Interlude: Abbadon
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All things considered, I think things are going pretty well. Please send the CDs I listed on the back of this note with the next batch of cookies. Also, Gennie’s suitemate Dawfyyd says he’d like some more of those chocolate crinkle cookies, and says they’re delicious.
If you were going to send me to an underground bunker, this one at least doesn’t suck.
Thanks for not sending me to military school,
Abaddon
He finished the note, folded it up, and slid it in an envelope. His parents’ last package had come with a note that said Write to your parents or the cookies get it.
He appreciated the joke, but Dawfyyd maybe hadn’t; he’d gone to the Store and come back with paper, pen, and stamps for Abaddon. “Here. Write to your parents.”
Gennie wasn’t big on orders, but she’d given a “suggestion” that Abaddon really ought to do what the rest of her crew told him, so he’d done as Dawfyyd had demanded and written to his parents. “Here.” He handed Dawfyyd the letter. “I told them you like the chocolate crinkle cookies, too.”
“Thanks, man. Your parents make really good cookies.” Dawfyyd flopped down in a chair. “I’ll take this to the mail drop later. Or you can. You have to know where it is, you keep getting mail.”
“I do, yeah. I just, I don’t know.” Abaddon shrugged. “Didn’t think of it.”
“The first year here can hit you like that. Everything’s so weird. Magic powers, magical slavery, bodies doing strange things—”
“Okay, are we talking about high school or Addergoole? Because ‘bodies doing strange things’ just sounds like puberty.” If he made jokes about it, he didn’t think too much about the collar around his throat.
“Ha, yeah. No, really, it can be easy to forget your parents – well, the people that raised you – and just get lost in living in a magical fairyland, but, really, don’t.”
“Don’t?” Abaddon blinked. That wasn’t something easy to obey; he could only barely follow the logic. “Wait, people that raised me?”
Dawfyyd paused mid-breath and tilted his head. “Oh, nobody explained that part. Okay, here’s where things get weird-”
“My girlfriend owns me through magical slavery and she happens to be a real live Disney Princess. My English teacher is a Satyr and my Russian teacher is a bear. ‘Gets’ weird? Things got weird weeks ago.”
“Weirder. So, you know about, uh-”
“-Why Gennie did her best to get pregnant the first week? Yeah.”
“So they did the same thing with our parents, just… more. Well, slower. And more organized. But in a lot of cases, that meant they were looking for specific gene matches that, well, didn’t work as child-rearing pairs?”
“You make this sound so clinical.”
“Practice. Lots and lots of practice. What that means for you is that there’s a good chance one or both of your parents aren’t your biological parent.”
“…You can’t just drop that on someone!” Abaddon stared at him. “I mean, seriously. ‘One of your parents isn’t your parent.’ What is this, some sort of Jedi shit? If you tell me you’re my father, I’m going to punch you.”
He felt like punching someone, too, that was the problem. He had to get that under control, and fast, or he was going to end up blowing up.
Abaddon had learned right after Hell night that blowing up wasn’t really an option for him, not the way it was for normal people, not anymore.
“Luke,” Dawfyyd teased, “I am your father…”
“Well, at least we know neither of us are Luke’s father.” He touched his forehead gingerly; the bone spurs that grew out of his forehead didn’t hurt much, not after the first week, but they kept getting longer, the more agitated he was. There was this point where, if they got too long –
No, he wasn’t going to think about that. He shoved away the thoughts of that other person, the one that lived in him, and smiled at Dawfyyd. “So. We’re, like, some sort of Weapon X thing? They wanted to make us a certain way?”
“That… yeah. Let’s go with that.” Dawfyyd smiled crookedly. “They wanted to see what they could do, and what they got was us.”