Chapter Text
Till holds his breath and closes his eyes. To say that he had given up right at that moment would be inaccurate though. He gave up before the round even began. A barely functional autopilot had taken over his body.
He barely felt the rain on his skin, or the microphone in his hands, while he was singing. He hadn’t felt much of anything until Ivan grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced uncomfortable awareness back into his body.
There wasn’t much time to think. Ivan was kissing him. Till didn’t want Ivan to kiss him. Everything was wrong, and Till was not one to shy away from shoving off unwanted touch.
A thought of a lounge and lyrics behind him bubbles up in his mind and is swiftly repressed.
Ivan wasn’t kissing him anymore. Ivan’s hands were on Till’s neck, and this was something closer to normal. Something they knew, the violence Till expected. It surprised him less, somehow, for Ivan’s hands to grab his neck and squeeze.
The initial shock was gone, and Till just didn’t care anymore. The stage didn’t matter. No one was singing. The cold rain hit his face and contrasted the warmth of the hands holding him up.
The hands flinched and shook. If Till was still trying to breathe, he would have found he still could. But he wasn’t. Wasn’t trying to breath, or move, or think.
Pain burst sharp into his shoulder, and he closed his eyes harder. He hears Ivan gasp, and his neck is released. Something in his balance spins and he pitches to the side, eyes just barely opening again. White fabric blocks his view and arms reach out to catch him, but the descent is only slowed as two bodies hit the wet floor of the stage together.
Voices were shouting, human and alien but everything was melting together. Till was so, so tired. Sleep reached out and he didn’t fight its embrace.
-
None of the other humans around him would be able to tell looking at his face, but Ivan was spiraling. Spiraling, and still bleeding, adrenaline wearing off and pain setting in, but he really did not care about those details.
By pure will, Ivan had stayed on his own feet when the resistance had pulled him off stage in the cover of smoke. Less people than there were from Round 5, but familiar cloaks regardless. He refused to move from Till until it was Mizi that moved him.
Mizi was here. That was good, he figured. That she was alive. Good for Till. Till would be happy she was there and she came back for him.
Assuming Till was still breathing, secured on the back of a motorcycle being driven by a tan woman that Ivan didn’t know.
He just wanted to check. Wanted to push Mizi away from him and force them to stop and put his hand on Till’s neck like he has a million times before and feel a pulse still fighting there. A pulse that was so often erratic, full of as much life as the boy it beat through. Even in his sleep, Till’s heartbeat had always been faster than Ivan’s own. When he was younger he used to try to speed his own heart rate up, attempting to match.
His vision was starting to fade black at the edges, childhood memories skipping and blurring through his thoughts unable to be kept. Even the insistent panic keeping his chest tight and jaw locked were going out of focus as blood loss took its toll. Mizi’s shoulders tense where Ivan’s head hits them, and he loses the fight with unconsciousness.
-
Till wakes up and thinks of nothing. Nothing lasts for only a few seconds before the sensation of laying somewhere unfamiliar gets to him. He sits up too fast and his head spins. Raising an arm to hold his head is a motion quickly aborted when the raw pain in his shoulder makes him choke. He focuses his eyes and properly takes in his surroundings.
He’s laying on a cot made of scratchy canvas with a thin blanket over his legs. The dismal black of his stagewear still clung to his legs, but his chest bore a plain white t-shirt. Pulling the collar down to see his shoulder, Till saw tightly wrapped bandages stained by dry blood. He grimaces.
The room is dim and curtains obscure its size. It’s nothing like the sterile white of his room or the artificial color of Anakt Gardens. Is he being punished? He didn’t remember what he did this time.
Ivan’s face, serious and flat, pops into Till’s head. Hands on his neck. Lips on his mouth. Eyes staring into his own with an intensity he couldn’t parse. Did Ivan kill him? Till didn’t spend much time wondering about what happens to a person after they die, but maybe the answer is they sit in an uncomfortable cot with nothing to watch but grey curtains.
Till reconsiders being dead, as a hot ache radiates from his shoulder. Did Ivan, what, lose? Till was barely even singing though, their scores couldn’t have been close. Hands on his neck. Hands on his neck. Attacking other contestants was a guaranteed way to get disqualified. Why would Ivan do that? Did he hate Till that much?
Till raises his good hand and rests his fingers against his lips. Hate didn’t seem like the right word. Not that he could ever read what was going on behind those pitch black eyes. His mind wandered to Mizi instead. A face he could read, a smile so genuine despite being so rarely meant for him. Till pushes his face into his hand, covering his mouth, and scowls.
They could both be dead. No, he refuses to believe Mizi is dead. They never found her. Missing wasn’t dead. Missing was gone. Mizi was gone, and any hope of seeing her, of singing just so she could hear it, left with her.
Was Ivan dead? A yawning void opened between his ribs and pulled. Ivan was weird, and hard to read, and Till didn’t understand him. They reached for each other with closed fists their entire lives, Ivan poking and prodding and pushing. Ivan kissed him, and he hated it.
Till curled into himself. Despite the confused storm of hurt rattling inside him, he didn’t want Ivan to be dead. He had never thought about the constant of Ivan until faced with its absence.
Angry and bitter and uncertainly grieving, Till hid his face in his knees and cried.
-
The last person Till was expecting to see was, in fact, Mizi. An unfamiliar Mizi, with short hair and sad eyes. Without glasses, without the pure white uniform of Anakt he always imagined her in.
This girl was dusty, and tired, and crushed Till in a hug within a few seconds of making eye contact with him. Till’s brain shorting out at Mizi being close to him was almost enough to block out the pain she was causing his shoulder, but an embarrassing whimper made it out anyway.
“Mizi, you’re going to reopen his damn stitches, get off,” a woman’s voice cut in. Mizi immediately jumped back off the cot, bumping into a tall tan woman who stood watching them.
“Sorry, I’m so sorry! I forgot! I was just- happy to see you awake!” She stammered.
Till took an embarrassing number of tries to make the syllables he was stuttering out form a coherent sentence, but finally managed, “It’s okay, you’re- I’m happy to see you too!”
“Ivan still hasn’t woken up, but he did get shot twice, which is more than you did, and it was in worse places, his side is really torn I heard, even though Hyuna wouldn’t let me help with it,” Mizi rambled at a speed that had Till struggling to process the information he was getting.
The tall woman playfully knocked Mizi upside the head, cutting her off.
“You have absolutely no medical experience, and you didn’t need to see that.” She flippantly added in Till’s direction, “Hey, I’m Hyuna.”
Mizi pouted. Till’s brain finally caught up with the conversation, and he swung his head to look around as if the curtains could have disappeared while he wasn’t looking.
“Wait- Ivan is here?”
Hyuna leaned an elbow on top of Mizi’s head, and looked at Till.
“Yes, that guy with the black hair is here. Before you ask, he should make it but we can’t be sure yet. He’s lucky he has a chance at all with that stunt he pulled. For what he wanted though, I have to say, not the worst plan.”
“What he wanted??? He attacked me!” Till exclaimed through mixed feelings ricocheting through his chest.
Hyuna looked at him like he was stupid. His face flushed and he opened his mouth to tell her off, but she cut him off.
“He threw the round, he made sure you won. Or at least, you would’ve.”
Till frowns. Mizi looks away from them, towards the floor, with something dark and sad in her eyes. Her voice is uncharacteristically quiet.
“I know you two were close. I’m glad we weren’t too late to save you both.”
“Close? No we weren’t,” Till stares dumbly. Mizi glances at him.
“But, you were always together. Even when we were small, if you were there so was he.”
Till scoffs, “He just liked to bother me.”
“Oh.”
Mizi looks away, and Till is left with the sickening feeling that he had said something that disappointed her.
The conversation returns to Hyuna, who waves over another human to give Till an actual check up, tell him how long he would be on bed rest, tell him how often the bandages would need to be changed. Less often than they probably should be, but supplies were tight. Mizi left with Hyuna midway through, after Till was unable to think of anything to start a new conversation with her. Vague guilt stuck in his chest and lingered.