Title: Now You See Me…
Author: Kate C. Massery
Email: Nomdeguerre22@hotmail.com
Category: Drama
Status: Complete
Spoilers: Reunion; written
during first season
Season/Sequel Info: none
Rating: PG
Content Warnings:
Arachnophobia
Summary: A look into the
past of a certain boy we know…
Disclaimer: These
characters do not belong to me, so please no suing. I am broke at the moment
anyway. No copyright infringement intended.
Author's Note: I'm updating
this (finally!) because the format was terrible and a pain to read. So I hope
this prevents people from staring cross-eyed at the wall after they finish
reading. Also, big thanks to Beth for being a great Beta-Reader and helping me
with this story.
The boy rambled slowly through the forest,
his steps silent and light as a cat's on the dry leaves and twigs that littered
the forest floor. He was taking his time, his gait unhurried as his long legs
followed the path that only he knew. There was even a slight smile on his face,
now that he was alone in the refreshing stillness of the woods. The echo of his
brother's words were fading from his mind as his eyes drifted over the intense
beauty of trees in late fall, their colors splashes of fire and sunset
intermixed with deep greens and browns.
With a contented sigh, he grinned when he saw his tree up ahead. It was an old, gnarled oak, its twisted branches stretching above the limbs of the smaller, lesser trees. It was huge, and perfect for climbing. The boy stopped at its base, pausing to trail his fingers over the rough bark affectionately. Then he bit down hard on the spine of the paperback he was carrying before reaching up and clasping his hands around one of the lower limbs. Hoisting himself up with practiced ease, he scrambled upward until he had reached his favorite place to sit. He settled down on a wide branch halfway up the tree, his back resting comfortably against the trunk. Then, taking his worn copy of Huckleberry Finn from his teeth, he thumbed through the pages until he reached one of his favorite passages. It was the part where Huck decides that he will run away, convinced that a life on the river alone was preferable to living with his father or the old widow who had adopted him. The boy bit his lip as he studied the page, silently wishing that he had the courage to do that. But then there were no large rivers nearby, and running away seemed so much more complicated in real life than in Huck's world.
He sighed again, this time for a different
reason, as he tilted his head back against the tree trunk. Closing his eyes, he
tried to dispel the voices ricocheting in his head.
"I hate you!" the older boy yelled, his
brown eyes snapping in fury. "You are such a screw-up!"
"Hey!" his brother shouted, annoyed and
frustrated. "What was that for?"
"Why don't you just grow up?" the other boy
suggested angrily.
"I would, except there's only room for one
precocious genius in this family," he replied sarcastically.
"Darien, have you ever thought that maybe,
just maybe, people would have a little more respect for you if you started
acting more responsibly?"
"I was just having a little fun. Where's the
crime in that?"
"You ruined my experiment," the older boy
said flatly.
"I did not," Darien protested.
"You did too. Because of you, I'll have to
do the whole thing all over again."
"It was just a joke," Darien said quietly,
his voice trailing off as he glanced at the overturned vial and the blue liquid
forming a pool on the floor.
"Your jokes are usually in very poor taste."
"I'm sorry, okay? Is that what you wanted to
hear?"
"Partly. I wanted you to admit for once that
you were wrong. Why do you have to be so stubborn?" The younger boy did not
reply. "You realize that that's why Uncle Peter favors me," he added
matter-of-factly. "I can handle the responsibility, and you can't."
"Responsibility for what, Kevin?" Now it
was the other brother's turn to keep silent. "Fine, that's all I needed to
know," Darien snarled, angry at his brother's reaction. Then he stalked out of
the room. Kevin watched him go, the anger leaving his face for a moment as he
watched his sibling's retreating back. His eyes were full of pity and
confusion, because despite all of the countless scientific formulas, theories,
and techniques that he could understand and categorize, his own brother was a
complete enigma.
He would never be able to understand his brother, Darien decided. Opening his eyes, he glanced down at the book in his lap. His brother Kevin, the scientist who would soon embark on the long hard journey of college where he would assuredly be recognized as the genius he was. He would go on to work for some prestigious firm or research corporation where he would no doubt single-handedly discover the cures for cancer and the common cold…Darien snorted at the thought.
His aunt and uncle both adored him, but particularly his uncle. Kevin and Uncle Peter would spend hours in their lab down in the basement, doing God knew what. Darien sometimes found himself wishing that whatever it was they were creating down there would blow up in their faces…
"But zis is hostile," he said quietly to the woods, mimicking the school counselor he was forced to see after that little incident in his chemistry class. He grinned, remembering the faces of his classmates when he insisted that sulfuric acid drinkable as long as you boiled it first…he was kidding, of course, but his teacher demanded that he be examined by the counselor. His classmates were familiar with his outstanding career as a practical joker, but apparently he had given too good of a performance that day. His teacher was convinced that he was nuts. Since then, he visited Mr. Zola, whom he called Mr. Zoloft, every Thursday during the first half-hour of lunch. He would sit slouched in the uncomfortable leather chair in front of the diminutive Swede's desk as the counselor grilled him, trying in vain to establish a motive for his "vierd" behavior.
"It is because of the deaths of your parents that you act zis vay, yes? It traumatized you, yes?" Mr. Zoloft would say, and Darien would just smile sweetly and then pretend to go into an epileptic fit. After about four sessions that resulted in Darien spending the rest of the day in the infirmary eating pilfered ice cream from the nurse's refrigerator, the Swedish psychiatrist finally figured out that the tall, gangly youth was faking.
"You do it vell, that I admit," the counselor told him. "But zis is not necessary, no? We can talk like the civilized people, yes?"
"Sure, whatever you say Mr. Zola," he had replied
blandly. Whatever you say…Funny, that had become his motto now a days. He found
that people rarely wanted to hear his actual thoughts. Instead, they preferred
that he regurgitate some nonsense that he learned in school. After a while he
grew tired of this fakery and turned to the anonymity of stupidity. He became
the class clown, the tall, uncoordinated, clumsy boy with the shaggy brown hair
that always ended up in his eyes rather than behind his ears where it was
supposed to stay. He was the boy who always had a snide comment ready for every
single question a teacher posed. He was the one who orchestrated the prank for
three consecutive senior classes. He was known for his ingenuity when it came
to making a clown out of himself, an idiot out of his intended target, and a
laughingstock out of every class that he was enrolled in. But he was not
recognized for his intelligence, which was not surprising, since he did
everything he could to hide it.
He supposed it began in Jr. high school when he
discovered that he had one of Kevin's old teachers, Mrs. Watterman. She had
treated him as if he ought to be Kevin, then compared them whenever he made a
mistake. Eventually he grew frustrated with trying to match up to his older
brother's brilliance and decided that it would be better simply not to try.
Ever since he had been blessed with the simplicity of being a screw-up, as his
brother frequently called him.
"Darien, why do you read this garbage?"
"It's not garbage," Darien said defensively,
leaning forward to snap the book from his brother's hands. Kevin's eyebrows
raised a fraction as he turned his gaze away from the boiling anger in Darien's
brown eyes. He pretended to innocently peruse his kid brother's bookshelf,
trailing a forefinger over the bindings. There were a few literary classics:
Mark Twain, Thoreau, Emerson, T.S. Eliot...those he could understand. Then
there were a few random quote compilations, a book of Chinese proverbs, and a
collection of Charles Schultz cartoons. Lastly, there was a whole shelf devoted
to philosophy. This was the crap he had been referring to. There were works
focusing on Descartes, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Freud. But what Kevin did not
understand was why Darien left his copy of Dante's Divine Comedy on the
philosophy shelf, next to two works about Faustus. Kevin leaned closer, curious
now, forgetting that his brother's eyes were glued to his back. A slim brown
paperback boasted the name of Christopher Marlowe. Next to it was another
slender volume, only this one looked more worn. He read the name on the cracked
binding. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Kevin thought hard, trying to remember
that boring English class about European literature that he had recently taken.
Ah, now he remembered! Faustus was a legendary doctor who had lived in the late
Middle Ages. He had bargained with the devil to acquire miraculous power, only
to find himself damned for eternity. In Goethe's version, Faustus was saved in
the end, redeemed by God.
Kevin straightened up slowly, wondering what
could be drawing Darien to that particular work, above anything else. Turning
around, he found that his brother was still staring at him, a wary, almost
apprehensive look in his eyes. A fleeting image of a small child fearful of
being slapped flitted through Kevin's mind, then vanished. It was replaced with
the same wondering disapproval that seemed to be his general attitude towards
Darien these days.
"Listen, I'm sorry that I yelled at you
earlier," Kevin began in an effort to be pacifying. "But I had been working on
that experiment all morning, and you ruined it. I had a reason to be upset."
"All right, I'll give you that one," Darien
said quietly.
"You know, if you would just show a little
more maturity every now and then, maybe you could help," he suggested. "Uncle
Peter would like that."
"But you wouldn't," Darien said shrewdly.
Kevin bit his lip, then stalked across the room to the door, but stopped just
before reaching it. He turned around again, his face quiet, his eyes
unreadable.
"You know, I can't figure you out,
Darien," he said truthfully. "You're not dumb, you know, but you go to such
pains to make people believe you are. Why do you do that? It would be so simple
to make good grades, get into a good college, make Aunt Celia happy..."
"Aunt Celia is happy," Darien interjected.
"She's happy when we're happy," Kevin
explained. "And you're not happy."
"I am very happy, thank you," he retorted
angrily, bristling. "I have my friends…"
"You have acquaintances. But you won't let
people close enough to you to be your friend." Not even me, he added silently.
"Why is that, exactly? What are you afraid of?"
"I'm not afraid."
"Yeah, right," Kevin muttered. "You could
make things a hell of a lot easier if you would give up on the whole pride
thing."
"Would you just stop?"
"No, because I want to get to the bottom of
this. Why won't you talk to me?"
"Just stop it."
"Was it Mom and Dad?" Kevin asked, going out
on a limb, and was startled by Darien's reaction. "You think it's your fault,
don't you?"
"Kevin…" he said warningly, a threat of
violence in his voice.
"They were in the car, Darien. It was an
accident. The fact that they were going to go pick you up has nothing to do
with it." Kevin quickly backed up against the wall as his brother exploded.
Darien grabbed him hard by the shoulder, towering above him as he stretched his
lanky form to its full height.
"You don't understand, okay?" His voice was
frighteningly soft, but his words were harsh. "They wouldn't have been in that
car if it wasn't for me. Me, trying my damndest to make them happy by going to
that dumb science fair with that piece of crap project of mine. Don't you get
it?" he cried, his voice rising. Kevin could see the muscles in his jaw spasm
and tighten as Darien gritted his teeth against the words that he was spitting
out like poison. "I was trying to be you. But I'm not you, Kevin. And I never
will be." He let go of his brother's shoulder and stepped back. Kevin reached
up and massaged his shoulder, which ached from Darien's grip. The two stared
each other down for a long moment, and it was Darien who looked away first.
"Get out," he said quietly, his gaze on the floorboards. Kevin did not move for
a moment, but the look Darien shot him quickly galvanized him. Hurriedly he
twisted the door handle to his right and then ducked out of the room. He was
already bolting down the stairs on his way to the basement and consequently did
not hear his brother's frustrated bellow followed by the crack of a book
hitting the wall. Once in the basement, he ignored the slam of the front door
as Darien stalked off into the woods, already engrossed in his work.
His position in the tree was becoming uncomfortable
and Darien squirmed on the bough in an effort to alleviate the pinching pain in
his shoulders. For a brief second he felt something faint tickle the back of
his neck, and he reached his hand around to swat whatever it was away. Bringing
his hand back in front of his face, he was confronted with a large, black tree
spider. It sat perched insolently on his palm, eight legs planted firmly, its
many eyes staring back at him. Sheer instinct took over, and Darien jerked his
arm, desperately trying to fling the horrid little monster away from him. He
had the creeping sensation that it had been watching him, silently judging him
while it bided its time, waiting to make its move. Flapping his arm wildly, he
was totally preoccupied with getting the insect off of him and completely
forgot about how high off the ground he was. Momentarily losing his balance, he
could feel himself toppling off the branch, only to hit another one lower down.
But this one was not so sturdy.
"Ah crap," he mumbled, knowing what was going to happen but having too little time to do anything about it. The limb snapped and he fell the rest of the way, landing heavily on his stomach. He felt his breath leave his lungs in a whoosh as dry leaves simultaneously choked his mouth and nose. Coughing and spitting, he straightened up painfully. "Stupid tree," he muttered darkly, casting a glance up at the offending oak. Then he looked down at himself and was about to brush away the dirt and leaves stuck to his chest when he noticed that the evil creature had somehow attached itself to the cuff of his shirt and had hitched a ride down. Sensing that its life was in serious jeopardy, the spider launched itself from his wrist, gliding down a silken strand till it reached the safety of the ground. "Oh, no you don't," Darien hissed as he picked up the nearest thing to hand: his copy of Huckleberry Finn, which was lying a foot away from him. After dealing the spider a hefty thwack, he wiped the book off on his leg. "As Garbo said, 'I want to be alone," he commented sardonically before clambering to his feet. People and various critters did not seem to get the point, he thought sadly. I just want to be left alone. "In fact," he mused aloud, his mouth set in a grim line, "Sometimes I wish I were invisible."