You said you wanted evolution
The ape was a great big hit
You said you wanted revolution, man
And I say that you're full of shit

-Marilyn Manson "Disposable Teens"

Day 5 at Raven Hill

"Dennis."

A day had passed since Casey's visit, and Barry wouldn't stop looking at Dennis smugly, like he knew all along how this was gonna go down. It was annoying as shit and made Dennis want to strangle the other man.

In a lot of ways the two were similar, and that fact drove Dennis even crazier. It was his job to protect Kevin, to keep him from being hurt. In the event he failed (and he failed so much more often then he could bear), Barry stepped in and consoled their host, to talk him down from whatever dark place his mind was headed. The two of them together were Kevin's last line of defense against complete despair, possibly even suicide, so they took their roles very seriously. Naturally everyone was drawn to the good-natured Barry, making him the de facto leader of the identities, and Dennis low key despised him for it. It must be nice to let others take on the pain so you could live in the light and be loved.

As it was, he did not want to be having this conversation right now. "Whatever you have to say, I don't want to hear it, Barry."

"Please, I heard what ya said to the doctor."

Shifting in his chair, Dennis turned to fully look at the other alter, brow furrowing in annoyance. "Since when have you been able to listen in when I have the light?"

"The closer the others and I are able to get Kevin to the surface, the easier it is for all of us to hear what's going on at any given time." Dennis looked shocked, but Barry shrugged. "What, did you expect us to do nothing while you and Patricia ran our lives into the ground?"

Dennis ran his hand over his scalp, frustrated. "Alright. And what exactly is it you thought you heard me say to Dr. Staple?"

Barry looked at him with so much compassion it made Dennis's stomach knot up. "That you're tired of all the death. You never wanted this to happen."

Hearing the admission come from someone else's mouth made Dennis wince. He thought if he kept repeating Patricia's reassurances to himself, he would find himself soothed. It wasn't working though. If anything, Casey coming to see them made the regret worse, and Dennis had yet to disentangle himself from the various directions he found himself being pulled in. He looked Barry in the eyes. "Do you believe that?"

The question took Barry by surprise. "Why does it matter what I believe? You know what I've thought about this Horde nonsense since day one."

Dennis stood up from his chair and crossed his arms, turning to face the other man. "No, not that. Do you believe that I have regrets?"

Barry studied Dennis carefully, and chose his words even more so. "I think you've only ever had the best intentions, but you lost your way a long time ago. You've been so busy playing a part for Kevin that you forgot you were just as much a person as he is."

The words stung more than if he had been called a despicable monster, but Dennis just worked his jaw and nodded. He had nothing to offer in his own defense.

Not willing to drop the point, Barry probed further. "So why? Why did you do it?"

Dennis just shrugged. Again, he had no defense, not one he actually believed in anymore. He just had platitudes. "You've seen the Beast. You know how strong he is, he can keep us safe."

Barry quirked an eyebrow. "I thought that was your job."

There was an instant change in atmosphere. The whole of Kevin's consciousness flooded with rage, so much so it was suffocating, and Barry was terrified the Beast was about to emerge. Instead, he watched Dennis stare him down with burning eyes, a snarl warping his face. "That IS my job; it's been my job for 29 years! Did it ever occur to you, or the others, that maybe it was getting to be too much for me? That maybe I needed some HELP?"

The realization that he never had made Barry flush with shame. When he replied, it was in a small voice. "You're so private with your thoughts; you don't let any of us in when you have the light. How could we have known it was bothering you when you never say anything?"

A groan escaped Dennis without his meaning to. "Don't you get it? I don't let you see because I don't want you to see, if it's too much for me, how will any of you all fare?" He fell back into his chair, anger quickly spent. "But the Beast, he can handle it. He can take the memories from me and let me rest. He can be everything Kevin needs him to be. Everything WE need him to be," he added quietly.

Barry almost hit him. "Are you listening to yourself? You're nuts. What can the Beast give us that we actually want? What has that rampaging idiot cost us?" He began to count off of his fingers like he was reciting a simple grocery list, and Dennis squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. "I'll tell you: our job, our freedom, our sole friend in Dr. Fletcher, and that's only the beginning! The blood spilled under the Horde's watch is never going away. We have to live with this for the rest of our lives, and I know for a fact now that you hate it just as much as I do."

Dennis didn't respond, so Barry walked up to him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Would it help if you shared some of your memories with me? You shouldn't have to be the only one to carry it all."

Ah, there it was, Barry to the rescue, Barry the hero. Dennis lurched away angrily, startling him. "You don't know what you're asking," Dennis mumbled, refusing to look at the younger man.

Barry gave a humorless laugh. "You're right, I have absolutely zero idea. But I'm asking anyway."

Exhaling, Dennis's shoulders sagged. There was no denying the request, not anymore. As much as it made him feel like a failure, the offer of help was too appealing, and he was weak and only getting weaker."Fine. Come with me into the light. I'll show you there."

Both men surfaced cautiously to the forefront of Kevin's consciousness, and Barry suppressed a grin as they got closer to the light and heard Hedwig doing his very best Nicki Minaj impersonation. "I'm a motherfucking monster!" he yelled, pretending to crawl on the walls around their room.

"Hey monster, I'm coming up," Dennis called out. "I'm bringing Barry with me, so let him through."

The order gave Hedwig pause. "But Miss Patricia said that if I let Mr. Barry into the light-"

Dennis cut him off. "Kid, Barry and I have to talk about something really important. Something Beast related, ok? So do me a favor and keep all the others away from us, this is private."

Hedwig gasped with excitement at the idea of secrets, and Dennis, realizing his mistake, closed his eyes in frustration while Barry groaned.

"Oh secret meetings! Can I stay too Mr. Dennis? I've gotten really good at keeping secrets!" Hedwig was practically bouncing on the bed in excitement.

"Nah Hedwig, this is grownup talk," Barry interjected gently, trying to get ahead of what was sure to be a tantrum.

"But..but…that's not fair, I'm NEVER going to be a grownup! When do I get to have grownup talks?"

"Hedwig-"

"Let me stay and I'll tell you what our super hero alter ego name is!" he begged, offering the only bargaining chip he thought he held.

Unfortunately for Hedwig, the thought of another alter made Barry burst out laughing. "Isn't 24 identities enough for us?" he snickered.

He didn't mean to be cruel, but Hedwig took it as mockery and started to cry. "This is why I never let you in the light, Mr. Barry! I'm so sick of everyone making fun of me!"

If Dennis were in a more lighthearted mood, he would have felt pleasure at the fact that Mr. Social Butterfly had just put his foot into their collective mouth, but the gravity of what he was about to do was weighing heavy, and Hedwig's crying was upsetting. "Hedwig. If you've ever trusted me even a little bit, you'll listen to me right now." His voice was so uncharacteristically tender that the boy immediately stopped crying. "I have to tell Barry about Kevin's mom, alright? You don't want to hear about that, do you?"

The mention of Mrs. Crumb made Hedwig curl in on himself, clutching his knees to his chest. "No, I don't like that lady. She's meaner than the Joker and Thanos combined, etcetera."

Dennis nodded sagely. "I know. That's why I need you to go deep into Kevin, and keep everyone else away from the light, alright? Even Miss Patricia. You have to help me keep them safe; you're the only one that is strong enough. Please."

For a moment Hedwig looked from Barry to Dennis and back again, as though trying to decide if they were telling him the truth. Then a grin broke out on his face. "Yeah, I can do that!" Pleased with his new role as a co-conspirator with the adults, Hedwig happily allowed the two older alters to take the light.

Blinking into consciousness, the pair could see that in between his playing pretend and singing, Hedwig had been drawing gory comic book scenes with colored pencils that the hospital staff had provided for him.

Ever the artist, Barry gingerly picked them up for inspection. "Ok, this is disturbing, but you've gotta admit he's got some of my talent," he announced proudly, pointing to rather well drawn scene of the Beast decapitating what he assumed was the Overseer, cloaked head falling to the ground.

Dennis grunted. "Yeah great, Patricia and I turned the kid into a psychopath, and they're never going to let us out of here." He sighed impatiently, "Can we just get this over with?"

"Good lord, are you ever not miserable? I'm doing this to help you, why are ya so tight?" Barry rolled his eyes.

"Because, and I want you to understand this before I show you," Dennis paused to make sure he had Barry's full attention. "This is going to be really unpleasant, and there's nothing I can do to stop that. But I wish I could, more than anything. I need you to believe that."

The gravity of what Dennis said pressed down on the younger alter, but he put on a brave face. "It's going to be ok, Dennis. Let me see. Please."

Resigning himself to his next action, Dennis integrated himself fully into the light and sat crossed legged on their bed, back resting against the wall. He took a few deep breaths and crossed his arms in an unconscious attempt to shield them both from what was about to happen. "You ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be."

Trying to relax and yet keep a pin on Barry wasn't easy, and it took Dennis a few minutes to calm down enough to access the parts of himself that he had long ago tried to bury.

Images began to flash out from his subconscious, and he tried to ride them out until he realized, to his horror, that something was wrong. More and more memories were coming through and he couldn't control them. He fought in vain to stem the tide, but it wouldn't stop. There were too many cracks in his wall, and it was coming crashing down on them both. Panicking, he grit his teeth down to the point he heard a crack, but the pain in his mouth was nothing compared to the scenes that were assaulting them both.

Barry wasn't faring much better. He was prepared to see some awful things, but what he witnessed went beyond that. As Dennis sunk them both deeper and deeper into his memories, the tide of darkness that surrounded them become denser and crueler, until it was no longer just darkness but filth that threatened to sweep them away.

Trying to get a foothold amidst the deluge of misery and pain that battered him, Barry steeled himself against the suffering that was inside them all, the suffering the others couldn't even begin to comprehend. The memories were so horrible, so wrong, that even Dennis, their great defender, could only hold onto fragments as they flashed through Barry's mind:

Being forced to lick up blood, then the resulting mess of vomit

Swollen eyes, sclera the color of red and yellow

Trying frantically to remove a knife pinned into soft flesh

Skin sloughing off from third degree burns

Being used up in a way no teenage boy should be used by his mother

Suddenly, Barry was aware of the light, and it was the most beautiful sensation ever; he could breathe again. He noticed offhand that there was the taste of vomit between his teeth and a sharp pain from where Dennis had cracked a tooth, but he still could have cried with joy.

When he was finally back in control of his senses, he looked around to see they were kneeling on the ground, Dennis desperately trying to clean up vomit with some of Headwig's drawing paper. They had gone through Hell together, and Dennis was more fazed by the mess on the floor then his memories. Barry had puked all over the poor OCD addled man, and it wasn't even his experiences he was reliving. "Dennis!" he gasped, and he could feel the other man cringe.

"Barry, I am so sorry, that got completely out of my control, I didn't mean for that to happen."

"Oh honey, don't you worry about that. I had no idea…I…." he trailed off, the horror of the situation dawning on him. Dennis had taken all that evil onto himself for years, living through it, trying to make sense of the senseless, and how had they all thanked him? They ostracized him, shunned him, afraid his brokenness would make life inconvenient or messy. No wonder he was desperate enough to let a Beast take over, it would have driven Barry to madness years ago. "I didn't know it was that bad, none of us did, I swear!"

He could feel Dennis smile grimly. "That just means I did my job."

"No, it's not…" he was having trouble even putting a sentence together, everything was so overwhelming. "That will never, ever be ok. I'm sorry Dennis, I can't even begin to put into words how sorry I am. I knew she hurt us real bad, she must have, right? But I had so very few memories of her.. and now.." he shuddered, the images of anguish flaring up again. "I'm going to have trouble sleeping for a long, long time. Dennis, how did you hold us together for so long?"

Dennis swallowed hard, the lump in their throat painfully stuck, and he looked at Barry with eyes full of unshed tears. "You don't think I'm disgusting? What I did?"

The thought that Dennis felt responsible for even the smallest part of the abuse they suffered made Barry see red. "Don't you ever say that again! Anything you did, you did to survive, you did it to keep us alive. You're not disgusting, babyboy, she was."

Dennis shuddered; something breaking open in him that he wasn't even aware existed. Acceptance from the most beloved alter meant more to him than he was ever capable of admitting to himself. In the past they had rarely seen eye to eye, and he never realized up until that point that he held so much respect for Barry.

His relief was short lived, though. "I'm also the one that fucked up our lives beyond salvaging." He sat back down on their bed dejectedly, grinding his palms into his eyebrows. He felt like shit.

Barry wasn't sure how to respond. It was true that he didn't see an easy way out of their situation, but he was also sure that it wasn't the time or the place to worry about that. Lord knew they had plenty of free time to contemplate at Raven Hill. Instead, he just gently started to help Dennis get back on his feet, murmuring for him to sleep, to recuperate.

"You let me worry about our fucked up life for a while," he smiled ruefully. "I meant what I said. If we're going to fix this, we have to work together from now on. I'll hold the light, maybe try and puzzle out some ideas with Orwell. Just…." He paused, and Dennis looked at him before fully giving up the light. "Just…promise me, are ya done with the Horde? With the Beast?"

The silence before Barry got a response seemed to stretch on for eternity, and their shared heartbeat could be heard pounding in his ears.

Dennis realized his time was up and he had to make a choice. Weak from exhaustion, tired of being used, he nonetheless gathered himself to make his voice a roar, one that all of the System could hear. "Not one more person dies on my watch!" he swore. "You hear me, Patricia?! It's over, no more!"

Patricia didn't answer, she didn't have to. In the far recesses of Kevin, furious thunder answered him back, the Beast screaming in rage at the betrayal.

"Oh shit," Barry breathed out, eyes widening at the challenge that was issued.

Dennis didn't have the inclination or the energy to get into a confrontation at the moment, so he headed for the darkness, away from the light.

"Mr. Dennis?"

Barry and Dennis started, and turned to see Hedwig cowering behind them.

"What is it Hedwig?" Dennis felt like he was about to fall over from fatigue, but he adored the boy, and wasn't going to leave without making sure he was alright.

Hedwig moved cautiously to Dennis and reached for his hand with his own trembling ones. "What did you and Mr. Barry talk about?" he whispered in a strangled voice. "Why are you mad at the Beast?"

"I…" Dennis pinched the bridge of his nose, not sure how to explain his change of heart to Hedwig. He looked to Barry, but Barry just shrugged his shoulders helplessly. It's not like Hedwig listened to him, anyway. So Dennis tried again. "What the Beast is asking us to do, it's too much. We're hurting too many people."

The explanation made no sense to Hedwig. "I thought they were food."

"No, they are not food. Miss Patricia and I were wrong, and we told ourselves lies so that we would feel better about what we were doing. But people aren't food, Hedwig. The Beast doesn't get to kill them just because he says so."

"So why were you helping him?"

Dennis sighed. It was just like a child to ask questions when you needed them to shut up and listen. His confusion was understandable though. "I was weak. I wasn't strong like you all needed me to be. I was…selfish."

The admission made Hedwig furrow his brows, just like he always saw Dennis do. "Did you change your mind 'cause of Casey?"

"Well," Dennis glanced at Barry, hoping he didn't notice the color rising in his cheeks. "Casey…has helped give some clarity to my thoughts, yes."

Before he could elaborate further, they heard the Beast roar again, this time closer. Dennis moved to take the light fully, to protect Barry and the others in case the Horde was making a move, but Barry would have none of it. "It's my turn to be strong for Kevin," he reassured, despite the doubt he was feeling. "Besides, if we're going to beat the Horde, we need you well rested."

It was all true, but Dennis didn't like the situation one bit. "Fine. But if Patricia tries something…"

Barry snorted. "Patricia can't do anything without Hedwig. Isn't that right, doll?"

With the look Hedwig shot Barry, it was clear that he didn't trust him.

Dennis knelt down so he could be eye level with the boy. "It's not fair for us to have to ask you this, but your power is so special that it can't be helped." Hedwig's eyes widened and his expression of awe was almost enough to make Dennis smile, but he kept his expression steady so Hedwig would understand the gravity of the situation. "I need you to be strong and use that power to keep Patricia out of the light until I figure out how to fix this mess we made, alright?"

Eyes filling with tears, Hedwig was devastated. "I hafta fight Miss Patricia?"

"Just until we get her to understand we can't use our powers to hurt anymore. She's stubborn as hell, but smart. She'll come around, kid."

Hedwig remained uncharacteristically quiet, obviously unconvinced. Dennis had to pull out the big guns. "If you help me and Barry, I bet Casey would come back to visit us. Would you like to see Casey again?"

Eyes lighting up, Hedwig started jumping around in excitement. "Casey! And when she comes back we can draw together, and watch some movies, and play games, etcetera…" he trailed off, elation clearly overwhelming his faculties and Dennis felt a stab of grief. He didn't know how to tell the boy that there probably wouldn't be movies and games for a long, long time. Not unless…

He shook the thoughts from his mind, not even daring to entertain hope. He was sore and tired and it would do no one any good to make plans while half asleep.

Barry noticed and smiled. "For god's sake, get some rest. We'll talk more when you're feeling better, alright? Hedwig and me, we got this." He winked at the child, and Hedwig burst into a grin.

"Yeah! Mr. Barry and I are gonna hold onto the light until you get back, don't worry Mr. Dennis!"