Chapter Text
There was a time that was not this, wasn't there? There was a place that was not here. There was... someone.
The Archivist stands on a balcony, overlooking a city of steel. People scream in the streets below, fleeing, fighting, falling, known. There is no escape from his gaze, as long as he stands here, watching.
He closes his eyes.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead...
There was someone. Familiar voice, smiling face, warmth somewhere next to him and in his chest.
I lift my lids and all is born again.
The world is bright and sharp, secrets spilling in from every place the Archivist sees. It has always been this way, and always will be, an unchanging pool of beautiful, powerful, fear.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Was it long ago? There is a voice that would recite poetry, lines tripping from a smiling tongue, words that echo through the silences in his head. It is a memory, or a dream of a memory; a memory of a dream.
Night falls, and the city is dead beneath his feet. Those that he watches have gone to troubled dreams, but still they are not free of his gaze. The Archivist no longer needs to sleep to see the images that play out in their minds, horror and fear interlacing in an unending tapestry of misery.
And yet... he slept, once. That, at least, is clear in his mind. Once, he needed sleep to feed his God, to pull every last piece of fear from the few dreams he had been gifted.
Once, he needed a lot of things.
You sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane...
Someone had lain beside him, back then. The details have faded long since, but the Archivist remembers waking up to tangled hair and a crooked smile, to someone who would hold him through the dreams (nightmares) and whisper soft words into his ear to calm his shaking when he awoke (why had he shook? Had he been afraid? Surely not).
Where had he gone?
The memories are faded and grey, lost in a fog of time. There had been someone; there had been no one. Whoever it was had gone long before he stopped dreaming; perhaps he was a dream as well.
He recalls a drifting: there, and then not there; his, and then gone. There had been something that needed doing, and the man with the smile that still lingers around the edges of the Archivist's soul had been the only one who could do it. After that there is only grey, and loss.
He'd promised to come back, hadn't he? Or had the Archivist dreamt that as well?
It is strange, he thinks, to doubt his own mind in this way. Still, there is no malice in the doubt, no malignant purpose behind the thoughts that intrude upon his mind. The fractals were banished long ago, along with everything else.
Everything... but there had been a promise, breathless and desperate, that they would see each other again.
I fancied you'd return the way you said.
And he had promised to return; of that the Archivist is certain, though the circumstances of his leaving remain shrouded in pain and confusion.
It's funny: he can't even remember the man's name anymore, though he's sure it was once the most important word in the world. It sits somewhere behind his thoughts, lingering on the tip of his tongue. He can almost taste it there, the familiar syllables weighing down his lungs with every breath - but it is gone.
Strange, that he should know so much and not know this. His mind tells him the ignorance is a blessing; his heart screams it is the worst curse imaginable.
But his heart does not get much say in matters, these days.
It has been so long, if it ever was at all, and yet still there is a hole in his chest where the man is not. Whatever end they had was a dark one, of that the Archivist is sure; but then, was there any other way for things to end? Perhaps they were doomed from the start.
I should have loved another instead...
Had those been his words or the other's? Spoken as they were forced apart by forces beyond their control and entirely at the fault of their own choices. Or just lines whispered in the dead of night, with no meaning or bearing upon the fragments of memory that haunt the Archivist's every moment?
Like a ghost.
He smiles, for some reason. Something about ghosts and poetry and a person by his side, something so buried by the haze of time that it is gone before he even has a chance to consider it.
But he smiles, anyway, as the sun rises.
It is... good, he thinks, that he cannot remember it all. Even the fragments he has are enough to distract him from his purpose, to pull his mind from the cold clarity he needs to fulfill his task. It is good that they should fade entirely. That he should let them do so, and stop fighting to maintain a vision that may not have ever been real.
The Archivist looks over the stricken city, that voice - as familiar as his own heartbeat - echoing in his head one final time.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead...
He sighs, releasing the tattered shreds of that warm and peaceful dream to drift on the wind as he whispers his reply.
"I think I made you up inside my head."