A/N : Chapter Info :
'GILT' - T, Drabble, 448 words. Characters : Haru, Bohman.
Canon Divergence, Episode 58, Bohman Wins. Character analysis, Haru-centric. Spoilers for the entirety of Season 2.
CWs for this chapter: Body horror, Discussion of emotional neglect (Lightning is, regrettably, Lightning.), Self-blame about said emotional neglect.
"He should have noticed earlier; his brother... normally would drop everything if he sounded even a little scared, let alone scared enough to ask for him by name."
/
Haru moves to stand, say something to stop what happens but is too slow; there is a sound like tearing metal and static as Bohman leaps forward, triumphant, in a moment weightless, hair almost still in the dead silence left in the wake of the data storm that had rose in that final clash. The statues start falling apart. This world starts crumbling.
He should have noticed earlier; his brother... normally would drop everything if he sounded even a little scared, let alone scared enough to ask for him by name. That thought rises alongside an unfamiliar feeling.
He thinks it's guilt.
The air bends, warps, arm outstretched towards Playmaker peeling and cracking like a shed skin as a sickly green glow fills the dead air, and the spectral shape of a thousand ascending hands follows.
Playmaker stumbles back, careening off the stone platform, eyes flat and empty even now as the world tears itself to pieces and the Ignis at his wrist yells his name.
His brother's shape, his hand, it falling to pieces, the bright form surrounding him filling in the parts that fall in tatters like the day the Cyberse World-
Haru always wondered if the reason Lightning ended up not caring for him is because he ended up looking too much like his Origin.
Lightning had never said-
...
Lightning had never said it outright, but he had the feeling.
(If it wasn't that, what had he done?)
He never knew if the shape his brother, Generation Three, took, was Lightning's choice, or something Bohman chose, himself, or if the Data Storm itself formed it, based on some combination of all of those things.
(He'd done research, when he was just made, because he thought it would help if he could find things Lightning didn't know.
He found an interesting fact about the statues Lightning liked so much.
He'd told Lightning about it, how they'd been gilt, how they weren't bare stone, and... He doesn't remember.
Why had that been important?)
...
(That's right. He had been furious. Why? )
A shifting figure on the lone form of Paradox Hydradrive in a sea of ash and smoke, observing as the Cyberse met their demise.
A Rorschach test.
His brother, confused as to why he'd 'ever do such a terrible thing' as separate siblings from each other.
His brother, watching the central tower of the Cyberse World fall to pieces. Quiet.
(His brother, tearing himself apart, now, over memories he had given him.)
... That's right. Lightning's Origin had a big brother, too.
(Why was that important, again?)
"It's the older brother's duty to protect the younger one."
Why had he said that?
...
From what?