Patchwork

By Kay

Disclaimer: I don't own Everworld, but I choose not to. Okay. That was a lie, too.

Author's Notes: Several interesting implications here-- it's a dreamy mixpot of Everyone x Christopher, weirdly enough, but subtle. Christopher/Etain, some Ganymede/Christopher and David/Christopher and even, for a brief second, Christopher/Jalil implications strewn around like broken lunch boxes.

I hope it's okay. Please enjoy the strange dreams. :D

Upon the wake of morning
I learned the world stopped short of turning
and caught in the air, falling down

I slipped, and smiled, and saw you there.

Christopher dreams.

He can always tell he's dreaming because everything feels like it's real, like he's awake and moving in regular motion, regular time, and he can feel the pump of his blood and the sour backwash of his breath. But reality isn't like that, so very real, it's more of a delayed twist to the gut that hits him twice before he can begin to recover—he doesn't taste what he inhales, he doesn't hear the exposition of his life bubbling in his chest. It's more filmy sights, and mistakes, and listening for the things he won't hear.

When he dreams, Christopher gets everything right. A well-rehearsed play perfectly executed on stage, none of it meaning anything, each word on target. The guy gets the girl, the evil is bade to sleep, tights don't chafe and swords don't stain. He figures out the moral lesson and straightens himself out—the blue of her eyes makes him fumble, the twilight dip to her smile brings him to despair, but that's what saves him, too, in the end. And friends don't fall when they should. They covet and witness and blame, but they still take his laughter for what it is, swept straight to the sun with it. That, too, saves him in the end.

Life isn't like a dream. It's ten fucking times worse, always.

It goes like this.

Christopher dreams.

Etain is a blot of blue Indian ink against the flow of the river, just another wave breaking on the shore. She flounders, lost. He's there to reach for her, standing on the bank. He is a hero. Etain is his princess, his mystery, his dream that he's dreaming about in shades of navy and black and baited waiting.

He picks up her and feels the weight, the water sluicing off her dress in light-sparkled streams that only make her more beautiful. She smiles. She's been there all along, just for him, the treasure at the end of the rainbow and not even a dragon to hold him back from it. "I could walk to forever if I were by your side," she murmurs, pressing against him and right in all the soft places. She's not a prize; she's the battle's victory.

"Forever," Christopher says, and he can't even imagine it. For the first time he can smell the sweetness on her, that edge of wild grass and summers, and her color has never seemed more vivid. Her hands are heavy in his own, the wrinkles of her fingers from soaking too long like baby flesh on his own white wrists. They are both porcelain like the gods, ever clear, ever beautiful in this moment.

He knows he's dreaming. It's not real, it's just another thing to forget in the morning. He knows all that, and still Christopher can't bring himself to close his eyes when he leans forward to kiss her.

Christopher dreams.

April is swollen with child, a pretty flash of red and cream against the walls of the castle. Sometimes he sees her smile at him—more often than not, she reaches to touch his arm, mouth opening as if to speak. He doesn't know the father. And bizarrely, here, Christopher doesn't realize he's dreaming yet because it seems so utterly right to see her like that, so beautifully curved and serene, that it floats past his thoughts. It isn't until she finally catches him, her fingernails digging into his skin until he feels the pain, that he knows.

She leaves him little things on the window ledges. Twigs tied up in lavender ribbons, a rubber ball dyed with ink. The first season of Mary Tyler Moore, still glossy in its plastic packaging. Christopher hoards these gifts like his own life, sewn up neatly in the bottom of his lungs, so that he can always say her name without shaking: 'April, April, April.'

He wonders if it will be a boy with red curls, the kind that will grow warm under your hand from baking under a spring sun. Christopher trusts April; he doesn't mean to, but he does. If she is willing to bring something frail into the world, he believes in her, and that frightens him terribly. The future is a changing, shifting, always different and terrifying thing.

"You mourn when you should rejoice," April says, brushing his cheek with a dry thumb. "Pick up the things you've dropped or the sight of blood will shake you."

Christopher wants to say he's never let go of anything, though. It isn't until he's turned the words over and glanced at the bottom that he finds it's just another lie.

Christopher dreams.

The curve of the golden cup looks sharp enough to break skin—he doesn't want to touch it, even as much as he'd love to drink from it. The wine is red, claret, just a shade away from blood and that makes his lips tingle for its tartness. Across from the table, cloaking the setting sun's light like a cape, Ganymede is smiling tenderly.

"You should drink," the immortal murmurs, but his mouth doesn't move. There is a brightness to him that hurts Christopher's eyes.

Christopher doesn't want to appear a coward, or greedy, so he only shakes his head. He won't slice himself trying to grip it. He won't reach, won't do anything but stare out of the corner of his eye, always wanting, always needing.

"It's a beautiful piece of life," Ganymede states softly, and picks up the chalice before Christopher can say anything to bring him away. Thick rivulets of maroon flake off of his knuckles like snow onto the yellow tablecloth. "It will grant immortality to whomever imbibes it. Would you care for a sip, my lord?"

Shame has clogged up his esophagus; there will be no wine for Christopher today. When he knocks it out of Ganymede's embrace, the wine spills on the table, but he doesn't care—Christopher is already stretched out with his fists in Ganymede's sunlight, pulling them together, because his heart burns and there is no quenching something with another fire, just more pain, just Ganymede still smiling like that on his forehead, blessing, blessing, damned, a kiss.

"Ah, that was it," Ganymede whispers, and Christopher feels the forgiveness ruffle his hair. He wonders if he's always been crying like this.

Christopher dreams.

The years have passed like blankets heaped on top of each other in storage—spread thin, they seem so very small. Etain sleeps with their children and the castle is quiet in dusk. He sees the glow of the lantern outside the window before he hears the coughing; it's what drives him down the stairs and through the entrance hall decked with the heads of gods, their faces still warped in indignation. He pinned Hel's furious snarl against the kitchen's quarters himself, but believes they've covered it since.

When he opens the door, Christopher knows what he will see, but his dinner drops into the bottom of his belly like a deadweight. Slumped against the door, flickering in and out of the little light he's kept going with matches and sparks of magic, Jalil is more ghost than friend.

"You say you'll keep it open, but you never do." Dark eyes, speculating, and they haven't changed at all. Christopher feels so old next to Jalil, always does now. Jalil is still made of adolescence, the sharp curves of his shoulders and ankles, the jagged jut of his collarbone, the sly curl of his grin. "And so I wait in the cold, King Christopher. You owe me your chamber."

"Etain's sleeping with the brats tonight," Christopher says, bending to the ground. He wonders how to pick up a shadow blotch against a door. "You can have another, though."

"It always is," Jalil says, sighing. He sinks lower into the ground, and for a moment Christopher is terrified that he will finally disappear into the earth.

"Patchwork," Christopher pleads, and tries to lift his shoulders above the dirt. Jalil laughs at him, batting his aid away gracefully.

"I knew I'd be waiting if I came to your door. I do it anyway, though, you know," and Jalil hooks his voice into Christopher's soul, as always, but the years take the bitter frustration away from the bite, "because you make it easy."

Christopher dreams.

"I've kept a thousand recipes for love," Merlin is telling him, matter-of-fact and confident. Beneath them, the world is just another ripple in the blackness. Christopher wants to pay attention, but he can't stop staring at it. If he looks away, it may vanish. "They're all as flawed as the next, of course, but it's not like real life is any better. The whole goddamn world is as helpless as an infant when it comes to finding a soulmate—or rather, infants are the best at it. Everworld and Old World, it's all the same."

He can feel the cold of space numbing his kneecaps, the fleshy weight to his thighs, the tip of his nose. Freezing over. Christopher remembers the winter wind of Montana, and it felt like this so very long ago.

"I've ruined everything for myself," he recalls, reaching to touch the little rings expanding under his toes. The earth isn't brown and green and blue like he'd always thought, but a pleasant and pink-edged color that isn't anything one way or the other. It's living, Christopher thinks, and feels warm.

"You should remember this," Merlin confides, "when you wake up. I never share my secrets with anyone but the worthy, you know." And then he proceeds to tell Christopher something that fixes him inside, could fix everything, and that he forgets the second he opens his eyes.

Christopher is awake. David is crying.

Not loud, sobbing like crying—if Christopher hadn't seen his face, hadn't glimpsed the shine of tears watering down the dirt scruffed across David's cheeks, he wouldn't have known. It is a silent, unforgiving mourning. The dullness in those brown eyes is like meeting an old friend, and Christopher watches another droplet run down from the corner of his eyes, over the swollen red rim, and finally tremble on his jawline and refusing to fall.

This is awkward. So fucking awkward. Christopher looks around for April, for Jalil—hell, for Loki, anyone but him—but the hallway is empty and Galahad's sword is laying uselessly on the ground. David's done fighting for the day, for the year, really, and he's never been good at turning sharp objects on himself.

Fuck. Christopher is still reeling from a lack of sleep, still half-drunk and half-pissed off, something flushed in his chest and face. He can't deal with David. He can't even deal with himself. Fuck.

"I can't sleep anymore," David tells him, dead. They're celebrating the victory outside in the courtyard, but David is defeated. Crumbled. "All I see is their faces. I hate you for not coming with me."

The last thing Christopher needs is something else to atone for, and he feels angry right then. Angry because David is dropping something else on his shoulders, angry that he's still juggling the rest, angry that he's angry. "I hate you, too," he spits out, bitter, swaying on his feet. "I hate this whole stupid place. Wanna kill me?"

Another tear runs down David's cheekbone. Blends into the rest, just a wet sheen on browned skin. "I'm… really tired."

So is Christopher. "So am I."

At that, David lifts his head like it weighs more than a wet dress or the guilt of a sin—he shudders a bit, falters, and then lets out a wounded noise. Christopher is still waiting for April or someone to come. No one is.

"Fuck," he swears. And then, "What the hell else do you want from me? I can't do anything for myself, much less your sorry ass. What am I supposed to do?"

And David looks at him like he was the last answer, the last hope, all strangled and cut off and gone on the last boat, and now they're both alone, and David is rejected, resigned, overwhelmed, and is crushed under them both, and it's all over right now, it's the end before the day and Christopher wants to scream at everything when he gets on a knee and takes the still-bleeding arm (but none of his organs falling out, so it will be fine, the wound can just bleed its heart out if it wants), loops it around his neck, and David sobs then, just like Christopher's learned to, loud and desperate and starving, animal keens building in volume.

Life is ten fucking times worse, always.

"Shut the hell up," Christopher mutters, and brings them both to their feet. David is heavy, but he doesn't feel the weight. He's not dreaming anymore. This is real—it's much harder to find David's room than it would be had he been sleeping.

Christopher dreams.

The sea is before him, calm and tipped gold. It's like Ganymede poured out all of his laughter over the waves. Christopher can catch the scent of salt on the wind, can feel the dwelling cushion of thousands of feet deep into the ground from the ocean—it's like sleeping, he thinks drowsily, and lets his cheek fall to the sand.

Next to him, David is watching the sky.

He's dreaming. So it can't hurt to ask. "Do you ever think we'll be right? I mean, that we'll be okay? Everything will be okay?"

It takes a while before David answers, and when he does it's slow, travels across lands and the sea to whatever's out there without any effort. "I had a dream once," he says, "and I had the answer. I kept it close."

Christopher's heart jumps. "What was it? You can sell it for pennies or wishes. You could sell it to me." Except he wouldn't take it because, honestly, David needs it more and Christopher is only greedy when it doesn't matter most.

David smiles; it's something Christopher's never seen before. "If I offered to break it in half with you, to share, would you have what it takes to buy it?"

"Ah, that was it," Christopher whispers, and can't look away from it. He wonders if he's always been so utterly warm like this.

Christopher is awake. David is sleeping.

He turns from the figure curled up in the sheets, blearily searching for the sun outside the open shutters of David's room. It is falling low in the sky. He doesn't remember the part from when David closed his eyes and Christopher followed, but their leader is shivering in his sleep and it is very simple, in truth, to pull the blanket higher over him.

He'd almost forgotten how nice it feels to wake up.

"Patchwork," Christopher says aloud, considering. He wonders what will happen next. There is only one way to find out, so it's easy enough—he sits on David's bed and watches him sleep, waiting, listening for the things he might hear.

The End