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Blood trickles down the walls like melting wax against a lit candle, and it has just started pooling on the floor to follow the path between the tiles of the dirty floor. The man hunched underneath the table watches its predestined trail closely, letting it seep through the cracks and crawl across the floor on its way to him. He thinks that the red is too dark to be blood, but he's been drowning in the smell of copper and spoiled remains for who knows how long. It is unmistakable. It is blood.
He is saying something, but he doesn't know what. It might be a prayer, it might be some words from a psalm, but he doesn't remember believing in God.
He doesn't remember who he is.
He doesn't remember whose arm it is that lies on the bloodied tiles or how it had ended up dislodged at the joint and missing its hand. What he does remember is the body back on the table with its insides turned out for his eyes to see, and it makes him wonder for a quiet moment who cut it open for him until he remembers that his hands are dirtied with rust. When he digs his nails into his skin and claws out the stains, he shivers at the sight of his own fresh crimson mixing in with the drying, murky tar.
Blood is blood. Since when had he been so terrified of blood?
He learned at a young age that there is danger where there is blood, but it was always caked between his fingernails, and never was he bled out or gutted open by another's blade. He's always been the danger and the threat for as long as he remembers even if he doesn't remember much. But how does the monster forget instinct once the prey is cut open and served? How is it shaken to morality when it bore none amid its hunger and bloodlust? How does it live with reality when it doesn't understand a single thing about itself?
There is danger where there is blood, and it's all around the room, leaving almost nothing untouched while everything else is bathed in this angry red light. There is danger where there is blood, but in the aftermath, it is he who still wields the blade.
He could tell a vein from an artery and a liver from a kidney, but he does not remember learning the distinctions or when he had been skilled enough to pick apart one thing from another. He can tell that it is an intestine that dangles off the edge of the table, and he does not need to look at the sink to know that there are hamstrings hung on them. All of it tells him that he's disassembled and identified each part many times before. It tells him that he knows too much despite knowing too little, and it says a lot about him even if he does not know who he is.
He wishes he knew less. He doesn't know who he is, but an inkling tells him that the world would have been better off without him.
"I'm sorry," he says even if the one on the table is long gone and there is no one left to hear him. He can feel the creatures of the void stir from their slumber to point at him and whisper strings of words he catches at intervals but can't make sense of. Their eyes are sprouting from the walls, sitting on the shelves, and peeking from the cupboard and cabinets. They are all looking at him, leaving him with no place to hide other than the space he makes for himself when he brings his knees to his chest and buries his head somewhere between.
His prayers have turned into apologies that stream out like water running out of an open faucet, but his mouth soon goes dry and a lump grows in his throat. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Please, leave me alone."
"What a shame," whispers a fluttery baritone. "I just got here though."
When a breath hits warmth against the shell of his ear, instinct causes him to jerk and tear his head from the space between his knees, but as he looks around the place he is hidden, he finds no one beside him. There is no one else in the room, and he can't remember a time when he wasn't alone in the privacy of his abode, but there is someone with him, and he can't tell if this uninvited guest is real or not.
"How curious," the voice coos from above the wood over his head. "There is a bit of everything almost everywhere, and you are hiding under the table. What happened?"
"Nothing," he answers. "I didn’t do it."
"I never said you did." The stranger's head comes popping out from the table's edge, and he bares too-sharp teeth in his upside-down grin and slitted irises in his too-bright eyes. His hair is the color of the sky on a sunny day and is tousled around the slots where feline ears sit atop his head. There is something undeniably wrong about the way he looks, but the way the corners of his lips don't even flinch out of place when he speaks makes the one under the table shiver. "But you did, didn't you?"
Something tells him that he knows this stranger, even if the other's features and the sound of his voice leave him unable to put a name to the face and fail to beat familiarity against the drums of his ears. He shines the way fireflies do when night has finally fallen and the moon is nowhere to be seen, glowing and flickering out of place ever so often that a lost man who bore no torch would pray that the flame of its being doesn’t die while following its aimless trail. The one cowered underneath the table wonders where it will lead him, but he stays huddled and afraid of the other’s canine teeth and piercing gaze while those cat-like ears flick forward.
“I didn’t.” He brings his knees closer to his chest and swallows down the dread that creeps up his throat. “I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t.”
“And if you did do it?” The stranger manages to ask this with a strange sort of gentleness despite the mischief in his tone, but it does nothing to the tension in his arms or the way his lungs start to close up on him. It does nothing to slow how his heart is beating a mile, making him wonder when it will finally empty itself of the blood it pumps cold and heavy into his system. “Mistakes are bound to happen.”
“No,” he says quietly as he shakes his head. “Not like this, not like this.”
The stranger’s face starts to come near his own, but when he looks past his head and to the space behind it, he finds no body attached. He has to bite down on the insides of his cheek to hold in the scream that threatens to tear out of his throat as the proximity left between them becomes mere inches. “You’ve lost your color. What’s drained you of it?”
He swallows hard. “I don’t— I don’t understand.”
“You’re all pale and grey, poor thing. There’s not a bit of sugar left in you,” the other whispers. “You’ve been spending too much time with that hatter, haven’t you? How much tea did you drink?”
A hatter? Tea? “What are you talking about?”
“Goodness, Mr. Baker! Not even that you can remember? You’ve gone mad!”
“Mad?” The way the other’s tone drips with childish glee does not sound right nor sane and stirs this heavy feeling that he cannot name within his chest, but the underlying truth manages to terrify him more. “No. No, that cannot be.”
“Oh, but it can!” The stranger’s head turns upright as the corners of his lips twitch. “There’s no use denying it, Mr. Baker.”
“I’m no baker.” He doesn’t remember being a baker. No, he is sure he is something else because his hands don’t itch with the want to create as much as his fingers twitch with the need to grip and grab and claw and tear through anything he can get his hands on. His nails, stained with drying red and horrifying desire, remain buried into his skin as if they were forgotten there, and the reminder of their existence embedded into his flesh makes him dig them in deeper. “I’m not a baker. I’m… No, no, I’m…”
He doesn’t know who he is.
"Who are you?"
He can't remember.
"Leave me alone." His plea is a quiet sound, and it grows quieter once he buries his head back in between his knees and arms. "Please. Just leave me alone."
“Can’t do that, I’m afraid,” he hears the other say. “You'd be off with your own head if I left you in your own kitchen! There are knives, you see.”
There are rocks tied to his feet and his wrists are bound together to quicken his descent into the abyss and eliminate his chances of survival. He is a monster too far gone to be saved, but this stranger offers him salvation like it’s one of the many pennies from his pockets, and it’s just too good to be true. No one can look at the mess he made and think that there is anything worth salvaging nor can they look at the blood on his hands and think about guiding him to redemption—that is too much of a privilege he does not deserve. That is not how the world works, he doesn’t remember it being so kind.
“You’re not real,” he says through a dry mouth and a muffled voice. “You’re not real.”
“But I am.”
“No. No, you are not. You are not real.”
The silence that hangs in the air leaves room for the quiet ticking of the clock hung on one of the walls, but the lack of any other sound turns it into an insignificant thing in the background as the fog thickens. The void holds its breath but remains the bystander when he is a disaster that unfolds and stirs to life until he becomes a force of nature that is a danger to itself. He is bound to be the only casualty amid the thunder and rain, leaving everything that he ever was to nothing but ruin. His heart rattles with the sound of fury and fear while his adrenaline runs to chase a trace of repose, yet the promise of the solitude that will come when he has succumbed to gravity and let himself fall keeps him from grieving for the end of his mortal life. The world would go on without him, and no one would be there to mourn his departure. He doesn’t think he would mind that at all.
For a moment, he thinks that he is finally left alone until he hears the other speak.
“You wound me.” When he peeks from the top of his knees, he meets the stranger’s eyes and finds them wide with wonder while his stretched grin has died into this close-lipped smile that is neither too big nor too small to seem out of place. “You’d prefer if I were someone else.”
He can’t bring himself to answer when the way the other’s tone feels tepid upon touch and weighs bittersweet on his tongue, making his heart twist and his stomach churn out of this newly bloomed guilt that he cannot make sense of. Denial sits a breath away and the fear of being left alone in his sea of unclaimed atrocities lingers amidst the fear that festers in his heart, but his sanity is one step closer to the cliff’s edge and the height doesn't scare him. There is nothing about this stranger that could calm the storm that rages within, but he wishes that there was because he is all there is, so he tries to unearth what comfort there is behind that tight-lipped smile even if it promises none at first glance.
"Who are you?" he asks.
"Who am I?" is rhetoric but stands as a helpless question lost in a fog. There is something melancholic about the way the stranger's eyes saunter past his gaze because when he follows it, there is nothing to see. He cannot help but wonder what it is that he is looking at: Is there something there that he cannot see or does the other search for something that does not exist? "That's strange. I can't remember either."
This sickly feeling bubbles within his chest and makes him go cold. He can't call it dread when there is nothing about the other that he should be concerned with. "What do you mean?"
"I can't remember who I am." When the other turns back to look at him, the former perks up as the corner of his lips stretches back up into his cheeks and below his eyes. "But you can."
"Me?" he answers soundlessly when his voice gets stuck in his throat. "No. No, I can't."
"I remember you though," the stranger says, "so you must know something about me."
"No. I don't, I really don't."
"It will come to you."
"It won't."
"It will."
"It wo—" The change in the air cuts him off, but before he can turn around to find the looming threat, the sound of shuffling at his side makes him hold his breath. The shock sets off his heart, and it beats tenfold a mile as his adrenaline begs at him to move, to run, to do something. But the warmth of his blood is unable to thaw the frozen thing he's become, leaving him glued to the floor and staring into those too-bright eyes. "Who's beside me?"
"You should know." The stranger's voice has abandoned nostalgic wonder and is back to its cunning mischief, except it is leveled and no longer a play to his words. It has begun to fit into what little comfort he's made up in the little time they've shared, but something about it tells him that it won't be staying for long. "Take a look and see. It will all make sense."
Something falls in the pit of his stomach when the realization settles. "You're going to leave me here, aren't you? When I turn around, you'll be gone."
The other tilts his head. "It's what you want, isn't it?"
"But you said you wouldn't leave me alone." The way his voice gets stuffed into his throat and threatens to shatter underneath the pressure makes him sound pathetic, but he does not think to mind. "You said you wouldn't."
"You won't be alone."
"Please. Please, don't leave. I'm sorry—"
"You will be fine." There is promise in the other's voice, and his gaze mirrors a truth that he almost misses. The look on his face is kind despite his out-of-place grin and his wide eyes, and for once in these past few minutes where they've been seated underneath the table, he trusts it. "I'll come back when I am needed. Now, go look."
He trusts him, and so he looks.
But when he turns to see what has found its way to him, he does not expect to find the ocean in a pair of eyes. They are the space between the surface of the waves and the bed of the sea where it is nothing but a deep and dull blue that distorts what is above from below. The vastness of the depths reminds him of the abyss that holds him captive and makes him subject to this unnamed demise, but the quiet that surrounds him and the void that hugs every inch of his form holds this solace that a chasm could never provide. He was plunged into the sea with his limbs unbound and no weight to drag him down, but he does not move away from the nothingness that holds him without any burden while his lungs do not scream for air because there exists no need for it. Here, he allows the solitude alone to carry him and lets the water rush in through every opening on his vessel before he loses himself to the fever dream.
The way this man’s gaze captures him whole brings about something otherworldly within his hollow chest, but the ocean’s unfathomable depths remain tethered to a reality he hadn’t known for a while. They are so terrifyingly real, yet the comfort that blooms in his heart tells him that he is right at home.
It is all so familiar how this stranger hunches over himself to rest his bandaged arms on his propped-up knees and the way the edges of his hood frame the modesty of his round cheeks and the sharpness of his jaw. Between the slits of the binds around his shoulders and elbows, he finds long-forgotten cuts that burst stardust on the warming color of the other's skin and the way they dance their happy little trail of past misfortunes. Somehow, he can imagine how they would feel—how soft they would be underneath his fingertips, how fragile they seem, unlike the one who bears the horror of carrying them every day—as if he's touched them once. There is a tale behind each and every scar, and a small part of him feels as if he’s heard the stories before.
“I know you.” He whispers it like it is a secret that no one else is privy to. He whispers so that the abyss does not hear what can be theirs to tarnish and make folly of, but the fissures in his memories prove to be a greater burden when he tries to remember the other’s name. What is his name? “I’m- I’m terribly sorry, but I think I forgot your name.”
“...It’s alright.” The other’s tone holds this rough hint of wear and tear while he speaks, yet when it flows into his ears and bounces off the walls of his skull, he relishes in the consolation that this voice brings. He knows this voice too well—the volume, the diction, the certainty—and he is just so glad that he does. “Do you know yours?”
“No,” he whispers as the shame creeps into his cheeks a little too warmly. He never thought to be embarrassed until now, so he weakly adds, “The cat-man wouldn’t tell me.”
“I see.” The other huffs a flutter as the corner of his lips quirks the slightest bit upwards, and if it weren’t for the practiced restraint on his jaw or the natural sulk of his cheeks, there would have been a fond curve to shape some well-meaning grin. “What did he tell you though?”
“...A lot of things.” A moment of silence settles, but when the other does not speak into it, he clears his throat and carries on. “He told me I was a baker.”
“A baker,” the other muses as his gaze drifts away from his, resigning to the empty floor in front of them. “You once told me that you were an artist.”
At this, he can’t help the way he perks up. “I’m an artist?”
“Well, you were—” The other’s voice ceases for a moment when his teeth catch his tongue and his lips press into themselves. With a quick breath, he tries again. “Are. You are an artist.”
It rings a bell, but the sound becomes faint until it dies into nothingness. He was an artist. Was. And now, he is someone else. He cannot tell who this someone is. “...That doesn’t explain this.”
“This?”
“This.” He doesn’t dare look back at what is beyond his place underneath the table and lets his eyes trace the tattered edges of the other’s hood. “This mess. It’s unacceptable.”
“You made a mistake and caused a scene. It happens.”
“This can’t be a mistake. This doesn't just happen. I must have done it on purpose.”
He meets the other’s eyes as quickly as they have parted from him, and for a while, those pools of blue narrow into a glare that holds nothing but a wordless question that never ends up being asked. Instead, this moment spent through their exchanging stares is doused in another heap of silence that locks both of them into place, leaving him to be subject to the ocean’s curious gaze until the fleeting spark from the depths tells him that the other found the answer that he’s been looking for.
“You’re afraid,” the other says. The look in his eyes has softened and something about the darkness of the depths radiates the warmth of an embrace, but the truth that comes spilling out of his mouth keeps him frozen cold and immobile. “You’re frightened of yourself.”
It is undeniable, so he does not bother to find any other reason that would explain the way he curls in on himself in what little space there is underneath the table. “...I don’t know what to do.”
“Then paint me a picture.” The other shifts on his spot to turn towards him and sit cross-legged at his side. “Tell me where we are.”
“The- The kitchen.”
“Tell me about that. What about it has been keeping you on edge?”
“There’s—” There is a lump growing in the base of his throat, and it turns the realization that he is seeing something the other can’t into this weight that presses up against his airways and makes every breath of air a sharp sting. His eyes are wet and itchy with this unbearable heat that calls for him to take hold of his eyes and claw them out of their sockets until the unbridled tears are no more and there is nothing left in this room that he has to look at for another moment. But the hold that the other’s gaze has over him is like an anchor to his ship, keeping him from drifting away amidst the clashing waves by rooting him on the spot as he fights to stay afloat. He digs his nails back into his knuckles instead as he takes a deep breath. “There’s blood. Lots of blood. It’s everywhere.”
The look in the other’s eyes doesn’t change, even when he asks, “Where did it come from?”
“Someone,” he whispers as a portion of him retreats into his arms. “She’s on the table. I think… I think I did that to her.”
“You think?”
“I don’t remember much...”
All the other does is nod. “Is there anything else?”
He wonders if he should tell him about the eyes sprouting from the ceiling and sitting on the open cabinets, but when he is reminded of the way their open stares burn through the back of his head, he treads carefully with his words. “We are being watched.”
“Watched?” The other’s brows furrow in the slightest. “By who?”
“I can’t tell you,” he says quietly, “but they’ve come to take me away.”
“What?”
“They’re going to take me away, and I won’t be able to come back.”
“Why do they want to take you away?”
“They want to replace me. They want me to be someone else.”
They both fall quiet once again, but this time, he pays too much attention to the way the piercing glares of the eyes around them dig into every inch of him that they can see. So he pretends that the deep blue is all that he has to worry about, except there is no agony that haunts his numbing mind when the depths start to drag him down underneath their gentle gaze. The calmness of the wind and the warmth of sunshine await him at the sea's surface, but icy stares that make him shiver remind him that there is no way out of these tainted walls. If he wants to get out of here, he'll need to claw his way out—
"Stop that." He feels a hand pry his fingers away from his skin, so when he looks where he tore at the skin not too long ago, he finds countless slashes that run across the back of his hand. Dark red continues to seep from the slits which do nothing to faze his already-troubled conscience, but now that he has seen them, he is suddenly aware of the sting from the open wounds and cringes at the ache. "You'll get them infected."
"I'm sorry, I—" Blood and bits of skin sit behind his nails, and the sight of them almost makes him gag. Despite that, his fingers still twitch with the restless need to grab onto something, and he refuses to make the other's hand victim to destruction. "Let me go."
The other sweeps the pad of his thumb across the back of his fingers without tearing his gaze from his. "No."
"Please," he begs as he tries to pull away, but he is weak against that firm yet gentle grip. "I'll hurt you."
"Do you want to hurt me?"
"No. No, never. I just might."
"You won't hurt me."
"I still mi—" He cuts himself off when he sees the way the other lifts his hand to his mouth, but what stops him altogether is the feeling of a pair of lips pressing over the dried-up rust and onto his knuckles. Static runs through his veins when he finds out how soft and gentle the other's lips are against the chill of his skin, he can't help but jolt and shiver at the feel of them. "Tej, the blood—"
"You're a delicate thing at heart." Tej's words ghost a warmth that spreads throughout his limbs and fills the chambers of his empty heart to the brim. "You wouldn't hurt me or anyone."
"But—" The lump in his throat has grown unbearable enough that his words die even before they get a chance to slip out. He needs to swallow it all and pretend that the heat running down from his eyes to his cheeks does not exist before continuing. "I hurt someone."
"No, you didn't."
"Her blood is on my hands. The tools were mine. She's dead because of me."
"You don’t remember what happened. It couldn't have been you."
"Who else could it have been? I was the only one here. It's all my fau—"
"Walter." His name is a quiet sound on Tej's lips, yet it manages to reduce his voice into silence and steal the last of his breath. He can feel something piece together within him, and he holds onto that sensation as his eyes burn through the tears. "Breathe."
Walter sucks in a sharp breath before letting out a sigh that trembles through its way out of his mouth. His voice is strained and turns into something below a whisper. "I didn't mean to do it."
He feels a light squeeze around his fingers. "You didn't do anything, Walter."
"I'm so sorry."
"You don't have to be."
"How are you so sure that I didn’t do it?" Walter asks as he feels his bloodied hand be nursed into the other's own. "You're putting too much faith in me."
"It has nothing to do with faith," Tej answers quietly as his free hand comes up to wipe at the tears running down his face. The pads of his fingers are calloused and rough against his skin, but as his palm goes to cup his cheek, he goes to lean into the touch and indulge in the warmth that it brings him. "I know you, Walter, so believe me when I say that whatever you are seeing is not your fault."
For all of the storms that happen out at sea, the ocean could be so kind because, beneath the surface, it holds a tranquility like no other. It holds all that he is without question or prejudice as if it doesn't need to think twice about who he's become, leaving him to the content solitude of the deep. There is nothing else with him, but loneliness does not haunt him in this void of cool blue the way it's supposed to when the water that keeps him suspended serves to be a companion that won't ever leave him no matter how deep he sinks. No matter the doubt that still lingers in his lungs, he still manages to find peace within these depths and in the spaces in his hands that Tej occupies with his fingers.
Some tears still flow from his eyes and the ache within his throat is still present, but his chest is lighter and he doesn't have to fight for air anymore. "Since when were you so good with words?"
"I never was," Tej says as he presses another kiss to the back of his fingers. "I was only speaking the truth."
"Nothing you said was certain." Walter reaches over to the retreating hand on his cheek to take it in his hold instead. "You could be wrong."
"I could be, yes." Tej's gaze has fallen to their hands, and he watches them closely without a word about how their hands gingerly mingle with one another. "But you want to believe me anyway."
"...I do." Walter traces the tip of his finger along the lines of the other's palm. "I really do."
"Then believe me all you want." Tej leans forward, and Walter has to close his eyes when he feels a kiss being pressed somewhere along his temple. His lips linger for a too-sweet moment, so once they finally part from him, he can still feel them ghost against that spot right on his brow. "You take what you can get, Walter. The world won't ever be kind enough."
Walter learned the hard way that the things that are too good to be true are, more often than not, products of lies and half-hearted promises that don't meet their end, leaving the unfortunate souls to pick up the pieces of their shattered ambitions to either put them back together or throw them all out. He doesn't remember the world ever being so kind, but when he relishes in the tender touch of Tej's fingers along his beaten hands, he figures he doesn't need it.
This is enough, he thinks as he nods. "I know."
With one last squeeze of his fingers, Tej places his hands on his lap before letting them go. "I'll help you clean up."
Walter sucks in a deep breath. "Alright."
"Ah, there he is! The star of the show!" When he looks over his shoulder, he finds the other's tail swishing from left to right and the cat-like grin greeting him mid-air. "Your colors have returned, Mr. Baker. Feeling chipper again?"
"Not after seeing this disaster, no," the Baker mutters as his scathing eye wanders the space of his ruined kitchen. He notes the strawberry syrup splattered on almost every surface, the frosting scattered along the sink, the bits of sponge torn off the forgotten layers of cake on the table, and the rest of his other ingredients jumbled and scattered. He has to pinch the bridge of his nose to keep his temper at bay. "And didn't I say no pets in the kitchen?"
"That is no way to treat a guest." When the Baker looks back, he finds the other rolling over on his back with his arms behind his head and his leg propped on top of the other. "Much less one you've invited over."
"For the sole purpose of delivering a cake, yes." The Baker turns back to the table and looks at the ruined cake with a frown growing upon his lips. "I told you to wait in the drawing room, didn't I? You'll get fur everywhere."
"Well, there's no use fussing over a mess now, is there? You've already made one yourself."
"Smartass, you are. Get out of my kitchen, Cheshire."
Cheshire huffs as he leans on his side to give the Baker a critical look. "Either pink and bright or black and dreary, you're still one stubborn mule."
The comment makes the Baker's frown turn deeper. "What was that?"
"Nothing, nothing." Cheshire's eyes shape into crescent moons that make his grin seem genuine for once. "I'm just so thrilled to have you with me, Mr. Baker."
"...Did I miss anything apart from this mess of a kitchen?" the Baker asks.
“Well, for one—” Cheshire's eyes drop down—"you have syrup and blood all over your hands."
"Ah." When the Baker goes to examine his hands, he finds just that alongside the scratches that travel across his skin. The syrup had dried up, but the blood mixed in with them is still fresh. "How in Wonderland did I get these?"
"Might want to clean that up before the kitchen, Mr. Baker," Cheshire says.
This air of nonchalance that surrounds Cheshire isn't new, but it is suspicious enough. "There is something you aren't telling me."
"Really? Shame. I guess you'll never know." The grin on his face is wicked as his tail straightens out towards the direction of the door. "Now, wash up, Mr. Baker! You don't have all the time in the world. I'll clean up while you are gone."
The Baker takes a moment to stare at the other in an attempt to find out what he is hiding from him, but the longer he stares, the more restless the flutter in the back of his mind grows. It tells him that he's supposed to know something, yet he just doesn't know what it is no matter how hard he tries to put the unhidden pieces together. Nonetheless, time is ticking, and the broken clock across the room tells him he doesn't have much time to come up with another cake if he drags this on longer than he should.
"Don't touch anything," the Baker says carefully as he turns to the door and makes his way out of the kitchen, "and I mean it!"
Cheshire chuckles as the other finally strides out of the room and shuts the doors behind him. "No promises, Walter."