Chapter Text
EPILOGUE
Years passed strangely and elastically. It was the way adulthood moves when nothing supernatural is chasing you anymore – but the memories refuse to dissolve completely. Avery grew up in the spaces between deadlines and early morning alarms to get to class, to get to interviews, and to get to work. He lived, truly breathed and lived in the hours he spent rebuilding a normal life from ground zero again. Routine became a grounding mechanism instead of a chore or a trap, and he finished school. It was slow at first, but then he had a purpose that felt almost foreign after everything he’d been through and lived through. He switched majors twice and finally settled on something that let him work with systems and behavior without touching anything remotely dream-coded. God, that traumatized him, and he hated it. But the good news was that he never dreamed anymore. Well, he did – but normal male dreams. He studied predictive modeling, applied psych, human navigation patterns, and they were things that looked suspiciously like the world that he escaped with D, but he could control it now.
He moved into a better apartment. A fancy and clean one he’d always dreamed of having, and it was furnished well and cleaned every week. Life was good. He didn’t need to microwave meals from Trader Joe’s anymore; he cooked food now. Real food. And he was good at it. He was not only on his way to earning a Nobel Prize but on the way to retiring to become a Michelin Star restaurant owner (Just kidding, but that’d be something Avery would want to be if money didn’t matter). Now, he has made new friends who have made him laugh more than he expected to. He made new memories outside of video games or anything virtual that brought him nothing but horror and rage.
He learned how to sleep again. But now and then, he woke at dusk with a faint ache behind his sternum, the ghost of the Crossroads and D. He still caught small flickers at the edge of his periphery sometimes, but it was nothing real or supernatural – just his mind cataloguing the world with residuals that would never fade. It was a reminder and an old scar you forget until the light hits it just right.
His career took off faster than he’d anticipated and became good – really fucking good, almost gifted – at what he did. Companies liked the way he broke down systems and the way he saw routes in problems that normal people would miss, but it wasn’t a curse. He was just sharp-minded and analytical and that made him indispensable and brought him self-preceived value. He published numerous papers and spoke at conferences, and was even invited to do consulting work that paid better than anything he’d imagined in his early twenties.
Every now and then, clients or friends asked where he learned to think like that. Avery always gave a vague answer – “I trained myself” and “Long story”. After all, nobody really needed to know the real reason.
He didn’t think of D anymore; he didn’t miss him every day anymore.
His grief softened into a gentle memory. The concept of heartbreak, in Avery’s eyes, eventually stopped feeling like a wound and became an old memory he was able to pick up and turn over without bleeding. He didn’t date much, only on occasion. But he never compared them to D or saw him in them. It was sustainable growth.
Then, one afternoon, years after the world ended for Avery and D, and restarted, Avery left a lecture hall and stopped dead in the threshold. Like a deer in headlights.
D was there.
He was older, sharper, and got a good haircut that framed his face well. He wore glasses now, too. It emphasized the whole nerd look. He didn’t look pale anymore, and his skin had become tan; it also looked like he was working out a bit more. No harsh muscles or anything, but he looked fit yet still slender.
Avery’s chest compressed painfully and then, slowly, released.
D hadn’t seen him yet. He was scrolling through his phone and leaning against the wall with a burgundy backpack slung over one shoulder. His posture was different, too – he wasn’t hunched or weary anymore, he carried himself like someone who had spent years learning how to live in a world that no longer wanted to hurt him.
Avery approached him slowly, “Long time.”
D looked up, and his eyes widened – barely – but it was enough.
“Avery.”
The sound of his own name being spoken in D’s voice hit harder than Avery expected. For some reason, Avery felt proud to hear his own name coming out from his mouth. Avery had seen him as a role model since the time they had last interacted.
“You’re here.”
“I had a talk,” D replied and shrugged, which was unusual. He never used his body to express himself, but this time he did, and his face looked light, “Some workshop on dynamic decision mapping.”
Avery let out a long breath that felt like it had been in his lungs for years.
“Of course you did,” he smiled.
D smiled back, and it was small and wry – older, calmer.
“And you?” D asked.
“Guest lecture on Cognitive Processes in Business.”
D nodded, and had his mouth open, like he wanted to add something else, like a joke – but stopped, “Fitting.”
“Apparently.”
Avery leaned against the opposite wall and was about to pull out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, but D saw and shook his head with a small smirk on his face and a light exhale. The silence between them wasn’t tense anymore. It wasn’t painful anymore. Just settled. The kind of silence that people share when they’ve lived their whole lives apart and survived the memory of what they were.
“You look good,” Avery said. An attempt to flirt.
“So do you,” D answered.
They both meant it.
“I’ve kept up with your work,” D said. “Publicly, I mean. The papers you published.”
“You read my papers?” Avery raised an eyebrow.
“They’re good.”
Avery laughed under his breath. “You used to tell me everything I did was chaotic and unpredictable.”
“It still is,” D smiled, “Just… productive now.”
Avery felt proud.
“And you?”
“I’m just doing research. It’s quiet. I help people learn how to navigate uncertainty, more or less.”
“Sounds fitting for you, too.”
D glanced down the path to head to the crossroads. Not the Crossroads. They were normal, don't worry. Avery could tell that he was minutes away from needing to go, and they both were. They had full lives to return to, as unfortunate as it was. They had futures that didn’t include each other, but weren’t lacking because of it.
Still, before D turned, Avery felt the urge to get something out of him – something without weight and without harsh expectations, something that acknowledged all of it without re-opening anything.
“I’m glad you made it out,” Avery said.
D paused in his tracks and didn’t look Avery in the eye.
“So am I,” he said. He finally looked directly at Avery, grateful. “And I’m glad you lived. And not just survived, you really lived. You made the best out of it.”
Avery’s throat tightened, and his chest hurt. He flexed his hand and quickly relaxed it afterwards. They just shared one look – two people who had saved each other in a world that doesn’t exist anymore, two people who had loved each other in a way that only survives in memory and never really made it far – they were two people who understood that the right person comes at the wrong time and remains securely kept in the heart anyway.
D nodded once.
Avery nodded back.
Avery never said that he loved D, too, but D knew that he did. He was mature enough not to pry, not to beg, and not to ask questions. But he knew. That’s all that mattered.
And they walked in opposite directions, each carrying the quiet certainty that they had changed each other’s lives forever, even if they never crossed the same road again.
END