"Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time."
― Ransom Riggs, Hollow City

DAY ONE
-ooo-

It was dark and all he could hear was the soft sound of steady breathing, the faint rustle of clothing and then a dead boy's voice cut through the darkness like a knife.

"I don't really understand why you're wasting your thoughts on someone as worthless as me," Komaeda murmured, his voice soft and close.

"Komaeda?" Hajime whispered, reaching out a hand into the black. His fingers settled in something soft, silky.

He'd only touched Komaeda's hair once. In the hospital, he'd laid his fingers against his pillow as Komaeda murmured delirious dislike while he was locked in the throes of the despair disease and it hadn't felt anything like this. It had been oily, damp with sweat, as difficult to bear as the boy it belonged to.

He hadn't wanted to worry about him then either.

"We're all somewhere, aren't we? Why not here?" A rustling in the dark and cool fingers slid across the bridge of his nose, down his cheek leaving a trail of damp behind that smelled like copper. "Unless you don't want garbage like me sullying your mental landscape?"

"Was anything you said the truth?" He whispered, tightening his fingers in that soft, silky hair, edging closer. "Anything at all?"

"Which do you hope for?" More rustling, the hair in his grasp slipped free and a breath that was not his own rushed warm and damp over his parted lips; slim cool fingers settled unseen in his hair, pulling just a little. "Why is my worthless self here with you in the dark? Why not her? Why not any of the others? They're extraordinary talent, I would think an ordinary, boring nobody like you would be more interested in their company than the touch of scum like me. Yet here I am. What do you hope for from me, Hinata?"

The way he said his name felt like an insult, subtle and sly.

Something warm and damp slid across his bottom lip and he shuddered, closing his eyes as disgust warred with desire. That was familiar at least. He'd always been attracted and repelled by Komaeda in equal measure. The scent of blood was stronger now, almost nauseating, but not quite.

A gentle weight settled over his hips and he lifted hands that felt heavy as lead automatically to slide beneath the heavy jacket that was draped around and over them, settling against a slim, t-shirt clad waist, steadying him, as if Komaeda had ever needed that. Still, he laid his hands there, supporting him, holding him in place as if he might escape or fade away.

It was difficult to think past the feel of him.

Past the smell of him, cooling sweat and blood and the crackle of fire.

Past the weight of him, so much lighter than it seemed like he should be.

Everything about this, about him, seemed familiar even while it also seemed completely new and incredibly strange.

What did he hope for?

He wasn't sure he hoped for anything at all except that he should remain himself. Which seemed like a strange thing to hope for, but it was there nonetheless though he couldn't quite remember why. But he was glad that Komaeda was here. In spite of everything that happened, events half-remembered that he couldn't seem to bring into focus, he was still glad.

"I don't know," he answered because everything about the boy hovering above him confused him; the way he felt about him most of all.

"Liar, liar," the words were spoken against his lips so he could feel each syllable.

Then the weight and feel of Komaeda was gone leaving behind only the scent of copper and the taste like the tang of metal on his lips as the presence that had felt so solid against him only a moment before dissipating like smoke and he was left alone in the dark.

-ooo-

It was still dark and his friends were screaming.

He needed to wake up.

Hajime Hinata opened his eyes to a sickly green glow, his heart thudding too hard and too fast in his chest, to the sound of screaming, loud and hoarse and interspersed with ragged sobs. He lashed out at the dimly lit walls that surrounded him on all sides, kicking at those too close walls with legs that were stiff and aching and beating against the opaque top with his fists until he felt the plastic begin to give, to crack. He thought he could hear something, someone, speaking, but it was muffled, outside perhaps, too far away to be anything he could make sense of. He couldn't make sense of anything. He couldn't think of why he would be in this box, of what had happened, couldn't even focus enough to remember what had happened. He'd been dreaming of Komaeda and Komaeda was dead… but then again maybe not.

Everything was jumbled and confused and everything hurt and he remembered codes and a voice like nails screeching, screaming across a chalkboard. Voices of the dead and dying and then a awful feeling in his head, a creeping, terrible sensation like that childhood certainty of a monster in the closet or under the bed and he could not shake the idea that he was not alone in his mind. And he couldn't breathe in this place, in this box, in this plastic coffin. He just needed to be out, needed to escape. Everything hurt and that sobbing was just getting louder and louder and he was running out of air, gasping and gasping and he was going to die in here. It was too much, too much, too much and he hit the top again and again until his knuckles ached, cracked and bled.

The cover lifted at last and he sat up, panicking again as something grabbed him by the hair and yanked him back into the pod hard. Pain screamed red and black and excruciating through his scalp. Tears sprang to his eyes and the screaming that surrounded him became even more shrill as he tried again, yanking so hard as he scrambled up that the entire world seemed to shift to the side.

There was a panicked moment of confusion as he crashed hard against a surface too solid, smooth and unforgiving to be anything but concrete. He feel himself, rolling, spilling out across it even as the air was painted white and soundless as the agony of impact seemed to swallow the whole of the world. Slowly darkness and faint green light seeped back into the world in the aftermath and he found himself panting, aching, freezing against the cold, filthy floor.

He tried to move, to scramble to up, but something had followed him from the plastic coffin and the weight of it fell over him like a blanket, wrapped around him, catching and tangling at his fingers and toes. He tore at it, shoved at it, but it just seemed to wind tighter and tighter around him as pain shot through his skull, blinding and intense. He could hear voices, words, calling to him, but he couldn't make any sense of them through the desperate, panicked screams that set his ears ringing.

He wasn't sure when in that endless panicked scramble of blind terror that he realized that the creature he was fighting was his own hair, but eventually he did, eventually the screams dissolved into quiet, jerky sobs and he collapsed against the ground, angry tears sliding down his cheeks as he curled in on himself, bringing his knees up as far as he could manage, his hair still tangled around his fingers and tugging pain against his scalp.

Trembling hands gripped his arms and his panicked gaze dodged up to a face he didn't quite recognize. Her face was so gaunt and pale and there were shadows like bruises beneath familiar blue eyes that were so dark and deep that it hurt to realize that he knew this woman. That he'd known the girl she had been even if only for a little while in a world that was both real and illusion. Her name was a sob choked out as he collapsed against her bony shoulder.

She made a soft startled noise, shushing him even as she gathered him to her chest with trembling hands. "Oh hush, hush, my dear friend," she whispered and her voice sounded so raw and rough like her heart was breaking or had been broken so many time that there were pieces missing that kept it from every being whole. Or maybe she'd just been screaming too. Maybe they both had. "It will be all right."

It was a lie neither of them could ever believe, but it was nice to hear the words nonetheless.

As he calmed, he realized he could see the others hovering hesitantly nearby. So much older, so worn and tired and beaten and changed by the things they had done, the people they had been in the years between who they had been and who they were now. And as he looked at each of them there was this terrible ache inside him for all the things they'd lost and for all that they had suffered, both real and imagined, but he couldn't help but be glad that they were here. That they had made it and he looked up at them and they looked down at him hesitantly and he wondered what they saw when they looked at him.

Was he horrifying to them?

Or were they just afraid that he wasn't himself?

That he was the monster Izuru must have been rather than the person they had known in the game?

Fuyuhiko was the first of them to break the silence as he stepped forward, his voice as brusque and brash as it had ever been. "About fucking time you woke up."

It wasn't funny.

It wasn't really funny at all and wasn't meant to be because Fuyuhiko didn't make jokes, not that he'd ever seen, but he started laughing anyway and once he started, he couldn't seem to stop.

It was a hoarse, wheezing sound and there were still tears rolling down his face, but it felt real and good and he felt his lips tremble with something that wasn't quite a smile but wanted to be and then Fuyuhiko was there. Close and warm and holding him more tightly than Sonia had, tight enough to make his bones ache, but he wouldn't have had it any other way.

"It's good to see you, brother," Fuyuhiko rasped, against his ear and he just nodded unable to force words past the lump in his throat, but it was, it really was. So, in the end, he just wrapped an arm around Fuyuhiko's broad back and fisted a hand in his too-tight shirt and held on, trembling with a bone-deep relief that he was here, that they were here.

Eventually he used his free hand to reach out to Sonia because he wasn't ready to be so far away from her yet. It felt like he'd been apart from them for years even though in reality it had only been something like moments and they'd probably never actually met before… before he had become what he had become.

He met Sonia's eyes over Fuyuhiko's shoulder and Sonia nodded her understanding, turning to beckon the two standing awkwardly a few paces off closer and they both lunged forward as if they'd only been waiting for an invitation. He felt Souda's hand clasp his shoulder and felt Akane's face pressed against his back like she didn't even care about all his strange, tangled hair and he was sobbing again, only this time it was against Fuyuhiko's shoulder as the man who called him brother patted his back awkwardly and tried to pretend he wasn't crying too.

The five of them slumped together on the floor, the survivors of unimaginable horror, but also the cause of so much pain that it was difficult to even think about. It had been a terrible choice to come back and he could see the beginnings of what it had cost them, the horror of what they had been lingering in their faces as they began to reconcile who they were with what they had been. He could feel it in trembling hands and fingers that gripped too hard, too desperate for the support of others who knew, who understood that they had been monsters, that they had allowed themselves to be ravaged by despair, had reveled in it, but that wasn't all they were.

Wasn't all they could be and… it, they, were… okay.

Not great, by any stretch of the imagination, but okay, because they weren't alone. They weren't alone anymore. They were together and they'd made it this far. They'd made it through all the horror and all the despair. And maybe they'd never be free of the things they had done, the people they had been, but that didn't seem so awful when there were arms to hold you together and friends who understood so completely what you were going through.

The relief that they were all able to be here, that they had all come through was enough for now.

Later there would be time to worry about the three virtual strangers standing nearby and the impatient tip-tapping of an expensive dress shoe against the concrete floor.

There would also be time later to get to work on how they were going to save their friends, because they were going to save them.

But for now there was just relief and gratitude and warm arms to hold them and joy and the bubbling laughter and tears that came with it.

And there was hope.

For the first time in a long time, there was hope for the future and for now that was enough.