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You adored Schism. The strange spirit that followed you in your waking hours and was piloted by your soul while you slept. Well, it was your soul, if you were being technical. But you’d long since forgone technicalities.
Sleep meant that you became the spirit, all grey skin and long limbs and rootlike growths from your skull, and sleep meant you could traverse Napoli, tapping into the subconscious of people as you moved about. Were you feeling generous, you could give them a lovely world to spend the night in. Were you feeling vindictive, you could leave them with memories they couldn’t distinguish from reality.
All in all, it was an entertaining activity.
And then, there was him .
He was a strange boy, white hair and red eyes and a mouth that was set in a line too thin for his age. He was stuck in a world that was much like reality, but with touches feeling like branding. He was reliving trauma every night and suffering through it time and time again.
That… now that, you could relate to.
The first few nights, you watched from a safe distance. Him at a man’s house, his professor’s. Dinner, polite but otherwise fine. Some talk, discussion of academics you’d had neither the chance nor the desire to understand.
Then, there was a hand around a wrist, shouts and pleads to stop, and you turned and left his dream.
His memories.
It wasn’t as if you didn’t want to stop it, far from it. Every time you looked, right before it happened, you felt your ribs curl in around your lungs, burning you from the inside out. Your blood was molten and you wanted to rip the still-beating heart out of the professor’s chest. But dreams were not reality, which was a fact you’d long since resigned yourself to. It was something in the past, and you couldn’t change the past, no matter how much you wished.
Even so, you found yourself coming back to him. Time and time again, you’d watch his memories, and then you’d leave. Then, it changed. Oh how it changed.
For the first time in the months you’d looked in on his subconscious, he was reliving something else. This time, the professor and he were in a library, and this time, it ended with something you could watch: wanton violence.
You wouldn’t lie; seeing the professor get beat over the head with a textbook was incredibly satisfying.
The next day, you ran to the newsstand, Schism invisibly clinging to your shoulders. For the first time in several years, you spent money (scarce) on a newspaper (unnecessary). And there it was.
Pannacotta Fugo, thirteen, a boy genius, who had tried to kill his professor. There were allegations of rape and pedophilia, and the man somehow walked free. Pannacotta (well, you’d been spying on his mind for the past however long, you considered that enough for a first-name basis) was tried for attempted murder. The article didn’t say it outright, but heavily implied that his rich family had kept him from being incarcerated. It also had a statement from them that he’d been disowned.
Your eyes widened, and you tucked the newspaper back under your arm, returning to the bench in the park you’d deemed your own. Pannacotta Fugo. Finally, a name to put to the face. It stirred something in you, something you hadn’t felt in many years.
Will.
From that day forward, it was your personal goal to find him. You spent countless nights scouring the dreamscapes that you wandered in on, but could not find him. Every now and then, you’d think he was just on your periphery, just outside of the invisible boundary that Schism couldn’t cross. You tried, to be sure, but when you tried to step over that unmarked line, it was like iron around your ankles, and you were yanked back to just over your sleeping body.
Fine, then. The waking method would do.
The waking method was more aptly the walking method, and your feet were aching on a daily basis from it. True, this was somewhat combated by the countless naps you took, trying to find him, but the simple act of walking nonstop… well, to say it nearly made you give up was an understatement.
And then… and then. Then, you found him again. He was right there. Right by you, when you slept that night. And like before, he wasn’t alone. But this time, he was with a man in a tastefully revealing suit, and… a goth.
His dream this time was something much more suitable for a teenager, a hazy unreality of bits of memories spliced into a fantasy setting. There was a healthy dose of deification added too, you noticed, the man dressed in white as a sort of messiah to Pannacotta. You couldn’t blame him. You knew that man. You knew Bruno.
He’d given you some money the last week, along with his name and an offer for a proper meal. Shaking your head with a smile, you gestured to your backpack and offered up an explanation that was something to the affect of “I’m looking for a friend.”
He’d glanced at Schism, and your eyes had widened. Then, his own spirit was there. Ivory and cobalt and beautiful in all the ways Schism was not. Sticky Fingers, he called it. A stand.
There had been more brief conversation, discussion of Passione (and an offer to join, which you’d quickly declined), and a mutual understanding that neither of you meant harm to the other. You stayed out of the way of Passione business, and Bruno had no intention of harming an innocent homeless individual.
Pannacotta was, as far as you could discern, safe. For the most part.
Occasionally, you checked back in. This entailed no talking, let alone revealing your voyeurism, but you’d watch his dreams, slowly witnessed him grow a sort of… family, around him. Family was a very generous word for it, considering the eldest was in his early twenties, by your estimate. They were more a group of lost boys than anything. But they were together. They were a team, they were ever-present in his mind, a constant. Even with nightmares, they featured.
Until they didn’t.
He stood alone, on a dock, looking out at the water. You recognized it somewhat, but it was warped from reality. The horizon stretched further and further back, and on it, barely in sight, was a small boat. He was crying. You felt the iron bars you’d built around your heart start to bend.
“They’re gone.”
You’d think back on this years later, but that was not at all a good way to introduce yourself to the boy you’d taken under your one-sided wing. He whirled around, summoned something with a visor and rabies-foam drool and patchwork, and the look in his eyes was wild with rage, and hurt, and--
Guilt.
There was so much guilt.
“Who the hell are you?” he spat, feet shifting slightly further apart, fists coming up defensively. The purple creature phased away, a stand, you realized.
“I… am a watcher, I suppose,” you answered, gaze drifting to the horizon and the boat that appeared to be always moving away, but never got any smaller. “This body is that of my stand, Schism. I mean you no harm. I am an… acquaintance. Of Bruno Bucellati’s. In a way.”
Technically, not a lie. Just a very, very bent truth. Then again… technicalities.
He looked mildly put at ease, enough at least for the tension in his shoulders to somewhat lessen. “What are you doing here?” he asked, tone still sharp.
“I… check in on you, from time to time. I have been for the past. Nearly half a decade, I believe.”
Pannacotta’s eyes widened momentarily, but his face twisted into a scowl once more. “That’s creepy. How do I know you’re not just sent by the Boss to kill me because I worked for Bucellati?”
Silence. You glanced at your hands. Grey, with the faint blue veins. Further up, on your shoulders and cheeks, plates jutted from your body like sad excuses for pauldrons. Pitch black eyes blinked at him from the nest of blood vessel roots that shackled the space where mouth and nose would be.
“I suppose you’ll have to trust me.”
Trust you he did not. Pannacotta immediately threatened bodily harm, and looked ready to pounce. Sighing, you changed the scenery, this time a plush room with a kettle of tea on the coffee table and pillows on the ground in place of armchairs. You sat, sighing and pouring two mugs. The tea room was a typical place you created, when you couldn’t find a dream which interested you enough to stay.
“Sit. This can go as long as we need, time works differently in my realm. If you want, you can try to kill me. Nothing dies here unless you dream it.”
And, promptly, he broke the kettle and jammed a shard into your eye. Blinking at Pannacotta, you let a small smile crack, though without lips, you only felt the skin over where your mouth would be tug as your eye crinkled. How Schism managed to speak without the organs for vocalization was certainly interesting, but you had no intention of probing around under the nervelike tendrils that covered most of your face.
You pulled the shard out, your eye already starting to mend itself, and fabricated a new kettle, steaming once more with tea.
“Okay, I’ll let you talk. But I won’t trust you,” Pannacotta said, squinting as he took a seat. It hit you just how young he looked. “Explain your stand, first.”
A fair question, one you would acquiesce to. “Schism is, monstrous as it may appear, is harmless, to an extent.” You thought of the man who’d beat his wife, and how he could no longer leave his apartment for fear of the world coming to life and rip him apart, without even the relief of death. “Rather, it is physically harmless. Anything that happens in this realm, dreams, will not happen to you in real life. The mental toll, though. That stays. As for me? I’m nobody special.” You snorted, poured two cups of the new tea, and took a sip. “Kicked out when I was younger, and I’ve been homeless since. It’s not as bad as it could be. I like to explore people’s dreams, when I sleep.”
Another screwed-up expression, Pannacotta’s nose wrinkling in distaste. “That’s still really creepy.”
A shrug on your part. “You become desensitized to it over time, I suppose.”
He nodded slowly. With his… profession , even he knew there was no room to talk. “So, how’d you find me? And why did you keep coming to me ? Without showing yourself?”
Ah, there it was, the question you were dreading. You stalled, naturally, busying yourself with trying to find out how Schism’s body was able to drink the tea without an orifice to pour it into.
“At first, it was chance. I genuinely didn't know I would care about you. I rarely do for most people, but…" as you trailed off, you reached for your throat, rubbing at bruises which had long since faded. Years later and you still felt your mother's fingers around your neck. "I could relate, so to speak. To trauma. When you dreamt, it was the professor."
Here, you looked up, those red, untrusting eyes boring into your own. Though his face was like steel, carefully trained and edited, there was still a twitch in his jaw, a curled fist by his side. This was where things were going to go to shit.
"You knew," he started, "you knew and you didn't do anything. You saw what happened and you didn't do anything."
You winced. Emotions, you reminded yourself, were fickle things. They brought stress and pain and irrationality. And hurt. A lot of hurt.
"Pannacotta, if I could change the past, I would. If I could take the memories of that away, I would in a heartbeat, if I was sure it wouldn't harm you in some way. But things like that, you can’t just erase without conse-”
“Without consequence? Do you know what it was like ? You have no idea how disgusting I am because of that,” he snarled, slamming his fist down on the table and jolting up, leaning over it.
You countered it with digging your nails into the wood and leaning forward, staring him down. “I lived it too, I know what it’s like dealing with the aftermath! If I could take the memory away without possibly hurting you more , trust me when I say I would do so in a heartbeat!”
It seemed like aeons before either of you moved away, but eventually you did, and Pannacotta looked like he’d been crushed. You were again reminded of his youth, of the fact that he was still, ultimately, a boy. A boy who had been forced to act grown up and learn to navigate the adult world at far too young an age, perhaps, but a boy nonetheless.
“I… am sorry,” you whispered, staring into your cup. Sorry for what, specifically? That, you could not place. But the grief and regret deemed the apology a necessity.
The silence was thick with tension, draining down your lungs like molten lead, and with each breath, you could feel the cage around your heart crack a little more, threatening to puncture it.
"Three days from now, at noon," Pannacotta said, voice quiet. Shaky.
Crack.
"What?"
"I want to meet you. Face to face."
Crack .
"I...are you sure? I am not exactly… attractive company," you chuckled, hiding the panic with a quiet laugh. "Homelessness and all."
Pannacotta's eyes bored into your own. "I want to meet you."
Crack.
Silence stretched on. Eventually, you forced the words out of your throat, feeling as though you were trying to swim while shackled. "Name the place."
Shatter.
Those iron bars that had shielded you for so many years, had kept the hurt and pain that came from people out of your heart. They broke swiftly, bending more than they could bear, and you felt them run through you, a sword-swallower's trick gone horribly wrong.
It was Cappella Sansevero, and you lingered outside, waiting for Pannacotta to show. Part of you worried that he wasn't real, simply a automaton of your desperation for a human connection.
But there he was. Hair tangled and eyes sharp, and he saw you and Schism skulking in the alley, and he strode to you.
Footsteps rang in your head like a hammer on the anvil, and then the boy, the child who had been the first person in years you truly cared about, was there. He stared at you, eyes red and piercing through to your very soul. There was silence once more, some unspoken balancing act unfolding, and then he took a breath. He held his hand out to you.
"Pannacotta Fugo," he said.
You smiled, took his hand in return.