I’ve missed my sweet boys.

1: their voice

When you hear him talk for the first time you’re surprised at how deep his voice is. It can be soft and soothing but when he’s excited it gets a little higher than usual. 

2: their smile

His smile is like the sun coming out from behind storm clouds. It doesn’t happen often but it’s worth seeing when it does.

3: their greatest achievement

Most people assume it’s when he escaped the lab but they’d be wrong. His greatest achievement is when he decided to go for what he wanted. To accept himself and the happiness he’s found with the people who helped him. He’s learned to trust and to let others into his life beyond his best friend, Skye. 

4: their insecurities

He’s very unsure about himself and his abilities. His entire life has been centered around the lab and being their lab rat. So can he be a normal person? Sometimes he wonders if he’s too damaged to be normal. Does he even know what normal is?

5: their shortcomings

He has a very limited view of the world and it causes him to be very distrustful of people. Along with the distrust is the fear. The fear of having to go back to the lab. Fear, doubt and distrust leaves him feeling somewhat lost and locked inside himself. Stunted is what he calls it. 

These poses almost look identical. This was not intentional.

I’m slowly putting sims back in as I have chosen to start fresh in terms of saves. I’m going to revisit some old friends the rest of this week, lol.

Juni and Cash, Robin’s birth parents. They have been looking for their son for over seventeen years. One moment he was playing in the park, and the next it was if he’d dropped off the face of the earth.

Recently, they received a call from a raspy-voice man from Boroughsburg who introduced himself as Animal, and gave them the news they had prayed for for so long.

Favorite Fellas, part 2, from top to bottom:

Scott Prior, by @foreversimmers

Mikael Karlsson, by me

Seamus Donnelly, by randuhhxx and me

Harley Durant, by @dstarsims

Phoenix Kramer, by me

Phoenix:

And even after he was dead, the lab still wouldn’t leave us alone. Harassing phone calls at all hours, coming to the school where my mom taught, following me home.The police wouldn’t help, they looked away.

Then Margo Elliot, the head of the lab tried to get the city to take me away from my mother. I guess to break her or something. It almost did. She called her brother in Boroughsburg. I guess he knew some people who knew some people who had some kind of underground railroad that helped people establish new identities when the police wouldn’t or couldn’t help. Then we were on a bus. Every stop from Riverview to Boroughsburg we got met by some bikers who took us for food and bought me candy and toys. And after two days, we were there. Animal was there to meet us. A year after we arrived, my mom married him.

But enough about me. I grew up with only one thing on my mind: taking down the lab for what they took from me. Animal and the group had kept tabs on them over the years, and we started hearing horror stories about human experimentation, of preying on the homeless and the disenfranchised, of kidnapping small children. Robin was one of those children.

It took years of planning to make the rescue a reality. And unfortunately, it was too late for a lot of the test subjects, who the lab kept in cold storage so they could scavenge every last bit of these poor souls, even after death.

When I broke into a small room, the first thing I saw was a pair of wide green eyes staring up at me in terror. It was Robin. He was huddled up next to his best friend Sky, both of them clinging to one another, trembling. 

“It’s okay,” I told them in what I hoped was a soothing voice, “My name is Phoenix, and I’m here to help. We’re getting you out of here.” I held out my hand to Robin.

After looking at me for a few seconds, he took it.

Phoenix:

I can’t keep my eyes off Robin. I try to do it when I know he’s not looking, because the last thing I want to do is scare him.

We spend a lot of time doing this; sitting outside the apartment building, watching the world go by. Sometimes we talk, sometimes not. Robin isn’t one for a lot of talking, especially about everything he’s been through. 

My eyes go over his slender form, curled up in the self-protective manner that he utilizes when we’re outdoors. I don’t know what he’s protecting himself from; I would give my life to keep him safe.  I suppose it’s reflexive for him. It was how he looked the night my group and I rescued him from the lab where he had been essentially imprisoned since the age of three. 

There has never been a time that the lab hadn’t been part of my life, although until the night of the rescue I had never even set foot in the place. But I had always watched them, because they killed my father. He had been a whistleblower, ready to go to the media with the documentation set to take them down. They planted an explosive device in his car.

I remember that morning. My dad came through the living room in his suit with his briefcase. He stopped and he just looked at me, didn’t say anything, just looked at me, like he was imprinting me in his memory or something. In retrospect, he probably was. then he said, ‘I need you to take care of your mom,  okay?’ And I didn’t know what he meant…I thought he meant just like check on her and make sure she wasn’t sick or if she needed something. Now I know he meant to watch out for her because he wouldn’t be able to.

For some reason, I felt like watching him through the window as he went to his car. He opened the door to get in, but then he stopped, and he looked up. He saw me looking…and he smiled. We waved to each other, and he got inside the car.

Boom.

Robin curled his body in a near fetal position until his heart stopped pounding. Another nightmare about the lab, as all his nightmares seemed to be about. This time he was strapped to an exam table as masked, white-coated figures removed parts of his body as he lay on the table wide awake. In his mind he could still hear their evil laughter as they showed him the parts before taking them away.  Amazingly, he didn’t wake up screaming like he usually did, but rather drenched in sweat and shaking from head to toe.

Normally, his cries would wake Phoenix, who slept in the room next to his.  Phoenix would come running immediately to calm Robin and bring him back to the present and reassure him he was safe, that no one would ever be allowed to hurt him again, staying by his side until he fell back asleep.

As his pulse returned to normal and the sweat started to cool on his skin, Robin still couldn’t shake the fear and terror he had felt during the dream.  And though he knew he should try just going back to sleep alone, his mind kept calling for reassurance.

He needed Phoenix.