Chapter Text
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The fire in his heart rekindles when the lights cut out.
In the back of his chest, a spark catches for the first time in months. The flame flickers to life and builds to a full conflagration of anger, malice and devastation in a matter of seconds.
Till is fucking livid. He burns with it, melts from the inside out and from his mouth he breathes its fire.
Never in his life has Till been so blindly angry, and by the stars above is that saying something. Anger has been a part of him. He’s lived his life with wrath held in the palm of his hands; a bat ready to swing at his aggressors. But never, never before has his anger reduced him to tears.
His voice strains raw, echoing around the Alien Stage venue in the dark. A noise so primal and animalistic that it jolts him a bit when it ricochets back into his buzzing ears. Till takes an aborted step backwards, hearing the sickening splash his heel creates.
Ivan’s blood grows cold around his shitty designer shoes and it’s only out of the vaguest shred of respect that Till doesn’t kick the bastard when he’s down, as he bleeds out and dies because Till won by default. Till won, and Till is pissed.
Pissed at this fucked up world for putting them here, pissed at Ivan- the prick, for not saying anything and quietly deciding on his own to hand Till the win by giving up his life. Above all, Till is pissed at himself.
He gave up too. He's been blind. He even let the world of alien oppression rule over him and beat him down like a dog. Mutt that he is, Till can still bare his teeth yet. And it’s his teeth that grit around his screams of agony and his hands that clench in tension-wrought fists. No one and nothing can take that away from him. Not even Ivan, pushy as ever; now that he lies there dead.
Till has never been angrier. So when hands come to grab at his shoulders, when his vision disappears behind the smoke, the young man goes absolutely feral. Ivan no longer in his sight, he kicks and screams in dissonant, high-pitched sharp notes. Bulky arms come to wrap around his midsection and if by damn the guards think they can take him quietly backstage after all of this? Then let them end his life here too!
His ears ring even as he chokes on his own voice and the smoke around the stage constricts his lungs further. Even more than when Ivan’s hands were literally clamped around his neck.
A hand covers his mouth to shut him up and immediately Till stops struggling. Why a hand and not a muzzle?
He’s tugged in one direction violently and by the time the smoke clears, Till isn’t backstage like he expected to be. He’s quickly dragged down a hall in the facility that he’s never seen before. Till looks around in confusion as the view whips past him at a fever pitch speed. He finally looks forward, squinting at the figure dragging him along in this frantic sprint down the hall.
It’s a human.
Not a robot, sentinel or alien species. Just some regular guy.
And honestly? Till hasn’t seen too many of those in the past few months, let alone his lifetime after the Anakt Garden so… excuse him for blinking dumbly and almost stopping his feet.
The guy must notice him falter nonetheless, because he turns and shouts something utterly incomprehensible, blocked out by the rush of his pulse beating against his own ear drums.
This pause, though, gets Till to look around further and catch sight of something far more important than the unfamiliar person. He sees another human running directly behind them and across his shoulder he carries… Ivan.
Till almost stops and bites. He doesn’t know who or what he would bite, but he grinds his own teeth together with the urge. A harsh yank on his shoulder brings him forward-facing again but does nothing about his frantic thoughts.
Because what the hell is happening? Who are these people? What are they doing with him and Ivan’s body? And how are they not all dead yet?
The only thing Till can actually process right now is the flame of anger in his chest. He’s frustrated, confused and still fucking livid. He needs a moment of peace, for things to stop for a little bit so that he can get a grip on what the fuck is going on.
And blessedly, he does get that, in a way.
The second he sees Mizi at the juncture between two hallways, Till promptly passes out.
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The muzzle is new.
Till hasn’t been backstage for long, as far as he remembers, but the tether around his neck is commonplace by now. That’s normal, but how do they expect him to sing, canary in a cage, if his hands are bound and his mouth covered?
He looks around, seeing faceless human competitors lined up all nice and organized by the guards. Lambs to the slaughter.
He shakes a bit at the shackles. It’s not like it has ever helped.
Till wonders where Ivan learned how to disarm them without alerting the owners when said man takes the stage. Wait? Wasn’t Till up in the bracket before him? Didn’t he go after Mizi and Sua?
Till shifts uncomfortably as Ivan picks up singing after someone else has taken their turn. It takes so much focus to hear Ivan’s voice above the rolling white noise in his ears and slowly the dissonance creeps up on him. Something is wrong. Till gets to his feet.
Ivan’s opponent is shorter than Till remembers. His own shackles clink and grind along the stage as he stumbles up to the boy.
He’d grit his teeth if it weren’t for the fucking muzzle. Ivan keeps trying to sing to the other boy, reaching out, growing desperate. Till gets sick of it quickly. He kicks Ivan’s competitor- the bastard refusing to sing. To even try to put up a fight.
It’s disgusting, pathetic, plain insulting an- Oh. His own lifeless eyes look back at him.
Till stares down in horror. This isn’t the round he thought it was.
His head snaps up to find Ivan- Mizi? Anyone. He looks around frantically unable to see through the brilliance of the spotlights into the void of the crowd. Then his peripheral catches on the image of something as it falls.
Till looks down again. He recognizes the body on the floor.
He wakes up in a rush of panic, snapping upright in an instant. The white noise is louder now, and there’s a sense of motion that must mean he’s in a vehicle of some sort. Till stares down at his shaking hands.
That fucking relieved smile of Ivan’s is etched onto the backs of his retinas.
He tries to blink the image away, looking around what seems like the back of a truck for a distraction. That’s when he sees it.
Ivan’s body lies in a cot on the opposite side of the truck.
Nope. Till thinks and then bangs his head against the truck bed, immediately knocking himself back out.
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“Till?” He groans and curls away from the voice that hits a higher register than what his brain wants right now. “Hey, Till. Get up.” The voice insists, though he pays it no mind. He hears the whistle of a breathy sigh.
Maybe they’ll give up trying to bother him now. Instead, the voice challenges: “I know you’re more resilient than this. Or have you finally given up?”
This gets Till to jolt up blindly from where he had been prone. He assumes he’s in a bed but before he can even open his eyes to find out for sure, he loudly declares, “Fuck off.” to the voice.
She laughs.
Till’s eyes snap open in shock because that’s- that’s Mizi’s laugh.
Mizi seems to balk a bit at the intensity of his shocked stare. “Uh, hi Till.” She says, almost bashful.
Till, as usual, makes an ass of himself by being reactionary. “You lived?”
At least Mizi takes it in stride, laughing a bit and then sardonically replying, “No, actually. I died that day. I’m a ghost!”
And a bit of a chill runs down Till’s spine. Because, yes, she’s joking with him and yes, she is actually alive in the flesh. But… a part of her did most certainly die on that stage.
As much as Till doesn’t want to acknowledge it- Sua meant far more to Mizi than Till ever could.
Now that Mizi has lost her other half… Till is even less sure of how to navigate talking to her than before.
His conflict must show readily on his face like all of his emotions do, because Mizi chuckles a bit self-deprecatingly. “Sorry,” She says. “That wasn’t fair. A bit of morbid humor. Yes, I’m alive and I’m okay.” Till fully takes her in, then. The short-cut hair, the bags under her eyes. How her irises no longer hold the innocence of one still hopeful. Till almost laughs. They’re at least similar in that.
“I was worried about you.” Till admits quietly. His hands bunch up fist-fulls of the sheets he’s under. One of Mizi’s delicate hands hovers above his. “It’s okay,” Till says. “What matters is that we’re both alive, right?” He doesn’t want her kindness, nor her pity. He doesn’t deserve to even look at someone who has persevered through so much. Till has faltered where she has seemingly found new strength. He refuses to get in the way of that by bringing her down into his misery.
“Right.” Mizi nods solemnly. “I actually came to wake you up because I thought you’d like to see Ivan. The medics said they’ll allow visitors now.”
Till looks at her blankly.
Ivan. See Ivan. What? See Ivan’s body? To pay his final respects or some petty shit?
Again, Mizi must find her understanding in his expression because she elaborates, “He’s in the medical wing of our compound. He’s stable and still alive. He hasn’t woken up yet but you haven’t been out for very long after all.”
Till shoots out of bed, almost stumbling directly on to Mizi. “What? I watched him die!” He yells at her, indignant and misdirected.
Mizi, saint that she is, pushes him away to a safe distance and takes a steadying breath for both of them. “Our friend Isaac carried him out with you. We were able to administer enough first aid to hold him until we got to our compound outside of the settlement and could treat him properly. He’s alive, Till.”
And that’s about enough to have Till crumble.
“H-huh?” Till whimpers a bit as his voice cracks. “He?”
Mizi nods sympathetically. Till buries his head in his hands, body shaking. This is so embarrassing, especially in front of Mizi.
She taps his shoulder lightly while Till can’t focus his eyes and calls out when she reaches the doorway, “Well, are you coming?” Till straightens himself and quickly trails after, rubbing at his face in shame.
It’s nighttime in the compound, with few idlers walking around the halls. Till wonders if Mizi has been waiting for the doctors to give word that Ivan was stable before immediately coming to gather Till. She seems haggard enough for that to be true and he’s left questioning if there is any limit to her care.
She really is something of a wonder.
Her head is held high, shoulders straight as she leads Till quietly through a dingy maze of hallways. After all that she lost… After the torment she went through with Luka on stage. How is she able to hold it together and help him of all people? Till quietly accepts his defeat. He’ll never understand how Mizi does it and, in fact, he doesn’t need to.
He’s not Mizi, nothing like her at all. He’s only in love with her.
Mizi is everything he couldn’t be and desires to care for. Full of wonder, a constant spark of curiosity and light. If Till is fire, then Mizi is electric. Always interesting, sharp and sizzling with excitement. Till has only ever doggedly followed after her light.
Even now, dimmed as she may be, Mizi is a lantern leading him through the dark.
They get to one doorway in particular and Mizi turns to look at him. She regards Till with a bit of scrutiny and says, “You’re not going to throttle him for that stunt, are you?” Her face is scrunched up in judgment and Till snorts.
“Not until he wakes up.” He rubs a hand along the back of his neck abashedly, realizing with a shock that his palm meets flesh instead of the constant metal constricting his throat. “He…” Till struggles to even question their efforts. “He will wake up, right?”
Mizi is quiet for a moment. She looks at the wooden door. “He should. We can’t know for sure, and it may take some time, but he’s still alive right now. I heard he had some internal bleeding that needed surgery and… It takes a while to get here from the city. Everyone did the best that they could. We have to hold on to hope now.” Till nods along shakily.
Having said her piece, she makes to leave, hopefully to get some rest if Till’s earlier pondering is right. He just doesn’t want her to disappear again. It gets him to reach a hand out, always reaching towards her. His motion is aborted, leaving his hand waving in the air.
Still, he speaks up. “Mizi, ah,” She stops and turns back to him. “Thank you.” Till says, with all the sincerity and emotion he can muster. He dearly means it. "Of course." Mizi responds. "My room is the one across the hall from yours if you need me." She offers. Then she smiles kindly, sweetly and in the way that she’s always been capable of- with a spark of compassion. Till blushes despite himself. Mizi waves a hand back at him and then disappears down the hall.
That leaves Till and one door separating him from a whole lot of ‘what the fuck’.
He stands there, feet rooted to the ground, for far too long. Waffling in indecision because, well, why go in? His brain buzzes with raucous questions and confusions that threaten to make him dizzy. Going in won’t help, it may even make things worse. Till’s questions will not be answered by opening this door, and frankly, he might not want the answers to some. Despair threatens to well up in him again but he tamps it down in frustration.
This is stupid, he’s being stupid and should just do something about it instead of thinking himself sick. Till pushes forward and opens the door.
It’s quiet in the room, soft and calm in a way that eerily reminds him of their cages. Even with the traumatic tang to his thoughts, Till doesn’t want to break the silence. Something like a delicate thread of stillness woven above the room.
His next step has him tripping over a cord connecting to one of the monitors and Till exasperatedly whines, “Fuck.”
His eyes had been transfixed on the figure in the bed. Till curses under his breath a second time as he approaches.
I hate this.
It’s the first concrete thought Till can string together. Ivan looks dead. Just as devoid of life as when he hit the dampened floor of the stage. Till has to wrap a protective arm around himself to keep from screaming out in terror and frustration again.
He calms his breathing for a beat, watches the slight rise and fall barely visible in Ivan’s form. The heart monitor beeps steadily.
It’s okay. It will be okay.
The numbness starts to creep up on him again, as he sits down in the chair next to Ivan’s bed. At the very least, he feels half alive again with a fire in his chest. Because of it, being numb is less like the all-encompassing nothingness he walked around with for weeks on end and is more like a bit of fuzzy edges to his thoughts.
Those thoughts that rattle around mercilessly in his head.
Ivan loves you.
The main one that echoes around, exceptionally painful.
This entire time, idiot; Ivan has loved you.
The worst part is that he knows. Till, in some way, has always understood this and the entire time he has been too afraid to face it. For Till, loving Mizi is easy. Safe. She’s always had Sua by her side and so there was nothing Till could ever do about it. Not that he’d want to- selfish fantasies in his childish mind be damned.
Loving Mizi is safe because she is something Till can never have. He doesn’t have to look at her and know he’ll be seen in return. He can hide away his gaze forever and view her on a pretty glass pedestal of his choosing. With Ivan, it is much harder to hide. So Till pointedly looks away. He turns a blind eye and runs when he has nowhere else to go.
Because Ivan is far too real and Till can’t wrap his mind around what would make Ivan so interested in the first place. Why follow after him? Till is nothing more than damaged goods. Worse than that, Till only knows how to harm, to destroy. He’s already hurt Ivan in multiple ways, most physical. One day, Till will burn down the entire world around him and the thought is only made worse by thinking of who else he’ll be taking down in the flames. It’s obvious, especially now, that Ivan would go far too willingly.
Till wants to talk back to him like always, to tell him he’s wrong in his misguided obsession. To hate Ivan for forcing Till into this situation, never leaving him agency even in the end. For that kiss, to do that of all things after what had just happened at the entertainment club. Did Ivan even know what they did to him that night? Isn’t that why he made things between them physical? Or was that just what Ivan wanted to do, always what Ivan wants and wants an-
Till wants to hate Ivan so much it constricts his throat. It would be completely valid to do so. There’s no denying that A. this man is sick in the head and B. that he is ill over Till himself.
He hangs his head over the back of the chair as his body slumps further down into it.
And yet, that final peck on the lips held so much beneath it that, Ivan’s hands around his neck, Till felt breathless for entirely different reasons. Ivan cares, Ivan has always cared. In ways Till can’t quite follow, sure, but now Till can’t look away from how very deep that runs. It’s terrifying to him.
Ivan nearly died for me. Till thinks, agony-wrought. Of all the stupid fucking things…
He runs a hand through his hair, longer than he’s comfortable with and greased from traveling to where- wherever the hell they are now. Mizi had said outside of the main settlement? It’s not like Till even knows what the city itself looks like beyond glances outside of windows.
He supposes he had a chance to look, when he and Ivan ran away together. But it was only for a brief moment where Till was caught up in the real happiness Ivan showed him before his eyes returned to the garden and suddenly Till felt lost without a leash tying him down.
It’s hard to remember now exactly what was going through his head when he pulled away from Ivan’s grasp, but it’s something like fear. A fear stronger than the regret and guilt he ran back to Anakt Garden with.
Till wasn’t afraid of Ivan, never Ivan. That guy isn’t very scary, after all. No, Till is afraid of himself. Still is, as he sits in a dim medical ward room.
He is so, so scared of the things that he’ll continue to fuck up.
It never seems to stop. It never gets any better.
Till is always the master of his own demise and if it were just his cross to bear alone? That’s fine. He can wade through the repercussions. It’s everyone else around him that he seems to bring down that makes him want to choke himself out. He places a hand to his throat, a sick mimicry of how his hands flew back there as Ivan was shot down in front of him.
Of course Ivan was never going to strangle him. Of course. Because he’s a fool in love.
The thought returns; Ivan loves you. Ivan loves you so much.
So?
Will you let him?
Till is too scared to answer back.
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The days churn by in a grind that feels something like routine as Till finds his place amongst the rebels of the human resistance. Their compound is nestled inside of a sort of red light district, tucked away from the commandeering structure of the city. It’s here that humans experience more autonomy and something of what would be a normal life if not for sporadic police raids. There are many communities of destitute aliens here, though, that willingly provide a protective buffer to the human population.
As outcasts of society, they’re all about the same regardless of their species.
It’s something of a whirlwind for Till to take in, but Mizi catches him up to speed and it doesn’t hurt that her senior Hyuna seems to be as fiery as a bomb going off. He respects that in a woman. They carry him along through his first week well enough. By the second week, it finally truly settles in for Till that he is actually free.
Dewey has been bugging Till to spar with him, no ulterior motives he claims, just to blow off some steam. Sure, that’s believable.
Why Till, a previous human-pet who’s never exercised a day in his little life outside of short health regimens for shoots and album drops? Dewey asks just one too many times, Till snaps and then he’s played directly into the other man’s hands.
They fight for as long as Till can keep up his pathetic stamina, Dewey parrying his blows while quietly giving him time to follow the motion so that he understands how it happened. They even garner a small audience that takes to cheering on the newbie. Eventually, when Till is far too exhausted to keep upright and a swift kick to his ankles lands him on his ass, they call it there.
Dewey wins.
And no one dies.
Till shudders from his position in the dirt, silt and sand clawed under his fingernails, and he starts to cry.
It’s a nice day out. Till can choose how to spend it. His neck isn’t caged in a metal restraint. He is free.
Till cries, awash with relief.