Chapter Text
The first colour he sees when he opens his eyes is red, piercing and disturbing, drowning out the few parts of his consciousness that had just recovered and awakened as his tired body begins to register the brush of the sheets behind his back and around his legs.
Red, like the colour of the flowers he had once braided into crowns when he was in Anakt Garden and still a child. Red, like the colour of the blood that flowed from his skin whenever he was punished for talking too much or too little in front of a Segyein. Red, like the tint of the falling sky on a meteor shower night from which he had escaped long ago and dared not think about even when he had the chance to do so.
The first thing he sees after waking up is the eyes of a dark-haired man's corpse, looking down at him with superiority and pity as the air leaves his lungs and his mind wanders far away from anywhere Ivan is not. Why is he here? Why can't he leave him alone? Till wonders. Yet he knows. He knows that Ivan would not leave him even after death because that is who he is. Annoying, insisting and infuriating, that always was and always would be him, the essence of the man who had once sung with him on a stage in front of millions of monsters anxious to know who would win the next round. The mere memory made him want to throw up.
Till knows that someone is talking to him, but he cannot listen. The moment Ivan's ghost kisses him to silence any kind of response Till was about to give, he knows that this will become his routine from now on: to be silenced by the pain and grief of having witnessed Ivan die in front of him in the pouring rain.
The first thing Till feels when he finally wakes up is a sorrow that runs through his entire body, from the tips of his toes to every strand of hair on his head. It hurts because he remembers it and it hurts because he is afraid he will forget it. Ivan just watches as he witnesses a part of Till begin to die again.
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The first time it happens it is an unconscious act, a simple response to a few simple words. The scar on his neck, made by a bullet, healed after a few weeks, allowing him to, even if he did not want to, or rather, could not, speak. The process had been complicated, especially as Till felt as scared and lost as when Mizi had disappeared during Round 5 , however, this fear was different, more tangible and less reactive. He felt almost as if he had been frozen in a fragment of time that he couldn't dare touch.
The first words that comes out of his mouth are directed to the ghost that had been haunting him since he was freed from the stage and the spectacle (although freedom shouldn't feel so heavy, full of regrets and filled with a sense of despair as it does right now). Till isn't angry, not really, but he knows that anger and hatred are easier emotions to carry on his shoulders than whatever he's really feeling, so he decides to try to push him away, the hallucination, rather than face even a hint of the things he knows he needs to admit to himself if he wants to move on.
Of course, Ivan doesn't go away. Instead, he slips his hand under Till's shirt and touches his chest, brushing the spot where his heart once yearned for an idealised version of Mizi. He moves his fingers around his body until they touch his collarbone and then settle around his neck. Till gasps, startled, before the man, whispering in his ear, demands Till to tell him something that he knows very well is buried deep in his soul, damaging and breaking him from the inside. Something Till doesn't want to face because he knows the resolution will do him more harm than good.
So without much thought, Till brings his own hands to his neck and squeezes Ivan's in a poor attempt to wrench himself out of the other's grip. He groans in pain and his fingernails dig into his skin, scratching the area around his freshly healed wound and the metal name embedded in his neck. He can't breathe and he's not sure if he wants to. It feels similar to when the real Ivan had choked him on stage right after kissing him, but not the same. Never the same.
The first time Till chokes himself, the last thing he remembers seeing before he collapsed on the bed Isaac had provided him in the rebellion's hideout is Ivan's eyes, once again. He doesn't know at what point the ghost moved from one side to the other but he doesn't really care, after all, he’s just that: a ghost. A cruel product of his imagination created using the memories of a man who had once been alive and breathing. The red in Ivan’s eyes, violent and demanding, doesn’t leave him until finally his gaze becomes blurred and he has realised that there is blood on his own fingers.
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The first time he has a nightmare about Ivan, he wakes up in a panic, sweating and choking on his own air. He doesn't even remember what it was about or what Ivan was doing to leave him in that state. Despite this, Till cries.
It's not unusual for Till to cry, he's always been an emotional person and he knows it, which is why coping with Ivan's death is so complicated. The man had left him so confused and lost that he didn't know where to begin to unpack the feelings that were weighing him down.
Perhaps he should start with the last look Ivan gave him before his still-warm body hit the sodden ground. Or maybe he should start with the forced, rough kiss he had given him before strangling him without any kind of explanation and the gentle peck he had given him just before he died, as if it were a farewell. Perhaps he should start with every fight and argument he'd had with the black-haired man when they were little and every lingering look he'd given him even when Till was angry with him. Or maybe he should start from further back, when Ivan had freed him from his collar and the cage that was Anakt Garden to show him a red sky covered in meteors, only for Till to regret it minutes after, leaving Ivan alone in the middle of the place he had surely sworn would be his new paradise.
Till regrets it every day since he woke up and every night Ivan comes to visit him. He regrets it when a crowd surrounds him to check if the self-inflicted scratches on his neck are healing properly and he regrets it when he is alone and all he can hear is Ivan's voice reminding him what a burden he is to the others. He regrets it every time he remembers some phrase or word Ivan ever uttered while he was alive and regrets it every time he realises that he is beginning to forget how Ivan's warmth felt when he was near him or how his voice sounded when he was just beginning to learn to sing.
If he could go back to the past, to that one fragment of time when he was running away and holding his hand, Till is sure he wouldn't let him go this time. That he would have run beside him until his legs ached and his feet blistered. That he wouldn't care if they had been caught eventually because, after all, that moment was theirs and no one else’s. No one would understand why the orange reminded Till of what freedom could have been, and no one would understand why Till had decided to go back instead of taking the chance to run away with the person who had once held so many affections for him. In that small moment, it had just been the two of them and for a few seconds that had been enough for Till.
The first time he dreams of Ivan (not a nightmare but a memory), he wakes up crying again. Not because he is scared. Not because the ghost of Ivan is reminding him how worthless he is compared to the others. This time he cries because the real Ivan, the one who is not a distorted figment of his head, had been there, silent and sitting next to him as he watched him draw carefully. This time Ivan is not doing anything strange or disturbing, this time he is just being a little boy curious about Till's drawings. This time he’s just breathing softly and resting his hand on the ground beneath them. This time he was just being human and that fact was hurting Till more than any nightmare or hallucination.
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The first time he is able to shut him up, Till realises that the only way to do so is to scratch his neck over and over again, just like the first time, until the adult version of Ivan transforms into a younger, less hostile version of him. Till knows that this may not be the healthiest way to cope with the hallucinations, but he also knows that he prefers this version of Ivan rather than the others.
Till doesn't hate the adult version of Ivan, he could never do that, but it is the one that is the hardest to deal with. Adult Ivan reminds him of all the mistakes he has made in his life and then kisses him to shut him up. Adult Ivan demands Till to admit things that he is still not ready to admit. Adult Ivan sometimes has blood on his lips and drops of water running down his hair. By contrast, the younger version is gentler and less invasive, making sure to watch Till silently as he draws while he paces around the room without much fuss. That version of Ivan sometimes asks Till to draw him.
It all started one afternoon, when the parasite, as Till had labeled him, asked Till to draw him. Of course Till had agreed without much trouble, tracing and filling in the spaces between the outline of his hair and the tips of his locks.
In life, Ivan had never complained about the things Till drew, but rather admired his works from afar and hid them from him only to return them later. This Ivan was different, not because his voice became distorted from time to time when Till's memories began to blur or because his gaze was a little less puzzling than he remembered it. Not because this Ivan was a ghost he could pass through like thin air or because his heart didn't beat and his lungs didn't fill with air. This Ivan was different because he had once asked Till why he had never drawn him back then.
Till knows it isn’t true, he used to draw the people he considered his friends a lot. Besides, there was no reason to show Ivan his drawings of him as that would only make the situation awkward, yet it was at that moment that Till realised that maybe, and only maybe, Ivan would have wanted to see those drawings while he was alive. Had that bothered him?, Had it made him sad? Till wasn't sure, he had never understood Ivan after all, not back then and definitely not now, but when he saw the expectant look on a slightly older Ivan's face, he realised that he would rather not know the answer to those questions, being left unsaid and forgotten just like the exact way Ivan’s mouth curved when he smiled or the way his handwriting looked on the paper.
The first time Till draws Ivan after graduating from Anakt Garden is in an empty room, in the afternoon, with the man's corpse beside him, watching him intently. The first time Till draws Ivan after graduating from Anakt Garden he cries himself to sleep because he can't remember how to draw his lips.
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The first time Till leaves his room to walk somewhere other than the bathroom, he walks to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Dewey had told him a little about the layout of the shelter, and even though at that moment Till's head couldn't think of anything other than Ivan's presence in front of him, his mind was able to vaguely remember how to get from the bedrooms to the dining room.
Till gets a little lost in the hallways before finding the kitchen door, open in the darkness, almost as if it were waiting for him. He takes a glass and begins to fill it slowly, being careful not to make too much noise and attract the attention of anyone who might still be nearby. Normally, one of the people who looked after the infirmary would bring him water. However, Till had finished it when he swallowed all the water in his glass after another episode in which he had sworn he could feel Ivan strangling him and refused to wait until morning to relieve the soreness in his throat.
He stares at the wall for a few seconds before he hears the parasite's voice behind him again, calling him a nuisance as he hugs him. The grey-haired man isn't sure he can handle it, it's the third time Ivan has done this today, and he's honestly tired of the fact that that day, for some strange reason, he's decided he wants to annoy him more than usual.
Till freezes in place, his mind now lost between what he can see in front of him and what he feels on his back. He wonders if the real Ivan would have wanted this for him, to see him go through this suffering, and when he realises he doesn't know the answer and never will, he becomes even more angry at the ghost surrounding his body with its arms and squeezes the glass in his hands even tighter.
Ivan had been a bother, and Till more than anyone else had been able to see that, but this was simply cruel, like some kind of karma that for some reason he had to pay for.
When Till refocuses on the glass of water in his hand, he realises that it is overflowing and quickly turns off the tap to avoid wasting any more water. His mind instantly focused on the drops of water sliding down the glass, and for a few seconds he remembers the raindrops running down Ivan's hair and the wetness of his fingers on the nape of his neck. He really didn't want to think about it, but the parasite's voice only made it worse when it called out Till for letting him die alone to save the life of a nuisance. That nuisance being Till.
His hand trembles, as do his legs, and before he knows it, Till drops the glass on the floor, shattering it to pieces, and kneels down in fear because now there are also drops of water running down his cheek to his chin. He chokes on his own saliva and coughs once or twice before he hears footsteps quickly approaching the kitchen.
The first time Till goes to the kitchen for a glass of water just to avoid being a nuisance, Isaac finds him on the floor, hugging his own knees and cursing internally at the ghost that no one else but him can see.
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The first time Till marks the 21st of June on his calendar he feels nothing. When he was younger there was a lingering feeling of excitement in the air from the day before. There was something special about his birthday, long ago now, when the other children in Anakt Garden gave him presents and congratulated him just for being born and when they sang happily for his birthday and decorated an improvised sweet cake for him.
Nonetheless, this time, his birthday didn't feel that way.
He wasn't alone, Isaac and Dewey had made sure he didn't feel that way, talking to him and looking after him as if he had been one of them for decades. Scolding him when he refused to eat and celebrating every time he agreed to leave his room. After all, the rebellion's hideout wasn't a bad place to be. There was almost always enough food for everyone, alcohol to drink until you passed out, and every week people gathered in the dining room to listen to others sing as a symbol of freedom and rebellion. Dewey had once told Till that Hyuna used to sing a lot when she was alive, enchanting everyone present with her powerful voice. Till would have loved to hear her sing, because despite everything, Till was still an artist, even if he was no longer allowed to sing as he used to.
The reason his birthday felt different this time was because he wasn't at Anakt Garden and his friends weren't there to celebrate with him.
Till wasn't close to Sua, especially because it seemed like he bothered her. Now that he can think about it more calmly, he realises that she was bothered by him because he acted strangely when he was around Mizi, so Till isn't able to judge her. Perhaps if his childish emotions had not interfered with his relationships with her, he would have been closer to Sua and could have gotten to know her better. Perhaps he would have felt even worse after her death, and perhaps he would not have liked that so much because it would mean having to deal with more losses. He can only hope that wherever Sua is, she is resting in peace and watching over Mizi, who had also disappeared long ago.
After what became known as ‘The Tragedy of Alien Stage’ , the girl whom the world had dubbed a witch had disappeared without a trace, choosing revenge and solitude over the plan that Hyuna had been plotting for years. Most of the rebellion hated her for ruining everything Hyuna had once worked so hard for, and only a small part of it (Isaac and Till) was able to understand why she had done what she did.
Till missed her, not because of the way her pretty pink hair danced in the wind and made his stomach fill with butterflies, nor because the touch of her fingers could warm his cheeks in an instant, those feelings had been fading for some time. The reason Till missed Mizi was because, after all, Mizi was his family, the only one left alive from Anakt Garden. Till hoped to be reunited with her someday because he knew she would be the only person capable of understanding the root of his guilt and grief, knowing that he was also the only one who, in one way or another, could understand hers.
As for the other person, Ivan, Till didn't have much to say about him. Ivan hadn't left, even though his ghostly presence was slowly driving Till mad. He still bothered Till in the mornings and watched him sleep at night. He whispered things in his ear when no one else was around and looked at him smugly when he wanted to piss him off. Little by little, Till had grown accustomed to his cruel and persistent presence in his life.
He was not alone, not thanks to the company of the other members of the rebellion, but thanks to the pair of red eyes that watched his every move. Ivan was everywhere, from the petals of the anemones that Isaac had once brought to the shelter to the bright stars in the night sky. From the muffled whispers in the corridors of the buildings Till visited to the sparse grass growing near the few trees that could be found near the hideout. From the sound of the wind as it hit the window of his room to the roar of the rain as it hit the ground.
The first time Till marks 22nd June on his calendar, he feels everything. He is the same age as Ivan now so he collapses on the floor of his room once again, his nails dug into his neck and Ivan's hands embracing his chest.
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The first time Till tries to ride a bike, he falls flat on his back and scrapes his palms, with Isaac and Dewey a few metres away laughing at him. Till groans in pain and gets up to look for his notebook. The first time he had used it, Ivan had tried to stop him again.
Till wanted to do something useful, like the rest of the people who lived there, so he asked Isaac to teach him how to do something, anything, without imagining that he would end up with more bruises than experience.
When he arrives at his room that night, covered in band-aids and scratches on his arms, Ivan stares at him from the mattress. It has become a kind of nightly routine in which Ivan just watches him and only bothers him when Till isn't tired enough to let his head conjure up the worst insults he can think of through Ivan's mouth. It hurt when the dark-haired one was the one uttering those words, especially because the sound of his voice, which had been fading before, had become unbearable those days.
Till had begun to forget, not by choice, he was well aware of that. He didn't know when it had started or why, but for several months now, Ivan's voice had become even more distorted than before. The way he pronounced his name was different, as were the sighs he let out from time to time. At first, Till had felt somewhat relieved because he wouldn't have to hear Ivan's characteristic whispering in the nape of his neck, but when the realisation that he would never hear Ivan's voice again finally hit him, he threw up in the communal bathroom until his throat was raw and his cheeks were dry from the salt of his tears. Forgetting was the same as letting go, and Till wasn't ready to do that. Not with his feelings. Not with the sacrifice. Not with him .
He didn't tell anyone, that would just make him more of a burden than he already was, at least that's what Ivan said, so he kept it to himself for weeks, hoping that in some distant dream the sound of his voice would become clear again. However, Till cannot control his dreams and instead has nightmares in which he finds himself back in the Final, singing against Luka and hallucinating about a mute man who dares not utter a single word. Not to Till.
He tears the pages out of his notebook and lets them be torn away by his own hands when he realises that no amount of empty songs and no kind of tragic ballad will bring back even a shred of what Ivan used to be. He understands that perhaps letting him go is part of the process, but he knows he cannot do it, even if it hurts to have him around. Ivan had become a dangerous addiction that he felt both drawn to and afraid of. A powerful drug created from the remnants of flowers, meteors, and regrets, and a bottle of alcohol that makes him forget as much as it reminds him of the reason he was here, alive, when Ivan was dead.
It is when he starts to give up that his whole world crumbles in front of his eyes because one day he hears his own voice coming from a nearby room and he is singing a song he never wanted to hear again in his life and his feet hurt as he runs to the entrance of a room where a projector is showing, in full colour, what Till knew as Round 6 . He honestly doesn't know what he's looking at and doesn't want to know. The trembling in his legs makes him collapse on the floor and the girl who was watching the video realises that Till is there.
He told her that he didn't want an apology because whatever she was doing was none of his business, even when the girl had promised him that she was investigating the stadium scenario instead of replaying the tape just for her own pleasure. Till believes her and leaves her alone, but asks her to give the tape to him when she is done investigating it. Perhaps he is some kind of masochist but he doesn't want to lose what little evidence remains of Ivan's existence.
The first time Till relives Round 6 on camera, he realises that those ruthless monsters did not tell the story well. The camera does not show the last look Ivan gave Till before he died, nor does it show how the guards had to drag Till forcibly away from the other man's body. He remembers it clearly now, his voice, and not because it is imbued in the audio of a video he would rather never have seen. He remembers it clearly because his cold lips rest on his shoulder and murmur something about how his hair has grown quite long, brushing his hair between his fingers and helping him hold it in a small ponytail. His voice is just as soft as Till recalls it.
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The first time Till is assigned a mission, he tries to prepare himself so as not to be a hindrance. His role was not as important as he would have liked, but he knows he has to start somewhere.
Even if the shelter had huge food supplies and Dewey would handle the planting of any seeds that could grow in such a vast and desolate terrain, that food had to come from somewhere so Isaac had asked him to take the motorcycle, just to practice the skill he had been slowly getting better at.
Isaac had told him that infiltrating the warehouses they were stealing from was neither easy nor safe, that it was a bit scary at first so he wanted to be sure Till could do it. Nonetheless, Till had stopped him before he could speak further and nodded with determination. He knew there were far scarier things than infiltrating a Segyein hold, like being punished by Urak multiple times a day because he refused to sing for him, beating and sedating him until all he could feel were the drops of blood sliding down the temple of his head. Far more scarier things, like going on stage for the first time, hoping that his plan to survive Round 2 would be a success even though it would cost someone else's life. Far more scarier things, like Mizi's absence after Round 5 and the pain that came after that and far more scarier things, like the rain and thunder on a white-floored stage where two men once stood to sing about the person who held their heart.
Till wasn't scared, of course not. He had had enough time to get used to the way the hairs on his arm stood up when he sensed danger or the way his heart beat faster when he felt he was about to die. Till was emotional but brave, always had been, perhaps that was something Ivan had admired about him.
So, as Till lies in bed after successfully completing the mission with a small smile on his lips (a genuine one for the first time in a long time), the younger version of Ivan comes over and, in a somewhat twisted and confused way, congratulates him.
The first time Ivan's ghost treats him well is in the early hours of a hot summer day, two years after The Alien Stage Tragedy . His way of expressing affection was still puzzling, as it had been with the real Ivan.The first time Ivan's ghost treats him nicer, Till restrains the urge to scratch his neck when later that day, the adult version appears to haunt him again.
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The first time Till doesn't complain about a kiss from Ivan is during a cold Monday night. To be honest, Till had always resisted when the man's ghost pressed his lips against his because he knew it was nothing more than an action he was taking to prevent Till from speaking.
Till resented it because Ivan never asked for permission to do so, he would simply stare at him for a few seconds with those terrifying red eyes only to then kiss him hard until Till's lips ached and his lungs ran out of air.
He knows that every kiss the hallucination steals from him is nothing more than a projection and a memory of the real one Ivan had given him on stage in front of the eyes of millions of monsters, when Till had been too focused on feeling bad for Mizi to realise that Ivan had approached him. Till is not angry about that, after all, neither of them knew quite how to show affection back then so he is not bothered by the act itself but by what Ivan had tried to say through that sudden kiss.
Till also remembers how many years ago, in Anakt Garden, Ivan had asked him to kiss him as a joke and practice when the act of kissing had become popular among his classmates. Till, of course, had refused and exclaimed in disgust that he would never do it. Now, he perhaps regretted a little that he had confessed to being grossed out by the question in front of Ivan.
As they had grown up in an environment where love was not something they were taught, Till wasn't sure what the kiss had meant to Ivan. Many times he had been angry with the ghost because he thought Ivan had kissed him in an act of hatred, as if trying to tell him to remember it forever and never forget it, to keep it always inside his head and to recall Ivan's lips as the first that had kissed his own. At other times he had cried because no matter how hard he tried, it was impossible for him to understand the real reason why Ivan had performed that act at such a particular moment as that, blaming himself for being unable to understand the things Ivan had thought of before he died.
The more time he spent in the resistance, the more Till learned about things he had not been able to learn when he was in Anakt Garden, such as what a wedding symbolised for humans or what it really meant to be intimate with someone. In his time as a child, all he knew was that he had to sing, perform an act and survive. He didn't have time to think about anything else.
Still, he had fallen in love with Mizi and the hope she represented. She had been something that blossomed from the depths of darkness and had led him to the light. She had been the escape from his devastating and painful reality full of incessant punishments and unjust confinements. Mizi was everything Ivan had not been, and yet he couldn't help but feel that he was gravitating around the man.
Sometimes when Till walked through the shelter's bar he could find couples desperately kissing at the farthest tables from the stage, almost as if they were never going to see each other again in their lives and this was the last chance to express their affection. At other times, he could see other couples giving each other little kisses on the cheeks and pecks on the lips, as if expressing a stable love that would never go away. The kiss Ivan had given him was unlike either of them. Rather it had been bitter and hard, hopelessly strong.
Till didn't know what Ivan had meant, so he tried to recall the events over and over again until his head ached and his tired eyelids closed. The first kiss had been the worst because Till hadn't expected it, it had been shocking and uncomfortable, full of emotions that Till couldn't put a name to. The second and third had been more insistent, invasive in nature and almost as if the dark-haired man didn't want to let Till go, clutching his head as if it was the only way to breathe. However, the fourth and also the last had been the strangest of all. It had not been given in anger or despair like the others, rather it was something gentler and sadder, as if it was a farewell.
Then Till realises that maybe that was what Ivan meant to tell him at the time and he doesn't know how to process that information.
The first time Till allows himself to be kissed by Ivan without resistance, he does so because he knows that maybe the ghost needs it. He needs to vent his sorrows and rest them on someone else's lips. He needs to tell Till that he's sorry too and that's why he gifted him what was left of his life. He needs to say goodbye and make it clear to Till that he also has feelings. So, when Ivan kisses him gently instead of aggressively, Till lets him, because he understands that he needs it too. Even if it just lasts until morning.
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The first thing Till glimpses among the archived papers is a folder with the date he graduated from Anakt Garden. There were probably many other things in the pile of poorly organised papers, but for Till there is nothing more important than something containing information about his once family.
He turns page after page, going through what Hyuna had left in her room before she set off on the mission to launch the rocket during The Final , only to never return.
Isaac had initially refused him entry, stating that they preferred to keep the place as Hyuna had left it, making it a sort of shrine to the one-time leader of the rebellion. However, Till had begun to insist when Dewey had accidentally told him that Hyuna had a stack of papers and folders about the different graduations of Anakt Garden and the Alien Stage participants in her room. Reluctantly, Isaac had agreed to let Till look through the folders without touching anything else Hyuna had ever possessed.
As Till goes through the papers, the smell of mould builds up in his nose and makes him sneeze. He keeps turning the pages until he stops when he finally finds one of the things he initially came for: information about Ivan.
Even after three years had passed, Till had never stopped seeing him, having to live with the parasite without being able to talk to him or shout at him if he was angry. One of the reasons he had been irritated for all these years was the fact that, at the time, he had not been able to fully understand how Ivan's mind worked.
Over the years Till had become better at understanding him when Ivan talked to him at night, gradually realising what Ivan felt but didn't tell. Despite that, Till feels he needs to know more, anything, about the man who had died for him on that stage.
It is when he checks Ivan's archive page that he finds the date on which Ivan was adopted: February 14th, a piece of information that Ivan had never told him about.
The sheet doesn't say much more about the conditions of his adoption but Till thinks that's enough, at least for now, as his head processes and recalls some memories where Ivan had said something about not having a birthday. He wonders if Ivan ever felt sad about that fact since, unlike the others, he did not have a date to celebrate the fact that he had been born.
The first time Till enters Hyuna's room he finds valuable information about Mizi and Sua, like their blood types or the owners who had adopted them a long ago. Nonetheless, he also finds information that is only for himself and no one else. Information about Ivan and the secrets he did not tell others. Information about the person who forced a smile and never seemed to be upset. Information that Till would keep from the eyes of ignorant people who never got to know him as Till did. Information he would only share with the cold ghost of the dark-haired man waiting for him in his room.
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The first time Till had been there was almost four years ago, when Dewey had given him a little tour of the place after Till had finally healed the wounds on his neck for the first time. Till hadn't been back to the terrace since then, sometimes it was too lonely and sometimes too crowded for his liking. Despite that, he was glad that it was empty at the moment, with no sign of life around.
Till spreads the white sheet on the floor and places a bottle of wine, a pair of cups and a tray with some kind of cake on it before sitting down. He grabs tight on a jacket he found in the warehouse and his loose hair gets tangled in the zipper of the garment as he bends down to mark a date on his calendar: February 14th.
He knows that this date is not Ivan's real birthday, but he decides to celebrate it anyway. He had been waiting five months since he had found Ivan's information sheet for this date, marking the days left with his blue pen.
Till looks up at the starry sky and remembers why he decided to come to the terrace before anywhere else: for the stars. He knows there's no way he can replicate the colours that painted the sky the night Ivan tried to escape with him, but he still decides that if he wants to celebrate Ivan in a certain way, perhaps the right way to do it is under the same sky under which they had run hand in hand long ago.
At that time, Till and Ivan did not mention the meteor shower again. Perhaps they were too frightened to understand what the other was thinking at that moment, and it had been better to ignore it. They acted as if nothing had happened. As if Till had not felt as happy as he did at that moment, and as if the fact that Till had let go of Ivan's hand had hurt them both more than Till would currently like to admit. Even today, he still wonders what would have happened if he hadn't come back, but he knows he should have stopped asking himself that question a long time ago. Ivan is gone forever, even if his ghost still haunts him.
He opens the bottle of wine and pours two glasses, one for himself and one for Ivan, who today decided to leave their room (the one they have shared since Till was assigned to it) to accompany Till. Ivan doesn't mock him, nor does he speak. Till doesn't look at him and doesn't cry either. He knows he's far from overcoming this situation, that Ivan's ghost won't leave him alone even if he begs him to, so instead he clinks his glass against the one on the sheet and drinks because maybe that's the best way to forget.
He hums the song he used to sing at Anakt Garden when they celebrated birthdays because, even if no one else is around, Ivan still silences him with a kiss when he wants to talk, so Till prefers to avoid the rollercoaster of emotions that that simple act now provokes in him. When he finishes, Till cuts the cake and eats a piece before deciding he'd rather not eat anything at all. Ivan's ghost looks at him before asking him something about his birthday kiss, something Till had supposedly promised him back then, before Till lies down on the sheet and hugs the jacket he brought specifically for tonight.
He feels lonely and hates it. Sua is gone, Mizi is missing, and Ivan died right before his eyes. Did the dark-haired man feel this way on this same date every year? No, he didn't, because at that moment everyone was fine. Everyone was alive.
When tears begin to well up in his eyes, Ivan lies down beside him and watches him without asking if he is okay, just as the real one did. Till believes that his understanding of Ivan has improved greatly, but not enough, it is never enough.
Sometimes he wants to hug him, to let himself be enveloped by the parasite's arms, only to realise seconds later that there is no warmth in his limbs. Other times he wants to be able to talk to him, tell him about his day even though, as the persecutor he is, he already knows in great detail everything Till had experienced that day. Sometimes he wants to punch him, demanding an explanation about what he was thinking when he decided to force a breath of life into Till with a desperate kiss even if he already knows the answer. Other times, he wants to be the one to kiss him first and steal the words from his mouth, stealing the complaints and taunts before he can even utter them.
The first time Till celebrates Ivan's birthday, he does so in the solitude of a terrace with the ghost that represents his insecurities and regrets. He celebrates it while crying until his eyes hurt because Ivan is not there to witness it. The first time Ivan's birthday is celebrated, it is not celebrated because he is alive but because he is dead.
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The first time Till loses a teammate on a mission, he loses his mind too and blames himself for what happened.
It's not something he could have prevented, he knows it, Isaac knows it and Ivan knows it too, nevertheless, the feeling of having failed keeps him awake that night, making him stare at the wall of the room as he feels the blood from his nose pool on the paper Isaac put in his nostril and how Ivan's hand rests behind his neck, squeezing lightly but not hurting him.
He asks him something about his injured ear but not about how he feels and Till is actually sick of it. Never in his life did Ivan ever ask him how he felt. Not when he used to find him with cuts and scratches covering his face and not when he was beaten and punished until he passed out. Rather, he used to run his fingers across his cheek without warning, crossing the intangible line between what he was allowed to do and what he was not. Ivan never asked for permission, not when it came to Till.
However, Till realises that he hadn't asked Ivan how he felt either. He didn't ask him why he smiled when he got into a fistfight with him after a stupid argument and he didn't ask him why he never looked upset. He didn't ask him about the scars that formed around his mouth after his special training to show a good smile and he didn't ask him how he felt when Till decided to leave him in the meteor shower.
So Till tells him to say it first and he is not quite sure if he is asking Ivan to ask him how he feels about the injury or about something else, something deeper. When Ivan answers him by asking him to say it first Till falls silent, for he knows that this argument is against himself and no one else.
Till swears he feels Ivan's head resting on his back, even if it is the same thin air that Ivan's ghost was made of. He blinks once or twice before a question, more like a realisation, pops into his head: how old was Ivan when he died?
He knows that Ivan is, was, a year older than him, so he was twenty-two at the time of his death, leaving Till with more questions than answers. At this very moment, Till knows that this is no longer the case. Despite the birthday that Till had celebrated for Ivan some time ago, he is aware that the years have stopped passing for him, that he is stuck in his twenties and that he will never be able to see Ivan with wrinkles under his eyes and white grey hair growing in his perfect black hair. Ivan is gone and all that remains is the hallucination of what once was.
Till expresses it without having to say it because he can't speak yet. Ivan is the only person who can hear him anyway. His thoughts are as messy as his feelings for the other man. At some point in his later years Till had tried to face it, to accept the feelings that overflowed his heart and just screamed Ivan's name, but he hadn't been able to. He was always too busy or too scared to understand what he was feeling so he preferred to ignore it, as if that would make it go away completely. He had hoped it would.
Till breaks down in tears as the painful thoughts burst into his head like thorns that keep cutting and pricking him every time he reaches out to try to understand them. If Ivan were alive, who knows what he would have done right now. He used to be unpredictable and strange, but he only wanted love, it took Till a while to comprehend that.
He would steal his birthday presents and step on the flower crowns Till made. He would call him a loser with his brutal honesty and then pester him until Till lost his patience. Ivan had been a nuisance but also a presence he had taken for granted in his life, following him with his eyes when he looked at Mizi from afar and trying to show his affections in the most counterproductive ways he could think of.
Perhaps if they had known the word "family" back then it might have been different, at least a little easier, or so Till thought. Ivan, Mizi and Sua were his family and that was a fact no one could deny. No one had spent time with them as Till had. No one had lived through what Till had lived through and no one had had to experience the death of two of the members of his precious group (no one except Mizi).
When he thinks back he realises that they were all just children who wanted affection. To love and be loved. Everyone was lonely and longing for someone, so it should have come as no surprise to Till when he realised that the person Ivan was longing for was him. The rebellious boy who always got into trouble. The boy who loved music and art more than anything in this life. The boy he had seen pining for a girl who was too focused on her relationship with another girl to pay attention to him.The boy he had kissed before he died as a last act of desperation because he didn't feel seen. It shouldn't have been a surprise, but it had been.
Ivan had felt lonely, perhaps unloveable. Till couldn't cure him and Ivan couldn't cure him either, but it was love. Ivan was possessive and aggressive, a person who didn't know how to love because he never had someone to teach him how to do it the right way, but again, it was love. Till was a person who clung to a false and idealised hope in order not to face his problems, yet he drew Ivan when he didn't notice, and then was ashamed that he had done it. Maybe it wasn't the way Ivan loved him, but it was love too.
Ivan had died to protect Till, strangling him and confusing him in a few seconds more than he had in all those years. It was rare and unaffectionate but it was love. Till had understood Ivan's feelings for him long after he had died, leaving him with the burden and weight of his heart on his shoulders. And while Till might have discarded that weight because his way of loving was different from Ivan's, he didn't because he appreciated Ivan, even if he wasn't there to see him. That was love too.
Ivan asks Till if he cries out of pity but Till doesn't answer and just hugs him for the first time in his life. He confesses to him that he never realised how scared Ivan had been and the adult version of Ivan transforms into the younger one. At this point Till no longer cares, his heart has learned to love all versions of Ivan's ghost.
He loves the younger version, the one he remembers the most because that's the one he had spent the most time with in life. He loves it when he asks him to draw him and looks at him with that expression of enthusiasm and amazement when Till shows him the result. He loves the slightly older but not quite grown-up version, the one that used to annoy him the most when they were young but also the one that shows up when he wants to lift a weight off his shoulders. He loves the version he barely remembers of Ivan in Round 3 . Even though he was unconscious, he loves the fact that he shows up when everything feels more peaceful and less heavy. He loves the adult version, even if it's the one that scares him the most. He loves that he spends the most time with him and he loves that sometimes he can see the pain inside his eyes, making him more human and less of a ghost.
Till still has questions about Ivan and even more about himself, but in Ivan's hands he no longer feels so scared. When the small arms of Ivan's ghost hug him back, Till feels as if a burden inside him has been blown away. Till knows it was not his fault that Ivan died. Ivan had made his decision a long time ago and all he can do now is thank him for giving him the gift of his years of life. Till buries his head in Ivan's neck once more, almost telling him that it is not true that he is not loved, that there is someone here, alive, who loves him with all his heart and would give anything to see him again.
The last time Till sees Ivan's ghost is during the night, after hugging him for minutes that felt like hours. After understanding that he should not be afraid of his own feelings. After, for years, crying and throwing up until morning came. After having scratched his neck until the blood overflowed. After having kissed him. After having appreciated him. After having loved him. After having let him go. After having let him rest in peace.
The last time Till sees Ivan's ghost, it vanishes into the orange-red sky of a meteor shower.