#trying to write 00 fic after reading octopath fic nonstop for the last week was surprisingly hard

[laora-ryn]

Bring Down the Sky late-game scene

yo, merry christmas to the 00 fandom! have a scene from later in BDTS, in which Neil has a long overdue chat with his siblings.

in case you’re not familiar, BDTS is my AU fic where Neil gets a second chance at life after Fallen Angels, and wakes up as his fourteen year old self from before the bombing. He saves his family, and things progress from there!

not sure whether this one’s gonna make it into the final fic or not (whenever the hell that becomes a thing otl), but if it does it’s gonna be heavily edited, so I don’t feel bad giving y’all this one to read! I hope you enjoy :)

(since Tumblr eats links now, to read the rest of my BDTS content, go to /tagged/bdts on my blog!)

@sapphireswimming @ninthfeather @the-stray-liger @rottenadel @ everyone else who was interested in this AU!

Neil has secured a place in his family's quarters at Katharon’s home base with only some token grumbling from Tieria (who balked at the thought of him so far from the Ptolemy) and Lyle (who grumbled about giving up his bed). He had raised a single eyebrow at the three beds in the cramped quarters—one for his parents, one for Amy, and one for Lyle, he had assumed easily, until he ran into Nat preparing for bed beside Amy's. "Yo," he calls out a bit skeptically, his brows rising higher as Nat turns to him casually.

"Amy was looking for you," she says—bluntly, as he's realized quickly she operates—though not unkindly. "Seemed like she wanted to ask you something."

They separated briefly earlier, and Neil has been itching to return to his family as well��and so this is not such a great surprise. But they have begun to heal already—talking for hours, this afternoon, assuring that they are both all right, now. He will find Amy, but first—"You’re spending the night?"

The bed is narrow, and he eyes Amy's bed, wondering how any couples manage to fit. She stares at him, a brow rising to match his own, before grinning, just a bit. "Have been for a while," she says easily, and Neil's heart stutters. "Don't you flip out on us, too—Lyle's been grumpy about it for years. But space is limited—and the only reasons we haven't swapped rings yet are location, cash, and you."

Neil nearly forgets to breathe, for a moment, staring at her with wide eyes and trying to realize exactly what she means by this. He has not heard much about Nat except that she and Amy have been together for a few years, that she has followed his family through hell. "What?" he croaks, eventually, and she laughs at him.

"You think Amy would ever agree to get married without you there?" she challenges. "Next time we take a trip to civilization, I'm buying her one—everyone knows it's past time. I'm certainly not going anywhere."

Neil is still blinking rather stupidly at her, trying to wrap his head around the idea that his little sister is probably going to get married—and Nat's face softens before focusing on something behind Neil, instead.

"Hey Amy, I found your brother."

Neil spins, and sure enough, his sister stands in the doorway—she smiles brightly at the both of them (even if she still looks exhausted), giving Nat a quick kiss before the latter says there's something she forgot to do in the hangar—that she'll be back in a bit. Neil looks skeptically to her clear pajamas, her loose, wild hair, but does not comment, because Amy sends her a thankful look as Lyle ducks in the door behind her.

“Hey," he says, his smile becoming a bit less forced as he stares at both of his siblings. He resists pulling them both into a hug (though he's sure neither of them would mind it), because Amy has that look about her like she's trying to work up the courage to say something—and despite Nat's reassurances from mere moments ago, his stomach drops again, wondering if something is wrong.

 Strangely, Lyle has that same look about him, and he has thought there were no more secrets between the three of them—and so he only waits, his face falling in concern as he stares between them, wondering what's the matter

"Mum and dad told us," Amy blurts eventually, and Neil blinks at her. "About—how you've lived twice."

Oh. Neil shouldn't be surprised, honestly, after everything their family has been through—both of his siblings would have demanded answers after Fallen Angels, after—"Right," he says, eloquently, and Lyle rolls his eyes.

 "Why didn't you tell us?" he asks, crossing his arms. "It would have made high school a lot less weird—I just thought you were a pretentious dick who didn't want to do his homework and charmed Mum out of driving lessons."

Neil winces at the memory of those confrontations with Lyle—acing history and algebra tests without studying, going to see movies instead of driving around town for a couple hours and wasting gas. "High school wasn't the best," he acknowledges, and Lyle snorts at that, moving into the room to sit on his old bed.

 "Seriously, though," Lyle presses, and he's being strangely nonchalant about this as he only stares at Neil, waiting for an answer. "They said you only joined Celestial Being here because you did last time—but..." his brows furrow in honest confusion as Amy moves to sit beside him. "Why did you ever join in the first place?"

There is no judgment on either of their faces as Neil sits heavily on Amy's bed, opposite them—only curiosity, wondering what could have possibly driven their brother to such ends. Neil can only blink at them, though, because if their parents told them about his other life, then surely it should be obvious—

 It hits him like a sack of bricks, that their parents did not tell them everything. They do not look horrified at his second life—curious, incredulous at worst, but—

 They do not know, and Neil is loath to spring this upon him, after everything, after all of this, but—

 "It's a long story," he hedges carefully, hoping they aren't too interested in what happened. He knows it's a lost cause even before Lyle rolls his eyes again and leans back against the wall, before Amy leans forward, her elbows on her knees, concern growing on her face.

“We've both wondered, all this time," she says after a moment, and Neil tries to hide his flinch. "I think—Mum and Dad have just accepted it, since you told them so long ago, but..." she hesitates. "We're not angry—I haven't been angry about this in a long time, I think. But I don't understand."

It's not this that's causing his hesitance, though it eases something in his heart to hear that Amy does not hate him for his actions. "I..." he trails off, because he is long past lying to his family—but he knows this is something they will not want to hear. Amy, here, nearly twenty-six when she was barely eleven in his last life; Lyle, here of his own will, without the spite that was too-often on his face, so long ago. He has, of necessity, learned to block these feelings out from his everyday life, but faced with the last life he has done his best to forget—faced with the fact that, once upon a time, his family was dead...

 "You don't want to know," he says, quietly, and knows it will do nothing to curb their curiosity even without looking up to them. Sure enough, Lyle scoffs, and Amy makes a noise of dissent, leaning forward in Neil's peripheral vision, trying to catch his eye.

 "I think we're past keeping secrets, Neil," his brother says, not harshly, but skeptical enough that it hurts Neil to hear it. "Amy said, we're not angry. You're our brother."

 He nods, jerkily, still hunched over—though turned well enough to his right that he can still see the two of them. "It's just..." he trails off, blinks a few times, feels his eye twinge despite the painkillers Tieria and Lyle's friends have loaded him up on in the past week. "My life...went a bit differently, the last time."

 "What kind of different?" Lyle presses, a frown all over his voice. Neil hesitates, swallows, tries to figure out how best to approach this—tell Amy that she was dead for years...tell Lyle that he left him utterly alone after years of such a close friendship.

 "Amy," he says eventually, trying to steel himself, and she leans closer still, "do you remember your eleventh birthday?"

 She hesitates for a moment, remembering, and Neil waits patiently for her to answer. "That was the year you bought me my bear, right?" she asks eventually. "And we went to the theme park?"

 "Yeah," Neil nods, still not looking up at either of them. "I, um—I woke up a few weeks before then. For context."

 "Okay," Amy says slowly, clearly wondering what this has to do with anything. Neither of them press, but they both so obviously want answers that Neil—

 "Um," he starts, but he has to breathe for another few moments—tries desperately not to tear up before he even gets the words out, because Amy and Lyle are here and alive and safe but—"and do you remember how the mall almost got bombed around then, too?"

 "I forgot about that," Amy breathes after a moment of silence. "Mum always brought us to the other mall further out, after that—remember?"

 "Yeah," Neil agrees, and decides not to say it was because he had to force down the blinding panic if he even thought about entering the mall where his family perished. He hesitates here, though, unsure of how to break the news to his siblings, who—somehow—still do not suspect the truth. As he forces himself to look up, Lyle's brow is furrowed in concern, and Amy is frowning at him, but they cannot imagine—

 "The bombing was stopped because they got an anonymous tip, and the military was able to stop him," he says eventually, because it's too late to stop now. "That—that was me."

 They're silent for several moments, digesting what he means by this, before Lyle swears, his voice low. "You only knew to stop it because..." he trails off, understanding some part of Neil's quiet horror, but clearly not all of it, yet. "It went off last time?"

 Amy sucks in a breath, and Neil can only nod in response. "That's awful!" she says, her voice rising a few levels—empathetic, always, to other human beings, even when she does not yet know—"How many people—?"

 "Two-hundred eighty-eight," he says, his voice cracking, and Lyle swears again, turning and punching the mattress as Amy's face drains further.

 "Who would do that?" Amy all but demands, her eyes wide and horrified as she stares at Neil. He feels his own face darken, looking away again, trying to contain his emotions though his eye socket burns, and tears start to trickle from his left eye.

 "His name was—Ali al-Saachez. He's dead—I—" he chokes, immensely uncomfortable with discussing killing with his (too-good) siblings, but—they need to know that Amy and their parents were avenged. "Four years ago, I killed him."

 Neither of them respond immediately, and he chances a glance up to them, terrified of their reactions. Amy's jaw has clenched, and she seems to be fighting some sort of battle within herself; Lyle's face is chalk-white, and his arms are crossed tightly over his chest as he considers Neil.

"That doesn't explain why you joined Celestial Being," Amy says after several moments longer, and Neil closes his eye for a moment—bracing for what he knows is coming. When he opens it, Amy only looks worried for him—but as he looks to Lyle, his brother's face is slowly falling in horror as he watches him. His eyes widen as Neil tries to collect himself, as he reaches up to wipe at his face, wills the tears to stop, and Neil can hear him breathing steadily, deeply, trying to assure himself that he's overreacting, that—it can't be what he thinks it is—

 "You—probably don't remember," he says haltingly, though the entire day is in sharp memory in his mind. "On your birthday, you—you really wanted to go to the mall for your trip, but I convinced you not to. That's why we went to the theme park."

 He pauses for only another deep breath, but Lyle's eyes are wider still—staring at Neil, begging him to prove him wrong. "Um, the last time," he says, failing to keep his voice level, "you and I and Mum and Dad went to the mall, because that's where you wanted to go. Lyle—" here, he turns to his brother, who is staring at him in unconcealed horror, "you were being an ass, you ditched us to hang out with your friends for the day, promised to be home for dinner."

 Amy's face is draining too, now, leaning forward far enough that her knees are touching his own—but neither of them say anything to interrupt his story. It's just as well, because he doesn't think he'd be able to keep himself together if they did, but as it stands—"I skipped out to get some food at lunchtime," he says, more quietly still, and Lyle shoves a shaking hand through his hair, swearing under his breath. "But—when I—"

 He chokes off, here, unable to force himself to continue at last—and he has to wipe vigorously at his face again, shoving shaking fingers into the eyepatch, trying to pull himself together. It has been—it's been so long since that day, twenty-five years, but—

 "Is that—" Amy breaks the silence after several seconds, her voice wavering dangerously, "is that when the bomb went off?"

 He rubs at his face for several moments longer before he collects himself enough to nod, just enough for them to understand—and Lyle curses again, louder this time, his voice cracking. Amy's hand finds its way to his knee, and her shaking fingers hold him tightly as she fights for composure. "Who—?"

   The question hangs in the air, and though she can't seem to vocalize the rest of it, the words are thick and obvious between the three of them. "All of you," he chokes, and Lyle sobs wordlessly, shoving a fist into his mouth to try and contain the sound. “There wasn’t—there wasn’t anything I could do, there was smoke and fire everywhere and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think I only wanted to—”

His already tenuous vision has grown blurry around the edges, and his siblings are only vague blobs before him now. His hands tremble beyond use, even when Amy’s fingers find them and hold them tight—and moments later, Lyle has moved as well, sitting heavily on his left side and pulling him into his arms.

This is clearly all the explanation they need—answers every question they might have had in the years since he came back—but still he feels the need to clarify, to explain himself. Neither of his siblings would recognize the man he became—the man that, somewhere, he still is. Despite all of this, he thinks, they would never entertain the thought that he would kill to honor their memory.

(To fill the gaping hole in his heart, though he doesn’t have the words or the courage to say this aloud.)

“I…I didn’t—”

“Neil,” Lyle says into his hair, and grips him tighter.

“I didn’t have anything left to lose,” he whispers. “Celestial Being asked me to pilot for them…I didn’t even need to think about it.”

Lyle’s breath catches, but he doesn’t seem to need an explanation. Where was I? hangs in the air, and the obvious answer follows immediately after—you didn’t want anything to do with me.

His twin brother—who, in this time, would and has put his life on the line for him—left him far behind after the worst tragedy of their lives, leaving Neil with nowhere to turn and no one left to help him. He opens his eye, briefly, to look toward Amy’s tear-stained face—to Lyle’s shaking shoulders.

“It’s why I never told you,” he says, just as quietly. “We’re together now, and that’s what I’ve been telling myself for years. Everyone’s alive, and we’re a family…and…”

A few tears leak from his good eye and into Lyle’s hair, and his brother’s grip grows tighter. “We’re not going anywhere,” he says, choked, and Amy’s grip tightens on the hand she still holds. “You don’t need to worry about us, okay? I’m not—I’m not the stupid kid I was back then.”

He chokes, nearly laughing, at the so very Lyle response. “I know,” he says. “I just—the nightmares, they don’t go away, even now. I try to come home to an empty house, or I—I call you and get hung up on, or the bomb detonated anyway, or—”

“I’m right here, Neil,” Amy says quietly, shifting to sit on the rickety bed as well. It groans beneath their combined weight, but Neil scarcely notices as his sister embraces him as well. “You don’t need to worry about me anymore.”

But he does, and he thinks he always will, no matter how far removed from the bombing or from Celestial Being she becomes. She is his sister—and she has grown up, has come into herself more than she ever could, the last time. “Of course I’m going to worry,” he says, choked, and leans into her touch all the more.