Chapter Text
-
A weight has been taken off a man’s shoulders. And all he knows is that it isn’t right.
There’s bells, if anything at all. Like church bells, but way too loud. It might have been the blow that was so violent it made his ears ring. That ringing isn’t in his head anymore. It’s in the air. It’s not right. It echoes all around the room, bounces off what looks like a high ceiling and announces something bigger than itself.
Once the black faded into something lighter, something not made of one particular colour, there was light. Sunlight. It had to be sunlight, because it felt so warm on my face. A few blinks to adjust my vision. It didn’t take me long to understand where I was. Why it all felt so serene, so quiet. There was no pain here. No weight, no past, no future.
There was a man sitting next to me, his face tilted up towards the beaming sun coming through the tall windows. Smiling to himself, entirely satisfied, waiting for the world to pass him by.
It was his sacred place. A shrine of truth amidst the shadowy hallways of his mind. It was a place that, to him, felt like home.
I realised with a start that it did for me, as well.
It was an altered version of the chapel. A careful symbolic reconstruction. The building was unnaturally empty, unnaturally silent and the ceilings and windows seemed a little higher than I remembered them to be. I was sitting on a simple chair, an exact copy of it mirroring mine. Both faced towards the chapel’s apse. The altar was completely empty.
A deep breath of relief escaped me and I closed my eyes. There was peace in this place like I had never known it before. I understood why you liked to spend your time here, but today this place was all wrong. We were no angels. This place was going to pull us right down into the earth, six feet deep before they could start building our coffins.
And Hell was I sure of one thing, that was not going to happen.
We sat in this silence and I let it carry us for a while. Nothing hurt. There was only the present. The significance of this moment and the unspoken words that floated around us, fluttering towards the ceiling, chiming in with the bells. There was no need for them to be said out loud.
But the water was still rising, and the quiet was interrupted. The ticking of a clock filled the room. The hourglass had been flipped. The sand was moving. Even in this place there was no forever, as much as both of us wanted there to be. This wasn’t reality. I knew the rooms of your mind palace better than any other place. Our faces lacked scars, this place did not exist outside the figment of imagination it was built on.
As soon as I started thinking about reality the scene started shifting. The clock became louder, overshadowing the bells. Cracks appeared in the marvellously crafted ceiling. I should’ve stayed oblivious, but there was no time for doubt now.
I understood one thing, the clock kept ticking, this chapel would start flooding. Death was coming, but it wasn’t going to catch us today.
-
Wade in, wade out.
Go slowly, don’t fight it.
Let it go.
The body wants what it wants. Let it take what it wishes to take.
Fade in, fade out.
Don’t fight it. Just don’t fight.
Wade in, wade out.
Steady now. Let my hands guide you through the curtains of sleep. You’re almost there.
You’re right where you’re supposed to be.
A place can swallow you as much as a person can. Darkness can be oppressive as much as it can be comforting. I was nowhere near where I came from, the air was too humid. There were hands, always hands, keeping me in place. I sighed, or gasped, when I felt a needle push into my skin. Escaping the end might be far behind now, but the fight wasn’t over. A mixture of my own blood and sweat in my mouth, it lingered on my tongue. Maybe not just my own. It felt too foreign. Everything felt foreign, except those hands. The world might have been burning, but those were the hands that would pull me out of this. I opened my eyes and saw nothing, but I could hear a breathing that told me it was you.
-
There lies a dead dragon at their feet.
The night is pitch black. It reflected on the water shimmering behind us as much as in the blood spilled all over the place. In the light of the moon the two looked horridly similar.
I reached a shaking hand through the sharp cut of the night. Ready to take. To merge, and it’s only this. This scene stretched out in front of us. You took my arms and created a shield. It was a declaration of understanding and maybe, a surrender to something else along those lines.
The need to connect was more important than any of the injuries we’d suffered. The physical boundaries of our bodies didn’t stop us from clinging onto each other. On the contrary, it made us grasp tighter. I felt like I’d been flipped inside out. The smell of it made me light in the head.
We were back at the beginning, yet at the same time we’d long passed the finish line. Once again running to no-man’s land.
The game was over, no one was cheering anymore. The unavoidable need to keep running was all that kept us moving. It brought us here.
My arms tightened. I squeezed my eyes shut. Not hiding, just accepting. I was going to collapse right into you and you let me. Defenceless in your own damn surrender. I dragged us straight into the beginning of the end.
-
For a while, I found myself in nothing but a liquid silence. Pitch-black and cold in contrast to the hot-red rush of adrenaline running through my veins. I couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel. I forgot my name, where I was, who I was and what I’d done. For a short moment, I wasn’t myself.
I was a consciousness floating around my own body. An observer watching myself from outside my head. Like the walls of my skull couldn’t contain me anymore. I was convinced that it was the end. For a few moments, while my lungs collapsed and ran out of air, I considered myself dead.
The darkness became uneven as soon as my senses came back. I remembered my name, and the first thing I knew was that I failed. Miserably.
I’d failed to bring both of us down. I’d thrown us off a cliff with the clear intention to make an end to it all. To enter death with you in my bruised arms. Yet here I was. I tried to forget about the water, looked up and climbed my way up to the light.
I choked on my own breath when I made it to the surface. My jaw felt like it had been split in two, stinging with salt as the smell of seafoam filled my nose. I coughed, spitting out more blood than water. It dissolved quickly in the dark waves. The panic kicked in like acid sprinkled through my body, stinging so bad it almost made me stop breathing. If there was anything I couldn’t afford now, it was to let it take me over.
I didn’t want to be left alone out here. You couldn’t do that to me. Not again.
I started calling out your name, I could barely hear my own voice over the rushing. The wind was so loud, it filled my ears and didn’t leave any space for anything else. I wondered if I was making any noise in the first place. It was a desperate attempt to be heard, rather than a name. The sound of it was lost between the water surface and the thick clouded sky.
Knife , I remembered. There was a hole in my cheek. No reason to panic any more than I was already doing. The vast white fog of my mind was disappearing, making room for events to recall. I started to remember. The dragon. The cliff. I wanted to finish this together. I was never one to abandon a job halfway done.
Despite it being almost too dark to see anything, I saw something in the water that didn’t match its colour. Never in my life had I swum faster. I grabbed your body and didn’t dare to even find out if you were still alive. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I were to find out the fall had been fatal. My goal was to get us both to the shore. If I could do that, then I could decide what to do next.
I had always thought being able to carry the weight of the past years of my life made me able to carry absolutely everything.
Having to carry your body, dead weight and wet clothes, smacked me right in the face and proved me wrong.
I dragged both our numb bodies out of the water. I collapsed and took you down with me, almost falling on top of you before hitting the ground. The sand was rough against my skin when I crashed down. I rubbed the gritty texture right into my wound, but I was too exhausted to get up. The shore was as colourless as the water. I would have smiled if it didn’t hurt so much. What a sad reality. Where everything goes up in an endless grey. At least we were on solid ground.
The ocean washed away some blood, but it hadn’t washed away our wounds. Let alone had it healed your bullet injury or the stab wounds Dolarhyde left me. My cheek hurt like hell and my shoulder was completely numb at this point. I had very little time to think about this. I checked your pulse and forgot how to do it professionally, so I just grabbed your grey wrist and pushed it against my ear. I heard nothing, it wasn’t working. Without thinking I bent over your body and put my head on your chest.
And, thank God, I almost cried with relief, there was movement. Oh so subtle, but there was a faint beating behind your ribs. Like a little bird, I thought, kicking against your insides. I gripped the sand, scratching my hand on a sharp rock. I barely even felt it.
If my years of training taught me any kind of field practice, it was performing CPR. But for all the times I had to do it, I never did it as frantically as I did then. I sacrificed my own air for it, feeling myself growing dizzier with every breath. A shock went through your entire body, but I tumbled over and blacked out before I was done. The pain ebbed away at once.
There had been a hand. It was the first thing I felt after the oppressive black came. It was cold, but I recognised it nonetheless. The first thing I saw was something I couldn’t place before realising it was the sky. The first thing I heard was something that pulled me back to life like shock treatment.
‘’Will.’’
I couldn’t truly place the thing that came over me when I heard you say my name. I don’t think I ever felt it before. It wasn’t happiness, neither was it relief. That word didn’t fit into the dictionary of whatever it was that we had. My vision cleared up and I tried to move a little. My limbs were incredibly sore, but then I told myself that I’d survived worse. My usual mantra. Even though I sincerely doubted it this time.
Water was crawling up my lungs. I rolled over, turned my head and vomited whatever substance was spilling out of me this time.
You wiped my mouth with your bare hand, urgent and certain but gentle. It stunned me so much that I forgot how to move.
‘’Will, can you sit?’’
Your voice was broken and heavy, the same urgency playing through. Like a stone building full of cracks, on the verge of coming down and crumbling completely. The hand on my cheek moved away. It was as if all warmth was pulled out of my body along with it, but then I felt two hands grabbing my own. They pulled me up. I could barely stand but they held me tight. Familiar eyes met mine.
Nothing was said, but there was a shimmer in them that a man shouldn’t have after surviving such a fall. I tried to smile. It must’ve looked horrendous. All I could do was stare up at you like I hadn’t seen you in years.
‘’Gonna pass out I-’’ I tried to say, but speaking hurt so much I swallowed the words down with the knot in my throat. I didn’t want to think about the fact that not for one second I had considered letting you drown.
‘’Hold on a little longer.’’
I stood face to face with you and even though something in me told me not to, I threw myself forward and embraced you tightly. You were alive. You spoke like you were on the verge of dying and you looked like you could fall any moment, but you were alive. We both were. And I didn’t intend things to turn out this way, but at least I hadn’t lost you. Blood was still gushing from your stomach. The only reason you weren’t dying yet was because you had to get us away from here.
An arm was thrown around my shoulders and pulled me along. We staggered, both struggling to walk, but willpower is the strongest force in the world. There’s nothing more powerful than an animal on the verge of death clawing at survival. It has nothing to lose. There was nothing left in the ashes behind us. Moving forward was the only way we could move now.
‘’We don’t have time.’’ You rasped. ‘’Let’s promise to take our time to do all of that once we are safe. Walk with me as far as you can. I can carry you for a while, but I can’t carry us all the way up.’’
I was starting to really see you again. The blood that the sea hadn’t cleansed off your colourless skin. An exhausted look to you that I’d rarely seen before. A pair of antlers crowning your head, but they were gone as soon as I blinked. I turned my head over to the sea and seeing its wild waves, it was a miracle we survived.
‘’Hold on tight, Will.’’ You smiled, hoisting me over your shoulders. I shifted to make it easier for you to lean on me. It was a matter of luck, or maybe misfortune, which of us would slip away first.
‘’You too, then.’’
One thing was for sure, whoever it was, we were going to get each other home. Even if it cost us our lives. My head was one big haze, but the goal was clear. And luckily for us, it was the only thing we had to stick to.
-
The house on the cliff was glowing in the distance, the lights still burning. We were walking away from it. My vision was wavering and my consciousness was slipping. The trees danced. Why were we moving away from the house?
One step ahead. I supposed you were one step ahead of me again. You, contrary to myself, always had a backup plan if things didn’t go as they were supposed to. If that was what this was. It was as if you sensed my discomfort.
‘’Trust me.’’
I do.
The trees got dense and darker the deeper we stumbled into them. We were in the middle of the journey of our lives after I thought it ended yesterday. A journey in which I found myself, us, in these dark woods where the straight way was lost. Like many other things we left behind for this.
The sound of our heavy breaths, the cracking of branches, the rustling of leaves and the clashing of the waves in the distance was all there was. As if the surroundings were singing a lullaby. I only just realised how tired I actually was. Every minute it became more difficult to keep my eyes open and everything just hurt so damn much. I wondered if I would wake up if I were to fall asleep now.
I closed my eyes for a few long seconds and suddenly I could barely see your face anymore. It was the sound of your breath that I held onto. The tight grasp of your hands, the leaning of your torso against the side of mine.
Another sound came crashing right through the natural quiet. Crushing leaves behind us together with the faint clicking of hooves. It took a lot of effort to turn my head.
The stag was calmly darting after us. It was almost a comfort to see it. In its eyes there rested a tired but peaceful gaze. It didn’t appear as threatening and mysterious as it always had. It was familiar with us and seemed to be satisfied with where it was going. Following more like a loyal dog than the haunting shadow it had always been. It was still uncanny, but no less than the man next to me or myself. Everything in my life was uncanny at this point. I made my peace with it.
‘’Don’t drift.’'
I wondered which of us said that. I couldn’t quite figure it out. I snapped my head back, realising the reassurance was for both of us, no matter who said it.
I blinked and the stag was gone. No more clacking hooves, no more presence. The world became a little darker.
-
My head hit something so hard it woke me up. My mouth was dryer than sandpaper. It reminded me of the way the nights used to be in Louisiana, where the humid warmth was settled so deep in the ground no house could truly escape it. Something more recent, too. Wolf Trap, burning up with fever, waking up only to find out I was living in my dreams.
I opened my eyes and the moment the white spots cleared up I saw windows. My body was swaying, there was a rushing sound that just kept going. I could barely think, but I was in a car. I could see that even through my half closed eyes.
My head was buzzing like there were thousands of bugs stuck inside. My jaw was tense. I touched it and felt the fabric. It was some cloth stiff with blood, pressed against it to stop the bleeding.
‘’Where…’’ I muttered to the shadowy silhouette on my left. Outside the window the world rushed past. The drops of condense reflecting the light of the car made it look like a starry night sky. I closed my eyes. You didn’t answer. I heard a sharp inhale. That’s what pain sounds like to a killer. I couldn’t see what happened, I just knew you weren’t doing very good yourself, either.
‘’Somewhere safe.’’ You hissed quietly. ‘’If that’s alright with you.’’
‘’I won’t leave you.’’ I managed to blurt out very hoarsely, letting the cloth slip and immediately regretting taking tension off my wound. You caught it and put it back against my face. I leaned in and appreciated that gesture more than I should have.
‘’I know.’’
There was so much left to say, so many questions to ask and explanations to demand. I knew that you felt the same, yet you granted me the comfort of not having to speak. We drove in silence.
Even though I wanted to, staying awake cost me too much effort. I just couldn’t fight it. My head rolled back and I did everything to keep it upright until you reassured me.
‘’Let yourself go, Will.’’
All I remembered from that ride is the vague feeling of a hand caressing my hair for a few short seconds, but I could’ve hallucinated that. I’m not sure.
-