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Are you okay? no one asks, and Theo’s relieved that they don’t. Are you okay? no one even thinks to ask, and Theo’s glad, is grateful that he doesn’t have to slip his mask on, with his self-assured smile and his taunting eyes and say yeah. Because his stubborn pride won’t let him say anything else, and Theo thinks that he just doesn’t have the energy to slip into Theo Raeken at the moment.
Thinks that maybe all he has the energy for is just Theo.
Theo, who's spent months trapped underground with his sister, not getting any reprieve from the agony and the clockwork torture. Theo, who’s spent months after that surviving in his truck, scraping by and reliving the trove of memories he’s collected over the years. Theo, who’s still surviving in his truck now—it’s not living, Theo doesn’t think he knows what that is anymore—all sunken cheeks and protruding ribs, all uncontrollably trembling hands and dull aching chest, all barely-standing body and tired, vacant eyes.
Theo, who doesn’t think he knows the difference between nightmares and reality anymore.
Theo, who doesn’t think he can tell whether the flickering lights in the grocery store parking lot mean something, mean that it’s all been a trick of the eye, all just been a game that she’s been playing, and any moment now the parking lot will morph right back into the morgue, and she’ll be standing right here, reaching for her heart. Theo, who doesn’t think that it would be all too surprising if it had all just been a game, because yeah, he’s spent some time being one of the good guys, but not really.
If he’s one of the good guys, they’d ask are you okay? without a second thought. They’d see his sunken cheeks and protruding ribs, see the way the bags under his eyes are far too prominent to be normal and the way all his clothes hang off of him like they’re two sizes too big. They’d see the way his back straightens in a split-second sometimes, see the way his hand shakes for just a moment too long before he manages to force his manufactured body back into its casual, relaxed state.
But their eyes never linger on him for too long, always just a passing glance, always a brief twist of the mouth as they recognize him. So they don’t see, and so Theo’s not one of the good guys.
He never wanted to be, he reminds himself. Remembering the stone-cold floors he’d spent years sleeping on, the excruciating feeling of having his skin held open and at the mercy of their needles and scalpels and the powder they’d line his insides with to see if it was possible to make him immune.
(It wasn’t.
He still feels the phantom burn sometimes.)
He never wanted to be, he reminds himself, thinking of the bright red coating his hands—even now, in the haunting silence of his truck, because he thinks he can make out her shadow in the corner of his eye, coming to remind him of that fact—and the stuffy, bone-chilling air of the operating lab.
He’s been built to be bad, built to be the antithesis of them, and he can’t blame them for thinking what they do. Can’t blame them for thinking he’ll remember. For thinking he’ll remember who he is. He’ll remember how to be.
Theo doesn’t think he knows how to be anymore.
She made sure of that. Still is making sure of that, night and day, through daylight and moonlight.
How to be seems a lot like how to live and Theo can’t really grasp that concept anymore. It lies beyond his reach, separated from him by a deep chasm of you don’t have to stop and just take it, please. It flutters away when he even glances at it from across the abyss, mocking him with its are you okay? and we’re all going to Scott’s, wanna come?
Yeah. (No.)
No. (Yeah.)
(Theo had thought no one would ask are you okay? but he does, eyes squinted and lips quirked down.
He does, reaching out with a hand hesitantly, but Theo doesn’t let him, moves back before he can.
Yeah, he says, and that’s the end of that, because then he’s pulled away, still has the bullet buried in his leg that he needs taken out.)
How to be seems a little abstruse when he’s sitting in his truck after the battle, parked in a grocery store lot, nails still caked with blood, and the only thing he’s sure of is that Tara is sitting next to him, watching him rot with a bitter smirk on her lips.
I think you were rotting down there.
Theo angles his head to the side, catches the way Tara’s eyes grow brighter, like she can hear his thoughts, like she knows.
Was he rotting down there? Or was that just a precursor, just a premonition of what real rotting is like, what he’d actually face up here?
Whatever happened to you, you deserved it.
He did, didn’t he? Tara’s smirk widens and his lips flick up in response. He fucking does, doesn’t he? He deserves the rot in his chest, deserves the unbearable ache that never fades, deserves the blind eye they turn when it comes to him.
He deserves not knowing if he’s even alive, because he shouldn’t be.
“Take it,” he whispers to Tara, but she doesn’t move, stays on the other side of the truck with her knowing eyes and callous smile. “Fucking take it,” he lets out in a strangled choke, his stomach in his throat, his hands trembling on the wheel.
The door to his truck suddenly opens and Tara’s gone, just like that, and Theo’s left staring wide-eyed at him. His blue eyes flit from Theo’s shaky hands to his face, and Theo steels himself, recognizes her game when he sees it.
“I told you to take it, I’m done,” Theo hisses, and he recoils, his mouth parting on a silent something.
“Theo, wha—”
“I know what you’re doing,” Theo swivels his head, tries to find her, wants her to just take it. “It won’t work, I know it’s you.”
He looks taken aback when Theo turns back around, and Theo cocks his head to the side, an apparition of a smirk on his lips.
“I’m rotting up here, don’t you get it?” Theo asks, his voice airy, and he blanches, and Theo smiles. She’s around here somewhere, he knows it. “So take it.”
“Take what?” he whispers, and Theo’s getting tired of this game, just wants it to be over now. He’s been through a war, he deserves not to be taunted like this, deserves the quick ending for once. His claws flick out, and his eyes snap to them immediately, enlarging when Theo lets out a quiet laugh.
He stumbles out of his truck into the empty parking lot, lights still flickering above him and he stares up, can almost make out the scent of death and decay that plague the morgue. Can almost hear the hiss of his name leaving her lips, can almost feel her hand going into his body.
(It’s already in his chest.)
“What are you doing?” he screams as he rounds the truck, nearly running into Theo, but he sidesteps at the last second, pushing his claws in harder.
“I’ll do it myself,” Theo shrieks, staring into his eyes, knows it’ll morph into hers soon enough, cold and dead. He twists his hand again and falls to his knees, crashing hard into the pavement, barely even feeling the rough gravel below him.
“No, no,” he hears, but he just sinks his claws deeper, a stifled scream ripping from his throat involuntarily.
His eyes close, and he feels hands on his body, holding him up, putting him down, he doesn’t really know anymore.
All he knows is that the rot in his chest aches and aches and aches.