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Freddie woke up from the nightmare that wasn't his and did a little poking. John was sleeping just fine, disjointed images tumbling through his mind; Roger was dreaming of his sister and his mum. Freddie whispered, "Brian, Brian," even though Brian couldn't hear his voice. Brian could hear him just fine. Brian was the strongest of all of them, unfortunately for him. He was also the one least able to control mental bleed. "C'mon, darling, wake up."
Freddie closed his eyes against the sharpness of Brian waking, even though it was all in his mind. After a bit, a thin, anemic sounding, "Thanks," traveled through the open lines of his neural synapses. Freddie sent along an image of himself giving Brian a hug, and then fell back asleep.
The four of them were prototypes, or so they were told. Minds to change the future. As far as Freddie was concerned, the present had been doing fairly all right at bringing along its own minds of the future, but clearly Foster, Inc. hadn't agreed. Foster's was largely government funded, and while Freddie was pretty sure--if the minds of some of the scientists that Freddie sometimes accidentally "overheard" were any indication--they ran other projects, their main concern was creating advancements in humans for the purpose of warfare.
There had been tests. Nobody had known it, the tests had masqueraded as normal, standardized testing. Only then, there had been other tests, things that their doctors had informed their parents were necessary. Those had been lies, as it turned out, all kind of coercion techniques had been practiced upon school teachers and physicians and several other innocent bystanders, but the damage was done. Military had come for John and Freddie in the night, full out soldiers. They had huddled in the car that took them from their homes, their parents', and Freddie had told John, "It's okay, I won't let them hurt you."
There was nothing Freddie could do to stop them. Brian tried, that first day. Freddie hadn't known his name then, thought of him as a mixture of Crazy and Brave, but when they'd gone for who Freddie would later learn was Roger, Brian had grabbed a nearby beaker, shattered it in his hand and stood in front of Roger holding jagged glass. The soldiers who were forever around converged on him like he wasn't some scared kid, even while Roger screamed, "No! No! Please, I’ll do whatever you want!"
They'd kept Brian in handcuffs after that, for a couple of weeks, until the experiments became so painful that the last thing any of them could think about was resistance. That had been months--Freddie thought maybe five, but it could have been more, time was irrelevant--ago, and Brian had scars on his wrists. They'd left him in them while he was sleeping, everything. They'd fed him through a tube, laughing at him watching Freddie, John and Roger eat. All three of them had snuck him food when possible, fed it to him by hand.
The experiments were-- Freddie didn't think about them if he didn't have to. He had scars all over the surface of his skull. They all did. Sometimes, when he woke to Brian's nightmares, it was hard to tell for the first few seconds, hard to be sure they weren't his own.
At breakfast, Brian looked up at Freddie and thought, Could I have an actual one?
Freddie didn't have to ask what he meant, he just nodded. Roger tilted his head fractionally. Guys?
Freddie played with his food. He just wants a hug.
Roger's mind clattered with a bit of panic and Freddie felt the words, behind you, right before he felt the barrel of one of the soldier's rifles in his back. The soldier said, "You know the rules, no playing with the toys."
They weren't supposed to use the telepathy if not under supervision. Freddie panted, and John snapped, "He wasn't doing anything." He rubbed a little at the sore spot on Freddie's back. There would be a bruise. Freddie couldn't tell if the guy had gotten his kidneys or not. He hoped not, that was always the worst. He had to learn to control his expressions, his gestures when he was "talking." He took another bite of his food and made himself chew.
They worked on Brian that day and there was no way to get to him, nor any way to cut off his cries of pain, the way he held himself back from pleading. They had all pleaded at first, all of them. Roger still would, on occasion, mostly for Brian. They had learned though, learned that the begging got them nowhere. Roger tucked himself into a ball and wouldn't unfurl even for John, who sat with him, stroking shakily at his back. At some point, Brian’s mind cried out, Sorry, sorry, and it was different enough from the incoherency of everything else that Freddie understood it was meant for them, as if it was his fault they were listening to him suffer. It's the most Brian thing Freddie had ever heard, that far gone in the pain, and still worried about them.
He hugged Brian at dinner that night, just sat down next to him and pulled Brian into his arms. Brian thought, tiredly, your back.
Freddie whispered, “It’s fine, darling.”
The three of them cajoled Brian into eating--it was a ritual, whomever had been worked on that day never wanted to eat--and Freddie held him through as much of the meal as he could. Because Brian's mind was cold and empty in ways that it never was, ways that scared Freddie, Freddie let him know the one thing he'd been able to hide all this time, the one secret Freddie still had. I would kiss you. If it wasn't like this. If we were out there and we could go to dinner and a movie, or maybe even just coffee, I would kiss you.
You wouldn't know me.
I would have found you.
Brian's mind was a collage of images then, much more like normal, of words and emotions and worlds that Freddie hadn't yet seen, but wanted to. Even as he pulled Freddie further into his arms, one thought came through all of it: You did. You found me.