High Anxiety - Dear Evan Hansen

For the Future

Yeah, sorry I've been MIA. Life, you know? Anyway, have a little something short and angsty. Not really Tree Bros, but it's not anyone else either. A little Sci-Fi plot-byte, I guess.

 "What the fuck have you done!?" Zoe gave him half a shrug, not even glancing up from the notes she was taking. "You killed him!"

"Not on purpose." She jotted down a calculation and set her pen in the notebook, looking at him through her dusty brown hair, which was falling out of its loose ponytail. The sleeves of her denim jacket were pushed up past her elbows. Smoke still drifted through the room, a ringing phasing through the air and crashing between his ears.

"You can't just go experimenting on people. You don't have any idea what any of this shit does. You just killed someone because you were, what? Curious?" His voice had gone low and hoarse. His anger burned his throat like the smoke floating at the ceiling. His insides burned while his skin shook with a trickling chill. Someone had cracked an egg above his head, and now its juices were seeping into his hair and down the collar of his shirt.

"Connor." She glared at him, jaw clenched. "I told him the risks. He was a volunteer. This is going to work eventually, and it'll be revolutionary. You can't run my projects for me. You can't rule my life. You can't just tear down all of my work—our work because you decided to be sentimental. Since when have you cared?"

"Since it was my friend you were using as a guinea pig." His nails were digging into the flesh of his palm. Either his knuckles had gone white or his vision was starting to. The heat in his chest was spreading to his ears. His teeth buzzed as they ground together.

"If you're going to be like this, I'll tell Mom and Dad that you snuck out to that party last weekend."

"I don't give a damn about the party," Connor spat at his sister. "You killed him, and for what?"

"For the future. He wanted to see it."

"Yeah, well great job. You just made sure he never will." Heat was pricking in his eyes now. His lips were trembling, twitching apart at the corners. He forced his breath out through his nose and slammed his fist into his leg. Not today. If he started crying, he wouldn't stop. Zoe sighed and came up to him. His already screaming brain tried to tell him that she was about to attack him. Instead, she laid her hand of his shoulder, soft and still. Connor shrugged her off. It was too steady. She was too steady. She had just killed him. He'd been her friend too, but Connor was the only one who seemed to care. Didn't it matter?

"He wanted to see how far we could go. I told you, he volunteered." Her hand was back on his shoulder again. Couldn't she take a hint?

"I don't give a damn about that either. He's gone."

"Fine. Have it your way." Zoe turned to the tray of her stupid experiments. A dozen little pills were lined up in a row, tiny jewels of swirling circuitry. "I'll need more people to test them. And, you know..." Connor peeked at her through his eyelashes, which were growing cold and heavy, glittering with tears he wouldn't let fall. "There's no real way to know if he's dead..."

"Don't fuck with my head right now. I don't care about your science-y shit. He's gone."

"Shut up and listen. It might've worked. We don't know if he's just stuck there and can't get back or contact us or anything."

"I told you not to fuck with my head." Connor leaned against the wall, chest heaving with ragged breaths. Still, he couldn't help the shadow of hope that passed over his skin, giving him warm goosebumps.

"Connor, think of the greater good, please." Zoe was counting the pills, shuffling them, weighing them in her hand and on scale, slipping them under a microscope lens. They clacked together in her palm, marvels of engineering, or at least they were supposed to be. It didn't matter either way.

"I'm not about to stand here and wait for him to come back. He's dead and you know it." Weird. The word death didn't fit the feeling behind his eyes. Death was cold, dark, and final. This, whatever it was, was hot, boiling, and starting to give him a killer migraine. He was dead, but something inside Connor still expected him to walk through the door. Hope was a bitch. "Let's just hope the one you're going to try and convince me to take kills me too. It would do everyone a favor."