Chapter Text
Colour. Burning. Pain. Nothing. Then he opened his eyes. He couldn’t have actually opened his eyes of course, because he didn’t have any, and he couldn’t have seen anything if he had because there was nothing to see. An endless span of nothingness in which he did not have eyes because he didn’t have a form because he was no one, in nothing, in no when.
But if he was pressed to describe the nothing that he couldn’t see, he probably would have called it grey. Indefinite, vague grey that should have been a comfort after the swirling pulsating nauseating colour of before.
Before?
It didn’t matter.
Anyways, the not-grey-but-might-as-well-have-been should have been comforting. It would have been if it weren’t for the unending excruciating pain covering the entirety of his non-existent formless self.
If he didn’t exist why did he hurt so much? No fair. No fair at all. Frankly he was a bit pissed. This was not the afterlife he signed up for.
Afterlife?
Right. He was dead. Died in a big old fiery explosion, the whole works. That would explain the whole all consuming pain bit.
So, he was dead, this is the afterlife. And he must’ve been alive at some point, that would be the before. Before the not-grey-nothing, before the fiery explosion and ensuing pain. The pain that he now had to concentrate to focus through.
If he hadn’t always been no one, he must have been a person, with a name, and a life. And a reason for ending it the way he had.
Danny.
A name, not his though. No, Danny was his reason. The reason he pushed the button on that detonator and took the whole goddamn circus with him. The circus, the bastards that took Danny, his brother, from him. He died to destroy them, to stop them from destroying the entire world like they had destroyed his life. To stop the swirling-bright-awful-colour-unreality of the Unknowing.
So, when he pushed that button, he took himself out as well as the entire circus. But what about the others? The others, because his friends had been there too. Friends might be a stretch at this point. His coworkers then, Daisy, Basira, Jon. Were they dead too? Somewhere in this not-greyness? No. They weren’t, he was certain of it. He was the only one.
How was he so sure?
Never mind that for now.
All this thinking was starting to get uncomfortable. The more he thought and remembered, the more intense the pain got. It was starting to have more definition now. As if remembering was making him realer somehow. He was still just a nobody in the nothing though, so he wasn’t sure how much it mattered.
My name is Tim.
Yes. His name was Tim. He used to work at the Magnus Institute with Jon and Martin and Sasha. Oh god Sasha. He had died to save the world and kill the monsters that had killed his brother. He focused harder as the pain built up. He had been prepared to die to get his revenge, he had been so focused on going out in a blaze of glory that he hadn’t even stopped to consider what he still had. Now he was here in the nothing, with nobody and he would never see any of them again.
Looking back on his last few months with the clarity that the nothingness gave him, he reflected on what he had left behind. He could never apologize to Martin now. At the time he had thought it would be easier to go if he didn’t have anyone holding him back, but Martin wouldn’t let go so he had pushed him away. Martin didn’t deserve that. And Jon, he knew that his last words would probably haunt him forever, that’s why he had said them. But in those few seconds of clarity before the end he had seen Jon’s face, really actually seen his former friend for the first time in ages and he had seen exactly how much raw hurt his words had caused.
And then he had gone and died and left the rest of them to deal with the shitstorm their life had become. There would be new horrors coming for them he knew. He knew. They would be in danger.
But there was nothing he could do about that.
He, Tim Stoker, was dead and gone and floating in a muted-grey-pain-nothing.
They were out of reach and there was nothing he could do about it.
No.
The nothingness seemed to flicker around him, holding him tighter as the pain built to a crescendo.
Fuck. This.
Outside of the nothing, finally real and somehow whole, Tim Stoker opened his eyes.