Chapter Text
The train moved steadily through neon trails, the slow rumble of the old, mechanised compartments the city council didn’t bother to replace in a few decades providing enough noise that people can’t really talk. Standing in the too crowded passenger car, only able to hold into something due to his height, Wilbur can’t say he doesn’t get why. Every single person he can see is either nearly all either beaten down expressions, with exhaustion sunk in their frames and faces, or barely contained rage, just needing a single human word to fall into a rant, a scream, a holler of anger and frustration nobody wants to poke at. And so the car stays quiet, for now.
Wilbur hopes it doesn’t turn into a riot. He could hold his own, could, yes, just jump out by one of the many broken windows and crawl to the top of the train until it quietened ( He could join in– no . He couldn't, not really. His chest aches with all the value of a reminder and a warning, all in one.)
Other people couldn't. It'd be messy, quick, and the majority of people can't afford any injuries, nor the mechnets they would need to not get these injuries in the first place. Funny, that.
Wilbur takes a deep breath, his engineered lungs expanding with a soft hiss, wishes he could smoke inside train cars without burning anyone else, and ignores that thought. The train keeps up it's slow rumble.
It's half an hour before a glitchy, slow voice, probably intended to be cheery when it was made, opens the doors with a " And we have arrived at the central station of City District Nottingham, next station– " as Wilbur steps out. There's rust in the doors.
Nottingham, once a city in Old England, now just another ever expanding district, greets him in all its fading glory, lit by cheap, colorful LED lights. The tube was one of the cheaper ones. Underground. Some good samaritan set up dispensable gas masks between the barriers. Wilbur doesn't take any, just steps towards one of the empty, too tight benches.
They have this fancy tilt. Made to be unbearable to sit on for more than an hour, besides the thick bars for "social distancing and comfort of those who pay for the services of the tube". Wilbur hates them, generally puts his back to the part his ass is supposed to be on and his legs to walls, head to the concrete floor, but there's questionable puddles near it, so he gets up, and crouches on the seat, feet to chipped wood. He pulls out a handrolled cig. Then he registers what he just called the smokes , looks at them in disgust, and lights them.
His nose twitches. He doesn't feel the taste on his tongue, doesn't feel his lungs heat. Neither does he feel the impulse to cough, or the unpleasant smell of cheap, offbrand smokes. It's just nicotine, machine controlled breathing, and people watching with a disinterested eye.
People move in and out. A few go to buy snacks. Some of them actually do it. There's a group of rich teens dressed in too carefully torn clothing and wild hairstyles, throwing a fit about not being allowed to buy the alcohol a nice, old vendor sells. The vendor looks afraid, the mechanical guards are watching raptly, and Wilbur has to fight the urge to flick his still lighted smoke at them.
Instead, he unbuttons his shirt just enough for metal to peek out from his neck, pockets his glasses, and approaches. His wallet is in his hands, and he smiles.
"Hey, gramps!" Wilbur waves at him as he approaches, faking being chipper than he actually is, and he sees the teens – too young to be modded legally, too much fake rebels to have them in any other way – looking at him. His throat gleams under LED lights, shining blatantly, and he sees the thread of panic starting to sweep into the teens. He can almost guess what they're thinking, right now: Is he a criminal? Is he security? Does his mechnet go to his arms? and he knows it's impossible for them to determine, with his thick jacket on the way "How's business going?"
The vendor barely pauses. Barely has any of the quiet looks into his eyes of snapshot guess "Fine enough, son." He says like he knows Wilbur, like Wilbur is some sort of regular. He says it in an accent that makes his replaced chest ache.
"Oh, that's– Great! How much is it for–" And Wilbur glances at the smokes nestled between some sort of industrialised cookies "A pack of Tumbler's , and two of these biscuit boxes? Tommy's been bugging me to get some, little twat, but you know how youger brothers are." And he doesn't know a Tommy, or even have siblings, not unless you count that disgrace, that– He doesn't have siblings, but the lie is easy to weave.
He barely even has to put a gloved hands on the stand before one of the teens recoils their arm. Too easy , he thinks, as he moves closer. Too easy. The vendor grins back at him "Fourteen ems. Three for the pack, Five and a half for each box."
Wilbur pries out the cards. Three anonymous emerald cards. A ten and a duo of twos. All green, scruffed and scratched rather than gleaming, still with a light that tells anyone who sees the value each card has. It's not too much money – the expensive cards are in his shoes, on pockets sewn in the back of his jacket. It's a genuinely good deal. If the old man keeps this price for after the teens leave, Wilbur might just have to start to buy his Tumbler's from him, rather than the corner store of his apartment. Give himself an actual reason to come here. A shitty one, but a better one than just people watching as an excuse to wallow in misery and ruin his hair.
The teenagers bleach at the cards. One of them pulls the biggest teen closer, whispers something, and they all move away, scuttling like they're trying to make their run for it not obvious and doing exactly the opposite. Wilbur watches, and snorts. God, he fucking hates rich teenagers.
He waits a beat, as they retreat, and then, carefully, asks "Are the smokes and biscuits still fourteen ems?"
The vendor nods. Wilbur hands over the money, gets food and a pack of Causers of Secondhand Smoking Damage. He leaves the station, pace slow, and frankly, a little pathetic. He looks at the hard light barrier, he looks at hostile architecture for far longer than he finds comfortable, and he doesn't flare up.
By the time Wilbur gets to his apartment – which consists of bare concrete and mattress, an old, worn couch he got tenth hand in front of one of these old TVs, physical and as thick as two of his fingers, and a microwave. Plus a pile of hanged clothes acting as a curtain to the apartment's single window – he has to admit, as he puts the biscuit box inside the microwave without turning it on, thayhe's as worn down as any of the exhausted passengers of the train.
Instead of thinking too hard about it, he turns on the TV, lays on the couch.
He's almost fallen asleep when the host gutpunches him by speaking "... And Doctor Phil M. Craft, CEO and Director of the Zephyrus Incorporated is once again voicing his criticisms of Wastaken Private Security And Development at the London Conference. Doctor Craft cites the disappearance of his own L'manburgian Series of combat androids, the suspicious appearance of the now discountinued Pogtopian Series of Wastaken, and also criticises their foray into biological engineering. Doctor Craft is known for his philanthropic habits, and his son, William G. Craft– "
Wilbur knows what the host will say. He will say the words tragic accident , he will say brain damage and amnesia , he will say William is a cheerful boy . He reaches the remote, on his left, and his hand is clenched.
And the host flashes a picture. Blue eyes. Dark hair. No glasses, skin so pale it can look gray. No metal peeking up his throat.
His hands spasm. The screen is black, now. It's quiet, too, and both are because of the hole where remote is stuck now. Wilbur is calm.
Wilbur is goddamn calm . He is a picture of pacisfism, of stability. He does not yell, he does not get up and punch the goddamn TV. He does not go back to sleep. He just tightens the coat he never took, and walks back to Nottingham's central station.
He… Doesn't really people-watch. He just sorta actually sits down, in the hostile architecture bench. His knees and ankles burn. The cheap LEDs give him light. All he does is exist. Breathe. And then he slowly blinks, and does it again. It lasts– God , it lasts hours. It lasts seconds He doesn't count. He's fine. He's fine. And so, he pulls himself into reality once more.
That's when he notices the unconscious teenager on the ground, and the messager bag on him.
He's blonde. That's what Wilbur notices first, and that's literally the least remarkable thing about him, Wilbur thinks somewhat hysterically. More important, more pressing, is the fact he's on the ground. It's the fact his jaw and chin are metal, connected to his lips and to darker metal sunk into his cheek on the left by wires, the fact he has a glowing wire going directly under his eyeball, and then darting out to his eyebrow from behind it on his right. That his legs are metal and gleaming red lights, same as his left arm, his only arm, mechnet prosthetics too unknown to Wilbur's eyes to be commercial, too high quality to be handmade.
More pressing is the fact he's bleeding, dyeing the white shirt a stronger red than his jacket.
And yet the only thing Wilbur can focus on is that he's blonde. Blonde, short-haired, and the metal on his jaw-line is the only thing that stops him from making unfortunate comparisons.
Doesn't make this any less of a hard choice.
Theoretically, it shouldn't be. Wilbur knows, from personal experience, that cyberpsychosis isn't all that's cracked up to be. That a mechnet hand, an eye, entire new limbs , doesn't automatically mean the person that wears them is going to be an axe murderer, a killer . It doesn't make them more dangerous, after initial supervision.
And yet, on the same 'personal experience' criteria, there's… Well. Wilbur doesn't try to think of him often. He doesn't even need to .
He should run. But instead– Instead–
Instead, Wilbur hauls up a heavy boy made of at least as much metal as flesh, said boy's bag, drags him to an apartment he never called home, and hopes the teen likes biscuit boxes.