interlude

Rating: T
Pairing: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb

Summary: "Newt's experience when they Drift."


blue—

blue blue blue blue blue he's surrounded by blue it's seeping into his skin under his skin it is his skin but it's not his skin—

eyes his vision is doubling tripling everything's a shade of electric white-blue—

Stop he screams with a voice that vibrates the very fabric of existence stop I can't—

I who is he what is he where—

flashes memories of them him it we us me I one many all—

Hermann

"—Hermann!" he shouts, and it all—

stops. Turns from electric, white-hot, burning blue to black; the void. Space: infinite and empty but still so full. Dark.

He hold out a hand. In the black, he can't see anything, but he senses the limb, feels the movement of it, the matter it displaces to get there. "Anyone?" he calls, voice silent in the—

Drift.

—is harmony, symbiosis; the melding of the minds, but

"Hermann?" he calls again, the comforting blackness suddenly frightening. "Hermann, where are you?"

Because he was there, just a second ago, he was with Newt, he was Newt, they were one, but now he's—

alone.

"Why?" he asks, shrinking in on himself. "Why am I—why am I alone?"

when are you not?

It's a sound that's not a sound—a thought he feels in the very fibres of his being. It dwarfs him.

when are you not?

"I—that's not true—" he protests weakly, "I—no, that's not—that's not—"

so, then, when are you not?

Words fail him; his mind screeches to a halt, unable to answer the question. He swallows. "Hermann—"

you are

alone

"I—I'm alone," he breathes. "I'm all alone." The realisation of that is sluggish, like a viscous liquid slowly transferring from one container to another. He's alone, surrounded only by the void and his own thoughts.

"That's—impossible." But he knows it's true—there's nothing in existence except for him. All around him, the heavy presence of nothingness presses against all of his senses, blinding and choking and smothering—

"…I'm dead." It's the only explanation, but if he's dead, then—then—

He drags in a gasping, panicked breath. "I can't be dead—where's Hermann? Where's Hermann—"

The blackness bends and twists, dragging him along with the rushing current.

you're—

—not

dead—

—you're not dead, newton. come home

He jolts out of the Drift, shuddering, blood dripping from his nose. Hermann throws up in a discarded toilet and Newt gives him the handkerchief he most certainly didn't steal from a certain physicist.

They rush into the helicopter, the wind whipping through their hair, stinging their cheeks, and Hermann's hand creeps into his. Quietly, almost too quiet to be heard over the roar of the chopper's blades, Newt asks, "Was it you?"

"Was what me?"

"Something—I was caught in the Drift," he swallows, rememberers the pressing darkness. "I was—in space. Alone. And then I heard—"

"You're not dead, Newton. Come home," the other finishes, looking surprised. "Oh. I suppose it was me, then."

Newt grips his hand tightly. "Thank you," he says, and the smile Hermann gives him is small, tired, bloody; genuine.