A/N Yeah, I'm just gonna dump this here. I can officially say this is the first fandom I'm writing a drabble/fic for before I've so much as glanced at anybody else's, which is an achievement, I suppose. Post Undivided. (Oh, and second person perspective because I love toying with that, and first person always sounds too awkward to me.)
Your name is Camus Comprix, and you are watching your brother struggling to stay upright on the cot you are carefully perched on the edge of. A watchful mother hawk. He still needs the IV to even stay awake, but whenever you quietly suggest to him that he rest, he fervently insists he will be okay, that the dark scares him more than the light.
He was created seven months ago, according to the files, but you met him three weeks ago and it is only now he will be given a name.
"You know why I am here, don't you?" You don't use contractions with them- the words are mangled, torn up and smashed together, and it confuses them. His eyes widen, and his mouth opens slightly. A tooth is missing.
"La calavera?" You almost forgot this one had an accent, and a rather feminine one at that. Calavera. Feminine version of skull in Spanish. Sometimes used to mean sugar skull in Mexico. Sugar skulls are a candy, usually used on Day of the Dead. Death. You quickly wind your head around the river of meandering thought, perhaps the fastest in the world to do so. You understand them, having been in their position. You shake your head, and he relaxes a bit.
"No, I am not going to hurt you. I came to ask you if you wanted a name."
"Name?" You nod.
"I said my name is Cam, remember?"
"Ember, fire, light…"
"Sorry, after we're done I will go tell her to turn the heat down. Now, do you want a name?" You ask each of them the same question, and they all react differently. Some are frightened, shaking their head so hard you worry their rewound brains might just start leaking out their 're not even close to whole yet, but you want to dignify them, give them a chance. You let them wait.
Others nod eagerly, then take hours deliberating what feels right. You check their files, their Unwinds- most of them choose a name that was one of their contributors.
Your brother thinks, before slowly nodding.
"All right, you can choose. Any name in the world." He thinks, and you see his lips move rapidly with each name he tries on. An identity for a boy with fifty, seventy-five, a hundred, all melted together, ripped apart and sewed back together.
"Sara, Alex, Alice, Jason, Sara, Andrea, Jason, Sam, Tuck, Sara, Jason…" His thoughts are spilling out loud suddenly, fingers drumming out a slow funeral march on a knee that's a different color from his leg.
"You like Sara and Jason?" He nods.
"Mhm." You couldn't care less if he decides to be a Sara, but you don't want him stuck between two- he needs to decide who he is now, carve out an identity to himself at least. He can always change that later.
"How about you mesh them together?" He smiles at that.
"Yes… Sarson, Jasra, Saren…" He pauses. "Saren…"
"So, you like Saren?" Good name. Creative, and wholly his own.
"Saren." The name is soft in his mouth, precious as any diamond and comforting as silk bedsheets. You smile, and almost feel long-healed scars tug on your skin.
"Saren it is, then." He smiles at you with a child-like innocence, and you wish for a split second you could be brought back to when your internal community was still a mess of emotions and thoughts, if only to retain a speck of that quiet reassurance everything would be all right.