Chapter Text
Seven is an interesting number. Till had a secret collection, in fact, of everything contained in the number seven. Seven days in a week, obviously. Seven colors in the rainbow, immature but it still counted. One of his favorites, seven notes in a musical scale, had delighted him when he realized it could be added to the list.
Seven rounds in Alien Stage.
Seven years since he last took to the stage… Seven years since he last saw Mizi. Seven years since he sang his last seven scales as a warm-up. Seven years since he had sung at all.
Seven years since Ivan had died.
Seven had a strange way of following him. He would often find himself down to seven cigarettes in a pack before he lost interest. Seven pints of beer before he drank himself sick. Seven socks, the eighth a constant missing companion, always causing his pairs to be uneven.
As he blasted through the streets on his motorcycle, some suave and electrifying new toy the rebels had trained him for, he allowed himself to weave designs through the metallic blur of idle cars stuck in traffic. Carelessly, he flexed his fingers across the handlebars, his back arched with determination to eradicate every stray thought from his mind.
If he thought the seventh anniversary of Ivan’s death would be any easier than the sixth, fifth, fourth… Till had been a fool.
Nothing would be as terrible as the first. When he had drank more than he knew was possible, stumbled around the dark streets in the fading glitter of city life, clutching onto building fronts and tumbling into light poles. It was reckless, most definitely.
If he could blot out every memory for just seven minutes, but there was not enough alcohol, never a fast enough speed, never a dangerous enough mission to truly obscure the black scar that had permanently marred his heart.
He wasn’t a genuine member of the rebellion, but he had maintained contact throughout the years. Some form of connection to the men who knew Hyuna, who briefly knew Mizi, as a form of continuum between the before and the after of that awful performance seven years ago.
“He drinks as bad as Hyuna, ugh,” Isaac had lamented, sticking his tongue out in a mock gesture of disgust.
“At least Hyuna’s problem was alive,” Dewey replied, clicking his teeth, “Till’s got a bit more reason to try to forget it all.”
Till had had his head down on the table as they spoke over him. Those bastards, he weakly thought, his skull too heavy with liquor to muster enough energy to actually say something out loud.
The thunderous growls of his bike vibrated rhythmic waves throughout his body as he maneuvered himself left, right, left. The memories swelled inside his chest, threatening to choke him as he soared through ribbon-like streets.
“You cut your hair! Lookin’ tamed over there,” Dewey threw an arm over Till’s shoulders.
“Yeah, thought it might be a nice change,” Till said.
“It looks thinner now,” Isaac commented, throwing his shot glass back.
Dewey grinned, “And with a color like that, you look forty!”
“You know who’s actually nearing forty?” Isaac was already pouring another round as he spoke, “that Luka guy.”
Seven years. How much could really change in that much time?
***
Ivan had no way of keeping time.
He knew that years must have stretched from that moment of deep, cascading fog. Time could be, if one tried, tracked through the soul. He learned to measure, not through days of the week or beats per minute, but spirals of thought. Like a swirling pool with a bottomless center, his imagination would glide through patterns of memory, hallucination, despairs. He knew that for each cycle, days must have elapsed between the beginning and end of the mental journey.
How much could change in a few years? He figured it must have been at least five. Then again, he wasn’t even granted the privilege of knowing the minutes or the hour. How could he really know? Perhaps he had merely been dead, and this was the limbo of the afterlife.
Could it be that he was in some form of punishment, in his death?
When one cannot access even the distinction between daytime and night, his every sense blurs and scatters into abstractions. His appetite would strike with ravenous rage at odd moments, or quiet for extended periods. Sleep was nonsensical, when he slept or for how long. His dreams would blend with reality, every blink a worrisome threat against his grip on consciousness. Even spoken word became an incomprehension at moments, the rush of language steepening his interpretation skills, or its sludge-like pace drowning him in an endless pit of vowels, breath, teeth, and spit.
Ivan had read in a book once, one of the classic volumes from those distant days of human liberation, about a French man with a peculiar grasp on time. “The memory of a particular image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years…”
He had known much about regret. Had let himself indulge in the painful images of his most frightening memories. It was half-entertainment, half-torture. The spiritual damage invigorated him.
Could an afterlife be so vivid? Or was it vivid because it was an afterlife?
Then again, did it matter if he was really, truly alive? Was this not indeed after life, regardless of the specifics?
His life had been over, for all he could gather. There was no part of this existence that could be considered life.
His life had been Till. His life had been the stage. Singing, practicing, stolen moments of devotion.
If Till were miraculously alive, then maybe he had given his own for that. It was Till who had taken Ivan’s life, and Till who reveled in it as he succumbed to the after.
Regret for a certain moment?
The image of Till, like a broken bird twitching in the sunlight, lived beneath his ribs. For all his regrets, however, his decision that day was not one of them.
Proust must have been wrong.