Chapter Text
The Radio Host had fallen asleep in his chair again.
To be entirely fair, he spent about as much of his time here as he did at home, and the furnishings were at about the same level of comfort here as there. The booth was maybe a bit smaller than his usual lodgings, but there were more records fit into it, along with various hidden snack foods and less rodents to get into them. He had quite a good setup at home, of course, but these crate-stuffed shelves were, as they said, 'the good stuff.'
The Trespasser outside knew all of this, and hoped that his memory served true.
He didn't especially like to think of himself as a Trespasser, but, there you were. From an outsider's perspective, he really wasn't in a good place to argue that he wasn't, but he rationalized that it would be their problem, and not his. It wasn't his own fault, after all, that circumstances had deprived him of access to a working key, so of course the lock-picking that had ensues was purely circumstantial, nothing more than a tediously specific detail. The fact that it was night was another such detail that could call his presence into question, but Time and the Sun had a habit of doing whatever they pleased, regardless of their suitability for perfectly entitled visitors. Here, especially, they played by their own rules about that sort of thing, and there was nobody he could talk to about that to try and argue the point. Besides, he supposed, the night actually was a benefit, helping him avoid the inevitable multitude of odd looks and very inconvenient questions. In the long run, it was better for everyone he got put in such a bad light, and though he was willing to acknowledge that it was so, he still felt the need to justify himself.
The Trespasser, to his relief, found the cluttered studio exactly as he remembered it. Small, battered, and, well, cluttered. But there was a kind of warmth here, too, somewhere in between the bright colors of record sleeves and ash-stained carpet. He stood there, staring and taking it all in for a minute or so. It had occurred to him that although it was a familiar space, he was seeing it much differently than he had once done. The disorder of the place had it's own personality, this unremarkable room was a home, and for just a moment he could even tell himself that it was breathing.
A soft snuffle broke him out of his reverie. The breathing, it seemed, was very real, and coming from the chair in the muddle of the room. He circled around to the side of it, looking down onto it's occupant, and continued to find surprise in finding exactly what he'd been expecting should be there. He wasn't sure why that would elicit a feeling of surprise, but strange emotions like that had become much more common for him recently, the overwhelming feeling of remembering a vivid and long-forgotten dream.
This sight from another lifetime, was, of course, completely ordinary to anyone else in the world. The Radio Host lay sprawled out low in the rickety swivel-seat, bent in the kind of way which only he and any species of cat might find comfortable. One un-laced sneaker propped up on his desk, where a turntable slowly revolved, the needle now at the end of its roundabout journey and putting out only the gentlest crackle as it found new dust. The other was lost somewhere in with the chair’s wheels. The man's hands were folded over his thin torso, an unlit but well-handled cigarette held in one of them. Just above these, a medallion glinted back the red power light of the record player. His neck bent forwards at an angle which should pain him in the morning, pressing his chin into his chest and making his thick-framed glasses in danger of sliding off the end of his nose, where a few locks of wavy ginger hair drifted back and forth from his breath. To the Trespasser, it was too ordinary. Too real.
Oh, there he was going again…
A white-gloved hand reached out and turned off the record player. The light went out with a heavy 'clunk', and the needle was deftly plucked up and set back on its cradle.
"Ah, I say…" Muttered the Trespasser, with all the awkwardness of attempting to start a serious conversation, combined with that of politely attempting to wake someone up.
The Radio Host stirred, his consciousness dragged back into the present not only by the change in noise from the record, but also from the change in light. He moved his head a fraction upwards, and then reached (or, perhaps, flopped) one arm in front of his eyes in a bid to tone down the intrusive flickery brightness. Had he left the television on again? He gave a low grumble as he tried to organize the scatter of his mind.
"Good evening, dearest cousin," continued the Trespasser, much more comfortably now he could consider the man to be awake, though the oddly muzzy tone of his voice now had a level of urgency in it. "I need your help."
The Radio Host froze, his expression half-obscured by the glare of light now reflecting off his glasses. He hastily scrambled his limbs into some kind of 'upright' form within the chair, brushing the hair out of his eyes and gripping the arms of his seat. He tried to talk, but the dozen or so false starts did not even make their way into his throat before falling away. Finally, with a breath that only barely qualified as 'speech', something made it's way into the silence. "Ge-…?"
"Will you help me?" Interrupted the Trespasser. He flexed his gloved fingers as they rested on the crook of his bamboo cane.
This address allowed the Radio Host to finally choose one of the conclusions that had been shaken loose in his brain. "I'm still dreamin'…" He murmured, letting himself fall back into his seat and running his fingers through his hair. He gave a long, drawn-out sigh as his shoulders relaxed, putting his head now fully into his hands. When he looked back up, it was with a sad sort of smile. "TV head's a new one, though. Heh. Creepy. But… It kinda suits ya, cuz."
"Ah, thank you, I think," said the Trespasser, "but, of course, that is all entirely besides the point, and dreams should not be taken so lightly with where we plan to go." He picked up the cane, and skimmed one hand along it to grip the other end. Nothing seemed to attach the gloved hand to the forearm of the suit. The Radio Host noticed this, and was unnerved. More unnerved than the head? That was still to see… "Haven't you ever wanted to be a Hero?"
"Plenty enough as anybody else might." The Radio Host sat up again and rubbed his eyes. He felt awfully tired, for a dreamer. "What'cha got? An audition?"
"Something like that…" Said the tv man, delicately. "Please, I can't do it myself, and, well, I don't know who else to ask…" He worried the ends of the cane a little harder, and the screen kept angling itself to points in the room which were not the man in the chair.
"'S that a fact?" The Radio Host tapped his fingers on his knees, and, deciding there wasn't much point staying put, pushed out of the chair with all the grace of a baby giraffe, and, as he found himself with a decent view of the top of a straw boater, certain other commonalities. It was nice to see his subconscious still held on to that difference in the height between them, though it'd been such a long time since they'd met in person.
The TV's antennas flicked upwards as the screen turned to his face, and at their full length they actually went up past the Radio Host's head.
"Aw come on, rabbit-ears," said he, "that's cheatin'!"
One of the long wires crinkled, and so did the color bar on the bottom of the screen. "That is even further besides the point, which, at this moment, is yes, or no?" The Trespasser looked around the room again. This story wasn't his… He didn't belong here… Paranoia, or perhaps some instinct, flooded his senses with the need to leave the studio as soon as possible.
"What?"
"Will you come with me? Help me?"
"Y'aint usually this persistent when you turn up…" Mused the Radio Host, stretching out his back and discovering a crick in his neck, as he scanned the room for whatever sorts of things he would need to pack. "Then again…" He already had most of what he would have wanted to take already on him, in some cases, literally. He did grab a ring of keys, however, from a drawer by his desk. "You've usually got your head screwed on, though not quite so pretty. Yeah, sure, why not, I'll help ya."
The Trespasser gave a sigh of relief. "Thank you," he said, "for agreeing, at any rate. Now, grab your jacket and lace your shoes, we have to leave right now, and it's going to be a long journey."
"Got it," said the Radio Host, tugging on a green jacket and leaving his sneakers untouched. He paused, flapping the zippered edges of the hoodie with his pocketed hands. "And where is it you're plannin on taking me?"
"I'll explain on the way." The TV Man moved himself to the door and threw it open, gesturing for his cousin to go first through. The man sighed, and did so. "Do you recall much of Alice in Wonderland?"
"Uh…" The Radio Host tipped his head back to recall, and the bamboo cane shot out to nudge him so that his path no longer connected with a trash can on the street. "'bout as much as anyone whose ever read it, I'd reckon. Why?
"Just keep it in mind, cousin." The TV man gave a hesitant silence, and then corrected himself. "Hero. You will probably find the memory of that story more use to you than any other experience, at least here, to compare with."
The streets they walked down were dark, and the pavement slick with recent rain was an impressionistic mirror of the world above. The TV Man kept on ahead, legs moving as quickly as his air of control permitted as he wound his way with no apparent rhyme nor reason through the town. Even the Radio Host, the newly-recruited Hero, realized he no longer know where he was now.
"I just ask…" Continued he, "because I've never dreamed anythin like it before and uh-…" He trailed off delicately. "Seein as how you uh…? With you're being dead, and all…"
"I'm sure you haven't," answered the TV man, opening the door to some abandoned brick shopfront, "because it really is me, and I really do need your help."
"You ain't how I remember ya."
"That's why I'm real."
"The problem with that is you're still dead."
"Which is why I'm like this." The TV Man gestured to himself, and sounded as though this was conclusive logic to the whole argument. "Really now, it's not even the point… You'll see it all make sense as soon as we get there."
"Uh-huh." The Hero's eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight coming through the boarded window. The place wasn't what he had expected at all. The walls were rimmed with nothing but doors, and a corridor lead further into the back than he would have thought the place had space for, and it divided into two more at its end. It had an odd feeling to it, abandoned, of course, but untouched by the usual signs of decay. He knew he had never been to this part of town before.
Then again, if it were only a dream, why should he?
"And uh, how 'bout me…?" Asked the Hero.
The question took the TV Man by surprise. "How do you mean?" He watched his recruit scratch the back of his neck as he desperately called to mind every possible electrical or gas appliance that he could have forgotten to turn off, and then realized what he meant. "OH! No, no no no no, not-… It's not like that at all, no," he quickly put his hands up, batting away at the very idea, "if anything, ah, actually-…" The Hero kept his eyes on him as he then trailed off and shook his head. "It will make more sense when you see it," he explained, and slipped down the corridor at the back. His cousin followed, and around the corners at the end of the hallway lead even more doors, like a hotel. Different colored lights filtered through the gaps in the worn wood, and arcane symbols were engraved on curiously shiny gold plaques on the tops of the frames.
"Ah! Here we are…" He fished something out of his suit-jacket as he stopped in front of one of the doors, (an infinity sign, perhaps?) and fitted it to the lock. He turned back to his new Hero, and the latter noticed that the line of colors at the base of the screen turned up in a way not unlike a smile. The taller man still looked worried. "Relax…" Reassured the dapper television. "I'm not here to escort you up to the pearly gates, if that's what you had in mind. You know that was never my style."
And with that, he threw the door open onto a blaze of color and light.