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1.
His first thought is a loud and clear “fuck!” before everything turns to shit, and fear lances like a bolt of lightning through him and his connection with Riley and the others, forking in seven different directions. But there’s nothing he can do anymore about it, feels trapped and helpless and frozen as he sinks lower and lower in the lift and Whispers holds his gaze in an iron grip.
Riley breaks his stare with a grip on his shoulder, and he nearly collapses against the side of the lift like a puppet with all its strings cut. The others know instantly what’s just happened, and Nomi is freaking out about it more than the others.
“Whispers,” Will gasps at Riley, and they share a look of dread, heart pounding like a wild rabbit against his ribcage.
(Riley breaks down in the mountains, rocking back and forth, murmuring “Sofðu unga ástin mín, úti regnið grætur, mamma heldur fjársjóðum þínum, gömul bein og völuskrín” into the crook of her arms, cradling a dead newborn that flitters in and out of existence, and Will cries and cries and cries, tries to reason with her, but ends up kissing her for what may be their last time and passes out in the passenger seat of the ambulance they’d escaped in.)
He doesn’t wake up. (Not really.)
2.
He feels cradled in warm arms, sheltered by a body that rocks him gently back and forth, and he knows instantly that it’s Riley. She’s saved him — them. It’s hard not to smile at such a victory.
Riley notices him stirring, matches the smile on his face, and lets him reach up and tuck a blue strand of hair behind her ear. “Thank you,” he murmurs, and doesn’t need to say any more. She — they — understand.
He lets the rocking of the waves and the slap of water against the hull lull him to sleep again as Riley leans over him and presses a needle into his arm.
Riley’s lullaby lingers in his ears even after his mind goes dark.
3.
Everything is dark for a very long time, and during it he feels inexplicably lost.
Time is no longer a solid medium, nothing to mark the passing of seconds, minutes, hours anymore. Darkness varies, and sometimes it feels like he’s about to breach the surface of something, can feel senses and emotions that aren’t his skim the surface of the abyss he’s fallen into, echoes reach him hours, days, weeks later, but —
the darkness always returns swift and oppressive, like a heavy blanket that hushes the world outside. Years go by like this, and he can’t feel afraid of not being able to feel anything anymore, but none the less time becomes meaningless when the hourglass snaps and the sand becomes a lonely desert he wanders.
Dawn never comes.
4.
Sara Patrell stares at him, (blood, gore running out of her head and onto the snow that Will has to shovel later, red blossoming like roses among the white, and the stains change the crystals forever) and the memories and emotions she unearths jackknifes through Will and he’s screaming and screaming and screaming in the psychologist’s office, crying and lashing out because I can see her, she’s right there —
Will’s dad is staring at him with shock and disappointment, and the psychiatrist is wrestling with him, trying to calm him down and everyone in the waiting room is staring at him, judging him —
Sara lifts two chubby hands, hides her face and shakes her head —
Don’t let him see your face, that’s how he got me.
(As hard and loud as Will screams, Whispers never comes, but he still doesn’t let his dad and the psychiatrist remove his hands from his face, palms wet with tears and wails wracking his small body.)
Too late.
5.
In a split second of clarity he grabs Riley’s wrist, and she stares back at him, surprise flashing through them, needle held loosely between her nimble fingers.
(He’s lying on a bed and all the windows and curtains have been shut, and anything that could indicate his location has been removed from the room. He wonders how many times he’s not-woken in a different place, wearing different clothes, how long it’s been since he passed out in the ambulance and didn’t quite wake up again.
The thought is scarier than they realise.
He feels like a ghost.)
“Don’t.”
He can’t go back under again. He can’t be alone with the darkness. Not when Sara haunts him, screams at him to run away, and the threat of Whispers lurking just around the corner of a very long hallway leaves him petrified.
He just can’t.
Not anymore.
The thought of falling asleep and never waking up again terrifies him, and he breaks down and cries and cries and cries into Riley’s side as she hushes him, needle set aside, her hands cradling him, wipes away his tears, fingers carding through his hair, which feels longer, but he can’t ask her how long it’s been since he first fell asleep (when he still felt alive with a heart beating between his lungs and the connection he felt with the world hadn’t yet been cut by a pair of rusty shears).
He clutches her body tighttighttight, fists his hands in the fabric of her jacket, and Riley starts to rock them back and forth like she rocked dear sweet Lúna before she died, and starts singing the lullaby that became the soundtrack to their stay in Iceland.
(“Sofðu unga ástin mín, úti regnið grætur, mamma heldur fjársjóðum þínum, gömul bein og völuskrín.
Við skulum ekki vaka um dimmar nætur. það er margt sem, myrkrið veit, minn er hugur þungur.”)
This time Will hears it, but he hears the twist in the language. “Sleep my young love,” Riley croons into his neck, cradles his head like he’s fragile like china, and he sags against her, lets his body sway back and forth, guided by her warmth. (He closes his eyes, but it’s not like the unknowing darkness.)
He can still feel Riley, scooped up in her arms, legs tangled on the bed, but his ear is pressed to her breast, and the steady beat between her chest soothes old wounds like a healing balm.
“outside the rain is weeping,
mommy keeps your treasures,
old bones and a round case.
We shall not stay awake through dim nights.
There is much that darkness knows,
my mind is heavy.”
The prick and slow press of the needle into his skin is dulled, and as he slips under again, sting of betrayal sharper than the injection, time crawling to a halt, Riley presses a kiss to his forehead, tears that aren’t his own wetting his face and he knows that Riley is sorry, so sorry, knows that she regrets putting him through this even when he hates it.
But it’s necessary, so he closes his eyes and laces his fingers through hers before he starts to lose the feeling in his arms.
My mind is very heavy, Will thinks, and then he is no more.
+1.
He wakes up slow,
(oh how he hates that that’s so weird for him, that it feels bad that he’s woken up because it makes his body tense and his mind scream what if Whispers finds me?)
and it hurts almost like a physical ache that being conscious feels foreign to him now.
(How long has he been dead?)
He almost doesn’t dare look around the room. The rules of being dead have faded and been forgotten over the abyss of not-time. Has Riley not given him enough chemicals? Is he allowed to look around? Where is she?
(He’s not sure if being alive is good or bad anymore.)
But he’s been asleep for so long, and he’s sick of the only thing his mind being able to conjure up is dark emptiness. The room is light and sunny, almost too bright in comparison to the thousands of years he’s spent living in the black terror of his mind on the run from Whispers, in this dangerous cat-and-mouse game of waiting. (Whispers waiting for Will’s injections to run out — Will waiting in vain for Whispers to give up.
They both know he never will.)
He’s tired of trying to out-wait the man. (He wants it to be over already.)
The curtains are pulled back and all he can really see is a glimpse of some trees and other buildings, but it’s a freedom that he’s not felt in a long, long time. He feels a flutter of something in his chest, and shifts his body, heavy and old and bone-tired, because even though he’s been sleeping for ten million years, drugged out of his mind, the chemicals are slow to leave him, still circulate in his veins like a lingering poison he desperately wants the antidote for.
He shifts into a sitting position on the bed, slowly, slowly, and takes in everything around him, drinking in his surroundings like a man starved in the desert. The bed covers are a rainbow of colours and pillows, and the fabric feels soft under the fingers that are regaining their touch.
There’s a gasp — high, female — and then the voice says; “You’re awake!” which is instantly followed by a lot of movement and chatter.
Suddenly Riley is on the bed next to him, cradling him, touching him all over — hands on neck, fingers down chest, knees brushing thighs, eyes all over him like a brand — and he wonders if maybe she had made a mistake with the dosages after all, but it’s put to rest when bit by bit, his connection to the world, to his other lives, comes flooding back and he can feel a raw lump forming in his throat.
You’re back! They greet, and the affection is warm and overwhelming, like he’s back where he belongs, a gap that only he can fill, back home, and Will barks out a weak laugh that gets stronger when Riley joins in, giggling into the crook of his neck with her arms wrapped around his shoulders.
(He loves the feel of her arms around him, can’t get enough of her.)
“Aww, they’re so cute!” the female voice from before croons, and Will turns his head, neck still stiff, to take in the woman sat on one of the living room chairs. The room is suddenly familiar, flashes of memory and sensate from another one of his lives, and Will recognises the woman as Amanita — lover, protector, protected, hers.
Nomi stands by the kitchen counter, red-purple mug of black coffee — just how he takes it — just how Riley takes it — in hand. She’s looking at him with an intensity he’s only felt her reserve for hacking, but there’s a smile on her face, too, so Will feels himself hope a little that the dark days are nearing their end.
She takes a sip from her mug and sets it down and walks over to the bed. (He revels in the fact that he can feel them again, licks the inside of his mouth as he feels the taste of coffee spread over his tastebuds, feels the warm pull of it down his throat and the small kick he gets out of the caffeine.)
Nomi reaches out with a hand, one knee on the bed, and she looks straight at Will when she asks if she can touch him. One hand between Riley’s shoulder blades, he reaches out for Nomi’s free hand and grasps it, and the other woman gasps as she feels herself in each of their bodies, feels the wrap of Riley’s arms around her shoulders and the grip of Will’s hand from where he’s leant on the bed. He feels the connection between them flow like liquid gold and Nomi eventually lets go, gasping in amazement. “So that’s what you feel when you touch each other.” She says, voice warm and soft.
(More or less, he doesn’t say.
Everything feels infinitely different when it comes to Riley.)
Amanita comes over and sits on the bed as well, pulls Nomi down next to her and rubs a hand over her back. “How does our Sleeping Beauty feel?” she says, all playful warmth that would have made Will snort and say “I’m not Sleeping Beauty” but has him go quiet instead. (Sleeping for a hundred years had not been pleasant.
It was torture.)
Riley and Nomi pick up on the change in atmosphere, feel it pang through them, sharp with pain and tiredness.
“It’s over,” Nomi says, voice firm, and reaches out again and grips his hand, the two-bodies experience flickering between them for a while, body and mind and soul flowing through time and space from where their hands are connected, until it settles down.
Over? He mouths at her, turns his head to look at Riley, and he feels the cluster nod their heads in unison, sees them flicker in and out of his vision, standing and sitting by the bed.
He feels flashes of emotion and memory shoot through his veins and neurons, like drinking liquid gold
— Nomi’s face lit up with the ghostly electric light shining from her laptop, Amanita coming over, wrapped in a blanket and leaning down to rest her head on Nomi’s shoulder, Nomi smiles at her and continues searching for Whispers — Riley had hidden Will across what felt like half the globe, tucked him away in a boat as they ferried over to Canada (first to Greenland, stealing enough supplies from pharmacies on their way to sustain months of unconsciousness, then through the Labrador Sea) then making their way down to the numerous abandoned project houses in New York — Nomi leaving paper trails all over Europe and north Africa — Wolfgang flying to London where they’d discovered Whispers was — Kala making a bomb — brightest flash shocking through all of their bodies —
Free.
Will cries in relief, feels the emotions run through him so strongly, (to be able to feel again) feels the softness of the blankets beneath his legs, the press and shuffle as people crowd onto the bed, the caresses of hands, the silkiness and roughness of hair as they lean against his shoulder, the warmth of their skin as they run their hands over his arms and back, as Riley cups his cheek and Nomi wipes away a tear, and feels whole again.
Over.