Chapter Text
“I’m sure that it’s all just in your head.”
Those nine words were something he’d heard time and time again– all throughout his life, really, but this last week or so it had just… ramped up. School was starting to get frustrating again, and with more and more of his peers being put on Better Living’s medication and beginning to further scrutinize his behavior as someone who hadn’t met the age minimum just yet, hearing it at home felt like another nail in the coffin of pure, unadulterated frustration that had been building for days.
Pryce Thomas. Fifteen years old, unmedicated. Brother to Kaiden Thomas.
And a real pain in the ass to Better Living’s insistence on all children’s successful transition from an unmedicated childhood to a placated, happy, plastic-smile adult who would complain about nothing and agree with everything.
The boy had always been a little “strange” in the eyes of peers and authority alike, but they brushed it off as childhood oddities that he’d soon grow out of when he reached the age of sixteen and could be officially placed on Better Living Industries’ pills. Sixteen seemed like such an arbitrary number, in Pryce’s opinion. Why not seventeen? Eighteen, marking adulthood? Such questions had often gotten him in trouble before, he’d learned to keep them silent, but some things could not go unsaid.
“No shit, Kay.”
“Excuse me?”
“Feelings are supposed to be in the head.” Pryce fiddled with an arm of his sunglasses as they sunk down to rest against his cheekbones. Not BLi-sanctioned gear since the newest rules passed last year, the sun never shone bright enough in Battery City for most people to need them so they’d been deemed an unnecessary waste of production time and materials. Relics to be dumped into the Zones. The fluorescent lights on stale white and grey warranted their use, in Pryce’s opinion, but no one ever seemed to agree.
“Feelings like this,” Kaiden repeated, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “are not supposed to be happening in the first place. The lights aren’t too bright.” He looked down at him, and for a moment Pryce wondered if the look on his face fell under frustration. Under things you’re only supposed to feel toward Killjoys and Zone Rats.
He shrugged. “Ignorance is bliss.”
Kaiden’s mouth twitched upwards. “Watch your mouth.” He reached forward, and took the bridge of his sunglasses between two fingers. Pryce had no time to object before the room rose from a darkened grey to something that stabbed into his eyes and left him squinting, blinking rapidly trying to clear the sudden swell of something painful. Something frustrating. He looked down. Carpet. Two pairs of white socks. Lines between tiles.
He didn’t want to be rid of his emotions, but…
“There!” Kaiden chirped almost sweetly, smiling as he folded the sunglasses into his back pocket. “See? Was that so hard? Would you rather I report you? You’re lucky that mother and father don’t see how much you act like… this.”
Pryce’s heart sank to his stomach as his gaze followed the dark lenses and darker frames as they disappeared into a stark white pocket. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words would form around the lump in his throat. He sat still a moment, staring, before managing the smallest nod, swallowing a grimace. He could not look up past Kaiden’s neck. He watched his brother pad away wordlessly, chest churning with something he couldn’t put a BLi-sanctioned word to. This wasn’t joy, wasn’t placidity, wasn’t something a good citizen of Battery City should be feeling.
He knew, for a long time now, that he did not fit the bill of a “good citizen of Battery City.” A good citizen didn’t complain about the light, didn’t get attached to objects others deemed meaningless. A good citizen didn’t have to bite back tears.
His brother was a model citizen. Didn’t cry, didn’t complain. He was willing to report those he cared about if they stepped too far out of line. Pryce was half-convinced recruiters would come knocking at their apartment door any second with the grand news that the eldest of the two Thomas brothers would be inducted into the s/c/a/r/e/c/r/o/w training program, leaving his poor, unmedicated brother to the mercy of their parents who hadn’t yet caught word that the only thing between him and an early dose of Better Living pills.
He stood. If he dwelled too long on it, he was only going to further risk getting himself in more trouble than it was worth.
There was nothing going on today, he had time to pass and that meant time to study, and a space where he could turn off the fluorescence and not be scolded for the risk of… what, some invisible police force? Bedroom inspectors who’d arrest you for turning the lights off if it wasn’t the appropriate hours for it? No. In his room, it was just him and a lamp he’d tampered with months ago. Batteries saved, eyes saved, and keyboard gently lit as his fingers danced across it searching for his assignment.
His teacher had sent students home with the task to watch a series of instructional videos, all to do with what to do in the case of a Killjoy attack on Battery City. Easy stuff, the sort of stuff you watched in every level of school, every grade, drilling all the basics in in hopes something would stick. Pryce didn’t necessarily fear the rebels from the Zones. The actors in the video donned garish colors and goofy masks, and if that was what a Killjoy really looked like, he didn’t see what was supposed to be so intimidating.
“Video lesson one,” the voice droned from the keyboard tablet’s speaker, “how to disarm a Killjoy.”
The instructor blathered on for a while about nothing Pryce would ever need. Walk in unpredictable patterns, get close, grab the arm wielding the gun and twist— He wondered if Kaiden would be able to follow these instructions despite having graduated from schooling two weeks ago. Would he manage to do something “unpredictable,” or fall victim to Better Living’s one-way thinking?
Pryce knew well enough that voicing these sorts of thoughts out loud was the type of thing that’d get you put on a stronger dose of the medications, or disappeared off the streets.
His gaze trailed away from the videos after a while. The instructor’s monotone voice was narrating some cheaply-dressed actors’ disarming techniques, but Pryce found himself starting to tune it out. Instead, his gaze turned to the window… he wondered what it was like out there.
Of course, there were the things Better Living said about the Zones; it was irradiated and those who lived there were actively deteriorating, there was so few resources that the Killjoys would turn on each other, fight for each other’s food, kill for a scrap of bread or a drop of clean water. That if Battery City’s residents did their duty and reported all Killjoy sightings, they could reign in and rehabilitate half the Zones by 2020.
But Better Living also claimed that their medicine was far from harmful, yet even the starter doses for more openly rebellious pre-medicateds were enough to cause migraines. Truth was subjective if you could pay enough carbons to enough people.
Another sort of thought that’d have him in some deep shit if he dared express it.
His pen lifted off the notes page he’d been trying to write on, coming up to his mouth as he started briefly gnawing at the cap on the back.
Sometimes he wondered if the Zones would accept him and his oddities better. If they’d let him live. No threat of meds he didn’t want, no pestering from Kaiden about things that really shouldn’t have mattered so much. Maybe he’d thrive better out there, maybe both of them would.
Maybe that sort of life was just too far out of reach.