A/N: BACKLOLLOL.

Okayso. This is me: I am a dork. A few weeks ago, I start THINKING about the time-travel logic in MtR.

As we all know, it makes no sense. PARADOXES BY THE EARFUL, and the whole 'direct cause and effect' distortion (Doris-topia back to Future-happiness before their very EYES? I think not) being the greatest of the illogical hogwash. I, being logical, wish it COULD make sense, because I take these stories so seriously I should be ashamed.

So I ask myself, how could it make sense? Then I get it.

Then I cry D: AND YOU WILL TOO. Maybe. In any case, prepare to have your mind and Lewis' world broken :D (WHY AM I SO MEEN. And dark.) If I have my way, there will be chapters to this, but it will not be finished, because I'm not THAT much of an idealist.

OHMYGODLEWIS. I scream for you. AUUUGGGHHH. (See?)

Enjoy :B

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Blue Sky Future

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"I don't get it."

"Don't get what?"

Normally, Wilbur wouldn't have responded. Normally, he would've kept on playing his videogames: except that this was the fifteenth time Lewis had said it, and this time it sounded important.

Lewis (not Cornelius, mind: Wilbur treated the stuffy new name like a curse word, and Robinsons never cursed) was, of course, a very important kid, so it made sense that he said important things. By the time he hit his seventeenth birthday, he had graduated with two Masters from Harvard; been on the cover of Time magazine; been featured in countless other scientific magazines and reports and appeared before countless committees to corroborate claims of incredible magnitude, all of which garnered him not a few medals. But these were all strangely impersonal triumphs that Wilbur—dear, unconcerned Wilbur with his portable GameStation and his habit of falling asleep on (or in) whatever Lewis was working on at the time—waved off with a canned congratulatory noise and a look.

This look said, 'Are you going to preen forever, Mr. Brain, or are you going to get over here so I can beat you properly?' It was topped off by a limp-wristed, yet threatening waggle of his friend's star-shaped controller, and never failed to get Cornelius—Lewis, now, sporting an impulsive grin--back in the game.

Lewis was oddly grateful for his disinterest, though anyone else—anyone else less assured of their own greatness, or their own bright, beautiful future with the biggest, most eccentric family the world would ever know—would have taken offense. But he didn't need lip service from his best friend.

Lately, all he seemed to be was a percentage, or a lime-light saturated ladder climber who had shaken hands with at least two hundred wrinkly scientists: he felt old. Wilbur helped bring it all back into perspective when he soundly trounced his friend for the fifteenth time on BattleSheep, a game with an innocent name and a whole lot of graphically exploding livestock to ruin it. (Lewis found a guilty pleasure in Wilbur's small collection of sophomoric games: he always made noises that began as disapproving, then exploded with undignified snorts as he careened sideways into Wilbur, simply too amused by it all to care that, with that loss of concentration, his farm was now property of Wilbaah, the evil pyromaniac Sheep King. It was just too much.)

He was still a kid. At seventeen, he was supposed to be drinking and getting into trouble and having sex and skipping class: but with Wilbur, his friend from the future, (who he counted as one of his biggest blessings, even with his parents—his parents—in the next room, cooking strange things with their clothes on backwards) playing video-games and wrestling was more than enough to keep him happy. Except when he had something important to say.

But lately, Lewis had been muttering important things as well as saying them outright. Dense, confusing important things.

The issue lay in his new interest: the time machine. Lewis technically wasn't supposed to start work on the time machine until he was at least thirty-seven, according to… well, the world. Wilbur mistrusted this early spurt of inquiry, and told him so: told him he could be screwing with the very fabric of time by sticking his nose into things that didn't matter right then. But Lewis just laughed him off and said that a little preparatory research never hurt anyone.

Wilbur didn't like it. Wilbur didn't like it at all: in fact, he almost looked nervous whenever Lewis talked about it.

Almost.

"Wilbur. Wilbur."

"Yeah?" Wilbur called over his shoulder again, rousing himself from his star-studded, video game. It whirred disapprovingly as he propped up the dashing red eye-piece, laser target blinking off.

"Come over here," Lewis demanded urgently, almost as though his teeth were clenched. Wilbur's fine dark brows nearly touched his hairline, but he heaved himself up anyways and trotted over the lab's honey-yellow tiling, running a doting hand through his slick hair. He stopped beside his friend, pinching his cowlick off to perfection.

"What's up, Corny?"

Every so often—and only every so often—Wilbur pushed his button and called him that, just to get some color into his face and loosen his geekus up: to remind him what a good friend he had, that it only happened every so often. Normally, Lewis smacked him. Today, Lewis seemed to swallow the name with difficulty, shudder and gum up. Before Wilbur had a chance to ask, the blond pointed at the paper in front of them.

"This doesn't make sense," Lewis said flatly. Wilbur glanced at the blue spread of information, and had the decency to squint like he was interested. Then—perhaps because the plans had brief, foggy sketches of a certain something that had been stolen from his garage so long ago, and he didn't like time travel right now, didn't like time travel anytime before 2022—he shrugged, and said knowingly:

"Yeah, I know. It's a problem. I always wondered, what in the world made blue-prints blue? Why not greenprints? Or plaidprints? Sure would liven this place up a--"

"Not that!" Lewis snapped. He tussled with the pile until two sheets of paper surfaced, notes lining their edges, quotation marks coming and going like ants. He looked at Wilbur, who had taken to leaning on the rounded desk like a bandy cat, and waited until those brown eyes met his. His finger tapped the sheets of paper. Wilbur cocked his head.

"I've been reading, Wil."

"And how's that Learn-2-Read program workin' for you, bud? Gotten up to semi-colons yet?" Wilbur asked dryly, smiling some. Lewis did not smile.

"I've been reading about time-travel," he clarified softly.

Wilbur missed a beat, eyes snapping down to the paper before he could control himself.

Lewis saw it. Wilbur swallowed.

"You mean you've… been reading about what someone thinks time travel would be like," Wilbur corrected him with growing laziness, a smart nudge in Lewis' side glazing over—erasing--his strange, stiff moment. "You're the guru on time-hopping, Lewis, don't forget. Until you come into the picture, all these goons are just shooting the bree—"

"Not if it makes sense, Wilbur," Lewis insisted, jabbing at the paper. Wilbur's hands clenched at his sides. "I don't ignore anything that makes perfect, basic sense. Let me explain, and you'll see--"

"I really don't think we should be talking about this," Wilbur said suddenly, too loudly for the quiet, whirring lab. He was somehow behind his friend again, cold hands in his pockets. Trying, pushing, pulling Lewis without touching him. The words came from his gut, serious and candid. Talking to Lewis. Telling him. Warning him in the strange silence, and he should have listened.

The last chance.

Lewis shook his head, plowing onwards as he grabbed a pencil and began to make sense of it all. Perfect, basic sense.

"Look. Look—see? I'll draw it. Time is linear. The possibilities of other universes and time-streams are obvious, but when dealing with… with just this one string of events, the rules become more closed."

"They don't know the rules yet—how could they?" Wilbur asked darkly, but Lewis had already drawn a line on the paper. Wilbur, after glaring at the diagram for a moment, slapped his hand down on the desk—the young genius didn't notice, and the pencil scratched on--and watched.

"It makes sense that you came to get me, Wilbur. And it's alright for you to come back to see me…because you're from the future: going to the past means you disappear from your own time-stream, but until you die, you have an unlimited amount of possibilities to return." His scribbles expanded, encroaching on his hastily-penned notes. "You can return three seconds after you left, or three hours, or three days, all while years and decades could have eclipsed here. If you die, those possibilities of returning run out, and time would continue beyond your departure, and you would effectively die in the future."

Wilbur made a noise, short and annoyed.

"Lewis, for real: you're starting to go Dad on me."

But Lewis' eyes lit at that simple sentence, malcontent and hot blue behind his round glasses, and he kept going.

"But it doesn't make sense," he muttered loudly, his pencil marks arching, reaching for an idea. His knuckles were snow white on his pencil, every mark dark as iron. "It never made sense! Because… in the past, it's different."

"Lewis," Wilbur said, grinding the two syllables.

"Because in drawing someone from the past, you effectively change the stream of time, and send it off in another direction!" Lewis accused him, somehow, cheeks pink with the hot, cold, perfect sense of what he was saying. He crammed a hand through his hair, chewing on the information as he said it, boiling it down for Wilbur and himself. Staring at the paper.

Wilbur watched with a sinking feeling in his heart.

"The future is a derivative of the past: assuming you're working with the same time-stream, changes carry. They echo. If you take someone from the past and move them to the future…"

Lewis scribbled. A little stick figure with glasses was suddenly blocked from the future by an angry line. A dotted line carried him over the timestream and re-drew him under the little Future box. The angry line hemmed him in there, too, at his back. Bracketing off a period of time. Skipped time. Wilbur ran a hand through his hair, nervously.

"…They are absent for the entirety of the time jumped between the time travel. They do not grow up. They do not continue. They do not… exist."

Lewis looked up at Wilbur, blue eyes wild. The lab lay silent and sky-blue all around them, and Wilbur couldn't escape.

"Don't ask me," he scoffed, battling Lewis' searching stare with a shrug and something that was supposed to be a smile. It failed, souring into a weird sneer. "The time machine must've known you would come back eventually, so you really did keep existing. You came back. You're here now, aren't you?"

"Time doesn't come in chunks, Wilbur," Lewis told him hotly, hands and pencil busy again; busy and working towards something that his best friend quailed from.

Working, explaining, destroying. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

"It doesn't recognize that I was 'fated' to come home, it wouldn't have stretched, it wouldn't have waited for me to come back: it flows were it's channeled, in a straight line. It runs possibility… by possibility… by possibility."

The new, possibility-serrated line cut a killing path through the little stick-figure with glasses. Wilbur went cold.

Lewis didn't stop.

"When I went with you, I was effectively erased from the world. I didn't exist."

He was feverish with thought, thought and accusation; Wilbur didn't turn away but Lewis grabbed his wrist anyways. He clenched his fist around it and took another breath.

Working, explaining, destroying. The process had been set in motion. The stone rolled, and would not be stopped. A rushing filled his ears.

"I wasn't there to grow up and go to college and invent Robinson industries, because I went with you, and reappeared in the future. I did not exist. That future… it was the world made by me not being in it during all those years."

Wilbur struggled, now, feline body disorganized and panicked and he pushed at Lewis' hand on his wrist, breath coming sporadically as he protested:

"Lewis, seriously, you're thinking way too hard about this—"

Wilbur was spared questions—cold, perfect questions that would shatter his bones when fired—when Lewis wilted away from him, consumed by something curling and sick in his head and eyes. Something living, now, that refused to let go.

"But I met myself. I met my future self. But it's… a paradox. I… saw him, I touched him! God, how is that possible?" He shouted, hands stabbing towards the future's blue sky in his golden lab. He smeared cruelly at his face, his mouth, his eyes, breath quivering. When he looked up, his eyes had been stoked by the abuse. They burned into Wilbur, boy from the future.

His future. His only future.

"Wilbur, tell me: did I really see myself in the future?" Lewis asked him breathlessly. He stepped closer to his best friend, one hand out. "Is that really me?"

Wilbur fell silent: he plummeted silent, hard and endlessly, with promise of a lethal impact. He looked at the floor, breath hitching in his lean chest. Lewis Robinson—Cornelius Lewis Robinson, Founder of the Future and so many things in between: a father, a son, a husband—watched him, trembling. Everything hung by a string. Wilbur bit his lip, body shuddering minutely. Losing. Losing something, because Lewis had said too much.

Finally, Wilbur Robinson spoke.

"You're not my dad."

And with a single sentence, Lewis lost everything.

The chair clattered as he fell into it.

"He isn't.., you. Okay?"

No. It was not okay. It was not okay. Lewis barely heard him.

"We just… knew," Wilbur murmured, choking on the words. The insufficient words. "We knew what would happen. Dad knows things like that, and he… subbed in. Pretended to be the future you."

Breath came back to him, slamming into his buzzing brain.

"H-he… he looked just—"

Long nose. Untidy blond hair. Felt just like—in a warm animal blush, a soul-blossoming moment, could almost hear his heart syncing with--

His voice caught. His memories caught, snagging. Both ripped and lay rigid, flapping in the truth. Cold wind rushed in.

"Hologram." Wilbur shook his head. "We knew you, so it was easy… to make someone that looked like you. Even if you didn't really exist… by that time."

Then Wilbur Robinson, best friend and—best friend, betrayer—something to him, this teenaged kid who Lewis suddenly didn't know and wanted to hurt, he went down on his knees in front of him, and touched his leg. Steadying. It would have been alright, and maybe Lewis—broken, battered Cornelius—would have smiled all hazy and dead and insane, if he hadn't kept talking.

"When I took you back, the world had changed a little. A lot. No: a lot," Wilbur promised him in a near-whisper, and his hand was suddenly twined with the other boy's. His best friend of so many years. Wilbur swallowed.

Explaining, destroying.

"It was weird," he continued doubtfully, knowing his words to be too simple to destroy a world—and yet. "Everyone who stayed behind knew it too, and saw it happen—maybe didn't know how--but we still kept up the farce long enough to send you back home. Then the world went right again."

He looked away.

"Why?" Lewis mouthed.

Somehow, Wilbur heard. Or he just knew.

"To give you confidence! Courage! Hell, I don't know!" Wilbur snapped, throwing his hands up and cleaving himself away from Lewis: broken, blond, messy little Lewis. He got to his feet and slashed at the air, unable to face him and still sour his voice and still make it true. "You were twelve, and it worked, okay? Here you are, making stuff up every second! You're making the world a better place, Lewis, day by day: you just aren't him!"

Him.

He had never invented all those things. Never. Those beautiful inventions existed without him; their souls existed without him and his clever hands and his unending attention. He was suddenly nothing: his efficient hands lost all pulse and molded into reviled lumps. Nothing.

Clever hands. Time magazine. Nothing.

But they… were in his notebook, they were in his goddamn notebook right now: his plans, everything he'd seen in the future, it was all there! It didn't… it didn't make sense, because all of them—down to the bubbles, the cars than ran on nothing but sunlight—were in his journal, even before he saw them the first time.

Plans for the future. His future. No one could've possibly made those same things, just right, just like he would have. Wilbur was lying… lying, somehow…

"But—Doris—" Lewis choked, tears burning in his eyes. His hands trembled on his knees.

"You didn't invent her," Wilbur said, shaking his head softly. "It was Dad again."

Lewis pushed his chair away from Wilbur, mouth contorting as he grasped at something, anything and the wheels squeaked and only took him a foot away and still Wilbur's brown eyes killed him.

"But when I said I was never going to invent…" His throat closed, face twisting. Wilbur knew the rest, and his head dropped to his chest. Tired.

"You just… let me talk through this, Lewis. You were partners with Dad when he invented her. By saying that, at that time, you just… sent negative energy into the future: by that claim, the future you would've convinced Dad never ever to make her. You were back in your own time, technically the proper time-stream, so you existed in the future as Dad's partner. You destroyed her. It worked. Don't worry."

He smiled, wan and fake.

"She's not coming back, Lewis."

But it wasn't about that.

A crisis. He had defined himself by that man. That man, that… great, good, handsome god with—with all that he had ever wanted. His crumbled down his spine, tucked his head into his knees and gasped. It was too much to be taken away at once: he would die.

He would die, if a piece this big were sliced away.

"But you disappeared," Lewis sobbed. "You disappeared, when Doris took over."

Wilbur couldn't stomach—couldn't bear—the quiver in Lewis' voice.

"I… guess…" He began in a whisper, then reasoned firmly: "Mom never would've met Dad, if it hadn't been for you. Plus… y'know, with the w-world destroyed the way it was, I… nothing really—"

"But wh-what about the family! What about my family!?"

He had so much to look forward to. Too much.

He wasn't The Father. He wasn't The Husband. He wouldn't marry Franny.

He wouldn't… marry Franny. He wouldn't fall in love with her one miraculous moment, then tumble into love with her day after day and then finally ask it. No rings, no white dress. It wouldn't happen. He didn't have a house full of eighty people and beautiful inventions and—he moaned at the loss, his reason to be. The shining Faberge egg of promise caved inside him. It twisted, yolk boiled black, sticking to his ribs and rotting there. His perfect future was stained and torn.

"We're still there!" Wilbur cried, reaching for him again, somehow.

"Franny—Oh God, Franny—" Lewis moaned into his hands, moments and ill-timed breaths from screaming and crying. His body convulsed, inches from wrenching it out of him like a cancer, or making it kill him before he could think any more on what he'd lost. Franny. Franny, two blocks away and taking piano lessons.

They had a date on Tuesday. She would disappear by then. His parents were next. All of them, anyone he had ever loved, pulled screaming into this hole that Wilbur Robinson created.

Franny. He loved her. He was sure of it.

Hands gripped his shoulders.

"She couldn't wait, Lewis. She would've married you, but she couldn't wait—they had to move on!"

He shook his head. The words were ominous, so ominous to someone who cared, but Lewis couldn't think.

Cornelius Robinson couldn't save him, now. His god was gone.

"What am I to you?" Lewis whispered.

Wilbur looked at Lewis' cold, blank face and something inside him cracked, fingers softening on Lewis' sweater.

"You're Dad's friend," he answered. "He used your family's name for the company because you're partners. And it had more ring to it."

There was something more he wasn't saying. There was something more, but Lewis couldn't take any more. There was no more, when he had so little. Nothing.

Nothing.

He cried, hard and loud and destructive, clawing at his face. His half-screams dipped and struggled and were suddenly absorbed by Wilbur's shirt, who had pulled him forward and wrapped him in his hot olive-skinned arms; who trembled too, crying for the question asked too soon and the friend destroyed in front of him. His neck smelled of some clean new sport scent and he was so, so sorry. Lewis smelled like the same laundry detergent as always. They insulated their pain, feeding it to one another, thrashing and gripping.

Once Lewis fell silent—terrifyingly silent—in Wilbur's arms, time began crawling forward again on that cold tile floor.

"You invented half the stuff. Promise," Wilbur said into his ear, shuddering. "Just… keep going and everything'll be f-fine."

"Keep going?" Lewis repeated blankly, voice thick with tears.

"Keep moving forward," Wilbur said, and smiled—a skeleton of the real thing--into his friend's untidy hair.

Lewis shook his head.

"No. No," he muttered, tensing. Wilbur began to speak, or hold him more tightly, his last line of reasoning dashed by a simple word—but Lewis thrashed. His friend made an anguished noise as Lewis thrust him away, wet hands slapping at Wilbur as a roar pealed out of him, angry and jagged and breathless.

"How long did you think this lie would last?!" He snarled, raw voice cracking. His blue eyes sparked, face red and oily and abused as he crouched, far enough away. Don't touch me. Don't touch me. Wilbur clutched at his stomach, own wet face twisting.

"I told you, I don't know!" He moaned. "I didn't think this up, Lewis, it was Dad!"

Dad. Dad. Lewis. Dad; Cornelius. They were no longer the same person.

A part of him had been wrenched away; his bright future was being bisected before his eyes, and the eviscerated ill-colored stuff of his dreams bled. He made a noise, clutching his head until it hurt more.

Wilbur got up suddenly, long body swinging to face him down, face drawn taught. He pressed a hand against chest, pleading. Still crying.

"You know me! I just went along with it! I didn't think I'd have to deal with it—to deal with you!" He burst out, leveling a finger at him, crumpled on the ground. Then, regret crept in, and weighted his hand down to his side; his eyes slid away, and his mouth softened. He cleared his throat, trying.

"I didn't… I never thought that I wouldn't be able to slip out of your life. Leave it to history. Not be a part of… whenever you found out."

Wilbur's voice broke, and he shook his head viciously.

"But you're my friend, Lewis. My best friend," he swore. "I can't do that do you. Could never."

Lewis watched him cry and crumble and something cold moved behind his eyes. Something that had to do with survival and not Wilbur: because he would have scrambled across the orange tile to grab Wilbur back, because he knew this was not his fault and his love was real. Lewis would have done it, seeing him cry.

The cold moved in, rimming his eyes and making his breath run clean.

"How do you know it's me?"

Wilbur sniffled, smearing at his face. Shook his head slowly.

"Have you ever seen me?" He demanded.

His mind was working furiously now. Searching for cracks. For loopholes. Wilbur didn't want to give him any. Still, he mumbled:

"No."

"Then how do you know it's me?" Lewis pressed, voice rough with urgency.

"I've heard your voice," Wilbur said simply, voice still weak and watery. "I know it's you. It has to be."

And that was it. The cold dusted away, because it had to be. Warm, messy emotional injuries clustered in, bleeding his brain. Wetting his face. An aneurism of the soul. Fatal.

Lewis Robinson curled into a ball on the floor and didn't move.

The lab stood to all four sides and made dull sounds, and the wide sky above stayed blue. Wilbur choked, fingers twining against his throat. Time crawled, unreal and horrific and Lewis felt that time draining the hopeless life from him and somehow wished he could keep it—and then wanted to die faster. He had nothing to look forward to.

Nothing to move forward for.

Then, for reasons neither of them understood, because all things had been said; all things had been explained so there was nothing left to destroy—magic is beautiful and wondrous until you know, then life is meaningless—but… Wilbur began talking.

Weak and fitful, he started explaining.

"The f-future is different than you know, Lewis. Things are… they're normal, at home. S-sometimes. Or everything was fine, until this happened and I met you. Dad is…"

He shook his head. On the verge of saying something that'd been going on for months, as if it mattered now. Some small glitch with him that Lewis wondered about distantly now, from his shell beneath the future's blue sky. There was a disagreement.

Wilbur ran a hand through his hair, smooth cheeks catching a breath before it half-whistled out. He looked down at the floor and said it.

"He keeps telling me to stay in my own time, but I can't. I have to see you. Even if I mess things up, I have to see you."

It made sense, if things made sense anymore.

The painfully harried look on his friend's face the moment he appeared from the time-machine… it seemed like so long ago that day he'd jumped out of it. But that anxious look. It eased instantly, of course, like a well-balanced pulley system lifting his features, all beguiling smile and puffed-up chest… but it was there. It was like the youngest Robinson had been sneaking around, and then arrived into a safe zone. He was breaking the rules, and he knew it. Wilbur wasn't supposed to be here with him. He might upset something.

Suddenly, Wilbur barked and it sounded a little like grey laughter that dragged into a creaking sound.

"And I don't know if this is supposed to happen. I don't," he repeated, shaking his head stiffly. "I don't know if I'm just playing into somebody's hands here, but…"

He looked up intently, absorbing his best friend's face; his mouth hung open slightly, thirsting somehow. He looked for long, long minutes.

Deciding. Explaining. Destroying.

"I don't have many friends, Lewis," he said softly, finally, but it was not an easy kind of softness: his rich voice shook at the edges, and he watched Lewis carefully. Minutely. "And I can't lose you to time."

Something had changed.

It was all so careful—his eyes, his voice--like Lewis would fly away if he didn't breathe right. His olive hands grasped at his sides—once, twice--softly but sharply. The slow mask shifted, and Lewis smelled the flinty desperation on him: in his eyes, in the human crooks of his body. Hungry, scared. He moved back, somehow, finding it difficult to breathe with this new boy in the room, who gazed at him like he was in danger.

Lewis sat up.

"Wilbur, what are you—"

Then, Wilbur—agile, beautiful, boasting Wilbur who wouldn't hurt his pale best friend unless they got in a wrestling match and Lewis' arm bent, oh god, and he apologized for hours and said here, punch me, it'll make you feel better and Lewis tried it once but it only hurt his knuckles and made his cheeks burn furiously—turned and gouged his hand into the front of Lewis' sweater, gripping and smacking and knocking the breath out of him.

Lewis yelled; he reached for Wilbur's face without thinking, fingers crashing into his hot mouth and ears. Wilbur heaved him away and then Lewis' penny loafers were waggling above the tiled floor and he coughed with his back against the wall, Wilbur's fist braced against his sternum.

He called for help, stupidly, like his life mattered anymore. And help: from whom? His parents, who suddenly seemed so far away; his girlfriend with Beethoven's 5th in her pretty ears… all to save him from Wilbur, his dark, gleeful best friend from the blue-sky future. He called again, raw voice echoing in his yellow blue-sky lab. His golden lab, his Faberge egg: cracked. Wilbur's other warm hand almost invaded his mouth, silencing him. Almost drawing blood.

"No, Lewis!" He snapped, but even with fear coloring his eyes Lewis knew that he was in pain. Wilbur struggled to speak, hand trembling on his friend's chest. "I have to do this. I have to, for you and me."

"Why?" Lewis sobbed under his hard fingers, muffled. His white hands clutched his best friend's strong shoulders, squeezing. His feet had nearly stopped kicking; Wilbur flinched at the tremble in his voice and the bleeding resistance. His lifeless legs. "Wilbur, why?"

It was the best question, and the worst: it could never be answered.

"You'll be able to be great anywhere," Wilbur promised him, like the words were a prayer breathed across his face. His dry brown eyes lifted to paralyze Lewis'; they stared, heartbeats staggering, vision blurring behind round glasses. Lewis didn't flinch— he could only soak in the quiet horror of the moment as Wilbur touched his face and his voice withered to a whisper. "And you'll have a family. I promise."

Then a blast of cold air came from his left and the lab swerved and Wilbur's gentle hand prized him from the wall and shoved him, heaved him into someplace smooth where his elbows knocked against metal. He cried out without thinking, shallow pain blossoming down his forearms. Lewis yelled for a second with his eyes closed. In moments, the yell leapt back at him, boxed in. Something clicked. Locked. He thrashed, then lurched forward, stubbing his hands on glass. He opened his eyes.

The flawless sheet of glass gave him a dim ghost image of himself, cutting off at his hands: white, scared, glasses askew. Blue eyes. Blue lights. His experimental freezing chamber. Wilbur had—

"Wilbur!"

He slammed his palms against the door. Wilbur watched him and edged away, hands knotting over his stomach as his best friend struggled against the coffin-like pod.

"Wilbur!" He screamed again, fear—real fear, the sharp black kind that lived where death did—pullulating in his wet warm human gut and gripping his skinny limbs. He didn't know what this thing could do. Fear of this machine filled him, as it could only do to one who knew all of its failings; every possible combination of lethal shortcomings.

He was seventeen, just seventeen. Had never kissed a girl.

He coughed when the gas streamed in; he beat the door, beat it again and again, until cold tar sucked up his bones and he felt dizzy—so dizzy—he couldn't lift his hand to struggle and the metal was so cold on his back--his vest riding up, all so quickly--

Fists driven deep against the horror in his gut, Wilbur dissolved in an anguished howl as the gas hit and Lewis sagged; later, it was the only thing that Bud and Lucille would remember hearing before they rushed into their son's lab and found him dead.

Dead, for all intents and purposes. Dead.

Lewis wilted, trapped in his own creation, blue eyes swimming in the sterile white that spewed from his mouth and nose. He fell. The stands caught him. His fists macerated into helpless white hands, once clever hands. Once a boy with a future. He reached out in the coffin.

Thud.

The last thing Lewis saw was Wilbur, always Wilbur: but not Wilbur laughing or grinning in a warm yellow halo, but pale, distant Wilbur, crushing himself against glass cracking with knife-sharp fingers of ice and crying.

Something came through the glass, muffled and loving and inches from some sort of death. He barely heard it; maybe he didn't.

"It wasn't all a lie."

Dark, flexible, warm Wilbur, a silhouette from a closing door: then paralyzing white.