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Till wakes up, clawing at his chest.
BLINK GONE
' What…happened?’
He remembers something. Ivan? He blinks.
No…a head of yellow. Which…who had yellow, again? Blonde. Messy, fluffy, blonde. Who was it? His head spun.
Till can’t think. He can’t seem to remember.
OH IN A BLINK GONE
His throat clogs dry and his conflicting feelings give him a headache.
The block in his head that fogs up his memories pushes and pushes and yet he desperately craves for his lost thoughts. He feels lost.
FORGET EVERYTHING AND ENJOY
He doesn’t remember and he doesn’t know where he is— or what happened.
‘What happened in the final?’
He remembers…Ivan ROUND TWO.
He tries not to think of ROUND SIX.
OH IN A BLINK GONE
He doesn’t remember anything else. And that scares him. A little. He grasps the blades of grass beneath himself tightly.
In the corner of his eye he sees its light. It’s ethereal— the color a glowing blue and white. It’s— divine. Maybe. It captures his attention. Makes him think of only it— for the moment.
He scrunches his face as he starts playing with the grass. He hasn’t played with grass for a long time. When he thinks about that he flinches a little back.
That muddy smog comes back. What is it? What is it he can’t remember?
DON'T MISS THIS MOMENT
The grass isn’t helping. Till frowns and rips out a patch.
It’s ugly. The dirt underneath is ugly. There’s this ugly, bald patch of grass in the rolling, divine fields of grass and Till just ruined it because he can’t fucking remember.
He wants to bash his head in. Would the pain help him remember?
No. he doesn’t think so.
..He still wants to bash his head in. Everything feels dead to him. Is he dead too? Is this that ‘heaven’ Mizi talked about?
There’s no way he’s in heaven. Gods, he must’ve lost something more than just a—godforsaken memory of blonde, blonde, blonde, blonde and purple fingers and even then he can’t remember for fucks sake— somebody must've bashed his head in for him.
OH IN A BLINK GONE
Huh, how wonderfully kind of them.
He stares at the grass again, a little mournfully.
His ears ring.
Does he believe in god? In heaven? No, they would’ve saved Ivan him, but they didn’t, so they aren’t real. He muses— because he doesn’t have much of anything else.
His ears ring and his nose burns suddenly. He hears guitar— his electric guitar— and panic claws it’s way up.
He ignores the peaceful xylophone horribly mix-matched in.
Why can’t he strum? Why can’t he catch up? He’s gonna die, he's gonna die because he can’t fucking strum fast enough to catch UP—
DON'T MISS THIS MOMENT
Bile. Bile rises. Oh my god he’s throwing up.
Why is he going to throw up?— and there’s no time to think about it, no, because the nausea, it climbs like a rabid dog and it jumps too many steps and Till knows he’s gonna vomit all over the grass.
Tears prick his eyes and he hunches over all alone and he feels so nauseous.
He sobs. It burns. It burns his throat, his insides. It hurts so bad. He sputters and vomits and coughs, he wants it all out now . Green blurs his vision. It hurts to wretch it all out.
God , it’s so stifling and humid. It hurts to breathe . Maybe he should believe in God now. Will they give him air? Please, please let him breathe.
I'M TELLIN' YOU BLINK GONE
He feels he’s dying. He might be dying.
It tastes so bad.
Everything is so dizzy.
His arms tremble so bad as he struggles not to collapse in the big, disgusting green mess he just made.
‘Please don’t collapse please don’t collapse pleasedon’tplease.’
LEAVE NO REGRETS
Even as he pleads his body feels so weak and he can’t help but betray himself.
He falls and falls and he feels like falling a million stories down into space, suffocating.
And his face meets...grass. it’s not his vomit. Where is his vomit? Where did he vomit? He looks around. There's no vomit anywhere. Only burning grass.
Till startles up. Why is the grass burning? All of its on fire. Besides him and his grass.
The ugly, bald grass patch is gone with the vomit too. Nowhere to be seen.
Just fire.
Blonde, blonde, BLONDE—
THE CLOCK GOES
Is this…his fault? He's so horrible. Why, why why why WHY WHY. Panic surges up again and the vomit doesn’t come to take it away and his nose feels snotty.
Something trails out of his nostrils and blocks his airway and now he really can’t breathe. All he can do is try and suck it back up, try and save himself from messing up again.
TICK-TOCK
If he flips over. Will it make it better?
He wants to see...the sky. His arms feel like jelly.
Groaning, he stumbles to turn himself over.
‘Ughhhhhhhhh.’ His mind decides to unhelpfully drone.
The sky looks really fucking off to him, when he finally manages to simply flip himself. He’s so useless he can’t even save Ivan. It looks nothing like Anakt Garden. Or anywhere else.
It looks almost like…a stage.
TICK-TOCK
His eyes zero in. Everything comes back into focus. Teal eyes shake and just out of the corner of his eye he can see blood slip down his face. His nose is bleeding. That’s why he can’t breathe.
He doesn’t feel that joy in discovering that. He feels even worse, actually. Till can’t blame it on nausea, on why he feels so bad, and he panics again.
It’s the type that makes him flail because he doesn’t really want to accept that he might be fine with that. That he might be fine with simply dying to Luka.
Oh. It was Luka all along, wasn’t it? It was Luka’s name he couldn’t remember. Luka was the blonde he despairing clung to for a sense of normalcy, for an escape to a heaven he didn’t know he created for himself. Didn’t know he was dying on the outside.
Now he has to face that. Now, he has to face the music. No vomiting to cover it up. No more training.
This...was it. He failed. That was that.
TICK-TOCK
Was he really fine with dying then? For an impossible fight he really thought he could win? With just that admiring feeling he got from Mizi? Even... as he crumbled at his reminder of Ivan?
....He kind of gets why Mizi beat up Luka. Even if he would’ve lost points and died anyway, at least Luka could’ve gotten a beating for all that memory.
He didn’t need a reminder of his failure, damnit.
Hm.
Till feels like he has a lot of time to think, now that he's dying. He could just…never wake up again. His eyes are heavy. Yet he thinks. That’s all he can do, right now. Isn’t it?
So Till regrets.
It’s only natural for a bird, feather cut, to wish to fly, shouldn’t it? To fly when they flew and chose to doom itself, letting go of its freedom. No sadness to be felt, just that fleeting sensation of flying and falling.
BLINK-GONE