AUTHOR'S NOTE
I really need to restructure these chapters or combine the first four to go in one part or something so this one doesn't just stick out as a huge mass of story overload from nowhere…at some point. And proofread, all the way through, I should do that.
This chapter has some content warnings, including a character experiencing a PTSD-related triggering experience.
It's a few days before Lucas is able to ask.
They have to hike their way back to Tazmily across fresh, newly forested terrain over the islands that's easy to see around in despite the easing darkness not yet giving way to anything like the dawn of a morning sun. The villagers are collectively trusting more than knowing for certain their old home will be there in some form or another when they get there. Though at least Claus voices (and Lucas suspects) that Tazmily will be its old self, same as it was before the Pigmasks arrived.
The unknown boy Lucas found in the crater that remained of the last Needle still isn't able to walk or even stand on his own. The boy hasn't so much as opened his eyes again since his initial bewildering exchange with Lucas, who had to carry him back alongside Claus to the others that were waiting for them if puzzled that they'd returned with a stranger instead of news of the Dark Dragon.
There are signs the boy is awake as they make their way to Tazmily. He doesn't speak and rarely opens his eyes but Hinawa can usually get him to drink some water at least if he's propped upright when they stop as a group to rest or set up camp. Flint carries the boy on his back without complaint for most of journey—it's obvious that conscious or not, the boy is too weak to stand, let alone walk. Lucas is grateful to his father for doing it without being asked. He and Claus have heated discussions about what the boy's presence means or who he could be but it's all speculation going nowhere and is really little more than an excuse to hear each other's voices, if either of them would admit it to themselves.
Tazmily is indeed waiting for them some four days later when they finish the walk there. "They" being all the village's former citizens now sticking as closely together in spirit as once they'd been, along with a fair few newly homeless denizens of New Pork tagging along as refugees. Not all the buildings are whole or complete as they once were. But the foundation of the town is back to its old self and the houses that are intact are made of the old, rustic interiors and simple furnishings that once defined Tazmily and the Happy Boxes are gone.
There's enough room to at least put a roof over everyone's heads, not that it's necessary. The villagers are weary from travel but not so far removed from their memories of the old way of life that camping out is in any way new or dangerous in the now-heavily forested areas permeating the land where the village resides. They've discovered along the way home to everyone's relief that the repopulated animals are as friendly and talkative now as they once were. What's far more a surprise is how any remaining animal chimeras act no differently when the humans encounter them; the hybrids that endured the apocalypse are living happily side by side with their wild neighbors with perfect politeness. Without Porky's influence it seems they have no reason to be aggressive, and so the villagers and the non-villagers accept the new order in stride and enter the forest without fear for the materials Tazmily will need to rebuild.
All this gets filed away somewhere in Lucas's brain where useful information goes when he needs to call on it, though all he can really think about after getting home is being home with his family since it turns out that Flint and Hinawa's house among all the others is a perfect reconstruction of how it once was. Lucas supposes (with less guilt than exhaustion, admittedly) that this was probably his doing somehow, even if he has no idea exactly how or why things happened the way they have since the Needle was pulled. The rest of Tazmily ushers his family in to their familiar home on the outskirts of the village to enjoy the house in its wholeness and tell them to rest instead of allowing them to participate in rebuilding or helping the new members of the town find homes.
Flint and Hinawa exchange glances and take stock of their children—plus the mystery black-haired boy, who blinks sleepily at the new surroundings for a moment before returning his attention as usual to Lucas from over Flint's shoulder—and then the couple tiredly acquiesce.
The doorknob is missing from their front door, they realize collectively as they approach the house that's otherwise identical to how the four of them last remember it.
But then, they suppose, just leaving it be that way and letting the door stand open feels symbolically like a good omen.
The boy is ushered in to living in their home with them for now, and he probably will be for a while. None of the family have really discussed yet the long-term implications of what that could mean. It's enough trying to settle back into a house they can't believe feels more real and solid and true to 'back then' than they'd even obsessed over at the lowest pits of nostalgia.
Lucas is nervous. He feels responsible for the boy and uncertain; the Magypsies never told him anything like this related to the Needles and he hasn't spoken yet to any of their lingering spirits in his dreams. A suspicion lingers that perhaps they don't know what is happening either, and so are deliberately avoiding him.
Claus is nervous too. But all the more so he's curious. Oddly it seems he's excited to unravel a mystery surrounding someone new and unknown. This black-haired boy in their house is not only a mystery but one tied most auspiciously to Lucas's role in this new world; by proxy, all the unknowns surrounding him are focused well away from Claus himself. It's a welcome distraction to the older twin to re-explore something as simple as human curiosity again without the need to touch on any of his own memories he isn't ready yet to unpack.
(Regarding the boy, Flint is curious, but reserved in his judgement. Or maybe he merely trusts Lucas's more than his own. Either way he'd more or less volunteered them all to welcome the odd extra child into their family's care the moment Claus and Lucas had returned from the crater, and the latter had been valiantly struggling to carry the black-haired stranger not much shorter than himself with his very tired shoulders.)
(Hinawa in her way bothered not even to ask questions. She accepted the new addition her younger son had brought to them without so much as a raised eyebrow. She lets Flint do the heavy lifting during the trek back to Tazmily, when the unknown boy still can't walk, and takes the remaining portion of the boy's care under her umbrella in stride. That part of her hasn't changed, though there is a new mindfulness they all notice for her never to let Claus in particular out of her sight, no matter what or how short the task at hand. At least, not without his brother or father accompanying him. Lucas doesn't mind this; he's all but bending over backward to keep both his brother and the odd unexplained boy in his sights at all times. Claus doesn't seem to know how to feel about the new status quo of their treatment of him. He hardly knows how to identify the feelings he does have half the time as it stands, now that they're returned to him on the inside of his human self like the metal parts that got restored to flesh and bone.)
"Ah…hey, how are you feeling?"
The boy looks over at Lucas, expression a bit startled. It's not a moment before he schools it back to a careful blank, though the mask has cracks.
He's sitting up on his own now, after half a day resting at Lucas's family home where they'd set the boy up on one of the twins' beds as a temporary measure while they settled themselves once more in the rest of the house instead. By the time Lucas has gone to check on him the boy seems the most lucid he's been since they met, which is a welcome if nerve-wracking change.
It's taken so long for the boy to reach a point where one of them doesn't have to carry or at least support him if he wants to move the slightest bit, any at all. Not that he's terribly vocal about anything he wants, beyond what they can guess that he seems to agree to. Lucas is nervous about any reasons he can theorize for where that much intense weakness could be coming from.
"…"
The boy breathes in and out for a few long moments with his eyes averted. Lucas bites his lip. He doesn't think the boy is actually going to answer.
Eventually, the boy surprises him and does. His voice is so quiet that Lucas (and Claus, hovering without bothering subtlety behind him) have to strain to hear it.
"I'm doing well," the boy whispers, fingers bunched anxiously in the sheets of the bed. His eyes flicker up to Lucas's a moment and then just as quickly away. "…Better, I mean. Thank you."
The boy looks pretty nervous. Maybe even scared. It's the first time he's spoken that Lucas has heard since Lucas found him in that crater.
Lucas remembers with a churning in his stomach what the boy had called him then. He's not—he isn't Porky.
He really wants to say that aloud. And there's so much he wants to ask. But Lucas's shyness or self-doubt is suddenly locking his tongue so he can't say anything. The boy isn't saying anything, either, and seems to be holding his breath for Lucas to talk which makes the problem worse. Maybe he expects Lucas to make some demand of him or start questioning and wants to avoid it. Maybe the boy just isn't good at talking in general. Lucas isn't exactly the picture of extroversion himself. He understands that feeling very well.
If it weren't for Claus, they probably would never get anywhere at all…
"So, spill it. Just what are you, anyway?" Claus finally demands of the boy after nearly a full minute of silence among the three of them.
…which may not be a good thing.
Lucas cringes at his brother's embarrassing directness. He exclaims loudly, "Claus!"
"What? You're dying to know, too, aren't you?" Claus says impatiently.
The black-haired boy glances between the two of them, looking mystified, dark eyes wide with anxious confusion growing more obvious with every second. "Um," he says with some alarm. "Excuse me?"
Claus turns away from Lucas and back to the boy on the bed. Claus folds his arms, the picture of the analyzing detective, and fixes the black-haired boy with an appraising look.
"Well, Lucas says you appeared when the last Needle—I mean, he said you were right there in the same place after," Claus says, impulsive nature sparing him the effort of having to actually think before he changes his words on instinct to avoid the wrong ones. A tongue that moves faster than his brain isn't usually one of Claus's positive points, but it's undeniably a handy coping tool for maneuvering carefully around those phrasings now that might stick on recent memories he's prepared to touch on as a landmine. "When we went back to the spot, and Lucas went to go look, he says you were already there at the center. And looking like you'd just been asleep right before that too!"
The boy looks more nervous and more confused the longer Claus speaks. There's a quick glance in Lucas's direction—whether a plea for help, or trying to ask some permission, Lucas isn't quick enough on the uptake to figure out. Let alone speak up on the boy's behalf, when Lucas can't even find a proper moment in all this to pipe up (his old timidity rearing its head) to tell Claus to knock it off.
The boy is on his own and so finally, hesitantly he answers. "Well—yes?" A beat, and then he elaborates, clearly not sure in the least what Claus is expecting to hear. "That's all true, I guess. If…you know, he told you that, then he wasn't lying."
"No, duh. 'Course he wasn't!" Claus snaps, not angry per se but simply impatient (as always, how he is). Hasty. He hasn't had the time to consider over what it takes to change, yet, not really. "That's not what I meant."
"Claus," Lucas interrupts softly.
Claus stops, looked at his twin. Lucas gives him a look in return that he hopes conveys That's enough, let me try now, please, and then Lucas turns again to smile weakly at the boy frozen on the bed. Lucas clears his throat.
"What he means is…w-well, we went back to the place the Needle was because we were going to meet the Dark Dragon," he starts, hoping more than anything he can tell the story properly in case the boy has never heard of it and thinks Lucas is crazy. "The dragon that's, you know, supposed to have been sleeping beneath the Nowhere Islands all this time. And the world did reset and even those people have come back to life, so…" Lucas stammers on, feeling too silly and anxious over what he's saying to meet the boy's eyes in case he's about to be ridiculed.
"…S-So I guess my point is, and I know it probably sounds a little weird, but…since I found you there in the same place, and there's no way anyone else could have gotten there so fast, and you were waking up right when all that stuff was happening to the world after I pulled out the last Needle and you already knew about that, I mean, the Needles and, um, all that stuff—"
Why, why doesn't somebody interrupt and please make him stop talking already? Hasn't Lucas already embarrassed himself enough!?
"—I-I guess we're both just wondering if, uh, if you're actually…the dragon?" Lucas knows by now his face has to be brighter and redder than Kumatora's hair, the question sounds so stupid when said aloud. "Um. Are you? The dragon?"
The embarrassment flees when without warning there's a loud slam of a body hitting the wall and a lurching motion in Lucas's peripheral vision. This, and a shout from Claus wrench Lucas's gaze back to the bed in shock, already in instinct yelping out too.
The black-haired boy out of nowhere has violently flung himself backward against the headboard of the bed so his back connects against the hardwood with bruising force. He's also knocked his head hard against the wall behind it before he could stop himself. The loud crack of the impact on his skull sends a quick, sympathetic pang of nausea through Lucas, whose heart is already racing. He rushes a step behind Claus to the bed to try and help.
Against the headboard, the black-haired boy has his head bowed and is making wheezing noises through his mouth like he's suffocating. This somehow, after days of barely being able to lift his head—he's gotten the strength in all of a moment of panic for whatever reason to curl his body tightly in on itself with his knees pulled up against his chest and hands clamped firmly over his ears, eyes scrunched shut. He's paler than even his normal pallid color, like a ghost. Lucas sees that while the boy's mouth works to gasp raggedly without success, desperate pulls for air the only sound he can make, there are also words forming unsaid on his lips between wheezes. It's all happening so fast that Lucas can't even try to interpret.
Neither Lucas nor Claus are able to do anything to help. They get no response when they try and grab at the boy's shoulders to get his attention or ask him what's wrong, only met with the same choking gasps that sound worse with every breath. Both twins nearly trip over each another in their haste to bolt from the room, screaming for Hinawa, their voices echoing against each other in a terrified litany of hurry, please, hurry, quickly, help.
With the twins gone, the boy on the bed is left to his own devices, engaged fully in spirit despite his helpless appearance in a fierce, active battle of willpower in his own mind.
For once and likely only once, the onset of an asthma attack may be more of a help than a hindrance in this fight. The necessity of controlling his breathing second by second without any chance at distraction keeps the boy very well tethered to the present, struggling to get air through inflamed passages that had sealed on him in all of an instant from a shock of post-traumatic stress.
He will not dwell on the memories of what happened. This isn't even the same world. He has a job, now, he has a better life to potentially give the people here if that's what the boy called Lucas decides he wants.
Breathe in—no no in breathe in breathe in, in, please—yes, yes, oh yes, breathe, breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe…in. Out. In—no, a cough, before he can stop it, but the boy manages to keep it from continuing long enough to knock the wind out of him he'd just gotten back. The seconds tick by like hours. The boy thinks of car fumes, devil trucks with mad faces and exhaust pipes, and manages another inhalation to prove that some demons don't have power over him anymore. He manages to get a good breath in and manages a very weak but triumphant inward smile at the air being pure and cleaner than he could have hoped for in a past lifetime.
He is not thinking about manila envelopes with printed labels.
He is not thinking about aborted phone calls, of men in black clothes and white vans.
He is not thinking about interrogations in white rooms from adults with no kindness in their thoughts that won't call him by his real name and never refer to him by it in conversations with one another, won't even let him say it aloud for himself because they're recording his words and if anyone were to find the tapes later in five or ten, maybe fifteen years, they can't be allowed to know who he was. The can't let any records survive that he, and his friends, his family, were real people with names instead of subjects under surveillance and detained because of intelligence and national security and whatever else makes them do things like keep him in locked rooms and give him shots and strange drugs and insist that the codename they gave him is what he's called forever now.
SUBJECT: DRAGON
SUBJECT ID "DRAGON"
SUBJECT '8X-01, CODENAME 'DRAGON'
…And so on.
He doesn't think about that.
The boy breathes and breathes, and thinks of nothing else but air. He manages to calm himself that way until the twins and their achingly kind mother return bearing hot tea and medicine. The boy inwardly thanks their actions with fervent, grateful words he's got no strength left to say and prays that even as a single unit away from them the boy Lucas (who had pulled the final Needle from the island's tail) will also still be as kind as the broken, battered heart in him wants to be.
Because the twin called Claus was a little intimidating, but it was the question Lucas had asked that had terrified him above all else. Ninten could survive, he thinks, not being allowed "Ninten" again, if that's what Lucas really wants…
But it will be hard to muster up the willpower from somewhere to make the world how Lucas wants it, if Ninten has to be called by an evil monster (one from the fairy tale he loved so much, so desperately) again.