Chapter Text
Naim stood in the corner of the yard, watching him. Ryan watched back. Part of him wanted to join Naim outside, drawn by the tearful expression turned toward him. Part of him wanted to hold Naim, to take him away from their hateful parents, their hateful town. Perhaps he would have, if it were truly Naim watching him; but it was not. It was something more twisted, more sinister than Naim could ever be. Naim's only sin had been to let jealousy overtake his care for Ryan; this entity, this thing that haunted him, had done much, much worse.
“I'm sorry,” Naim's voice called to him. “I didn't know all of this would happen. If I'd known, I wouldn't have— If I'd known, I would have stayed quiet.” Ryan said nothing. Jessica had been right, in a way; the thing had gotten better at imitating Naim. Its eyes were rounded and glazed, teary in a way only Naim's ever seemed to get; its shoulders hunched in, like it was trying to disappear into itself. But behind the demure expression and the remorseful body language was only hate. Naim had been angry with Ryan, had been jealous and scared—but never hateful. The entity could never replicate the affection, the care, the purity that Naim's gaze carried when he looked at Ryan.
Incensed by Ryan's apathy, the entity strode over to stand directly outside the window. “Please, let me in,” Naim's voice was no more than a whimper. “I just want to talk to you. I'm scared. I can't be alone.” It pained Ryan to listen to Naim crying out for him. After all, no matter how hurt or betrayed he was by the real Naim, he would never wish fear upon him. It was almost enough to make him cave. What if it really was Naim, and Ryan was leaving him to die at the hands of cruelty? Wasn't this all his fault anyway? Hadn't he started it with Naim in the first place? Ryan only watched it; just as he couldn't bring himself any closer, he couldn't look away.
Its (Naim's?) patience seemed to wear thin. It moved closer, pressing his hand to the glass that separated them. “We don't have to talk. I just don't want to be alone. I'll leave in the morning, when my mum gets back.” He looked down at his hand, then back up at Ryan. For a long moment, neither said anything, seemingly content to look into each other's eyes. Then Ryan was on the floor, glass littered around him. Cold hands encircled his neck, pressing together with unnatural force. Ryan knew Naim wasn't this strong; he'd seen him struggle just to lift the pipe. These hands were driven by an unholy, deep-seated hate, the kind reserved for those it believed were the lowest of the low. What Ryan had done to deserve that title was beyond him.
As his esophagus was slowly crushed, he wondered, for a moment, if it was always going to come to this. If Naim hadn't told the preacher, someone else would have; he and Hunter couldn't have stayed hidden much longer anyway. Though he was still hurt—betrayed, even—he was no longer angry at Naim. Better that it had come from a place of love, twisted as that reasoning was, than from a place of malice. He was tempted to give up. To die looking at the face of the object of his greatest affection. But it wasn't actually Naim. So Ryan couldn't give up.
Rather than waste himself on the futile endeavour of prying the fingers from his neck, he flailed his arms out around him. His right hand connected with the sharp heel of his mother's boot, carelessly discarded after a long day at work. His fingers closed around the base, and he swung the sharp end into the entity's temple with all the strength his oxygen-deprived muscles could muster. Though the pressure around his windpipe lessened, it did not cease. So he swung again. And again. And again.
As soon as he could, he scrambled out from under the heavy body. Propelled by the basal instinct of his amygdala's fight-or-flight response, he floundered out of the room and toward the front door. Beside it sat a half-packed school backpack, and he snagged it as he catapulted outside. And he ran. He knew it wouldn't chase him. After all, it only had to catch him eventually; it wasn't concerned with the where or the when.
The further he got from the threat that had kicked his sympathetic nervous system into high gear, the more rational thoughts began to slip back in. Where the fuck am I headed? Does it matter? Where the fuck am I? He had to find someone, fast. Once he wasn't alone anymore, he could plan his next steps. Ahead, he spotted a run-down convenience store, sure to hold at least one person, maybe more. As he got closer he slowed his pace, until he looked like nothing more than a teen out for a casual night walk. The cashier didn't bother to look up when he walked in; the only sign she knew he existed at all was a mumbled “We close in thirty minutes” aimed in his general direction. He slipped to the back of the store as inconspicuously as a slightly out-of-breath, terrified-looking person could, and stopped in front of the drink fridges. He tried to get his bearings while he pretended to debate between a Sprite and a Schweppes.
Out of imminent danger, Ryan had only one goal. Find Naim. He didn't even know if Naim—the real Naim—was still alive. What had the entity wearing Ryan's face convinced him of? What if Naim hadn't been strong enough? What if he'd died thinking Ryan hated him? He had to get to Naim. He left without buying anything, not that it mattered to the apathetic worker; she probably hadn't noticed he'd left at all. Glancing around, he pieced together where he was and how to get back to Naim's house. He hadn't seen any silhouettes of lanky teenage boys, but he wasn't going to chance his luck—he sprinted as fast as he could.
As he turned onto Naim's street, he could already sense something was wrong. As if in protest of something so blatantly unnatural, the street lay eerily silent, absent of even the smallest sounds of wildlife. Not a good sign. Ryan quickened his pace. From the street, Naim's house looked quiet—peaceful, even. No lights were on, and to any other observer that would have meant only that the occupants had turned in for the night. Ryan knew better. He knew the fear Naim would be feeling, too scared to switch the light off, even though it made no difference. Quietly, he looped around the back of the house, noting the open window as he passed. Though he had suspected something had happened, the backyard confirmed it: a hole had been torn through the screen door, blood and hair ringing the gaping wound. It swung back and forth in the breeze. That, coupled with the silence, could only mean one thing. Naim was gone. He was gone, and Ryan had done it—because if Ryan had only stayed with him, or better yet had never spoken to him at all, never invited him to the factory, never even met those deep, soulful brown eyes, then none of this would have ever happened.
Ripped from his thoughts, his head slammed into the brick wall of the house, so forcefully it almost certainly caused a cerebral contusion. His ears rang as his legs gave out beneath him, the world lurching into a sick vertigo. Naim's likeness reared its arm back, Ryan's head in tow, readying itself for a second round, when Ryan reached up and laid his hand against its cheek. It wasn't Naim. Ryan knew that. And yet the realisation that Naim was gone, coupled with his spitting image standing right in front of him, had thrown some kind of dissonance through his muddled head. As Ryan braced himself for the end of his life, all he wanted was to hold Naim one last time.
But the darkness he waited for never came. Instead, the entity seemed to have frozen in place. Confused, Ryan drew his hand down toward its lips, thinking for a moment that it had swapped places with the real Naim, or maybe it had been the real Naim all along. The hate and malice that always burned in the entity's eyes was now shot through with some other force, as if even the pure embodiment of destruction didn't know how to answer being met with care.
As his thoughts came back to him, Ryan realised his window of opportunity was narrowing the longer he let himself linger. He ripped his head from the entity's grasp and stumbled away, clutching at the rough brick for any semblance of support. Naim—the real Naim—was gone. Ryan had nothing left for him here, nothing in this run-down industrial town. He had to leave. It was the only chance he'd have at any facade of a life. As he fumbled his torn, dirtied backpack more securely onto his shoulders, he made a plan. Just get to a bus station. There's always someone trying to escape this fucked-up town—you either stay for life or hightail it the first chance you get. Sleep a few hours, then catch the first bus to Melbourne. Maybe just jump from city to city, cross-country. That was good enough for him. As he staggered toward the bus stop at the edge of town, he saw a plume of smoke rising from the dense forest that bordered the suburban cluster of houses. The factory, their factory, was up in flames. Well. Ryan didn't need a clearer sign than that; Naim was gone, and so they were gone.
The bus station was in sight, and just as well, because Ryan absolutely had damage to his cerebellum, which was doing its level best to convince him he was on a ship caught in a storm rather than standing on solid ground. He collapsed onto a seat, ignoring the disgruntled looks he garnered from the other wayward travellers seeking refuge.
He woke to shuffling all around him—a bus had just arrived, or was just leaving. He blinked hard, trying to reorient his eyes to the bright shine of the morning(?) sun. His head was pounding, and his mouth felt as though it had been stuffed with cotton balls, but he was alive. As he stood to join the line, his gaze caught on a solitary figure on the other side of the road. Naim stood, watching him. How—how the fuck was it here? Ryan was surrounded by people, swarming past him as they prepared to set off. He stood frozen as it walked over to him. In the short time he had been without its haunting presence, it had become infinitely better at imitating Naim. Now its eyes were rounded and concerned, emphasised by the deep purple crescent moons beneath them; it looked wary, and hurt, and hopeful. Ryan couldn't move. It was breathtakingly realistic—so realistic, in fact, that he thought perhaps he could let this version of Naim finish him. It stopped just short of him, gazing deeply into his eyes. Something about it made Ryan think that perhaps it was not "it" at all.
“Please tell me it's really you.” It was all he could do to whisper it.
Naim said nothing. He managed only to nod, once.