Butterfly Effect (Kyle's Lost Twin)

Professor Chaos

It's currently like, 10 pm on Saturday. I just spent the whole day with the gang, so I figured some me time was in order. I'm just walking around the neighbourhood, on my way back home from Starks Pond. I know it's stupid to walk alone at night but it's a small neighbourhood and I can defend myself. I've got my sharp butterfly knife with me. I doubt I'll need it but it's nice to know it's there.

As I'm walking past Leo's house, about to reach mine, I notice something odd... Someone is stalking around the shadows of Leo's house... The way they're moving makes me feel uneasy, it's like they know what they're doing. Could they be a burglar?

Hiding in the shadows of the trees between our homes I watch as the figure makes its way toward the Stotch's home. To my surprise and horror, the figure starts scaling the wall! Fuck, they're heading to Leo's bedroom!

Before I can fully register what's happening my feet start to bolt toward the home, I can't let Leo get hurt. There's no time to call the cops, I gotta do this myself. Fuck, what if they're armed? Fucking Americans and their stupid fucking gun laws!

I scale the building, trying my best to mimic the movements of the mysterious shadow. I make it to Leo's window and see the individual standing in the middle of the room, their back turned to me. That's when I finally see who they are... Professor Chaos.

In a swift and quiet movement, I manage to sneak up behind them and tackle them to the ground, quickly I grab my knife from my pocket and hold it to their throat.

"You think you can sneak into my friend's room?! What did you do?! Why are you here?!" I know whispering and yelling at the same time is a juxtaposition as I'm essentially talking at a regular volume but it's the tone that makes the difference.

"What- Wait... Y/n?" The person's voice is soft and familiar. I use the blunt end of my butterfly knife to remove Chaos's mask. Our eyes make contact and my heart drops. For the first time in my life, my mind feels completely blank, I can't speak. Hell, I don't even know if I'm breathing.

How do I even begin to register what I'm seeing? Professor Chaos may have never directly hurt people but the Chaos he's caused has killed people. He's got over twenty deaths under his belt and that death count only continues to grow.

"Y/n... Please let me explain..." His words seem to drag me back to reality, but not completely. I feel like I'm watching everything unfold in a third-person perspective. "You... You can't be..." My voice echoes through my mind, a whisper of disbelief cracking with betrayal. The sound is so foreign to me. I'm so dissociated from it all, I don't even recall actively saying anything. As if I'm hearing my voice from a recording and not in real-time.

"Y/n, please... You don't understand..." Everything looks so blurry... Fuck, am I crying? As if on cue I get off of Leo and wipe my eyes with my sleeves. I need to stop dissociating, I need to gain control again. This is such a confusing and delicate situation if I act on emotions I can and likely will fuck everything up.

Fuck! How do I get back into my own damn mind again?! This shouldn't be this hard! Looking around the room I try to focus on different objects, different smells, different surfaces and materials, anything to ground me, to take my focus away from the problem that's causing me to dissociate in the first place.

"Y... Y/n... Y/n!" Leo's voice begins as an echo but slowly it manages to pull me back. Everything hits me at once, all the emotions I should have been feeling hit me like a truck. I feel so betrayed, so angry, so upset but mostly I feel confused. How could someone as sweet as Leo be a villain as bad as Chaos?

Was I too late to help him?

Was everything worse than I thought?

Did I fail him?

"Y/n... I'm so sorry." Leo mutters, tears streaming from his eyes and I don't know whether to hug him or punch him. I stand there, staring at him waiting desperately for a reason.

Is there even a reason, a reason good enough for the harm he's caused?

"I started doing this as a kid... I was hurting and hurting others was my way of making it better because no one would help me. I tried so hard to be good, to be kind. I believed with every bone in my body that if I kept my head up then everything would work out but it never did. Hurting others gave me power, control, everything I felt I never had...

...Every time someone hurt me, every time someone took advantage of me, every time my parents made my life hell I became Professor Chaos and turned the tables... I would have stopped, especially after I met you. I wanted to stop. But the people I cared about didn't stop hurting me...

...I'm a monster." Leo collapses to the ground, tears streaming from his eyes. I feel conflicted until I see his scar and once again, my heart drops.

The moon is shining directly onto his face, through his window. He's not wearing any concealer to hide it, in fact, the light of the moon is making it shine ever so slightly. With his puffy red eyes, and dishevelled yellow-blonde hair, the sight in front of me was absolutely heartbreaking.

This isn't some heartless villain whose only goal is to hurt others and doesn't give a shit about anyone else. Villains rarely ever are...

This is a kid, a child, who's been hurt over and over and over again with no one in his corner to tell him it'll be okay. No one to lean on. No one to cry to. No one to tell him that they care.

Still, he puts on a happy face and tells everyone around him how much he loves them. Never expecting an 'I love you too' in return because no one has ever said it back.

No one has ever cared too.

But I do.

I love this broken kid more than words can express and him being a villain is better than him being dead. I don't care if that's selfish. I don't care how many people he's hurt.

I don't care that he's Professor Chaos, because he was Leopold Stotch first. A kid who was born into a world where his love and innocent joy should have been cherished and protected. Instead, every 'I love you' he said was greeted with emotional scar after emotional scar.

Wounds like that don't heal, kids in this position with no way out either hurt themselves or others just to feel something. To have some form of control back. To know that they're still alive and that this world isn't some fucked up nightmare they can't awake from.

I just hope he didn't pick both.

I can't leave him like this.

I can't force him to cry alone, not again. Never again.

Sitting down next to him, I wrap my arm around him. He immediately returns the embrace, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and crying into the crook of my neck.

As I hold him in my arms, the sound of his sorrow makes a permanent mark in my mind. It's a sound that will haunt my nightmares. A sound I know he's heard too many times, but no one else has.

A sound that creates a promise. A promise to protect him, to keep him safe and to never let him have to cry alone again.