random 500 word flip and gradient drabble (pre-fic, flip is ~18 and gradient is ~10)
Gradient looks all too small swathed beneath the fabric of Vee’s hoodie. Yes, Vee had been small—in the space she lacked physically, she made up for with a voracious temper—but the way the dark cotton clings to Gradient’s bones, sullen and swamped, reveals just how awfully young Flip’s little brother is.
At ten years old Gradient sits across from him, drenched in the shadows of their dead sister’s jacket, preparing himself to introduce himself and their other siblings to the Underground that had stolen everything from them.
Flip adjusts himself. The bed creaks and the place where his leg no longer remains, aches.
He remembers the axe. The burning; The realization; The dust. Flip had thought that it was the worst thing that would ever happen to him—revenge stolen in haste and ill accordance—but… then. Well, then it had happened.
Still, it smells sweet. Still, Flip is haunted.
Maybe if they’d gotten the whole prosthetic situation ironed it earlier, he would have been able to stop it. Maybe if he hadn’t needed so much pain management, they’d still have the money. Maybe he wouldn’t have been a coward. Maybe he’d have stopped it.
Maybe, for once, Flip would have followed his first instinct.
“I-It is. Right?” Gradient tries again. His mouth curves into a frown at Flip’s continued hesitancy, and yet another glitch wrecks his spine like an electric shock. It was almost unfair, how much he looked like her. There’s the same displeased quirk of his brow as his gaze drops back to the papers laid in front of them: the outfits Palette and Trebuchet would wear upon their debut. And, there’s that same hardened determination, cobbled together with a single breath and prayer, as Gradient considers Flip once more. It’s sillier on Gradient’s round features. A kitten drawing their claws. Pitiful, as it is endearing. But, it gets the message across. Of course her shadow would carry her visage. Of course, her ghost remains. “Bad? It’s bad, right?”
The answer falls too neatly from Flip’s mouth. Yes, it was bad. Horrible. Awful. Again, the cycle repeats. Again, his family will be torn apart by greed and circumstance. Palette and Trebuchet were just as young. Just as naive. There is no other outcome. There has never been any other outcome.
But… maybe there is? Maybe history would be a blueprint, for once. Hope. Just maybe, there’s hope. And, so, Flip finds a nearly harsh, “No,” shaping his speech. No, it doesn’t have to be. It won’t be. He’ll be there; They’ve seen what happens, when tempted. It’ll be different. He thinks. He prays. But…
“I don’t know,” Flip finally settles on. His swallow scratches his throat, tasting too vividly of acid and indecision. He tries not to look at how Gradient has stilled. How, so clearly, he’s done his best not to flinch.
Flip, idly, wonders if Gradient would let him tailor the jacket. Tighten it up, and make it something that won’t weigh him down. Dye it into something different. Alter it to who Gradient wants to be, as a person. Perhaps it’s a selfish desire, though. It’s hard, seeing the way the cloth drags on him: a last, helpless plea. The darkness suits him; The silhouette will be grown into.
“...Okay,” Gradient finally murmurs. He shakes his head. Scares away the rumbling glitches. “I-I’m… I’m worried.”
‘Don’t be,’ Flip wants to say. Gradient shouldn’t bog himself down with such thoughts. Worrying won’t stop the inevitable. It would be all too mean, though. Honest. ‘You should be,’ is his kinder thought—cloaked in harsher reality. To be aware is the first step; You must know your opponent. And, yet, both answers refuse to be known. Flip finds himself at an honest loss of words.
Before Flip can try again, it seems his lack of answer has been taken for what it is.
It is how it is; It is how it will always be.
“Okay,” Gradient repeats. He shrugs his shoulders: embraces what weighs him down. With newfound confidence, he pushes the papers over. “Could you. U-Uh. Give your thoughts on the d-designs?” he asks, gesturing down to his own hurried scratches: clearly redrawn, erased, and redrawn again.
Slowly, Flip picks them up.
He doesn’t know if it matters. If he can; If it’s worth it.
But, at the very least, he’ll try.
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