Plink.
Plink.
The faucet in the sink is dripping and Billy uses the sound to ground himself against the way his head is rushing. Max is behind him, hand stretched out hesitantly as she steps ever closer.
"Billy?" She asks quietly, like she's approaching a feral animal.
He's not stupid, he knows what he looks like; hands clenched over porcelain, hard enough that his knuckles go white, the line of his shoulders stiff and the set of his jaw clenched with enough force that a single shift will crack his teeth. He knows what he looks like but Billy can't bring himself to care.
"Billy? You- You need to breathe," She stutters out, like she's not sure what to do. (Billy doesn't know how to tell her that there's nothing she can do.)
He's pretty sure he's breathing but the way his lungs are burning suggest otherwise. He takes in a deep breath anyway and the burning doesn't fade. Fuck. So that's what it is huh. He thinks bitterly. It's been a while since it got this bad honestly, he'd actually forgotten what it felt like (he'd forgotten it even existed).
"Billy?"
Billy takes in another deep breath to appease her (to reassure her) before purposefully relaxing his posture.
"I'm fine Max," He croaks out and he hates the way his throat gets scratchy when he's upset.
"You don't sound fine," She comments quietly, still tip-toeing around him with her words and Billy hates it.
"Drop it Max," He scowls and Max glares right back, finally convinced that there's nothing she can say to make him talk.
He's back in his room. Leant back on his chair, spinning a pencil between his fingers, staring intently at the open notebook before him.
Billy knows all their… powers, stem from their minds, they don't have external physical augments, it's all in the makeup of their brains. His power though, is never something he considered to be a 'mental ability'. He can't talk into people's heads like 004, he can't read people's emotions, their fears, their pasts like- like- (he can't finish the thought. Even after a decade it still hurts. It still fucking hurts.) The point is, Billy can't do things like the others, they always thought he was the weakest and they were right. His specialty isn't people's heads but even he can recognise a mental connection. Lying quietly at the back of his mind; it's weak and barely does anything and Billy didn't even notice it until he was passed out in the hallway of his school with a seizure from the backlash of whatever the person on the other end had done.
Billy can't believe he forgot, he doesn't know how he could let himself forget it. After it happened, the anguish that broke through from the other end drove him to his knees, simply from remembering it in the following days. He must've forced himself to ignore it so he had time to process it all. Now, years later, Billy can't remember the exact feeling that he experienced (for the better he figures) but he's got a series of old, hastily scribbled words in the notebook open in his desk, written one after the other with a desperation to get it out before it consumed him.
Billy goes over the words he wrote, running his eyes over the lines, over and over until he forms a picture, stirring old memories until he figures out what it all means. Whomever was on the other side- the person he had unknowingly made a connection with... they'd tried to kill themselves.
It was someone from the Lab. There's no possible way it could be anyone else.
He doesn't know how many are still alive, how many managed to escape like him (he doesn't know how many more kids came after he left). Billy hopes through everything that it's not him on the other side. If it is, Billy can't decide if he actually hopes they succeed one day, free from living another day trapped in hell. But... if they got out, if they're finally free like he is, Billy hopes that he gets help, that's he's not alone, that he gets better and that it never ever happens again.
God Billy hopes it's not him.
It's been years since something bled through, there was a time when small pulses of negative feelings would slip through, small enough to not unbalance him but big enough that he's aware of it. So what happened this time? What caused them to go over the edge? They didn't try again this time, he knows because it didn't send him to the ground but it was still bad enough to bleed through the link. Even Billy, through all the shit he's been through and all the shit he's felt, hasn't fallen that far that he feels like he's got nothing left.
Fuck he hopes who ever it is, is free.
It makes him feel sick with the thought of how many of the others might of tried to kill themselves too (if 001's death really was an accident when they pushed past the limits of their power until their brain haemorrhaged, if 003's sudden flood of energy into the building's system was simply a last attempt ditch to get them all out or her loss of will to try and escape with them.) He knows that no one gets out of the place without issues and it just feels like those bastards are winning. He got out- others might have gotten out, but they'll never be able to get over the things they did to them- the way they twisted, pocked and prodded until they just broke.
"They're going to take him away."
There's a voice in his head and William knows 004 must be in a lot of pain to reach him through eight walls.
Take who? He thinks back.
"Five, they're taking him to another facility, I heard them."
For how long? William asks urgently.
"Forever," Comes the reply but 004's voice is growing fainter as he struggles to keep the connection, "I'm sorry, I can't stop them."
Forever.
They took him forever and Billy couldn't stop them.
He's always been to weak to stop them.