Professor Latyon fic: Turn Around and Say Good Morning to the Night

[bethfrish]

Livejournaaaaal. D:

I fully realize that very few of you are still here and that even fewer (read: zero) will find this fic relevant to your interests, but seeing as I started this back in THE FALL OF 2010 and vowed ON LUKE TRITON'S SOUL to one day finish it, I feel that I owe it to myself to post it here amongst the ashes of a once glorious blog. (Wait, glorious?)

Many years ago, I played Professor Layton and the Unwound Future and it BLEW MY MIND. Mainly because, wow, what an unnecessarily elaborate scheme to, in the end, essentially just kill everybody. If you analyze the semantics of Future London at all, you will quickly realize that it makes no sense whatsoever. Like, why were all those people living there? Why were there hotels and restaurants? How were the townspeople not dying of vitamin deficiencies? But I loved that game and I loved crazy ol' Future London, so this is my 2.5 year attempt at giving Clive's psychoses some merit.

Title: Turn Around and Say Good Morning to the Night
Fandom: Professor Layton
Pairing: Clive/Family Goon
Rating: PG-13



You are the last child your mother ever carries, the youngest of nine sons and the cause of your father's eternal and unspoken grief. Her dying moments are lost to the agony of your birth, and those she leaves behind have little to offer but the brittle charity of their indifference. Hours after her passing, your father lifts you from the bed, pink and bloody as you cry at the shock of the world, and places you in the arms of your eight-year-old brother. "Give him a name," he says, and returns to the mines so that none of you will starve.

You grow up too skinny and too shy, wanting little and asking even less. There's a stuffed bear that sits in the window of the toy store near your school, smiling sadly at you with outstretched paws and lonesome button eyes. Every morning you race ahead and press your hands to the cold glass that stands between you, and every morning your eldest brother comes up beside you and grabs you by the arm, bruising your skin beneath the threadbare wool of your shirt as he pulls you along faster than you can walk.

You're too young to work in the mines when you leave school at the age of twelve, so you wash windows and shine shoes and deliver newspapers in the frigid hours of the morning, praying that your father never finds the Sunday edition of word games and puzzles hidden down the front of your coat. It's the only time you ever spend with your brothers. Counting down the hours till darkness, listening for the creak of broken hinges from your father's bedroom door. Your brothers crowd eagerly around the table as you read from your stolen pages, betting what little pocket change they have on the writing beneath your hands. You've never see them smile so much or laugh so easily; light and raw and just like yours, the same child born nine times over.

Your father puts bread on the table and a roof over your heads, but you learn soon enough that he can give you little else. You cry over the bear in the window until there's nothing left but the cruel indifference that welcomed you into this world, and you close your eyes to your over-crowded bedroom as you drift to sleep, deciding with tearless resignation that your life will remain unremarkable.

And you might have been right, except that at seventeen, you're offered a job.

The boy can't tell you everything-not about the work, not even where you'll be sent-but the pay is more than you've ever seen, and when you ask if there's work for your eight older brothers, he winks into the sunlight and says, "Of course."

Because of this, it falls on you to tell your father you're leaving. You will hurt him the least, your brothers say; you do not question why. The words are short and unrepentant, hanging like thorns in the space between you, but your father only folds his soot-stained hands in his lap and gazes past you at the wall. "Maybe now you'll have a future," he says dully, and you don't know whether to despise him or to cry.

When you wake up days later, it's to the endless gray of an unfamiliar ceiling. Your mouth tastes of copper and your pillow is too soft, and when you lift your arm you're wearing pajamas that don't belong to you.

"Rise and shine," comes a grunt from the foot of your bed. "The Boss is waiting downstairs, so get a move on!" Then the door slams shut and you think Bostro without knowing why.

You search the ceiling for answers, but when you rub your eyes all you can remember is the smell of dust and the speckled, rusted orange of broken clock parts. The pretty lilt of boyish laughter and the nagging suspicion that your tea had been drugged.

"I do hope you slept well," says the Boss, rising from the sofa when you enter the lobby of your flat. You recognize him from the clock shop-those bright, inconsolable eyes, gazing mournfully at you from the shadows of his top hat. "We administered a mild sedative to aid in the acclamation of your new surroundings," he says heavily. "Do let us know if you begin to feel ill. There may still be some adverse reactions of which we are not aware."

His smile is so pained that you don't ask him to elaborate. Instead you shake his hand and mumble, "We're thankful for the work."

"And we're truly pleased that you accepted our offer. A place within the Family is not something we take lightly here. You will soon come to know all that entails." Then he pulls his overcoat shut and tips his hat down over his eyes. "I sincerely apologize for the briefness of our meeting," he says distantly, "but Bostro will go through your duties with you over dinner-or breakfast, perhaps, in your case-"

"Ah, Dimitri," someone calls from the doorway. "I'm afraid that Bostro is a bit...indisposed at the moment."

The Boss turns sharply. "What do you mean indisposed? And what are you doing here?"

"You know," the boy says idly, "if we didn't rely so heavily on the revenue, I'd say the casino was a horrific idea. That's the third incident this week."

"I thought we agreed that you weren't to be seen with us," the Boss snaps, but you recognize the boy immediately. He's the reason you're here.

He leans against the door frame, caught in the pale light of some indeterminable evening. "Are you aware of the fact that the population has nearly doubled in the last month?" he asks calmly. "I thought you'd want your latest workforce to be fully briefed as soon as possible. I'll leave though, if you prefer. I was on my way home anyway."

The Boss looks at him, unsmiling. "Do as you wish," he says finally, then turns to you. "I should tell you now that Clive is not a public member of the Family, not precisely. He won't be associated with us under normal circumstances, but I suppose in Bostro's...sudden absence, we can make an exception."

"We've already attended to your brothers," Clive explains, studying you from the doorway with his hands in his pockets. "We would have seen to you as well, but I dare say you were knocked out cold."

"Was I?" you ask, ashamed. "I never sleep that long."

Clive regards you for a moment, eyes shining. "Perhaps your tea was oversteeped," he offers, then vanishes into the strange, graying gloom that betrays neither night nor day.

Your Bible and a photograph of your mother were all they had allowed you to bring from home. You find them later on a table in your room, placed neatly beside a pouch containing several hundred pounds.

"This dump was supposed to be finished months ago, but the construction team took too long on that blasted hotel," Bostro grunts, tossing the clothes from the tailor onto your bed. "Bloody depressing in here."

"I don't mind," you insist, bringing the coat up to your shoulders. The gray wool feels foreign beneath your fingertips, nothing like the rough, tattered clothing you had to fight for in the winter. You've never owned anything that didn't belong to your brothers first.

"Painters'll be here tomorrow so make yourself scarce." Bostro slides something roughly across the table. "Know how to use a gun?"

You shake your head.

"Nothing but the Boss' tranquilizers. Still, I'll beat your face in if I catch you using it on a civilian."

You stare at the weapon, gleaming dully in the yellow light of your room. "What's it for then?"

Bostro doesn't even look at you, just yanks the door open with too much force. "Keep it with you," he barks, and leaves you to dress.

You study your reflection with distrust, straightening the cuffs of your white silk shirt as he does the same. This boy doesn't look like he spends twelve hours a day in the mines. His hair is too clean and his clothes fit too well. He looks like someone who counts for something, someone whose life is worth more than yours. This boy isn't you, but you begin to wonder if maybe he could be.

A knock at the door interrupts your silent appraisal. Clive's contact with you is supposed to be minimal-you work for Bostro, who works for the Boss-but there he is in the doorway, carrying a white box between his arms.

"Well, well, well," Clive says with approval. "Don't you look sharp."

In the days since you've been here, you can't understand how someone like Clive ever came to work for Dimitri. How someone so spirited and alive could sell his youth so carelessly to the underground. Of course, you're nearly the same age. He might wonder the same of you.

You'd tell him, you think, if he asked.

"I brought you something," he says, setting the box at the foot of your bed. Nestled inside is a hat the same soft hue as your suit, made from warm, thick felt and an artisan's master craft. Clive places it on your head with the tips of his fingers.

"How do I look?" you asked with a strained laugh.

Clive studies you for a moment, pushing the brim back from your eyes. "Like your brothers," he says finally.

You shrug lightly. "We look like our father."

Earlier that day, you'd heard rumors of being stranded in the future-a selfish, manipulative ploy designed to ensure loyalty to Dimitri's cause. As your brothers argued across the table, you wondered idly what your future life was like. If you had a family, if you were happy. You wondered what had become of your eight brothers, and your father. You wondered if he'd ever learned to love you, or if you'd finally stopped caring that he didn't. You never asked if the rumors were true.

"Oh, and these," Clive says, reaching into his coat. He hands you a pair of dark glasses. "Rather silly, in my opinion, but it's all part of the Family image."

"Of course," you say, studying his reflection instead of yours. You feel lost behind the empty panes of tinted glass, but Clive just looks at you through the mirror and smiles, like he knows you're watching him.

The city lives and grows around the shadows you cast. Bostro scatters you throughout the streets and tells you to listen. Listen to the shop owners when they go outside for their cigarettes. Listen to the chef as he berates his son. Listen when people mention the Family, watching for the doubt in their eyes when they unlock their doors and remember a time when this was not their home.

The locals call you the Family Goons. Feeling the weight of the pistol at your side, you can hardly blame them, but the barrel is full of tranquilizers produced in Dimitri's lab, and Bostro's threat goes off in your ears every time your fingertips graze metal. Your sole priority is to keep those around you from questioning the life around them, even if you think that the Thames seems different from the one of your childhood, or that the air never feels exactly right.

You begin to learn the city by duty, its people by choice. The woman who owns the noodle shop brings you soup by the bowlful, first out of fear, and later out of fondness. Months ago, she confides, she'd received an anonymous grant of fifty thousand pounds, to be spent on the condition that she open her business ten years in the future. How and why were not part of the deal; she took the money and never looked back.

The girl at the book store cultivates your growing love of literature, selling you editions at a quarter of the price even though you tell her not to. She alludes, more than once, to an offer being made to her father just before they moved, but she is much better at changing the subject than you are at keeping it. You secretly wonder if she promised, as you did, to keep silent about her past.

"Do you ever miss your home?" you ask finally, deciding that the question is benign enough to answer truthfully. She takes David Copperfield from your arms and smooths the dust jacket over its spine. "This is my home," she says, and presses your money gently back into your hand.

The children recognize you by sight, singling you out from your brothers when they ask if you'll judge their makeshift games. They run through the streets as you watch from beneath the brim of your hat, laughing away their fear when you sneak a piece of candy into the winner's hand.

"Daddy's a physicist," one boy tells you between breathless rounds of skipping rope. "I heard him tell mummy that we traveled through time and that now we're stuck here." He makes a face, scuffing at the ground. "But that sounds like rubbish." When you ask him why, he just scratches his ear and shrugs. "Dunno," he says, and hands you the ends of his rope so that you can take your turn.

It isn't long before you begin to wonder if Dimitri's alter ego isn't purely for show, if he has any interest in this city beyond his own team of haunted, hollow-eyed scientists. It no longer worries you when he disappears for weeks at a time, lost to a world of endless research and failed experiments. What he hopes to accomplish through this farce of garish top hats and illogical time travel, you can only begin to comprehend, but his passion for the latter is devastating. Sometimes you find him alone on the bridge, staring out into the water with that faraway grief in his eyes. You don't think he ever sees you. He only pulls his own plain lab coat tighter around his body, gazing with inconsolable wonder at the steel horizon.

It's your own family you see the least of all. One at a time, your brothers come to take your place, nodding their wordless dismissal as they bury their hands in the pockets of your identical coats. Sometimes you have a riddle for them, thought up on your own because Clive's fictitious newspaper isn't like the one back home, but they no longer seem amused. Either they'd prefer those days remain forgotten, or they regret having left them behind; you save your puzzles for the children instead.

One night you find your eldest brother lingering outside your flat, smoking a cigarette beneath the dim yellow glow of the streetlamp. You wish him goodnight as you reach for your key, clearing your throat when he gives no response.

"Do you really think this is the future?" he asks suddenly, gazing up at the sky that never seems to rain. "I wonder where we are." It isn't meant to be a riddle, but he looks as if he expects you to answer.

Opening the door, you look down at your shoes against the mat. "Home, I guess," and he turns away without a word, releasing a thin plume of smoke out into the night.

One day you realize, as you finish getting dressed, that you don't remember how long you've been here. Your brothers attribute it to the endless and agonizing monotony of routine, but you find, to your surprise, that you do not despair what your life has become. Days in the mines were spent counting the hours until sundown, the weeks until you were paid. Every second was another point on the endless circle of your existence, and the only escape you knew for certain was that one day you would die.

These thoughts no longer trouble you as you stand on the corner of Flatstone Street, watching its residents come and go with your back to the wall. Most do not fear you as they do your brothers, and Bostro constantly rebukes you for failing to be a threat. You promise that this will change, but the young boys and girls only giggle at your efforts, deciding with childlike resolve that your menace is not genuine. The years have robbed London's summers of their heat, its winters of their bite, and somewhere too went your disappointment with the world, lost to a time you weren't there to witness.

Once a week you're assigned to the southern border of the Thames. It's a post usually given to the higher ranking members of the Family, but you alone are placed above your brothers for reasons you cannot fathom.

"Try the back alley for a change," one of them complains over bowls of noodles before your shifts begin. "I almost got bitten by a rat."

"I've never seen any rats," you tell him quietly. Your father would have slapped you for calling him a liar.

"Must be nice standing around," your brother says, "feeding the ducks." He pierces the broth with his chopsticks, in search of a bit of pork. "You're Clive's little favorite, aren't you."

You don't like the sound of his words, even if they're true. "He's nice to me, that's all."

"He isn't nice to anyone else," your brother says bitterly. "I don't like him."

The conviction of his words takes you by surprise. "Why not?"

"There's something he's not telling us," he says. "I don't like it, and I don't trust him."

"I do," you insist, but your brother just shakes his head.

"What are we doing here, exactly?"

"It's... It's better here. It's better than the mines," you tell him. "The people here-if you just talk to them-"

"We're being paid to scare people, and you're a fool if you think it's more than that."

"You're wrong," you say flatly.

"Am I? Clive brought us here without even telling us where we were going," he says darkly, leaning in over his soup. "I met a man who says he hasn't seen his wife or kids in over a year. A year! Can you believe that? When I asked him how he got here, he said he didn't know. I asked him about time machines. He looked at me like I was insane."

"We were asleep. We don't know what happened."

"Exactly," you brother says in a rough whisper. "Have you ever watched Clive? I mean, really taken a look at him? Even the Boss is afraid of him."

You scoff and stare at your bowl. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Watch him," your brother says. "See who's pulling the strings. The look in his eyes says he'd just as soon push you in the river as save you."

"That isn't true," you insist, but your brother cocks his head.

"Yeah? And how do you know?"

"He's my friend," you say finally.

Your brother sits back in his chair and gives you a cruel smile. "I'll bet he is."

"And just what does that mean?" you snap, but he just gives a haughty sort of laugh. "You didn't have to come here!" you tell him angrily. "No one forced you! Why don't you take your stupid questions to Clive and leave me alone!"

"Like where the bloody hell we are?" he fires back. "Maybe I will." Then he throws some coins on the table and scrapes his chair across the floor. "You never did listen when we told you to stop your dreaming."

When you see your brother later his nose is broken and his bottom lip is split. You say nothing about it, and there's too much of your father in him to admit what you will not ask.

You spend the rest of the day watching over Scarlet Street, just outside the Family's headquarters in the depths of Chinatown. It's no secret that the Towering Pagoda is purely for show, just another means of enforcing Dimitri's empty, effortless intimidation, but you find it breathtaking, even in its deceit. There's a kind of mournful splendor to Chinatown. An ageless, tarnished beauty, like oxidized silver.

Some of the children start a game just down the road, gathering players as the day wears on. Sometimes you wonder if they traveled here as you did, or if they were born in the years you never knew. They run as if they'll never tire, laugh as though the world were never cruel, hanging their endless cries of victory and disappointment in the sky as you watch from the shadows. When the ball stops at your feet, you pick it up and cup it in the palm of your hand, whistling innocently until a young girl pokes your arm and looks up at you with outstretched fingers and a shy smile.

Your brothers told you, long ago, that you had no right to miss something that was never yours. You were too afraid to disagree, but even as a child you knew that missing something was not the same as wanting it.

After the light has gone from the sky, the children from the streets, a figure emerges from the Towering Pagoda, wrapped in the folds of a long, dark coat. You naturally assume it's Dimitri, returning to the sleepless bright lights of his laboratory, but it isn't.

You know it's Clive just by the way he walks. Graceful and quick and deceptively careful, like the air itself can't know he's there.

"Hello," you say when he stops beside you. You're not supposed to speak in public, but there's no one there to catch you, and even if there were, Clive has never had much regard for Dimitri's rules.

"Lovely evening, isn't it?" he asks.

Peering over the dark rim of your glasses, you smile. "They're all lovely."

You stand together for a while, unwilling to break the stillness of the night, but when you look at Clive he's already watching you, eyes unreadable as he holds your gaze captive. Your brother's words flutter in your chest.

You hesitate. "Can I ask you something?"

Without warning, his expression grows dark. "More questions," he says viciously. "I thought the rest of you would learn by example."

"Wait, I-"

"Dimitri told me I was too ambitious," he mutters savagely, more to himself than to you. "This is what I get."

"Hold on, that's not-That's not what I-I don't know..."

Clive stares through the dark glass between you. "What then? What do you want to know?"

"I-" You falter, averting your eyes. "Why am I the only one who gets to patrol the Thames?"

Clive is silent for what seems like an eternity, and then he surprises you.

He laughs.

A sweet, pure laugh like the children at their games, rising up into the starless void of the sky. "What did you say?"

"I just-" You bite your lip. "I just wondered why none of my brothers ever stand watch by the Thames. It's only me."

Clive regards you for a second, then asks, "What do you think of the river?"

"Well, it's nice," you answer truthfully. "The water is nice. I suppose it's a little dirtier than I remember. But it's peaceful there. It's sort of beautiful, in a way."

And Clive leans in so close that his leg brushes against yours. "That's why," he says, and you're almost certain that the heat in your chest is something you never knew enough to miss.

Halfway through your second spring, one of your brothers meets a nurse from the clinic and asks for her hand in marriage. She's a shy, beautiful girl who tends to the city's children and takes meals rich in vitamin D to those with aches in their bones. Bostro opposes the union with malicious fury, and when your brother makes the mistake of asking where they might hold the ceremony, Bostro's only reply is an angry, pistol-shaped bruise on the side of his face.

"The world has only grown crueler," he says bitterly. "I'd go back if I could."

You knock on his door when your post ends, bringing warm soup and ice chips from the restaurant down the road, but you quickly find that you are not his only visitor.

Retrieving his cap from the window sill, Clive rises and gives you a cryptic smile; you don't think you've seen him in at least a month. "I'll see to it that the proper arrangements are made," he tells your brother, laying a reassuring hand against his shoulder. "After all, what kind of place would this be if we couldn't spend our lives with the ones we love?"

It isn't a very large wedding. Just you and your brothers and those acquaintances who remain unmoved by the Family's unshakeable presence. Even Bostro accepts the invitation, watching quietly from the back row as he crumples a blue handkerchief in his hand in a confounding display of emotion. Dimitri is unrecognizable and unnoticed in his plain suit, and Clive's attendance is an anomaly that no one dares to question. The Family knows enough to stay silent, and those who are strangers simply remain blind to their unease.

The ceremony is blessed by a Catholic priest and adorned with roses so vibrant in color you're sure they couldn't have taken root in this earth. When your brother asks about the flowers, or why he's never seen a Catholic church anywhere in the city, Clive only smiles distantly and shakes his head. "This is the first wedding I've ever been to," he says, and raises his glass to the sky.

You watch him from across the grass, caught up in the lilting melody of his laughter, studying the way his hair catches the light of the sunless afternoon. There's a fire in his eyes that died in Dimitri's so very long ago, a fury beneath his smile you find both radiant and terrifying.

The dead summer air carries the first notes of the quartet's waltz-another Family extravagance you're sure can't be local-and Clive catches your eye from across the flowered lawn. "There aren't enough women here," he says, taking your hand. "Dance with me."

You never learned how to waltz, but Clive places his hand against your back and guides you through the movements, chuckling softly when you step on his foot. You look away, embarrassed, laughing in protest as he draws you close and snatches your sunglasses from your eyes. "Take these off," he says, tossing them into the grass. "You don't need them right now." You can feel his breath against your cheek, and his hair smells of pollen and fresh air. Like the white, tender warmth of some faraway sun.

As the evening carries the party away, he takes you to a small clearing by the river, crowded with strange plants and dry, dead patches of earth. "Snapdragons," he says softly, crouching down beside a fragile, dazzling stalk of orange flowers. "An experiment in genetic engineering, of course. Otherwise they'd never grow."

You kneel down beside him, cupping the flowers in the palm of your hand. "They're still beautiful," you tell him.

Clive studies them carefully, brushing past your fingers as he tests their petals. "They are," he decides after a while, and you recognize the dizzying fervor in his eyes just before he kisses you.

His mouth tastes of raspberry tarts and the too-sweet bite of champagne, like the rich warmth of the earth as you grasp at blades of broken grass. You stare at him when he finally pulls away, listening to your heart thud in your ears. "Why did you do that?" you ask meekly.

"Because you're handsome when you're not dressed like one of Dimitri's hopeless inventions," he tells you. "And because you look at me like I've saved your life." His smile fades as he lays his fingers against your cheek. "You can't think that of me. I haven't, you know."

You shake your head. "I... I don't understand."

"One day you might," he says, and kisses you again.

The stems snaps beneath his knees, so fragile in their death, orange petals caught like confetti in the wool of his suit. "The flowers," you insist helplessly, but Clive only sits back and cradles a broken snapdragon in his hand.

"Man made what God could not. I wonder if they'll even die."

"They have to," you say, smoothing over the dirt where the broken stem protrudes. "Everything dies."

Clive lowers his eyes. "When I was a boy," he says, "my mother would let me pick the flowers that grew behind our flat. I thought that if I put them in a vase inside the house, they'd be protected and they'd live longer. 'How pretty,' she'd say, and we'd put them on the table where we ate. As soon as they started to wilt, I'd just go outside and bring in more. But one day I realized that they weren't meant to be picked. They didn't belong in a glass vase inside someone's house. It only made them wilt faster." He breaks another stem between his fingers and holds it out to you. "But it made me sad that no ever saw their beauty in that little dirt patch outside our flat."

You gently take the snapdragons from him. "Then maybe they were happier in your vase," you say quietly.

Clive rises from the ground and smiles wistfully. "Maybe," he says, but the flowers cannot voice what you believe to be true.

Weeks pass before you see Clive again, and when you do, it's with the warning that his name is Luke and that you are enemies.

You begin to suspect that certain higher ups in the Family know more than they're letting on, but Bostro won't tell you anything beyond your daily assignment, and when you dare to ask he strikes you across the cheek with the latest issue of Clive's paper. "You shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you!" he growls, pushing past you as you pick your hat up off the floor.

"Something's going on," your brother whispers. "Something bad." Then he heads for his post on Auckland Lane without another word.

Clive is rarely alone now. When you pass each other on the street, the only sign of recognition is the lingering shadow of a smile, a fleeting twitch at the corners of his mouth that no one catches but you. Your brothers regard his party with newfound distrust and growing resentment, but you know well enough that no charade is without its purpose.

His young companion appraises your city with watchful eyes and hushed words, fearless in his demand to let them pass. Clive is dressed to resemble the child, but you can tell in an instant that the boy will never fulfill the future that Clive would have him be.

It isn't until the last hour of a night shift on Midland Road that you finally see him alone, casting faint shadows beneath the needless glow of the streetlamps. He looks at you so strangely, it makes your chest tighten, like the look in your father's eyes when you told him you were leaving.

"What is it?" you ask, because there's nobody there to catch you.

Clive slips his hands into his pockets, gazing up at the pale, eerie shift into dawn. "In the end, there can only be one sun," he says finally. "Did you never miss it?"

You lean against the cool brick of the corner building. "What do you mean?" When he gives no answer, you take off your sunglasses and wipe them on your sleeve. "I can't even see you," you say with a small laugh, but Clive's expression remains impassive.

"I don't think you need those anymore," he says suddenly.

You run your fingers over the hinge, slightly cracked from when you fell asleep wearing them. "Why not?"

Clive peers at the sky again. "Even man's creations die," he says without emotion. "What would you say if I told you to leave?"

You stare at him as the knot in your chest grows tighter. "My shift is almost over."

"That's not what I mean," Clive says. He turns to face you, and there's a coldness to his words you've only heard one other time. "Surely you must have figured it out," he whispers. "Don't you even realize where you are?" He takes your hand and presses it against the wall. "I made this," he says with a small, miserable laugh. "I made all of this. It isn't real."

You shake your head, even as the words fail to surprise you. "Of course it is."

"It's not. It never was. The pet shop, the hotel... The restaurants, the bookstore... I created them. I forced them into this empty existence. They came because I told them to." He gives another broken laugh. "Nobody really lives here."

"That isn't true," you insist. "Lots of people live here. I live here." You blink away the sudden sting of a decade's worth of tears. "You live here," you plead. "It doesn't matter how it began. It's real now. It's real to me."

Clive lets go of your hand, studying you in the pallid light of his rising sun. "If you ever wanted to be saved, this is your chance. Please...go home."

You look past him into the street. "This is my home," you tell him, and the smile he gives you is all at once broken and beautiful.

"Then forgive me," he whispers, and kisses you gently on the cheek before turning and walking away.

It's the last time you ever see him. The last night you patrol Midland Road. The last time you fall into a perfect, dreamless sleep, curtains drawn against the morning's light.

You wake up hours later to the sound of someone pounding violently on your door. It's much too early for your next shift to begin, but the noise is so heavy it feels as though the room is shaking. You blink up at the ceiling, exhaling slowly as you will it to stop. It has to be one of your brothers-you're the only ones who live there-but by the time you open the door the hallway is empty, and you slowly realize that the floor is still shaking with some powerful, unseen force.

You take your time getting dressed, even as the faraway sirens fill the air with terror. People run past as you walk through the streets. Some are crying, some are trying to rescue things from their shops. You see your eight brothers, but they do not see you, and you take no measures to change this. A small boy waves to you fondly before being hustled along by his parents. You taught him how to play jacks one summer. You wave back.

Eventually you find yourself in Chinatown, staring at your reflection in the window of the empty toy store. You walk past the cracks beginning to form in the street and press your hands against the trembling glass. There's no one left to tell you you're making a mistake. In this moment, the city belongs to you.

"If you could change anything about your past," Clive had asked you once, "would you?"

You had thought for a second, then said, "When I was a child, there was a toy store near our house. We passed it every day on the way to school. All I ever wanted was the stuffed bear in the window. It was such a small thing to ask for... I never got to touch it. I never even got to go inside." You didn't look up at him. "What about you?"

"The past no longer belongs to us," Clive had said after a moment. "It is not ours to change." You looked at him then, at the fleeting ache in his eyes before it vanished. "It can only inspire the future. Those faraway losses and dreams... The future is all we have."

"It's stupid to want a stuffed bear," you had laughed quietly.

"No, it isn't," Clive had insisted, and gave you a toy store to prove you were wrong.

You refuse to cry as the ceiling falls away, as the plaster and dust and blood begin to sting your eyes. Dropping to your knees, you blindly grope your way towards the back of the store, crawling over cracks in the floor and the desolate jangle of toy fire engines. There's a small display of handmade dolls in the corner, softer still than the clouds you gave up years ago. Gasping for air, you pull a stuffed bear from the shelf with the very tips of your fingers before you're thrown against the wall. Then you raise your eyes to the crumbling sky, smiling into its fur as the world around you goes white.