A.N:

Leo is on vacation in Denmark – but I get her to text me prompts none the less. And even if she's not read the previous chapter, she still manages to send me these prompts that just...work. Ily

Colour: White, Song: 99 Luftballons – Nena, Word: Union.


"For the love of God, would you slow the fuck down?"

Willem rolls his eyes as he takes the stairs in pairs of two.

Margaret is almost running up the long and light-grey staircase to Level 3. She's smiling and can't seem to stand still for even a second despite Willem's efforts to make her calm down.

"it's just because you're so slow," she teases and winks at her older brother. All Willem can do is stick his tongue out as he tries to catch up. He needs to start exercising – when Margaret can out-run him like this – he knows he's getting out of shape.

"I'm so excited to finally meet this mysterious friend of yours! You always talk about him, makes me so curious!" she giggles and skips down the hallway with light steps, swinging a large picnic basket around; something that worries Willem a lot – because he can hear glass clinkering against one another as his sister jumps around like a 5-year old.

"Is he handsome? I bet he is," Margaret smiles.

Willem almost stumbles over his own feet.

"Handsome? Now the hell would I be able to tell you that?"

"Oh don't be such a stick-in-the-mud Wim! I'm not going to seduce him...unless he's super hot, then I might flirt a bit,"

She laughs as her older brother face-palms and groans – she's not even met Erik and already he's nearly regretting this.

Once they reach the Erik's room, Willem knocks once before entering.

"Goedemorgen Erik...I brought-"

He's suddenly cut of as his sister pushes him away from the door and near launches herself at Erik.

"Ohmygod! He's gorgeous!"

Erik looks terrified at the sudden contact from a woman he's never met before, and he seems to be almost falling off his chair (and it's not just Margaret's clinging to him making him unsteady).

"Margaret, let go if him...you're scaring him," Willem tries to reason.

Blinking in confusion at her brother's words, Margaret turns her focus to the man she's clinging to.

"Oh..I am so, so , so sorry!"

Immediately she releases Erik from her death-like grasp and takes a step back. Both siblings notice the slight trembling as Erik takes a few deep breaths. Had Erik been 40 years older he would most likely have died of a heart attack right here and now.

Margaret smiles sweetly and curtsies politely to Erik, hoping to redeem herself like she always does: using her good looks and charm.

"I'm Margareet...but you can call me Margaret. It's nice to meet you Erik"

Erik looks the blonde woman up and down with dull-blue eyes before giving her a small smile. "Nice to meet you too Margarete...sorry..Margaret." Erik mentally slaps himself for getting the woman's name wrong right after she just told him how to pronounce it. Not good.

With a quick motion he shuts the book he had been bent over before he was attacked by a very affectionate woman. Willem only manages to catch a glimpse of the book; sketches and a few words – immediately he wonders if Erik is an artist too.

However; he doesn't get a chance to ask, because his sister is already bombarding him with questions. She wants to know everything – down to his favourite colour and music style.

Erik avoids almost every single questions with a slight frown and another attempt at escaping her. He does, however, admit rather quietly he's really fond of the colour blue.

As if his wardrobe wasn't proof enough of that.

Margaret makes small talk, asks him how to properly pronounce his last name and then chats about how she was born in Belgium, but grew up mostly in the Netherlands together with her siblings. Erik nods occasionally and seems to listen to what she's saying, but Willem is blocking out his sister's inessential babbling. Instead he focused on Erik. He sees how Erik's eyes dart from Margaret to his leather bound sketchbook on the desk. He notices how Erik is again picking pieces off his nails – ripping them to shreds again.

It seems to be some sort of odd nervous habit, yet it is completely ignored by everyone but him.

He's probably over thinking things.

Then again; it won't hurt to try...

Clearing his throat to get the two blonde's attentions Willem looks at his sister with one eyebrow arched – making his small scar move ever so slightly up.

"I distinctly remember you promised us waffles..."

"So I did!" Margaret claps her hands together and springs up from the edge of Erik's bed. "I'll ask the nurses to borrow the kitchen downstairs. Be back soon!"

The two men watch as she takes of with light steps. Erik seems mesmerized by something, because he's watching his sister walk away intently – Willem hasn't really seen that look before.

With a swift motion, Willem flicks Erik's temple with his forefinger and thumb. Erik recoils slightly and glares.

Then his expression soften and he looks towards his door again.

"She...she's real..right? You're not tricking me..."

He doesn't know if he should be worried or laugh.

"Erik...Margaret is my sister. Of course she's real..." but the question worries him – what has Erik seen that makes him doubt his sister's existence?
"What on earth would make you think other wise?" he asks with concern.

Erik's movements are slow, as if he's scared Margaret will come back at any moment and catch him doing something he shouldn't. Like strangling her brother.

"She...well...I have seen her before..."

"What? Impossible"

"Yeah...I know." Erik coughs into his hand and pulls his sketchbook out from the loose pieces of paper he tossed over it.
"Yet...I have a drawing of..well..her."

All Willem can do is blink. This isn't making any sense.

Yet; when Erik opens the book and hands it to Willem, he has to admit – it certainly does look like Erik has met his sister before.

Erik has drawn a beautiful woman sitting on the edge of a lake, the only thing that has been added as colours are blonde hair and green eyes, the rest of the drawing has just been left on the beige paper; only some thin pencil lines marking shadows and depth. It looks real – or at least drawn from real life.

However; there is one great difference. The woman in the drawing has a tail.

Willem looks at the drawing, then at Erik, then at the drawing again. He can't quite piece this together.

"How? I mean: who is this...?"

"I don't know her name...she's a Huldra...she's one of the creatures I see..." the last words come out quietly. Obviously Erik doesn't want to admit he can see his fairytale friends so clearly he can make frightfully accurate drawings of them. Even worse – the huldra-woman looks just like Margaret.

Yet Erik has never met her. And he can't have seen her in passing while at the institution - not in such great detail. The entrance to Level 2 and Willem's room is on the opposite side from the Level 3 entrance and where Erik's window faces. It is, in all senses: impossible.

And as far as Willem knows, he's never even mentioned what his sister looks like.

"This is creepy," Willem mutters.

"You're telling me..."

"You've drawn my sister...practically half naked."

"I..um...actually...when I saw that particular 'creature' she wasn't wearing clothes at all..."

Willem knows a few people who would kill to be able to see beautiful naked women – real or imaginary.

"Not that I want to ask..but I feel I should...why did you then add clothes?"

Erik gets a hint of a blush across his pale cheeks.

"I amuse myself by writing and illustrating children's stories based on what I see. I didn't feel it was appropriate to have her naked in a book intended for children."

"Ah..." Willem tears his eyes away from the Margaret-look-alike Huldra and inspects the opposite page. And there it is, as clear as day, a few short sentences on the beautiful creature and how she fell in love with a human.

The rest of the book is the same.

Everything written in Erik's beautiful cursive handwriting. With each little story there are incredibly detailed drawings or sketches of the characters, some large and scary – others small and cute. However, one thing is a common theme in Erik's drawings:
While he can draw incredibly realistic creatures and humans, the Norwegian seems unable or uninterested in drawing scenery.

Thus the book is incomplete.

Pages upon pages feature little faeries dancing on sketchy flowers and toadstools – you can see what Erik wants to have around them, but he never gets further than drawing the creatures.

"Fascinating..." Willem mutters to himself as he turns the pages one by one. A woman in a dress made of the whitest snow, a gnome using a rabbit as a mount and a beetle carrying a little flower faery. Everything seems so vivid and real.

Until you tear your eyes away from the creatures.

Willem feels an itch in his fingers. He wants to colour, draw and perfect these beautiful illustrations. Make the entire scenery come alive with flowers, grass and trees. Make the water in the river flow as if it was real, and paint the clouds in the sky – dull grey or a brilliant white.

"You have a lot of talent,"

"Not on the same level as you, you make the earth come alive in your work. All I do is put pencil to paper and draw things that don't exists," Erik shrugs.

"I can draw the rest,"

The words fall out of his mouth before he can even think. Willem bites his lip – he wasn't supposed to voice that though out loud. Any moment he expects Erik to rip the book away from his hands and glare at him for even suggesting to tamper with his work.

It never comes.

"You...you'd do that?"

"Well, only if you'd want me to..."

Erik grins like a child at Christmas.
"I'd love you to!"

He gets a giddy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He's never collaborated with anyone on something like this, it's terrifying and exciting all at once.

Their in deep discussion by the time Margaret returns with a large batch of fresh waffles (He lost count but he thinks she took about 45 minutes and 9 seconds). Erik tries to subtly hide the book away, while Willem distracts his sister by poking fun at how long it took her to make something so simple. They want to show her the complete book once it's finished – not while it's still a mess of pencil lines and ideas.

There is also the issue of Erik's little huldra-woman and her uncanny likeness to Margaret. She'd probably be flattered, but Erik is to polite or shy to show it to her now.

For the remainder of her visit, the three sit around in Erik's room, chatting and telling stories. Erik even allows Margaret to get close enough so she can braid parts of his hair. Erik gives her quizzical looks from the corner of his eye while Willem tries his uttermost best at not keeling over with laughter. A mission he fails at least 6 times.

Erik's blonde hair is getting long in some places, and after he tells Margaret (for the 99th time) that he really wishes she'd stop fiddling with his hair – she decides she'll give him a haircut.

A pair of borrowed scissors later(in exchange for home-made waffles – who knew the nurses were so easy to bribe?), Erik once again has the hairstyle from his old photograph.

The trio chat until visiting hours are over, and a nurse actually has to come and tell Margaret that they can't allow her to stay any longer.

~~~~~~x~~~~~~

Once again, it's just the two of them. Although the silence that follows, after the chatty young woman has left, is far from as uncomfortable or awkward as it was before.

"She's nice," Erik whispers.

"Heh, yeah... she is,"

"You're lucky to have her,"

"Trust me, I count my blessing every day that she still puts up with me,"

"Must be an angel," Erik muses.

"You say that as if you can see wings or something," Willem chuckles.

"Maybe I can,"

Erik gets a playful look in his eyes.
With a groan and a light glare, Willem throws a pillow at Erik – lightly.

"First a tail and now wings? You sure you don't belong up in Level 4?"

"You're allowed to stick me up there if I start stalking her or trying to push her out the window to prove she has wings,"

"Level 4 is scary..."

"Level 5 is worse,"

Willem thinks for a moment
"Have you seen level 5?"

"No...but I've spoken to one guy who's been up there,"

Willem nods – then he finally processes what Erik just said.

"Hang on a minute! No one ever comes down from level 5!"

"True...in a sense..." Erik sights and leans against his beds headboard. "He was convicted of having attacked his cousin with an axe..."

Willem flinches and shudders at the thought.

"So of course they stick him up in Level 5. However, a year later they realise someone had sneaked some really powerful hallucinogenic drugs into his drink that night – as a prank – and it caused him to have such vivid hallucinations he attacked the first moving thing he saw, sadly that was his cousin..."

"But he survived?"

"Yeah, bad blood between them for a while, but his cousin now comes to visit a few times..."

"Wow...can't quite believe that,"

"Neither could I when he told me...he's annoying, but not the murder type,"

"You're like the...guru of stories in this place,"

Erik laughs at the compliment and shakes his head. "I'd rather not be, Level 4 is bad enough. Level 5 is hell,"

"I can imagine," Willem shudders.

Willem is about to ask if Erik can tell him how the other levels look like – because he's curious. However; a nurse sticks her head in the door and tells him he has to leave.

"I'll tell you about it another day...it's not exactly a cosy story to tell around bedtime..."

"As if that would stop you..."

"Heh, true. But let's keep this day positive."

Willem chuckles and waves goodbye to Erik as he exits the room.

Making his way down to his own room, he can't help but wonder if perhaps Erik really is family now. Margaret at least seemed to really want to adopt him – and knowing his sister, she probably will do so if given the opportunity.

The sleep comes naturally – he even forgets to take his calming medicine. Yet for once he doesn't wake up and feel the need to fill his veins with anything.

He's making progress.

Slowly but surely he's becoming who he once was.

And funnily enough, it's partly due to a friend who sees thing he can't.


A.N:

okay, this was rather long. I hope it's still good and that it's not boring anyone to sleep yet.

I also hope I'm getting better at working in the prompts with more subtlety.

(I'm not so subtle about who's the patient from Level 5... )