Chapter Text
Fragments.
That was the best—and perhaps, only—way to describe Derek’s dreams. Jagged pieces. Shattered, with those shining reflections, warped and wrong. Akin to fish leaping out of a river, there and gone in a flash. A cut off scream; whispered voices; a flash of lightning in the corner of an eye, entrapped in knowledge but not in sight. His dreams groaned under the weight of all that they were forced to know. The Universe burst from his mind, into those times of sleep, and he was there at the beginning of it all – a flash of light, a glorious and endless expansion, and the creation of Everything, all for him to see on his screen. It raced through him, each moment a murmur desperate to be heard, and the cacophony rung in his ears long after he woke.
But when he woke… Things were different when he woke.
His mind was quieter. Exhausted, overwhelmed, but – quiet.
Everything he’d once seen; everything he’d once known… Gone. Shadows remained, but nothing tangent – nothing he could hold onto or use. If it weren’t for the tubes tied to him and the beeping of the hospital machines, he would be inclined to think none of it had ever happened. That he was the Derek from before; the one who hadn’t found that World, those gates, that King.
But he knew better.
In wakefulness, the infinite knowledge had been lost, but he still knew more than he felt he should. On the top of this very long list was something of utmost importance; something he, stuck in a hospital bed for two months, had spent a lot of time pondering.
The King in Yellow had lied to him.
This was the first thing that Derek thought when he finally woke up – because, at the end of it, he shouldn’t have woken up.
Don’t you realise you’re destroying your own mind, too?
But nothing had been destroyed. The knowledge was gone, but so was the agony.
You’ll cease to exist if you merge with me.
And yet, unless this was some twisted version of the afterlife…
There will be nothing left of you.
…Derek was alive.
He was alive.
And he really wasn’t supposed to be. For a few minutes, he had died. At least, that was what Dr Thomas said. He’d been found shortly after he’d fallen unconscious, slumped over at his desk, a breath away from his ending. He could remember it, vaguely, even now – his vision darkening, his mouth moving over a name that he never fully spoke, and then… Nothing. His mom had found him. An ambulance had been called. His heart had stopped for a second, a minute, and then – he was resuscitated, and the next four months of his life were spent in a coma.
He remembers it, because he remembers the dreams.
For four months, he had been staring at a screen; thinking nothing and everything at the same time, resigned to his belief that this was the afterlife. This was what he would see for the rest of time – nothing more, nothing less. It would never change. Time would tick, a whirling clock, and he would remain here: glued to the screen, staring endlessly into the abyss.
And then he woke up.
And, well, wasn’t that a surprise?
“Your vitals are looking far better,” The nurse had said on his first day awake, smiling cheerfully at him. He stared blankly back. His head was so… empty. “Dr. Thomas should be coming to visit you soon. She’ll want to discuss plans for your long-term recovery. Are you okay with that?”
Slowly, Derek had nodded.
“That’s great to hear. How are you feeling, now? It can be quite a shock to come out of a coma when you’ve been in it for so long. Patients often report feeling disoriented, or confused, and sometimes they experience gaps in memory. Rest assured, this is completely normal, and not something to be alarmed about…”
He had trailed the rest of her words out and moved his gaze to himself; to his left hand, and he watched as it slowly, carefully twitched. A tiny movement that he hadn’t done.
Ah, he’d thought, his body going cold. Somehow, he’d known. There you are.
And when the dreams came that night – when he saw the screen again; his mind was flooded with that agonising, endless knowledge, and he woke the next morning with none of it there, he felt the truth of his suspicions in his bones.
The King in Yellow had lied to him.
Five months, three days and five hours after he had woken from his coma, Derek Hutchins was released from the hospital.
His mother came to pick him up, and they drove back to his childhood home in what was mostly a vast silence, occasionally broken by her mentioning titbits of news. Too unwilling to look at even his phone screen for more than a few minutes at a time, Derek understood through her his university was willing to make special considerations for him to continue his computer science degree next year. He made a quiet noise of affirmation while recalling his plan, long before the coma, of dropping out – ah, well.
Despite his near-death experience, he wasn’t too surprised to find that this decision hadn’t changed.
Regardless, considering the fragile nerves of his parents, it was potentially a decision that could be made later.
His father met them at the door, and the two shared a hug before he was allowed back into the house.
Though brief, it was the first they’d had in years; Derek didn’t need any further confirmation of how this incident had affected his parents; they were quite clearly distraught. Despite that, though, he remained irritable that he had woken up – it would have been easier for them to lose their son immediately, than to have him come back so painfully different, unable to breathe a word of what had happened.
Besides, it would only make the second time that they lost him that much more difficult.
He wouldn’t feel the guilt too painfully regardless.
Not when it was the better option – the one that would keep them, and everyone on earth, safe.
But even still…
Oh, it hurt more than it should’ve.
All of it hurt so much more than it should’ve.
Derek spent the next three months in his bedroom. The family cat, Romulus, lay purring quietly beside him through the many hours that he lay in his bed. He planned out exactly how he would die. He wrote it down, suddenly afraid of forgetting in lieu of the dreams, and read it quietly to himself every night before he slept, the cat asleep and none the wiser – almost as though each whisper was a promise to the King that he knew, through gut feeling alone, lurked in his mind; in his body; in this prison. A promise that he wouldn’t exist for much longer, because Derek wouldn’t either.
New Year’s Eve came quicker than he expected it to. Perhaps, he was more of a romantic than he had thought himself, because it was dusk of the 31st of December when he left his house, ready to enact the plan he’d spent so long brewing. But, he thought, somewhat wryly, maybe he was allowed to be – after all, you only really died once, even if Derek had technically been the exception to that.
May as well make it beautiful, right?
He walked for a few hours. Past the small forest surrounding his house, along the winding river that everyone growing up in this part of the country knew, until he finally found the bridge. The fireworks would look gorgeous from here, Derek was sure of it, even if he was only able to see them from the river. The water would be cold, but the current was merciless, and the rocks were endless, and if he weren’t trapped under them, he’d be torn to a point where he lay unrecognisable. It would be months before they fished him out, if they ever did, and perhaps that would be for the better – his parents would report him missing, they would be inconsolable for a time, but they had already grieved him once.
Hopefully, they wouldn’t spend so long the second time round.
It was New Year’s Eve when he found that bridge.
It was New Year’s Eve when he sat at the edge of it, the sky already dark, the river underneath a torrent that could be heard from miles away. He checked his watch—three hours to midnight—and felt in him a slow calm at the thought that these hours were going to be the last of his life.
It was New Year’s Eve when, unbeknownst to him, a man was walking his dog across that same bridge.
It was New Year’s Eve when, after a year since Derek had first ‘died’, he and Avery truly met for the first time.
Avery hated New Year’s.
He didn’t like the fireworks. He wasn’t a fan of the noise. He hated how drunk his parents would become. He disliked waiting for midnight, where the hours felt painfully slow, but nobody let him sleep for fear that he would ‘miss the celebration’. He hated how excited everyone became. He hated how happy they were.
He hated all of it.
Over everything, though, what caused Avery the most anguish on New Year’s was that it was no longer a celebration – it was a reminder. He couldn’t avoid the memories on this day. They flooded his mind throughout the day and remained nightmares while he slept. He heard words that had once been typed but never spoken, he saw a pair of gold eyes waiting from the darkness, a low laugh following – he felt that panic, the ever-mounting, desperate panic that had overtaken him on New Year’s Eve when, stupidly; so stupidly, he’d opened his inventory, and…
It felt so ridiculous to grieve someone you never knew.
But Avery did. He had. Every day, for a year, he’d felt as though there was something hollow within him; something that would never be whole again.
Remmy raced forward, barking eagerly the whole time, and Avery watched in a vague amusement as he tried—and failed—to chase a squirrel. The squirrel, thankfully, scampered up the trees ages before Remmy, still a clumsy puppy, managed to catch up to it. He barked once, twice, sat at the foot of the tree and whined loudly. Avery sighed, but the noise got a small laugh out of him; at the very least, he stopped thinking about the truly awful day it was and instead focused on the family’s new dog.
More Avery’s than his parents, really, considering he was the one to walk Remmy, but…
Oh, whatever. It didn’t matter.
He whistled sharply, and Remmy—the smart boy—ran straight to him. He was young to be mostly off the leash, but, except for the rare moments where he got sight of a bird or squirrel, he was very well-behaved. He stuck to Avery at almost all times; slept in his room, even. Avery never complained. He loved the company.
The two of them walked alongside the river until they came to the old bridge. Remmy wasn’t scared of the roaring that came from underneath. He bounded forward, excited by the new terrain, sniffing eagerly. Before they began their crossing, Avery put his leash back on. Better to be safe than sorry.
“Alright, boy,” He murmured, and Remmy barked. “Let’s be careful here, yeah? Don’t pull too hard.”
Remmy barked again.
“Atta boy.” He laughed gently. “Let’s go.”
They wandered forward, and Avery allowed his gaze to drift to the river, the horizon, the dark sky. Everything looked so serene that he could nearly forget... everything, really.
Except, there was something out of place.
There was a person where they shouldn't be.
He, or Avery thought he was a he, was sitting at the very edge. His head was tilted upwards, as though he were admiring the night sky, but there was something unsettling about how close he was to falling, if he were to slip.
Avery called out without thinking.
And unbeknownst to him, a year after he had lost someone that he grieved to this day, that same man who still lingered in every one of his dreams was the one who turned his head and answered.