Chapter Text
Never and always alone. His thoughts were as horrible guests as the watchers in the room next door were, always part of him and always invisible.
Well, the watchers were always invisible. His thoughts materialized into nightmares and villains stalking the colorless walls of his cells, every creak of the building another step closer to his doom.
What was happening?
To him…to Carmen?
Gray tapped a finger on the floor next to him, letting some of that loathed air escape from his lungs and bounce into another confined existence- his confined existence. He smiled slightly in envy, and in pity. The poor breath was constantly being used and trapped, just like him. He couldn’t drift quietly through a vent and escape into the beautiful outdoors like it could, though..
He grudgingly permitted another breath into his lungs.
He had thrown the ACME device off too soon, like Carmen had. He knew the confusion of switching between someone fabricated and someone real. Only, his real existence was the less desirable one, not his fake one.
Existence seemed like a bit of stretch now.
He tapped his fingers on the floor again and closed his eyes, holding his breath until his chest hurt and he couldn’t hold it anymore. Carmen used to be like that. There was only so long someone could keep her down before she burst free.
His face tightened.
I killed people. And you let me…
He let the air go and greedily sucked in more.
If he hadn’t waited so long? If he had sacrificed his own stupid dream of working side by side with his best friend for her own free will sooner? Would she be suffering in this place with him like she was now?
Why am I here, Crackle?? We graduated together. And you…we…she’s in my head!
In, out. In, out. The tempo increased and became steady, like the measures of notes upon notes from ballets chasing each other across the rhythmic bars of their white paper frame.
Well, he thought. I have the white. I have the tempo. I certainly have the bars.
There had been some kind of disturbance a couple weeks or so ago, an alarm, a fight next door. Then absolute silence for days and days and days and days.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
He shied from the possibility he didn’t want to consider.
You TRAITOR!
I know, Carmen, he thought sadly. I know I am.
Another held breath forced it’s way out of his lungs like a red bird bursting from its cage.
How long could Carmen have held on like that? How long could they have held her?
What did you do?
What we had to.
That simple statement made his hands shake.
What had that disturbance been? No one had been in to see him for a very, very long time. Not the outside of him or the inside. Just a hand dropping in food so quickly he could never ask anyone anything.
I’ve used up my usefulness, he thought wryly, once again pushing that thought he needed another moments buffer to confront away.
How long could they have held her, and what would they do when that time ran out?
He recognized a headache building up behind his temples and paid less attention to it than he did his now unsteady breathing. He tilted his head down and clenched his jaw, which was now sporting hair that had not been allowed a razor.
Would she have fought them? Carmen would be too smart.
Carmen wasn’t always Carmen.
And, then, she might just be angry enough.
He opened his eyes and blinked, not trying to stop himself from shaking. The brown, dry pellets that looked like dog food were the only break in the white, white, white of his tiny room. They treated them like dogs.
If Carmen bit, would they…?
No.
A bone-chilling crack bounced from his memory and into the space, and the sound stared at him with malicious yellow eyes that were as terrifying as a dead man’s.
Tap, tap, taptaptaptap…
He knew the sound like the back of his crackle rod. The sound knew only the front of it.
He forced the air out of his lungs again and blinked furiously, astonished, almost, that the muscles still obeyed him when he had caused that crack, those dead eyes.
Would they?
The eyes switched to purple and back.
Please let the disturbance have been anything else.
Carmen’s tired eyes were looking at him from inside his own memory like they had for months.
“Are you a dream?” He murmured to that free and ever-trapped air.
I wish. Then we’d have a chance of waking up.
The answer filled in and he let his head tilt forward more, closed his eyes again.
The possibility wavered in front of his eyelids.
Maybe Carmen was dead.
Thinking it forced all the air from his lungs like his body wanted to get definite proof, right there and then, and his eyes snapped open and struggled to prevent tears from following their familiar path down his face.
Maybe Carmen was dead.
Did he hope not?
Two existences for each of them. Both of his were miserable. Would he want a release?
Would she want a release?
No! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!
Would she?
Please!
Did he want to find out?
The breaths were so shaky, unstable as the balance of justice in this vile room. In? Out? Stay? Go? Hold…force.
He shivered.
Would he want a release…
He probed the empty shell of a brain that only now swirled with misery and memory for an answer. His brain offered nothing.
Taptaptaptaptaptap.
His door opened.
The masked doctor.
He winced. Now…
The glassy eyeholes considered him for a moment and then disappeared under their arm, and Gray saw his tormentor’s tight face for the first time.
“I’m sorry.” The doctor said.
Now his brain offered an answer.