Okay, I originally came up with this one after the "Self Reliance" oneshot.
That one was only meant to be a gag (heck, it wasn't even supposed to see the light of day, but like a certain other story, it refused to let me go), centered entirely around Vector's role. But the Alternate Universe notion that Remmy and Komi were siblings kind of stuck, and this story is designed to explore that idea, as well as some of the other references in that story.
I own Constable Moriarty, the dingo Raki, the echidna Emi-Li, and any random anonymous characters that show up.
I don't own Remmy, Komi-Ko, Holmes, any of the Guardians, or any of the Fire Ants.
The story starts...oh, within a few hours of the ending of "Endings, New Beginnings."
A little more rewriting for some of the early chapters-less replotting and more rewording to fit Eli-Za's role in, thanks to the changes in Endings, New Beginnings.
The Brotherhood searched long and hard before they agreed on a safe place to leave the child.
Spectre and Deo teleported into the ruins of the supermarket. Spectre glanced around at the damage. "I don't like leaving him here," he said.
"I know," Deo replied. "But this part is still structurally sound. As long as he stays put, the very worst he'd get is a few more bumps and scratches."
Spectre shook his head. "That's not what I meant. I don't like just leaving him alone like this."
"There isn't much choice. Now, let's get out of here, before the Rescue Team sees us."
Spectre took one last look at the child, and grimaced. Remington had curled up right underneath a collapsed shelf unit. It was only after the Guardian examined those shelves carefully that he decided they would actually shield the child from further harm.
Spectre nodded, and the fire ant took him back to Haven.
—
The Brotherhood was watching on the monitors when Spectre returned.
"How's it look?" Spectre asked.
Sojourner pointed to screen where several echidnas, and one dingo, made their way from building to building, marking those they'd already searched.
The dingo and a few others worked their way into the supermarket, and Sabre zoomed in on the image until even the EUSAR logo was legible.
"What of his memories?" Tobor asked.
"He knows to stay put until they find him, but he won't know why. He doesn't even know we were there." Spectre shook his head. "I couldn't take everything away, not without damaging him, or reverting him to infancy."
Tobor snickered at the thought, and Spectre glared at him.
"Basic things," Spectre continued with a shrug, as he recalled what Eli-Za had told them about the chip, "memories that are deeply ingrained... He'll have those. But he won't remember anything else. He won't remember us." He won't remember the Legion.
"I still say we should have marked him up, some," Tobor growled. Spectre gritted his teeth, and had to fight the urge to strangle the elder. "Make it look like he'd gotten a concussion, at least."
"He looks pitiful enough to fool anyone," Sojourner snapped. "He certainly doesn't need our help." He turned his eyes back to the monitor. "As for his memories, psychological trauma will do him for an explanation just as well as it did Eli-Za."
"Hey, fellas!" the dingo shouted. "I found one!"
—
The dingo crouched in front of the shelf unit and tried to peer in at the little echidna.
But the child cowered away from him.
"Hey, little one, it's okay," the dingo said. "I'm Raki. And I promise I don't bite." He smiled, taking care not to let his teeth show.
"Legion really did a number around here when they invaded," one of the echidnas muttered. "I'm amazed we're finding any survivors anymore." She sidled up next to Raki. "What's wrong?"
"Little guy's afraid," he replied.
"Shi—shoot," the echidna corrected herself. She scratched her head. "We don't need another one running away from the rescuers."
Raki nodded and moved away, and the echidna sat down in his place to peer at the child. "Hey, there. I'm Emi-Li. What's your name?"
The child crouched down further; he flicked his eyes in the direction Raki had gone, then stared at Emi-Li.
"You know," she said, "I bet your mom is really worried about you, huh? You want to get out of here? Find her and let her know you're okay?" She held out her hand but did not reach for him.
The child backed away from her hand and whimpered.
"I can call her, if you want," Emi-Li continued. She grabbed her radio. "Tell me her name, I'll tell the chief to find her so she can talk to you."
"I can't," the child finally whispered. He frowned. "I don't...I don't know."
"Of course you can," she said. "Look, I'll page the chief right..."
He shook his head. "I don't...I don't know who she is," he whispered. "I don't remember."
Emi-Li blinked three times. Crap. "Can you tell me your name, then? So the chief knows who to ask about?"
He shook his head.
"Damn," Raki muttered. "Looks like we'll have to do this the hard way." He walked over to the other end of the shelves and gripped one section. "Hey, Holmes," he called to another echidna, "give me a hand over here, will ya?"
"The chief is going to have our hides for this," Holmes replied, grabbing the shelf unit about midway between Raki and Emi-Li. "This isn't the proper way to retrieve victims."
"If I was as short as you," Raki growled, "maybe I would stick with the 'proper' method. But I'm not about to make the kid wait for the big guns, not when we can do the job just fine without." He glanced up at Emi-Li. "Can you get him?"
"I think so," she replied. "He doesn't have a lot of room to move in here. Just watch it that you don't hurt yourselves."
Holmes and Raki braced themselves and hauled on the shelf unit. It budged one inch, then another.
The child's eyes went wide as he saw his shelter moving. He tried to back away, but Emi-Li crawled in and grabbed him. She wrapped her coat around him, binding his arms to his sides before he could think about fighting her off.
Holmes braced himself under the shelves and worked his way to where Emi-Li held the child, and the two of them slid him out with a minimum of effort.
"We're out!" Holmes called. He verified that nobody else was underneath, and Raki carefully lowered the shelves back to the floor.
Emi-Li's radio crackled to life. "You find anything?" Moriarty asked.
"Yeah," Raki said, grabbing the radio. "We got a kid in here." He looked around at the wreckage and lowered his voice. "And more bodies."
—
Holmes and Raki found an opening large enough to push a gurney through. By then, the child was so panicked that the paramedics had to gas him to sleep and strap him to the gurney so he wouldn't hurt himself.
Only after they were sure he was asleep did they push the gurney back outside.
Constable Moriarty lifted one eyebrow at the sight of the child, but kept his thoughts to himself.
He was just helping the paramedics load the gurney into an ambulance when the ground shook.
The walls began to crumble, and the ground beneath the team began to sink.
Raki's eyes flew open wide. He shoved Emi-Li and Holmes in the direction of the ambulance, then lunged for the lip of the sinkhole.
Emi-Li turned, but the supermarket, and the dingo, had vanished.
"Raki!" she called. "Raki, are you all right?"
"Fine," he rasped from inside the sinkhole. "Don't mind me, just hanging around."
Moriarty motioned for the ambulance to leave while the rest of the team worked to extract their friend.
—
"Structurally sound?" Spectre hissed, glaring at Deo.
"Well-at-least-they-got-him-out-first," the fire ant managed past a constricted throat.
"Isn't Tobor the one that insisted we take him there?" Sojourner muttered, watching his father's reaction carefully.
Spectre scowled in the elder's direction, then pointedly ignored him.
—
Several mornings later, Holmes found Emi-Li in the hospital, watching the child.
"How's he doing?" Holmes asked.
"Sleeping peacefully," Emi-Li replied. She grimaced. "As peacefully as the anesthetics let him, anyway."
"He's still on them? Is that even healthy anymore?"
She shook her head. "They can't keep him calm without it, though. He threw a screaming fit every time they tried to get near him with the IV. While he was still half-asleep from the gas."
"Most kids don't like needles, Emi-Li."
"Most kids are nothing but drama queens," she snapped. He snorted. "He's genuinely terrified, and it makes it hard to care for him." She frowned. "They can't remove the IV, not until the anesthetic's wore off and they know he can feed himself, but..." She ran her hands through her hair. "They're worried how he'll behave when he wakes up."
He sighed in disgust. "Sound like a lose-lose situation."
She nodded.
"Here I was hoping for good news." He sighed again.
"Nothing good on your end?" she asked, nodding towards the folder in his hands.
He shook his head and handed her the folder. "I've checked the records thoroughly. Complete city surveys, a listing of the bodies we've recovered, another list of those still missing. There is no record that boy even exists!"
"That's not surprising," she said, flipping through the folder. "Hawking's generator isn't perfect; we get little openings between zones all the time, even when the Legion doesn't stick their noses in where they don't belong." She shrugged and returned the folder. "Could be there's echidnas on the Island now, or he's from that Lost Tribe or Albion—"
This earned her a snort and a skeptical look.
She lifted one eyebrow. "Our people haven't left the Island in how many hundreds of years? And we've been stuck in this zone for almost as long; we don't know what's out there anymore."
"Even so. Albion? The Lost Tribe?" Holmes folded her arms. "I never thought you for a dreamer."
Emi-Li rolled her eyes. "All I'm saying is he could be from anywhere."
He scratched his head. "That's going to look just great in my report."
She turned to look again at the child. "Does anyone have to know?"
"He doesn't know who his family is," he replied. "We don't know if he has family anymore. Someone has to take care of him until we can find that out."
"But who's equipped to deal with that kind of trauma?" Raki asked, walking up behind them. "Not too many people who can, and thanks to my people and the Legion, most of them are too busy helping out the Rescue Teams." He shrugged. "Got too much mass hysteria to shut down to spend time on one child."
"Exactly," Emi-Li said. "And no orphanage would take him without that kind of help. He'd never have a chance at a real family." She frowned for a moment. "Although...my brother might have a few ideas."
Holmes blinked several times, then nodded. "He has a child, right? A little girl? Maybe this kid's age?"
"Komi-Ko is five, so maybe a couple years younger," Emi-Li replied.
Holmes smirked. "And I suppose this has nothing to do with your mother haranguing you both about a grandson?"
"Why, Holmes," Emi-Li said with a gasp. She drew back and stared at him, wide-eyed. "Couldn't sweet, innocent little me want to help, without needing an ulterior motive?"
"No," Holmes and Raki said at the same time. Raki grinned.
"It's obvious he doesn't trust us," Emi-Li replied, waving them off. "If Komi-Ko can't get through to him, nobody can."
Holmes nodded. "Don't get too excited, though; it may not stop your mother from nagging you, even if we could be sure he's an orphan. But I'll run the idea by Moriarty, see if he's got anything."
—
Remington shivered and tried to make himself smaller.He was there, waiting with the next dose, waiting to test the child again. "No, please," Remington whimpered. "I can't do it, it "Stop this!" the woman shouted. "You're going to "He is unstable," the man growled at her. "If it is not controlled, he "You can't control it," she snarled. "We've
"Do what?" a girl asked.
Remington opened his eyes. He took one shaking breath, and another. His eyes darted around, but he couldn't see anything.
He felt something on his arm, but some...thing told him not to examine it.
Instead, he found himself looking the other way, in the direction of the voice. A small beam of light illuminated the room, and he saw a little girl sitting by the door.
"Can't do what?" she asked again.
Remington blinked several times. "Huh?"
She stood up and stretched to see him on the bed. "You talked. You were sleeping, but you talked."
"Did...did I?"
She nodded. "You said you can't do it."
He shook his head. "I don't remember." He frowned. The dream had been so...vivid, so real. But now...it was gone. He couldn't remember any of it.
The girl nodded. "You said it hurt."
Remington shuddered. "I believe that," he whispered.
The girl watched him for a moment. "I'm Komi-Ko."
"Remington," he replied. Then he gave a start. Where had that come from? He almost thought he dreamed it.
But it sounded...right.
"Rem—Remi—" She frowned as she tried to pronounce his name.
He smiled. "You can call me 'Remmy' if you want."
Again, it sounded familiar, but he couldn't be sure why.
"Remmy," she said, smiling back at him. "Aunt Emi says you don't 'member your name."
"I didn't," he replied, grinning. "Maybe you helped me remember?"
She giggled and covered her face.
"Now that," Emi-Li said to the little girl, "is the first time I have ever seen you get shy."
Remington stiffened up.
"Emi!" Komi-Ko said, holding out her arms for the woman to pick her up. "So did you talk to daddy yet? Is Remmy gonna be my new brother?"
"Remmy?" Emi-Li lifted one eyebrow. "Is that his name, then, little imp?" She pulled the little girl into her arms.
Komi-Ko nodded.
"It's Remington, miss," he whispered.
Emi-Li's eyebrows shot up. "Well...Remington, how would you answer Komi-Ko?"
He frowned. "I—I don't know."
"My brother would like to adopt you, and Komi-Ko seems to approve..."
"Seems to?" the little girl repeated, squirming around to face her aunt.
Emi-Li grinned. "But if you'd rather not..." She shrugged. "Nobody wants to force you. But it's the best option we can find. At least until we figure out who your parents are."
"And if you do...?" He watched her oddly, almost like he was measuring something.
"We'll...we'll deal with that when it happens," she replied.
He hesitated. He didn't trust Emi-Li, any more than he trusted the doctors, or the other people who'd found him. She was hiding something; he could feel it in her words. But every time he tried to get a sense of her, it fled like his dreams, just to the edge of his awareness.
Komi-Ko turned to look at him, her eyes begging him.
He met her gaze, and some... thing...shifted inside his mind.
"All right," he heard himself say. "At least until I remember them." He did not dare promise more.
"Yay!" Komi-Ko said, clapping her hands. "I got a big brother!"
And I have no clue how a five-year-old girl should sound.
*sigh*
She shouldn't be five for long, though.
Note: Anonymous reviews are enabled, but if you have a question, please sign in, so the site's reply function is available! No guarantee I will use that method-some questions are taken care of more easily in notes, if I assume someone else might ask the same. But I would at least like the option, especially in the more...elaborate replies.