Chapter Text
Day 13
Neil awoke on the mattress in the garden. He must have dozed off waiting for word from Vyvyan. He’d had another one of those dreams, the ones that felt more like visions. He didn’t know what any of it meant, but he was sure it meant something important. If only he could remember more when he woke up. All that stuck was that odd phrase Rick had said, ringing in his head over and over.
Follow the threads.
It had something to do with his dream, but it was gone before he could even reach it. Ah well, he’d meditate on it later and try to remember, he could usually recover them that way, if he was patient enough.
He stood and brushed himself off, looking up at the looming sky. It was turning black. Had he been in a normal place, he would have said it looked like rain. But the haze above him wasn’t quite clouds, and the darkness within it was nothing like rain. Besides, the edges of the rest of the garden were turning similarly hazy and dark. The front of the house was gone, shrouded in nothingness. He looked toward the shelter, relatively safe beside the impossible fence, the garden gate still reachable. He didn’t even want to know what might happen if he tried to go through it now. Best to check in - though if Vyv wasn’t out here by now, he feared the worst.
He stooped to get through the low door, and looked back to Rick’s bunk. Vyvyan lay in it, holding Rick in his arms, cradling Rick’s head to his chest. Vyvyan wore a dazed, thousand-yard stare. Rick was very, very still.
Neil made his way to the back, and knelt by the bed. Vyvyan didn’t turn to look at him, didn’t even acknowledge his presence.
“Vyv?” he tried gently, “Is he…”
Vyvyan nodded slowly, distantly. He made no other moves, said nothing. Neil choked up for a moment, then swallowed it - Vyvyan wasn’t at all well, and it seemed Neil needed to be the strong one in this situation.
“I’m sorry, Vyv. I know it doesn’t really mean anything at a time like this, but I really am sorry.”
He wasn’t even sure Vyvyan was hearing him completely - he didn’t respond to that at all.
Neil stood and sighed a deep sigh. “I’ll be outside…bring him out when you’re ready. Take all the time you need.”
He was halfway to the door when Vyvyan spoke, his voice hollow and deadened. Neil wasn’t familiar with the tone, but Rick would have recognized it as the Eerie voice - a voice typically reserved for sleep-talking.
“…We have to burn him.”
Neil stopped, not entirely sure he’d heard him correctly. He turned around.
“He made me promise,” Vyvyan continued, the same blank stare, the same Eerie voice, “A long time ago. He can’t stand the idea of rotting in the ground, he doesn’t want to be a corpse. We have to burn him.”
Neil returned to Vyvyan’s side and knelt again, watching Vyvyan with concern.
“Are you sure?”
Vyvyan nodded, but didn’t turn toward him, didn’t look at him at all, “I promised.”
Neil nodded back, though he doubted Vyvyan even fully recognized he was there.
“…I suppose I’ll gather as much wood as I can.”
“…I’ll help. …Give me a minute.”
“…Vyv, you don’t need to…”
Vyvyan blinked, and finally looked at Neil. Seemed to really acknowledge Neil for the first time since he’d entered the room.
“Yes I do,” he said, and in his eyes, where Neil expected to find pain or anger, there was simply a stare, as hollow as his voice.
There was nothing at all.
They built the pyre atop the slab-roof of the shelter, from the pile of wood Vyvyan had gathered over his search. By the time they finished, Vyvyan was…well, better wasn’t quite the right word. He was faster, he seemed more engaged with his surroundings, but he spoke very little, only when he had to. And when he did, his voice held no emotion, and none of the exuberance or even the volume of his usual voice. He didn’t really seem to focus on anything, and he seemed completely unable to meet Neil’s eyes. He was simply…not quite there. Blank. Neil watched with concern as Vyvyan lay Rick on the pyre - he’d insisted on doing it himself. But even as he arranged him gently, his movements were stiff and distant. As though he were respectfully tending to the corpse of a stranger.
“Go on,” Vyvyan said, without looking at him, “I can finish it. I assume you don’t want to watch.”
“…I assumed neither of us did.”
“I have to. You don’t.”
Neil frowned uncomfortably. Had it been anyone else, he could have imagined Vyvyan eagerly anticipating the sight. But this wasn’t anyone else - this was Rick. And Vyvyan didn’t seem eager - far from it. He watched Vyvyan for a moment, then nodded. If it was what Vyvyan thought he had to do, he couldn’t very well argue. He approached the pyre and put a hand on Rick’s shoulder.
“Goodbye, Rick. I’m sorry I haven’t got a poem or anything, I only wanted to say…” he choked up, unable to prevent himself, “I’m glad we ended as friends.”
He pulled his hand away to cover his face as tears began to fall, and he fully expected Vyvyan to yell at or hit him. But he simply stood there - as if Neil weren’t even there, let alone blubbering. Neil wiped his tears away and took one more, concerned look at Vyvyan, searching his face for something - anything. But Vyvyan didn’t even look at him, didn’t even shift his hollow eyes away from a point somewhere beyond Rick.
Is this who Vyvyan is now? Did the Vyvyan I know die last night?
He didn’t have an answer. He only knew he didn’t want to be there for what came next. He went into the shelter and closed the door.
Vyvyan was no more emotive after Neil left. He continued his slow, deliberate ritual, breaking his lighter open and pouring the fluid on various rags, stuffing them into strategic holes, and finally lighting each in turn with the matches Neil had been using to light the camping stove. Then he sat on a heap of rubble in front of the pyre and watched.
He watched as the rags burned down to the wood, watched the wood catch. He watched embers begin to fly, and heat waves obscure Rick’s body. He watched flame begin to lick at the edges of him. He watched Rick’s hair and pajama bottoms catch fire.
He watched Rick catch fire.
The smell of burning flesh hit Vyvyan’s nostrils and before he even knew what was happening, he turned and vomited. He hadn’t eaten anything in days, and he only brought up bile, but he dry heaved nonetheless. He fought the nausea and forced his eyes back to the fire, to Rick. He refused to allow himself to look away.
This is my penance. This is what I deserve. If I were any sort of man at all, I’d throw my worthless carcass on the fucking fire and give him some sort of justice, but I’m a fucking coward. I am a coward and a failure and I as good as murdered the one person I love above all others and this is my penance. I have been tested and found wanting. I brought this upon myself. It should have been me.
It should be me.
Day 16
The garden was nearly gone. All that was left was a bit of grass and rubble just around the shelter, and along the fence to the garden gate. Everything else was shrouded in a writhing, black mist, something somehow liquid and gaseous at once. If it continued shrinking at this rate, Neil estimated they had a day left, maybe two, before the darkness reached the door of the shelter and trapped them.
Neil paced the short length of the shelter, reading the list he’d made and occasionally scribbling notes on it. He muttered to himself, repeating things he’d been over for days, trying to make some sort of connection, find some sort of answer to the puzzle.
“So in the third dream, I was at home with the girls, except nobody could see me. I went into Winnie’s room and watched her sleep a bit, and then I saw the drawing on the wall. It looked like you and me surrounded by stars and flowers and grass and there was this black line through us. And when I woke up that was all I could remember, the picture, along with that phrase again - follow the threads. Follow the threads, get to another house, what does it mean?”
“What does it matter?” Vyvyan muttered, his voice creaking from disuse, “We’ll be dead in a day or so.”
Neil jumped. It was the first thing Vyvyan had said since he’d wandered back into the shelter and thrown himself onto his bunk, three days ago. He lay on his side, staring through the opposite bunk, through the wall, neither quite asleep or quite awake. He’d barely moved, Neil had to basically force him to eat and drink something yesterday before he dehydrated and died. And this was the first thing he chose to say?
That was it. That was the limit. Grief was grief and trauma was trauma, but Neil had finally reached his breaking point. He stormed over to Vyvyan’s side and shook him, somewhat violently.
“Damn you, Vyvyan, I know you’re in there somewhere, come back! I can’t figure this out on my own, and I know you must know something! You’re not allowed to give up, not now, not when we could still get out! I know you don’t think there’s any point, but frankly I don’t care - my girls are out there somewhere, my daughter, and I am not going to let you lie there feeling sorry for yourself when I know you could help me get to them!”
Vyvyan stared through him, seemingly unmoved. Neil sat back against the wall between the bunks, frustrated and closer to despair than ever. He put his face in his hands and sat there, paralyzed and helpless.
“…Follow the threads.”
Neil took his hands away and looked at Vyvyan, who hadn’t seemed to move, but he’d definitely spoken, if quietly and without feeling.
“…I don’t know what it means…but I’ve heard it as well…in the place where we’re dead…from your daughter.”
Neil sat up and leaned toward Vyvyan, ready to listen to whatever he had to say.
In the dream, Rick was burning. They stood in nothingness, blackness all around them, and the flames engulfing him gave off no light. He was half-gone already, his charred skin peeling away from his blackening bones. Two bright blue eyes stared into his soul, seemingly impervious to the flame.
He wasn’t frightened – he’d watched his lifemate burn once already and while the sight was no more pleasant the second time, he felt no danger from the apparition. This didn’t feel at all like a nightmare, more like a vision; something vitally important. Rick opened what was left of his mouth and spoke, his voice a foreign, raspy whisper.
“It is crumbling. There is no time,” he said, a strange, stilted way of speaking – as though something else spoke through him, “Follow the threads or all will be lost.”
“But I don’t understand! Everyone keeps saying it, but I don’t understand! What threads? How do I follow them?”
“Look, my love,” Rick reached out a melting hand and pushed it effortlessly into Vyvyan’s chest. Warmth spread through him and every cell in his body felt somehow more alive, more aware, “Close your eyes, and see.”
He closed his eyes. He saw.
He felt himself begin to expand, separate, his entire being unwinding in an endless, perfect pattern. He saw the past and the future all at once, and it should have overwhelmed him, but it didn’t because he was the past and the future. He was woven into the fabric of the Universe.
And now he was fully aware of them – the others. The ones who were them, but not them. Vyvyan, Rick, Mike and Neil going to University in perpetuity, eternally youthful and unchanging. Vyvyan, Rick, Mike and Neil working The Business, making money hand over fist and earning a sizable retirement. Vyvyan, Rick, Mike and Neil going their separate ways after graduation. Vyvyan and Mike on the streets, working a scam. Neil and Rick tucked away in the cellar, chatting philosophy while they process their drugs. Vyvyan and Rick hopelessly in love, growing old together. Vyvyan and Rick hating each other, living as far away from each other as possible. A double-decker bus lying smashed at the bottom of a ravine, burning for all eternity.
He saw all times converge at the moment they first met, first arrived at the house – the first house, the one destroyed by the plane. He watched time bottleneck at that point, squeezing into impossible contortions throughout their first year, up through their moving into the second house. Before that moment, the past was a single, steady progression for each of them – distinct, individual, constant. But once they moved to that second house, time splintered off in uncountable directions. Countless worlds, some nearly identical, some so wildly different that they were barely recognizable, flowed from the focal point like a spray of water. Some even stretched back in time as well as forward, rewriting their own histories. But no matter now alien the world, no matter how identical, each was traceable back to the four of them together in the house for the first time. And as the infinity of their existence became clearer, as he began to understand the immensity of it, that was when he finally saw the threads.
Translucent cords leading from each of their chests, moving into each other’s. The four sitting in front of the telly, threads languishing lazily between them. Rick and Vyvyan fighting, the thread stretched between them, glowing hot with anger and adrenaline. Rick and Vyvyan in an intimate embrace, a glorious thread wrapped around them in a brilliant white glow. Everyone home but apart, the threads stretched throughout the house, pulsing with steady energy. Infinite lives, infinite threads, always in fours. In many worlds, there were more - threads to other family, close loved ones - though rarely very many more than five or six between them. But no matter the circumstance, the four were interconnected. They were always, constantly connected.
Even if they were living far away from each other, the threads stretched across time and space, connecting them all. The closer they were to each other, and especially the closer to the house, the brighter and stronger the threads. The house was a sort of amplifier, but it was also a sort of incubator. It ate chaos, but it also spewed chaos. It bound them together, tighter and tighter, safer from the wild randomness of their Universe; a Universe which revolved around them.
There were some worlds where one or more of them had died, the house’s glow weaker, but soldiering on with the survivors. There were a few worlds where the house had been destroyed but the four remained, sustaining their world through their sheer existence, unprotected but alive. He suddenly understood that what had happened to them was a combination of these. They’d lost the house and Mike in one go, and it must have caused some sort of…rift. A wound the house and their own power couldn’t heal.
He turned his attention to himself, and he saw them; four cords, leading into the darkness. One glowed a weak white, and when he followed it to its end, he found Neil, tidying up nervously, going over their collected notes, consumed with worry over the distance from his family, his daughter. If he focused on the thread, he could sense Neil through it. He could almost hear Neil’s thoughts in a vague, abstract way. Neil had five other threads leading away from him, not glowing at all, floating off into the darkness, three in one direction, two in another. One for each person he loved.
Vyvyan looked to his other threads and found they simply ended, cut off in jagged edges as though ripped apart. Two languished black, floating listlessly into nothing, like the other threads attached to Neil. But the other, blacker still, seemed to bleed a dark ichor, dripping and throbbing with palpable, desperate loss. It cast about wildly as if searching for something it could not find. And he understood. He knew what had to be done. He knew how to find the other house, the other Rick. He scanned the multitude of lives before him until he found it – another thread, just as horrible and black as the one leading from his own chest, reaching into the darkness, reaching out for nothing. He took hold of its ragged end and followed to its source…
Rick lay in bed, looking tiny and vulnerable. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, his nose raw. He was little more than skin and bones, every rib and vertebrae visible. He wore only a pair of dirty skivvies, probably not changed for days. His hair was growing out, haphazard and ignored. He was curled into a ball atop the sheets, hugging his knees and staring into the wall, into nothing. He cried deep, sorrowful gulps, a raw, primal sound.
“You’d hate me so much if you saw me like this!” he choked out through his tears, to the empty room. Vyvyan immediately wanted to contradict him, but it was clear he was still invisible, inaudible. He’d followed the thread, but he hadn’t got there - not really. He looked on feeling helpless, remembering the way Rory’s arm had passed right through him.
“I know I was doing better,” Rick continued, “I was! But I can’t do this! It’s too hard, I don’t know how to do this!” He pulled the pillow from beneath his head and hugged it tight against him, crying into it. “Your side of the bed doesn’t smell like you anymore. I’ve forgotten which book on the second shelf was your favorite. I’m surrounded by little ghosts of you, but they’re fading away.”
How long have I been dead here? Weeks? Months?
It didn’t matter, he had to fix this somehow. He couldn’t save his Rick, but maybe he could still save this one. He tested the bed, and it was solid enough, just like the gravestone. He sat on it, between Rick’s curled legs and arms, and watched him closer. It hurt to see him hurt. Out of instinct, he reached out to stroke Rick’s cheek.
He made contact, actual contact, and ever so faintly, he could feel Rick’s skin under his fingertips, feel the wetness of his tears. But then the spell was broken and his fingers fell through Rick’s head.
Rick gasped and lifted his head, searching the room with wide eyes.
“…Vyvyan?”
He felt it.
“It’s me poof, I’m here, please don’t cry.”
Rick lay his head back down and let out a shuddering sigh. It seemed he still couldn’t hear him.
“I’m imagining things. I’m losing my bloody mind.”
“You’ve been barmy the entire time I’ve known you, poof,” Vyvyan smirked at him sadly.
“…What an odd thing memory is. I really thought I felt you there for a moment…”
“You did,” Vyvyan said, plaintive and frustrated. He’d done it once, could he do it again?
He reached out, concentrating hard, and tried to stroke Rick’s hair. But it was as if Rick wasn’t even there.
It’s as if I’m not even there. Because I’m not. I’m asleep, or I’m dead, or whatever I am. If only I could follow the thread when I’m…
The final piece of the puzzle clicked, and he was simultaneously overwhelmed by the truth of it and embarrassed by its obvious nature. He leaned over and kissed Rick on the temple, no longer concerned with whether he actually made contact. Fortunately, he did.
“Just wait a bit longer, poof,” he said, and kissed him again, “I’m coming home.”
He stood and left the room, one more thing to do before going back to the garden and testing his hypothesis.
Hours later, bolstered by the strange experience that morning, Rick managed to drag himself out of bed long enough to take a nice, warm bath. He’d just stood and picked up his towel when he saw the finger-writing on the mirror, the condensation clinging around the scrawled, familiar handwriting.
GO OUTSIDE YOU LAZY BASTARD
He stared at it a moment, stunned. Then he let out a surprised laugh that transitioned into more laughter - the first time he’d laughed in months. (In three months, eight days, and ten hours, in fact - he’d been keeping track.) He cried through his laughter, holding the towel to his chest. Both laughter and tears died down and he gave the mirror a grateful smile.
“Fine,” he said to the mirror, “You win, like always. I’ll go for a walk, if it’ll make you happy. Only promise you’ll haunt me again sometime.”
There was no answer, but that was all right. For the first time in a long time, Rick was all right, if only in this moment.
He steamed the mirror up every day until the words faded. By the time they did, he was greatly improved; closer than ever to the person he’d been before his world had shattered.
Day ???
“I know what to do,” Vyvyan said, sitting bolt upright and startling Neil considerably. He’d drifted off after they’d spent hours spent trying to decode their visions, and Neil was letting him sleep a bit - it was the first real sleep he’d had in days. But Neil was most surprised by his tone - he was animated, almost excited.
“What? What is it?”
“I know how to get back. Well, how to get to the place where we’re dead, the other house. We’ve been thinking about it all wrong - we’ve got to get there from here, while we’re awake. It won’t work any other way. But I think I know how to follow the threads.”
He explained the things he’d seen, the infinity of their lives, the nature of their reality. He explained the threads, and what happened when he followed Rick’s.
“And see, that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to walk through the gate and reach for the threads. I’ve got to reach for Rick’s and Mike’s and Rory’s, and you’ve got to reach for Mike’s and Rick’s and Summer’s and Meadowlark’s and Éowyn’s. It’s the only way - we’ve got to mend the connections, make that world whole again. Ours is already gone, what’s left is fading, but if we can make it there, it’ll fix everything. Everything will go back to normal!”
Neil watched him with increasing skepticism; it sounded as if Vyvyan had completely lost his mind. He sounded manic, crazed.
“But what if you’re wrong? What happens then?”
Vyvyan watched him, eyes wild, his face just on the edge of some sort of dark glee.
“Then we die. We make it home, or we die. That’s the choice. The only choice.”
Neil sighed, “And the only chance we’ve got.” He stood and took one last look at the shelter, both their savior and their prison.
“All right,” he said, resigned to either outcome, “Let’s go.”
Vyvyan and Neil stood in front of the garden gate. They were surrounded by the black, writhing nothingness, the garden slipping further and further into darkness the closer they got to the fence. Vyvyan took a deep breath, nodded at Neil, and opened the gate.
Rather than the same darkness, the space behind the gate was a bright haze - the haze they’d been surrounded by at first. Neil watched Vyvyan with trepidation, but Vyvyan looked confident, so Neil looked ahead, into the haze. The two took one last pause, then stepped through the gate, together.
The moment he crossed the threshold, Vyvyan felt that same unraveling feeling, the sensation of coming apart on a molecular level. He did his best to concentrate on the idea of the threads, and he became strongly aware of his own. He felt Neil through the thread connecting them, and he tried to send encouragement along it. He kept hold of the concept of the threads as he looked for the one he’d found before, Rick’s thread. His concentration landed on it, and he pictured it alongside his own. In his mind’s eye, they moved toward each other - and suddenly they slammed together, as if they were magnetized. The black ends met and twined - and in an instant, two threads were one. The thread glowed bright, thrumming with endless energy, revitalized. Vyvyan felt a similar, if weaker, sensation as the other threads merged with Mike and Rory, as Neil’s own threads merged. The glow intensified. It was brilliant, all-consuming. There was nothing but white…
They were standing on the street, in front of the house. In front of the house, not in the garden. It was the middle of the day, and all was quiet on the street. Normal. Pleasant. They looked at each other and realized they’d been…reset somehow. The scruffy beards that they’d each begun to grow were gone, and they were dressed in clothes lost in the bombing - the clothes they usually wore. Vyvyan’s tri-hawk was in perfect shape. Neil’s ankh pendant, lost in the rubble, hung from his neck once again. The scrapes and bruises from their ordeal were gone. They were…fine. Absolutely fine. They stared at each other for a long moment, shocked that it had actually worked. Or at least, it seemed to, anyway.
They looked around the street for a bit longer before approaching the door, cautiously. Neil almost knocked on it, before realizing how silly that was and simply turning the knob. They each stepped through the door in wonderment. Here was the entryway, the wardrobe, the stairs. Here was the sitting room, the kitchen. Everything whole, and where they expected it to be. They were home. Everything looked right, everything felt right. Mike was even sitting at the table, hidden behind his newspaper, like always.
“You took your sweet time. Did they have any or not?”
Neil and Vyvyan looked at each other, confused. Mike lowered his newspaper, half-glancing in their direction.
“Rick, are you even listening to-”
He did a double-take and the paper fell from his hands. With a shaking hand, he slowly removed his sunglasses, revealing shocked, wide eyes.
“…No…it couldn’t be…”
“…Well, it is,” Neil said, “…Surprise!” He waved.
An expression crossed Mike’s face neither had ever seen before. Mike watched them in genuine awe, standing slowly, leaning onto the table as though he was afraid it would disappear.
He approached them, staring, mouth moving but making no sound, until he finally managed a shocked, “My god…”
“…No. Only your subordinates,” Vyvyan said, and Neil felt instant relief - even if it was subdued, that was the first time he’d sounded anything like himself in days.
“Vyv…oh christ, Vyv it’s really you, isn’t it?”
Vyvyan shrugged. Mike did something that surprised everyone, including himself - he grabbed Vyvyan and hugged him. Tight.
“Jesus Christ almighty, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it! Vyvyan Basterd, in the flesh, back from the fucking dead!”
Vyvyan stiffened on instinct when Mike first wrapped his arms around him. But after only a few moments, he sank into the hug, hugged back, and closed his eyes.
“It’s good to see you too, Mike,” he said, and Neil was happy to hear the tiniest hint of emotion in his voice.
“And suddenly, we were standing in the street, just outside,” Neil said, finishing up the story they’d been trading back and forth. The three sat at the kitchen table, Neil and Vyvyan filling Mike in on everything they’d been through, everything they’d learned. Vyvyan had avoided a lot of details - he was nearly back to monosyllabic words before Neil took up the part about Rick’s death. Neil finished the story from there, Vyvyan staring uncomfortably into the empty fireplace, fidgeting, distant. Mike listened intently, and when Neil finished up, he released a tensely-held breath.
“What a story,” he said, bewildered, “I’d never believe it if I didn’t have two dead men in my kitchen telling it to me.”
The front door opened, and they all looked toward it. Rick walked through, carrying grocery bags in both arms. He’d been doing the shopping. It was a bizarre sight; Rick, his face neutral and somewhat bored, carrying the bags casually and quietly, with little effort. Neither Neil nor Vyvyan had ever seen him do such a menial task without heaps of complaint and melodrama. Vyvyan stood slowly as Rick turned to close the door - he hadn’t noticed them yet.
“Well I had to go to three different Tescos until I found one that had any in stock, but I-”
He stopped in his tracks as he looked into the kitchen - at Vyvyan, standing in front of the table, staring at him like a dying man watches an oasis in a desert. Rick stared back, frozen for a few seconds.
Then he dropped the bags and fell into a dead faint.
Vyvyan moved toward him, feeling as though he were wading through thick syrup. He knelt by Rick’s side and lifted him, propping him against the entryway frame, touching him with cautious reverence. He brushed his hand down the side of Rick’s face, his throat, his arm - as if he were trying to make sure he was really there.
Is it you? Are you really my Rick?
Rick came to, and his eyes focused on Vyvyan. His mouth dropped open, and he reached a hand up to Vyvyan’s face, performing the same reality test, brushing his cheek, his hair, each star on his forehead.
Vyvyan inspected Rick’s right arm, turned it over - revealing the tattoo of Ursa Minor, right where it was supposed to be. Half the symbol of their mutual pledge, their ultimate commitment. I promise to stay with you for as long as you'll have me. I promise to protect you for as long as I'm able. And I promise to love you for the rest of my life. He traced the shape with his finger, his lower lip beginning to shake. He looked back up at Rick, into the eyes already welling up - and the dam finally broke. Vyvyan crumpled into tears, pulling Rick to him and burying his face into Rick’s shoulder. He clung to him, desperately, curling into Rick’s lap as he escalated to sobs, loud and anguished. Rick clung back and cried along, squeezing Vyvyan so tight it actually hurt a little.
Neil and Mike slipped quietly away, into the cellar, unnoticed.
Vyvyan’s tears intensified. He was hysterical now, completely unable to stop, completely unable to let go of Rick for even an instant.
“I’m sorry,” Vyvyan wailed, more tears than words, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Rick had no idea what he meant, but it really didn’t matter at all. He wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, ran the other down his back. He swallowed his own tears and simply held Vyvyan tight, a steady rock for Vyvyan to cling to.
“Shhh,” he whispered into Vyvyan’s ear, “It’s all right. I’ve got you, it’s all right.”
“I tried! I tried so hard but it wasn’t enough and I lost you and it was my fault and I’m sorry!”
Rick really couldn’t even understand most of that, Vyvyan was crying too hard, but he’d heard “I tried” and “I’m sorry” and he squeezed him tighter.
“I know, love, I know. Shhh, it doesn’t matter, you’re here. I don’t know how or why, but you’re here, and it’s all right,” Rick began crying again, tears of overwhelm and joy all at once, “It’s going to be all right now.”
Vyvyan’s sobs lessened, eventually devolving into whimpers. Rick didn’t let go, determined to do whatever he could to make sure Vyvyan was all right. Vyvyan finally stopped crying, and Rick savored the warmth of his hitched breath against his neck. He never thought he’d ever feel it again, and the feeling filled him with an odd combination of joy and heartbreak. Vyvyan was here, Vyvyan was alive…but he was hurting so much, more than Rick had ever seen him hurt. He wondered what could possibly have happened to put him in this state.
“I broke the second promise,” Vyvyan said, quiet, ashamed, begging for forgiveness, “I didn’t mean to, but I broke it.”
“No, love, no you didn’t! You never would, I know that. You weren’t able, that’s all.”
Rick thought he was talking about dying, about leaving him alone and heartbroken. But Vyvyan shook his head.
“No, there must have been more I could have done, I did everything wrong, I should have saved you, I failed you.”
“I refuse to believe that,” Rick said kindly, now entirely lost but trying to just go with the flow, “Whatever happened, I know you did everything you could. You never do anything less. And besides, it doesn’t matter now. You’re here now. You’re home.”
Vyvyan’s breathing slowed as Rick soothed him, the two sitting in silence until Vyvyan broke it with a whisper.
“I love you, Rick.”
“…I love you, Vyvyan,” Rick choked up once again at speaking Vyvyan’s name, after months of avoiding it, “So, so much.”
“Don’t go away…” he muttered sleepily, and Rick squeezed him.
“Never. Not ever, I promise.”
Vyvyan fell asleep, days of exhaustion finally catching up with him. Rick was trapped under him, but he really didn’t mind; he was with Vyvyan. This was all so unbelievable, but it was happening. He only hoped it would stay like this, that Vyvyan would stay.
Neil came out of the cellar and headed for the door, clearly eager to get to his other home. He paused when he passed them, looking at them with concern.
“Is he all right?”
Rick nodded, smiling at Neil, “I think we both are, mad as that sounds.”
Neil smiled back, and reached for the door.
“Neil?” Rick caught him just as he opened it.
“Yeah?”
“…I’m glad you’ve come back as well.”
Neil smiled wider, “Me too, Rick.”
And then Neil was gone, and Rick was perfectly content to sit there on the floor of the front hallway, holding the love he thought he’d lost forever, sleeping safe in his arms.
The next day, Rick shaved his mohawk back in, explaining that he’d let it grow in because it reminded him too strongly of Vyvyan to keep, but that he really did prefer it. Two days later, Vyvyan’s car reappeared, whole and functional, in its usual spot in front of the house. Three days later, Vyvyan and Neil’s tombstones vanished from the cemetery. By the end of the week, the house and their lives had returned to status-quo. No one even seemed to remember that they’d been dead, that anything unusual had happened at all. It seemed no one retained any knowledge of the things they’d experienced, not even Mike.
No one, that is, except Vyvyan. He kept it to himself, and there were some days even he forgot it had happened. But a part of him remembered, kept the knowledge close.
And a month or so later, when the group gathered in the hospital waiting room to await the arrival of Meadowlark’s new baby, he noticed Éowyn staring at him, swinging her little legs under the plastic chair. When he made eye contact with her, she gave him a knowing, conspiratorial smile, wise beyond her years.
Vyvyan returned the smile and winked at her. He squeezed Rick’s hand, their fingers entwined nearly as tightly as their souls.