The Virtue of Selfishness
Disclaimer: I do not own Warehouse 13. Please review!
What breaks Joshua the most are the quiet calls from his sister in the middle of the night. He loved her dearly, that was for sure, but picking up a call from Claudia was a little like picking up a grenade.
Unpredictable.
Terrifying.
He never knew what was waiting for him. Some days it was their weekly chat, organized and pre-arranged with "how was your week's" and half-hearted pleasantries that took too long and ended too soon all at the same time.
Other days, old science professors would be trying to kill him- the warehouse getting mixed up in his life again, (as if it didn't take enough already anyways) and the calls would be fast paced and adrenaline filled, turning his intelligence on an incredibly fast level.
But some days, some days, he would get a call out of the blue.
He would be performing an experiment or shuffling papers and his phone would light up and buzz with her name plastered all over the front.
Always, every time, his heart sank to his stomach and with a heavy hand he picked up the cold metal object.
Her voice would barrel through the line, not waiting for a greeting before she was asking "Joshua?" in a tiny unsure voice he only heard 1% of the time. It's wavering high quality revealed years of mistreatment, of confusion, of brokenness that burrowed itself right in his guilt-ridden heart. It broke him. Always and completely. And of course- she would blow it off, wildly grasping for a reason- any plausible reason- she called. But he knew the real reason. She was checking up on him. For herself. Making sure that he was alive. The dreams of her screaming "I'm not crazy!" haunt him forever in the night.
And this was his confession: that he was to blame. He had known, way back then that his experiment wouldn't- couldn't- work. He was just blindly selfish. And anything Claudia experienced after that was entirely his fault. Sometimes he thought about how cruelly blank the inter-dimensional space was, but it was nothing compared to the purgatory of the real world. Where his sins had caused unyielding pain and suffering and mistrust in the tiny innocence he once nurtured. He still tried to nuture.
And what made it worse was the unyielding adoration Claudia showed him. She never doubted his intentions, never doubted his loyalty, never doubted her brother was anything but a saint in disguise. She loved him. He loved her.
Most days, he could pretend they were a normal brother and sister. Teasing and jokes flicking off the tongue in sweet and humorous conversations. But then he'd get another midnight phone call, and he remembered what he had done. Besides, it had all worked out in the end. That's what he told himself. One of these days he will ask for forgiveness, when he is ready to stop being selfish. When he stops seeing part of her as the failures he made.
Until then, he can only try to be better. For her.