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When she lockpicks the door open, she half expects to find her brother hanging from the ceiling. He hasn’t been answering her calls, he’s blocked his location from being grabbed—he must have wiped down, she thinks. He can’t afford to do that every fucking week, she thinks, almost petulantly.
More frustratingly, Elliot is crunched in that small space between his mattress and his dresser, his knees pulled close to his chest. He’s paralyzed, watching Darlene with eyes full of terror. His eyes, now that she’s really looking at them, are bright red. Weed, she thinks. Then, he’s crying.
Darlene barely shuts the door behind her, crossing the small apartment in record time. She crouches down in front of her brother, lips slightly parted as she decides on what to say.
You had me scared shitless, comes to mind. I fucking hate you for making me worry about finding you like this.
“Are you okay?” she asks. She knows he isn’t—she figures it’s a starting point, something for Elliot to vehemently reject like everything else in his life.
He blinks. He wipes at his face. Shakes his head.
“Been better,” he says, cheeky.
A frown creases her face. “... Is he okay?” she corrects.
He smiles, stretching his legs out, planting the palms of his hands on the floor to push himself up. “You’ve gotten really good at that,” he says. Then, he adds, “Kid’ll be fine. Some days are just harder than others.”
Darlene uncrouches, her knees aching beneath her. Damn, she’s not as young and agile as she’d like to think she is. She’s only 25.
He sniffs, wiping the drying tears from his face. He looks at her with something akin to fondness. “You look just as shitty as last time,” he quips, his voice lilting in ways Elliot’s never would. She knows he doesn’t mean the insult, not really. He’s trying to break the ice—this insurmountable obstacle between them, embellished with a fluorescent sign proclaiming in big letters, I’M NOT YOUR BROTHER.
“Fuck you,” she answers, and she knows he’s just as aware of her true intentions.
“I’m grabbing a cigarette,” he says, apropos of nothing. His eyes linger on her expectantly. She can hear his request, even in the silence between them.
“Got another?” she asks, playing her part, fulfilling her role in this lifelong script of theirs.
He walks over to Elliot’s desk, snatching a half empty pack of Reds and his lighter. He grabs two sticks—which is an improvement from smoking the whole pack, Darlene thinks distantly—and hands her one when she puts her hand out.
They end up on the stoop, Darlene sitting on the middle step with him standing across from her, even if he’s turned away and looking down the sidewalk. He’s always looking for threats, always keeping an eye out for the system.
(Sometimes, she wonders if he ever looks out for her. With the way he looks at her, it doesn’t always feel like it.)
She takes a long drag, whistling the smoke to her side. “Is he coming back?” she asks, almost absently. She feels it’s rhetorical; she already knows the answer.
“Not right now,” he says gently. He sounds like a father, standing at the door, not allowing her inside. Elliot can’t come out right now. He’s feeling under the weather. And then belatedly, Sorry.
“You mind if I crash here anyway?” she asks after another drag. The nicotine is helping her nerves, at the very least. She feels like she’s been hotwired into functioning, something foreign running through her veins that makes her more or less human.
He exhales a puff of smoke, glancing towards her fleetingly. “Thought you were staying with Dom,” he says. “You break up?”
She shakes her head, even if she isn’t completely sure in her answer. She doesn’t want to talk about this with… him. He’s not her brother, even if he wears his face and speaks with his voice. This is the same jackass who blew up all those buildings. He’s even the same jackass who talked her down from her last panic attack. She fucking hates him.
“Rough patch,” she says instead, voice raspy with smoke. “We’re taking a break so we don’t fuck it up completely.”
He nods. He doesn't speak for a while, and Darlene doesn't either. They just smoke in silence. They're three feet apart and it seems like there's an impossibly wide chasm between them.
Eventually, Darlene drops her cigarette to the ground, smushing it under the heel of her combat boot. "You wanna watch a movie or something?" she asks with more confidence than she feels. She thinks he likes movies. It might make their time in the apartment less awkward. Maybe Elliot will come back.
He hums in thought, taking one last drag before snuffing his cigarette out on the railing next to him. "... Yeah, sure. Why not?" Without looking, he drops his extinguished stick next hers and says, "I could go for a shitty flick right now. Something to watch with my brain off."
"Don't turn it off completely," she finds herself riffing as she gets to her feet. "Don't want to lose the other idiots in there."
He scoffs, but he follows her up the stairs regardless. "A little restart won't kill them."
Darlene rolls her eyes, stepping back inside. Surprisingly, a light smile plays across her lips.
"I hear Batman v Superman fuckin' tanked the box office," he continues. There's an undercurrent of passion in his voice; he's wanted to talk about this with someone, and he's using her as his listening board. Some part of her doesn't mind. It's Elliot's voice. "Must have been real shit if Batman and Superman fans hated it so much."
He doesn't brandish a key, so Darlene lockpicks her way back in. It's almost tradition, considering how many times she's done it. Elliot's lucky she didn't remove the entire doorknob like she used to.
They settle on the sofa, and he sets his laptop on Elliot's coffee table, running a VPN and grabbing a torrent in record time. Darlene crosses her arms against her chest, leaning back into the somewhat firm cushions. She tries to equate the uncomfortable feeling with her bed at Dom's, and despite how shitty it is in comparison, she smiles.
The movie begins, and he and Darlene make stupid commentary and quips. She doesn't think she'll even remember the plot in the morning, but for those two hours, she feels like she belongs somewhere.
At some point, they must have lit up. Darlene wakes up in the late morning smelling like weed, her head pressed into the armrest with a blanket haphazardly tossed over her. She rubs the sleep from her eyes, wishing she had a cup of coffee, and groans when she catches the sight of the empty coffee pot on the counter.
When she gets to her feet and stalks towards Elliot's room, she finds him at his computer. As soon as he hears her footsteps, he stops his typing and turns to her.
She sees the wide-eyed stare and immediately knows.
"Good morning to you too, asshole," she greets with no heat.
"Darlene," he begins stiltedly. It's like she's found him with his hand in the cookie jar.
"It's been, what, a month since I've seen you?" she says, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall. "Any new projects? Or are you back to that basic shit again?"
Basic shit means simple white hat hacking. Stuff he—Elliot, she corrects herself—used to do at his job before Allsafe.
"Sorry," he says awkwardly. She can already imagine the rest of his sentence. Sorry I'm not him. Sorry I'm here instead.
Darlene huffs a laugh, the noise startling him if the way he winces is any giveaway. "So? Are you just up in la la land all the time or are you up to something new?"
He shrugs. "I don't come out that much."
"... Well," she begins, trying to lighten the mood, "kind of hard to top taking down a worldwide terrorist organization and facilitating the biggest wealth redistribution in history."
She's speaking from experience—it's been difficult to feel like she's accomplishing anything in life after last year's incredible feats. Darlene barely manages to take a shower on some of her more difficult days—and she should feel like she's won the damn World Cup for her efforts—but she just feels like the dysfunctional adult she knows she is.
Life is no longer an exercise of strength or resilience. It's a display of humiliation.
God, she's only 25. How is she supposed to feel accomplished about anything?
It's what she and Dom had fought about. It's why she is currently crashing on Elliot's couch, seeking refuge with her older brother and finding his self-contained support team instead.
It's not fair, she thinks petulantly. He's got an entire fucking squad and I'm just as alone as I've always been.
He's still staring at her. Him and his stupid fucking bug eyes. It's how she can always tell him apart from Elliot, especially when his gaze flicks away when she looks back at him.
"You wanna grab food?" she offers. She's starving, and some time out of his head and his apartment would do him some good.
He glances up at her, sees that she's asking for real, and glances back to his screen. "Five minutes," he answers. She notices his case of CDs next to his keyboard, and she knows.
She waves her hand dismissively, pushing herself off the wall. She needs to piss, brush her teeth, comb out her hair, get dressed, steal some coupons, and find where she put her phone. Not in any particular order. "Yeah, yeah," she says, "finish deleting whatever scumbag it is and we'll catch the subway after."
"... Okay," he mumbles in reply as Darlene heads towards the bathroom, and that's that.
She gets ready, he meets her at the door, and they end up at some cozy mom and pop place filled with people three times their age. They almost seem like functional siblings, sitting across from each other with half empty coffees.
"I know you want him," he says, poking absently at the last bit of his pancake. Darlene focuses on how he must be full if he hasn't finished his favorite food, even if that's not what's important here. "That's why I said I was sorry earlier."
Darlene takes a long sip of her coffee, thinking over her words. She feels a low rumble of anger, of frustration, of pettiness—it simmers under the surface, waiting to come to a boil. It almost feels like she's in the pre phase of a panic attack. She can see it past the clouds, barely over the horizon. It'll inevitably consume her, but for now, she can see clearly.
Placing her mug down, she sighs heavily. "You don't have to be him," she says. "You're my brother, too."
He shrugs, refusing to look up at her. "I'm not him," he repeats, as if that's what she wants to hear. It's this wall he adamantly builds up every time they see each other, reinforcing the belief that he's not him, that she wants him instead.
"You look just like him," she jeers, hoping to lighten up the mood.
Instead, he flinches. He keeps his eyes downcast, refusing to speak.
Touchy subject, she figures.
"Is… is he okay?" she asks finally, tentatively broaching the topic. Maybe he'd rather talk about Elliot than himself.
He doesn't reply immediately. They sit in silence for a long stretch of time, the sounds of the diner coming back into focus around them. Plates and utensils clatter together noisily, twenty different conversations filling the air. It's incredible how Darlene had tuned it out when she and her brother had been talking.
Eventually, in a very quiet voice, he says, "Stuff with Krista. He remembered something from when he was a kid."
Some childish part of her thinks, I always remember stuff from then. He's lucky.
She takes another swig of her coffee. It's barely lukewarm at this point, but it gives her hands something to do, hides her mouth, forces her to consider her words before she speaks them and gives them weight.
"Our childhood sucked," she says, an attempt at solidarity. She's reaching her hand out, hoping he'll accept it and grip tight.
"Yeah," is all he says.
At least we had each other, sits heavily on her tongue. It's true. She knows it is.
But she takes another drink of her coffee, considering.
"Yeah," she repeats, the word hollow. It doesn't feel like enough. But she can't summon any alternative right now.
That looming storm on the horizon? It's getting much, much closer.
She finishes her drink, the sound of ceramic on wood as she places her mug down feeling like a death knell.
They head back to Elliot's apartment. They don't talk much after that.
On her fourth day of crashing on the couch, she wakes up from a late afternoon nap to find Elliot laying on his bed, staring emptily at his ceiling.
Where the fuck have you been? comes to mind first. Wouldn't it be nice to squirrel away until fuck knows when because I have a whole team of people to cover for me? comes second. Fuck you, comes third.
"Hey," she says.
He doesn't move, gaze still on the ceiling. Distantly, she realizes he must be dissociating.
She slides off the couch, walks across the apartment, and slumps down to sit next to her brother. When the mattress moves under him, his eyes slowly shift to her. He blinks heavily, almost like a cat.
"Rest well, sleeping beauty?" she jokes, grasping at humor to tamper the frustration simmering in her chest. She missed Elliot, she did—but she's pissed at him. He's always running away, forcing other people to pick up his pieces. He comes back when the problem's gone and dealt with.
It takes a long while of him just blinking at her before he brings a hand to rub at his face. After a minute, he lets his arm drop to his side.
"Sorry," he says. He sounds so much like the other him when he says it—that stilted, awkward tone while giving single word answers. She knows it's Elliot, though. She could recognize him in any lifetime. "I just got back."
A four day vacation of blissful nothingness, she muses. Wouldn't that be fucking nice?
"You good?" she asks, softening her voice. She wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. She wants to dig her hands into her hair and pull. She wants to jump out of his window and land on the sidewalk—she wants everyone to see, hoping to traumatize some other children so they feel as fucked up as her. "Bug eyes said something happened at therapy."
Elliot sits up, his movements sluggish. He's still blinking heavily, like he's not fully here. Darlene will say the wrong word and he'll flee back to the top of his castle like a fucking traumatized Rapunzel.
"… Dad," he whispers, and Darlene feels her anger for Elliot deflate in an instant.
She hates their father. She hates what he did to Elliot. She hates the bastard for ruining her life before she even turned five. She hates him, and distantly, she wishes whiterose's machine actually fucking worked so she could revive her father and fucking murder him for what he did.
Of course Elliot is the way he is after that. Who could blame him? He protected himself.
And Darlene? Darlene was on her own, dealing with an absent father and an abusive mother. Once Elliot peaced out for college—fucked all the way up to New York to get away—she was on her own.
The storm is growing under her skin, threatening to climb up her throat and out. She might be having a panic attack. She's probably just pissed the fuck off at everything.
"We couldn't have one good parent," she whispers, her voice tiny. If she speaks any louder, she's going to explode. She pulls her knees to her chest, digging her fingers into her legs. "Fuck, man. I was happy when I got kidnapped!"
Elliot manages a shrug, seeming a lot smaller. He's supposed to be her older brother, the one with his shit together and a nice job and a nice apartment. He's nearly thirty and he can barely leave his apartment to walk Flipper.
They're both so fucked up.
Darlene's hands snake into her hair and she pulls, screaming her frustration. Elliot's wide eyes jolt to her immediately, but she can't see him right now—she's breathing fast, she can't catch her breath, she's crying, she's crying, she's going to fucking die—
—there's a hand on her arm, and she jolts, flying to her feet like she's been burned—
—"...lene," Elliot says, terror in his eyes—
—and she drops to her knees, hugging her arms around herself as she devolves into body-wracking sobs.
Elliot sits beside her, afraid to touch her—decides to just show up, to be there for once in his fucking life. He's next to her, offering his presence and not running off to some mental paradise and sending a clone to replace him.
He's here, Darlene thinks, and pulls him into a hug.