Chapter Text
He wakes to a void.
*I’m all alone, aren’t I?*
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to face something like this alone. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to face something like this. He… he actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d been alone. He… couldn’t remember the last time he wasn’t alone.
He… couldn’t remember. Anything. He couldn’t remember anything.
Just... this. This black void. Nothingness. He… he had a name. A name? What’s… what’s a name?
Sounds, they were sounds, that’s it, something to call oneself, to distinguish them from other… people.
Other people? No, no, that couldn’t be. There was… there was only him here. Alone. Forever. He’s always been here… right?
*Where am I?*
Cosmic. A single something in a vast nothing. But wouldn’t he soon become nothing, too?
Endless void, and him. An… intruder. The weaker of the two, he would surely die.
Fire. Ice and smoke and shadows, sounds and screams and force, rocky skin and booming hands, floating and speed, dripping blood in a pool of dirty crimson…
He was forgetting something. There was no time, but he was losing himself, somehow.
He felt nothing but his own presence; saw nothing but the black abyss. Patience. Patience. He... why patience?
*I... who am I?*
Waking was hard; he couldn’t register anything he saw.
He reaches out; the sharp, angular, edged thing that is his arm passes through the shards like they aren’t even there.
Perhaps they aren’t.
He tries to inhale; glass pierces is his lungs and his veins and his chest. He chokes, sending out a spray of cold shards.
Glass flickers away from his body and limbs. It fades to dust before his eyes. His form is air, weak enough to be swept away by a gust of wind.
And yet he knows that there’s no one here to cause one.
He can’t breathe…
Up here, there’s not much to be seen.
A skyline, where the city touches the horizon. He can’t touch it, and it can’t touch him.
He falls.
Nothing will hold him, keep him from crashing to the ground and shattering into a million tiny pieces. He should be able to catch himself… right?
He can always catch himself.
He can’t move his arms. Maybe they’re broken. The wind screams in his ears as the ground flies up to meet him. He thinks he sees people, watching in horror as he plummets toward his doom. He wonders how many of them will try to save him, like he saves them.
A desperate cry breaks from his throat as he impacts—
…
Up here, there’s not much to be seen.
He falls. He should be able to catch himself, he always can, but he can’t move his arms—maybe they’re broken? He screams as the ground flies up to meet him, impacts—
…
Up here, there’s not much to be seen.
He falls.
(My… my body. I can’t… I can’t feel anything.)
He stares down at his hands.
Bare and white. Cold, so cold. A crystalline flower like ice blooms over the flesh of his palms, shards of petals chipping away and joining a mosaic of broken pieces that quivered, suspended in the air like a glittering mobile. For every fragment broke away, a new one rose to the surface beneath it before it floated away with the others.
He thought maybe he was floating among them. But it was hard to tell; he was cold and numb and cold, so cold…
(…who am I?)
Ash.
He wanders the ashes of the burned city.
Buildings and bodies, smoldering char. Thick, chalky smoke coats his throat and lungs; he tastes wood and glass and metal alike. Small fires, whispering demons of their predecessor, dance across the embers of the earth.
Yet, everything seems so familiar. Like it comes from close to home.
Or even from home itself.
He scans blackened skies; chokes out ash and tar, gasping hoarsely. His lungs beg for fresh air.
He sees a figure in the distance, flame flickering around his form as he stares at the ruins that he somehow survived.
Then the figure looks up, eyes glazed and so completely lost, looking for all the world like a broken child.
He... he didn’t do this.
*I did.*
She wakes with a gasp.
Something heavy presses against her chest, limiting her lungs. She gasps for breath, trying to shove it away, but her arms feel heavy and stiff, and her hands grasp at... empty air, just a thick feeling in her chest as she struggles to breathe. The air around her feels empty and makes her wheeze, like heavy smoke or clouds.
There is no ground beneath her back. She tries to turn, and sees the earth, far, far below her. The vacuum of space has stolen the air from her body, and she chokes on nothing as her lungs refuse to expand.
He knows he’s always been fast, but everything around him feels so… slow.
The blurred faces of his family, classmates, and teachers. He struggles to remember their names, struggles to read the fuzzy words of the books before him. He struggles for words, struggles to remember things. He’s… not sure he can remember his name.
Time doesn’t seem to work quite right. He moves at a speed that he’s certain is normal, but everything around him moves at a snail’s pace. He thinks he’s in class, for hours longer than he should be, and blinks to see his empty dinner plate as people around him gather dishes in slow motion. He sleeps for days, and no one questions it.
He feels lost.
White.
A blank nothingness. A slate cleared of form or shape, except for him. It feels too quiet, like something is waiting for him to let his guard down. But somehow he knows nothing will attack him here, for he is the only dark spot on this white canvas. It’s hard to focus; he can’t tell if he’s walking in a straight line toward a point of escape, or if he’s just wandering in circles through an endless existence.
His shoulders feel light, like… a companion, metaphorical arm always thrown around his neck, has left him.
Like… a guardian angel, had become lost.
He feels so alone.
She wakes to sand.
Desert, as far as the eye can see.
Her limbs feel tired and burnt already. She can see a haze on the horizon that she thinks might be water, but knows it’s probably just a mirage.
The sun beats down on her brow. She tries to stay small, minimizing the sunlight baking into her skin. She wonders how she got here, how she’ll survive. Her mind swirls with fear and uncertainty, as she climbs sand dune after dune, stumbling toward some point in the distance that she desperately hopes will lead her to some hidden paradise.
As the sun begins to set, she doubts she will find one.
The brilliant light of the sun finally,finally disappears. Though it’s warmth still radiates through the sand, the air around her suddenly plummets in temperature, leaving her shivering, her own sweat turning icy against her skin. She drops to the ground, crawling into a ball as her thoughts grow cold and sluggish, and wondering how she will ever escape this nightmare.
She wakes, exhausted.
She stumbles through a day that she finds unfamiliar, speaks to faces she doesn’t know—doesn’t remember.
She tries to wake herself up—drinks a hot coffee that taste like dirt, eats a granola bar that only taste like cardboard—but it doesn’t seem to give her a burst of energy, like she wants it to, like it usually does. She stares at the problems on the chalkboard, wishing the blurred numbers and letters would just come into focus for a minute—but anytime she raises her hand, her teachers just... ignore her. Like they don’t see her at all.
Her mom makes her favorite pork rolls for dinner. She bites into one with as much fervor as she can muster and tastes… nothing. Not the sweet, tangy meat, not the soft, slightly salty dough. Not the delicious garlicky sauce that drips from the dumpling, slowly draining as she stares at it blankly.
She feels her hand on her shoulder; her mom, who she knows is so pretty and sweet and soft and pink, like a strawberry mochi, looks her in the eye, says something and some strange, garbling tongue—and she looks into her mom’s face and doesn’t… see, the face that stares back. Logically she knows it’s her mom, but she looks unfocused and far away.
She burst into tears that tingle as they run down her face.
They wake, to their bedroom curtain closed.
They frown, sliding out from under a plain gray comforter—that they don’t recognize?—and stride to the window, flinging the curtains open to a gray, clouded sky. The light that streams into their bedroom now is dreary and cold. They frown again, moving to their particularly large closet and opening it to fetch a sweater.
The closet is… very small, suddenly. Only one shoerack? They shudder, wondering at the plain gray clothes that hang from the single rack. They don’t seem familiar, but… isn’t this what they’ve always worn?
They don a soft gray cardigan with a little black cat embroidered on it, and slip on a pair of simple beige slippers after digging through the shoerack, and not coming up with a pair of pretty pink slippers that they had been so certain that they’d owned at one point. They catch a glimpse of their hair in the mirror—browner than they remember, and their eyes seem less… brilliant. They sigh and run a brush through the unruly hair, pinning it behind their ears with a pair of little black barrettes that they find on their dresser. They feel so… plain, all of a sudden.
Breakfast is uneventful. Their parents barely take notice of them when they come into the room, only their mom sliding a glass of juice to them as they take a seat at the table. Their food tastes… bland, but not for lack of trying—their father really never had learned how to season eggs, and they doubted he ever will. They sprinkle a little more pepper onto their plate, frowning at the lack of difference it seems to make.
Their mother rushes out the door to work without her usual overbearing declarations of love—she merely gives them and their father a peck on each cheek, and takes off, her long black coat streaming behind her in her stride.
…Hadn’t her coat always been a beautiful, brilliant red?
He wakes, to an empty room.
He feels something around his head, like a band, tightened just short of uncomfortable. He’s lying on the floor, which is a nondescript tile, and looks up at a popcorn ceiling with a single fluorescent light hanging from it.
It swings a little as he stares at it.
For a second, he tries to move, try to stand up—but a stabbing pain shoots through his head, down his side, into his legs. He gasps, losing his focus for a moment—the pain fades again just as quickly. He tries to gather his thoughts, figure out what’s going on: is he hurt? is he bleeding? But another sharp pain tears behind his eyes, and he clenches them shut against the fluorescent light—it hadn’t seemed so blinding a moment ago.
He carefully doesn’t move—he can’t gather his thoughts enough to figure out if he’s hurt, but he can’t move without hurting himself. The pain doesn’t feel like electricity—that’s a familiar crackle, something that’s ingrained in his DNA, something he can handle, something he grew up with. No, this feels much more like an injury—he’s never had a concussion, but he’s heard people describe them, and this… pain, feels familiar.
He tries to let his mind wander, trying not to wonder if he’s bleeding right now, trying not to panic about how much time he has left. He tries to calm himself down; he takes long, even breaths, dragging them out to lower the racing of his frantic heart.
He tries not to think.
He wakes, to purple.
It’s his purple—even if it’s ugly and weird and his powers are ugly and weird, he still likes them, still appreciates his versatile quirk—girls like guys you can do lots of things, right? But even if it’s his purple that he wakes up to, it still seems very unfamiliar.
For one thing, it’s not usually on… other parts, of his body.
They swell around his feet, pinning him. For a moment he has an extremely dirty thought, but it disappears again quickly as he realizes thatthey are pinning him.
His purple never sticks to him—but now it suddenly is, and it’s growing.
Little spheres appear around his wrists, growing quickly and overtaking his whole arm. He screams, desperately trying to rip them off with his other hand, but they stick firmly. The ones on his feet are slowly climbing his legs, first to his knees, then his thighs and then suddenly on his hips, his head feels heavy and he can see the hair expanding down and into his line of vision. He gasps as the ones on his arm reach shoulder, swiftly climbing his neck. It envelops his chin, then his mouth—he realizes he can’t scream, he can’tbreathe—
It swallows his eyes, as purple is replaced with blackness.
...
He wakes, to his purple.
It sticks to him, and, he realizes with horror, it’s growing.
She wakes, to screeching.
It’s like a wall of sound, pressing against her ears. It’s as deep as it is high, a scream and a rumble that collide into a sheer force of volume. It feels like needles against her eardrums, and she let out a scream that, normally, would block out this horrible noise—but it is silenced under its deafening roar. She feels something warm and foreign on her hands where they press painfully against her ears; she feels a liquid vibrating with the noise as it runs down her arms and stains her sleeves.
She huddles down, trying to protect herself with her arms, but the very air is humming with its pressure. Her brain feels foggy, and she whimpers with pain as the sound buzzes through her whole body.
She wakes, to a dark room.
It feels small, and yet somehow she feels smaller. She can see a very dim, slightly greenish light on the ceiling, seeming so far above for the little storage closet she seems to be in. But there is nothing here aside from her—four walls, a floor, and the ceiling, with no door or furniture. She looks for a doorknob, but doesn’t even see any seams in the walls where one might be. She bangs her fist against all four walls, and the floor, screaming to be let out, who dares lock her in here?
But she hears nothing, and receives no answer.
She knows she has somewhere to make a way out, and she sure she can devise a plan—she’s at the top of her class, after all—but think as she might, nothing comes to mind. She sinks to the floor, staring at the dark wall in front of her as she helplessly racks her mind for something, anything of use.
She feels only fog in return.
He feels tired, burnt-out. His hands feel shaky—he can barely bring food to his mouth.
But no one seems to notice his troubles, even if he dared ask for help.
He doesn’t want to seem weak, but… he’s never felt so tired before. He triesto get some of his favorite little sugary treat to cheer himself up. But no sooner does it touch his lips then his hand jerks violently, sending the little cake smashing to the dirty cafeteria floor with a sad, wet splat.
While he expects the other kids in the cafeteria to laugh heartlessly at his misfortune, they don’t even do that. They just continue in muffled, garbled conversation that he feels too dizzy to hear.
He tries to salvage the little bit of cake that had an actually touch the floor, but... it just turns to loose, raw sugar in his hands, like sand.
He wakes, to an empty apartment.
Usually his mom is still around when he wakes up, before she goes to her day job as an elementary school teacher—she’s often still sitting in her soft green arm chair, grading the last of her papers as she waits for the kettle to boil. He’ll kiss her on the cheek and start his usual breakfast—miso soup with hot tea, and an extra cup for his mom with just a dab of honey in it.
But today she’s gone before he’s up, and he reads the note that she left for him—“Left early, won’t be back till late”—he frowns to note that it’s not even signed. He drinks a lonely cup of tea, suddenly without appetite for his miso.
He packs his lunch for school—lots of fruit that he is sure he’ll appreciate more in a few hours, and a new recipe of vegan curry he’d premade the night before. But his school halls seem hollow and monotone—he feels like he’s gotten too familiar with a colorful cast of faces that he doesn’t see wandering the halls anymore. He wonders if his school building always seemed so… small.
So lonely.
He wakes to something grasping his mouth.
With a cry, he yanks it away, staring at a disembodied hand, one of his other limbs reaching up to trace over the bruises it had left on his job with its tight grip. It tries to reach out and grab at him, but he yelps and flings it away, where it floats aimlessly through space.
He realizes suddenly that he, too, is floating aimlessly through space.
Blobs of wriggling mass the same color as his flesh, float around him. He notices one shifting into an eye, then another into an ear, a third into a mouth—the hand that had been gripping his face melts into a blob like the others.
So… these blobs are... him?
...No. One of the mouths reaches out and bites him, when he’s not looking. He smacks it like he would an insect, and it snarls at him as it releases and floats away again.
If it was him, it wouldn’t attack him, as harmless as their tactics seem to be.
But as he watches, one of the blobs splits into two; twin eyes stare at him for a moment, and then shift into chattering teeth.
He wonders if it is possible, that they will soon outnumber him.
He wakes, to echoes.
At first he thinks it’s just his horde of little sisters, scrambling through the house in the morning and bickering over the single upstairs bathroom. But these voices sound different; older. He wonders if his dad has some friends over—but when he checks the kitchen, he sees only his father, sipping his coffee and reading the paper. He lifts his mug in a sort of silent greeting toward his only son, and he smiles back at his father before he dismisses the echoes as a figment of his imagination.
But they continue throughout his school day—he hears someone, an adult, say something, their tone indicating a question, but when he turns—an empty hallway behind him. He doesn’t understand any of the individual words in the question, only the tone. Once he thinks he catches a word, maybe a name?—“Tooru“, maybe. He think the name is familiar, but for the life of him, he can’t put a face to it.
He figures it out—he must be in some kind of coma, and dreaming all of this. He always figured he’d get knocked out in at least one of his martial arts classes eventually, but he’s really hoping he at least did something cool to warrant a coma.
But he can’t remember any such incident.
And if he’s in a coma, he isn’t sure how he’s going to wake up.
Everything is a blur for Tooru.
She sleeps. She eats. They ask her a thousand more questions, one after the other, neverending and she doesn’t know the answers. She goes back to sleep. She wakes up, she eats, they ask her a thousand more questions.
She can’t answer them. She doesn’t know the answers and she doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.
She doesn’t know what happened to them.