Chapter Text
Whatever you do at the crossroads.
Keep going forward.
Or something like that
(I was never really good with endings)
▪︎ ▪︎ ____ ▪︎ ________ 🟨 ________ ▪︎ ____ ▪︎ ▪︎
Derek stares at the white screen, at the black words that seem to bleed into one another the longer he looks, as though the letters themselves are beginning to cease existence, just like him.
The pounding in his head doesn't come in pulses anymore, settling instead in a constant, crushing pressure, until he almost wishes that everything could just end, that he may be granted mindless, eternal dreamless sleep. It'd be easier if everything just stopped. If his mind ceased and he could sink into oblivion, fall into something blank and silent, where nothing watched him think as each second slowly slips through his fingers like sand.
Seconds? A little voice in his mind asks, cutting through his thoughts.
Truth be told, he doesn't know how long it's been since he spoke the enchantment, since he read aloud the transcription from the buried book, and kicked Avery off the edge. Time unraveled, into something shapeless, the line blurring and coming back and forth until it seems that past is future and present is past. It might've been minutes. Maybe hours have passed, and he doesn't know. His vision is too blurry to read the time on the corner of the screen, and his mind too loud, too crowded, to reach for the infinite knowledge.
Derek can only hope that he won't be forgotten.
He'd never admitted it. He's not one to feel scared, not even when he was a child, fear didn't suit him.
"Derek's such a great kid! He's never any trouble, I don't even have to worry about him," his mother would say.
Derek didn't cry, Derek was smart. And Derek didn't fear. Not really.
Aren't you, mortal, scared of death?
Of course he is. Only a fool places trust on what they don't understand, and, even now, with infinite knowledge, with the infinite itself presenting itself, beautiful and dazzling all the same as murderous and incomprehensible, he can't grasp what waits beyond the curtain.
But death isn't his true fear. It's easy to admit you're scared of the unknown.
True fears are hard to say; the words shut your mouth, render you speechless when you wish to confess; silent when you need someone to understand and cradle you in their arms. They make confession seem like exposure, like placing something vital in the hands of someone you can't trust.
True fears are something you keep close to your chest, buried and away from the world so it can't reach in and tear you apart.
But Derek told his to Avery in his final letter.
Derek's true fear is to be forgotten.
Such a simple thing. Almost childish, isn't it?
His head drops onto the table with a dull thud. Empty Soylent bottles clatter to the floor, roll away. The room is dark, save for the cold white glow of the screen that floods the sad, dark space and the walls that seem to close in, dragging Derek deeper in his own mind.
He squeezes his eyes shut, grips his head; but it makes no difference, because sight is no longer necessary.
He knows everything. Where everything is. What everything is. How everything came to be. It doesn't come to him in comprehensible fragments, segmented so his brain can try to understand one before another. It comes all at the same time, too fast and too slow, as he means nothing in the grand scheme of things. He knows he doesn't matter. He knows the exact number of quarks in every particle in this realm, how long it'll be for everything to fizzle out of existence and reach the true ending of existence itself, how long it will take for his body to be found after he dies, because no one is—
The floor is freezing as he seizes on it; pain flooding every nerve and fiber. When did he fall off his chair?
Sleep.
Pain should stop one's thoughts, stretching his mind thin enough to tear. Death should stop this hell. So why doesn't he just-
There is only the certainty, growing as this show comes to an end, that something watches him endure his last moments, its infinite eyes piercing him, judging him. When everything stops, Derek would've sighed if he had air for it.
...
The voice speaks, but can it really be considered a voice anymore?
It's no longer separated enough to be considered that, isn't it?
The King in Yellow speaks, even if Derek is sure he can't be there anymore.
At the crossroads, turn left.
For you were never given a choice.
To be of flesh and real,
Is to forget cause and cost.
At the crossroads, it doesn't matter,
Whether you choose or not.
Turn back, and I still win.
For immortality is just a sin.
Hastur is not my name.
Neither is yours.
Hastur is us,
The cause and the cost,
My victory, and your loss,
The King and the Lord.
...
When Derek wakes, the world takes its time returning to him, lying on the cold floor, heart pounding like a hammer in his chest.
The headache is gone.