The light in Wolfwood's hands shows him a few things through the perspective of a little boy:
Nighttime, crying alone on a rooftop with only the moons as his witness. The sound of small footsteps approaching him, a grunt of, Oh, here you are.
The other boy is a little older than him, with messy, dark hair and brown eyes that regard him with an odd sense of casualness (Wolfwood knows this face. It's like looking in a tiny mirror). Then he hears him run off, slip, cry out in alarm, and the boy whose eyes he sees through runs to help him to find him dangling there by his legs, entirely unbothered, before he swings himself back onto the roof.
He holds his hand out and smiles, The name's Nicholas D. Wolfwood.
Another little memory of the two of them in the tomas pen, scattering feed for the chicks.
You're finally smiling, crybaby Livio.
Smoking worm legs on the rooftop, exhaling and coughing on pink smoke, laughing when Miss Melanie comes to chase them away, running hand-in-hand.
Memories of that little dark-haired boy hugging him when he was sad, curling up together for a nap in the middle of the day, shirking chores to go play. Nico showed this little boy lighter tricks.
And then one day, Nico was gone.
Livio wanted to follow him.
This is your little brother, no?
A man that looks too big to be little Livio's brother (but looks alarmingly like himself; how many people's memories will he have to see his own face?) is hunched on floor, on his elbows and knees, clothes torn from bullets and stained with blood. There should be a flood of alarm, grief, confusion, but he feels hollow. Like he's not in his own body, like something else is there in his head.
I hear he volunteered himself to follow after you.
This blue-haired freak Wolfwood recognizes— the differences are there, but he'd know Bluesummers anywhere.
What beautiful brotherly love.
The man on the floor in front of him goes through rapid stages of shock, alarm, distress, shouting until he's forced into the floor, thrown to the ceiling, back down to the floor, the surfaces cracking, breaking, and all the Wolfwood of now can do is watch this through a young child's distant eyes.
Things are starting to feel staticky, hazy, like something else is trying to take hold as he watches. As the scientist approaches, as the doors shut.
And then Wolfwood is thrust back into his own body, back into the present, and he's holding that light data in his hand and gawking at it. His stomach turns, his teeth grind, and he digs out his phone, scrolling through the names until he finds the one he's looking for, the Livio lacking a star beside his name that keeps him at the top of his contacts.
Into the speaker he practically barks, "I'm outside the mall. Get yer ass over here. I have somethin' for ya. Now."
@doublefanged
