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“Oh Charlie let me look at you.” Noel brought his hands up to cup his cheeks and everything fell sideways.
Alarm bells blared in his ears as his heart begun to claw its way past his ribs. Ripping intercostals into membraneous strands and bending brittle bone it dragged itself up his throat, silencing him as he fell to his knees.
“You’ve grown so much.”
The clash of bayonets, cymbals to the ceaseless, maddening percussion of the machine gun next to his ear. Artillery fire a death nell from the timpani. The orchestra of war. The shard of shrapnel that blew Noel’s head apart from the eye inwards.
“Shut up, shut up. Stop wearing his fucking face you aren’t him.” He croaked out past the calcified muscle lodged in his neck.
The man without a name was certain he was crying. Noel just stood above him smug smile fifty different shades of blood red wrong.
Noel had a beautiful lopsided grin. Even now when he couldn’t remember the sound of his voice without the mouldering, honey-toned baritone below, he still remembered sapphire blue eyes and the grin that could charm even the hardest souls.
He cared for his last memories better than he cared for his grudges and he cared for his grudges very, very well. He knew what little he had of Noel better than the backs of his own scarred hands.
This however, he did not know.
This was not Noel.
The things he used to do in the vain hope of being the reason for that smile. The things he wanted to do to the creature above him upon seeing the facsimile of his lips straining not to tear at the seams.
But there Noels visage stood before him in perfect twenty-twenty vision as his world spun.
He couldn’t remember Noels face.
When he first realised he had forgotten he had lost himself within his mind for a week. Only returning to a concerned Roland and Delphine who had spent a never revealed amount of time working to coax him out of his mind. He couldn’t remember what he’d said to the two of them. They had refused to tell him. Delphine had been crying.
He remembered The King’s falsehood perfectly.
His cold impression of a smile plastered across the rebuilt, half heartedly wrong face of his best friend.
Remembered cold lips against his in a way that was never real. Never a possibility. The dreams of a boy brought real within a nightmare. Ceramic and smooth, honeysuckle lies worming into his skull like sick roots.
He never knew how much of Noel’s appearance The King had created. He hated how his only memory of his friend’s face could have been just another lie.
Yet here he was.
Noel Finley.
Smiling with muscle tugging too tight at his cheeks, blood threatening to spill from stretched nerves and ragged joints.
Noel had always been taller than him.
Looking up at the memory of a forgotten boy, he fell further and further downwards.
Remembering the fear, the regret and the pain.
Then he wasn’t remembering and he was Charlie again. Fifteen and drunk on stolen strawberry wine. Sat with his best friend by the lake and for some godforsaken reason deciding to cut open his chest and present his heart to the boy he loved.
Only for it to shatter a million times in soft hands and lopsided lips.
Fucking sapphire blue.
He wished he’d just kissed him.
He hated himself for it.
The ghost of his best friend took his face back in his hands. Wordlessly he swiped his thumb under his left eye. Watching them glisten on his thumb before licking them from the digit and moving his lips up to his.
Everything about it was wrong.
It didn't stop him from closing his eyes and leaning in further.
Two sapphires lost in a wine dark sea.
“Sometimes giving up and pretending is just that much better, isn’t it?” A voice he hadn’t heard in years asked lightly.
His eyes were still closed and he couldn’t pinpoint where the sound was coming from, his lips were still on his.
His voice was small when he replied. Hunched in on himself in the corners of his psyche. The man he had become in dreams hastily trying to rebuild walls he had been working so hard to dismantle.
“You aren’t him.”
He didn’t want to beg. He had survived. He wasn’t going to say anything. He wouldn’t tell Him anything. Not that he could anyway, he had nothing left.
The lips were on his again, pressing up against scarred flesh. Soft and yielding.
Until they weren’t.
“Would you rather I was Him?” Was whispered into his mouth as skin sloughed off and Noels face melted away. Caving in where the shrapnel had hit him and crumbling like sand tempered into glass. Contorting as it bubbled in molten form and quickly cooling.
The King was always so cold.
A tentacle wrapped around a shaking leg as Noel fell away and a yellow cape billowed above.
He said he wouldn’t beg. Charlie couldn’t go through this again. He wouldn’t. He refused to break. He had survived ten years in the Dreamlands and he would survive ten more if he had to. He would not become another broken plaything of the goddamn King in fucking Yellow.
Not again.
The limb snaked its way to his lower back. A black oozing thing, viscous oil clinging to it and dripping onto bloodstained floors.
Frozen mask steaming from proximity to his face. Burning like ice.
Winters with Noel on the ice. Skates skidding through soft waves of fallen snow above the water. The man was trapped underneath. Knocking against the ice. Drowning - or was he already dead?
He died in the war alongside Noel. Buried under shrapnel and lost to a land belonging to no one but the ghosts and the rats.
He died in Egypt far from his family. Taking them from him without his knowledge didn’t stop his heart from breaking.
He died a thousand times in the Dreamlands. Both mind and body torn apart by Him.
He was already dead.
This didn't matter.
He fell forwards. Allowing the appendages to hold him. Trusting them not to drop as the ever shifting coils engulfed him.
He was a ghost. It didnt matter anymore. He was terrified. He didn’t care.
The world went black.
“You’re never like that for me.” An almost breathless voice said above him.
He came to covered from head to toe in blood. The substance was tacky, having only recently begun to dry.
Charlies mind was foggy as he raised himself on his elbows from where he had been lying on the ground. The hand he hadn’t noticed carding through his hair ceased its movement.
Raising his head he made eye contact with Kayne, who’s legs his head had seemingly been resting on, causing memory to flood back to him.
The flash of Noel’s camera flicked between his thoughts as blinding memory after memory hit him.
Everyone he had loved. The ghosts of his life and the shell of himself. Kayne had played them all like a sick puppet show for his own entertainment.
“You’re no better than Him.” He spat.
“And you’re my favourite a broken record of a human! So do stop jumping and stuttering across these same endless accusations. Its only cute for so long.” He more growled than said while pinching at his cheek. “We’ve got to do this again some time!” The god giggled at him before offering a hand to help him up .
He took it. He always did.
Ghosts haunted this world for a reason didn’t they?