HCF

maybe it’s cowardly of him, but tyrell starts with the easy part, once he’s back untouched in negative space: ‘ i guessed as much. ’

the money, he means - he’d cycled through a few burner phones until he realised no one tries to call or look up or hack dead people, and then - the alert in his account, too. even on the other side of the world. it could only have meant a few things, and - it had kicked him out of some pleasant inactivity. started him listening again; the news, the police channels, but -

they’d left out the part about the nuclear plant, or at least the part where elliot was there, and something twists uncomfortably in tyrell’s ribcage. ( nothing to do with it. there’s no one to rattle or threaten or hurt or pressure and he doesn’t know how else to help. if elliot even wants that, after everything. )

why are you here is the on the nose question that eats at him, too, and the honesty that comes on its heels even startles tyrell: ‘ because i’m selfish. ’ a twitchy shake of the head. ‘ i thought: go somewhere no one knows who i am. but then that stopped working out. ’ he had the privacy and the stability and the routine of prescription refills and being able to sit out in the sun without looking over his shoulder but: in the end he’s selfish, and hateful, and still found himself wanting things he couldn’t have.

maybe it’s just easier to torture himself up close. ( but he should have stayed gone. maybe that’s what elliot’s really saying. tyrell’s jaw works, wishing elliot would just come out with it, then. ) quietly: ‘ do you want me to leave? ’

i don’t know what to say to that. selfish, and innumerable heavy implications that come with it, the idea that the selfless thing would’ve been to stay away. to stay away from elliot. my brow creases, and then he shakes his head. tyrell doesn’t have to go. which isn’t exactly the same thing as wanting him to stay, but — maybe the difference doesn’t matter.

“ i need to go back inside. ” it’s too cold, he’s been stood up too long. “ i’m in pain. i asked them not to give me morphine. ” does he even know i’m an addict ? does tyrell know - much about me a lot about me, anything about me ? it’s not a criticism, in elliot’s head; just a question, that - i don’t know if i’ve ever told him anything. and in the after, working my way through mr robot and the old elliot and my mother and the young elliot, and darlene, and krista, all of it — i feel like now it’s over, there’s nothing else to do but talk. we tried to kill someone together and spent all night walking through the woods and i’ve never said anything to him except i think you’re the only person i know that actually likes me. “ so i just ... need to go back to my room. you can come. ”

‘ no shit? ’ huh. who woulda thought. leon, idly, scrapes squared-off nails at a patch of skin behind his ear. ‘ good thing i stopped dating chicks, i guess. ’ beat, appraising: ‘ you look like you came out a trash compactor, man. ’

it’s such a strange–by strange he means uncanny, by uncanny he means unheimlich, unhomely–thing to make your last words something like i’m just gonna go for a walk, and then wake up somewhere else with more to say and breath to say it with. 

but then, none of that quite stacks up against this; he’s been going through the paces, weekly sessions, medication, but still, the cold tangled thing in his chest freezes and revolts, muscles of his arms, chest, stiffening, startled-animal. played over maybe half a hundred times, ways that elliot might want to touch him, and none of them had added up right, and take care of whiterose had been some sort of acceptance that he doesn’t get what he wants, and maybe that’s all right–nowhere in there is there any sort of preparation for this, and somewhere in between tyrell’s thoughts go blank and brittle, like a stretch of undisturbed snow, or the hiss of tv static.

lasts long enough he realises he’s been frozen stiff for too many seconds; he remembers, or reminds himself, to tuck his arms around elliot while he can. while he’s allowed to. before elliot remembers or realises or decides that this is a horrible idea. something in him wants to prick damp behind his eyes, behind the sunglasses shielding him from the glare off the snow or just from people looking at him too long, but those don’t come either. usually, it’s easy to blame that on the pills. here, he knows it’s the suddenness. the startling. 

it’s better this way. he shouldn’t dampen elliot’s hoodie the first time elliot wants to touch him. the clock in the back of tyrell’s mind ticks down seconds until elliot regrets it. fifteen. fourteen. thirteen.

‘ i thought so, too, ’ he hears himself saying, and then, ‘ i had to disappear, for a while. but it’s - ’ well, it’s not over. it might never be over. not with everything that’s been done to them, and everything they’ve done to each other. but this is the closest they’ve ever been to actually safe, and, ‘ it was time. to come back. ’ eleven. ten. nine. a weak sound like a hiccup or a queasy laugh trickles wetly in the back of tyrell’s throat, and he realises - ah. there, the stinging behind his eyes. that’s a problem. seven. six. five. thin, strained - ‘ why are you here? ’ the hospital.

the long stretch of seconds where tyrell is like a statue lets too many anxious thoughts ball up in his head — that’s supposed to be my job. it’s elliot who doesn’t like being touched, it’s elliot who doesn’t want people to hug him, it’s elliot. it’s me. i’m the problem. he doesn’t want me to touch him, and that — feels like turnabout is fair play. he’s planning to pull away when that thing in tyrell unsticks and he’s being held back, and elliot sets his weight down from standing on the balls of his feet to the flats. the movement tugs tyrell down with him, just a little.

“ i stopped white rose. like you said. ” does he - know ? is that how he knows it was time to come back ? elliot swallows and it hurts. he breathes, and it hurts, the pressure of his chest against tyrell’s chest, of tyrell’s arms around him. it’s his ribs, but it’s a feeling, too, something nameless and ugly and like the howling of that wounded animal in the woods. “ or, i stopped her machine. she’s dead. ” i didn’t want her dead. i never thought she had to die, she just had to stop. the feeling is mixed. the following feeling ekes a little bit of pride into elliot’s voice: “ and we stole all their fucking money. ” 

and none of that is why elliot is in the hospital. for that, he does loosen his hold. he’s stayed holding onto tyrell long past four, three, two, one, and the wincing inhale when he can take a full breath makes him shudder uncomfortably. “ i was in this room, with her. and she left a way out. to turn her machine off. she left - it down to me. she let me choose. ” he’s been standing too long. his fingers curl in the fabric of tyrell’s coat for the steadying of it. “ the place blew up anyway. i broke a couple ribs, hit my head. they want to make sure i’m not gonna grow a second head too, i guess. ” you know. radiation. 

he should leave.

he should never have walked over in the first place. - one thing to come home, to be allowed to come home; something else entirely to find his way back into the lives he disappeared from as though he never left.

the cold nips at a half-bared stretch of tyrell’s throat, between where his chin ends and his scarf starts; feels disjointed from the warmth that’s bronzed into his skin in the time he was - away. gone. recovering. the stretched scar across his belly, under his shirt, under his coat, hasn’t changed colour. he doesn’t know if that makes it more real than the rest of him or less.

he should leave.

tyrell’s fingers weave together, wrists pressing lightly at the small of his back. he glances down at elliot once he’s spoken to – too late to leave, then. though, maybe elliot would assume he’d imagined the shadow. maybe not.

his tongue wets the winter-dry chap of his lips, and what he’s about to say is impressively stupid, but then: it was never going to be anything else. quietly, privately, some sickly tender thing that aches at his jaw, ‘ bonsoir, elliot. ’

          mr robot should’ve warned me. anyone should’ve warned me. anyone passing through the garden should’ve gone, hey, are you tyrell wellick ?, or i should’ve looked up and seen him for myself — anything other than bonsoir elliot and the inhale of breath and wondering, not for the first time, if tyrell is real. the shadow will disappear when he looks up. like so many delusions of men in black following me on trains and down the streets.

i know you probably think i’m crazy for this, too, but i don’t want the shadow to disappear when i look up. i know. he killed a woman and bragged about it in my apartment. he’s scared me. he’s been in this with mr robot when we were at odds, he’s been with and against the dark army. he shot me. but in every one of elliot’s visions of the future, of peace, of some kind of end to everything, every fairytale ideal has included tyrell. tyrell not in prison, tyrell with his family, tyrell alive. tyrell as something like a friend. 

          i still have his phone. in my apartment.

and he’s so certain that the shadow will disappear when he looks up that he almost doesn’t. he chances a look sideways, first. looks at the shoes. it’s a convincing stance. expensive shoes, the way he sets his weight when he’s stood. it’s a good hallucination. it’s so good, and it’s so ... near, it’s so, so convincing. it’s enough to convince him to look up.

“ tyrell ? ”

he stares, dumbfounded, at first. the seconds hang like something weighted and real as elliot looks at him and he knows, understands, this is something real and happening: the details are all just so slightly off, so imperfectly captured, tyrell’s face not exactly as he remembers it, warmer in colour. the feeling is enough to carry elliot up off his feet, pain whining through his ribs and sides with the forward motion and coming to a dull sharp peak as elliot careens into tyrell and wraps his arms around his torso tightly.

muffled into his shoulder: “ — i thought you were gone - ”

          hello, friend. it’s me again. it’s - always going to be me, sometimes, i think. i have to find my footing. our footing. whatever they said, he’s not ready to be awake. he’ll come and go. maybe he’ll go back to that safe place. i don’t know. what i know is they won’t discharge me until they’re happy i’m not sick or going to get sick, but —

they will let him walk around the gardens, though. they seem willing to let him move and exist. so i do that, in drawstring pants and slippers that darlene got me and told him make him look old as fuck, dude, totally in line with your spirit. a t-shirt and a new hoodie - grey, not black - round the whole thing off, and elliot drags the aching, rusted joints of his legs over to sit on a bench, zipping the hoodie up to his throat. my old clothes were ruined. there wasn’t a meltdown, but turns out it’s still dangerous to have big explosions at a nuclear power plant. darlene said something about the hospital being worried about contamination. i have a few broken ribs, too, but they said they just wanted to monitor me a day or two more.

it’s probably too cold to sit out here, staring at his feet, staring at the threat of ice on the grass. it’s - oh. it’s new years day, isn’t it ? it’s january 1st, 2016. the shadow of a person appears in elliot’s periphery, feet crunching on the ground, but i don’t look up. just look at the grass, contemplating its freezing and its growth. i thought i was going to die. even when i was trying to live. i didn’t know i’d get to see what happens to the world.

quiet and impulsive, to the peripheral shadow: “ — happy new years. ”

Bev’s head bobs back in slight shock. It rolls into a tight nod. No money. Cool. But also questionable. Does he trust this guy? That’s a complicated question. Bev has had a hard time trusting anyone ever since, well, you know. This guy seems like, like, just look at that black hoodie, their public meeting space, they may be on set for a scifi hacker film right now, except there are no cameras here–movie, security, or otherwise–in this dingy little coffee shop, which is definitely directly related to why the meeting spot is here. It’s not because of the excellent coffee, that is for sure (it’s awful, it tastes so awful). But, in the guy’s defense he also seems genuine.

Bev has never thought about what name he would like to have. He’s only ever thought about it abstractly, only ever thought about what it’d be like to not have his father’s name. Not another name. Just, not his father’s. He’s read online articles and picked up pamphlets on the legal process of changing your name. Once a month, he googles the names of his fathers relatives to see where they’re at name wise. See if they’re still sticking to it. Two of them have changed theirs. His father’s sister and a cousin. One kept their first name. One didn’t. Marriage, some might say, is a solution. But he hasn’t been able to enter any significant relationship with a woman since the murders. Hasn’t tried to.

He can feel beads of sweat dampening his temples and hairline. He wipes his palm across his forehead.

          “Here is the thing.”  His eyebrows jump up, and he does a vague but stern hand gesture towards Elliot.  “I don’t know what I want my name to be. All I do know is I don’t want it to be this, you know what I mean? I don’t think I can live with my name being this anymore. But then, on the flip side, I think I’m supposed to live with it? This may, this is, this is my cross to bear. Is there any kind of, uhm, trial period on a name change? Right, like, I can’t, I probably can’t return it? That would essentially be me asking you to do this service again. There is no undo, I assume. And, uhm, I’m fine with using some random name generator as long as I don’t get a name like Gary or, uh, Chad. That would be pretty unfortunate.”

let him talk. don’t even zone out. we shouldn’t talk over him. this could be important. we’ve been here, remember ? or i have, which means you’ve seen me do it. when bev runs out of steam, elliot waits, three, five seconds to make sure he’s not going to start again, then shifts forward, hands looking for a more confident purchase as they lay on the edge of the table.

          “ i’m trans. lots of people like me try names out before we use them forever. there’s nothing stopping you doing that. ” it feels odd to slip that out of elliot’s mouth for someone who doesn’t, necessarily, need to know that about me. is bev going to benefit by knowing this ? is exposing some part of myself to a stranger that could hurt me useful ? i don’t know. but it’s, for elliot, intrinsically linked to the concept of a name, and why you might want to change it, and, “ i was a kid when i started calling myself elliot. the only other people who did were me and my best friend, and then i got my sister to do it, too. but my mom never did, though. because some people won’t let the name you were born with go away. you should know that, before you do anything. it’s like a death for them. ” 

          he drops his hands off the table and pins them, palm to palm, between his knees instead, shoulders hunched forward. “ i’m not saying you shouldn’t change your name. just saying what you’ll have to deal with. ” the question he didn’t ask comes back, but where elliot had been curious why bev wanted to change his name —