Chapter Text
Chatterbox growled with effort as his pickaxe connected, cracking another lump off the wall of rock. Clad only in dress pants and beat up tennis shoes, his skin was covered in streaks of clay and powdered rock, a sweat-soaked shirt long discarded in a different room. There was no way to tell how long he had been working save for the ache in his bones. There was no clock, no calendar, no sunlight or windows to inform him of the time of day.
Not that it mattered. Time had become incomprehensible, with pain his only reliable unit of measurement. It centered him, keeping him at least partly anchored in the reality he had been thrust into. He was listless without his Hiccups, desperate for distraction that didn't involve the idiots that orbited him when he left the uneasy silence of the Funhouse. There, deep in the underbelly of his inherited monolith, he had worked himself to exhaustion nearly every day since she left.
It had been two months?
Three?
Six?
The thought stopped him from breathing again. He had let her leave at her most vulnerable, and so much time may have passed... Guilt and loneliness corroded his spirit, made every pump of his heart push acid through his veins. Anything could have happened to her out there - she was capable, but so, so broken, her mind cracked in half by the unbearable weight of her love for him. Chatterbox, too, was splitting into pieces.
“Stupid, stupid - why did you fall-” He hissed, swinging the pickaxe again. His shoulders burned. It hurt to breathe. “Why did you let yourself do it? You just ruined her - made her leave-”
He swung again, stars twinkling at the corners of his vision. The temporary balm of unconsciousness threatened to overtake him. It had become a comfort to feel it, knowing that soon his body would crumble beneath the weight of the pickaxe, exactly as it had done many nights before.
“She would have killed herself -” He whispered, trying for the thousandth time to convince himself that he made the right decision. His soul screamed to the contrary each of those thousand times, telling him that he had doomed them both. And now, months later, his voice sometimes felt as if it belonged to someone else when he scolded himself.
“Could have locked her up - so what if she hated me for it? At least she would be – she would be…” The pickaxe slid from hands as they went limp.
Chatterbox fell unconscious, dropping into the jagged pile of earth and stone he had made.
-
A blizzard raged around him, reducing visibility to nothing. His feet trudged through the deepening snow still, somehow, though he could not feel them. The cold that threatened to reach his bone marrow had not paralyzed them yet. He couldn't feel anything through the cold. He could only watch himself moving, swallowing the heavy fear that his eyes would freeze open.
Then, the veil of white parted layer by layer, and in the distance, a strange gathering was made clear. There were hundreds of reindeer walking in sync through the storm, the tines and dips of their antlers collecting snow. He remembered seeing reindeer before, when he was only a child. Only they called them caribou there.
A deep calm fell over him as he watched the herd pass; but it was short lived.
A scream cracked the serenity of the scene, and crushed his fragile heart.
The herd broke into a run as the cry echoed back.
It was her.
She was crying out for him.
-
Chatterbox sat bolt upright, grunting as he slid off the stone piece he had collapsed on. The cavern-like room was chilly, but did not freeze his limbs. He tested them anyway, rolling his shoulders and ankles to make sure he hadn’t ended up in some strange place where dreams could manifest real world symptoms. It wasn't the first time he had endured that dream specifically, nor did it mystify him any less. It always felt significant but in ways he didn't feel smart enough to explain. He had considered asking Windsong, Los Santos’ resident spiritual guide, to dive into the meaning of it with him, but had dismissed it just as easily. There was nobody that he wanted to be near at that point in time other than his missing Queen. He couldn't even bring himself to hold court with his mother anymore.
Introspection ground to a halt when a noise caught his ear that he hoped his mind wasn’t making up.
There was a whisper.
He could only barely make it out. It seemed to be coming from another of the many rooms he had dug out over the months. A pained grunt pushed from his throat as he rose to his feet, the unforgiving nature of his sisyphean task having taken a toll. He had no plans for how deep or wide he planned to dig, merely working himself to the bone for the opportunity to eventually be buried himself when the house collapsed atop his catacombs. He had lost count of how many rooms he had torn into the earth below the Funhouse. And since nobody knew of the work he was doing, the whisper raised his hackles, giving him just enough adrenaline to wake up completely.
“Who’s in here? This place isn’t for you.” His voice was deeper, snapping out into the empty air as he hefted his pickaxe back up. The room he was working on was still only partially dug out; the whisper grew louder when he left it.
“Please…” He still couldn’t make it out, but it came from a room to the left. He followed it.
“Please? Please what? You’re a trespasser!” Chatterbox slammed his tool-turned-weapon into one of the wooden beams that held his walls in place.
“Give it back! It isn’t fair!”
The whisper became a bitter cry that wound razor wire around his heart.
“Cups?” He whispered back, eyes wide as he picked up speed, wooden handle slipping from his grasp as his body devoted that energy to pursuit.
“You can’t keep it - I need it, please, I can’t go back without it!”
“Cups, is that you? Please let that be you - whatever that it is, I’ll get you a new one-” He choked out, eyes welling with tears. She sounded so scared that the need to comfort her felt compulsory.
“Give it back!” Her scream was shrill and pained - what had been taken from her that caused her such pain?
He rounded the corner into the last room. His heart burst into fireworks, pounding in his chest when he saw her form in the far corner. Clad in what he recognized instantly as a mustard-yellow prison outfit, her sleeves were rolled up, her hands tight fists that pounded against the unforgiving stone that made up the walls. Blood splattered her forearms and hands, leaving thick wet streaks behind each time they hit their mark.
“Ray, stop - stop, you’re hurting yourself, oh yuck -” He picked up speed and slammed on to his knees beside her.
“P-please don’t - please, I didn’t mean–” She stammered, reeling back so hard away from the wall that she fell. She struck the floor, but did not stop moving, scrambling backwards.
“It’s me, Ray, it’s Chatterbox - you don’t gotta be scared of me, remember? I would never -” He jumped back to his feet, but in the time it took for him to stand she had made it out the uneven doorway, screaming as she went. Her words became terrified wails that broke the dam holding his tears at bay.
He ran out of the room – the screaming stopped like a radio being switched off mid-song.
The air was still and thick as he ran through the rooms, up and down the stairs, his earlier chill gone, melting into horrid sweat. The rooms became a labyrinth as he cried out, searching for her by sound and sight, checking every nook and cranny for signs of her. He searched each room a dozen times over, feeling as if each had begun to stretch into infinity.
Frenzy took him - how could it not? He had seen her, heard her, could still smell her blood in the room she had been in.
This was not like the other times he had seen and heard her since she left. This was not a memory - Los Santos had orange jumpsuits, not yellow. He had never seen her pound her fists bloody. He had never seen her defiance against something be warped into such wild terror. Was she still afraid of herself? Was she afraid of him? She hadn’t even looked at him.
“Cups, please… Please, talk to me, whatever it is, I can help you - I can fix it - we can fix it!” He pleaded, desperate to find her. Save for the echo of his own voice, he received no answer.
Only when his legs hurt too much to keep running did he search for the door that led into the finished part of the basement.
When he found it, he began to question his sanity. He had forgotten that he had propped a door up against the handle to avoid anyone wandering in. The clowns always tended to show up at the Funhouse and he didn’t need any of them rooting around while the outer door wasn’t being hidden behind a wall of basement detritus. The chair was in the same position that he propped it in, and no blood was smeared on it or the handle to indicate her barreling through. If she had been in any of the rooms, he would have found her.
His body felt immensely heavy as he passed through the threshold. Maybe he had kicked up something nasty down there that had made him loopy, or the lack of sleep was making his mind play horrible tricks on him. Perhaps the guilt was weighing on him more than he had realized, so deeply that it was now demanding his attention rather than allowing him to wither away beneath the earth like the scum that he was. But what could he do? He had no idea what he could do other than wait where she left him and try not to chip himself into pieces. He didn’t know where she was. He didn’t know what she was doing. He didn’t know if she was in danger, but his recurring dreams always ended with her screams echoing off a frozen landscape.
As he ascended, lightheaded and filthy, Chatterbox tried to focus on something else. In the kitchen he opened a half empty bottle of water and finished it off, closing his eyes as he heard her laughter replaying, watching the ghost-memory behind his lids. Maybe he just needed to clean up and sleep in an actual bed. The more he dwelt on his uncertainty about her, the harder it became to care about his own well being. He was trapped in Los Santos, bound by his word to be there when she returned, having no way to locate her anyway. He never promised to be whole when she returned, but he thought he should at least try to make her return easy. If she returned to Los Santos to find him dead or a husk of the man she left waiting, it would only undo her healing.
“Get it together, Chatterbox… Yuckin’ idiot.” He walked to the stairs, beginning an even slower ascent than the one from the basement, his legs burning.
He shed the remainder of his clothing before getting close to the bathroom, kicking off his shoes and shoving his pants and underwear down to step out of while still in the hall. He hadn’t been bothering with even a bandana around his lower face while in the semi-privacy of the Funhouse and the feeling of sweat and dirt layered on his face was making him itchy. The pipes groaned to life when he turned the knob, showing their age before the water began to flow. He stepped in without concern over the temperature, knowing it would heat up enough eventually. The chill washing over him brought him out of his mind further, emptying his head of burdensome thoughts.
As the water heated up, he began to scrub himself clean with some of the body wash that Cups had left behind. It smelled like spiced fruits and he used it sparingly for fear he would run out before she returned. There were other things to wash with, but he needed her scent to center him… to wipe away the smell of blood. Soon he was awash with her again, the grime of his labors disappearing down the drain. Steam filled the room as he washed his hair with her shampoo, his eyes rolling shut once more. He breathed deep and slow, the hot water soothing his aches and clearing his head.
When he finally opened his eyes to gaze up at the ceiling, they widened as far as they could go, his breath catching in his throat.
Instead of a dark ceiling obfuscated by steam could see swirling lights dancing in an endless expanse of night sky. He stopped breathing as he watched them move, adorned by the stars glittering behind them. Raising his arms, he stretched his fingers toward them, unable to figure out what his spatial orientation was at that time. Was he in the sky or somewhere else?
He still felt the water, the warm embrace of its heat holding him steady. But when he looked down, he could not see the bathtub or his bathroom. Instead, he saw a pool of water beneath him, the lights above given a mercury-silver sheen in its reflection. It was as if he was suspended in place between the sea and the sky, both neverending in all directions.
Then suddenly, the sea blinked.
He gave his head a rough shake. He was back in his bathroom, struggling to catch his breath.
“Must be tired… I'm losing it.” He mumbled, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
He stepped out of the bathtub, grabbing the towel off the back of the door to dry off. What had he seen? Why? Too tired to question the way reality seemed to be morphing into otherworldly vision. Maybe he was still asleep somewhere in the basement. Maybe there had been a gas leak and he was tripping his yuck off down there still.
Grumbling and rubbing his face with the towel, he looked in the split mirror to check his pupils.
He furrowed his brows and stopped breathing again as he looked at his reflection. In one half he could see himself; in the other was Ray. Her visage mimicked his expression, brows knit together, silver eyes wide in confusion followed by recognition.
“Wh… what the yuck?” He whispered out, drawing a hand up to touch the surface. It was the same mirror that had always been there, not broken enough to warrant replacing the glass. It still worked as a mirror, but one with two sides, a viewing portal.
Her lips did not move to mirror his own - he couldn't hear her, but he could read her lips just this once. She was saying his name, a palm pressing flat enough to define each line contained within before his eyes. “Is that you? Cups? What's happening?!”
Throat tightening, he placed a hand over hers, hoping she could see it or feel it wherever she was. He studied what he could see of her, not moving from where he stood. If she could see him too, he wanted her to be able to take comfort in his face as she once had. Her face looked the same, with her tan skin and perfect cheekbones, her captivating eyes - but it looked different, too. A new scar was newly healing on her cheek, and her lower lip was swollen like an overripe fruit, bearing a fresh split right off center. Her hair was different, but he couldn't see enough of it to identify how.
“I- I don't know if you can hear me, Ray - I love you… I love you. I hope you remember how much I love you, ‘cause it's the only thing keeping me alive. I don't know where you are but please… please be safe.”
Their tears mirrored one anothers. She spoke on her side - could she hear him? If only he could hear her voice - if only he could have her tell him she was safe - that she loved him still. He watched her lips move in a language he could not understand. Silence had always sounded terribly foreign, the music of her voice sorely missed. He saw the split begin to bleed a little, but she didn't notice as she continued to try to communicate with his reflection.
She looked so real, like he could reach through the mirror if only he could open it like a window. He pulled his palms from the surface and tried to find some way, some trick to destroy the barrier between them. He could feel the back of the wall mounted mirror, and nothing behind. There was no window, only the looking glass that had connected them temporarily.
This was something more than mere delusion, more than a warped memory, something that could not be explained. It was her. Their connection had only strengthened in ways he couldn't yet comprehend while she was away, the thread that stretched between them taut and full of power.
As the steam dispersed through the holes in the walls, so too did her face in the mirror; he kept watch, eyes locked on hers. They shared a wavelength, committing the others face at that time to memory… both watching in silence until the other blinked out of sight. When both sides of the mirror only reflected him, he pulled away and ran to his bedroom. He hadn’t brought his phone with him to the basement, leaving it on its charger to avoid any contact with the outside world while in the one of his own design. Ignoring the texts from clowns pretending to be concerned, he called one of the few who had never led him astray; his mother. He sat on the bed, listening to it ring.
And ring.
And ring.
He looked at the phone as it continued, sighing and ending the call.
“Makes sense… It’s late.” He eyed the time; it was 4am. He tried Kirk and Twinkles to no avail after that. He didn’t know if either of them had reached out or come looking for him during this latest stint of self-isolation, so he chose to swallow and forget any irritation that they hadn’t answered.
“What would they even tell me? Chatterbox, you’re losing your yuck, stay outta that basement? Chatterbox, come do some yuck stuff and take your mind offa her?” He asked the walls of his home, the most stalwart of his companions… but also the one that responded in ways he couldn’t parse. Was it speaking to him now? Had it helped him view his missing love? Had it helped him see that she needed help?
He was suddenly full of energy, abandoning the bed. If there was truly some force in the universe working to draw him to her, he would accept it. Now more than ever he felt that his guilt was justified - that she needed him to find her. Whether she was lost or trapped, he would seek the signs. There were so many reminders of her in the Funhouse… but there were far more back in the city. He had to go to the places that were important to her, to them, and see where it would lead.
He moved to the wardrobe to yank out an outfit. He didn’t want to be recognized by anybody, so he opted for things out of the ordinary for him. Instead of dress pants, jeans; a black hoodie in place of a nice shirt. Pulling a fresh bandana across his lower face, he pulled up the hood and slid his shoes back on. When he glanced at the bed, his throat tightened.
“Cups… What’s happening to you?” He whispered.
On the bed she lay, body clad in a white cotton gown. Each limb was restrained with thick leather cuffs. She looked like a doll, body limp and unmoving. He noticed that her braids were gone, the bulk of her hair length shorn off; ear length lack waves were loose around her on the pillow, framing her beautiful and bruised face. She was not a doll but a fairy in forced repose, captured by some terrible monster and spread out for dissection. Was his mind fabricating guilt-painted horrors, or showing him an even more grim reality?
Chatterbox felt sick to his stomach, but brought a knee up onto the bed beside her. He knew she wasn't real, but she didn't disappear when he moved closer. Too afraid to touch her skin, he brought shaking fingers to one of her wrist cuffs. It would be easy to remove - if this was a projection of what she was going through at that second, he begged the universe to pull the string between them tight enough to bend reality, allowing him to free her. He held his breath as he touched leather, running his fingers down without lifting to feel the metal buckle. A chill ran down his spine as they found purchase, bringing his other hand up to quickly undo it.
“Please work –” He whispered, trembling as he felt it give beneath his hands.
His vision blurred as it slipped away, blinking back into the ether and dragging her with it. “Yuck - Ray, please be okay, please-”
He crumpled into the empty spot that once held her, and screamed. Flashing back to times that had really happened had been painful, but what was happening now was actual torment. It was agony to see her wounded outside of his reach, outside of his ability to tear into her enemies. But how could he find her? If the visions were messages, they had to have a meaning. If it was some out of sequence roadmap that would lead him to her, it didn't make sense just yet.
He needed more, no matter how much it hurt. Every part of his being had been marked by hers - marked as hers. He could not, would not continue to try to function without knowing her fate. He couldn't stay at the Funhouse any longer, the atmosphere too full of her to be bearable. She was every place he looked, within arms reach but impossible to grasp. He had to seek her out in the open air, follow the whispers until he could weave them into a map.
There would be signs of her all over Los Santos, too. She always left impressions wherever she went, painting every soul in her atmosphere in some way. The floor and walls of his home remembered her - so too would Grove Street, the canals, the hospital, the taco spot where they sold weed together, the food court, even the apartment she rarely went to. Just as he was marked, they would be too, changed by her time with them.
His movements felt mechanical, forced by purpose. At least if he had gone insane it was getting him out of the house. He grabbed a set of lockpicks from the nightstand drawer and made his way down the stairs, plotting out his route. First he would steal a car to avoid recognition in using any of his. It wouldn't be hard, considering Farmer Paul always left his cars and truck unlocked. From there he would go straight to the place he felt would be most overwhelming. Better to get the hardest part done first.
The first stop would be the Canals, then her former home on Grove. He would walk the cul de sac after, absorbing the pieces of her that she had left with the gang who had since abandoned the city. Everything they owned was still around, but the street was now a ghost town. A twinge of anger tightened his muscles at the thought of Chang Bang, at the way they had lied to her, tried to poison her against him when she lost her memory. The anger turned inward when he remembered the reason she had lost it to begin with.
“Yucking idiot… you had her and you screwed it all up. Unforgivable. Stupid.” He snarled aloud, bursting from the front door. The pre-dawn air was cold and soothing, scrubbing away the remainders of basement filth from his lungs. It did little to calm the turmoil inside as he jumped the fence, looking around for a car to snag.His phone vibrated in his pocket and he considered ignoring it. But if it was Tessa, Kirk, or Twinkles, he didn't dare. As much as he was desperate to find his other hand, he needed someone he could trust to tell him if he had truly lost his mind. Leaning against the side of the barn, Chatterbox pulled out his phone, and nearly dropped it.
The display read Ray Mond.
He slid down the barn's outer wall until he hit the ground, holding it in both hands. It rang a third time and he answered in a panic.
“Ray?! Is it you?” The nervous crackling in his voice made him cringe.
“S-stupid, stupid bitch - what were you thinking?!” The harsh words came from Cups, and were answered by Ray.
“I had to, I had to go-” Ray stammered, “I needed to be alone!”
“Cups? Ray? Please talk to me…” He interjected - he heard a buzzing in his ears - and she spoke again, one more in two parts. He sank into familiar terror as she continued to argue with herself.
“Why won't you just remember?! We're the same… you just refuse to be happy.” Said Cups.
“It isn't that fucking easy, Mugs -” Replied Ray, only to be snapped at directly after.
“Cups! My name is Hiccups and you know that, you're just being a yucking coward!” His Queen fought viciously, but her battle was primed to destroy her.
“Can you hear me?” He whispered weakly, thrust mentally into the time months before, when her split had first become noticable. He still felt entirely to blame, believing that if he had never made her choose in the mines that she would still be there… they would be married by then, the way it should be. Instead, she was lost, and he was trapped, their souls fractured instead of being made one.
“No I'm not… I just need to be alone, okay? I need time - I need time!” Ray’s voice was as broken sounding as his own as she continued the one sided conversation.
“When has being alone ever been good for us? You can barely remember what happened the last time we left - well, you left - that whole five years you were gone… right? You pushed it all down-”
“What the fuck do you know about it? You weren't there!” Ray pivoted from broken to furious, empty to full of rage.
“I was always here!” Cups screamed back –
The line cut out. He watched her name disappear from the display, then let the phone fall from his hands. He gripped his face tight, trying without success to catch the sobbing noise before it could escape. Surely this was all a bizarre nightmare, and he was still passed out in the basement. He had always heard that crazy people didn't think they were crazy, but wasn't sure how true it was. It felt to Chatterbox that even those dubbed insane by society would have, at one point, known that there was something wrong with them.
That was how he felt. Something was deeply wrong within his world. Loneliness had finally bored a hole deep enough into his psyche to warp it. Deep enough to make him feel like he had really felt the warmth of her body on the bed, really seen her face in the mirror. He was losing it, yet he couldn't stop. He couldn't bear to give up then. Would it be better to stop and go back to the Funhouse, try to forget the shock of seeing her hair cut short and her body bound? Could he somehow suppress seeing the pain in the eyes of his soul’s twin?
“Coward… you're a coward if you give up.” He snapped at himself, a dog barking at its own tail.
“What if I'm just going nuts… what if she comes back and I'm gone?” He reasoned as he stood, staring at his darkened phone screen. “She was always too good for me…”
He walked, and then began to run when he spotted a car on the side of a nearby barn. It was all automatic; Chatterbox felt strange, like something else was in control of his body. As he slid into the old 4-door and began to rummage for the keys, he also realized that the pain in his body seemed to have muted; still present, but he felt numb to it. “Always too good… you didn't deserve her. You broke her… but she needs us.”
As Chatterbox located the keys and started the truck, the colors of the earth around him shifted, becoming more grey. Everything was muted and dull, washing out to monochromes. It felt oppressive and sad, the sunshine drowned away. The car sped down the highway in the blink of an eye, dodging graveyard shift workers on their way home to sleep the day away. The city loomed in the distance, its skyline blotted out by a storm about to break.
Soon, he arrived, cutting the engine close to the bridge.
The Canals behind Grove street stretched out before him. Cups had always loved it back there, unaffected by the stench and charmed by the relative solitude of the area. They had so many important conversations there, with her pacing circles around him on the walkway or rolling down the grassy hill after losing her footing for the dozenth time. Without her there, it was just another grey spot he could barely stomach being near. He could almost hear her in the bush, ready to jump out, the memory so vivid that he could remember the thrill of fear. She liked to scare him, to make him react to things she had done; she craved and sought his attention in a way that nobody ever had.
When he realized that he was the center of her attention, he had become addicted. Some of it was selfish; who wouldn't want to brag? She was Ray, Los Santos' most eligible and aloof beauty. The IT girl - and she wanted him. But that had never been his goal with her… he had only wanted to torment her at first and cared nothing for her social standing. She had been the one to win him over. It all seemed so ridiculous. He could still barely believe that they had even been together to begin with, frequently going back through his messages and pictures to remind himself that it had been real. That it was real.
Stepping out of the car, a noise caught his attention right away. He couldn't place where it came from until he heard it again, eyes lifting and focusing on the distance. The sound originated up by the bend that he had once sped around with her on stolen jets kis.
“That… that can't be real…” He stammered aloud; the fear deepened, but so too did his sense of wonder.
Walking toward him was a massive reindeer, its antlers making it ten feet tall. Wise old eyes locked on to him during the approach, keeping Chatterbox locked in place. When the beast’s approach went from a walk to a jog, his heart fluttered with fear. “Okay… it isn't real… it isn't, it can't be.”
He considered sliding back into the car, but found himself walking toward the creature. It was then that he noticed that its antlers were adorned, each wrapped with red and white ribbons. The burst of color in the monotone landscape took his breath away. When it broke into a full run, they streamed behind it, fluttering and flicking in the wind, accompanied by a chorus of hooves and panting.
He broke away toward the hill and to the back of Ray's former home – the Gworls’ house. Max had sold it with her blessing, Ray having found a home in him. He wished that all of Ray's friends were like Max; kind, reliable, and brave enough to love her unconditionally. Of all of her friends, he was the one that Chatterbox trusted and cared for the most. He meant to spend more time with him in her absence, to protect him from the trials of life the way she would want him to. A pang of regret coiled in his stomach thinking of the things he had abandoned to dig his own grave; but he pushed it down.
Adrenaline coursed through him as the reindeer pivoted to climb up after him. As he ran, it got so close that he felt its breath on the back of his neck the second before he skittered up the fence, body rolling as it hit ground behind it. He heard no crash, no sign that it had struck home on the chain links; when he looked, it was gone. Taking a deep breath, he stood, pondering the back of the home. It sat unoccupied, all traces of its former owners scrubbed clean or removed. Would it be worth it to break in?
It didn't take him long to decide, knowing that walls held on to memories. The Funhouse was held together by spare pieces of wood and the ghosts that still lingered there. Every night he could hear it groan and creak, whispering its secrets to the wind. He had confidence that the Grove Street house had things to tell him, if he could only understand the language it spoke.
He checked the windows before bothering with the surely locked door; luck was with him. Soon he was sliding into the empty house through a back window.
Inside, a chill gripped him immediately. It slid from the back of his neck all the way to the bottoms of his feet. His muscles stiffened slightly as he went to the stairs to guard against the feeling, but he still shook from the suddenness of its onset. Why was it so cold? Had Max left the air conditioning on and blasting when he sold it? He felt compelled to go down the stairs that led to the secret chambers in their basement, where he realized the cold could not be coming from a machine.
As far as Chatterbox knew, air conditioners couldn't produce snow.
As he descended, it gathered on the stairs, growing thicker with every step. By the bottom, he had trudged so deeply into it that it came nearly to his knees. He was afraid to lift his eyes, sure that he had ended up somewhere other than the basement. Clenching his fists, he continued deeper, unable to stop moving, compelled by the mystery of his visions. He slid a hand along the wall, using it to remember where he was, and where things should be located.
“Ray… Cups… wherever you are… please tell me. Show me.” He called out. He was speaking without thinking about it, his voice rougher and deeper. “Please… please. Let me find you. Show me!”
His words were a demand laced with desperation, pushing his legs through the snow.
“Chatty… can you hear me?”
Her voice was a pulse of light in the distance that finally drew his eyes from the floor. Before him was a vast wilderness, with wind that whipped up drifts of snow to bury the vegetation. Evergreens bent and swayed, a monochrome moving picture.
“Ray?!” He screamed.
“Chatty?!” The light blinked again, briefly bringing color back to the trees. It filled him with strength, made him faster. The world flicked by him as he managed to run toward the treeline, heart pounding fast, lifting him through the heavy snow.
Warmth surrounded him as he closed in. “Please… show me something. Show me something that'll lead me to you… tell me where to find you.”
“I - I don't know where I am-”
“Keep talking! Describe it!”
“I - when I left I - I got on a plane -”
“Where did it go?”
“Chatty - I killed someone - they won't give me back your mask!” It was not her words but her intonation that made agony bloom in his heart. She was in such pain that it bled into him. He needed to accept it - to understand what she was feeling so that he could find her. “I keep trying to escape –”
“Where did the plane go, Ray, please, I need to find you!” He asked - and then he saw her.
Clad in the same yellow jumpsuit and thinner than he had last seen her, his Queen sat on her knees in snow that melted beneath her. The glow she cast banished the grey from his vision, returning greens and blues to the landscape. The long pixie cut that framed her beautiful visage made her hair much curlier than when it was down to her hips. He dropped to his knees in front of her, reaching out for her.
“I didn't go west - I went North first, to-”
Just as before, the scene was cut short too soon. He was back in the house, head against the empty corner where her clothing was once stored. There was no snow to be found, no trees or reindeer, no Ray. Frustration made him want to scream again, but he bit it down. He had clues now, at least… he believed that his Cups was alive, but that she was in trouble.
A vibration in his pocket reminded him to breathe.
He pulled out his phone and answered when he saw it read “Tessa”.
“‘Lo?” He mumbled, clearing his throat.
“Hi… sorry I missed your call, I was asleep. How are you?” She asked. Her tone could be read as cautious, but he knew better. She was worried, the way a mother feared for her son.
“I… I have to leave, Tessa. I have to find her.”
“Cups?” She said; she already knew the answer.
“Yeah. I - I keep seeing her - She's in danger, Tessa. I have to help her.” He let his body sink to the floor as he told her.
“You're still seeing her? Chatty, are you sure we shouldn't bring you to the hospital first? Just in case something is wrong?”
“No… Whatever this is, it isn't the same. This is different, Tessa - it's real, it's like we can see each other sometimes. I think she's in prison… and she's scared. Nobody understands her there, and-” His voice broke just as tears began to stream down his cheeks.
“Where are you? Can I come and see you?”
“Only if you promise you won't try and talk me out of this.” He told her. He knew that she would keep any promise she made to him, or she wouldn't make it to begin with.
“I promise. I just wanna make sure you're okay… you don't sound okay right now.”
“I'm at Ray's old house on Grove… My car is by the canals. Meet you there?” He smiled softly.
“I'll be there in twenty minutes. Have you eaten today? I'll bring food. Just stay right there.” Her voice was soothing, dulling the pain of seeing the love of his life ripped away over and over again.
If anybody could help him figure out where she was being held, it was Tessa.
“Thanks, Tessa.” He said as he slowly rose back up.
“See ya soon.” She said.
Collecting himself, Chatterbox took a deep breath, and began to walk. Though his body still ached and his head felt heavy, he would know no rest until they were reunited.
He had to go North.