[Two months have gone by following what the alien race as a collective whole has deemed a tragedy.
In the aftermath of what should have been the conclusion of the last round of the current Stage, a group of human rebels had attacked in an act of terrorism. All stage participants from that night, save Luka, were considered to be missing or dead, as well as at large and highly dangerous. That...wasn't something that Till needed to worry about, at least not right now. The media seemed pretty well convinced that he, at least, had died. Everyone saw him get shot live on stage, and he didn't get back up after that.
You don't get back up after that.
Yet, despite everything, despite wanting more than he ever thought possible to just let himself go, it seemed he'd clung to life stubbornly in the end.
For her.
Mizi. A witch, they call her. The moment he'd seen her that night had been so fleeting, yet it meant everything just to know she was there. Alive. She'd come, she was here, he meant something to her, and...as quickly as she'd returned, she'd disappeared again. And this time, Till wasn't allowing himself to cling to the idea that she might come back like she had before. If she is still alive, somewhere, part of him wonders if she wants to come back. She was the one who redirected the rocket after all, he doesn't think she intended to make it out in the end.
Though...neither had he.
The first month had been a lot of staying in a bed set aside for him at one of the rebel guerilla camps, hidden away somewhere unknown and safe so he could have time to recover. His wound had been nearly fatal, leaving Till completely bedridden for weeks on end. They hadn't been entirely sure if he'd wake up initially, even if they'd somehow managed to stabilize him. Turns out whoever took the shot was off with their aim, missing vital organs and giving him a brief second chance to do something more with the time he had left.
But what?
That's what he finds himself asking, now that enough time had gone by that he could actually get up and walk on his own. He'd still need a lot of rehab as far as he and anyone else could tell, but he'd been stubborn enough to not want people helping him for very long. He wouldn't actually be able to make any improvements if he just let people guide him forever, so he'd need to push through it. Just bear it. For her. For them.
During one such time he'd been trying to remember how to get his legs working again, Till saw him for the first time. It had only been a glimpse through an open door in the hallway, there one moment and gone the next. He'd been standing there like a wraith, watching him unblinking, and before Till could even find his voice to scream, someone walked past and the visage was gone. A hallucination? His eyes playing tricks on him? Maybe...
But he sees him again, a few days later. And this time he does shout, and the people around him immediately assume something's wrong and come to his side, only for Till to blink enough times for the image to disappear again. Go back to sleep. Get some rest.
[ Till stops singing and Ivan makes his choice, just like Sua made hers.
It turns out it was smart of her to plan ahead in all those modest moments, pouring over the sheet music like it was some secret, like she wasn't ever so carefully manipulating the score that would seal her fate. She was always bright. Unlike him, who only thought he was clever. Now that his time to intervene has come, it's the most ungentle thing, an unwieldy mouth upsetting what was already a precarious balancing act. It's a mess, like everything he's ever done in earnest. He isn't sure that it's worked until his own blood washes the taste of Till from his lips. The subtle change in the shock in those electric blue-green eyes tells him everything he needs to know before his legs give out beneath him: the shots have hit the right person. And as he falls, Ivan holds Till's last look at him tight. Live, take this life that wouldn't mean a thing without you.
The heart in his chest—such a useless organ until now—feels strangely full. In reality, it's beating slower. He knows that. Soon, he'll slip beneath the black wave of eternity.
[ Ivan stands at the center of nowhere. Pinpricks of starlight shine in all directions, impossibly distant against a blue-dark haze of cosmic dust. God doesn't wait here. The Great Anakt does not either, though that was never a belief that was born of humans. All is silent in this space except for the murmuring things that pass through his essence like thoughts. There is no sensation, other than a loose recall of life before.
If he does not try to remember his shape, he is nothing. If he does not reflect on who he once was, then he is no one.
It's tempting, to let himself become that, to rest, and maybe for a while he allows that to be so. But Ivan has never known his place, never known better than to want what he cannot have. It's when he braves wanting again that he discovers an eccentricity of this ethereal place, that wanting makes it into something else.
The blackness of the void separates into colors, and the lights—the lights of the universe congeal into a sky. Not just any sky, but the simplistic projection of one that hung over their heads at Anakt Garden. He's in his white cloths watching the curve of a silver-haired boy's cheek as the latter fixates on his sketchbook. He knows this moment. Soon some other students will run past, accidentally knocking the drawings out of Till's hands, and that's when Ivan will slip his pencil down his shirt so that the two of them spend the next several minutes together looking for it.
It's just the first of many memories he inhabits. They're lonely—he knows how they end—but they're perfect— ]
[ Time becomes strange— endless replay. What's stranger, though, is the first time the stars conjure a scene he doesn't recognize.
Till's checked himself in for punishment in one of the isolation chambers. That's hardly new for the more haphazard boy. It's the scrapes on Till's face that Ivan notices are out of place, the fact that they aren't in any configuration he's seen before. He always pays thorough attention to these types of marks on Till, has them memorized. They're wounds, but they're also places he wants to touch, urgently, for reasons he can't explain.
But before giving in, he's always dealt with the devices restraining him first, because they're hurting him and because they're hiding even more bruises he wants to see to.
When Ivan reaches for Till's collar, his fingers sink straight into it, all the way through Till without the other boy stirring. His wrist is shoved into his neck, but all it feels like is empty air. Ivan realizes that he's not inhabiting a moment in history. He's not anywhere in this instant at all. Hours pass, Till facing the door until a silhouetted Segyein arrives to drag the latter away and shut Ivan in the dark, unnoticed.
The second time something happens differently, the stage is covered in smoke, in fire. He's never seen it like this, not even in a dream. A fluctuation in the choking fumes briefly reveals that it's covered in bodies. Were he alive, he still wouldn't be able to feel the heat, because he's plunged into ice upon realizing who one of them belongs to. Ivan falls into the space of the figure already shedding tears for Till. He strains muscles he doesn't have, as if he can somehow move hers forward to find evidence that this isn't exactly what it looks like. Suddenly, she's whirling around, she's calling for help and — it actually comes.
After that, the fabric of reality ceases to act like a flipbook. He's able to follow the men taking Till. He's able to ride in the hull of their getaway vehicle unseen and hunker in the corner of the dingy room where they hook him up to all of the equipment they have. He's able to do all of this, somehow, stubbornly persisting in the present. Long after Till is left well enough alone, a barely breathing husk. Ivan entwines himself with him on the stretcher, weightless as a held breath, waiting for his condition to improve.
To experience the slow return of pallor to his skin is divine.
Although he does not seem to exist, some part of Ivan still feels the familiar impulse pull back at the last second, give Till his space come the first time his eyes reopen. From a measured distance, he watches. He doesn't have to learn to be content with that. The day Till cries out, the first thing Ivan thinks is that something's wrong. He's in a fragile state, after all.
As the doctors scurry to see to him, Ivan steals glimpses between their crowded frames, concerned that the scar tissue keeping things sealed has given out. It gives him boldness, brings him closer, closer, closer, reaching out as if to stop the flow of fitfully-imagined blood himself. ]
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-06-28 09:57 pm (UTC)In the aftermath of what should have been the conclusion of the last round of the current Stage, a group of human rebels had attacked in an act of terrorism. All stage participants from that night, save Luka, were considered to be missing or dead, as well as at large and highly dangerous. That...wasn't something that Till needed to worry about, at least not right now. The media seemed pretty well convinced that he, at least, had died. Everyone saw him get shot live on stage, and he didn't get back up after that.
You don't get back up after that.
Yet, despite everything, despite wanting more than he ever thought possible to just let himself go, it seemed he'd clung to life stubbornly in the end.
For her.
Mizi. A witch, they call her. The moment he'd seen her that night had been so fleeting, yet it meant everything just to know she was there. Alive. She'd come, she was here, he meant something to her, and...as quickly as she'd returned, she'd disappeared again. And this time, Till wasn't allowing himself to cling to the idea that she might come back like she had before. If she is still alive, somewhere, part of him wonders if she wants to come back. She was the one who redirected the rocket after all, he doesn't think she intended to make it out in the end.
Though...neither had he.
The first month had been a lot of staying in a bed set aside for him at one of the rebel guerilla camps, hidden away somewhere unknown and safe so he could have time to recover. His wound had been nearly fatal, leaving Till completely bedridden for weeks on end. They hadn't been entirely sure if he'd wake up initially, even if they'd somehow managed to stabilize him. Turns out whoever took the shot was off with their aim, missing vital organs and giving him a brief second chance to do something more with the time he had left.
But what?
That's what he finds himself asking, now that enough time had gone by that he could actually get up and walk on his own. He'd still need a lot of rehab as far as he and anyone else could tell, but he'd been stubborn enough to not want people helping him for very long. He wouldn't actually be able to make any improvements if he just let people guide him forever, so he'd need to push through it. Just bear it. For her. For them.
During one such time he'd been trying to remember how to get his legs working again, Till saw him for the first time. It had only been a glimpse through an open door in the hallway, there one moment and gone the next. He'd been standing there like a wraith, watching him unblinking, and before Till could even find his voice to scream, someone walked past and the visage was gone. A hallucination? His eyes playing tricks on him? Maybe...
But he sees him again, a few days later. And this time he does shout, and the people around him immediately assume something's wrong and come to his side, only for Till to blink enough times for the image to disappear again. Go back to sleep. Get some rest.
He wasn't crazy. He wasn't.]
1/?, delivering this in installments, since who knows how long i'm going to wax poetic
Date: 2025-06-29 09:55 am (UTC)It turns out it was smart of her to plan ahead in all those modest moments, pouring over the sheet music like it was some secret, like she wasn't ever so carefully manipulating the score that would seal her fate. She was always bright. Unlike him, who only thought he was clever. Now that his time to intervene has come, it's the most ungentle thing, an unwieldy mouth upsetting what was already a precarious balancing act. It's a mess, like everything he's ever done in earnest. He isn't sure that it's worked until his own blood washes the taste of Till from his lips. The subtle change in the shock in those electric blue-green eyes tells him everything he needs to know before his legs give out beneath him: the shots have hit the right person. And as he falls, Ivan holds Till's last look at him tight. Live, take this life that wouldn't mean a thing without you.
The heart in his chest—such a useless organ until now—feels strangely full. In reality, it's beating slower. He knows that. Soon, he'll slip beneath the black wave of eternity.
Ba-dum—
Ba-dum—
Ba-dum—
Ba—
—
89/70 ]
2/?
Date: 2025-07-01 10:14 am (UTC)If he does not try to remember his shape, he is nothing. If he does not reflect on who he once was, then he is no one.
It's tempting, to let himself become that, to rest, and maybe for a while he allows that to be so. But Ivan has never known his place, never known better than to want what he cannot have. It's when he braves wanting again that he discovers an eccentricity of this ethereal place, that wanting makes it into something else.
The blackness of the void separates into colors, and the lights—the lights of the universe congeal into a sky. Not just any sky, but the simplistic projection of one that hung over their heads at Anakt Garden. He's in his white cloths watching the curve of a silver-haired boy's cheek as the latter fixates on his sketchbook. He knows this moment. Soon some other students will run past, accidentally knocking the drawings out of Till's hands, and that's when Ivan will slip his pencil down his shirt so that the two of them spend the next several minutes together looking for it.
It's just the first of many memories he inhabits. They're lonely—he knows how they end—but they're perfect— ]
3/3, i give you the gift of tl;dr
Date: 2025-07-02 10:08 pm (UTC)Till's checked himself in for punishment in one of the isolation chambers. That's hardly new for the more haphazard boy. It's the scrapes on Till's face that Ivan notices are out of place, the fact that they aren't in any configuration he's seen before. He always pays thorough attention to these types of marks on Till, has them memorized. They're wounds, but they're also places he wants to touch, urgently, for reasons he can't explain.
But before giving in, he's always dealt with the devices restraining him first, because they're hurting him and because they're hiding even more bruises he wants to see to.
When Ivan reaches for Till's collar, his fingers sink straight into it, all the way through Till without the other boy stirring. His wrist is shoved into his neck, but all it feels like is empty air. Ivan realizes that he's not inhabiting a moment in history. He's not anywhere in this instant at all. Hours pass, Till facing the door until a silhouetted Segyein arrives to drag the latter away and shut Ivan in the dark, unnoticed.
The second time something happens differently, the stage is covered in smoke, in fire. He's never seen it like this, not even in a dream. A fluctuation in the choking fumes briefly reveals that it's covered in bodies. Were he alive, he still wouldn't be able to feel the heat, because he's plunged into ice upon realizing who one of them belongs to. Ivan falls into the space of the figure already shedding tears for Till. He strains muscles he doesn't have, as if he can somehow move hers forward to find evidence that this isn't exactly what it looks like. Suddenly, she's whirling around, she's calling for help and — it actually comes.
After that, the fabric of reality ceases to act like a flipbook. He's able to follow the men taking Till. He's able to ride in the hull of their getaway vehicle unseen and hunker in the corner of the dingy room where they hook him up to all of the equipment they have. He's able to do all of this, somehow, stubbornly persisting in the present. Long after Till is left well enough alone, a barely breathing husk. Ivan entwines himself with him on the stretcher, weightless as a held breath, waiting for his condition to improve.
To experience the slow return of pallor to his skin is divine.
Although he does not seem to exist, some part of Ivan still feels the familiar impulse pull back at the last second, give Till his space come the first time his eyes reopen. From a measured distance, he watches. He doesn't have to learn to be content with that. The day Till cries out, the first thing Ivan thinks is that something's wrong. He's in a fragile state, after all.
As the doctors scurry to see to him, Ivan steals glimpses between their crowded frames, concerned that the scar tissue keeping things sealed has given out. It gives him boldness, brings him closer, closer, closer, reaching out as if to stop the flow of fitfully-imagined blood himself. ]