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He disappears into the woods.
You follow him. He lets you. There’s a part of him, at least, that lets you. Through the thorny walls of his mind, into the quiet recesses of a realm adorned in overgrown thicket, you creep about, a crawling frost, a drifting wind. Of course you follow him. You owe it to him. It is your turn, now, to follow him into the dark, to wait for him on the other side, where the chaos recedes and the storm over the sea quiets and the moon rises once again.
He is not there quite yet.
You follow your instincts. You track the troubled pools of water and the imprints in the grass. You lope beside him like a wolf. You find him, at last, in a bed of dandelions. You watch from a distance. You are unsure if you are ready to see him, or if he is ready to see you. His breathing is ragged. He shakes and coils around himself, a frightened serpent. You cannot know what he feels; but you know what you feel, and what you feel is an enormous sense of pity. Whatever kind of distress this is, it looks… familiar. You can name a time when you, too, have wanted to run out into the tangled dark forever, to hide among the flowers and bury your hands in the earth until the rage in your veins subsided.
But his burden is not rage. It is fear. Fear of what? He doesn’t sense you, does he? He mustn’t. You reach out a hand to brush aside a dripping branch. You stop. You think. Why would he want your help, let alone need it? You? The ne’er-do-well who dragged him close behind you on your path of avarice? You, who wrapped your chains tightly around him, because if you couldn’t escape your fate, why should he? You, the reason he very well might have taken your place, in another, darker life. You. The sole reason his grief nearly ate him alive. You, you tell yourself cruelly, and for a moment you, too, want to lay shivering in the weeds. Really. You. You haven't changed in the slightest. Selfish, foolish you. What makes you think—
That’s enough, you decide. You swallow your anxiety, and the taste of it makes you shudder. You emerge from the trees and, as if to buy yourself time, approach his bed of grass and dandelions in narrower and narrower circles until—
He startles. The rustle of grass, the rise of dandelion heads, the leap of feathery seeds into the air— everything happens so quickly, before all the noise dissipates into a great and smothering silence. It strikes a painful chord with you. Perhaps he has the very same— perhaps he, too, is— perhaps he’s going through— no, that can’t be. You put the thought out of your mind. You have never met another man like yourself, who cracks the way you do under unexpected change, or who values the intricate little patterns and routines of the world, the ones that coalesce into art far from the layperson’s notice. As far as you’re concerned, you never will.
You are alone. You are with him, but in many ways, you are alone. You dash your hopes for connection in this way. It is one pipe dream among many. Indeed there are a few ways you wish to connect with him.
You don’t bother.
You know he will never feel the same.
“Christ almighty, Jacob,” he says firmly, and your reverie shatters. His hand clings to his heart. An effort to soothe it. “I told you not to startle me like that anymore!”
Ah. He did, indeed. In your defense, you weren’t trying to this time.
“Terribly sorry, old boy.” You lean on a tree, not far from him. Shards of ice dig into your back. Chains bite your wrists, your ankles, your neck, your heart, your throat. You ignore the urge to shed your skin. Anyone would wish to, anyone with working nerve endings at least, if only they knew your predicament. You always hated the cold. “Old habits… die hard, as they say.”
“Hah.” There is no mirth in Ebenezer’s voice. He lays back down. Throws himself back down, more like. He sprawls onto his back, catches his breath, stares at the vast twilight above. “Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be furious with me? Telling everyone how I’ve failed you for the last time, and how I’ll never survive here and it’s a wonder I survived at all among the living, and—”
Why on Earth would you do that?
You don’t realize you’ve thought aloud. Ebenezer’s face is grim. “Why wouldn’t you? It’s true, isn’t it? You saw what happened to me, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t see anything,” you tell him. “Hence why I was so worried. As far as I was concerned, you were there one moment, and the next, you were gone. What was I meant to do? Just let you vanish?”
He doesn’t say anything.
You hover a bit closer to him now. “Ebenezer, whatever it is that bothers you so, you can tell me. Are you quite alright?”
“No.” This surprises you. You’ve never known him to be so direct; to say so plainly, so effortlessly, that he isn’t doing well. Perhaps he doesn’t have the energy to conceal it any longer. “Frankly, I’m not. I’ve made an absolute fool of myself. Now everyone knows their beloved Chainbreaker—” his voice drips with ire “—is some sort of lunatic. And all this because ‘it’s too hot’ and ‘I don’t like crowds’ and ‘my cravat doesn’t feel right.’”
Something flickers inside you. Irritation? No, that’s not it. That can’t be it. You would never dream of being irritated with him. Not when he’s being so earnest with you. Besides, what is there to be irritated by? You’re being selfish. Again. Your best friend is on the ground, miserable, tired, and all you can think about is—
“I don’t understand,” you decide. “Those are all perfectly normal complaints.”
“No, they’re not.”
“They are.”
“If they’re so normal,” Ebenezer hisses, “why is it that I’ve never heard them from anyone else? There’s no need to lie to me, Jacob. You and I both know that something is wrong with me. No grown man breaks down crying at such a public event like that. No normal man stops being able to speak when he feels cornered. No normal man— no normal person— is so rigid and so inflexible and— and—”
Your voice becomes firm. “You’re spiraling again.”
“—and normal people aren’t this stressed all the goddamned time, and normal people don’t feel like they’ll go mad if they aren’t constantly moving, and— and— if I’m so normal, why the Hell does everyone seem to think otherwise? Everyone senses it. I know everyone does. I’m not— I don’t— I don’t belong anywhere, Jacob!” His voice borders on hysterical. He gestures wildly as he speaks. “Everywhere I go, everyone seems to know something I don’t. There’s always someone gawking at me like I’m some sort of zoo animal. Always someone who knows how out of place I am. I have fought my entire life to belong somewhere, to have a place in polite society, and yet there’s always something I’m missing. Normal people understand the rules. Normal people remember them! And yet I fail, every single time!”
“Ebenezer, stop.”
He bolts upright. Tears glisten in his eyes. “Don’t you tell me to stop! Don’t you dare! You don’t know what it’s like to have something so— so profoundly wrong with you. You’ve never been mocked for the only things that make you happy. You’ve never been excluded for anything you couldn’t help! Do you know why I chose to live on the cold fringes of society? Do you know why I rejected it for years? I didn’t have a place there after you died! You were the last thing tethering me to some kind of normalcy. Without you, I became…”
An ugly sob escapes him.
“I remember when Past told me I was different,” Ebenezer says, quiet and defeated. “That I have ‘eccentricities.’ That I ‘see the world differently.’ I know what they meant now. They only pitied me. Of course they couldn’t tell me to my face that I’m a freak, or that—”
"I said, stop!”
For just a moment, you’ve lost control of your tongue. Electricity crackles ferociously around you. Your skin stings; wrath and cold and lightning build underneath. It’s that word. Freak. It pierces deep into you— forces its way through the padlock on your chest, digs into your heart, bites at your insides until you’re shaking all over. Your long nails dig into your palms. Pain and remorse and nightmarish memory coalesce into a throbbing mass within your chest. Ebenezer trembles, too, almost imperceptibly. His eyes are wide. You’ve hurt him.
You’ve hurt him.
His lip quivers. Oh, God. Oh, God. What have you done? You really are no good for him. You really are nothing more than a wicked influence wreaking havoc on his life. That’s all you do, isn’t it? That’s all you’re good for. Wreaking havoc. It’s all you’ve ever done. Problem child, heartless miser, Phantasim of Greed. You ignore the voice in your head. The one that screams at you to atone, to pay, in any way possible. The one that crowds around you, that suffocates you like a thousand bodies pressed up against yours.
You take a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” you say, softer this time. Your voice is still fraught with emotion. “I just… I didn’t mean to… I— I only—”
“It’s alright.” It’s clearly not. Tears run down his face now. Ebenezer hugs himself, and you wish so desperately that you could do it for him. You want to squeeze him and squeeze him and squeeze him to make up for all the years of distance between you.
“I… I do know what it’s like, Ebenezer. I do.”
He doesn’t meet your eyes.
You decide to press on. You have to make up for what you’ve done, for the way you’ve lashed out. It isn’t his fault. He doesn’t know. He couldn’t have known. If you can show him some kind of sympathy, if you can just convince him that he isn’t alone… perhaps he’ll forgive you. Perhaps, then, you can forgive yourself. Most importantly, above all else, you want him to feel better.
What you wouldn’t give to take his hand.
“I…” This is more difficult in practice than it is in theory. “I know you believe you’re alone, but I— I am also— we aren’t quite as different as you’ve been led to believe.”
Ebenezer’s voice is smaller than you’ve ever known it to be. “What on Earth do you mean?”
“Well, I… don’t quite know how to articulate it, I’m afraid.” You stare at the ground and occupy yourself with counting the dandelions. “But everything you’ve said, I know intimately. More intimately than I like to admit. The exclusion. The passion unlike any other. The… the rules. All those godforsaken rules that I don’t understand any more than you do. Like… like…”
You struggle for an example. When you find one, you smile.
”Etiquette be damned,” you begin, “if I want to wear a hat indoors, who’s to stop me? Why, it’s not as if I’m spitting in someone’s face!”
Ebenezer manages a brief smile. “But… but you seem so… y— you don’t strike me as that type at all.”
You sigh. You’re tired of standing now. Unwilling to lay upon the unforgiving grass, you decide to hover. “I suppose I simply became adept at hiding it. Much like you did, yourself. Perhaps we are quite different, quite different indeed; but I found a kindred spirit in you, Ebenezer. Before you, I… I thought there was no one else in the world who knew the same anxieties, or the same kinds of joy. If anything, quite honestly, it hurts me that you would say such cruel things about yourself.”
“I’m sorry.” This whole ordeal seems to have exhausted Ebenezer immensely. He lowers himself onto the ground once again, picks up a dandelion absentmindedly, twiddles its stalk between his forefinger and thumb. “I just… I felt… I don’t know what I felt. Alone, maybe. I felt alone.”
“You’re not.”
“But I was convinced I was,” he said emphatically. “Even now, it’s hard to see you as anything other than… perfect, unflappable, confident Jacob Marley. I always wished I could have been that. Frankly, I always wished I could be anyone other than… me.”
Warmth rushes to your cheeks. You nod and fight the impulse to smirk weakly. Or to thank him. You? Perfect? Unflappable? The notion is almost comical. At the very least, you find it immensely flattering.
Ebenezer continues. “And I know you wouldn’t lie to me about this. I owe you an apology, Jacob. I didn’t mean to stir up old memories, whatever those may be. I’m sorry I was so vicious.”
“I forgive you.” You allow yourself a sigh of relief. At last, everything is resolved. Almost everything. “I owe you one, as well.”
“I told you, it’s alright.”
You shift uncomfortably in place. “If you insist.”
A tense silence descends between the two of you. Somewhere deep within the woods, a bird cries.
You look up.
The sun still descends far off in the distance, turning the sky from blue to lavender. Wild, bright, almost sanguine orange rays of evening rise in the far-off west and stain the clouds above. As Ebenezer calms down, life seems to return to his realm. The gaps between the trees glow golden. Buzzards rise up and circle listlessly. Insects hum. Foxes and squirrels dart in between the trees. More dandelions sprout up, emerging by the dozen, little spots of sunlight rising from between blades of grass. Ebenezer sighs deeply once again, and with every breath another beast or bird or flower seems to fold into the world out of nowhere.
At last, he speaks. “Do you think there are more people like us?”
“It stands to reason that there would be.” You hope so. God, you hope so.
“I should like to meet them someday. Had I known earlier that I was never quite as alone as I thought, perhaps…”
He falls silent. You try to encourage him. “Perhaps what?”
“Perhaps I wouldn’t have learned to hate myself so much.”
In an instant, your heart breaks. His voice is so morose, so weighed down by decades of ache and fear and loneliness. In him, you see yourself. With his, your soul is intertwined, inextricably linked. Wherever he goes, everything in you begs you to follow. His victories are yours. His sorrows are yours. When one of you is cruel or kind to himself, he is cruel or kind to the other. Something blossoms in your chest. A thousand dandelions unfurl within you when you look at him. This time, you don’t want to run from it. You create an image in his mind. One where you’re embracing him, trying to remember how he smells, to imagine how his coarse hair would feel against your chin and how his hands would fit in yours and how warm he must be.
Compared to you, of course.
When Ebenezer receives the thought, he freezes. Looks up at you, his eyes bewildered. Oh, God, you’ve made another mistake. Have you overstepped? Are you overwhelming him once again? I’m sorry, you think, immediately afterward, and you hope to God that he—
He returns the image. This time, he’s the one squeezing you, shivering against your cold aura but holding on nevertheless. You blink. His mind creates a vivid, deeply soothing picture. You’ve never known another’s emotions so intimately. A warmth fills your entire body, profound enough that you briefly fear you might melt.
“Thank you.” Ebenezer is crying when you look at him, his face buried in his hands. “I… needed that.”
Your own lip twitches. Are you about to cry, too? You haven’t done it in many, many years. Maybe too many years. You’ve forgotten what it feels like.
Your voice is tight. “I think we both did.”