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The clock on the wall ticks and Charlie’s eyes flick open.
“No,” he whispers. His heart, such as it is, what is left, sinks. He feels sick.
It’s late. The ticking clock says so.
“No,” Charlie moans quietly.
The quiet street outside his apartment speaks, too, of the late hour. Smoke curls in a slow trail up from a cigarette resting loosely between his fingers. It trembles as his fingers do.
“No,” he says again, stronger this time.
The light is wrong. It’s always wrong here. The King can throw down a backdrop of any number of familiar places, but the fucking light is always wrong.
The light is wrong, but he knows where he is. What night it is.
“No, I don’t want to do this!” Charlie cries. He throws his cigarette across the apartment, his apartment, and slams his fists on the table. “Fuck you!” He hopes the cigarette catches and burns the fucking place to the ground. He hopes he dies a fiery death this time.
He knows if he looks in his bedroom, he’ll find a trunk packed. Luggage ready. His few worldly possessions not traveling with him packed in a box.
“This was before I went to Egypt. What the fuck do you think you’re gonna learn here?!” He’s shouting at no one, nothing but phantoms, but he knows the King is watching. Listening.
He shouldn’t give him the satisfaction of his anger. But the mundane tortures, the replayed memories, they’re actually worse than the standard fare. Deprive him of sleep, starve him, vivisect him, make him Prometheus--he could withstand that. But this…
The lock at the front door scrapes and Charlie gets up from the table with such force the chair clatters to the floor.
“No,” he growls between gritted teeth. He marches across the facsimile of his apartment and as the knob starts to turn, he holds the door closed with all his weight, shaking his head. “No,” he repeats bitterly. “Don’t you fucking put on his face, you piece of shit.”
“Dowd.”
It sounds just like him and Charlie’s heart shatters. But he’s accustomed to the suffering by now. He’s been broken a hundred times over. There shouldn’t be anything left to break. He shakes his head with an incredulous rictus smile of pain.
“No,” he says again. “No, I won’t let you have this.” Not this night.
“Charlie.”
Charlie heaves a dry sob. “Fuck you,” he breathes.
“You- you didn’t call.”
He didn’t call. He was supposed to call and tell Roland everything was ready. But he didn’t because he wanted to see him, but he didn’t want to piss him off, calling him at home, Roland hated that, even if it was the last time--
“This is weak! ” Charlie shouts hoarsely. “You sound like you’re reading a fucking script! Do better, you bastard! At least make it sound like him!”
“Charlie…”
Of course he shouldn’t have goaded him. That does sound like him. Not just his normal voice, either, but the softer voice of Roland in one of his rare, tender moods. But he steels himself. “No,” he says gruffly and twists the lock shut.
He won’t give in. He’ll keep this memory safe. He won’t let the King twist it.
Not even to see his face again.
“Charlie, please.”
Charlie chokes on an incredulous laugh. “Please?! Roland Cummings never said fucking please in his life! ”
“You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed to be here, Charlie,” comes in a sudden rush. “Open the fucking door.”
Charlie’s eyes go wide. “What..?”
“ Please, ” he whispers thickly. “I don’t know how much time we have.”
This… this is different. It’s never been like this before. Charlie knows he’s being tricked, manipulated, but… His fingers hover by the lock. “Tell--” He swallows on a lump in his throat. “Tell me something only Roland, the real Roland, would know.”
The pregnant pause that follows only breeds misguided hope in Charlie’s breast. He shouldn’t get his hopes up for anything in this endless torment.
“You hate your birthday because you share it with your father,” Roland says quietly. “It’s July twelfth. But you say it’s October third.”
Charlie’s heart twists and aches. “ Roland, ” he whispers in sweet agony.
His last night before getting on that boat and sailing away. The last time he saw Roland. The last night Roland used his key to let himself into his apartment after Charlie stayed up half the night expecting him not to come.
He came. Better make the most of it. Right?
He shuts his eyes tight against the burn of tears. The King knows just how to twist the knife. Abject horror does nothing to him, not after the things he’s seen. Torture? He’s been through war. Nothing the King could throw at him would be as awful as what mortal men do to each other in the name of honor and country.
But the chance of one moment of companionship? One more second with the man he was willing to kill and die for? One scrap of his mercurial embrace…
He turns the lock and jerks the door open.
“Oh-- god… Roland… What did you do? ”
What stands before him is unmistakably Roland Cummings, but he’s gaunt and pale, even more wasted away than Charlie himself. A grisly gunshot wound ruins his forehead, and his eyes are a horrible, familiar yellow . Around his neck and wrists, tight enough to welt the skin, he’s bound by golden chains.
“What I had to do,” Roland says grimly. “Charlie…” He steps forward, reaching for him.
No matter how fucked up he looks, it’s him. He rushes forward and wraps his arms around him. “I’m here.”
Roland’s arms wrap tight around him with the rattle of chains and Charlie heaves a dry sob into his neck. “Roland,” he nearly weeps. “Why are you here? Why are you in the Dreamlands?”
“I did a lot of things wrong after you left, Charlie,” he says heavily. “Without you, I was--”
“Fuck, Roland,” Charlie whispers, slowly shaking his head as he pulls back. “You didn’t… Tell me you didn’t make a deal with- with the King …”
“No,” Roland says quickly. “No, that’s not why I’m here.” His hands move clumsily to Charlie’s face, hold his jaw, feel over his face. “I can’t see you. He took my eyes.”
Charlie swallows down another sob, shoves it down deep. He holds Roland’s hands on his face, shaking his head. “It’s for the best,” he says, forcing some wry humor into his voice. “I look… awful,” he laughs vacantly and turns to kiss Roland’s palm. His hands-- the King may have taken his eyes and made him waste away and bound him in chains, but his hands are still his.
“I want to kiss you,” Roland whispers in a rush.
“Then kiss me, idiot,” Charlie says weakly and pulls Roland in, crushing their lips together desperately. He’s seen worse horrors in his time in the Dreamlands than an old fatal gunshot wound. Even emaciated and tortured, Roland is still handsome to him.
“How did you end up here?” Charlie whispers when they can finally bear to part.
“A ritual,” Roland says. “I bound part of my soul to the fabric between worlds.”
“Jesus, Roland,” Charlie hisses. “You really got in deep…”
“I know,” Roland says. “I went too far. I-- you-- you kept me grounded, Charlie. You always pulled me back. Without you, I…”
Charlie pulls Roland’s brow down against his own, ignoring how the feeling of that awful wound makes his skin crawl. “Roland…” He sighs, squeezing his eyes shut tight for a moment. “You’re… you’re dead ,” he has to force the word out. “In the- the real world. Back home.”
“Yes,” he whispers and Charlie’s heart shatters all over again. He hadn’t known for sure, and the confirmation destroys him more than anything the King had done.
“But--!” Charlie gasps, clinging to any sliver of hope. “But you’re-- you’re here.” He pulls back to look into Roland’s blind, stolen eyes. “You’re here and we can--we can escape together.” It’s madness to think that could be possible, but Charlie’s lost enough of his sanity to hold out hope that the impossible could be possible.
“Charlie,” Roland breathes painfully. “No… I can’t. I’m only a… fragment. A… fractured piece. A broken soul.”
Charlie’s face twists distraught. He sniffs and pushes back tears, holding Roland tight.
“I made so many mistakes,” Roland says, thin fingers gripping Charlie’s back. “Like that night… This… night.”
The last time. Roland had come, but just like every other night they stole away a few hours in secret, Roland left. Even that night. He could have stayed. Could have slept beside him with the excuse of seeing him off in the morning. But he didn’t.
“I wish you had stayed,” Charlie admits.
“I should have stayed,” Roland says, the words running over Charlie’s.
Charlie sighs and smiles bittersweet, kissing his long lost partner. “We can do it over again,” he says, taking Roland’s hand and trying to drag him further into the apartment.
Roland follows, but says, “I don’t know how much time we have, Charlie.”
“I know. Let’s make the most of it.” A dry, humorless laugh leaves his lips. “Right, Roland?” Just like he’d said that night.
“Listen, Charlie,” Roland says, squeezing his hand to stop him. “I have to ask you something.”
“What?” Charlie fixes all his attention on Roland.
“When you returned from Egypt--did you go back to the office?”
“What?” Charlie says again, this time confused. “No, it-- it had already been rented by somebody else. You were missing, presumed dead. I had to lay low. I changed my name--” He won’t get into all that now. “Why?”
“There’s no hope for me, Charlie, but you might still escape this place,” Roland says, serious and grim as the grave. “And when you do, you have to find one thing.”
Charlie’s brow furrows. “Roland…” Is Roland about to give in? Panic rises in his chest. Is he gonna just give it up? Make all this torture for nothing? “Don’t--”
“My lighter,” Roland says. “I want you to have it.”
“Your--” Charlie shakes his head a little. “Your lighter?”
TIME’S UP.
“No,” Roland whispers and for the first time, Charlie sees true fear on his face. “Charlie, I--”
Without warning, his head explodes.
Charlie might have screamed. If he did, it didn’t register. His mouth hangs agape, staring at the empty space where Roland’s head had been, covered in his blood. He can taste it in his mouth, feel it cooling on his skin. He staggers back as Roland’s body crumples and thuds heavy to the floor.
His lungs burn until he finally takes a ragged breath that tears his throat. He’s gone.
He’s gone he’s gone he’s gone--
Something snaps in Charlie.
Of course the King would give a man dying of thirst only a sip.
A switch flips.
He would only dangle the possibility of reprieve before him, enough to salve the agony for a second before reopening the wound.
A cold, collected calm washes over him.
He will not bend. He will not bow.
“Now you’ve fucked up,” he says, nodding slowly. “Now you’ve really fucked up, buddy.” An ember of hot rage burns in the pit of his stomach, a coal that will never go out.
The King gave him something.
“You took away the one person I loved most in the world. You killed him.” His lips twist into a cold, rictus smile.
Closure.
“Now, what’ve ya got left? Huh?!” He snaps sharply. “Burned through that ammunition quick! C’mon, you bastard!” His head snaps up and he looks around wildly, knowing the King is everywhere. “Hit me with your best shot!” He pounds his chest fearlessly.
His stomach drops sickly as the floor disappears beneath him, his apartment vanishes, and he falls. He lands hard on unforgiving crumbling sandstone, and looks up to find himself in a pit. A new prison.
Charlie Dowd has nothing left to lose.