Chapter Text
Nothing makes sense.
Ray reads fantasy books. Their descriptions of magic always posit feats indescribable, acts that defy logic and common sense to grant wishes with the scantest chance. He’s read of devious genies that grant three wishes; of a mirror that showed the souls in the afterlife; of time-travelling artefacts and gods that exchanged wishes for Promises. But they’re just that—fantasy. Magic isn’t real.
He’s alive, he’s alive, and nothing makes sense because he’s felt his flesh burn to the bone (it had stung like a bitch, pain prickling through every pore of his body even as he registered it fall off in chunks) and his throat close up under the oppressive heat and lack of oxygen. Inside the house that was his only home he had sacrificed his body to become ashes and—
and, oh, he remembers now, and Emma.
Emma who had dove in, fearless, after the burning match; Emma who had, for all of her physical prowess and cat-like agility, slipped on the pool of petrol on the floor; Emma who had fallen into the oil just as it erupted into a lake of flames and the dining room and Ray with it. Now Ray understands why he’s dissociated so much from the feeling of burning; he couldn’t even focus on that with Emma, Emma burning to ashes with him.
Only, he thinks, as he studies his hands in front of him—brings them up to golden dawn sunlight filtering in through the window and studies the way the shadows dance and creep over the contours of his life lines—only, he’s still whole and solid and flesh and bone.
Alive.
How?
Or better yet, why?
“RAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” comes a voice that Ray had just heard hours ago, and had made his peace with never hearing again (due to his death, not hers, shit shit shit, he fucked up so bad. He killed Emma, he did the worse imaginable, oh god). There’s a slam of a door, and before Ray can react there’s a bright orange and white lump pressing against him warm and heavy in his lap. Emma’s knees dig painfully into the soft flesh of Ray’s inner thighs. He grunts; Norman, following closely, a little breathless, waves hi.
Ray thinks he should be the breathless one. If he had not had an hour of contemplation he would’ve muttered, “Is this heaven?” After all, he is warm, in bed, and reunited with his two dead best friends.
Out loud, he says, voice sleep-scratchy (not smoke-clogged), “Your knees are pointy, Emma.”
Emma’s eyes—bright, full of life—widen and she bounces back with a smile. Norman comes to sit sideways on the bed next to her.
“Mama sent us to get you, Ray,” Norman explains, “Are you feeling alright? You’re late to breakfast.”
“I’m alright,” Ray says, even as his stomach turns in nauseous loop-de-loops.
Emma crosses her arms with a huff. “Then c’mon! Don’t be a meanie—Connie is asking after you and she deserves the perfect day today!”
That catches Ray off guard. “C-Connie?” he says. The heaven theory is coming back pretty fast.
“Yeah!” Emma pauses in man-handling him off the bed. “It’s her last day, Ray, did you forget?” Her brows furrow. “No, that’s not like you, are you sure you’re alright? Are you sick and hiding it from us, Ray? Ray! Don’t be like Norman.”
Ray gives a startled laugh. It’s so easy to fall back into this. “Norman can’t hide that he’s sick, dummy, he’s the worse at pretending he can talk without thouding lithe thish.” Ray mimics Norman’s nasally, stuffed-nose pitch and Emma falls back onto him in a fit of giggles.
“Exactly!” she crows.
Expertly navigating through their tangle of limbs, Norman reaches up to feel at Ray’s forehead. “Mmm, you feel fine to me, Ray,” Norman says.
“I am fine,” Ray grumbles, “and if someone would get off me we could be downstairs by now.” Emma mutters out a ‘sorry, sorry’ in between giggles but dutifully climbs off the bed. Once Ray is done dressing, they each take one of Ray’s hands and lead him downstairs.
As he lets them pull him along, Ray lets himself breath properly for the first time since dying in a shroud of flames (it was real, he’s sure.) The journey downstairs is pitifully short, no matter how they drag it out by stopping by the washroom for Ray to splash water on his face and Emma getting sidetracked by a pretty bird cresting on the windowsill (‘she looks like she could be related to Ner!’).
For the first time since waking up, things feel like they make sense.
If only this could last.
—
By the time they finish breakfast and their daily test, Ray is almost convinced this is real. He’s watched Mama and their siblings closely throughout the day; slipped away in that short morning break to poke and prod at every part of the house. No one is acting out of the ordinary. He’ll run to the gate too during free time but by now he’s sure that it will be there, solid and cement and confining. He’s losing hope that it will crumble under his touch like ash.
(If this were heaven there wouldn’t be a cage anymore would there. If this were Hell he’d hardly believe they gave him Emma and Norman too. Also, he’s got a heartbeat and the skin on the inside of his elbow is an angry red from where he pinched himself hard enough to break the capillaries, for physical proof. He also tried holding his breath until his lungs and brain rebelled viciously, and he spent 5 minutes getting over his coughing fit and contemplating his supposed revival in the pantry.)
Norman takes off like a shot for tag once Ray nods; then, when Norman’s out of sight, Ray closes his book and slips into the woods as well. It’s not long before the playful screeches of children putter off behind him to the soft sound of his footsteps on packed dirt, the pitiful little fence left far behind. The wall rises up in front of him.
Ray stretches out a hand.
It’s solid.
Ray lets out a heavy breath, then checks his pocket watch. He has to dash now to make it in time for his last test.
Gilda and Anna are gossiping when Ray settles back into his spot underneath the tree in the clearing. Don, who still seems to be smarting from his loss—and one-upmanship in front of Connie, Ray would bet—takes note of Ray’s return. “Oi! Ray, where’d you go, man?”
“A walk,” Ray answers shortly, too wound up for anything else. The pocket watch ticks in his hand, a measured beat slower than his heart. Ray cracks open his book, and Don mercifully understands that as the conversation being over.
Only half a minute later Norman and Emma troop back into the clearing, poking at each other but looking none the worse for wear even after a gruelling game. Emma seems to be teasing Norman, dancing in circles around him, and perks up and waves at the rest of her siblings. Her greeting carries from where they are at the edge of the forest.
Ray checks his pocket watch.
“10 minutes, 32 seconds. That’s a new record,” he hears his voice call, and he can no longer deny this sense of déjà vu.
For all intent and purposes, it seems that Ray has traveled back in time, to the day he set his plan in motion. Ray doesn't quite believe in fate; if he does believe in higher powers he certainly does not believe in them being kind or caring.
But it seems like he’s been given a second chance.
Ray’s never been one to look a gift-horse in the mouth.
—
It’s honestly a bit jarring and after the heck ton of emotional whiplash this morning, Ray feels like an asshole and a hypocrite letting Connie go, all over again. He tells himself he’ll atone for his sins, properly this time (the fire was still a solid plan, he thinks, but he has to time it differently so Emma is far enough away,) and hopes that’s enough. Scratch that—he’ll make sure it’s enough. This time, he won’t screw up.
This time, when Emma screeches at Little Bunny’s presence and Connie’s forgetfulness in the dining room Ray is right there, suggesting they go after her. With a muttered reluctance that he thinks is pretty in character for himself, he even tags along—“you’ll drag me into doing your punishment with you anyways,” he declares (It’s true.).
The demons are just as scary as Ray’s remembers from a lifetime ago—literally. He holds his breath and the back of Emma’s shirt tight and then when they run, leaving the synchronous plip click plip clack plip click of demon’s claws and dripping pipes behind them, Ray’s holding Little Bunny in his other hand.
When Emma looks up at him and Norman, eyes sparkling with tears in the moonlight and dirt under her nails and all over her snow-white uniform, tearing up grass in her desperation, Ray can understand why Norman never says no to her impossible requests. He’s stupidly glad that he didn’t have to witness this the first time around; watching her cry and knowing he can’t do anything for her makes his heart ache in a way he didn’t think possible with how much he has numbed himself to sacrifice.
Norman promises “everyone,” thoughtlessly, breathlessly, lost in the desperation of putting Emma at ease. Ray wishes he could do the same. God. He can’t even save two people—he’s already lost these two, once—he cannot, will not, promise to save even more. His heart is compromised enough as it is.
Instead Ray puts an arm around the two of them. Emma and Norman both look up to him with shining eyes, glittering with shed and unshed tears, respectively. “We’ll get out of here,” he says, careful on the pronouns. “I have a plan,” he blurts out. “We’ll outsmart Mama and the demons and you two will live.” They are whispering, because they are panicked and in shock but they are not dumb, but his voice grows harder and more confident as he finishes his declaration.
His best friends nod. They trust him so much it hurts. I got you killed, Ray thinks desperately. I don’t deserve this.
Emma throws her arms around both of them, wiping her snotty face on Ray’s collar but he doesn’t care right now (never on Norman, god forbid the little germs stomp on his weak immune system and he keels over from the common cold). Ray hugs them tight.
—
Later that night, Mama finds him in fresh pyjamas—the incriminating ones with grass-stained knees already hidden deep in the hamper, for Ray and Norman’s laundry rotation tomorrow—clutching Little Bunny. He hasn’t moved from his spot watching for her lonesome—as always—return.
She isn’t surprised to find him awake. They have established, since Ray was six and liable to nightmares and still at the age where crawling into her bed was acceptable, that he doesn’t sleep on nights his siblings got shipped. His heart panics too much and his mind is always restless with what if’s; he ends up a shaking mess if he tries to force himself into bed.
So Mama offers, with a kindness that Ray would hardly consider compassion, since she is the cause of his situation in the first place, in more ways than one (and what a revelation, that lullaby, that voice)—Mama offers: on nights when I am out of the House, you are to look over your siblings and guard the house. She phrases it like keep the inhabitants of the house safe against intruders when really it is the other way around.
Mama knows Ray is strung high on nights like these. The secret, one he knows better than to not think she is privy to, but will not admit for his pride anyways, is that he is always high-strung. Only nights like these, he will allow it to show.
So Ray thinks, that he can get away with asking, “Mama, does something feel…weird to you tonight?”
She blinks. “No, I wouldn’t say that,” she says, carefully.
“Like everything has happened before,” Ray tries, just as carefully.
“All my children are unique to me to the end,” Mama says, mildly, and Ray bites back his choke. That was not what he was implying.
“Of course,” he finally mutters.
Mama strokes his hair; he allows it with a full-body shudder hidden under an exhale. “Good night, Ray,” Mama offers, and then she is gone to check on the babies. They usually start fussing this time of night.
So Mama doesn’t seem to know either. Well. The Escape 2.0 is a go, then.