Chapter Text
The first day was the hardest. I could tell everyone in the family was still scared of me. Even Cleo, though she hid it well, had her moments of uncertainty. Not that I could entirely blame her. I remembered vividly how big and strange everything had seemed to me when I was still just a baby. To her, I must have been the one who was big and strange now.
Rebecca and Simon, on the other hand, didn’t do much to disguise their nerves. They left me and Cleo in the living room to play with Isaac on the floor, while they moved into the kitchen - far enough away that they could talk in hushed whispers without us overhearing, but close enough to keep watch in case anything went wrong.
Their eyes never seemed to leave us as they spoke. No… their eyes never seemed to leave me. Every time our gazes met, I would glance away nervously. My powers seemed to be growing more potent as I settled back into my original body, and if I watched them too closely, I would start to catch snippets of their fearful thoughts. That wasn’t exactly something I wanted to hear. For the moment, I just tried to focus on keeping Isaac entertained.
After a few minutes, Rebecca and Simon returned to the living room, grimly determined faces saying they’d reached some sort of decision. Cleo seemed to sense this too, as she reached over to protectively grab my hand. I could feel her twitch away at the cool, almost rubbery feeling of the inhuman skin she found there, but she quickly pushed through the unfamiliar sensation for my sake. I appreciated it. Sure, Rebecca and Simon hadn’t immediately kicked me out once they'd seen how Isaac wanted me around, but they could always change their minds again.
Rebecca let out a long, gusting sigh before speaking. “Okay. We can try… this,” she said, gesturing to the three of us sitting on the floor. Cleo and I immediately slumped a bit in relief. Isaac, though he didn’t fully understand what was going on, made an appropriately happy noise as he crawled over to put his own hand on mine and Cleo’s.
“But!” We straightened back up as Rebecca continued, “It’s just a trial for now. We’ll have to see what’s best for Isaac before we make our final decision.”
I could hear the thinly veiled threat behind her words, even without listening into her thoughts. Luckily for the both of us, I also wanted what was best for Isaac. I gave her a solemn nod.
She nodded back. The tension didn’t leave her entirely, but it did seem to ease up a bit.
Luckily, Simon chose that moment to try and lighten the mood. “So… I doubt anyone feels like cooking tonight. What do we think of pizza?” He paused, then turned to me awkwardly. “Uh… can you eat pizza, actually?”
I considered this. I had only a vague impression of diets from before I’d lost my memory. The only clear things in my mind were books read to me - or rather, to Isaac - about farm animals who could only eat vegetables. I had no idea if pizza would be good for me, when it sounded like it was barely even good for humans. Still, I could feel hunger gnawing incessantly at my stomach after my body had spent months in stasis, so I was willing to take the risk. I gave a shrug and a nod.
It didn’t take too long for the pizza to arrive after that. I was told to stay in the kitchen, out of sight of the front door, while Simon went to pay the delivery driver. Rebecca stayed with me, clearly trying to make it look like she was doing anything but watching me. It was almost funny; despite how nervous my mere presence made them, they seemed even more nervous about letting me out of their sight.
A minute or two later, and we were all seated around the table with a slice of pizza in front of us. (Besides Isaac, who had a few easy-to-eat little pizza bits as well as some healthier applesauce.) It almost gave me a feeling of whiplash, being so suddenly thrust back into normal life after everything that had happened. If it weren’t for the heavy silence blanketing the table, I could almost imagine I was still little baby Isaac, just having dinner with his family.
Well, that and the fact that I was now a head taller than everyone else.
Simon was the one who eventually cut through the oppressive silence. “So, I think my train is actually more broken than it was before.”
We all stared at him. “What did you even do while we were gone?” Cleo eventually asked, bewildered. I was curious, too. Back in the facility, just before my escape, I’d only had the time to check on Cleo and Rebecca, so I wasn’t quite sure what Simon had gotten up to.
“I managed to distract Elliot for a while by getting him to try and fix my train set,” he said smugly. “For all that he's hailed as a genius, the guy clearly knows nothing about model trains. I guess I'm going to have to fix all the stuff that he broke on top of everything else…” Simon trailed off into a long sigh, and images of all the work ahead of him flashed through his mind vividly enough for me to glimpse.
Cleo shifted guiltily in her seat. “Sorry, again, for wrecking your trains.”
Simon was quick to reassure her that it was alright, but as he talked, Rebecca’s face grew thoughtful. “What actually happened, back then?” she asked, turning to Cleo. “I know you tried to tell us that Isaac had powers, but we didn’t believe you then, so you never got a chance to tell us the full story.”
Cleo perked up, looking tentatively hopeful. “You actually want to hear it?”
“Of course,” Rebecca assured with a calm smile, though an undercurrent of guilt flowed quietly in the back of her mind. “I'm sorry we didn't believe you the first time. I'd really like to know what actually happened.”
“Okay!” Cleo splayed her hands out dramatically, her voice dropping into the one she always used to tell stories. “The year was 2009. I was in the living room with… uh… Isaac, and I had noticed a bunch of weird things happening in the house.”
I held back a snort of laughter at how she conveniently avoided mentioning Milo's presence and what the two of them had actually been doing. Well, I supposed I didn’t have to reveal what had actually happened, so long as it didn't happen again. I'd have to remember to talk to her about that later.
“I realized there was only one possible explanation for it,” she continued, holding up a single finger like a detective, and looking at each one of us in turn. Rebecca and Simon had the sort of patiently amused look that spoke of exasperation and fondness for her theatrics in equal measures. Isaac was making a mess of his applesauce. And me? I was hooked, like with every time she told a story, even though I already knew the ending. So sue me, she knew how to work an audience.
“It was an insane idea, but there was nothing else that could have possibly fit. The kitchen cleaning itself, the TV mysteriously switching channels, and things moving around with seemingly no explanation - there was only one common thread.” She slammed her hands dramatically into the tabletop. “These things only happened when Isaac was alone in a room!”
I could practically hear the gears turning in Simon’s head as he realized the truth about the handful of times he'd “forgotten” that he'd already finished Isaac’s bedtime routine. Luckily, he didn't interrupt Cleo as she continued her story. “I brought him out to the train set because I knew he could mess with electricity, at least. I made him turn it on, and then started setting up a bunch of obstacles, but he just kept on getting the train past them no matter what I put down. I might have gotten a little… creative after a while,” she said, voice turning sheepish at the end.
“What could you possibly have used that would've caused that much destruction?” Simon asked.
“Your old computers,” Cleo admitted. She gave a nervous little chuckle as her father groaned. “I'll admit, at that point I was pretty much just looking for the heaviest things I could find for him to lift. I definitely got a little carried away there.”
“Cleo…” Rebecca sighed.
“I know it was a bad idea now,” she said, throwing her arms up. “At the time, though, I thought he’d just lift it up and set it down like he’d been doing with everything else so far. I just didn’t realize that the ‘setting down’ part was becoming more of a ‘dropping’ part until we’d already gotten into the really heavy stuff.” She scratched her cheek awkwardly as she glanced away, clearly more eager to finish her story than she had been at the start. “So, yeah. The computers broke through the table and kinda set everything on fire. That’s about when you guys got home, and you know the rest from there.”
The table descended into a brief silence as Rebecca and Simon tried to think of something to say that wasn’t scolding their daughter for her recklessness. They’d already done plenty of that, after all.
Eventually, Rebecca sighed. “I’m just glad the two of you are alright now.”
“The three of us,” Cleo reminded, and suddenly everyone was looking at me.
Rebecca in particular glanced uneasily at me, at the way I was awkwardly hunched over, slightly too big for the chair. Not quite fitting in. “Right…”
Cleo shot her mother an incredulous look. “Come on, Mom! You agreed he could stay. The least you could do is try and actually get to know him.”
I caught a brief flicker of thought from Rebecca about only having agreed to a trial run. One look at her daughter's disappointed face had her quickly discarding it, though, and she gave in with a sigh. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She turned fully towards me, and I tried to straighten up despite my knees pressing against the underside of the table. “Thank you, properly, for getting Isaac out of that horrible place. I suppose we don’t need to introduce ourselves, but we should probably get to know you. So, what’s your name?”
Ah, that’s right. I hadn’t bothered to think about it that much, so I’d almost forgotten I didn’t have one. I must have at some point, but it had long since been erased from my memory. I glanced to the side, carefully gathering my thoughts. It was easier to do when I didn’t have to look anyone directly in the eyes and get distracted by echoes from their own mind. I’d never used psychic communication with multiple people at once before, but I thought I could probably do it with a little concentration. Looking back towards them, I tried to push the words into their minds as gently as I could.
I don’t know.
They all still jumped a little, but it seemed more like pure surprise, and less like the involuntary seizures that Wendy and Elliot had experienced when I was first learning this form of communication. Cleo seemed to recover the fastest, though she didn't say anything - just started to look very, very sad. Simon was next, seeming briefly confused before the answer dawned on him, and he let out a soft, “ohhh…”
Only Rebecca was left, then, looking at me incredulously. “How can you not know your own name?”
I tried to find the words to explain, but that feeling was coming over me again - the one that had made me duck away from Cleo the first time she'd caught sight of my real body, the one that had nearly driven me out the door just a few hours ago. In the end, I could only look down at the table with a small whine.
Luckily, Cleo stepped up to help. “He doesn't remember,” she said softly, eyes lingering on me. “From what we read in the journal, it sounds like he wouldn't remember anything from before he moved his mind into grandpa's. Maybe not even before he moved to Isaac's. The only memories he has are of us.”
Ah, it seemed that even in all the time it had taken Cleo to bring me back, Rebecca still hadn't gotten the full story about the journal. I could feel the swirl of complicated emotions that the mere mention of it brought up in her, emotions that only twisted into something further unrecognizable as Cleo finished her explanation. Was it pity that she felt for me? Fear? Sympathy? Hate? I couldn't tell. I don't think she could either.
After several long moments, Rebecca let out a sigh. “Well… I suppose, if he's going to be staying with us, even temporarily, we'll need something to call him. We can't just keep saying ‘him’ all the time, he needs a proper name.”
The others nodded. “Good point,” Simon agreed, and then looked at me. “Do you have anything you'd want to be called?”
I shrugged. It didn't matter much to me. The only name I felt any attachment to was Isaac, but it wasn't actually mine. You choose, I told them.
They all fell into a contemplative silence after that. Well, except for Isaac, who had finished his pizza bits and seemed to want more before eating his applesauce. I used my levitation to scoot the applesauce a bit closer.
“What about Attila?” Cleo suddenly suggested. “Or Genghis?” At her family’s confused looks, she explained, “I always said that Isaac was going to be a warlord, and grandpa’s journal said that the alien used to be one! He deserves a warlord’s name!”
Everyone looked at me, sitting awkwardly at their too-small table and delicately nibbling a slice of pepperoni pizza.
“I'm… not too sure about that one,” Simon said. “I always thought he would be a writer, so maybe… hmm… Oh! Mary Shelly!”
Cleo gave him a look. “I don't think that's gonna work, Dad.”
“Why not?” Simon looked genuinely put out. “She was a very famous writer.”
“And also a woman,” Cleo pointed out, exasperated. “And he’s not - wait.” She turned to me, eyes wide, and seeming almost guilty for some reason. “I've just been assuming, but - you're not a woman, right?”
Again, I simply shrugged. I don't think so. Perhaps my people had a different concept of gender to humans, but if they did, I didn't know anything about it. More importantly, I'd never felt any sort of discomfort or disconnect at being referred to as he and him. So I figured I'd simply stick with what worked.
“See?” Cleo said with a triumphant look to her dad (though I could sense some relief underneath.) “Besides, wouldn't it make more sense to name him after someone who wrote about aliens?”
As the two of them quickly got off track debating the best alien story (the issue of entertainment versus accuracy was brought up now that they had something to compare to) Rebecca remained steadfastly silent. Her thoughts were a quiet murmur, like the white noise of the TV from another room, that I couldn't decipher without listening further in. But I wouldn't have to, as only moments later, she spoke a single word.
“Abraham.”
The other two stopped their lighthearted bickering match to turn to her. “Really?” Simon sounded surprised. “Didn't you always say you thought Isaac would be a scientist? I thought you'd try and name him after Einstein or something.”
Rebecca shook her head. “That's just it. I thought that Isaac would be a scientist, but we're not naming Isaac. This is someone different, and he should have a name of his own.”
I was only half paying attention at this point, as I'd noticed Isaac pushing his bowl of applesauce a little too close to the edge of the table for comfort. Of course, as soon as I'd scooted it back to safety, he'd giggled and clapped and it had become a game. I was currently too entrenched in applesauce warfare to give my full attention to the conversation, especially when Isaac managed to push the bowl off the table entirely and I had to save it from splattering on the kitchen floor.
I was no longer watching, but I thought I could hear a bit of a smile in Rebecca’s voice as she continued. “This is someone who seems to want to take care of Isaac. Maybe not exactly in a fatherly way, like the original Abraham and Isaac, but still. Their names go together.”
Cleo and Simon made soft sounds of agreement. I didn't quite understand what she was getting at - maybe these were characters from another movie, like Elliot and ET? Whatever the case, it was a name that seemed to mean something to them.
“So?” Cleo asked, leaning into my line of sight so that I didn't have to break my attention away from the applesauce battle. “What do you think, Abe?”
I spared a few precious moments to really contemplate my answer. This is what I would be called from now on, after all. But it didn't take me long to decide that…
I like it. I glanced between each member of the family, soft colors lighting up unfamiliar parts of me, while an inhuman - but unmistakably happy - warble escaped me. The others all smiled, a bit surprised still, but slowly starting to take my weirdness in stride. It made a warm feeling bubble up inside me, something that made the lights and colors stick around.
And then, of course, Isaac's applesauce fell to the ground with a sad splat. Isaac laughed and clapped in delight while Rebecca sighed and stood up.
Here, I'll help. I flicked my eyes closed for a moment to gather my concentration, then carefully levitated the roll of paper towels into Rebecca’s hands.
She grasped it uncertainly, still not quite used to the things I could do. But soon enough, she smiled - a small thing, but entirely genuine.
“Thank you, Abe.”