Chapter Text
『 I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete
I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I've been dreaming of? 』
It started with dreams.
Usually, people don’t recall them nor do they keep the details in their memory for longer than the very first few minutes when they wake up, or maybe seconds. But even those who remember don’t experience recurring dreams on a regular basis, unless they’re traumatized.
Needles pierce his skin. He is muzzled and cuffed to the table under a painfully vibrant lamp and distorted faces hovering over him. Another scar is made on his body when a blade cuts through the skin. He hates it, he fucking loathes it, but he has to endure it, no matter what. Sometimes, he thinks there’s another human with him when everyone else left.
Well, Till wouldn’t say that he was.
Sure, he grew up in an abusive household and maybe dealt with more than most kids have to way too early, but he managed, then prevailed, and then maybe talked to a therapist or two. But even if he wasn’t as thick-skinned as he considered himself to be, stubborn almost out of spite for the world, the dreams didn’t make sense. His first therapist suggested that maybe they were an allegory of the abuse he suffered and locked within himself, and the omnipresent figure that was present more often than not didn’t represent a particular person but someone his brain made up to help him deal with the reality he lived in.
Where is he? His body is numb. It itches with pain. All of his limbs seem unresponsive as he drifts in and out of the vegetative state for an unspecified amount of time that could depict eternity. Then, something drops to the floor — his muzzle. He feels a faint touch on the bruised skin of his face, a different kind. It’s safe. His body almost stops fighting to stay vigilant when something — someone? — brushes against him. A comforting presence. He gives himself to it, and then lets himself rest.
Till called that bullshit and never visited that therapist again. Dreams shouldn’t be that deep, right?
Expect, maybe, just maybe, when Till finally accepted it, they were. A fucking annoyance on top of that too, if he had to add. Because no matter how much he thought about it, no matter what he tried to make out of them, nothing seemed right. Something always felt wrong with the way he perceived them, like there was an important puzzle piece hidden away from him.
Someone leans against his shoulder while he sketches. He’s focused and at peace, comfortable in their shared, small bubble, as the wind gently tousles his hair. The thing around his neck doesn’t seem that heavy either. It’s nice, considering his companion usually fights with him regularly, bringing forth frustration. Wasn’t he called friendless, too? He doesn’t have to look at them to know they’re this person.
How many people dream of the same things more often than not, and how many can recall it, see connections between these scattered scenarios? How many seem to have an entire world stuck in their unconsciousness, which sounds like the most plausible interpretation?
Well, maybe Till is just fucking insane. And weird. Who even feels anxiety when looking into the sky late at night? Somehow, it makes him uncomfortable, like it could swallow him wholly.
The vast night sky stretches above him, a starry canvas painted with a meteor shower tonight. He stumbles when his wide , teal eyes bore into the sight too intensely for someone who’s running, but the clasp on his hand is too tight to let him fall. He is being steadied by another person with an unknown face and dark eyes sparkling with worry and determination.
The only aspect that always slipped his memory was the faces. He could draw them vaguely except for one. No matter what, Till always woke up with no recollection of it, leaving in his imagination blurry, unrecognizable splotches. Yet the presence was unmistakable, and so Till knew that the person most present in his dreams was always the same. The pain in his heart that followed when his eyes opened always brought the same feeling of sorrow and anguish. He was tired of blinking open his damp eyes, uncomfortable from the sweat covering his body.
There is always a reason not to look, but the logic following his dreams always points in the direction of the same person. Teal eyes rarely meet theirs. He looks away; a peculiar force forbids him to do otherwise.
⋆
In between the repeating loop that was his dreams, something Till could still blame his weird subconsciousness for, it suddenly trespassed reality.
Till rummages through his pencil case for the nth time, curses at the back of his tongue. If not for the teacher who just walked into the class, beginning to calm the commotion among loud teenagers, Till would have likely exploded. If he doesn’t have his favorite sketching pencil for this boring class, then how is he supposed to push through?
“Hey, Till—”
“Were you the one who stole my pencil?”
His classmate raises an eyebrow, confused. “What? Why would I?”
Till opens his mouth, drawing a blank, because… why would he ask that? For a split second, he is almost certain that his stuff was stolen before, a weird feeling that screams of deja vu.
“There is something under your notebook,” the classmate offers before taking the seat in front of Till.
It is the pencil. Till looks at it strangely. His head throbs uncomfortably though, probably from the lack of sleep he has been getting.
The class starts as Till opens his sketchbook. He has another dream to convey on the paper.
He didn’t notice at first. It could’ve been insomnia or his sour mood, and not some… what, exactly? Weird, cryptic dreamwalking, seeing things that aren’t there or aren’t happening? That, or maybe actually being crazy, like he was told.
Till carefully ties the flowers together, one by one, in immense focus. Art classes always put him at ease, and today is no different. That is not until the unfinished flower crown slips out of his hands and between the desks, just as someone walks by him. The classmate steps on his precious work, and the next thing Till knows is him lunging at the boy with hands clenched into fists and someone stronger pulling him away. The anger he feels is over the top, but he is certain it was done on purpose. His head hurts. He’s seen this before.
His parents call him aggressive and insane, though.
There were more situations where Till lashed out and got in trouble, going from one deja vu to another. He refused to talk to the psychiatrist all the same. It didn’t feel like it would ever get resolved or make any sense, leaving him angry and sometimes empty, as if something was torn off him and thrown away.
Food at the canteen isn’t great today, but Till begrudgingly eats his fill. He is deep in thought, waiting for his friend who queued later than he did, when he’s abruptly brought back to the present.
There are two fingers on his cheek. Till shudders, the touch tender and so familiar it almost splits him in half when his entire being responds to it. The fork he’s been holding falls on the plate with a loud clatter, his hand trembling. The commotion causes the touch to disappear, and its loss wrecks through Till like a wild storm. He whips his head to the side to see—
“You’ve got pen marks on your cheek,” his friend tells him.
Till stares at the hand in front of him. The fingers are big and rough, the opposite of what Till felt on his skin. No one has ever touched him with so much care — all he has known were slaps to his cheek or punches. Yet it left him with the same feeling he would wake up with almost every single day, wondering if he’s fallen asleep with open eyes just now because why—
“Till? Are you okay?”
—why else would the figment of a touch linger on his skin in the middle of a day, in a canteen, as if a ghost of a person from his dreams started to haunt him outside of the world created in his head?
It started with dreams, but didn’t end on them. Whatever mess Till carried in his head for most of his life became a part of him. He continued to sketch anything he could recall, any little bits, conveying the feelings he was left with — yet whenever he attempted to draw the imaginary person who became the source of his comfort and pain, the face was always blank. No matter how many times he told himself to look at them before falling asleep, steeling himself for it, he never did.
And it was torturous.
But Till learned to live with it.
『 Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old, and I need something to rely on
So, tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired, and I need somewhere to begin
And if you have a minute, why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So, why don't we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know 』