, like he is. Some group that got lost before and now doesn’t want to join the other colonists. 

 

Some group that keeps a girl and a boy in a little room. 

 

He turns back to her. She hasn’t moved, his companion holding her knees tight against her chest, eyes following his every move. 

 

“I’m Will”, he tells for the hundredth time since he arrived. She keeps staring. “What’s your name?”

 

She hasn’t answered him yet. Not her name, or where they are. Not how old she is. Around his age, he would guess. Maybe a year younger. But not older. Definitely not older. She’s so small and she is the saddest person he has ever seen. 

 

“My mom called me Sandy.”

 

The unfamiliar rasp startles him. Will leans against the wall, taking her in. The girl, Sandy, seems as surprised by her response as he is. He wonders how long it’s been since she talked to anyone. Instead of asking, he forces himself to smile. 

 

“That’s a nice name. Hi, Sandy.” 

 

She doesn’t smile back, not that he was expecting her to. In the hours they have been together, Sandy’s face has not twitched once, except for just now, in her shock. It’s become almost comforting, the blankness. Surely, if she isn’t screaming like he is starting to feel like doing, whatever comes next can’t be so bad. 

 

Will hears her breathe deeper, turns to see her speak. She is looking at the empty bed when she does. “You’re younger than Dan was. He likes us younger.”

 

Sandy is nodding to herself like something makes perfect sense. Like her words hadn’t made Will’s blood run cold. Stammering, hands shaking by his sides, he asks, “what?”

 

“You shouldn’t fight him. He gets mad”

 

She keeps talking to the bed, holding herself. The dead and sad don’t leave her as she speaks. Maybe, all that horror is simply a part of who Sandy is. The idea makes him nauseous. But her words… her words make him want to jump out of that window, maybe even drag her along and spare them both. Girl and boy plummeting to the ground in glory.

 

“It’s ok, it gets better with time”, she smiles at that fucking bed with such kindness it steals Will’s breath and he knows, as well as he can ever know anything, this isn’t the first time Sandy has said this to a scared, trapped boy. “Try to get used to it.”

 

Dan, she said. Dan, Sandy, and now, Will. The kids stuck in this room. A room with two beds, one of them still waiting for the boy who used it first. The kids taken by those men. He likes us younger. 

 

As he lets himself slide to the floor, falling on his knees, Will -still a boy- understands why their only window is barred. He fears he will grow jealous of whoever got to jump before the room became a cage.

***

Broken glass covers the grass once walked on. It’s one of the few signs of former life. 

***

 

 

John stands before his son with shaking hands. 

 

His daughters are preparing Will’s room for his move, Don and Smith cooking a measly lunch. His wife, always so strong and beautiful and fierce, was supposed to join him. Right as they were to cross the door into the infirmary, Maureen found that she couldn’t. Whatever shape Will is in was not one she could bear.

 

So now here he is, a father and a husband, alone, bowl and razor in hand. 

 

Penny had mentioned, too casual not to be pointed, that Will needed shaving. His son doesn’t like to grow a stubble, they all know; it used to be a source of humor in their family. After so many days, Will’s face covered in prickly hairs is a slap to the face. If his son were well, if he were healthy… 

 

But he isn’t. Instead, there is a still body on a bed, and stubble. 

 

Slowly, scared to scare his boy, John steps closer to the bed and the white sheets and the white cheeks. The blanket is up to Will’s chest, hiding what John is sure must be a tapestry of bruises and injuries. The same can’t be said for his neck and face though. John forces himself to swallow and breathe, to keep his hands to himself, as he eyes the dark bruises all around Will’s throat. The black eye. The scrape on his cheekbone. 

 

John is a soldier, he knows war, horror, monstrosity. He has run across the desert with a gun on his back and a helmet to keep him alive. Has seen the bodies of his friends and comrades bleed out across the sand, turn pale and bloated and rotten. He understands pain.

 

Will was never supposed to be the same. 

 

Sighing, a father sits before his son with a breaking heart and croaks, dying. “Hey, kid.”

 

Will doesn’t move, his eyes don’t leave the ceiling, his breath does not stutter. There is nothing here, in this room, on this bed. That scares him more than anything ever has. 

 

“I noticed you haven’t shaved in a while, so I, uhm, I figured I could help with that.”

 

Still nothing. 

 

Slow, so slow. Gentle, so gentle. John pours some shaving cream on his open palm, and with two fingers he carefully spreads it over his son’s wounded skin. Will inhales sharply at the first touch, but settles just as fast. The silence being too much to bear, John opens his mouth again.

 

“Remember the first time we did this?”, he keeps spreading, almost caressing, “Don, you and I, crowding a bathroom. You were so excited, I had been promising to teach you how to do this for weeks. Too long. I always make you wait too long.”

 

Wiping his hands on a small, ratchety towel, John picks up the razor. 

 

“Don was pretty excited too. He actually had to remind me. It wasn’t until he brought it up that I noticed you were sporting a bit of a beard”, tracing his son’s jaw with the blades, John finds it in himself to laugh, “you hated it so much, it was so obvious. Penny joked you were like an angry porcupine. You never said anything, you never do, but I knew the only reason you hadn’t shaved already was because you were waiting for me.”

 

He wets the blade on the bowl and moves to Will’s other side. “I always keep you waiting for me, don’t I? Since you were little and I left for the first time. It's just so easy to forget sometimes, that you’re just a kid. Will Robinson, larger than life, is a fifteen year old boy who I can’t seem to…”

 

He chokes on his own words, failures and mistakes and those hopeful bright eyes haunting him. His boy, his baby boy. What kind of father is he, the supposed hero John Robinson, when he couldn’t protect his own son. When his daughters have to pick up the load every time. 

 

What kind of man?

 

Salty rivers mark his own cheeks as he gathers the towel and rinses Will face, washing away what’s left of hair, cream and water. 

 

“I’m sorry I left you waiting for me again. I’m sorry you always have to fight on your own.”

 

He dries Will’s cheeks with the edge of his blanket, still tearing up, and stands to leave. He’s done what he came in here for. What little he is capable of. Even if it doesn’t amount to much at all. Trembling, John turns when a sigh stops him. It’s weak, barely there, but it reaches him all the same. 

 

He turns to his boy, nearly dropping the bowl and the razor and the towel. Will isn’t looking at him, eyes still on the ceiling. And just as John is about to call it a random breath, it happens again. Louder, firmer. Still so small, almost in pain, but there. Now he does drop everything as he sits by Will, reaches for the hand hidden beneath white wool, pretends not to ache at the bruising and cuts there. 

 

“Will?”

 

The boy is scared, and in pain. In so much pain it feels like he is dead. Even so, past that agony, a grunt makes his way through his chapped lips, his fingers slowly curl over a much larger hand, and a soldier falls to pieces.

 

Oh, Will, he thinks, my sweet, sweet Will. 

***

“Remember you…”

***

A creature of stars and light feels the change, a ripple through still waters. The taste of rain, a phantom pain, coming back to life. It doesn’t last long, this sign of life, this hope. But it exists and somehow, through the void he has been living in since he lost his boy, it is enough. 

 

Robot is a friend, a protector, family. He will be the monster of the story if that’s what it takes. Will wait another three centuries. A millenia. The taste of rain will see him through. 

 

He dares to walk away from the closed door, firm and certain once again. Will Robinson will stop floating soon, and when he does, his family will be waiting.

 

The gentle ants. And the creatures of stars. 

***

There is a boy on a bed.

 

A mechanic and a smuggler stalks to the mattress with a mission. Still, no matter the fire that burns in his chest and the screams that ring in his ears, he is gentle. The boy has let go of his crying father now, been still and quiet and nearly dead once again, for far too long. And now that everything’s ready, now that he is ready, Don West will make sure the boy is safe.

 

His boy. His little brother. His friend. 

 

Tender, Don removes the blanket, grateful it won’t be needed after today, and moves his hands beneath Will’s back and legs. The kid doesn’t react, he is pliable, breakable. Don’s fire grows stronger. 

 

No one will ever hurt Will Robinson again, he swore to himself after he let go that first day. He will be there, Don West, to hold his hand. 

 

Slow, he lifts the boy, cradles him like he would have a babe, leaves the infirmary behind. The halls are empty, only Judy waiting for them at Will’s room. She insisted there was no need to turn this into a spectacle, that it should seem as boring and average as possible. A descent into normality instead of madness. 

 

His love smiles at them where she stands, right outside the room, door open wide. The place is just as a happy boy left it, bed unmade with the covers bunched up on the right. Robot figurine and replacement camera on the shelves. Far too many rocks that Don is not smart enough to know anything about. 

 

There is no dust, no dirty laundry to trip him over, no smell of empty and abandoned. That’s what Judy had wanted gone. Let the traces of Will remain, destroy the traces of his absence. It’s not like any of them need the reminders. Will definitely doesn’t. 

 

Together, Judy and Don walk in, Will still resting on the man’s chest. He stops, a brother and a lover, and aches. This room is so full, and young, and bright. It is the boy he has watched grow up. The boy he is terrified he’ll never see again. 

 

Hopefully, as time passes, the new Will will emerge from the cracks and blood, grow into this space. And he will be as beautiful as the Will who left on a bright morning. 

 

“Alright, kid, here we go.”

 

Don is careful when he sets the boy down, loving. The bed has been waiting for the boy who left it and if beds could feel, this one would be pretty darn happy to have someone as Will Robinson back. Judy moves in behind him, and together they fluff the pillows, and right Will’s clothes. They are about to reach for the blankets, still piled on the side, when the impossible happens.

 

Will groans, and sighs, and curls his fists. Judy reaches for his forehead to try and comfort him but Will… he moves away. Don’s breath stops in his chest, Judy flinches back. And Will, by God he moves.

 

The boy whines, shaking on aching limbs, and he sits. It’s a slow progress, so slow his companions want so badly to help him up. They know better. Don remembers what that voice can do, the way it can break and tear. Eventually, Will is sitting, sweating and panting. Judy starts to smile, probably about to welcome her brother back. The boy doesn’t let her. 

 

Will moves incredibly fast, it must be instinct, Don thinks. It has to be, for all the blurriness in those dull eyes. One moment he is so easy to touch, the next he has his back against the wall, no longer within arms length. Still complaining, in incredible pain, Will lifts his legs until he can press his knees against his chest. And once he has, once he is folded into himself, he stops. 

 

All sound is gone, all life. 

 

There is a boy on a bed, his eyes are dead, his skin is pale, hair tangled above his head. He stares across from himself, finding something that is no longer there. And those tears that had been so blissfully absent since John went in to see him start falling once again. 

 

From where he stands, unsure, Don can see Will’s chapped mouth moving. If he didn’t know any better, if he were surer about his skills at lip reading, the would think Will was mouthing another name.

 

Not Don, not this time. But Sandy. 

 

But Don is not sure, so he says nothing at all. 

***

“Remember…”

Notes:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years. This is my present to you, an incredibly depressing chapter!
I'm so sorry.
This one took a while, for which I'm very sorry, but never worry, I'm always working on my LIS stories, so even if it takes a bit, know another chapter is coming.

Chapter 6: Chapter 6

Notes:

I think this one is my favorite so far

Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, make it stop

***

Penny holds her tablet with shaking hands. Her brother lays by her, his clear eyes staring at nothing, his still hands beneath the covers. She tries not to stare at him, tries to read in comfort for them both, even if Will is on his side and so close to looking at her, if only he were in there, somewhere. If he wasn’t stuck wherever he’d been all those days, in the pain of what happened to him. 

 

She doesn’t know what she would be like, if it had been her. If she would freeze like him, or rage at everyone and everything the way Penny wishes her brother would. Or, most likely, she wouldn’t have survived. Hell, she doubts anyone else would have survived. The days, the torture, the… the rape.

 

Her breath stills in her chest, mouth running dry and throat closing up. Their parents don’t know, Don doesn’t know, Smith doesn’t know. Judy knows, she knows, Will knows. In a way none of them can, will ever, know. Penny is an outsider, barely touched, not at all scarred, and yet she can’t even stand the thought of… of any of it. Of her baby brother hurting, screaming, begging. 

 

Had he begged, as it happened? Is that what this is, right now? Is Will begging for respite and is she drowning it out with a fucking book?

 

How depressingly useless. 

 

Penny’s eyes dart back to the boy. He hasn’t moved an inch, has barely blinked. She doubts Will is even listening. Still, she does the only thing she can, the only thing she has ever been able to give this incredible, mind-blowing, heartbreaking boy she calls brother. She tells him a story. 

 

“...so she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.”

 

Against the heaviness in her chest, this lost girl finds it in herself to smile. Vonnegut has never been her favorite, others like Austen or Wilde usually keeping her better company. But Will? Will has loved Vonnegut since he was little, too little to be reading war books. They used to bicker about it, whether or not he understood what he was reading or if she was missing out. Little Will understood every word, she knows. Probably more than Penny herself did, the first six times she gave the man a try for her brother’s sake. 

 

And yet, now, in this frozen room with this frozen boy in this frozen pain… yeah, yeah, she gets it.

 

“You win. I get why you like him so much”, Penny smiles at the bed, Will doesn’t react. Her smile stretches her skin thin. “I guess you always got the world in a way most don’t. You were talking to the stars before you were asking for a dog. Remember how you used to name them?”

 

No answer comes, of course. For once, she doesn’t need one. Penny remembers very well, the way they would curl up on her bed and a tiny, innocent Will would whisper to her for hours. The names of the stars he could see from his window, how they felt, what they had to say. Before space, she thought those nights were just a child’s imagination. Now, though. Who knows. 

 

She turns back to the book on her screen. “People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore.”

 

The words flow from her lips, soothing. Penny leans towards Will, just a little, and pretends she’s reading to him before bed, while everyone else is gone and it’s just the two of them. Years and years ago. 

 

It’s not until she’s nearly at the end of the page, and the words are close to running out, that she notices. Will, frozen and staring at nothing, is mouthing along. Tears run down her cheeks, her voice stutters. But by God, Penny doesn’t dare to stop reading. To murder this sign of life before it fully blooms. 

 

There is no sound, no rich voice flowing with hers. Not today. There will be, though, she knows this. Will is alive, he’s the strongest of them, he survived. Her baby brother does not lose. Ever. 

 

Together, brother and sister say the only thing left to say, after world-shattering tragedy. 

 

“Poo-tee-tweet.” 

***

The body on the bed is slowly, achingly, starting to feel less like a corpse. 

***

He is shaking on the bed. His coat and jacket are gone, as is his belt. He doesn’t know what happened to them, if they were burned or thrown away. Will stopped knowing anything as soon as Pete sneered. 

 

Sandy had warned him about that sneer. Once the words came back to her, and the hidden kindness to her hands. She stayed up all night soothing his back, the bruises and cuts. And she only slipped once, called him Dan. Progress from the first day and night in which his name wasn’t Will as far as she knew. 

 

Her kindness didn’t do him any good when Pete came for him. And it does nothing for him now, with the tears on his cheeks, or the rawness of his throat. Or the pain between his legs. 

 

There is no Sandy in this room. He’d been dragged back here, his knees scraping on the uneven floor. Thrown to the ground like garbage. Dead meat. A toy. 

 

A sob breaks through his teeth, and through the strength in his shut jaw. The taste is still there, on his tongue, the roof of his mouth, his bones. Will is managing not to vomit, it’s not like he gets much food. He’s managing not to die too, even if it feels like he should have that first day, before it got this bad. 

 

God, he’d been so stupid. So, so stupid. 

 

Sandy told him not to fight, to let them. Let them take, let them hurt, let them break and use and abuse and burn and destroy and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt.

 

He shouldn’t have bitten Pete, he shouldn’t have, oh God, he should have just… let him. 

 

Will is a Robinson, son of a soldier, of one of the greatest minds on Earth. He was taught to fight, it’s in his blood. Robinsons never give up, they never lay down and take it, and they sure as hell don’t turn the other cheek. 

 

He should have taken it. He should have given up. He will turn the other cheek. He has to, Will Robinson will die if he doesn’t. And he has to live, for now.

 

There is a way out, he just has to find it. And when he does, he’ll take Sandy and burn this place to the ground. 

***

There is such a thing as hope in the dark, such a thing as life in smothering death. For a body -broken into, taken and scarred- it’s no gentle song and prayer. For copper it is fire, rage and willing to break itself free. For a boy, it is still soft, trapped in his ribcage, breakable. Small bird of broken wings. It is not love or words on a page, it is not fire that has burned and killed. It is memory, of horror and dreams, of girls with dead eyes and robots made of stars. Of himself, when he was still alive.

 

It is the will to stand after everything has been stolen from him, to hold it once more, to win. 

 

What is left of Will Robinson, what breathes and lives, what little managed to leave the woods, still whispers he wants to win.

***

She was a sweet little girl, gleaming white pearls in her mouth and white, gentle hands that held with fervor. Lips of honey, hair of warm coal. And trusting, so trusting. 

***

Don lays on the dirt and waits to be covered by moss. 

 

There is something to the dirt he digs his fingers into, the little insects crawling about, over his hands, his legs, his neck. Some form of life. He wonders, not for the first time, if the buried feel any of this. The world moving and unmoving while they rot underground. If it’s better or worse if they do. 

 

And then he wonders something worse. A question he’s been trying to avoid for days. Is this what it feels like, to be Will? The empty, the stillness, the rot. If Don keeps laying here to be consumed by the ground, will he gain even the smallest understanding of what’s happening to the kid?

 

Probably not.

 

If it were so simple, they would have figured out how to help Will days ago. 

 

It is… difficult isn’t a fair word for it, he doesn’t think. Heavy, maybe. It is heavy to be with Will Robinson, to love him, to hold his hand. And he has held it, for hours at a time, often at night while the kid slumbers. The rest of the time he rambles, talks about Sister Agnes and his brother and the streets of Salvador. The warmth of the sun and the taste of mango on his tongue while syrupy juice trickled down his chin. 

 

Words he hasn’t said in what feels like a thousand years. A millenia. Words Will should be so excited to hear and now doesn’t seem to notice. That almost-man has asked poor, washed up Don about his past so many times. Each of them getting nothing for his troubles.

 

Don wants Will to sit up and demand more, to ask about every single crack on the sidewalk and the leaning walls of the orphanage. To stutter and not know what to say when Don tells him he doesn’t remember his parents. That the only brother he holds in his heart now has bright eyes and blond hair.

 

That it feels like his baby brother died in his arms a few weeks ago and he’s been putting off the burial. 

 

Judy sleeps beside him at night and he holds her but doesn’t feel her. The weight in his chest is as heavy as a boy and the ringing in his ears sounds like screaming. Last words. Last agony. Brittle bones he keeps trying to carry past the trees and rocks only to drop them a few steps away from home.

 

Don has never been a hero, but he also had never been useless before. So fucking useless.

 

He holds the pale hand, soothes the bruises, kisses the broken knuckles. Prays over closed eyelids and soundless mouthing of words he doesn’t understand. Speaks and speaks and speaks into nothingness. 

 

The void has swallowed little Will whole and there is a part of Don, insistent and pervasive, that wants to go down too. So he lays on the dirt and gets slowly eaten by bugs. Maybe that way he will mean something. Some form of nourishment. 

 

Loud, banging steps come up behind him and the dirt shakes beneath him. His back tenses for a second, just long enough for his breath to stutter. Blue lights come into view as they peer down at him and this little excuse of a man finds it in himself to smile.

 

“Hey”, he breathes, “here to drag me back?”

 

Robot steps back just enough to not feel too invasive, lights swirling.

 

“Home, Don West.”

 

He sighs. Home. Jupiter 2. Last rites. Lost boys. Sister Agnes kneeling by his side, Jesus crucified above them. Soot and blood and screams and rot. 

 

“Feels more like a grave, doesn't it?”

 

Robot doesn’t answer. Not for lack of trying, he’s sure. But then again, what kind of answer can he give. What kind of comfort, useless platitude, gentle white lie. When his brother decided to forget about him, Don ran into the church and hid beneath a statue of Mary. If she could mother the son of God, maybe she could hold him against her breast too, kiss his forehead. Answer his questions. 

 

Sister Agnes and Sister Marta found him late into the night, with the rain falling outside and patting patting on the glass. As he cried on their white robes, old and crooked crucifix in hand, Anges patted his head, kissed his forehead and held him against her breast. Tan poca fé, she told him. His lack of faith had always been the problem. Not the gods that didn’t answer or the brothers that chose to leave. 

 

As he looks at the sky and turns himself into an offering, Don remembers what it is to despair. How sweet old texts can be for drowning men. 

 

“Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo, santificado sea tu nombre; venga a nosotros tu reino…”

 

If he prays hard enough, forces himself into faith and belief, it might just change something. Let it not be said there is a lack of trying. 

***

Smith walks into the lab-turned-Maureen’s-office with a sneer and curled fists. Maureen is sitting by the table, papers spread across from her and pencil in hand. Smith clears her throat and smirks as the other woman startles just enough to be noticeable.  

 

“Penny just finished. It’s your turn.”

 

Maureen barely glances her way, sending that pitiful imitation of a smile and getting back to her numbers or whatever it is she’s using as an excuse this time. 

 

“Think you can go in for me?”

 

“What happened to routine?”, there is no answer, of course. That’s alright, Smith did come here expecting a fight. “Maureen, how many times have you seen Will?”

 

The scientist freezes, pencil hovering over her notes. The woman’s shoulders tense and when she speaks, she does so through gritted teeth. “What are you talking about?”

 

Smith walks in further, stopping right across from Maureen and sitting on the table, one foot still on the ground. There is a smile on her face that is everything but kind and Maureen is quick to drop her pencil and glare back. Old habits and all that. 

 

“John went in for you last time.”

 

“I had a meeting with Victor.”

 

“Judy the time before that. And Robot. And me.” 

 

“I don’t…”, Maureen starts shaking her head, picking the pencil back up.

 

No. Not this time. 

 

“You can’t avoid him forever, you know? Hiding away isn’t gonna change that.”

 

Both women sit in the silence that follows. They’ve grown used to it since Will came back; the gushing black paste covering them whole, making their movements heavy and their words scarce. It’s easier to be blind than it is to wipe it off. 

 

“I’m not hiding.”

 

“He’s still your son and…”

 

Maureen slams her palm on the metal, pencil finally clattering down down down to the floor. Tears grow in her eyes only to be mercilessly blinked away. 

 

“No, he’s not!”, the mother dares to meet Smith’s gaze steadily, sure as ever. “That… that thing in there. That’s not my son. Not my Will.” She scoffs, arranging her papers into a neat line. “A shadow, maybe.”

 

“Typical.” There is venom now, familiar and formerly missing, when she opens her mouth and speaks. June, Smith, someone else. That venom never seems to leave. “It’s not pretty, so it can’t possibly be Robinson. Life isn’t clean, Maureen, you should know that.”

 

“This isn’t life, it’s death. I’m not staring at it as it comes.”

 

“How dare you?”, Smith stands. A fight is a war is a voice. Maureen can hide all she wants but she cannot be blind, not anymore. She won’t allow it. “That boy, your boy, dragged himself out of hell for us. He survived the most horrible things that could happen to anyone. And you’re calling it nothing. He’s not dead. Will is alive, somehow, you don’t get to take that away from him.”

 

As she yells fire grows in her belly, up her chest, out her throat. The roof of her mouth tastes of smoke and ash long before she’s done. And as she calms she realizes Maureen stares back, not in shame, but in curiosity.

 

“You know.”

 

Now she does laugh. Of course, if there is a way to avoid, let it be this one. That old, forbidden knowledge. The question so many are asking. What could have possibly happened to Will that managed to do this.

 

“I guessed. It’s not that hard. If you dared to look, maybe you would know too.”

 

Now Maureen does look away. Fast, clumsy. The shame creeps in and the sight of it tastes of sugar.

 

“I can’t. You don’t understand, that’s my baby in there. Mine. To see what they did to him… I can’t.”

 

“I love him too.” It shakes the rage, the shame, the paste. This admittance, the word never said; common knowledge but always kept quiet. June Harris, Zoey Smith, unnamed creature, loves a Robinson as if he were hers. Not her child, never that. But her kind. The pain of his scars is shared by all of them, even her. “If you can’t stomach it that’s fine. It’s your business. But don’t disrespect Will by calling his fight worthless.”

 

Survival is ugly, the Robinsons need to start learning. 

 

“Smith…”, shock and kindness and pity and guilt all pour out of Maureen’s eyes.

 

But that is not why they are here, that is not the fight. Not today, hopefully not ever. Breaking in and turning away, Smith calls out over her shoulder trying really hard to put the venom away. 

 

“I’ll cover your shift.”

 

Maybe, one day, Maureen and Will both won’t need her to.

***

And she has a broken neck. So it goes.

 

And fire destroyed everything in its path. So it goes. 

 

And Will Robinson was taken apart. So it goes. 

***

Fire overpowers silence, doubt and fear. It doesn’t listen to the warnings of others as it breaks through a rift, heading for the home of his family, saviors, human and brother. 

 

The ship enters the sky, goes down heading for a human settlement. Such small creatures that take up such a large space. He hears his brother in his head, rattled and angry.

 

I told you not to.

 

Scarecrow does not laugh, he can’t, it’s not in his system. He whirls and turns and accelerates on the way down.

 

And I knew better.

 

His brother warns, cold, Scarecrow.

 

He roars as his ship lands. The humans scurry around, breakable little things that they are. So stupid to think themselves powerful enough to stop the children of space. To stop him, were he a threat. 

 

I know. You do not. Your human breaks like you haven’t.

 

Robot’s voice grows, insulted. I have hurt.

 

And now Scarecrow ignites, raging and injured. Hurt is a privilege, to break is a far more violent pain. He stalks his way to the back of his ship. 

 

Not like us. The gate lowers and his path to the planet opens before him. On the other side, standing on fresh grass and surrounded by humans, Robot watches.  Let me, I know. 

 

His poor, naive, hopeful brother doesn’t dare to deny him. 

***

The air ripples through a small, hidden room. Little hairs on the back of a pale neck stand alert, a heart beats wildly. His shields, weakened as they are, do not stand a chance against red metal. No matter how hard he hides, he cannot hide away from this visitor.

 

And yet…

 

In the fire he knows well, the almost-boy finds comfort, familiar pain, familiar rage, a twin image. He remembers fearing it in the past, being small and stupid and sheltered, uncomfortable before the strength of Scarecrow. 

 

Now his breath calms, sweat dries on his palms and he closes his eyes, for the first time in so long, to sleep easy.

Notes:

The book Penny is reading to Will is Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vunnegut. He speaks of people looking back and staying stuck in the past as those who become pillars of salt. And he says that, after a massacre, the only ones who can comment are the birds, 'cus they are the only ones left alive (Poo-tee-tweet). "So it goes" are the words he writes everytime someone dies or something horrible happens; there are whole essays about those words.

The prayer Don says is accurate in spanish, I would know, trust me. I don't know the name of it in english but it's the main one. And what Sister Agnes says (for those who don't want to translate) is "such little faith".

Chapter 7

Notes:

What is it with me and posting chapters at 2 am

She smiles at him before they fall asleep every night. 

Those bright pearl-teeth don’t seem to remember their bodies were broken into not even an hour ago.

***

She hides behind medicine when things go wrong. One of her professors on Earth had told her that, long ago. It proves true everyday in space, especially since Will came home. 

Judy runs to her infirmary, her tests and treatment plans. She seeks to fix what she can, tries to ignore what she can’t. 

Her greatest fear is that Will does not want her to. 

On this day, like the one before and the one before that, Judy reviews her brother’s progress. His burn worries her, if only a little. It should be healing faster than it is, she doesn’t want the muscle to atrophy, his skin to grow hard and inflexible. A part of her can’t help but think things would be easier if Will were responsive. If he would just help her help him. If he could just… try a little harder. 

No. It is a poisonous thought, unfair and cruel. She chokes it down every time.

Judy is his doctor, it is her job to care for him until he can do it himself. 

And if the day never comes? a treacherous whisper. 

She slams her papers down, bitter and frustrated and close to screaming misery. Every second, even in sleep, Judy tries so hard. Hard enough for all of the Robinsons combined. It is never enough. No matter how well her brother’s body becomes, his soul, his heart, is a different matter. 

Judy has never felt so limited before, like such a waste. 

A curse on the tip of her tongue, moments before her rage and rot strikes out and throws her data pad against the wall, buzzing comes. Barely there, then all at once. The air changes all around her, anger and power flooding the ship. Shaking, wishing for a gun, Judy runs.

***

Robot follows a few paces behind his brother, the power that is Scarecrow permeating on every wall, the floor, the air. He is sure Will Robinson already knows they are coming, that he felt his brother land the day before. The rest of the humans stay outside, whispering to each other, pointing, accusing. To Robot they are friends, and he is theirs. But Scarecrow has never belonged with humanity the way Robot does.

They both know Will Robinson is the exception, not the rule.

That only makes this twice as necessary, as terrifying. 

On the side, rushing past hallways and doors, Judy Robinson stares, mouth open, pulse rushing. He cannot blame her, if he were human, Robot would look the same. 

“Scarecrow?” she asks, eyes darting from one robot to another. “What are you doing here?”

It is not common for his brother to visit them, and never before has he entered their metal home. Unbothered and barely noticing she is here, Scarecrow answers.

“Will Robinson.”

The human turns to him first, as hesitant as Robot himself had been only hours before. Judy joins them, walking by his side, Scarecrow farther ahead. Quiet, she turns to Robot.

“Can he help?”

That is the question. The hope and fear. He does not know, he knows what he wishes for. 

“Hope, Judy Robinson.”

Sighing, the human keeps walking. After all, they keep vigil together every day. Why should this be any different? 

***

The boy on the bed opens his eyes willingly for the first time in too long. Finally, he thinks, and gasps at the fact he can think. For once, he stares at the door, not in fear, but in anticipation. 

He is rewarded quickly, with copper and sand, towering at his always open door. Privacy is no longer allowed to him, hasn’t been since a wooden house surrounded by trees and death. For once, this intrusion is welcome. 

His throat works, his chapped lips tremble. If he had a voice he would speak his visitor’s name, as he is muted, Will thinks it. 

Scarecrow.

The copper robot groans and rumbles, inside him is a war that tastes of peace. The boy finds a mirror in the metal and stars, warmth. Much like gentle hands and whispered promises in the middle of the night. 

He thinks again. Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow. 

Careful, so very careful, the robot walks into the room. 

***

In the depths of the forest, hidden by trees and stones, a small group of sinners runs. 

***

Will is so small, she feels like he could fit in the palm of her hand.

Penny smiles wide at the toddler, remembers holding him up in the air and letting go, just for a second, to pull that beautiful laugh. Their mom lost their mind when she saw it, in her eyes Will is still breakable. Penny knows better.

Her baby brother will be the strongest of them all. 

The little body curls up next to her on the mattress, and Penny’s pale hand darts, looking for his, to hold over the pillow. His little eyes are closing already, sleepy and tired after a day of playing. Judy had fussed over them the whole time, frowning and worrying at her nails; trying not to smile, in case mom was looking their way. 

Tomorrow, tomorrow the three of them will play together.

Tonight, Penny leans just enough to place a kiss on Will’s brow, smiles at his sigh, and lays down to sleep.

In the hours that pass before they wake up, boy and girl don’t let go of each other. 

***

Smith feels him arrive before she sees him. Tention, buzzing all around, shakes her out of her thoughts. She was getting white yarn for Will’s new belt, hoping to make a better one this time around. It drops from her hand when he breaks through.

Scarecrow.

Fire rises in her chest, uninvited and unwanted. Robot is hers, Will is hers. This copper creature is not hers. And she is not his. This they both know. 

Shaking, June Zoey Smith speeds to the boy’s room. That niggling fear pushes her forward, past the shadow that is Don and locked doors. Do not hurt him, she tries to send, do not push him. He can break.   

Nothing is sent back, as expected. She is not Will, her knowledge of these creatures is nowhere as deep, as complex, as tangible. Her thoughts do not speak. 

Smith finds Judy standing outside Will’s room, Robot behind her. Instead of fear, horror, suspicion, what lives in the girl’s eyes is… hope. Unfathomably, impossibly, for the first time in too long. She slows, meets Robot’s gaze, breath caught in her throat. 

“What is going on?”

Judy snaps back into herself, glances at her and immediately turns back to the room. The doctor shakes her head, silent, chin pointing past the door. 

Slow, a thousand possibilities running around her head, Smith peeks. It is not what she expects. Inside that room, on the bed, curled on his side and still as a corpse, lays Will. Scarecrow stands before him, clawed hand reaching for the much smaller and fragile body. Her heart jumps to her throat before she has the chance to understand it. 

On the bed, Will is watching Scarecrow, his eyes still dull and exhausted, but alive. So alive. And, around one of those murderous claws, thin fingers curl. Their boy looks to one of his monsters and responds, no longer swallowed by the void, the pain, the trauma. 

Still burdened, she knows, still aching.

But here.

Will is here. 

***

Neither of them can breathe very well. 

Boy and Girl lay across from one another over thin wood. They are bruised and in pain, what few clothes they are still wearing are torn and dirty. Their skin marked, branded. Owned, if only for some time. 

What is slowly stopping to be Will wants to lay on that horrible bed that was Dan’s and is now becoming his own. His broken skin and torn muscles need it. And he is sure her body needs it too.

Pete and his men had discovered their new favorite hobby today. Apparently, it is amusing to hurt them at the same time, in turns, both. Sandy crying for Will was funny and Will growling in Sandy’s favor was hilarious. 

No wonder these people wanted two children at once. Their sadism is too much for only one of them to take. It is too much for them both. Would be too much for a thousand children.

When Henry and Charles threw them into their little wooden room, Boy and Girl landed on the floor and curled up, groaning and crying and screaming. Now they keep their eyes locked and their hands reaching, but not yet touching. 

He would save her if he could. She would kill him if she knew how.

Both are merciful. 

Dan had killed himself and even that was a kind of mercy, if only for the boy Dan was before Pete and his men. And the women that look away every time. 

Sandy heaves, tries to turn. Groaning, Will manages to drag himself on the wood and help her onto her side. What little comes out is barely bile. She falls on her back right after and finds him again. Closer now, Will’s hand locks around Sandy’s, fingers gently rubbing circles on her wrist. Later, when they find the strength to stand, she will rub circles on his back as he cries on the not-quite-his bed.

It is not good, not truly bearable, but it is what they have. What they can get. 

In his exhaustion, Will lets his eyes fall closed, Sandy soon following. They will sleep on the floor, broken ragdolls. Maybe as the sun rises they will turn human again. 

In the hours that pass before they wake up, Boy and Girl don’t let go of each other. 

***

He wonders what is left of her, hopes it is more than what is left of Him. If this almost-boy were stronger, he would go looking and bury the bones, the gleaming pearls, the gentle hands.

He is incomplete and weak and barely alive. 

***

Maureen stands surrounded by her people and has no answers for them. Everyone has been careful and silent with her and her family. They have heard nothing of what happened to Will, have not seen even a trace of the violence that has ransacked her children and her heart. Their hands are still clean. 

“Why is he here?” Victor stands, arms crossed, against the wall.

“Scarecrow is not like Robot, his presence makes the people uncomfortable.” Kamal sighs.

Maureen had not seen the copper robot arrive, before this meeting she hadn’t known of his visit. Still, it easy to understand why he bothered with coming, why he landed on this planet. 

“He’s here for Will, not you.” Her voice is tired, heavy. Shadows grow under her eyes every morning and the men and women around her are quick to see them. To see the exhaustion.

Angela dares, for the first time out of anyone, to ask. “How is he?”

Maureen scoffs, chokes on a laugh. The people around her twitch, look away. They are so painfully ignorant she wants to scratch their eyes out. 

“Alive”, she settles for, “maybe Scarecrow can help make him… more than just alive.”

Gentle, cupping her elbow, Hiroki speaks. “What happened, Maureen?”

Her eyes grow wet without her permission, a knot on her throat. 

“I don’t know. None of us… Will hasn’t said.”

Still bent over her screens, Diane frowns. 

“Why?” 

“He hasn’t said a word.”

“It’s been weeks”, Victor stands a little straighter, disbelief in his eyes. Whatever he sees in her takes care of that very quickly. “I’m sorry, he is a good boy.” 

She nods, nothing else for her to do. Kamal, probably in agreement, rubs at her forehead and decrees, “keep Scarecrow away from the others while he is here.” 

“It’s just Will he cares about. He’ll stay away on his own.”

She doesn’t wait to hear anything else, to answer anything else. These people have no right to her baby’s pain, they have no right to what little she has given them. Silent, this heart-broken mother steps away from Hiroki, turns her back. As she is about to walk out the door, Kamal calls to her once more. 

“Maureen, if there is danger to us, to the crew, I need to know.” 

Acid lifts the corners of her lips. Oh, if only she knew the answer to that. Many nights she has lain awake with the fear of whoever hurt Will coming back to finish the job. To destroy him once and for all. 

“When I find out, they’ll die. Don’t worry.”

The pathetic little gasps behind her do nothing to erase that acidic smile. This time, when Maureen walks away, no one dares to stop her. 

***

In his dreams she is still reaching for him, begging, smiling. 

He cannot find her. He has failed her. This the living and the dead, both, know. 

Notes:

There we go. Hope you liked this chapter and please feel free to leave comments and kudos if you want, I love those.

Chapter 8: Chapter 8

Notes:

Usual warnings apply.

Pain spreads like a disease, blackening their veins and turning their blood to oil. 

***

Penny smiles for the first time in weeks. 

In Will’s bedroom, the boy that had once been an empty shell is now sitting up. When Judy talks, she talks to their brother, not at him. Will says nothing back, and Penny keeps smiling because even in this silence there is consciousness. A boy that nods and shakes his head and is so wonderfully here she could cry with the beauty of it.

Scarecrow, thank you.

Nevermind the boy is still pale, shaky, wounded. Or that he still cries with no warning or reason. Or that he huffs, now, whenever something is asked of him. Frustration and worry are subtle, whispers, against the bright joy in her. Her brother has been alive for so long, yet only now he is living. The attitude is no price at all. 

And the rest of it… well, who could blame him. 

“Can you believe it?”, she asks her sister, practically buzzing as she helps put away bandages and creams. “Finally.”

Judy hums, frowns. No, not now. There cannot be something else wrong when Will isn’t quite right. Better, yes. 

“What?”, Penny puts the bandages down, eyeing her sister. 

Sighing, the other woman smiles a weak thing and shrugs. “It’s too soon, Penny.”

“I don’t…”

“He’s better right now, but it’s too soon to tell just how much can change, from now on.” 

“He’ll keep getting better”, she glares, “Will’s a fighter, he’ll keep fighting.”

Judy sits on the edge of the bed their brother had once laid on, where they had swallowed their sick and healed the worst done to his body. Penny hates this room, doesn’t understand how Judy can bare to work in it.

“You need to understand, severe trauma changes a person. Will is responsive now, and that is great. And maybe he’ll keep getting better until he’s almost like he had been, before. But maybe not.” Pitying, the doctor that has seen too many people fall to pieces hopes beyond hope her fears don’t come true. “Maybe this is as good as it gets. It’s more than I expected.”

Tears, blinding fury, build behind Penny’s eyes. It can’t be, it just…can’t. Will has always been so big, in presence, in mind, in heart. She knows he was hurt, that he has been through too many horrible things. She also knows her faith and where it lays. In her brother, in his strength. If Judy will not believe, then Penny will do it for the two of them. 

There has to be more than this. Better life. 

Her brother deserves it.  

***

Like a puppet whose strings have been reborn, this almost-boy moves in life with crooked limbs and bleary eyes. He has no voice of his own, ventriloquy a forgotten art. 

***

John watches from afar as his family finds a way to force itself back together. He smiles when they do, cries alongside his son. He has become a ghost in his own home, never reachable, touched. But watching. He comforts himself by knowing those kids know how to live without a father. And they are better off for it.

All that horror has made John infectious. 

***

The body breathes and aches and moves into aliveness. Almost-boy, almost-man, almost-right. A thing that was scarred, a person undone, a tapestry forcibly stitching itself back together. No longer a pillar of salt. So much poetry, pretty words for what is inherently ugly.  

Don stands over him and the boy tries not to see another man, light brown beard, dark eyes, cruel smile. Don takes Will’s foot, careful and loving, and Will remembers a hand dragging him over the wood. Don speaks sweet nothings and Will hears himself be called a whore.

This wounded body wishes to leave the house in the woods, wants to go home, to feel safe. It doesn’t. There are so many wishes and so little hope. 

And yet…

There is a part of him that remembers collapsing in Don’s arms, a hand holding his, a kiss on his hair. He remembers Don helping him shave and giving him shit advice on girls Will didn’t ask for. He remembers he wanted to tell him before anyone else that Will… but he didn’t say it. And now he never will.

Don rambles now as he lifts and stretches Will’s legs, massages his burned calf, spreads creams over his injuries. And as he rambles he stops to ask questions, pointless ones like what do you think? or can you believe it? The man holds himself still, just for a second, waiting for the body on the bed to answer.

Silence is all he gets. 

If he could, Will would tell him not to bother. But then there wouldn’t be a problem. This almost-boy remembers the last thing he did with his voice, the sounds that came from his mouth, the words and promises. A body on top of his, violating, and Will’s pain. A girl crying and Will’s vow. A fire, and an animal screeching as it brought justice. 

He doesn’t want it now. Here. Let my voice be buried, he thinks, let it die.  

The others long for words, try to coax it. It’s pointless. Will enjoys his silence, finds warmth in it. Life. Don heard him screaming, and the boy can’t imagine how this man can wish to hear anything from his mouth again. 

So he lays on his bed and lets Don move him and tries to remember what it is to be held. 

***

There must be some kind of cure for this, Judy thinks. Medicine to make them healthy. Take the distance from their father, the anger from their mother, the fear from Penny. Take the pain, all of it. Will doesn’t deserve it, and Judy, she fears she can no longer bear it. 

***

Puppeteers, cruel beasts, rotten things. Their limbs remember the heat of fire, the sting of a knife, the screams of a child. Hideous little things that they are. The group runs for their lives, men and women with soot all over and the taste of ashes on their tongues.

At night, most curl up into a ball and dream of what they’ve done, and the demon that came from the trees to make them pay for it. They wake up screaming, wailing. Stupid little beasts.

With the sun in the sky and whatever they have turned into weapons they move. This way, that. No real hope, no real faith. Just breath. 

Empty. 

Some of them, the ones with a voice that once was a conscience know themselves to be monsters. Undeserving of every beat of their heart. They know it is justice, what has happened to them and theirs. 

They understand Pete had it coming, and now they do too. 

***

He can’t help but pretend she is here, safe and warm, by his side. He is haunted by a girl with kind eyes. 

***

She sits on Dan’s bed, silently looking out the window. 

Will watches her from the bed they share, his aching body keeping him down, with curious eyes. Sandy usually acts like a child, is what he’s learned on the last day and night. Except for when she is like this, statue, cold, away. Like a fairy, or the moon. 

Their day ended not that long ago, Peter and Charles dragging them out of their room by their hair and parading them around camp. Sandy, as a priced horse; Will, fresh meat. All those hours she kept her mouth in the shape of a sweet smile, eyes empty, tears sometimes falling down her pale cheeks. 

Now he curls into himself while Sandy curls outwards. She walked in with her head held high and sat, back perfectly straight. The moonlight shines around her like a halo, if he were in just a little more pain, Will could mistake her for an angel. He still might. 

He supposes she is beautiful, most boys his age would probably think so. She can be doll-like with her painted on smiles. If they were home, on Earth, in a Jupiter, her skin would be clean and soft; her hair untangled and washed; her nails kept and painted. Yeah, she is lovely, or was. That’s probably what made these men look at her. 

And what about Will? He’s never called himself beautiful, has never cared to. Other children called him pretty, back on Earth, but it wasn’t a compliment then. His mother calls him handsome, but she is his mother. No one outside his family has ever wanted to point out what he looks like, for better or worse. 

Well, no one before Peter. But what that man does to him is not a compliment either. 

Does Sandy have a family, he wonders. Someone who cares about her. Who wants to protect her. If she does, would she be here with him? Probably. Will knows himself to be loved and yet… 

“What happened to you?”, he asks before he can stop himself. 

Shame and pity and curiosity fight behind his rib cage . How did you end up here? is what he wants to ask; he won’t. If only a day has come so close to destroying him, what has time done to Sandy? She’s been here long, that much is obvious. People barely look her way, they expect to find her. Will is a novelty, she is old news. 

He is so sorry for it. 

This holy figure, shining and fragile and gentle, turns over her shoulder to see him and smile. Not the usual, vacant, child-like smile. Something older, far older than either of them. Sad, resigned, horrifyingly present. He’d hoped for her to be beyond this life and its pain, unaware or spared from its evil. Usually it seems that way. 

Maybe she only comes out at night, when the men are gone and the women don’t point and whisper. 

“Oh”, she speaks, and sounds older too, “my mother died.”

Before he can ask she turns her back on him again, looking out the window. 

Will sighs, covering himself up with the blanket they share. His mother is alive, waiting for him back home, she will hold him tight and kiss his cheeks and ask where he has been. Or, likelier, she’ll storm in here with his dad, guns blazings, and destroy everyone who dares hurt him. Who will destroy the world for Sandy? 

Pale and bruised and dirty, she is stronger than he could ever hope to be. Maybe she’ll destroy the world for herself. In her mother’s name. When the time comes, Will thinks he can hold the matches for her. 

***

Some of the puppets will never move again. Glass on the healing ground and crooked bones are all that’s left of limbs with broken strings. 

***

Scarecrow who has come back from the dead and wished to die both walks behind his brother as they guard a human boy. There is a chair with wheels, small and weak, that carries him. Sitting, Will does and says nothing. Thinking, Will screams and cries and wishes. 

Claws curled, Scarecrow hears it all, feels it in his own core. Remembers when his own mind was like that. A hope that burns, a past that aches, a body that doesn’t work. This boy cannot walk, he can barely sit, he cannot clean himself. If Will Robinson were made of metal, parts would be missing, and Scarecrow could rip them off of himself and fuse them into the boy.

But the child is flesh and blood and organic. Beyond him. 

It’s a pity. 

The other humans smile and cheer, steps light, as they push the chair Will is in. Without words, with eyes and nods, he had asked to go outside. To see the sun. The others think it life, Scarecrow fears it is death coming closer. Robinson cannot be revived with lighting. 

The girls that helped save him ramble on and on, nonsensically. They squeeze bony shoulders and caress blond hair, smile and kiss temples. A child tied a body to the floor gently, once. How very tragic, the familiarity. 

Outside comes within reach and the boy straightens as much as he can, leans forward. The girls walk faster and the robots follow. Light showers them, warmth. It is a nice day, soft breeze, sunlight, quiet. The group moves behind the human ship, where some boulders and grass cover them from view. His brother kneels by Will and takes off the soft fabric covering skinny, wounded legs. 

For a moment, Scarecrow allows himself to enjoy it. He angles his face upwards, lets the sun cover him, feels the air caressing his plating, hears the grass beneath his feet. There was a time this was an impossible dream. Freedom, stolen in violence. 

Scarecrow has it now, can reach outside whenever he wants. Is no longer in chains. 

And that alone is worth everything. 

Robot startles, the humans gasp and fall to their knees. Turning, copper meets blue eyes. In his metal chair, pale and bruised and scarred, Will Robinson angles his face upwards, tears falling down his cheeks. What’s left of the hands that branded his neck are left for all to see, weak fingers clutch the railing, try to lift the body up and give up halfway through. 

Will lands on the chair, loud and painful, doesn’t flinch. The boy is staring at the sun, the beginnings of something on his lips. It isn’t a smile, not even close, but it is more than the blank slate that face had been all day and the one before. 

Letting his eyes fall closed, Will Robinson feels the light on his skin and cries. 

***

Breath has become a mutation, unthinkable and unnatural yet marvelous. A miracle that brings tears into the mass’ eyes and forgotten prayers into a cynic's lips. A curse, too. Shaking fingers, burning leg, faded bruises. Breath unwanted and begged for. Consciousness born screaming.

Notes:

And we have another chapter down. I still don't know how many more chapters we have to go, but I think we might be about halfway through, give or take.
Thank you very much for reading, and please feel free to drop a comment or a kudo if you like, it's always nice to hear what you guys think.

Chapter 9: Chapter 9

 

We deserve this, they say. We deserve. We deserve. We deserve. And in the dark they admit, if they could, they would slay the monster. 

They are bound to hell anyway. 

***

She sits across from the boy, knitting in silence. June is sure she is the only one that never tries to talk to Will. Everyone else blabbers and stutters over and over, basically poking at the kid. Desperate. 

And she can see it, the similar desperation in Will. The shaking, the simmering rage, the fear. He’s going to pop, that kid. She can’t wait. And hopes to never see it. 

A voice might come with the blow, or a death. Little dominoes falling one after the other until the tower breaks into a million little pieces. Will, Don, Penny, Judy, Maureen, John, Smith, Robot. Maybe even Scarecrow. And then what? Rebirth, maybe. Or putrefaction. 

Someone is going to rot, she’s sure. It’s been coming for weeks. 

But not today. 

The now is for knitting a new belt, a placeholder for past happiness. A distraction. The quiet of them in this room while Will lays on his bed and rests. Not that fitful sleep with a tense back. Not the scurrying glances and shaking limbs. True rest; closed eyes, deep breaths, gentle quiet.

He’s awake, she knows. And she’s watching him, he knows that back. It’s almost like a compromise. Smith gobbles him up with her eyes, and Will lets her, as long as she stays silent. It’s better, so much better, than the alternative. 

When June stumbled home with running mascara and an ache that stayed for months, she didn’t bother to let anyone gobble her. Kindly or otherwise. She drank. Bottle after bottle for years, little bouts of poison that could’ve killed her if she’d kept it up. These days she watches Will bite his tongue and wonders if that’s his bottle, or his therapy. If it matters. If it can be both. 

Just like many other times, June considers. She could break this truce between them and tell him. No one else knows, can know, where Will is inside his head. He might want the company of a woman who was once young and naive and bleeding on someone else’s bed sheets. 

Or he might not want it. Will is often solitary in his joy, should she let him be solitary in this too? Is it better? Does it matter?

On and on the questions circle her head as her needles circle thread and Will pretends to sleep. He screams when he really sleeps, now. Silence means consciousness means lies by omission. For both of them. 

He hasn’t told anyone. Not with his mouth or with a pen or with his eyes. Neither did June Harris. Neither has Smith. June became a criminal, in her acidic silence. At night she stays awake and wonders what this boy will become with his. If she should try to stop it. 

Silence was June’s right. It is Will’s. 

The men that hurt them didn’t care about things like that. 

Smith refuses to take one more thing from Will Robinson, no matter how venomous. And finds, ironically, that she can’t take it from herself either. 

She should tell him she should tell him she should tell him.

She can’t, today.

Maybe tomorrow. 

***

Victor eyes Maureen, suppressing the squirming rising up his spine. She holds his gaze steadily, coldly. Furiously. There are things they both want to know and can’t. Things a boy is expected to say and doesn’t. A captain that is expectant. 

“No”, Maureen spits at his feet. The ground rots under her word. 

“Better me than someone else”, he tries, “and it will happen. Kamal won’t wait any longer.”

“No.”

The ground keeps rotting. 

“Maureen… I’m on your side. Better me.”

A mother wants to claw his throat out. Wants to hunt Anjum Kamal down. Wants her baby to feel like her baby again. None of those she can have. 

“Better me.”

She swallows her anger down and listens. 

***

Penny keeps trying to kiss Will’s forehead. 

She used to do that all the time, cradling his head in her hands, squeezing his cheeks. Now that he seats and nods and frowns, Penny forgets there are things that can’t happen anymore. 

If she sings, Will won’t join her. If mom goes for a hug, Will flinches. If Don makes a joke, Will glances at him and looks away. 

If Penny tries to kiss him, he starts sobbing. 

It scared her, the first time it happened. Days ago, Will stood up on his own and seemed pleased. In her joy, Penny forgot how fragile he still is, and pressed her lips on his sweaty skin, right under his hairline. 

Her brother froze, breathed in deep, and fell to the ground. His injured hands flew over the ground, hunting for something he couldn’t find. The tears started falling right after, hiccups becoming sobs and those wails. 

Penny ran to her room and wailed herself to sleep, too. 

Today, she watches him from afar, fingers clenching in the desperate need to hold. Out of everything she believed could be taken from her, loving her brother was never what she expected. She used to be so good at making him smile. Now she can make him cry. 

All of this anger, the tears, the shaking. All because of some monsters who thought they had the right to…

On the other corner of the room, Will trembles on doe legs, sweat falling down his neck. He’s taken to trying to stand every day. And Penny watches closely, fearing the fall that’s coming. The screaming frustration that leaves Will’s lips every time he loses his balance. The clenching of her fingers. 

“You’re making good progress”, she finds herself saying, knowing no answer is coming.

Knowing words don’t really matter anymore, with Will. If only words weren’t the only thing Penny’s always had. 

Her brother nods, stiff and careful. Focused. 

When his burnt leg starts bowing, she knows the fall is coming. She fears it will kill him, eventually. That fall. And if it does, Penny will die with him. She won’t even mean to, Penny thinks. But she’ll die. 

How is she supposed to spend a lifetime clenching fingers at empty air. 

***

It’s an easy enough thing, to talk. You don’t need to know the truth to open your mouth. Space and aliens break all the rules just as easy as bored men. This group of survivors, three years into a stranded exile, have nothing better to do but talk and eat. They feed every day a little more. Build bonfires in between Jupiters.

Did you hear?, they ask each other. Maureen Robinson lost her head. They gobble up their words and their hunted meat. The Robinson boy came back wrong. A bite, saliva pooling. He's finally done it. Torn dead meat. He's become a machine. 

Amongst their whispers the fire rages. 

***

Will watches Robot stand over him with jealousy. 

He’d never been jealous before, not really. Envious, maybe. Self-hating. This is something very different. 

He watches the ridges and scratches on thick, firm metal and growls. The sharpness of  fingers unbelievably dulled by choice. The strength. He wants he wants he wants. So badly. 

Robot is kind with him. Slow and gentle, like always. Will is both grateful and bitter. He wants to be stronger than this, strong enough to take it, the power of his friend. He’s scared to death of anything rougher than a caress. And even that is toxic to scarred skin that once bled in the name of ‘love’. 

Forced love. Violent love. Deadly love.

Love that wasn’t love at all. 

Robot’s is. He is kind and slow and obvious in a way he hadn’t needed to be, before Pete went ahead and tore into a child. And another child. And one after that. An angry wheel of broken bodies. 

This child feels a thousand years old and ugly. Monstrosity has become more appealing than weakness. In fire, in screaming, in metal. The monster watches his dearest friend and wants to tear him apart. The crying boy watches and wants to hide inside strong arms. Both wish they were covered in something thicker than skin.

Will sits across from Robot and runs his fingers over the platting, slow and careful, learning. I want I want I want. And Robot, who lives in his head and in his heart and in his pitiful skin, knows. Allows. Is not afraid. Will won’t kill him. Robot won’t let him kill himself, either. This sick compromise lets the boy feel something other than a victim.

He traces metal and spikes and claws and pretends they are his own. 

Robot lets him. 

***

Monsters and demons in men’s flesh walk past the trees, their burnt skin grown closed and stiff. Their people starving, angry. Mutilated. Another monster in child’s flesh tore them all open, once upon a time. After they tore him and his other child friend apart. 

In this time, lost, they walk like a down-trudden army, no leader, no hope.

Until they see the smoke. 

It’s far, very far. Their journey in circles losing the path once well worn. But it is there. And where there is smoke, there is a camp. A warm fire. People. 

A destination. 

***

The first time he sees her, she thinks he is her friend. Peter smiles at her mom, and the little girl clinging to her skirt, and promises safety. They believe him.

When her mom’s peach-soft skin starts bruising, little Sandy kisses the purple skin better. She makes up spells to take the pain away. Her mommy kisses her forehead every time and smiles. Her youthful face grows older, colder, emptier. Sandy starts to think the older woman looks lost.

Peter is happy.

Some nights, Sandy hears her mom cry, scream, muffle strange sounds on her pillow. And grunts, slapping skin, gasps. She spends the hours telling herself stories. In the morning, her mom moves stiffly, Peter is happy.

She is twelve when her mommy kisses her forehead for the last time. 

The body on the ground is bloody, a knife still in hand, skin bruised like never before. Sandy falls to her knees and screams.

Peter is happy.

The first time he kisses her, he tells her to start calling him Pete. 

***

Vijay eyes the people who used to be his closest friends and hopes they will find their way back. He’s tried, stupidly, to knock and approach and talk talk talk. It’s almost pathetic. It’s definitely sad. Nothing ever comes from any of it. 

Penny never leaves the Jupiter anymore. He misses her smile, the twinkle in her eyes. He wants to get in trouble with her again. But more than that, he wants to know she is ok. To see some sign of life.

And Will, who he has found himself growing closer with, with time. Everyone knows he’s alive. No one knows more than that.

The whispers are starting to play tricks on him too. Vijay is scared. For his friends, for his family, for himself. Of whatever is out there and what it has already done.

Penny and Will wouldn’t be taken out by just anything. 

But all of the Robinsons at once?

There was something really bad on this planet. 

***

Innocent hands cling desperately to each other, fingers interlocked. Please, he begs them. Please please please. She is screaming, crying, fighting. She hasn’t fought in so long she’d almost forgotten how. Today her pearl-white teeth bite and her sweet voice roars.

Even after everything that’s been seen and done and endured, she finds she doesn’t want to die. Her mommy used to kiss her forehead, she remembers. A boy kissed her forehead once, before he jumped. 

She wants more of that. So much more. Please. 

He tries so hard to keep holding her, to drag her to him and away from them. 

He fails.

Her neck breaks.

The boy breaks with it. 

***

The flames rise high, higher than any of them. Than anything. Charged with the anger, the hate, the fear. A little girl’s tears and a little boy’s cries. A monster’s fury. Sandy, Dan, Will, Sandy, Dan, Will, Sandy, Dan, Will.

Every broken scream blurs the names together like watercolor blood, soaking the earth. Centuries later, trees will burst from the charred remains of this hell, two children feeding the roots from their bodies. Bones hidden, protected, cherished, by the land. 

Until then, this reaper wails, stabs up and down and up and down and up and down on his demon’s face. Destroys him. Destroys them all. He straddles the larger body, face and hands caked in their blood, stabs and stabs and stabs. He is an animal, no longer kind and gentle, but rabid. Foam dripping from his mouth. 

Son of a bitch, stab. Bastard, stab. I win, stab.

I win. 

 

I

 

w

 

i

 

n

 

 

 

Notes:

And we're back!
This chapter is a bit of a transition point, laying seeds for what's going to happen in the second half of the story. I hope you liked it, and thank you so much for reading and sticking with me. If you feel like it, comments and kudos let me know how you're doing and what you're thinking :)

Chapter 10: Chapter 10

Notes:

Usual trigger warnings. This chapter has direct mentions or glimpses into SUICIDE, RAPE, ABUSE.

 

He dreams of it all the time, even awake. The spikes breaking through pale skin, covering his back, sharp and deadly. Fingers becoming claws. Fire in his hands and his legs and his face. Power grown out of decay. 

***

Samantha watches Scarecrow come and go. From his ship, to the Jupiter 2, and back again. She remembers watching him drag his body through the Resolute all those years ago. Remembers being scared and alone and wishing she were bigger, stronger, more dangerous. 

From Scarecrow’s lights she reads a story. Pain and suffering and injustice. He is very easy to understand, at least to her. The Robinsons are easy to understand too. 

During one of his trips, the girl decides to join him. Hesitant, Scarecrow lets her. Samantha waits by the entrance of his ship early in the morning and walks side by side with a robot.

“Is he better?”, she asks him. Will isn’t ok, that much is obvious. Scarecrow wouldn’t be here otherwise. 

The robot hums and grunts and Samantha knows Will isn’t as better as he wishes the boy were.

“He’s scared.”

Another hum. The Jupiter 2 is getting closer, or they are getting closer and the Jupiter is frozen in some other time. Weeks and weeks ago when Will first went missing. 

“When I was scared, I imagined I was bigger.” Scarecrow stops, turns to look at her, leans down so his lights cover her whole in red. “Didn’t you? Imagine you were sharper, deadlier. Maybe he is imagining that too.”

Maybe he needs to be, she doesn’t say. Fragile is a terrible thing to be, worse when you know it to be true. She stopped fearing life itself when she learned even robots could break. But Will already knows that. 

“Maybe he should feel harsher.”

Scarecrow doesn’t say anything back, and she doesn’t stay to give him the chance. A few steps away from the Robinson’s ship, she walks the other way and leaves them be. They don’t need her there, not right now. Judy likes to worry about her, and she has to be worried enough about Will. Besides, Samantha knows herself to be harsher these days. 

And she has an idea. 

****

The last thing they do together is share a kiss. An innocent kiss. A child’s kiss. Sandy, tears in her eyes and fire in her heart, leans across the grass and through the arms of cruel men to place her lips on a boy’s forehead. 

Will continues to feel her for years to come, that last moment shared between two hurt kids. 

The end of a life. The start of a tragedy. 

It’s not nearly enough.

****

Knowing what is to come, Judy convinces Will to bathe. Which, in turn, means convincing him to be bathed. By her. He started to deny anyone else in the bathroom with them after Penny, joyful and hopeful and crushed, hesitated to help with the more private parts of a bath. Forgetting, for a moment, that Will was aware already of what they did or didn’t do. Of what they couldn’t stand to keep doing. 

So only two siblings now crowd the bathroom, drowning in the silence that has been planted between them since Will came back. Judy would try to play music, or speak and speak and speak about everything and anything if she thought it would make a difference. Her baby brother used to love music. Now, a part of her thinks he no longer notices it. That he can’t. 

She helps him sit in the bathtub, holding his arms and his shoulders and his hands. Holding him so desperately, still fearing the pieces of him will be flown away by a cruel wind. 

Fearing she has been right all along and this middle is actually an end. And Will, silent and pale and scarred, lets her. It must be easier, she thinks, than trying to fight her hands off. She would never leave him. And she is sick to think her hands aren’t the only ones he is fighting, every day, even now. 

Or maybe she’s wrong about all of it. If she is, Will can’t tell her. 

So so so sad, she soaks up a sponge, washes her brother’s back. Her touch is gentle the way her words can’t be, after so long of holding them in. The way this planet hasn’t been either. For any of them. Will hums, closing his eyes. Allowing, for just a second behind a locked door, some comfort. 

“You don’t have to tell him anything.” They both stop, surprised by her voice, the steel in it. The danger. Shaking, Judy wets the sponge again and keeps cleaning, trying to wash the anger off of herself along with her brother’s sweat. “You don’t owe them a story.”

Will, of course, says nothing. But he lifts a shoulder, dropping it quickly. 

“You don’t.”

From out of the water, his hand rises where she can see it, palm open becoming a tight fist.

“They won’t get angry with you. And even if they do”, the fist opens and closes again, “that’s their problem.”

Will scoffs and it tastes sweet. Oh, little brother, she thinks, even in the darkness you are still a work of art.  

“I mean it, Will.” And it’s hard, so hard. “Your needs matter more to me than theirs.”

His hand opens up again, waving dismissively away from himself. It’s fine, he says. It won’t change anything. 

It’s easier. 

***

The day he surrenders, Dan smiles. This boy, small and thin and kind. Too kind. He’d seen a stranger in need and rushed to help. The rag held to his mouth and nose and stinging his eyes had put him to sleep in seconds. Even after all the pain, he never regrets being the type of boy who rushed to help.

He regrets having to leave her behind. But Sandy won’t go, she refuses to give up. Dan can’t do it anymore. 

When Pete comes for him, Dan fights. When the man uses and abuses, Dan bites. When he is dragged to the little room, bruised beyond recognition, he is warm. Happy. This is it, he thinks. The end of tragedy. 

Sandy knows the moment she lays eyes on him. Tears start falling down her soft cheeks, hands shaking. He stands, limps to her and, gentle, holds her face in his hands. 

“Are you sure you won’t come with me?” 

She is almost angry, would be, if she didn’t understand where this plan comes from.

“Not yet.”

He nods, just once. They have had this conversation many times. It always goes the same. He is sorry for it. But not sorry enough to stay. 

“I will see you again, Sandy”, he swears, wiping her tears with his thumb. He knows he would have died on the floor, bloody and miserable, if it weren’t for her. She knows she should join him, she can’t she can’t she can’t. 

It’s not fair, but then again, their lives have never been fair. 

“Ok”, she says. Permission. Not quite a blessing. Enough for him to go easy. 

So, so happy, Dan places his lips on her forehead, branding. Keep this touch, out of all the others. This love that is love, not violence at the hands of men. Not Pete’s brutality. Keep me. 

Smiling, he leans back and turns, walking away from the girl on the bed and to the window, closed and locked but so very breakable. With his fist, he crushes the crystal, blood dripping from his knuckles. Away, too far away, startled shouts and footsteps hurry to them. They’re too late. 

“Bye Sandy.”

Dan sits on the windowsill, watching her, and lets himself fall backwards and in peace. 

He dies smiling. 

***

On the first day of resurrection, Don held a screaming boy in his arms and cried. This, he will forever remember, the memory carved into his ribs. Without knowing it, that child bound him to falling ash forever. Jesus had his apostles, Zeus was envied and worshiped by all, Prometheus was chained to the rock for all eternity. 

Don West belongs to the Robinsons and will shadow the body that grows and regrows in the aftermath of violent murder and resurrection. A witness, a follower, a guardian. Hollow and sacred all at once. 

***

They are laying in bed together. Warm, alone, tranquil. It is moments like now, few and far in between as they are, that make Will jumbled and twisted. It would be easier if Pete was always violent. If every time the man touched him, it was painful and bruising. Most of the time it is. But others…

Pete breathes on his bed sheets, hand pushing his sweaty hair out of his face. Will watches him greedily, obviously. Usually, Pete wouldn’t let him. He does now. 

“Why”, Will finds himself asking the other man, has a moment when fear and adrenaline and the desperate urge to make himself small small small fill him up. The next, Pete turns to him calmly and everything dissipates as if it were never there. 

“Why what?”

And there are many answers to that, aren’t there. Why me, why now, why here. Why Sandy, why her mother, why why why. 

Past a choking fist inside his throat, Will asks, “why don’t you always hurt me?”

When he was very little, his mom taught him to scream if anyone ever tried to touch him in private places. When he was a little older, he was taught that adults who touch children like that are hurting them. When he was almost a teenager, he was taught about rape. In all of these conversations, no one ever mentioned it could be like this. 

Because this is rape, he knows that. Just like the blood and teeth and fists are rape too. Yet they are so different, almost opposites, he turns them over in his head all night long trying to make sense of it. 

“Did you want me to?”, Pete raises a brow, smirks. As if Will would say yes. As if he enjoys it when the man makes him bleed. 

“No.”

“Then why does it matter?”

Because I don’t know what you are, he almost says. Because I wish you made this easy on me. Because I think a part of me is starting to like it sometimes and I wish it didn’t. 

“It’s just confusing”, he settles for. It is, after all, half a truth. 

Pete confuses Will like nothing ever has. He scares him and angers him and Will hates hates hates him. He also makes him feel… something. Not safe, not loved. Never cherished. But wanted, maybe. Seen as something that can be wanted. That had never happened before this place. 

Even now, in this little peace that never lasts, Will is covered in bruises. His thighs have bite marks on them. His wrists ache when he moves them. It is an illusion, this. Will knows that, he really does. Except for when it’s happening, and it’s slow and almost nice and he almost forgets where he is and who he is with. Sandy says it’s normal, that it happens to her too. 

Will worries it will become normal for him as well. That he will be here long enough for that to happen. 

“Stop thinking”, Pete grumbles and pushes himself up until he’s sitting. Will’s eyes follow. “This is about not thinking.”

The man smiles, Will keeps his face blank. When Pete crawls on top of him, Will spreads his legs and lets him. 

It’s easier. 

***

Victor Dahr enters the Jupiter 2 shadowed by robots. These metallic giants wait for him outside the ship, large and powerful and angry. He knows they are, angry. So is he, to a point. This was never his idea. If it were up to him, Will Robinson would be left to heal in peace, given the quiet he clearly needs. 

This is also why he isn’t a captain, like Kamal. He doesn’t have it in him to burden a child for the greater good. Because that is what this is. Cruelty to an innocent for the sake of everyone else. 

At the end of the hall, Maureen and John Robinson wait for him. Their faces are blank, their shoulders tense. They are very clear in how unwelcome he is in their home. Victor nods at them and doesn't blame them for any of it. If it were Vijay, he would be worse. 

“Maureen, John”. 

“Victor.” John starts, to welcome him, to threaten him, both. Who knows. 

“If I say enough, you’ll leave”, Maureen breaks in, sharp.

“Of course.”

He hopes she does, and that she doesn’t. Victor doesn’t want to be here, to do this. He fears he will hurt a child enough he will be banished from the family altogether. The Robinsons stand in front of him, leading this unwilling troop forward. Victor has a moment to think how funny it must look, a Dahr surrounded by humans and robots both, in defense of Will Robinson. How sad, too. 

The hub comes into view, Penny standing at the open door, arms crossed. Out of everyone, only she has it in herself to force a smile, or a brave attempt at one, his way. Victor returns it in what ends up being a grimace. When she looks away, he is almost relieved. 

“He’s waiting for you”, Penny says, eyes still on the floor, “be patient with him.”

Nodding, shaky, unsure, Victor enters the hub. 

On one corner stands Don West, glaring, another shadowy guard. Closer, stands Judy, face as blank as her father’s. And on the chair farthest from him, in between Judy and Don, sits what doesn’t look at all like Will Robinson. 

Pale, is the first thing Victor notices. Too skinny, small, sad, dangerous, haunted. Unrecongnizable. 

Clearing his throat, Victor steps closer. “Hello, Will. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

The boy says nothing. 

***

The moon is high in the sky when it happens. Screams and tears and rage all blend into a symphony of misery. Will, still a boy, struggles against his captors and begs. Please please please, let her go, she doesn’t deserve it, she’s the best of us, please please please. It’s pointless. 

Pete is happy.

The man, smiling and ugly and so so so evil, grins at the children he has brutalized and feasts on their fear. Sandy, once so trusting, watches it all with tired eyes and knows this is it. Still, she fights. And it is pointless too. 

“Let her go!”, Will demands, foaming at the mouth, shaking. 

“The rules are clear”, Pete calls out, the crowd impassive as ever. Permitting. “You knew better.”

And they did, is the worst part. They knew and still they dared, still Will bit into Charles’ ear and stole a pocket knife. Still, Sandy took his hand when he offered it. Still, they tried to run. They weren’t fast enough, lucky enough, invisible enough. 

“It was me”, Will begs, “it was me, it was me.”

Pete meets the boy’s eyes and winks, turns to Sandy, who refuses to cry. She holds her head high as she has always done in the moonlight. Her fear has long turned to something different. Acceptance, once. Fire, tonight.

“You knew better”, Pete tells her, hand on her cheek, caressing. “Stupid little girl, I taught you better.”

“No”, she moves her face away from his filthy palm, “my mom taught me.”

Something new burns in Pete’s eyes. Not quite anger, not quite shame. Embarrassment, perhaps. Something Will immediately fears. He struggles twice as hard, tries to bite, kick, anything that will get him to Sandy’s side. Sandy who now smiles a real thing, not painted and vacant, triumphant.

She knows she knows she knows. And decides, if this is how it ends, she will be the match.

Before Pete gets the chance, Sandy throws herself forward. And reaches to place one last kiss on the last boy’s skin.  

***

A group of sinners gathers their hand-made spears and knives. The smoke has dissipated by now, but they do not worry. They can walk for years if they must, long ago, that’s exactly what they did. Then, a man who was cruel and charming both led them home. Now, burnt out survivors walk together in hope of something new. 

Still, evil and pain linger. Victims are scarred across the planet’s surface, bones feed the ground beneath their feet. These people hide fangs behind their lips. 

And they attack, wild, desperate. The poor animal didn’t stand a chance. The moment they saw it, nibbling at the grass, the sinners knew they would eat it. It is necessary, they say to themselves. And yet, they enjoy the hunt. Measure their steps with grins, plunge spears and laugh. As the animal cries and wails and screams, they laugh so so so hard. 

It’s less of a hunt and more of a slaughter. After so many years living in hell, they have forgotten what it is to have mercy.

 

 

Notes:

And that's this chapter. Next one we get to see Victor actually try to interview Will, amongst other things. Do let me know what you think, what you liked, if you have questions. I do love comments. And thank you very much for reading and sticking with this dark, cruel story of mine.

In Judy's part, I referenced two songs by Noah Kahan, You Needs My Needs and No Complaints.
Your Needs, My Needs: "You were a work of art, that's the hardest part."
No Complaints: "I saw the end and it looked just like the middle."

Chapter 11: ARC II

 

 

 

 

 

PART II:

 

Blessed be the Daughters of Cain

bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers

committed long before their conception

Blessed be their whore mothers

Tired and angry, waiting with bated breath in a ferry

that will never move again

Blessed be the children

Each and every one come to know their god through some senseless act of violence

Blessed be you, girl

Promised to me by a man who can only feel hatred and contempt towards you

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

This marks the start of Part II

The next update will be the full chapter, which I'm already writing, so hopefully it'll be out tomorrow or the day after. The quote comes from Ptolemea by Ethel Cain.

I also added a marker for Part I at the start of the first chapter :) bc our beloved Kingtide inspired me

Chapter 12: Chapter 11

 

She remembers hearing it once, long ago. The smell of old wood and smoke, her mommy with a cigarette dangling from her lips. The day heavy, yellow and pasty like age. And that voice, eerie as it was, singing from an old vinyl.

Later, Sandy would think the song was always meant for her.

“God loves you, but not enough to save you.”

***

Samantha walks with firm steps and her head held high. People stare and whisper when she passes them, they know she is an honorary Robinson. They frown every time she’s not in the Jupiter 2 hiding, surrounding Will, crying. Stupid. 

Long ago, Samantha learned all about timing. She would just get in the way by going to the Robinsons. There are other forms of help, other hands to give. And though she knows herself to be right, Samantha also knows she can’t do it alone. 

Good thing she doesn’t have to. 

Sure, she walks past the bonfires and tents, past Jupiters and Chariots. There, at the very back of camp, hunched into himself, stands Vijay. His father is with Will, Scarecrow told her. He was angry, bright red and burning. 

He thought it would do more harm than good. She hopes he’s wrong about that. Samantha doesn’t know the Dahrs very well, but she has eyes. She has seen how close the adults are, seen the love in Penny’s eyes, how gentle Vijay always is. 

If Victor is already out of the way, she might as well use it.

“Vijay”, she calls, walking into the tent where he is working.

Startled, the young man drops his tablet on the table, cursing under his breath. Samantha bites her lips closed and still. 

“Yeah?”, he turns to her, tries to smile. It doesn’t really work. 

“You’ve been learning mechanics, right?”

From Don, she knows. Judy had told her months ago. Apparently, Vijay’s father wasn’t pleased, something about carrying on the family’s responsibility for their people. The sisters had been happy though, excited. 

“I was, yeah.”

Nodding, Samantha walks closer, keeps her voice down.

“You learnt to design things already? Make them.”

Now he frowns. “Yeah…”

Finally, Samantha allows herself to smile. 

***

Victor walks past Maureen and John, who elect to stay by the door to the hub, and sits across from the boy that, apparently, is Will Robinson. The boy who doesn’t make a sound, who sits completely still and follows every move Victor makes with sharp, cold eyes. 

A shiver runs down the man’s back. 

“How are you feeling, Will?”, he forces past his rapidly closing throat.

For a moment, Victor allows himself to feel ridiculous. Here he is, a man who has faced deadly robots and spaceship crashes, alien monsters and conspiracies. And here is a boy, barely a teenager, that somehow manages to make Victor feel like prey. 

“Your mother informed me you haven’t been speaking. Is that still true?”, he mutters, watches as Will raises a brow and it feels sharp. Hostile. Penny winces beside her brother and that answers him well enough. “I see”, Victor licks his lips, eyes darting from one Robinson to another, Will’s sharpness and Judy’s anger and Don’s shielding crossed arms. “Perhaps, writing, then?”

For a moment, no one moves, and the rise and fall of his chest is as loud and powerful as a tsunami wave. Then William sighs, whatever it was that had grown so threatening inside the child falling back just enough to let air back into the room. One sister digs into her pockets for a pen, the other crosses the hub to gather a used notebook and place it gently onto the table.

“Here”, she slides the notebook forward, and Will still doesn’t look away from Victor. 

The man forces a smile. “Thank you, Penny.” 

This time, the young woman doesn’t try to meet it with a smile of her own, merely nodding and, instead of going back to where she was, going to stand right behind her brother’s side, near Judy. 

For a stupid second, Victor wonders who they are really protecting. 

“This won’t take too long. As I’m sure you’ve been told, there are a few questions I need to ask you. The bridge is worried, Will, about any future threats to our camp and people.”

The boy’s lips do something strange, twisting up and down and to the side, falling into a tight line. A snarl suppressed, maybe. A painted smile, perhaps. Pointedly, Will grabs that pen and writes on a blank paper, lazy with it, like he has all the time in the world to get it out. The notebook is turned back around for Victor to read. 

Late

That oppressive weight returns.

“Yes”, he whispers. Too late, for this child he is trying so painfully hard to recognise. “We are under the impression you were… hurt by something. Perhaps an alien creature. Is that right?” 

A shake of the head, face still empty of any tells, lips still held tightly closed. 

“An accident out in the woods?”

Another shake. 

The weight grows heavier still. 

“A person.”

William doesn’t move a muscle, and in that stillness there is answer enough. Behind his head, the girls meet each other’s fleeting eyes, curl hands into fists. Don West glowers from his corner. 

Inside his dry mouth, the words start growing bitter. “It was purposeful, then. What was done to you.” 

Now William releases those lips and the corner of them ticks upwards just enough to change his entire face. The shiver runs deeper this time and Victor feels the powerful urge to run. When the boy writes, that calm laziness is gone, replaced by some more genuine control, like a butcher carrying a knife into the slaughterhouse. 

Obviously 

“May I know what, exactly, this person did?”

A voice from behind them cuts in before William can. “What does that matter?” 

Startled, Victor turns, finds Maureen glaring and feels relieved to still recognize her. 

“We need to prepare for this assailant’s…”

Then it is Judy’s sharp teeth that cut. 

“My brother doesn’t owe you details.”

“The point of this interview…”

“Questioning, more like.”

Mother and daughter take turns baring their fangs his way, like wolves defending a cub. And in the middle, calm, William still sits. Victor allows the sound of the women’s voice blur into the background, watches the boy watch him with eyes that are too calculating, too intelligent, not to feel threatening. 

Even if the other Robinsons don’t, Victor knows the young boy isn’t in need of anyone’s protection here. None of them have power here, not really. Those eyes are too strong for that. 

Slow and soft, Don uncrosses his arms and steps closer, breaking whatever discussion was still being had beyond Victor’s notice. 

“Will, you wanna answer kid?”

Penny delivers that grimacing smile. “You don’t have to.”

As he is spoken to, William doesn’t look away from Victor. 

The pen is wielded once more and the boy takes his time with it, loops the ink over the page. Turns it around for him to read and, sick, Victor can’t help but think Will looks satisfied when nausea visibly crawls up his throat. 

Pete consumed  

***

Will remembers a childhood story, read aloud by Penny when they cuddled in her bed late at night. Flashlight aimed at the pages. Little Will so small he made the tiniest of mounds under the blankets. 

It is funny, in a way, how fitting that story was always going to be. How well it would one day belong to what once was Will Robinson.

“I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence.”

***

They sit on the hub of Vijay’s Jupiter, a used and worn notebook between them. It’s filled with Vijay’s notes, his designs and work before everything that’s happened got in the way and made him stop. 

Samantha is quiet, calm. He doesn’t understand how she can be, every day Vijay feels himself go a little more insane. Isolation is a bitch, cruel. And his dad doesn’t talk to him the way he used to, hasn’t since he started learning under Don. 

Hasn’t talked to him at all since Will came back. That, more than anything, tells Vijay all he needs to know. How scared he needs to be. 

“I used to be jealous of Will”, he says as he draws on the blank page, nauseous, “he had a robot. It seemed like an advantage, when things got dangerous.” 

When ships crashed and monsters flew over their heads, when they got shot at. That year of separation Vijay learned to stop being so bitter, learned that Robot was more than a shield. Over the years, his envy became fondness, his weariness turned to understanding. 

Samantha nods once, watching him move the pen and trace dark circles. “It can be.”

“Didn’t help him now”, he mutters. All the power Robot has in a finger and it somehow did nothing. He can’t wrap his head around it. Can’t understand how Will Robinson, of all people, was taken down. His stomach clenches and he draws sharp edges. “Do you know? How he’s doing.”

The girl hesitates. He is Penny’s, she is Judy’s. They’ve known each other for years but Vijay can’t remember the last conversation he really had with Samantha. He thinks maybe it has never happened before. Until now. But the doubt in her eyes as she thinks is familiar, he sees it in the mirror every morning. He feels it when he forces himself to sleep. 

“I know it’s bad”, she finally says, slow and careful like she’s tasting the words out as they come. 

He sighs, stops drawing. It’s not enough, this, here. He should be helping, really helping, he would be if the Robinsons would let him. But if all these years have taught him anything it’s that they are as good at locking people out as they are at solving problems. 

Vijay feels useless. “Yeah”

Staring at him deep, like Judy sometimes does when she’s figuring something out, Samantha speaks again and she sounds surer than anyone or anything. “It will work. You wanted a robot and I wanted to be bigger.”

It has to work. He might just cry if it doesn’t. 

“About that, I was thinking, maybe it could match?”, he points to the page, to the edges and waves. Like plating. “With them. The robots.”

“Metal.”

“Yeah.”

They meet each other’s eyes and breathing becomes a little easier. It’s something. 

“Do you know how to forge?”

“No, but we can figure it out”, he draws another edge, wavier than the last, “we have time.”

“Maybe.”

Samantha leans forward, following the pen with her eyes. Vijay goes to the upper corner of the design, thinks for a second and draws a line. Like Robot’s, circular and twisting. The girl hums.

“No, sharper.”

A smile bursts through his lips and he stops, for just a second, to feel it. Vijay thinks it might be his first smile since Will went missing. It’s warm, like the sunlight, like a tool in his hand as he brings something back together. 

He nods, erases the corner and draws it like Scarecrow’s lines instead, spiky, dangerous. 

It feels like more than just something.

“The center needs to be wavy though.”

Samantha rolls her eyes, “obviously.” 

***

Disgusted, horrified, Victor falls against the back of his sit. He closes his eyes when he asks and knows it is cowardly. Knows he is merely hiding from that sharpness.  “What does that mean, Will?”

Once again, Judy cuts him away, “you don’t need to answer that.”

The boy doesn’t make a sound and this time, Victor is grateful. Weary, he opens his eyes, finds William still watching him carefully, if a little gentler. The man turns to his radio and writes the name down. 

“Pete. Do you have a last name?”

A shake of the head. 

“Any other names from those involved?”

Now, the boy hesitates. It’s barely there, easy to miss, but Victor sees it happen anyway. The hitch in the teen’s breathing, the aborted movement of a hand. William’s brows grow the tiniest bit furrowed as he writes on that notebook. 

Sandy. Dan.

“There were three assailants?”

When the boy shakes his head it is almost violent. 

Sandy. Dan. Will. 

Now Victor straightens, hand over his radio. He sees from the corner of his eye as the sisters do the same, focused, surprised. 

“Survivors?”

Those lips twist up and down and up and down. The eyes grow duller, easier to meet. There is a sadness here that stains, he thinks, watches that notebook and expects the pages to start rotting. 

He liked us young. 

He hears the start of a sob behind him, running footsteps fading away from them all. A man cursing and following after his escaping wife. He cannot imagine the ache of hearing such a thing about your child, of watching your boy write it down. For a moment it is Vijay sitting here instead of Will, Vijay with those eyes and those twisting lips and this heaviness. 

“Dear God…”

Victor’s back gives in, his head falling forward and hands covering his eyes. Finally, he understands the oppressive weight for what it is. The horror of it, the pain it carries. Of course he is sharp, Victor thinks, a prey animal determined enough grows claws eventually. 

The father in him that once carried his own little boy through dark nights dares to raise a hand, cross the table between them, almost touch the bony fingers that still hold that ugly page for him to read. 

Judy, so very quick, lands her own hand in between them so violently it echoes.

“Don’t.”

William hasn’t moved at all, shielded as he is by his oldest sister, but he does look tense. Like his body is preparing to spring up and run, or to turn that pen into the weapon he has been carrying it as. 

Victor breathes out slowly, leans as far away from the Robinson children as he can while still seated. 

“Of course, I’m sorry.” He meets the boy’s calculating look, “I… am so sorry, Will.” 

Penny pulls on her sister’s shoulder, “maybe we should stop…”

Don walks all the way up to the boy, leaning near his ear, tears falling. “Will…”

Fast, William grabs his notebook and brutalizes it with his pen, the paper ripping where he digs too deep. 

No 

And then.

End it

There is fire in that gaze, so bright against the darkness of the room. So painful to meet. Sitting here is a creature that hunts in the shape of a boy. 

Desperately unwilling, Victor swallows the need to leave this wretched place. 

“Was Pete alone?” 

***

Whispering, Will clutches Sandy’s hands between his own, foreheads pressed together. The children shake, weep, try so very hard to pretend they are elsewhere. Anywhere. Just not here. The childhood story comes back to him in pieces, and each one he ties with red ribbons and gifts to the girl keeping him alive. 

“I’ll love you how a prisoner loves cigarettes. How those cigarettes love fire, and how that fire loves matches.”

****

The boy shakes his head again.

“How many?”

A shrug, uncaring. The pointed laziness is back and Victor wonders how much of this is genuine. This creature that almost smiles and almost frowns and fervently watches them breathe. 

“Where are they?”

Easy, William writes, and this time that almost smile is more prominent, more sickening. 

Nowhere

He wants to run far from this place so badly his feet ache with it. Wants none of this to be real in the first place. That Kamal was the one asking questions instead and had spared Victor from this. 

“What does that mean? Will, this is extremely important. I need you to answer me in as much detail as possible.”

William goes to write once more, a pit at the bottom of Victor’s stomach expectant for the answer. And something strange happens, a stillness that is very different. The boy stops altogether, even seems to stop breathing, pen hovering over the page.

Those eyes, once again dulled beyond recognition, move slow and careful over them all, to the door where now only the robots stand. It is not them William is watching. Whatever he sees there makes the boy’s breath stutter, his hands curl into fists, his lips twist down down down. 

Scared, Don meets Judy’s gaze who meets Penny’s. The Robinsons make themselves small, lean into their youngest’s space, hesitate to touch. “Kid, hey.”

Victor watches Don West lightly press his fingers against the boy’s wrist, watches William flinch away and grip the mechanic’s hand in the same breath. A deep breath leaves Judy’s chest and the boy gathers himself again. For the first time since he entered the Jupiter, Victor feels like he recognizes this boy. There is a fragility here he has seen before. A childishness in how tightly he is holding onto Don. 

Careful, Victor asks again. 

“Where is Pete, Will?”

The boy writes in pieces, starting and stopping and starting again. 

Fire

Nowhere

He lost

Though he fears he already knows, Victor asks anyway, notices William grab Don tighter still. 

“And the others, the people with him? Will, what happened to these people?” 

William leaves the page be, turns to the robots behind them, and Victor turns too. Standing there, bright red and proud, Scarecrow answers for him. Or maybe William answers through Scarecrow. Either way, it is far too fitting. 

“Justice.”

***

With blood on their teeth, the sinners climb up the hill. Their bellies are full, warm. Every prey they catch they eat whole, down to the bone. Keep the gleaming white teeth and claws and antlers to nibble on during their trek. 

Those same bones are later sharpened into knives, daggers. Weapons they use to strike their next prey down. During the night they now light fires, no longer afraid of the flames now that they have remembered the power of a kill. Of the screams and cries of the innocent. 

The sinners know themselves to be creatures to be feared. 

Not far now, not far at all, a camp waits in blissful ignorance. And in that camp there is shelter, hope, meat. The sinners? no matter how much they eat, how many they kill, always find themselves to be starving. 

***

Sandy stands by the barred window, staring deep into her own reflection. 

With Dan gone the room is wide, vast and endless like the sea. She saw the sea once, when she was small. So so so small. When she looks past her face and at the moon, Sandy can see it. The salty waves, the footsteps dug deep into the sand, the birds in the sky.

Her mommy had been so happy to go, she remembers that too. Clear as day, her mommy’s smile shines bright, her peals of laughter, her hand holding Sandy’s as they dared to go into the water together. 

It feels like a different life, different people together at the beach. Girls who had never known a man’s anger, his burning hands. Who knew all about smiling at each other and little else. It was perfect then. So perfect. 

It took Pete no time at all to bar this window. 

Sighing, Sandy leaves the waves. Meets her own eyes on the glass, tilts her head just so. She looks like her mother now. More than she used to.

Her cheeks are hollow, like hers had been near the end. Her skin is too pale, her hair too long, the dark circles under her eyes too deep. 

Like a doll trying on skin, Sandy twists her lips up and down and up and down. No lines yet, like her mommy’s. At least there’s that. Pete used to hate her mother’s smile, she remembers. Remembers his scowl, her mommy’s shaking hands, her own screams when she stumbled upon a body, bloody and bruised. 

Steady, Sandy lifts her own hand now, touches her cheek and watches her reflection match every move. She doesn’t think her cheekbones were always so sharp. No, her cheeks used to be round, she’s sure of it. Her eyes brighter. Her teeth stronger. Everything in her feels brittle now. 

Was Dan brittle? When he crashed on the ground, how much of him broke? Did it hurt? 

Her mother hurt when Pete broke her. She hurts badly, these days, when she breathes in deep. 

Dan’s cheekbones were sharp too. His hands were strong, like Pete’s. His voice gentle. 

Sandy leans her forehead on the bars, the cool metal quieting her mind down just enough for breathing to seem easy again. So vast, this room. So endless, this life. 

Remember the sea. 

Her mommy raised her to smile. Dan smiled as he fell. Pete hated her mommy’s smile.

Up and down and up and down and up down, her lips twist. 

Remember the sea. 

***

High in the sky, past clouds and dreams and old, forgotten cities, the mind of the universe watches. Angry. Old Gods, Old Powers, Wise Creatures. Whatever they are, with their shared eyes and memories, they witness the slaughtering of innocents. 

Raging, they watched their child be violated, disrespected, spat to the ground. In their flaring light, the stars cursed the devils, pulled golden threads between their sharp fingers. Sent a minor god of war to protect and defend. Healed with burning lips. 

Now, grown tired of the anarchy of the pathetic little beasts that roam the woods, they send out a wave down down down to a ship. Their children, all three of them, flinch. Ares bares his spikes, shield glowing a vibrant red. The bursting star panics, runs to the bedroom housing their cherished. And their youngest, once-a-boy, still-a-boy, more-than-man, wakes from deep slumber with his eyes wide and foams at the mouth. 

In the sky, the Old Gods taste blood coming. 

***

He thinks of the story now. Of the girl who read it to him and the girl he later read it to. He thinks of beds and flashlights, wood and broken glass. Sweaty foreheads and kisses. It all seems to blur together, some days. The Before and The After. 

Will Robinson lives and dies in liminal spaces.

“I’ll love you even as our names are carved into two headstones.”

 

 

Notes:

And here we are, chapter 11 is finally out :) Let me know what you think if you feel up to it!

The references today were:
God loves you but not enough to save you - Sun Bleached Flies by Ethel Cain, which is Sandy's song
A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
And the "Pete consumed" comes from the book Sharp Objects, where the actual quote is "Adora consumes"
Also! I forgot to add this earlier. The part about Old Gods was heavily inspired by Kingtide! In fact, there are references to their stories in that part, specifically the “old, forgotten cities” and the “mind of the universe”. So if you haven’t, go read their stories :) they’re excellent

Chapter 13: Chapter 12

 

Chest heavy, Don sits by Will’s bedside like he has many times before. This time, he holds a book, yellowed pages and smudged words decades old. This book was the only one he kept from the many he was made to read at the orphanage. The only one he remembers whole pages from.

The only one in his language.

“You doing ok?”, he stops to ask.

Will, sitting up in bed with his back against the wall, nods once. Stiff. 

Don tries to smile, shaky. This boy that sits before him is his baby brother, his girlfriend’s brother, the kid he has watched grow up. The corpse he carried home. And once, months ago, this teenager walked into Don’s room with shy steps and eyes stuck to the floor with a request.

Would it be ok if I learn spanish? 

Don smiled then, jumped up, rubbed it in everyone’s faces. The kid’s learning, he said, it’s for me, he didn’t say. It’s my language and it doesn’t have to be just mine anymore. After more than a decade I can share it again. 

And then… well, everyone knew what had happened after. Why Will now is learning to understand the words but not to say them. Why Don speaks and speaks and speaks for the both of them. Why it’s not as sweet as it had been, the first time Will managed to properly speak a sentence back to him. 

A stupid one. Forgettable. Imprinted in Don’s memory.

Me pasas las llaves? Hand me the keys? 

Biting back sighs, Don turns the page and keeps reading. He hears himself speak the words of a man revered by many, hated by Sister Marta, adored by Sister Agnes. Hears the story of a family destroying itself generation after generation, yet forever united in blood and name. Hears about decades passing by in the blink of an eye and the world changing.

And Will, face blank, listens carefully to all of it. Don can see the wheels turning behind the bright eyes, can see him understand in a way Don himself hadn’t, at fifteen. It’s bitter to speak alone, but it is also sweet to be heard. And he wonders, this faithless man, if maybe Will likes to share too. 

Not the words, not anymore, but the silence. The little crinkle between his brows, the tightness of one side of his mouth, the dancing fingers on his blanketed lap. If this is a way of speaking, when voice has dried up. 

“Había estado en la muerte, en efecto”, he reads, “pero había regresado porque no pudo soportar la soledad.”

For a breath, Don stops. He chances a look up at the boy and their eyes meet. He doesn’t need to ask if Will caught it, the understanding is clear in the heaviness of him. The sudden sadness. Instinctively, Don wants to apologize. 

“We can leave it here, if you want.”

Will sharpens, like he did when Victor tried to touch him, or when Maureen tries to hold him. Like he is offended and afraid and raging all at once. Like they are the enemy he doesn’t want to fight. 

Firm, the boy shakes his head once, then points to it with his chin.

Don doesn’t even bother to hesitate before he goes back to reading, sounding out every word, tasting the letters, sharpening syllables. My tongue , he thinks. My tongue and your eyes are as good as words. 

***

Will stands, grounded, under the stars’ light dripping in his enemies’ blood, flames all around him. Shaking, he raises his face to the sky, to the gods that once claimed him and abandoned him to be used, desecrated. Like an angel fallen and turned unholy, murderous. Past the blood, this creature opens its cracked lips and screams, throat tearing open, voice shredding. 

He screams on and on until his insides taste of violence.  

***

Vijay sits with Samantha once more. This time, they aren’t in his room, or a hub, or a work tent. They sit side by side, far away from everyone else, during lunch. There’s some meat on their plates, but they don’t touch the food. Let it grow cold and hard. 

There’s more important things to worry about.

“What do you think?”, he asks her, holding his notebook out to her.

Samantha nods. “It’s better. Sharper.”

“I just, I don’t think it should be only sharp, you know?”

The girl frowns, lifts her eyes to meet his. She has been all for sharp edges since the start, for harshness. “Why not?” she sounds almost offended. He worried she would. 

Vijay swallows hard, leans in closer. “Will isn’t you, or me. He shouldn’t be all dangerous, he should be strong. Protected.”

“Exactly.”

“But sharpness isn’t the same as strength. Scarecrow isn’t strong because he has edges, it’s because he put himself back together”, Vijay watches her carefully, sees something turning in her eyes, “right?”

Samantha bites her lip, brows furrowed. “Maybe”, she concedes, and he can see she doesn’t like it.

He had been thinking about this for days, every time he had a moment to himself. The Will Robinson he knows doesn’t like to be a threat. Whatever happened to him, Vijay can’t imagine that changing. Doesn’t want to. 

“Robot is strong and he’s not sharp at all.”

Samantha sighs, nodding. 

“If I’m right”, she starts, “and he felt like prey, this should make that go away. Predators have claws, Vijay.”

“Yeah”, he agrees. It’s not that he wants to take all the edges away, a bit of sharpness is good. Necessary. Will himself already had it long before he disappeared. “And he’ll have them. I just want him to have more.” If he has been made prey, let’s not make him into something else just because we think we should. “I want him to be Will.” 

Samantha doesn’t respond, but she does turn back to his notebook. She turns the pages and watches every sketch carefully, the ones they made together and the ones he made last night, in the dark. They are sharp, and thick, but they are also wavy and comfortable. Balanced. 

Closing her eyes to take a deep breath, Samantha nods. “Ok.”

***

Smith is working on the new belt when Maureen finds her. The other woman is pale, dark circles under her eyes and stiff. Wrinkles that usually aren’t there go deep on her face. Ready, Smith lowers the yarn and turns to Maureen fully.

“Go ahead.”

Maureen’s face is careful, not a single twitch to it. “You weren’t surprised.”

And there it is. Smith swallows one nervous, bitter gulp. 

“No.”

“How?”, Maureen steps closer, leaning in, towering over June who still sits. “Did he tell you?”

And that idea, after everything, is ridiculous enough that Smith scoffs. “Of course not.” She watches Maureen, watches the fear and disgust and pain in her. Knows the other woman is smart enough to figure it out. That she will, right now. Still, she speaks. “I saw it on my own.”

And figure it out she does. Quiet, still, Smith sees it happen. The shadow on Maureen’s face clearing, eyes widening, mouth falling into a stiff line. Her jaw works itself closed, teeth gritting and, not really understanding why, Smith smiles a little. Always so uncomfortable, Maureen. 

June decides to leave her to it, picking her yarn back up and working it around her needles. Half an eye is kept on the other woman, who stands, observing in return. The two of them sink into the silence for a bit, transfixed by the yarn knotting into itself, building something beautiful and pure from nothing. Letting out the well known breath of defeat, Maureen leans on the wall and falls on her ass, sitting on the floor across from Smith. 

“What now? I don’t… I don’t know what to do.”

Smith speaks into the yarn. “Be there, that’s all. Remind him you love him, that he’s alive and strong and those fuckers aren’t. Remind him he has a future.” Don’t let him be me, they both hear. Me, who was alone. Who drank and lied and buried it all in drugs and scams. “Other than that… it’s up to him.”

“You chose to keep going.”

Her smile returns as she pulls at the yarn, like a noose tightening. “No, I just did it. Where do you think all this” , Smith gestures herself whole, “came from.”

She breathed because she had to, lived because she was still alive, ate because her body was hungry, drank because her throat was thirsty. Like Will did in the early weeks of his return. A living corpse with no hope and no choice but to exist. A void personified. 

“I’m sorry, Smith.”

“It’s in the past”, she shrugs one shoulder as her knuckles tighten around the needles and her neck remembers being bit. Remembers seeing a matching bite on Will’s shoulder so many years later. Feels the silence beating between them. “Will doesn’t know. Not yet.” Smith lets out a breath. “Maybe not ever.”

Secrets are sacred things. No matter how healing and right they may be to share, the withholding of words is like prayer. Carved into you from their conception. Like lash marks. 

“Ok”, Maureen croons, so easy. So soft.

It’s difficult, even now, not to hate her for it. All that goodness. Sickeningly sweet and kind and admirable. When June pretends to choke her demons in their sleep, the Robinson Perfection is hateful like rabies. Poisoning like lead. She smothers the urge to bite if off by tightening another knot.  

“Hey, he’ll be fine. That kid is the strongest person I know, and he’s not alone.”

He’s good too. Alive and good and defended, it’s a lot more than most people get to be. Hope to be. Ache to be. More than June Harris ever was. 

A perfect tear falls from Maureen’s eye. “I can’t understand how someone could.. how Will, my Will.” She lifts her hands to her face, wiping at her cheeks and hiding her eyes, unwilling to look at the world that has destroyed this family so horribly. “I don’t understand.”

“I know”, the yarn and needles clatter to the floor, and while her palms wish to bruise, Smith places a hand on Maureen’s shoulder and squeezes. “I know.”

***

The children share Sandy’s bed.

Will is laying his head on her lap, the younger girl sitting with her legs crossed and petting his hair. She sings under her breath, an old song he doesn’t recognise filling the room, covering them like a blanket. He doesn’t understand the words, barely catches the melody, but what he does catch feels painfully fitting. Begging for mercy and a god that cares about what happens to them. 

They both know it’s just a wish. 

Breathing in deep, Will dares to close his eyes, letting this horrible place fade away under Sandy’s singing. The horror lowers and rises and tries to choke them every day. He wonders if that would change if Sandy sang louder. If Will joined her. What if they both went quiet? Would the horror win, in their silence? 

Or would it run away screaming. 

“Sandy”, he whispers and the girl stops the song, her hands hesitating before starting on his hair again.

“Yes?”

“Tell me about your mom?”

She’s only mentioned it once, that night Will dared to ask how she ended up here with him. My mommy died. It’s hateful, but he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it, wondering. How, when, why. On and on and on. 

“Why?”, her fingers pull on his hair a little harder and he winces.

“It’s important, right?”

It has to be. Their lives before this place have to matter, he needs them to. Needs to know this isn’t all they are now, broken bodies in a dark room used by cruel men. 

Sandy hums once, massages his scalp in what could be an apology, or muscle memory. 

“She was very pretty”, Sandy tells him, “she sang songs and kissed my forehead.”

Will’s mom doesn’t sing, but she does kiss his forehead, and she is pretty. He misses her so much. 

“What else?”

“She was very sad, I think. Pete liked to make her sad.”

His heart skips, traces back and works again. Pete. Must he ruin everything, that man? Had he destroyed Sandy’s mom and then decided he liked children better?

“I’m sorry”, he whispers and tries to blink away the burning of his eyes. 

“I loved my mommy”, she says and Will’s chest aches. 

For a moment it seems like the room grows smaller, closing in on them, darkening even more. Time trickles by slowly, thick like molasses, but sour and dank like cheap wine. He sees it clearly, Sandy and her mom once a family, happy and safe. Now destroyed by Pete. He sees himself, with his own mom and his sisters and his home, now taken and destroyed by Pete.

For once, he can’t not imagine him dying here. In fact, it feels inevitable. Will has been branded, owned, and he will die. But Sandy won’t, like he promised himself that first night, when Sandy burns the world he will hold her matches.

“I loved my mommy too.”

He hopes she will know he burned willingly. 

***

The sinners sit in a circle, cooked meat on sticks all around. They tear at it with their teeth, rip it apart and swallow without chewing. Blood and fat and soot smear their hands and lips and cheeks. They feel like hunters, predators. Full bellies and salivating tongues and bliss. They love it, this feeling. 

They’ve missed it. 

***

Penny gorges herself on flavorless oatmeal to choke herself. Will is with her in the hub, his own plate still mostly full, a spoon in his shaking hand. She knows better than to help, or worse, reach for him. Her baby brother still hides from her hands. And he is still silent. 

So, she decides to match him. For the first time in her life, Penny exists quietly, observing as she swallows and swallows and swallows, belly full to burst. Her own hands are steady and lift the food to her mouth fast, violent. Will goes so slowly it’s easy to miss he’s moving at all. Some oatmeal falls from his spoon and lands on the pristine, white table. 

She counts the flakes still in the puddles. 

Will lifts another spoonful and half of it falls back on the bowl before it’s even halfway to his mouth. He sighs, clenching his hand around the spoon tight, and tries again. It has been this way for half an hour now, she’s been keeping track. Will keeps trying to eat in peace and fails. 

Penny has this strange urge to lift her own arm and put the fleshiest part before his mouth. Bite me, she wants to say. Eat from me. Messy and bloody and ugly but so much better than this trudging through oatmeal. Let me be useful for once and eat me. 

She gorges herself some more. 

Her brother needs… something. Saving but not, mercy but not, hope but not. Everything and nothing and all impossible for her to give. At her best, she can offer company in misery and what good is that? Will already has plenty. Everyone here is miserable together, it fixes nothing. 

Penny watches him as she chews, sees anger in him and grows scared. What could he do with his anger? This boy that came back from nowhere covered in blood, that smiles at the thought of justice and glares openly when he used to be shy and little. That is hers and loved and beautiful but cold. 

What could they even tell him, after all he has survived. How could they demand sweet honey from a creature that dragged itself out from the deepest pit of hell by his fingernails. Maybe they should switch his oatmeal for something else. Something beating.

Some small prey animal. 

The spoonful finally gets to his mouth and Will closes his lips around the silver metal, drags the oatmeal in and chews it carefully, with meaning. Penny sees the flakes break between his teeth, the paste watered by his saliva, swallowed down his throat greedily. His hand raises the spoon to the bowl in search for more.

Penny opens her mouth as he eyes his bowl, ready to break whatever this is and say something stupid. Something like please, remember gentleness. Or, even worse, when you start hunting again, please don’t hunt me. She feels it coming, tastes it. You are still so beautiful, stay beautiful, please please please. 

Will looks her way and his brows furrow. He watches her carefully like he watches everything and the questions in his eyes make him look just like he used to, before he was taken. 

“I love you”, she says instead. 

Will’s frown stays where it is, but his lips lift into the mirage of a smile. There you are. Very, very slow, he nods at her and moves his arm to her, elbow pointing at her own. He is inches away, so close she feels his body heat. She waits, freezing. And finally, after weeks and weeks of clenching fingers, Will knocks his elbow into Penny’s. 

I love you. 

I am still me and I am still here and I love you. 

***

Robot watches Scarecrow stand guard outside their home in red bright light. He watches Will Robinson follow everyone with his eyes in cold stillness. Watches the family breathe in deep and let it go slow. 

The stars are furious. And he, this creature centuries old that has seen the universe build itself piece by piece many times, fears what is to come.

He wishes it were already over.  

***

Will sits by the ship’s raft, legs warmed under a blanket, skin soaking wet in sweat. His hands clench and unclench over his knees. The boy’s dreams had turned sour, images of Sandy’s smile blending into her open mouth, her soft hands rubbing circles on his back landing on the dirt, stiff. 

He couldn’t stand it. 

Will had growled himself awake, reached for his wheelchair and landed himself on it violently. Brought himself here, still hidden and beyond view of the camp. Near the stars. Bastard stars that left him, cruel stars that saved him, gentle stars that gave him everything. 

He thought it was over, that the fire had purified the earth when he let the smoke rise. That his punishment was enough to destroy the monsters. Clearly, he was wrong. And it scares him. If all that animalistic rage hadn’t been enough, what will be? How much farther must he fall to put an end to this? To avenge them. Himself. Sandy and her mom and Dan. 

To be satiated. 

Monster and human and weak, Will closes his eyes with a sigh. There is more to come, the last fight against what is left of Pete. The man is dead, he knows. But ideas are dangerous, powerful. His people share them, share the memories and the crimes. 

Will does too, now. 

He sees himself smile and scream, sees his hands on his knees and sees them covered in blood around a knife’s blade, sees his covered legs and sees them stradling Pete’s corpse. Feels his breath rattle and heave. Hears his pain and his laughter and Sandy’s voice. 

And he remembers, weeks and weeks ago, how a brother had gently kissed his temple and whispered in his ear, holding his hand. Remembers falling into Don’s arms, being carried. Hears what Don told him before Will passed out completely, his first day back. 

In these echoes of violence he grasps the prayers of that lost man and shoves them down his bleeding throat. 

Remember you are strong.

 

 

Notes:

Sorry for the wait, life happened. The book Don is reading is A 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE and the translation for the quote is: He had been in death, indeed, but he came back because he couldn't stand the loneliness. Thank you for reading and sticking with this story, we're nearing the end! Can you believe it?

PSA: I started a profile on Medium where I'm gonna be posting thought pieces and writings, usually on media and analysis of motifs, genres, symbolism, etc. But I'll do some on life in general too. If anyone is interested, or feels like giving it a try, I'll leave the link here: https://medium.com/@amyjimar19 :)

Chapter 14: Chapter 13

Notes:

WARNING!!!!!
A scene here happens during a rape, the act itself isn't depicted graphically, the focus of the scene is a conversation between characters during a pause, but it is there. If you want to skip it, it's the part after the poem. I'll add the dialogues in the end notes.

 

 

Judy sits across from her brother in heavy silence. They’re in the hub, as usual now that he is getting better at walking. She insists he leave his room during the day, doesn’t want him to keep rotting in bed. Besides, it calms her jumping heart to see him move, be a person and not a body. 

Still, she wishes he could… talk, to her. Hates herself for it, hates that she keeps waiting to hear his voice. That she is disappointed every time he keeps his mouth closed. 

But this silence. This maddening, unfair, diabolical silence is eating her alive. 

Eating them all.

“I wish I knew what you’re thinking”, she tells him and watches Will stop scribbling on his notebook. He’s drawing constellations, it almost makes her smile to see it, even if his lines are still shaky and his pulse is all wrong. 

Will glances at her fast, looks back to his notebook. She notices his shaking hands and wishes she could stop herself. Tries really hard to shut the fuck up. 

Fails. “We used to talk a lot, before. I miss that.”

Tell me you do too, please. Tell me you miss us, miss sharing secrets and jokes and stupid rumours. There is still so much of you I want to learn, so much I want you to learn about me back. Don’t you? 

Will drops his pen, moving his hand near Judy’s but not touching her. He touched Penny a few days ago, but hasn’t again. Hasn’t dared with anyone else unless he is leaning on them to walk or bathe. 

Practicality is fine. Intimacy is poison. 

At least that’s her theory, but she can’t be sure, because Will can’t tell her. 

“I’m sorry”, Judy whispers, wiping at her eyes before they tear up, “I know it’s not fair. And you don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to. But I hope you do want to, someday.”

She tries to smile at him, tries not to full out cry when he doesn’t dare to look at her. 

“I’m sorry”, again. 

Her brother pats the table once, goes back to his drawing. She watches carefully as every dot is added on the page, each tiny thing coming together to make something beautiful. She hopes Will still sees the world that way, somehow. A large thing made beautiful because they are in it. 

***

They can’t see her, but between boy and girl is a ghost. Pale and beautiful and with a twisted neck. She doesn’t seem sad, or angry. She is calm like moonlight, watching.

If the boy noticed her, he would freeze and stare into empty space. He has before, when he’s caught sight of her. If he understood the ghost was really here, with him, he would wonder if she is an angel. 

***

When his sister leaves, Will sits with an empty page by his hands. He wishes he could give her what she wants, give them all something other than this silence. He knows he hurts them, that they can’t understand this is better. If he speaks they might all die. 

It’s not that he hasn’t considered it, all those times he dared to mouth along sacred lines, voiceless answers to questions, names. And every time he waited for fire or twisted necks, for his own anger lighting in his chest. 

He can’t do it again. Not now, at least. If ever. 

Sighing, Will eyes that page and the pen by his fingers. He could write, like with Victor. But then, what is he supposed to write? It is one thing to answer questions, another to have nothing to draw from but himself. Is this how Penny feels every time? 

Conversations are difficult, he can’t tell Judy the truth of what lives inside his head if he is looking at her. Seeing her heartbroken face. But if he writes it down, she could read it somewhere else, without him. Like a compromise. 

In his throat he remembers all the books his sister and him shared as children, the times they would read passages to each other, the bedtime stories. He remembers the books he has been read since his return, too. Words of war and death and solitude. So it goes and all that. 

He imagines what it would be like to be the one writing words, to make all the darkness sound pretty. Sandy could have done it, she was beautiful until the end. Otherworldly. Will isn’t, he is ugly and stained and ruined. He feels it in every breath he takes, every movement of his body, every shaking step. 

He was beautiful once, though, a voice whispers. So beautiful he was consumed, bitten into until he was only brittle bone. He thinks of Sandy’s songs and Penny’s voice and Vonnegut and Vuong and Judy’s despair. 

The pen fits into his palm like a blade. 

It’s not like the little writings and shitty poems he made as a kid and never shared, or like the stupid made up songs from his childhood. It’s not english homework or Penny’s brilliance.

But it’s something, and in its twisted edges he thinks Judy might be able to get it.

Penny definitely will. 

It’s something. 

***

I am a rabbit made of charred wicks

Light me on fire and eat me whole

It’s such a feast

 

I must taste fresh like strawberry ice-cream

Or like blood on your chapped lips

Talk about a good fucking

 

Less a fucking more a burning

Sacrificial on the town square

“Watch the bitch crying up there”

 

It’s a good show for tuesday morning

With my eyes teary-eyed red

and the smell of rotting flesh

***

“Tell me you want it.”

Will stops moving, sudden and frozen and shaky. The room goes quiet, only their breathing hitting the walls and echoing back to them, tickling their bare skin. Hesitant, even a little afraid, Will lifts his face from where it’s hiding on the crook of Pete’s neck. 

“It’s a lie”, he whispers, and even that feels too loud. 

The man shrugs, holding onto the boy’s waist tight to keep him in place. “Don’t matter.”

Sandy has never mentioned this. They’ve talked about the slow times, the gentle times, the ones that almost feel like sex instead of violence. But he’s never heard Pete pretend this is anything other than domination. Even when he is careful he holds all the power and never lets the kids forget it. 

This… this is different. Unstable, even. It makes Will immediately afraid. 

“I don’t lie, remember?”, he tries. And it is true, it’s one of the rules, the first one Pete ever told him. The only one he follows every time. He’s learned himself to be a very bad liar. 

Pete shrugs, runs his fingers down the sides of Will’s body, around his back. It’s almost a caress. “Then mean it.”

The boy clenches his hands around the man’s shoulders. He knows he should just say it, give the man what he wants and make this easier on himself. They’ve talked before, usually after Pete is done for the night and they gather their breaths back. Whispered talks with secrets and confessions and understandings. A very fucked up type of pillow talk, he guesses. 

Pete likes it.

But no matter how well he knows better, Will can’t bring himself to say the word want. Not here, sitting on the man’s lap, naked and being used. 

Feeling him. 

Will lifts his eyes and meets Pete’s. He is burning holes into Will’s pale skin, gripping tight enough to bruise. But he stays silent, waiting for an answer. Expecting to regret it, Will gives it. “Not today.”

Fast and strong, Pete’s eyes darken, still burning. Will starts apologizing instinctively, leaning away or starting to move his hips again or anything, everything, to make this better. Instead, the man holds him against his body and flips them, leaving Will laying down on the bed with Pete pressing him down. 

The boy remembers he is powerless here. 

“Someday, then.” 

Pete’s gaze thankfully leaves as the man leans down by his neck.  

Will goes to respond, a refusal or a promise or something else, he’s not sure. He doesn’t have to figure it out, though. His voice leaves him, coming out in a choked gasp when Pete grasps his thigh and moves. Hard and angry and no longer the pretension of intimacy of a few seconds ago. 

Like a punishment. 

All he can do now is hold onto the man’s shoulders, the bedding, his own sanity. Close his eyes tight and forget he is here. 

He doesn’t know it yet, but he will never touch Pete like this again. 

***

The sinners watch from their hiding places hunching behind boulders and trees and climbing onto tall branches. They watch as the hunters once did, and stop themselves from pouncing. The hunters used to do that part, they used to walk the forest and wait for ages, stalking their prey until it was alone and vulnerable.

Then they attacked, killed the animals, knocked out the children. Dragged the prey home for Pete to accept and, hopefully, share. The food everyone hungered for, the children… some did, but they are dead now. 

They deserved it, the sinners remind themselves. That is not who they will be from now on. They will be good, reign with wisdom. Pete isn’t here anymore to demand savagery. When they take the camp it will grow stronger, better, for having them. 

Weak people die and they are not weak. 

The man they are watching is tall, brown skin and black hair and an english accent. He is with two other people, a tall red-haired man and a brown woman with curly hair. Neither of them speaks, walking together with sharp eyes.

Not sharp enough. Nobody notices the sinners.

These strangers are clean, well-fed, and warmly dressed. They must be from the camp the sinners are searching for, the one that makes smoke at night. 

Turning to one another, the sinners agree, they will follow the three strangers. 

***

Her baby brother walks into her room, slow and careful, leaning on Robot for balance. A thin layer of sweat covers his brow, he must have walked somewhere else before coming here. He’s getting stronger everyday, but too long on his feet, tires Will out like nothing else. 

Judy smiles at him, moves to the foot of the bed to save him a few steps. Robot’s stars whirl to greet her. 

“Hey.”

Will nods, watches her for a second the way he watches everyone now, studying. Like she’s the most interesting creature he’s ever seen. The most confusing. It must be exhausting, she thinks, calculating the people around you all the time. 

Careful, Will reaches for his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. He makes that almost smile of his when he leans to hand it over, the one that was born after his return. Will used to smile wide all the time, cheeks round and eyes bright. Now it hides around the eyes, the slightest of softness, smoothing his face like nothing else.

His young face that always look harsh now, cold. But strong, always strong. 

Judy takes the paper, starts to open it up when Will stops her, laying his fingers over hers. It lasts a second, that touch, but it soothes her like water after days of thirst. She holds herself perfectly still, lets Will lean back and rest his weight on Robot again, lets him breathe in deep a few times. 

“Judy Robinson, Penny Robinson”, Robot says into the room. 

Judy eyes the paper, her brother, the gigantic alien before her. Her thumb runs circles over the page like she used to do around Will’s wrists. 

“It’s for her too?”

Will nods again, points to the paper with his chin and turns to leave. Judy lets him, watching his steps with a critical eye. He is getting better, balanced already on his own. When he gets his strength and resistance back, it will be like he was never on a bed or a wheelchair or leaning on a friend. 

Like nothing ever happened. 

She waits until Will and Robot’s steps fade away to unfold the page. Whatever she was expecting, a constellation or a list or a series of curses damning her to hell for not finding him, is not what greets her. No. In shaky handwriting that used to be neat, some words written over several times to make them clearer or bold or loud, is a small poem. 

Penny told her, years ago, that Will liked writing too. He used to write poetry when he was little, sometimes Penny found it, memorized some lines. She remembers them still. Neither of them know if Will was still writing before he was lost, if he was, it was even more of a secret than it had been in his childhood. 

Judy was always curious about the kinds of things Will would write about. 

Now she holds his words in his hands and she laughs, tears falling down her cheeks. She reads it over and over and over again until the nausea leaves her and only her baby brother’s voice remains. It’s horrible and sad and unfair and good. Penny will love it, once she can bear to read it critically. 

In the meantime, Judy memorizes it whole. 

***

They are holding him back. 

Henry and Charles laugh in his ears, grips bruising around his arms, and Will has never felt so helpless. He watches as Sandy is dragged away from him, her kiss a brand on his forehead, burning and sweet and gentle. 

Everything this place isn’t. 

He is crying, he realizes, crying and sobbing and begging. Begging so loudly like he never has before, not even the first time Pete touched him. Sandy is still like she always is at night, and for a second the back of his mind is lucid enough, separate enough, numb enough to wonder if the moonlight is making her stronger. Blessing her, in a way. Even now. 

“Please!”, he cries out, fighting against those arms, “please, it was me, it was me. Please, Pete!”

The man doesn’t seem to hear him. He is watching Sandy with raging eyes and the girl meets that horrid gaze with her own kindness, unmovable and whole and here. Still here after everything he has done to her. 

“Pete, hurt me! I’m asking”, he chokes, but he is desperate and afraid and guilty and he knows the only way to take those eyes away from Sandy is with an offering. The one thing this man has still not gotten from him. The one thing Will still has. “I’m asking you to please hurt me. I want you to hurt me.”

That does it. Pete stills, looks over his shoulder until his eyes land on Will, wide and hungry. The boy trembles. 

“Hurt me.”

The smile is wide and sharp, like a wolf about to slaughter the lamb. All teeth. The man winks at him and Will’s stomach recoils. 

“In a minute”, he promises.

It takes a second, maybe even less. Pete is winking and promising so much pain and then he isn’t, his hands flying to Sandy’s pretty neck. Will barely has time to follow, to meet Sandy’s gentle smile and her reassurance and confidence and beauty. She looks at him like she’s still kissing him and then those hands close around her skin and snap. 

He hears the bones break, watches the body falling to the dirt, the smile forever frozen on her sweet face. The angle of her head is wrong. 

Will starts screaming. 

***

Vijay and Samantha stand around the melting metal in full protective gear. They had fumbled their way through molds, ruined a lot of them and melted a few. Now they finally got it right, it’s exciting to them. The proof of all these days spent whispering over prototypes and designs. 

Their metal is dark, liquid and burning. Like a soul, almost. When they watch it move down the molds it feels alive. Aware of what it is, of how strong and dangerous it’s meant to be. 

They hope Will sees it too, when they finally give it to him.

But first they have to finish, and there’s still long to go. 

They will be here all night, maybe longer. Neither of them minds, they won’t move until it’s perfect. Sharp and strong and gentle and predatory. Will, who has survived, imbued in metal.  

***

It was easier than he thought, getting away from Charles. Henry was already weak after the stab, unwilling to keep fighting with him and leaving as Will was dragged back to the wooden room. And Charles was excited, handsy and nibbling at Will’s neck. It was so easy to bite his ear off, to kick him between the legs and lock him in the room that had been Will’s prison for so long. 

It had been easier still to sneak into the kitchen, this late at night. Everyone had gone back to bed already, expecting him to wallow in his own misery until Pete came for him. And hurt him. 

But Sandy is… he heaves with it, the snap of the neck. 

Why bother now, he thinks, walking behind the counter. He’s not going to do this alone, it may be cowardly and pathetic but he doesn’t care. He chooses this, what should have been hers. The burning of the match. 

Will chooses fire. 

Maybe the heat will do something for this place, purify it, somehow. Burn away the sins. 

He gathers the fuel they use to start the coals and cook, grabs all of it, every can. And he soaks the kitchen with it, throwing it all over the wood like rain. Like blood. He sneaks to the dinning hall and soaks that too, sneaks outside and drops fuel on the grass all the way back to the house. He stands outside the door where Charle’s pounding on the walls can be heard. He hears the answering questions, running footsteps. They are coming for him, he knows. Gentle, he drops the cans on the floor. 

Then he pulls out the matches from his jacket.

 

 

Notes:

DIALOGUES:
Pete: Tell me you want it.
Will: "It's a lie"
Pete: "Don't matter."
Will: "I don't lie, remember?"
Pete: Then mean it.
Will: Not today.
Pete: Someday, then.

 

AN: So sorry for the long wait, life happened and writers block writer blocked. Still, here it is, finally. We're getting very close to the end now :) I hope you'll forgive my calling the poem good jsjsjs it's mine, but I found it fit Will very well, considering, so I leant him some verses, since the actual poem is a little longer.

REFERENCES:
Ocean Vuong
Kurt Vunnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
A 100 Years of Solitude

Chapter 15: Chapter 14

Notes:

I overestimated what can happen in 5 days, so I went back to make some changes and now we're all going to pretend Will was missing for 15 days... yay!

 

Vijay gathers the metal carefully, like he would a baby. It is cool and firm, sharp around the edges but wavy and flexible. Like Will. It is the result of days and nights full of hard work and sketches and welding. He has made this from his hands and it feels good, so good, to witness the joy of creation for himself. 

The cloth Samantha had picked lays stretched out on the table, ready to wrap itself around this gift. Like a warm blanket, or a mourner’s veil, or craft paper. Soft and steady. Vijay holds his breath as he puts the metal down, hands trembling just a bit. He gathers the corners of the grey fabric with the tips of his fingers and bundles it all up. 

There are stars on the cloth. Silver stars that remind Vijay of Will’s eyes. Of Robot’s face. 

He hopes they remind Will of something good too. 

More than anything, he hopes he measured everything right and it will fit.        

***

He holds the girl tight in his arms as they try to sleep. This close, Will can hear the words Sandy is singing to them like a lullaby, sweet and gentle and eerie. Like her. He closes his eyes as her breath hits his neck and the little hairs on his arms stand. 

For a moment Will wonders why his body doesn’t react to Pete’s touch anymore. He smothers the question quickly, shoving a hand against its mouth so it will keep quiet. Like Charles when he isn’t supposed to be touching the kids. 

Easy, Sandy breathes in deep and keeps going, soft voice washing over them. 

“Hide me there, under the leaves

Nine going on eighteen

Lay it on me”

Will shift closer still, his nose hidden in the girl’s hair and his arms around her thin body. If her voice was a little deeper, he could pretend Penny is singing to him on one of those nights mom was working and Judy studying. 

“I thought good guys get to be happy

I’m not happy

I am poison in the water and unhappy”

Unbidden, Will purses his lips like a boy kissing a babe in his arms. Like Judy when he was born. Like Penny when he had nightmares back on Earth. He is not alone here, in this darkness. He is poison in the water and unhappy but his misery has company and it is kind. It sings to him late at night. 

“I’m tired of you

Still tied to me

Too tired to move

Too tired to leave”

As his breaths start growing even and Sandy’s singing fades into the background, Will holds her tighter. Afraid she will be taken in the night. That she will get up and leave, go up to the moon where she seems to belong. It’s a selfish thing, but Will knows he couldn’t let her leave.

He wouldn’t survive here on his own.

***

I’m tired of you, still tied to me… 

***

Steady, Samantha walks into the Jupiter 2. 

She radioed Judy earlier, when Vijay told her the package was ready. Now they only need permission to deliver it, to see Will. Or, at worst, put the gift in Judy’s cold hands and have her deliver it for them. Not that Samantha likes the idea much. 

Scarecrow meets her at the raft, burning as ever but gentle with her. She wonders if he is this gentle with Will, or if he has to be even more careful. What she knows of the boy is little, but clear. He is brave and brilliant and fragile. He was naive, before. Samantha doesn’t need to know what happened to be sure he isn’t anymore. 

“Is Judy here?”, she asks Scarecrow. He watches her for a moment, thinking. She lets him see whatever he wants, unmoving before this large, imposing being. Unafraid. “It’s important.”

Whirring, he turns to lead her in and Samantha allows herself the beginnings of a smile. 

She moves silently inside the ship, weary of awakening whatever hides inside these walls. Sadness or anger or fear. All of which float outside like a stink. All of which everyone whispers about as they eat around the bonfire. 

The robot stops outside the infirmary, door closed. He looks back to her once, a last vetting of sorts, before walking away and allowing her to do what she must. Samantha is grateful. With a deep breath, she knocks on the door and waits. 

A bang, a series of steps, hesitation. The door opens to reveal a woman who is haunted, dark circles under her eyes and sharp cheekbones, as if she has been starving. Running. Her hair, usually perfect, lays messily around her shoulders, her sleeves have old stains on them. Salve or syrup or blood. Samantha won’t ask. 

“Hey”, Judy whispers and Samantha doesn’t think the woman even notices she is whispering instead of talking. “What’s up?”

“I need to see Will.”

The woman’s face closes like shutters. Slow, then all at once. 

“He’s not up for visitors right now.”

“Shouldn’t you ask him first?” She’s pushing too hard, she knows. But this is important. Too important to let it go just because Judy is afraid. “It will be good for him, I promise.”

“Sam…”

“Vijay and I made him something”, she cuts in, “I know something really bad happened, and I know Will is hurt. This can help, I promise. It will help. Just give us the chance to give it to him.”

Judy’s eyes darken and lighten over and over, her anger and fear warring with hope and the love she has for her. The one Samantha knows she’s exploiting. She would feel bad, if she didn’t know it’s for the better. 

“Just a few minutes, then we’ll leave.”

They watch each other, waiting for… something. A light, an explosion, Will around the corner. The very few times they’ve fought in the past, Will always finds his way in between them. Usually, he helps. The last time, Samantha snapped at him, told him she was none of his business. That she’s not his sister for him to keep trying to protect her. 

Two days later he was gone. 

And maybe it matters, that she was cruel right before it all went to hell. That she never got the chance to… and that it won’t mean anything to Will anymore. That it probably didn’t bother him then, either. He was too good. Maybe she cares to see some of that goodness stick and she knows, she knows, she can give him something to hold it together. To hold all the breakable parts of himself. 

Maybe she needs this as much as he does. 

“It matters”, she says to Judy and watches the woman cave. 

***

John walks back to camp with Victor and Ava. He is the only one who doesn’t talk. Out here in the woods that swallowed his son and spat him back out with missing parts, he doesn’t feel like his voice holds. Will lost his own in these trees, they stole it from him. They bloodied him and hurt him and… good God, they raped him. Whoever was out here. They did the unspeakable and more and John doesn’t even know any of it. Only what Will saw himself forced to write.

What Victor, his friend, saw himself forced to draw out of a boy. 

He blames that, his not knowing, the knowing he does have, for the feeling he gets out here. Like he’s being watched. In the war, he would have shot at the trees and found spies ready to attack him, left them dead on the sand. Now he remembers Will’s cold eyes and his stillness and his shaking hands. John keeps his eyes down and his mouth shut. 

He walks back to camp and feels himself being followed. He blames the horror. 

***

‘Cause I hate this story, where happiness ends and dies with you…

***

Will is sitting on his bed, clean and shaven, long hair brushed. It’s down to his chin now. No one has dared to cut it and he hasn’t asked them to. He doesn't know if he should. The less he looks like the boy in a wooden room, the better. And then a girl stands in the corner, with her twisted neck, watching him; he fears she won’t recognise him one of these days.

He doesn’t want to leave her alone. 

She’s here, Sandy, watching from the other side of the room as Vijay and Samantha come inside, Judy right behind them. They had asked to see him, his sister told him. They have a gift for him.

Will doesn’t remember what it feels like to get real gifts, it’s part of why he said yes. He couldn’t help it. Maybe it will feel nice, he hopes in silence, he wants to feel nice. 

“Hey, Will”, Vijay smiles at him, the same smile he always gives. A little lopsided, one dimple showing. He’s very good at hiding the shock of Will, Victor hadn’t managed that. Samantha doesn’t bother to try, she eyes him, all intent. It’s nice, he thinks. People either show they’re afraid or try to pretend.

He’s already glad to see them. 

Neither Vijay nor Samantha can tell, Will doesn’t smile anymore. But Judy, from the hall, sees the way her brother’s eyes soften and thinks this is as close to content she has seen him in weeks. 

“We made you this”, Vijay keeps going, stepping closer still and not at all visibly frightened. How interesting. “It’s not perfect but, well, we hope you like it.”

The older boy stretches, holding the bundle out for Will to take. He does, hands ever-shaking even though there’s nothing physically wrong with them. Even though he wrote at Victor easily. Judy thinks it’s his brain, like his voice leaving and his memories taking over. 

The bundle is heavy, hard. It’s wrapped in starred cloth and he feels his lips quirk at it. Anger and comfort battle inside his chest, as they always do whenever he looks at the sky. Will steals a peek at the three people watching him. He meets Samantha’s gaze, she answers it without wavering. He’s always liked her for a reason, he thinks to himself. Maybe he should write at her some day. 

Anticipation builds in his chest and for a moment, brief and small, he remembers Christmas morning. Both of his parents happily married, his sisters laughing, the fireplace flickering and cookies in his mouth. He closes his eyes to taste it well, the old feeling of joy. It’s not wrapping paper and the cloth doesn’t tear as he opens it but his wide-eyed look is the same. 

Here, in his arms, is armor. Not full, a chest piece and arm braces. Black, fine and elegant; the shoulders break into sharp points going outwards, like a threat. The pieces over the chest and torso are wavy, curved like Robot’s plating. The braces are similar, curved around the wrists and pointy where the elbow bends. Like Scarecrow’s spikes.

Judy gasps from the hall, and Will. God, somehow, he feels himself start to smile. He runs his fingers over the metal, remembers running his hands all over Robot, pressing himself close and pretending the strong skin was his own. Remembers the first few days, back in the infirmary, when he wished to tear his skin off and replace it. Remembers jealousy of Crow’s strength. 

“It’s sharp, and strong. But it will be soft on the inside too, for you”, Samantha speaks. “You could cut someone with the edges if you wanted to.”

“Or not”, Vijay tries, “it could just be scary.”

Oh, he knew all about being scary. Pleased, Will gathers the armor in his arms like a teddy bear and nods, once. 

***

Clara watches the ceiling for the last time as her breath stutters and her heart pounds.

She is bruised and in pain, blood leaking. She hid a knife in her skirts earlier, tried to stab with it when Pete came back from his meeting. Tried so save them. Her and her baby. 

He got her instead, turned her wrist and made her stab herself. 

It was a good effort, she thinks. A pity and unfair and cruel and a good effort.

The best she had in her after so long of bruising hands and cutting words. 

As the world leaves her, or she leaves the world, or she becomes one with it in bliss, Clara remembers. She remembers her house in Nebraska and her mother’s yellow living room, the old vinyls on the record player.

God loves you, but not enough to save you.

Her mother yells in the kitchen, smashes plates against the pristine floors. Her father drives away one night to never return. A boy kisses her behind the old church, another steals a pack of gum. A baby grows in her unwed belly and Clara cries into the public stall.  

God loves you…

Her belly rounds and rounds and years later Pete kisses her cesarean scar before biting into her flesh, hard. She pushes and screams and a little girl with pale skin and pearl teeth is cut out of her. Pete forces his tongue down her throat. Her baby girl, “Protector of humanity”, Sandra. Sandy.

Baby, my baby. Pete slaps her. She kisses her daughter’s forehead with a knife hidden.

God loves…

Someone will kill him soon, she wishes. Swears it. Curses, maybe. Pete will be stabbed to death someday, by someone luckier. Faster. Sandy Sandra Sandy Dee. Baby, it’s me. Shut up, you stupid bitch. Mommy. Mommy I love you Mommy. Sandy. 

God…

***

They leave him alone soon after. Happy and hopeful and a little misty eyed. Will can’t wait to show Robot. He will be relieved, Will knows Robot never liked it when Will pretended like that. He tolerated. Will remembers what it was like to tolerate. 

First, though, just him. He locks the door for the first time since he returned, stands on his own and feels the muscles burn. There’s a mirror that had been brought in for his exercises, full body, right on the wall. Careful, Will goes to it until he can see himself whole. The boy watching him back is pale, skinny, small. He is scarred over, but his eyes are sharp, his hands curled, his mouth firm. 

Like a tiger cub, pretty and soft but dangerous, with a promise you can’t play with it. Or shouldn’t. 

Behind him the ghost watches, she seems pleased, too. Will tries not to notice her, he wishes he could have this for himself only. Wishes he wasn’t tied to everything that happened in the woods. 

Breathing deep and letting go slow, he reaches for the chest piece. It surrounds his back too, where the suggestion of spikes creates a line down his spine. It closes from the side, so he can put it on alone. No knots. The satisfying click as it closes sends a thrill over his chest. He fits the arm braces around himself, these have velcro straps. They were careful, his hands can do this easily. 

When he turns back to his reflection it is a slap, a hug, a wish. He seems taller, thicker, wrapped in metal. The black paint stands against his skin and hair beautifully. His eyes look silver like the stars on the cloth. Samantha was right, he could cut someone with the edges if he wanted to, it would just take one decisive move. Easier than stabbing over and over and over in the dark. But he can be hugged, if someone is careful with the way they wrap their arms around him.

He can be helped, if needed. No one would be stupid enough to touch him without his permission, while he wears this. 

Will meets his reflection and tries to grin. He looks dangerous. 

***

I was too young to notice that some types of love can be bad…

***

Pleased, the sinners watch a long line of Jupiters settled on the grass. The piled wood of bonfires marked the ground between ships, tents and stands scattered across camp. Chariots, footsteps, people. 

Everything they had lost and rebuilt, that had burned to the ground not that long ago. The fury of a child turned wraith.  Pete’s hunger. 

This is what they wanted, a fresh start, a new camp to take and better. These people may not know it yet, but they need the sinners, need their wisdom and strength and ruthlessness. The universe is cruel, laughing faces and families eating together and arcane rules will get them nowhere. 

Only predators survive, and when they take this place for themselves, the sinners will prove it.

 

 

 

Notes:

Next chapter we finally see *exactly* what happened the last day in the woods, not just fragmented flashbacks!

References:
"Joy of creation" - FNAF
Hard Times - Ethel Cain
Sun Bleached Flies - Ethel Cain
"A cub you can't play with later" - Hannibal, Thomas Harris

Chapter 16: Chapter 15

Notes:

WARNING: This is graphic as we are ever going to get, so... Graphic Violence, Sexual Assault.

Also, listen to Ptolemea - Ethel Cain and Brutus - The Buttress while reading. Trust me.

 

Heard you, saw you, felt you, gave you

***

Will sits on Pete’s bed, bare like the day he was born, with an itch under his skin. Pete is not touching him, doesn’t seem to want to, and it is driving him insane. He eyes the man’s calloused hands, watches his naked legs shift as he gets more comfortable on the other side of the bed, follows the movements of his throat as he speaks and speaks and speaks. 

When the familiar order to undress came, Will had followed it mindlessly, he’d climbed on the mattress and closed his eyes. This… this isn’t familiar. Not the space between them, not the light smile on Pete’s lips, not the fact that they are both here, close and naked and not in pain.

It makes no sense. 

Every word makes the itch grow stronger still. He feels like a caged dog, rabid, needing to bite and tear off his own skin. Foam at the mouth. Cry and wail. Something. Anything. 

“What do you miss most, from before?”, Pete asks him as if it isn’t a cruel thing to ask. As if Before meant before going to space and not before he was stolen by this man. As if the answer is anything other than: myself. 

“Ice-cream”, he settles for. A child’s response, just like Pete likes it. 

The man smiles wider. 

“Strawberry ice-cream was my favorite. Yours?”

Will starts digging his fingernails into his thighs. 

“Chocolate.”

Pete goes into a story of his childhood, when his mother took him for ice-cream after a bad exam. Will tries to block out every word and fails, feels the cold air against his skin and his nails starting to break skin. It’s not enough. He can’t do this, not this. He can close his eyes and go somewhere else while he is being used, he can lose himself just enough to sort of enjoy it, or cry and scream and beg when he can’t. 

Will knows how by now. 

But this? It’s not fair to ask for this. Images of an innocent Pete with a mother who loved him, just like Sandy’s mom loved her. Like his own mom loves him. Pillow talk without the pain that always comes before the whispers. This is too close to intimacy and Will thinks he might start losing his mind.

He can’t do this. 

***

Need you, love you, love you, love you

***

Henry and Charles come to walk him back to his wooden room once Pete is done talking. Only talking. The itch is so loud now, Will’s whole body is buzzing with it. He lifts his hand to his lips and lets his teeth gently bite at his fingers. 

“Hold on”, Charles stops them, looking around. Will knows how this goes, usually he would grow limp and dazed. Block it out. Tonight he can’t can’t can’t. His teeth are too sharp.

“Hurry it up”, Henry says back and starts guiding all three of them to an empty storage room down the hall. Will’s breath starts coming faster, he feels the tips of his fangs with his tongue. 

They open the door and close it fast behind them. They’re supposed to ask for permission to touch him, for Pete’s ego. They hardly ever bother. Will can feel the men against him, can feel Henry by his hips, his hands clutching. Charles starts nibbling at his neck, right below his jaw. Will looks at the wooden ceiling as he is touched, his skin burning, ants running beneath. His mouth starts opening on his own, he doesn’t even notice until Henry is rocking them and Charle’s ear is right there, so so so close and he…

He bites it.

Hard.

Blood soaks Will’s mouth and Charles starts cursing at him, fighting him off. Henry moves away, finally, and Will lets go long enough to smash his forehead against Charles once, twice, thrice. The man falls fast, unconscious. 

“Fucking bitch!”, Henry launches. 

Will crashes against the boxes behind him, almost falling. Henry wraps his hands around Will’s pale, thin neck and squeezes. A day ago he would have given up, saved his strength. The buzzing is loud loud loud and he can’t can’t can’t. The knife glints from Henry’s belt and Will steals it ready to stab. 

***

I'm on fire, I'm on fire, I'm on fire

***

He leaves the men on the floor of the storage room. Will stops long enough to grab a shelf and move it in front of the door. Then he runs. He moves fast, faster than he ever has. Up the stairs, to the right, opens the door so fast and Sandy startles where she sits on her bed, watching the moon.

“Come on!”

She watches him for a moment, his stretched hand, the blood on his lips, the knife in his grip. Her vacant eyes grow vibrant and she goes to him. 

Boy and Girl run out of the house together. 

***

I can see it in your eyes, he keeps looking at me

***

They try to be careful, they really do. They hold hands as they run and hide in the shadows, behind thick trees. Most of the camp is asleep, few people walking around still, sitting by the fires. Will’s knuckles grow white around the knife and Sandy’s grow white around his free hand. 

When a woman that always disapproves but never intervenes walks past their hiding spot, they wait until she is far from view.

Time has shown them there are no saviours here.

A thud follows a series of curses follows yelling. 

“They woke up”, he whispers to Sandy. Their terrified eyes meet and together they decide to keep trying. 

They run for the woods. 

It doesn’t take long at all.

One second they’re crouching behind a boulder, watching a raging Pete and bleeding Charles walk past them and the next there are arms around their waists, hauling them out. 

The children start screaming, fighting. The knife is kicked out of Will’s hand but he doesn’t care, he just reaches for Sandy. 

Innocent hands cling desperately to each other, fingers interlocked. Please, he begs them. Please please please. She is screaming, crying, fighting. She hasn’t fought in so long she’d almost forgotten how. Today her pearl-white teeth bite and her sweet voice roars.

Even after everything that’s been seen and done and endured, she finds she doesn’t want to die. Her mommy used to kiss her forehead, she remembers. A boy kissed her forehead once, before he jumped. 

She wants more of that. So much more. Please. 

He tries so hard to keep holding her, to drag her to him and away from them. 

He fails. The men force Boy and Girl apart and they are laughing. 

The itch is unbearable. 

***

You poor thing

Sweet, mourning lamb

There's nothing you can do

It's already been done

***

They are dragged back to camp late at night. Whistles and cat calls and insults following after. He remembers this well, Will. It was just like this when the hunters took him, after they had stoned Robot to pieces and cut him up with machetes and spears. So easy, they had taken down a robot.

So beastial. 

Now he tries to dig his feet in the dirt, to scratch and bite and scream. It’s never helped him before but he has nothing left to do. 

The moon is high in the sky when it happens. Screams and tears and rage all blend into a symphony of misery. Will, still a boy, struggles against his captors and begs. Please please please, let her go, she doesn’t deserve it, she’s the best of us, please please please. It’s pointless. 

Pete is happy.

The man, smiling and ugly and so so so evil, grins at the children he has brutalized and feasts on their fear. Sandy, once so trusting, watches it all with tired eyes and knows this is it. Still, she fights. And it is pointless too.

“Let her go!”, Will demands, foaming at the mouth, shaking. 

“The rules are clear”, Pete calls out, the crowd impassive as ever. Permitting. “You knew better.”

And they did, is the worst part. They knew and still they dared, still Will bit into Charles’ ear and stole a pocket knife. Still, Sandy took his hand when he offered it. Still, they tried to run. They weren’t fast enough, lucky enough, invisible enough. 

“It was me”, Will begs, “it was me, it was me.”

Pete meets the boy’s eyes and winks, turns to Sandy, who refuses to cry. She holds her head high as she has always done in the moonlight. Her fear has long turned to something different. Acceptance, once. Fire, tonight.

“You knew better”, Pete tells her, hand on her cheek, caressing. “Stupid little girl, I taught you better.”

“No”, she moves her face away from his filthy palm, “my mom taught me.”

Something new burns in Pete’s eyes. Not quite anger, not quite shame. Embarrassment, perhaps. Something Will immediately fears. He struggles twice as hard, tries to bite, kick, anything that will get him to Sandy’s side. Sandy who now smiles a real thing, not painted and vacant, triumphant.

She knows she knows she knows. And decides, if this is how it ends, she will be the match.

Before Pete gets the chance, Sandy throws herself forward. And reaches to place one last kiss on the last boy’s skin.  

It sears into him. That awful itch gathers right where her lips were and Will weeps. 

***

Tell me, what have you done?

***

They are holding him back. 

Henry and Charles laugh in his ears, grips bruising around his arms, and Will has never felt so helpless. He watches as Sandy is dragged away from him, her kiss a brand on his forehead, burning and sweet and gentle. 

Everything this place isn’t. 

He is crying, he realizes, crying and sobbing and begging. Begging so loudly like he never has before, not even the first time Pete touched him. Sandy is still like she always is at night, and for a second the back of his mind is lucid enough, separate enough, numb enough to wonder if the moonlight is making her stronger. Blessing her, in a way. Even now. 

“Please!”, he cries out, fighting against those arms, “please, it was me, it was me. Please, Pete!”

The man doesn’t seem to hear him. He is watching Sandy with raging eyes and the girl meets that horrid gaze with her own kindness, unmovable and whole and here. Still here after everything he has done to her. 

“Pete, hurt me! I’m asking”, he chokes, but he is desperate and afraid and guilty and he knows the only way to take those eyes away from Sandy is with an offering. The one thing this man has still not gotten from him. The one thing Will still has. “I’m asking you to please hurt me. I want you to hurt me.”

That does it. Pete stills, looks over his shoulder until his eyes land on Will, wide and hungry. The boy trembles. 

“Hurt me.”

The smile is wide and sharp, like a wolf about to slaughter the lamb. All teeth. The man winks at him and Will’s stomach recoils. 

“In a minute”, he promises.

It takes a second, maybe even less. Pete is winking and promising so much pain and then he isn’t, his hands flying to Sandy’s pretty neck. Will barely has time to follow, to meet Sandy’s gentle smile and her reassurance and confidence and beauty. She looks at him like she’s still kissing him and then those hands close around her skin and snap. 

He hears the bones break, watches the body falling to the dirt, the smile forever frozen on her sweet face. The angle of her head is wrong. 

Will starts screaming.

The lamb, so pure and beautiful, is dead. And the crows are laughing. In revenge, Charles bites Will so hard he draws blood. The boy doesn’t notice, he is still screaming. 

Sighing, Pete turns to them. “Tuck him in.”

***

Hiding from something I cannot stop

***

He is still screaming as they drag him back to the house. 

“Shut the fuck up”, Henry grumbles, his side weakened from Will’s earlier attack. They must make one hell of a picture, he thinks in between screams. All three of them stained in blood. 

Charles clenches his hand around the back of Will’s neck, pinching. The boy leans back instinctively, trying to make those thick fingers let go. 

His throat aches but he can’t stop. 

Up in the night’s sky, the stars shine down on him. Will opens his eyes to watch them, voice wrecked. They seem to be blinking, red and raging. These are not the stars he is used to seeing at night. As the men move him, Will grows still and quiet, screams fading as the stars seem to swirl inside his irises. 

They are loud tonight. 

Brutus, they whisper. Brutus Brutus Brutus. 

Will can feel himself be pulled, pinched, slapped. His eyes stay with the stars that now remember him, that have watched him scream and beg and bleed over wooden boards. 

Let your name be Brutus, Heavy…

His skin vibrates so hard he shakes with it, Henry and Charles struggling to keep hold of him as they walk inside the house. His jaw clenches as his teeth grit inside his mouth.

Brutus…

***

Stop, make it stop, make it stop, I've had enough

***

Henry goes to bed, handing the knife to Charles, unwilling to fight. 

Charles doesn't seem bothered as he throws Will inside the wooden room. If anything, the smile he wears is elated. He moves fast, pulling Will by his hair and forcing him on Sandy’s bed. Nestling between his kicking legs. Clenching his chin in his large hands. 

“You gonna make it up to me, bitch.”

Will growls and shakes as a tongue licks his cheek. He turns to the side, away from the man, and finds the window.

The moon is so bright. 

Brutus…

This can’t happen, not now, not here. Not on Sandy’s bed. 

He itches itches itches. 

Charles growls as he moves against the smaller body but Will was named Brutus by the stars and he feels himself change as the skin on his body shook. He falls on Charles like an animal, hungry, and rips the ear fully off, biting into the flesh. Swallowing as to not choke.

The man screams but Will muffles it against the mattress like these men have muffled him so many times before. He kicks the man between the legs and, once he is on the floor, slams his head on the wooden boards over and over until he stops moving. 

Then he goes for the belt. 

Knife in hand, Will doesn’t bother with subtlety. He runs.

He sneaks into the kitchen, this late at night. Everyone has gone back to bed already, expecting him to wallow in his own misery until Pete came for him. And hurt him.

But Sandy is… he heaves with it, the snap of the neck. 

Why bother now, he thinks, walking behind the counter. He’s not going to do this alone, it may be cowardly and pathetic but he doesn’t care. He chooses this, what should have been hers. The burning of the match. 

Will chooses fire. 

Maybe the heat will do something for this place, purify it, somehow. Burn away the sins. 

He gathers the fuel they use to start the coals and cook, grabs all of it, every can. And he soaks the kitchen with it, throwing it all over the wood like rain. Like blood. He sneaks to the dinning hall and soaks that too, sneaks outside and drops fuel on the grass all the way back to the house. He stands outside the door where Charle’s pounding on the walls can be heard. He hears the answering questions, running footsteps. They are coming for him, he knows. Gentle, he drops the cans on the floor. 

Then he pulls out the matches from his jacket.

***

I am no good nor evil, simply I am

***

The fire starts fast, grows even faster. 

Silhouetted, the monster stands before the rising flames and smiles for the first time in days. 

He watches the fire take the house, hears the screams coming from inside, watches people come running and be burned as the flames catch on their clothes, their hair. 

Brutus Brutus Brutus. 

Will starts laughing. 

He walks past the people burning, leaves them to squirm and suffer. Hides in the shadows. Everyone who avoids the flames and gets close to where he waits has their throats cut by Henry’s knife. They soak Will in a red waterfall. He doesn’t mind. 

He moves, always hidden, taking out the camp as he goes. Quick slits, deep and forceful, like his father had tried to teach him once, years ago. Will hadn’t wanted to listen, but he had been a boy then. Now he is something else. 

Something thirsty.

He doesn’t even realize the itching has stopped. 

***

I am here now, as you run from me still

Run then, child

You can't hide from me forever

***

When he sees Pete, he freezes. 

Will has just killed someone else, unflinching. The shadows had hidden him well, but Pete stands across from him, near the burning house, covered in soot and fury. The man starts running to him.

Will runs too, away away away. To the burning dinning hall that might hide him long enough to let him cross it and walk into the woods like he and Sandy tried to. There won’t be people left to catch him this time. 

“William!”

Pete screams after him, slams the door open just when the monster hides under the counter. They move around each other, slow and steady. Raging.

“Come to me, boy”, Pete speaks gently as he throws chairs and tables, trying to find him. Will keeps crouching, moving in the opposite direction. “Playtime’s over.”

He just needs Pete to move deeper into the hall and he’ll have the way to the back door cleared. Just a little more. 

With a growl, Pete throws a chair against the window, breaking it and covering the grass in shards. The cool breeze feeds the flames around them, eating up the room they are in. Will starts having trouble breathing. 

He doesn’t think very hard when Pete fades from view, he just stands and runs. 

A pair of stronger hands drag him back inches away from the door. 

***

I am the face of love’s rage

***

They wrestle on the floor, fighting over the knife, over each other, over breath. 

Pete’s body covers him whole, pressing him down, and it is so much like what happens at night that Will starts screaming again, even if he can’t breathe anymore. He wraps his palms around the knife, the blade cutting into his skin, but he doesn’t let go. Pete rips it out, and the thin flesh and blood force the knife away from Will’s grasp.

The weapon is thrown aside. 

“You’re going to pay for this one”, Pete snarls against his ear, hands finding his neck like Charles likes doing. Only Pete squeezes really hard and all air leaves Will. “We could have been good, Will. I could have loved you.”

Will tries to fight the man off, to rip his hands away, to draw breath. 

“You would have loved me.”

Brutus, the stars call out to him, Brutus Brutus Brutus.

He stretches until his fingers find the knife and drag it back. Heavy, he thinks, I will be Heavy. He draws what strength is left in him and stabs back. A scream follows and air, blessed air, comes back to him.

Will doesn’t hesitate, he turns, straddles Pete quick, before the man can react. 

“Fuck you”, he rasps and tastes blood.

“Wait, wait!”

Will lifts the knife and brings it down on Pete’s face. Then he does it again, and again. And with every scream of agony, every feature stolen by the blade, every splatter of blood, Will feels better. Electrified. He opens his mouth, not knowing why. A word, a curse, a promise. When he allows his voice to leave, he says nothing at all. He screams, animal hunting prey, feasting. 

Hating. 

The flames rise high, higher than any of them. Than anything. Charged with the anger, the hate, the fear. A little girl’s tears and a little boy’s cries. A monster’s fury. Sandy, Dan, Will, Sandy, Dan, Will, Sandy, Dan, Will.

Every broken scream blurs the names together like watercolor blood, soaking the earth. Centuries later, trees will burst from the charred remains of this hell, two children feeding the roots from their bodies. Bones hidden, protected, cherished, by the land. 

Until then, this reaper wails, stabs up and down and up and down and up and down on his demon’s face. Destroys him. Destroys them all. He straddles the larger body, face and hands caked in their blood, stabs and stabs and stabs. He is an animal, no longer kind and gentle, but rabid. Foam dripping from his mouth. 

Son of a bitch, stab. Bastard, stab. I win, stab.

I win.

I

w

 

i

 

n

***

I am the face of love’s rage

***

Pete is unrecognizable when he is done with him. Barely an idea of a man. He pants, still straddling the corpse, as he lowers the knife.

Will allows himself a moment to lean forward, breathe. It’s… good, what he feels. Pleasure. For a moment he comes back to himself enough to notice the expression on his face, the sounds he is making. Like Pete when he finishes.

Nausea rises and the stars’ chants now feel bitter. He had wanted to be Will Robinson forever, Athena, not Brutus. 

He gets off of the man, stumbles onto his feet and to the door. Outside everything is quiet, people are dead. The house is nothing. Ashes fall. The sun is coming up. 

Will stands, grounded, under the light dripping in his enemies’ blood, flames all around him. Shaking, he raises his face to the sky, to the gods that once claimed him and abandoned him to be used, desecrated. Like an angel fallen and turned unholy, murderous. Past the blood, this creature opens its cracked lips and screams, throat tearing open, voice shredding. 

He screams on and on until his insides taste of violence. 

***

I am the face of love’s rage

***

It is day fifteen, the sun is in the sky, and there is black snow falling.

 

 

Notes:

Happy New Year!
This one was harder than I expected, but I finally finished it! Please let me know if you liked the chapter, what you're thinking. Next chapter we get back to the present and the sinners... It's the last arc you guys!

REFERENCES:
Ptolomea - Ethel Cain
Brutus - The Buttress
The Magnus Archives - "Wasps Nest"

Chapter 17: Chapter 16

Notes:

WARNINGS APLLY HERE I'M SO SERIOUS
We have a few scenes inside the head of a rapist (not during a rape), GRAPHIC depictions of violence, murder, references to SA.

 

Seven--six--eleven--five--nine-an'-twenty mile to-day 

***

When night falls, they charge. The sinners wait by the tree line with bated breath until the bonfires die down and everyone goes inside their Jupiters, not even bothering to leave a guard outside for the night. Weak, they sneer. They will do better once they take over, make things safer for everyone. 

They will make these people stronger. 

But first, the overrun. 

Henry is on the first wave, leading the charge. He is the closest they have to Pete, the one who best knows how to lead, the one they would never stand against. The one with the sharpest teeth.

They are quiet, spears in hand and rocks and fists and rage fueling them. They move fast, quiet. It happens in seconds. The Jupiters find themselves surrounded, the Sinners wait by the rafts, armed. Others go to the bonfires and light them back on, carry torches to the others and, when ready, place the fire by the rafts, over the sensors.

Alarms blare, people open their doors in shock to find armed men and women shouting in their faces. Fire burns. The Resolute people run where they are led, some try to fight back to be knocked down, a few are speared and bleed out on the grass staring at the night’s sky. 

Screams fill the air as the Sinners grin, fangs showing, and children cry into their parents’ legs. A man tries to fight against a Sinner who is dragging his wife by her hair, the Sinner back hands the woman and plunges a spear through the husband’s neck. She screams and there is nothing she can do.

Blood starts spreading on the once fresh grass, it could be day sixteen and the Sinners miss a Jupiter hidden by a boulder where a monster stirs. 

***

Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!

***

Will feels the warning at the center of his chest. He is lying in bed, eyes closed and trying not to notice the ghost with a twisted neck standing on the corner of his room, watching quietly.  The usual routine in a world after misery and wooden rooms with barred doors. He feels the cold air against his skin, reprieve from burning dreams. 

Until he doesn’t. This weary peace is drowned out by rage, heat bloomin inside of him from beyond the skies. The stars scream inside of his head, pound at his skull, drag his tired form out of bed in a second. 

The ghostly girl starts weeping.

Will turns to his bedside table, where the armor lays waiting to be worn. A knife, small and sharp and deadly, sits beside it. Ever since his family started to let him spend some time alone in his room, he stole it from the hub. The monster doesn’t hesitate to stand and drape himself in metal, remembering bloodlust and screams, the last day he had a voice and dared to use it. 

The chest piece clicks into place, his arm braces cover him in black. He stretches his neck and feels the spikes darting up his back, images them growing sharper and stronger, flaring like Scarecrow. When he is not a boy, he reaches for the knife and holds it in his clenched fist. 

Sandy keeps crying in that corner and he wonders if it’s out of fear or pity. 

Footsteps start moving towards his room and its ever-open door, lights bouncing back from the walls of the hall. Robot is afraid, uncertain. He reminds Will of himself years and years ago, when the worst he had ever seen was a robot in a cage. Behind him, that same robot stands tall, red and proud. Scarecrow is furious, sure. Violent.

Will understands, meets Crows’ lights with a manic grin, all teeth. 

Robot’s fear heightens. 

With loud thoughts he says, it ends now.

***

There's no discharge in the war!

***

Henry laughs. He stands before a bonfire surrounded by kneeling fools and he laughs. This rush, the taste of sugar, this is power. The same Pete held for winters and summers. That Henry reached for with every nod, every order followed and every bitten tongue. That a whore stole from them all weeks ago.

The others wield their spears with desperation, or hope, or a bitter mix of both. They think this is about finding a new home, spreading their strength to poor souls. They weren’t there when Pete’s eye got caught on blond hair, pale skin, full lips. These sinners have no idea this camp belongs to the one that slaughtered them.

There is no goodwill here. 

It’s hilarious. Henry laughs harder still, he might just be getting hard. By his left a young woman cowers on the dirt while Mitch grabs at her, forcing her buttons open and pocketing her knife. Later, Henry will give that girl to Mitch, as a reward for a strong victory. He will give his people whatever they want. Food, shelter, bodies. 

He’ll grab something for himself too. 

A blond little thing, with pale skin and full lips. But no tongue, the last one annoyed him with all his talking. 

“Stop this!”, a woman calls out. She is older, middle aged, with brown skin and a proud gait. His former captain, who Henry only ever saw in pictures before boarding The Resolute. Before that same woman left him and his people for dead, only one working Jupiter between them, after the aliens attacked. 

This night gets better and better.

“I am Captain Anjum Kamal, what is your business here?”, she roars, walking until they are toe to toe. Henry smiles wider as her hands shake, pushed behind her back for him to miss. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Pete never shook. 

“Congratulations!”, he laughs in her face, “you are going on an infinite vacation, you fucking bitch.”

He doesn’t even have to open his mouth for two of his own to drag her away, into the pile of kneeling lambs. 

***

Men--men--men--men--men go mad with watchin' em

***

Penny rounds a corner, running into Judy’s side. “What is going on?” She’s panting, shaking. The screams can be heard past the boulder that hides them and their open raft. Vulnerable and lucky. 

“I don’t know!”

Together, the sisters run for their baby brother. Will, who has been hurt and defiled and weakened by everything he has survived, who needs protecting. Who scares them a little, when it seems like he resents it. Their parents catch up first.

“Stay quiet”, their dad hisses at them, running by their side. Their mom keeps silent, lips in a tight line and eyes a burning set of coals. This can’t be happening, they’re not ready, not strong enough, not now. There’s too much rot in this family for them to fight like a crew. 

“Don is checking the guns”, Judy tells them.

The guns they’re not supposed to have but their resident smuggler ensured for them ages ago. That John taught them all to use and Will once cringed away from. He’s their best shot, Will, and he hates it. Or he used to. 

“Good”, their mom mutters and runs faster.

It turns out to be for nothing. Loud footsteps come up to them around the hall, lights on the walls. Robot and Scarecrow walk side by side like a personal guard and, between them, Will stands with his head held high and his new armor covering him whole. It’s a terrifying sight like it never was before. The family stops cold, eyes wide. 

Will is smiling. 

“Hey”, Penny tries to hide her weariness behind a smile that doesn’t fit her. “You ok?”

“Sinners”, Robot answers for him.

The Robinsons frown, look at each other. They don’t understand any of this and that makes them innocent. Weak. They are not the monsters here. 

“Ok, Will, listen to me”, John tries, eyeing his son like one would a snarling animal, “you need to stay here, ok? Whatever’s happening out there is…”

Will scoffs, smiles wider. There is something in his eyes none of them have ever seen before. Fire and anger and wild. Dangerous. This is not the first time Will has seemed threatening but it is the first time any of them have been afraid of him. Of what he might do to them.

Remember kindness, Penny thinks.

“My fight”, Scarecrow says and none of them know who he speaks for. “It ends now.”

Far away, they hear Don and Smith arguing their way back with the guns. They’re almost here, but Will doesn’t wait for them. He strides to the raft with robots at his back and a knife in hand.  

***

Oh--my--God--keep--me from goin' lunatic!

***

Henry is fully hard, trapped inside his pants and panting. The screams are intoxicating. He smiles and licks his lips, dares to run a hand down his chest, hesitating over his waistline. Not yet. When everyone here is too tired to fight, when they accept their new world order, then Henry will find a pretty thing and swallow the spoils. 

He starts to turn, seeking that horrid woman who calls herself captain to spit on her face. Greg stumbles into Henry’s back, jaw slack and eyes wide. Growling, Henry reaches for the other man’s neck, pulls his head down and squeezes.

“Watch it!”, he spits at him, “you fucking…”

Greg whimpers, but not at Henry. A shaking hand lifts up and points.

Frowning, Henry slowly releases the man, eyes finding wherever he is pointing. There is a boulder, large and ignored in the shadows of the night. It could make for good security, he thinks. If they could move it, somehow, shut in their prisoners. It could…

Rage blooms inside of him, fists clenching by his sides and Henry has to bite his cheeks to not turn on Greg and beat him to death just to have something to put all of this on. There, by that boulder, is a monster. Pale skin, long blonde hair, a knife. The body is covered in black metal and that bitch, that fucking bitch that attacked him and murdered their leader and slaughtered their people, is smiling. 

Henry growls loud, an animal on the hunt. 

“William!”

The monster starts laughing, knife at the ready, and runs to meet him. 

***

Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!

***

Will moves smoothly, too smoothly for a boy who was on a wheelchair not that long ago. When this is over his body will resent him, ache and tremble and cramp up. It isn’t ready for this. Not that readiness has ever mattered before. 

Scarecrow follows him, battle-form taken and face red, hands dripping lava. Kill them, Will tells him, just not him.

Henry throws his people away, starts moving to crash into Will, maybe try and tackle him. 

He’s mine. 

Scarecrow doesn’t say anything back, instead he wraps burning claws around a Sinner’s face and muffles the screams in dripping metal. Robot, hesitant, follows slowly, merely throwing aside those stupid enough to run into him, keeping an eye on Will. 

He can hear his family screaming after him, hears Vijay gasp when a Sinner starts beating him after trying to stand -to help. Samantha kneels, frozen, watching it all in horror. 

When shooting starts he knows his dad is taking over the fight on their side, ever the soldier. 

Henry and Will meet by a bonfire, the heat close to burning, his armor too hot to the touch. They grab at each other, roar and try to bite, kick and slap. Will feels the ghost of this man’s hands squeezing his hips, his crotch, his neck. Hears his grunts and moans from late nights when Pete was away or uncaring. Remembers how he used to make Sandy scream for fun. 

The memories build and build and build, they start clawing up his neck and blood drips inside his throat. Will isn’t being careful, he slashes at the air wildly, no true aim, knowing he will cut Henry eventually. Just like he cut Charles, and Pete, and all those that stood by as he was thrown on the ground and raped over and over and over and over and over and over

“Ah! Fucking…”, the knife catches on Henry’s shoulder, making the man take a step back.

and over and over and over and over and over

Will screams, wraith, lunges again. Shots go off behind him, more and more, Sinners falling like flies. He thinks he sees Vijay get up, shove at a man who was reaching for Samantha. 

and over and over and over and over and over. 

He cuts Henry’s cheek next, the wound deep and blood flowing freely down the man’s neck. In a rage, Henry kicks at Will thrice, barely breathing in between each attack. The last one lands, making Will stumble.

Brutus, Brutus, Brutus. 

Scarecrow burns someone else, their screams so so so loud they take over the night for a moment, until the sound fades and another body falls. 

I will be heavy. 

Henry slaps Will, hard, so hard his ears ring for a second. Only a second. But it is enough, Henry sees it and throws himself over Will fully, his weight so much heavier that they both topple and slam into the dirt. Henry is on top, the shape of his body familiar to the monster’s mind, if things were a little different, this could be another kind of shared night. Those had plenty of pain and screaming too. 

Heavy, the stars rage, wield your dagger, heavy. 

They struggle, Will shoving at Henry’s jaw and the man trying to pin down Will’s legs. “Stop it!”, the man yells, “you want this? Huh? You want me?” Will screams, Robot takes a step closer, for once willing to give into this violence. Will stops him with a thought.

He’s mine. 

Will meets Henry’s eyes, lays still and pliant beneath him, panting. The man stills too, weary yet hopeful. By their record, this is usually the point where Henry gets what he wants and Will closes his eyes through it. Their noses touch, they go loose, they wait. A still point in a whirlwind of fury. 

“Henry”, Will gasps, “I’ll see you in hell.”

And he lands the killing blow. His knife digs into the side of Henry’s neck, the man opens his mouth to scream but nothing comes out, too much blood making him gurgle. Will takes the blade out to stab him again and again, a red sea falling over him. He stabs and stabs until Henry is unmoving and even heavier, eyes glazed over. 

It is done, the stars speak to him, soft and gentle like a mother. Only then does Will stop, leaving his knife inside the man and letting the body to fall on top of him. He takes a moment to gather his breath, knowing he is safe here, the battle ended when he first stabbed Henry. The night is quiet now. 

Will licks his lips, allows the taste to lay on his tongue. Of this man’s blood, his rapist’s blood. Then he swallows, rolling the body aside until he is free once more, soaked in red and watching the stars.

Will is smiling. 

***

Men--men--men--men--men

***

A monster stands before the flames.

The remaining Sinners kneel, hands behind their heads, watching him in terror. They remember what he did to them and theirs once, have seen it yet again. Will is the creature of their nightmares, he has chosen to become a haunting after being prey. This is a thing that ruins, they think of him.

They are not wrong. Not tonight. 

Slow, careful, too weak now to do more, Will limps up to them. His dad is watching him, firm and steady but so so so frightened. It is in his eyes, he is afraid Will could kill him. And he isn’t wrong either. Luckily, Will doesn’t want to. 

He is a monster but he has loyalties. 

Penny is crying farther back, still by the boulder. Sandy’s ghost stands with her, neck twisted and tears running down her thin cheeks. He knows that, right now, they are both weeping for him. What he has been made into, to survive. They won’t want to see this again. Will doesn’t either.

There is only one way to make that happen. 

“Will, stop.” Captain Kamal has moved to him, stepping in between Will and the living Sinners. “These criminals are being taken under custody.”

A laugh starts to bubble up but he swallows it before it comes out. That wouldn’t look very good. Instead, he tilts his head to the side, watching her. So naive. 

Will shakes his head, eyes kind, and moves past her. Kamal, for all her duty to the rules, lets him. She knows who they are, what they did to him. Her eyes are cold and her back is stiff and she doesn’t like it. But she also doesn’t stop him. 

“Son…”, his dad tries, let it be known, he tries. And he quickly gives up. Later, they will both think it part of a pattern. 

My name is Brutus. 

For them, his family, Will decides. For Samantha who is crying silently, for Vijay who is bruised, for his mom who looks away, for Judy who is fuming, for Don who lifts his hands as if waiting for Will to fall into them, for Smith who understands. For the girls whose hearts he knows he is breaking. For his people who are dead, or bleeding. For Robot who has hated every second of this. He decides to spare them this. 

Scarecrow. The robot comes up to him, head high. Kill them. 

It takes a second, really. Crow doesn’t hesitate, he lifts his hands and shoots the Sinners where they kneel. Will watches the bodies fall, no longer smiling, and breathes. Silence reigns this night and it is peaceful. 

Without another word, Will turns and limps back to his Jupiter, both robots close in case his legs give out on him. 

***

 There's no discharge in the war!

 

 

 

Notes:

There we go, the new chapter. And this marks the end of arc two. Only one left to tie things up and this fic will be finished :)

REFERENCES:
Brutus by The Butress
Boots by Rudyard Kipling

Chapter 18: ARC 3

Notes:

Pssst, there's a chapter before this if you haven't seen it yet

 

 

 

 

 

PART III:

 

 

And I'd lie to her and say that I'm doing fine

When, really, I'd kill myself to hold you one more time

And it hurts to miss you, but it's worse to know

That I'm the reason you won't come home

But I still call home that house in Nebraska

Where we found each other on a dirty mattress on the second floor

(Where I needed you, and I need you still)

Where the world was empty, save you and I

Where you came and I laughed, and you left and I cried

Where you told me even if we died tonight, that I'd die yours

-House in Nebraska, Ethel Cain

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 19: Chapter 17

Notes:

Listen to Nettles by Ethel Cain with this one ;)

 

The sun rises silently, hesitant in its brightness, as if this land had been forever touched by darkness the night before. Slowly, so slowly, the survivors gather themselves on the scorched ground, weeping and shaking and covered in ash. 

Many are injured, aches spreading over their bodies and their hearts, scars carved deep into their minds after a horror they will be haunted by always. Some are dead, now cold and twisted on the dirt, dry blood on their clothes, pain on their stiff faces. 

They are all afraid. 

***

In a hidden away room, door firmly shut against the smell of smoke and misery, Victor Dahr stands surrounded by leaders and trembles. 

***

Vijay sits by his mother, her shaking hands on his own. She is a strong woman, his mother. A kind woman, and in a life as difficult as this one, kindness is a rebellion. Last night had been a terrible thing, worse for those who are gentle. 

He gathers her in his arms, her bruised cheek burning against his pale, aching skin. He had taken a beating meant for her, last night. Another for Samantha. He should be seeing a doctor, his mother will insist on it soon. But later. For now he simply feels her breathing and watches.

Their people have found their way back to their feet by now. Some have limped away, others come back with bandages and water and stretchers. Others sit quietly and wait. Like him. 

When he saw Will the day before, Vijay knew that the younger boy was strong. He always had, he supposes, but not enough. The kid sitting, hoping for something nice, was scarred and pale and skinny and so so so strong. Vijay had wanted to kneel.

Now, as the sun rises ever higher and the air turns warmer, he hopes Will is at peace, wherever he is hiding from them. Maybe there will be those who will dream of this night and the slaughter at a child’s hands and wake up weeping. Vijay will wake up with pride. The child wore armour made by Vijay’s hands as he saved their lives. His mom’s life. 

No, he will never be afraid of Will Robinson. He doesn’t have it in him. Instead, as his mom keeps breathing, Vijay thinks of other metals he can bend into deadly strength. 

***

The boy runs his hands along his aching throat, all these weeks of silence bleeding through. 

***

Judy holds onto the girl she abandoned, regret on her hands. Sam holds her right back, crushing her ribs a little, and Judy allows it in her misery. She deserves it, this pain, for forgetting there is more than one child in her life. 

Sam sniffs a bit, wipes her cheeks where fresh tears have made their way down, sighs. She lets go of Judy but keeps her head hidden between the woman’s neck and shoulder, like a little girl holding onto her mother after a nightmare. 

Careful, Judy starts running her fingers through dark hair, humming under her breath and rocking just enough to make Sam grow loose. 

“I thought he was weak”, the girl whispers, ashamed.  

Without hesitation, Judy smiles and speaks against the child’s head, “I know.”

The lack of resentment slaps Samantha. She always looked down on Will for his softness, all those smiles and tears and whispers. Always hiding behind someone bigger. She used to think herself better than that.

Last night taught her better. Vijay had been hurt because of her, because she froze, on her knees. Because a man looked at her in a way that hurt her without needing to touch her, because a woman dragged her out of her Jupiter by her hair, because a lot of people died right in front of her and she didn’t do anything for anyone. 

“I thought I was strong.”

Insistent, even a little harsh, Judy stops her. “You are, Sammy, you’re still here”

Samantha laughs at that. She is here because she was saved by others, all she did was watch. The Robinsons had defeated most of the attackers, Scarecrow killed most of them, Will won the fight. They are the strong ones. Those who had it in them to fight back. 

She remembers hiding in vents for months, keeping danger as far away from herself as she could. Remembers clutching her dad as he tried to walk away, holding her mother’s hand as she grew bored of cartoon’s. Closing her eyes last night when the shot ran out, heaving on the dirt at the smell of blood.

And she remembers Will, showered in red and metal, smiling as he licked his lips. 

A sob forces its way out of her throat and Sam hides against Judy’s chest. “I’m weaker.” 

***

Maureen watches Kamal watch her. All of them leaders, all of them unsure. Stuck in this room with doubts and questions and no ideas. 

“Who were those people?”, she asks and Kamal flinches. Maureen keeps watching her. 

“Former colonists. They were classified as lost after the first robot attack, their Jupiters were never found.”

Angela shakes her head in disbelief, an almost-smile at her lips, “how is that possible?” 

Kamal sighs, shoulders drooping. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe they didn’t land in Goldilocks”, John adds, meeting Victor’s eyes as if some unspoken theory had just been proven right, “maybe they weren’t as lucky, wound up somewhere else.”

“Then what? They just lost it?”, Maureen scoffed. Of course they did. People could never just be easy. 

Her husband shrugged her way, eyes still on Victor. “People are capable of anything when they rule themselves. Follow a piece of shit and they get worse.”

“And how did they get here?”

“Does it matter? It’s not like we can ask them.”

The turn of John’s lips knocks the air out of her. If she were a crueler woman, she would call it amusement. 

Clearing his throat, Victor turns to Kamal. “Speaking of…”

John doesn’t let him finish. “They attacked, we fought back. That’s it.”

Diana shakes her head. She frowns and stares at Maureen’s husband, eyes wide. “And after? I’m sorry John, but that, right at the end, was different.”

John merely shrugs, not even bothering to look at her. “Those fuckers deserved it”

“I’m not denying that, but we have to consider what it means for one of us to be capable…”

Finally, Maureen snaps. She stands straight and dares Diane meet her eyes as she spits, “wouldn’t you have done the same?”

For all her youth and all her deference, the younger woman doesn’t cower. “Not like that.”

The words settle over them all, heavy. Maureen bites her tongue. Oh, the privilege of denying horror so easily. She wishes Will still had it. 

Careful, Hiroki asks Kamal the only question that really matters. “So? What are you going to do to the boy?”

It takes a moment and, to her credit, Kamal does not waver when she eyes them all and answers. 

“Self-defense is not a punishable offence.”

“But…”, Diana starts to stand. 

“A pedophile is no loss for anyone”, Kamal stands taller, firmer. The weight in her eyes resembles the one she carried last night, when she let Will through to finish what others had started. Maureen leans on the table, almost smiles, when Kamal’s gaze turns to her. “But, I am also ordering that William continue to receive medical and psychological attention, and he will be under watch at all times until we can be sure he is stable.”

It is the kindest thing they could have asked for. A needed thing. Maureen knows this well. The boy she saw a few hours ago is dangerous, and he has been since he returned, they all knew it. They just hadn’t been capable of imagining how much. Grateful, a mother accepts what she knows is not only mercy, but a favor. 

“Agreed.”

***

Beings of metal stand side by side, watching the humans cry and limp and growl. They do not approach, do not try to help. After last night, their presence is tolerated at best. Later, Robot believes people will smile at him again; they will remember he did not hurt, did not kill. That he protected. 

Scarecrow, on the other hand, will be different.

His brother is already an outcast to these humans. A threat they endure for Will’s sake. Having seen him join a slaughter, no matter whose side Scarecrow fought on, is too far. 

Against history and logic, Robot hopes this is not the last time his family can be together, organic and metal alike. 

Beside him, he knows Scarecrow doesn’t care. That he bothers with Will and Samantha only. That the people here are less than dust to his processors. Alienation would probably be welcomed.

Still, with a selfish heart, Robot hopes. 

***

Will finds himself crumbled on his bedroom floor. His body, twisted and bruised, aches badly enough for tears to start building. He knew there would be a price for fighting, felt it as soon as Scarecrow shot the last of his anger at the last monster. He wasn’t ready, but then, he wasn’t ready the first time either. 

No one ever is, can’t be. Not for Them and what They did. What he himself has done. 

His armour lays a few feet on his right, bloodied and dirty. Will is bloodied and dirty too, he needs a bath but can’t take one alone and Judy cannot look at him right now. So he stays down, red covering his face and his neck and his hands, curled up like a child. 

If the floor were wooden, he would feel right at home. 

Nausea rises up his throat at the thought. That house wasn’t home. That bed wasn’t mine. He swore to himself he wouldn’t belong to it. The forest and the room and the men. But then, he swore he would die for Sandy’s life and he didn’t. So maybe promises were always empty once they were believed. 

Maybe he is neither boy nor monster but some ugliness in between. 

Something deadly and frightening that even his sisters cannot carry. 

Maybe he is what kills those who deserve it and is foiled right after. 

Maybe he will spend the rest of his life in a little cell, with a cold floor and a bed and a barred window. 

The thought makes him smile. 

And that’s when the tears start falling. Salt drips down his face and into his mouth, against the floor, inside his ear. He finds himself made a river. Will Robinson is a killer. Will Robinson does not regret it. Will Robinson cannot remember what it means to be a good person. 

His chest contracts and sobs flow, then heaves, then he is wailing like an animal. And this is it. What he is. The ugliness with a shape and a name and no voice. Without his consent, his hands start clawing at the floor and his legs tremble.

He is not sorry. He wishes he was. He wishes he was still something pure. 

I will be Brutus. 

What a horrible fate to be given. The name of a traitor and a killer to carry on his shoulders like a cross. Rage weaved into him like ribbons. 

“Lay me down where the trees bend low.”

Beyond his ruin, this thing hears a voice. It is sweet and soft and so familiar. This is a picture seen a thousand times. A moment held in time, between the Before and the After, where nothing hurts and there is kindness. 

The ghost walks to him, her bare feet on the cool metal right before his eyes. She is singing.

“Put me down where the greenery stings.”

Slow and careful, Sandy kneels, then lays, side by side with him. Close enough to touch. He watches her. The pale skin, the dark hair, the smile. The neck. Her poor twisted neck. It doesn’t let her head touch the floor all the way. 

“I can hear them singing”, a girl smiles at a boy with love enough to heal the world, “to love me is to suffer me, and I believe it.”

Will watches her, transfixed. He cannot breathe, cannot blink, for fear she will leave him. That he will be here, alone, once more. 

Tiny rooms feel larger when there are two of them.

“When I lay with you, in that aud lang room.”

Sandy stretches out a hand, halfway between them, and Will holds it in both of his own in a second. He squeezes, raises their hands up to his forehead, closes his eyes. Lets the voice of a girl wash over him.

It is right, this moment. With Boy and Girl and a song and this misery. 

There always meant to be two of them. And Will finds he does not know how to be a One.

“This was all for you.”

***

In the end, it is John that decides. The bodies littering the ground outside the Jupiters cannot stay there, bloody and rotting. They cannot be buried with their own, do not deserve the respect of a grave. Not these sinners with far more than blood on their hands. 

Don joins him readily, something like fire on his eyes and hands clenching. Surprisingly, Smith joins them too, silent. Together, they gather these monsters and pile them in a Chariot, slamming them down on each other like waste. Don grits his jaw the whole time.

After, John drives with his accomplices to the farthest hill he can find, overlooking nothing beautiful and empty. A void surrounded by life. Hating, John smiles at the thought and nods once.

“Come on”, he gets out of the Chariot, steady as he was in the desert after a fight, sand and blood all over him, sweat on his tongue. He remembers the screams of the enemy and the screams of last night and the rage of his son. Wars blend into one horrid picture he knows will haunt him for the rest of his life. 

Don and Smith gather the oil, drag bodies by their feet without bothering to look at any of their faces, as if humanity was something to be revoked. A final punishment for ultimate cruelty. Rather monstrous himself, John finds himself enjoying it, a little. Happy to have taken this moment, to be the one holding the matches and destroying what is left of the people who destroyed his son so terribly Will put himself back together wrong. 

“Go on”, Smith whispers and there’s joy in her too. 

The only one still somber is Don. He stares at the bodies as if solving a puzzle, seeking where nothing is left to be found. John gives him some time, just in case there’s something worth the effort after all. But soon, with a sigh, Don turns around and stalks back to the Chariot, slamming the door. 

Perhaps there should be something more here. Some guilt, some horror. But all he can fit inside himself is satisfaction. These were people once. They raped his boy. Will was so happy to see them all dead and John cannot stop seeing it. The fury, the smile, the laughter. A wraith wearing Will’s face. 

For a second he wonders if this sacrifice will give him his son back. Fools do always ask for second, third, hundredth chances. 

He knows whoever he saw last night is the only thing he will ever have, from now on. Knows there is only one thing that might bring that creature some peace. 

Taking a deep breath, John nods at Smith and drops the match. And he stands. For hours, unmoving, he watches the flames rise, he smells the cooking flesh, the burnt hair, he’s surrounded by ashes. And he is silent the entire time.

 

 

 

Notes:

Ah! This took forever, I know, so sorry about that. But life happens and busy gets busier and before I knew it the weeks had gone by. I hope you liked this chapter and don't worry, I will finish this fic.

Notes:

Ok. So, idk why this exists, but it wouldn't leave my head. I hope I do it well. There is a happy ending, that I can promise. And I'm also working on my series for LIS, in fact, the next chapter is almost ready for that one. If you feel so inclined, comments let me know what you think about the story and how it's going.