Work Text:
“Why didn’t you eat the cake?”
Airan’s ear twitched at the sound of Crystaline’s tone; upset, but not necessarily angry.
Crys shut the laboratory door behind him. It was obvious now that he didn’t intend this as a quick run-in. Airan, letting out a low exhale, set down the test vials of unidentifiable liquids on the counter and turned. He made direct eye contact with Crys; he had come to stand directly in front of him, a mere two feet between them. His eyes were wide and serious, focused on Airan. The morning light spilled through the window behind them, making his eyes shine.
Airan waited for a beat. When no words broke the suffocating silence between them, he simply uttered, “I wasn’t hungry.”
Crystaline didn’t miss a beat. “Bullshit.”
Airan blinked.
Bullshit?
What the hell did he know? That was the truth. Crystaline didn’t know a damn thing about him—he'd been living with him and the others at the base for two years. Not a single second of that time was spent by anyone conversing with him, besides Bettina, and all she did was flood his system with new drugs and pry on his “intriguing silence”. Not a soul took the time out of their day to dare talk to him. And maybe they had the right to. Two years ago, he would’ve knocked them to the side with his bow staff in pursuit of Crystaline. He had superimposed himself into their base, into their lives. But that wasn’t what he’d wanted. It was Crystaline, right? Crystaline who had seen him passed out on the battlefield, Crystaline who opted to take him to this damned base, to bring all of his belongings here, make him their full-time patient. He was just Bettina’s practice dummy, a fixer-upper to fill her time. That was why he was there. That was what they saw him as. A villain, and something to be fixed. They didn’t know him any deeper. Crystaline didn’t know him any deeper.
Airan took a step towards Crystaline. He felt his face contort into a grimace, the closest display to any actual emotion outside of brooding darkness he’d shown anybody in months.
“You don’t know me,” he snarled.
Crystaline didn’t back away.
He stepped forward, meeting Airan where he was at.
“And who’s fault is that?”
Silence filled the room once more. Both ghosts stared the other down, eyes wide, breathing hard.
Crystaline’s words rang too loudly in Airan’s head for him to form a reply.
What did that mean? What was he accusing him of? Was it supposed to be Airan’s job now to become everybody’s best friend? When he didn’t run away after being unbound from the clinic bed two months after being captured, was that his unspoken agreement to spill every last detail of himself to the Busters?
That was what was really bullshit.
This wasn’t Airan’s job. He didn’t ask to be here. He didn’t want this.
Crystaline’s eyes narrowed. Airan felt them bore into his soul, ripping him open. He hated it.
Then Crystaline turned around and walked to the door. No final remarks. No fighting for the last word.
So why did Airan stop him?
“Why is that my job?” he shouted.
Crystaline paused. He didn’t look back.
Airan tried his best to keep his breathing deep. “I didn’t ask to be here.” He took two steps closer to Crys. “I didn’t choose this.” Another step. “I don’t want this!”
“Then why haven’t you left?”
Airan’s stomach dropped. His mind cleared. He felt his face drop before he could stop it.
Crystaline turned and watched.
“You’re not chained down anymore. You’re free. You’ve been free.”
Airan stared.
“You’re allowed to get the hell out whenever you want to.”
Airan’s mind started spinning, and he was defenseless to stop it.
He hadn’t left. He’d been free to. He’d been free to return to his own lab for over a year. The door was clearly unlocked. He had a window in his laboratory that opened wide enough for him to climb out of. And he’d done so before. Several times. He just always came back.
He always came back to them.
And his laboratory. They’d given him a little laboratory. He even had a bedroom upstairs as well; he just chose to sleep in his lab. They had given him these things, set aside such a major portion of their own base to make him feel he had a place to belong, somewhere to be with something to do.
They knew him, didn’t they?
Airan felt sick.
And Crystaline was too good at reading people.
He stepped toward Airan, who stepped back further, his head in his hands. He didn’t stop backing away until he bumped into the counter.
How? How could he do this? How could he think such things? How could he treat them like this?
He had left his own laboratory high and dry. There were hundreds of workers there that had depended on him. Roman was there. Dima was there. Dane was there. Honey was there. He was the ringleader for their circus of a run-down business, their little lab hidden away in the thick of the forest. Airan hired those who found themselves alone with nowhere else to turn the way he had been. He gave them a job, good pay, a home if it was what they needed. When he was taken away by the Busters, he was forced to leave that, but he knew they must’ve held out hope that he would return. When he stayed with the Busters, he abandoned that.
If that betrayal wasn’t enough, the way he’d been treating the Busters made him truly beyond redemption. He was the one purposefully avoiding all of them. Every interaction he’d had with almost every member was either extremely rude or cut short because of him. Every attempt at reaching out, he turned down. For the gods’ sake, he gave them all the silent treatment for a whole two weeks after he’d awaken from his coma. The best thing he’d done for them after they’d saved him and taken him in as their own was let Bettina try new treatments on him to try and set him right again.
It was with that thought that Airan realized why he hadn’t gone back to his lab.
They would have come to get him, right? Dane would have been infuriated that he’d been taken away. He would’ve kicked ass for Airan. Roman would want his apprentice back; otherwise, he’d have wasted almost 50 years of training him. And Honey, Honey would beg for Crystaline to bring him back. She’d want him back in her arms, back by her side. Right? But what about Dima?
He recalled overhearing Dima one night. A month before he passed out, a month before he left the lab behind. She was talking to Honey, muttering quietly. Airan didn’t know Russian that well, back then, but he put enough of her words together.
We can’t care for him, Honey.
I don’t have what it takes to set him right.
I don’t know how.
They left him with the Busters on purpose.
Dima knew Bettina could heal him.
They didn’t want him to come back, did they?
Airan groaned, clutching his head tighter. Fuck, it hurt. Everything hurt. When he tried to open his eyes, the room would spin. He felt weak. He heard Crystaline’s voice through the mess in his mind, but he couldn’t process a word of it. It was static in the storm of thoughts terrorizing him. With every passing thought, another three surfaced. He remembered too much all at once, memories from all throughout his past at his lab that had been buried deep until now.
It was a flurry for a moment that lasted too long.
When his mind began to settle, the first thing he noticed was something gripping his shoulder.
His vision returned. Crystaline was in front of him, his paws firmly grasping both of his shoulders. He looked scared. Worried? Likely disturbed. No doubt because of Airan.
“Airan?” His voice was gentle, but it sounded forced. “Can you hear me?”
Airan blinked. He wasn’t sure how his face looked. He couldn’t get his brain to cooperate enough to change his expression. He managed a single nod.
Crys exhaled deeply, his paws gripping impossibly harder. “Airan, I’m here,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
Airan had forgotten how to respond.
In one swift motion too quick for Airan to process until it was over, Crystaline hugged him. Airan was swept into his arms. He couldn’t get himself to move. Even if he was able to, he wasn’t sure if he would have pulled away.
“I’m so sorry,” Crystaline whispered in his ear.
“Don’t leave. Please stay. Please.”
Airan found that the storm had passed. Through the fog in his mind, he managed two things. He got his arms to close around Crystaline’s neck, resting in his soft mane. And he spoke one simple word, weak, but audible:
“Okay.”
“Why didn’t he just eat the cake?” Crystaline sighed, slumped in a chair in Bettina’s office. “I just wanted to include him. I made that cake myself! Technically. As far as he knew, I made that cake myself. I think.”
“Give it a rest, Crys,” Bettina said, clacking away on her keyboard. “There’re some things about him that he just won’t say. You have to let him meet you where he wants to.”
Crystaline huffed. “He’s such an ass about it, though. I mean, don’t get my hopes up like that and just... crush them! And besides, who doesn’t like cake? If he gave me cake, I’d gobble that shit. He’s so...”
Crys trailed off. That was unlike him. Bettina paused, glanced at him over her computer.
He sighed again. “I shouldn’t call him crazy,” he mumbled, to himself more than anyone else. “He... he’s just... healing.”
Bettina looked back down at her computer screen, but the clacking didn’t start back up. “Yeah,” she hummed. “He’s doing a lot more than you could imagine.”
She looked back to Crys after a period of silence. He was looking up at her. She took a breath.
“He’s got a lot to work through, Crys. Go easy on him.”
Crystaline laid his head in his hands. “I know. Just...”
He looked back up at Bettina again, sitting on the edge of his seat.
“I’ve never seen him eat, Betty,” he whispered. “He doesn’t come to dinner, he doesn’t join parties. It’s because of the social part, right? Not the... food?”
Bettina looked back to her screen. She couldn’t reply.
Crystaline stared at her pleadingly for a long moment.
Finally, she closed her eyes.
“He doesn’t eat,” she spoke lowly. “He hasn’t eaten in a few years. It makes him sick.”
Crystaline’s jaw dropped. He covered his gaping mouth with his paw, shaking his head.
“No...” he breathed. “How? How is he—”
“I don’t know,” she cut him off. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out now. But he told me himself, he can’t eat anymore. He doesn’t want to come to dinner and bring attention to it.”
Crystaline put his face in his hands. Airan starved himself. Crys let it happen, all this time. He thought he was doing a good job looking out for him. He should have realized this was happening sooner. He should have done something.
Bettina’s clacking started up again.
Airan doesn’t cry. He can’t. A strange side effect of the ways he’d fucked up his body. He didn’t remember what it felt like to be so upset it brought him to tears.
That night, Airan stared at the ceiling for a long time.
If he could’ve cried, he would have.