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Chapter Text

"I am as mad as he, if sad and merry madness equal be."

Act III, Scene IV, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare

Act I, Scene 0: Prelude

The past few months had flown by quicker than Max Goof expected. There were three separate celebrations for the College X-Games, each one more bombastic than the last: Goofy and Sylvia's moving out barbecue and subsequent engagement party, a flurry of different adventures and summer activities with Bobby and PJ, the first clumsy weeks of Fall semester, all-in-all he was exhausted. Max was having fun, he promised, but at the same time, all of the running and skating around, activities and schoolwork every other day was weighing on him. Perhaps something else catches his mind too, a welcome but missing note in his perfect picture, leaving an oddly sour residue in his mouth, perhaps he noticed it the very second the competition was over last semester: Bradley Uppercrust III. He was a thorn in his side, for sure, he couldn't deny how infuriating the Junior was last year, always finding one way or another to antagonise him and his friends, but ever since Max called the 'towel-boy' deal off and Bradley had sauntered off-stage, he hasn't noticed him since. Sure, Max was thankful at first, the headache dissipating into ether,  but as the days continued, the inexplicable weight of the boy's absence dawned on him. Where did he go? Did he quit school or change departments? Why wasn't he there at the Gamma parties? All these questions fill his head, and more so as his absence was amplified in the first rose-golds of August as it cascaded into the valleys of State University buildings.

It wasn't like he hated the guy, not really. Max had assumed that Bradley would be the type of person to do something about it if his pride or his ego was ever brought into question. Alas, the boy had disappeared off the face of the Earth. He tried to ignore the aching emptiness, one less thing to worry about, he told himself, but it gnawed at him at every empty desk at the library or absent face at the skate park. The feeling stayed with him from the end of semester, extending all the way through summer vacation and latching its tendrils deep into fall classes. Max had never intended to be some paladin, some face the college can staple, "Rustic Hero Saves College X-Games". He resented it, in a way. Somehow, even if he wasn't being totally overshadowed by his father, he found a way to overshadow himself. How was he suppose to live up to the expectation of last year, more importantly, does he even want to? There was always this feeling that there was some persona he had to push, some role he had to fulfill, but despite his fans, his history, and intensely competitive spirit, Max never really wanted the spotlight. What he especially didn't want was an arch-enemy, but life and Bradley had other plans. He waited for the fallout, bracing himself against the door of his empathy, and the lack of a blast scared him more than anything he could have imagined. Where did he go? Wouldn't he want to kill me? Once the flaky popular girls had lost total interest in his raggedy stoner aesthetic, they all eventually left him alone, leaving him to stew in his own insecurities and confusions about what had actually happened on the course. 

Max had truly meant it when he had called the deal off. Despite the boy almost killing him, he had little resentment towards him, call it an inherited trait from his father: Goofs really do not hold a grudge. It just didn't make sense that someone like Bradley Uppercrust III would evaporate like that, no fanfare, no big argument or headline, just radio silence. Max paces around the room, absentmindedly picking at his snakebites. He didn't know why he was so hyper-focused on a boy that hardly cared about him when he had serious obligations to think about. It drove him in a special kind of frustration that made him struggle in high school, one that bubbles underneath the skin like a boil, making its way directly into his bloodstream.  

Perhaps he had been stressing too much over things he really had no control over. Max throws on a pair of battered sneakers, grabs his helmet and board and sets out for the Bean Scene, hoping caffeine would quell his unnecessary thoughts. Each push sent warm bolts of electricity from his legs to his brain, a familiar dance that always grounded him when he needed it, the cool wind easing his sun-kissed skin. The late summer bustle mutes to a dull roar as he catches a faint whiff of coffee on the air. The scent lingers in his head a little too long, brushing against memories of early mornings with his dad before school. He opens the glass doors and surveys the area: more or less the usual crowd for a Tuesday, a handful of frequenting beatniks, some stressed Econ majors huddled in a corner, and an oddly familiar looking girl not daring to look up from her English Literature textbook. He strolls to the counter, ordering the usual, and skulks to a booth way in the back. Max comes often when the emotional pressure becomes too much to bear, the floorboards under him like there's some mysterious second weight attached, weighing him down a few hundred pounds. There has been a swirling storm battering itself underneath his muscles, a growing bile bubbling in his synapses, he has everything he has ever wanted, yet he only feels numb. Slumping in his seat, his eyes glaze over as the hot black liquid makes its way down his throat, coating his esophagus in a not unwelcome discomfort. He doesn't understand why he feels this way, he won, didn't he? Why did it only make him feel restless and panicked? Why couldn't he genuinely enjoy his life after the X-Games? Why hadn't he had the motivation to sleep or eat? Something didn't sit right with him, and it extended way beyond a missing rival and an unsettled stomach. Max Goof is determined to figure out what that something is.

Bradley Uppercrust III was dead.

No, not dead... yet.

Bradley Uppercrust III was rotting.

He had been rotting for a while, festering in the filth of his own actions. Each small element, each practiced gesture of self-importance and poise, each careful addition to his persona weighing just one measurable tick over his tipping point, until it was too much to bear. He doesn't remember much after the celebration, only how lonely the locker room was. The sheer haze of what had transpired dissipating, Bradley tosses off his exercise suit and runs the water as hot as he could get it, the droplets searing his skin. Blood and dirt encircle the drain like a predator to prey, only choked occasionally by lathered bubbles of soap. He does not look anywhere but down, the drain an eye bearing itself into his soul, the dark of the missing grate only amplifies thoughts of deep chocolate irises he cannot remember who belongs to. He remembers his thoughts swirling like stars on the edge of a black hole, collapsing inwardly, further into the rabbit hole until the shower went sideways, the blues and whites of the ceramic tiling suddenly and violently hurling towards his face. Bradley does not remember waking up.

Someone does. A girl wakes up in a hospital bed a few weeks after the State University College X-Games. She stares at the IV drip as the droplets engrave its rhythm into her head. She does not really know who she is, only who she was. Her back aches as she sits up, a consequence of being slammed into a blimp at full speed. She checks her messages and, expectedly, bears few results: Some halfhearted goodwill messages from her mother and Tank, a cold voicemail about dropping her out of the Uppercrust lineage, and a slurry of profuse apologies from an unsaved number, probably from one of those self-righteous assholes that beat her. She tosses the phone on the table next to her, practically useless at this point. This isn't her first time waking up here, she wasn't exactly in a coma, but today is different; important. Over the past few weeks, the girl has been carefully deconstructing every minuscule detail of Bradley's life, dissecting each snide comment, stolen glances, buried feelings, all of it. The occupation had originally been taken up by a feeble boy who she pitied, broken and out of excuses and people to tell them to. Perhaps the boy never really lived much at all, a hollow shell only hoped to be fulfilled because of what would be expected. The rot had become simply too great to ignore, the mould beginning to seep into his favourite foods and media, clothes and interests, and eventually the girl was hired to the position.

The wake of the destruction of Bradley was great, and it left no survivors, except for her, a weak, wild girl hobbling over the last remaining vestiges of his body. The girl feels ancient, a primeval figure nestling itself in the columns of his flesh, hibernating until those columns crash into the earth, wrenching herself from the mangled re bar and asbestos-ridden drywall. Today, she knew that she had to force herself to make a decision, though something she has been secretly planning her entire life. She thinks of her grandmother, one of the few people in her life that saw her for her, not stoking the ego of his corpse. She thinks of late nights, sobbing into cups of hot chocolate and plates of oatmeal cookies about boys she dated her parents would never know about. She thinks of the serenity of the well-kept gardens and fields on her property, the small apple orchard providing rest from the noon-day sun. She thinks of gushing over her first crush on a boy, a hulking, Polish beast of a 3rd grader who spoke brashly and hurled spitballs at her, nicknamed 'Tank'. Brooklyn Uppercrust I was no bigot, she made sure her granddaughter knew that much, contrasting how she feels with her father, 'Brook's' son. She thinks of the funeral, how much she had begged whatever higher power to have her last until Christmas, barely making it to September, each face shrouded in black as the casket descended into the ground. She thinks of her soft voice singing lullabies to her while she forces herself to sleep. She thinks of these things because the decision has already been made, and the ache provides a gratifying respite to the physical ache still permeating through her body. She'll name herself after her grandmother, she'll vaccinate herself with this name so the rot doesn't consume her. It infected everything he was, every memory, every opinion he had on himself. Everything suddenly dissolved. 

But Brooklyn Uppercrust II refuses to let the rot take skating from her.

Brooklyn Uppercrust II refuses to let the rot take music from her.

Even if she doesn't skate, even if she never writes any songs ever again, she has to hold on to these. Skating and music were the two constants in her life, simultaneously two constants that were controlled. Her parents were wary of skateboarding, the culture being far too 'bohemian' for their tastes, subtly motivating her to do anything else to no avail. It felt like the only ways she even knows how to express herself, her inner feelings is to either maneuver a piece of plywood underneath her feet or tap into herself and sing. It was always more important to focus on more 'essential' activities: horseback riding, golf, shooting, anything her father deemed proper for a young man, especially one in the Uppercrust lineage. Hurling yourself at high speeds with a culture of expected bruises and roughness isn't exactly indicative of a proper gentleman like Bradley Uppercrust III, but maybe she knew that, and maybe that's why she did it anyway. Music was enforced nearly as heavily, God forbid if her parents ever heard Hip-Hop music coming anywhere near her room (though it always tended to happen when Tank was around). Of course, she had choir classes and was forced to play violin for a number of years, but through birthday money and careful planning, she amassed quite the collection of music and equipment, to the point where she might consider herself an audiophile. Brooklyn hadn't actually touched her recording equipment since high school, though the thought of it stirred in her present mind. 

Brooklyn pulls out a small metal ammo box from underneath her rolling table, one of the few things she took with her into the hospital room. She fishes for a key attached to her neck and opens the box, sorting through loose notebook paper and mostly-blank sheet music. She gathers a scrappy collection of pages, words scribbled and missing, a No. 2 pencil nearly to the nub, and a worn ratty pair of headphones, and puts on a playlist to begin to stew in her own thoughts. She needs time to piece together a personal letter to herself, written in dots and dashes and scraps of poetry, the bylines of her emotions laid bare in fields of staff lines and rivers of seventh chords.

Bradley Uppercrust III was a rotting corpse and sprouting from his chest comes Brooklyn Uppercrust II, a girl born from an ember perhaps too hot for her fragile hands to hold. She hopes the newly acquired emotionally-regulatory medicines help satiate the animal inside her, tame it just enough to stop the pounding in her skull. She is Lazarus, but her ascension is not heavenly, un-bathed in radiance, but felt just the same: Brooklyn has never felt more alive in her entire life. 

Chapter Text

Scene I, Act 1: Enter Viola, Orsino

When Bradley Uppercrust III was very young, his older sisters thought it would be a hilarious idea to see their baby brother in a dress. He stood in the mirror, his young shoulders exposed, out of the corner of his eyes his sisters chortled with rude abandon, and he kind of... liked it. There was some sort of electric pulse underneath his skin, a primeval, euphoric buzz from his nerves to his brain, he didn't quite understand it. He couldn't. A tiny brown-skinned fairy simply could not comprehend the sheer scope of the infinite eldritch capacity of Queer experience, like a moth to the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. That aching feeling kept happening, finding a perfect groove between the stolen glances and clothes, the intense jealousy he would get at every movie and classmate, variously feminine things. Uppercrusts are instilled with poise and fashion, it would be unbecoming of a young man like Bradley III to be so finely in-tuned with his feminine side, tweaking and perfecting like a secret Swiss watch. Bradley had, in many aspects, become the perfect façade. Whenever he was free to be himself and his sisters left him be, he would spend summers and winters on his grandmother's orchard, playing and making up stories in the grass, singing to himself, watching TV. It was the only sense of normalcy he could possibly get. 

Eventually, his father had come home and the unbearable weight of expectation seeped in as a bad smell, irradiating the air like fungus' spores. Bradley could never have been prepared for the shifting, the simultaneous Atlas and Sisyphus all in one horrifying package. He, Bradley, II, had been away for most of his life, occasional visits on vacations/business trips, glimpses at the family manor, when he was home, he was swarmed with office work, practically barricading himself in the study. It didn't matter anyway, Bradley III was expected to attend to his own studies and respectable manners of a proper young gentleman, private school, equestrian studies, business major, his father always had been an ever-looming presence in his life. Every 'interest' is bound in expectation and prestige, cultivating interests entirely separate from the context of legacy proved exceedingly difficult, yet he did prevail in small victories. 

Bradley remembers the yelling, glass breaking, shattered pieces of warped reality scatter across the hardwood floor, he lets out a scared whimper. He remembers the swirling storm of fear Bradley II brought, a figure of Chronos eating his young, a figure of Zeus' rage to the first Promethean humans. He hid in his room that night, perhaps cowering or distracting himself, perhaps crafting his identity, his protective mask hardening to a sneer. It kept happening, again, every small disagreement blew up into a bolt of fury between the two: the Second and the Third. To say he became jaded was the largest understatement in the infinitely expanding universe. Eventually, the Bradleys assured themselves mutual destruction, a cold war treaty of "Play your role, or at least act like it". So, he buried his femininity, crushed it into dust and scattered it onto the deep depths of his soul, and it sat as a shifting sand dune for years. 

It never diminished, merely swirled around the atmosphere and ozone of his mind. No matter how much he swept it away, how much he added fury and flame and pure, rageful joy, it never diminished, merely fought back. It, then, has a decisive victory in her mind when the mask of Bradley had finally slipped from his hands, shattering against the floor like the cup from the dining room years ago. He remembers drowning, deeper, further into the blimps infrastructure, a sea of terrific fabric, crashing maverick waves against him. Bradley and [Brooklyn] fought like imperial siblings, their gnashing teeth on each other's throats intent on fratricide, Bradley chokes from lack of air. Something died inside the interior of the deflating zeppelin. But, he did, somehow, end up on that stage, and he did somehow end up in the locker room, and he somehow was taken to the hospital hours later, laying on his side on the floor. He fought, boy, he did fight. In the chlorine nightmare of a hospital, Bradley tried to rationalise his own existence. It didn't make sense that this would happen to him, it didn't make sense that the simples arranged Bradley-wise could be a catalyst to such explosive force, could rupture the lining to his reality so precisely as to nearly resemble a piece in a non-linear quantum Rube-Goldberg machine called fate. The more Bradley fought to keep the shape, the more it fell apart, each seam ripping until there were merely frayed edges, tattered cloth unleashing Venusian dust. But the dust coalesced, rebuilt herself atom-by-atom, like a phoenix, Mr. Manhattan, or Sandman in that one Spider-Man 3 scene. As Bradley withered and withered, she grew and grew. Their relationship turns parasitic, Brooklyn vampyric, a leach suckered onto Bradley's veins. The birth was fantastically gory, a woman shoving her fist out the stomach of a man, born as the blood and bile slid out around her. 

It would be more useful if there was a fine line between Bradley's corpse and the pristine of Brooklyn, it would not be accurate. She recognises the memories, the traumas, she is familiar with her body's mechanisms, but it also feels wildly new. New feelings emerge out of the blackness, terrifying and eldritch, she has never thought about the processes and chemical makeup of her body more. Her world had shifted in strange and uncomfortable and exhilarating ways. With each existential horror, a new bud of excitement sprouts in her chest. At first, she had only thought that the feelings came from the hilarity of uprooting her life so swiftly, so she waited for them to fade. 

It was, perhaps, a little odd how quickly her father had taken to cutting her out, without any warning or second chance to be found. She was thankful to some level, it allowed her to finally flourish with her new wings, able to finally spread them out after setting the cage ablaze. She did find herself unsettled by it, as if there was some other plan, something else her father was planning. Like other things, she pushed the thought to the back of her mind, Brooklyn had much to worry about. 

Brooklyn didn't really have time to deal with her father right now, currently her goal for the semester was simply to survive through the grades and stray reconnoiters. The chasm between now and the previous semester consistently gave her a migraine, that, and possibly minor side effects from her Lexapro prescription. She couldn't exactly rely on her image or money to "gain" friends, so inevitably she ends up with a lot of alone time, which has its benefits and detriments. Frankly, she barely knows what to do with herself most times, and she had no vigor to skate or write anything, and thus her slump slows to a bored crawl.

She has taken to the libraries and coffee shoppes lately, the atmosphere and caffeine easing her mind as she works her ideas like clay. She watched a familiar dark, handsome shape step into the Bean Scene, her cheeks flushing as she tried to stare down at her book. The words swam around her head, taking wild nips at her cheeks and nose. She knows the shape, she has seen the speed, the flourish, the... hips.

It was him...

At some point post-egg-crack, Brooklyn lost her fire. She doesn't think it went away necessarily, but it felt tattered, cut like a knife and set as a sail on a sea of melancholy. Brooklyn merely didn't have the energy to argue with everything that blinked wrong. What took its place, though, was a never-ending pit of anxiety clamping onto her lungs, her heart, her throat. It had initially started on her first day back, her eyes darting at every classmate hoping nobody notices the explosive boy from last year. It had continued to persist as she noticed how often she found her own hands shaking, a weight was lifted and yet her shoulders still remained heavy. 

There was, to a certain extent, a small amount of blame that Max Goof possesses in the utter collapse of her old life, she supposes she could thank him for that much. He had been her catalyst, and to that end her hatred of him faded to blasé indifference, and eventually neutral anxiety. Max would, above anyone, be able to instantly recognize her old mask, what she is so desperately trying to bury. The thought made her spine shiver. 

Brooklyn knew she would have to deal with him at some point. Max Goof had yet again wormed his way into her life, though she couldn't exactly blame him. It wasn't like she owned the campus, at least not anymore, but in every class, he was there. She supposed he is only minding his business, why exactly does she keep thinking about him anyway? 

She remembers last year, how infuriatingly handsome and suave and, well, put-together he was, so much that would drive her crazy. She never could admit that to him, along with the fact that he probably would have won anyway, considering. She always focused on style, form and function, but there was a reason she had to resort to cheating, she simply couldn't catch up. What he lacks in precision, he has in wild, bursting rays of creative genius. It wasn't necessarily the moves themselves that had intrigued her with the initial offer to join the Gammas, more so the complex expression of his identity, mirrored in kicks and flips. It was like some mesmerising dance.

Skateboarding hadn't quite felt the same since, sometimes she occasionally glances at her old board, still nearly as pristine as the day she bought it. 

Oh gods, someone very familiar is walking through the door to the Bean Scene, backpack and skateboard slung over his back, slouched and chocolate eyes scanning over the small café. Her eyes drift to his shining piercings, stars stuck below his lips near his dimples, eyebrows, earrings and septum ring like that of a planet, she could only imagine what other piercings he had, and she did imagine. Maybe he got his navel pierced, his nipples, or maybe his--

No.

NO!

......No?

She pushes the thoughts back as far in her head as she can, tucked away near the weird fetishes and drug-induced fantasies. Dirty girl, how could she think of him, practically a stranger, like that? But it didn't work, Brooklyn couldn't help it. She needed a distraction, or perhaps a way to store these feelings away, and never, ever address it again. It wasn't helpful that her mind and her eyes continuously began to wander, despite her best efforts. 

He didn't seem to notice her, that was good. She doesn't know if she could exactly talk to him right now. Brooklyn was so certain that she could use her money to pass at least a little bit. She had spent thousands of her remaining money on hormones, surgeries, appointments, clothes, hair extensions, rerouting her life in directions she couldn't possibly imagine. Once the realization had fully set in, the tattered ribbons of Bradley settled, Brooklyn didn't have any particular issues on a mental level, though it wasn't a perfect transitional period. There were many things Brooklyn was never taught, and many parts of being trans she did not know or understand. There was so much, well, culture, she had to catch up, already feeling inadequate. She had looked some things up online, mostly on Reddit and Youtube, and on some particularly sketchy forums and porn sites, with varying amounts of success. Still, she couldn't bring herself to get bottom surgery, she enjoyed the experience (less so the residual feelings leftover). Brooklyn was certain that these efforts would add up to some semblance of an image, that her true self would mask the failures of the broken self.  

Max takes a large swig of his drink and exits the café, the sound of wheels on cement fading into the crowd of coffee-addicts. 

Brooklyn slides out her notebook, headphones and laptop. She is so tired of not being able to deal with her own emotions, the anxiety and depression meds only go so far. Scribbling some lyrics, her mind fixates on 2 silver stars witnessed moments ago. They refused to escape her, how can something so small tether her to the earth so strongly? Her breath catches in her hair. a resounding puff sliding her bangs to the sides of her face. She jots a couple lines down each day throughout the next week, always settling towards those celestial beads and rings through glances at coffee shoppes, classes, passing the skate park, it was maddening to some extents. Brooklyn cannot for the life of her sling off the Goof, it was so easy before. She could just pretend he wasn't there or throw another rager at the Gamma Mu Mu building. But now. things have slowed to an manageable but immeasurably place in her life, any thoughts of him just sticks onto her emotions like glitter, never quite able to be completely rid. 

Who was she kidding, she couldn't slide him off even last year too.

Brooklyn has a feeling she is going to have a long year.