#ts Logan au | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

delimeful · 4 months

Text

you can't go back (10)

warnings: depression mention, death mention, animal violence mention, angst, lmk if i missed any

Roman had been poking and prodding the alien in his barn for answers for the better part of a month, to no avail.

No matter what combination of words, actions, or prop-laden charades he and Logan had attempted, they’d come no closer to anything resembling communication than they had when Roman had been angrily threatening the alien with a broom. He’d been growing more hopeless— and admittedly, more guilty— by the day.

And then, entirely unintentionally, along came Patton.

Less than an hour after their accidental introduction, Patton had somehow managed to not only convince the alien to speak to him, but also earn their apparent undying loyalty.

Roman kind of got it, because, well, it was Patton, but he was still feeling incredibly miffed about how the entire situation had played out. He couldn’t even say as much, because then Patton would start making pointed statements about not hiding things from one’s friends and how nice it would have been for him to have met their excitable extraterrestrial earlier.

Going by the way the alien kept hovering over Patton like a brooding hen, Roman figured their captive-turned-guest(?) probably felt the same way. Not that he could really blame them.

Despite Patton’s gentle prompting and Logan’s intense staring, the alien refused to utter so much as a recognizable syllable in front of them, sticking firmly to bobbing a clawed hand up-and-down or side-to-side for ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, respectively.

That alone was enough to confirm that Patton was right: the alien absolutely could understand human speech, though not as comprehensively as Star Wars would have had him believe. Even with this new willingness to interact, around half of their questions were still answered with a hesitant motion of bumping the sides of their forearms together and then drawing them back apart, which seemed to be the alien’s version of a shrug.

This wasn’t the only new gesture they were introduced to over the course of the next few days. From subtle shifts of their faceplates to the absent air-pedaling their stabby limbs did while they were thinking, they were now witness to a whole gallery of unfamiliar mannerisms. The thick spiral-ring notebook Logan had dedicated to documenting the alien’s body language had rapidly begun to run out of blank pages, with the frantic scribbling becoming such a well-worn background noise that even the alien stopped being wary after a while.

As it turned out, the alien was a lot more expressive when all six of their limbs weren’t forcibly restrained. This was one of those things that seemed a lot more obvious in hindsight.

Given that four of those limbs had both the sharpness of a spear and the spring-loaded power of a harpoon gun, Roman still felt a fair amount of uncertainty about just how much trust they were placing in a relative stranger, but he kept those thoughts to himself.

After all, this was a welcome change from the quiet, still way the alien had been curled up on their makeshift bed for the past week, not nearly as aggressive as before but also not nearly as alert or even responsive, some days. Roman had been getting more and more worried, half-expecting to find a corpse every time he went to check on them, like a bug left in a jar to suffocate.

Whatever magic Patton had worked, it had brought an undeniable spark of life back to the alien, and wary or not, Roman was unspeakably relieved about it.

The past couple of days had been dedicated to finding supplies for the alien’s project, which they had figured out (mostly through extensive guessing) was a makeshift translator. One of Logan’s old laptops, the disemboweled guts of the alien’s helmet, and an old car battery from the junkyard had been sacrificed to the alien’s tinkering, along with various bits and bobs pulled from old charging cables and a broken VCR player.

After the third unsuccessful game of charades, Roman had just grabbed the whole junk drawer in the kitchen and tipped all the contents out in the hopes that the alien would find what they needed.

Seeing as there hadn’t been any more requests, they seemed to have found the pieces they needed— or at the very least, acceptable substitutes. From there, all that was left to do was loiter in the barn and wait for them to finish.

“Guys,” Patton called, the only one allowed to sit nearby while the alien worked. “I think it’s ready!”

The moment the words split the air, Logan practically teleported over to their corner of the barn, and Roman was only a step behind, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm in his chest at the thought of finally learning what had happened to his brother.

The alien was crouched with their backwards-jointed legs folded under them, and as they all gathered around, the limbs on their back pulled in to avoid grazing any shoulders, as though even the barest touch would be poisonous. As always, they didn’t make direct eye contact with anyone, simply reaching out to the contraption and pressing one of the buttons on the VCR.

They made a series of carefully enunciated clicks and churrs, the same muffled language that they had used during Roman’s pointless interrogations, and then released the button and pressed down another one.

There was a brief moment of silence, and then:

“Can you understand this sentence?”

The voice was robotic, the inflections slightly strange, but the words were clear.

“Yes!” Roman exclaimed, half an answer and half a cheer of success. “It worked, we understood that!”

The three of them exchanged glances, sharing a sort of awed joy at the impossibility of it all. The alien waited for a moment longer before recording another stretch of clicks and sending it through the translator.

“The energy cell won’t last long. Ask important questions first.”

Like mirror images, both of his friends turned to look at him at the same time, and whatever expression he was making seemed to tell them everything they needed to know.

“No matter what the answer is,” Patton told him, reaching out to hold onto his hand tightly, “we’ll figure it out together, okay?”

Logan flipped his notebook over, abandoning the list of questions to set the tip of his pen to a blank page. “I’ll record the information verbatim. It’ll ensure we don’t miss anything.”

Embarrassingly enough, Roman’s eyes began to sting. He cleared his throat, smiling weakly at his best friends. “Thanks, guys.”

The question sat heavy on the back of his tongue, the shape of words practically memorized after the many times he’d spoken, shouted, screamed them. When he looked forward to the alien, though, he realized that there was something else he owed it to them to ask.

“What’s your name?”

The alien went rabbit-still for a moment, a reflexive attempt to hide that Roman was pretty sure meant they were surprised. He didn’t rush them; he was pretty surprised at himself, too.

Finally, they leaned close to the speaker again. “I am known as Anxiety.”

“Anxiety?” Patton echoed, his eyebrows lifting in bewilderment.

The alien shuffled their hands over each other in an uncertain-looking gesture before speaking into the translator, a little quicker now. “Was that the wrong word? The direct translation is more like ‘he who fears needlessly’?”

“Anxiety… is a good word for that, yes,” Logan answered after another uncertain pause. “It simply isn’t a word we would usually use as a name.”

“Alien,” Anxiety replied succinctly, with another one of those forearm shrugs.

Roman nodded, fitting the name carefully into the list of things they’d learned about this stranded stranger. “My name is Roman, and this is Logan and Patton.”

Each of them waved on cue, one perfunctory and the other over-enthusiastic. Anxiety glanced between them for a moment before apparently giving in to his curiosity.

“Who is first?” he asked through the translator, earning three confused looks.

“I’m the oldest?” Roman offered, not in the least confident that this was the answer Anxiety was looking for. “But not by that much? We’re all in the same grade, um, which basically means we’re only a few months apart in age.”

Anxiety didn’t lose the air of puzzlement, but he shook his hand in the ‘no’ gesture. “Nevermind. Ask your questions.”

Roman swallowed, his nerves returning to him twofold, and forced the words past numb lips. “What… What happened to my brother?”

Although Anxiety had almost certainly expected the question, his limbs still flexed behind him, trembling slightly with tension. Foreboding sunk into Roman like a stone through water.

“Your brother was abducted,” Anxiety finally answered, the translator turning the words flat and stilted. “Stolen, but most likely alive.”

Alive. Alive. Most likely alive. Roman’s chest felt like it might burst with how hard his heart was beating.

“Why? What are they going to do to him?” he asked, his voice rising louder in his desperation. Patton squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.

Anxiety’s hesitance stretched even longer. This time, after speaking into the translator, he shuffled backwards slightly. Preparing for a violent response to whatever he’d just said.

“Deathworlders are valuable in some circles. That crew is money-hungry. They probably took him to use as a champion in illegal fighting rings. Dangerous, but not lethal if he can fight,” the translator spit out dutifully.

Fighting rings. Roman thought about every movie scene he’d ever watched with gladiators, every news article about local dog fighting, every old story about men shoved into a pit of starving lions. Pictured Remus, dropped into some horrible real-life version of that scene from Star Wars, but without magic powers or even so much as a lightsaber to his name.

He felt sick. His hand went limp in Patton’s grip, nausea churning in his gut. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. What could he possibly say to that? How was he supposed to ask about his own brother’s odds, his life expectancy on an alien battleground?

“What do you mean by ‘Deathworlder’?” Logan asked, his gaze sharp as he picked up the slack.

Anxiety’s attention was clearly riveted on Roman’s response, but he managed to answer after several seconds passed without anyone lashing out, leaning forward again.

“It’s a title. Sapient species that originate from deathworlds.” When this clearly wasn’t as helpful as he thought it would be, he elaborated further: “Planets with harsh terrain, hostile fauna, lethal weather patterns. A Deathworlder has adapted to thrive in these conditions. You make a home out of a place that is difficult for most aliens to even survive.”

Patton frowned, confused. “You’re surviving just fine, aren’t you?”

Anxiety’s faceplate twitched slightly, an expression they had no reference for.

“I thought Patch would kill me for our entire first interaction.” For the first time, a sense of his voice was audible even through the machine-tone translator. “I pay attention to danger. This planet is full of things that could very easily kill me.”

His extra limbs twitched slightly, as though he’d said more than he’d meant to, and he firmly averted his gaze to the ground.

Abruptly, Roman realized that they were one of the things Anxiety was referring to. The primal panic that they’d witnessed while interacting with him wasn’t a farce or an exaggeration. To Anxiety, humans were a potentially lethal threat.

“Patch?” Patton asked.

The angles of Anxiety’s back limbs shifted to point at where Lady Macbeth was sprawled out in a beam of sunlight, content that all was well within her kingdom.

“You renamed my cat?” Roman asked incredulously, and then, more pressingly, “If you thought she was going to kill you, why did you befriend her? You tried to stab me the moment we made eye contact!”

Anxiety’s arms twitched in what seemed like a hastily-aborted shrug. “Predatory beasts normally kill to eat or to defend territory. Sapient species are capable of a lot worse. If I am going to die, I want it to be quick.”

Something about the way the words were spoken, present tense and oddly direct, made Roman’s skin prickle unpleasantly. It was uncomfortably close to a request.

(Sure, Anxiety understood their language, but had they ever said aloud that they wouldn’t kill him?)

“To aliens, humans are dangerous?” Logan asked, dragging them back on-topic. “How so? From my perspective, you have more natural weapons than we do.”

Anxiety made a dragging chirp that seemed to serve as a wordless scoff. “Humans are impossible to kill. I bite you, and you hit me. My bite bothers you, but your hit shatters my exoskeleton. I bleed out and I die. Your body heals and you live.”

Patton looked discomfited at the very idea.

“Aliens are delicate, compared to us,” Logan surmised. “Because the environments they evolved in weren’t as hostile as Earth.”

Anxiety nodded a fist in confirmation.

By the time Logan turned to him with a grim look, Roman had already put the same pieces together.

“They wanted Remus because they were sure he would win,” he said, fists clenched at his sides. “Because he’s a Deathworlder, so he’s hard to kill.”

Remus wasn’t being tossed to the lions. He was the lion, trapped and caged far from home. A monster only let loose to slaughter.

Sure, maybe his brother wouldn’t die, but what kind of a life was that? Remus was sixteen. He was supposed to be trespassing in abandoned buildings with his shithead friends and creating bizarrely gory trash sculptures for his art portfolio, not fighting for his life in front of a crowd of alien scumbags.

“How do we get him back?” he asked, lifting his jaw stubbornly.

Anxiety only watched him, making no move to speak into the translator.

“Come on, there has to be a way,” he urged, shoving to his feet and staring down at the alien. “He can’t just be gone. I have to help him! You have to do something!”

Patton stood too, frowning in a way that suggested he thought Roman needed to back off, take a few deep breaths.

“Please!” Roman added instead, his voice cracking down the middle of the plea. “Please.”

Anxiety shifted to press the record button again, but the laptop screen flickered and faded, nonresponsive. Their battery power had run out.

With a displeased sound, Anxiety slowly rose back to his full height, immediately moving several steps away, and for a moment, Roman thought that was it, his begging had been rejected. It was hopeless, and there was nothing else to be said.

Then, there was a strange crackling sound from Anxiety, who had turned to face away from them in an uncharacteristic move, his spidery limbs shifting tensely.

“Give t—ime,” he spoke, the words nearly made unfamiliar by the odd pronunciation. “Thhhin—k.”

“Think?” Roman echoed with uncertainty; the ‘th’ sound dragged so long it was almost a hiss.

“You need time to think of a way?” Logan interpreted, clearly exercising all his willpower to remain where he was instead of circling around to see Anxiety’s face.

“T—ry,” Anxiety emphasized. “Don—t. Hope.”

“Trying is all we can do,” Patton replied warmly, while Roman was still puzzling out the soft clicks Anxiety was using for the ‘T’ sound. “Thank you for trying to help us, Anxiety.”

There was another odd noise, like the crinkling of paper, and Anxiety’s face was as concealed as ever when he turned and hurried back over to his makeshift bed, apparently done with speaking for the day.

Feeling more than a little exhausted himself, Roman didn’t begrudge him it. All that mattered was that Remus was alive, and they would figure out a way to rescue him. Anxiety might have warned them not to hope anything came of his efforts, but long odds had never stopped Roman from hoping before.

He wasn’t giving up on his brother. No matter what it took to bring him home.

#sanders sides fic #humans are deathworlders #ts roman #ts logan #ts patton #ts virgil #ycgb #you cant go back #my writing #writing #space au

101 notes · View notes