2.1.4
"I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at." - Maya Angelou
If someone had asked Heine, he would have said he had no family. There was a certain truth to that. There was also a certain falsity: Giovanni might have thought of Heine as his brother, but Heine did not reciprocate. What he did think of him as, it was difficult to say, but there was too much at stake in "brother," and between them there had always been too much at stake. It was just a matter of different stakes.
You could, he supposed, narrate it as "sibling rivalry," if you wanted to be a little disingenuous about the whole thing. But Heine tried to make a habit of coming clean, at least when he was alone with himself. Bit of a farce, really, when the world was such a dirty fucking place. Didn't mean you had to revel in it though.
He didn't know how old they'd been when they met because he didn't know for sure just how old either of them was, but he guessed he must have been eleven or twelve and Giovanni a year or two younger, Lily another year or so younger than him. And there had been others, of course. Whatever accident it was that had drawn them together in the midst of that insanity, Heine didn't know, but he remembered the first time he'd seen him, kneeling alone on the floor of that exam room with his ankles splayed out to either side in the way that only small children seem able to comfortably sit.
Giovanni had a crayon clutched in his fist, drawing crooked unsteady lines on a notepad that probably belonged to one of the doctors. Heine remembered wondering where he'd found the crayon-it was the sort of question which, occurring to him unexpectedly, offered unforeseen assurances that he had had a life before this, because he knew what a crayon was just as surely as he knew that this was the first time he'd seen once since he'd awoken.
There had been something wrong with Giovanni. Heine might have known it even from the way he drew, the way he held the crayon in his hand-like a boy half his age at best. The operation they'd done on him had damaged his brain somehow. It meant they kept cutting him open again and again to try to get it "right."
But there was something wrong with Heine too. The kind of wrong that happened when the operations were a success. The kind of wrong that Giovanni wouldn't properly grow into until years later. Years after Heine finally, clawing tooth and nail against himself, finally managed to remember how wrong it was.
It wasn't the kind of memory that let you forget again, mercifully, somewhere years down the line. Some knowledge always stayed: the warm rush of blood between fingers the crack-crunch of bones under palms.
Giovanni remembered it too. Heine knew he did. When he appeared on the street, singling him out in the crowd, calling him brother, his fingertips ghosting down the plane of his belly, a tickle through his shirt that pinned him in place like an insect under glass. When he sent that gang of thugs and then sat watching, baiting, trying to tease out the monster Heine had been from the lair in which in slumbered, walled off by the conscious humanity and refusal of barbarism that even the Cerberus spine hadn't managed to strangle from him in the end. When the hook of the broken handcuff still locked to Heine's wrist had cut through him like a sickle from gut to sternum so that Giovanni's blood tang smelled even stronger than the lingering burn of gunsmoke in the air and his half-coy smirk said Goodbye, brother when he took that backward step off the building, leaving Heine looking after him, feeling like a cord in his belly was anchored to Giovanni's body as it plummeted to earth.
Brother. Maybe. But for an accident of rebirth. And Heine still had no family. Or else he did-brothers, sisters-and he just kept on working to get away from them.
Muse Heine Rammsteiner
Fandom DOGS
Word Count 682
If someone had asked Heine, he would have said he had no family. There was a certain truth to that. There was also a certain falsity: Giovanni might have thought of Heine as his brother, but Heine did not reciprocate. What he did think of him as, it was difficult to say, but there was too much at stake in "brother," and between them there had always been too much at stake. It was just a matter of different stakes.
You could, he supposed, narrate it as "sibling rivalry," if you wanted to be a little disingenuous about the whole thing. But Heine tried to make a habit of coming clean, at least when he was alone with himself. Bit of a farce, really, when the world was such a dirty fucking place. Didn't mean you had to revel in it though.
He didn't know how old they'd been when they met because he didn't know for sure just how old either of them was, but he guessed he must have been eleven or twelve and Giovanni a year or two younger, Lily another year or so younger than him. And there had been others, of course. Whatever accident it was that had drawn them together in the midst of that insanity, Heine didn't know, but he remembered the first time he'd seen him, kneeling alone on the floor of that exam room with his ankles splayed out to either side in the way that only small children seem able to comfortably sit.
Giovanni had a crayon clutched in his fist, drawing crooked unsteady lines on a notepad that probably belonged to one of the doctors. Heine remembered wondering where he'd found the crayon-it was the sort of question which, occurring to him unexpectedly, offered unforeseen assurances that he had had a life before this, because he knew what a crayon was just as surely as he knew that this was the first time he'd seen once since he'd awoken.
There had been something wrong with Giovanni. Heine might have known it even from the way he drew, the way he held the crayon in his hand-like a boy half his age at best. The operation they'd done on him had damaged his brain somehow. It meant they kept cutting him open again and again to try to get it "right."
But there was something wrong with Heine too. The kind of wrong that happened when the operations were a success. The kind of wrong that Giovanni wouldn't properly grow into until years later. Years after Heine finally, clawing tooth and nail against himself, finally managed to remember how wrong it was.
It wasn't the kind of memory that let you forget again, mercifully, somewhere years down the line. Some knowledge always stayed: the warm rush of blood between fingers the crack-crunch of bones under palms.
Giovanni remembered it too. Heine knew he did. When he appeared on the street, singling him out in the crowd, calling him brother, his fingertips ghosting down the plane of his belly, a tickle through his shirt that pinned him in place like an insect under glass. When he sent that gang of thugs and then sat watching, baiting, trying to tease out the monster Heine had been from the lair in which in slumbered, walled off by the conscious humanity and refusal of barbarism that even the Cerberus spine hadn't managed to strangle from him in the end. When the hook of the broken handcuff still locked to Heine's wrist had cut through him like a sickle from gut to sternum so that Giovanni's blood tang smelled even stronger than the lingering burn of gunsmoke in the air and his half-coy smirk said Goodbye, brother when he took that backward step off the building, leaving Heine looking after him, feeling like a cord in his belly was anchored to Giovanni's body as it plummeted to earth.
Brother. Maybe. But for an accident of rebirth. And Heine still had no family. Or else he did-brothers, sisters-and he just kept on working to get away from them.
Muse Heine Rammsteiner
Fandom DOGS
Word Count 682