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He wakes up on a bed.
Bigger than a full, smaller than a king - he’s guessing, based on how little space he takes up - it’s clearly made for multiple people, but no one else is around. The blankets are tucked-in and wrinkled underneath his starfish limbs, like he didn’t bother to seek real comfort before falling asleep.
Haze covers his awareness. Fingertips numb, he raises his arm, splaying his fingers flat and flexing them. They bend on command and something about the motion makes him feel uneasy. He repeats it twice before drawing his hand back for examination. His palms have a cross-stitching of tiny lines, long creases intercut with small chips and scars.
The very first thought that comes to mind is a memory. A warm voice with a chiding sort of sadness, telling him that little marks across a heart line - the topmost line on a person’s palm - indicate a lot of emotional trauma.
The second thought that comes to mind is much simpler: Karl.
Drawn out from the depths, a cabinet unlocked with a rusty key; it’s said in a gravelly whisper, a soft coo, shouted across a burst of light. He supposes it’s his name, that he is Karl and Karl is him, and it feels correct, but he doesn’t know how to be sure.
Reality hits Karl hard - he’s not sure if that’s his name - knocking the air out of his lungs. He waits for more to come along, for the blackened, empty gaps in his sense of self to be filled, but nothing happens. No awareness of where and why and when; the curtain is closed, the show is over, the lights are dimmed.
Karl’s heartbeat pulses in his knuckles, a flickering lantern, and he chokes back the anxiety that rises, threatening to clamber out of his mouth.
Everything is unfamiliar.
He looks around the room, hoping to jog his memory, but it’s really only sparsely decorated. Beautifully furnished in dark oak, but devoid of sentiment; the walls are bare and the bedspread is plain.
Sitting up and settling himself - the movement makes him feel sick, sluggish and too-quick all at once - he reaches over and grabs the only item that stands out, a photo tucked into a frame on the bedside.
Three men are pictured, faces close to the camera. A red and brown structure stands half-built behind them. They all look a little worse for wear, dark circles and chapped lips, but joy radiates in the sunlight that stretches across their faces.
When Karl tilts it to peer closer, his eyes catch on his own reflection. Messy brown hair and wide eyes, he looks like he’s just gotten out of a fight.
Underneath that, past layers of seemingly unremedied exhaustion, is slowly-dawning surprise. Karl watches it in real time.
His face is one of the ones frozen behind the glass. Picture-Karl has the brightest smile, a shock of color across his shoulders and fingers tightly intertwined with the guy to his right.
Karl flexes them again, unsure if he’s remembering - gentle whispers and tentative hands, the kind that seemed to fear he might shatter - or if he’s making something up, painting a picture in the endless expanse of nothing he’s been left with.
Hungry for more, he tries to run though his knowledge of names and faces to figure out who the other two are, but they’re buried under a muddied pile. James, Drew, Billiam, Oliver; every person he almost-knows is a faded blur and each one rings false in his ears.
These people mean something and he has no idea who they are.
Eyes stinging, Karl blinks hard, trying to steady his breath as it quickens.
You’re okay. You’ll remember.
A gentle knock sounds, jolting him out of his bubble for a second. The air smells crisp, like it’s rained recently, and his sweatshirt needs to be washed. One drawer in the desk on the other side of the room is slightly off-color.
“Hey Karl, you up?” a voice murmurs through the door.
Karl starts to speak, coughing when his words come out dusty and strangled. “Yeah.”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure, yeah.”
Lo and behold, one of the other people in the picture - the one whose hand he’s holding - walks in balancing two cups and a plate, shutting the door behind him with his foot. They both wince when it slams, but the guy recovers quickly and hands him some food and water.
“George is sleeping,” he laughs, sitting at the foot of the bed.
It’s an exasperated sort of sound, which means there’s something there, but Karl couldn’t possibly find it if he tried. He instead gestures to the plate as he sets the cup down on the side table. The guy’s eyes linger on the photo next to Karl for a second before they flicker up to his face and he smiles.
Soft warmth nestles into Karl’s chest, flooding fear out of the cracks and crevices. He has no idea what it means, but he takes it in and cradles it. Muscle memory, his body recognizes this person better than his brain and it follows the regular patterns; it recognizes him as safety.
“Thank you,” Karl says. It’s not a real reply, but his mind rewards him for the dodge with the addition of Sap-, as if through static.
A name, maybe, or a nickname. It doesn’t slide into place as smoothly as his own, but it still sits there, somewhat comfortable.
Sap (if that’s at all correct) seems oblivious. “No problem, man. I was worried about you.”
“Why?”
“You keep… disappearing.”
Embarrassment - or guilt, or some sludgy green combination of the two - creeps up Karl’s chest and paints his cheeks rose-dust. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Sap shrugs. “I trust you.” He hesitates, gnawing on his lip and then covering the motion by lifting his drink. Coffee or tea or something similar, based on the mug; Karl wonders faintly if Sap knows what he likes. “I just, would appreciate some warning.”
Karl wants to offer comfort of some kind, but he knows he can’t say much, not without a sense of long this memory thing is going to last.
The fraying edges of his current surroundings aren’t that bad. Even though he doesn’t recall any details - there’s a cake in there somewhere, and a bunch of wooden signs - he knows that Sap is someone and this place is something. Probably home - if not his then someone he knows’ - judging from the photo.
It’s the stuff he can’t remember he’s forgotten that’s the problem, a theoretically-infinite number of unkept promises already-made. He’s not exactly in a position to be making more.
“I’ll try,” he says anyway. “I can’t really -”
“It’s okay,” Sap repeats, softer. His smile is wane, but genuine. “We’ve all got shit.”
That’s putting it simply.
Karl’s bones still itch from liminal space of the Inbetween and Other Side, fragments of them lodged underneath his skin. In flashes he can feel the recoil of a pistol in his hands, the glide of a metal blade into his gut, the hum of community amidst church pews.
None of that was him, yet all of it was. Sensations sharper than his current action; the feeling in his lungs and ribs and larynx is dreamlike in comparison.
So yeah, he’s got shit. And its consequences only add to the burden.
He doesn’t understand how he can hold onto the shards of time-travel he’s gone through, but current-day comes to him in out-of-context snapshots. There’s happiness there - intimacy and a sweet glow, he can see it - but a sort-of name that fits like too-wide shoes and a burst of affection don’t tell him any more than what he already knows; he’s missing something vital.
Karl’s lost life to time and he has no idea how to get it back.
Sap takes his silence for easy company, completely missing the way Karl hides his blurry eyes by ducking his head. He tears off a piece of the bread he’s been given and chews slowly, ignoring the other man’s magnetic pull as he washes down the sadness - I can’t remember who you are and I’m so sorry, I think I miss you even though you’re here - with a swig from his cup.
“By the way, did you talk to Quackity?” Sap asks abruptly.
Karl freezes.
Quackity. Quack-ity.
Cold coats his tongue and he swallows hard around nothing while the word - name, he thinks it’s relatively safe to assume - runs circles in the space in his mind, avoiding the giant holes.
It rings like a chord with a single string out-of-tune, echoing in a vast cavern. It’s the same as nearly everything else so far; there’s a feeling there, somewhere, faint nostalgia of some kind, but Karl doesn’t know what it means and he does know that he can’t ask.
“Yeah,” he blurts, locking eyes with Sap. “Yeah, yeah I did.”
Sap grins. “How’d it go?”
“Um, good. Yeah, good.”
“That’s good.” He wraps his hands around his mug tightly and his smile crumbles into pieces, a sharp pang hitting Karl’s sternum at the vulnerability in his expression. “I hope he comes by.”
Sweat slicks Karl’s palms and he rubs one against the side of the bed frame, feeling it scrape against wood. Sap’s moment of transparency is gone just as quickly as it appeared, organized neatly behind some kind of wall.
“Me too,” Karl says with cheer. It falls flat, gets pressed into a ball, disappears into the ether, but Sap doesn’t notice, caught up in his own thoughts as he nods agreement.
Discomfort ties itself a knot between Karl’s collarbones as the silence stretches and he presses a hand to his face.
He expects it to burn, but it doesn’t. His skin is cool and stubble lines his jaw.
Another voice - a shout this time, high and petulant - shakes the tension out of the air and leaves them raw.
“Sapnap!”
Sap - Sapnap, Karl has more confidence in the people who remember than his own inability to, and he repeats it three times for good measure - rolls his eyes and stands up.
“He has to call for me now,” he explains, in a way that probably would make sense to literally anyone but Karl, who’s still marvelling over the name Sapnap and how it makes everything click into slightly sharper focus. “But if he thinks I’m gonna simp for him, he’s wrong.”
A pause hangs from the sky, drops down on tentative legs and stands there, shaking. Playful light flickers in Sapnap’s eyes; he expects Karl to say something, but Karl has no idea what the right or wrong answer would be so he grabs a strip of bacon and all but stuffs it in his mouth, smiling sheepishly. Sapnap wrinkles his nose.
“Gross,” he stands up. “Alright, I’m gonna go deal with Gog.”
Anxiety seizes Karl at the thought of Sapnap leaving, at what will disappear as soon as the door shuts behind him and leaves him alone again.
He has a name, he has a tendril of warmth, he knows that there’s someone else too, but he needs more. He can’t see any red thread or golden filling, the gaps are bridged by emptiness and it aches, threatening to consume the tangible bits too.
“Sapnap,” Karl whispers. A rush of satisfaction crashes against him when the name sticks and doesn’t disappear upon being spoken out loud. It drowns his emotions in a quiet curl of hope and he tries to squash it gently.
“Yeah?” Sapnap asks.
Karl shakes his head. “Nothing, sorry.”
“Nimrod.” His laugh is affectionate and Karl has no time to process the look he’s given before Sapnap swoops down and kisses his cheek. “Love you.”
How he’s supposed to respond is obvious - and he tries, he really does - but the words taste ashy in his throat and his lack of knowledge drops heavy into the set of his jaw. Karl doesn’t want to lie, wouldn’t be lying if he was himself, but he can hardly remember what to do with his limbs as he sits, much less how much this man must mean to him.
Luckily, Sapnap doesn’t really pause, leaving the room and shutting the door not-all-the-way, only so that the latch hits against the wood.
Everything feels significantly colder as soon as he’s gone, like the hearth’s been un-lit and ice is trying to worm its way back in. Karl’s heartbeat jumps up to his ears as though it’s trying to escape.
Taking one last look at the picture - at himself and Sapnap and whoever else, joined together, content in themselves, presumably with no idea of what’s to come - Karl sighs and sets it and the food on the nightstand.
Consciousness carries tons. What’s going on and what it all means dangles just above where he can reach; Tantalus’ garden in a desolate bedroom.
Karl knows he has to put all the pieces together, but it’s too much.
It’s too much to not know where to start or how much time it’ll take to finish, if it’ll even be worth it by the end or if he’ll just be a blank canvas come morning. His shoulders shudder as he attempts to breathe normally and he lifts the duvet to tuck himself into bed.
He hopes - with whatever shreds of that he has, kept in a safe or something in his skeleton - that the memory of a brush against his skin and glittering eyes and a name that curves around the edges won’t be gone when he wakes up. He also hopes he didn’t say anything wrong.