Work Text:
It’s the same as always: his father is beating Lyra to death and he just stands there, watching. Then, when the body hits the floor —deformed face pointing towards his direction—, he knows it’s his turn. Toby struggles to move without success. A few steps away, his father starts to run, waving an axe.
“It was all your fault”, he whispers before the attack.
Toby wakes up screaming and covered in sweat. He realises he can move now and grabs his axes, trembling violently. There’s only death and terror in his head, worsened by the darkness of the room and the silence. He attempts to take a deep breath, but the paranoia has made his senses go nuts. The slightest movement could set him off.
He stays like that, hunched in a corner, aiming his axes towards any suspicious —and imaginary— shadow, until dawn. Five hours that felt like an eternity. But sleeping was out of question.
After drinking water from a random bottle he found lying around —not the time to be picky—, he gets out of his room. If no one went to check on him, then no one heard him: that’s his conclusion. So it’s fair game to pretend nothing happened.
Until he runs into Masky and Hoodie. Which are now looking at him. Without moving out of the way. But they are always weird, it doesn’t mean anything.
“What was all that noise last night?” Masky asks.
“Obviously, he had a nightmare”, Hoodie answers.
For fuck’s sake. Toby hates when they do that, asking things just to end up talking (shit) between each other. Besides, of course he had a nightmare! What else could it have been? A failed jerk-off session?
Dickheads.
“That happens when you ruin a mission”, Masky says, coldly.
And they leave. Of course, they just wanted to let Toby know that they heard him (and it was annoying, too). It’s not like he expects compassion or understanding, but the way Masky said it, when he knows damn well it wasn’t Toby’s fault… Right, he may have talked too loud, sue him! But with Masky shutting him up and the effort —so painful— of being quiet, only to get jittery instead, it couldn't have ended any other way than it did: with him screaming out of his mind.
God, he wants to scream so bad right now. But he doesn’t.
The punishments don’t usually last over two weeks. He knows it too well and repeats it every time he wakes up in the middle of the night, or morning, or day. Most of the time there’s screaming and Masky and Hoodie are always ready to talk about how much it bothers them. However, after five days straight of this routine, they stop.
He tries to stay up as long as possible —his record is three and a half days—, but it turns out that it just makes the nightmares worse. He doesn’t know if it’s because he sleeps more profoundly or because it’s part of the punishment. In any case, he mutters a curse against the Operator.
The nightmares go on.
Dark shapes crawling towards him, then taking the shape of someone from his past life —his mom, dad, Lyra, former schoolmates and bullies—. People who he recognizes only during his sleep and, then, doesn’t remember when he wakes. Sometimes, even Hoodie and Masky appear, shouting at him. And less frequently, the Operator, watching him through the woods; those are the ones he hates the most.
Being awake is no good either. The hallucinations and paranoia plague him every minute of the day. He wonders how much longer he will take it, until he… until…
Just a bit over a week, he remembers.
He doesn’t need a mirror to know he looks awful. Not like he worries about his appearance, especially because he always had a sickly one, with his pale, almost yellow skin and all those wounds over his body. Now, however, he manages to look worse.
Or that must be what Masky, who watches Toby shamelessly, thinks. If he had any strength, he would ask him what the fuck he wants, though Masky is probably taking advantage of his weakened state. He thinks it’s funny? In a few days, he’ll show him something really funny.
This time Toby yells, but it sounds more like a cry. He looks at his axe and considers —it would be over in a second—, then he settles in biting his fingers until they bleed.
It’s going to happen again. He knows that as soon as his eyes close, the shadows and death will appear. So it’s a pretty shitty time to be exhausted as he is.
With no other choice, he slides against the wall and sits on the floor. Lately, he does that a lot: sitting and staring at the ceiling to not fall asleep, hitting his limbs, making noise. Useless attempts.
—Toby…
The voice —his mother?— is right next to his left ear, he can feel its breathing. Toby doesn’t move. It’s one of the few occasions where he has total control over his body and, even though he’s only delaying the inevitable, he stays still. A dark forest extends in front of him like a bottomless well, inviting him to walk and get lost. More tempting than it actually is.
—Go on, Toby. Walk…
There’s something almost comforting in the way it says his name, but chilly at the same time, like an imitation that doesn’t quite do it. Maybe he should walk and end this already.
—That’s right, Toby, go on…
When did he start to talk? The movement is so natural, almost like he’s the one actually doing it. Or perhaps he is and, after all, he wants to. With every step, the fog gets thicker. A few more to never come back —to where?—, Toby says to himself, even if he has no way of knowing.
—Just a bit more and…
The voice disappears along with the spell. No, he doesn’t want to be there. Toby tries to turn around, but stays in place. The forest is getting closer. A strong smell of rot and sulfur reaches his nose. It’s my corpse, he thinks. And when he looks up, at one of the trees getting closer, Toby sees himself hanging from one of the branches. Dead. Empty eye sockets and intestines exposed through his cut-open stomach.
Unsure about what to do, Toby closes his eyes. Never works —these aren’t common nightmares—. When he opens them again, there’s a scene change: everything around him is dark, except for the bit of light reaching his eyes.
He looks down and finds his stomach cut open.
Waking up from a nightmare is horrible by itself. Waking up from a nightmare and seeing someone else in your dark room, much worse. But if that someone else is Masky… The shock is the only thing preventing Toby from passing out.
“You finally woke up,” Masky says, like it’s the world’s most common situation, nothing to see here. “You were moving a lot.”
“Did I scream?” he barely asks, dragging the words.
“No.”
Toby waits for Masky to elaborate, but nothing. He just watches him from a corner of the room, like a fucking maniac, and he has the nerve to take a seat. Now he’s sitting and watching him. Masky. Who is in his room. In the middle of the night. After a nightmare.
Does he want to kill me? Toby wonders.
His brain short-circuits. He doesn’t remember the nightmare anymore and neither feels afraid, because of the strange situation. Perhaps he should feel relieved, but not even close. Toby feels strange. Like, I’m-about-to-get-a-tics-attack strange.
“How many do you usually have in one night?” Masky asks in a whisper, making Toby’s heart flutter.
“I don’t know, I… I don’t count them,” he answers, trying to hide the surprise in his voice. Even if he doesn’t understand the situation —Masky here, actually here—, why ruin it?
Maybe it’s just the fear of being alone talking.
“Do you remember them?”
“Sometimes.”
Masky nods and stays silent again. It seems he’ll stay like that. Toby thinks about asking him (Why?), but doesn’t. Silently, peacefully, the night goes on. He feels the exhaustion take over his body, the same one as every day and yet… Among all the awful things, something’s right.
The hours pass quickly when you’re not stressed over a bad dream. A few times, Toby forgets he has company and gets scared for a second, but besides that, the night ends without notice.
As the first rays of the sun appear, Masky gets up, gives him a last look and leaves.
Neither of them mentions a thing during the day. Toby needs to convince himself it wasn’t a dream: Masky really did spend three hours next to him, in his dark room, doing nothing —accompanying him—. Thinking about it makes him feel ridiculous, so he tries not to.
It’s almost impossible with Masky staring at him.
Toby doesn’t know how to feel when, the next night, it repeats. He’s used to not getting answers —why ruin it?—, so he resigns to not asking him what the hell are you doing here? and just sit there, looking through the window.
In the middle of the dark, a thought appears with strength, hard to deny.
I could get used to this.
The third night, Toby dares to have hope —odd word, hadn’t used it in a while—. He may not know Masky’s motives, but that doesn’t stop him from being… happy with his presence.
Sometimes he wonders how they had managed to survive for so long, abandoned as they are. You could say they chose this lifestyle: does it mean they are no longer human? The first night he slept there, lying on the wooden floor and startled by every sound, a stab of loneliness overwhelmed him.
That was his life now, Toby thought. A cabin in the middle of the forest and two homicides as company.
Now, however, he’s looking sideways at one of them —while he prays to not be left alone again—.
Some nights don’t go as smoothly. Nights where nightmares and reality are difficult to tell apart. To Toby’s dismay, the fourth night is such.
“Are you awake?”
The voice sounds far away, like he’s talking from another room. But Masky is near. Toby can feel his presence and hates— despises it. Is he here to kill him again? To scream at him until his ears start bleeding? To break his bones, one by one, while he comforts him with a soft tone? Toby wants to scream, curse him, demand that he leave. Why doesn't Masky leave? Why doesn’t the whole world disappear?
“Toby, are you…?”
Masky interrupts himself, and doesn’t speak again. However, he stays. Toby can’t decide whether that’s a bad or good thing: his presence relieves him and makes him sick at the same time.
It’s a slow night. Toby doesn’t dare to look at Masky (it hurts), because his mind won’t stop replaying the goddamn nightmare —the Operator must know, how foolish of him…—.
When he finally can move and turn around, Masky is gone. There's a water bottle in his place.
Luckily, they don’t have anything to do that day, so he can stay in bed. The distress and the headache are killing him. But what worries him to death is that he possibly blew up everything, acting like an over-sensitive-dumbass.
Why did you leave?
A faint creaking sound.
“More water?”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that, because of their job, their sleep schedule is a mess. Sometimes, Toby forces himself to sleep during the day to later go out at night; sometimes, the early morning is the best time to rest; sometimes, the exhaustion hits out of nowhere. He handles this stuff without complaining, same as Masky and Hoodie.
Masky manages to, somehow, always be there when Toby wakes up. From time to time, he asks Are you okay? —which is stupid, really, it’s not like it makes Toby happy to hear it—, but most of the time they sit in complete silence, each one in a corner.
Sometimes, when he’s not in such a bad mood, Toby considers talking to him. However, every sentence turns out stupid inside his mind, and the hypothetical answers don’t encourage him either. “How are you?” Mentally tormented, and you? “What have you been up to?” Just killing for Him, the usual. “Why do you bother coming? Are you worried about me?” Don’t be fucking stupid.
It’s the last one he’s scared of the most.
One night in particular, Masky seems to be in a chatty mood (not that Toby minds).
“So, you don’t feel a thing?
“Nothing.”
“Coldness? Warm? Pain?”
“No, no and no.”
“Surprised you’re still alive.”
“I guess.”
“Are you a pyromaniac?”
“What?”
“It’s a yes or no kind of question.”
“No.”
“Sure. What are those random movements you make?”
“You gotta be more specific.”
“When you’re mad and you twitch your arm, what the hell is that?”
“Tics.”
“And the noises…?”
“Also tics.”
“Does that mean they’re unintentional?”
“No, it simply means I love to get wounded.”
“Funny. What are your nightmares about?”
“I don’t remember.”
(It’s not completely a lie.)
“You said you remembered some.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You suck at lying.”
Toby wants to say something witty in response, but nothing comes to him.
“Do I appear in your nightmares?”
Masky makes the question with the same energy as the others, but the ambience suddenly turns gelid.
“...Yes.”
There’s no answer.
Should he have lied?
Suddenly feeling small and stupid, Toby barely asks:
“What’s your name?”
No one has said it out loud before, but anything related to their past lives is taboo. Asking or trying to talk about it is a death sentence. If it were a different situation, Toby wouldn’t even think to mention it.
Things have changed, however. Between Masky and him.
Toby hears a shaky breath and feels like he’s about to die. He ruined everything, didn’t he? Masky acted so nicely and he goes and tries to take advantage of the situation and—
“Timothy. But Tim’s fine.”
It’s more than fine: it’s fucking perfect.
“Alright, Tim.”
And Toby wants so badly to know what kind of face Ma— Tim is doing, under the mask.
Toby walks faster than usual, holding his axe as if he were ready to attack. Fresh blood stains his goggles (impossible to clean), so he takes them off and feels almost naked.
“You keep turning around,” Hoodie says, causing his gaze to return to the road ahead.
Lately, he does that a lot and doesn’t even realize —unless Hoodie is there to point it out, evil bastard—. The nightmares take away all his energy and attention, even during the jobs. Today, for example, he was distracted, all over the place. For a second, and he’d rather die than to admit it, he saw in the victim’s face something awful (probably from one of the dreams) that made him miss with the axe. He got it the second time, but the damage was already done.
The tension inside him reached a peak.
Hoodie calls him out a few other times during the walk. Doesn’t talk besides that, but Toby feels like, at any given moment, he’ll ask.
A few meters beyond, the cabin appears and Toby sighs, relieved; now, he’ll be paranoid in peace.
“I saw Masky go to your room.”
It takes Toby too long to process the comment. He turns around, clumsily, and faces Hoodie, who has taken off his hood to smile at him.
“Really?” Toby answers, trying to sound disinterested.
“Really. And not just one night: many.”
The implication in his voice is obvious. He does it to rile him up.
“Hmmm.”
Toby won’t let him.
“Amazing, it’s the first time I've seen someone blush like that.”
Shit.
Hoodie kept on laughing even after they split up and his words stuck on Toby’s head. What did he mean by all that? It’s Hoodie, he jokes and fucks around, right, but maybe Tim had told him something? And since Toby will never know —because he won’t ask—, he does what he considers appropriate: stay up all night.
They must be pretty close, Toby thinks bitterly. Before he joined, they were alone for a while. Who knows what they were up to?
Toby sits on a window frame and plays with a loose thread of his jacket. A few times, almost by reflex, he turns around to check if Tim is coming. Because he should. The nightmares haven’t stopped, and that’s what this is all about, right? These strange encounters would’ve never happened otherwise.
Three more days, Toby whispers to no one in particular.
“You’re still awake.”
He nods as an answer, his gaze fixed on the trees. Staying up has been kind of easy, because of the expectation.
Tim stands next to him and leans on the frame. Seeing his face is all he wants and yet Toby doesn’t think he has the strength to do so. Without the dark, what will hide whatever is reflected in his eyes?
“Toby,” he calls, and his heart —the remains— melts.
Still weak, Toby turns around and faces him. Tim isn’t wearing his mask. The world stops to rejoice before something wonderfully mundane: a shared look.
It happens in slow motion, the way Tim holds his hand so tenderly —the same one he used the other day to choke someone to death—. And Toby’s heart is beating so hard, the world must be ending.
If he could feel, he’s sure the warmth of Tim’s hand would be his favorite sensation.
One night, Toby finally gathers the courage to ask Tim why. After hearing his answer, he wishes he hadn’t done it.
On the night before last, Toby considers.
Actually, the nightmares aren’t so bad.
I could keep having them.
I could keep having you.
These encounters in the dark are no longer enough.
I’d love to see your face under the light,
and for you to see mine.
To really see me.
If you did, would you still be by my side?
The fire is everywhere. Dark smoke burns his eyes and throat. Behind him, the forest. He has a feeling of all the bad that will happen if he goes there, so he doesn’t. Instead, he closes his eyes.
This is it, he thinks. This is the end.
He feels a touch on his shoulder, but remains still. Maybe he can avoid it from happening this time. Letting the fire consume him is better than what awaits him on the other side of the trees. He knows it, deep inside him.
The bony hands apply more pressure. His shoulder must be broken by now. In any case, he’s soon to die, be it for the fire or this strange presence —not the time to be picky!—. Just keep your fucking eyes closed.
“You know…”
Every fiber of his body reacts to the voice. Such a warm voice, out of place. What is it doing here? Who does it belong to? It’s like he knows perfectly, like it's deeply engraved on his mind.
Don’t let it fool you, he reminds himself.
“When you wake from the nightmares, you have this kind of expression…”
His knees touch the ground. The hand is still there, it won’t ever leave.
“It’s like your eyes are more…”
The smoke surrounds him. Even if he wanted to open his eyes, he couldn't. Now He’ll break him. There’s no escape. There never was.
“Human, somehow.”
He can almost hear the weak sound of his answer. Unsure, exposed, almost panicking —always panicking—. The word burns in his mind.
“I think, maybe, it was one of the first times you screamed. I saw you wake up, lost and scared, like it wasn’t really you.”
Like it wasn’t really you.
Maybe it’s the shock provoked by hearing all of that again, but his eyes open. The smoke is so thick he can’t see anything. Take me away, he wants to scream. Why does this never end?
“Like you weren’t a murderer being punished, but a victim.”
STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTO
“I think that’s the reason why.”
If only he could die right now. Ever since those words were pronounced, he broke. There was nothing left for him.
Suddenly, every trace of smoke disappears. Though the fire it’s still there, it doesn’t look real. He tries deep breaths before looking up —the inevitable—. A giant, human-like figure, wearing a black suit and a red tie. No eyes, no mouth, nothing except pure white.
A ringing sound fills his ears. It’s faint at first, but it grows louder.
“Don’t make the same mistake again.”
More than a warning or a threat, it’s an order. Toby nods several times, although he knows it won’t make a difference: if the Operator wishes to get rid of him, He will.
Tendrils come out of the forest to catch him. They wrap around his body and squeeze it, pulling him backwards.
That was it. That was the end. That was how Toby Rogers died.
The ringing stops, and everything turns black.
“The prodigal son has finally woken up!”
If he thought before that waking up with Tim in the room was weird, it was because he hadn’t added Hoodie to the mix (simply, no). And there they are, right on top of him, looking at him like they can’t believe he’s alive —Toby shares the feeling—.
“Congrats on surviving all the nights!” Hoodie yells, making a move to touch his head, until he notices all the sweat. “Man, you should take a bath or something. Ew.”
He leaves, saying something along the lines of No more screaming and I’m so hungry. Tim stays.
Toby’s shoulders are still heavy, so he keeps lying down —his chest is heavy, too, but that’s a different story— and pats the space next to him —when did he get so bold?—. Tim hesitates a second before lying down.
“This was the last night,” he says, after a moment of silence.
“I know.”
Just a week ago, the moment before dawn, the darkness of it, reminded Toby of his loneliness. Now, he makes the most of it. Because only then can he lie.
“You don’t need me here anymore.”
“I know.”
And what has he done lately, but hide behind it?
“Unless you commit another mistake and…”
Even now, as he takes Tim’s hand and brings it to his lips, he lies. He makes the most of it, then, so Tim can’t see the look he hates so much. That of the murderer being punished, this time by his own feelings.
“Let’s hope not, Tim.”
There are many obvious things in the world. Among them, the fact that Toby will never get to find love —or recognize it, even—. But if these encounters in the dark are the closest he’ll ever get, let the fucking nightmares come.