Plan B

Chapter 6 | "You're Not You!"

An endless, dark sky. Starless, like an abyss, devoid of light, of direction. An expanse of dry wasteland in all directions, seeming to fade out into nothing after a certain distance. 

Like all of this is a little bubble of reality. If you wander too far, there's just... nothing. Maybe the ground will become checkered, as though he's walking across a chess board, and if he is to step any farther in the wrong direction, there will be a machine. The machine.

Maybe.

But now, he stands in the middle ground. Torn. Torn between a beacon and an umbra. If he goes right, he enters the warehouse. If he goes left, he returns home. Both are right there in front of him, perfectly within his reach.

But where does he go? If he is to choose right, he condemns himself once again to the life he will have no choice but to live. If he is to go left, he can go home and forget everything. But... he knows it isn't home. Not now. If he goes home while everyone else is still trapped, it won't be home; it will be a hollow shell of a house that was once a home. And what is a home without warmth, company and love? Well, the answer is simple. It is not a home. Or it could be, if that's what you choose to make of it.

But that is the last thing he chooses to make of it. He can only go left if everyone else goes left with him. But they can't. Not while they're stuck on the right. And he can't go right and then left. Trying to pull them out of the shadows would only pull him back in with them. So the weight pushes down on his shoulders. All he can do is force himself to make a choice, knowing no choice he can possibly make will lead to good.

He needs a miracle. But now he's sure that miracles only exist in his imagination. He can dream up a miracle, but that doesn't mean it will manifest. Because he knows perfectly well what he wants. Only, it's impossible. Something that can only ever happen here, where everything is fabricated and nothing is quite real. But... that means that, here, he can will it to.

And if it can't happen during his waking hours, maybe here will have to do.

He turns away from the shining beacon behind the house, though it beckons him toward it. He focuses instead on the other side. Where shadows eat away at every last bit of light, greedily consuming everything in their path. 

The rough outlines of figures scrabble about at the entrance, building a horrible, towering amalgamation in their fight to get out. Screeching. Screaming their fear, sorrow, unbridled anger. They all want to go home just as badly as he does. 

And he realises that, before he knows it, familiar shapes are pouring through the doorway. None have quite defined features, but are all recognisable as the rest of the prisoners nonetheless. Their hands fall free from their shackles, and they slip right through their higher's fingers. Fury radiates from the warehouse as the captives spill out. He smiles, both at his omnipotence and his ability to watch it all happen. 

When they pass him, he finds himself able to walk with them. They travel, freely and without worry, back home again. Just across the plain. 

Soon enough, one of them slows to walk by him. This figure is just as greyed out and vague and imaginary as the rest of them; just as this whole idea is so fanciful. Yet, it - he, even - is so recognisable, much more so than the others. The face, among other things, is mostly lost in the cloud of haziness. But he is sure the smile he knows so well in consciousness is there.

A hand brushes his arm. The head tilts at him. He's sure he looks proud, impressed, even if the only proof he has of that is his body language. The invisible smile seems to widen, and his waking anguish seems to bring the shape of his lover from the background into the foreground. He can't see him, really, but his warmly gazing eyes are there.