9 TWLA 09

After a small fight with a zombie Caesar for modesty's sake, they settled in for rest. Jeremy was a little concerned about how lax they seemed to be after such a bloody conflict but Rainmaker assured him that the only one who needed to fear anything at the moment was her. He trusted the lady veteran to know what was best and let himself relax.

It donned on him how well he seemed to be adjusting to a situation that should have him freaked out beyond words. At first, he had lumped it all onto shock but that reasoning seemed to grow thinner by the moment. Whatever the reason, it only served him better for the time being. So, he let the thought pass while he drifted off.

***

He was back in the hit and run accident dream. Except, when it reached the part where he and Ray Ray would get hit by the car, that didn't happen. Nor was he overwhelmed by darkness and the memory of pain. Instead, he felt himself falling sideways into a hole as his right hand bounced off the pavement and flew past them towards the fender of the vehicle that was about to hit them.

The world in red after the darkness resolved into a clearer scene of blood spurting from his right arm stump and missing feet. A young man that must have been the older brother that Ray Ray had mentioned, placed tourniquets on his limbs. The young man placed a few drops of glowing purple liquid from a flask into his mouth and was about to do the same to his mutilated limbs when Ray Ray started screaming for the young man's attention.

"Theo, please! Help him! This is my fault. I-I'll promise to be good from now on and not run off anymore. Just please... don't leave Jay Jay like that!" his friend screamed over the pain of their own missing fingers.

The young man, features etched with with an old and deep sorrow, said, "We don't have much regeneration medicine left, Little Brother. But, even if I was willing to use it on him, his body couldn't handle it. The magic in it's too powerful. It would kill him."

Ray Ray, shaking like a leaf, said, "Give him... give him mine, then. I-I can use the medicine."

Theo gave him a sad smile. "It doesn't work like that. If your body isn't exactly like his, your friend's immune system would reject them. At best, he'd get really sick and probably lose them again anyway. At worst and most likely, he'd die. But, that does give me-"

He had fainted from the shock but woke up later to the sound of grunts and barely held back whimpers. Looking for the source, memory Jeremy saw a copy of himself using a black line in the air to cut off a foot along a marker drawn line. He screamed in terror.

Pale blue eyes that were nothing like his own, stared back at him through a haze of 'black light'. Behind them was an irresistible force that compelled him to remain calm and forget what he was seeing.

"Bad men tried to kidnap you. While you were running away from them, you were hit by a car," his copy said in Theo's voice but it was cold and distant.

In the background he could hear Ray Ray sobbing and apologizing to him and Theo over and over again. With a few hissing directions, Jeremy clone Theo calmed his little brother down. Together, they attached the hacked off parts onto Jeremy's memory self and healed them in place with more of the purple liquid from the flask.

The whole time, Jeremy wasn't just feeling his own pain but a weak echo of Theo's as well. He could feel the man's emotional pain as well. It was stifling. So much so that he cried even through the steely mental control gripping him. Seeing it, the mysterious and utterly miserable shapeshifter put some distance between them while he waited for the regeneration medicine to restore him.

"Didn't you tell him to stop hurting while he was sleeping? Why is he crying?" a concerned Ray Ray said.

"He can still feel his own pain. His mind just isn't registering it. But, that doesn't stop him from feeling mine. That's the power of the bond I used to take his form and I can't order him not to feel that."

Confused, the child asked, "Is that why you and dad told me not to make a bond, because I'd look like them?"

The shapeshifted young man shook his head. "You won't change like me or your true father. You are only half what we are... Don't make that face. You're no less special. Your other half has all kinds of things I-"

Memory Jeremy had grown too weak and had fallen into a fitful slumber. From there, the dream dredged memory should have been over but it wasn't. It had switched perspective into shattered remnants of Theo's memories. None made any sense until it reached another unexpected shared scene.

Somewhere along the way, Theo had gotten his original form back. He was living a miserable existence in a miserable place where every day had blended into a gray sameness. That was broken by a sudden jolt of terrified emotion that came from someplace far away.

The young man was about to ignore it like he'd ignored so many of the unwanted bond's reminders of its existence when he felt a shudder run through it. His bonded was dying. The, now ten year old, boy he'd went through the pain of maiming himself for was being choked to death. A brief flare of anger pieced through his gray existence.

And before rationality or apathy could reassert itself, he had 'slipped between'. Appearing in a bathroom, he saw a drunk tattooed man on top of Jeremy. With an almost effortless gesture, Theo turned into a living portal to a dark place and 'hugged' most of the man out of the room and into some inner void. Gingerly and with great care, he picked up the remnants of the man and tossed them into himself as well.

With a regret filled glance at the dead woman by the toilet, he canceled his power and pulled out his nearly empty flask to pour a drop of the purple healing liquid into Jeremy's mouth. "Forget I was here and what I've done... Keep focus and stay strong. Do what you can to make your life better. There won't be anymore boogeymen coming out of the dark to save you from the human shaped monsters again."

After that, the rest was a jumbled mess. Jeremy could vaguely feel that at some point, Theo had faced an enemy that could have been killed in a less self destructive way but couldn't drum up the energy to care enough to survive. His last fleeting emotion was an accepting and relieved peace. He had found a way to die that no one could blame him for.

***

Jeremy could feel himself floating in the dreaming darkness. A withered hair strand of connection led out from himself to a tiny spark of opaline brilliance. Somehow he knew that's where Theo's memories came from. With symbolic strength and metaphorical hands, he reeled the tiny spark to himself.

The moment he touched the brilliant grain directly with his symbolic hand, the dreamscape buckled and a teen or young man's voice said, "Big Brother? No... that's not possible. Who are you!?"

He thought, "Ray Ray? It's -"

He woke up clawing at the air, forcing his sleep paralyzed mouth to slur out loudly, "-me s'jermy!"

Caesar sat up like someone had shocked him, kicked one bare foot against another and said groggily, "I'm not even wearing my sock's, old man!"

Through blurry eyes, Jeremy saw the young man look around dazed and lost for a moment before the leaf crowned young man slapped a slightly manic looking smile on. "Weird dream."

Behind him, a leather covered radiator in human form said in a low, growling baritone, "So much for a nap... Suit up. We leave after we eat."

Rainmaker, who had been sitting in meditation by his head, stood up and began pulling vacuum sealed meals from her pack.

Caught up in the flow of preparations, Jeremy didn't realize he was crying until King slapped a calloused palm onto the top of his head and said, "Take a p*ss and wipe your face off. You must be pretty backed up if it's coming out the top side."

An unnatural calm and level-headedness asserted itself over Jeremy as they made their way through the winding cavern path out of the plateau. Seeing his mother's death from another person's perspective and the real version of events had messed him up. The additional revelations about Theo and the truth about his childhood best friend had been icing on a psychologically overwhelming 'cake' of inability to process.

Despite all that, something within soaked it all up and parsed it into something he could tolerate. He could feel a portion of the sadness and anger, the unwilling disbelief and half formed gratitude but not all and not at once. It was as if something refused to let him be anything but 'well adjusted'. It felt wrong and right at the same time.

Because of that, he didn't know whether to believe the end part of his awakened dream memory or not. He wasn't sure if he'd really reached out, pinged some psychic sense of his childhood friend or if it was just part of a wishful thinking ending to all the strange and traumatizing content. Only the passage of time could reveal the answer.

Jeremy wasn't so wrapped up in his own head that he couldn't tell some things were going on with his companions as well. King kept scratching at a set of velvet coated nubs on his head while Rainmaker absently stroked the perpetually damp streaks of slightly stiff, red clay colored hair running from her widow's peak and temples. He could feel that his special brand of purification wasn't doing anything about it either.

Caesar was ambling about in a state of self deluded cheerfulness that neared but didn't quite cross the psychotic break line. It was the guy's inability to be still that illustrated a strange but important point to 'Blue Jay'. The predominantly plant based nixed that parted way for them weren't being leery of King. They were scared of getting too close to Caesar.

Although King didn't seem too anxious about anything, Rainmaker looked like she was walking on eggshells until they stepped back out into the evening sun at the base of the plateau. "I'm surprised Rose didn't try anything at all. She was always trying to pull some trick to separate us before."

King looked back at Rainmaker. "She was too worried about showing good manners to her new nightmare boss."

She looked at the tyrant strangely. "There was a nightmare at the base!? W-why didn't you say anything?"

He shrugged. "If they had wanted to kill us, we'd be dead. I've never given a damn about petty politics but we broke the balance in the nightmare's favor anyway. I'll tell you what, though. I'll never set foot past that cavern entrance again unless it's the only way to get back to Earth after I'm ready to die."

Caesar laser focused in on King and said, "We're not coming back...ever again?"

"Didn't say that. I said I wasn't going past the cavern entrance again. I know better than to think we might not be asked to do some exchanging with them. If you want to hop and skip your butt back up to hell's garden, be my guest. But, don't expect us to go haul you out if something decides to keep you there."