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When Sunday awakened, he was greeted with darkness. Faint, mesmerizing patterns obscure themselves behind black veils in this stuffy hotel room. His body floated, suspended in sickly sweet dreams. True Order, the crescendo of a dream realized, crashing down like a flightless bird, cushioned by the warmth of his sister’s embrace…
But he was awake.
Oh, was he awake.
They were given leniency, for now, as the stage was cleared and The Family scrutinized the events that transpired. Naturally, Sunday didn't expect to get away scott-free. Like all deeds for the greater good, he would have been met with resistance on all sides regardless of what he did.
But it was the silence that followed that was slowly chipping away at his sanity. Knowing the Family, he expected all sorts of punishment to befall them. Imprisonment. Banishment. Torture. Hell, he would have preferred they clipped his wings entirely– spiritually, figuratively, literally. But no, they were free to move about– they were even free to dream, with some restrictions– and all the while, Sunday felt that ever present watchful eye. Once again, they were at the mercy of this wretched Family, thrown back in their cages where they belonged as they awaited their fate. It was sickening.
It was sickening to be awake.
He jolts up when he hears the door of his hotel room open. Truly, more of a luxurious prison cell than anything.
“Robin.” Sunday sighs in relief, breath a little shakier than he would have liked to let on. But there was no other person he would trust to be vulnerable with. He reaches out to touch her cheek when she sits beside him. His thoughts of punishment and exile coming back to him in that split second– as he had never thought that whatever happened to him would most likely happen to Robin as well– and a sickening coldness washes through him. The question tumbles out of his lips in a hurried worry. “Are you alright? You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No, no. I’m fine!” Robin shakes her head. She looked… different. Without the overly decorated costume she put on as a performer, she looked as ordinary as ever. Anxiety graced her features– as one would be, when put in a situation like this. But even then, her light shines through. “I came here to check up on you. You… haven't left your room, is all. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m alright. You know you need not worry about me. Besides, I doubt anyone would want to see me out there, just lounging about as if nothing happened.” He pauses, clears his throat before he makes his sister worry even further.
“But everyone’s been worried about you.” Robin clasps his hands. Everyone? He feels a strange, nauseous feeling somewhere in his gut. “We’re… still under protection, of course. But the Family has been lenient enough to let me get in contact with the Astral Express.”
After a moment of silence, he gives a half-hearted laugh. “Well, tell them I’m not going anywhere.”
Somehow, he found that hard to believe. The only person who the Astral Express would worry for, and the only person who would truly mourn for him is sitting right beside him. But Sunday decides to muse her anyway.
“And what of that mangy mutt?” Sunday scoffs, sitting up straight and dusting himself off. A curiosity he couldn’t help but ask, now that they were on the topic of people caring for people’s well-being. A certain someone was left out of that list. “I’ve yet to give him a piece of my mind for the indecency of literally stabbing me in the back.”
His sister falls silent.
“Mr. Gallagher… He…"
Robin tells him the Trailblazer’s tall tales. The full truth behind Penacony, its reflection sleeping underneath the grandiose facade. The truth behind the actors on the stage he and the Dreamaster had set, what their fates had been after the standing ovation. His face remained unmoving through it all, but not for any sort of apathy. Though, he could argue with himself about that another time.
So Gallagher was… gone? It wasn't as though he cared deeply for the man, but even with the grave transgression of murdering his sister behind the lie of working together, a part of Sunday couldn't find it in him to truly hate Gallagher in a way that matters. After all, he was the one that reunited them. Gave them a chance to break free of the Family’s chains for the first time since they were children.
It was a shame. Perhaps, out of every single variable that had crossed his path, it was Gallagher that understood him best. Gallagher, who had the audacity to stand and face him as his equal, way before the curtain had even dropped. But in the end, he was too good to be true.
A dream within a dream.
“I see.”
It was all Sunday could say. An emptiness settles in his chest, one that he couldn’t pinpoint before Robin had left the room to give him space to rest. Its weight only truly sinks in when he laid down, his eyes wide awake, mind elsewhere.
As the days passed, Sunday grew more restless. The walls of his prison grew ever smaller around him as wayward thoughts occupied the space outside his brain. The anticipation of something made his bones itch. His last talk with Robin had, strangely enough, weighed heavily on his mind. Recalling bits and pieces of it, being reminded of the way Robin held his hands– a comfort that once eased his easily rattled heart– was now reason for his chest to grow heavy, filling his lungs with muck so thick it kept him from breathing. For a moment, he muses if this was the torture the Family had finally imposed upon him.
Most days, he shuts himself off in his room, curled up on a velvet couch with the lights off. He had stopped talking to Robin.
And he hadn’t dared to close his eyes. There was no point to it. Dreams of a perfect tomorrow now shattered into a million pieces, what replaced them were echoes of the ghosts that sprang forth in his conquest.
It was ridiculous. Death did not exist in Penacony. In the end, no one was truly harmed. And yet…
His thoughts stray to familiar, yet unfamiliar places. Dreamflux Reef. Those couple of hours he had spent in the heart of the real Penacony, scouring the streets in frantic desperation looking for Robin as Gallagher patiently tailed behind him. They made stops here and there as Gallagher took a second to greet back at those who said hello to him, took a couple of minutes to run small errands for those that needed it.
Sunday had refused to talk to him during that whole time, incensed as he was with how they even got in that predicament in the first place. But now, he would give up anything for just one conversation with Gallagher. To prod him of answers: What was the Reef for? How long have you been here? Have you been tending to these people this whole time? Just who are you?
Alas, this interlude had only lasted a couple of sweet hours. As all the actors made their way to the main stage, they entered their third act, and the rest was history.
He would die before these thoughts saw the light of day, but a small, microscopic part of him was moved by it all. By Robin’s genuine kindness in spite of it all. By the Trailblazer’s thickheadedness, their refusal to keep their noses out of everyone’s business. By the people who slipped through the cracks and fell through the real Penacony, how even amidst that imperfect dream, they had found happiness.
By Gallagher, who had given him another chance to correct his course, no matter how unconventional his means had been.
Sunday was just too resolute– he needed to see through his convictions to the end, to prove that true Order was the right choice – and that he made his own decision. Deep down, he thinks that Gallagher knew all along about his intent to betray them. And yet, he made no further steps to pull Sunday back. He likes to think maybe it was born out of that self-same conviction.
He had won, that wretched, despicable dog. He won, and yet…
“...This is beyond my duties as a Memokeeper.”
“And yet you intervene, time and time again.” He argues, sitting up straight. Even at his wits’ end, he refuses to let go of his calm charade. “But I digress. I would still humbly ask for this favor. Preserving precious memories still aligns with your creed, does it not?”
The lilac-haired woman eyes him silently. Again with the scrutinizing gazes. But for once, be it out of exhaustion or desperation, Sunday could not find it in him to retort.
“This memory is… important to me.” Amidst the cracks of his already broken facade, something genuine slips out. “And with all said and done, I’m afraid he would disappear into obscurity, forgotten by history.”
He doesn't meet her gaze. He can't stomach even a crumb of kindness thrown his way, even if he did ask for it. “If you need reassurance that I will not deceive you, you have my word–”
“Do what you must, then.” Her voice was surprisingly soft. Understanding. It made Sunday feel even more ill. The woman steps forth and hands him a translucent card. ”I suppose we all go at our own pace.”
Sunday reluctantly takes the card. It was lighter than air, blank slate as it was, almost shining a faint light. But his eyes were fixed on the lilac-haired woman, expecting a catch of sorts. There always was, in favors like this. But the woman simply turns heel and walks away with a few parting words.
“But even from the sweetest of dreams, we all wake up one day. I hope you remember this.”
In his dreadful waking hours, he wonders what his fate would have been if maybe he never relented, to give up on his doomed principles. To listen to the voices around him that told him to stop.
Asdana was a place of infinity, a place where truly anyone can make anything happen. Penacony was just one of the many dreamscapes that made up this system. And so, he knew that what he wanted to do wasn't beyond the realm of possibility.
They say that one cannot truly die as long as they are remembered. Dreams, memories– such intangible and malleable things. So easy to take into your own hands and mold them into something to take comfort in.
He wonders what it would have been like. What it would have felt like. He wonders, if perhaps by some different stroke of fate, their goals aligned, their paths crossed and straightened to a single point instead of being violently tangled like this– Would they have seen each other eye to eye? As equals, instead of one leering over the other. He wonders if Gallagher would take him in, if he would allow Sunday to stay by his side. He wonders what it would feel like to be close to him– to be intimate with him– without having the need to pull up his walls. He wonders what his hands would feel like on Sunday’s skin. Would they feel as rough and calloused as they look? Would he still smell of cigarettes and syrup, sick and sweet, if he took his breath away in a single kiss?
Knowing who he was– what he was– would Gallagher still willingly understand him?
Sunday remembers that night vividly. The night he confronted him. He hears his voice, his words. So goddamn condescending. The way he paraded around, gloating in his schemes discovered way too late. The memory of it made Sunday angry. Shaken by the throes of grief, he let his guard down just this once and let the other man get into his head. Perhaps it was this moment that heralded his end– made him desperate to wrest back the control that slipped away from his fingers– but the consequences of that reality were both a lifetime ago and still far into the future. There was no point dwelling on it now. No, the only thing he wanted were these memories as they were.
He turns around to look at his face. To see him . But the sting of Dormancy pierces through his core, and his rage dissipates in an instant.
For a moment, he was free.
He falls through dreams within dreams within dreams– a kaleidoscope of what-ifs and endless possibilities locked within a single moment in time.
A pair of arms catch him in his fall.
“Well, look who’s awake.”
His body gains back the weight that it usually has as he plummets into this fixed point in time. His senses finally catch back up to him after the fall, and the first he notices is that pleasantly unpleasant smell of cigarettes and booze, welcoming him in an embrace. The sound of his voice– Did it always sound this sweet?
He couldn't help himself. Sunday flings his arms around the other man. Gallagher lets out a surprised breath, but he returns the hug with a small laugh.
“Well, good morning to you too, little birdie.”
In this dream, he would give up on everything. He would give up on enforcing true Order, and let the people of Penacony take the wheel to steer their own fates. He would step away from the duty the Dreamaster had bestowed upon him, and he would stay with Gallagher in Dreamflux Reef instead.
The air down here was less stifling. The watchful eye of the Family unable to pierce through the canopy of stars that blanketed the Reef. And instead of the pretentious lot that littered Penacony’s streets, those that bought their tickets to paradise, he meets those that needed this sweet dream the most, those he aimed to bring salvation to once upon a time: the downtrodden, the weak, the misfortuned.
Perhaps, his fate did not lie in soaring the skies as his sister did, but to walk on the ground in his lonesome amidst humbling obscurity. Strangely, Sunday didn't mind it at all. If fading away like this meant breaking free of the shackles of his responsibilities, then…
“What’s on your mind, hm?”
He feels a hand pull him back by the waist, a pair of lips nuzzling onto the wings at the back of his neck. It makes him shudder, the affection making him flush red, and Sunday instinctively swats Gallagher’s face away. That was never enough to deter the other man from pressing a chaste kiss on his cheek though.
“Nothing.” Sunday was quick to answer. “Just enjoying the view.”
Gallagher raises a brow. He pulls him closer and Sunday relaxes in his arms. Still, his eyes stayed fixed on the moon above. “Worried about what’s going on up there?”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, considering that we haven't been blown to smithereens yet, then maybe everything turned out alright.” Gallagher hums. “No sense in worrying your pretty little head about it.”
“You’re not the least bit curious?”
Even in this dream, Sunday has not let go of his skeptical nature. He wasn't that far gone yet.
“Maybe, I am. But Mikhail put his trust on those kids to save the day, just as he put his trust in me to find them. That’s good enough for now.” Gallagher muses. “And even if it's not enough, we’ll come climbing up there to lend a hand when they need it.”
Right. He had resolved to break his dedication to Harmony, lending whatever strength he could offer to the outsiders that would liberate them all from the hands of the Dreamaster. At this moment, all he could do is place his faith in them.
The call to arms did not come to pass, and the Planet of Festivities continued to turn. The next few hours felt like a lifetime. A dream upon a dream upon a dream, a possibility locked in this single moment in time. And in this lifetime, he sheds himself of his responsibilities.
In this lifetime, he doesn’t lose Gallagher because of his misguided ideals. In this lifetime, Sunday gets to know him. Truly gets to know him. Cheeky, sharp-witted Gallagher that always had something smart to say, mostly to Sunday’s expense. Caring, considerate Gallagher who teased him relentlessly, but held him with a gentleness he never knew he needed. They would stay in an old apartment, a couple stories off the main district of the Reef, spend their days attending to the souls that had been lost and made their home here. During the day, Sunday would read to the children that Robin taught to sing, and at night, he made his home in Gallagher’s arms. In this lifetime, he learns to love. Or what’s close to it. He learns to love and care for others the same way he loved and cared for Robin.
In this lifetime, he wasn’t known as Sunday, head of the Oak Family, self-appointed chosen of Ena the Order.
Just simply, Sunday.
“How long do you think you’d want to stay here?”
“In Dreamflux Reef?” Sunday hums to himself, tracing circles on Gallagher’s chest with his fingers as he ponders an answer. He never truly thought about it. “I doubt the Family will ever stop looking for me. I’m a traitor now, after all.” He laughs at the irony of it all. “Once I step foot up there, they’ll detain me for sure.”
“Maybe… It’s time to leave Penacony altogether.”
“Oh?” Sunday shifts in his spot, propping his head on Gallagher’s chest to properly look at him. “Travel, huh? Not a bad idea. Do you think the Astral Express is taking passengers?”
“That would be the dream.” Gallagher chuckles, and the way it vibrates through his skin made Sunday’s heart full. Still, his laugh had a tinge of melancholy to it. One that Sunday couldn't help but notice. “...But you know that’s not what I meant.”
“And what do you mean, pray tell?”
“What I mean… Is this truly what you want, little bird?”
“What..?”
“I see that you haven’t lost that hard head of yours. Still so stubborn, still won’t listen. I don’t know if I should be impressed or concerned.”
Sunday slowly sits back, a coldness suddenly seeping through his bones. Gallagher’s eyes narrow ever so slightly at him, as if looking at him through time itself. Even at the start, he was a mile above them all, like some sort of omniscient pest. Overseeing this unfolding story, writing its passages from the shadows, even well after the ending had graced their pages.
But no, it can’t be him.
And yet, it is. It is, right? Gallagher, just as he remembers him.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. You know what I am, Sunday. I’ve done my part. I’m not supposed to be here.”
The facade breaks and recreates itself, again and again and again, its pieces grinding into dust and piercing through Sunday’s skin. He can't tell if he was talking to Gallagher at all. The real Gallagher, impossible that may be.
“Tell me– Are you happy here?”
“...And if I am?”
“Well, then who am I to spoil your fun?” This Gallagher chuckles again, the emotion behind it unclear. He casts his eyes downwards as he slowly reaches for Sunday’s hand, brushing his knuckles with a gentle thumb. Poisoned words made sweet with such a tender touch. “But this can’t be good for you, darlin’.”
The feathers at the back of his neck trill, like a cat sensing danger. He feels a crack somewhere in this sweet, sweet dream. Sunday scoffs, trying to mask it off. “And since when have you been so caring, my love?”
“Now that hurts.” The other man looks back up. Again, unreadable. Unbearable . “Why wouldn’t I care for you? Now that everything’s settled, that’s all I can do, right? That’s my new purpose.”
He raises the hand to his lips and his touch feels like rot blooming on Sunday’s skin. Sunday quickly averts his gaze. Something rumbles in the pit of his gut, making him nauseous.
“But it’s awfully cold here, don’t you think? With just the two of us.”
“It’s perfect. ” Sunday says through gritted teeth. “Because I don’t need anything else. Not anymore.”
“Even though you’re all alone here in the end?”
In those velvet eyes belied a certain gentleness. His words, confronting as they were, were spoken with a softness Sunday couldn't have possibly deserved.
He can't look at him. He can't. He can’t look at this dream anymore.
Sunday snaps. He breaks from Gallagher’s gentle hold, and he lunges at the other man with his hands around his neck.
“Shut up! You think I don't know that?”
“Then why?” Gallagher remains unmoving, only peering up at Sunday. “Why this dream? Why me?”
A question that he had been dreading so much, he never even thought to ask it to himself. Why Gallagher? A traitor he admittedly didn't care about, someone he despised. Had he really gone so far off the deep end, that he had made an entire delusion over a man he doesn’t truly know?
Gallagher continues to speak. The tone of his voice, it was that same tint of kindness extended by Robin, the courtesy of that Memokeeper. It made him sick. “In time, Penacony will forget about me, if they even knew who I was to begin with.”
“You selfish wretch. You can't just… You can't just say that. After everything you've done, you expect me to forget about you?”
“You can.”
“No! Damn you, Gallagher!” Sunday spits, but his voice slowly wavers, tethering on desperation. His fingers dig deep in the other man’s skin, but he remains unbothered. “What else is there for me to do, damn it…”
And finally, he breaks.
“I already lost. What else… Can’t I just…” He shrinks into himself, burying his face in Gallagher’s chest and shielding himself from this world, now closing in around him. “Just this once, can’t I be left to rot in peace..?”
A pair of hands gingerly wrap around him, and it makes him wince. But like always, it was never enough to deter the man.
“I’m sorry, angel. I really am.”
It was never enough to make him stop haunting Sunday every waking moment of his life.
“Whether you chose to step into your role as the antagonist of this story, or stayed here in this sweet dream with me… It still would have been the end of my duty. So please…”
A palm rests on his cheek, tilting his head up to meet Gallagher’s eyes. His next words– whether it was from Gallagher himself, or dug out from the very recesses of his exhausted mind– would deplete this last fight in him. And he relinquishes himself in the warmth of his embrace.
“Please don’t blame yourself, Sunday.”
Even in the sweetest of dreams, we all wake up one day.
If that was the case… If one day, inevitably, the world will swallow us whole for the sins we’ve committed, then…
“Just for a moment… Can't we stay like this for just a moment?”
Sunday whispers, careful with his words lest they be snatched away from his hands again. And he makes this moment last another lifetime, committing that scent of cigarettes and sweet syrup to memory.
Sunday awakens, greeted with darkness. Faint, mesmerizing patterns obscure themselves behind black veils in this stuffy hotel room.
His body floats, suspended in sickly sweet dreams.