He lost time again. He knows it, because he wakes up on the floor of his room, instead of somewhere sensible like his bed, or even the chair at his work desk. There are a few disorienting moments where he wonders how he got here. Why he's here.
He was having a beautiful dream. It was a dream of cool waters, and fields of endless grass, and someone, distant and smiling, and happy to see him.
He's in hels. He's... supposed to be in hels. No fields of endless grass here, only hot and heat. The world smells faintly of brimstone and ash, even when the windows are closed -- but who would keep the windows closed when without the windows open there would be now breeze.
The wind in hels is hot and unforgiving.
He thinks he used to like it here once. He remembers feeling... happy.
Right now the only feeling he has, is that he's uncomfortable on the floor. He stretches out his hand across the crimson stem planks, splaying black fingernails against the boards and listening to the soft shff of noise. The wood grain isn't like the wood grain on trees. There are no odd concentric circles spooling and unspooling endlessly across the bark. Instead, hard, compact fibers from the long stem press against each other like sheets of cardboard, varying in color where nutrients collected.
Well. He thinks that's why the colors are like that anyway. He used to be an expert on things like that. He has hazy memories of talking excitedly to his best friend about why hels was the way it was. The abnormalities, how different it was from a standard nether. Why there were birds, where they came from, how they lived here, of all places, tenacious against the heat and smog.
He has... memories of knowing things. They're soft and bright around the edges, less clear than his dreams. He remembers talking to people, and knowing things, but he can no longer remember what those things are.
"Moment of clarity," he says out loud to himself, to no one. He used to have those. He used to have them so often, they were normal. Not moments of clarity, living in clarity. Now those moments were so rare he wasn't sure they really happened, until he lost them again.
This was not a moment of clarity. This was, at best, a waking dream.
He was still laying on the floor.
His shoulder hurt. He thinks, maybe, he fell on it when he... left. Faded. Passed out. Slept. Dreamed. There's a bruise there. Or maybe he's been laying here for that long. He's heard of that happening to people -- laying still so long their bodies bruise. Their friends have to pick them up, turn them over, move them so they don't hurt themselves while the Universe slowly drags them away. He remembers doing that for someone once. Not his best friend. Someone else. Someone who used to live up the street. He remembers washing their hair for them while they slept, and wishing they would wake up.
There is no one here to wash his hair. His best friend... might have already forgotten about him. That happens sometimes too. People so far gone, they spend their last moments alone because... because...
There is an ache in his chest. It hurts. The pain is intense, and he cannot tell if it really hurts that much, or if its just the first thing he's felt in a long, long time. The novelty takes his breath away. It isn't fear. The fear wore off... oh... a long time ago. Back when he still thought he had something worth living for. Back when he still had hope he had a chance. When fear actually gave him something -- adrenaline, fight or flight. Back when there was still enough of him left to feel things like spite, or hate. He'd torn apart his workshop once, in that fit of anger. He never cleaned it again. Couldn't bring himself to climb the ladder. Besides, if he passed out again, he didn't want to wake on a bed of broken glass.
Still on the floor. It aches. He should move.
There's a book beside him. His sketchbook. He fell asleep, faded, passed out, left, dreamed, while he was in the middle of reading it. Old drawings. Grand plans. Notes to self. He held a hope once that, maybe, if he memorized the pages well enough, he wouldn't forget who he was. Trying to grip those pages through memory now, though, they slipped through his thoughts like water. With an effort, he musters the strength to pull the book towards himself. Doodles of sheet pattern the page its open to, and he smiles.
A beautiful, soft dream. Walking through fields of grass towards someone who was so, so happy to see him. His smile was radiant as the sun, his voice embroidered with enthusiasm, like it was a part of the fabric of his being. He'd called him by name. Taken him by the hands. "Hello hello! Finally we meet again my friend! You've been hiding for so long. But now, what's gotten into you. You look tired. Wouldn't you like to rest?"
Oh. Rest. He was always tired now. No voice to speak. No thoughts to think, save the ones that rolled past like clouds on a summer day, formless and inconsequential. He was holding a book in his hands. Oh. His sketchbook. Right. For remembering himself, and not the dream.
He has, a moment of clarity. Brief, and colorful, and formed and whole. It breaks through the formless dark of his mind and says, boldly and unapologetically, the thought of yourself as you are now once terrified you.
He lays on the floor and turns that thought over like a stone in a river. Like a bright star caught in tissue paper clouds it glares at him, pins itself on the horizon line of his thoughts. Thoughts like that are so beautiful and rare now. Moments of clarity.
Yes. When he was whole and strong and... imperfect, but alive because of that imperfection, he was terrified of this. The slow fade. The loss of will. The loss of life. He was dying. He had been dying for a very long time. The Universe wanted him, because while he lived, his Hermit wasn't whole. And his Hermit, out there somewhere, was trying so hard to be whole. And... he was never meant to exist.
No helsmet was ever meant to exist.
The ache in his chest gets deeper, bottoms out into something that leaves him breathless again. Mourning. No one else would mourn him so... surely he was allowed, while he still had thoughts to think, to mourn himself. He was crying. The soft patter of his teardrops marred the straight, compact lines of the crimson floorboards with freckles. He clutched the little sketchbook to his chest and curled up on the floor, and he was wracked, briefly, with the fear and mourning and loss he rarely was able to feel. And he reveled in it. In the fact that, for just a few moments, he cared.
Stand up, please. You're thirsty. You're hungry. You want to live.
No. No. He wanted to go back to that dream. It had been so much kinder.
Someone was out there, standing in an endless field of green, beneath an endless sky of blue. He had a labcoat folded over his arms, tightly curled horns blooming from his head, and a smile that could light up the sun. And the wind blew, and set wildflowers dancing. And they stumbled towards each other, inexorable as two stars colliding. And he was a small thing dying, searching for a moment's warmth and softness, and his Hermit took him by the hands and said, "I lost you there for a minute. Are you coming back to stay yet? You'll like it here, I promise. We'll have adventures together, you and me. There's so many questions to ask, an entire Universe to explore! And you'll be here with me, won't you?"
And he could not say he had no choice.
And he could not say he wanted to live.
Because it was all just a dream, and only the few lucky, for a moment, controlled what their dreams gave them. All he could do was hold onto his Hermit's hands and pray this one didn't turn to nightmare.
"I should... leave a note," he whispered to the empty room. "He'll... remember he's missing something... eventually. He'll... want to know."
"You're right, a note would be kind! Here, I'll help you. Dear Evil Beesuma, don't worry, I've gone to meet my new friend Z--"
There was a pencil stuck between the pages at the end of the sketchbook. On that page was a drawing of someone he no longer recognized. That face hadn't looked back at him from a mirror in... well. In a very long time. He blinked at the little self portrait, watching the stranger there for... too long. Too long.
He'd been doing something. What was it?
That ache in his chest drilled itself through his ribs. He grimaced, and buried his face in his sketchbook.
"Hey, don't cry again it's alright. It's a little confusing isn't it? I said I would help you. Will you let me help you?"
He shook his head.
"I am sorry. Truly. I'm not trying to be mean. It's just. You seem so much happier here. And you feel so tired there. You don't want to be that person anymore, do you?"
"No," he whispered. "No I don't."
"Would you still like to write something? Or would you like to come here?"
"He'll remember something's missing," he insisted quietly.
"Yeah he will. But that's what the stone was for, right?"
Oh. Yes. Yes his remembrance stone. He'd carved his name. So people would remember. But he'd never taken it to a wall. He'd thought. He'd thought. Time. He was supposed to have more time. Time to place his stone. Time to visit his friend one last time. Time to tell his neighbors, the nice ones who kept bringing him dinner twice a week, because they were worried he would be so busy in his workshop he'd forget to eat. And the shopkeep he bought his spare parts from, who always told him about his life, and the man he was seeing, and how they were living together now. And they all had someone who cared, who would remember them. Who would take care of them when they lost time. Who would pick them off the floor when they fainted. Who would help them clean up broken glass when they couldn't bare to see what they were becoming. People who cared. People who cared. People who cared.
"I'm going to be forgotten," he said quietly. "I'm going to be forgotten, and no one will care."
He was still on the floor.
He was still on the floor, and he was tired. He thought he might fall asleep again. Here. On the floor. Where he'd fallen asleep the first time, and lay until his shoulder bruised, with no one to turn him over, or carry him someplace soft and warm.
He had been dreaming of someplace soft and warm.
"Dear EB," he whispered to his dark room, as the breeze rattled the shudders upstairs, and outside someone shouted on the street, and the world turned and forgot him. "I'm sorry I didn't come to visit. I didn't want you to worry. D-don't worry. I've gone to meet a friend. Signed..."
He blinked at his sketchbook, vision unfocusing. He was tired. He wanted to sleep. The ache in his chest was fading, replaced with quiet ambivalence.
"Signed..."
"Oh deary me. Do you remember your name?"
His eyes fluttered closed. He buried his face in his hands. He thought he could see, in the distant dark in the back of his eyelids, shapes of grass. Light seeping in. Hels was hot, dry, scorching. This place wasn't. It was soft and warm, and there was sun on his skin.
"It's alright," he said, and he laughed like the sun. "That's what the stone is for, isn't it?"
Yes. Yes that's what the stone was for.
He couldn't say that out loud. He wasn't one of the rare, happy few who could control their dreams.
"So how about it?" Zedaph asked, taking him by the hands. "Will we go on an adventure together?"
He had friends back home. He had a life he had enjoyed living once.
He was never meant to exist.
He couldn't talk in dreams.
"Don't be scared," Zedaph grinned, pulling him along. "We'll go together, yeah?"
He couldn't talk in his dreams.
He closed his eyes.
He stopped feeling the grass beneath his feet.
He stopped feeling the sun on his skin.
There was only Zedaph, radiant as the sun, and perfect and whole.
In hels, there was an empty room.
