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At first, Till doesn’t recognize what he’s looking at. He’d gone to sleep the night before, after half-assedly wrapping a bruise on his side and drinking out of one of the pain reliever bottles in the medical room, and then, next thing he knows, there’s something he doesn’t recognize lying on the floor by his bed when he wakes up.
His initial thought is that the small mass is his blanket, or at least something from his bed that he must have kicked off in his sleep. But no, his blanket is still draped over him, and his pillows are still propped up behind his head. His next thought is that it’s Ivan screwing with him, but even that doesn’t make sense. The lump is too small.
Till swings his leg over the edge of the bed and toes at it lightly. The thing jerks, making Till shout, making the thing—fuck, it’s a little person—jump, take several shaky glances around at its surroundings, and start crying. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the little thing notices Till peering over at him from the edge of the bed and starts to sob even louder.
There’s a rush of footsteps just as Till realizes maybe he should get out of bed and do something about this, and then—
-
A baby.
A baby.
It walks and talks, at least, considering the babbling it had started once it finally calmed down, obedient even as the medics swarm around it to run test after test. Ten little fingers and toes, thin grey hair, round cheeks, eyes that take up nearly half his face. Till has no idea where it came from, let alone how it managed to find its way to Till’s bedside.
Though if the medic was to be believed, Till had apparently given birth to him.
“Not exactly,” Hyuna corrects. “But I guess it wouldn’t be wrong to say he was born from you.”
Till takes a deep breath. The doctors had insisted a while ago that Till make a habit of it, breathing in and out before saying anything he might regret, or losing himself into a panic before he can say anything to begin with. “That’s the same fucking thing,” he says.
Which sends one of the medics into a long tirade of: Yes, the genetic makeup is identical, very fascinating, very similar to the way extinct breeds of plants used to grow from each other without needing to pollinate, and also explains the physical similarities, you know? (Till doesn’t.) Plus, it’s on Till that the baby is here in the first place. The pain relievers he thought he was chugging? Nope. In actuality, the concoction he’d managed to put into his body was a liquid drug sample the rebels had stolen from one of the aliens’ research facilities last week. Wonderful.
The baby tightens its grip on its shirt as everyone starts to talk over it. Though, maybe shirt isn’t the right word. They don’t keep clothes that little anywhere on their base, especially none that would fit it, so they currently have it dressed in one of Dewey’s tanktops, a few centimeters ripped from the bottom so it fits like a long dress, brushing against the baby’s ankles.
“Isaac’s going to bring him something that actually fits him by tonight,” Hyuna says. She turns to the baby, raising an eyebrow. “You okay with that?”
The baby nods. “Yes,” it says in a small, baby voice. “Thank you.”
Born from Till, his ass. It sounds nothing like Till. Till’s voice had never been this soft and high-pitched.
There’s a gasp next to him. Mizi has a hand over her mouth, eyes wide as she looks at the baby. He’d almost forgotten that when the baby started crying, everyone had run over, and subsequently followed them to the medical wings because no one at their base knows how to mind their business. Till frowns when he glances at her. Are those tears in her eyes? Ivan’s also looking at the baby, but the expression on his face is too weird for Till to even begin to decipher. Sua, not looking at the baby, is looking at Ivan instead, disgusted.
“Wow,” Mizi breathes.
“Wow,” Ivan says, voice hoarse for some inexplicable reason.
“Wow,” Sua says dryly.
-
The baby makes its favorites known quickly.
It likes Sua enough. At the very least, it doesn’t seem scared of her, even though Till doesn’t think he actually sees it doing anything with her. It even speaks comfortably to Isaac and Dewey, especially strange considering the two of them would probably still have the height advantage even if four of the babies were stacked on top of each other. Isaac’s created a game with the baby, putting it on his shoulders and chasing after Dewey down the halls. The entire base had quickly grown accustomed to the sound of shrieking. Accustomed enough, that is. It still makes Till flinch when he hears it.
Hyuna’s rougher with the baby, throwing it around whenever she has a spare moment, and tossing it into couch cushions whenever it runs up to her. But the baby seems to like that too.
Its favorites by far, though, are Mizi and Ivan. At least Mizi makes sense. She’s soft with it, hushed tones and smiles and pinching its cheek lightly whenever it asks her to play. Mizi is Mizi. It’s understandable to be attached to her.
But where it likes Mizi, it adores Ivan, like Ivan was the one that gave birth to him—“Oh,” Hyuna says, “And before I forget. Till, I think we need to give you the sex talk again.”—which makes everything infinitely more confusing. Even moreso when Till actually sees Ivan and the baby.
Ivan always makes a dumb face of surprise whenever the baby approaches him, but still dutifully carries it around everywhere it wants to go, letting it play with his fingers and hair and climb all over him without saying a word in objection. And that’s just the semi-normal stuff. The two of them sometimes just stare at each other in complete silence until the baby does something to break it, like tap Ivan’s nose or try or make a face to get Ivan to laugh. Once, Till even walks in on Ivan shoving the baby’s cheek into his mouth, holding it there without moving. The baby doesn’t even cry when it happens, or punch Ivan the way Till would if it was him. It just starts giggling about it being ticklish and baby-voiced lectures of “If you bite me, I’m going to bite you too, okay?”
All of it is just— It’s so fucking weird.
And then there’s Till.
-
It’s not that Till hates the baby.
Till just wants nothing to do with it. It’s a completely different thing.
There’s something about looking at it that makes him lightheaded and causes his palms to start aching. And because of how freely the baby has been treating their base, Till has to see it even more than he wants to. It’s like everywhere he turns, the baby is there doing something with someone else, social in a way that Till’s never managed to be. It took weeks for Till to feel fine with being at their base, and weeks longer to adjust to Ivan being alive altogether, but the baby’s somehow managed it in days.
And despite everyone’s insistence, Till still doesn’t see the familiarity between them. The baby looks more like a stranger than something that’s supposed to look exactly like Till. Its hair is all different. When it stands, the top of its head barely hits Till’s upper thigh. Till’s hand could probably cover the baby’s whole face. When it holds a cup with both hands, its fingers can’t even meet each other along the circumference. Till doesn’t know that he’s ever been this small.
Worse than that, the rebels seemingly only decide to have brains when they want to kill aliens, because no one can think of something to call it. The baby doesn’t have a name, it says, and no one other than Till is comfortable with not giving it a name at all, so they start to call the baby “Till,” too.
Ivan only shrugs when Till argues about it. And— gross. Ivan’s so sweaty, lately. “If you’re both Till, then you’re both Till. Though, I suppose if you really think about it, since you gave birth to him, which are your own words, he’s almost like your—”
“Don’t say it,” Till interrupts. There’s a wave of something that runs through him at the thought, hot and uncomfortable.
“I can call him Baby Till, if you’d like,” Ivan says, like he’s being magnanimous.
“Why.” Another deep inhale. “Why would that be something I’d like.”
Ivan is breathing heavier, just barely enough for Till to notice. “I thought you might like that better than if I called him Till’s baby.”
“Ivan,” Till says. The pit in his stomach starts to grow. “Stop talking.”
“Yeah,” Ivan says, voice breathy. “That’s what I thought.”
-
The baby is curious about Till, is the thing.
Till’s not an idiot. He sees it always trying to be in the same room as him, inching closer and closer whenever it thinks Till isn’t paying attention. Even when Till looks at it, face blank and eyes communicating something to the tune of don’t get any closer to me, it still doesn’t get scared and back off.
So even though Till still jumps when he notices it in his bed, a small part of his brain is annoyed with himself for even being surprised.
It’s watching him approach. Till can make out the shine of its eyes even in the dark.
Till clears his throat. His skin starts to itch, all of a sudden. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to be together with you,” the baby says, making Till pause. “I’m together with everyone else all the time, but we aren’t together a lot.”
“Yeah,” Till says. Purposefully.
The baby continues. “So we can be together right now.” It does the same pose when it’s lecturing Ivan, pointing a finger and waving it around. It looks ridiculous. It doesn’t even sit up to do it.
Till runs his tongue over his teeth. Deep breath. “I want to sleep,” he says.
The baby nods, scooting backwards until its back softly thuds against the wall behind it. “Okay,” it says, sounding excited. “Come here.”
No, Till thinks. That wasn’t an invitation. But short of tossing the baby out with his own hands, Till doesn’t know if anything will get through to it. So instead, he steps forward gingerly, lying down in his own bed, far enough away from the baby that no part of him is touching it. It’s fine. This is the last fucking thing he wants to be doing, but it’s fine.
He should have known better. The second he relaxes, it gets worse.
He nearly jumps out of his skin when the baby shifts again, moving forward until, rather than being pressed against the wall, it’s pressed against Till’s side instead. Where the baby touches him, Till’s skin starts to feel like static. The baby doesn’t seem to have a problem with Till’s lack of reciprocation, dropping its head onto Till’s shoulder with a sigh. Till can feel it smile against him, like even this is enough to make it happy.
Till exhales. He’s exhausted. His days have felt longer ever since the baby arrived.
Then, the baby starts to sing. It’s not a song Till recognizes, clearly made up based on whatever it had done that day. “Ivan gave me a bun... soft, yummy bun... Mizi said don’t eat too many... or your tummy will hurt...”
The lyrics don’t even rhyme.
“Don’t you want to sleep?” Till asks. He doesn’t turn his head to look at it, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the ceiling.
The baby continues to sing, slipping its answer into the lyrics. “Today was really fun... I don’t want to sleep...”
Till’s eye twitches. “Go to Ivan, then. He’ll listen to you.”
The baby shakes its head against him, briefly stopping its singing. “I want to sleep with you.”
I don’t want to sleep with you, Till thinks. “Ivan wants to hear your songs,” Till tries. “He told me.” As if.
The baby hums. “He heard them all. He told me to come sing one to you. To make you happy.”
Till makes a face. So Ivan was around here somewhere watching this. “So you came here to sing to me?”
The baby nods. “So you can sleep.”
“I sleep fine,” Till says.
“Okay,” the baby says. “I’ll help you sleep better.” It sounds determined. It goes back to singing, cupping its little hands around his mouth, like it’s trying to make the lyrics reach Till alone. Like it’s a secret, just for them.
It hits Till, just then, that the baby’s desire for singing is genuine. It does it constantly. Everywhere. To everyone. Its eyes shine whenever it’s singing, whether it’s a song the others have taught it or it’s just like now, meaningless lyrics carried by an equally meaningless tune. It’s like it sings more than it even talks.
Till still doesn’t think the baby is anything like him. Not in looks, and not in personality either. But this small piece of it, Till thinks he can understand. He feels it too, most of the time. When he’s composing alone, or when he’s on stage. Even under Urak, in his worst moments, Till can’t say that there was a moment when he didn’t want to sing freely like this. When he didn't think that in a different life, it would have been nice, if he could just—
Nausea curdles in him just as quickly. He doesn’t want to relate to the baby.
“Stop,” he says, before his brain can catch up with his mouth.
The baby cuts itself off midword. “...Stop?”
“Yes,” Till says. Begs. He looks at the baby then, just to make his point sink home. “Stop singing.”
The baby blinks. “Okay. Did it make you happy?”
Till feels the start of a headache. “I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
Till’s eyes have adjusted to the dark by this point. He sees the baby’s mouth wobble. Fuck. Regret sinks low into his chest. “I. I shouldn’t have said that. You can sing if you want to. I’m happy.” He gets up hastily, jostling the baby who was practically lying on him at that point, shoving it back into the mattress with a light bounce.
The baby sniffs.
Fuck. “I’m going to sleep somewhere else,” Till says. He doesn’t want it to cry. He doesn’t want it to do anything. He doesn’t want it to exist at all.
The baby’s voice is small when it speaks. “Okay,” it says. “Sorry.”
“Sorry,” Till says, scrambling towards the doorway. Ivan’s waiting just outside the room, and Till knew that he watching this from somewhere, but he can’t bring himself to make eye contact as he leaves.
-
Till likes their base, now that he’s stopped getting lost. He likes that even with how many people are in it at one given moment, it’s not hard to find places where it’s completely silent. Storage closets are always an option, but after Till had gotten locked in one for a few hours and had that fiasco end with him throwing up all over their spare medical supplies, he’d tended to steer clear. The next best thing was hiding in Hyuna’s office. Firstly, because she didn’t care, and secondly, because she rarely used it in the first place, tending to do all of her real planning and strategizing out in the main meeting room.
He can admit to himself, though, that sitting under Hyuna’s desk with his face buried in his knees, is pathetic. Doubly so when it’s to avoid a danger that’s smaller than the height of one of their grenade launchers.
Fuck. Whatever. He doesn’t care. It’s been days since he made the baby cry and he’s managed to avoid it fine by doing just this. The baby will go away soon enough and Till can pretend like none of this ever happened.
“That’s funny,” a half-amused voice comes, making Till jerk up and bang his head against the bottom of the desk, “You’re making the exact pose Till does when he thinks we don’t see him during hide-and-seek.”
Till blinks, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light again. There’s someone bent down to look at him underneath the desk. “Sua.”
“Sua,” she agrees, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Did you know I was here?”
“I came here to get a file. Because some of us work during the day.”
“Sorry,” Till mutters.
“To me?” Sua asks. “I don't even know why you’re here.”
Till bites his tongue. “The baby.”
The half-amused look on Sua’s face is back. “You’re hiding here to avoid the baby?”
Till bites his tongue harder. Is it that wrong to not want the baby there? He doesn’t even know how to fucking act with it around. And now, it’s like everything he’s ever done is being weighed against an apparent version of himself he barely recognizes.
From what Ivan had told him, the baby isn’t even mad at him. Till, on the other hand, can hold grudges for days. Till can be so furious over the smallest things that his vision goes red-tinged with it. He’s accepted the character flaw for what it is, and he has no desire to work on it. Even before he had guns and weapons, it sometimes took full syringes of mystery liquid for Urak to get Till to go hazy enough that he’d stop trying to take his business partners’ eyeballs out. And the baby isn’t even the least bit angry. Till could laugh.
“It’s funnier than I thought then,” Sua says eventually. “Do you remember? You used to do this pose when you were hiding from Ivan, too.”
-
The baby glues itself to Ivan even more, which is fine by Till. If Till only has to watch it from far away until he never has to see it again, then that’s the best he can hope for.
Today, it’s decided it only wants to eat if it can sit on Ivan’s lap to do it. Part of the reason was its newfound fascination with the sharp tooth that sticks out of Ivan’s mouth, poking it and rubbing it to its heart’s content. Fascinated with something as minuscule as teeth. Ivan opens his mouth wider to accommodate, pretending to gnaw at the baby’s hand whenever its fingers wander in too much.
There’s soup for dinner today. It’s too salty for Till, but the baby manages to drink two baby-sized bowl’s worth of it. More than that, Ivan is the one feeding it to him, spoonful after spoonful after the baby had accidentally missed its mouth on one attempt, leading to the entirety dribbling down his face and onto his shirt. Strangely enough, the scene almost looks like when Ivan had barely woken up, and his muscles were sore enough that he could barely move them, and Till for some inexplicable reason had decided to feed Ivan tiny spoonfuls of broth until he had the energy to do it himself. He doesn’t know why the memory resurfaces now, of all times. The baby isn’t injured or incapable. It smiles whenever Ivan spoons more soup into its mouth. Ivan, back then, hadn’t had the energy to do even that.
Mizi comments to Till, “Your tastebuds must have changed as you grew older.”
Till managed to get through half of his soup before putting his spoon back down. His appetite has always been small. Another thing they don’t have in common, he thinks, looking at the baby’s full cheeks.
Hyuna laughs. “But he makes the same face as our Till does when he likes the food.”
Mizi grins. “The one when he’s eating sweet things.”
Hyuna snaps, laughing louder. “Yes! Exactly. When his eyes close, right?”
Mizi nods.
Till isn’t sure what exactly is so funny. “I’m going to head back,” he says, pushing back his chair and getting up.
“Till.”
Till raises an eyebrow at Ivan. “What?”
“Not hungry anymore?”
“I’m full.”
“Are you sure?”
Till frowns. “Yes.”
Ivan looks at him carefully. “We still have some buns in the freezer. You just need to steam them for a few minutes. They’re bland, so you’ll like them.”
Till doesn’t bother to start the argument of whether or not his taste in food is horrible and needs some work and how he’d really like paprika, actually, and glances down at Ivan’s lap. The baby stares back at him.
Fuck your buns, Till thinks vehemently.
-
There was a reason why Till needed Ivan. A legitimate one. A work-related one.
It’s just, once he actually finds Ivan, the details of it are suddenly just out of reach.
In one of the spare rooms, Ivan’s fast asleep on the couch. More accurately, Ivan’s napping on the couch while the baby naps on top of him. The baby is smushed against Ivan’s chest, only half of its face visible.
It must barely weigh anything, because it rises up and down with Ivan’s chest.
He and Till did this a few times, Till thinks. Or something similar at the very least, when Ivan was smaller and more dead-eyed and followed Till around with his hands clenched to the back of Till’s shirt. They’d find a quiet patch of grass and claim it before anyone else could, and then they’d nap until Ivan had to go do the next thing on his schedule. Till had always had a feeling that Ivan was never really asleep during it, even when Till was tired enough to knock out immediately. It was always suspicious how awake Ivan seemed to be, how he was always the one to wake Till up even when Till was the one to go to sleep first, and that the bags under his eyes never seemed to go away. Ivan’s makeup artist—because Unsha had one for him even when Ivan didn’t have anything scheduled for that day—was talented enough but Till could always see the faint purple underneath it.
Till doesn’t know how many years ago it was now, but it’s too late to bring it up with Ivan. He can live with not knowing.
Because Ivan, whether he used to nap when they were children or not, naps now. Genuinely. His body, without the schedule and the trainings, crashes more often. Ivan does a lot of things now he didn't before. Like let a baby drool on him.
Till watches the baby tighten its hold on Ivan, matching the grip Ivan has on the baby’s back. Like it can sense him, the baby twitches a little, nose scrunching up as it shuffles up into Ivan’s chest. At the same time, Ivan’s hand tightens along the baby’s back, letting it adjust itself without letting it fall. It takes barely a second before both of them go back to being still.
Till stares, nearly forgetting to blink until his eyes burn too much to keep them open for any longer.
-
Hyuna is the last person Till expects to confront him about the whole thing.
“I don’t know if there’s another way to explain what the medics said, Till. Genetically speaking, he’s you.”
“It’s not me,” Till rebutts. “I’m me.”
Hyuna rolls her eyes. “I know that. I’m just making sure you got reminded of that so you stop treating him like an alien.”
“I’m not,” Till says, but it comes out flimsy.
“Right, because you can’t even look at him most of the time. I don’t know if you realized that.”
Till swallows, suddenly out of his depth. “I can look at it. I just don’t want to.”
“Okay,” Hyuna acquiesces. “One step back. Let’s start with you call it ‘it’.”
Till wonders briefly if there’s a lifetime maximum of how many deep breaths he's allowed to take. He bites out, “Have you figured out how to get rid of him?”
At that, Hyuna sighs. Thankfully, she lets the topic change without comment. “Not yet. I mean, the whole drug was experimental. We’re not even sure if we’re right in figuring out what it did in the first place, let alone create an antidote for it.” She rubs the back of her neck. “We already knew that they’re doing something with the bodies of Alien Stage contestants. Cloning them, bringing them back, putting them in stasis, what have you. This is just a prototype for something worse to come.”
The words are foreboding, but it’s not just the disgust towards the alien that has nausea rolling in his stomach. If it had turned out that it’s a clone of Till. Something permanent. He’d have to watch it grow up, if it survived that long, and it would grow up to look like Till. Look, but not act. The baby would grow up differently. It wouldn’t know Urak, or Anakt Garden, or what it was like to live as a human pet for nearly its whole life.
Well. If the baby is unrecognizable now.
-
The real issue, once Till can admit it to himself, is this:
Till doesn’t remember anything before Urak.
He doesn’t grieve the memories, or wish there was anything beyond the faint memory of being dragged away and the harsh lighting of his cell before he was sold off. Obviously, he knows that he came from somewhere, whether that was the streets or a different kind of slavery ring. He knows that there was a life before Urak. He just never wanted the memories of it. Surely, to end up with Urak in the first place, there must have been an unhappiness to the “before”. If not at Urak’s hand, at the hands of someone else. The only peace in his life before escaping with Mizi during the chaos of Round 7 was in pockets of time in Anakt Garden, watching Mizi from afar. That’s what he’s always known.
But the baby is always smiling. Its age is young enough that it must be from before Urak, but it’s always smiling. Other than the two times Till had ended up being the cause, he hadn’t seen it cry once. It’s always happy. Making jokes to itself and giggling about before anyone else could figure out the punchline. Creating songs and melodies out of thin air, humming to itself while it skipped down the halls. Carefully watching everyone and gauging their reactions whenever it makes a little too much noise, but ultimately happy as long as the people around it are.
Till doesn’t remember experiencing anything like that at all.
-
Till finds Mizi sitting on her bed, flipping through one of their older case reports.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Mizi says. It’s a dated joke, considering they’ve been ‘meeting up like this’ for over a year now. It was out of desperation at first, both of them needing someone to talk to in the weeks they’d spent together in the medical rooms, waiting for Ivan and Sua to heal. Even after the two had woken up, Mizi and Till had started seeking each other out sometimes. Sometimes to talk, sometimes to just sit there. It was nice, usually.
Till points at the papers in her hand. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, this? It’s for Till,” she says, and then stops herself with a laugh. “The little one, I mean. He wanted a bedtime story last night. I don’t know any good ones, so I thought I’d read him some of our old reports. A sanitized version of events.”
There’s a sour taste in Till’s mouth. “Right.”
“Sorry,” Mizi says, laughing again. “This must be so weird for you. I don’t even know what I’d do if there was a small version of me running around.”
Probably not whatever Till’s been doing.
His eyes catch on the wall next to Mizi. Mizi decorates her wall more than the rest of them do. It’s not a surprise usually. There’s a photo of the four of them that Isaac had taken for them once Ivan had finally been cleared to leave the medical wing. He was still in a wheelchair, then. Till’s hand cramps at the memory. There are pressed flowers surrounding it, new breeds they’d uncovered throughout their missions, nothing like the red flowers at Anakt Garden.
Underneath the flower, there are two sketches taped up, both ones that Till had drawn of Mizi.
Those had been more of a spur-of-the-moment thing. Near the beginning of all this, when the adrenaline had worn off and all that was left was Till and Mizi and two occupied medical cots, Mizi had told him that she wondered whether Sua would even recognize her when she woke up. Mizi’s hair was shorn, and there was a cut along her face that they couldn’t guarantee wouldn't leave a permanent scar. Till, in turn, had drawn two pictures of her. She had the same smile and pose in both, but with the features, her hair and accessories and clothes, reflecting what she’d looked like the last time Sua had seen her, and the way she looked like currently. Mizi had choked up when he handed them to her, telling her, “For Sua. So she’ll be able to tell”. Mizi had spent a long time crying into his shoulder after that. It was also the first thing Till had managed to draw since they escaped, after weeks of scratching out page after page in a fit of rage after he had accidentally tried to draw Ivan.
But these aren’t the things that make Till pause.
Next to those drawings, there’s now a third one. The tape hanging it up is fresh, as though Mizi had only put it up moments before. Till bites the inside of his cheek. The lines of the drawing are careful, shaky in some parts and confident in others. There’s a nature scene sketched out in red and black, likely the only pen colors the artist had on hand. In the foreground, there’s a string of people holding hands. Starting from the left, there’s someone wearing glasses, chest-length hair drawn in red instead of pink. Then, a figure drawn carefully with red eyes and a sharp tooth peeking out of its mouth, making it look more haunting than the usual “Ivan” expression the artist had clearly tried to go for. There’s a much smaller figure in the middle, drawn in a bright red shirt. A figure with black hair and large, scribbled-in eyes. Then, at the end of the row, a figure that looks nearly identical to the small one.
In the drawing, all five of them are smiling.
Something in Till’s chest twists, ripping and tearing into infinitely small pieces, and just as quickly tying itself back together into tight knots.
There’s another figure, disconnected from the rest of them, smaller and drawn above the rest. There’s a tree next to it, also floating in midair. The artist hadn’t quite learned perspective just yet, Till thinks, and there’s a humor to the thought he doesn’t remember having before. The figure is dressed in plain clothes, something red sticking out of it’s neck.
Till doesn’t recognize it immediately, but the baby had been running around their base for days. There was bound to be someone he befriended that Till’s never even met. Then again, it was equally likely the baby had watched a round of Alien Stage, and the red was supposed to show what happened to the losers at the end of each round.
“Till?”
Till blinks. “Sorry. Did you say something?”
Mizi looks at him worriedly. “I asked if you were okay.”
Till clears his throat. “I’m fine.”
“Right,” Mizi says. “You know, I heard Ivan say that Till was going to be in the common room today. If you wanted to go.”
“Subtle,” Till says.
-
By the time Till does go into the common room, the baby is still there. It... it really is small. Till doesn’t remember being that small. But he must have been, right? Till must have existed at some point looking just like this. There was a life that this baby knows that Till is no longer privy to.
It— He— looks up from its—his—spot on the floor when it notices Till, mouth falling open into a tiny ‘o’. “Hi.”
Till clears his throat. “Hi.” He takes a seat on the floor across from him.
The baby looks at him. “Are... are you still mad?”
“I’m not mad,” Till says.
“I don’t want you to be mad,” the baby says. “Ivan said that maybe you wanted to play.”
He gestures to his lap. On it, there’s a children’s xylophone set. Till didn’t even know they had one here. Or maybe they bought it just for the baby. Till stares at it, heart beating painfully against his chest. His mouth feels numb. Vaguely, he remembers having one before, a birthday present. He doesn’t know where any of his presents went after he left Anakt Garden.
“Ivan is dumb,” Till manages to say.
The baby, clearly brightening up at not having been rejected outright, shuffles closer to him. “What does dumb mean?”
“It means Ivan.”
“Really?”
Till nods.
The baby nods back, picking up both mallets to the xylophone. He hits a few notes, a tune that almost sounds familiar if Till really thinks about it. Or maybe he’s forcing a memory to form when it doesn’t exist. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know if it matters.
The baby really doesn’t look upset with him. Rather, he looks like he’s content with Till sitting there, even when Till’s done absolutely nothing to endear himself to him. Weirdly enough, it makes him think of Ivan. Ivan had never done anything to endear himself to Till either, and Till still keeps him around too.
(There’s a phantom memory, suddenly, of pressure on his lips and Ivan’s breath against his mouth, lips slick with rainwater and saliva. He firmly pushes it out of his mind.)
Till asks, “Do you like your name?”
“Mm, I like it,” the baby answers. He doesn’t think about it much before he does. He doesn’t think too much of any of his answers, Till’s found. His brain’s probably too small to understand what a name actually means. “We have the same one.”
“Yeah,” Till says. ”It’s confusing though.” He's already lost track of how long it’s been since the baby arrived, and he’s called him nothing but “the baby” in his head. What was he supposed to do, also call the baby Till? Or, even worse, use one of Ivan’s suggestions?
The baby shakes his head.
“No?”
“I like it. We can share.” The baby peers up at him from beneath his eyelashes. Like he’s trying to act cute. Till holds back a shiver. He’s been spending too much time with Ivan, clearly. “Do you like yours?”
“I guess,” Till answers, just as easily. He was probably the same as the baby once. No name until someone told him that he’d be referred to as Till. But Till doesn’t remember a time when he had been without it. It’s a weird question. But then again, he asked the baby the same thing.
The baby repeats the notes a few times, the same melody over and over.
“It’s nice,” Till tells him. Rudimentary, and nothing like the kind that he’d come up with as he grew older, but it’s nice still. “Did you come up with it yourself?”
The baby shakes his head, but doesn’t explain further. Instead, he holds out one of his mallets to Till. “Do you want to play, too?”
Till takes it from him. “Okay,” he hears himself saying.
“Here,” the baby says, pointing at one of the bars. “Play this one next.”
“I know,” Till says, hitting the bar. “It’s only eight notes. I remember it.”
The baby’s cheeks flush, but Till can tell it’s happiness over any sort of shame. He hits the next bar, Till following suit with the next note.
It goes like that a few times, and—fun isn’t the right word, because it’s only so fun to hit the same notes in a loop, but it’s not boring either. Till exhales. It’s not quite the deep breath that the medics had suggested.
Till’s grip is too hard on his next hit. The xylophone returns an off-key sound, wood banging on metal rather than an actual tune. He blinks. He looks at the baby, who looks back.
There’s a beat of silence.
Then, Till huffs. Rookie mistake. He rolls his eyes, adjusting his grip correctly before hitting the note again. At the same time, the baby bursts out into helpless giggles, clutching his stomach as his eyes close in delight.
-
The time passes by without Till realizing it.
The tune evolves the more they play it. By the end, they’re left with one that’s completely different. Still easy, in Till’s opinion, but he didn't think the baby was ready to level up to anything more difficult than that. Not when even holding the mallet was a lesson in balance. The baby is sweating a little from how many breaks he’d taken to laugh once Till had started to play off-key notes on purpose every now and again.
The baby grins once they put their respective mallets back down. “I’m, I’m going to show Ivan the song.”
“Do you remember it?” Till asks, only half-curious. He can guess the answer, a little.
The baby nods.
“Good,” Till says, and then, practically instinctively, he reaches over and drops a hand on the baby’s head. He pets it once.
The baby touches his own head too, surprise written plainly on his face. “Good?”
Till clears his throat, face starting to heat up. Why did he do that? “Yeah. Go show Ivan.”
The baby nods, picking the xylophone back up and clutching it closely to his chest. “Okay!”
Till realizes later, once he’s alone in the room, that the corners of his mouth had lifted up in the moments he hadn’t been paying attention.
-
As it turns out, there’s no need for them to find a cure. The baby disappears overnight, the same way he came.
“Back inside you,” Ivan says, a strange look on his face.
Sua hits him.
“Do you feel him?” Ivan asks, fervent about it.
Sua hits him again.
“Till,” Ivan says, voice serious enough that it makes Till pause. A hand drops to Till’s stomach.
Till hits him reflexively. “What are you doing? What’s wrong with you?”
Ivan makes an aggrieved noise, dropping his head on Till’s shoulder.
“Are you panting?”
“No,” Ivan says, biting down on Till’s shoulder. “Just thinking,” he says, with cloth against his teeth.
“Do you guys not feel bad that you make us watch this?” Sua says, and when Till looks at her, she’s already reached up to cover Mizi’s eyes.
Till rubs Ivan’s head, trying to dislodge him. “You didn’t get enough of biting the baby? I saw you do it. You were trying to eat him.”
Ivan’s teeth press down once, still not enough to hurt, before he lets go. There’s a damp patch on Till’s shirt now. Ugh. “No,” Ivan says, and actually sounds upset about it. Then, his tone changes. “Well.”
There’s a new glint in Ivan’s eyes. Till takes a step backward. “What. What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” Ivan says. He takes a step towards Till. “Just figured. Your cheeks are just about as full.”
Till splutters. “No, they’re not.”
“I mean,” Mizi says, eyes still covered.
Till takes several large steps back, just as Ivan moves closer, hands outstretched. “I—I already let you bite my shirt. That’s it. You’re not allowed to bite me more than that.”
“Says who?” Ivan says, and snaps his jaw in Till’s direction.
“Are you five?” Till says. His back is against the wall now, but the doorway is still in his reach. “Stay away from me!”
“Till,” Ivan says. His voice is deep, gravely. It makes something squirm in Till’s stomach. “Come here.”
“Mizi, I think if we stay here any longer, the stupid will rub off,” Sua says.
Ivan makes a grab at Till.
Till ducks, running past him and out the door. “Fuck you!”
Ivan’s laughter follows behind him.