#hesopher

sketches of Emmett's grandkids 🥰

Bonus:

The last memory on the data chip held a weight to it both because it was the last one Midas had to look at, and because he knew from the first few seconds that it was actually the last memory he’d had before he’d lost them all. It was some time after his twentieth birthday, and he was sitting on a flat table wearing a surgical gown, and a small rat in his lap.

Morg.

Midas remembered that rat now.

“You’re a lot more excited than I thought you’d be,” Hesopher spoke, double checking the devices and systems for the thirtieth time. He was scared. It wasn’t even  nervousness, but full on fear. And yet they were doing this anyway, because they had enough proof that it would work, and they weren’t sure how much time Midas had left. Their first experiments had been with dinner before it was cooked. Slabs of meat that still had a bone in them, injected with nanites to see if they would follow the old documents and convert the dead meat to a cyborg system without harming the tissue. The bone material was replaced with metal, and the muscle and other tissues laced with microscopic fibers to strengthen them both for health and to be able to work with the heavier bone replacements. Once they had become experienced enough with that to not have any flaws they had captured a field rat and modified their program for it. That was Morg. A healthy little rat that had so far lived a lot longer than expected for a wild rat, and was nibbling away at a cracker Midas had given him.

After Morg they had done their first terrifying test with Midas, and started with the pinky toe on his left foot. Something that wasn’t life threatening if he lost it. But they found they didn’t have to worry. The years and years that they’d put into perfecting their research had made the surgery a perfect success.

And so they had tried something else.

Midas let Morg hop back to the ground and scurry out of the room, then flexed his left hand to remind himself that this would work. His entire arm up to his elbow, and both of his legs up to his knees were already converted. The same subtle heaviness in his limbs that present day Midas was extremely familiar with weighed on those limbs. They still ached at that time, but it was just the muscles. The bone deep pain that he felt everywhere else was almost nonexistent there. It was just the blood from the rest of his corrupted skeleton he was born with that still caused him grief. But today they were going to fix that.

“I’m excited to be normal,” Midas answered, looking up to his dad with a hope filled grin, raising his hand and flexing it as well as swinging his legs slightly to emphasize his point.

Hesopher couldn’t help the short laugh that escaped him at the choice of words. “You’ll hardly be what people consider normal. But… seeing you be able to run across the field and chase butterflies without ending up bedridden for a week will be nice,” he admitted, the motions from Midas reminding him that this would work, and the conversation giving him something to look forward to.

Drawing a shuddering breath to steady himself more, Hesopher brought the syringe of anesthesia over and inserted the needle in the line closer to Midas’ arm after he obediently laid down. “...Ready?” he asked quietly.

Midas could only give him a warm smile. “Yeah,” he responded softly. “Whatever happens…. Thanks for indulging my wants for so long,” he added. Even if he did end up dying, which he knew would have happened within the next year or two even if they didn’t do this, he wanted his dad to know that it wasn’t his dad’s fault. Midas wanted to take full responsibility for whatever happened, but didn’t want to somehow jinx the surgery now by voicing the possibility that it could kill him. So instead he just thanked his dad for always being there for him, and going along with all of his needs and wants.

Hesopher seemed to understand, his eyes stinging and blurring with tears as he rested a hand on Midas’ cheek fondly. “... I love you. My little Midas,” he responded. That was enough. He would have plenty of time to speak to him longer once he woke up again.

Midas’ smile just grew to show teeth, and he rested his hand over the top of his dad’s. “I love you too dad. You…” he stopped himself there. Those words could be said later. So instead he just grinned again. “I’ll see you when I wake up,” he bid, lowering his hand back into position.

“...See you when you wake,” Hesopher agreed, squeezing the syringe that caused his son to fall into a dreamless sleep.

All of the memories from the data chip settled in Midas’ mind like a heavy blanket of warmth as understanding flooded his mind along with them. So many of the questions he’d had were explained now; even questions he hadn’t realized would have an answer. He didn’t know how to interact with people because he hadn’t grown up with much interaction outside of a few. He didn’t know how to tell when he was sick because he didn’t know what it was like to be healthy. Sick felt normal. Pain, and fatigue had been his every day. He knew so much about programs, and machines, because that had been his escape from the prison his physical body had felt like. And throughout it all his dad had been there, holding him tight when it all became too much. Gently following on with his crazy, childish ideas that strangely were what he needed.

And yet he hadn’t followed through with his last promise. He hadn’t been with his dad when he’d woken up, as though it were something that was his fault.

Blinking his eyes open, Midas looked up from where he was kneeling in the flower fields Hesopher had mentioned finally being able to see him run through, looking his father in the eyes that quickly became blurred.

It was easy to see the change in Midas’ expression when he looked at him now. Midas was still his son regardless of if he remembered him or not, but having his little boy looking up at him with such a familiar expression caused Hesopher to choke on fresh tears. “...Good morning,” he said softly, thinking back to the last conversation he’d had with his son.

Midas’s form shuddered with a weak laugh mixed with a sob. It was hard to find breath to speak, especially when he pushed himself to his feet again while rubbing his eyes. “It worked,” he responded, voice muffled through his tear closed throat. Forcing himself to take a deeper breath so he could speak more clearly, Midas gave up trying to rub the water from his eyes and looked to Hesopher. “It doesn’t hurt, Dad.”

It was Hesopher’s turn to let out a choked laugh, just a small huff as bittersweet relief washed over him because of those simple words. Yet Midas’ smile faded as he couldn’t keep from sobbing harder, suddenly stumbling forward while sliding his arms around Hesopher’s torso in the tightest hug he’d ever felt from his son.

“Daddy it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Midas’ sobbed confirmation that those eight years of painstaking testing, sleepless nights, and smothering fear had succeeded to free him from his life of pain trapped to a hospital bed by plastic vines broke the iron weight that had been sitting in Hesopher’s heart for the past three years. He hadn’t heard Midas call him daddy since he was a smaller child, but it seemed to fit. There he was. His perfectly healthy little boy sobbing in his arms, and making every tear Hesopher had shed alone before today worth it a thousand times over. It was hard for either of them to say anything more, and Hesopher didn’t care that Midas’ now above human strength was making it just a little hard to breathe. The most cherished thing he’d ever had in his life aside from his wife was now back where he could hold him, and he wasn’t going to let go.

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First

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aaaand there's all of Midas' backstory ;v; I cried a lil writing that last part.

The relationship label made sense considering how much Hesopher and Midas looked like each other. Whip and Ian had guessed some sort of relation, but they had been thinking more of a distant relative like an uncle, or maybe cousin. So when Hesopher revealed he was Midas’ father the other two couldn’t help looking surprised.

“A’ah, no. Don’t worry about it. He’s a good kid, we were happy to take care of him. He helped us out a lot too,” Whip faltered, finally removing his hand from his sword’s hilt in favor of waving both hands slightly in front of him. He felt a little embarrassed about having reacted so defensively towards Midas’ father, but the sudden appearance of someone he didn’t know always made him wary. “I have to admit when we came here I was only expecting to find something vaguely familiar to him that would give us a hint on the next place to look. We honestly only stopped by because he said the cathedral in Crystal’s database felt familiar instead of just looked.”

“You looked through my harddrive?” Crystal butted in after an offended noise, holding a hand on her sternum.

Before Ian could get too flustered and start to defend their actions, Whip just laughed. “We stole your tokomov reactor too,” he informed, giving Crystal a mischievous smile. He knew her reaction from before had been pretend considering she had apparently scrubbed her harddrive of anything important. So now he was giving her an actual reason to be offended.

“WHAT?” Crystal blurted, her gaze snapping over to fully stare at Whip now.

“There we go,” Whip snickered, revealing that he’d just been toying with Crystal by saying that so bluntly. “We put it to good use at least. Since you left it for a few years or so. Hooked it up to a machine Midas helped design that keeps molrillos from invading an establishment of people just outside Cerah.”

The revelation was indeed better than Crystal had expected after hearing her reactor wasn’t where she left it, causing her to blink quietly for a moment as she registered that. “Oh…. Well I guess that’s fine,” she shrugged. It was foolish of her to expect something as valuable as that to go unnoticed for so long anyway. Instead she allowed Ian to pull the conversation back to where it should have been.

“Do you know why a cathedral would be something Midas recognized? Aside from them being around here?” Ian asked, addressing Hesopher since Midas seemed like he was still having a hard time processing everything that was going on. He didn’t seem to be upset about Hesopher’s arm still being around him at least. Though Ian still couldn’t help noticing how careful the grip was. Was Hesopher afraid of holding Midas too tight for some reason?

“Oh… That’s because we live in one,” Hesopher responded, looking both amused and saddened by the fact. “It was easier to repurpose one of the cathedrals into an infirmary since they were built better than the original buildings. And since housing isn’t abundant here, most people live where they work.”

Another piece of information that clicked in Midas’ mind as true. Just like when Hesopher mentioned he was his father. All the scrambled thoughts of potentials getting dismissed like dispersing fog as the title settled into place. He was only second guessing the feeling since he couldn’t bring himself to actively remember anything specific about Hesopher. The names sounded right. Midas Clandel was his name. And the hugs and kisses from Hesopher had been familiar. Likewise being told he lived in that cathedral he’d seen before made sense, and felt right. He could vaguely remember looking out a window from the inside now.

“You’re one of the doctors for the city then?” Ian asked to confirm his guess after hearing Hesopher worked at the infirmary, and was also wearing a white coat.

“That’s correct,” Hesopher confirmed with a nod.

As Ian confirmed Hesopher’s profession, and through that confirmed his knowledge in medicine and taking care of the human body, Whip couldn’t help circling back to something that Crystal had mentioned to Midas earlier. He almost asked them outright, but when Ian shot a look to him as soon as he opened his mouth Whip reeled that sentence back in favor of a more polite question. “So… what’s the reason you guys had a hunch Midas wouldn’t have his memory? Did you do something to him?”

Okay maybe that second question wasn’t strictly necessary, and Whip felt a mild tinge of regret when Hesopher’s expression became one of anxious regret. Yet that only served to support Whip’s suspicion, and he folded his arms and started pointedly at both of them. If Midas wasn’t in a state of mind to interrogate these two then Whip and Ian would be more than willing.

Hesopher didn’t seem to know how to respond this time, his gaze falling as he pulled Midas a little closer. The argument was there, so he inevitably responded truthfully without realizing how bad it would make the situation seem. “...Yes…”

The response caused Midas to jerk away, eyes going wide in shocked confusion. He didn’t feel the need to avoid Hesopher, somehow he wasn’t scared of him despite the answer. He just wanted to be able to see Hesopher clearly, without looking up at him from directly below his chin.

“W’what?” Midas asked, finally finding his voice.

“Hold on,” Crystal interrupted again, raising her hands and stepping slightly forward, between Whip and Ian, and Hesopher. “He’s making it sound a lot worse than it is. We didn’t expect this to happen, so we didn’t notice it until months later, when he was already with me,” she consoled, noticing how Whip and Ian were shifting protectively towards Midas.

“Notice what? That the kid couldn’t even remember his full name?” Whip blurted, gesturing an open palm to Midas. “Or his own father?” The hand moved to Hesopher.

Crystal’s eyes squinted in mild annoyance at Whip’s outburst. But considering she’d already known him for a long time now she opted for a blunt answer instead of working through a gentle one. “Midas was in a coma before we lost him. He wasn’t exactly in a state of being where we would notice anything. I was watching over him, and while we were trying to figure out why he wasn’t waking up Hesopher noticed that part of his harddrive was replaced by Midas’ memories. He downloaded the data from the computer he was connected to and his own memories got lost in the mix of data that Hesopher had been given to hold onto from people in the city. Home videos parents took of their kids. Birthday parties for family members and friends. Festivals. Journal entries. News articles. All sorts of data sent to be backed up in a secondary database.”

The revelation was enough to get Whip to snap his mouth shut, head pulling back in stunned silence while Midas gasped, making connections in his own mind. “...That’s the reason everyone I can think of always gets called so many different things. Because it’s like I have everyone’s point of view in my head, I can’t tell which one is mine.”

The fact that Midas latched onto, and largely confirmed what Crystal was saying without them having mentioned how his current memories were was enough for Ian to believe that Crystal was telling the truth. Whip was still wary, but also reeled himself back, effectively scolded. His gaze flicked from Crystal to Midas, then back to Crystal, and then to Hesopher as he noticed Hesopher had raised his hand to his sternum. “...A coma?” Whip then prompted, a little more sullen.

When Hesopher looked up and drew a breath to answer, Crystal held her hand up to interrupt him again. “Look, Hesopher sucks at explaining things. Would you rather stumble through a painful sequence of misunderstandings caused by a second guessing guilt ridden father? Or just give Midas his memories back and fill in the blanks after?”

“What?” Midas asked, immediately snapping his attention to Crystal. “You… have my memories?”

The question only prompted Crystal to look at Hesopher as he looped his fingers under his own collar to grab a small chain, pulling the object attached to it out from under his shirt as he took the necklace off. A small data chip encased in a protective crystal case was then lowered to his palm, and he held it where Midas could see. “Some of them,” he admitted, holding the data chip as though it were more precious than gold. “Most of them seemed to have gotten lost. But the ones I could isolate I transferred to this disk so that I’d be able to give them to you as soon as you wanted them.”

It was strangely harder than Midas expected it to be for him to respond to having the chance to get even a few of his memories back. He knew that’s what he’d always wanted, to finally have some answers to why he’d ended up where he had been. But to have them supposedly held right in front of him made him suddenly afraid of knowing those answers. What if knowing made him suddenly different somehow? What if he’d actually been a terrible person, or had done terrible things, and he was actually better off not knowing? The conflicting thoughts made his hand hesitate in the air above the chip, having reached out almost immediately, then frozen in his doubts. And yet when he considered not knowing, considered staying in the scrambled haze of data that wasn’t his, and also thought of how it felt to have those two pieces of information from before settle so comfortably in his mind, his hand lowered to the chip as his eyes rose to meet his father’s.

And when Hesopher only smiled so warmly back at him Midas felt comfort spread into a blanket over his worries, a small smile given in return as his fingers closed around the chip.

Without another word, Midas lowered himself to sit cross legged on the ground, making sure he didn’t end up falling over when he stopped paying attention to the outside world. As he felt Ian and Whip tense and shift uncomfortably beside him, Midas cupped the chip in both hands and closed his eyes, digging into the tiny database the device had and exploring what it held.

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First

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I'm hyperfocusing so hard these days on this story X'DDD That's why all the updates so soon after each other.

This section was one of the rare ones where I didn't have much of an idea, just sat and wrote.