#unless you want me to run a metanarative in the tags

[mauserfrau]

Mama’s Rings, Part 1 - Bordertober Fic

Oh gosh.  I confess, I dropped in rather unexpectedly last night.  So, this is all @kingcharon ‘s doing, though I didn’t and up jumping on the awesome prompt list because too much awesome and I’d beat myself up if I didn’t finish.  I’ve got kind of an erratic workload this time of year, so I’m just letting my muse drag me ‘round by the nose as time allows.

There’s a good many people making really cool stuff in these tags, so please do have a looksee and feel welcome to join in.  Makeup weekends are a thing.

That said, tonight is Troy learning his way around his illness. Contains medical situations, mentions of the twin’s early childhood trauma, Typhon existing and small children having digestive issues.  Tonight is 1-4, I’m expecting about 9.  

1.

In his very first clear memory, he’s crying.  A dull, throbbing ache winds through his whole body.  It’s worst around his middle.  There’s this sharp spot on his back too.  He squirms. 

Mama holds him up on the potty chair.  He’s terrified to be there.  He doesn’t have the words for why.  She sings to him, or she says hush with her voice all teary, her big hands stroking his sides or his hair.

One moment when she pauses close to his face, he grabs her thumb in his hand.  He pulls her down.  He picks over her scratched silver rings.  He still hurts, but playing with her keeps his mind off of how much. 

Leda sings again.  She doesn’t hold him so tight.  But she doesn’t let him take his favorite ring off of her thumb.

“That’s mine,” she whispers, hardly missing the words of the song.

~*~

2.

Troy refuses to eat after a bad ‘spell’.  Mama makes a jammy paste out of the almost too old plums to try and tempt him.  Ty munches on glowbugs, the really tangy orange ones, but his head has started to hurt by the time she comes to feed him too.

When she tells him, he whimpers.  “I wanted to play too! It’s not fair.” 

“Just eat! You can’t throw up light!” They never say ‘magic’ about how the two of them work.  ‘Spells’ are ‘magic’, but ‘spells’ are also what Troy has. 

He wonders.  There’s clearly something not OK in his belly.  Maybe he can throw up light.  Maybe it’ll come out of the old IV pinpricks in his veins.  Maybe his Siren markings will bleed it like stuck Djira.

Tyreen tells him she hates him and she leaves.  He thinks she’s whimpering too.  The sound of Mama and Dad arguing drowns it out though.

He starts to figure throwing up light can’t be much worse than crying, listening, being there and knowing this fight is his fault.

After everybody’s gone to bed, Troy rolls over against his sister.  Tyreen throws her arm around him before he’s got any chance to stop her.

There’s light.  His senses fade back into being, one by one.  So, there’s pain too.

He stares up at the ceiling, tasting glowbugs underneath his skin.  He realizes that if he’s magic, magic must be a terrible thing.  It makes people scream and cry.  

He’s four.  Deciding this breaks his heart so badly he can’t sleep even though he’s starving and his whole, hurting little body wants to sleep.

~*~

3.

Mama spends time in the medical suite with him sometimes if the homestead is all set with food and fire.  It’s kind of like how Dad works on the robots.  Well, Mama helps with those too, Troy and his sister soon enough since they have “tiny fingers”.  They both get told no a lot for carrying screws in their teeth, but especially Tyreen since she’s got two hands and no excuse.

Troy doesn’t mind being “worked on” too.  The medical suite is simply part of the homestead to him.  A lot of his other earlier memories start and end there.  None of them scare him as bad as the really old one about the potty chair.  Some are even kind of nice, like the one where he woke up next to Tyreen and Mama had posed them like fish with the very last two of the sparkly bandages.

“It’s your shoulder.  There’s a little more that has to come out,” Mama tells him now, petting his head.  

Troy nods.  He breathes the disinfectant and the steely warmth beneath the lights.  

When he wakes up a while later, the room is dark and something is very wrong.  He knows very well what sutures feel like and he is covered in them.  Also, he’s alone.

He calls for Mama.  Something in his belly stabs with agony.  He catches his breath and holds his hand over his mouth.  Monitor noise fills the room.

It’s Dad who comes to get him.  “There’s my little man,” he says cheerfully.  “Wow, you were really down for the count.  Did a number on Mama too.  She’s dead to the world someplace out back.”

Troy balks, wide-eyed.  He points to where he’s hurting.

“Huh? What about your business?” Dad seems ever so slightly taken aback.

No.  Troy shakes his head.  He ends up clumsily grappling with the bedclothes while his father laughs and laughs.  Like the loop of missing skin on Troy’s stomach and the drain sticking out of the wound perfectly normal.

He can hear Tyreen whispering.  “I think she had to fix his belly button like she did mine.” Then, to him— “Can I see?”

Troy sobs and pulls the sheets up.  Not that Tyreen doesn’t end up seeing anyway.  It’s days before he can walk himself to the toilet.  Tyreen takes him.  She doesn’t complain much.

~*~

4.

Mama dies.  Dad doesn’t let Troy help dig the grave.  He has the robots do it even though they’re too precise and they don’t seem to realize not to laugh about it.

It’s that plentiful season after the rains on Nekrotafeyo when new mantas are born and there’s so much spawn and sprat in the lakes that Tyreen can go wading for supper, though Dad says that’s wasteful. 

It seems deeply wrong for Mama to be gone at all, but especially then.  When everything else is alive and she’s not anymore.

Troy picks around the homestead, looking for where Dad might have put her rings.  He couldn’t have burned them.  Silver doesn’t burn.  But then where are they?

Once again and after dark, Troy goes out to Mama’s grave.  He starts to ask her, but the night is cool and whistling.  His voice seems like too much for the valley below.  Besides, he does know where one of Mama’s rings went.

Troy pulls up his shirt and plays with the round scar she left underneath his belly button.  He wonders if maybe she fixed his spells since he hasn’t had one since.  Part of him knows it’s wishful thinking.  Besides, why didn’t she tell him what she found?  Why didn’t she tell him she was going to?

The same reason she didn’t give him her ring to play with.  Some things were hers.  

When he heads back to the homestead, Tyreen’s waiting for him in the shadows, her arm tucked against the wall so she’s awfully hard to see.

“Was she there?” she asks.  

He thinks at first she’s trying to scare him, although that’s funny stuff to say if she is.  “Ah, no?” he answers like it’s normal.

Next thing, she’s fists balled up and trembling in front of him.  Troy puts his hand up to guard, concerned she’s going to hit him.  

Then she’s gone in the moonlight and he barely sees her for the next few days. 

#borderlands 3 #fanfic #fanfiction #bordertober #border-tober #Troy Calypso #Tyreen Calypso #Troy Calypso PoV #Leda Calypso #Typhon DeLeon #medical gore #i mean it's not graphic but still #like dm me if you're concerned #I do my best to tag #but I'm not great at it #unless you want me to run a metanarative in the tags #that I can do #oh and #angst