Chapter Text
When He opens his eyes he only sees the gray sky. Stormy clouds, dark as the upcoming night and the murder of crows circling under them, in restless waiting of a fest. All around reigns impenetrable silence and the smell of iron, putrid and moist crawling into his nostrils and mouth. He can’t feel his body, can’t will himself to move his limbs. Somewhere at the back of his conscience, he knows he should try to stand up or to call for help. But he doesn’t know who to call for. He doesn’t know where he is and even less why he is there. The crows chant their funeral cry overhead and darkness descends over him again.
When he wakes up it’s on a dry surface that smells of something bitter, and noise all around. His fingers twitch and he registers the low throb of pain over most of his body. His mouth feels dry and he tries to clear it, almost falling off the narrow bed in an unexpected fit of coughing. Luckily, a nurse hurries over, helping him back down. She looks almost as exhausted as he feels.
“Name?” she inquires, picking up a clip pad.
“What?” He asks, voice still raspy.
“What is your name? It says here no badge was found on you. Name and unit identification.”
“I…” He looks from her down to his lap, tries to think, to concentrate, but- “I… I don’t know.” He mumbles, a cold sense of dread overtaking him.
His mind is completely blank. He knows he has a pair of feet and that they are called feet, but not where they had carried him from or to. He knows he has a body but doesn’t even remember what color his own hair is. He knows that he is in a military hospital but not why . He tries to remember, anything, anyone at all. All in vain. The nurse sighs and he looks up at her in despair. There’s something kind in her tired eyes, but no surprise, as if it’s not the first time she’s been confronted with a case such as this.
“Can you at least tell me your nationality. English? Irish?”
He thinks again and then shakes his head. It starts to ache and he buries his face in his own hands, trying to keep his rising panic and bitter bile down. He is actually relieved to hear the nurse leave when someone calls for her.
The more he tries to think, to remember, the more lost and confused he feels. All the faces in his head are blurry, all the voices tainted with a metallic screech, none of the names and words make sense. His fingers itch to grab something, something long and thin, like a part of him that would restore sense to everything, that has been ripped away, but he doesn’t know what it might even be.
He lowers his hands to stare at them and only then notices it.
A single thread. Thin like a spider’s web and red like blood, no, more like fire, glistering with an unnatural shine under the dull hospital lights. Its end is tied loosely around his pinkie finger and when he follows its length with his eyes he sees another nurse hurry by and just passing through the thread, which doesn’t even stir and quietly disappears in the distance. He tries to grab it, pulls at it, but it’s like it’s made of pure light. Immaterial and ethereal.
Great, on top of the memory he is losing his mind now.
He is dispatched from the hospital soon enough. Still unable to tell them his name, but he’s not seriously injured, only slightly mauled, and they desperately need the space. Go see your troop sergeant, a haggard doctor tells him. Our hero doesn’t have the time to remind him that he doesn’t know who that is either. He asks around, gets sent from one person to the next, but nobody seems to recognize him. The various sergeants, captains, and vets just shake their heads. If it wasn’t for his, apparently unmistakeable accent, he would have probably been suspected of a German or an Austrian spy. It will pass, the most considerate tell him, short memory lapses after a shock are common. It will come back.
But the weeks pass and it doesn’t.
During the night, what little sleep he can get is filled with the sounds of explosions, flashes of lights, screams and, just sometimes, the touch of warm lips and the smell of sweet herbs. During the day, he is perpetually cold, dirty, and has no money or ways to sustain himself. Doing cargo and cleaning jobs in exchange for a piece of bread or a cup of warm water. He knows now that he is in Bretagne, an area in a French town occupied mostly by British and American troops, that supply the battle lines in the west front. And also, he apparently knows some French, which he is eternally grateful for because he doesn’t know how worse his situation would be if he was unable to beg for food. And whatever he does, his hand still itches towards his side, towards an inexistent pocket in the ratty uniform he had been given in the hospital, itches to grab something, to say words that don’t come to his tongue. And the days grow colder and colder.
He lucks out when he wanders into the countryside, subconsciously trying to follow the red thread that is still unwaveringly tingling on his finger. He stumbles upon a rich house with a half-destroyed front lawn and an old lady as the only mistress. She allows him and two other men stay under her roof and take cold baths, mends their clothes and feeds them hot porridge and bread, in exchange for working in her terrain and clean the debris away from the house. She wants it to be presentable for when her son comes back from the front. She refuses to believe it might not matter but spends most of her days praying and it makes him wonder if there is an old woman somewhere praying for him as well. If only he could remember her name!
The news reach them in the middle of November. Germany surrendered! The rest of the central powers are going the same way. Most of the troops will be returning home, coughing and missing limbs, but hopeful to see their native shores again. Not everyone will reach their destination, succumbing to the fevers along the way. But the deathly grip of disease doesn’t even touch Theseus, he seems immune to the illness and is among the lucky ones to set foot on London’s streets again. Or at least he thinks it’s “again”, struggling to feel any sort of familiarity. Nothing. Nothing except the red string, which seems brighter somehow, warmer, excited. He follows it for lack of anything better to do, through the crowded streets, and gasps when he feels it throb, increasing his pace. He doesn’t know why his heart is beating so fast in his chest. A man without a name, without a home, but with growing hope. There must be a reason he can see that thread, it must be leading somewhere where all the answers lay. The pull becomes almost physical at this point, when he is about to round a corner, he just knows that he is almost there-!
But just as he turns into a dark, deserted alley, the connection shatters. The tense thread falls to the ground as if it had just been severed, and he is just left staring into the empty darkness. The string twitches and raises again, loose, as it had been in France, but this time it’s pointing in another direction, south-west. Something like this has never happened before, and he is thoroughly confused. But at least, this is some development, and despite the bitter disappointment, he tries to convince himself that this means coming to London has been the right call, and that as long as he doesn’t have anything better to do and any other lead, he might as well follow the mysterious filament.
The first snow falls over the countryside and he burrows deeper into his clothes, grinding his teeth together and breathing on his callused hands. They are bruised and dirty, nails broken and peppered with white streaks, a sign of malnutrition. The wheel of the hay cart he’s hitching a ride on catches on a stone or a batch on the road and the whole precarious structure jerks, making him lose his balance and crash painfully with his shoulder against the side of the cart. He hisses and rubs it, pulling his feet closer to his knees. Maybe he should have stayed the winter in London, or even never left France. But… the light of the thread seems to flicker as if reassuring him in his decision to pursue its path.
He has an idea now, a suspicion pierced together by the fragments of tales that he’s been hearing from the people he’d talked to along the way. At first, he asked discreetly but quickly learned that those that lived on the streets and on the go, either didn’t care or didn’t stay completely sane for long themselves. There exist tales, in faraway lands, of an invisible string that ties together soulmates, lovers, fated… however you call it, it sounds like madness. But he allows himself to dream, maybe of a wife waiting for him back home, with a warm dinner and a kind face, or of a childhood sweetheart that knows his name and his story, who can tell him everything and help him find his place in the world. He closes his eyes and allows himself to dream, ignoring the rumble in his stomach.
The thick layer of snow seeps into his shoes and drags him down. It’s getting darker and maybe he should have stayed the night over in a town, which lights he saw between the hills in the distance, but the impatience gets the best of him. He can feel the thread getting excited, almost as if it has its own mind, throb, and tense up, guiding him between the fields. He follows it faithfully when, huffing and almost stumbling over, he reaches the top of a hill and watches over the empty expanse of the land. One more step and a tingling sensation down his spine distracts him but when he raises his eyes again, he sees a farmhouse in the distance, surrounded by old trees, that he could have sworn was not there before. Shaking his head he figures he’s too tired at this point. Maybe he can stay the night over in the stables…
However, when he gets close enough he observes the red thread disappearing straight into the house. Or maybe it’s just running through-
He barely has time to stop behind one of the trees when the door opens and a young man walks out, carrying a bucket filled with some dry herbs and talking to apparently no-one under his breath. Leaving the charge on the floor, the youth straightens up and looks over into the sky.
And our man, hidden behind an old oak, gasps. He can’t help it, breath hitching with the realization that this is the most beautiful human being he’s ever seen. After all the misery and devastation he’s witnessed over the past few months it sounds stupid, to become entranced at first sight with some stranger, but there's something hypnotic in that boy, something that calls to him. The fiery red hair picking under the woolen hat, the pale skin peppered with freckles and rosy from the cold, chapped, full lips letting out warm puffs of breath, and kind, dreamy eyes framed by long eyelashes.
Hypnotized, heart beating frantically in his ribcage, He takes a step forward, and then another, hesitantly walking towards the young man who just hears his approach. Their eyes meet and it feels like the most crucial moment of the life he can remember. He is about to ask forgiveness for intruding, torn between staring some more at that gorgeous face and closing his eyes to capture it in his memory when the man lets out a shocked cry and covers his mouth with his hands. It’s only then that He notices the end of a scarlet thread tied around the boy’s pinkie.
The other end of his own.
The other end of the connection he’s been following for months.
His only hope .
The end of his journey.
Before he has time to process what it means he’s suddenly got an armful of a handsome stranger and the youth is hugging him tightly, kissing his temple and forehead and crying, his tears freezing on pale skin.
“Oh Theseus! Thank Merlin! I can’t believe- we thought you were dead! Oh, thank what powers there be- you are alive! You- oh you came back!! Wait until mom- MOM!! MOM!!” He cries out and a disheveled woman runs out of the house. She locks eyes with the picture of the two of them hugging and clutches at her chest, eyes wide in shock and filling with tears. Something in her face runs right through His heart and he suddenly feels like it’s too much, like he can’t keep up with everything that’s happening. The unbearable exhaustion of the long journey catches up to him-
And he passes out.