Please let the Hargreeves hug 2025

+Bonus: the whole canvas and modified version 😛

"??? It was the first solo surgery Mom let me do how could I possibly forget"

As a kid, he was made to compete against most of them in s highly abusive household. Mutual feelings of superiority, inferiority, jealously, belittlement existed and it's all too easy to say 'he loved them underneath it all' but what is love? Do you love your random classmate bully who you are always compared to? Who might be on the same team as you in a football match and you might look out for each other but then the teacher would reveal the man of the match while ridiculing the others and you will have to shut up and take it. You just saved the very same guy from falling flat on his face and the silent gratitude in his eyes is slowly turning into a sense of pride and superiority due to the praise. He isn't giving you any credit. Now if your teacher makes you call each other siblings, how much would change? What does it matter what you call each other if at the end of the day, you aren't taught to love but to compete.

Now, the situation gets even more complex as you are isolated from the rest of the world and the same source of your envy is one of the only human companion you have. You can talk to them, fight with them, plan mischiefs with them, form little groups to come and target the classmate who pissed you off the most that week but the 7 of you are all you have. As much as you deny it, at a base level you can in fact relate to them, understand them, as much as they might backstab you and as good as it may feel to see them getting scolded, you haven't forgotten that they helped you and you haven't forgotten what it's like to be on the other side, something that fuels you to both enjoy this and to empathize with them. You also don't really like when they get too sad, it's only fun if they are seething but them being completely heartbroken over it is too much to bear.

Now, you run away. At 13. Reach a world that has already ended. Get stuck. You are alone, isolated, everyone else is dead. You decide that this is not the end. You decide to keep going, to fix everything; it was partly your fault this happened after all, if only you hadn't left, if only you had listened. But it's alright, you have your powers, you have your equations and even though they are temporarily malfunctioning, they will be back for you and you'll use them to remake the world, in a way that would make it so it never ended at all. But it's tough, it's more that tough, it's horrible, you can't but you have to. The tattooed corpses are too much, you need them up and about, you need them to fight, to argue, to have your "i did it, i was right" moment because what does any of it matter when your whole world, the one that was mostly confined inside those four walls, is gone. So you'll go on but you need something to hold onto. You need a reminder about why you are still going. Saving the world is too grand a concept, it's an ideal and when going gets too tough most ideals are easily abandoned, personal desires remain. So you remember your old life, your siblings and you hold those limited memories very close to your heart for what feels like a limitless life. You collect everything you can about them - magazine interviews, newspaper clippings, an autobiography because you can't forget, you need this, you'll need to think of the sound of the violin the next time the suicidal voice in your head gets too loud. You will need to have people you can attach behaviours to the next time you read a novel or it might feel too detached, too unreal, too detached. People don't exist anymore, the story is nothing but an illusion if the people in your mind cease to exist too. You have imaginary conversations with them.