A/N: For Ailavyn Siniyash. Crossover with The Adventure Zone: Balance. Set post-series for TDiR and in Story and Song for TAZ. Standard disclaimers apply.
It was time to move on. To find a new profession, a new name, a new life. He thought he'd try a new field again; it was too suspicious, coming into something knowing so much but having nothing to prove that knowledge, and he didn't want to raise anyone's suspicions. That made things…difficult.
Will Stanton, currently a history professor at the University of Reading, was not deaf to the wild conspiracy theories of his students or the quiet mutterings of some of the faculty. He knew exactly what they thought of him. He'd just hoped he'd have a little more time before they thought to question everything.
He hadn't realized it had been so long since he'd come here. Months had blended to years, and years to decades, before he'd noticed. And now he can't have been here for forty years already because he still looked so young and maybe there was some mistake and—
He'd tried to avoid having his name recorded, his picture taken, but that was…difficult in today's society. He could hardly remember a time when it hadn't been difficult. At least he'd done a stint as a computer programmer before this; ever-changing though that field was, he'd kept up his knowledge on the side. It made disappearing easier, and he'd have to disappear again soon.
Perhaps he'd learn chemistry this time. He hadn't tried that yet, and—
The world shifted.
Shuddered.
Disassembled and reassembled too quickly for anyone else to notice.
Everything was as it should be, but it felt like nothing was quite in its place.
There was something…missing.
He could feel it, the lost ache of something dear, and hear the echoes of screams in his head, screams that hadn't sounded in this realm. Screams that had never sounded at all. Screams from stolen voices, silenced to almost every ear.
A click of a button submitted the students' final grades. It was rather absurd, thinking that anyone could believe each student's knowledge could be so summarily defined. He had no idea how many of them had taken to heart the lessons he'd been trying to teach them. About history. About humanity. About their world, now fully in their hands, and the weight of their choices or inaction.
Especially in the wake of this, of Darkness that should not be, a remnant that should be unable to touch this realm. Such things would not matter if the Dark had found a way to return. He was not supposed to act, was only to Watch, but if this world was no longer free of the Dark….
Will rose, stretched out a hand, spoke words no one else in this realm knew to speak, and walked out of the little office—out of that life—forever.
He found no trace of the Dark or their meddling. Years past, and he came back to that day, to that moment, time and time again, but wherever he was, he always felt it. It seemed to have no origin on this earth. It resonated instead in every molecule, in every vibration of the universe.
He had studied physics this time, but he had learned nothing, understood nothing, until he had gone back to live that year through again for the hundredth time and beyond. This was the first time he had not felt it—the shift, the resettling, the screaming silence—and though he knew he had not missed it, he could not find what had changed.
It was the same moment experienced over again. Nothing should have changed. But it had. And he was the only one who knew, the only one who could know.
His search for answers had swept him around the world, crossing the Old Ways and common roads alike, but it was not until he had reached a crossroads of the two in the United States of America, intending to get some food from the taco truck unwittingly parked on the intersection, that he heard the Song and finally understood.
It was not the Dark. Not the Dark he had fought, the Dark whose rising tide he and the others had turned back. This was the Dark of another world, another realm. It sought to destroy, to consume. It was powerful. Insatiable. And it had come here.
It had taken as its vessel a man not unlike Hawkin, whispering in his ear and using him to bend others to its will until it had bound them all. It had risen, and it had overwhelmed them. It had won. They had let it, had welcomed it rather than fight it, but Will's heart ached for the soul of the man lost inside, for all the souls that had been swallowed since the first. He could feel the man across the planes, struggling to remember, to breathe, to live again in the Light, even as the Darkness would have him drown.
Will knew this was not his fight.
He could not turn back this Dark alone any more than he could have staved off the second wave of the Dark that had fought for control in his world, so long ago yet still so recently.
But those who chose to fight now were not doing so alone.
When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back.
They had not been six, in the end. He had held the Sign of Stone; Merriman, Fire; Barney, Wood; Simon, Iron; and Jane, Bronze. But Bran had not held the Sign of Water alone, for he had not been able to cut the silver spray from the tree and defend against the Dark, and it had been John Rowlands who had taken it up and helped the Light. Without him, the final mistletoe blossom could not have been cut before they had been overwhelmed, and no white bird would have flown free from the tree and into the world.
Will knew, as everyone now did, about the seven birds who had guarded the Light across the realms, who had fled from the Darkness which tirelessly pursued them. He knew that they had chosen this time to stand and fight, and he knew they did not fight alone.
This was not his fight, but their Darkness was now invading his world. Their magic had reached his plane. And from the ruins of food truck before him, Will saw a brave resident of his world stand and fight back against the rising Dark. The evil inside men was a matter for men to control and not something in which he could interfere, but this was not wholly their evil.
So, he helped in the little ways he could, in the ways that wouldn't be known, his magic masked by theirs, because it was of the Dark, and he was of the Light, and those who fought against the Dark should never need to do so alone.
When it was over, Will did not forget, just as he had not forgotten the last time.
Nor did he make anyone else forget.
Now that it was known, now that it was remembered, it should not be taken away.
This was not the time for forgetting, and too many mistakes had been made for forgetting in the past.
As it was, truth would become tale soon enough. Whether remembered in rhyme, masked in myth, or lost in lyric, details would fade as in dreams and memories would become muddled. Before long, all would be relegated to fable and fancy, to story and song, for such was the way of things, and however long Will watched, that would not change.