Trigger warning - dissociation, blood, depressed kid, probably some sadness

(Sidenote - OMG! WE MADE IT TO 100 REVIEWS THAT'S NEVER HAPPENED TO ME BEFORE!)

*throws confetti*

*plays parade music*

*hands out chocolate chip cookies*

Thanks, guys. You're the literal best.


xii.

Rex isn't sure he remembers how he escaped.

He's thinking about it one second, thinking about making a build and escaping through a cracked window, and feeling the sun on his face and feeling anything besides fear beating in his chest, and then – then he's outside.

The sun is warm on his skin. Though there's a small hum of anxiety buzzing through his veins, there's a stronger feeling of hope rushing through him.

Rex blinks, and realizes his feet are bloody.

Strangely, these things pass through him. He thinks he knows the name of what he's experiencing - thinks Holiday mentioned it to him once – but it doesn't magically appear from the vortex that is his brain.

And he doesn't push it. This vague, hazy state he's in is – it's not great. But it's not blind panic. That has to be good, right?

Still, despite his need to cling to this new mental stability – this wonderful break from reality – Rex can feel a gentle force pushing him back, back.

He blinks. He is in the desert again. His feet are bleeding onto a dusty orange sand, and the dark liquid shows up brightly.

He's bleeding.

"Oh, ah, o-okay. Crap." Rex says, the thought finally sinking in. "No, t-this is bad, this is really, really bad..."

Looking back, he can see a trail of bloody footprints leading to a small, ugly, burnt forest, and he can only assume they go back farther.

He is trackable.

And he's bleeding. And he doesn't know how that happened.

"Motorcycle, I need a motorcycle," He starts muttering like a crazy person. "Or jet-pack – jet-pack would work great right about now."

It takes a moment before his orange, levitating ride appears. But it does. That's what counts, right?

There's a heavy, straining sensation on his limbs that says this build will crumble soon.

"It's fine, that's fine. I just need to-to throw off the trail."

He's talking to himself. He should really stop.

"Come on, Rex."

He revs the engine and, after reaching up to pull his goggles down, and coming back empty handed (you didn't have your goggles on when they kidnapped you – you're still in your pajamas right now, you don't even have freaking sho–) he takes off.

Rex would freak out. He wants to, but he knows that if he thinks about anything but kittens and rainbows and being free and not back in that place again, his build will collapse. He will start sobbing.

He will hyperventilate at his disassociation. (Is that the word?)

(that's the word isn't it)

He will scream at not remembering something yet again, even if it is but a moment.

Though he's too aware to slip back into that calm, fuzzy state from before, he does let his body do all the work of driving, and lets his mind stay pleasantly blank. Numb.


He sleeps in an abandoned barn.

He wouldn't stop, not for anything, because his fear of being followed isn't rational, and he needs to be a few states away before he can properly relax – but his build shattered into pieces a mile back, and he's tired.

He can't keep going like this. He has to rest, just for a moment.

It'll save time in the long run.

The building is small, the roof partly caved in, and the door, once boarded up, is falling off its hinges.

He yelps when he sees rats scurry out. Except, you know. Manly-like.

"It could be worse." He says to himself. But honestly, if he weren't bone-tired both physically, mentally, and emotionally, he wouldn't be doing this. It could be worse, but not much. He could be roughing it in the open space with naught but shrubs and cacti for cover.

It still takes a great effort – heeded by the setting sun, and faint, disturbing, animal noises in the distance – to step foot in the barn.

It's...bad. Grass has grown through any sort of floor the barn ever had, there's various rodent dropping everywhere, and with paranoia still deep in his bones, he would swear there are eyes in here, watching him.

He looks over his shoulder again, the fifth time that minute. The orange sunset gleams behind him, wavering with fading heat, but he sees nothing in the distance but shrubs and shadows.

It's safe. For...however long.

Curling up in the cleanest, most big-lite corner he can find, he licks his lips and wishes for water. He rubs at raw feet and wishes for shoes. He hugs his arms and wishes for his coat.

If there was more energy and water in him, Rex knows he would be crying right about now. He's not even ashamed to admit it to himself.

Today has been terrifying.

He doesn't think he'll be able to sleep with the event's running through his brain. Each scene keeps flashing, again and again, like some sick montage on repeat.

The room. The room.

He was alone.

He was panicking.

The memory.

The escape, the memory of which teases at the edge of his subconscious, like he does remember after all, but has tucked it away until his brain has enough emotional reserves to handle it.

He wishes he could just blink, and wake up in a different body, a different house.

If only he could be anyone else, any old person who doesn't have people hunting him, trying to kidnap him for a third time.

If only he could finally feel safe again.

Closing his eyes, he imagines he's a normal teenager. Right now, he's not in some run-down shack filled with ants and termites and probably beetles, he's normal and safe and home.

It's a nice house, he pretends to himself, a usual one-story white-picket-fence thing like Noah's.

Inside are parents who love him, who've just eaten dinner with him (his stomach rumbles at the thought of mashed potatoes and meatloaf, which for some reason seem like the sort of foods normal people eat), and have already hugged him and bid him goodnight.

Tomorrow, he'll open his eyes in his normal-teenager room with one bed and a desk and a tv, with a videogame system hooked up like Noah has, and he'll put on thick jeans and a warm hoodie and go to school.

He won't worry about food or water, shelter or warmth, he'll only concern himself with acing a math test, or finishing up 'finals', or something.

He'll know his last name and who his family is, and most importantly, he'll be safe.

With that lovely fantasy running through his mind, Rex slips into an exhausted sleep, hands curled underneath his head.

And he dreams.


There's several faint sounds, a thump, thump, thwok. Two repetitions of something rubbery hitting wood or plaster, followed by a soft, clothes shifting noise.

Rex looks over to see someone bouncing a ball.

The ball itself is insignificant as it bounces from wall, to the floor, back to its owner's hand – it's old and plain red and Rex is pretty sure he even has one back at Providence – but the someone who holds it matters.

Both Rex and him are in a hallway with no end, exactly, just a stretch of room that just stops in fog not far away, and the only attraction Rex can see is that on the wall he's facing is a door.

The figure – boy, really – leans next to it, one foot balanced on the wall behind him as he casually throws and catches the small red ball.

The boy is lean. He wears an old jacket. His unruly hair seems contained only by a pair of goggles jammed on his head.

He glances up once at Rex and Rex sees that his eyes are dark, unhappy.

Thump, thump, thwok.

"Who are you?" Rex asks. It seems like the thing to do, although his eyes really keep sliding back to the door, to the worn rusted metal knob. He wonders if it's locked.

The boy pauses momentarily in his mindless game, hand mid-air.

"Aren't you tired of asking that, yet?" He says back, cryptically.

This is a dream, so Rex rolls with it, though the words strike at something within him.

Even in his sleep, he's tired. He's tired of everything.

"Uh, so...do you know what's in there?" Rex nods his head at the closed, off-white door. It can't be locked, can it?

"Well duh." The boy says back. "Of course I do."

Rex blinks.

Thump, thump, thwok.

"Are...you going to tell me?"

"Look, dude, you either open the door or you don't." The boy snaps. "You don't get to cheat and find out any other way."

Rex finds himself squinting, trying to bring this figure into view even though they can't be more than five paces away from each other.

"Sorry, who are you?"

The boy groans.

"Oh God, now he's stuck on repeat."

"Seriously, you sound really annoying – like I'd heard you somewhere before."

"You're so funny." The boy deadpans. His face seems to be getting clearer, and Rex realizes the boy has on gloves, too.

The identity of this guy is on the tip of his tongue, so near to his horrible memory that it feels like his brain is cramping trying to reach for it, and then suddenly – a cruel, cold wind thunders down the hall, so strong and sweeping he stumbles against the wall.

"It's...It's so cold." He rubs his arms like he can keep the heat from escaping. "It wasn't this cold a second ago."

"Oh? They say deserts can get down to 30 degrees at night."

"But we're indoors. In a hallway." Rex points out.

"And you're an idiot." The boy retorts.

Thump, thump, thwok.

That's not an answer. Nothing in Rex's life seems to offer any real answers for him, these days, so why is he surprised that his dreams are the same way?

Another chilly wind blasts through him like his jacket may as well be tissue paper.

He hates this. He doesn't want to stand here and feel cold and insulted by a boy he can't name, and listen to his own questions go unaddressed.

As if a magnet is drawing his fingers in, Rex steps forwards, shivers, and wraps his hand around the doorknob.

It's cold beneath his grasp, but it warms quickly.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." The boy says, that every present, slightly maddening thump, thump, thwok still echoing with clarity across the hallway.

"But..you told me to open it." Rex feels so confused.

"No. I just said I wasn't gonna tell you what's in there. And I'm not. But you don't wanna open that door."

Rex can't make himself let go of the knob.

"Why?"

The boy doesn't try and catch the ball as it bounces towards him again, like he'd done every single time before. He lets it die down and roll away.

"You tell me," He says, eyes still so unhappy. "You're the one who closed that door in the first place."

"No, I –"

Another cold front burns through the corridor. It's all Rex can do to hunch in on himself and shiver, forced back a step by the strong winds. He rubs his hands together and pretends like he can still feel them.

If this is a dream – which is a fact that is present in his mind but slippery, sliding out of reach so quickly like sand between his fingers – then why does this cold feel so real?

"It's freezing in here. Can't you turn up the heat or something?" Rex asks, a stream of air hissing between his teeth as he tries to control his blatant shivering.

The boy offers him a shrug.

"Feels fine in here to me."

"Okay..." Rex frowns. "But I'm still cold."

"Since when have I ever cared what you think? Better question, since when have you cared about what I think?"

That's anger there, raw and explosive like it's been building for too long. How can a stranger be harboring such strong emotions towards Rex?

"I don't – I don't understand –"

An epic sigh echoes around him, and the boy laughs to himself, shaking his head.

"Oh my God." He says to himself. Then, to Rex, "Don't you ever get tired of being so clueless?"

Rex flinches back.

"I mean, it's all, who am I, and what's in there, and why's that happening, and – my personal favorite – why does my life suck so bad? Doesn't it ever get boring, not knowing anything?"

"Hey. Stop it."

Rex can't think of a better retort than that, so he settles for a glare.

Being so ignorant has been a burden, an emotional rollercoaster, a pain, and really, really, friggin hard.

But he wouldn't call it 'boring'.

Absently, he rubs at his shivering arms.

"'Hey, stop it'." The boy mocks in a high-pitched tone. "How about this – when you finally manage to keep a bit of anything in that dumb, airhead brain of yours, we can talk about being friends and me not hurting your little pansy feelings."

Rex tries to glare even harder, which is challenging because none of this is real, not his eyes nor the kid.

"I'm just dreaming you. You are just a stupid figment of my stupid imagination. Why aren't you nicer?" He snaps.

The boy shrugs.

"Well, you got the 'stupid' part right. And I dunno? Maybe you aren't nice." Oh, like that isn't the lamest comeback of all time. Rex doesn't even care about that one – almost chuckles at it, actually.

Then there's such a swift, chilling gale sweeping through the corridor that he feels like the cold has stolen his breath. His whole frame is vibrating now, moving just so he doesn't lose any more heat that the wind is persistently taking.

He can't help but feel that the boy is doing this, somehow.

"Or maybe," The boy says suddenly, like he can hear Rex's thinking about him. "Maybe you're sick of your brain treating you so delicately. Like you're gonna break at any moment. Like you can't handle the truth."

"The truth?" Rex wonders. His eye wanders back to the door, where suddenly, in black, block letters is the word truth.

He swerves his gaze back to the boy but his hands haven't moved, they're by his side, so they didn't put the letters there.

"This door...this is the truth?" He wants to open it all the more now. He even steps back to it's edge, his toes bumping the bottom part, creeping slightly underneath.

Like before, however, something stops him. This time it's him.

"What to you mean, I closed this door?" He asks the boy.

The boy's whole face darkens.

"You know." He growls. "You didn't want the truth. You locked it away. You know exactly what I mean."

"...is this about the amnesia thing? Because I didn't mean to forget –"

"But you do. You always do." The boy laughs.

Rex wonders if the boy knows how much he sounds like he's crying when he laughs.

It'd be pitiful, if he weren't blaming Rex for everything wrong in his life.

"When everything is going great, you stay. You live. Then the second things start to hurt – start to feel real – you bail. You tuck all of that pain that makes life hard away, behind the door," The boy gestures, and suddenly Rex can hear a faint thumping on the other side of the door. Whatever it is, it sounds frantic.

It scares him.

"And you start over. You lose the truth. Again and again, you just – forget it."

He also notes how the paint is chipping, the hinges are rusted, and there's a sprinkle of dried blood around waist height on the old, dingy wooden door.

Suddenly he presses himself against the other wall to get away and it feels like the door is leering closer to him now.

"W-what's the truth?" He whispers. He isn't sure if he wants to know. Before, he'd been so eager, but now – now it feels like knowing might destroy him.

The boy huffs a sigh.

"Oh my gosh, you either open the door or you don't, Rex. This isn't that hard."

"But..." Rex struggles to understand his abrupt anxiety at the sound emanating behind the door. "Will it – hurt?"

"Yes." The boy says.

This doesn't inspire confidence in him. Neither does the fact that he can't feel his toes from the cold.

"Okay. B-but just for like a moment, right?"

"No." The boy says. "It'll hurt. And it'll last. But if you do open the door, you'll finally know. You'll know why you forget. And you'll know what you forgot."

Rex swears he hears some creature screeching in agony behind there.

He shivers and he looks at the boy with familiar, sad eyes, and he says in a voice smaller than he'd like,

"I wanna wake up now."

"It'll be cold. It'll hurt." The boy warns. "And you won't understand Why. So are you gonna learn the truth or not?"

Rex shuts his eyes against another roar, and curls in against a roaring, searing wind.

He's so scared. He's so tired.

"I wanna wake up now."

The dream world dissipates at his command, the fog that was blocking the ends of the corridor swooping in and encasing everything in blurry surrealism, including the awful door and the boy.

The last thing he hears is a mocking snort.

"I knew you wouldn't do it."

And then Rex wakes up.


Rex jolts upright.

With a frown, he slowly reaches up, grips the shirt material near his heart, and listens to it jump around violently for a while.

He'd been dreaming. That's right, it was a dream.

He breathes in the cool desert air, fists grass in his other hand, and practices breathing until his heart rate calms.

It's cold. He notices immediately – that sort of thing is hard to miss when you're in the desert, at night, wearing the equivalent of pajamas.

"Damn it." He mutters to himself, breath a puff of fog in the cool early morning. He's not sure exactly how he thought one run down, ruin of a barn would be enough protection against the frosty air.

Then again, he hadn't really been thinking yesterday.

Taking in calming inhales, Rex begins to stand up and move around, trying to get warmth rushing back through his body.

It's hard to have optimism for the day in his position – awoken from a nightmare, on the run from someone who's name Rex can't stand to hear, totally devoid of food and water – but Rex is nothing if not stubborn.

He pictures getting to some dinner with hot, delicious, syrupy waffles and orange juice and a comfy booth. He thinks about getting back to play basketball with Noah some more, or that video game with the aliens, or even just to lie on his bed and watch Noah do homework.

He closes his eyes and tries to remember how it felt the couple of times Holiday gave him a hug. He tries to remember Agent Six's unflagging, though often annoyed presence – how it was always there, always ready to support and protect Rex.

There's so much he still wants to do. Hell, at this point he'd settle for a decent breakfast. So he can't die here – he can't.

With a dry throat and a renewed sense of determination (if not traditional optimism), Rex exits his abandoned shack of a barn and looks out along the horizon to see where he should head now.

He hopes he has enough energy for his motorcycle build. He can't see the end of this desert-like terrain in any direction.

"So I guess where I came in..." He mutters to himself, coughing a little as his throat seizes up. He decides he probably shouldn't talk out loud right now.

You know. To preserve the water left in his body.

With the swift rising sun and his constant, if odd, movements, Rex is beginning to feel his limbs again.

Guess that's the way I should head now, he thinks to himself.

But of course that would be the moment things start to go wrong for him.

Suddenly, from behind him, he hears a loud growl.

Rex's whole body freezes in place, and he turns every so slowly.

It's a blue, mechanical wolf, he thinks in total disbelief. A blue wolf crouched in deadly wait near his barn.

That just isn't something you see everyday! And not only that, but it stands upright, like a person, and it's eyes look so intelligent that it scares him.

"What are you –" Rex begins to ask, if very insensitively.

And that's when the Wulf pounces.


A/N: I know I say this every time, but you who still read this are awesome. I confess, writing-wise I have the attention span of a squirrel so it's super easy for me to get distracted and start working on another story, but it's super difficult for me to want to finish a fic.

I also have a lot of opinions about this fic. It was my first 'real' fic and when I look back on earlier chapters I'm just like...errrr. Could've done things much better. *sighs*

But I know you don't want to hear my annoyed-with-my-past-writing rants, so I'm just going to say thank you for reading this. Thank you so much if you reviewed or fav'ed, or followed, or even just skimmed through.

Only a few chapters to go.

Your author,

Kokoro