Author's Note
I do not own The Gifted.
Unlike All of our Tomorrows, this is a direct companion piece to the Debt Owed. If you haven't read that, what are you doing here? No, I joke. The very brief premise is that Lauren and Andy have flashes and memories of being the Von Strucker twins.
This is another one inspired by a song, this time My Eyes from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and was actually written as a songfic, but I had to take the lyrics out due to the copyright thing. It's set during Lauren and Andy's stay with the Underground. I think the song works pretty well for Lauren and Andy.
Lauren felt like she was seeing her arrival at the underground through someone else's eyes. Her body didn't feel like hers. She could see Andy knelt in front of her, but she could see someone else as well, a memory of the boy superimposed over her brother's face.
"Lauren?"
"Andreas," the girl whispered, reaching for him as the pain radiated out from her chest. "Don't leave me."
"I'm here," he said, his voice sounding like it was coming through water.
"We should have destroyed them," she muttered, drawing a bloodied hand down his cheek. "We should have destroyed them all."
"We will," he replied, and then there was a sharp pain across her face. Someone cried out. There was another sting of pain, and a different voice, one she
"Lauren come on! Snap out of it!"
She snapped back to reality, and the image she was seeing over Andy's faded. "Andy?"
"Lauren?"
"It's me."
She rubbed at her cheek, which stung where she guessed he had hit her.
"Sorry," he muttered. She shook her head.
"No, it- It's alright. I'm alright."
He wrapped his arms around her, and for a moment she was the girl again, her arms wrapped around Andreas, and then it faded and she was rocking back on her heels in the basement.
X X X
The people here had nothing.
They were guilty of being mutants and for that they had been driven from their homes and hunted down like animals.
It made her feel sick.
It made her feel even worse to know she and Andy had made everything even harder for mutants everywhere.
And when she slept at night she dreamt of being the girl and crushing her enemies like the insects they were.
You can do that now, the girl whispered inside her head, we can do that now. He's here with us.
X X X
She and Andy pushed their thin bunks together to form a slightly bigger double bunk and slept curled up in each other's arms.
Lauren knew there were people that whispered about that, but they didn't care too much.
X X X
Sometimes she wondered if things would be better if she had just told her parents about all this back when it started. About her powers, about the girl, about her being a mutant.
Sometimes she wondered what her dad would have done if he'd known before Andy destroyed half their school and then she and Mr Strucker blew up a street.
She wanted to think that he would have accepted her, that he would have helped her with all this, but sometimes she wondered.
X X X
When she was five, Lauren wanted to be a policewoman.
When she was seven, she wanted to be a vet.
When she was ten years old, she wanted to be a nurse like her mom.
Now she was seventeen and just wanted to live.
And the other girl inside her wanted to be a serial killer.
Go figure.
X X X
The only news on the radios was about mutants being hunted down and arrested across the country.
Andy found her on the roof as she stared out into the distance, her arms folded across her legs. "Hey."
"Hey yourself."
He sat beside her and followed her gaze to the horizon. "You alright?"
She shrugged.
"You can talk to me you know."
She rested her chin on the heel of her hands and swung her legs back and forth off the edge of the building. "They're calling us terrorists."
"I mean, it is a secret underg-"
"Not the Underground Andy, us specifically. Me and you."
"Oh."
"And it's not working Andy, all this with Dreamer. It's not helping. She's still there, the girl, Andrea, and it's tearing me apart."
Andy reached for her hand, stopped. "Remember what you told me? Keep fighting it."
X X X
But what if she was too tired for that now?
X X X
The people here had nothing.
They were guilty of being mutants and for that they had been driven from their homes and hunted down like animals.
It made him angry.
It made him feel even worse to know he had made everything even harder for mutants everywhere.
It was all his fault for lashing out, for bringing the gym down, for amping up Sentinal Services.
Every time a young child was led into the Headquarters by a frightened, frantic looking parent, Andy felt even worse.
X X X
Dreamer couldn't stop the flashes, and she couldn't take away the feelings of being another person, but she could remove the memories once they were there, which helped.
Lauren was getting brighter with every day that passed, bolder and more confident, more like the Lauren she had been three years ago, before all this started for her. Sometimes though, underneath it all, Andy could still see flashes of the other girl, buried deep but still there.
It scared him.
He could still remember her laughing in Mr Strucker's sitting room, the look on her face as she choked him in the street, the stranger behind her eyes as they arrived at the Underground Headquarters.
X X X
"-investigators still believe-"
"- a deliberate attack on this quiet neighbourhood-"
"- old man, I never would have-"
"-something wrong with him-"
Andy leant over and switched the radio Lauren was sat in front of off. She glanced at him and reached out to turn it back on again. He caught her wrist. "Stop beating yourself up. It wasn't you, out there, with Mr Strucker. It wasn't you."
"It sure felt like me."
"Come on, me and some of the other kids are going out to practise with our powers. You should join us."
She gave the radio one last glance and followed him out.
X X X
It was a good afternoon.
X X X
Lauren got better.
They practised and trained in the yard, sometimes together and sometimes opposing each other, blowing holes in the old walls and brick – and every time he used his powers he caught a flash of using them in a different situation (tearing apart soldiers, tearing apart cars, buildings, tanks) and they went straight to Dreamer after every session.
X X X
Sometimes he wondered if it would have been different if he'd tried to talk to Lauren sooner. If he'd known about hers, maybe he wouldn't have gone ballistic when his manifested.
X X X
Another human parent came through with their mutant child, a little boy with scaled green skin and a forked tongue. Their own mom befriended her immediately, and Lauren took the little boy, Daniel, under her wing for the short period of time they were there.
"They drove us out of our home," his mom whispered one night as she stared at her bowl of soup. "They were going to lynch him."
Daniel cuddled a little closer to Lauren and Andy tried to ignore just how close he was to her.
X X X
They left two days later, and another three days after that a father arrived with his teenage daughter, who had long stripes down her face and arms and a flexible red tail.
"What's your name?" Andy asked.
She gave him a shy smile.
"Belle."
X X X
Of course, Daniel and Belle were counteracted by all the teens and children who arrived on their own, frightened and bruised and bloody, abused just for being mutants.
X X X
When they put together the plan to rescue their dad, Mr Strucker, and this Polaris from Sentinal Services custody Andy only looked at Lauren.
She smiled and it was all her.
X X X
They rescued their dad and he held them tighter than he had in a long time.
Lauren remembered sitting on an overly large armchair as a man in military uniform shouted at them in a language she should have known.
X X X
Some days they didn't talk.
Some days they didn't need to talk.
It was like there was knowledge shared between them, wordless and instinctive, flowing from Lauren to him and from him to Lauren.
They didn't need to talk.
X X X
Some days though, he could feel the craving inside him.
He wanted the power he had felt when he held Lauren's hand in the park, the magnetic hum that was just that little bit more when he was close to Lauren.
He looked at her, and he knew she felt it too.
X X X
She couldn't stop fighting.
She could never stop fighting.
But she was tired – so tired.
Sometimes – just sometimes – she thought it might be easier to let herself be the girl.
She wouldn't have to fight anymore, and the girl would know what to do. She should have known what to do when they were faced with Sentinal Services in the tunnel, when they were rescuing their dad-
But it was easier with Dreamer. Oh, the girl – Andrea – she still talked sometimes – on top of the list of things she didn't tell Andy – but she was quieter now, much quieter. She didn't have to constantly fight between what was her and what was the girl, because Dreamer got rid of the girl's memories as soon as they came, so they were never there to get mixed in with her own.
Except they kind of already were.
And sometimes when she spoke to her dad she expected him to answer in German.
X X X
They had to move the beds apart because of the craving demand when they were lying there trying to sleep. Andy buried his face in his thin pillow and told himself it was Lauren, it was his sister, and he wasn't meant to think about her like that!
X X X
She woke screaming for Andreas.
A shield bubble exploded out from her bed, sending everything too close to her flying.
Andy was there at her side in a heartbeat, panicked, catching at her arms as she flailed and struggled against the ratty blanket. "Lauren!"
"Andreas!"
"It's Andy, I'm here, I'm here."
She gasped for air, clinging to him, sobbing, the vivid image of her bloody hands and the ghost of pain in her stomach still fresh in her mind.
"Don't leave me," she whispered.
"I won't. I won't."
X X X
They lay awake together for most of the night until it was a more reasonable time for him to take her to see Dreamer.
It happened again three nights later.
X X X
He thought she was getting better.
She was supposed to be getting better!
Part of him – a deep buried part – wondered what she was meant to be getting better from.
Andy tried not to think about that part, but it was still there.
The nightmares seemed to stop after about a week and a half – or maybe Lauren just stopped screaming when she woke up.
Some of the others were starting to get annoyed by that.
Andy wanted to punch them right in their judgemental faces.
At least Lauren had stopped flicking back and forth between herself and not-Lauren.
X X X
Esme tipped the scales again.
The girl spoke, like she hadn't done in weeks.
Lauren had always known she was still there – always known she would always be there – but now she was loud again.
She thought like Emma but not Emma.
She thought what's the connection.
She thought how very fascinating.
She thought is she here for the Club?
She thought and thought so loud until all Lauren wanted to do was scream and have her head back to herself again.
But she hadn't had that for three years.
X X X
The night after Esme arrived Lauren woke screaming again.
Esme was hot, but something inside him said if she was going to be causing his sister pain and distress then she had to go.
And then he wondered where that thought came from.
And Lauren woke screaming the next night too.
X X X
Sometimes he wondered how she dealt with this for three years.
At least he had Dreamer to help.
Lauren had fought with this for three years.
How did she cope?
Sometimes he wondered whether she did.
He remembered her in the car, muttering and whispering to herself, shaking and pale.
He remembered her at Mr Strucker's, wild and angry and not-Lauren.
He remembered her after that day in the park, sick and confused.
He remembered all the days he had sat drawing and gaming in his room while crashes and bangs like breaking plates or falling weights came from behind Lauren's closed door.
All he could do was hold her when she woke and try to ignore the image of another woman behind his eyes.
X X X
It felt like she was breaking apart.
There was her, Lauren, and there was the girl, Andrea-
Except they weren't, not really.
There was one person, LaurenAndrea-
Except they weren't, not really.
Every time she remembered being Andrea she got Dreamer to take it away, but the girl was still there.
Every time she closed her eyes she remembered being someone else.
Every time she fell asleep she dreamt of the atrocities.
Every time she woke up she felt the need for the power and the need for him.
X X X
And when the Underground leaders stood there and asked for their help attacking the Trask labs, they only looked at each other.
Because maybe this time they could do some good with these powers.
Author's Note
In future, any other song-inspired Debt Owed fics will probably go here to make them one collection, as I don't think they work to be part of Ignition simply because of the length and the time covered. There is at least one more already written that will be published later (it kinda very loosely connects to an Ignition chapter, so I don't really want to post it until then). I'm leaving All of our Tomorrows separate as it can also stand apart from this universe.