Chapter Text
They stayed at the treeline a long time after that, past the point where the cold should have driven them back inside, neither one willing to be the first to move and break whatever fragile thing was sitting between them.
Elliot spoke first, in the end. He had to. He'd spent three years being the one who took care of everyone else's hard moments, and it turned out he had no practice at all handing someone one of his own.
"I don't really know where to start," he said. "I've never said any of this out loud before. Not to anyone here. Not to anyone outside of my family."
"Start wherever," 007n7 said, quiet, still close enough that their shoulders touched. "I'm not going anywhere."
Elliot pulled his knees up, wrapped his arms around them, and made himself keep talking before the fear could talk him out of it again.
The pull started almost as soon as he opened his mouth. Low in his skull first, a pressure that had nothing to do with the headache he'd already been carrying all day and everything to do with what this conversation was costing him just to stay present through it. Not yet, he thought, gripping the log hard enough to feel the bark bite into his palm. Just let me get this part out myself. Please.
"It's not new. Whatever you saw tonight, it's not new. It's been happening since before we... died and got sent here, I think, though it's worse here, and I– I feel like it's worse every year I stay." His voice caught there, and he pushed through it anyway. "...I have dissociative identity disorder."
007n7 didn't say anything right away. Elliot made himself keep going, afraid that if he stopped now he'd never manage to start again.
"There's other people in here with me, sort of. I don't know how else to explain it. More than one, I think, though I've never actually met most of them. Only one of them really talks to me. The rest are more like doors I haven't found yet, or that haven't found me."
He pressed his palm flatter against the bark, using the sting of it to keep himself where he was. "Not a bad someone, the one who does talk. Not trying to hurt me, or you, or anyone. Just... there. Quiet, mostly. Talks to me sometimes, on the harder nights." He smiled weakly.
"It's the reason I don't actually know if I made a wish on my birthday, or if I said thank you the right number of times, or if this is honestly the first time I've ever told you I love you, or if I already did that once before and just... don't get to keep it."
His voice broke fully on the last part. For a second the treeline doubled in his vision, both trees where there should have been one, sound going soft at the edges the way it did right before he lost a stretch entirely. He dug his nails harder into his palm and held on anyway. Not yet. He needed this part to still be him.
007n7 reached over and took his hand again, the same careful way he had the first time, like he was still checking it was allowed.
"Three years," 007n7 said, slow, working through it. "You've been keeping this secret the whole three years. By yourself?"
"I didn't know how to say it. I still don't, really. I just know I can't keep doing what I was doing tonight, going blank while you're in the middle of something that mattered, and then pretending after that everything's fine, that nothing happened, when you're the one who has to stand there and watch it happen to me." He looked over, finally, meeting 007n7's eyes instead of the dark yard beyond him. "I'm scared you're going to look at me different now. I'm scared you already do."
"I don't." 007n7 said it fast, immediate, like there hadn't even been a question to weigh. "I mean, yeah, I'm scared too, but not of you. For you."
He was quiet a second, thumb moving slow over Elliot's knuckles, before he said the rest of it.
"I kind of already had an idea something was going on," he admitted, and it clearly cost him something to say too. "Not this exactly. I didn't have a word for it or anything close. But I've noticed things, for a while now. The way you go somewhere else sometimes, even standing right in front of me. I didn't push, because... I don't know, everyone in this cabin's fucked up, y’know?”
Elliot bit back a laugh at the sudden passion in 007n7’s voice.
“I figured if you wanted me to know, you'd tell me whenever you were ready. I just wasn't expecting ready to look like tonight."
"I didn't want anyone to worry."
"I get that. I do. But Elliot," 007n7's voice wavered, thick with something that wasn't quite tears anymore but wasn't far off either. "I already worry. I've worried for months, honestly, every time you went quiet. I just didn't know what I was worrying about.”
He smiled, and it was that sweet, warm smile that Elliot loved so much. “Knowing is better. Even like this. Even scary like this. You've been doing this completely alone. Smiling through it. Making up excuses for me, for everyone, probably for yourself too. That's not something to be embarrassed about. That's just... a lot. That's so much more than one person should have to have without telling anybody."
Elliot let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for three years, not just tonight, and that was exactly when the pull he'd been fighting since the first sentence finally won.
There was no fighting it this time. He'd spent probably everything he had getting the words out, and now that they were finally said, whatever had been holding the door shut for him let go all at once, quiet, almost gentle about it, like it had only ever been waiting for permission. His last clear thought was something close to relief, and something close to sorry, and then the treeline went soft and far away and someone else was looking out through his eyes instead.
007n7 felt it happen before he understood what he was looking at. Elliot's shoulders dropped, some tension he hadn't even noticed leaving all at once, and when the eyes across from him focused again, something in how he held himself had changed.
It was familiar in a way that took 007n7 a second to place, and then he did.
"Hey," he said, and the voice sat close to Elliot's own but different in the mouth of it, calmer, none of Elliot's usual nervous static underneath. "Sorry. He was holding on as long as he could. He wanted to be the one to tell you most of it himself. I think he did okay."
007n7's breath caught, but he didn't pull his hand back. "Oh... hi."
He immediately looked like he wanted to take it back and say something better, glancing away, flustered. "Sorry, that was, uh. Not a great first line. I don't actually know how this works. Should I call you something? Is there a name, or is that a weird thing to ask, I don't want to make this weirder than it already is..."
He cut himself off, pressing his free hand over his own face for a second. "Sorry. I'm overthinking this."
"You're fine," the voice said, and there was real warmth in it, a little amused but not unkind about it. For a moment 007n7 felt a sort of dissonance in the voice and memory, like it was Elliot saying something he wouldn’t normally say. "Nobody gets it right the first time. We can work on it. There's no rulebook, honestly, we're kind of… making this up as we go too."
007n7 let out a breath that was almost a laugh, some of the tension in his shoulders easing. "Okay. Working on it. I can do working on it."
"For what it's worth, I already know you a little. Not properly, but I've been around. Elliot talks about you. Used to talk about you constantly, actually, before things got quiet in here between us. I remember him being a nervous wreck for weeks about that scooter."
007n7 went red in the low light. "That obvious, huh."
"He doesn't hide things from us as well as he thinks he hides them from everyone out there." A small, tired smile, not quite Elliot's, softer at the edges. "There's more of us than just me too, I think, though I don't get to talk to the others much anymore either. We used to be a lot closer, all of us, before we died and got sent here. I don't fully understand why it got harder in here. I just know I'm the one who's easiest for him to reach right now, so I try to stay close."
"Is he okay?"
"He's tired. It's not sleep, exactly, but it's close enough, if you get what I mean." The voice looked down at their joined hands like it was still getting used to the feel of someone else's fingers in Elliot's.
"Are you..." 007n7 started, then stopped, chewing on it before he let himself actually finish the question. "Sorry, I don't know how to ask this without it sounding bad. Are you him? Like, is this still Elliot, just different somehow, or are you a whole separate person?”
Elliot’s face was silent for a moment, before 007n7 realised how horrible that probably sounded.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, I– I don't really know how any of this works, I probably should've read up on it before just diving in and asking you stuff…"
"It's not weird." Elliot said it without any offense in it, just thinking the answer through properly instead of brushing it off. "It's actually a fair question. Most people never bother asking, they just assume one way or the other and run with it. Short answer, I'm not him. Longer answer, I'm not really separate from him either, not the way you're separate from Two Time or Chance or anyone else in that cabin. Same head, same life, most of the same memories. Just not the same person answering every time someone knocks. I don't have a better way to put it than that without ruining the moment."
007n7 nodded slowly, taking it in. "Okay. That actually helps. Thank you for not making me feel like an idiot for asking."
"You didn't sound like an idiot. You sounded like someone trying to get it right instead of just guessing and hoping nobody noticed,” Elliot smiled warmly, and 007n7 smiled right back like an idiot.
"How do I..." 007n7 hesitated. "Is there anything I should be doing? To help him come back, I mean, or is that not how it works."
"Just keep doing what you're doing. Talking, holding on. He listens for your voice even when he can't answer it. It helps him find his way back faster than most things do." Elliot squeezed his hand once, light. "Thank you for not running. He was so scared you would."
"I'm not going anywhere," 007n7 said, and meant it as much for whoever was in front of him right now as he had for Elliot minutes ago. "Either of you. All of you. Whatever you count as."
The voice let out something like a laugh, surprised and a little moved by it. "We'll take it."
007n7 kept talking, low and steady, the way you'd talk to someone standing at the edge of something. He kept Elliot's hand wrapped in both of his the whole time.
They sat together a while like that, quiet, until the treeline blurred and steadied again, and this time when Elliot's eyes opened, they were his own. Exhausted. A little unsteady. But present.
007n7 didn't point out that he'd noticed the change back, something Elliot was pretty grateful for.
"Hey," Elliot said, voice rough. "Sorry. That was fast."
"Don't be sorry." 007n7 kept hold of his hand, didn't loosen it even a little.
Something in Elliot seemed to soften too as he exhaled. “Wow, it feels good to…not have to immediately figure out what happened while I was…gone.”
They shared a smile as they held hands companionably for a few moments.
Then, 007n7 spoke up again. "That was... a lot to process, not gonna lie. In a good way. Mostly a good way." He hesitated. "So this isn't new. You've had this a long time."
"Since before this place, yeah. Most of my life, probably, longer than I've had words for it." Elliot rubbed at his eyes, the headache finally starting to ease off now that there was nothing left to fight. "The distance is the new part. Back home I actually knew some of them. Had names and communications for a few. It was still hard, but it wasn't lonely, not the way it's been here."
007n7's face did something complicated, understanding settling over the fear.
"Then maybe that's something we can work on too," 007n7 said, quiet, careful. "I don't know how. I don't know the– the first thing about any of this… But if there's a way to help you find your way back to them, I want to help, if you'll …. let me."
Elliot looked at him a long moment, throat tight. "Yeah," he said finally. "I'd like that."
They sat like that a while longer, hands linked, the cold mostly forgotten. Elliot didn't know yet how much more of this he'd manage to say tonight, or whether the others would ever need to know, or how any of it would look a month from now, a year, whatever came after tonight. He didn't have an answer for any of that yet.
But for the first time in three years, give or take, there was one person in the world who knew exactly how much of him was missing on any given day, and had chosen to stay anyway.
Not give or take anymore. Just exactly. Whatever that turned out to mean, going forward, at least it wasn't a secret.
It was something they were going to carry together.