Chapter Text
It starts with Grace in bed, surrounded by next week’s lesson plans. So, he was a little messy. Sue him. He was organized where it mattered… in his own way. Not to say the lesson plans didn’t matter, but he was derailing himself. He had had a dream, a nightmare really. The red echoed behind every thought, every feeling, making a home between his ragged gasps for breath, aching, clawing, feeling. Was he feeling, was it feeling? He couldn’t tell. It was everywhere, and everything, a union beyond comprehension laid bare just for him. And everyone else. It was peace and chaos until it was no more.
Most people wake up before they die in their dreams. Grace didn’t. He couldn’t put into words what the Lack felt like. To have an essence, a core, a soul, and then to imagine what it would be like to lose it? Maybe there wasn’t a word for it at all; maybe that word vanished along with everything else. Only then, in the infinite nothing where everything and nothing combined into a fucked up loogie of metaphysical bullshit, did Grace breathe.
Fingers clenched into the unwashed sheets, gripping onto reality as he raggedly sobbed. Why? The terror and grief he felt for a world his mind conjured seemed silly, as the drenches of reasoning slowly percolated their way in, beyond the animalistic panic. Grace gasped and heaved anyway, because since when did animals care for logic? He was off track again. One thought, Grace. “One thought at a time please,” his mother’s voice rang out in the back of his mind. He breathed. And then he breathed again.
The last time he experienced a panic attack so severe his brother had fallen. Colt had been in the hospital for months, and there was a moment when he wasn’t sure he would ever leave again. It passed, but that everlooming terror never left him. The Grace’s were resilient, if nothing else. That still didn’t change what happened after. Grace didn’t like to think about it. This nightmare was going straight into that mental file as soon as he figured out how to. Do Not Open, Look at Your Own Risk. File it away into the back of his mental cabinet to never see the light of day again. His mind felt littered with those mental flags, but it was all he had. Beyond the kids that is, the kids were all he had. And the terrible coping skills. He might have let slip a strangled moan. He wasn’t sure.
Grace dropped his head into his hands, exasperated with himself. A hint of guilt for dismissing the kids for a second as well, if he was really looking. Muttering a verbal “Get it together Grace.” to himself like a loon, he thought, ‘Coffee.’ That was what he needed. A distraction too, before another day of work– of rewarding happy work, where he would once again try to get Mason to sit down for longer than five minutes. Good grief, that kid was a lot. It was worth it though. His body moved on autopilot, the way it had a hundred times before, and would a hundred times after. With the routine, he could feel his jagged edges shift back into place, the angry points turning inward so they couldn’t cut anybody else. A blanket of normalcy eased him into the day as he haphazardly threw on the nearest cardigan. The silly foxes looked back at him from where he stood by the mirror.
He gave himself a once-over. Scraggly hair sticking up every which way. Dorky pun on his sleep-wrinkled shirt. Pants that should have really gone into the wash by now, but they could last another day. They were the most comfortable out of his meager collection, and his students wouldn’t notice. Well, maybe Abbey would, but she was kind enough not to say anything. Again. The steam from his coffee fogged the mirror, and he nearly toppled over in his haste to add cream, his attention once again seized by his careless glance towards the clock. He was running late (Again) and would have to drink his caffeine amidst the Friday traffic. He hopped on one foot, forcing his shoes on before zipping out the door, hot drink nearly sloshing on the carpet as he left. If his shoe was moreso crushed under his foot than on, well, that was neither here nor there.
A moment.
He ran back inside, coffee gripped in a claw machine grasp as he nabbed his wallet off the coffee table. He paused before locking onto his lanyard and throwing it over his head. Maybe it was bunched up all weird in his collar, but if he left any later, there would be heck to pay. No time. Back outside he went, nearly tripping over his laptop on the way.
Another moment.
Another mad dash back inside, this time sans coffee, an engine humming in the background. Scrabbling, Grace took the car keys from the countertop, mildly panting from exertion. A few drops took flight from his fingers to leave creamy brown splots on the glass. He hesitated a moment before shaking his hand dry. Later.
The door slammed behind him as he darted out of the empty apartment. Footsteps grew fainter as he ran to the car.
All was calm.
Peaceful.
A thundering of steps rang out into the early morning, once again leading Grace back to the blasted front door.
With a final click of the lock echoing throughout the tiny apartment, inconsequential yet loud as a gunshot, Grace left his apartment for the last time.
He was engulfed by dimmed gold. It was like nothing he had ever seen, which immediately raised his hackles. Simon glanced around his surroundings. His eyes never rested on any one place for long. He was out in the open. That was… not great. Taking a step forward, he almost flinched at the crunch of decay beneath his feet. Rocks. Everywhere. He remembered reading about dirt trails in an old book he had stolen, but he never thought he would ever get the chance to see one. Or rather, this didn’t seem like a road, more so a field? Maybe? Tall grasses reached up high towards the tangled mess of cords lining the sky. A sky? He had to be dreaming. Why would they take him to… Oh. He was dreaming. That was the only explanation. It’s just, this was odd, even for him.
He absentmindedly toyed with what had to be some sort of grain. It felt far too real. They brushed against his knees where he stood, swaying slightly in a breeze. Breezes on the station were rarely a good thing, but it didn’t cause the panic he expected. A soft simmering lump of dread, the one he had been stuck with since- since. Since. Since Then. That feeling had been his only companion for the last week or so, but here it felt foreign. It was kinder than he deserved. He soon succumbed to frustration at the absurdity, clenching the false promise in his heretical fist.
They said you could only dream of what you knew, every stranger’s face you passed on rotation, jumbled and smashed together into mental dolls for your subconscious to play with. Or in Simon’s case, torture him with. It came back to him in pieces, as the damp swirled around and seeped into his bones. Resisting a shudder from the chill, Simon found himself engulfed by a ruby fog. The pain in his soul followed soon after, as someone screamed in the distance. His brothers, oh fuck, he couldn’t just stand there. What was he doing? Idiot, idiot, idiot! Move, damn it! He felt rooted in place as his vision swirled in the mist, the stems cloying around him in a hypnotic dance. And beyond his vision, shadows? He didn’t have time to process; he didn’t even have a chance, before the fog flashed brilliantly and he was thrust into consciousness.
For once, he found being a light sleeper disadvantageous. He lay there. His breathing, slow and deep, didn’t falter, nor did his eyes open. Simon learned early on, after all that had been kind and true had left him, even his brothers couldn’t be trusted. He learned that lesson the hard way. The result was this facade of calm he draped over himself—a shield forged from pain that his mother would lament bitterly. The convict across the way screamed from his cell. A clear answer to a rhetorical question. He found it pointless to care for the man’s suffering, as empathy was hard to spare from the damned. It wouldn’t be wanted either. The weight of his sin was heavy, liable to spread if left unchecked, and the blood caked under his nails made his words bitter to the ear. He missed his journal. Simon had few belongings to his name. What he did have, he protected with bite and scorn, desperation making every last stand lethal. Eventually, the hoarse screams frittered off into wailing, which simmered down into a choked whimpering. When the pounding of boots thundered past the hall, the whole symphony began anew.
Great.
Simon found himself trapped in place, suspended between what could happen and what he had done since Then. A space between choice, or the reality between scene breaks, he surmised. At the very least, it gave him a chance to turn over whatever the living fuck that was.
His mother had been a fan of romantic paperbacks, the few left from the Old Times passed around between mothers like a loving heirloom for a generation bereft of purpose. When he got older, she had used them to teach him to read. The schools on Eden had been… serviceable. But his mother believed there was more than Purpose to life. It was a naive thought that led to her own demise. The world was built in fact and reason– flights of fancy were a hazard at best. Secretly though, he kept that smile cradled between his ribs. The last remnants of a heart he couldn’t afford to have. Maybe her naivety had killed him too, the roots wound so deeply within his essence he could never have hoped to be free of it. Simon was coming to realize he had never been free. Freedom was unrealistic, so he moved on.
Back to the original point; the books. In some of these tales, they would speak of soulmates. She had whispered of people, bound together by fate and choice. Someone made just for you, to be what you needed. Not what you wanted, she made sure to clarify, her voice tilting up in a way that echoed teasing mischief, but what you needed. He had been so young, curled into her side as the fever wracked across her body, when he had asked sourly, “What’s the difference?” He had been a moody child. It never seemed to bother his mother though, the saint she was. “Well,” she began, “sometimes the things we want hurt us, or distract us, and the things we need, even if they’re unwanted, help us, better us in ways we may not understand at first.” A little Simon furrowed his brow. He could still remember the rattling breath that belied her kindness, a somber soundtrack to his happiest moments. She had a habit of meandering off on tangents that never quite seemed to match the original topic, but somehow circled back like a metaphor if he had been wise enough to pay attention.
Alas, baby Simon had been a little shit.
Now he was stuck trying to piece together wisdom from scattered memories. Maybe he had missed something that his utilitarianism had blinded him from. Would she be proud? Disappointed? This line of thinking had been walked before many times, was unproductive at best and now was not the time God Damnit! Soulmates! That was the point. A point he would much rather throw out the airlock and never peruse again, thank you very much. Soulmates had been taken with the Quiet Rapture, or so they said. Maybe it was true, or maybe it was propaganda to keep their little soldiers neatly in line, he couldn’t say. The thought left him feeling wrong-footed. It was like the idea alone was enough to break his world in two, which was ironic if he considered it for more than a moment. He wouldn’t. He would dismiss it. It was impossible. Just a stupid hope for the simple-minded and weak-willed. Yet…
He had never seen a field like that. Forests maybe, from old pictures, or desert landscapes in a curt lesson, but nothing like that. A place both resilient and miserable, cloaked in a blindness he had never heard of. A fucking headache.
And yet.
The whole mental interrogation would bear no fruit, he knew that. His time was better spent sleeping. Or maybe not. There was no telling what they would do with him. He knew better than to hope for mercy. Mercy was from the Old Times. A bitter failure like him wouldn’t qualify. He laid there a long time. Long enough to hear the struggle as his neighbor was dragged away to an unknown fate. Long enough to know he would be next. A stray wish escaped him before he again succumbed to exhaustion. ‘Please, please, if there could ever be mercy for a monster like me– Don’t let me have a soulmate. No one should be trapped with the likes of me, let alone lose a lifeline they may have cleaved to in this unforgiving hellscape.’
When Simon crashed this time, it was to empty silence.