[Song I suggest listening to as you read: "Through The Looking Glass" by Sleepwave]

TIMOR

"What the hell has even happened to you, you bastard?!"

It was easy to shrug noncommittally, to continue placidly staring at the red-faced teen screaming at him with all the tact of a newborn. It was easy, sliding his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels in the manner of one bored to metaphorical tears. It was easy to keep hold of the silence he'd cultivated for four years, to offer no explanation for his actions. Denying himself had become second nature to him - it was as involuntary as breathing now.

And so he had no trouble doing all the aforementioned things while the roseate ranted and raved until he was even more red in the face than he had been upon seeing his older self (Timor had to wonder if that was physically possible; he clearly remembered having a perpetually flushed face at this age, and it was a wonder to him that he could ever become any redder). Then he seemed to come to a decision, as admist his animalistic panting he lunged, hands outstretched as though in preparation for strangling the life out of Timor's husk of a body.

The assassin dodged fluidly, and as the boy sailed harmlessly past he caught him by the wrist, swung him around with the aid of his own garnered momentum, and hurtled him face-first into the wall Timor had previously stood against. The impact sounded with a dull, uneventful thud; he hadn't thrown him with much force, conscious of the fact that this version of himself had little concept of breaking one's own fall.

A low groan slipped past the boy's lips as he rolled away from the wall, onto his back. Timor stood over him in his usual stance - arms across his chest, weight shifted to one foot, head cocked in supposed boredom - and it was that unreaction to his presence that served to once again ignite the boy's fury. He was back on his feet after a moment of scrabbling, and would have launched another fruitless assault if Timor hadn't stayed him with both hands on his shoulders.

His expression was even, smooth, without wrinkle of furrow to indicate he was anything but indifferent to the current proceedings, but something told the boy Timor was stewing on the inside. With what emotions, he couldn't say, but the thought that perhaps there was true color in this vacant soul gave him pause, and he didn't struggle again as Timor looked him over.

"Echo."

Timor felt him tense beneath his hands, saw how rigidly he stood. That name was a curse on his lips, vile and unwanted on his tongue, and had been for as long as he could remember. The boy felt the same. For some reason, a reason as vague and unfettered as the reason for this meeting, knowing this, knowing they still shared this connection - this hatred of the name he'd done so much to forget - returned a spot of emotion to his voice as he said, "I changed."

"I can fucking see that," Echo growled. He no longer had any want to move from his spot in front of Timor, and he wasn't entirely sure if it was out of fear or camaraderie. Still, he made a show of swatting Timor's hands from his shoulders. "What I want to know is why. Why the hell did you change? Weren't you... aren't I fine as I am?"

Well. The honest truth was that this Echo, this enraged, indignant, victimized fifteen-year-old, was anything but fine. Timor supposed not bottling up his emotions at this age was something of an accomplishment, but when compared to the unyielding anger he so arbitrarily tossed around, he had a mind to think anything was better than this constant storm of pitiless feeling.

He could remember, as much as he wished to cut himself free of the past, what this was like. To drown in a unending sea of loathing (some of which was turned inwards on himself). To have frothing waves barrel into him from all sides, with no escape, no air, no salvation. He'd hated everything.

Face to face with Echo, seeing his flushed cheeks, his twitching chest for the first time in years, it occurred to him that perhaps he hadn't outgrown the habit as well as he'd thought.

Echo was breathing heavily, which came as no great shock to Timor; the boy often spent his 'youthful' energy in one go with his distressingly candid outbursts. His chest rose and fell in quick succession, each panting breath no more than a puff of stale, clammy air past his lips. Though he'd deny it, Timor's own chest tightened with phantom enmity, a lingering affliction he'd hoped to have left behind, in a time where Echo still ran rampant through the seas.

"Calm down," Timor ordered shortly, to which Echo was quick to counter with a breathy "Screw you!" The pink-haired assassin paid the reply no heed. "Your shrieking won't get you anywhere."

"Says you--"

"Says me," Timor agreed nonchalantly; Echo's jaw ticked with effort of holding back the retort he curled against the roof of his mouth. "I know. It won't do anything. Shut up, Echo."

His words had the desired effect, though Echo's reluctance was palpable, tainting the air around them with his ill-feelings.

"I changed," he said again, and with no intrusive words stopping him, he went on, "Out of necessity. To survive. Emotions like anger, guilt, sadness - they're useless."

"But you're just a fucking puppet right now! Hollow-hearted, soulless - you gave up all the bad shit, but what about... what about the stuff that made you - makes me happy?"

Timor's only response was another careless shrug. He'd contemplated this before, whether this transformation was worth the loss he'd suffered during the process. He simply didn't care any longer. More aptly, he couldn't care. His life before the present had lost all meaning, whether he would have preferred it that way or not.

Apparently, however, that was unacceptable for Echo, and he made his feelings abundantly clear when he suddenly struck out with both palms, shoving Timor as roughly as he could manage in the chest. The man only moved backwards out of courtesy - he knew if he'd reacted as minimally as he normally did that Echo's tantrum would only worsen from here on out.

"Is this what I'm doomed to become?" Echo demanded, his words warbling now as the bitter tears flooded his lashes, his throat constricting as though a python had wound round his neck with crushing force. "Am I really... Is that all I'll ever be? A damn echo? Not even a human, just an echo of one, like I've always been?"

A dangerous trembling had infected his lips, distorting the loathsome smile they'd curled into as he spoke.

"That's it, isn't it? First I'm just a carbon-copy of Dad - Maksimov Echo, the continuation of Maksimov Leo's harrowing saga. And in a few years, I'll be you - whatever's left behind when you've had every last bit of humanity scraped out of you."

His shaking hands tore viciously into his unkempt hair, eyes shut tightly in some vain effort to trap his tears before they traitorously fell onto his cheeks. He wanted to run, to escape, but where was he to go? He'd been brought he specially for the purpose of meeting his future self, he had no clue how to return home.

Wait... that's not... right...

Something inside him shook just as violently as anything outside as realization dawned on him.

Could he really, honestly call that place something as endearing as home? His island was a place where things went to die. He knew that, had given it the moniker of "Death's Paradise" himself. Not once had he ever felt any affection for the village, for the craggy, mountainous peaks that enclosed them on all sides. And his family...

What family?

They were better off without him, that much was obvious. He would never be the man his father wanted him to become, which, as he'd said, was his father. The path that had been laid out for him was unappealing; he sometimes felt physically sick thinking out the life he'd lead while caged within the mountains, with his father dictating his every move, his mother supporting with false words and veiled smiles, his siblings - no, they weren't poisonous, not yet. They loved him, cherished him as much as he did them.

When he'd spoken about the things Timor had left behind, the good things that deserved to be remembered, he'd meant the twins. They were his only bright spots in an otherwise pitch black life.

And he'd abandoned them, without hesitation or care, according to Timor.

Echo sank to his knees, hands still tangled in his hair, tearing and pulling with the intent to cause pain, so that he might feeling something besides the glacial regret seeping into his bloodstream, icing him all the way to the core. He looked up, blinking through tear-blurred eyes, as Timor crouched with him. Even the white-hot ire he felt swelling in his chest at the sight of the inhuman man failed to melt the ice he could feel crackling throughout the entirety of his body.

"You... You bastard!" he spat. "Even if you left... you could have started over, you could have done something with this half-life you'd been living! But no, the moment you gained any sort of freedom, you just... You just fell back into your old habits, became someone else's marionette, traded one set of strings for another. Don't you realize that?!"

Timor's stony expression told him everything he needed to know.

Timor realized what he'd done - he just didn't give a damn. Not anymore. Not now, when he was even less of a man than Echo. Things as trivial as a wasted soul didn't bother one when it was their soul they'd cast aside.

This was too much. He hadn't wanted to know his future, even before it turned out to be so bleak. With the knowledge he had now, his precious hope - the thing that had kept him going all these years, had saved him from the creeping, unsavory thoughts that plagued him while on the border between consciousness and sleep - had all but turned to dust in his hands, slipping through his fingers even as he struggled to catch the cascading grains.

He had no home to return to, no home to strive for.

This, what he had now... was not a life worth living.

Echo stiffened as Timor's calloused fingers ghosted over his cheeks, before his grip solidified and he held Echo's face firmly in his hands. Their forehead came together with a gentleness he'd have thought was gone from Timor's movements, and his eyes fluttered closed in surprise; tears leaked less fiercely from beneath his quivering lids. He sniffed once, twice, afraid of what other torment Timor would inflict on him.

"That's enough."

The words weren't meant for Echo - they were directed at a young girl who'd just appeared not two feet away from them. She radiated undisguised grief as she slipped a thin, elongated rod out of her back pocket and scribbled it through the air, miming the action of writing; a stream of glittering light leaped from the tip of the stylus and fell over Echo's still body. His muscles tensed, curling him inwards for a moment, before the editing took effect and he relaxed, collapsing against Timor's chest without so much as a breathy sigh.

"I'm... so sorry," the girl said, wheeling around as Timor lifted the boy into his arms and set off for the door that had just materialized at the back of the room. "You said you wanted to speak to him, but I didn't think he'd..."

Timor said nothing, his hand already fitted around the door's handle, fingers straining with the effort of keeping still a moment longer. The girl assumed he had nothing to say about the matter, that he'd return Echo to his own timeline and then set off for the universe she'd plucked him from originally. But he chanced a look over his shoulder, catching her stare long enough for his message to be conveyed.

She had no reason to offer an apology. What was done was done, and he'd brought this upon himself.

Still, she couldn't shake the intense remorse that had taken root in her heart; its seductive vines slithered through her veins, entwining her further with her misery. She should have refused this request, she should have known better.

Echo was, for all intents and purposes, dead. No substantial part of him lived on in Timor. He'd freed himself from those troubling emotions years ago.

For the current Timor, it was better that way.

For Echo... she'd let him cling to the hope that anything was better than the world he felt so confined in. The disappointment would arrive later, but it would eventually be cleansed from his system, the same as any other feeling they'd deemed unnecessary.

The girl swallowed thickly. Just what sort of monster had she turned him into?

Timor offered nothing even vaguely resembling a goodbye as he turned the handle and swung open the door, and he vanished in the same overwhelming silence, leaving the girl to sit there and ponder just what had possessed him to want to contact his past self in the first place.

...so yeah. This was a thing I thought of earlier and I just had to write it, ya know? I mean, the thought of Timor and Echo (his younger self) having a conversation, with Echo seeing his dismal future first-hand... I couldn't resist XD If this was confusing in any way, I'm terribly sorry! I don't mind clarifying anything, so if you have any questions, feel free to either PM me or put them down in the comments!