Chapter Text
As far as everyone knows, Ezekiel has absolutely no memory of his time trapped in the video game.
In a sense it’s true; he has no conscious memory of the horrors he experienced trying desperately to save his friends. And while the others at least remember their final run, the memories of the countless other runs are apparently lost forever. No one will ever truly know what Ezekiel went through, over and over and over again, to save them all.
But though Ezekiel has no conscious memories of the video game, it still comes to him in his dreams. Horrible, confusing dreams that are gone by the time he wakes, but still leave him gasping and sweaty and on the edge of panic and desperately grasping for even just a sliver of a memory that might tell him why, why this is happening to him.
It’s almost cruel, really. Take the memories but leave the aftereffects.
His conscious memory may be an “unsaved game” but his subconscious has managed to retain all the data.
It didn’t start immediately afterward. He had been fine. For weeks it was almost like nothing even happened, although he did notice the difference in how the others looked at him. He remembered their words to him when it was all over.
You were a hero.
Yeah right. Like he, Ezekiel Jones, was even capable of being a hero. He had decided a long time ago that he should just give up on trying to be the good guy when it was so much easier to be good at being bad. And anything “good” he does, he does in secret so no one gets the wrong idea. He’s the criminal, the overconfident, self-obsessed master thief who only does things that serve himself.
He’s not meant to be the good guy.
Surely they were teasing, taking advantage of the fact that he lost his memory to mess with him.
But since that day, they look at him with different eyes. Their actions are the same. They weren’t suddenly treating him like a totally different person. He’s still their annoying little brother who at some point shifted from “barely tolerated” to “endearingly obnoxious.” But the eyes don’t lie, and it’s become somewhat uncomfortable for Ezekiel to catch them looking at him with that… expression they all seem to have now.
Whatever that expression is, exactly. No one has ever looked at him with those eyes and he can’t manage to make sense of it.
Other than that, however, everything seemed to have gone back to normal.
Until the nightmares start.
Now, Ezekiel isn’t a stranger to nightmares. They’ve visited him throughout his life, ranging from typical childhood dreams of monsters to visions of much more real, human monsters.
Less-than-ideal childhood aside, in his line of work it’s impossible to avoid the latter version. Especially considering how young he was when he first started.
But these new nightmares are different.
The first time they come, he’s sleeping on a cot in the Annex.
(When it became clear that Ezekiel had the very cat-like habit of falling asleep practically anywhere except for the bed that had been provided for him, the cot had become something of a permanent fixture in the main section of the Annex. It was partially an attempt by the others to, as they stated, “encourage Ezekiel to stop falling asleep in random places.”)
(Jenkins had even stopped complaining after a while. Ezekiel figures it was because Jenkins decided if Ezekiel wasn’t going to sleep in his actual room , he would rather the young Librarian sleep on a cot in his workspace than on top of his desk again.)
They had returned fairly late from a rather physically demanding mission and gone their separate ways pretty quickly. The others disappeared into their rooms - because they all do have their own apartments, but said apartments have become increasingly redundant as the Library has become Home - and Ezekiel had curled up on the cot, falling asleep fairly quickly.
And then the nightmares began and he was trapped.
He couldn’t make sense of the images assaulting him in his sleep. Faces, voices, colors – they always say no one dreams in color, but the images were so incredibly vivid. All of it coming at him at a disorienting pace. Nothing really playing out in the form of actual scenes; it’s an assault by a chaotic jumble of image after image. He doesn’t quite exist in a physical form so much as he’s an observer out of time, out of place, thrown from overwhelming space to overwhelming space.
And then he bolts awake and suddenly he’s very present in his existence, drenched in sweat and gasping for air.
He can’t piece anything together.
His mind is a frantic mess of visions and colors and feelings all vying for his attention. For a long moment it’s all he’s aware of.
That and the fear .
It’s a heavy force crushing down on him even now as he struggles to reorient himself to his surroundings.
The Annex. On a cot. Tangled in a blanket.
Running a hand over his face, he tries to calm his breathing and hammering heart. It feels a hell of a lot like the aftermath of a panic attack – something he’s also familiar with, but hasn’t experienced for a while now.
He learned quite a while back that replacing self doubt and constant overthinking with overconfidence and narcissistic tendencies does wonders for anxiety. It didn’t get rid of it, but it certainly helped push it aside. Besides, one doesn’t become a world-class master thief with self-doubt and anxiety.
It was simply something that had to be done to ensure his survival in the shady world he had somehow come to occupy.
He didn’t think it was possible to have an actual panic attack in your sleep, but he can’t remember a nightmare ever leaving him feeling so terrified . His muscles are literally aching.
As he breathes and breathes and becomes more grounded in the present, Ezekiel registers someone just outside his peripheral. His heart jumps again and he whips his head to the side, on high alert, to see Jenkins standing a few feet away, a small bottle in hand and face pinched with thinly masked concern.
Jenkins clears his throat awkwardly. “I was just coming to try to give you this,” He waves the bottle slightly. A clear liquid sloshes inside.
“Trying to poison me in my sleep, Jenkins?” Ezekiel croaks, giving his best attempt at a lighthearted tone as though he wasn’t still trying to calm in breathing and racing heart. As though Jenkins hadn’t just witnessed… whatever the hell just happened. “I know I’m annoying but that’s a bit concerning.”
Jenkins looks less than amused. “It’s a calming tonic. You were… having a nightmare. You wouldn’t wake so I thought I might try this instead.”
Jenkins had tried to wake him? Unsuccessfully, apparently. Must’ve been some nightmare.
If only he could actually remember what the heck it had been about.
“I appreciate the concern, Jenkins, but I’m good now,” Ezekiel swings his legs over the side of the cot and stretches casually. His body seems to have finally gotten the message to calm the heck down , and the only physical evidence of his nightmare was the sweat still coating his body and the slightest tightness still grasping his lungs and heart.
Jenkins is watching him with that look on his face – the one that says he in no way bought into Ezekiel’s BS. His eyes search the young Librarian’s face and he looks like he wants to say something. But after a moment, he seems to reach the conclusion that pursuing the matter will achieve nothing. Sighing, he slipped the bottle into one of his pockets.
“Well, in that case I’ll leave you to go back to sleep,” he responds, turning to leave the room.
“Nah, I’ve had enough sleep, I think I’ll grab my board and head to the Grand Canyon or something. There are so many awesome places I haven’t boarded yet.” Ezekiel starts pushing the cot back to its typical corner when he realizes Jenkins is looking at him again.
“Mr. Jones, you do realize it’s two in the morning?” He says carefully, watching for Ezekiel’s reaction. “And considering you and the others did not return until quite late from your mission, a rather long and tiring mission from the sound of it, I would say you haven’t slept for more than an hour.”
Normally Ezekiel would respond with more witty banter but he’s honestly too mentally and physically exhausted to even bother. Now that he’s fully come down from his panic, he feels strangely empty and raw.
He spins around for the back door, realizing then that he hadn’t even taken off his boots before crashing onto the cot. He sets the back door for a random location and is through it in a matter of seconds.
In hindsight, the fact that he didn’t take the time to see where the back door was sending him could have potentially been very bad. Luckily, he ends up in a town in what seemed to be Japan. He finds himself walking a bit and ends up in a large, sunny park. A cool breeze sweeps past him and a little ways away he can see several families having picnics. Small children chase each other around the blankets as the adults laugh together.
It would be the perfect place to just lie down in the grass and have a long afternoon nap. But as drained as Ezekiel is, the last thing he wants to do is go back to sleep. Instead, he forces himself to walk around the town and try to focus his mind on other things.
It isn’t until he’s been walking for some time that it hits him - despite the flimsy excuse he gave to Jenkins before leaving, he hadn’t thought to bring his board with him.