21. Walking Alone
Walking Alone
Chris was getting so fucking tired of this bullshit.
Being transported from one hellscape to another on a whim, having to watch everyone else go through trials seemingly designed to fuck with their heads as much as possible, all on top of dealing with Dustin’s self-righteous ass?
Yeah, it was time to wrap this shit up.
But of course, that’d be too fucking easy. So now he was sitting in what was supposed to be his own bedroom, but he knew better.
This was clearly the prelude to some bullshit. Like Metal Gear Solid 2 tricking everyone by thinking you’d be playing as Solid Snake again, before forcing Raiden on you like a fucked up joke.
Everything in the room looked normal at first; empty Mountain Dew bottles, piles of clean but unfolded laundry, a box of half empty Manic Panic Flash Lightning hair bleach on the dresser… but something was off.
The shelf above his dresser had a picture of the entire basketball team, with Spinner hoisting Chris up on his shoulders after they won the Washington State Championship last year.
The photo itself was still there, sandwiched between two glistening golden trophies, but…
Chris himself was nowhere to be seen in it.
He blinked at the picture dumbly for a long moment; his anger momentarily dissolving into straight up confusion.
There’s… no way he wasn’t in the photo. Literally impossible. He was the one that hit the three pointer that won them the game against the Garfield High Bulldogs.
As realization set in, Chris’s anger roared to life like a flashover.
The garden was trying to erase him, was it? Was that what it thought it could do? Just snuff him out of existence without him fighting back?
Fuck. That.
Dustin had gotten used to disorientation since these trials began, but he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t starting to grate on him a bit. Especially with Chris being two seconds away from snapping; he didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
Now he was wandering around the outside of his own house with the others, trying to find a way inside since that had to be where Chris was. They’d already tried the front door, but it had been melted shut somehow.
“He’s gonna burn himself alive if we don’t get in there soon,” Bailey said, chewing her bottom lip as she sat next to Dustin on the front step, “I wish I could just shake some sense into him,”
“I don’t even think Superman would be strong enough to do that,” Dustin grumbled, crossing his arms as a gust of wind blew his fringe into his eyes.
“So what, we just… give up on him? Let him stew in his bullshit until he explodes?”
“I don’t know… maybe,” Dustin sighed, shaking his head as soon as the words hit the air, “ugh, of course not. I just don’t know how to help him. I never have. Any time he gets pissed off, the next thing I know I’m taking a punch to the gut. Either from his words or his actual fists,”
“I know Dusty, I know. And I’m sorry; I’ve always tried to ease the tension between you two so it doesn’t all fall apart, but I can’t really do that anymore. No one can, not unless we hit the problem at the source,” Bailey said, rubbing Dustin’s back.
Yeah, because that would totally go over well with Chris.
Before Dustin could voice his annoyance with his brother any further, Chloe and James returned from the backyard, their shoulders slumped in a combination of defeat and exasperation.
“Back door’s sealed shut too,” Chloe confirmed, plopping down next to Dustin and Bailey, “we even tried to break a window, but the glass was somehow insanely hot to the touch,”
“Yeah, I slammed a lawn chair into those big dining room windows and the chair fucking melted,” James co-signed, his tone somewhere between amazement and confusion, “I think the garden is forcing us to sit this one out. Maybe whatever it wants Chris to see, is for him alone,”
Dustin’s eyes widened as the horror of that concept settled over him.
Chris was good at a lot of things, but processing his emotions completely on his own?
That was a recipe for a complete fucking disaster.
Chris stormed out of his room, immediately heading for the living room fireplace to confirm his suspicions of the garden’s intent. He examined all the family photos on the mantle, and sure e-fucking-nough, he wasn’t in a single one of them
The photo of him and Dustin at Bartholomew Pier as kids, in those ugly ass matching overalls (exactly the same except for the fact that Dustin’s had a Batman logo patch on the front pocket, while Chris’s had Superman) was front and center, but unsurprisingly, it only featured Dustin.
Holding a balloon in each hand, rather than him holding one and Chris holding the other.
Like Chris had never even existed.
Like he never mattered.
Like no one even fucking cared.
The writing was on the wall, and Chris was reading it plainly; he was being replaced. Dustin was going to entirely eclipse him. Make him irrelevant.
Just like when they were kids.
Chris scoffed, tears welling up in his eyes as he clenched his fists.
Dustin probably didn’t even remember that; how things were before.
Back in Elementary school when he was excelling and being placed in “advanced learning” classes, while Chris needed a “specialized learning plan” just to keep up.
The way their parents' faces dropped when they saw the letter from the principal explaining that fact.
He’d never forget hearing the conversation between his parents about how they had to “give him special care”, that they needed to “make sure he was properly tended so he wouldn’t burn away his chances for a good future”.
Not like Dustin. Not like their little fucking scholar with his compassion, and “maturity beyond his years”.
He’d been so fucking angry back then, but who the fuck was he supposed to take it out on?
It wasn’t Dustin’s fault… not really. It wasn’t even their parents’ fault.
Both of them were brilliant and from successful families.
His mom always told them about their Japanese aristocratic heritage, and apparently one of their dad’s earliest ancestors was the first god damn emperor of China, so who wouldn’t have high hopes for their kids in their shoes?
The only person he had to hate back then, was himself.
He’d sat with that for a long time. All throughout elementary school, and even into middle school.
But then there was puberty. And then basketball. He got taller, his face got sharper, his social skills got better.
He had the ability to do the one thing Dustin couldn’t; be charismatic. He loved his brother, of course he did, but Dustin had never been good at commanding attention anywhere but on stage. But Chris? He’d spent years hating himself, which meant he knew exactly how to make other people love him.
And then, when he was seven years old, he internalized the coolest shit he’d ever heard.
“Sometimes firefighters used controlled blazes to combat wildfires. Literally fighting fire with fire.”
From Freshman year on, if anyone thought they could erase him, deny him, burn him to ash?
He’d burn so fucking bright that he’d become uncontainable. It hadn’t failed him yet, and it wouldn’t fail him now.
Light like glowing embers surged through his veins as his powers activated; spreading warmth across his body with every ferocious beat of his heart.
The tears falling down his face turned to steam, his shirt’s fabric started to release curls of black smoke into the air, and the pressure building in his chest became too much to bear.
With a growl that quickly erupted into a painful scream, Christian released a blazing stream of fire from his throat; straight up at the ceiling like a furious dragon.
It caught fire instantly, spreading around the room faster than Chris thought possible…
but he didn’t stop. He wouldn’t. Not until he burned down every inch of this fucking torture chamber disguised as therapy.
He pushed harder, screaming louder as the flames from his mouth got more intense. His shirt was set ablaze as well, burning off his body and revealing the glowing red lines beneath his skin; not veins, but like the ones on the diagrams from the acupuncture clinic that their dad used to go to.
Dustin would probably know what they were called… and that just pissed Chris off even more.
The light in his blood brightened. He looked like a literal fucking star standing in the middle of their living room as the house burned around him. As the fresh surge of anger and frustration and directionless, impotent rage coursed through him, the fire from his mouth changed.
Instead of blazing orange, it was now bright, brilliant blue.
The floor buckled. The smoke obscured his vision. The pictures of him and… never mind. The pictures of just Dustin melted and burned to nothingness.
The ceiling collapsed inward, and the foundation gave way; the entire house fell in on itself, with Chris right at the center of the carnage as billowing smoke, ash, and dust rumbled outward like a pyroclastic cloud…
For a long moment as the remains of the Ying house smoldered, everything was deeply quiet.
Dustin couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
Their house… or at least the garden’s approximation of it, had just literally fucking exploded out of nowhere. The group noticed the fire, but before they could do anything other than put distance between themselves and the house, it had been reduced to nothing more than a smoking frame.
The smoke and dust were burning Dustin’s throat and eyes, but he couldn’t stop running towards the fallout, hoping to God or whatever the fuck else was out there that he’d find Chris alive among the damage.
“Chris! C-Chris, you here?!” he called out, coughing furiously.
He didn’t get an answer; at least not with words. But through the cloud of smoke, he could see… lights. Rhythmic, pulsing red lights, almost like a heartbeat.
When the dust cleared enough, he realized it was Chris standing there, shirtless but unharmed. Beneath his skin were those glowing, fuck, what were they called? Meridians! Qi meridians. They were lighting up the darkness like a beacon.
The twins locked eyes, but clearly neither of them had the words to express all the things running through their minds.
After a beat of silence that seemed to stretch on forever, Chris finally smirked, his red irises and meridians finally dimming.
He raised his fist triumphantly in the air.
“Take that, motherfucker,”