Chapter 4: Winter Used to be Warm
(Author's Note: Content warning for dark themes and character death in a flashback.)
Minutes passed before Grandpa finally let go of the Egg of Light and opened his eyes.
"I'm sorry, Himari, it shouldn't have been like this..." That was Grandma's name, so it was no wonder Grandpa was saying it while in tears once his memory came back.
He and Lucas gave Grandpa a hug from each side. They gave him as long as he needed to process it all. Eventually, he managed to regain his composure and wipe his tears.
"It was awful just like Leder said, I don't even know where to start...but I've gone through all this before, so this ain't the first time I'm processing it, I'll manage." Grandpa said.
"You don't have to tell us anything if you don't want to." Lucas said.
"No, it's alright...let me start at the beginning. I was born in the twenties, and things were bad enough already back then. I had a hard time believing my own grandpa when he told me there never used to be a 'fire season', just autumn."
"What's a fire season?"
For a moment he was gobsmacked.
"Right, you wouldn't know...it's incredible how the Dragon's power keeps the climate normal on these islands. It was a shock for all of us when we first got here, before we used the Egg and forgot we weren't used to it. Like we'd sailed outta hell and straight into paradise."
For the next few minutes, Grandpa struggled to explain how different the climate already was compared to Nowhere in his youth and how it only became even more dire as he aged. Winter used to be far too warm compared to what it was supposed to be.
"Your grandma and I weren't sure whether it was right to bring a child into the world when even folks from our generation already felt like we had no future. But I'm glad we did."
If even Grandpa felt like he had no future as a kid, then what did that say about all the adults in the village?
"What was Mom like when she was young?" Claus said.
"Our little girl was incredible, she was our ball of sunshine just like you two were to her...she was so kind, and brave, and funny, and clever, too..."
Grandpa went on explaining his life and how he'd raised Mom. He'd taught her her playful humor while it was Grandma who came up with her name. She was a Japanese-Eaglelander, and what was Japan, they might ask? A country on an island chain actually not all that far west of Nowhere.
"The only reason no one ever found Nowhere is because these islands are magical: they don't show up on normal radar, and people don't even see 'em normally...we could only find it because we had the Egg of Light, and that let us see through the illusion. But it used to be called the Sound Stone."
"You mean the thing from the movie?!" He and Lucas both said.
"What movie?"
Right, he hadn't seen it. They tried to explain what they'd learned of Porky's past, even though it was from the very biased source of Porky himself. Some of it could've been lies, but Porky didn't have a reason to lie about the Sound Stone, did he? It was supposedly a magical stone Ness received from a time traveling alien named Buzz Buzz that absorbed the melodies and power of each of eight sanctuaries around the world and give them to Ness so he could defeat Giygas. When Ness reached the last sanctuary and absorbed the power of Magicant, the stone disappeared.
"Porky was telling the truth about that part, at least, that lines up with what we know. There's no way he was some misunderstood hero like that movie tries to make him, though. We might never know the whole truth of it since no one except him is still alive from that time..."
"Except Dr. Andonuts, we could ask him what really happened! He was in the movie, so he would've talked to Ness, he'd know what Porky was really like back then." Claus said.
"I can't believe he really used to be a kid like us...how'd he end up so awful?" Lucas said.
"I dunno..." Claus said. "Maybe it's because he lived so long, so normal people like us all died in the blink of an eye for him and Fassad, so they stopped caring."
"But Ionia was immortal too and she wasn't like that."
"He said his parents treated him like crap, but Wess did that with Duster and he's nice...so he must be like that just 'cause he wants to be, but why would anyone wanna be like that? I don't get it! Whatever, I don't care, I hate him!"
"I don't get it either..." Lucas said. "But it's okay to wonder why he turned out that way, you don't have to feel bad about it."
"It's not just him, though, it's all the people in charge when you were younger, Grandpa. Didn't they know things were getting worse 'cause of how they were running things back then? So why didn't they do anything about it? Even if they were greedy, didn't they know it would be bad for them too in the long run?"
"A lot of them were old enough they knew they wouldn't live long enough to see what their greed did to the young either way. I 'spose those types didn't care all too much about their own kids' futures, if they had any. Some of 'em were delusional about the climate, or thought they'd escape to space when the chickens came home to roost, but they never did figure out space travel like the aliens. That whole nuclear arms race was a game of chicken, too, so you could say it was chickens playing chicken, eh?"
"Ehh...chickens aren't that dumb." Lucas said.
"...Alright, I'll admit that wasn't my finest joke. Anyway, some of 'em hid in bunkers, too, but it wouldn't do them much good for long if they got rid of all the people to do the work for them, or if there was no soil good for farming the food they'd need to stockpile down there. That's why even if they had made it to space, it wouldn't have helped 'em much. I'm not sure how many people are still alive out in the old world...I hope it's not too few. Some places were better off than others."
"What about everyone else who wasn't rich? Why didn't they do something about it?" Claus said.
"It's not like nobody tried. There were protests and riots all over when more storms and disasters kept happening just like all the climate scientists predicted, heck, sometimes even worse than they predicted. One of those scientists was that Jeffrey Andonuts feller."
"You mean Dr. Andonuts?" Lucas said.
"No, the doctor's first name is Andrew, Jeff is his son. Or. Was his son...Dr. Andonuts said Jeff was 14 in 1994 when the stuff with Giygas happened, so there's almost no way he's still alive..." Claus said. He could remember now how much Dr. Andonuts had told him about his son he'd unwillingly abandoned when he was kidnapped through time by Porky, something he only admitted since he knew Claus wouldn't remember it once he was done turning him into the Commander. Did he know? He probably could have asked Leder or some of the Pigmasks who regained their memories what happened to his son...it was better that way if he didn't have to be the one to give him the bad news.
Now he felt bad for Bronson.
"If it's any consolation, Jeffrey passed away peacefully from old age." Grandpa said.
"Oh..."
"But like I was saying, there were a lot of people who did try to do something about the untenable status quo that was slowly dooming our whole planet, and some of 'em weren't as subtle as the protesters. There were revolutionary communists, and I was one of them."
"Wait...so you tried to overthrow the government of Eagleland? Was it as bad as Colonel Green said it was?" Claus said. "I mean, Clive?" How hypocritical of him to call him by his now discarded rank when he hated hearing 'sir' or 'commander'.
"I didn't quite hear everything he was saying back then, you'll have to remind me of some of the details..."
So they did and explained at least the gist of it.
"Hmm...yeah, I'd say it was that bad, and what he told you wasn't even the half of it. The fact our government was slowly killing the planet was bad enough, though. If I tried explaining everything I know, we'd be here all night, so I'll stick to the basics. First of all, Eagleland is the name of both two continents and a country. The country was in North Eagleland. Lucas, you saw the whole world from up on the Dragon's back, right?" Lucas nodded. "Well, these two continents are those two more vertical-looking ones, and North Eagleland ends on that long snakey peninsula."
"Oh..."
"As for the country, it only took up the middle part of that continent, from the east coast to the west, and it was called the United States of Eagleland, or just the USE for short."
"So the anagram's spelled like the word 'Use'. Gee, that's really on the nose, ain't it?" Claus said.
"Funny coincidence, huh? The USE did have a habit of using people...where do I even start? I guess the beginning is as good a place as any. Before it was called the USE, it was just a group of settler colonies that were part of the Foggyland Empire. That's where the 'United' part comes from, since those colonies got tired of being under Foggyland's thumb, so they banded together to rebel against them to get their independence. Too bad they just used it to do their own oppressing."
"Isn't Foggyland where Dr. Andonuts is from?"
"Yeah, it was a country on that big island over in Europe. It lost the 'empire' part a long time before I was born, but back when it was in its prime was when it was colonizing Eagleland. Problem was, there were millions of people there already, and the settlers didn't plan on getting along with the natives."
"So it's like how the Pigmasks came here and took over Nowhere?" Claus said.
"Almost. It was actually even worse, hard as that might be to believe."
"You can't be serious." Lucas said.
"Deadly serious, I'm afraid. The worst part was the disease. See, since Europe and Eagleland were so far apart, and no one had sailed to Eagleland yet-except maybe the Vikings, but forget about them-there were all these nasty diseases the settlers had that none of the natives were immune to. It went the other way around, too, but not as much for some reason. They mostly just gave 'em syphillis back. But smallpox and all the other diseases the settlers brought wiped out almost ninety percent of the native population..."
"Oh god, that's horrifying..." Lucas said. He looked sick struggling to comprehend the sheer scale of death and suffering, trying not to imagine it, but doing so anyways.
"Don't cry, Lucas...this is why I never wanted to tell ya, not about all the awful stuff in my past or history long before I was born, but hiding it didn't do any good." Grandpa said.
Claus tried not to listen in on his twin's treacherously vivid imagination. For once, it worked...
"Porky did something similar once..." Claus blurted out without thinking.
"He did what?!" Lucas said.
"It wasn't as bad!" Claus said. "But it was similar, 'cause he brought people from all these different times and places, and some of 'em got each other sick, since they weren't immune to each other's diseases. Sometimes that brought back diseases that were supposed to be gone, and that got me really sick one time..."
"I'm so sorry..."
"It's okay, I got better, and Dr. Andonuts and the other doctors kept those diseases from spreading too much. I guess in the past people didn't have the technology to do anything about it."
"Yeah...is that why those pandemics were so bad, Grandpa? 'Cause those people got the natives sick by accident and couldn't cure 'em?"
Grandpa sighed. "I wish it was that simple. Sure, they didn't have vaccines or nothin' like that, but they didn't exactly pack up and go home when they saw they were spreading disease. If anything, they were glad it was killing off the locals, some records say they even tried to make it worse."
"What the fuck? How could anyone be so cruel?" Lucas said. He hardly ever swore when he was ten, Kumatora must have rubbed off on him.
"I don't want to know either, all I know is there was a whole lot of money in pushing the locals off their land. If it was just the pandemic alone, then the population would've been able to recover eventually, but it didn't since they kept oppressing them. Like how they almost drove the buffalo extinct since the natives relied on them for food. They even started dehumanizing 'em to try to justify all their atrocities..."
Grandpa struggled to explain the concept of racism to them. There had been no such thing in Tazmily, after all. It wasn't like they'd never seen any signs of it, though, especially Claus. While Porky claimed he saw all humans as equally beneath him, and treated Claus more like a machine than a person, there was a pattern of him being a bit more unfair to some than others, and that kind of discrimination showed up among some of the Pigmasks he pulled from various places and points in time too.
"One way they did it was constantly lyin' and calling them inferior, saying they left the land 'untamed', to make it seem like they didn't really own it so it was okay to steal. But really, they were smart folks who had some fine agriculture. Heck, in some ways they were even better at it than the colonizers. Least their way of doing it didn't wear out the soil in a couple centuries, they knew the land better since they'd been there ever since the ice age made a land bridge. 'Course, they were behind in a lot of other ways, like not having good enough weapons to fight back, but is being good at killing people really something to be proud of? They'd call 'em 'savage' too, even though they were the ones committing all these atrocities and driving them off their land. Whole lotta projection there."
"How'd they get away with this? Wouldn't people see how wrong that was eventually?" Lucas said.
"Part of it was how they covered up their own crimes, too, 'specially later on when open racism and colonialism wasn't acceptable in the 'civilized world' anymore. They'd pretend it wasn't really that bad, and if it was, well, it's not their fault what their ancestors did, so they can't be expected to make up for it, now can they? They even made up a whole holiday called 'Thanksgiving' about this idealized peaceful encounter with the natives..." He started to explain some more and Claus felt sick.
The Pigmasks always lied about what they did wrong and projected their own atrocities onto their enemies too.
"Wait...what happened to the people who lived on Nowhere first? Leder said the people from the kingdom of Osohe left the islands a long time before we got here because they were afraid the Dark Dragon would wake up...but what happened to them after that? Where did they go?" Lucas said. "Did they survive the end of the world? God, it would be awful if they didn't and they could've been safe if they stayed..."
"I hope they're okay, too, but we don't know all the details yet." Grandpa said. "If I remember right, sometime before we wiped our memories, the Magifolk told us how the people of Osohe went to Dalaam, but I don't know how many of them stuck there after that or kept moving elsewhere, or how many of 'em made it through the world ending. We didn't have a lot of information about how everyone else was doin' when we were on the White Ship, since the internet and the cell towers and just about every line of communication went down with all the infrastructure that got blown up."
"I know Kumatora isn't really from Osohe, and her being the princess just the story Tazmily made up for her, but I'm sure she'd wanna meet them anyways." Lucas said. "I wish they had stayed here, we wouldn't have treated them like the Pigmasks treated us or any of those awful people from the past..."
"So do I, but I can see why they feared the Dark Dragon waking up..." Grandpa said.
"..." Claus stared a hole through the table trying to shut out his own treacherous imagination. What if he'd pulled the last Needle?
"He didn't mean it like that, Claus."
"Look, I know what the Magifolk said, but I don't think that really would have happened if-" Grandpa said.
"You don't have to keep consoling me! I get it, ok?! Everything would've been fine, and even if I had destroyed the world it wouldn't be my fault, I guess!"
"Claus..."
"M'sorry..." Claus sniffled. "I'm so pathetic, I can't take anything, and then I take it out on you...
"You're not pathetic..." Lucas said.
Then he had to let them spend another minute or two consoling him or else he'd feel bad about rejecting their kindness too.
"I'm okay now...can we get back on topic? When are we gonna get to the part abour your past, Grandpa?"
"I'd like to start there, but I'm just trying to put everything in context first. I wish history was shorter and less nasty, too. Anyhow...I think I've said the gist of how the USE treated the Native Eaglelanders. But there's more: they killed so many natives they enslaved millions of people from Africa instead to do their work for them."
"They what?!" Lucas said.
Grandpa continued to explain the basics of Eagleland's history...
Claus knew what slavery was on more than just an intellectual level. Porky did call him his slave robot, after all. It meant working without pay, being provided the means of subsistence but no freedom to do anything but what Porky and his subordinates said, and being unable to escape, but somehow what Grandpa described seemed in some ways even worse than what he went through despite the fact he tried avoiding the nastiest details to not disturb them too much. Maybe it was because he at least didn't have to live in fear when he wasn't as capable of fear with his emotions numbed by his programming, but that had its own downsides. Maybe it was just the sheer scale. He at least never had to fear going hungry: sometimes he was given gourmet meals to make sure he got the nutrition to be a good soldier, but he couldn't quite enjoy them. His bed at the Empire Porky Building was comfortable enough. But a gilded cage was still a cage. And of course, there were still the punishments if he did anything out of line...
"They got away with it for so long 'cause they weren't the only ones doing something so heinous, all the industrial powers of Europe pretty much carved up the world as they saw fit. Everyone banned it eventually, but in Eagleland it took a civil war for it to happen. The problem was, they only banned slavery on paper, it was still legal as a punishment for prisoners, and they had laws convicting people for just about anything, especially the people who used to be slaves...in fact, Eagleland had the highest incarceration rate in the world. Besides, even normal wage labor wasn't exactly fair when they had people working for dirt cheap for long hours in awful conditions desperate just to get enough to survive."
Claus had seen and heard of his share of workplace accidents in the Empire Porky Building, but people kept going to those dangerous jobs anyways, because what else were they going to do? Unlike Claus, those ordinary workers were 'free' to work whatever job they wanted, but all the employers were 'free' to pay as little as they wanted, just as the landlords and the stores could charge as much as they wanted for housing and food. It was eerie. He'd always had this inkling something was wrong even as the unfeeling Commander, but no one had quite articulated it properly until Leder. Even now, it felt like he was only barely starting to understand.
The explanation went on and finally they got to the 20th century, where the industrial revolution continued to escalate its pollution of the earth and exploitation of human beings.
"And somehow, people still called Eagleland a great land of freedom, and they'd always go back to World War 2 to justify it...they were the heroes that time, weren't they? But just because they fought something worse didn't make them a force for good. Our family knew that since we were Japanese-Eaglelanders."
"Why did that matter?" Claus said.
"'Cause Japan was one of the nations in the war. Their government was full of fascists just like Germany and Italy, and they did all kinds of atrocities..."
Even the briefest, tamest explanation of the war made Claus sick. The things Japan did to the people of China and Korea were unspeakable, not that he knew what those places were, and then there was the crimes of Italy and especially Germany...
"That's why it was good for all of humanity those regimes were brought down. But that still doesn't justify the USE dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they used them to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians when the military was already going to surrender anyhow..." Leder had mentioned the first two atomic bombings in his explanation of the world's end, but hadn't gone into much detail due to the lack of time.
He explained a little further. There were many lies claiming it was somehow necessary to vaporize all those innocent people and poison many more with radiation to get Japan to surrender, but in reality, it was more to keep them from surrendering to the Soviets instead and to send a message to the world what those bombs were capable of.
"Then there's how they treated Japanese-Eaglelanders during the war. They put them in camps, accusin' them of working with the enemy even if they were loyal citizens..."
And though they weren't slaughtered or enslaved like in certain other camps, and were let out eventually, by then many of them lost their homes and careers and not all could get them back. Their ancestors on Grandma's side of the family were among those people.
"The end of the war was a huge turning point for the world...it led to a whole new diplomatic system and treaties of human rights that were supposed to make sure all those atrocities never happened again. It was supposed to be the 'war to end all wars', too. No one wanted a third world war, especially now that the nuclear arms race was getting started. The USE and some other major countries made concessions when it came to worker's rights, too, and you'd think all that would mean things were getting better."
He went on. The age of imperialism was supposed to be over, but it proved to be a facade as long as the rich were still in power. The invention of nuclear weapons prevented direct confrontation between the world's most powerful countries, but instead it was one proxy war after another. There was that time the USE bombed North Korea into rubble destroying 80% of all buildings, as if their civilians deserved such horrors just because their government attacked South Korea. Then the coup the USE and Foggyland staged in Iran replacing its democratically elected government with a dictator that supported their interests. Then a failed invasion of Cuba after they dared to have a socialist revolution. Then Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the list went on, including everything Colonel Green listed and then some, and Grandpa couldn't remember them all off the top of his head, so there were some he was forgetting...according to Grandpa the list of all these foreign interventions by the USE once made quite a long Wikipedia page, whatever that meant.
"And you're telling me people from there actually thought it was the greatest country on Earth?" Claus said in disbelief. "Porky got people to be loyal to him like that, but he has that mind control goo...they didn't have that back then, right?
"No, definitely not. But there were some other reasons...it helped their image when they passed the Civil Rights Act in the sixties, then they could at least say everyone had equal rights on paper." He explained some more about how this apparently gave everyone in the country equal rights to vote and protection against discrimination regardless of race or gender, with women having gotten the vote around half a century earlier. At least, white women. "But that didn't mean things were fair in practice." He said something about systemic discrimination and inequality along with gradually worsening conditions for the poor of all races. Something about the 80s and a certain president rolling back many of the welfare protections that had lifted them out of the great depression. Something about falling rates of profit necessitating more exploitation at home and capitalists being emboldened by the fall of the Soviet Union thinking nothing could stop them now.
"Were any of the things Porky said about communists starving their own people true?" Claus said. He didn't trust him, but he had to know something after all that time travel, right?
"If he was talkin' about China and the Soviet Union, then it's definitely true there were major famines in both of those places, but no, they didn't deliberately starve their own people. It's true they might've been able to save more lives if they'd handled it differently, though, I've got no doubt they made plenty of mistakes with all kinds of tragic consequences, and plenty of wrongs they did on purpose too. But the media in the USE was bought and paid for by the rich just like most the politicians, and they had every reason to lie about anything communists did wrong and make it seem worse than it was. I don't know if Porky was lyin' on purpose or just repeating what he heard and thought was true. But if you wanna talk about famine? Just wait until you hear about the second half of the 21st century."
"What happened then?" Lucas said, as if he hadn't seen the unnatural amount of desert from atop the Dragon's back.
"Like I said, they called it 'global warming', but that doesn't feel like a good enough term to describe the whole world falling apart. When I was young, my own grandpa said the climate was already too hot compared to what he remembered as a kid. He said there used to be so many bugs that you had to wipe 'em off the windshield every time you went on a long enough drive, and you could see so many fireflies at night...then when I got old, I was telling Hinawa how much more it used to snow. We had bigger problems than the ski resorts closing down, though, most people couldn't afford 'em anyways. The real problem was all the droughts drying up the crops, killing people with heatstroke, and turning more and more land into desert. And it's all Shell's damn fault!"
"What's Shell?" Claus said. Surely Grandpa didn't have an odd hatred for turtles.
"One of the oil companies killing the planet. Them and Exxon and all the others kept lying and hidin' the truth about the damage they were doing, even though Exxon's own R department did the research proving it was real. They'd rather make a quick buck than stop the end of the world, and nobody did anything about it...at least not soon enough..."
"Is that why you rebelled? 'Cause everyone was going hungry?"
"Yeah, but it ain't the only reason. Be patient, I'm getting there."
In Grandpa's childhood things were bad enough. He was born in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic that killed over a million people in Eagleland. At first Claus thought that meant it must have been incredibly hard to treat or contain, but Grandpa said most of those deaths were entirely preventable. Other countries were able to prevent the virus's spread far more effectively and have far fewer deaths, even China, despite the fact China was ground zero of the epidemic. Vaccines were invented, but they weren't perfect, and the virus kept mutating to make them less effective the more government negligence and denial of the virus's existence and lies that vaccines were harmful helped it spread more. Apparently, keeping everyone going to work and making their bosses money was all that mattered, not the million dead people and millions more permanently disabled. All this when just a few thousand deaths sent Eagleland on a murderous rampage across the Middle East a few decades before. Why was it called 'Middle East' in the first place, anyhow? Because east Asia was the far east? Compared to where? Why did the UK get to decide it was the center of the world?
It only got worse from there. Grandpa wasn't even in kindergarten when the government was outright funding and arming a certain settler colony committing genocide with the entire world watching.
"See, in my grandpa's time, it was easier for the government to get away with this stuff because the internet didn't exist yet, and when my dad was a kid, at least social media didn't, so everyone would only get the truth a long time after the fact if they covered something up. But that was one of the first times you had the victims of all these war crimes broadcasting what was happening to them in real time and disproving all the lies the media tried to feed us. Maybe in a better world, that woulda been a turning point where we put a stop to all this so the world didn't end..."
But then the government got really good at censoring the internet. Then they began to gradually roll back more and more of the civil rights laws and let the police be even more brutal in punishing any dissent. Their illusion of democracy began to fade until when he was a grown man, it crumbled entirely. The right wing found every scapegoat they could for their increasingly miserable world except the wealthy actually responsible. The military figured out how to reverse engineer the alien ray guns and forcefields, though thankfully they couldn't quite crack the code on the spaceships.
"Then the USE invaded Mexico..."
It was a country to the USE's south that was becoming increasingly uninhabitable thanks to climate change, which spurred on more immigration. Thus it was a convenient scapegoat and target for the military industrial complex. The government brought back the draft. For psychics, it applied regardless of gender, and in their case at the tender age of thirteen instead of eighteen, since that was when their powers tended to fully manifest.
Their family had been farmers even back then, struggling to grow crops and tend to livestock in the dry fields of the increasingly desertified state of Texas with its now scorching summers along with the unpredictable storms. Mom had powers ever since she was little. Apparently, he and Lucas were late bloomers in that way compared to her and Kumatora, only managing a handful of accidental feats of telekinesis. There was also their telepathic link as psychic twins, but that could be dismissed as just having a close bond when they finished each other's sentences, just like them talking to animals could be dismissed as just kids being kids and pretending. Mom's powers had been weaker as a little kid, but she could at least move some small objects at will and make little flames and heal small wounds like paper cuts, so unlike with them, people knew she had them.
Including the government.
"WE HAVE THE BUILDING SURROUNDED! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP SLOWLY, OR YOU WILL BE CONSIDERED FELONS FOR ILLEGALLY HELPING THE PSYCHIC HINAWA TANAKA AND HER FATHER ALEC EVADE THE DRAFT, AND YOU WILL BE TREATED ACCORDINGLY!" Said a painfully loud mic from one of the military vehicles scaring all the animals outside their little farm house. Or were they police vehicles? It was hard to tell the difference nowadays. Alec had tried to forge documents and lie and say Hinawa didn't have psychic powers the same way he'd feigned enough disability to dodge the draft himself, but clearly it hadn't worked after the deadline for her enlistment passed recently. They must've gone back and figured out his own deception in hindsight too.
Alec made sure the locks were secure and readied his shotgun.
"No, Dad, don't fight, they'll kill you!" Himawari said trembling in the corner holding her head in her hands, ever the scared younger sister.
"I can't let them take Hinawa." He said.
"Then I'll go willingly!" Hinawa said. "Please, this way no one has to get hurt!" She was shaking too struggling to put on a brave face.
"But what about you?! I can't let them make you into a killer, and I sure as hell can't let them send you to die!"
"There's t-too many of them, you can't win, we should run away!" Himawari said sobbing her eyes out.
"THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!" The mic said making Himawari scream.
"We can't, we're surrounded. There's no good option: either we let them take Hinawa, or we fight back and risk everyone dying." Himari said. The police weren't known for mercy or maknig sure not to hit more than their intended target in the crossfire.
His wife had always been the cooler head between them, but even she was overcome with fear, she just held herself together with incredible composure other than the shaky grip on her own shotgun.
"You can't be saying we should let them have her, can you? We can't do that..." Alec said. Some horrific mental calculation of losing one daughter versus both and their own lives.
"I know, and I'm not." She said. "Hinawa, take your sister and hide in the basement and stay quiet, we're going to try to convince them to stop this. If anything happens to us, then wait until they're gone, then go to the neighbors, they'll take care of you. If they find you, don't try to fight! Just listen to them and take care of yourselves. Understand?"
"But Mom, I can't-" Hinawa said.
"I know, I know you don't want to, but there's no time to argue and I need you to listen! Please, I love you both so much and I need you to be safe!"
"Okay, Mom, I understand." Hinawa said blinking back tears.
"No, I can't leave you!" Himawari screamed but Hinawa grabbed her hand, yet she resisted, freezing in fear, slowing Hinawa down as she pulled her along.
"Stupid Japs never change, even now they're not loyal..." The mic voice grumbled under his breath forgetting to turn it off. "Permission granted to breach." His voice now echoed over the intercom from something just outside the door.
"Copy that."
The quadcopter burst through the window shattering it into pieces. It was a tiny little helicopter with four propellers and a gun that had been tested on the children of Palestine and now aimed its laser sight at Himawari.
BOOM!
Alec was quicker on the draw than whoever was commanding this thing from afar to kill children. The drone was obliterated in a single burst of shotgun pellets. He reloaded as fast as he could.
CRASH!
Two soldiers kicked the door off its hinges, then aimed their plasma guns.
BOOM!
Both their spreads of shotgun pellets bounced off blue forcefields surrounding each of the soldiers.
ZZZZZT
A burst of electricity made him spasm on the floor unable to see or think much of anything.
The other soldier didn't set his gun to stun.
Why was he spared when Himari was blown to bloody charred pieces by a plasma blast?
Hinawa must've had the same thought when she was electrocuted and Himawari met the same end as her mother. Was it just because they were the ones being drafted?
He couldn't scream once he could think enough to process what happened.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
Hinawa could.
Her body shouldn't have been able to move a single muscle except to spasm. But those psychadelic flashing lights within her refused to bend to the laws of reason. Not anymore.
Hinawa saw red and so did he. When she let out that bloodcurdling scream of grief and rage, a stream of flames burnt the two soldiers and the unhinged door to a crisp. A soft green light glowed around her own body, that must have been what let her stand despite the electrocution. The flames began to spread from the wall around the front door.
"THE TARGET'S POWERS HAVE AWAKENED! REPEAT, THE TARGET'S PSI HAS AWAKENED! PERMISSION TO USE LETHAL FORCE ON IT GRANTED! OUR LIVES COME FIRST BEFORE A NEW RECRUIT!" Mic Guy said in a panicked voice and his vehicle took aim. A massive plasma blast missed its intended angle through the window to her thanks to an anxious trigger finger and instead ripped the wall apart sending burnt splinters everywhere including into his side and left leg. He was lucky none hit his head.
Finally he could scream. But he couldn't get up and do anything to help.
"GIVE THEM BACK YOU MONSTER!" Hinawa screamed and threw a fireball that ignited the fuel of Mic Guy's truck and made it explode killing everyone within including the one with the drone. Another fireball destroyed the empty car of the first two soldiers.
The last two soldiers broke into the room from behind, and would have killed Hinawa then and there if the first one didn't miss and the second never got the chance to fire before both were charred corpses.
Then the sound of gunfire went quiet, leaving only the crackling flames and their screams and the panicked animals outside.
When Hinawa finally stopped screaming, the geometric lights around her faded and she looked at what was left of her mother and sister and her bleeding grandpa and the men she'd killed.
"No, no, no no no oh god no please! W-wait, wait wait my powers are stronger now s-so I can heal you! Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay-" She kept saying that while using that green light to put their pieces back together but the only one she could heal was him, making those wooden shards tear out of his flesh which rapidly healed itself. Nothing happened to Himari and Himawari's charred bodies.
She sobbed. "NO! It's supposed to work why can't I help you? This is all my fault, why couldn't I protect you sooner, I wanted to but I couldn't, it's not fair, I'm sorry, I'M SORRY!" She screamed and sobbed more, then coughed from the smoke.
The fires kept spreading, inching towards Alec and his family's bodies.
"No, no, this wasn't supposed-" She coughed again. "to happen!" Then her hands glowed blue and reflexively sent a wave of cold instead putting out the fire near the wall and freezing those two soldiers' bodies solid. "I never wanted to kill anyone!" She lied.
Or maybe it wasn't a lie. Claus had never wanted to either until he saw Mom die. He'd never wanted anything to change him to make him capable of that kind of hate.
He had better control of his telepathy now, so he'd only seen a few glimpses of that scene and Grandpa's emotions, but it was enough. Lucas did a better job not accidentally prying, but he was in tears just from having heard Grandpa tell the basics of the story trying to avoid any gruesome details other than the fact of the deaths themselves.
"If you want to know why I became a rebel, that's why. They shouldn't have killed my wife and daughter if they didn't want me to shoot back." He said grimly.
Claus started to realize why Grandpa liked making stupid jokes to lighten the mood.
"But everyone said Auntie just got sick like Fuel's mom, and that she wasn't so young when it happened..."
But it never added up. Mom barely ever talked about her, which wasn't like her. Whenever Claus asked too many questions about her or Grandma, Mom and Grandpa shied away from the details. Tazmily's sanitized past had always been a fragile illusion just as much as its veneer of being a utopia. Fuel's mom had died, but she had a terminal illness, so people knew it was coming, so it wasn't that bad, was it? Except it was. Nana's dad went missing, but no one had seen him die, and he'd gone and taken the risk of sailing into the unknown in the first place...but that didn't mean he brought it upon himself. Duster had been abused, but no one knew what went on behind closed doors, and he said things weren't that bad between them like Wess told him to. But then Mom died. Then Claus died. If it happened to them, it could happen to any of them, couldn't it? Every villager must have had the thought in the back of their mind of what if their spouse was next? What if their kid was next? What if they were next?
Then instead of letting that break their facade of utopia for good, they clung to all the false comforts the Pigmasks offered...
But how could he blame them for hiding from their past when he'd done the same?
"Hinawa couldn't bear the thought of forgetting about her completely, but it was hard living with the real way we lost her and your grandma. So we changed the details and took away the worst of our grief."
"I can't believe Mom would do that..." Lucas said. "She's the one who taught us not to run away from our feelings, she said it's okay to be scared or angry or sad."
"Yeah...I'm the one who ran away. I'm the one who's weak. You're more like her, Luke, you could live with remembering all the pain, I couldn't. It doesn't matter if they forced me to forget, that only happened 'cause before that when I remembered, I did something stupid that coulda got me killed 'cause I couldn't live with it, and then when I remembered again..." Claus trailed off. "So I don't get it, how could Mom do that?" As if he hadn't just seen why.
"Well, she was one of the ones most against the whole idea of wiping our memories, she was sure it would be better to learn how to live with it instead of forgetting and riskin' repeating our mistakes, and I 'spose she was right..." Grandpa said.
"So why'd she listen to everyone else? It's not like she'd back down just 'cause most people were dumb and didn't agree with her." Claus said.
"'Course not, she's always been strong willed, so it wasn't just 'cause most the villagers wanted to do it. But not everyone was as strong as her, some folks weren't holding up well after all we'd lost...some people didn't know how to go on if they had to live with rememberin' it all."
So it wasn't just him?
"It wasn't all or nothing, either, we knew our memories didn't have to stay changed forever. It was only supposed to be long enough for everyone to settle into their new lives and have some time to heal, and for our kids to have some time to grow up in peace without all our burdens. But we ended up passing 'em on to you anyways by forgettin'..."
"You couldn't have known the Pigmasks would show up, we've been over this already..." Lucas said.
"Maybe not, but now that I remember it all, it reminds me why we couldn't forget the hell we were running from. We had to know why we made our village the way it is, or else we could've screwed it up on our own down the line, even if no one else came to ruin it."
"No, people here aren't that cruel, we wouldn't have made things so bad on our own." Lucas said. "If things did start getting bad, Leder coulda spoken up and reminded us of the past, or Duster and Wess could've gone and gotten the Egg." Then again, they saw how that went the first time. "Leder probably would've said something if the Pigmasks hadn't kidnapped him..."
"Well, there's no point dwellin' on what could've been...I just want you to know what your mom was really like when she was young. She was an incredible person, but she wasn't perfect, even she struggled with all that pain. That's why I can't blame her for going along with the Egg plan in the end, she deserved a better childhood than the one she got, even if it was fake." He said. "...and her sister did, too. God, she didn't even get to grow up! I bet she would've been an amazing woman just like Hinawa, I wish you could've met her..."
Grandpa tried blinking back his tears and they hugged him again.
"I wish I coulda met her too." Claus said.
"Yeah...I think I would've done the same thing in Mom's place, it must've been so hard for her living with that for so long. I only had to live with you being gone for a few years, and I didn't know for sure you were gone, and I got you back..." Lucas said to Claus.
They let go of Grandpa.
Claus imagined a world where the Mecha-Drago had killed Lucas too right before his eyes. Why was it that her powers awakened then and his didn't? Did he not want it enough? Or was it just because he was younger and a late bloomer compared to her?
Then it hit him.
"Wait...Mom killed people? I'm not saying she did something wrong, they were horrible and they deserved it! But I never thought..." That she'd been burned by the flames of revenge too. That awful people tried to make her into a weapon too. That she'd failed to save her little sibling and mother too.
Had the Egg of Light washed away not just her tears, but the blood on her hands, so they could be clean when she held her babies?
"Yes, and sadly that wasn't the only time. She was the last person to want violence, but they forced us to fight to survive..."
"If Mom had to fight, too, then what would she think of me having to hurt all those people and animals?" Lucas said. "I know I had to, but I can't help feelin' like she'd be ashamed..."
"Of course she wouldn't be ashamed, she'd be proud of you for doin' the right thing. And she'd be sad that you had to in the first place, she would've wanted to do the fighting in your place, and she'd say there shouldn't have had to be any fighting at all. I know you feel like you lost your way, but trust me, you're still her sweet little boy, just like she was still my sweet little girl even when she had to fight. She had the same kind of feelings as you, worrying she was getting too cold and violent, so I had to be there to remind her like I'm reminding you now."
"T-thanks, Grandpa, that means a lot..." Lucas said wiping a tear. "What happened next?"
"We had to go on the run after that since there was a huge manhunt for us. We wouldn't have been able to hide for long if the rebels didn't take us in..."
They started meeting the rest of the future Tazmily villagers after that. Some were already with the revolutionaries, some they ran into later, some they had already known before this.
"Duster and Wess used to be real thieves back in the day." Grandpa said. They only stole to survive, taking food and medicine the corporations would rather allow to waste away on store shelves and tossed into landfills instead of letting them go into the hands of the poor. They even stole a stockpile of baby formula locked behind reinforced glass to keep baby Kumatora alive after she lost her mother and father.
"And speakin' of them..." It had been a safe childbirth thanks to Tessie being the doctor at her delivery, so that wasn't why Kumatora's mom died. Instead it was because the government found out about Kumatora's psychic powers that manifested soon after her birth and sent in their agents to kidnap her early, probably hoping to make her grow up indoctrinated and loyal. They killed her mother and father in cold blood and would've abducted her if not for Tessie and others getting her to safety.
But that was getting ahead of themselves in the narrative, that didn't happen until the year the White Ship sailed. It was hard telling all these things in order.
"Can you tell Kuma her mom and dad loved her? I know they're not the ones who raised her, and I don't wanna make it seem like they count more than Ionia, but it might make her feel better to know they cared and didn't abandon her..." Lucas said.
"I'll ask if she wants to know about them, and if she does, then I'll tell her."
"That seems like a good idea...do y'think she could remember anything from the Egg of Light if she used it, or would it not work since babies don't remember much anyway?" Lucas said.
"I'm not sure, but she could give it a try."
"How did you find the Egg of Light, anyway?"
"It was thanks to Hinawa. I mean, thanks to your mother. She had a strange dream one day about the Sound Stone showing up again in the first sanctuary Ness went to, Giant Step, and she was sure it wasn't just her imagination. If you believe the stories about Ness, the psychics back then had prophetic dreams like that too. I trusted her instincts, so we went there and sure enough, we found it. That's how we were able to find the Nowhere Islands in the first place, since the Sound Stone helped guide her there when normally people couldn't see 'em. Or the Egg, whatever you wanna call it. It's like the Dark Dragon was guidin' us there the whole time. I don't wanna imply this was all predestined somehow, though, it only worked because we made it happen. Maybe the Dragon was just looking out for us and tryin' to make sure at least some of us survived what we were doing to ourselves."
"You think so? That sounds nice...I just wish she could've done more for us." Claus said.
"Me too, but she's not all powerful, and she was asleep back then." Lucas said.
"I know, I know..." Claus said. "So what else happened?"
"We didn't find the Egg of Light until just a few years before we went on the voyage, around when Hinawa was in her early twenties. It took a while to get ready to go there, since we had to find all the right people to go on the journey with us so we could make a sustainable community once we got there. We needed the White Ship and a lot of supplies, too, obviously."
The White Ship crew was a ragtag band of misfits, refugees, hippies, deserters, draft dodgers, anarchists, communists, and various combinations of the above. They were all united in the shared interest of making sure the whole human race didn't go extinct if the looming threat of global nuclear war really did happen.
Mayor Pusher hadn't actually been a mayor in the old world. Instead, he was the token rich person among them who helped fund their whole expedition by quitting his nepotism-earned corporate job and giving away his share of his family's generational wealth after seeing the sheer suffering his fellow bourgeoisie were causing.
"You're telling me even he used to be a good person? Really?" Claus said with his arms crossed.
"Yeah, believe it or not. I 'spose it was easy for him to fall back into his old ways since he forgot what made him change..."
"That's so lame..."
Lighter and Bronson would've gotten engineering degrees if their college didn't expel them for protesting the USE's war crimes, so they tried other means of change by joining the revolutionaries. Many were radicalized by the criminalization of peaceful protests: if even waving a sign gets you locked up, why not go all the way? Caroline was a baker even then, but didn't own a shop of her own, since her mom and dad's store got bought up by one of the handful of monopolies that owned just about everything. Instead, she volunteered at community kitchens struggling to feed the many made hungry by the famines or homelessness caused by skyrocketing rent or the constant storms or the war.
Mapson was among the deserters. He hadn't been eager to use his navigational skills against the people of Mexico or wherever else the USE decided was its latest victim. Thomas had been a firefighter back then, too, but he didn't have a bazaar on top of that. It took up all his time and effort as it was fighting the constant wildfires all over Eagleland in its increasingly dry climate. Nippolyte had struggled to bury all the bodies even when he wasn't quite as old. Isaac had been a loner in the past, too, since like many he'd been separated from his family, but he had more trouble than others making new friends to fill the gap. It was hard for Claus to even be mad knowing he joined the Pigmasks when he had too, willingly or not.
...Where was Isaac lately, anyway?
The younger adults in town like Abbey and Abbot had been just kids back then, and the mere fact many of them had no relatives here said enough about the sheer tragedy on its own.
"I could keep going, but if I try to tell you everyone's stories, we'll be talking all night. Let's just focus on your mom and dad."
"How did Mom and Dad meet?" Lucas said. They'd been told in the past they were childhood friends, but obviously much of what they knew about Tazmily's history was fabricated since the adults hadn't been born here.
"Honestly, it was like something out of a storybook. She found him wounded on a battlefield and healed him and a bunch of other people, and he was just about head over heels for her at first sight. She fell in love with him quickly, too, and she told me it wasn't just 'cause of his handsome face, but how he helped her out when she was tired from overusin' her PSI. She loved how kind he was helping her patch up everyone's wounds."
"Aww..." Lucas said.
Claus smiled too and felt something warm in his broken rusty heart.
"I was happy for her, of course, Flint was a decent enough young man."
"What was Dad like back then?" Claus said. How much of what he knew about him was a lie? He'd only held back this question so long since all the other things he learned made it slip from his poor attention for a bit.
"I only met him when he was nineteen and Hinawa was eighteen, but I know enough. He was...hmm...he was different. He was still kind, but he wasn't quite as bold as a young man. Wouldn't see him taking on a Drago by himself, that's for sure."
"Weren't you helping him, Grandpa?" Lucas said.
"Oh, don't flatter me, I didn't do much except distract it. I mean her, not it, sorry. My back was killin' me by the time I got halfway up the plateau, so he did most of the work, and not just 'cause he had the spear with the Drago Fang. I ain't exactly gettin' any younger."
"I don't get it...if he wasn't as brave then, then what changed him? Was it all something he made up with the Egg?" Claus said.
"No, I wouldn't put it like that. It was real, it was who he wanted to be. Forgetting everything he went through just made it a little easier, and he went through so much...even before we met him, he'd lost his older brother to heatstroke and his father to diabetes."
"He lost his brother too?" Lucas said in shock. "That's so sad...but what's diabetes?"
"It's a disease that makes your body not make any insulin, or at least not enough, there's two types of it. You don't need to know what insulin is right now, the point is you need it to survive. Back then, people could make up for it by injecting insulin, though, and there was more than enough of it made as medicine. Those corporate bastards just made it too damn expensive! Sorry, I need to watch my language."
"No, it's okay...I think I get it."
"What really happened is we lost him to a medical bill, not a disease, and a bill's not all that different from a bullet if you think about it. Just takes a more roundabout path."
"And the people who send them can act like they didn't kill someone." Claus said bitterly. "What about Dad's mom? I mean, our other grandma? Is she okay..?" He tried not to get his hopes too high.
Grandpa sighed. "We lost her to the world war. We didn't see it happen, but we knew she was in one of the cities that was destroyed by the nukes. Same went for a lot of people everyone knew. Then there's other folks we don't know for sure are gone, but their chances aren't good."
"Oh...I get why it was so hard for Dad after he lost so much, but if he wouldn't have been the way he is without forgetting, what does that mean for him?! I wanted to be like him, Grandpa! What does that say about me?!" Was he just chasing an illusion? Becoming the broken person Dad really was instead of what they imagined him as? What Dad had imagined himself as? Claus's head was spinning.
"It's okay, calm down..." Lucas said.
"It's not okay!" Claus got out of his chair. "I thought it was just Porky turning me into his robot that made everything weird, but the whole village was made up!" He gestured to the window with the view of the east side of the fractured village, then started pacing around the room uneasily. His head ached. "All the grown-ups went through all this horrible stuff and we had no idea! I thought Dad really was who we thought he was! I thought I was who I thought I was!"
"Hey, breathe..." Lucas put a hand on his left shoulder, the one he still felt all of. "I know it all feels wrong and they made things up, but it was all still real to us. You're still you, and Dad's still Dad, we're just learning more about him and Mom and everyone."
"But you looked up to me, you thought I was the strong one and I was a good big brother, but I wasn't, I fucked up when everything went wrong..."
"You didn't-okay, maybe you made a mistake, but you shouldn't blame yourself so much, and that doesn't mean you weren't a good brother."
"What about Dad? Was he a good dad when he was leaving you alone all the time?" Claus said.
"Well..." Lucas looked away awkwardly. "No, but-"
"Don't say but, he was a bad dad! The Dad I knew wouldn't have done that! At least I thought I knew him, but I guess I don't know anything anymore! Maybe he was always gonna fall apart as soon as something really went wrong, and I was too!"
"You've got every right to be angry at him, but don't be so hard on yourself." Grandpa said. "Just 'cause you did something reckless once doesn't mean you weren't strong or brave for your age. Now that I remember, I've seen too many kids who've lost a mother or father, and lemme tell you something: I've never seen a child who wasn't hurtin' something awful after that. Hinawa had just as hard a time as you did, and the only reason she didn't make the same mistake as you was 'cause she already got her revenge and I was there to watch her. Besides, do you really think she never did anything else reckless fighting the government? There's still so much more I haven't told you about her."
"She did? But Mom's always been so patient and smart, she wouldn't-"
"Not always. Takes time for anyone to learn, even her. People said she was 'wise beyond her years', but she was still just a girl who had to grow up too fast."
"Oh..."
"People said that about me, too." Lucas said with a frown.
"I wish they wouldn't...even if they're right, you shouldn't have to be, you should get to be a kid. You should both get to fool around and make all the mistakes you want instead of havin' to be perfect for people to appreciate you."
For a moment Claus smiled in gratitude.
...But then he remembered the bitter twist in his gut that he'd shoved down for this entire long conversation.
"Then why'd you call Lucas a fool for letting me go?! He had a fucking nightmare about you!"
The rest of that conversation was awkward and painful. Grandpa apologized but he barely listened to it before storming out of there. The worst part was that hurt look on Lucas's face. Wasn't he the one who was supposed to be angry for Lucas when he was too nice for it himself? Was he just stirring up trouble now over things that had already been resolved since Grandpa apologized a long time ago? But it wasn't resolved if Lucas had a nightmare, was it? Maybe even if it was a problem, he was being stupid since Lucas could take care of himself now. He didn't know anything anymore. He spent a little while yelling and cursing at the air, then apologizing to the sheep for all the noise once he'd cooled down at least a little.
The sun had dipped quite far in the sky west of the house already, even though it was summer...they'd been talking for hours.
"Woof!" ('How about some fetch?') Boney said after coming out of his doghouse.
"That sounds nice, I need something to distract myself besides yelling and bothering you and all the sheep. Sorry about that again, boy."
"Ruff!" ('I thought Lucas was the one who apologized too much!')
"Haha, me too..." Claus said.
They played fetch for a little while with an old worn down bone that Lucas must have used a lot in all those boring days spent waiting for him and Dad to come home. At least he could still play this game well enough with only one arm. When was the last time he'd been allowed to play like this? The Commander wasn't permitted much in the way of entertainment, nor did he seek it out. A few times, Porky had challenged him to some of his old video games and was furious when he lost, insisting he was cheating by having a brain that was part machine. He learned to let him win the same way he'd let Lucas win, but Porky could almost always tell. Sometimes Lucas could tell, too, but unlike Porky, he didn't let it slight his pride. He would just smile, touched that Claus cared enough to try to help foster what little self confidence he had. With Boney, things were simpler. If best boy wanted exercise and fun, then he would get it, that was all. Simple was what Claus needed right now. For just a little while he could just feel alive.
Until he started to notice Boney coming back to him slower than he remembered.
"Woof?" ('What's the matter?') Boney said, having dropped the saliva-covered bone at Claus's feet still waiting for him to take it.
"It's nothing, boy." Claus lied and threw it again, but Boney didn't chase it this time.
Boney whined sadly. ('You can tell me...')
Claus sighed. So much for three years of wearing a mask teaching him how to lie. "I'm just worried about you getting old...I missed three whole years of your life, and now you're eight, so you've got what, three or four more years left? I can't stand the thought of losing you too."
"Woof!" ('In dog years, that's an awful long time! I wouldn't want ya to spend all that time worrying...can't we just have fun now that you're finally back? I missed you so much!')
"But..." Claus said, then shook his head. "Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry, I'm just making you worry too now..."
"Ruff!" ('I'm still in my prime fetching years!') Boney said with pride.
"Haha...yeah, you sure are." Claus knelt down and pet him again. If only for now, he felt grounded in the present again.
But his thoughts started going back to the past again by the time of their awkward family dinner. To three years ago when Grandpa hurt Lucas's feelings. To Dad not being there in those three years. To far further back than that before they were even born, when their parents were living through all these horrors.
To his credit, Grandpa didn't shove their argument under the rug when it was time for dinner.
"Y'see, we had an argument earlier, because Claus found out about the hurtful things I said to Lucas back when Claus went missing..." Grandpa said, then gave his apologies all over again.
But did it really help? Sometimes all his and Dad's remorse felt like salt in the wound instead of a bandage. Couldn't even be as mad at them as he wanted if they really were sorry now. It was convenient that way, how all the bad happened while he was gone and now they got to let bygones be bygones. All because he'd chosen to leave Lucas's side in the first place.
"I told them about what I remembered, and you should know too, there's just so much to say."
"It can wait, I'll get my own memories back soon enough, and then I'll know everything you told them anyways, since Hinawa would've told me about her past before we all lost our memories. I don't want to make you talk yourself hoarse twice in a row." Dad said.
"Sure, but even if you'll know, there's still more I haven't told them yet."
"What about what I missed? I wanna know more about Mom's past, too, but what happened here while I was gone?" Claus said.
"I already told you how I wasn't treatin' Lucas right, what more is there to say?" Dad said.
"Can't we focus on something positive? I wanted to talk more about your mom's childhood and the good parts of it." Grandpa said.
"It can't have all been bad, right, Luke?" Claus said. "There must have been some good times in the last three years..." Were there?
"Yeah, but they weren't the same without you and Mom..." Lucas said.
No one wanted to focus on those details of Lucas's lonely neglected life or Dad's futile search. They didn't ask Claus about his time with the Pigmasks, either. No one wanted to get all the dirt out from under that rug if it might hurt his feelings and make him kill himself again, and were they even wrong to think that way? They didn't say that part out loud, and he didn't abuse his telepathy, but he knew.
So for the next few minutes Grandpa started talking about Mom's childhood.
"She loved gardening ever since she was little. Even though the soil was in rough shape, she never let that stop her. She was always such an optimist...maybe that's the only reason any of us are still around in the first place. Most people thought we were chasing a fantasy with the Nowhere Islands, y'know. They didn't know they even existed. A lot of folks thought the world was doomed and it was too late for anyone to do anythin' about it. But not her. She stared the apocalypse dead in the eye and made it blink first."
"Whoa..." Claus said.
"Whoa indeed. Everyone doubted her, but now here we are. Here you two are. And if what Lucas said is anything to go by, the rest of the world's got a chance at a future too. Even when things look hopeless, all we have to do is find a way to keep on going like she did...I hope you two can do that too."
"I don't know if I can be half the person Mom was, but I'll try." Lucas said.
Claus didn't say anything. He didn't like hearing people talk about Mom with the word 'was', but it would be wrong to berate Lucas for finding the acceptance he couldn't.
Then there was a knock on the door.
"Can I have the Egg back? Some people are whining since they're in such a hurry to use it too." Kumatora said after opening the door. "I told them to shove it since they've got plenty of time, and I wanna make sure you're not scrambling your brain before anyone else tries it. How're you holding up, old man?"
"I've been better, but I'll manage. They don't have anything to worry about except remembering what they've been through, and they already lived with that once." Grandpa said after handing the Egg of Light over.
"Okay, good to know. How about you two? I know you're not the ones remembering, but you were talking for hours, so he must've told you a lot about his past and whatever shitty-I mean, crappy stuff went down back then." She glanced at Grandpa while adjusting her language.
"Honestly, I'm not feeling good...I don't even know where to start about all the awful things I heard about the old world. I know we already heard some of it from Leder, but there's more, and he was just talkin' about the world in general, not Mom and Dad and Grandpa specifically." Lucas said.
"Aw, I'm sorry to hear that, kiddo. C'mere." Kumatora said and gave him a hug. "How about you?" She said after letting him go.
"I'm fine." Claus lied. "It's not like I never heard about anything dark before, I was with the army."
"Oh...right." Kumatora said awkwardly.
No one asked for further detail, again.
"What about you?" Claus said. "Are you gonna use the Egg too?"
"I'll wait until everyone who's in a hurry is done first, it's not like I'll remember much anyways. Hell, might be nothing at all since I was just a baby. Whatever it is, it's no big deal." She said.
"Grandpa knows about your parents." Claus blurted out without thinking.
"He does? I mean, you do, Alec?" She said the second part looking at him to avoid talking about him like he wasn't there.
"Yeah, but I'll only tell ya if you want to know. I know the Magifolk were the family that raised you, so it's not like you have to know about your blood family..."
"I know, and they a...were, but I still want to know. Not right now, though, you can tell me later." She didn't sound comfortable with the past tense yet either. "Or I'll just ask someone else once more people have their memories back. You guys can go back to your meal, I'm gonna go help more of the villagers with that. Let me know if you need anything, kiddo. You too, Claus." She said before heading out.
"Wait!" Claus said just before she was out the door. "Uh..." He wanted to ask again if she was sure she'd be fine living on her own without her family, but he stopped himself, that would be just like how everyone was walking on eggshells around him. "Never mind." He said. How was she supposed to believe she could handle it if no one else believed in her? How was he?
Once she left, Grandpa went back to telling them more stories about Mom's childhood. He talked about Grandma, too, how in some ways she'd raised Mom just like Mom raised them, just in a more difficult time, and that that was part of how Mom learned how to raise them.
"I never used to think about like that, I guess I thought it came to her naturally...but like you said, Grandpa, she wasn't always a mom, and she wasn't always a grown-up, so she must've had to learn it somehow. She put in all that effort figuring out how to be a good mom just for us..." Lucas said with a smile.
"I wish I could've thanked her for trying while she was still here." Claus said with a frown.
"Well, if she were still here, I think she'd tell you it was all worth the effort. She still made it look easier than I did, though, I barely knew what I was doing the first few years." Dad said.
"It was all worth it? But she didn't even get to see us grow up! Sorry, I-"
"No, I should've said that differently, I know it ain't fair she passed on so soon." Dad said. "She should've gotten to see you grow up, but what I meant was she was happy to have all the time she did with you, even if it wasn't effortless to take care of you."
Was that why everyone worked so hard not to hurt his feelings now? Was it all worth it for them even when he felt like nothing but a burden? The Commander had been a burden to almost everyone around him, a high maintenance machine if ever there was one. Well, everyone except Dr. Andonuts. Sure, Mom and Dad saw him as a blessing, even when as a baby he kept them up at night and they had to change his diapers, but wasn't he not a baby anymore? Wasn't there anything he could do besides be needy? Something good, for once, instead of all the awful tasks and functions of the Commander?
Dad managed to clean all the dog fur out of their twin bed before it was time to go to sleep. Grandpa got a sleeping bag, though he said he would've been fine with just sleeping on the rocking chair by the fireplace.
The twin bed was a little small for the both of them now, but they managed to fit somehow. Despite that and how much harder he found it to fall asleep, in another way it was more comfortable than ever. He never used to be the cuddly type, but now Lucas's warmth kept him grounded in reality. Made him think everything really was gonna be okay somehow. Long gone were the days of the ungrateful Claus pushing him away or complaining about him taking the sheets. Lucas appreciated his presence just as much. It took both of them longer to fall asleep than it once did, but to his surprise neither of them was kept up all night by all the awful thoughts about the last few years or the horrors their parents went through. Lucas fell asleep first, then over the next hour or however long Claus tried to relax listening to his steady breaths tuning out all those thoughts.
Somehow, they'd made it. Despite all the horrible things that happened, they were both still here, now, in the present...that was what mattered, right...?