striketwice | reverie ⚡️ overflow

[He ducks into the garage when it’s clear no one’s present, looking over the place and ignoring the chill. Such a scene is foreign to him—he knows so little of cars and how they actually work—though he gets the acute feeling not all of these tools are used as much as they’re presented to be.

Mender, whispers through his thoughts. Magic, then, to fix broken things? It would make sense, if all of this belonged to Alec’s father.

Little to do here, though. Not much to uncover. Henry makes his way to the stairs, up and up, and tests the door at the top. Does it open for him?]

[ It does, swinging open on silent hinges. The door opens into a small kitchen area, and though it is quite small and the appliances quite old, the inside of the building isn't falling apart as much as the outside would suggest. Maybe they have magic to thank for that, too.

Henry also comes face to face with a man who can only be Alec's father, lingering a small handful of steps into the room. Thomas Brennan is tall and broad, with chestnut-colored hair swept back away from his face and a full beard to match. His hands and clothes covered in grease, his arms peppered with tattoos, the language of magic woven into the images in an attempt to camouflage it. He has phone tucked against his shoulder, his head tilted to keep his ear to the receiver. He's leaning against the wall, arms crossed in that way that Alec is so fond of doing all the time. His back is to a darkened hallway on the far side of the kitchen that leads to the rest of the apartment.

He doesn't seem to notice or care that Henry is there. A female voice comes through the phone, though it's hard to make out what she's saying. When Alec's father responds, his tone is harsh and hushed. A man at the end of his rope. ]

I remember the deal, Sabrina. You don't have to tell me again. It's just... [ He scrubs a hand over his face. ] We're starving down here. Shit, can't even spare a few bucks to put the kid through college?

[ Just over Thomas' shoulder, in the dark hallway beyond, a flicker of movement. ]

[He can see the resemblance. It’s the first thought in his mind as Henry slowly steps into the kitchen, his footsteps purposefully unobtrusive, not particularly minding he isn’t noticed. Sometimes it’s easier to glean information as an observer; and if he’s taking a passive role in this little trip down memory lane, anything that chooses to interact with him instead will make itself known.

So he just walks further in, slightly past Alec’s father, keen to listen to one half of the phone conversation, taking in oddly familiar body language. He’d guess the woman on the other side would be Alec’s mother, given the context, the frustration in the man’s tone. Unwilling to throw this struggling family a bone.

And why would she? People are inherently selfish. This is such a textbook example, right here.

Movement catches his eye, though, down that darkened hallway. Henry clasps his hands behind his back and, with a curious tilt of his head, moves towards that darkness.]

[ The conversation continues in hushed tones as Henry moves through the kitchen. An argument is clearly brewing, though like the storm outside, it hasn't broken yet.

Nearing the hallway will reveal... Alec. He's not like Henry knows him, of course. Scant weeks away from his eighteenth birthday, Alec is tall like his father - like he is in the present - but not near as broad, and lacking in his usual layer of scruff. His clothes are dirty and torn, a dull splash of dried blood standing stark on his grimy white t-shirt. There are dark bruises mottling his face, a fresh gash on one cheek and a swollen and split lower lip that he can't quite help but prod at with his tongue. This is the norm for him, more often than not. Picking fights with anyone who so much as looks at him wrong, coming home from school bloodied and bruised and entirely to blame for his own sorry state.

And then he turns right around and picks more fights with his father. His dad has never laid a hand on him in all these years, but voices are often raised, things are thrown and then later put back together with a careful application of magic. But all the magic in the world can't fix the bitter resentment that sits heavy over this house like a fog, and Thomas Brennan has finally reached his breaking point.

Like Henry, Alec listens to the half of the phone call that he can hear, anger burning bright in his eyes. ]

Fuck the deal. [ Thomas snaps suddenly, raising his voice briefly before he remembers himself and quiets down again. His voice has taken on an angry edge. ] I bet that fancy new fiance of yours would just love to know you got a kid. Your old man, too. How's that for a fucking deal?

[ Angry words fly from the phone into Thomas' ear. He slams the phone down in response, hanging up. He stomps downstairs back into the garage. Behind him, Alec's whole body has gone tense, fists curling so tightly that his nails bite into his palms.

The whole world feels like it's tilted. Like this is the beginning of the end.

Henry will feel something tugging him to go back downstairs. ]

[And there he is, the bearer of this memory. Even as the heat of the argument goes through its paces, without Henry’s attention ever truly straying from it, his look fixates on this younger version of Alec. Bloodied and grimy and with a busted lip, bruising marring his complexion. He looks like the sort of young man that gets into fights, yes, that much is obvious, but Henry would bet that he’s also the one starting them. He need only look at those eyes, see the anger boiling there, to know it.

What’s special about today, he wonders? The argument on the phone, it must have been a turning point, a breaking point. Alec’s recollection of it is so clear, and the atmosphere’s like an ill omen. Something tugs at the back of his neck, urging him to go downstairs into the garage once his father storms away. But he ignores it for as long as he can, taking in this younger man’s demeanor for a moment longer.

(So much resentment. He could not be any different Henry at this age, but he knows that feeling well.)

Well. Finally, he turns away. Back through the kitchen and down the stairs he’ll go.]

[ As Henry moves down the stairs, days pass, a blur of inconsequential things moving in and out of the garage below. The car there is put back together and driven away by its owner only for another to take its place.

Both father and son have been trying to pretend that the conversation in the kitchen never happened, but the tension vibrates between them like a cord pulled too tight, straining under the pressure. It's late, still cold. The storm brewing outside seems to have darkened, the clouds look more agitated.

Thomas is bent over the car's engine, and the subtle, colorless glow of steel-colored light shines in the space as he no doubt etches out a spell or two to fix whatever's wrong. Behind Henry, Alec slides out of the door, uneasily making his way down the steps.

On the street just beyond the garage door, a large, black car with shining chrome details and tinted windows pulls up. ]

[Time rakes across the memory. It whirls around Henry, days moving past in a blur, watching the cars change out, routine rooting itself into life like a disease.

(The storm outside, though… It truly feels like it’s a thing alive again, like it wants to devour everything here.)

The day settles into a normal pace. Alec’s father is working on something, light shining from etched magic. Behind him, he hears Alec himself make his way down the stairs. But ultimately, he’s drawn to the movement just beyond the garage door, the large black car pulling up, looking not unlike a great predator descending onto an everyday scene.

Maybe he’s biased. Maybe it reminds him of government vehicles that he so very, very rarely ever got to see; pulling up to the building, men in suits would always spill out, stern-faced government officials making certain Hawkins National Laboratory was running like a well-oiled machine, its projects still viable, still producing measurable results. How Papa would smile and charm them into thinking that yes, of course, it was. And then some.

No, nothing ever good emerges from big, shiny black cars with deeply tinted windows. Henry watches. He can feel it in his bones.]

[ Henry’s instincts are right on the money. The two men who exit the car, the driver and one passenger, are finely dressed, their suits dark and indistinct. They have dark glasses and hardened expressions.

They’re not government. They exist quite outside the law.

“Mister Brennan?” One calls, and Alec’s dad straightens from where he works, something cautious in his gaze. The man produces a sizeable stack of cash from his coat pocket. “We’re here to make a delivery, on behalf of Miss Cordell. I trust this will be sufficient?”

It doesn’t seem that Alec’s dad realizes that Alec is there, still lingering near the top of the stairs as he watches this exchange. The car’s passenger, however, has clocked him immediately, his gaze flicking up briefly behind those tinted lenses.

What happens next happens very quickly, most of it is a blur. As Alec’s father steps forward to accept the money from the driver’s outstretched hand. He takes a bullet to the gut for his troubles, and two more to the chest on top of that, a silenced muzzle pressed into his skin and fired point-blank. Where the guy was keeping that gun, Alec will never know. The other man draws his own weapon and takes a pair of shots at Alec, who scrambles down the stairs, ducking as chunks of wood and plaster rain down on him from the stray shots.

Get to dad get to dad get to dad– It’s frantic, a racing mantra through his brain as he ducks behind the old car for cover.

What does he do, what does he do? All the tricks that Henry knows Alec possesses, the barrier and the invisibility, the ability to call fire into his hand with a mere thought, he doesn’t know them yet. He’s just a kid. All he has is whatever he’s been able to learn in those moments when he and his dad aren’t fighting just long enough to teach him.

With trembling fingers, he starts scratching out runes in the air, sloppy and haphazard. This is all he has. This is it.

The two goons circle around either side of the car, coming up to level their weapons at him, but the glowing marks stall them for just a second. “What the hell?” One murmurs, and then in a bright and blinding flash, the bulbs overhead burst in a shower of glass as lightning pours out of the fixtures above. The men are thrown back, their smoking corpses dropping into ruined heaps. The whole city block goes fucking dark.

Alec scrambles to his feet, he runs, tripping over little-used tools in the dim garage, and drops hard to his knees at his father’s side. The man hasn’t moved since those shots to the chest dropped him, and Alec’s fingers curl tightly into his father’s shirt, now soaked through with blood. ]

No. No no no. [ Desperate, trembling. ] Dad? Dad, come on!

[ Thomas Brennan doesn’t move, he doesn’t respond. His eyes remain wide open, unseeing. Blood ekes from the corner of his mouth. He’s already gone so pale. So very cold.

Heedless of the blood and mess, Alec buries his face against his father’s chest. A sob wracks his body. He screams.

Overhead, the sky finally breaks. ]

[“It all happened so fast.” That’s what they all say, but Henry finds it is often more true than not. Once the first gunshot rings out, the series of events would almost be too hard to follow if he were not implanted into this memory at its core by way of his powers. He’s cognizant of every detail of every action, even if he does not move from where he stands at the back of the garage. It’s as though he can see from all angles — the men in suits rounding on Alec, the glow of another spell, the shattering bulbs and searing light, the whole city blacking out. The charred visages of men ruined by lightning. The empty look in Thomas Brennan’s eyes.

That scream, resounding through everything.

Oh, if Alec were a resident of Hawkins, young and his mind still malleable, Henry thinks this kind of grief and guilt and pain would have ripped a long tear between dimensions in one single attempt. He would have been drawn in by it, like a predator scenting blood. He would have made him one of his victims.

So it’s fortunate those were never the circumstances presented to him. Instead, this is an insight into the foundation of the man, the very moment where his life took a turn, hatred seeping in deep. Why he hates people, because “people” represents the worst moment of his life and from it, all they are capable of.

He lets him sob. Watches his shoulders shake from it. The scent of rain tainted by the city fills his nostrils. But eventually, Henry ventures forward, stopping just short of where Alec mourns his now deceased father, and crouches down beside him. With his words, he forces lucidity into this memory, the same way one might realize they're in the middle of a dream. Maybe that’s cruel — but now he’s done with only observing.]

You blame yourself for this. For all of this. Don't you?

Edited 2022-11-17 01:26 (UTC)

[ The moment Henry speaks, teenage Alec goes utterly, terribly still. A deep, shuddering breath, and he raises his gaze to look. A swath of bright red runs over one half of his face, none of the blood his own. Lightning flashes bright from the storm outside, and before Alec even speaks the answer is there in his eyes. Hatred, burning and white hot, and it turns inward and runs deep. So very deep.

There is no one, in this world or any other, that Alec Brennan hates more than himself. ]

It's all my fault. It was always my fault. I was the deal.

[ He would find this out later, as he set his mother up for her grand fall, but now that Henry's forced some lucidity into the situation, some of Alec's memories muddle. Correspondence between Thomas Brennan and Sabrina Cordell in the early months of her pregnancy.

Alec's life for Thomas' silence. That was always the deal. ]

You?

[He looks at Alec, the bright crimson running down half of his face—striking, really—and it’s no wonder this guilt burrows deep. Hatred turned inward, nestling like poison. This is a new layer of clarity, a new revelation about him, and perhaps what he needs is for someone to comfort him. To console, or to be a listening ear.

Henry’s not the person to do that. He can’t offer comfort, he was never given the toolset to do that in a sincere way for deep hurts like these. He’s only ever pushed the knife in deeper.

He doesn’t this time. But his “consoling” lacks warmth. Feels more like an observation than much else.]

From what little I’ve seen, this outcome would always have been inevitable. Your existence itself was a point of contention. You’re faulting yourself for being alive. Did you have a choice in that?

[Oh yes, he would have been… a very potent victim, this teenage Alec, so angry and guilt-laden. But it’s hard for Henry to think of that as a missed opportunity now. This is rarer, finding someone similar to himself, who lets him peruse through the darker parts of his mind.]

[ The way Henry responds is almost clinical. Crisp and carefully distant, like the way he does everything, but it isn't wrong. Maybe this was always going to happen, maybe even if he and his father had the best relationship in the world.

But those "what ifs" are of little comfort now, with his father's corpse cooling beneath his hands and the storm of his anger raging outside. It will take more than a simple observation to undo the decades of damage that Alec has done to his own self-worth.

Grimly, ]

Did I have a choice? Of course not.

[ His choices begin now.

Outside, the wind begins to howl, and rainwater splashes its way in through the open mouth of the garage. Sirens blare in the distance. ]

I think you should go now.

[No, he imagines it will take more than a few plainly-stated sentences to undo any of the damage he's seen here today. And why would he want to? Someone so broken to the core is just like-

He stops that dangerous line of thought. That almost-admittance. Instead, the rainwater splashes in, the storm grows fiercer outside. Sirens are crying out somewhere in the distance.]

Are you sure?

[Henry reaches out with two fingers of his left hand, brushing fingertips across the red that paints Alec's skin. This touch probably isn't wanted, or even really comfortable, but since when does he care about that?]

You don't have anything else you want to show me?

[All the dark things in this head of his.]

[ He flinches, just a bit, when Henry's fingertips alight on his face, but he doesn't flinch away. Just like when he turned his gaze upon the horrible, twisted thing that Henry became, it feels important not to turn away. ]

You've seen more than enough, Henry. More than anyone has ever seen.

[It is important not to turn away. It's important to accept every facet of Henry even when he is being less than... comforting in both words and actions. But eventually, at least, he retracts his hand, turning it over to look at the blood on his fingertips.]

Then I'll take the scenic route out. See you on the other side... eventually.

[He smiles, small and faint, and stands. His look is lingering, but then he turns to leave, choosing not to put this newfound trust into jeopardy today.

Instead, he sloshes through the rising water, ducking under the garage door, and leaves him. But not without trailing through a path of old childhood memories first.]

[ As he walks away, the grisly scene behind Henry dissolves in the rainwater, washed away to instead show him scenes of the past.

Henry once offered to let Alec relive his happiest moments. Alec declined then, and it becomes abundantly clear why: there are precious, precious few of those to be found in his childhood. As Henry surmised by looking at teen Alec, he has always been angry, prone to lashing out and starting fights. His childhood is one of isolation, talking back to teachers and throwing punches at fellow students until detention is practically a second home. From the first moment another child commented on the ratty state of his secondhand clothes or teased him for not having a mom, it's always been this way.

Even the few quiet moments he and his father shared in something like happiness is tainted by what's to come. It's hard to look back on those times and see them for what they are, as guilt looms heavy over the scenes. Suddenly, the Warden labeling Alec as "an ungrateful little shit" makes a lot more sense. He never appreciated any of this until it was far too late.

Eventually, the way out opens, and Henry will emerge from the stormy, shadowy corridors of Alec's mind. ]

[It’s funny, he thinks, as he wanders down this fleeting path of memory. As a child, Alec could not be more different than himself when he was those same ages. Henry was a quiet one, a solitary one, and it’s more likely he would have found himself in the unwanted crosshairs of a kid like Alec rather than seek his company.

But it’s still interesting to see. The fond memories here are laced with a heavy, cloying sense of guilt and gloom, and even Henry’s not sure he could prise them apart if ever given a reason to try.

…Could he say the same for himself? His parents would buy him an overlarge cake for his birthdays. His sister would drag him down the hall of their new house and laugh, trying to show him the new places she’d discovered after they’d moved in. Family outings in the summer. Bright faces in the sunlight. These are supposed be fond memories, warm ones, but they are so laden with discontent that he’s sure they died on the vine a long, long time ago.

He supposes it’s the same for Alec. He understands.

Eventually, the path ends. Once darkness is all that surrounds him, Henry is out of Alec’s head, and they’re back in “reality” again, sitting on his bed in the man’s room. He opens his eyes.]

Alec?

[(Henry's nostril is bleeding red.)]

Welcome back. How do you feel?

[ After a second, Alec's eyes blink open. He can feel a headache beginning to bloom behind his eyes, but it's not the worst he's ever had. No, what's more immediately apparent is the hollow, gnawing feeling in his chest, as thay day decades gone is made suddenly fresh again, suddenly raw. It's a miracle that he didn't come to with tears in his eyes.

He scrubs his hands over his face, trying to will the sensation away. At best, he's able to shove it down to deal with later. It'll have to do. ]

Been better.

[ He glances up at Henry, noting the bloody nose. ]

You got a little something on your face.

[He lifts his brow, gently. Henry doubts he’s as steady as he presents himself; not after a memory like that. It’s like opening a fresh new wound — he would know. It says something for his stubbornness? His conviction? His acting skills? That he’s playing all off as nothing.]

Hm?

[He touches right below his nose, and his fingers wet with familiar warmth.]

Oh. That’s a side-effect. Don't worry. It’s normal, though it takes so much less effort in this place to start bleeding.

[ Alec is well-practiced in keeping himself together in the company of others. He'll fall apart when he's good and ready - which is to say when next he's alone. ]

Less effort? What do you mean by that?

I mentioned once that this prison’s made me weaker? That includes my endurance when it comes to using my powers. Too much, and I… tire. Easily.

[Turns his hand to face Alec, bloodied fingertips wiggling ever so slightly.]

This is the first sign of strain.

[ He arches his brows, considering the ramifications of that. ]

So you're just living with a mini version of whatever the hell happened to us in that elevator?

You mean with our powers being dampened? I guess so.

[warden thought he’d be too OP or something ig]

It’s not ideal. But it’s better than not having my abilities at all.

I didn't even know that kind of shit could happen.

[ He was so!! Fucking!! MAD!! ]

Upsetting, isn’t it? Like losing a limb.

[It wasn’t terribly jarring for Henry, though. Even if he, too, hated it.]

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