Chapter Text
It wasn’t a dream.
Louis realizes this the next day after trying to climb up his usual preferred tree for reading and finding himself eye-to-eye with a gaze like the blue moon for the second time.
Once again, Louis screams, losing his grip on the tree and falling to the ground. He falls on his back with a loud thud, but the pain isn’t what has him stunned. No, the thing that keeps Louis lying on the grass and staring out above him is the fact that he’s looking right at the same eye that terrified him the night before.
“...I was right. You do look just like her.”
Louis jolts upright. The grass crunches under his weight as he scrambles to put distance between himself and the unusual shape in the tree. From the safer position, he observes.
In the daylight, Louis can see much more clearly the things he can’t. There is a body attached to the eye, Louis is sure of that now, but somehow he can’t quite make it out. The parts of the individual’s body hit by the sunlight seem more visible, but the parts draped in the tree’s shadows might as well not even be there. The figure almost seemed made of glass.
Louis took what he could see and tried to form a picture out of it to make him seem more tangible. To make the sight of him less surreal.
“Just like who?” Louis asks after a moment of stunned silence, feigning indifference even though in the back of his mind he wonders just what on earth is happening.
The figure seems to think about their response before answering. “What’s your name?” he says, ignoring Louis’ question entirely.
Louis narrows his eyes. “...What’s yours?”
The figure hums contemplatively. A breeze blows by, and Louis catches a glimpse of what could be black hair being whipped around by it. He doesn’t understand what he’s looking at.
The figure doesn’t say anything. Louis waits, and when he doesn't answer, Louis prompts. “Well?”
“Does my name really matter?” The figure’s voice is lighter than the night before, Louis notes, but not weightless.
Louis folds his arms in an act of bravado. He doesn’t care about that. All he wants is for the figure to go. “If not by your name, then what should I call you while I insist you leave?”
The figure lets out a tired, hollow laugh. “Believe me, I would leave if I could…” he sighs. Before Louis can give any kind of quip or snark in return, he continues. “I have a question for you. Where exactly are we?”
“I already answered that last night,” Louis said tersely.
“Yes, I’m aware, but…” the figure’s voice gains tension before letting out an exasperated sigh. “...If that’s still your answer, then…” Their voice trails off. From the direction that their eye is looking, they seem to be staring off into the distance. Louis doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t much care. This… whatever they are, is trouble, plain and simple.
“If that’s all, then what do I need to do to get you to leave?”
“Like I said,” his voice sounds more frustrated this time, and it only worsens the more he talks. “I would leave if I could. If you’re who I think you are, then maybe this makes some degree of sense, but everything is wrong, even that. I don’t know why I’m here, when by all accounts I should be-”
“Louis!” Louis turns. Once again, his conversation with this strange being is cut short by someone calling his name. This time, it’s only-
“Noé?”
Louis didn’t think it was possible to feel so much panic. It wasn’t him who said that.
Why does this being, this unknown creature, know Noé’s name?
“Louis, are you okay?” Noé calls again, rushing over. Louis tenses.
“I’m fine! I only fell!” Louis calls back, glancing between Noé and the figure. “Stop worrying so much and go play with Domi or something. I’m going to read my book.”
Noé visibly deflates, but doesn’t protest. Louis begrudgingly promises himself that he’ll give him his dessert at dinner. “Okay,” Noé says, quieter, before turning around to go back to the flowers with Dominique. Louis watches quietly to make sure that he gets there safely.
“...I see. You were worried that I was going to hurt him, weren’t you?”
Louis faces the figure once again. “Would you?”
“No,” the figure says. Louis doesn’t trust him, but something about his voice makes him want to. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to."
There’s a beat of silence, and then Louis plucks his book off of the ground and makes his way back up the tree. If he’s being entirely honest, he doesn’t actually want to, but it would make Noé and Domi worried if he were just standing around, and he’d look scared if he didn’t climb back up.
Louis settles on a sturdy branch nearby the figure, deciding that he’d at least try to settle things now. “Are you really not going to tell me anything about who you are or why you’re here?”
“I don’t know why I’m here,” the figure sighs, sounding like the admission was painful. “And as for who I am… as I said before, does that matter?”
Louis stares the figure in the eye resolutely. “Fine. If you’re doing whatever you want, then I’ll do the same.” It takes a moment before the thought comes to mind, but when it does, Louis tacks it onto the end of his sentence quickly. “Lune.”
He blinks. Whether he knows it or not, he’s been named, and Louis isn’t taking any criticism. “Hm?”
“Lune,” Louis repeats. “If you aren’t going to tell me your name, I’m going to call you Lune. Unless you’ve decided that you want to share?”
Lune is silent for a moment, and Louis briefly wonders what kind of face he’s making. Then he lets out a long, tired sigh. “Alright, then. Call me Lune.”
By the time Louis, Noé, and Domi decide to go back inside, it’s already evening. Louis distantly registers that Lune never did leave the tree, and pays any thoughts of him no mind. In part because he genuinely forgets, and in part because he simply doesn’t want to remember.
Louis hopes that this is just a one-time thing and that by tomorrow, any trace of Lune will be gone with the night. He doesn’t want to consider any of the implications that other outcomes might have.
He lies in bed with that wish playing in the back of his head, Dominique and Noé once again sleeping in his room on either side of him. Even though the two of them are there, it’s still difficult to fall asleep. There’s a faint anxiety tickling at the edges of his mind, waking him every time he begins to drift off.
He’d acted daring before, but quiet nights easily break his composure. Louis can’t help the way a familiar, unpleasant feeling coils tightly around his heart.
He doesn’t know what possesses him to do it. But, still, Louis opens his mouth and whispers into the night-
“Lune… are you there?”
For a moment, Louis doesn’t receive a response, and he starts to feel relieved. But a moment later something about the room feels different, almost like something has been moved, or there’s been a new addition to what sits within. Louis glances to the side and makes out Lune’s nondescript outline in the dark. Neither of them otherwise move.
“Here I am. Do you need something?”
Louis is quiet for a few seconds before shaking his head. “...I don’t.”
Lune hums. “I see.”
Louis doesn’t know why or how he’s able to tell that Lune is about to leave, but he's sure of it. “W-wait.”
The curtains are cracked open, allowing moonlight to stream in. Under the light, Louis sees Lune tilt his head. “If you don’t need anything, why am I here?” Lune asks.
I wanted to see if you were gone.
I wanted to see if you weren’t.
“...I wanted to see if you’d left yet,” Louis says in a clipped tone instead.
Lune chuckles, but he doesn’t sound amused when he speaks. “I thought I might’ve, but I was still here all along. So sorry to disappoint you,” he says airily. Louis can picture a smile on his face, but the expression doesn’t feel right even in his mind.
Louis chides himself the thought. He shouldn’t be worrying about the ingenuine nature of Lune’s smiles. There are other things to be concerned with. “Where did you go?”
“Does it matter? I heard you call me, and then I was here again,” Lune says simply. With a faintly teasing edge to his voice, he adds, “Did you miss me?”
Louis glares, any other questions he has withering away in place of blooming annoyance. “Not one bit.” He pulls the blankets higher over himself and shuts his eyes, resolutely done with this conversation. “I’m going to sleep, so you can go back to wherever you were now,” he says curtly.
Lune chuckles. “Alright.”
A few moments pass in silence. Louis knows that Lune is gone now, but he doesn’t know how long that will be the case.