#we SHOULD feel uncomfortable with our sympathy for him - the film goes out of its way to make us feel uncomfortable about it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

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i'm fucking losing it about that most recent post and i cannot get coherent words out about it because i get too excited about the possibilities and it is extremely hard to type while flapping but !!! oh my god!!!! oh my godd!!!!!!!!!

CW: Opening to what is definitely going to be a severe trauma response in the next piece, brief victim-blaming language

Jake watches the video, and Laken can't read his expression at all. It's grim, maybe - his jaw is set, and his blue eyes don't leave the laptop screen.

Youtube starts with a stupid fucking State Farm car insurance ad, and Jake is quiet and thoughtful before the ad even ends. He didn't argue with Laken, or suggest disbelief. He only texted come to the house and show me while C is at rehearsal, and Laken had hopped on two buses and walked half a mile, but here they are, now, only a little sweaty for their efforts.

Laken hunches over next to him, their hands over their mouth, thick wavy black hair falling over their eyes. They'd re-shaved the sides yesterday and the air moved over the shorn-short spaces as the fan turned overhead.

They don't speak. They just watch Jake watch Tristan Higgs dance. They watch Antoni, Chris's other brother, sit quietly on Jake's other side, his own dark eyes equally fixed on the screen. When the video ends, Jake hits the replay button and watches it again.

And again.

"This video is from eight years ago," He finally says. His voice is a deep rumble, barely a sound human ears can hear. “I mean, the dancing is from eight years ago.”

Laken swallows and nods. "Um, y-yeah. So he would be-"

"Fifteen," Jake finishes for them. "Give or take. If he's as old as I think he is. And this guy seems pretty fucking sure that Tristan Higgs is dead."

"Right." Laken swallows, uncomfortable. "So, Ben-... You remember Ben. He's, um. Been looking stuff up, and... He sent me some links to, like, old news articles, and... Um..."

"What is in the articles?" Where Jake's voice is rough-edged, struggling for control, Antoni's voice is soft, hazy with his accent, sliding over consonants and coasting the vowels. "What is he sending?"

"So, um, like... This double-... Uh, double-murder and stuff. These people that were killed and just, like, their kid survived, Tristan Higgs. Except then he disappears-... just drops off the face of the earth. But no obit or anything.”

Jake and Antoni look at each other, the men sharing an expression that communicates a wealth of information Laken isn't privy to. But the one thing they don't show is any surprise.

"-and... Ben's been messaging the guy that posted the video, and-... They're gonna meet, um, in a couple days. At, you know where La Mode is? The ice cream place where they filmed that bit in that old Vince Shield movie-"

"I know where La Mode is, yeah," Jake says, watching Laken carefully. He hasn't looked at them like this in a long time, since he first met them - calculating and slightly cold, considering the risk they pose to Chris and to everyone else in his house.

"I also am knowing that place," Antoni says with a nod, putting a hand on Jake's arm. Jake is tense - Laken didn't realize it until he suddenly relaxes, consciously, now. "Why is Ben wanting to talk to this man?"

"I, I don't know. He kind of, he's really intense about this stuff. You know, when he found out Chris was, um, was... a pet..." The word is ash on their tongue, gums up around their teeth, makes their stomach flip in disgust. "... He kind of lost his shit once we got Chris calm about it. I think he thought-... Uh, you know, people like Chris, they get targeted, and... so he's been thinking about that.”

“This isn’t his business, Laken,” Jake says, weary, closing his eyes.

“No, I know, but he's got a little brother who's the same age Chris was when-... this video must have been made. Who’s a lot like him. So I think he's... I don't know. Maybe thinking, you know, if it was his brother, he’d want someone to do all this... if-... if someone took his brother away."

"Yeah, I get it." Jake swallows, sitting up slowly, rubbing at his face. He's got a day-old stubble along his jaw, the kind that made Laken grin a little when they saw the rubbed-red, irritated jawline of the guy with black hair who answered the door, Chris's other brother kind of.

The one that Laken met the night Dylan told Ben and them where Chris really came from. Except... not this. Dylan hadn't known this.

"So, we need to get Chris ready-"

"Get me ready for, for, for what? Laken, why, why are you here?"

Laken closes their eyes and lets out a slow, soft sigh. Of course - the one night they needed Chris's rehearsal to run full-length is the one night he comes back early. They turn to look at Chris and give him a slight smile. "Hey, querido, we just, um-... So, there's..."

The video has still been playing in the background, forgotten, and the music kicks into the crescendo where the second gymnast steps up, catching Chris's attention. "What's, what's that? Is, is, is, is is is it-"

He goes silent as Tristan Higgs steps into place, shoots his bright smile towards Akio Nakamura, and does his first set of flips and spins.

The three of them watch Chris watching Tristan Higgs. They watch his backpack slide off his shoulder and thump to the ground. They watch his eyes - the perfect match to the eyes of the boy on the screen - follow Tristan and Akio dancing briefly back to back, his laughter as he drops his head onto Akio's shoulder.

Something in the line of his shoulders tightens. His skin is pale under the freckles, his hair suddenly seems too garishly bright against the rest of him. There are shadows under his eyes Laken has never seen before. He looks younger... and haunted.

They hold their breath until it ends, the two boys hugging and laughing, Tristan bouncing and rocking and flapping ecstatically when the routine went off without a hitch.

The video cycles to the next one, a different set of Nakamura's. Chris blinks and then looks at the three of them, eyes moving from one to the next. "Why... are you watching... that?"

His voice shifts, change, slips into a drip-drop of words, a slowly leaking faucet language that Laken barely understands when compared to his usual mile-a-minute. He stands perfectly still.

Once again, Jake and Antoni aren't surprised.

"Chrisha," Antoni says, gently. Jake's jaw works, maybe fighting for words that don't come. "That is you, we think. You were... are Tristan Higgs."

Chris's eyes move to Antoni. Then back to Jake. "No," He says, simply. "I'm... not."

"Chris?" Laken feels a wash of uncertainty. "Are you okay? We're pretty sure this is you."

Chris stares right through Laken, eyes empty, full of a kind of fog all their love can't break through. "No, I, I'm not. I'm... not him."

Jake is the one to push himself to his feet first, taking Chris gently by the arm to walk him back towards the doorway. "Chris-"

"I'm... not, not him," Chris says, looking up at Jake, up and up and up. "I'm... not, Jake."

Chris, Laken's sunshine boy, their love and light and life, is a dull bit of broken rock, sodden earth after too much rain, the sooty stumps of trees in an empty wildfire-wrecked field.

"I know it's hard," Jake says, folding Chris into his arms, and Laken watches with a twist of something that isn't quite jealousy, but isn't that far off. Chris will always turn to Jake, first. They can't compete with that - they don't want to, even, they just sort of wish they could. "I know, Chris. But Laken's right, this kid... I think that might really be you."

"No," Chris whispers, burying his head into Jake's chest. "No, no, no. I'm... not. I, I make myself, I made Chris, I don't want to, to, to to to-to be anyone else anymore..."

"You're still Chris," Jake murmurs, and holds him close. "You're still my brother. This just tells us maybe a little bit about what happened before I met you, that's all. That's it, Chris. Nothing has to change."

"Everything changed," Chris whispers, pulling slowly back. "Because I, I did it wrong. I, I, I moved, wasn't... I was, was supposed to hide... and, and be so quiet..." His hands move, one finger up to his lips, as though shushing himself. The empty look in his eyes is cracking open to a well of pain that Laken, for all the times they've held him after nightmares and all the meltdowns they've seen... They've never seen it quite like this.

He pulls away from Jake, and slowly picks his backpack up from the floor.

"Chris?" Laken shifts forward, but the look on his face when he glances back at them makes them stop short. "Baby, I-"

"Go... home, Laken," Chris says, and turns away from them. "Tris, Tristan Higgs is, is, is, is dead. He, he, he... he he-... he, k-... killed people, and he’s, he’s, he’s dead.”

He's gone, his feet heavy on the stairs, before Laken can say another word.

Jake and Antoni glance at each other - another immense conversation contained in a single shared look - and then Jake sighs. "Come in, Laken. I'll drive you back to campus. Ant, if you'll-"

"Watch the house and speak to Chrisha. Got it." Antoni gives Laken a soft, sympathetic smile. "These things are not easy," He says, softly. "You cannot pick yourself back up again, simple as that, start a story where you were left off. I will speak with him."

"But, I should-"

"You'll make it worse," Jake says, rough-edged again.

"Harder," Antoni gently corrects. "He will need us, who know what it is they do to our minds, tonight."

"Wh-what do they do?” Laken looks from one of the men to the other. “I, I know memory loss, I get that, and he was clearly-... hurt, so much, but-”

“They take a frightened man-... or, child,” Antoni says, voice gentle as always. “And they teach us that the person we were before was so terrible that the person we are now exists only to suffer.”

“But he’s just a kid, there, in that video,” Laken says, a token protest, voice weak. Antoni’s smile widens, slightly, in its sympathy for them. “There’s no kid on earth who could possibly deserve that. He doesn’t even remember what happened!”

“You do not have to remember a crime to be told you are responsible for it.”

“But-”

Antoni takes their hands in his, looking them right in the eyes. “When you are alone, and frightened, and desperate to survive... you will believe anything that gives you the slightest chance for a way out.”

Laken swallows, hard, thinking of Chris whispering after a nightmare one night, they made me a Romantic pet because I was a slut who wanted it all the time - their sunshine boy, who never ever does, effortlessly believing a lie, repeating back the names they called him, acting unbothered and like he barely noticed his own words.

Laken swallows back a flip of disgust at the idea of a teenager being taught to hate himself that way.

“Wh-what happens if he remembers everything they made him forget?” Laken’s voice is a whisper.

“If we’re lucky,” Jake says gruffly, “He doesn’t remember it all at once. If we’re not-”

A wail shatters their conversation, a low keening cry from upstairs, muffled by distance and closed doors, a sound of wild screaming wordless grief. All three of them flinch as there’s a resounding crash and a slammed door.

“If we not, that happens,” Jake says, and he’s on his feet and up the stairs before Laken can remind him that he’d said he would take them home. They move to stand, but Antoni lays a hand on their arm.

“Jake, first,” He says softly. “It is easy to be overwhelmed, in these moments. Jake first, and then you.”

What they feel now is definitely a little bit jealousy.

And guilt.

Chris’s screaming, his misery and pain, seems to go on forever, twist itself into the walls of the house and burrow in. Antoni leaves to comfort frightened people who stick their heads out of doors and ask what’s going on, people Laken doesn’t know and has never been introduced to. They look at Laken, consider them, and Antoni speaks to them with soft reassurance while Laken feels helpless, and hopeless, and pointless in this house full of hurting people, while their own hurting person finds comfort in his brother, not in them.

They turn back to look at Jake’s laptop, sitting alone and watching a group of gymnasts hugging after getting their scores, laughing.

The title dates it as a year after the dancing video.

By the time this one was filmed, Tristan Higgs was already gone.

---

Tagging: @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @slaintetowhump , @astrobly @newandfiguringitout , @doveotions , @pretty-face-breaker , @boxboysandotherwhump , @oops-its-whump @moose-teeth , @cubeswhump , @cupcakes-and-pain @whump-tr0pes @whumpiary @orchidscript

#chris the strawberry blond romantic #whump #memory loss #memory recovery #tw: trauma recovery #box boy #box boy universe #recovery whump #laken mamani: frankly i want to date them #tristan higgs #jake the shelter guy #antoni sings lullabies

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