AUTHOR'S NOTE
I waffled on posting this yet since I already have other stories on the category's front page but finally decided, what the hell, one update a week so long as I can miraculously keep that up seems reasonable enough.

Please note – this is planned as a oneshot collection and direct sequel to my story "Pollyanna," and they're both part of a series under the same name that shares a continuity. You hopefully don't have to go back and read the first story or any others to get something out of this, but it'll help make more sense of things, since (spoilers) the basic premise is that instead of finding the Dark Dragon that was supposed to cause the apocalypse / rebirth of the world at the end of Mother 3, Lucas finds…Ninten? Friendship and angst ensues.

(The whole 'heart inheriting' thing and the reconstruction of the world as Lucas wants it still applies. Lucas and co. are completely baffled by this turn of events. Ninten is just happy to help.)

Please hmu ﹫ minderrific on tumblr / twitter if you ever want to ask anything re: fic or talk Mother-related stuff or headcanons or or whatever! I'm very new to this series and only went through all three games since the start of the year. Feedback is very appreciated, critical or otherwise.

THE SAME IN YOU

Part 1
 Where the Heart Is

It was like…

It was a curious feeling. Ninten couldn't identify it.

Ninten yawned, watching Claus and, of course, Lucas: they were playing together with Boney in their family's backyard under the late morning sun. The newness of having a sun again was still a novelty to all of them. Even if one slightly paler than the norm, while in its early stages.

Ninten could work on that. Eventually. For now, though, he'd conceded to Claus (privately) that he could probably stand to reserve his PSI for now while Lucas was content and didn't need anything.

Ninten felt too drained for physical activity, even if he was able to get up and walk around again. He reluctantly declined to join the twins and opted to spend his time observing instead. He chose a distant perch atop the homestead's precarious cliffside fence, clambering up to sit at the spot where it bordered the furthest section of Flint's yard.

It was a curious feeling.

Ninten pondered just what 'it' was, which tickled at the corners of his mind, or maybe his heart. He wondered whether it was something that had originated from himself or Lucas.

Inheriting a heart from someone (through whatever hackneyed, last-minute psionic magic mix had accomplished the Needles' creation in the first place) turned out to make distinguishing whose feelings were whose…confusing. Ninten had learned as much in the week or so that had passed since waking up to the sight of the last Needle—and in turn, his future—in Lucas's hands.

In all that time Ninten still hadn't thought of a satisfactory way to explain to Lucas or the remaining people around him why there had only been Ninten and not some terrible, island-size dragon of darkness beneath the earth that triggered their apocalypse. Such had been the expectation they held, from whatever legends had apparently survived Ninten while he slept their predecessors' past away. That mystery among others was a headache he didn't know how to begin to parse. He couldn't say he trusted his own memory leading to the end of his last conscious moments before mere days ago too well, and besides…

Frankly, Ninten could put off the task of detangling something that might well be buried for good anyway as long as time permitted, thank you very much. He didn't want to spend a nice day thinking about dragons.

Instead Ninten dwelled on the mystery of what exactly was nagging at him while he watched Lucas and Claus idly from the fence. The mystery-feeling was far softer than anything that drove him to action, not even unpleasant, though he knew it'd annoy him a fair bit if the sensation faded away before he could pinpoint it.

At the very least Ninten thought he'd worked out it wasn't Lucas's heartstrings working now that were tugging the strings of his own. Lucas was currently engaged what seemed to be a hundred percent with his brother and Boney, and by every indicator Ninten could glean from him, overjoyed to a nearly painful degree over it. Lucas's emotions and pangs of the heart usually projected themselves more powerfully and without ambiguity than whatever…whatever it was at the corners of Ninten's mind.

(Even uncertainty in Lucas, more common than it ought to be, reflected onto Ninten's conscious as something that felt refreshingly honest and direct, for a worry over known unknowns. He really was a good kid.)

So that ruled him out. The unknown gnawing at Ninten continued as he watched the two boys across the yard tussle against each other playfully and throw wood sticks for Boney, shouting for its own sake and acting like kids. Ninten was growing to know the boys better the longer he lived in their home. And he just couldn't shake nor identify the strange, nostalgic sense he got about them that grew stronger the longer he watched.

It was like…

…

…Oh. Right.

Ninten swung his legs back and forth. He was too agitated with racing thoughts to mind his balance on the fence for now, despite the cliff at his back. He turned over the realization of what he'd recognized carefully in his mind.

If he had to name it…Ninten supposed he might describe the strange feeing as a sense as though he were, right now, turning through the pages of a family photo book: one that was maybe titled, "Lucas's Growing-Up Album"; or even, "Lucas and Claus's Growing-Up Album," if the twins being born together would end up sharing one one.

With a pang, Ninten recalled that his own sisters had shared theirs.

Lucas and Claus giggled madly as they played, mannerisms exaggerated far beyond what either teenager (any teenager, Ninten thought as he tried to think back on the people he'd known) usually expressed, and giddy. For all the world they really might have been little kids. A reversion in time to how they'd probably been before so many, horrific unexplained disasters Ninten was still parsing out had turned both boys hurt and a little hardened inside and…well, in Claus's case…

At least Ninten's hold over the islands could extend to the power to restore the other boy to flesh and blood. Ninten shuddered.

He counted and then thought of nothing for a while as he'd been taught for meditation, letting time pass as he worked his mind through the skin-crawling thoughts. Once calm again Ninten back to watching the twins, both very much alive and whole and for all the world looking far happier than he'd ever seen them (in the short time he'd known them, at least). The overmuch innocence in that laughter and gleeful joy Ninten observed, over such a simple game of fetch with a pouting Boney, both Lucas and Claus look like…like…

Yes, they did seem right now to be so much younger children than they actually were. Ninten pondered this unhurriedly; not that he had much choice, with so much of his strength of mind pouring into the earth they had to live on that he still suffered the physical aching of its growing pains as well. Occasionally he saw the other two boys stop for a breather in the yard, then grin conspiratorially at each other and break from their game to run back inside the house and try to pull their mother out by the hand. Again, like smaller kids than they were, they petulantly begged Hinawa to come out with them as well, to join.

Ninten snickered behind his hand.

With exasperation that was more fond than felt, Hinawa continually insisted to them (with admonitions too soft to be heard as such) that they were interrupting her letter-writing, that she was trying to finish a message she was sending to her father. Surely they knew she had promised to finish it by the afternoon, and that that was soon approaching—and didn't they want her to have time before that, to make lunch for everyone early? That way it'd be ready whenever the boys grew tired of running around, and whenever their father got home if he decided to return home midday from his visit to the village square to check in on all their neighbors…

And so on.

Ninten felt he could see a fairly good image of the children Lucas and Claus had been before their disasters started. Same for their gently laughing mother preserved with them in a sunny morning that had somehow been transplanted to the present from that era too. All three imprinted on a newfound recording of the imagined past, playing out in the here and now as if on a homemade VHS tape…

There was even an eerie kind of 'family video' quality to the scene he couldn't deny. Ninten closed his eyes, but still all but physically saw as he watched them that particular, grainy quality of footage on a tape that had aged with time and degraded in fidelity, for having had been played and repeated so many times.

It was like…

No.

It all but was a memory. Wasn't it? In every sense, but in that it was happening now. And perhaps that was what had tugged at him so oddly. Because—

Because to have a moment like this shared after the fact? by a reminiscing child or overeager parent? that was one thing. But this was just unfolding, in the making, and so Ninten felt quite self-consciously that he was intruding—inserting himself into a stranger's family photograph. Butting in on a moment with the quality of a cherished, a happy memory that ought to stay between a parent and her children.

Memories of the kind that people clung to for years or decades, or…or longer, if they had that long.

(Ninten knew with a wrench in his gut that some did.)

It could be a baby book. A string of polaroids from a family vacation. An errant snapshot, or photograph framed on the mantle, or an instant photo developed and pinned with magnets on the refrigerator.

A diary.

A music box.

A fishhook carved from onyx-black agate.

Memories of happy times in a family that didn't have to stay that way. Mementos people kept, because even if they might degrade in quality…they never could in importance.

Intruder, Ninten repeated again warningly in his own mind to himself. But he did not move from where he sat watching, with that curious feeling clawing in him on the fence.

The twins, their mother; the put-upon arguments of brothers just happy to be able to reach out and touch the other to know him safe. Boney pawing good-naturedly at them all. Part of it felt too authentic to be a re-enactment. Ninten realized he was smiling, despite his torn-up worries about what he was looking in on: and yes, that pure joy surely was Lucas's. The blond boy was so earnest and determined and open that his relief and joy felt like a blaze impossibly bright and pure in Ninten's chest. And it hurt.

Hurt like the smile stretching Claus's face into the smile he wore matching his brother's because Ninten could read without Telepathy that the older twin was so happy that he didn't even realize how scared he was in that moment that this was all just some mechanical simulation or a dream.

Both twins were too caught up in one another and in their home and their mother and in how much they had missed this, had so synchronously to have missed and needed it to be real for one last morning, to be even the slightest bit self-conscious that they were acting as goofily as toddlers instead of teenagers.

Ninten knew they deserved this moment, and he tried to focus on the happiness instead of the feeling of don't belong, not yours, intruder. He tried to let the happiness settle in him and take root until his thoughts were elsewhere, on a memory of how he'd had an album of moments like this for himself that his parents had kept for him when Ninten was a baby. Cataloged milestones, mostly taken by his mother, telling a story of a treasured and by appearances unremarkable childhood. Small moments that branched from the mementos to the events they represented in Ninten's mind…

Playtime with the family dog. Exasperation from a mother who was less than thrilled at her son making so much trouble, yet then love and hugs and soft laughter at his anticipation of favorite meals. And his siblings, his—

Oh, his sisters.

He'd been five. And it had not been just one; not a brother or sister to split his childhood memories into halves with as another set of siblings left to two might have done. Twins, of course, so very like the boys in the yard that Ninten wished selfishly for a moment he could tear his eyes away from them so he wouldn't have to think about—

(Ninten had never forgotten the memory of meeting those two new lives now part of his at once in the Mother's Day hospital. Identical faces forming mirrored images. A pair of cribs resting side by side: impossible to differentiate, terribly fussy from infancy through early childhood, tiny tiny things Ninten ached to hold and protect and love forever and ever so much out of some brotherly instinct that compelled him always to rush to where they were every time they so much as cried or made some noise that even his mother was wise enough to ignore, else the world might turn malevolent and hurt them hurt his baby sisters or take them away from him before they were big enough he could explain properly how much they meant to him that he loved them—

—and then, because the world had done no such thing, toddler twin girls. So much alike, one fearful and the other practical-minded but both adoring and both kind and sweet. Girls with the same faces. Only the colors swapped.)

Minnie and Mimmie could have passed for Lucas in Claus any day, Ninten thought as he returned to himself with a very sharp pain in his heart that could have been Lucas's joy being too intense for the poor boy to handle after the pain he was used to, or merely Ninten's reminiscence of loss being just what it was. Ninten could for all the world be watching some memory of his own past, similar enough to this present-day facsimile of it. Imagine two girls playing with poor and tired Mick who had gamely tolerated Ninten's babyhood but couldn't make heads or tails of two eager girls at once with all his energy no matter how good Minnie and Mimmie's intentions.

No. No, Ninten loved them, he thought with a sudden anger against the pain. He wouldn't let time make his little sisters into thoughts like wounds that hurt. It could be—Ninten could think of this the other way around.

Just a moment of simple fantasy, he reasoned. Ninten could replace the world around him with an image of the past or at least let the laughter of Lucas and Claus and Boney in his ears be a mirror to somewhere else in time. Ninten wouldn't be intruding that way, either. Ninten let memories carry him away, calmer now as Lucas's heart loosened its grip on his.

He eased his grip on the wooden fence and leaned back as much as his diminished strength allowed, let himself have the memory. Not the gone-hurt-lost part, but the reason that it had ever been important.

(Two girls playing tag in the front yard. A barking dog that had raised Ninten probably near as much as Carol had, for the ease even a very young Ninten could always escape her watch. Twins sipping milk at the table. Hugs, cups of orange juice, ribs once a week, calls in the night for big brother if one of the girls had a nightmare, two mirrored faces always together, always underfoot, and his mother around them.)

It was like…

Ninten kicked back and looked up at the blue sky, long moments passing before his face eased into another smile that was his own.

Nice times then; nice times now. He'd been a lucky kid, he reflected.

Ninten really was.

It was like…

He smiled faintly with closed eyes craning his neck up toward the newborn sun.

It was almost, almost like…

Ninten let go of his thoughts. Felt them scatter to the wind as he tuned in to the subtle shifting of the earth below.

Eventually, Hinawa called the boys in for her lunchtime specialty. Omelets, the fluffy kind Lucas liked so much.

Ninten had lost track of time altogether by then. He blinked over in the direction of the yard again. He watched as first Claus, then Lucas—no, because Claus actually stopped at the door to wait for the other to catch up before going in—raced to the doorway and toward the kitchen inside. Ninten's mouth twitched at the corners watching Hinawa turn in the doorway, trying in vain to scold them for startling her, but the boys were already long gone.

A tired, panting Boney trailed grumbling behind, and the image elicited a quick, stifled snort of laughter from Ninten. He felt warm and light in his heart at the memory of his Mick.

It was a nice thing, really, to see his new friends having a day like this. Lucas and Claus both were so desperately in need of happiness, Ninten reflected more even than a restored home or a world to live in. It was good to have a day where they were both relaxed and Hinawa as well, even with Flint still out of the house to ignore the villagers' insistence they could do without his (needed) advisement in rebuilding Tazmily.

Ninten hadn't planned to move from his sky-watching spot once the two boys and Boney were off to enjoy their lunch. However, a voice calling his name startled him halfway before he could return his gaze back to the clouds.

"Ninten!"

Ninten blinked again, surprised to speechlessness. Hinawa stood waiting in the doorway, hands on her hips. His. She watched Ninten who was frozen atop the cliffside fence at furthest back edge of the yard, her posture and stance both clearly expectant.

It was too far to tell, but Ninten though he saw a crinkle of mirth—maybe also, a trace of sympathy, some sadness perhaps for something she saw in him he did not recognize—in the corners of Hinawa's eyes. As if she recognized something familiar and funny and a little pitiable in his baffled look the way his own mother might have once upon a time.

She stood waiting.

But, he'd…he'd waited first. To give her and her sons the space for their moment, that snapshot or family photo in a happy morning. Ninten knew Lucas and certainly the remainder of his family had to be needing it. Ninten could only feel Lucas's heart but it was full of love but then pain that was intense, often not in ways that Ninten could make any sense of despite feeling torn apart by grief in the other's nightmares more evenings than not.

Yet, other hurts that plagued the blond boy especially in sleep were so familiar. And Lucas had been through hell and back, had lost his brother had lost his mother had found his wish to have them—

Ninten stared at Hinawa and a hundred memories flickered through his mind.

It was…oh, it was like…

(Welcome home Ninten she'd called, arms open for him and waiting oh, my baby, come here, you must be famished, you must be so exhausted. Two smiling, perfect mirror faces of little girls in pink and red flanked her on either side, both girls crying in relief and happiness that he was home like he'd promised, that he was safe, wasn't hurt or dead or lost like they had worried. Happy barking echoed around the three in excited running circles, his dog's oft-complained about retiring age forgotten in his excitement and pride and he felt it reached the doorway love all of them grateful awed love relief how love.

This, every bit of this, was all Ninten wanted in the world. A moment, just this. The only sight in this world world or the universe that could keep Ninten for even one more instant away from what he'd longed for since emerging from Holy Loly. And that was what would come after this as soon as he could let go of them again, the moment Ninten could at last at last untangle himself and upstairs and finally take a moment, just a moment to rest his eyes…

And then and only then at last fulfill the stern promise he'd made to himself back then. And cry. And cry, and cry…)

Ninten felt more than controlled his body tumbling off the fence, scraping his knees on the way down albeit without feeling any pain. He wobbled his way upright again, eyes still bound watching Hinawa. She was still waiting.

He wasn't hers—he wasn't, but—

Okay.

Heck what was he doing. Ninten wasn't about to go around refusing small miracles. Bits of offered kindness that he hadn't even thought to hope for. Known he wanted.

Dreamlike, he stood. Ninten's thoughts drifted away.

Without conscious thought he realized himself already walking toward the doorway where the twins had gone up into the house. He made his way toward Hinawa and their family's open home feeling lightheaded on legs that walked without his conscious thought, as if caught in some apparition, or a dream of his own design.