"Edgar?"
He snapped his head up, and he was sitting in the main room and it was Group time, and everyone was staring at him.
"What?"
"Are you all right, Edgar? You seem tired."
Edgar blinked several times. A gray blankness in his memory, the definite indication of something but he had no idea what. He had been doing something and now he was here.
"How long have I been here?"
"The whole time, Edgar. You just seemed to be drifting off a little, so I wanted to know if you wanted to go take a nap."
"The whole time?"
"Yes."
"How did I get here?"
"You walked in," Claudia said from across the room.
"Maybe Scriabin did it," Richard said, "and he just woke up now."
Scriabin?
I...
Don't lie to me, don't lie to me now-
No no, it's not that it's just...I don't know. I didn't...I don't remember. I don't remember doing it. I don't think I did it.
What happened?
"Edgar, do you want to go back to your room?"
"How long...was Nny here? Did Nny come?" He stood up. "Is Nny here? I saw him-"
The man beside him stood, rested a hand on his shoulder. "Edgar, calm down-"
"Is he here?" More plaintive. "Is he here? I saw him, I saw him, please...I didn't-, I didn't just see him-, he was really here, God, he had to be..."
"Harry, why don't you take him back to his room?" Mary said with genuine sympathy, and Harry moved his hand from Edgar's shoulder to his arm. Harry's touch at least didn't go into his bones, and for that Edgar was thankful.
"Did you see him? Please...please, someone had to have seen him..."
"It's okay..."
"I just want...I just want to see him, God, I was so close...he was right there, and he said...he said..."
"Shh, come on. You've been here the whole time." Harry led him gently away, his touch comforting and parental, and Edgar let himself go. "Don't you remember?"
Edgar started sobbing.
There were chopsticks in his mouth, and with that realization came a sudden burst of something, Chinese food he recognized.
Edgar?
Edgar sleepily looked up, became connected, and Scriabin stared across the table. There Johnny sat with his boots on the tabletop, a small container of food balanced in his lap and a pair of chopsticks likewise in his mouth.
Where am I? Was I...when did...was that a dream? Is this a dream?
"Edgar? You okay?"
"Scriabin," he said automatically. Johnny gave him a long, hard stare, and then turned back to the television with a quick jerk of his head.
Is this...is this real? Was that real? Where am I? What's going on?
This isn't our home...
Wow, you're really helpful, aren't you? For god's sake, wake up for once!
Johnny... Soft and wondrous, and Scriabin bit down on the wood in his mouth hard.
"How long are you going to be here?" Johnny said with obvious resentment, and Scriabin found he could easily match it.
"What are you talking about?"
"You." Johnny rolled his eyes and his mouth curled for a moment in distaste. "How long until Edgar comes back?"
Scriabin stared at him, his eyes gradually narrowing and he pulled the chopsticks from his mouth and embedded them in a piece of meat in the container he realized he was holding.
"Fuck you." It was the first thing he wanted to say, so he said it. Not what he should have, not what he might have if he had thought about it long enough, but he found his ability to control his decisions was getting a little more shaky as time went by. "I'm here now. It's me."
Johnny...
Shut up! Fierce resentment that had died without constant fuel. Johnny was gone, he had been gone for so long, and Scriabin had worked over, accepted, was able to overcome some of his emotions regarding him since Johnny wasn't there to feed the flames, and Edgar's memories changed easily and unpredictably. Shut up! You're pathetic!
He felt Edgar's dull hurt, and he lapsed into silence. Beneath it, he knew the sentiment still remained. He wanted Johnny.
Shit, that's what he wanted.
Johnny didn't want to talk to him and kept his eyes on the television set.
"How long have I been here?"
"I don't know," Johnny said with some resentment. "You come and go."
Scriabin growled slightly, realized he'd have to rephrase his question. "No, both of us. How long have we both been here?"
Johnny still didn't look at him. "Edgar's been here for a month now. I hope you aren't planning on staying around very long."
"I'll stay as long as I fucking want to, you skinny bitch." Deep hatred, and Scriabin lifted the stabbed piece of meat and shoved it in his mouth as if it was some kind of act of defiance. He spoke around it, still trying to sound angry and eat at the same time. "If you want to talk to your precious Edgar, you better learn to get used to it. It's my decision if he'll talk to you or not. I control his life now, not you."
Johnny this time did turn to face him, and Scriabin found that his chopsticks were embedded in the back of his hand somehow. Johnny's expression was surprisingly mild, his head slightly tilted.
"Have you taken your meds today, Edgar?"
"What?" Scriabin tried to pull the wood out of his skin, and Johnny leaned over the table, bending over his boots in a way that would have at least been painful, if not impossible.
"It looks like you're seeing things again. Did you talk to your doctor about that? Who's your doctor?"
"What the fuck-"
It hit Edgar first, and he pulled in tight to protect himself and let out a shuddering wail of despair.
"Are you having strange dreams?"
Edgar jerked, fell out of his chair.
"Edgar, are you all right?" A hand lifted him back up, and he was shaking hard.
"I..."
"You said you were having some strange dreams. Is that the case? It could be helpful."
"Where am I..."
"You asked me for an individual session, don't you remember?"
"Where's Nny...?"
"...There is no Nny, Edgar. You know that."
He inhaled deep and let it out slowly.
"Did you dream about him? Is that what you were talking about?"
"Oh God, everything's falling apart..."
"What?"
"It's like...oh God, oh God." He held onto his shoulders. "I thought things were bad before, I thought things couldn't get worse they could only get better, and it is, it is getting worse, everything is getting worse oh God."
"How are they getting worse, Edgar?"
"I thought, I thought that the hallucinations, I thought that was as bad as it would get, I thought that would be the worst and maybe those little things where I wouldn't be sure where I was, where I wouldn't know and forget, but oh God, now, now this is so bad, this is so bad, I don't know where anything is, what anything is anymore, oh God it's all falling apart-"
"How are things falling apart?"
"I don't even know what's happening to me anymore, I don't know what's real, oh God, it's like, like every reality I know is collapsing and falling and breaking into pieces and I keep falling into one piece after the other, and I can't tell when I do it and when I get out, and oh God, God, God, God why won't it stop, how can this get any worse how could this possibly get any worse-"
"It's okay, Edgar, you're only short a quarter." Claws briefly on his shoulder, and Johnny held two cones of ice cream in his hands. "I think he'll let it go."
The clerk stared at them both, unamused, and Johnny sighed in an exaggerated fashion.
"It's just a quarter. We'll just look in the car for loose change, Edgar, it'll be fine."
The edge of the counter where the lottery tickets were pasted hit his forehead with a sharp sound, and he felt a long string connect his skin to the edge as he fell.
Walking through the ways, the broken times. I'm figuring something out, slowly, surely. There is a logic to be found, a pattern to be seen. We just have to find out what it is, make the best of where we are.
God, what's the illusion? What am I dreaming and what's real? I don't know if I'm asleep or awake, and I used to know and that's why it was so important.
It doesn't matter what's what, it matters how we react to it, my boy. Come here, come closer to me. How we react may determine our future, and I think that's what's most important.
Ngh...I can't...this isn't...I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. What's going on? Where are we?
If I'm touching you...
Oh...
If I'm touching you, then where else could we be?
O-oh...
There's little in life that's real, is there? Little that's really positive. Permanent, I mean. Little that's permanent. I found that out before in various nasty little ways, and that book was just a big part of it. Didn't let you keep that. No wait, didn't we burn it? Doesn't matter.
Ah...
What matters is that we need to, hmm, find a way to get around this. We need to find a way to adjust. Like you said, multiple realities, and we keep falling in and out of them.
Then, then where are we now?
I suppose we get our breaks now and then, don't you think? Not sure. Perhaps nowhere, perhaps someplace or another.
Nnh, I don't, I don't believe in it, I don't believe in this multiple reality thing, one of them has to be real, something has to be real or I'm just not seeing it, something is real and something is fake, they can't both be real, this can't be happening...
Hmm...well, you can believe what you like. It doesn't change what's happening though, does it?
A-ah, I'm...
Just you and me, as always. Even when reality itself is tired of us, it always ends up with just you...and me...
Hnn, I...ah...
Been a while, hasn't it? We'll figure something out...I'll figure something out. Play each reality, nnf. Play them as they come, go with what works. Ah, just you and me, isn't that right? Heh, isn't that right...
Oh God...
Let's not forget that, ah, shall we? With all this, there, all this reality nonsense going about...let's not forget what's important. Me.
Aah! P-please...
Us then.
I, I don't-, I'm, I'm not-
Ah, god, mmm. You're so...you're so much better than the others I've had.
You've had-
Nnf. Hmm, you react...
Ah...
Just the way...
Aaah...
I want...
Scria-aaa-ah-!
Heh. Mph, god, Edgar, you are-
Unh-
Such a, nnf...a fantastic fuck.
Nnnnn, s-stop, stop it, I...I just, just, I just want...
I know what you want.
"Hey Ed, you want to go the pool?"
Where am I now? He moved his hands and ran into a bush.
"Ed, come on, man. Do you need some help?"
It was the activity therapist, a lively guy who was always very friendly. Edgar liked him, and he liked Edgar. Scriabin was a different story, but maybe it had the same beginning and just a different ending.
He came and helped Edgar to his feet.
"C'mon man, you've got to be more careful. You want to come to the pool?"
"What was I doing?"
"You were petting the cat."
There it was, near his feet, tail flicking occasionally. Edgar pulled closer to the AT's side, and he laughed and led him away.
"How long was I out here?"
"I don't know, I just came out to check on you."
"Have I always been here?"
"What, in the hospital? I don't think so. You've been here a while though."
"Was I...did I leave?"
"I don't know. You'll have to ask your doctor about when you can get discharged."
"Nny..."
"Hey Harry, would you mind keeping an eye on Edgar for me? He's your roomie, isn't he?"
"Yeah-"
"I think he's feeling a little out of it. Just make sure he's okay, all right?"
"All right."
Edgar sat by the edge of the pool, and Harry rested his arms on the cement beside him, kicked his legs without too much effort.
"You okay?"
"I don't know where I am anymore..." Edgar stared at the blue water.
"It'll be okay, all right?" Harry put a wet hand on Edgar's knee. "Don't worry about it. You'll be okay."
Edgar leaned back and stared at the sky until his eyes hurt.
Nngh...god, did they put me under again? My head hurts...there's a jackhammer going, my god Christ, someone's pounding on a piano or something. Shit, Edgar never should have gotten that book about that guy, it's all I can fucking think about now fuck my head...
Something shifted against his chest, sharp and pricking through his shirt, and he should have felt a bit more alarmed but his head hurt too much to react that quickly.
"Where am I...?"
Someone pressed against his back moved, they straightened, moved an arm, sat up.
"Edgar...?"
He rolled over, saw Johnny propped up on his arms, his eyes still dark-rimmed and exhausted.
"I'm Scriabin."
Johnny stared at him for a little while longer, and he got out of bed. Scriabin managed to force himself up on his arms to watch him navigate the dark room with strangely practiced ease.
"I'm staying on the couch," Johnny said before he shut the door behind him. Scriabin fell back against the pillow, and when he dug a bit deeper, he found the same kind of longing that infuriated him from Edgar. The quintessential quiet desire that typified his interactions, holding out his hand towards Johnny as he left but never saying anything, never making it more blatant than a simple, pathetic, unseen gesture.
You don't need him. Stop it.
At his voice Edgar recoiled in obvious fear, tried to hide but he wasn't good at it, not like Scriabin was. I didn't mean...
Fuck you.
Edgar kept further away, and he thought that Scriabin couldn't hear him anymore.
Nny...
He was going to pay for that, Scriabin would see to it.
Harry had his arms pinned behind his back to keep Edgar from slamming his head into the wall again.
"Edgar, calm down-"
"Why" was the word that Edgar had been chanting nonstop for almost an hour now. Harry had been here some twenty minutes. Edgar's forehead was bleeding and his glasses had been knocked askew, and still his body moved to hit the wall again but Harry kept him back.
"Why, why, why, why-"
"Maybe he'll come later-"
No change in Edgar's mantra, just the same word repeated over and over again, and despite his struggles Harry did not let him go.
Please, please, please stop
Nngh
Scriabin, please, please don't, d-don't do this
Shut up.
Nngh, no, no, Scriabin, no, please...
Nnf.
Please, ah, ah- a- agh, you're, you're hurting-
Do you think it's an accident? Don't tell me what I already know.
Why, agh God, why, please
Say what I want to hear.
Gkk, s-stop, I don't, I don't want, I don't want-
It doesn't fucking matter what you want. What you want means shit to me.
...nnngh...
Now say what I want to hear.
Please...please, stop...
No.
Aagkkha-! Aaaah, don't! Don't-! Oh God, please, please-!
And you were so proud of it when you first did it. I liked it better when it was bleeding anyway.
Ungh, please, please stop oh God please please stop oh God stop st- kkkgh, please
Mmph!
AGK-
Say it. Say it.
...gkk, m-my...you...
Do you really want to make me angry? Really angry? I don't think you do.
I-I'm not, not trying to make you angry-
Then why do you keep doing it? You bring this on yourself.
Aggk-! Stop...stop, please, don't hurt me anymore...
Say what I want to hear.
Hnnnn...you, you're...nngh, ah, I-I'm sorry...
Say it like you mean it.
Nnn-n...
Say it like you mean it.
I didn't-, please stop-
Say it.
And if there was any mercy, oh God, oh God, sick and clenching and choking and thinking, thought realized fear actualized and God, please God why, why was he getting used to this-
Edgar stared out the window, and the trees shifted abruptly, sharply, into colors and crayons, and he was staring at a piece of paper on the floor.
"Are you okay, Mr. Edgar?"
"Todd?" Confused but that was nothing unusual. He looked up and it looked like Johnny's house, but there was Todd, sitting with a crayon in hand, a stuffed bear in the other, and a sheet of white paper on the floor.
"Yeah. Are you okay?"
"What are you doing here? What am I doing here?"
"Shmee says it's okay to be confused." Todd let his hand travel in loops across the page on the floor. "I've been here for a while now."
"Where's Johnny?"
"Who?"
"Where's...where's your neighbor?"
"I don't know," Todd said with obvious fear. "He's not coming over, is he?"
"Isn't this his house?" Edgar was sitting he found, and he looked down at the floor to see a sheet of paper at his own feet, and a crayon in his hand, and his fingers felt waxy.
Todd tilted his head. "Mr. Edgar, are you okay?"
He stared at the sheet of paper. A house on fire, flames and walls all black. Little words jumping out the windows, trying to escape. Delusion had been so badly burnt by the fire it looked like deluge.
Todd turned back to his sheet of paper.
"Shmee says..."
"Where am I?"
"Things are getting a little strange..."
"Where am I?"
"But they can't be this way forever, that's what he says."
"Todd, what am I doing here? How long have I been here? Have I been doing this all day?"
"You've always been here, Mr. Edgar." Todd smiled, and he held up his drawing. "You're acting kind of like Mommy does."
Edgar stared at the sheet of paper, and it reflected.
"Priority."
Sat up awake in bed, breathing hard and fast and he pressed a hand to his chest, clutched his fingers shut.
"Oh God, please!" Spoke between breaths coming too fast, too hard, and his heart beat wildly. "God, make it stop! Make it stop, where am I? Where am I? What's going on? Where am I!"
At least it isn't who am I-
"Edgar, you're here! You're safe, you're safe, calm down." A voice from beside him in bed. He already felt the initial preemptive hatred Scriabin bore for Johnny coming to the surface, then the light flared on, bright and burning and he covered his eyes. Warm hands on his shoulders, around his hip, and he was pulled close to a body that fairly radiated heat. Arms settled around him, strong enough to make his shaking stop and his breathing slow. "God, it's okay. It's okay, you're here with me. It's all right. Everything's all right."
A soothing mantra until Edgar felt like his heart was under control, a soft voice that made him feel peaceful, something familiar that he had longed to hear, that he had missed so dearly and he didn't know, not until now. Soft words and a hand gently running through his hair.
"Are you okay? You've been having nightmares for weeks."
Edgar opened his eyes.
Jake tilted his head at him, and a piercing caught the light. "Are you okay? I'm worried about you, man."
Edgar stared and he would have said something if his heart hadn't been perched right on his tongue, blocking all air.
Jake... Just as surprised, almost reverent, and then fearful silence. Does he...
Jake kept him close, let his head rest on his broad chest and Edgar stared into the bed sheets, his heart now resuming its frantic pace. Jake's arms around him, pulled him together and close.
"J-jake...?"
"That's right."
"So..." And then he realized, the fear hit him hard and fast and blinding and he returned Jake's embrace as tightly as he could. "Oh God, don't leave, don't you leave too, don't let this be a dream, please..."
"Mr. Edgar, are you okay?"
Wax all over him and he spasmed violently, and he heard his voice join with the one in his mind.
Please God, I can't take much more of this-
"How long has he been out?"
"Well, we gave him two shots-"
"Edgar, how do you feel today?"
"I feel...lost."
"They told me my daughter is dead, but I know she isn't." Harry sat on his bed across from Edgar's, looked at him with a sense of intensity and determination he could not hope to have. "I know I'll find her again, I know she's out there. She's in danger, she's in so much danger. I have to rescue her. They tell me she's dead, but I know she isn't. She's trapped."
"Where?" Edgar had his blanket in his hands and the thread was wrapping around his fingers and it cut deep and his fingers were slowly dying. "Where is she?"
"There's this other world. Sometimes, you can see it." Harry sounded so serious. "This world, this world we know, is being invaded by this other world. That's where she is. The other world has grabbed her, taken her away. They're going to hurt her, I know it. I can't let that happen, I'm her father. I've got to protect her."
"You've got to protect her."
I'll do that for you. I'll protect you.
What?
That's what you want, I felt it.
"She's trapped in that other world, and I can hear her calling me sometimes." Harry clenched his fists. "She's not dead, I know it."
"She's not dead." Edgar believed him, and the threads pulled across his paling skin. "She's not dead, you'll find her again."
"And you...Edgar, you'll be okay. We'll be okay in the end, I know it." Harry got up, went to sit by Edgar. "We can make it through. You've just got to be determined. You've got to be able to go through Hell for it, but we'll survive. You'll survive."
"I don't know where I am..."
"But where are you going?"
"I don't know..."
"What do you want?"
"I don't know..."
"Well, that's your problem." Harry put a hand on his shoulder. "You've got to know what you want, otherwise you're just fumbling in the dark."
Ah, God...
Just a little...there.
O-oh, oh-! I-...I sho-...
Quiet.
Aaah!
Ah, there, yes...
Oh God, oh G-god-
Yes, yeees...
Oh God, who are you?
He felt as if he was breaking, stretching, going too far. A rubber band stretched across too much too long, and his entire self was shaking, quivering.
Scriabin-
I'm trying, I'm trying-
What's going on-
Where are we now?
Scriabin, what's going on? Edgar was sitting on a couch and Johnny was sitting on his legs, watching the television. Oh God, what's going on?
I'm not sure-
Is this real? Am I dreaming this? God, is this all some kind of horrible nightmare?
Shit, at this point Edgar, I fucking hope so.
Johnny turned to look at him. "Edgar?"
Edgar stared for a few moments, made sure that he wouldn't move.
"Uh...yeah..."
"Are you okay?"
He'd heard that question so many times recently, it was losing its meaning.
"I...I don't know."
"Are your legs asleep? I could move. You were just napping and I didn't want to wake you up."
"No, no, I'm fine..."
"You sleep a lot..." Johnny kept his eyes on the television, but it was obvious in his words that he wasn't paying attention to it. "How can you do that?"
"Was I sleeping...?"
"I mean...just to be gone that long...and maybe when you wake up, it's all gone. Everything you knew was gone, or different, and you don't know what's real. I couldn't do that. It...no."
"Maybe sometimes it'd be better that way..." Johnny turned to look at him. "It'd be better if things were different when you woke up..."
"Oh, here..." Johnny reached over to one side, picked up a small black thing. "Here, you took it off before. Do you want it?"
He held out Edgar's eyepatch.
God, what is this, what's going on, are we just dreaming this? Is this just everything we want? Are we dying? Is that what this is? Are we just reliving memories all out of order? These aren't memories, it's the future or the present but not the past...
Jake...
This is like, like something...I don't even know anymore, I don't know what's happening...I must just be imagining this, I'm imagining all of this, that must be it, that must be it...
"Edgar!"
"Todd?"
"Edgar, get back here!"
They were wheeling in the latest addition to the pediatric unit, strapped down on a stretcher regardless of how necessary that really was. A small boy with large eyes and a stuffed bear, and he stared at Edgar as he went by.
"Todd!"
"Mr. Edgar!" Todd said with some mixed emotions, and the two who were accompanying him turned to see what was going on. "Mr. Edgar, what are you doing here?"
"Todd, what are, why are you here-"
"Edgar, get back here-!"
"Mommy and daddy," Todd managed to get out before the stretcher was on its way again, and Edgar was getting pulled back to join the rest of his own group.
"Todd..."
"Edgar, you can't just go darting off, do you want to go down a level and get back on unit restriction?"
"God, he's here too..."
Everything, everything fell apart at one moment, that's when things went wrong. Something is the key here, something will explain what's happening, we have to find out what it was or what triggered it.
Everyone's going insane...
Not necessarily.
"I want to talk to Edgar."
How important were memories, really? Severely disoriented and he wobbled, but Johnny's hands on his shoulders stopped him from falling backwards.
"What?"
"I want to talk to Edgar. Let me talk to him."
Nny...?
And that jealousy reared up, fierce and angry and Scriabin smirked in a way he knew would be particularly maddening.
"Nope."
And Edgar didn't even argue, he just sighed softly.
Nny...
"Let me talk to him!"
"Ah, nope nope." Scriabin started laughing then, and he wasn't sure why. Maybe just how much control he had over both of them, over himself, just felt so good and exhilarating. "You didn't say the magic word."
"What's the magic word?"
Scriabin held up his own crayon drawing, and Todd stared at it.
"Oh, that word." Todd turned back to his own drawing. "I know that one already, Mr. Scree."
"Scriabin, kid."
"Shmee says the word isn't magic." Todd drew off the page onto the floor. "He says you make it magic."
"Do I?"
"Yup." He drew right up Scriabin's leg, marked a smiley face on his thigh.
"Let me talk to Edgar! I know he can hear me! I know you can let him!"
Snap snap snap, from one reel to the next, abrupt and hard like he slammed to a stop.
"This is getting old..." Scriabin felt dizzy. "You might want to get out of the way, I think I'm going to be sick."
Where are we? Where are we?
Please make it stop, make it stop, make it stop-
"Edgar, how do you feel today?"
"I feel...lost."
"Did you ever know a Julie?"
"Julie?" The little boy pushed himself off from the tree, swung a bit on the bit of wood at the end of a long rope.
"Yeah, did we know a Julie?"
"I dunno." The boy spun in circles, fell off. Edgar went and picked him up again, and he found small arms tight around his neck. "Wait, I think I do."
"Who was she?" Edgar picked him up, let his legs settle around his waist and his face was hidden.
"She said you were gay in class once."
"Edgar, you've been hallucinating pretty severely," the cat in the lab coat said. It put a paw on his forehead, leaned his head back to look in his one eye. "I think you might be having some kind of adverse reaction to the medication."
"Where am I?"
The cat sighed. "You're very disoriented. I'm going to change what I've been giving you, all right? Hopefully that will help. It doesn't mention any previous allergies or bad reactions here beforehand...it would have helped if you told someone what was going on earlier."
"Was I always here?"
"Yes, Edgar. Now-"
"Joel?"
The cat stopped and stared at him.
"...Did I tell you my first name?"
"I thought I killed you."
The little boy clung tight to his neck, shivered and the thunder outside roiled and rumbled. Rain pounded against the small house and Edgar shivered underneath his blankets with his brother hanging on tightly, and the storm raged as if he had done it some kind of personal wrong.
"This is it, t-this is it..." Scriabin stammered, and Edgar tried to hold the flashlight steady in the dark to stop the shadows from leaping out at him. If he let his guard down, they'd come after them both, and the thunder would just cover the sound... "Edgar, this is it..."
"What? What's it?"
Thunder shook the ground, penetrated the air and eardrums, made Scriabin hang onto him tightly as he would be shaken free, and he felt his heart beating frantic and hard.
"Edgar, Edgar, remember, remember, the collapse, collapse, this is it-"
The flashlight's batteries went out.
He walked up to get his lunch.
He asked for a taco. The woman stared at him. Stared and then she blurred into static, so he reached under the safeguard and got the taco himself.
"Edgar, are you all right?"
Hand against his forehead, and he stared at the ceiling above.
"Where am I now...?"
"You're in your room, you've been in here for days." He recognized that voice. Harry. It figured that Harry would have stuck by him. "You've been pretty bad."
"God, I've been...I've been dreaming, I think..."
"It sounded like it. You were screaming a lot...are you sure you're going to be okay? I'm worried about you."
"I'll be okay...if everything would just stop for a few seconds, I'll be okay..."
"Good..." Harry's hand grew cold and slick, and it curled around Edgar's palm. "It's been so long since we've visited each other. It's nice to see that you prepared dinner."
Edgar screamed as he felt the thick cords of flesh wrap around his body, his legs and arms in a way he wished he didn't know.
"Not again-!"
But this time, this time there was something different.
He caught the flurry of wings, something like a bird and feathers whirled through the air, and then there was a flash of red and his other eye was gone, and that was it.
He was blind.
Edgar! Edgar! Can you hear me?
Edgar, where are you? I'm here! I'm here, come back to me! Can you hear me? Edgar, please!
It didn't...
No, it didn't! And it won't, not as long as I'm here! Edgar, where are you?
I'm tired...
No! No, don't you dare! Don't you dare, get back here!
I'm so tired, this...I can't do this anymore...
You can and you will, you can and you will-
Blood was a lot darker than they show it in the movies. It wasn't bright red at all. Seeping out into the water, in the darkness. Dreams or reality.
Skin really did float in water.
"Edgar, you're having a nightmare..."
"Edgar, you're having a nightmare. Wake up!"
"Edgar! Edgar, wake up!"
"Mr. Edgar? Mr. Edgar!"
"Edgar! Edgar!"
Acute acute acute acute
"Everything stop! Just STOP!"
"Stop what?"
I can't do this anymore-
Yes you can- yes you CAN
"Scriabin, if you're going to keep distracting the others, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"I'm...what?"
"Stop tapping your foot please, it's distracting."
"Yeah, you're always twitching. Cut it out."
"Richard."
"So...I've been here...?"
"We're talking about journeys today, Scriabin."
"What journeys?"
"The journey you make through life. Your stay here at the hospital is a journey, and it's up to you to make the best of it. It's up to you to best use your time here."
"...I think I need to change my meds."
"Have you talked to your doctor?"
"I...I haven't seen him since..."
Found Edgar curled up in a small ball, so frightened by even the possibility of an attack that
Scriabin warded it off that time, Scriabin did a good job. He did a good job, and he was so relieved to see Edgar again that he hugged him, and then one thing led to another and he did something that one of them regretted later on, but he wasn't sure which one it was.
And he wasn't sure what it was he did.
"How could you let him do that to you?"
His eyes opened and burned, and he shut them again.
"Oh sorry, the light. Lemme get that...there." Shut off, and merciful darkness. "But Edgar...seriously. Why did you let him do that to you?"
No question he could ask would explain where he was. He stayed silent instead, and a hand touched his chest, traveled up to his cheek and brushed against the scars beneath his eyes.
"You don't deserve it, you don't deserve to have someone who hurts you like that...even yourself. Why do you let it happen?"
"Jake...?" Edgar rolled over, identified his voice. He found his forehead pressed against Jake's neck, and his arms settled around him.
"Yeah?"
"Just..." It wouldn't last, each blink took him further away. Joint desire and a joint attraction and it was rare and overpowering, to have the two of them agree on something for once. "Just hold me right now, I can't...I can't deal with this."
Jake did, and his breathing slowed.
"I'm sorry." Jake's hand moved slowly back and forth across his shoulder blades. "I wish I could make it better."
"God, don't go..."
It was already too late, and Edgar was holding his threadbare blanket in the hospital, and Harry was snoring.
"Johnny, how did I get here?"
"Hmm?" Johnny looked up from the comic he was drawing.
"How did I get here?" He had a coffee mug in his hand.
"I took you out." Johnny returned to his drawing. "I saw you, so I took you out."
"What were you doing there?"
"There was this study on sleep..." A pause for a few minutes. "But I saw you."
"It was real..."
"Yeah. I thought you looked...I thought you'd be better off with me. Since I..." He couldn't think of a good end to that sentence.
"How did you get me out?"
Johnny shrugged.
"Why?"
He shrugged again.
"Nny, what if...I'm not...what if things just get worse?"
"What do you mean?"
"I was there for a reason..."
Johnny turned and stared at him.
A long time ago, there was a young boy and his grandmother. One day, the young boy and his grandmother decided to go to the zoo nearby. It was a very nice zoo and was widely known for having large and expansive exhibits that no other zoo had. It had lots of interesting animals and things to do, and fun toys that he could touch but not have. His grandmother told him about all the animals, and special stories about them that he loved and never heard enough of.
The boy loved looking at the animals and even though he wanted a stuffed toy, he didn't say anything. He was a nice boy, and he knew that his grandmother had spent money to even get them into the zoo, and to ask for something else was impolite. He was a polite boy.
One day, the young boy and his grandmother went to the zoo, and they had a new exhibit. It was a large house made of glass, and outside it had big colorful signs that said "The Butterfly Experience."
The young boy and his grandmother went in.
Splitting apart, piece by piece, sawed over the rough edge too long and elastic screaming, squealing as it pulled apart. Stricken, broken strata, and and and
and
Come on, Edgar, come on, we've been through worse than this, we've survived before and we'll survive now
Eventual collapse, collapse, eventual collapse
Eventual, not inevitable! God damn you, listen to me! Come on!
The elastic wanted to turn on the rough edge that tormented it so and it wanted to tear it to pieces, but there was little a rubber band could do against its tormentors except snap back, and in this situation...
"You're still hallucinating, Edgar."
"Am I?"
"Yes."
"What am I going to do?"
"I changed your meds, so I'm not sure what else could be the problem..."
"Is this where I really am?"
"What do you mean?"
"...I don't know. Never mind."
"You're a strange guy, you know that? I've never had anyone react this way before."
"How long have I been...?"
"A week or so..."
Scriabin, stop...
Stop what?
"What was the other world like?"
"It was a dark place..." Harry kept eye contact with Edgar as he spoke. "Everything was rusty, bloody...worn down, destroyed. Like everything had been abandoned. Nothing lived there...it was dark everywhere, even outside, and it was raining constantly. That was probably why everything was all rusted...there were horrible monsters there too-"
"Monsters? What kind of monsters?"
"Lots of different kinds...it was hard at first, but I managed to get through them...well, some of them, before I came back to this world again, and I ended up here. I have to go back to the other world though, Cheryl is waiting for me-"
"What kind of monsters?"
"Oh...let's see...there were these strange bird creatures, and these dogs-"
"Dogs?"
"Yeah...vicious, really persistent...they were all mangled though, stretched out of shape...twisted by the other world."
"Maybe..." Edgar looked down at his blanket. "Maybe, maybe that's where they attacked me. Maybe that's where that thing came from. From the other world."
"Have you been there too?"
"I've been there."
"Oh, you're awake."
"I've been awake for a while."
"You've been there too, James?"
"Well...I think I have..."
"I've got to go back." Harry kept his fist tight. "I've got to go back and find her."
Imagine if you were that brave.
Back in the room with the light and the pen and the clipboard, and the soft tap tap of nervous movement not from him.
"Edgar?"
His voice was weak, barely audible.
"What?"
She looked down at the clipboard, back up at him.
"Have you ever been abused?"
Stared at her, eyes wide and disbelieving, the instinctual and lightning-quick sense of wounded dignity, of the very idea of it.
Blinked and felt it, and then the first reaction got pushed away, pushed to one side with a soft "oh" from Scriabin of surprise, and he felt his eyes water a little.
"Yes."
She stared at him for a few seconds, scratched something on the paper.
"This might be hard for you, and I'm sorry. But...would you feel comfortable telling me what kind of abuse? Emotional, physical, sexual? You don't have to answer if you don't want to. There's no pressure. We just want to help."
Edgar stared and his eyes watered still, and he felt his throat closing so he had to speak fast.
"All of them."
"I see," she said softly, and she marked out something with slow precision on the sheet that Edgar couldn't see. "Did you ever report it to the authorities? To anyone?"
"No." He was choking, slowly choking.
Like anyone could do anything about it. Nny doesn't exist, after all, Scriabin said with a touch of hostility, and for a moment the behavior that had been drilled into him, reinforced through so much punishment and fear throughout his double-life, those borders set that Scriabin said he hated and wanted to tear down for Edgar but had built himself, all of it came down and for a moment Edgar felt something again, he felt something that Scriabin had taken away. He felt hurt, that was familiar, but now he felt angry.
Fuck you. For once he wanted to fight back. For once he wanted to stop sleeping. Fuck you, you were worse.
Scriabin took a deep breath, too prolonged to be a true gasp but it indicated the same kind of emotion.
Edgar-
You were worse because you haven't stopped. His chest tight and it hurt, and Edgar let his head rest on his arms on the table. You haven't stopped, and you'll never stop.
"Edgar?"
He had no idea who'd be talking to him now. At any given moment he could be anywhere. He had become multiple, many places at many times. All places at all times, and he could never say where he was. He jumped, shifted without warning, became possibility. Became infinite, spread thin over a multitude of different places, different times and different thoughts and people under different circumstances, and there was little, if any, standard he had to decide which was more real, valid. What was the source reality he had once known, where he had started, and where he was now. Lost. He felt lost.
"What?"
"Edgar, how do you feel today?" Back in Group again. The faces around him familiar. Some of them were. Harry sat beside him, and he could recognize Michael and Richard across the room.
"How do I feel?"
I feel like I'm being torn apart. How about that.
"Scriabin feels like he's being torn apart."
"Edgar-"
Not only that, but that no one can even tell. Being torn apart by myself and nothing is happening, no one is noticing. My head is splitting sideways and everyone is just using it, getting used to it, no one wants to change it. I'm splitting, fading, falling, and my head hurts and I feel sick and the food here is horrible.
"Scriabin's very unhappy."
"How do YOU feel?"
"...the same."
"Then why mention it then?" Michael said with his arms crossed.
"Just let it go," Harry said, and Michael rolled his eyes but didn't say anything further.
"I don't know where I am anymore..." Edgar rested his head in his hands. "I don't know how I got here. I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm supposed to be getting better, but I'm not. Nothing's changing. Everything's just getting worse. Everything's blurring together. I can't tell what's real and what's fake anymore."
"Edgar." Johnny walked through the door of the meeting room. "I got some cookie dough. You want to make it or something?"
Might as well have asked if you wanted to knit a red sweater.
Edgar reached for the salt and knocked it over.
Depth perception, my dear.
Shut up.
He picked it back up.
It felt so normal that it almost burned.
"Edgar, how do you feel today?"
"I feel...lost."
"If we collapse..." Scriabin dunked the plastic lobster he was playing with underneath the soapy water. Edgar raised an arm to protect his face, as he didn't want to get any in his eyes. That would sting. Scriabin continued splashing the toy about without much care, his hair plastered to his skin with small rainbow bubbles sliding down. "If we collapse, what will happen to our selfs?"
"Ourselves?"
"Our selfs, you twit." Scriabin stared at the lobster. "If everything falls apart, for real, everything we know, all our memories...what happens to us?"
"What do you mean?" Edgar took the cup that was floating nearby and doused Scriabin with it. Scriabin sputtered, wiped his eyes, considered retaliating but realized Edgar was just trying to get the soap out of his hair.
"Us. If we lose everything else...will we lose each other too? If things get really bad...do we lose each other? Will we just become some gibbering mass, instead of who we are?"
Edgar filled the cup again, this time taking a bit more care, and Scriabin ducked his head to allow the water to run over it.
"If we collapse, completely...the end of the whole process, will we still be here? Or...will you?"
Scriabin shifted his weight uncomfortably, and Edgar knew he was trying to decide what to say. He eventually looked up at Edgar, and he wore his glasses in the bathtub because...well, just because, it seemed.
"Of the two of us..." He didn't want to say this, normally wouldn't have, but what did they really have to lose at this point? "Of the two of us...I think I'm more at risk. Don't you think?"
"Risk at being lost..." Edgar pushed some of Scriabin's hair out of the way of his face. "Yeah...you are...but if it comes down to it...I think that if we're going down..."
Scriabin dunked the lobster under the water again.
"I think we're both going down."
"How much of us will be left?"
"I dunno."
"And how long will it take to repair..." Scriabin splashed again and this time Edgar did get some water in his eyes. He rubbed at them furiously but the stinging didn't stop.
It was not a question of if it could be repaired...
To Scriabin, it was how long it would take to do it.
And that faith...faith in himself, in his abilities...
What good would it do?
Scriabin looked up at him again, reflective lenses spotted with stray droplets of water.
"It always comes down to us."
He handed the plastic lobster to Edgar.
"What would you do, Edgar?"
Back in that house again, and he tried to jerk up but found he was lying down. Johnny was beside him, close enough so that he could feel the warmth off his body, but just far enough so that they weren't touching.
"What?"
"What would you do?"
Edgar tried to gather his thoughts, find a way to respond.
For him. Scriabin sighed.
Edgar lifted an arm slowly to move it over his head, and he saw again the wounds he had inflicted sometime ago that he could no longer remember. Letters and slashes to hide those letters, and healing...
He blinked with his one remaining eye, and he looked at Johnny, who stared at him, curious and waiting.
"What else can I do?"
What haven't you done...
Johnny stared a few moments longer, and then he turned to rest his head on his arms, away from him.
"...to find myself. To know what I want. I've lost everything, I've lost...what I thought I was doing. I don't know where I am, I don't know who I was. I don't know who I am."
Right in the middle of him talking, and that added a whole new level to this that Edgar wasn't sure where to begin with.
But you were talking before...it wasn't me, it was you...are we just jumping through periods of time? How can you be here but not be here? Daydreaming? No...god, no, this doesn't make any sense...
"And..."
Patiently waiting, and someone coughed.
"I'm sorry, I forgot what I was talking about."
"That's okay, Edgar."
How can I have...when I was talking? Did I leave? Did I just dream up what was happening...have I been going through the routines while I've been miles away? How can this...how does...
Edgar opened his eyes and he was in the quiet room, sitting on the bed.
He buried his hands in his hair and whined harshly through his teeth.
I'm sick of this, I'm sick of it, I'm sick I'm sick I'm sick...
You're wearing my coat...
Opened his eyes, and he was.
"I think we'll be okay."
"What?"
"I think we'll be okay," Johnny repeated as he turned to look at him again. Edgar was propped up in bed reading a book, and Johnny was beside him, sprawled out completely.
"How so...?"
"I mean...I saw what was happening...I read your book. Once or twice...I read it, and I know what was happening. I know what he was doing to you...what he did to you. And now, I know that...things have gotten very bad." Johnny took a deep breath. "But I think we'll be okay. I think you'll be okay."
That's an arrogant statement to make. I think we would know if we were okay or not, or if we were going to be at any point.
"I...so you did read it then..." Edgar wasn't reading what was in the book, and he was pretty sure it wasn't words to begin with. "I wasn't sure...everything gets very hazy at that point. It's hard to remember exactly what happened back then..."
"I know...but I think we'll be okay. I think we'll get past this. I think that...we can still get what we wanted."
What YOU wanted.
"I think we can still achieve it, don't you?"
Edgar nodded, mostly because he wasn't sure how else to respond.
"You're the one who told me to keep trying..." Johnny rested his head on his hands. "You're the one who said that I could change, if I really tried. I think you can too, if you want. I think you can get past this."
Wow, why didn't I think of that! Just believing that things will get better! My word, you're just so full of surprises, Johnny! To think, if only we had contacted your miraculous font of knowledge sooner, perhaps EDGAR WOULD STILL HAVE AN EYE!
"I did that myself." Didn't intend to say that out loud. Johnny didn't turn to look at him, but he was sure that he must have heard that.
Don't you blame him for that, that was my decision.
I blame him for everything, Scriabin said with pure loathing.
"Why are people so...unpleasant?"
Holy shit.
He tried to move and just as he thought, it was...
It was quite painful.
This time, Edgar really did get sick.
"Edgar, how do you feel today?"
"I feel...lost."
"feel today?"
"ost. efee I"
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"leeleeleel ah"
feel feeeeeeeeel to to to tototodaKCZCKKKCKZKKXXXXZZZZZ
"Hmm?"
"Where...where are we now?"
"I don't even know if that's the right question anymore." Edgar managed to focus on Scriabin's face at least, although he still felt vaguely dizzy. His features were sharper, more pronounced, his eyes hidden but his jaw-line marked with small sharp protuberances, maybe something like spikes or horns. His ears longer, pointed, and he noticed that the hand resting on his lower back felt bony and thin, and claws poked through the fabric.
"What are we?"
"Closer." Scriabin seemed to be studying Edgar just as Edgar studied him in return. He looked at Scriabin's hands to find them dark, ridged with spines and fingertips thick with sharp claws. Animalistic. "What are we, hmm."
"Well..." Edgar looked down at his feet. "We're dancing now, apparently."
"So we are." Scriabin swept Edgar along with him, an elegant turn and Edgar felt a strange weight accompanying him, not finishing in time. "I feel pleasantly lucid, don't you?"
"Considering what's been going on, yeah, I think so. I'm still...what's going on?"
"Well, maybe this is...maybe we're reconstructing reality. Maybe this is just a representation of what we really want."
"I don't think so."
"Why not?" A long step that Edgar followed, pressed against Scriabin's chest. He looked and caught the bone constructions lifting from Scriabin's back, large and yet insubstantial, the thin bone fingers of wings with webbing created only by the tangled threads of yarn looping in and between each other, thick knots and thin trailing lines to fill the empty space, an illusion.
"If what I really wanted was to dance with you, for some utterly bizarre reason, I don't think I'd wear a dress." Edgar looked down at the thick fabric around his legs. "I would wear the same thing as you. Not just because it's less emasculating, but...you understand. You know why."
"I do." Scriabin smirked at him. "But are you sure this isn't just what you've always wanted, deep down?"
"Har har." Edgar rolled his eyes as Scriabin dipped him near the ground, leaned over and supported him. "Wouldn't you know that already, in that case?"
"Touché." Scriabin lifted him back up, spun him close. "Besides, on my end, I'd prefer not to have my wings present. They're mine, you know. If this is what you want, then they wouldn't be here."
"And if this is what you want, then they wouldn't be here either, would they?" Edgar matched his smile for a second. "You'd look a great deal more handsome, I'd imagine. You have a tendency to do that."
Scriabin grimaced in distaste at some unknown figure. "Yes, I'm not much for the whole monster-ish look I have going on here. It's remarkably difficult to dance with my feet like this."
Edgar glanced down to check, and saw feet angled upwards and back like an animal's with barely any pads, just bone and claws scrabbling against the tile. Edgar stumbled a bit himself in his own footwear.
"You should try it in heels."
"So." Scriabin whirled around again, his claws tapping a strange rhythm along with the faint strains of music that Edgar could just hear. "This isn't us then, is it?"
"Well, for you, all I can guess is that maybe it could be the ugliest part of you. For me..." Edgar lifted a hand from Scriabin's shoulder for a second to look at his white gloves a bit more closely. "I have no idea what this is about. The gayest part of me? Shit, this is stupid."
"This is important though, Edgar." Scriabin pushed him away, hung onto his hand and Edgar spun away, and the way the skirt followed his motion late and the weight of it, completely foreign, almost made him stumble. "Whatever these delusions are, we're not creating them. Something else is doing this to us."
"Hmm." Edgar spun back, felt Scriabin's chest against his back and his arm around his waist. "You're right. We're not going crazy...something is happening. Something keeps shifting us around. Maybe trying to disorient us. What do you think?"
Scriabin spun him around, let him settle back into his previous position, one hand on his shoulder and the other in his grasp. "I think I like being able to talk like this again. I feel...I haven't felt this way in a while. Do you think it's because we haven't tried to fight yet?"
Edgar was following some pattern long-set, and he rested his head on Scriabin's shoulder. "You mean the delusion? I think you may be right. Other times we've doubted, tried to find the reality we came from. So far, we've done what this...whatever this is has wanted us to do. We're dancing, for...some reason."
"Something wants us to do something. There's something behind this, I know it." Scriabin settled his head beside Edgar's, and those sharp things on his jaw-line scratched against his skin. "The system is trying to force our collapse. I think that's what it's trying to do to us."
"This is a good sign then, isn't it? That we're able to talk like this?"
"It depends...we can't do what we want to. We're trapped in the pattern it sets, otherwise it jerks us around again."
"It'll start doing that again soon anyway, though. It'll know that we aren't collapsing, so to speak, if we just go through the motions. We're just postponing the inevitable."
"Not necessarily." Scriabin took a turn, and Edgar almost stumbled, his feet unused to the shoes they were confined in, the requirements for balance. "We'll figure something out."
"Heh...listen." Edgar closed his eyes, heard the faint strains of an invisible orchestra, and felt claws touch his cheek gently. "Is this one of your symphonies?"
"Ha." Edgar opened his eyes and saw Scriabin smile, wide and fanged. "This is entirely too melodic for my namesake. If it was one of mine, you'd know it."
"Must be hard to talk with those fangs in your mouth."
"Did you know you're wearing a tiara?"
Edgar raised an eyebrow. "Touché."
Another sweeping turn across the ballroom floor.
"There's no one here..."
"Did we have an attachment to this story? Do you think that's why it's dredged it up?"
"What story?"
"Beauty and the Beast." Edgar rolled his eyes again. "It isn't that hard to tell, is it?"
"Nothing comes up for me." Scriabin shrugged. "But memories right now...they're falling apart. Not a reliable source of information."
"Then why...? I'm sure that's what this is, I'm sure of it."
"Well, the moral was...what? Appearances can be deceiving?"
"I don't think this is about morals..."
"What else could it be about?"
"Nothing. And it may know by now, that with us..." Edgar nodded towards Scriabin. "With us, everything means something."
"Good point."
Edgar nearly rolled his ankle when his foot slipped, but Scriabin's hand around his waist kept him up.
"Isn't this...isn't this form of yours the form you use to protect me? Or when you protected me, I mean? I remember seeing it once or twice...but it was never for a long period of time."
"It is intimidating, isn't it?" Scriabin's voice touched with quiet amusement, and it had been a while since Edgar had heard that. Lately he had vacillated through such extremes, from hatred to sadness to frustration and anger. Subtlety had been lost in the process, and to have it back, to hear it again...something about it was empowering. Comfortingly familiar, long old. "Changing just this much is difficult enough, but it does the job. I don't like changing too far."
"So, if this is the form you protect me in..." Edgar looked at Scriabin's shoulders, the tattered ends of his sleeves. The outfit Scriabin was wearing, directly from a fairy tale illustration of a prince, had been changed, damaged to accommodate Scriabin's not-exactly-human form. Edgar ran a gloved finger across Scriabin's shoulder. "Is this the part of me that needs to be protected?"
"Are we trying to find meaning again?" Before, the statement would have come with an accusation, that it was Edgar's fault and Edgar's failing that he was doing something that, the insinuation ran, was so pointless. Now, the quiet bemusement took the harsh edges, generalized the subject to the both of them, the mistake both of theirs and the gravity of it largely downplayed. It was a pleasant change, to be able to speak without fear of attack, and Edgar knew that throughout it all, he had been speaking the same way. A truce struck at some point, although he wasn't sure when. "I don't think there is any, to be honest."
"Staying with the confusion theory then? If this...whatever this is is trying to confuse us, then they're doing a good job." Pulled close to Scriabin and Edgar rested his chin on his shoulder, the warmth of his body comforting in a way that, in such a setting, was so strangely platonic. "The system just trying to disorient us...make us weak for the final attack."
"Edgar..." Scriabin rested his head against Edgar's gently, his motions smooth. "They've already attacked us...for all intents and purposes...they've won. We aren't fighting them now, we're trying to rebuild."
"Giving up?"
"No, just changing goals." A touch of old pride. "Maybe they haven't won, maybe you're right. But I don't think they're going to attack us again. What we have to focus on is healing the damage already inflicted. Finding our way back."
"Rock bottom. They used that phrase a lot in Group."
"Careful." Scriabin took a deep breath. "We're still not sure what triggers it. Best to keep it vague."
"But this whole scenario...why? I've never danced in my life. It's not something I was ever interested in. Why do we look like this?"
Scriabin paused, then he smiled, a sharp tooth catching over his lip. "My boy, didn't a movie come out...?"
"Which one? Not yours, I imagine."
"No, an animated one." Scriabin's grin grew wider. "For the children, your everyday fanciful ride, and it had a scene with a ballroom, and the beauty and the beast dancing..."
"God, do you think so?" Edgar said, aghast. "This is just some stupid recreation of my memories of a commercial for a movie I never even saw?"
Scriabin just smiled and raised his eyebrows.
"Christ." Edgar rested his forehead against Scriabin's shoulder. "This is just embarrassing."
"Come now, the dress wasn't embarrassing enough to begin with?" Scriabin adjusted his grip on Edgar's back. "You're handling that rather well, considering."
"You get pushed far enough, you stop reacting." Edgar sighed, and pulled away to look at Scriabin again. "And how seriously can you take something like this, anyway? This is like that dream where I was a church mouse. You can't question something like that, it's just so patently ridiculous. You just let it go."
Scriabin shrugged, and his wings shifted, creaked behind him. "Wasn't I in that dream? I think I was."
"You were a cat, if I recall." Scriabin grinned at the thought, and Edgar rolled his eyes again. "Big surprise."
"Ah, I'd make a good cat..." Scriabin said mostly to himself, and he looked up towards the ceiling.
"God...those dreams. Do you remember the dreams? The really bad ones?"
Scriabin nodded, let his eyes travel to the floor to watch their steps.
"Preparation for an attack...? Or maybe there would never be one, we'd just get worn down until we couldn't fight anymore..."
"So...what do you think will happen when we do collapse? I mean, when the system is done with us?" Scriabin kept his eyes down. "Will things just go back to normal?"
"Think about it...we just snap back, and everything's okay again..." Edgar shook his head slowly. "We wake up, and it's like...nothing ever went wrong. It was all a dream..."
"Here's a question for you." Met his eyes again. "How far back would that be? Before the hospital? Before the diary? Before the toy? Before Nny himself? Before she died?"
Edgar made a thoughtful noise, but he couldn't think of much else in response. Scriabin let the silence go, let the music softly fill the gaps. It sounded familiar, long ago and far away, and Edgar knew the song. He knew he'd heard it before, but he just couldn't place where, exactly.
Scriabin faltered for a second, claws slipping and his wings spread to help keep his balance. Edgar watched the bone and yarn sway, the loose strands near his face and away again.
"Why do you have those, anyway?"
"Long story." A grin, something childish and mischievous, and that kind of relative innocence had been lacking too much lately.
Short pause.
"I like...being able to talk like this again." Edgar looked up. "I haven't felt this way since...God knows how long."
"Edgar..." Scriabin's expression a little more serious. "You were being sarcastic with me before...more so than you would be normally. More confident...like me. You don't think that we're already...losing each other, do you?"
Edgar hadn't thought of that, and he found that his initial planned reaction, to laugh, would have said too much. "Losing each other...God, I thought we couldn't be more separate."
"I told you, that's what worried me about this whole thing. Possibly..." Another dip towards the floor, and Edgar closed his eyes. He could feel Scriabin breathing on his neck. "We're rational now, which is good, but...what does it mean?"
Lifted back up. "How do we know what to do? I don't think this will make any sense...it's not supposed to."
"At least that we can hang on to."
The claws moved, settled around his face until Edgar couldn't move for fear of hurting himself, and Scriabin kissed him. Chaste enough so that it would have fit in such an archaic scenario, but the fact he felt those fangs in one way or another meant that Scriabin was pushing it, as usual.
"I was supposed to do that." Scriabin gave him a wicked grin. "I suppose I should rip your bodice off now."
"Frankly, if I can still think through the whole ordeal..." Edgar closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "If doing it will keep us thinking...I'll rip it off myself."
Edgar looked up, opened his eyes. Wherever he was now, it was dark. He felt something warm and breathing across his lap, and he reached down to shake whatever it was.
"Scriabin, wake up." As soon as the words left him, he realized that it was, indeed, Scriabin lying across him. He wasn't sure if the reality was defined by his words or if he had just known, in one way or another.
"Hmm..." Scriabin sighed long, stretched, pushed himself up. "Where are we now?"
"You said before...if you were touching me, then there's only one place we could be." Edgar adjusted his glasses, felt both his eyes blinking and solid. "This is definitely in my mind, somewhere. Not reality."
"Depends." Scriabin's words elongated as words were when one was stretching, his back popped once. "Nnf, depends."
"How so?"
"Your definition...our definition of reality isn't that clear, and what is clear can be easily...imitated. If this is all some long fever dream, orchestrated by the system to keep us quiet and out of the way, then who's to say they wouldn't learn or know eventually that in your concept of reality, I can't touch you? That to mimic reality properly, I wouldn't be able to touch you?"
"That insinuates..." Edgar's eyes slowly adjusted, and he could see shapes across the walls. A basement, he was almost positive. "That insinuates that there was a reality, at one point, and that the dreams began at one point. Everything beyond that would be a dream."
"Question is when that period began." He could see the vague shape of Scriabin standing, short and compact.
"Looks like we're children again..." Edgar grabbed Scriabin's sweater, used it to pull himself up. "If we were just thrown into a...long fever dream, then whose control was the dream under?"
"Think the system was tweaking the dreams?"
"I don't know anymore..." Edgar shook his head. "Like you said...how far back? When did I start dreaming? Am I dreaming now? What was reality...how far back have I been hallucinating? When did it start?"
"I've found we're not particularly good at defining starting points." Scriabin reached out, found Edgar's hand in the darkness. "Not for when you started to feel attached to Johnny, when you began to think of me as a person, when you got attached to me, when things started going really wrong...we're not good at that."
"Where are we now, do you think?"
"If the system is collapsing us...or causing us to collapse, it'd make sense that our memories would end up jumbled together like this...like you said, with the shards. Just falling into one after the other. But you may remember...there are memories that we created, or one or the other of us created at some point...we may fall into those as well. Fantasies, nightmares."
"How real is this, then? If the system is affecting the dream, than the conduit is open for it to influence us directly...maybe through the guise of dreams. Those creatures..." Edgar shuddered. "Those creatures...they could come to us now, at any time, if we're dreaming. They could hide themselves, wait for their moment."
"Like I said...I don't think we're considered that much of a threat anymore." Scriabin tugged at his hand, and Edgar reluctantly stepped forward into the dark. "I think they know that...well, we won't resist as actively as we once did. Darn it, now that you've pointed it out, it's hard for me to admit that they won this time...or at least, that much."
"Darn it?" Edgar smiled.
"Shut up. It's hard to hear this voice swearing. Now...if we're in a basement, this must be the basement of our house. Granma's house. Think she's here?"
"I don't know." Edgar felt around, headed towards where the stairs would be if this was the basement after all. "It's possible."
"Hmm..." There, he felt the banister. He took a step and heard Scriabin following behind, still holding on tight to his hand. "We're talking so civilly...working to decipher a common problem...and in the other realities...the shifting places, it wasn't like this..."
"What do you think it means?"
"Could be that the dancing...that this is just a dream, between you and me." Scriabin tightened his grip for a few seconds. "That we're just dreaming now...somewhere."
"Not as far back as I would like," Edgar tried to say with some humor.
"True. That means though, that our dreams...our shared dreams together, that can't be changed. We can't...we're not as crazy, that way. If that's a good way to put it."
"Not exactly...those horrible nightmares. They weren't ours, I'm sure of it. This dream-reality CAN be manipulated, it's really just a question of why they haven't done so yet."
"Hmm, manipulation...my specialty." Edgar was sure that Scriabin smirked in the dark. "Let's see, if I was in their position...our previous nightmares set us against each other, in one way or another. You...remember how." He didn't want to even say it out loud. It had been a long time ago, but dreams like that...they were hard to forget. "This dream...whatever the system is, it may just be presenting us with the illusion of sanity, of control. Of hope. Ha, that'd be sadistic. Giving us false hope that we'll get through this. Well, I think we have more of an effect on our future than the system may suppose..." That unquestioning faith again, in that they would survive this alive. "This dream here can just as easily be manipulated as our dreams from before...they either aren't doing it, for one reason or another, or they are, just to convince us that we're free when we aren't."
Edgar ran a hand through his hair. "Complicated..."
"I think things got complicated when we started shifting realities." His tone was mild. "Question is, what's more likely? What would they rather do with us? Do they have the time to spend on one lock, to invest so much time and effort into driving us specifically crazy? Would a system so shoddy as to pick Johnny and not realize it until it was too late be that thorough?"
"I don't think so..."
"Neither do I. That leaves the always unsettling option that it really is just us, finally losing that last vestige of sanity. There are no multiple realities, just delusions and hallucinations. Not a pleasant thought."
"Maybe this isn't entirely...you said there was a pipeline open to me, didn't you? Well, those things...those monsters came in through that pipeline, and I don't know how affiliated they were with the lock system, but I know the...big..." He shuddered. "The big...blob thing was. The other three...maybe they were just tagging along for the ride."
"I see." Scriabin put a hand to his mouth. "So it's possible this isn't necessarily the system manipulating us, but just some opportunistic parasite-" Scriabin choked on his last word, reconsidered. "An opportunistic predator saw that this mind was weak, open, and...you know, who would really notice, this close to the end?"
"So the reality shifts aren't related to the collapse, you think?"
"Oh, I think they are...in some way. All we're doing is theorizing." Scriabin shrugged. "I'm not sure. It's not healthy that we're doing that, and if it continues, I don't think...like we said, we can't take much more of this. There's got to be some way to stop it, or at least understand what we're up against."
"All we've got are theories..." Edgar rubbed one hand over the other. "Without more proof...we don't really have a plan of action. Important things first...if whatever reality we were shifting through before was the waking world, and this now is the unconscious...that means we're easy targets for the monsters now."
"If that is reality, which one?" They reached the door at the top of the stairs. "Which one was reality, and which one was just some kind of insane illusion?"
"I'm not sure about that." Edgar reached out, turned the knob. The main kitchen, and that was it. And that was literally it. The rest of the house was entirely gone, as if it had been ripped away. The walls stood at waist-height in some places, ankle-high at others, ripped edges as though torn with teeth. Blasted apart. The kitchen table stood on the tile, as it always had, although a few dead leaves rested on its surface, and its joints were marked with rust. The floor tiles were dark and dusty, dead leaves skittering across occasionally.
"Now this is interesting." Scriabin took the step into the kitchen, and Edgar followed. "Look at that."
Beyond the walls of what had once been their childhood kitchen stood a verdant, thick forest. The sunlight came through the leaves sparsely, caused glowing spots that shifted with the wind. Some tendrils curled across the walls, the slow invasion of the living into the living room.
"Hey, there's the kitchen sink." Edgar smiled. The fixture was rusted and overgrown with the same crawling ivy.
"Well." Scriabin put a hand on his hip. A small cabbage moth fluttered by through the streams of light from the canopy above. "Well."
"I'm not sure." Edgar kept a tight hold on his hand. "What does this mean?"
"Nothing."
"Heh..." Edgar followed the moth with his eyes. "When you can just say that to things...it's a lot easier."
"If this is a dream...where will we wake up? In the hospital? With Nny? At home? Which reality will win out?"
Edgar stared up at the trees above, branches mixing and interlocking, and the soft motion of everything that only becomes apparent when you sit and pay attention. He stared, watched some small creature leap from one branch to another.
"Do you think...this is it?" Edgar sat down on the dirty ground, amidst the dead leaves that still moved occasionally. Scriabin turned and stared at him for a few minutes. "Do you think this is the last time we'll be able to talk like this? Really dream before it all falls apart? What if you're right, what if this is the last time we're really us before it all comes tumbling down?"
Edgar moved his arms out of the way, and just as he thought, Scriabin flopped into his lap with some deliberate strength.
"Oof!"
Scriabin paid no attention, and instead rested his head against Edgar's chest.
"The last time we'll be together? In...you know."
"The last time we'll be able to think and talk clearly? Who knows." Edgar shrugged. "Who knows how long this dream will last? I know we're dreaming now. There's no way we can't be."
"What if this is the last time..." The cabbage moth landed on Scriabin's jeans, let its wings slowly open and close. "What if this is it? What if this is really it? Our last chance..."
"Can you say good-bye?"
Scriabin stared at the moth.
"Can you?"
"I don't think so." Edgar shook his head, the specter of finality prompting honesty. "I just...I just can't believe it. That this is it, this is the end. I can't believe that, it's just...it just doesn't seem real to me. I can't...I can't imagine being without you. I can't imagine...not being. I can't say good-bye if I don't really believe that...you're leaving. I feel...you should feel something when you say good-bye, that makes it valid...I don't feel anything."
"You never feel anything." Scriabin kept his hands in his lap, and the butterfly stayed where it was, undisturbed. "That's okay. It's who you are, I guess...I never liked that about you, you know."
"Can you say good-bye? Good-bye to all the things you hate about me?" Edgar smiled tentatively. "Good-bye to..."
"Good-bye to myself. Good-bye to being, for me. This is a bit more serious for me than it is for you..." Scriabin sighed. "Maybe when it all goes down, and you find your way out again, and you're rebuilding, I won't be there. I'll be that sacrifice, lost in time. Who can say? I can't...I don't want to."
"You don't believe it'll happen either, do you?"
"No."
"That we'll really...that this is it. You don't believe it..."
"No."
"Me neither."
The two watched the moth open and close its wings.
"We're both rather fucked up, when you think about it."
Edgar tilted his head slightly. "I thought you weren't swearing in that voice."
Scriabin ignored him. "The thing is...the amazing thing is, we can actually get worse."
"That's what I've learned through all of this." The moth finally flew away, flickered in the beams of light pouring down on old faded tiles. Scriabin shifted his weight, pressed a bit closer and Edgar held onto him. "That's what I've learned over...everything. Things can always get worse."
"I thought we hit the bottom before..." Scriabin sighed, and Edgar closed his eyes. "I kept thinking that, every time something bad happened that things could never get any worse."
"Things can always get worse."
"I don't want to die." Scriabin turned and buried his face in Edgar's shirt. "I don't want to die."
"We all die eventually-"
"I don't want to."
Edgar took a deep breath, thought back. He heard Harry's voice, just a sound or a syllable, and felt his hand in his own. Imagine if...the capacity for change, he had to have faith in the capacity for change, otherwise...
Now. This was the last chance, their last time, maybe, and it would have to be now. He took a deep breath, gathered his resolve.
"If I have a choice...if there's even the slightest chance...I'll save you."
The finality in his words, the determination was enough that Scriabin didn't ask for reaffirmation, for any proof.
The die was cast. For all of their faults, the parts that ground against each other and caused such friction, despite it all he could not give it up.
He could not let someone die.
Not when there was something he could do to prevent it.
"When it comes down to it...the last moments before the complete collapse of mind and body...when it comes down to it, I want you there with me."
"I want to be there..." Scriabin turned enough, slid his arms around Edgar, his sweater covering his hands. "I want to be there, because I know you can't get back without me."
The end of all things, and the moth fluttered by again.