Billy and Caleb | backdated June 10th
Jun. 10th, 2018 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainBilly and Caleb finally come face to face with each other outside of a sim.
It had taken some self-motivation, but Caleb was outside. He’d slathered himself in sunscreen, grabbed the book on the top of (one of) his To-Read pile, and parked himself under a shady tree. It...wasn’t that bad. The open space still made him uncomfortable, but it was a little bit better than the last time he’d forced himself past the school’s walls. The book helped.
Buried in a fantasy romance about a dark elf spy and a human mercenary, Caleb’s fears of being snatched up by the Right were easy to ignore. Beside him, Frumpkin dozed in the single patch of sunlight that had manage to slip past the tree’s foliage and occasionally he’d absently reach out to scratch him behind his ears.
Goodnight hadn't slept well the night before, which meant both Billy and Goody had gone down for naps as soon as class let out. Billy had woken first, spent about half an hour lazing to make sure that Goody really was sleeping peacefully, then decided to go for a run before he got up. He left a note, got dressed, and headed out.
He'd made almost a full lap of the grounds and was drawing close to the main building again before he spotted the familiar face in an unfamiliar context. Another mutant from the sims. Billy stopped in his tracks, but managed to keep himself from calling a knife to hand as he got his breathing under control.
He'd been through this before with Cal and Pam, he reminded himself. This was all real. Goody was safe. Whoever this was, he was just another kid who'd been rescued, like the rest of them. That didn't necessarily mean this kid wanted to talk to someone else from the simulations, though.
"Hey!" Billy called, waving to get the boy's attention. "OK if I come over?"
While Frumpkin only spared a cursory, disinterested glance, Caleb paled, staring at the boy who had spoken. Even without his eidetic memory, he would have remembered that face. How could you forget someone whose simulation you lit on fire? “Okay.”
Billy walked over and dropped into a sit out in the sun. He would have preferred to take a spot in the shade (he was still hazy on how much sun was "too much"), but the kid already looked nervous. Scared, even. It was probably good to have a boundary between them, even if it was just a line of shadow.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Billy said. "You never did anything to me."
“That you know of,” Caleb said dryly as he closed his book over. “You recognize me?” It wasn’t really a question. He could already knew what the answer would be.
Billy frowned at the implication. "I recognize your face from the sims, but not anywhere else. Did you know me from before the facility?" Maybe they had actually fought before. He didn't remember this boy from his first school, but he wasn't necessarily the only kid who'd been shuttled through multiple places. Or had his memories cut up to make him more obedient. Maybe there was even more of his life missing than he thought.
That was a strange question. Wouldn’t the boy know if he knew him from before the facility? “No, just the sims. You are the boy with the knives.”
"Yeah." Billy half-smiled. "And you're the boy who can do a lot more than knives. But my name's Billy."
Caleb wondered what they had made him do in the sims. He returned the half-smile with his own, more awkward version of it. “I am Caleb Widogast. That is Frumpkin.”
"Hi, Frumpkin." Billy waved briefly at the cat, but didn't seem disheartened when he continued to be ignored. "He's a handsome cat. When did you get him?”
It wasn’t a surprise that Billy didn’t know about Frumpkin. The Right had always thought Frumpkin was useless and the likelihood of them using him in a sim was less slim than slim to none. “Around when my mutation manifested.” Caleb snapped his fingers and Frumpkin disappeared like a candle snuffing out. He snapped them again, and Frumpkin reappeared on the opposite side of him.
Billy's eyes lit up. "Awesome! So you can't ever really lose him, can you? He just appears when you want him?”
Caleb made a so-so gesture with his hand. “Sort of. If he died I would have to summon him again. It’s a spell.”
Billy nodded. He considered asking how Caleb had learned the spell, but it wan't like it took much guessing who would have killed his cat. And he was probably bringing up bad memories just being near Caleb anyway; no need to double down. "Are you OK?”
That was a complicated question. At the moment? Yeah, Caleb was fine. A-okay. In general? No. “Are you?”
"Yeah. Like I said, you didn't do anything to me. But it can still be weird seeing faces you know from the sims." Billy considered. "I think it's a good thing once I remember I don't need to fight anyone. It means you're real, which makes this place more real.”
Caleb could actually understand that line of thinking. It made sense, in a weird sort of way. “Can I ask what I did in the sims?”
"It did different things. Like Cal. Mostly elements, though - fire, wind, ice." Which had meant closing with him had never been an option. He'd had to take him out from range. But Caleb really didn't need to know that.
Ah. Caleb had assumed as much. The Right had loved his element manipulation spells. “Did you ever see a green girl?”
"Maybe? There were all kinds of people in there. What was she besides green?”
“Not very tall. Sharp teeth.” Caleb gestured at his mouth to indicate fangs. “Her name is Nott. She is a friend of mine.”
Billy considered, then shook his head. "No, I don't remember seeing anyone like that. Not in the sims or actual fighting.”
Caleb tried not to feel disappointed. There were undoubtedly more facilities out there. It didn’t have to mean that she was dead. Maybe she’d escaped... “They separated us as a punishment. I don’t know where she ended up.”
Billy frowned at the knot of emotion that suddenly tangled up his insides. He understood how that went all too well. He'd been lucky to get Goodnight back.
"I'm sorry. You were close?”
“We looked out for each other,” Caleb said after a moment. It was a simplified version of the truth, one he could more easily admit to Billy, and to himself. “It was my fault. I spoke out of turn. I knew better than that.”
"It's not your fault those people are inhuman sons of bitches," Billy said. Then, in case it helped Caleb feel better, "Maybe 'were' for some. We killed a lot of them on our way out.”
Not for the first time, Caleb thought of his handler and wondered where he was. “It’s no loss.
“I appreciate that you’re trying to cheer me up, but I know it is not my fault they were jagholes. I could not control their behavior, but I could control mine. I knew what they’d do if I acted out.”
Billy frowned. Conversations about blame were always slippery. The guards had tried to lay blame on Goody whenever they'd beaten Billy, and he'd known that was crap even back then, just one more way to try and hurt. Because they'd enjoyed it. But Goody still seemed to blame himself for some of what had happened, even though it had turned out all right. Even though they'd never had any choice. So it didn't make sense to him that Caleb blamed himself; speak up or not, they'd have found a way to hurt him and the girl and make it somehow the fault of those they were torturing. But maybe holding on to blame made it seem like there had actually been a choice?
It was also a lot to try and put into words, especially when Caleb didn't seem to want to hear it.
"Maybe not cheer up," Billy decided. "That's asking a lot when you just met me. More like... thinking it sucks a little less here and now, maybe."
“Ah,” Caleb said in understanding. “That I already know, but thank you. This place is good. It seems to be what it claims it is.” It was what Trent had promised him. This time, though, it was real.
Billy nodded. "A safe place to rest before striking back.”
That wasn’t where Caleb had been going with that, but no judgement even if it had caught him a little by surprise. “Sure, if that’s what you want,” he said as Frumpkin, who had grown tired of being ignored, moved from his side to stretch out on the grass in front of Billy. He rolled over on his back, his striped, orange tail twitching.
Billy half-smiled at the invitation and stretched out beside Frumpkin, reaching over to scratch his ears.
"Yeah, definitely. The world will be better off without them. And we don't know who's still back there. They're just kids. They deserve their lives back.”
Caleb felt a stab of guilt. Billy was right. What if Nott was there? What if she was still in one of those awful places alone and afraid while he was out here safe? After everything she had done for him, how could he justify not helping her just because she was afraid? “They do. You are right.”
"What is it you want out of this place?" Billy asked, dangling a blade of grass for Frumpkin to toy with.
Frumpkin batted at the grass, then playfully grabbed hold of Billy’s hand with his paws and pulled it down to his mouth, but didn’t bite down.
“To gain a better understanding of my mutation,” Caleb answered like it was no secret. “I want to learn.” He’d barely begun to scratch the surface of his powers and he knew, in time, he’d be capable of so many things. Magic was capable of so many things. There had to be a way to undo what he had done.
Billy let Frumpkin grapple and rabbit-kick at his arm; the cat was unexpectedly gentle in play. Pita usually left him scratched up a little, but she was still a baby anyway.
"That's why a lot of us are here," Billy agreed easily. "Just figuring everything and ourselves out."
Caleb’s mouth slanted in lopsided almost-smile and he joked, “Good thing we are at a school.”
Billy chuckled. "It's a big school. It can be a lot of different things.”
Maybe that was the case with this school, but Caleb wasn’t convinced yet that that was a good thing. “What do you want it to be?”
"Safe for Goody and the others. And a training ground for me. Aside from that..." Billy shrugged and wiggled his arm a little to keep things interesting for Frumpkin. "I guess I'm not picky.
Caleb watched as Frumpkin playfully batted at Billy’s hand. He liked people who were nice to his cat. “Goody is a friend of yours?”
"Yeah. He woke me up." Billy frowned. "We were at the same facility. They got him to where he cared about me so they could threaten me to get him to do what they wanted." Billy frowned and withdrew his arm. Thinking about it made knives bristle under his skin, and he didn't want to accidentally stab Frumpkin, even if the cat would probably get better from it. "We both got out, though.”
Caleb was happy for Billy and his friend. The Right took a lot; he was glad they hadn’t taken that too. It was a small victory, but those were important too. “What do you mean he woke you up?”
There were more words now to describe how he'd been before Goodnight. Fugue. Withdrawn. Disassociated. But none of them really seemed to hit on the essence of the difference in his life before Goody had shown him the mercy of holding fire.
"I wasn't a person before I met him," Billy explained. "I kind of... forgot how to feel anything. It was different with him around. Like waking up.”
“Ah,” Caleb said in understanding. He could relate a little. Their circumstances were different, but he knew what it was like to be lost in a fog and to have someone take your hand and lead you back out again. “X-Force broke you out of the Facility, but he’s the one that saved you.”
Billy nodded. "Yeah. You had someone like that?”
A frown pinched Caleb’s mouth, something sad and haunted passing across his eyes. “Sort of… I, ah, was not well when they brought me to the Facility. A girl there healed me.” And then she’d lost her mind. She’d taken on his grief, or his pain, or his guilt—whatever it was that had shattered him to pieces the night his parents had burned—and she had paid for it. Caleb had never even learned her name…
Billy frowned; Caleb's expression said a lot. "She didn't make it out?”
“I don’t know. I have not seen her since.” But Caleb knew the Right had no use for mutants who couldn’t earn their keep.
Billy's expression darkened. There was no need for either of them to elaborate on the possibilities. None of them were good. "Yeah. OK.”
Caleb stretched out a hand as Frumpkin came over, giving him knuckles to rub his cheek against. “It is good you and your friend both made it out,” he said as he watched his cat.
"It was going to be both or none. I can introduce you, if you want?" Billy nodded toward Caleb's book. "It's OK if you're busy, though. Goody always wants to meet everyone, so later works too."
As done with socializing as Caleb was today, he couldn’t really pass up an opportunity to question another person who might have seen or heard what happened to Nott. “Okay.”
It had taken some self-motivation, but Caleb was outside. He’d slathered himself in sunscreen, grabbed the book on the top of (one of) his To-Read pile, and parked himself under a shady tree. It...wasn’t that bad. The open space still made him uncomfortable, but it was a little bit better than the last time he’d forced himself past the school’s walls. The book helped.
Buried in a fantasy romance about a dark elf spy and a human mercenary, Caleb’s fears of being snatched up by the Right were easy to ignore. Beside him, Frumpkin dozed in the single patch of sunlight that had manage to slip past the tree’s foliage and occasionally he’d absently reach out to scratch him behind his ears.
Goodnight hadn't slept well the night before, which meant both Billy and Goody had gone down for naps as soon as class let out. Billy had woken first, spent about half an hour lazing to make sure that Goody really was sleeping peacefully, then decided to go for a run before he got up. He left a note, got dressed, and headed out.
He'd made almost a full lap of the grounds and was drawing close to the main building again before he spotted the familiar face in an unfamiliar context. Another mutant from the sims. Billy stopped in his tracks, but managed to keep himself from calling a knife to hand as he got his breathing under control.
He'd been through this before with Cal and Pam, he reminded himself. This was all real. Goody was safe. Whoever this was, he was just another kid who'd been rescued, like the rest of them. That didn't necessarily mean this kid wanted to talk to someone else from the simulations, though.
"Hey!" Billy called, waving to get the boy's attention. "OK if I come over?"
While Frumpkin only spared a cursory, disinterested glance, Caleb paled, staring at the boy who had spoken. Even without his eidetic memory, he would have remembered that face. How could you forget someone whose simulation you lit on fire? “Okay.”
Billy walked over and dropped into a sit out in the sun. He would have preferred to take a spot in the shade (he was still hazy on how much sun was "too much"), but the kid already looked nervous. Scared, even. It was probably good to have a boundary between them, even if it was just a line of shadow.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Billy said. "You never did anything to me."
“That you know of,” Caleb said dryly as he closed his book over. “You recognize me?” It wasn’t really a question. He could already knew what the answer would be.
Billy frowned at the implication. "I recognize your face from the sims, but not anywhere else. Did you know me from before the facility?" Maybe they had actually fought before. He didn't remember this boy from his first school, but he wasn't necessarily the only kid who'd been shuttled through multiple places. Or had his memories cut up to make him more obedient. Maybe there was even more of his life missing than he thought.
That was a strange question. Wouldn’t the boy know if he knew him from before the facility? “No, just the sims. You are the boy with the knives.”
"Yeah." Billy half-smiled. "And you're the boy who can do a lot more than knives. But my name's Billy."
Caleb wondered what they had made him do in the sims. He returned the half-smile with his own, more awkward version of it. “I am Caleb Widogast. That is Frumpkin.”
"Hi, Frumpkin." Billy waved briefly at the cat, but didn't seem disheartened when he continued to be ignored. "He's a handsome cat. When did you get him?”
It wasn’t a surprise that Billy didn’t know about Frumpkin. The Right had always thought Frumpkin was useless and the likelihood of them using him in a sim was less slim than slim to none. “Around when my mutation manifested.” Caleb snapped his fingers and Frumpkin disappeared like a candle snuffing out. He snapped them again, and Frumpkin reappeared on the opposite side of him.
Billy's eyes lit up. "Awesome! So you can't ever really lose him, can you? He just appears when you want him?”
Caleb made a so-so gesture with his hand. “Sort of. If he died I would have to summon him again. It’s a spell.”
Billy nodded. He considered asking how Caleb had learned the spell, but it wan't like it took much guessing who would have killed his cat. And he was probably bringing up bad memories just being near Caleb anyway; no need to double down. "Are you OK?”
That was a complicated question. At the moment? Yeah, Caleb was fine. A-okay. In general? No. “Are you?”
"Yeah. Like I said, you didn't do anything to me. But it can still be weird seeing faces you know from the sims." Billy considered. "I think it's a good thing once I remember I don't need to fight anyone. It means you're real, which makes this place more real.”
Caleb could actually understand that line of thinking. It made sense, in a weird sort of way. “Can I ask what I did in the sims?”
"It did different things. Like Cal. Mostly elements, though - fire, wind, ice." Which had meant closing with him had never been an option. He'd had to take him out from range. But Caleb really didn't need to know that.
Ah. Caleb had assumed as much. The Right had loved his element manipulation spells. “Did you ever see a green girl?”
"Maybe? There were all kinds of people in there. What was she besides green?”
“Not very tall. Sharp teeth.” Caleb gestured at his mouth to indicate fangs. “Her name is Nott. She is a friend of mine.”
Billy considered, then shook his head. "No, I don't remember seeing anyone like that. Not in the sims or actual fighting.”
Caleb tried not to feel disappointed. There were undoubtedly more facilities out there. It didn’t have to mean that she was dead. Maybe she’d escaped... “They separated us as a punishment. I don’t know where she ended up.”
Billy frowned at the knot of emotion that suddenly tangled up his insides. He understood how that went all too well. He'd been lucky to get Goodnight back.
"I'm sorry. You were close?”
“We looked out for each other,” Caleb said after a moment. It was a simplified version of the truth, one he could more easily admit to Billy, and to himself. “It was my fault. I spoke out of turn. I knew better than that.”
"It's not your fault those people are inhuman sons of bitches," Billy said. Then, in case it helped Caleb feel better, "Maybe 'were' for some. We killed a lot of them on our way out.”
Not for the first time, Caleb thought of his handler and wondered where he was. “It’s no loss.
“I appreciate that you’re trying to cheer me up, but I know it is not my fault they were jagholes. I could not control their behavior, but I could control mine. I knew what they’d do if I acted out.”
Billy frowned. Conversations about blame were always slippery. The guards had tried to lay blame on Goody whenever they'd beaten Billy, and he'd known that was crap even back then, just one more way to try and hurt. Because they'd enjoyed it. But Goody still seemed to blame himself for some of what had happened, even though it had turned out all right. Even though they'd never had any choice. So it didn't make sense to him that Caleb blamed himself; speak up or not, they'd have found a way to hurt him and the girl and make it somehow the fault of those they were torturing. But maybe holding on to blame made it seem like there had actually been a choice?
It was also a lot to try and put into words, especially when Caleb didn't seem to want to hear it.
"Maybe not cheer up," Billy decided. "That's asking a lot when you just met me. More like... thinking it sucks a little less here and now, maybe."
“Ah,” Caleb said in understanding. “That I already know, but thank you. This place is good. It seems to be what it claims it is.” It was what Trent had promised him. This time, though, it was real.
Billy nodded. "A safe place to rest before striking back.”
That wasn’t where Caleb had been going with that, but no judgement even if it had caught him a little by surprise. “Sure, if that’s what you want,” he said as Frumpkin, who had grown tired of being ignored, moved from his side to stretch out on the grass in front of Billy. He rolled over on his back, his striped, orange tail twitching.
Billy half-smiled at the invitation and stretched out beside Frumpkin, reaching over to scratch his ears.
"Yeah, definitely. The world will be better off without them. And we don't know who's still back there. They're just kids. They deserve their lives back.”
Caleb felt a stab of guilt. Billy was right. What if Nott was there? What if she was still in one of those awful places alone and afraid while he was out here safe? After everything she had done for him, how could he justify not helping her just because she was afraid? “They do. You are right.”
"What is it you want out of this place?" Billy asked, dangling a blade of grass for Frumpkin to toy with.
Frumpkin batted at the grass, then playfully grabbed hold of Billy’s hand with his paws and pulled it down to his mouth, but didn’t bite down.
“To gain a better understanding of my mutation,” Caleb answered like it was no secret. “I want to learn.” He’d barely begun to scratch the surface of his powers and he knew, in time, he’d be capable of so many things. Magic was capable of so many things. There had to be a way to undo what he had done.
Billy let Frumpkin grapple and rabbit-kick at his arm; the cat was unexpectedly gentle in play. Pita usually left him scratched up a little, but she was still a baby anyway.
"That's why a lot of us are here," Billy agreed easily. "Just figuring everything and ourselves out."
Caleb’s mouth slanted in lopsided almost-smile and he joked, “Good thing we are at a school.”
Billy chuckled. "It's a big school. It can be a lot of different things.”
Maybe that was the case with this school, but Caleb wasn’t convinced yet that that was a good thing. “What do you want it to be?”
"Safe for Goody and the others. And a training ground for me. Aside from that..." Billy shrugged and wiggled his arm a little to keep things interesting for Frumpkin. "I guess I'm not picky.
Caleb watched as Frumpkin playfully batted at Billy’s hand. He liked people who were nice to his cat. “Goody is a friend of yours?”
"Yeah. He woke me up." Billy frowned. "We were at the same facility. They got him to where he cared about me so they could threaten me to get him to do what they wanted." Billy frowned and withdrew his arm. Thinking about it made knives bristle under his skin, and he didn't want to accidentally stab Frumpkin, even if the cat would probably get better from it. "We both got out, though.”
Caleb was happy for Billy and his friend. The Right took a lot; he was glad they hadn’t taken that too. It was a small victory, but those were important too. “What do you mean he woke you up?”
There were more words now to describe how he'd been before Goodnight. Fugue. Withdrawn. Disassociated. But none of them really seemed to hit on the essence of the difference in his life before Goody had shown him the mercy of holding fire.
"I wasn't a person before I met him," Billy explained. "I kind of... forgot how to feel anything. It was different with him around. Like waking up.”
“Ah,” Caleb said in understanding. He could relate a little. Their circumstances were different, but he knew what it was like to be lost in a fog and to have someone take your hand and lead you back out again. “X-Force broke you out of the Facility, but he’s the one that saved you.”
Billy nodded. "Yeah. You had someone like that?”
A frown pinched Caleb’s mouth, something sad and haunted passing across his eyes. “Sort of… I, ah, was not well when they brought me to the Facility. A girl there healed me.” And then she’d lost her mind. She’d taken on his grief, or his pain, or his guilt—whatever it was that had shattered him to pieces the night his parents had burned—and she had paid for it. Caleb had never even learned her name…
Billy frowned; Caleb's expression said a lot. "She didn't make it out?”
“I don’t know. I have not seen her since.” But Caleb knew the Right had no use for mutants who couldn’t earn their keep.
Billy's expression darkened. There was no need for either of them to elaborate on the possibilities. None of them were good. "Yeah. OK.”
Caleb stretched out a hand as Frumpkin came over, giving him knuckles to rub his cheek against. “It is good you and your friend both made it out,” he said as he watched his cat.
"It was going to be both or none. I can introduce you, if you want?" Billy nodded toward Caleb's book. "It's OK if you're busy, though. Goody always wants to meet everyone, so later works too."
As done with socializing as Caleb was today, he couldn’t really pass up an opportunity to question another person who might have seen or heard what happened to Nott. “Okay.”
