He reached the door to the family apartment and balanced the box against his hip as he reached his hand forward and ran a finger down the smooth panel at the front. Immediately, the door popped open with that now familiar little click. Tucking his hands more safely under the box, he moved into the small kitchen of the apartment. Sure enough, there was a fridge there and plenty of empty spots to put the food.
Huh, with a disabled father and a five-year-old sister, the cooking must fall to him. He hadn't thought about that before… Well, if he was cooking, perhaps he could think of ways to make the ingredients last them for longer, similar to the way he would use every little morsel of the food he would buy back on Earth.
After placing the box on the counter, Chris unpacked the groceries he had purchased.
Not good, not good at all. Eyes flickered from what he assumed were vegetables over to what could be fruits that had some weird luminescent look to them, similar to the bright colors people's eyes had when they got a breakthrough. He didn't know a single ingredient here. Did this really have to be one of the few areas that Kaelith got creative? What was he even supposed to do? He couldn't live if he didn't so much as know how to cook. Those thin tan fingers that still didn't feel like his own pinched the bridge of his nose with an exaggerated exhale.
He couldn't put it off anymore.
The lack of knowledge in this world wasn't something that he could just close the gap on. It would take years, and did he even want to do that? It was denial at its maximum to play at ideas of going home, when home wasn't real. If he were bluntly honest, he had to admit to himself that he was never going back to Earth. That wasn't in the cards. He would never have his little apartment back. This… This was his life now, wasn't it?
He braced himself with both hands on the edge of the counter; it was bolted into the floor and didn't budge as Chris leaned into it. The tension in his arms holding his weight helped him not to fall into his chaotic emotions.
Was the best option here really to … accept that he was living Ashanti's life now? Accept those memories of him as if they were his own? Would that not make him a whole different person to his core? Chris had felt plenty of times that Ashanti didn't exactly have the fondest emotions toward members of his family. Would Chris come to agree with those sentiments? Negative sentiments against a five-year-old girl who couldn't truly have done anything to deserve it? The emotional dissonance of that sat crooked in his mind. Chris had never really had such potent emotions toward anyone, and all the sudden there were emotions for a sister, a father, an overwhelming situation —
Spiraling, that was probably the best way to describe his thoughts right now.
"Ashe, want help?" Came the voice of the problem herself.
He took a sharp intake of breath and jolted to look her way. Amina just blinked her dull eyes at her brother. The best way to describe it would be like looking at a kitten, but not just any kitten, but the stupid ones with their pupils completely blown that didn't seem to have a solitary idea within them. That level of cuteness aggression rushed at Chris. At the same time rushed the hostility that was all Ashanti's doing.
He swallowed back the emotions and tried to even out his face. "Yeah. Help me put everything away. I'll cook in a little bit."
"Ashe, cook?" She tilted her head in the same confused way she had earlier. "You always let Papa cook, though."
Let Papa cook? The man was clearly disabled. To have your spine injured like that, it must have been unbridled agony to move at all, and Ashanti was letting the man cook dinner for the family? What was going on here? This family was all sorts of wrong in so many ways. Was this just culture shock? The obvious distaste for his sister, the disregard of the father that clearly loved him even if the father was quick to anger… Did the father abuse them? No, no, Chris doubted there was any physical abuse. Ashanti's mental feelings regarding his father weren't exactly the physical type. There wasn't fear for himself in those reactions, but perhaps fear for his father.
There was really only one way to know.
Bitterness sat in his stomach, and this time, that bitterness was completely Chris'.
"Maybe it's time to try something new," he finally replied.
She giggled, "You're weird."
… Weird? That was completely normal! Probably… Surely it couldn't be normal to have your disabled father doing housework.
Amina helped him put away a few things on the lower shelves of their fridge—an almost completely empty fridge. The barren look sent a pang of anxiety into Chris' stomach, and it sat heavy. It looked like they only bought food once they had run out entirely, which wasn't actually the most frugal habit. Back on Earth, Chris knew it was smarter to stretch ingredients. If you bought a whole chicken, one night you could cook the thighs, the next the breast, then pick the bones clean, and finally boil those bones into broth to freeze for later. Nothing went to waste. But maybe this family didn't need to live with that level of caution. Their apartment was spotless, sleek, and so futuristic it could've been lifted straight from a sci-fi novel. Could they really be middle class? Maybe their father had earned so much before his injury that they could still maintain this standard of living.
It didn't really fit what he knew so far, but unless he accepted the memories, he wouldn't know—
"—truly a marvel! If you could say anything to the people of Earth, what would you tell them?"
Chris snapped his head toward one of the wall-mounted screens in the kitchen. Amina had switched it on, her wide eyes fixed on the interview playing across the display; on it was another reporter sitting with Kaelith Seko Islani. Anxiety shot through Chris so sharply it felt like even his ankles locked up. Perfect. Exactly what he needed in the middle of his existential crisis: front-row seats to the man who had caused that crisis in the first place. Oh, joy.
Onscreen, Kaelith faced the camera, his eyes glowing with a white luminescence so strong that even his sunglasses couldn't hide it. Most people had just a few faint lines of breakthrough energy streaking from their irises, but Kaelith's were so crowded with them it was impossible to tell where one ended and another began. How many breakthroughs did it take to reach that point? Hundreds? Thousands?
"Stay curious. You never know, maybe even someone from Earth can find a way to Breakthrough their current situation." The smoothness of Kaelith's voice sent a shiver crawling down Chris's spine. The man didn't look at the reporter, didn't glance away. His gaze locked on the camera—directly and without unblinking. And then, just for a second, his lips curved upward in a knowing twitch. The words stuck to Chris, almost as if directed straight at him.
That… was impossible, right?
They were an entire nation apart, so there should be no way for this man to know that Chris would look at this screen at just this moment. Could it be possible with a Breakthough? What sort of Breakthrough would give you a power like that? What sort of OP bullsh—
"Wow… his eyes are so pretty!" Amina squeeled, looking at the Kaelith with near adoration in her eyes.
… What kind of sister was this, that man could be Ashanti's enemy! Little traitor, "Help me put the rest of these groceries away, kid."
The girl pouted, but didn't complain. If anything, there was a pleased look in her eye that kind of stung something of Ashanti's that was buried deep inside of him. He really needed to understand these family dynamics before they figured out he was some sort of body snatcher and reported him to the police.
… Curiosity, huh?
A few excuses to his family of having a headache let Chris escape back into the obscured safety that was Ashanti's dark room. Feeling tired despite it only having been a few hours, Chris allowed himself to flop onto the bed and look up blankly at the ceiling.
It was a bit of a hopeless situation.
The thin, tan fingers that were his but not his own pinched the bridge of his nose again. He let his eyelids drift shut, sinking into realizations he'd rather avoid. His chest felt tight, foreign, as if even the emotions running through him didn't belong to him. At the very least, he should test what it was like to truly dig into the memories, to test if his fears were founded; that he would lose himself and potentially become Ashanti.
Carefully, he focused on Amani. Curiosity had been killing him about just what was between these two siblings. Some lighter memories crossed his mind; the moment he first carried her, the memory still had that hostility present, what was behind that bitterness? Where was the answer? Thoughts swirled around him wildly, as if the bitterness itself was sweeping and whipping the memories into a storm. Chris pressed a hand to his head, but pushed just a little more —
It felt like a release of pressure as these memories he was searching for finally slid in. Like something clicking into place that he hadn't realized he was missing, the most obvious thing in the world. After all, even on Apeiron, a family doesn't pop into existence if it didn't have one other factor. A mother.
She was beautiful. Amani's blonde hair had come from their mother. Flashes of Ashanti's life played through Chris's mind, quiet moments filled with contentment. Her name was Nalediva, derived from Apeiron's blazing star, Naledi. It was a fitting name for a woman who loved so completely. Of course, there had been problems. Nalediva and Papa fought often; both were stubborn, and Papa could be quick to anger. But even so, their life together was happy in an understated way. Amani's birth had been a miracle to them, and Ashanti shared in those echoes of excitement.
She smiled so brightly. Being pregnant really suited her; she glowed with an elation that seemed so integral to her being that it couldn't be separated. As she grew in her pregnancy, Ashanti's heartbreak grew as well, spreading through their body—no, through his body. Chris clutched at his head, unsure where one ended and the other began.
His head hurt. His heart hurt. He didn't want to remember this.
Ashanti slid out of the memories with a pained wince, and Chris took a deep breath and tried to steady them.
He was so close to having understood what had happened. Of course, Chris could make assumptions — Nalediva clearly died at childbirth or soon after it. The details could vastly change the entire situation, and as the Earth saying goes; assumptions make an ass out of you and me.
Ashanti screwed his eyes shut and willed the headache away. A hand drifted to his chest, over his heart, and balled the cloth there into a clenched fist, and Chris took another shuttering breath. His vision at the corners faded inward, a telltale sign of a migraine starting.
Unclenching his fingers from the fabric around his chest, he pressed fingers to his temple and rubbed in quick circles, trying his best to clear up the stress with a light massage. If that didn't work, he would try the—
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
He heard something clatter to the floor outside his room, followed by a loud expletive—Papa. Was he trying to cook? It sounded like he'd dropped something. Chris forced himself to sit up and head toward the noise. With a light push, his door swung open, and he made his way to the kitchen, each step taken carefully as the halo of a migraine threatened to blur his vision.
Chris pushed through it and tried to focus his vision on the sight of his father attempting to use his crooked spine to bend down, a hand holding on to the counter, clutching at the support in a way that looked almost painful. The pained look on their father's face was a stark contrast to the happiness that he had in Ashanti's memories with his mother. Chris strode forward without a word, picking up the bowl that dropped, moving carefully as not to tip over with the force of his own headache. He placed the bowl on the counter.
"You didn't have to do that," Papa said, his tone a mix of quiet, touched, and almost angry.
Chris was well versed in pushing through pain, and hid it from his tone as he replied, "Papa, why don't you let me do the cooking from now on? It will be good for me to help around the house more."
"I can do it!"
The snappy tone was defensive, but there was a softness buried underneath. In the memories of happier times, Papa had been warmer, gentler—and that man hadn't completely disappeared. Not that Papa didn't need a long and arduous therapy session that taught him how to speak to his children. If Chris could just… understand a little more about what happened, maybe he could help their father more. For now, the best that Chris could do was have the man who was clearly in pain sit back down. It wasn't a lot, but it was better than nothing.
"Why not let me do it just for tonight then?" Chris lied. He fully intended to cook all the meals from now on, but sometimes the best way to make changes was to slip them in so slowly no one even noticed.
For a brief second, the anger seemed to grow in his father's eyes, but Chris just looked at him straight on, having no intention of backing down. Then, the man deflated into himself, and Chris was sure he had seen something broken and raw in the man before he walked away, each step careful and pained. There was a deep cavern of concern that wiped away the headache as Ashanti's emotions threatened to overwhelm him again. Once there was no one around to see him, Chris gave in to the urge to curl a bit inward, clutching at his chest and wanting to rip these strange emotions out.
But he couldn't. This was the normal now — just like Papa's pain was his normal.