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In your dreams, you are alone; there’s no one standing at shore for you, because {cycling link for: 'drown', choices: ['you pulled him in right with you.', 'he pulled you out and stumbled in and never surfaced again.', 'no one was there in the first place.']}
<br>
<br>
[after 3.5 seconds]
You are seveteen and twenty and some part of you is always going to be here, waiting for someone long gone.
Even now, in the privacy of your own head, you can't bring yourself to think: _he's dead._ It curls through your thoughts like a wisp of thread, looping through every memory and subconscious action until it becomes taut — he's dead. You did this. You're responsible for this.
<br>
[after 4.5 seconds]
It's been [[two years and three hundred and sixty-two days.->dream]] Aren't you supposed to be over this? Aren't you supposed to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and not flinch? When are you going to be able to stop paying the phone bill of a dead person?In your dreams: it's bright and humid as fuck because Augusts around here are always like that, heralding the rain showers that creep in at the start of the month. Sweat makes your hair stick to your neck. The house is quiet and empty and you're bored out of your mind.
It's not fair. You just wanted your friend. You wanted someone because you were bored and alone and you wanted _Red_ because he's your friend and this was supposed to be safe.
You know the ocean. You know what to do and what not to - you'd grown up here.
It was supposed to be [[_safe._->dreamagain]]
In your dreams: there's something in the ocean.
Something blinking, crawling, a thousand lights in your blurry, red-stained vision as you struggle to break surface. Someone tugs at your arm even as you flail, holding your skull in one hand and desperately trying focus on anything except for whatever is crawling around in your eye socket. Water burns in your lungs, you can't _breathe_ and—
The world goes dark. When you wake up, you're alone on shore, there's blood covering your hair and clothes and when you reach shaking hands up to your face, [[the pain hits you all at once.]]
In your dreams: you curl up tightly, like if you make yourself small enough than maybe every part of you that hurts will crumble into tiny pieces along with you. You're saying something to yourself, asking, calling out for someone; crawling further towards land to try to get help, to tap at your phone with shaking hands even though there's no fucking signal and your screen is covered with your own blood and—
There's nothing inside your eye socket, mercifully. However, there's also _nothing inside your eyesocket._
(Later they'll ask you, soft and coaxing, _what happened?_
What the hell are you supposed to say? You don't know. Was Red swallowed up by the ocean; did he take your place and end up a host for some parasitic worm or the other; did he drown slowly or was he torn into pieces the same way your eye was? Did he just disappear into the horizon, another missing persons case among many?
No one would've even known if he screamed for help — the only person around to hear it was you, [[unconscious.]]
They never even find a body. No sign to indicate that Red had ever been there in the first place - nothing except you.)
(Later, in a hospital room that's too bright, they'll tell you it's a miracle you didn't go into shock. You stare at how Red is carefully plucking out each individual petal from the flowers placed in a vase, and say nothing.)
(Later, they'll call it a _wormhole._ They'll talk about the ocean rising, and it'll be casual, at first; it's just _worms._ Basically harmless. Weird but harmless.
Then: they keep getting bigger, and bigger, crawling furthwe inland, and then someone finds out the hard way they're parasitic and still no one _does_ anything; when the death toll starts to climb, you're not even surprised.)
(The thing is, someone has to be the witness. Someone has to find the body — someone has to be the first person on the scene.
If it hadn't been you, it would've been someone else. If it hadn't been Red, it would've been you, and it's just your luck really, that the world looked at the one guy who had the audacity to say shit like _what's the point in living if you can't die for someone else,_ and decide to make that happen.)
In your dreams: the world takes him from you, unexpectedly and without warning, and you never really came to terms with it. You’re still not sure whether you have, if you’re being honest, and you’re not ordinarily honest with yourself.
In your dreams: you can never <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/48701626/chapters/127568722#ret">go back home.</a>