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The last thing Till had seen before he closed his eyes was the world beyond the windows. Blue sky filled with clouds, stars just starting their nightly war with light pollution.
When he opened them again, the sky was red, and his rough mattress and pillow had been replaced by even rougher, dry grass that caressed his face.
Sleep cleared from his vision, and he realised that the stars seemed to have won the fight for the night—instead of shining high in the sky, falling down into deep nothingness now.
His heart was racing more than it was beating as he took in his surroundings. This place...
It couldn't be, right? At last, he scanned his own body. Still the same, still all grown. The scar on his ear being all the confirmation he really needed.
Was he dreaming? He winced as he pinched himself, just to make sure he was as wide awake as he believed he was. There was no way—he couldn't be back in that moment, right? Yes, it had been so many years in the past, it was physically impossible!
Laying flat on his back, he was still dizzy from everything. When he sat up, two pairs of legs ran through him. Transparent, he realised, there had been no collision.
As he looked after the giggling boys—one of them, himself—he realised he was back. Back here, in the memory that always made his heart ache with a mixture of so many emotions when he recalled it.
Regret, guilt, fear, confusion, sadness... it all swirled deep within his guts.
Drunk on this cocktail of anxiety, he squeezed the grass one last time and stood up in spite of it, following soft laughs and quiet footsteps. Eyes darting between the star shower in the sky and the children before him.
He couldn't avert his gaze from all the things surrounding him. However this happened, whyever he was back here, he was stuck in it. Reliving not only the pain but also its beauty until he'd be released from this place; he wouldn't run away again.
His mind had yet to decide whether it was positive or negative to be at this place, but his heart was sure—hope swirled inside of it, and not even its frantic beating due to a feeling almost akin to fear could stop it from rising within him.
Wordlessly, he ran after the boys now, steps having sped up without him even noticing. He came to a sudden halt when the same scene that had followed him deep into his nightmares ever since Ivan's death.
“Run away with me!” Ivan said, this smile on his face that made it look like he had everything planned out—knowing him, he might actually have had a vague idea of what to do.
His free hand pointed forward, the other squeezed the one of Till's boyish version, who let go of the young Ivan's hand as if it had burnt him. Brows furrowed, shrunken into himself—his inner conflict was obvious on his face.
It was like being driven by instinct when Till found himself in the same pose as the silver-haired child he used to be; hand grabbing his—this time sleeveless—wrist, the phantom of the turmoil he had felt back then pooling in his gut. A perfectly mirrored image.
Ivan's gaze wasn't on him but on him, and yet red pupils seemed to pierce him like a dagger, revealing all the ugliness of his inside world.
“I can't—” the young Till replied, and before Ivan was even able to reply, he already turned on his heels and ran away. Tears hidden, but Till knew they were there, he could still feel them burn his cheek like acid.
Without thought, his hand went to his neck, running over healed scars and remembering the blood they used to spill. His gaze didn't leave Ivan, whose eyes followed the shrinking silhouette of the running boy until he was not even a dot at the horizon anymore, then, expression unreadable—but definitely not anything positive, he could now tell (he probably wouldn't have back then)—, he looked back at the meteor shower.
“You're still here,” his voice was almost a whisper; it took Till a few seconds before he realised that the child was talking to him. “Why?” He added, their eyes finally meeting.
Under his gaze, he still felt like the same child that just ran away. Exposed, raw, like a knife was pressed to his pulse point and every move could be his last. The person holding the knife, however, was not a stranger nor a threat. It was another thing years of dealing with him had hinted it, but the realisation of it took far longer than that.
He failed to find the words for a reply, so he just said: “The stars are beautiful.” But he didn't even look at them.
The boy hummed in response, a certain melancholy in the note. Something in Till snapped at it.
Thoughts running through his head without any of them being understood by him, nor with a clear command to his body, his feet moved before he ended up kneeling before Ivan. He tried to force a smile, but it felt like a lie.
Till didn't want to lie.
Sincere—he wanted to be sincere. Their relationship had always been built on his own ignorance, his own blindness when it came to Ivan. This time, he wanted that to change. He figured out no better way than to do something they had never really done, but Till had always felt the weird urge to do (in hindsight, he should've never restrained himself from doing it—but when it came to Ivan, regret was one of the things he felt most, anyway). His arms wrapped around Ivan's smaller frame and he hugged him.
Their first and last hug, and Till didn't know if it could even be considered real. But it all felt real, and to him that was enough. His brain couldn't tell, so why did he want his heart to know?
“I'm so sorry,” he mumbled, head buried in the white fabric that he had learnt to loath. It was soft, because of course it was, but it was itchy in other ways. It managed to soak up whatever stray tears had tried escaping his eyes, though. At least it was good for that.
“It’s okay,” Ivan replied, but Till could feel the shakiness in his voice; the understandable disappointment. He hadn't known that he'd die by then, but still, he could've left. Could've walked into freedom, joined the rebellion in its earlier stages—he'd have been an amazing addition—but he did none of it. He had stayed. Just because Till didn't go with him?
It should have been no surprise when small sobs shook Ivan's body, but it was, and Till tried his hardest to ground him by squeezing him closer.
“You're crying,” his voice was hoarse again, but he pressed forward. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” Together, they sobbed now, no matter how much time would pass, these memories would always be his weakness. He could never get rid of them, most times he didn't even really want to.
Ivan nodded, despite the tears that streamed down his face, and for a moment, all Till did was pull him closer so the boy could bury his face into his shoulder. After a while, they came face to face again, and Ivan revealed a smile.
“I'm just happy… You're free. You're so… old!”
Till had to chuckle sadly at that. He rubbed his own teary eyes dry—he didn't really feel like crying anymore, just like that—before his gloved finger caught Ivan's tears from running down his cheek.
“Yeah, I am, I guess. If you really wanna call 28 'old'. You were always taller, though.” He smiled at that, genuine.
Ivan's smile got brighter, even while the tears continued to fall.
“I didn't make it, did I?”
Till didn't know what was gone faster—his smile or the air in his lungs. His voice failed him, and honestly, he couldn't bring himself to say it, couldn't even shake his head in confirmation. In fact, he couldn't even look at Ivan’s cheery face! As if he had just complimented the nice weather! That guy… The only indicator of tragedy were his tears, and that could very well have been happiness.
“That's okay,” Ivan spoke again. “I must've had a good reason to. Or maybe I didn't.”
He shrugged. It gave Till a strange sense of comfort. Ivan had always been like that. Blunt, to the point. He used to hate it.
“You died because of me,” Till choked out.
“Are you happy?” Ivan ignored him pointedly.
The gloved hand halted on his cheek. Was he happy?
What did happiness even mean in this world? He didn't know.
But he found himself nodding. He was not unhappy, most of the time. The people in the rebellion were kind and he had long since accepted that he had no debt to pay off to them for saving him. They were just genuinely good people. And Till was glad to be part of the cause.
He sighed. “I am. I think I am.”
“Then whatever circumstances caused me to die because of you were worth it.” He looked at him with such a genuine adoration that Till wondered how his younger self had missed it over and over again.
Till just smiled, eyes turned to the stars.
If he could have willed time to stop, he'd have willed for it to do so now. He had so many more questions, so many more things he needed to say.
But before he knew it, he blinked. And hugged by him was only his blanket.
Disappointed, Till flopped onto his back. It hadn't felt like a dream. He had even pinched himself to make sure. But if it wasn't… What was it then?
It was something Till was never fated to find out, but the conversation he had with the boy echoed through his mind a lot anyway. And every time he laughed, he answered Ivan's question again.
Yes, he was happy. And every time, the image of the boy smiling ear to ear over that information appeared in front of his inner eye.