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There’s nothing special about the morning that Tech-9 comes back. Fade wakes the same way he does everything nowadays, a slow drift into awareness, blinking up at his ceiling and not feeling any more present for it.
He slips through his sheets, through the mattress and the bed frame and the floor, stretching and yawning like a ritual, like it will make him more real, and then Tech calls his name from the doorway.
His brain, all stretched out over space and time, takes a second to register why this shouldn’t be happening. It’s familiar in a way that doesn’t snag as wrong until he remembers. Tech is dead. Fade whirls around.
“Carlos,” Tech says again, and god to hear his name from that mouth again-
“What’s happening here?” dirt falls off him in clumps, it’s in his hair and on his face and caked into his clothes, “I… I don’t understand,” his words drip heavy from his mouth.
Tech staggers, reaches out to him, and Fade wants to touch him so badly, god if only. It’s been a year and it’s been so much longer since he held Rolando, and it’s a hunger he can never eat away, a thirst he can’t drown, and he can’t do neither of those no more to begin with.
Tears cut rivers in the dirt on Tech’s cheeks, streaming from his shining, dazed eyes that keep dancing round the room they’re in, skittering like a frightened bird, “Why was I in there, Carlos? Who put me in that hole?” and Fade remembers. They buried him. They buried him because Tech is dead.
It’s like the Big Bang all over again and for a moment he thinks he can smell the tear gas; that burning in his chest and pounding in his head and death before him. His hands that had been aching to reach out, to touch, clench into fists and they’re his again. He’s angry, no, fucking furious, and he doesn’t care what that thing is, not really, only that it isn’t Rolando, and he’s- he’s gonna kill it.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Fade doesn’t wait for an answer, he punches the thing wearing Tech’s face so hard it splits the skin on his knuckles and sends it flying back. He couldn’t care less for the stinging of his fists or the cries of the monster in Tech’s skin, it’s been so long without him and he can’t- he can’t.
“Fucking asshole! Fucking lying asshole!”
The wretched thing cowers back, shielding it’s face — Tech’s face — and all the anger in the world can’t overpower how sick it makes him to see that fear again, even when he knows it isn’t Rolando before him. His hands are suddenly like the rest of him, in the wind and no use to no one. He was never stronger than Rolando’s round, beseeching gaze.
“Who are you?” Fade demands, blustering to cover up his hesitation, “And you got about three seconds to tell me or you’re gonna die.”
“Carlos, man,” and god it sounds so much like him, he can’t fucking take it. His name. That mouth. “It’s me, it’s Rollie. Why don’t you believe me?”
It hurts, hurts so bad, Tech coulda shot him for how much it hurts.
“Fuck you.” Fade spits and Tech scrambles back, hands lifted again in defence,
“I’m Tech, Carlos. Tech-9. Jesus Christ. Out of all the people… you should know who I am…” Rolando’s voice splinters and he’s curled away, away from Carlos and there’s no way he can reach him now as he sobs, “Oh god, what a nightmare. What a fucking nightmare.”
And Carlos just stands there, wanting to hurt him and wanting to hold him and not able to do neither of those things no more.
It’s like a hook behind his ribs, pulling him back. Time likes to do that, stretch him thin through those three seconds. He’s here and he’s there, and he’s all the way back there, pinned down by the Demon Fox, cradling Tech’s body in his arms, all alone in Spockmann and his Pop’s voice hisses I don’t have a son anymore.
He doesn’t know how much time he’s lost when Tech shifts and his body snaps back into the here and now, like a rubber band recoiling. Stings the same too. Fade’s still just standing there, fists clenched, as Tech shuffles up the wall, leaning against it to steady himself. He pulls himself up straight, like a soldier at attention, swaying on his feet but always at the ready. There’s caution laced into the way he stands, in how he takes a shuffling half-step like he’s faced with something awful and trying to slowly back away.
“What’re you doing,” Fade’s words ring hollow from his empty, empty chest. Tech freezes.
“Dunno,” he says, voice still tight and tear-stained, “was gonna go sit,” he inclines his head towards their makeshift living room, lumpy old couches and all. Tech takes a few more haltering steps before Fade decides enough is enough. It takes effort, but habit makes it easier to be solid enough, to take Tech’s arm and sling it round his shoulder, pull him in closer and share the weight.
Weight, it’s good to feel it, the bulk of Tech’s body now so far from that skeletal frame he’d held all that time back, a year ago. It’s familiar, it’s ensnaring, and he knows he can’t believe it. Tech walks clumsy, tremoring from his legs all the way up to the arm he’s wrapped across Fade’s chest, head hung low and breath coming heavy just from those two, three steps. He knocks into Fade’s side and smells like sweat and dirt and gunpowder, undercut with the iron tang of blood.
It’s the taste of something so sweet that it’s sour, too good to be true, Tech rests his clammy forehead on Fade’s shoulder for a second, and he knows he can’t have this. He keeps one arm wrapped around Tech’s back and the other on his bicep and each step they take is like the beating of a heart and a nail in the coffin, a mantra circling in his head till he’s dizzy from the sound. This ain’t Tech, and he can’t let himself believe it.