Author's Note: Thank you for the reviews/favorites/alerts. I apologize for the double post on the last chapter. It appears the website had a day or two where it did not want to work appropriately. I shall not hold this against it-- really. Anyway, please read and enjoy! A second apology for any grammar/spelling as this chapter has only been edited twice and I generally do it three or four times.

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

-Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"

It was simpler to call his state unconsciousness though it held peculiar additions associated with sleep. For instance, he saw-- maybe dreamt?-- swirling impossible images of flashing colors, faces and smatterings of stars. The information was allusive, the faces contrived and the scenarios fantastical nothings. As he came out of the state, he felt as though he may have been slightly restored from rest, but consciousness was slow coming and almost painful. The visions which he should have recalled had already descended behind the wall of white which surrounded most of his mind. Only small bits, an occasional eye, word or plan, brushed his waking mind and carefully stayed out of reach of his processing brain. As he hunted them, he first became aware of his body and how utterly abused every piece of it felt though the ache in his feet and legs far out weighted the rest. It conflicted with the strange nothingness that had replaced his head, the airy, feather like non-existence, a balloon snapped from a string. The rest of him was sympathetic with his feet and legs, whining about overuse and pain. And the things that did not outright hurt, such as his left ear and his eyelashes, decided that they did not appreciate being left out; his ear started to itch and his eyelashes twitched against his cheeks, causing an unpleasant tickling sensation. It all joined together, becoming an orchestra which strummed a great symphony of suffering. He attempted to flee it, to dive back into the half-remembrances, but was stuck listening to the cacophony. This, untamed and vicious, was not sleep which gradually fades and can become bound to a person's will; this was unconsciousness-- and maybe hell-- which comes and goes as it pleases. He wanted relief, wanted it now, wanted to find a warm, comfortable place to curl up and be safe from it all. If only such a place existed-- if only he could remember what such a place was.

The only way he could find relief was to open his eyes and this proved to be much easier to think than achieve. At some point, they'd transformed into solid bulbs of lead and his best attempts to control them ended in the briefest twitching of reluctant lids and the slightest roll of the eyes beneath them. Even this action fell in and out of his grasp, frustrating him as the music of pain reached a crescendo and blotted thought from his mind. He could live with the oscillation between wakefulness and sleep; by themselves, they were barely annoying as they simply resembled a restless night. But there was no distraction in the world of half-conscious stumbling and he needed something to focus on other than the bass drums of his injured feet and the strumming strings through his torso. It was the urge to escape that made him persevere against his body and the never ending daylight-- once a blight against him, now a blessing-- of the planet with no name surrounded him overwhelmingly.

Or, surrounded the face looming startlingly close to his own. It was huge, haloed in the bright lights and positively bewildering. With so much of his limited energy poured into working his eyes, he had not yet grasped movement in his limbs and found he could not escape this head of doom. Maybe in the future he could at least turn away but at the moment, he was forced to stare into the eyes and wonder if this face was out to destroy him. The worst bit was the face did not seem to realize his concerns for it smiled broadly at him and leaned even closer. He could feel breath on his cheek as the warm eyes crinkled at the edges.

"Ye had me worried there," an accented voice said. "I thought ye may not wake up at all. Be a damn shame for ye to die considering you may be just one of five people in this whole God forsaken place."

Two thoughts attacked his mind one straight after the other. The first, and most pressing, was that the face and breath and voice needed to pull away lest he pass out from claustrophobic confusion. He tried to part his lips to inform this person above him of such and the next thought occurred to him. While his mouth moved without any serious complications, his tongue had latched to the roof of his mouth. It refused detach, cemented by the last remnants of saliva. Only quick, slightly wheezy breaths came from him and those did not portray his desires in the a remotely accurate fashion. The person did back up, but not as much as the traveler would have found comfortable, his previously happy face now creasing with concern.

"Ye aren't going to die on me now, are ye?" he queried, his ill-fitting blue shirt wrinkling about him. "Not after I brought down that pointy eared bastard who was attacking you."

This was the first time he realized that this person was not the same as the one he'd spoken to previously. This person's face did not have the same alien aura as the previous man's had. He had a bit of scruff growing on his features which were neither shaded green nor marked with the strange eyebrows. His hair was a different shade than the other's had been though his clothing closely resembled both the traveler's and the man's; the only difference was the shirt color, adding a third to the collection of shades the traveler had viewed: red, his own, yellow, the man's and now, blue. Unlike the man he'd decided to travel with, this person had a stockier build and a whole range of expressions. This met with his accent, making him so obviously different that even the traveler's muddled mind wondered how he'd missed it.

The words sunk in and the traveler attempted speech once more only to fail miserably. His lips cracked, bled and he became aware of a severe quaking rushing through him. The air, damp and chilled, soaked into his being and clothing, making him wet and acutely miserable The warmth from before-- which he had considered unbearable-- became a bright figment from the past and he wished he had not squandered his time in it so foolishly. It would be a mild comfort, a bit of a barrier between the ever building pile of ills that plagued him. The person hovering seemed almost distraught over his physical distress, reaching out tentatively to touch his shoulder, jerking back and then letting his hand fall upon the traveler's arm. He leaned over towards his left, returning seconds later with a clear bottle half-filled with liquid.

"Think you can manage some?" the person asked nervously. "Tried to get some into ye earlier but it would've been easier to--" The person trailed off, frowning. "Never mind, I'll help ye sit up now, nice and slow."

His body had all the strength of wet tissue but the necessity for water was overwhelmingly controlling. With the person's supporting hands, he managed to be propped up partially. The bottle was pressed against his dried out face and blessed water dripped into his mouth, loosening his tongue and soothing his agonized throat. He started to suck the water in with vigor, his body craving more, his thirst changing from painfully unbearable to unquenchable in seconds. The water he gained was not enough to repress it, only making it insatiable, controlling, so when the bottle was taken away from him, he felt strung out like an addict.

"No more-- ye'll get yerself sick," the person said, placing the bottle on the ground.

The water loosened his vocal cords enough for him to speak though he thought his words sound strangely clipped and slurred. "Whad 'appened?" He knew the answer-- he'd collapsed-- but the disconcerting comment about 'bringing down that pointy eared bastard' prompted him to inquire anyway.

"I'm not sure," the person admitted. "I came 'round that bend right over there," he motioned with his hand to the forest, surround by thick mists but all the traveler saw were trees, "and there you two were. He had his hands on yer head and you, my friend, were screaming to bloody Mary, Jesus and all the saints. So, took this thing," he waved a cylindrical-- hypo, the traveler remembered suddenly-- thing, "and jabbed it in that guy's neck. You stopped screaming, he keeled over." His brow wrinkled slightly. "Mind you, I'm not sure exactly what I did but certainly got him off of ye. Sleeping like a babe."

He blinked over at the man he'd met, who he planned to travel with even though he didn't know his name, and saw the man sprawled on his side, unmoving. Something did not seem right about the person's description of what had happened. The man had not caused his collapse, he knew that much for certain. He would not harm someone without good reason and the traveler had given him none. His persona had not given the impression of any vicious intent. As he processed, he noticed his reasoning for not believing the man would hurt him dealt with feelings instead of facts but considering his mind was completely wiped of the majority of the facts he'd learned in his life, he was willing to trust his gut. At the same time, his instinct told him that this person with the accent was decent as well despite his propensity to invade personal space and attack unprovoked. A misunderstanding could have occurred here, he reasoned as his head started to spin again.

"I don't think he was hurting me," the traveler told the person with the accent.

"Sure sounded like it, lad," the person replied. "It makes me damn nervous to think about the sounds ye were making. Whatever he was doing to ye, it wasn't friendly."

It still didn't feel right. "I don't think--" he began but then stopped himself. The water in his stomach bubbled up towards his throat and he had to concentrate on not allowing it back out his mouth. His head gave a nasty throb as he focused and the pain redoubled. "Aw shit," he managed through clenched teeth.

"Easy there," the accented person replied. "Easy." His hands hung inches from the traveler. A look of desperation settled on his features. "Where are ye from? I'll try to take ye there. I don't know much about this place but if ye live here, surely you know it better. I can get ye home."

"I d-don't know," he mumbled. "D-don't even know… my name…"

His stomach dropped a little when he finally spoke those words. It had been obvious to him before that he knew nothing of himself but actually saying it brought about a reality he had not expected. He was a blank person with no background, no understanding of self. Nothing was certain for him, nothing true from experience or learning. All he had were feelings and even so, he did not know what to make of them because they had no basis. He was a blank person, lost in a world he could not comprehend, surrounded by things and people that both made sense and contradicted his senses. His breath quickened and he could feel his heart speeding up in his chest.

He did not hear what the accented person said in response to his panic and did not care. The ever deepening problem of who he was occupied him, directing his attention away from the outside world and internalizing him almost entirely. He was a blank person, he thought again, an unfailing mantra in his echoing mind, but that alone was not what frightened him. It was the peculiar crawling under his skin, the thing that pounded on the wall of white that blurred the rest of his mind and insisted that this was the worst fucking time ever to not remember. A smaller part of him, in front of the white nothing, calm, cool, collected was stating that he always wanted a fresh start, that this was a perfect time to rebuild, to become someone new. However, beneath the screaming intuition which demanded he had to remember, that there was something important, that he was supposed to be someone, it was insubstantial. It's pathetic cries were drowned out by tidal waves of sensations, of nerves, of emotions; and by the disgusting intuitions that he continually had. He tried to sort it out, tried to pin down everything so he could firmly tell them all to fuck themselves but it was not possible. So he centered on the cool collected voice, the one that was lying, he thought, and told it very firmly what it could do with its platitudes. This was not a fresh start he screamed over the pounding, yelling and smashing of the thing behind the wall. A fresh start is an empty mind, not a blank one; a fresh start does not involve impulses about people you don't recognize and doesn't draw you towards actions you can't remember achieving. You can't make a fresh start when your past hovers over you, invisible but watching and jabbing all the time.

And the calm one stopped. Not because of what he said but at least it silenced itself and left him with the raving lunatic who's words he could not make out because of the distortion of the blankness. He put metaphorical fingers against the wall and shoved against it with all his might, only to be bounced back like it was made of rubber. The voice did not stop, did not grow hoarse, just kept shouting away in it's strange disturbing manner. He knew he had to reach it somehow but could not figure out how to break down the wall between them. Clawing, hitting, shoving, pushing, lifting; none of these worked at all. Going around it was impossible as it reached infinitely to all sides but he attempted it anyway, following the great expanse, trailing his hand over it, waiting for some sort of break, or a lower area that he could scale, or an end point. And his perseverance paid off an eternity later when he hit a changed area. He did not know how he realized it was different-- it did not look radically out of place-- but he stood in front of it knowing this was the entrance. After a moment's observation, the difference became obvious. Part of the wall here was changing colors, orange-gray mixing with the pure blank and creating a sort of hole in the fabric of his mind block. Tentatively, his fingers darted out to touch it and found that they passed through unharmed. Before him was an entrance into everything he had to know; how had he not found it previously? Why was it so difficult to bring it to mind otherwise? He did not know, did not pursue this but instead tried to push himself all the way through into his past.

And succeeded just a little. He got in and saw a jumble of images, of people, of faces which all slammed into him and crushed him. There were voices, shouts, silences, laughs, cries and a skeleton which grinned at him and reached out with boney hands to snatch him. And then, a woman's face, pale, big eyed, smiling, head tilting. Lips, pale but tinted enough to be real, curled up slightly, as though amused and he felt a building pressure.

"Oh," it said. "Fancy this."

And his eyes flew open.

The accented person was no longer present though the man from before still lay only a few feet away. His head pounding with a new intensity, the traveler made his weakened body sit up, ignoring the pain to the best of his ability and the strange lightness that accompanied his limbs. He could not recall exactly what he had seen behind the veil beyond the face and the skeleton and this frustrated him. The unorganized sensations that had accompanied his piercing of the place faded back behind it and he did not have the energy to reach out and hold them. And he could not get back to the wall anymore, the thing that had shoved him away still keeping him back. It was time to leave off on that, he conceded unhappily. Whatever had discovered him regaining who he was would need to let down it's guard before he tried again. Until then, the real world would have to provide a distraction. His eyes flickered over to his unconscious companion and he knew that he must trust this person. The voice correlated with something he'd heard in the shouting crowd of memories, confirming his thought that he must know this man. Tentatively, he reached out and brushed his hand against the man's hand. He received no reaction but the body beneath his fingers was warm. The man was still alive so whatever the accented person had injected into him could not be overly harmful.

"Hey," he said in his hoarse voice. "Wake up." He added a little shake at the end, his fingers resting on the yellow shirt sleeve. "Wake up."

The man stirred slightly only to stop moving once more. Sedative, the traveler thought. He's been given a sedative. Surprised that he knew what that meant and yet heartened that something had stuck with him, he tried shaking a bit harder. He could not use volume, his throat too tight to produce any real noise, so depended on action to do the work for him. His perseverance was rewarded a few moments later when a pair of hazy brown eyes peered up into his own, dazed and unfocused. The man's head tilted to one side and then the other as though he searched for something.

"You awake?" the traveler asked.

"The answer to that question is obvious," the man replied slowly, his voice thick.

The traveler's confidence was bolstered when that answer did not surprise him. Was it possible that he had managed to keep some of the memory particles that he'd sensed? "Just wanted to make certain that you weren't doing the opened eye sleeping thing."

The man raised an eyebrow at him. "I am not doing so."

"So you said."

The man turned towards the road again, his eyes gaining more coherence as each second passed. His eyebrows dipped down in concentration and then, with apparently no struggle at all, he sat up. Unlike the traveler, who found extreme difficulty in keeping a vertical position, the man appeared to have no after effects from the medication at all. He put a tentative hand to his neck where the traveler could see a slight green bruise and then pulled back without the slightest trace of pain on his features.

"My memory has failed me again," the man informed him after a moment of orienting himself. "The last clear image I have is attempting to discover who you were after you collapsed. Something struck me and now I am here, speaking with you. Are you aware what occurred in the interval?"

The traveler smiled, slightly, "Uh, somebody thought you were hurting me and got you in the neck with a hypo."

"I was not harming you intentionally," the man said. "There were walls built around your long term memory preventing me from accessing it. I apologize if it caused you any pain."

The traveler shrugged. "I don't remember it." Was that the orange gray? Had the man caused it? If so, should he ask the man to attempt again and widen the weakness in the defenses? "I'm going on word of mouth." A sudden wave of dizziness assaulted him and he nearly tipped over. The man steadied him as he swayed. "Besides, I don't think you'd hurt me."

"What information allows you to draw such a conclusion?" the man asked and he seemed genuinely interested.

For some reason, he was reluctant to tell him why. This man, he deduced, would not understand acting purely on what felt right. But, there was a flipside to this; he sensed that at some point in time, he'd said these sort of things and had come up victorious. So he spoke, "It seems right-- I feel like I know you."

"That's highly illogical," the man replied without hesitation. "You do not know me or what I am capable of. Without experiencing my interactions with either yourself or others, you cannot be certain whether or not I am capable of causing harm."

The traveler shrugged. "Consider it a hunch. Nations have been built on less." Though what nations he referred to, he hadn't a clue and what they'd been built on, not an inkling; it was annoying having to second guess every word that escaped one's lips.

"You are a very strange man," the man said after a pause. "Though I understand where you are coming from. I, too, sense that we have some sort of connection though I do not base it on hunch as much as latent memories."

"Tomato, tomahto," the traveler responded. His vision had once again started to fade.

"I do not--"

"Same difference," the traveler clarified.

"No, you are mistaken. You base what you are saying on feelings while I draw a hypothesis from the facts at hand."

The traveler laughed and the man turned to him as though assessing the reason. The traveler wondered if he should tell him and then decided against it. Now was not the time. "Whatever you say." He started to droop forward, his body giving in to exhaustion once more. The man stopped him from falling over, supporting him with both hands now. His fine features showed no reaction to this slow building collapse. "Sorry."

"Your physical state deteriorates steadily," the man noted.

"Yeah," the traveler rasped. "I make a shitty travel buddy."

Beyond them, in the trees, the rustling of movement amongst wood and leaves caused them both to change focus, the man with sharp interest and the traveler with weary curiosity. Betwixt the trees, the accented man emerged, followed by another taller man in a red shirt that did not fit at all. The man behind carried a case with him and had the distinctive look of someone who had been forced into coming. He halted as the person with the accent continued and studied both the people on the ground from his position. His craggy face wrinkled up.

"Good God, man," he said to the person with the accent. "You said they were just a little roughed up."

"They are," the man with the accent replied. "See, both sitting up, breathing, moving, and so on. Just a wee bit messed about the edges. Am I right?" He looked warily at the man and then to the traveler. "Not torturing you, I'd hope?"

"Not physically anyway," the traveler whispered, his head drifting with the mists in circles.

The man's eyebrows raised. "I've never tortured this person."

"Then explain why I found him screaming and you hovering over him?" the person with the accent demanded.

"I was merely seeking answers."

The traveler followed the argument in the distant fashion of someone watching a ping pong match. Who won didn't matter, so much as he could watch the ball pass back and forth between equally interesting and talented opponents. He barely recognized another presence until a hand tapped his arm. Turning away from the sparring, he saw the man in the red shirt crouching beside him. A flash of the skeleton smacked int his vision and he jerked ever so slightly. And with it he knew this person, knew that this was more than just a comrade like the man and the person with the accent; this person was a friend, someone close, a cohort in the execution of many a shifty idea, someone who knew him better than anyone.

"'lo," he mumbled. He watched as the man opened the case. "You a doctor or something?"

"As far as you know, yes," the man in the red shirt said.

"You aren't sure?" The traveler's neck had turned soft and his head kept flopping about.

"Nope." The man in the red shirt inspected his feet, his expression growing downright thunderous when he saw the damage. He opened his mouth to lecture-- somehow, the traveler realized that the outcome was a diatribe about taking care of one's body-- but instead, grasped the traveler's shoulders. The man, who had been in deep argument with the person with the accent, stopped as he felt himself be relieved of the weight. In turn, the person with the accent also ceased. The man in the red shirt had a set of fingers on his neck and seemed very unhappy about what he'd found. Whatever, the traveler thought, his eyes wandering the tops of the trees now.

What had happened? He had come no closer to discovering his pass in his brief traipse into memories than he had been before. While he felt slightly closer to discovery, as proved by his immediate recognition of the pseudo-doctor and his solidified trust in the man with the yellow shirt, he could not come up with a reason for them all to be here, in this odd place, with no memories. It was all interrelated, obviously but he could not come up with any of the logistics unless he took another trip behind the veil; and that was off limits for the moment, the gigantic pale face still guarding it like a junkyard dog. The little snippets of facts which kept approaching him reminded him how pivotal knowledge would be in unraveling the situation and solving it. It would explain how they all knew each other and why they were all here. It would reveal the something that had caused this, left them wandering the ceaseless paths of this place. And, to make things time oriented, he came to an abrupt conclusion that whatever had done this, whatever had put the face in his mind, was malevolent. Too many supposes, he thought, too many questions, too many half-facts and broken images. It would all have to wait until later. For now, he was weary down to his bones.

Bones.

His vision reminded him of looking through the branches of the trees. It came in patches and then, it was unfocused and difficult to concentrate on. He was lying down, the craggy faced man over him and judging by his expression, he was saying something of consequence. The traveler's ears weren't working and, even without knowledge of who he was, he was fairly certain he'd never been able to read lips. Bones-- the word echoed through his mind again as he studied the visage in front of him. Bones; why was that word so important?

"We need to get him back to the house," he heard at a distance. "He needs a warm place to rest."

And then it clicked. That voice, that face, that person; Bones. His name was Bones.

"Bones," he whispered.

The man in the red shirt reacted immediately. "What was that?"

"Bones," he repeated and then he drifted away.

Next Monday:

"You think I'm crazy but I know you're called Bones. And I saw her. In the dress. In here. And there was a girl with blonde hair…"

"Listen, kid, as far as I'm concerned, everything in this place is crazy. You, me, her, Blue and your pointy eared friend. I don't know who I am, where I am or how I got here but I have a very particular set of skills which suggests I knew a lot more not so long ago. So, yeah, I think you're crazy but I am pretty damn sure the rest of are too. Now, shut up."

See ya there.