Chapter Text
Between the pale yellow sodium light and the murky glass of the window there is a sheet of cool summer rain. Between the layers of glass, there is a pocket of air, a muffling sheet between the room and the city without. Between his eyes, lying on a barren bed in a barren bedroom, the man who used to be Francis York Morgan is awake.
The rain beats patterns into the street, floors below, the roof, floors above, and as the city, though sleepless, is awash with silence, it is nostalgia he feels in waves, the ebb and flow barring him from sleeping, escaping into the white void of the dreamscape, the endless maze of ivory rooms that filled the hole where cryptic nightmares once sunk their teeth into his mind. He cannot tell if he prefers the safety of the emptiness.
On summer nights when the rain is ceaseless and his body cannot rest, his thoughts wander back to the forest, not the pristine, white one where he dreams now, nor the red hell from which he has escaped, but that which he caught only glimpses of, lush and green and populated entirely by goddesses.
She was one of them, of course, the last, regretted Goddess, his wording on her damning her as much as his negligence. Francis Zach Morgan does not blame himself for the death of Emily Wyatt, but cannot ignore the heavy weight of his inability, the trigger freezing beneath his fingertips. But then, she had been the purest goddess of them all, divine not just in her beauty, but her strength, infinitely stronger than all the women before her and all the men, himself included, who could not do what had to be done.
When her name floats to the top of his mind, he rises, walks through the darkened room into an equally bare bathroom, the light refracted from beyond the shower door just enough to illuminate his face in the glass.
It is an odd thing to look in the mirror and see a face you cannot comprehend is yours, to see a face you thought was alien for so long now identified as yours. Each time he looks, it is as if he sees his reflection for the first time, as if his very reflection is an alien image that he can’t comprehend.
The line was fine, always fine, where one ended and the other began, which was which and who was who, murky and muddled. The mirror no longer lies, and his words don’t twist before they reach his ears, but the view is no easier and the syllables no less foreign on his tongue.
Utterly ridiculous.
Like bandaging an old scar because you forgot you even had it.
He waits a few moments to let the faucet run into the drain before splashing his face with water. Cold, and he does not wipe off the drips clinging to two-day-old stubble, only runs his hands ( his hands? ) over the plane of it.
The lines were fine, fine like the old scar bisecting the left side of his face. Feeling it now is different than it ever was, now painfully obvious. How he had managed to hide it for so long… well, that was the Tree’s doing, the words still echoing in his mind - “ how did you escape the red room? ” - and the implications of it chilling to the bone. But then, there wasn’t suffering, there was only… York.
His hands are still wet when he leaves the bathroom, when crossing the barren room bathed in streaks of orange light, when falling unceremoniously on the bed, when they settle somewhere between the pillow and the back of his head.
“ … it’s been a while, hasn’t it? ”
A year, a year since Greenvale and a year since he’s said a word like this, into open air. The last time he had encountered the Tree, he wouldn’t speak to anyone but him for a year, but this time, he’d talk to anyone but him for the same frame. …bookends, almost. Closure. Wrapped up in a nice, neat little package. Zach can feel the corners of his mouth quirking without his trying.
“ York… I hope you can still hear me, even if you can’t respond. I know you’re there. You said you were always with me. Don’t you remember, York? ”
It almost feels silly, now, stupid. Yet he can’t remember bringing a hand to his neck, thumb pressed against the pendant’s smooth center. …Emily. Of course.
“ Did she take my advice, York? I know you’re usually not one to come out and say how you feel. I hope you don’t mind my trying to help you out. Sometimes you just need a little push.
“ … You, and Emily, and Anna, Becky, Diane, Carol, Thomas… All of you are together, aren’t you? I’m almost a little jealous. ”
Almost, not quite. Thinking about it – it’s bittersweet. Being alone isn’t so bad, once the fear is closed out of the mind.
“ …That’s all for now, York. Maybe I’ll talk to you again sometime. ”
No response echoes through the barren room. No response was expected. The silence is a comfort, a comfort and pain.
When Francis Zach Morgan sleeps, he dreams of white trees and endless rooms, connected through doors with no walls, hallways with no boundaries. He does not move from the room, only sit in the silence and watch the ivory leaves fall to mirrored floors.
Illuminated by the pale yellow sodium lights, the rain patters on against the foggy window, a ceaseless rhythm and quiet melody filling the emptiness. There is no malice in the rain. There is only cleansing, healing. Grace.
…and Grace will lead me home.