The world shifts at precisely thirteen minutes after midnight.
It's not an obvious thing by any means; in fact, it's hardly noticeable at all, not against the terrible, beautiful power of the witching hour itself. The trees are strung with starlight, gentle as it flickers off dew-wet leaves, and the smell of oncoming rain lingers in the silent air. The hush settles over the street with a weight at once gentle and constricting, and it feels almost like a warning. It would take a rare person to break that silence, and the streets are empty anyway.
Or, at least, they were.
And then the clock strikes 12:13, and the world shifts or stretches or shatters, and the street is no longer empty because it is here, bathed in silver moonlight and midnight silence, that the entity once known as Wilbur Cross finds themself kneeling.
The pavement is hard beneath their knees.
It's the first thing they notice. The world is still settling into place around them - or maybe they're settling themself into the world - and the boundaries of reality are still hazy, but the ground is hard beneath them and they can feel it. Grit covers the pebbled surface, tiny fragments of who-knows-what leaving imprints in their palm, slicing into their hands where they're trying to hold their shaking self up. It shouldn't be a pleasant sensation - their hands are already red, blood weeping from the array of thin cuts spiderwebbed across the skin that is now pressed against the sandpaper surface of the world itself - but they've never been too concerned with shoulds anyway. They just push harder, drag their mangled hands across the cracked pavement, dig their fingers into the concrete until it hurts.
It hurts.
There's a grin on their face. They can feel it, pulling at the corners of their mouth unnaturally, but they can't see it and they wonder what it looks like. If it's as sharp as it feels, held into place with staples and stitchwork. If it looks as unnatural as they think it must: a mask that doesn't fit anymore or maybe never did. If it's the one they vaguely remember from green-tinged memories, or if it's the earlier one that doesn't feel real anymore, or something else they can't picture at all. If it even matters when it hasn't been theirs in too long and there isn't anyone around to care.
There's no one to care about the blood either, even as it coats their hands, a brilliant sheen of bright, not-green crimson that shines in the moonlight and mixes with the microscopic debris that summoned it from beneath their skin. They flex their fingers and watch the colour shift, feel the sting, and the grin widens because they're choosing this. It's been too long since they could. Choose, that is. Or feel?
They're not sure.
They're not sure because the Black and White had meant neither for so long - a vast and total numbness sapping away everything except when They decided to have fun, to poke and prod and flay and maim until there was only an all-consuming pain that never ebbed, never left - but they don't need to be sure when this is so vastly, wildly different. The pavement is hard. Their hands sting.
It's glorious.
A laugh tears its way from their throat, hollow and wrong as it rips its way free, but they don't choke it back, not this time. There's moisture on their cheeks too, skin stinging slightly with the sensation even in the absence of any wind, and they don't do anything about that either. It doesn't quite feel real, and yet feels overwhelming in how simultaneously too-real it is. Their hands claw against the pavement one more time, tendons visible in sharp relief beneath their skin with the gesture, and then they're fighting their way to their feet before they know why.
They know these streets, somehow. It's old knowledge, and fragile - an old photograph bubbling at the centre of a flame, tissue paper to be shredded on their claws if they try to reach for it - and yet there's a sturdy kind of familiarity to it too. They've been here before, and somewhere in the mess the Lords had made of their brain, they remember. (It's odd, having a thought all on their own, absent the cacophony of words and colours and voices that used to ring in their head. It's… quiet.) There's a route to take, and they might not know what it is but they can damn well figure it out.
Something jingles as they stand, and their hand is wrapped around whatever it was before they can process the motion. Hell, they didn't even process the impulse, not when it was just a jolt if shutupbequietdon'tbefuckingnoticed shooting through their skull with a flash of remembered green and a stab of pain. It's instinct more than anything, and they fight the urge to fall back to their knees by staggering out of the street instead.
They're holding a chain. They can feel it, biting into their fingers where it's wrapped around them, and there's something familiar about the beaded feel, about the hard, curved edges of the pendants responsible for the noise in the first place. Stiff fingers uncurl, conscious effort fighting against the instinct to keep muffling them just in fucking case, and then what-was-once-Wilbur is looking at a pair of vaguely familiar dog tags.
Wilbur Cross, reads the first; John Mcnamara the other.
The first is a familiar name, if foreign and ill-fitting. The letters seem too crisp, too clean, too unchanged. Their skin crawls just to hold the thing, and the cool metal almost feels like it's burning. It'd feel like a slap in the face from the universe if they cared about that kinda thing these days. Wilbur Cross is dead, after all. The man no longer exists, so why should the name itself?
John, though…
John.
That name was also familiar, well-worn and gentle in a way that shouldn't still make sense. Too much has happened for that, over too long and too uncertain a period of time. Gentleness has been a fiction - a trap - for longer than they can truly remember and there's no point in reaching for it when it's never anything more than a mirage (at best), yet the temptation is there, lurking behind their eyes and beneath their skin and deep in what remains of their soul. The urge to reach out one more time. To try, one more time, because it's all they still know how to do.
They ignore it. (Temptation has been a thing for other people since that first flash of green, that raspy echo of a laugh, that giggling thing in the darkness. Since the pink, and the yellow, and the blue, and the purple. Since the darkness and the apple and the flames of everything and nothing licking at Wilbur's soul until there wasn't any Wilbur left.) There's a map somewhere in their head to follow, and it's not like they have a beating heart to listen to instead, so they walk down the road, feel the oil slick of the pavement passing along underneath the soles of their scuffed shoes, and pretend not to notice the inevitability of their destination.
Both paths lead to John, after all. They could never not.
The door is hard beneath their palm.
– – –
The knock sounds at the door as the watch on the wrist of the man who is still John Mcnamara strikes 12:32.
It's a loud knock, somehow both resonant and oddly tentative, rattling its way through the otherwise empty house. There's something wrong about it, though John's not sure what it is. He's simply in bed and then he's not, the familiar handle of his gun in his hand as he picks his way through his own house with his heart pounding away in his chest. His hands aren't shaking - that was drilled out of him after his first training session, much less now, with years of P.E.I.P. missions behind his belt - but they probably should be. His pulse is thundering in his ears by the time he reaches the door, much less when he actually peers through the peephole, and it's almost anticlimactic when he can't see anything on the other side. He keeps the gun at the ready, puts his hand on the handle, and creaks the door open.
He recognises the figure on the other side, but he isn't entirely sure he knows them.
They're not really standing in front of the door (which would explain why John couldn't see them) and are instead half-slouched against the wall nearby. One hand holds them up, while the other curls around their waist. There's blood in too many places - coating their hands, stained into their jacket, trailing from the corner of their mouth, dried on their temple, near their ears - but it's not right. It's too thick and dark and clotted, even where it's fresh, and John has never seen someone standing with their blood coagulated in their veins before. Then again, he's never seen anyone with teeth quite that sharp or that plentiful, or fingernails so naturally sharp, or skin quite so sunken. There's enough there that they look familiar - too familiar, and John has to hold himself back from saying the name he knew them by - and enough that they look entirely too non-human as well.
There's an urge - buried deep in the memories he's walled off, to preserve them and to save himself - to not ask questions. To patch up now and get answers later. They still look like Wilbur, after all, give or take some humanity, and he'd patched up his old mentor often enough that the instinct is still there. And yet he remembers Wiley, too - the mania in his eyes, his fervent ramblings about Wiggly, the knife he pulled on the P.E.I.P. peeps - and he holds himself back. It's hard, but he keeps himself from moving forward, from welcoming them in, from falling for what could be a trick. (It's harder, but he even almost keeps himself from feeling guilty about delaying, about his hesitation, about his distrust. Almost.)
He makes himself keep his voice hard, steely. It's not hostile, but it's (devastatingly) not friendly either. "What are you doing here?"
A shrug, as well as can be managed given the fact that they're still trying to hold themselves up as they practically shake apart. "Didn't…" They trail off for a second, with a weak little cough and a pass of their tongue over dry, cracking lips. "Didn't know where else to go."
"Wiley-"
He gets a weak shake of the head at that, but he can't quite assess how genuine it is because their eyes have closed, pressing together in a wince that he can't let himself think about or he'll cave. "Not."
"Not… Wiley?"
Another shake of the head, though it's hard to notice because they're still shaking everywhere else, a violent tremor that's only seeming to get worse before his eyes. "Not." The hand they're supporting themself with buckles and they only don't topple over because John catches them instinctively, one hand tangling in the rough denim of their jacket and the other trying not to drop his gun or shoot anything while still keeping them upright. "Got out." One of their hands curls urgently around John's wrist and he can feel their fingernails pressed against his skin - still dangerous, still too sharp - but they don't press any further than that. "John-", they add, and he waits, listening to hear what they need to tell him, but they don't go any further and just say it again. "John."
Then they're staggering again, two seconds from toppling over, and there's a time for caution but that time has passed. It has always been a matter of time before John caved, before he let them through that door, and that time has come. (Besides, what else could he do? Make them leave? Send them out into the world, where they could hurt other people? Or get hurt themselves? That wasn't happening, and he'd be foolish to pretend otherwise.) He pulls them across the threshold and into the living room before he can talk himself out of it, and they're sitting on his couch before he processes it.
He isn't sure what the hell they've done to themself - if he'd thought they'd looked bad before, on his darkened stoop (and he had), it had nothing on the devastation visible when the lights were on - but they don't seem to care as much as he does. They're half-collapsed onto the couch and are still actively bleeding, but they don't give the injuries themselves a second glance. They're more intent on the couch itself, on the bloody streaks their fingers leave behind on the leather as they clutch at it, on the loose thread sticking up from behind one of the cushion's buttons. John has seen that look before, though never on them; he's seen it on the faces of other P.E.I.P. soldiers, hands shaking and eyes haunted as they try to figure out where and when they were, to ground themselves. He'd gotten practice referring them to mandated counselling after missions-gone-wrong, but he'd never been good about handling them directly.
Guess this was his time to figure it out.
He realises, then, that he's still standing, still hovering awkwardly. He's just… not sure what to do - what even was the standard operating procedure for your old mentor who disappeared thirteen years ago and came back as the devout servant-slash-slave-slash-minion-slash-convert of an eldritch being as old as time itself has returned once more and is bleeding on your couch like there's no tomorrow and, hell, ya never know, maybe there isn't in the P.E.I.P. training manuals? John's pretty sure they didn't cover that in boot camp. - and doesn't want to make things worse.
Then again, inaction wasn't much better, so he might as well do something. He pushes aside the fact that he doesn't know how to make things better either - he's damned if he won't find a way to god-damn deal - and tilts his watch to point in Wilbur's direction with as little motion as possible. "Here." He gets a look back that would almost look like the old Wilbur if it weren't for the green tint to those not-quite-familiar irises: perplexion with just a bit of wry amusement. It's a reminder, in a way: of the fact that things can never go back to the way things were, and of the fact that things could only ever change so much. "Yours is broken."
And it is. He can see it from where he stands across the room, and he could recognise it from longer. It was the same watch Wilbur had always worn: the same dark leather strap, the same silver face. Only the stillness of the hands and the crack bifurcating the glass indicate that anything has changed at all.
They don't immediately react. When they do, it's not to look at John's wrist but to look at their own, to stare at the once-valued, now-broken timepiece with something indecipherable in their eyes. There's an unnatural stillness to the motion, a lethargy that makes it seem like they're not moving even when they are - or maybe that's just another element of their newfound inhumanity - and his instinct would be to say they seemed unflappable if he weren't inexplicably concerned that something was breaking beneath the surface.
A beat. Two. And then they were moving, fingers scrabbling at the strap, nails scoring into the leather as they pry it free. The motions are urgent. Desperate. Like there's something wrong about the watch, or maybe just wearing it, and they need it off, right then, right now, immediately. (Maybe there is, because for a second - the briefest of moments - John would swear it flashed bright, sickly, neon yellow.) The watch is launched across the room the second the strap comes free, slamming against the corner of John's table with an audible snap and then falling to the floor. It doesn't shatter, but the face cracks a little further, a network of thin lines starting to creep across it, and John fights a wince at the sight.
It's only then that his own watch is acknowledged, their eyes flickering over to it and then bouncing away. John gets a nod back - an acknowledgement without the words, a thank you without the confession - but he can see their eyes flickering back to the watch. Looking away, looking back, looking away.
He eases it off of his wrist and sets it down near them, moving as slowly as he can without being patronising and telegraphing his movements as much as he can without practically shouting them to the room. And then, because sentimentality has always been a crucial character trait of his (and curiosity just behind it), he starts walking over to the other watch as it lies broken on the floor.
"Might not wanna do that." It's quiet but audible, and it stops him in his tracks both because of who's saying it and what is being said. "Dangerous."
When he looks back, their eyes are still flickering between the watch and that button's loose thread, back and forth. Their fingers rest against their knees, not fidgeting like he remembers Wilbur doing, white-knuckled as they press into their jeans. "What do you mean?"
No answer.
He'd be lying if he tried to deny the spike of concern searing through him at that. He knows things aren't the same - the past is past, by definition, and his watch is still ticking well enough to prove it - but he's never been good at placing head over heart. "Wil?"
The boundary between past and present shatters with that word, and he regrets it the second he processes himself saying it, but he can't pull it back either. Can't do anything other than kick himself because he might not know what he should be doing but he'd place a pretty hefty bet that that wasn't it.
He's still worried about the slip-up when he registers that they don't exactly look upset about it either. They don't even address it, just dart a look over at their abandoned watch and then look back at that button. "They messed with it sometimes."
"They?"
"The Lords." They don't wait for him to ask before continuing, words halting and voice hoarse enough that John wants to wince. "They're called the Lords in Black. One of 'em works with time. Controls it. Bends it. Warps it like nothin' else." Their nails scrape against their jeans again. "Messed with my watch a few times. Said He liked the look of it. Bastard."
They say it less like a curse than a name and John notices and wonders and doesn't ask. Instead, he walks over to the watch and picks it up, ignoring his own instinct to hold his breath for the span of time before his fingers reach it… But then his hand closes around the too-familiar object without a consequence in sight and the world clicks back to normalcy (or, at least, the closest thing to it possible given the past thirteen years).
"Seems fine now." He flips it over a few times, though he's not entirely sure what he's looking for. Something of Wilbur as he used to know him, maybe, or maybe anything like that flash of yellow to indicate that they might have gotten out but still aren't safe. Maybe it's just to feel the weight of it in his hands, to see if it's still the same watch. To reassure himself that not everything has changed irrevocably. That maybe something is fixable.
Whatever it is he's looking for, it's not there. There's only that broken face, the slightly scuffed leather, the motionless hands frozen in their tracks. "You sure you don't want it back?" It feels stupid to ask - Wil might look similar but they're not the same, and the watch probably doesn't mean anything to them like it does to John, and they had just chucked it across the room without even blinking - but he does anyway. To him, it's still theirs, still one of the few things they never went anywhere without, still important.
They don't answer directly, not at first. If he weren't watching, he wouldn't have seen their shrug at all - a small thing, slightly off-kilter because of whatever injury is keeping their hand tucked against their stomach, absent even the rustle of cloth to give it away - much less been able to interpret it. The resultant "Keep it." isn't much louder, but it's enough. John tucks the watch into his pocket and pretends that he can't feel it there like a weight, too many years of significance imbued in it for it to be any other way.
And then, for a moment, there is silence because, for a moment, there is indecision.
John knows what his instincts are telling him to do. They're not the same instincts as would carry him safely through a P.E.I.P. mission, nor are they the ones he had taught to him by his teachers at the academy, but they're about as potent, as deeply ingrained. He doesn't know jack about what brought Wilbur back out of the Black and White - doesn't know if whatever's going on is real or another gambit set up by the things lurking on the other side of that portal - and half of the training manual would tell him to stay reserved until those questions are answered; the other half points out that this is his commanding officer newly returned from behind enemy lines who-knows-what on his tail so he damn well better provide whatever support he can.
He ignores those halves because all of himself is telling him that this is his old mentor - his old partner and friend - who needs help, and that makes this easy. He still has the first-aid kit they used to use tucked under his kitchen cabinet (and he's spent many an evening trying not to think about why it was still there, and what it meant that he kept hoping for this very situation - Wilbur on his doorstep, asking for help - to occur). "We need to get you fixed up. Your shoulder…?"
"It's nothing." They're still ignoring the blood, the shakiness of their hands, the larger injury, whatever it might be. One of their wrists is worse than he'd thought initially, swelling angrily alongside the bruise curling around it, but Wil keeps moving it, keeps shifting it as they run their fingernails back and forth along the rough, stained texture of once-blue jeans. "I'm fine."
"You're bleeding."
Wil nods. Shrugs. "Yeah. That's new." Their tone is nonchalant, except for the tension still audible in it, the raspiness undercutting their certainty. "It'll be fine."
The last time they'd done this, it had been right after a mission. Something had gone awry - for all that the evening had burned itself into John's mind, he couldn't for the life of him remember what - and they'd each ended the evening slightly the worse for wear: John with a dislocated shoulder and a bruise the size of Illinois on his hip, Wilbur with a four-inch knife gash along his side. He'd insisted on dealing with John's shoulder first, had brushed away his actively bleeding injury instead with as many I'm fines as it'd take, had ignored the urgency until he'd keeled over mid-sentence after standing up a hair too fast.
Wil's just gonna have to forgive him not immediately believing them.
"Are you certain?"
They nod. "Yeah." For a moment, they look down. John isn't sure what they're seeing - if they're fully in the moment or not - but it's a struggle to maintain his composure as they flex their hands again, as newly formed scabs crack and blood beads up along their edges. He wonders if they're processing the carnage that's been made of the body they're inhabiting, if they're in too much shock to fully notice the situation or if they can see every bruise, every cut, every broken piece that makes up their shaky, fractured whole. He doesn't get an answer. All they say is, "'S been worse."
John tries not to think about that sentence as he files it away for later, as he sets the first aid kit on the nearby table and tries to tell himself that it'll be okay if he doesn't push for them to take care of their wounds. "Here. For in case you change your mind." No response is immediately forthcoming, but he can't say he expected one. Not really. "Want some coffee?" He had some, already sitting in the pot. He'd made it earlier that evening, later than he usually did outside of late nights pouring over P.E.I.P. files, and he hadn't questioned it at the time, but now it was… well. Curious, to say the least. "I reckon it's been a while."
Another nod. "Thanks."
John nods back, and turns, and walks away. (He's not fleeing. He's retreating. Tactically. To regroup.)
He needs the space just to process. To rationalise the shift of everything he'd known and accepted for the last thirteen years initiated by nothing more complicated than a knock on the door. To figure out how to handle the sentient paradox that had landed on his doorstep: Wilbur-but-not, a left turn away from being sane and a decade from being human. Someone he had trusted once but couldn't now, and yet couldn't convince himself to stop trusting either. The ceramic is cool beneath his fingers as he tries to ground himself - clenches his hand around the normal, unbroken smoothness of his mugs - and then has to fight a half-sardonic laugh at it. (So that's what they'd been trying to do.) He focuses on the act of pouring the coffee, of heating it, of preparing it the way he knows they like, and then he pauses. Reconsiders. He knows they liked it like that once - back when Wilbur was Wilbur, and John had known him, and he had known John, and they'd been partners - but so much has changed. How much have they?
He tosses the old cup and pours a new one, black. A fresh start. A clean slate.
They don't fully seem to notice his return, back to staring at his watch, their hands running mindless, bloody circles along rough, red-caked denim. He lets his heel scuff against the floor once in warning before he approaches, their cup proffered before him for them to take, and their hands aren't steady as they take it but they're steady enough. (He winces as they cup their shaking fingers around the hot mug, imagining the sting, but there's a twitch of something almost pleased at the corner of their mouth so maybe it's what they need right then.)
He tells himself that they're not exactly settled right now anyway, that there's no peace to disturb with the questions he needs to have answered. (He almost believes himself.) He makes himself ask anyway, as objective and neutral as he can force his voice to be. "I have questions."
Another nod. Wil doesn't seem surprised, nor disturbed. They don't seem anything other than lost, and it definitely doesn't bother John at all (it doesn't, it doesn't). They simply cup their hands around the mug, stare at the liquid, inhale the steam. "Ask 'em."
"What happened?"
They might not ever have been settled, but they sure look less settled after that. (John fights a flare of… something. Concern, maybe. Confusion, possibly. Guilt, definitely.) Their mouth opens, teeth glinting pearly and sharp as they fumble visibly for whatever they're trying to say, eyebrows drawing together a little as the words fail to come. "Got out," they manage, but John can see a flicker of something almost like confusion, only half-hidden behind the broken remnants of a shattered mask that looked like it had one been perfect.
"Got out?", he echoes. There's a time for being harsh and a time for softness, and this is a time for calculated use of the latter. (John tells himself that's why the comment was gentle, kind, and he ignores the fact that it was instinct more than strategy. He doesn't ignore it well.) "Out of what? Out of the Black?"
"Yeah." They nod, and their eyes are still pointed towards the mug but they're not fixed on it anymore. They're staring somewhere beyond it, into a space John can't see. He's not sure if they're looking at nothing or seeing somewhere between the seams of the universe. "It broke. Fuckin'... shattered." They make a gesture, easy enough to follow: a clenched fist opening as wide as possible, a child's sign for explosion if ever John's seen one. "Like fucking glass, John, and-" They swallow, a hitching thing, about as sharp and awkward as if that glass had been in their throat. "I saw a way out, so I started- God, I just started runnin' 'fore They noticed. Just… Just kept on runnin'. Didn't stop, couldn't fuckin' stop, and then I- I'm out. I fucking got out, John!" He wasn't sure if they sounded excited or guilty or panicked or happy or something somewhere at the nexus of all of them, but their voice drops as soon as they're done speaking and he almost wishes they were still as animated as they'd been for that single second. "It's quiet, John. It's so… so fucking quiet."
"Is that good?"
Wil shrugs, flexes those bleeding fingers around steaming white porcelain. (John can't help but hope he's making up what looks almost like fear in emerald-tinged eyes, naïve though it may be, and is immediately filled with the certainty that he's not.) They don't answer immediately, but John's patient enough to wait for them and eventually they do. "Dunno. Ain't really… happened before. Ain't like 'em ta leave at all, much less like this." They look up, those unnaturally green eyes burning into John's own. "They're always here, John. Always here." One reddish finger lifts, points to their temple, digs into the skin there like they'll convince him if they only push far enough. "Talk-talk-talking, all the time, all the fuckin' time- All the colours. 'Nough ta drive ya mad, John. Fuckin' crazy. So much noise, all the time-" They're whispering, the words half under their breath even though John can still hear it, can still make out the edges of each word as they say it. "They'll be back. But it's quiet now."
John stores what he can, sorts it into files in his brain that he can go through later, some time when it's not almost one o'clock in the morning with a meeting at seven the next day. "And the blood?"
"They noticed."
"What?" It's not the hour that has him asking the question this time; it's the fact that he very much doesn't want to be right about what they mean. It's the fact that he's pretty sure he is. It's the fact that "started runnin' 'fore They noticed" was running through his head in a loop.
"They noticed," they repeat. "Don't take too fondly to escape attempts, the lot of Them. Ain't good ta try 'less you know for sure you're gonna make it." A moment, then a wry-looking expression that almost looked the way Wilbur used to look. "I didn't, but it's the closest I've gotten. And somethin'... somethin' helped. I swear, there was somethin' in there too. I remember… white. No fuckin' clue what it was, but–" They break off, eyes unfocusing again, like they're looking for something they can't find, and then they refocus and the look is gone, wiped clean. "I ran, John. I ran, and I ran, and I fuckin' fought because They sure as shit ain't happy with me. There's gonna be hell ta pay later." They take a sip from the mug, swallowing it more smoothly than their last attempt, and something almost genuine tilts up the unscarred corner of their mouth. "Good cup o' joe, John. Ya got better."
John ignores the comment in favour of just looking at them, taking in everything he'd noticed earlier. The blood on their hands, the bruises, the shoulder injury. Considers everything he might not have picked up yet: broken bones and more lacerations beneath that denim ensemble. "This was one fight?"
They shrug. "Ain't just the Lords in there. Sniggles pack more of a punch than you'd think."
John blinks, tries to put the pieces together, and then gives up when the burning behind his eyes makes it abundantly clear that he wouldn't get anywhere with it anyway.
"You need to sleep." It jerks him out of his thoughts. They're not looking at the watch anymore, nor staring at the coffee; they're looking at him, with an expression he can't parse. (Or, more like, an expression he can't let himself parse. It holds too much - too much he's trying to ignore, or too much he can't let himself acknowledge, or, worse, both - and he has to look away lest he look too long. "I'll go." They don't let him respond before they move to stand, setting the nearly untouched coffee down on the end table before clawing a hand into the leather armrest and trying to shove themself to their feet. "Thanks for lettin' me rest a bit."
He nods. Pretends for a minute that there's any possible way this ends with them walking out his door. (They seem stronger than they had been. More grounded. Better equipped for the world. They'd probably be fine. Or this could be a trick. A ruse, to seem hurt and abandoned and scared and convince him to let them stay. It could result in so much stuff that John isn't thinking about. It could, it could-) He lets the premise slip away. "You can stay."
They blink. (It doesn't seem like a calculated blink either.) "What?"
"This hour is not one for departures. This couch has seen you through many a late night; it can see you through one more. Particularly since you've found your way there already." He's kept a blanket in the end table nearby since before Wilbur disappeared, since that first night he'd made the mistake of letting his nearly-insomniac-and-definitely-workaholic mentor go over case files in his living room. (John had conked out on the sofa; Wilbur had kept working with the light turned low and not realised it was just gone two until John woke back up and forced him into some semblance of sleep for a few hours.) "Here." He hands them the blanket, watches them stare at it for a second before taking it. "It should see you through for now."
They stare at him for a moment, assessing. Look back at the watch with something almost like bewilderment on their face. Look back, with a hesitant, dawning kind of understanding that John's pretty sure he won't like. "I'll be gone before you can think about doing anything."
Well, he was right about not liking it.
John hums in acknowledgement, lifts his hands in a familiar show of openness. "I don't offer for my benefit."
The understanding is supplanted by disbelief, and he's damned if it doesn't wrench at something at the very core of himself to see it. He's always known that things couldn't have been good on the other end of the portal, in any sense of the word, and yet he's also never been confronted with quite so dramatic proof as this. What kind of life must it have been for basic decency to seem like a foreign, incomprehensible concept? For Wil to wonder if even John's most basic tenets had been replaced by back-stabbing manipulations like offering safety and then yanking it away? These are questions John doesn't want to ask; these are also questions he can't avoid.
And yet they nod again, slowly, and he wonders if he's won some small victory. If they're one step further away from the Black. (If he's making it up, or if their eyes have gone a decidedly familiar shade of dark brown.) "Thanks. Thank you, John." It's hesitant, and halting, and, he thinks, genuine.
John turns, walks towards the doorway and the lightswitch right next to it. Rests his hand against the wall until his finger hits the switch. (His arm, as it presses against the sill, feels bare where the wristband of his watch should be.) "Good night, Wil."
They shift, looking over with a kind of subtle appreciation John's not sure he deserves for what he'd consider basic human decency under any other circumstance. "G'night."
The light clicks off.
– – –
The watch that was once John Mcnamara's and is now temporarily retained by the thing that was once Wilbur Cross slowly ticks its way to 1:02:25.
1:02:26.
1:02:27.
Once John left, night spread its silent wings over the house with remarkable efficiency. Beneath that darkness - beneath the almost-timeless hush that came with it - a paradox sits on a leather couch and breaths like they've not breathed in a decade's worth of long, long years.
Wil, John called them. Wil.
They sound it out, whisper it into the night. Feel the syllable curl their tongue, scrape the back of their too-sharp teeth. Smile. It doesn't quite fit - feels, in a way, like a mantle that once belonged to someone else and is just a hair too big - but it fits more than anything else. They're not Wilbur anymore, easier though that might have been, and they can only hope they're not Wiley and all that came with them either. Wil, though… It's close. It's a name they can grow to suit.
It's a name they can make theirs.
It's still not easy, though, sitting there on that couch. There, it is harder to avoid the memories, the ones that aren't quite bad but are tinged with a melancholy of days gone by. It's harder to ignore time's relentlessness - to ignore the fact that time exists at all, after so long without it - and to ignore all that has changed since they were last here. To ignore the fact that John's hair has finally gotten longer like he'd wanted last they spoke, the fact that one of the windows is newly cracked for reasons they can't name, that they are no longer Wilbur as they'd been last time they sat on this couch. It was harder to ignore time when it kept ticking on around them.
1:03:10.
1:03:11.
1:03:12.
Their hands still sting, aching with a kind of persistence that is at once relieving and irritating. In a way, they still appreciate it - are thankful that there's something keeping them grounded, keeping them firmly entrenched in the knowledge that they're actually alive - and yet they don't need it anymore. They can't be making up their surroundings right then, of that they're sure; after enough time spent in the vacant nothingness trying to intentionally do precisely that and falling painfully, pitifully short, there's no way they're doing it by accident now.
No, they're definitely out of the Black, unbelievable as it might seem, and they don't need this bleeding weakness to prove it anymore either.
Their hands are steadier as they press them together, one palm curving over the bloody surface of the other, and it's little more than a matter of focus to will the cuts closed. (One of the few perks of being twisted into something so very other in the space beyond dimensions; the dimensions themselves held no claim over them.) The other hand followed, and their temple. The bruises at their wrists where things vaguely like hands had tried to stop them. The bits of their skeleton that weren't where they should've been, weren't how they should've been. They can't fix everything - can't hide the silvery scars spreading in serpentine networks across their hands, the long-mishealed gash on their face, the absolute disaster that their spine has become - but they can fix some. Enough to not keep bleeding all over John's couch, at any rate.
And then they wait.
– – –
The entity now known as Wil watches the watch that was once John Mcnamara's and counts the seconds. Watches as they tick by into a minute, and the minute into an hour, and the hour into hours. Attends to the motion of those tiny clockwork hands with all the attention watched pots are known to shun.
2:10:45.
5:15:38.
6:50:00.
8:20:59.
John comes and goes, his presence lost somewhere in the sands of the metaphorical hourglass. They notice it, distantly, but they've no energy to do anything about it, to say the lines they should say - thanks a bunch fer lettin' me sleep on your couch, John. mighty grateful to ya! - or explain their spontaneous full recovery or even just acknowledge the cup of coffee he left for them. It's long cold, now, and yet they can't consider reaching for it because they've gotta be ready. Gotta be prepared.
After all, like so many things about the past less-than-a-day, it is only a matter of time. The Lords in Black were never ones for disappointment, never the type to let an insult or a loss or a betrayal go unpunished. They have Their hands around every timeline, a puppet string around every person They could reach (and They had long damn arms), control over… over everything. It's not a question of if They're going to attack but of when, and when They do, there's no question that They'll be successful. This… This is a temporary reprieve. A holiday. A finite period of time fast coming to a close.
And so Wil sits on the sofa and stares at a watch and counts.
9:30:01.
11:00:00.
The hours mount. Nothing happens. It's too good a streak of luck - too fortunate a string of occurrences - for them to believe it. Their luck has never been good, not even before the portal, not even when they were Wilbur; for it to be this good now? It has to be a trick. It has to be.
Right?
13:15:03.
They're still alone. John's not back, which is probably good judging by the nerves spiking through them, the urge to curl their fingers into the couch and hold tight against anything that might come to snatch them away. There's a tapping sound filling the room, and they wonder if this is the Lords making Their presence known before They actually show up until they realise it's their own foot tapping an anxious tattoo against the floor. Surely They should've been here already.
Unless They were waiting this long just to fuck with Wil. A sadistic long con, to make them think they were really, truly alone before pouncing and dragging them back. A game, like They always loved to play, perfectly tuned to inflict the worst suffering They could while still leaving some room for more fun later.
Hell, maybe it's already happening. Maybe Wil's not making up the haziness at the corners of the room, the way the floor seems like it's warping at the edges, bending up into nothingness. Maybe the darkness still lurking in the corners aren't just shadows cast by something they can't see and are instead the oozing Black seeping out after them. Maybe they've hallucinated the whole thing, or it's the Lords' latest trick, or-
No.
They stand before they can think about it, close their eyes before they can question it. Pressing their fingers against their eyes without gouging them out is a delicate task, but they manage it, somehow, despite the panic trying to take over. Their hands are shaking again - not shock, at least, or blood loss, but simple, good-ol'-fashioned fear - but they focus and breathe and manage, somehow, to quell the tide. (Or, perhaps, they only tell themself they've quelled the tide, even as they can feel it trying to build again, lapping at the very tenuous supports they've erected to keep it at bay. One or the other.)
The room isn't helping. It probably should be - it's familiar, and the first haven of something-like-safety they've had since the portal - but it isn't, and there's an urge to move, move, move so they do. They grab the coffee cup as they go and down it as they move, instinctively (and maybe irrationally) dreading the moment they let their guard down enough to fall asleep. It's empty by the time they step across the living room threshold and into the kitchen.
This, too, is familiar, with the same rose-gold-limned nostalgia of everything John-related, and yet they can see the differences. A new dish they don't recognise drying in the drainer; a new spatula to replace an old one John had melted once trying to make an omelette; a magnet on the fridge from some town Wil's never been to. Tiny details of the thirteen years John's lived since Wilbur stepped through that portal, elements of the time Wil has spent in a hell older than time itself and aborted from its flow. It was painful, in a way, and yet it was also almost relieving. (Wil isn't Wilbur, not anymore, but they remember being him in the way a chair remembers an owner who's sat it in for long enough: the echoes remain, stored in the well-worn tracks of the past. Wil wasn't Wilbur, but they can still feel the relief Wilbur would feel at John being, at least to some degree, alright.)
It's then that they notice the ticking. It's not quite loud but undeniably present in a way that sends a long-ingrained chill running down Wil's back. The panic floods back before they can think, before they can rationalise the sound and run through the logical pathways, before they can fully process the fact that they'd picked up John's watch with the coffee cup, that they'd brought the ticking in. (They try to ignore the fact that they hadn't intended to pick up the watch, that they hadn't even noticed they'd done it. It was instinct, that was all. Instinct.)
Once they've noticed it, they can't stop, can't push the noise away. Even setting the watch on the countertop doesn't help; they can still hear it, ticking away in the background. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Turning away doesn't do anything; stepping away doesn't do anything. It worms into their skull, and they can't help but fixate on it, can't help but listen for that next quiet tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Ti-
When they come back to themself, their hand is three inches from John's knife block.
Just stepping away doesn't feel like enough, so they throw themselves back, let their back slam into the wall, let their legs collapse out from under them. The wall is cool behind their shoulder, sturdy as they slide down, down, down, grounding as they finally land on the hardwood flooring. Their knees are up in front of them, hands trapped safely between their legs and their chest, head pressed against the wall behind them. Fuck. FUCK. They've been a weapon for a long damn time - never quite so literally as after the portal, but even from the start - and yet it's different now, in a way they can't quite explain.
No one gives a weapon autonomy, because no one wants a weapon to think. No one gives a weapon autonomy because, if its only purpose is to kill, then how can it know when to stop?
Well, they may not know exactly when to stop, but they know to avoid the knives now, that's for sure. There are too many memories attached with those - too many people they've hurt over the years - too little distance between those blades and the same loss of control that has allowed Wiley to slip in once before. Hell, being in the kitchen in general is walking a fine line, a precipice between what was once normal and what is now dangerous, and yet, as they sit there with their knees still pressed between them and the world, there's nowhere else they can think of to go.
It's an urge, an instinct that pulls them to their feet. Coaxes them across the room and towards the cabinets. Whispers at them until they open them and peer inside. Cataloguing the contents is a well-worn skill; planning a menu is a long-perfected art. Pulling out ingredients… unexpected, but not unwelcome.
There's still a learning curve, though. A difficulty in improvising ways to cut and peel and grind without the use of a knife. A hesitance to pick up a tomato paired with wondering if it's going to rot like everything else in the Black and White (at least until they remember that they're not in the Black and White anymore and so the produce will be fine, and that they could fix it even if it weren't). A reticence to cracking an egg for breading because there are too many moments stored in their memory where it was something else cracking between their fingers. Too long spent staring at water boiling on the stove, watching as the slow, constant exposure of heat breaks the noodles' texture down and down and down into merely a shadow of its future self.
And yet, when all is said and done, they cook.
– – –
John Mcnamara walks into his house after work to find the entire place smelling of cooking. Not just simple cooking - the kind he's wont to do in the evenings when he's actually at home instead of traipsing around the countryside fighting monsters - but actual, real cooking, of the sort he hasn't smelled in years. Tomato sauce, mainly, and spices, and something else he can't quite identify, all of it layered with the sound of popping grease and boiling water. It smells, frankly, heavenly.
And familiar.
It's not a surprise to walk in on Wil in the kitchen, stirring at something on the stove with a practised ease. Or, well, it wasn't an unfamiliar surprise, and, once someone was in the kitchen and producing those particular smells, it wasn't shocking that it was Wil, and it wasn't at all surprising that they knew their way around his kitchen. The fact that they were cooking at all did still give some pause.
(The memories play a role too, though. The vivid similarity between this and thirteen years prior, when they'd shared this place enough that Wilbur had started cooking for them. When John had had the fortune to discover that his mentor could actually cook and cook wel. When Wilbur would casually stroll into the kitchen and whip up shit John had never tasted before but loved immediately.)
It's this pause that results in a rather undignified, "What the hell?" slipping out before he can think of the best way to approach the situation.
Wil spins around, caught off guard enough that John's able to catch their lightning quick glance towards his watch sitting on the counter and, before it, the instinctive but quickly shut down twitch towards the knives. "John! Shit, didn't expect ya…" Their brows furrowed, enough that John's almost worried until their expression clears with a smile that curls their lips back, reveals canines that are fangs more than they are teeth. This isn't the past, not anymore. Wilbur never had those teeth: too white, too sharp, too plentiful. It's Wil who follows the smile with a gesture of their spatula; it's Wil who tilts their head towards the stove. "Want some pasta?"
John can't quite answer the question, can't quite fight the curiosity about what the hell he's just walked into. "You made dinner?"
Wil shrugs, something just barely more vocal than a smile exhaled in his direction. "Instinct, I guess." A moment, then: "It's not poisoned. Want some?"
And yeah, it's not the past. It won't be the past again, even if either of them wanted it to be. Things have changed too much - they've both changed too much - and there's no way things can go back to precisely the way they once were. But maybe, just maybe, they can make something new.
So John simply nods. "Sure, Wil." And smiles, just a little. "Thanks."
As the clock strikes 8:17 in the evening, they sit down to eat.