The muscles in Diego's body seemed to crystallize from head to toe. Watching it felt familiar for some reason Cecil couldn't place. He stalked silently out into the living room and Cecil hesitantly followed, slipping off the headphones from around his neck. Diego had to raise up on his toes just the slightest amount to see out the peephole, a fact which Cecil found disproportionately endearing even though the peephole was probably just installed a little too high.

"Who is it?" Cecil whispered.

"My ex-boyfriend." He drew a small pistol from his pocket and held it low at his hip.

"Is he dangerous?" asked Cecil, staring wide-eyed at the gun.

Diego shook his head, lips quirking. "Not him." Then, louder, "I know you're not alone!"

"Diego, please, just talk to me. Just open the door." Cecil thought he knew that voice. But why?

"What's going on, Diego?" Cecil hissed.

"Go away, Kevin," said Diego. "I'm only going to talk to Carlos."

"Come on, Diego—"

"Step back from the door and get Carlos."

There was a pause during which Cecil imagined Kevin letting out a long sigh, and then his voice came pitched louder. "Carlooos!"

Carlos. That name spoke to something deep and essential in his chest. Cecil's heart was already lodged somewhere in his trachea before Diego reached over and threaded their fingers together, giving a squeeze as if offering him strength. "Cecil, listen. This guy's a creep and you don't have to engage with him. Back before you can remember, he used to stalk you. I think he's mostly harmless but if you want, you can go back to your room while I deal with him. Either way, I'll be here in front of you and he won't be able to hurt you."

A stalker? Cecil's brow pinched together as Diego talked. No, that wasn't right.

"I'll stay here with you," he said quietly.

Diego nodded and squinted through the peephole again, then opened the door. The sun shone into Cecil's eyes and hit his face, jarring and warm, his first direct exposure to the outdoors in months. He winced away from it and had to blink several times before he could see anything.

On the doorstep stood a man, his hair a mess and dark eyes bright with feeling. He looked like he hadn't changed clothes in at least a few days, had shadows under his eyes, and looked a little bit like he was or had recently been suffering sunstroke. His jaw was tensed, something his dentist had been trying to get him to work on, and his nailbeds Cecil knew were stained various odd colors from the many substances he worked with on a daily basis and his perhaps unwise tendency to forgo gloves. The man barely glanced at Diego, gaze finding his in a moment.

"Cecil," he breathed, and Cecil fell back in love instantly.

A moment later Carlos noticed their entwined hands, and his expression hardened, his jawline becoming impossibly sharper. It was almost unfairly attractive. Cecil's eyes tore away and swept up and down his frame, not seeing a weapon. Diego had a gun.

It was one of those moments of immediate, crisp clarity, the strongest sensation of the sort Cecil had experienced after day after endless day of fog. Unless Carlos had something up his sleeve, Diego had the clear upper hand here.

"Get your hands off him," said Carlos.

Cecil looked warily at the man who owned his heart and said, "Why does he look like you, Diego?"

Doubt and hurt flickered across Carlos' face. It wrenched something loose in Cecil's chest, made him long to take it back and murmur reassurances in Carlos' ear for hours, years, but the look of smug triumph in Diego's eye when Cecil couldn't take it anymore wasn't much better.

"Cecil, you know me," urged Carlos softly, with a heartbreaking note of uncertainty. "It's me. Carlos." The look on his face wasn't one entirely devoid of hope, though. He still had some faith in Cecil. That, unfortunately, wouldn't do. He had to keep Diego confident, at all costs.

Cecil had become quite the actor in the last few weeks, although sometimes he had trouble remembering that it was an act, which made it much easier. This, now, was his most crucial performance ever, and the most difficult, because Diego wasn't the only audience. A few weeks ago he didn't know if he would have had it in him. But he felt smarter than he was then, shrewder, simply because he had to be.

He shrunk back from the door slightly, clinging to Diego's arm and looking to him for help, wide-eyed. "Diego…"

"You're scaring him, don't speak to him." Diego couldn't quite keep his enjoyment of this situation out of his tone, but then again maybe he wasn't trying to. "Just talk to me. What is it you want?"

It took a moment for Carlos to respond; he seemed to be having trouble processing exactly what was happening. He was still looking at Cecil, and Cecil stared back with a guarded expression bordering on impassive until the last remaining shreds of confidence and color drained out of his sweet Carlos.

"I thought you were lying before," he finally rounded on Diego, voice like a blade's edge. "What did you do to him?"

"Just tell us what you're doing here so you can get on your way," Diego said, swinging the pistol in his hand in a wide, careless arc.

"You know exactly what I'm doing here," gritted Carlos.

"Refresh my memory. Some of us seem to have… forgotten."

"I'm here for Cecil." Every word was measured and carefully controlled; Cecil could picture him dropping each one precisely into a flask.

"What, were you thinking of taking him by force?" Diego laughed, clearly also aware of his advantage. The question was accompanied by another wild gesture, another swing of the gun. Cecil's heart stuttered in his chest.

"Careful, Diego, you're making me nervous with that." He wrapped his fingers around the hand holding the pistol, startled when the man's grip went lax under his touch. He took a shallow breath and slid the gun easily out of Diego's hand to hold it at his own side.

"Sorry, honey," Diego murmured, pressing his lips briefly to Cecil's temple. Cecil didn't breathe. He didn't think he possessed that ability anymore. He thought he'd made it the first time Diego had left him alone in the house without locking him in the bathroom, but this was really it; the full extent of Diego's trust, a tangible, lead weight against his palm. He felt dizzy with it.

"Really, Kevin?" sighed Diego a moment later, apparently seeing something Cecil couldn't with the way Diego was partially blocking his view of the outdoors. All he could see was Carlos, looking like he'd been slapped in the face, presumably from Diego's affectionate gesture. Cecil let go of his hand and took a slow step back, then two more.

"What did you think our plan was here, to ask nicely and hope for the best?" Kevin's voice. "We didn't involve the police like you asked, but we stopped by the station and grabbed this out of my desk just in case you were full of shit. And would you look at that."

"Am I expected to believe that you're going to shoot me?" Diego asked dryly. "Cecil doesn't want to go with you."

Kevin took a step into Cecil's line of sight and he could see that he wielded a pistol similar to the one currently in his own possession, held tremulously in both of Kevin's hands and pointed at Diego. "I might. You don't know what I'm capable of."

"I think I've got some idea, and it's not this, baby." Baby, he said, with Cecil standing right there. That seemed a little rude.

Kevin seemed to think so too, if likely for a different reason. "Don't call me that. Not if it doesn't mean something."

"What do you want, Diego?" Carlos asked quietly, sounding grey and tired.

"I want you to understand. Cecil doesn't know you, he doesn't like you, doesn't trust you. He's not going with you, and even if he did it would never be what you want it to be."

"It doesn't matter," said Carlos without hesitation.

"What doesn't matter?" Diego sounded irritated, his fingers twitching at the hem of his pocket. Cecil stiffened, a response that had been soundly conditioned into him every time Diego's hand strayed near there in that particular way. In their recent, more peaceful times, he'd forgotten.

"Who or what Cecil knows, what he remembers and doesn't remember. It doesn't matter if he doesn't love me today, or ever again. He still deserves to get out of this place."

Diego's face turned dark, and his hand slipped into his pocket to close around something they couldn't see, but Cecil knew. Carlos didn't know, wouldn't know, but he knew. Oh God, he had to do something.

"Diego, no. Don't." His voice sounded small.

"Cecil." The tendons in Diego's arm pulled taut, standing out against his skin. Most people wouldn't think of attempting to use a knife in a gun fight, but he seemed quite confident that Kevin was all talk. Cecil's bones and nerves remembered deeply what it had been to feel true terror, to see this man stalking deceptively calmly toward him and be certain that he was about to die. His head remembered it in the way he still got frequent tension headaches even months later, and he could see now in the harsh planes of Diego's face as he stared down Carlos emotionlessly what he should have known the whole time: despite the fact that Diego was now in the habit of kissing the temple that he had once violently slammed into the wall, he was still that man.

"No, listen, please Diego, just calm down." They weren't exactly the right words, since Diego seemed remarkably calm, but Cecil was nearing hysterical and couldn't quite form a sentence adequately expressing his need for Diego to not be who he was. He probably looked like the one out of his head, begging and on the verge of tears while Diego stood there composed with his hand in his pocket.

"Why, what's he doing?" Kevin asked, taking another step forward. "What do you have in there, Diego?"

"A knife, he's got a knife."

"Cecil," Diego hissed.

"You don't have to hurt these people," Cecil said.

"He's the one with a gun pointed at me!"

"But he's not going to shoot it, right? You're not going to shoot it."

Kevin's gaze locked with his, and Cecil wasn't the one with pistol raised and aimed, but in that moment he might as well have been. He could see his outstretched, trembling arms and knuckles turned pale from the pressure of clutching at the grip as if seeing them from inside Kevin's own head, and he knew he was right, could feel it as a wave of understanding passing between the two of them. He wouldn't shoot Diego. He couldn't. It would be an impossible move to go through with, unthinkable.

Diego drew his hand from his pocket, the knife handle held between deft fingers. He twirled it once at his side as if to prove he knew what he was doing with it. "You're not thinking of leaving me, are you, Cecil?" He turned his head to point the knife at him.

"No," choked Cecil brokenly. Not if it got Carlos hurt. "Of course not."

"Does it feel good, knowing that whatever it is you have with him is all because of tricks and lies?" Carlos cut in, clearly trying to draw Diego's focus away from Cecil, but oh God, he needed to stop talking right now. Diego's hand twitched, and he turned his face away from Cecil so he didn't see his expression, but the rigid, drawn up muscles of his back told him all he needed to know. Carlos' eyes had shed their lackluster dullness, flashing with fire. "To know that even if he chose to stay, none of it would ever be real? You barred your doors against the one thing that was really, truly real, and for what?"

Cecil could see it all coming. He could see Diego snapping and striking with the knife, sinking its blade through Carlos' clothes into his flesh, in some vital place, he could see the round 'o' of Carlos' mouth as it would open in the shock of pain, moments before his shirt would spread crimson. He could see it all.

He lifted the pistol in his hand, fighting to control the tremors wracking his frame. Diego's trust in him was a small, steel handgun and a turned back.

Diego snapped. Cecil squeezed the trigger.

A sharp pain pulled in his wrist. He stumbled, his right ear ringing.

The knife fell to the floor. Diego sunk to his knees, and Cecil shortly followed. Once he could hear again, his ears filled with a piercing shriek. He thought it might be coming from himself for a moment, or maybe even that it was just in his head, the sound of his own shattered psyche, but then he saw Kevin dropping his gun and rushing forward, his mouth contorted wide and horrified. The red that Cecil had pictured so clearly spreading across Carlos' shirt now soaked into Diego's, blooming like a flower in his side.

"What did you do?" Kevin screamed. He knelt by Diego and caught him when he tipped forward, cradling his head. "Diego—no—no, no no, what did you do—"

"Cecil," Carlos came and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Oh my God, okay, I just need… I'm gonna call—" He pulled out his phone and dialled, holding it to his ear. "Hello, yes, a man has been shot. I need an ambulance. Yeah, I can give you the address, just let me remember…"

Kevin pulled his shirt over his head—Cecil's shirt—and balled it up, tearing at the fabric covering Diego's torso and pressing the shirt against it. "I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do…" Diego made some kind of pained grunting, gurgling sound and Kevin let out a sob.

"An ambulance is coming," Carlos announced. "Cecil—can you hear me? I'm going to try to help Kevin."

The weight of his arm was gone a moment later. Carlos pulled a blanket from the back of the couch and then he was kneeling next to Diego too. "That's good, you're actually doing really great, Kevin, keep that pressure on it. Help me prop him up so we can get this under him and pressed into his back."

"Oh my God, there's so much blood," Kevin whimpered, doing as he was told.

"Try and stay calm for him. Do you have a first aid kit here?"

"Y-yeah, um. I think, um, on the top shelf of the closet, the one in the hall."

Carlos was on his feet again, gone, and then back, rifling through the box. "I don't think there's much useful in here, it's not very complete… I think what we've got going is just as good. Keep applying that pressure, see if you can pack the shirt in as much as possible."

"Diego, an ambulance is on its way… you're… it's gonna be okay, just hold on, okay? Just hold on, please, Diego."

"Cecil, you still with us?"

"What were you thinking, shooting him?"

"He's in enough distress as it is, alright?"

"Oh my God, oh my God…"

Cecil took a stuttering breath into his lungs. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"You're sorry?"

"It's okay, Cecil. You were under extreme stress and he was trying to attack me."

"Did he, did he get you?"

"Just grazed me, just a scratch. It's nothing."

His shirt was torn, right around the clavicle. Cecil shuddered.

"Kevin." Diego's fingers twitched, like maybe he wanted to reach for him.

"You don't need to try to talk, Diego, unless it's crucial." Kevin brushed his hair back from his face. Diego grunted in response, eyes wide and breath coming in short gasps. His eyes rolled over to lock with Cecil's. Through the pain, he could see confusion and hurt in that gaze, so piercing and accusing that for a moment Cecil was convinced that Diego was reaching into him physically to wrench shards of ice through his chest. Cecil looked away, and hated himself for it.

The pool of blood around Diego and Kevin was inching closer on the hardwood floor, and Cecil tried not to gag. After a haze of blaring electronic wailing and flashing lights through the open door, he was cognizant of a few snatches of conversation, but it all seemed distant. He didn't think he fully lost consciousness, exactly, although he must have drifted away in some form. It wasn't to a place that offered any relief, in any case. If he could have turned it all off through sheer power of will, he would've.

Carlos' voice. "I'm sorry."

The squeak of shoes slipping on wet floor, and a faint whimper. "I'm going on the ambulance. I-I have to—"

"Of course. But Kevin—be careful? Just because he's hurt—"

"I know. But I can't—he shouldn't be alone…"

"Go, go."

The next thing he was distinctly aware of was Carlos gently shaking his shoulder, sitting on the floor next to him. "This EMT needs to check you over, alright?"

Cecil jerked and straightened. The floor was dark with blood, but empty save for the knife. "Where's Diego? Is he—?" His throat closed over the last word.

"He was alive when the ambulance left," said a young woman in a vest. "This man tells me you've been a bit slow to respond. Do you have any injuries that you're aware of, any pain?"

He couldn't take his eyes off the floor in the entryway. There were big dots of red leading out the door. "Why?"

"Well, so I know if there's anything I need to help you with. Do you feel pain anywhere?"

"Um." To help him with? "My wrist? And—I mean—I've got this headache, but I do a lot of the time."

"There's a bit of swelling here. Can you move it?"

Cecil winced and nodded.

"It's likely a sprain. Anything else?"

Any other pain? He didn't know how to answer. His brow was sticky with sweat and he couldn't stop shivering. "I..."

"What about from earlier, while you were here?" Carlos asked gently. "Did he hurt you at all?"

"No," Cecil answered automatically.

"This headache you have, you say you get them often?" the EMT asked.

So many questions. Cecil's brain was being overloaded. "My… head got slammed into a wall a few… a while ago." Carlos tensed at his side.

"Besides these headaches, have you been experiencing any dizziness, ringing in the ears, sensitivity to light, fatigue, anxiety, loss of ability to focus or loss of memory, or insomnia?"

"That's quite a list you've got there," Carlos commented.

"All of them," said Cecil.

"All of them, really? Those are symptoms of post-concussion syndrome. They can last for weeks or even months after the initial injury."

"Oh." He didn't bother mentioning there may have been several other factors.

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Cecil Palmer."

"Can you tell me what year it is?"

"Um..."

"Can you tell me who he is?" She looked to Carlos. "Does he know you?"

Carlos shook his head. "I-I don't think—"

"This is Carlos," said Cecil, curling his hand over Carlos' on the wood floor. "This is the man I'm going to marry." Cecil could feel the hitch in Carlos' breath through their hands. He turned on Cecil with wide, searching eyes.

"Is that right?" asked the EMT. Carlos swallowed audibly and nodded.

"Is Diego going to make it?" Cecil asked.

"Our paramedics know what they're doing, sir, and it's not a big town so the hospital is very close by."

So basically what he was hearing was she had no idea. It felt like something was trying to crawl up his throat and get out. "I'm sorry," he whimpered. Carlos squeezed his hand.

"Sir?"

"I shot him."

She tapped her papers on the floor to straighten them and stood. "Save that for the police report. I'm gonna get some ice to bring down the swelling on your wrist, maybe lie down for a second before you're roped into a bunch more questions."

Carlos helped him up after they got the ice pack for his wrist and led him back to the bedroom. It felt strange being in this room with the person he had spent hours, weeks in here longing for. Carlos seemed jarringly out of place in this environment, this part of his life. Cecil felt inexplicably embarrassed.

Carlos wrapped him up in blankets and laid him down on the bed, then laid down too, facing him. The blankets didn't quite stop his shivering but at least they were a nice, solid weight on him. Carlos was quiet, seeming content to give him the space to talk or not talk as he wished. Cecil felt a nearly smothering wave of affection for this man.

"I knew it was you the whole time," he said. "I was just too scared to let him know I knew. With the gun and everything."

"Oh. Oh. That was smart," Carlos said, gently trailing a hand through his hair. Everything he did was so gentle, Cecil wanted to cry. Although maybe not for that reason alone. "You had me really scared there. But I don't understand. Why did he think you didn't know me in the first place?"

"There was this pill… I don't even know where it came from, but it was gonna make me forget. I pretended to take it. Or rather, I did take it, but then I made myself throw up. It still… kinda worked sometimes, though."

"A pill?" Carlos' brow was furrowed in either scientific confusion or regular indignation, but then his eyes widened. "Oh. I think I might know where it came from."

"You do?"

He nodded grimly. "StrexCorp. It's just a theory." He shook his head. "Huh. Maybe Kevin's dreams of revenge weren't so hairbrained after all. Seems like Diego had the same idea, just directed at the wrong people."

"What?"

"If I'm right, then Kevin stole those pills from StrexCorp, and if they were meant to erase memory, then it seems pretty likely that's what they used on him."

"Oh," Cecil said, slotting that bit of info into place. It made sense. Diego wanted Carlos to feel the same pain as he had. He wondered if Kevin even knew that the first time he remembered meeting Diego wasn't really the first time. He drew one of the blankets tighter around his shoulders. "I don't much like StrexCorp."

"No," Carlos huffed, eyes softening and carding his fingers down and behind Cecil's ear, as if he was tucking back a nonexistent strand of hair. It tickled. "You've been so brilliant, doing what you needed to do to survive this. You saved yourself. And me too." He was looking at Cecil like he was a bit in awe. Cecil saw Diego's tentative smile and red rapidly spreading through white fabric and squeezed his eyes shut, but that just made the image brighter, so he opened them again, breathing harshly through his nose. Carlos' expression had slid more regretful. "I'm so sorry I didn't get here sooner. Time moves a lot faster here than it does in Night Vale, but I still wasted a bunch of it being too scared to think clearly. I don't know what you must have thought."

It did? That would explain… Had it always been like that? Carlos had never said. He'd spent so much time here, and he'd never said… Cecil didn't want to ask how much faster, how long he had actually taken to get here. He didn't want his brain converting that math into the length of the year they'd spent apart. No, he couldn't take that now. That would be a conversation for another time.

He didn't think he could answer. What could be said about hopelessness heavy enough to tie around his ankle and drown him? He just took Carlos' hand. Carlos clung to it like his hand alone would anchor Cecil to his side for the rest of time. "I love you," Carlos said. "Immeasurably." Cecil melted and leaned forward, kissing him with dry and unsteady lips and hoping that conveyed the same sentiment. When he pulled back there were tears in his fiance's eyes. "I'm sorry." Carlos gave a little off-balance laugh, swiping at his eyes with one hand. "I'm supposed to be the one holding you together."

"It's okay," Cecil found the voice to say, squeezing his hand. There would be plenty of opportunity for that later. Maybe sooner rather than later. He took a shaky breath. "Did Kevin go with him in the ambulance?" Carlos nodded. "How did Diego seem? I mean… did it seem like…"

"It was hard to say." Carlos looked down and away as he said it.

"Carlos," Cecil said, propping himself up on one elbow. There was something in that look. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing."

"Carlos!"

He sighed. "When they were putting him on the ambulance, I overheard one of the paramedics say he was starting to go into hypovolemic shock."

Hypovolemic shock. He tried not to hear it as a death sentence. "That doesn't sound good."

"It's not. But he's getting as much medical attention as anyone can."

"Hypovolemic shock, what does that— is that—"

"It comes from excessive blood loss. I'm not sure what the survival rate is with that, but I'm sure it's higher when you're already in an ambulance."

Cecil curled in on himself. "I didn't even say anything to him… I didn't try to help him, you and Kevin did everything and I just… I just watched..."

"It's okay, sweetheart," Carlos drew him into his arms, rubbing circles into his blanket-covered back. "You were in shock."

Cecil squeezed his eyes shut. "He trusted me. He let me take the gun out of his hand because it was making me nervous, and I shot him with it."

"Cecil." Carlos' tone was firm. "That man held you prisoner in his home. He hurt you, he drugged you, he lied to and manipulated you. He could have killed you, he threatened to from the very beginning."

"Instead I killed him."

"Even if that's true, no one would blame you. Least of all me, I was outright baiting him. You didn't do anything wrong, Cecil."

Cecil let himself be hugged, nearly nauseous with guilt. He didn't know if he'd ever be able to fully believe that. But Carlos' arms were strong and warm around him, and it would only upset Carlos if he said that aloud. Instead he tried to focus on the fact that Carlos had gotten through with only a scratch because of what he'd done, and that was worth it, it had to be. He pressed his face into the sweaty, sliced open material of Carlos' shirt and let himself let go. Carlos held him through the tremors and tears and frame-wracking sobs so violent he was sure if Carlos hadn't been there holding him together his pieces would all have flown apart. It lasted forever, his body just finding more and more tears to produce, but he was free to let those out, too, because Carlos was here and he was safe.

Carlos murmured soothing things into his ear through it all, rubbing his back, and eventually Cecil's chest tired of heaving. He pressed his lips just above the shallow cut over Carlos' collarbone, spent. "I was sure I'd never see you again," he whispered, and Carlos shivered from his breath.

"It's all over," he assured Cecil. Cecil drank in his voice and his scent and the feel of his skin, and tried to internalize that statement.

It wasn't entirely true, of course. After not enough time spent matching his breathing with Carlos', limbs tangled together, someone came knocking on the open door to pull them outside for questioning. Carlos huffed irritably and pulled himself and then Cecil to a sitting position on the bed. Cecil dug the crusted tears from the corners of his eyes with his knuckles.

"This house…" Carlos said, nose scrunching up. "I definitely didn't miss this smell. What is that?"

"What smell?"

Carlos just gave him a look, before they headed out to the living room. Caution tape now marked off the scene. Cecil froze in front of the open front door, the sweat on his skin cold with dread. He was going to have to talk to the police about what happened. He didn't even want to talk about it with Carlos, let alone strangers. Would they put him in handcuffs? Would they make him condemn a man who might be dead or dying?

Voices from outside bounced off his ears; most clearly were the officers around their cars, but he could hear sounds of traffic down the road and more distantly, kids shouting, maybe in a park. It had all been just a stone's throw away this whole time. The threshold of this doorway had been an insurmountable barrier, and now that it stood wide open he found himself paralyzed to cross it.

Carlos took his hand, and the voices dimmed. He felt his support through the tips of his fingers and glanced over to see the face of someone who maybe didn't completely understand every strange emotion weighing on Cecil's chest, and hopefully never would, but who was doing and would continue to do what he could to sustain him through it. That was, after all, how relationships worked. He clung to Carlos' hand and stepped into the sunlight.