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Sasha can’t sleep. She’s been trying to for nearly three hours now, laying awake in the darkness of her room. Her chest hurts. Zolf had promised that he’d put her back together perfectly, and Mr Ceiling had all but confirmed that, but. She doesn’t know. Something feels… wrong. Feels off, in a way she doesn’t know how to articulate.
Maybe she is missing a kidney. She thinks those sell high on the market, and Mr Ceiling obviously needs a lot of coin to keep up whatever they’re doing here.
Thinking about her maybe-missing, maybe-not kidney (there should be a word for that, she thinks, something to describe an object that is simultaneously there and not-there until you can check) helps her push away other thoughts, so she focuses on that. Traces the scar running down her chest, lips pulled into a frown. She knows Zolf is a good healer, but Mr Ceiling said she was dead, and she doesn’t know if Zolf could have pulled her back from that.
Maybe she’s just a walking zombie, waiting to fall apart at the slightest provocation. Maybe Mr Ceiling wasn’t done, and now she’s… incomplete. A shell of a human, somewhere in between life and death. Dead and not-dead. Just like the kidney. She feels around her midsection, as though that will let her know whether or not she still has a kidney.
I’m strong now. I can protect you, Sasha.
She flinches as the words enter her mind again, unbidden. This was exactly the type of thought she was trying to avoid with the whole kidney stuff - because if she doesn’t think about it, then maybe it isn’t true, and the only person she’s ever considered to be her family isn’t -
She takes a deep breath and sits up, resting her back against the headboard. Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away, as much as she wishes it would.
The words have been rotating around in her mind nonstop since they were said, since she realised that Brock was one of the brains in the machine. She’s tried to push it away, tried to ignore it, as though that will give her any sort of relief.
She is glad she knows what’s happened to Brock, even if the entire idea of it makes her more than a little nauseous. It’s better than never knowing, being left to wonder if he died in the slums of Other London without Sasha ever being able to find him again. This is still… awful and terrible, and Sasha would give anything to change it, to save Brock, but… at least she knows. As much as it hurts.
Giving up on all concepts of sleep and peace, she swings her legs over the edge of the bed, and rests her elbows on her thighs. She stares at the closed door, turning her options over in her mind, and giving up, grabs her leather jacket from the chair next to the bed. She moves slowly at first; the terror of her legs refusing to work under her when she moved too quickly is locked in the back of her skull.
She wanders down the hall like a silent ghost, pulling her leather jacket over her shoulders. Her feet are bare as she walks through the hall, silent on the metal floors below. The building is eerie at night; with everyone having gone home, it’s silent and dark, always-on emergency lights the only light in the shadows. She likes the shadows. Finds comfort in them, always has. The dark envelops her as she goes, and she walks through it with a confidence that she normally doesn’t have, a confidence that’s only tempered by the fact that she doesn’t know what to expect on the other side.
She makes it to the brain room easily enough; her mind has been trained to remember, and she unconsciously makes maps of everything in her head when she’s somewhere she doesn’t know. The door is unlocked again, which almost disappoints her, but her hands are shaking a bit, and she realises that maybe now isn't the best time to test her skills.
It’s a sobering thought, really. One she pushes aside in favour of even more sobering ones. Because she came here with a purpose, a mission, and there are still things she needs to know.
“... Brock?” she whispers, peeking into the room. The columns are eerily lit in a blue light, and the brains float in the nutrient bath that keeps them sustained. “Are you there?”
There’s no answer; Sasha doesn’t know what she was expecting, actually, and maybe it was the silence. (It’s not oppressive; when you grow up in Other London, you learn how to make the silence yours.) Maybe she should leave; there are most likely no answers left here for her, no comfort to be found in the half-forgotten memories of her best friend in the world. She half-turns, ready to let the door shut behind her, but there’s a blink of light in the corner of her eye. She pauses, hand on the metal of the door, and waits, watches as one of the brain columns blinks at her.
“Brock?” she whispers, too quiet to be heard even in the silence, and the column blinks again.
It’s as good an invitation as any.
Scaling the wall in the side of the room to perch atop one of the platforms that overlooks the columns is one of the easier job’s she’s had. It barely takes any effort, and then she’s sat up there, feeling at home with the height, with the shadows. The column in front of her continues to blink, and it’s a strange sort of comfort, a pale blue light that pulses through the room and casts long shadows across the floor.
“Brock, I don’t… I don’t think you’re here, mate. Not really, at least. Just… the version of you that existed when we was kids,” Sasha mutters. Her legs dangle off the side of the metal platform as she watches the brain columns that stretch throughout the room. “I might pretend you are though. And, I don’t know if you can… hear me, in there? Don’t really know how this whole thing, er, works. But if you can - I’m so sorry. I didn’t - I was gone when Barrett took you, and I didn’t - I should have protected you.”
The apology sits heavy in the quiet, and as Sasha’s sitting there, she can see one of the tendrils coming down from the ceiling. She doesn’t even jump as one of the familiar orbs descends, stopping about eye level at her side as it hums at her curiously.
“Hello, Sasha.” The voice is quiet, but it echoes around the room. The orb doesn’t - well, it doesn’t have any eyes, really, but there’s a few lights that blink back at her, and Sasha nods at it.
“Hi, er - Mr Ceiling,” she says, awkward.
“I noticed you weren’t in your room. Why weren’t you in your room, Sasha?” he asks, and Sasha slumps down on herself, legs swinging slowly.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she says.
“Why couldn’t you sleep, Sasha?”
Sasha turns a bit to look at the orb. It’s still looking at her curiously, as much as it can look curious, and the lights blink again as it watches her. There’s something almost… innocent about it - Sasha wonders how much human interaction it’s actually had, outside of Henri, to treat everything like it’s a new experience.
“Bad memories,” is all she says, and Mr Ceiling cocks the orb to the side, as though it doesn’t understand. It seems to at least pick up on her tone, and he doesn’t respond.
They sit together in the quiet for a while; Sasha doesn’t have much to say to him that she hasn’t already said, and Mr Ceiling is more about responding to conversations than starting them. It’s… almost nice, for a while. Having someone sit beside you in the quiet, both of you hurting in ways you can’t quite communicate. At least she knows the context for her pain. She almost feels bad for Mr Ceiling. Almost.
“Why do I miss you, Sasha?” they ask out of nowhere, and Sasha sighs.
“Because one of your brains is the only person in the universe who would ever miss me.” She repeats the explanation from before.
“...I don’t think that’s true,” Mr Ceiling says, a sense of wonder, almost, in his tone, and Sasha gives him a surprised look. “I think there are many people who would miss you, Sasha.”
Sasha snorts. “Not any more than I could count on one hand.”
“Zolf is a good friend. He cares a lot. He would definitely miss you too!” he says, like it’s something to be proud of, having connections that can break you. “Hamid would too. He is very sensitive, and he has good conversations. He would worry about you if you left.”
Sasha looks away, staring out over the brain columns again. She doesn’t think that they’re wrong - Zolf and Hamid are both good people, of course they would miss her - but this is. This is different, somehow.
She doesn’t have a good response, either, so they lapse into quiet again. There’s… a certain kind of macabre peace in it. The quiet of the room, the gentle drifting of the brains in the columns.
“Brock, if you can hear me at all… when we were kids,” Sasha says, quietly, “I made you a promise. And I’m sorry that I didn’t keep it.”
“What promise, Sasha? I don’t remember that,” Mr Ceiling says, confused, and the lights on the column in front of her blink.
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Sasha mutters, and wraps her arms around her knees as she rests her chin atop them. “Just me, having to remember for the both of us.”
The silence around her is oppressive, now. She doesn’t like it. It feels… wrong. Unfamiliar. Like she doesn’t belong, and it’s well scary for someone who’s made a job out of making the silence her home.
“Tell me?” Mr Ceiling says, and for a moment, Sasha can hear Brock in his voice. It’s nothing more than wishful thinking, but she still lets herself smile, a little bit wistful, a little bit sad.
Brock used to not be able sleep until Sasha told him a story - she used to create all manner of tales, usually based on whatever they’d done that day, but Brock never called her on it, and he always feel asleep without fail.
“We promised to get each other out,” she says, and she can remember it just like it was yesterday, even though it was nearly a decade ago.
It had been another day of Brock nearly getting caught by a rival gang while trying to steal some food, with Sasha saving him by the skin of his neck. Literally - he’d run under an awning she was perched on and she scooped him up.
He’d laughed and blown a raspberry at the people chasing him, and then he and Sasha had scrambled away together, dashing across the rooftops and putting distance in between themselves and the guards. They hadn’t relaxed until they’d made it back to Barrett’s territory (so much smaller, back then), and then they’d collapsed against the wall of the closest balcony they could find.
Brock had dropped the bag of fried eels in between the two of them, and they’d eaten like kings, a rare treat from the rat and tasteless, undergrown veggies that they were used to. After they’d finished, he’d looked up at her with bright eyes and smiled, promising that he was going to get out someday. Sasha didn’t believe him at the time - no one, no one , gets out from under Barrett’s thumb, as much as they want to - but he’d looked so earnest that she couldn’t shoot his idea down. She made him promise to get her out if he ever did, and then he did the same to her.
They’d spit on their hands and shaken on it - an unbreakable promise, in Other London. Brock had only been a year or so younger than her, and he was the closest thing to family that she’d ever known. Barrett wasn’t family - Barrett was a tyrant, and Sasha knew that Brock was the only person that she could trust. They were like siblings, working together to survive - Brock-and-Sasha, the dynamic duo, who all the other kids knew by name. Until it all fell apart.
“When you… when you disappeared, I thought you’d gotten out. You didn’t come to the meeting spot, and I got worried. Spent the entire day searching for you, until six-fingered Stevie told me that he saw you leaving Other London with a group. I thought you’d snuck out and would be coming back for me when you can. And then a few weeks passed with nothing, and then a year, and. Eldarion. Escaped her a few times, finally found a home with Mr Gussett, but the whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about where you were. How I could find you.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t - get you out in the end,” Sasha whispers, curling in on herself even more.
Mr Ceiling - or, well, the orb that had descended - leans against her, and she wonders if that’s a half-remembered memory, too. The tendril is cold and metal against her side, a slight weight that she barely even notices. There’s a familiarity to it, even if the situation itself is novel.
“It’s okay, Sasha. I’m big and strong now. You don’t have to protect me, anymore,” they say, voice bright, and Sasha wipes the tears that had just started to fall down her face.
“Yeah,” she says, voice hollow, a chip of guilt on her shoulder that she knows she won’t be able to get rid of anytime soon. “Yeah, I suppose you are.”