Drowning Echoes.

[aison]

Title: Drowning Echoes.
Warnings: Mindfuck.
Word Count: 8588.
Characters: Alan. Nigel. Ariadne, Lorelei, Sarah, Cynthia, Crista.
Notes: References are psyches's Die Lorelei, Contrasts, and Picturesque Madness. Also takes place in the same world as "Nice Times."

Summary: This is a fairy tale. This is a broken story.


It’s a fairy tale told backwards. The princess woke only to go back to sleep, hid away in a cave consisting of dreams. It’s a fairy tale told backwards, a pretty descriptor for a reality far too bleak.

For a brother resting in a bed asleep as if dead. And nothing Alan would do could wake him. Medical specialists finally went to stated their confusion in turn--it was nothing like a coma; it was only as if he was sleeping and wouldn’t wake up. A restful sleep, peaceful, as if being given the rest long since desired, and Alan rejected it. Bitterly thought of a fairy tale told backward; Nigel had woken from a coma years ago to succumb to a life of dreams now, and it was so ironic that Alan couldn’t even--

There were nights where Alan had held Nigel and begged him quietly to wake up. Promised devotion and dedication more than what had been seen--trailed off into unintelligible murmurings of love and need. Those nights had stopped long since prior. Now there was silence, echoing and empty in the space between, and Alan would breathe in the scent of Nigel’s hair, something warm and faded, and give himself over to quiet tears.

--He couldn’t even breathe. And it’s that simple thought, that fading remnant, that reminds him of drowning. It moves against his mind in shifting, subtle ways, until he’s almost forgotten it, and then it presses against him again.

It’s a fairy tale told backwards. The magical guardian appears too late. She cannot do a thing.

Her eyes are still as gold as her hair and there exists something animal-like in the way that she looks at what exists. She maintains friendliness, to be certain, smiles easily and quietly; a laugh to welcome. Her eyes, though, hold that selfsame sharpness that a part of him once knew. It was how species would separate each other, look down upon the lower life forms. She does it perfectly, keeps that distinction, that perfect general contempt projected outward.

Even now, he watches her, and when she catches him, she winks; the expression dares to reach her eyes.

“It reminds me of drowning,” he says without fear of misunderstanding. Without the human uncertainty of feeling another’s heart. She knows him, and has known him, and whether he remembers changes nothing of that fact. “It’s peaceful, but all I feel is that there’s no coming up for air.”

She watches him, as she always would, and does not question which of them is the one treading waves. No longer seeks to differentiate black and white; she allows him his world of gray. “Where did you drown, then? Whose hand pushed you past the shore? Where are your legs, and why can’t you walk?”

There are a thousand answers, a mess of retorts, but he will not offer them to her. She does not ask for answers, but to probe his mind, and it’s finally something that he understands. Where did he drown, then? “I wonder,” he speaks, slowly and succinctly. “How far do you think a song can travel?”

“A song?” she questions back, voice an amused ring. Her eyes watch him--sharp and fierce. A contrast. She is always a contrast. “Songs fly on the wings of the people who hear it. Who live in the verse and dance in the melody. Songs continue,” she speaks, and his head rings from the force of it. “As long as there is one who will hum the echoes.”

“…‘For if I perish on these rocks’--” His mind moves. Pieces clicking into place, and like before, like always, music flows forward, lyrics pressing deeply into the space behind his eyes. ‘River, oh, river, have mercy, take me down to the sea; for if I perish on these rocks, my love no more I'll see. If I should float upon this stream, and see you in my madman's dream, I'd sink into your troubled eyes, and none would know 'cept L--’

Lorelei.

That fucking mermaid. That cast-off deadweight.

Ariadne blinks at the hatred laid bear, then her expression settles into a vague understanding; something tight and pinched around her eyes. He is not the only one who can call to verse. “‘The sirens sing no lullaby.’”

He nearly snarls at her, catches himself before he does so, and settles for a thin glare, a pointed expression. “‘Same old sad songs, same old story.’”

The two creatures watch each other, eyes waiting for a break, souls dancing on the edges of their forms, waiting; waiting for--

She laughs, and he still remembers that sound, when all else lays forgotten. It's bold and deep, and resounds like a bell.

He blinks.

She is standing and he doesn’t remember her moving, she is leaning down close to him, long hair brushing his face, and she reaches a finger to press against the tip of his nose. She smiles. He remains obtuse; sits frozen and frowning, a lost child. “I’ll tell you what I said then,” she speaks, and there is something hurt in her, a terseness to her mouth, but she’s trying to ignore it. He sees it, notices, but she-- "There is nothing simpler than this," she states. "You can have anything you want. As long as you accept that there is a price and you have to pay it.”

She straightens, sets her jaw and seems to nod--the motion isn’t caught in transition. "The time when you give up something," she says slowly, in the way of repeats, "is the only time you can gain something in turn. So this time, Alan, don’t--”

She inhales, and it seems there is a weight against her chest. “Don’t give up everything. But, Alan. Do something. Don’t let all flow back to shadows. You need your light.”

He watches her when she leaves, and he watches the space where she had been for a long time after.

It’s morning when he locks the door behind him. It’s near dusk when he parks near a place he hadn’t thought he would ever return to. Sand and sea and breath; air heavy with saline filling his lungs until there is nothing else. Nothing but hatred and memories.

He doesn’t know the words to sing.

He finds a rock to sit on near an overhang, not entirely hidden, but out of sight enough, with a clear view of the beach and waters.

He thinks, this is how it will always be. Stories told backwards, happiness calling back to rot, and Nigel under threat. Perhaps it’s hypocritical for one only baggage at the start to speak of constant liability, but Alan had balanced weakness, and as if to mirror, Nigel stopped being so aware. Had lost that near perfect defense. As if Alan was a distraction, or simply something faulty to rely on, and it only gives a wonder--idle thoughts in motion--if it’d be better for both to part ways, and trouble each other less, if it would be better--

He snarls at the thought and jumps to his feet. The whispering song that had been trailing through the air dissolves into giggles.

There is a splash, and then she waves fingers at him, that stupid siren with mussed hair of mud. His fists clench, lips pulling back from teeth. He stays on the rock. There is an old scar, circular and white, shining brightly at her collarbone next to her throat, and he curses that it wasn’t two inches over, that it hadn’t torn through vocal cords and ripped arteries away, and--

There is another giggle. “Tell the truth, Alan dear. You were thinking of leaving him just now. Our Nigredo.” Our blackness, our death. Our light.

Alan glares, emotion choking him. “You were singing of it.”

The mermaid feigns shock, mouth a perfect ‘o’ and hand to her breast. How people found her beautiful, Alan could never understand. “Who me?” she chirps. “Why would I ever sing of breaking up that love story?”

She gives herself away--in the sharpness of her eyes and the faltering smile she wears--and sarcasm, angry and short, edging into her tones. Her true face, he decides, a part of him holding to themes--is of a witch, her own bitterness and selfishness making her cruel.

Or maybe she was cruel to begin with.

“And what brings you away from your perfect story? Trouble in paradise?” Every word she speaks is a smug trill, grating to his ears. “Or have you come to finally try the fairer sex?”

“Unlikely,” he makes out, tension lining his frame. “I’m just here to settle up with some dumb bitch.”

She reacts to the language unconsciously, drawing back with a hiss. She’s unused to people disliking her so vehemently, it seems. Such a fucking civil way of saying that understatement. “And why should I even care what you want?”

He stays on the rock, unwilling to have her swim off. “Because I still have him.”

Here is the smile of one assured of their win. “Are you so sure about that? You poor, poor creature.”

He takes back his decision in a heartbeat, and jumps down, feet sinking into the sand. Her smile doesn’t falter, but she watches him, wary. He stalks forward--she doesn’t come close to shore. “What did you do?”

“What if I didn’t do anything, Alan?” When she widens her smile, her teeth shine sharp in her mouth. “Maybe he chose his fate. Maybe it’s the better option.”

It’s stupid, so fucking stupid, and he reacts to it anyway, even knowing that it’s what she wants. “Like hell!” he shoots back, leaning forward. “You can’t have him either this way, so why--”

He cuts off short. She’s smiling, beaming like he touched on something true, and she moves closer, form slipping between the waves rippling towards the shore. He feels the first degrees of fear, then, and none of it is from her--all of it, only, from the potential of loss. She presses through the water, form taut with excitement. “Do you want to see,” she speaks coyly, low in tone and silk around the edges. “Do you want to see my new pet?”

There’s something sick in him. “Go to hell.”

She treads water and watches him. “Why, Alan. Do you want me to spend time with you that much?” A beat--enough for a swallow from him, a saccharine smile from her. “Because you’re already there.” She laughs, a high amused shriek, and flips her tail behind her. “Come back when you’re more interesting. Or find your own way down.”

She slips beneath the water, and he doesn’t even move to stop her. He doesn’t even move at all.

And he feels like he doesn’t move for a long time after. Even when he’s returned to their home, quiet and dark, there’s a stillness that overwhelms and swallows everything. Like an empty promise dying away- “I’ll always find you.” -like a miracle, rotting and turning to ash.

There’s something worse than waiting in the air; stagnancy turning rancid.

The metaphysical and supernatural is not his forte--it never has been, only for others, and in this, there’s only a quiet frantic pulsing--he doesn’t know what to do. How to move and what actions to take. There’s nothing he knows.

But he can’t remain still. Can’t give himself to silence.

There’s a myth that sticks with him, that he can’t get out of his head. A man chained upon a rock, a great eagle pecking at his insides, devouring them, only for them to grow back overnight. In the cool dark, there was rejuvenation. And under the bright, unforgiving sun, the eagle would return, to again relive the man of his insides.

Did he cry in relief during the night? How long did it take, Alan wonders, for the man to realize the punishment actually came after the sun escaped the sky? That comforting relief. That deeply held hope. That slow redeeming healing.

How long did it take for that person to turn to despair? To wish for pain in absence of nothing. For the existence of hope maintains itself foremost as a deeply held curse.

There’s a riddle he can’t remember. It might be that it gives the answer. There’s a clue in the way the paint shades the walls, and he doesn’t--

“Listen.” She’s awkward, unused to anything like comfort. “I’m not saying you don’t have reason to be upset, but Alan, man…. You gotta leave the house sometime.”

He forgets himself and tells her of mermaids of monsters of fairytales, and she only watches him in an older way rarely seen. His voice trails to nothing and she reaches over to touch his hand. “You gotta get out,” she repeats, more firmly, hazel eyes catching orange. She stands to stretch fingertips skyward, then looks around the room before her eyes find their way back to him. “There’s no answers to be found here,” she says. “You’ve got to look elsewhere.”

He wonders when she had vanished, to leave behind an empty room. He can’t remember if there were well-wishes or further advice, and upon further recollection, he isn’t sure that Sarah had been there at all.

Out of the house, is it? He’s not sure it’s as easy as that. He’s staring at ginger hair without remembering a transition, and he becomes gradually aware of a glare aimed at his skull. In the middle of a vague contemplation over whether this is her house or his, Alan realizes, far too belatedly, that his hair is white instead of dyed brown, and he wonders, seeing himself reflected in those sharp olive eyes, how long Cynthia’s known the difference.

“There’s nothing I can tell you,” she says, the perfect mix of concern and distain. “You would surely know better than I.”

“Only maybe,” he replies, with the distinct knowledge that they’ve been having a conversation he has no recollection of. “You signed for him, were responsible--”

She interrupts, cutting him off neatly. “And now you do,” she says firmly. A beat, and-- “And now you are.”

Responsible for him. No matter what.

Their eyes meet and hold, a balancing act of wills, and against everything, Cynthia looks away, seemingly annoyed. “There’s nothing I can tell you,” a repeat, possibly softer than before. “But he’s never been someone who could be convinced of anything. If he doesn’t want to heal, he won’t.”

He does, Alan says, or doesn’t say; emotion written in the space behind his eyes.

“Look elsewhere,” she says, near to a threat, a final vow, and yet he thinks it sounds familiar. He’s heard those words before. “Or give him a reason to wake.”

But I already was, he thinks, and this time he knows it isn’t aloud. I thought I already was.

He’s mixing facts with opinions, and she’s quick to point it out. He doesn’t remember meeting with her, but by this point it only makes sense. “You do realize it has nothing to do with how you feel? Whether he wakes or not.”

There’s an ounce of hesitation in her tone--it’s a strange enough scenario, even for her--but even if there wasn’t, he would still question. Still second guess. “Do you really think that, though?” A beat. A pause. “There’s a kind of energy built by negative thoughts, and by positive as well.”

She looks at him, as if seeing him all over again. “You’ve never said things like that before.” You’ve held to logic, is the unsaid.

He coughs a laugh, a grating sound, and she closes her eyes. “The mind must change, when pressed into pieces,” he says, as if quoting verbatim. He isn’t sure whether or not that’s actually the case. “I guess I stopped caring,” he allows, one shake of his head.

She returns to watching him carefully, looking him over with a detective’s eye. Quietly, she considers: “Or perhaps you’re only caring about what matters.”

Jaden is the one he remembers leaving, a crisp nod to him as she stood, and something softer around her eyes.

And Crista is the one he remembers going to, remorse at his eyes and regret in his mouth. Nervousness slowing his motions.

He’s known where she lives for near a year now, but it’s the first time he’s broached that distance. That ever-widening gap. The first time he’s looking into her eyes, three years older, and wondered:

Where they would be, if everything had continued down the path they had originally chosen?

Perhaps Alan had to leave, but he hadn’t had to stay. For so long and to never return. To never look into those eyes.

Those eyes that smile tiredly at him all the same. She says, as if it’s nothing: “I wondered when you’d get around to seeing me.”

Not visiting but seeing. A kind of sight not restricted to simply directing the eyes. He thinks he remembers then. Why he loved her. Why he loves her.

They speak of nothing at all, touch nothing that matters, and yet he listens to her voice, feels it move through him and secure him to the ground, and he gradually remembers linear thought patterns, refocuses on the flow of time, and in the safe warmth created by this one person who was the first he chose, Alan Kane remembers. Precisely who he is, and how exactly he came to be. What he is, and why he was that way.

This precious girl.

He touches her hair as he leaves, and startled, she reaches for his hand. For a moment, he lets her take it, and they don’t look into each other’s eyes. Weight keeps both gazes pressed firmly to the ground. Things unsaid allow him to leave without a word more.

Here lies only what could have been.

He returns home and thinks on what he can remember. Who exactly he is. A strict focus on what matters. That Alan is responsible for Nigel--that Nigel can’t be convinced of anything--that he needs a reason to wake. That Alan should search elsewhere, look elsewhere. That he had made a promise to always follow and find. That he should do something.

“Don’t let it all flow back to shadows. You need your light.”

The time when you give up something is the only time you can gain something in turn.

He thinks he understands, then. He thinks he might be starting to understand.

“Tell me how to do it,” he says, near a demand. Her gaze is flat, unfathomable.

“What makes you think I know?”

“Because I know who you are,” he answers. What she is will always remain an unknown. “I know you can touch on minds. I know you can move through dreams.”

Her eyes sharpen, a warning by any other name. “I can touch your mind, Alan,” a name given firmly as if it’s a point to be made. “No others.”

It’s a lie and both know it, but it is true as well. He knows it--feels it--and watches her. She says nothing else.

He wonders. He wonders if he’s wrong.

She exhales suddenly, a loosening of pressure. “You already have everything you need,” she tells him. “The knowledge you already hold.” The ability, both understand, is a separate attribute. “The connection is already there.” She looks at him, golden eyes sharp.

You have to look elsewhere.

Her eyes seem to change, seeing his understanding. “‘I’ll see you in my madman’s dreams,’” she quotes. “‘I’d sink into your troubled eyes.’”

And none would know ’cept Lorelei.

He will undo her, he thinks. He will erase her existence.

There is a final passage of time. He returns to the sea, to the sand, and watches. Watches. Thinks, determines, and mourns. How is it said, that defining phrase. Non sum qualis eram.

I am not the kind of person I once was.

No, Alan Kane thinks. He hasn’t been that person for a very long time now.

A person who no longer exists.

There are wishes in dreams--hope and fears. Lives can be lived within the span of a dream, or less than a thought. And for some, for those who know, the body can be free of the soul, the soul of the body--a fleeing, flying escape in the guise of a dream.

Keep the body alive, and the soul will yet remain. It could remain without for as long as it willed--except the body longs for the soul, and the soul the body, and following a drawing, inexplicable pull, both pieces would reunite as if never separated. As if the thought of abandonment never occurred.

And it is more for those whose energy pulses true--whose senses are tied to the flow of the body’s waves.

So, in essence, for a creature like Nigel, like Alan, there should be no way to hold halves separate. Unless there was a reason given. Unless there was a hold on the mind.

Alan has accepted much and many in his span of existence. And here he would go further--he would work on faith. And he thinks he understands it. He understands.

There is no need for the water, for the waves. No need at all. The human reason Alan has built would demand his presence, for him to call her to challenge. An older instinct, too, and anger, would wish him to storm the depths of her hell, to slaughter her in his sights.

But he is neither person. And he never was.

He focuses on what matters--quietly moves to the chair by the bed, takes a hand between his own, and bows his head to touch another’s chest.

No, Alan is neither being, a creature different for certain, an abomination perhaps, but he will succeed all the same.

He breathes in, a careful, quiet method, and reaches for two items to recall within his mind. Within his soul. Both are equally threatening, have the possibility to wipe the self he is away. Yet, there exists no hesitation. First, he reaches for what is dark.

And what Alan finds is shadows. He knows the theory, premise, promise. Part instinct, part Ariadne, and part Nigel, Alan can understand. That what Alan Kane is--what they are--could slip into another’s mind, given the connection. And Alan--always--could slip beneath another’s skin to seek them out. And here, here-- He would do this in a way untried.

He slips into the darkness within his mind and seeks Nigel. Recalls the feel of him, the taste of warm flesh beneath his tongue. The ease and effortless motion of being within another’s company; the perfect silence kept in the comfort of one who is known. Dark and bright--what exists as light. Nigel is one who shines, and Alan can only follow. Can only move on faith.

For he knows that Nigel is waiting for him.

It is like swimming, he thinks, moving through the dark as if it is an indescribable murk.

It reminds him of drowning.

There is a sudden light, blinding, the glaring shine of sun on glass, the cry of gull and waves, and Alan finds himself treading water, and looking at a cave.

It’s said there is a rhyme and reason for all but that falters here, stutters to fall short. There is no horizon to these waters, no line of land in the distance, but there is that small wall of rock, jutting up; that cave. It feels as if there should be a faded quality here, reminiscent of a dream, but all is stark--flat--bright. It’s toxic, and Alan doesn’t know why he thinks that, but he knows that it is true.

Just as he knows this feeling is accurate--he is small, made miniscule, the only creature recognizable as human in these waters-- These waters that expand downward for more than any body of water should go, but that’s not accurate really, either, for what he is in is too large, too consuming, to be anything on earth--it is a deeper and darker ocean green, waves both wilder and more serene. Something older than civilization. Something that had been masquerading as the sea for a far longer time.

There are monsters greater than men, and they must follow three rules to terrify: They must not be seen. They must not speak. And they cannot be reasoned with.

To make a monster fiercer, let it be unable to be killed.

There is a shifting of the current beneath Alan’s feet, something indescribably large moving deep below. There is that repeated sensation of being made meaningless, small. Of lacking form inside of something far more vast. Alan swims for the line of rock jutting from the waves. He slips from the water onto stone, in front of that dark, singular cave, and listens. Listens further than ears can possibly hear. There is a light dimly pulsating, ringing out a song of being. One he knows the feel of well.

There is no fortification of the self, no strengthening of the will, no hesitation of the mind. Alan steps forward as if that’s all there is. All there ever was.

And all there is gives itself as shadows. The illusion is complete--it takes moments for Alan’s eyes to adjust to the complete lack of light after it had blinded him, and he allows one moment, one only, to consider that this is real and nothing like an illusion at all. He had been in the sea and now he is in this cave. The details given are whole, complete--to any other it would likely be something unable to be doubted. To any other, perhaps, the cave would cause them to be lost. For even now, as his sight clears, Alan sees the labyrinth of passages stretching out before him in all directions. And there is no clear way to go.

But there is no illusion that holds itself to be complete, no reality to be held to more than any other. If Alan closes his eyes and tightens his hand, he can feel another’s skin against his own, smell detergent and cleansers and warmth-- Both exist as real, neither more than the other, and perhaps it is because of that, that Alan is privy to only one path when his eyes reopen.

Only one lesson to be learned. Darkness speaks more clearly than light ever will. There is a trail of dark to lead to what shines. He steps forward, and keeps to shadows.

There was a story once. Of a man within a cave. He calls out, and a stranger answers him, calling him forward, a new path at every turn, until he finally realizes, unconscionably lost, that the voice heard was his own fading echoes, and there is no longer a viable way to leave. The man is trapped within stone, held there by his own foolishness.

For that, Alan does not speak a word, and he decides to not trust his voice either, for he knows not what stories hold themselves as true. He is prepared, but not for the right assault, for when he passes a crevice-like pathway, a voice he has not heard for months calls out softly.

Alan jerks to a halt at the sound of his own name, freezes in place at the tones he has missed, and he denies the sound, denies it with all of his being, because that dark pathway does not hold the light he is seeking, and even so-- Even so, it kills something in him to lift his feet, to take a step-- It shatters something, destroys it utterly, for him to move on.

And it worsens. A simple name was not enough for Alan to stop, despite the pull, so the voice continues, in such familiar intonations that Alan could die. Mentions of promises, petulant queries, apathetic accusations, and in the end, abrupt denials of love.

It is the last, strangely, that allows Alan to shut out the voice entirely. It is the last that he could never believe, despite any insecurities. Because Alan is what Nigel needs. The same could be said of them both.

The same is true beyond all measure. It is why Alan is here now. It is why he follows that light that shines only within the confines of his chest. Why, in a different reality altogether, he presses his face into another’s chest and inhales deeply.

The path ends abruptly without warning, opening into a large cavern with a hole near the top. The moon shines in (and wasn’t the sun just shining?), illuminating the glow that skirts the surface of the pool of water that finds itself inside.

His eyes, like in a bad romance novel, tend towards what is sunbathing itself on a rock. It combs fingers through its disgusting matted hair, and shifts its weight to show off what it likely considers are its best features. What the thing considers its best, Alan knows as the worst, and he has no want to delay on a further illusion of something most hated.

But the creature opens its lips and vocalizes without words, a low soprano carrying into the apparent night. The mermaid’s eyes look ninety degrees past Alan, and he follows them, unconsciously. To the dark-haired boy who has stilled in awe at the sight.

…In the end, Nigredo is a stupid child, and Alan doesn’t have time for memories of a past that isn’t his. Ignoring the show put on, he continues along the thin path that skirts the pool, and moves deeper into the dark.

The dark in which there is singing. The echoes of the singing that had been heard moments prior. Alan tenses completely, even as he keeps walking. Even as--

He moves through another opening, and bright light assails him. Holding a hand to cover his eyes, he squints through it, and can make out another opening on the far side of this pool whose top is seemingly entirely open to the hot air. There is singing, cheerful chirping, and a kind of splashing that sounds like someone washing clothes in a river. Large rocks distort most of the visibility, and he takes into consideration the possibility of a trap as he moves forward, wary. He rounds the largest of the rocks, and there is movement there, the same hated creature, with lilies in her hair, tucked behind her ears, a more open expression on her face, and in her arms--

In her arms rests a bloated corpse, and she is singing to it. Nonsense words that seem more a child’s song. She splashes her tail idly in the shallows, and chirps something down at the corpse, seemingly lacking the knowledge that it is already dead.

Alan halts there, pauses, and it’s enough that the shadow of a memory looks up, untroubled, before she frowns in petulant consternation. “He’s so stupid,” she says, in the affectionate way of children that have ripped the wings off of butterflies. “I won’t stop playing with him even if he pretends to be asleep.”

There’s a shrill scream that echoes from somewhere, enough for blood to curdle and for Alan to jump at shadows. He looks to the side, on guard, and the light drops out, the cavern night-black; a quick, sudden splash as the only other sound. He looks back to the creature and her prey and both are gone, as if they were never there. Silence echoes, and it’s more threatening than anything else. A song or a giggle would have been more fitting, more familiar from a creature that gloated and mocked. But it’s silence instead, and Alan continues slowly, on edge, along the pond--now ink black, the murk of it unknowable--and back into the cool gloom of the long pathway.

Is it hours or is it eternity that he walks--perhaps it is only a moment, and nothing more. Alan has walked dark halls, with voices disembodied and precious calling out of crevices. He has walked the span of caverns, tracing memories and murmurings unwanted, and after the last, the air is the color of pitch, and no amount of time within it will make his sight used to it again. He moves blindly, but does not stumble, following-- Following what was before him, what was always, always before his gaze.

The air turns cold and thick, and he still breathes it, because there is only the need-- The abject requirement-- To continue, to keep going, to seek and to find--

There is a cavern full of moonlight that shines from nowhere, and after the darkness he was wrapped in, it nearly blinds him anew. He presses a hand to his eyes, then freezes, freezes, because what he saw in the moments before his gaze whitened and graced blind was--

His hand drops; he runs along the rock face leading up to the large rock in which a body is laid out on. A body younger, perhaps, but Alan’s to know all the same, and it’s as if Nigel is sleeping. And it can only, always, remind Alan of drowning.

His sight shatters, splitting into dual layers, seeing both the body on the rock, and that self-same body, laying straight, musing up at the air.

“I’m going to go away,” Nigel muses, younger, and not to Alan. The recipient makes itself known as the mermaid heaves half of her body out of the water, leaning coyly on the rock. Her expression, a petulant pout, has traces of sadness, if one can believe it.

“Just because a few humans died?” Her tone tries for brevity, amusement, annoyance, and comes off as a whine.

Nigel smiles at her, reaches to pat her head, a picture of slopped mud as the strands move between his fingers. She closes her eyes, affects nonchalance for it to fail. “It’s not because of that. Not quite.”

She huffs, and slips from his hand. “Don’t take so long next time. Waiting four years was far more than enough.”

Nigel smirks, and Alan realizes he can still see. How old? When was this? Fifteen? Sixteen? “Four years is unable to be tolerated from one who’s seen millennia?” He remembers Albedo, then, and his impatience, and wishes to retract the words--

Alan’s head pounds.

The mermaid looks at him, clouded sea as her gaze. “Moments are too much, human child. You lack the knowledge that you claim to bear.”

Nigel is quiet, silent, then offers a more serious expression, near an apology. “Don’t forget. I’ll be back. I made a promise, didn’t I?”

Lorelei’s mood vanishes; she smiles, wide and sharp. “As much as I want, as long as I want! Shall we have a round now--”

He waves a hand, cutting her off. “This is fine for now. I want to watch the sky.”

The sky is dark, ridden with stars, but there is something almost peaceful on Nigel’s face as he looks upward.

There’s a harsh splash near Alan, that of a body struggling and coughing, and when Alan turns from the rock, there’s an illuminated pool, and Nigel, as Alan knew him first, is stumbling from the water. The man is pressing a hand to his mouth, and he suddenly throws it outward, a strangely dramatic gesture. “Why do I even bother?! You seek to ‘refine my views’, and yet attempt to drown me at the first chance you get! I’ve been gone for four years and this is how you repay me for visiting you? I’ve learned not to come back!”

She rises from the water, more creature-like than she’s shown previously. Her head graces the water’s edge, and then she rises to show narrowed eyes and nothing more. Her eyes shine like something dead against the thin light--she is unmistakable, undeniable, as a monster. She says nothing.

Nigel coughs and spits out water, then throws his hands to the air. “And now you’re sulking! Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t drown when you wanted!”

She slips up until her chin graces the air. “…When you wanted.”

Nigel stops, something like fear flashing through his eyes before dying.

“I didn’t change your mind, Nigredo, but it’s changed all the same,” the mermaid speaks, deliberately and firmly.

And Nigel denies nothing. Pauses there on the sand and remembers red. Thinks of a blue with such clarity that it hurt to perceive. “…Not yet.”

There are tears in the tone, death in the echoes.

She watches him, unrelenting, and he swallows, stares at the sand that the water is touching and feels an echo of a different fear. “Not yet?”

He doesn’t look at her. He cannot. “Not yet. I haven’t broken my promise yet.” To continue, to remain. To wait for them to return.

To allow her the chance to change his mind. He has made too many promises--they clash against each other and turn to rot.

“Not yet,” he repeats, then swallows down death. “But don’t worry; you’ll get your chance.” He waves a hand idly, turns away from the shore. “I doubt I’ll be able to hold out for another year.”

She watches him, says nothing. Waits until he is nearly out of earshot before she calls, sweetly, threateningly. “Don’t stay away too long.”

The pool turns black and the figures to mist. There’s footsteps, closeby, and Alan is thinking. Thinking. For if Alan had not appeared, shown up in a mess at Nigel’s doorstep one night, Nigel would have kept his promise. He would have visited Lorelei within a year, and maybe he would have remained, maybe not, but he would have kept the promise.

Instead he remained with Alan, only, until a series of murders drew them to the sea. A mermaid’s impatience and a stupid man’s promises. Both were to blame, but Alan--always--would turn fault to one side--

She laughs, and there’s no echo present. No memory, this, and he knows it somehow. “He would have returned to me, our Nigredo. He would have spent eternity with me if not for you.”

She shows herself, then, and it’s not what Alan expects. A woman, naked and graceful, on the border of youth and maturity, perhaps in her twenties, or perhaps it wasn’t counted as such when Lorelei graced human still. She halts a distance from Alan and spreads her hands for him to take in her form--her curves lay the same, but her hair has a shine not present in her current form. It reminds him of a fawn, velvet and graceful, and her eyes-- Are sharpened, focused. Have a clarity to them that hurts to perceive.

This is the mermaid as she once was, and Alan knows it without a line of myth.

The near beautiful expression wavers; she almost snarls in disgust before catching herself. “That wasn’t an invitation, when I spoke before. I wouldn’t have thought you could make it to this mindscape, but you are a most abominable creature, after all. What is not true for mortal men cannot be spoken the same for abominations unfit.”

Alan says nothing, and she fills the silence. Whether gloating or nerves, he doesn’t care to guess. “And what now, Alan? You’ve made it to your beloved’s side, but how will you free him? How will you wake him? With a kiss or something disgraceful? And how--” She smiles, more assured now. “--Will you ever make it home again?”

His eyes angle, and she’s spoken the truth. Where the youthful body had rested, there now lay Nigel, whole and complete, and exactly as Alan knew him. This was his brother, this was his love, his light, his life, and that couldn’t be feigned in any way.

There’s no need to speak to her. He already made that decision. He crosses back to the upraised rock and reaches fingertips to touch a chest.

As the same occurs in another reality, a hand twitching to lay palm-flat against a beating heart.

And Alan only closes his eyes. Only breathes, only seeks, only reaches--

{Nigel. Come home, sweetheart.}

I’ve been waiting for such a long time.

Eyelids flutter and shift. There’s a sound from a throat long since unused. There’s a ratcheting screech behind Alan, but he doesn’t yet have ears to hear.

“Nigel.”

A hand reaches to touch his hand, and Alan isn’t sure which reality this is true in. “…Alan?”

There’s an implosion like a firework done backward, and Nigel is gone, awoke, released. Gone from the rock cave, and gone from both their sights. Alan remains. Alan who is held in a clawlike grip from behind.

She hisses in disgust at the contact and anger at the undoing. “What is not true for mortal men cannot be spoken the same for abominations unfit,” she repeats as if in verse. “But there’s nothing you’ve won. If I hold you here, he’ll come all the same, and this time you won’t be able to undo it. In fact--”

She smiles, and he realizes. That he’ll have to reach for that second item. Within his mind. Within his soul. Both are equally threatening, has the possibility to wipe away the self that he is, but there exists no hesitation. He breathes in, a careful, quiet method, and reaches for that second item, even as she speaks.

“In fact, Alan, why don’t you just (go to sleep).”

He reaches for music. For what was low and classical, with a undercurrent of voices straining. Something that had once been relaxing, but what was for other people was not for him-- Music, thick and haunting, meant to be comforting, no doubt, but lacking. It was eternity stretched out in a graveyard spiral, a song that would forever continue to play, and magenta would flare within his irises, a Song would rise in his mind.

A Song would raise itself in the cavern around them, drowning out whatever she meant to entertain.

The woman looks frightened, unsure for the first time, and Alan closes his eyes, holds to that current that pulses within him. Exists as a song, as the Song, as the waves kept within it. He had always been one to pick at scabs, and if he bled, he would bleed.

“(Stop. Now.)”

He wonders if you know when you’re going crazy. Was it a sudden flash, or slow, sleek and slinking in his mind before he realized, a graceful and dissonant melody tracing its way under his skin and self and soul--until he lost the person that he lov--

No. No, incorrect. They had not even stepped foot within those woods; had not yet profaned by slaughter.

She shrieks at the rising tones, and throws an arm out much like the gesture Nigel had made earlier in memory. “(Just die!!)”

There is emotion behind it, a command, clear and perfect, and Alan opens his eyes, watches her and seeing nothing. “No. Not yet.”

When he vanishes it is the opposite of the one that went before. The silent snuffing of a candle flame, as if nothing had ever been there to begin with.

No, nothing had ever been there at all.

-----

It was weeks before Nigel could even start piecing things together. He woke, cramped and sore, as if he had been sleeping far too long; the echoes of the link ringing in his mind. Alan was resting at his side, in a chair, and woke a few minutes after Nigel, but wouldn’t say a word. He responded, otherwise, in perhaps minute ways, but enough that Nigel didn’t panic in full, and he wondered now, at that. That if Alan would have just slipped into catatonia if he didn’t believe he needed to comfort Nigel. That, even then, even still, Alan was looking after Nigel.

When Alan awoke, he only pressed his hand again against Nigel’s chest, then dipped his head there, as if seeking comfort, and took in a long, shuddering breath.

It was another day before Nigel realized over seven months had passed since he’d last seen light. It was actually thanks to a message on the phone, a doctor requesting a weekly report on the condition of the patient, and the mechanical woman at the end stated the day and time in precise, perfect details. Alan wouldn’t explain, and made no move to act surprised over it. It was enough at this point to concern him, and Nigel sought out others to find out what happened.

Sarah, after expressing a perfect surprise at seeing him at her door, only had this to say: “It was bad, Nigel. You were gone and he was left here, and hell if I ever thought Alan would be the broken type.”

No, he thought to himself. Nigel was only more obvious. Alan was delicate, as precious as blown glass and beautiful to look at, but he broke all the same.

Cynthia visited, and would have deigned comment except Nigel nearly begged. “He sought to take care of you,” she said, without an ounce of emotion. “Only he didn’t know how.”

“He was changing,” Jaden spoke, when they met, eyes shadowed with concern. “Less keeping to logic and more to faith. To need. ‘The mind must change when pressed into pieces’, is what he told me.”

What he said. In the months Nigel had been asleep.

He almost doesn’t call her, but does so anyway, dialing numbers he had long since memorized and never used.

Crista was silent over the phone, and then only said, “…He’s always been innocent, despite any evidence otherwise. Broken and withheld, but he was healing.” He was, once upon a time. “He had been healing.”

And he would never have contacted the last, but she showed up one morning, in their house without ever opening the door, and patting Alan’s head fondly. “I told him,” the creature said with regret. “I told him not to give up everything to maintain his light.”

Fiercely Nigel would declare that he didn’t, and Ariadne only looked at him with eyes that Nigel could see. “Perhaps he hasn't. Though, what song traces itself in his mind, Nigel Kane? What fear echoes within his being? What loss permeated while you played in the sand?”

…In the sand?

She smiled, tiredly, and dropped her hand from Alan’s head. “‘If I should float upon this stream, and see you in my madman's dream, I'd sink into your troubled eyes, and none would know…’”

They were lines that echoed, that spoke familiar, and Nigel couldn’t place them.

“None would know,” Ariadne repeated. “Except for Lorelei.”

Lorelei, and Alan, apparently, except he would tell no tales. It was simple enough to look up the lines, and one night while Nigel held the other, Alan cuddled up against him and holding tight--as if Nigel would slip away again if Alan let go--Nigel murmured words into Alan’s hair. Whispered promises, again, again. A vow in verse, in song.

My sorrows I will drown before I die. It's you I'll see, not Lorelei.

It was enough, it seemed, for Alan to at least slip into sleep--something the other man had been lacking for going on two weeks now. And Nigel had a trip to take all the same.

He hadn’t ever wanted to return. Sand and sea and breath; air heavy with saline filling his lungs until there was nothing else. Nothing but hatred and memories.

He knew too well the words to sing. But she would come even in silence.

Her head broke the waves, and she smiled, even if the expression graced itself as unsteady. Alan had pulled Nigel out, in some way or another, and Lorelei was not whole for that fact. There was a subtle malicious joy in that, that Alan had wounded her in some manner.

She rose further and Nigel saw the scars, puckered and round, from a gun that had been shot in her direction some time ago. A different story, a different ending, for he was here, and not hiding away.

Perhaps that was the problem, in the end. He had become a liability who preferred to run, and for that Alan had sacrificed part of himself. It was enough to want to stab her, to rend her, but Nigel would never get close enough. He understood too well how one reacted when cornered.

“So you’ve returned,” she declared, with an attempt at her usual brevity. It fell empty, and Nigel didn’t feel like duplicating her greeting. She paused, off-beat, then wondered. “Do you want to come back with me?”

He pulled lips from teeth in disgust. “To the confines of your miniscule mind? I may not remember much, but I remember nearly learning claustrophobia from the lack of space.”

She blinked, almost looking hurt, then snarled in return. “Then why have you come, Nigredo? To finish what your monster started, to--”

“Don’t--” Sharply, bit out. It was too close to memories far older for her to refer to him as that. “Don’t call him that.”

Instead of delighting in the reaction, she splashed the water with her hands, frustrated. “Then what, Nigredo?! You came to me, and I thought you would stay-- You replied to my song by your presence, and then you just--” Left.

Left her alone again. As he always did.

Replying was not something recalled. And had no place in this story. “I left, Lorelei, and I keep leaving you. Is that what you’re trying to say? You’re a delicate, lonely child who needs a friend to drown and despair with, to entertain you, and I keep leaving, is that it?!”

He was gasping for air, heaving for breaths, because it was true, wasn’t it? No matter who it was, despite what was believed, Nigel was the one who strayed. Who ran. Who slept beside the depths. “…I don’t plan on returning here. Don’t bother any more with your games, or I will finish it.”

She blinked, expressions passing through her mien in the span of a heartbeat, then she only smiled. An expression given with effort, but given nonetheless. “You said I could try. As long as--”

“I don’t care.”

She reacted instantly, vehemently; the perfect mirror of a dumped lover. “You promised me, and you’ll keep your promises! You’ll keep them, or I’ll keep you close, willing or not.”

It’s a threat, and a perfectly precise one. She would sing to him, speak to him, and Nigel would walk into the ocean without a thought.

He hummed a beat, as if thinking, and began to pace idly along his set line of distance. “Willing or not…” he mused. “You know, mermaid, I’ve thought of that since then.” That time. When she nearly did pull him close. “That language. That prayer.” He stopped his pacing, and smiles coldly at her. “That method of praying.

“You hail from before Babylon, don’t you? That unified language before all separated into confusion. No, don’t respond,” he went on, halting her interruption. “I know you’re not intelligent enough to answer that. I’m right, and it’s obvious now, so obvious. You prayed in a way all living creatures would understand, and respond to, and that’s why it’s so effective. That’s why I hold a fear that I never would have gained.”

He paused there, and she was silent for a moment. “…So you’ve figured out the great mystery, then. Should I give you full marks? Am I no longer interesting to you, now that you know?”

“You haven’t been interesting for a long time now,” was the harsh reply, softened in the next breath. “And yet, you’ll always be the most interesting thing I’ve known. You were the first creature to expand my mind more than what my world designated, more than what my brothers offered. And you were likely my friend.

“But it doesn’t matter now.”

Lorelei treaded backwards, shifting the water at her touch. “Are you planning to kill me, Nigredo? Do you think that you can?”

Nigel hummed again, then mused. “I may not be able to, but I’m not planning to kill you. I just need to let you know. About that language.”

Her expression showed confusion, and he nodded, as if in resolution, then went on. “You learned that language, likely through acclimation. But I went a little further than that.”

There was nothing left to say. Nothing left to hold between them, and yet Lorelei opened her mouth as if to recall what once existed--

“Don’t,” Nigel says, cutting her off completely. “Please, don’t; I’d rather not. In fact,” he adds, moving a hand in front of his face.

“Don’t speak at all.”