if it is morning, why are we dying?

“What will you do now?”

Nikita shoves the red curtain that hangs from the entry arch aside like she’s ready to rip it down. “Put some sweatpants on.”

An unbidden laugh bubbles up Matt’s throat at that. It feels wrong to laugh, but somehow right, too. What else can he do? “That’s understandable.”

Nikita pauses at the road, looking back across the rusted metal bridge that crosses the dry creek bed separating the highway from the town. “What about you?”

“I…” Matt hesitates, following Nikita’s gaze back to the parts of Everlock he can see. Already, right before their very eyes, the carnival archway is disappearing, the red curtain they pushed aside just moments before fading out of existence. In the town itself, the final remnants of the spell that kept it sealed in time are vanishing, gold lines cracking the shell around it before Everlock is opened up to the sky for the first time in 39 years.

What is he going to do now? Get in his car and drive home, just like that? It’s what he’s wanted all along, isn’t it? Isn’t the prospect of going home what Joey killed for? What Matt killed for? Didn’t he vote all those people to die just so he could go home, turn his office light on, sit down at his desk and write another script, record another video, play another game?

Nikita’s looking at him now, her eyes unreadable. There’s something she’s not saying, and if she’s not going to say it, then Matt isn’t, either. Not right now. Not while the sound of Manny begging not to die is still echoing in his head.

“I need a shower,” Matt says instead of admitting that now he has no idea what to do, no idea where to go or how to walk down this road to his car, drive back home, and become himself again.

Nikita huffs out a laugh. “Girl, you really do.”

If she picked up on his unsaid words, which she surely did, she doesn’t mention them. For that, Matt is thankful. He doesn’t have the strength for that right now. It’s all hitting him at once, and for a moment Matt feels so overwhelmed that he reaches out to grab the railing of the bridge before his knees buckle.

Nothing will ever be the same.

He’s never going to see Ro again, never going to hear her voice or smell her baking, never going to hug her close to him, never going to run his hand over her hair idly as they sit and watch a TV show while waiting for something to finish in the oven. He’s never going to see Safiya again, with that signature look she always used to give, mildly confused, mostly exasperated, always fond, never going to message her with a stupid question that she nonetheless replies to, never going to share knowing looks with her behind someone’s back. He’s never going to see Manny again, with those deep green eyes, Colleen’s laugh lines, Teala’s coral lipstick—

They’re all gone, Matt thinks to himself, and the knowledge is so heavy that he nearly wheezes. They’re all gone, and dead, and probably disintegrated into ash by now.

But Nikita’s speaking again, and Matt manages to pull himself back to reality long enough to focus on her words.

“There you are. I was beginning to get worried that you’d tripped and killed yourself.”

Matt looks up to see Joey, stepping onto the bridge with his coat balled up and tucked underneath his arm.

Joey just smiles weakly. “Thanks for waiting.”

“Like we had a choice?” Nikita asks, arching an eyebrow. “With your track record, we didn’t think we could leave you to fend for yourself.”

Matt stays silent. He doesn’t know what to say to Joey. Even talking to Nikita, as bristly as she is, seems like an easier prospect than saying a single word to Joey.

Joey blinks hard, and Matt sees him swallow. For a moment, he thinks they’ve gone too far with joking about Joey’s propensity for injury and death. Matt knows firsthand how traumatic it is. But then Joey wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and says, voice breaking, “I’m going to find a way to fix this.”

“You better,” Nikita says firmly, and she crosses her arms. “We’ll help.”

She looks to Matt, as if daring him to disagree. He thinks maybe he should, but he just nods. After all, what’s he got to lose? Standing out here on the bridge, as the sun rises, everything pearly gray in the early morning light, he feels like a ghost. He feels like everything that made him who he was got left on the ground in Everlock, and if he can only find a way to reverse what happened there, it’ll come streaming back to him. Maybe he’s right, in a way. Matthew Patrick was left in Everlock, because Matt knows the man walking out isn’t the same one who walked in those frighteningly short hours ago.

Matthew Patrick is dead. Long live Matthew Patrick, his brain supplies unhelpfully, and Matt would smile if he had the strength.

He doesn’t have the strength for that, though. He barely has the strength to walk alongside Joey down past the few houses that make up the edge of Everlock, heading back to the road that will take them back to modern civilization.

"What do you think will happen to the town?" Joey asks, looking at each person beside him, then back down to the road.

"I don't know, but they better not let any more damn carnivals in." Nikita trudges up the small incline that leads to the highway with a scowl. "I hate carnivals."

Matt smiles faintly, and just gives a noncommittal shrug when Joey looks at him. He can't help but wonder alongside Joey, though. Will the surviving townspeople rebuild? Will they tear it all down and start over? Will they flee, and leave it a ghost town? Matt isn't sure what he wants for it, either. He feels almost protective of it, or maybe it's just sunk-cost fallacy. He's given so much that he can't bear to see it taken away. It would be nice if Everlock could be renewed, he thinks, but he doesn't really want it to be completely remade. That would feel like forgetting the people who died there, both the ones that Matt knew, and the ones that he didn't. It would feel like paving over a graveyard.

Before Matt even knows it, they've reached the road, standing on the rutted, dusty gravel track that leads back to whatever they can salvage of their old lives.

"This is it then, huh?" Joey asks first, breaking the silence as they stand in front of his car. He's already got his keys out, running his fingernail along the groove of one nervously. Joey has a lot of nervous tics, Matt's noticed, and almost all of them involve his hands. Joey clears his throat before continuing. "I mean, we did it."

"Yeah," Matt says distantly, finally managing to speak in Joey’s general direction. He thinks of Maria, the look on her face as she ran off with her brother. "Yeah, we did it."

And what did it cost? Seven people dead, eight if Matt counts in that number – he shivers involuntarily – and lifelong trauma. But the town is free, and Joey is alive again. They did what they came here to do.

No, a cruel part of Matt says, we came here to find out what happened to Joey and where he went, not go on a suicide mission. Joey lied to us, all of us, and that's why we died. That's why Ro died.

"I'm glad I had you," Joey says, and Matt wishes he wasn't looking at him when he said that because the openness on Joey's face and the trusting look in his eyes is too much for him to bear. "Both of you. All– all of you."

"I'm glad I had me, too," Nikita replies. She reaches out to pull Joey into a hug. "Don't die again, ‘cause I won't save you this time."

Joey hugs back, tears starting to slip down his cheeks. For a moment, Matt stands at the sidelines, but then Nikita reaches out and grabs the sleeve of his coat to tug him closer. Joey and Nikita are both warm against his body, alive and real, smelling like sweat and old perfume and the metallic scent of dried blood. Tentatively, Matt reaches up to wrap his arms around them both. Joey is stick-thin, and Nikita is soft and strong, and Matt pulls himself against them tight and tries to pretend that all they are is three friends embracing.

“I’ll call you, okay?” Joey says what feels like a long time later, pulling away a few inches and wiping his face again. “Sometime soon. I’ll call you.”

“You better.” Nikita steps back to give Joey room to get in the car, but Matt suddenly doesn’t want to let go.

“Stay safe,” Matt says after a moment. Now that he has Joey in his arms, he’s not entirely sure he wants to let him go. Joey might have done horrible things, but so has Matt. “See you.”

Joey nods once, his arms around Matt feeling hesitant. “Y…Yeah. See you.”

Matt has to let go then, has to take a deliberate step back as Joey climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the car. Will he ever get Joey back? Will he really call them sometime soon? But there’s no way for Matt to make Joey stay, and so he just watches as Joey starts the car and pulls into the road, dust kicked up as he accelerates and leaves Nikita and Matt staring after him.

Nikita is silent, and as Matt looks at her, there’s a crack in the facade, her eyes dark as she looks at the retreating car. As soon as she notices him looking, though, she glares at him, and the moment passes as quickly as it came.

“What?”

Matt doesn’t want to let her go, either, but he certainly can’t tell her that. “Um… Do you want me to walk you to your car?”

“You’re clingy, Matthew.” But Nikita starts walking, and doesn’t snap at him when he follows.

Birds are starting to call, songs filtering from the scrubby trees and bushes lining the road, as the cool, gray morning seeps into the cracks of the landscape. It touches the valleys, the ravines, every crack and fold in the landscape. The low mist that settled over the landscape in the night makes everything feel even more dreamlike and unreal, and the only human-made sounds are Nikita and Matt’s footsteps crunching on the gravel and dirt. Matt looks back over his shoulder in the direction they came from just once. In the dawn, the ferris wheel looks bright, like it’s been copied and pasted onto the scene from a world 39 years in the past.

Nikita’s car looks out of place when they walk up to it. Matt only spent one night in the seventies, and yet he suddenly feels more used to flower decals and disco dancing than the sight of Nikita’s bright, modern sedan, some kind of sparkly keychain hanging from the mirror. Nikita clicks her key and it unlocks with a beep. Matt can’t help a wistful smile at the thought of Mortimer walking up to a car like this.

Nikita turns back to him expectantly. “Well, pretty boy, I have a date with my bed. So if you want to say any more tearful goodbyes…”

Matt wastes no time before he’s tugging her into a hug of her own, crushing her so tightly that she stumbles in her white boots and makes a noise of surprise. But, after a moment, she wraps her arms around him as well. Matt wishes he never had to let her go. If he had his way, he’d go home with her, for her protection and for his. He doesn’t want anything else to happen to either of them. He doesn’t think Nikita would appreciate that very much, though, and so after a second he pulls back and gives her a weak smile.

“You’ll call me, right?” No one else except Joey knows what he’s gone through. Nikita is one of two other people in the entire world that he can tell about this, and he can’t bear the thought of losing her.

Nikita scoffs as she slides herself into her car, one hand on the door. “Only if you don’t call first.”

Then she’s slamming the door shut behind herself, locking it as the engine purrs to life, and Matt has to back away again and watch as Nikita follows Joey back down the road towards the highway. Once her car turns the corner and the dust settles once again, it’s like she never existed at all. Is this how Joey felt holding my body, Matt wonders, after I died and left him sitting alone in the cold?

The memory makes panic claw at his throat and he swallows back the weight of tears, an involuntary shiver rolling down his spine. Without Joey or Nikita to distract him, the memories of his death are crowding too close for comfort, weighing down his chest like the feeling of blood choking him, the heaviness that came with the stopping of his heart. He remembers every moment of his death in razor-edged detail, remembers even the words Joey whispered to him, soft and broken with tears, as he wiped the blood away as best he could and watched Matt gasp for air.

“Just close your eyes,” Joey had whispered, his voice shaking. “I’m sorry, Matthew, I didn’t want this– you didn’t deserve this. I– I’m so sorry.”

Matt takes a deep, shuddering breath before the memories can drown him, deliberately turning away like he can turn away from his memories, and walks to his car, each step careful and measured, refusing to allow the panic he feels in his chest into his walk. He needs someone next to him, someone to keep him from breaking down, someone to keep him moving forward, someone like Safiya or Manny or Ro, someone like Mortimer, like Calliope–

Matt doesn’t know how he gets into his car, but before he really registers it he’s sitting in the driver’s seat, the faux leather steering wheel cold under his hands. The sudden silence is unbearable. He’s alone, and he feels more alone than he’s ever felt in his entire life, sitting in his car on an abandoned road in the mountains, staring at a town that hasn’t seen the sun since before he was born. Some part of him wants to go back, because to be in Everlock is to be with his friends.

He could do it. He could stay for a while. Pretend that his old life doesn’t exist. Pretend that the person he is now is the only person he’s ever been.

No, you couldn’t, a voice in his head says, and it sounds like Safiya.

No, Matt thinks to himself, and he looks away from Everlock, his throat feeling tight with panic and tears. No. I couldn’t.

Matt starts the car, blinking the blurriness from his vision as he reaches to turn the radio on for something to fill the silence. As he follows the road down, his eyes keep flicking to the rearview mirror, hoping to see one of his friends running after him, waving their arms, alive and whole once again.

No one does.

Matt’s still alone by the time he turns onto the two-lane highway and accelerates away from Everlock.

Matt doesn’t recognize that he’s home until he’s standing on his front porch with his keys in his hand. It’s barely seven in the morning, and his neighborhood is quiet, rows of houses and cars with people living in them that will never know what he went through. That crushing feeling of loneliness is back, but it’s not so much loneliness as isolation: Matt went through something that most people will never understand. He saw things that other people won’t ever see. He knows things now. Magic is real, demons are real, the afterlife is real, and he’s standing in front of the house he’s lived in for years while his neighbors sleep soundly or eat breakfast or go to work and the sun is rising like it’s any other day.

Matt’s next breath feels tight and he fumbles to unlock the door, pulling it closed behind him quickly and locking it. In his quiet, cool house, the sound of the deadbolt falling into place sounds like a gunshot.

Six gunshots in quick succession, Manny’s shock, Nikita’s broken sob as she looked away.

The memory makes Matt want to throw up, and he swallows back the sourness of bile, his stomach rolling unpleasantly. He can still smell that room, practically taste the stench of stale popcorn, choking him even as he stands miles away safe in the hall of his house. Breathing is suddenly difficult, and Matt reaches up to loosen his tie, his breaths labored. It gets carelessly thrown to the side as he stumbles up the stairs to his bedroom, pulling clothes off as he gets there, his jacket and boots tossed somewhere he can’t really care about, his fingers trembling as he struggles with the small, slippery buttons of his shirt.

Everything suddenly feels too constricting, too close, the walls pressing in like the walls of a coffin. He came so close to not making it out alive. If his friends hadn’t–

But they did, Matt tells himself, trying to calm the frantic, roaring panic, lurching into his shower and turning the water on the hottest setting he can stand as he leans against the wall and pants for breath. They did. I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.

The water pours from the showerhead, hitting his body in scalding, steaming droplets, hot like blood – he never really thought about how hot blood was until Safiya’s was bubbling over his hands, her eyes rolling back in her head as she moaned in agony – and Matt’s chest is tight as he drags in another breath, his lungs aching. He can still feel it on his hands, slick and stained into the lines of his palms, deep crimson that filled the air with the choking scent of iron. He can still feel it on his body, where the Strong Man’s blows tore skin. Still feel it caking his face, leaking from his mouth and nose, staining Joey’s lips when he pulled back from Matt.

Matt may as well be bathing in it.

He takes one hand away from the wall to push his hair back from his face, hanging his head and letting the water rush over him. Every breath is like he’s trying to inhale sand, the air suddenly thick and unwieldy. Everything about him feels dirty – his hands, his body, his very soul. Matt did things that he can’t wash off. Tears sting his eyes at the thought, the shame, the guilt so thick it chokes him, and he bites back a sob.

Matt reaches for the soap and gropes in the cabinet just outside the shower door for a washcloth, quickly scrubbing himself down until his skin feels raw and angry underneath the foam. He feels like he needs to be scrubbed clean from the inside out, like how it felt to be resurrected, that burning that cauterized his wounds and filled his senses with sharp gold light, painful and merciful all at once. Lazarus, brought back as a saint, but Matt looks down at his trembling hands, the water running over them in soapy streams, and he still sees Safiya’s blood dripping from them.

The exhaustion is hitting him now, his bones aching, his muscles sore and pushed to their limit after a night of literally running for his life. Matt barely manages to remember to turn the shower off. He stumbles from the bathroom, uncaring of the cold on his skin, and puts on the first clothes he grabs from his dresser before collapsing face-first into bed and curling up tight. His brain feels like mush and he no longer has the strength to hold back his emotions, not here, curled up on his side, safe and alive in his bedroom when his friends won’t ever feel this again, and Matt can’t help but sob, soft and broken, tears streaking down his cheeks to stain his pillowcase.

Matt fights sleep, when it comes for him – he remembers what it feels like to know he wouldn’t wake up. But his body, exhausted and worn down to the bone, doesn’t give him a choice. Within a few short minutes of his sobs dying down to barely audible whimpers, he sinks into a restless sleep.

When Matt wakes up, it doesn’t take more than a heartbeat before it all comes rushing back to him in a cacophony of colors and sounds. He sits up in bed so fast he nearly falls off, his heart rate spiking into a frantic skitter as he stares wide-eyed at the bathroom door where his boots lay, splattered with mud and other questionable, dark substances. Everything he remembers…it happened. It all happened. Last night, he drove to the mountains, to a small town forgotten by time, and he watched his friends die. He watched himself die. Matt’s stomach has knotted into an uneasy, sickening ball in his gut and he pulls his knees up to his chest, dropping his head as he gulps in breaths of air past the dizzying nausea.

He tries to close his eyes and catch his breath, but whenever he closes his eyes all he can see is JC’s lifeless body, slumped lifeless in the chains holding him, the embroidery on his shirt stained crimson. JC trusted Matt, the same person who sent him to his death. What kind of fucking irony is that?

Matt barely manages to scramble out of bed before he’s dry heaving. He’s not sure if the metallic, bloody taste in the back of his throat is his imagination or the last remnants of blood that leaked into his stomach after The Strong Man turned his internal organs into ground meat, but it tastes like he’s chewing pennies as he stumbles to the bathroom and drops to his knees next to the toilet, retching, his entire body rebelling against him. He can still feel the slickness of Safiya’s torn-open stomach underneath his hands, muscles flexing as blood gushed from below his fingers, her long black hair fanned out on the floor behind her head and her hand weakly grabbing for Joey, or Matt, or anyone–

He watched people die. Safiya, Ro, JC, Manny, and even if he didn’t see it happen he knows exactly what fates met Teala and Roi and Colleen, people that he knew. Matt retches again, his throat burning as he heaves up nothing but bile and traces of blood that might only exist in his imagination, trembling as he clutches the side of the tub to avoid pitching face-first into the toilet. His stomach aches, empty and sick, and his muscles cry out, his whole body still exhausted and sore.

After a few long seconds, breathing heavily, Matt manages to wipe his mouth with the back of one shaking hand and slowly ease himself back to sit against the wall, pulling his knees up to his chest as he stares at the cupboard. Every one of his heartbeats feels amplified, a bass drum in his chest, and though Matt hates how fast it is, he’s still thankful to feel it. He tips his head backwards and blinks up at the ceiling.

The early afternoon light coming in through the frosted window, normally so banal and routine, nearly makes Matt tear up. He thought he would never see the daylight again, just like his friends. What a strange thing to take for granted, the daylight, but Matt now knows how easy it is to have his life snatched away, the thread cut like those old Greek legends used to say, and his next breath is strained in his lungs. He blinks again, hard, and swallows. For some reason, he lived to see the daylight. He’s not still dying on the cold, hard-packed dirt and gravel, choking on blood, cradled in Joey’s arms as the lights of the town blurred into smudges against the dark sky and all he could hear was Joey’s voice.

“Close your eyes,” Joey said, and his voice had been gentle but devastated. “It’s okay, just close your eyes. It’ll be over soon, and– and it won’t hurt anymore.”

Matt had moaned, his nerves flickering with agony, each breath tasting like coppery, hot blood. He didn’t want to die, but if it was going to take the pain away, if it was going to settle the bruises, the splintered, sharp feeling of his shattered ribs gouging into his lungs…then maybe death wasn’t so bad, after all.

Joey’s fingers were soft in his hair and on his cheeks, wiping away tears and blood. “It’s okay. It won’t hurt anymore. It– it’s like falling asleep, Matthew, and you’ll– you’ll be okay.”

Matt’s stomach heaves again and he’s leaning over the toilet before he even registers moving, coughing so hard tears sting his eyes as he spits into the toilet bowl. His death felt like– it felt like–

It felt like dying, that’s what it felt like, and there’s nothing to compare it to. It was the worst horror and the best mercy, the purest agony and the sweetest relief. He was terrified, but he was thankful, too, by the time the warmth finally swallowed him whole, because Joey was right, that meant it didn’t hurt anymore. Matt sobs as tears drip down his cheeks, curled up to his toilet and shivering slightly on the tiled bathroom floor. Joey stayed with him the whole time, and though Matt is loath to admit it, the savant’s broken, tearful reassurances made it ever-so-slightly more bearable. If Joey hadn’t been there…

Matt wants that reassurance now, too. He wants someone to pick him up off the floor and tell him what to do, or tell him that it will be okay, or tell him fucking anything about how he’s supposed to live his life now.

How is he supposed to go on, knowing what he knows? Where does he even start?

His silent question is answered in the form of a cat.

There’s a questioning, insistent meow from the bathroom doorway. Stiffly, Matt turns his head, blinking through the tears until he focuses on Skip. His cat is standing just outside the bathroom, looking at him with a certain severity in his eyes, and as Matt watches, Skip gives another mrow. Skip doesn’t know what’s going on. As far as Skip is concerned, this is just another day, and all he cares about is the fact that his owner hasn’t fed him yet.

It appears that Matt’s going to start by feeding his cat.

He has to think about getting up from his slumped-over position. His body feels brittle and easily breakable, and Matt’s not sure how much of it is from soreness and how much of it is because he knows now how breakable he really is. He rinses his mouth out with a few handfuls of water from the sink, Skip watching him all the while. Then, carefully, Matt takes a step out of the bathroom. And another. And another.

And another.

It’s like this that Matt makes his way out of his bedroom, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. Skip makes another insistent noise and winds around Matt’s feet as he stands in front of the cupboard to withdraw the cat food, and the familiarity of it is so heart-piercing that Matt thinks he’s about to cry again. But he manages to hold his tears off as he fills Skip’s bowl and sets it down next to his water. It’s an innocuous thing, taking care of his pet, but for a moment, standing in his kitchen watching Skip eat, Matt feels just the smallest fraction…not better, exactly. But it doesn’t make him feel worse.

As if reminded of his own hunger, Matt’s stomach growls unpleasantly. The thought of eating makes him feel a little nauseous again, but he knows he’s going to have to at some point or another. He pulls down a box of cereal and a bowl and ignores the way his hands shake as he prepares it. Every time he thinks about eating he thinks about JC, the taste of hotdogs and ketchup and mustard, the smell of grease paint and fear. JC died because of him.

Matt lets out a shuddering breath and leans down to pet Skip, running his fingers along the cat’s spine to ground himself with the familiar feeling. Skip makes an affronted noise and glares at Matt, licking his lips, and Matt wishes he could smile at his cat’s annoyance for the interruption to his meal. Instead he gives one gentle pat to Skip’s head before walking back upstairs and grabbing his phone from where he left it charging before he left for Everlock. He unlocks it as he carries his bowl to the table and sits down.

He has two unread texts, both from members of his team, and a missed call. Ignoring the call, Matt manages to fire off a quick, hopefully-not-too-rambling explanation that he’s come down with the flu and won’t be available for a few days. He feels bad lying to them, but he can’t exactly tell them the truth, can he? Matt takes a bite of his cereal as he swipes the reminder of his current situation away, and…

Wow, is he eating cardboard?

Matt frowns down at his bowl, then looks back at the box, still sitting on the counter. He knows it’s not old, because he just bought it a few days ago, so why the hell does it taste like he’s chewing on a corner of the box? Did his tastebuds not get the revival memo? He glances outside just to reassure himself once again that he’s not still dead. It’s cloudy outside, a light breeze rustling the leaves of the bushes outside his windows, but for a moment, he still feels as though this isn’t his life, isn’t his house, isn’t his body. Matt clenches his teeth for a moment, takes a deep breath, and forces himself to take another bite of cereal. To distract himself from the feeling of chewing on wood chips, he swipes to the news, hoping to find anything more interesting than the hell he just went through so his brain will stop relentlessly screaming at him.

Unfortunately, though he does find something interesting, it seemingly directly relates to the hell he just went through. An icy cold chill of apprehension goes down his spine as he sees another news story about the missing people, seemingly having disappeared into thin air, leaving their belongings and their lives behind. Nine last year, six just days ago, and now seven more, ones that’ll never be found because their bodies are abandoned in a town lost to time, ones that the news doesn’t know about yet. Matt knew as soon as he got the letter from Joey that it had something to do with the other disappearances, but he couldn’t make sense of it then, just like the rest of the world. It was frightening and confusing, sparking a media frenzy and countless talk radio pieces and news segments, but it was so foreign that no one had any real idea what was going on.

But now, Matt thinks he understands. What towns did they have to rescue? What artifacts did they have to find? What horrors did they suffer in their final moments?

Twenty-two people’s blood on Joey’s hands, Matt thinks to himself, his stomach clenching with horror and anger in equal measures. Ro and Safiya included.

And Joey still thinks he deserves to live? He still thinks he deserved to walk out of Everlock next to Nikita and Matt, like some sort of team? There’s anger, vicious in Matt’s chest, and it makes his mouth taste bitter, a lump in his throat as he blinks down at the screen of his phone with furious tears in his eyes.

But then he thinks of Joey’s anguish in the face of Matt’s suffering, the taste of tears on his lips as Matt clung desperately to him–

Matt shoves his bowl of cereal away and sets his phone down, turning around in his chair to stare out the window, focusing on the breeze blowing the leaves and the clouds hanging over the rooftops and driveways, light gray against the inoffensive pastels of his neighborhood. Everything seems washed out compared to Everlock, bright garish oranges and greens, the lights of the ferris wheel as he laughed with Ro beside him, the crimson of blood and the bright bubblegum pink of the gun that ended Manny’s life. Everlock feels like the only real thing that’s ever happened to him, and everything else is just a pale imitation, empty and meaningless.

Matt drops his head and rubs his hand over his face shakily. Now that the shock has worn off, it doesn’t feel like he can do even the simplest of things. He doesn’t know how he managed to drive home, he doesn’t know how he managed to talk to Nikita, he doesn’t know how he managed to look Joey in the eyes and treat him like someone that Matt cares about.

(Matt does care about him. Matt cares about him so much it makes him nauseous. That’s why he’s so angry his hands shake when he thinks about what Joey did.)

He doesn’t know how he’s managed to do anything. He doesn’t even know how – why – he survived. He doesn’t know if the fact that he did is a good thing, because now he’s alive to see the aftermath: more missing posters, more talk show segments, more trends on Twitter and worried partners and families and friends, more news articles and interviews with investigators. Before, Matt was hopeful that the missing people would be found. Now he knows that’ll never happen. He knows the truth, him and Joey and Nikita, and everyone else in the world will just have to live thinking that maybe all these celebrities decided to fuck off and go live in the middle of the woods or fell off a cliff and died or got kidnapped and murdered–

Matt’s phone rings, and the sudden, cheerful default ringtone sends him jumping so high he nearly crashes straight to the kitchen floor. It’s too loud, like Rosanna’s scream, like the bang of gunshots, like the sound of his own ribs cracking inside his chest, and Matt flinches away from it, trying to shove his phone away before he really knows what he’s doing and sending it skittering across the marble of the countertop.

Luckily for him, it doesn’t tip over the opposite edge and fall. Instead, it slides to a stop a couple inches away, still ringing and buzzing. Suddenly breathing heavily, Matt looks down at it, blinking involuntary tears from his eyes. It’s not a gun. It’s not a person screaming in their final moments.

It’s a phone. Ringing. Because that’s what phones fucking do.

Carefully, his stomach still clenched with a jolt of adrenaline, he reaches for it, and checks the caller ID. Mike Lammond. Matt has to think for a moment about who, exactly, Mike Lammond is, but then the profile picture pops up and it feels like the floor drops out from underneath him.

It’s a picture of Rosanna.

Mike Lammond. Her partner. Of course. Of course, it’s early afternoon, and Ro showed up at Everlock early yesterday evening, not long after Matt. She’s been gone for over 12 hours, and while an adult being gone for less than a day before might not have raised any eyebrows before, now… Now, it sets everyone on edge. Matt stares blankly at the picture, lost in the sight of Ro smiling – she smiled at him as the witches led her off, her grin broken and shaky, her cheeks already wet with tears. The witches had to drag her to the altar, not because she fought them but because her legs were trembling so bad she could barely hold herself up, and Matt feels like he might puke again as he looks at the photo of Ro in her bright, clean kitchen, her hair neatly curled and her eyes shining with happiness.

Mike is still calling. Matt should answer. Matt needs to answer. Matt needs to face this because– because isn’t it partly his fault that she died? Couldn’t he have stayed behind in the witches’ challenge, allowing her to live at the cost of his own life? Wasn’t he too selfish to sacrifice himself for her? He thought about it briefly, when they walked up to that table, surrounded by the scent of autumn and the rancid, poisonous brew in the cups that poor Ro just couldn’t keep down. But then Matt remembered the feeling of his body shutting down, the agony of his heart stopping, and he blocked everything else out except the knowledge that he wasn’t dying, not again.

On autopilot, Matt accepts the call and raises it to his ear.

“Matt?” Mike asks, from the other end, and the worry in his voice makes the nausea in Matt’s stomach grow stronger. “Are you there?”

It feels like hours that Matt’s voice refuses to work, but eventually, he manages to say, “...Yeah, it’s me.”

If Mike notices his hesitance, he doesn’t seem to want to comment on it. “I– I’m sorry to bother you, but I just– Ro isn’t home, and– and her cellphone is still here and her car too, and no one has seen her and we had plans today and I don’t think she would have just ran out like that without telling me, and– and I just wanted to know if you’ve seen her or– or if you’ve heard from her at all, you were one of her best friends and after what happened to– to everyone else, I-I’m just so worried, Matt.”

Mike’s words come out in a rush, as if by saying them fast they won’t be true. Matt barely understands half of it, but he doesn’t really need to. He gets the gist. Rosanna is gone, just like the rest, and Mike has no idea where. Matt does. Matt knows that her body is probably still on that altar, stiff with rigor mortis, blood stained into her clothes and dripping to the ground. Are her eyes open, he wonders, staring at the sky?

He wants to tell Mike. He wants to tell him everything, the witches, the potion, the challenge, Joey, Safiya, everything about last night, and Matt can feel the words heavy on his tongue but the last rational part of him manages to stop himself. What would really happen if he told Mike about Everlock? Mike would do the sane person thing and call an ambulance on Matt if Matt started ranting about magic and demons and witches. Rosanna is dead, but Mike can’t know that.

“I…I’m sorry, Mike. I haven’t heard from her since last week. We– we talked for a bit about a collab, with the new FNAF game coming out in a couple months. She didn’t mention anything about leaving.” The lie tastes just as bad as the potion Matt forced himself to swallow, and he wishes he could throw it back up. “Everything seemed fine.”

“That’s what’s so terrifying,” Mike says, and even through the phone Matt can hear that he’s on the verge of tears. “She didn’t– everything was normal, and now she’s just–” There’s a sob. “I– I’m sorry. I have to go, I have to– I’m sorry.”

Just like that, Mike hangs up, and Matt is left with his phone still to his ear, staring blankly ahead. He loved Ro, and all that love didn’t mean a goddamn thing, all because of Joey. For a moment, Matt feels such an intense rage that he nearly sees red. It should be Joey abandoned on that altar instead of Ro, those heartbreaking blue eyes filmed over with death, his hair hanging loose from its perfect style, dead like he should have been from the start.

The violence of his thoughts makes Matt feel queasy, and he shakes his head as if he can shake it away, dropping his phone and swallowing thickly. He doesn’t want any more death, not even if it’s Joey’s, because too many people have died already. Besides, if Joey is gone…

If Joey is gone, then there won’t be a single person in the world who’s survived dying except for Matt, and Matt doesn’t think that’s something he could bear. He can already barely manage to keep the weight on his shoulders steady knowing that Joey’s gone through it too. If he was the only one? It would crush him.

It’s not the only reason that he doesn’t want to lose Joey. But it’s the only reason that he’ll allow himself to admit. In truth, he doesn’t know what to think about Joey. It feels like all his emotions are twisted up inside him, a hard knot underneath his ribs that hurts when he breathes, pulling tight on his heart when he pictures Joey crying and even tighter when he pictures Joey smiling. Joey killed people just to live, people that Matt loved, and yet can Matt really hate him for that, when he knows how it feels? He would have done anything to stay alive in those last desperate moments, held against Joey’s chest. Fear drives humans to do horrible things sometimes, and Matt’s hands aren’t exactly clean, either. When Calliope drew Teala’s card – well. Matt felt as though his fingerprints might as well have been burned into it. He doesn’t know how many people voted for her, but if he hadn’t, she might still be alive.

Or she might have died in the next challenge. Or the next one. Matt doesn’t know. He stares at his bowl of cereal miserably. There’s no way he’s eating now, not when his conversation with Mike sits like lead in his stomach and he can still hear Ro’s final, agonized shriek ringing in his ears. He dumps whatever was left in the bowl and half heartedly rinses it out before leaving it in the sink to take care of later. Then, slowly, unable to ignore his exhaustion for any longer, he trudges back upstairs and curls up in bed again, pulling the blankets tight around himself and burying his head into his pillow. He just wants to sleep, to close his eyes and not see his friends’ faces, hear the echoes of their voices. For a brief second, he finds himself wishing he could have the sweet warmth of oblivion that overtook him as he died, dulling the anger, the agony, the fear, until finally his eyes slipped closed for the last time and he knew the pain really was going to be gone for good.

Well, he thought the pain was going to be gone for good. He was proven wrong by Joey’s stubborn refusal to leave him to his grave – something which Matt is mostly thankful for. But it means that he’s no longer safe from the ache that has settled deep in his bones. He tries to convince himself it’s just from exertion.

Matt manages to hold his tears back for a good few minutes. But then there’s a meow and a sudden weight at the foot of the bed. Peering up from underneath where the blankets are covering him, he sees Skip, sitting serenely near his feet. He flicks his ear at Matt, then pads up and settles down to lay behind Matt’s knees. Matt can feel him purring even through the blankets.

Tears flood his eyes without him really knowing why, and before he knows it he’s sobbing quietly into his pillow, clutching it to his chest like a child with a teddy bear. His face feels hot and his throat hurts and he’s just so tired and overwhelmed that he doesn’t know how to do anything but cry. Outside his bedroom, the day moves forwards without him, time steadily marching on like the low clouds drifting across the gray, colorless sky.

Matt’s sleep is restless, and by the time he wakes up, panting as though he’s still fleeing from the zombies and sticky with sweat, his head feels fuzzy and his mouth is dry. Skip is gone, probably having slunk off in annoyance with Matt’s squirming as he dreamed, and his bedroom is dim. Outside his window, there’s the soft sound of a light, warm autumn rain. It seems the clouds finally broke. For a long moment, Matt just stares at the ceiling numbly. Then, finally, he turns his head to the side and blinks until he can focus on his alarm clock. It’s almost six in the evening. He reaches for his phone and unlocks it automatically, blearily reading the text message that pops up – it’s from Stephanie, his friend and work partner, telling him that she’s sorry he’s sick and hopes he gets better quickly. He lets his phone drop and closes his eyes again.

The zombie's hands on his arms are frigid, bony, rotting fingers digging into his flesh through his jacket, pulling at him with undead strength, dragging him across grass wet with dew, and Matt yells for help but a part of him doesn’t think help is coming, not again.

The crypt was so cold. Somehow it felt colder than the autumn chill outside, as though any residual warmth had been systematically sucked out, leaving it dead and dark and empty and freezing, like how he used to think death would feel like. (He knows what death feels like now, like warmth, every emotion all at once, like a soft hand on his cheek and like a slap, like getting beaten to death and like getting fucked until he can’t breathe, but he used to think it would be like outer space, a barren void full of nothing but frost.)

Matt opens his eyes again to try and escape the memory before it consumes him. He has to do something, get up and live the life that he fought tooth and nail to get back to, before the memories completely overtake him and snap the control he’s trying so hard to keep steady. He doesn’t know what else to do.

But as he sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes and pushing his messy hair back from his forehead, he doesn’t know if he can even manage that. The prospect of walking the few steps to his office and sitting down at his computer to work on a script or check his emails sounds like some kind of insurmountable challenge. But isn’t that exactly what he killed for? Isn’t that exactly what he allowed Ro to be killed for?

Why did I escape, anyways? Matt thinks miserably, staring at the window. I can’t even get out of bed.

The guilt of that thought – people died so he could live on – manages to kickstart him enough to stand up on legs that feel a little weak and shuffle to the bathroom door. His body still aches, stiff and unwieldy, and so he opens the bathroom cabinet and withdraws the bottle of painkillers, swallowing two with a handful of water from the bathroom sink before making his way down the hall. For a long, weary moment, he stares into his office. His chair, his computer, his mouse right where he left it. Matt looks away. By the time he’s made it downstairs, he feels a little dizzy, and collapses thankfully on the couch as he pulls a blanket over himself and turns on the TV just to avoid seeing his reflection in the dark screen.

Matt’s body barely even feels like his own any more. He feels like a nuclear reactor left running on autopilot, like one wrong move will send him spiraling into a meltdown, and the only way to avoid it is to hit the scram button and end everything all at once. It’s a convoluted analogy, Matt knows, but as he stares at the home screen of the TV without really seeing it, convoluted is all he can come up with. He selects the first TV show that pops up and presses play.

It feels like mere moments later that there’s a knock on the door.

Matt looks up, pausing the TV show just out of habit and squinting back at the front door. The unexpectedness of it does a bit to break him from the haze, and he frowns to himself. He’s not expecting anyone, and the No Soliciting sign generally keeps all but the most hardheaded of door-to-door salespeople away. With curiosity managing to overcome the fugue, Matt digs his phone out of his pocket and swipes up to check the doorbell camera.

The person standing there makes him choke.

Joey hovers awkwardly on Matt’s doorstep, his coat still in a bundle and held against his chest, looking just as weary and broken as Matt with a tell-tale red flush on his cheeks and puffiness to his eyes that signals he’s been crying. He’s chewing on his lip and keeps glancing around himself as if someone’s chasing him – given Joey’s history, that might very well be the case. Nonetheless, a loud and very opinionated part of Matt wants to leave Joey standing out in the metaphorical cold. What the hell could he want, anyways? Probably nothing good. The bastard just killed seven people, and 16 more before that. He doesn’t deserve Matt’s sympathy, or anything else he might ask for.

But then Matt thinks about how frighteningly thin Joey was when he hugged him, and, cursing himself for his own soft heart, pushes himself up from the couch.

Joey looks surprised when Matt opens the door for him. “Matt… I…I didn’t think you’d–”

“What do you want?” It comes out harsh, and Matt kind of hates himself for the unspoken words: Whatever it is, I don’t care.

“I…” Joey recoils, pulling the bundle of his coat tighter to his chest as if to protect himself. “I…”

For a moment, Matt thinks Joey isn’t going to respond. It would be better that way, if Joey just slunk off somewhere so Matt could pretend he didn’t exist, pretend he didn’t care about him. But after a long moment of silence, Joey drops his eyes. Matt sees the way Joey’s bottom lip trembles a moment before he opens his mouth.

“I didn’t know where else to go.” Joey wipes his face with one arm, obviously trying to hold back tears and doing a miserable job of it. “I– I don’t know where else to go. I don’t– I don’t have a house, and– and everyone thinks I’m dead, and–”

The anger doesn’t leave Matt. He doesn’t think the anger will ever leave him. But standing here, staring at Joey crying on his doorstep, it’s tempered with something a hell of a lot more sympathetic. Joey has been missing for over a year. The world thought he was never coming back, and his family acted accordingly. They sold off or took back his things, ended the lease on his house, rehomed his pets. Matt’s life is just as he left it, which is a blessing and a curse, but Joey… Joey’s life isn’t just shattered. It’s gone.

“I thought you might–” Joey swallows down a sob, a pathetic noise that winds itself around Matt’s throat and squeezes. Desperately, Joey wipes his face again and ducks his head. “I just want to sleep, I’m– I’m so tired, Matt, I just– I just want to stop running.”

Matt wishes he could tell Joey to fuck off back to hell, or purgatory, or wherever the fuck he crawled out of, but he can still feel Joey’s hands on his face, wiping the blood from his skin even as Matt coughed more up, the last sensation he remembers before darkness.

He stands aside wordlessly, allowing Joey to step inside. Joey looks even more shocked, but he hastily scrubs his eyes and ducks past the threshold, watching with an almost guilty expression on his face as Matt shuts and locks the door behind him. Neither of them speak as Matt turns back around and meets Joey’s eyes.

Matt just let Joey into his house. What happens now?

Joey’s still wearing the clothes from last night, stained with dust and blood and sweat, and Matt can’t help but cringe a little in sympathy. The first thing he wanted to do was wash Everlock off, and he imagines that Joey probably wants the same thing. He resists the urge to fidget and nods in the direction of Joey’s rumpled, dirty shirt. He figures a chance for Joey to clean himself up would probably be appreciated.

“Do you want to take a shower?”

Joey’s expression gives Matt the sense that he might as well have offered Joey a million dollars and a puppy. “Can I?”

“Up the stairs and to the left. It’s the door at the end of the hall.” Matt deliberately looks somewhere other than Joey’s ridiculously hopeful expression, instead motioning vaguely towards the flight of stairs next to them that lead to the upper story of his house. “I’ll…find some clothes for you.”

Joey nods thankfully and hurries up the stairs, still holding the bundle of his jacket. Matt just stands in the foyer for a minute, listening as the bathroom door creaks open and then shuts. A few seconds later, the water turns on. He should have told Joey to take a hike. He should have told Joey that his face is the absolute last one that Matt wants to see. He should have told Joey that he loves him so much it makes him feel sick.

Matt follows Joey’s path upstairs, turning in the other direction to head to his bedroom and opening his closet door. For a moment, he just stares at the clothes inside without really seeing them. Is he really going to help Joey?

Does he really have any other choice?

Shaking himself a little, he manages to gather a pile of clothes that look like they’ll fit Joey. Joey’s taller than him by a few inches, but Matt thinks the clothes will be passable. They’ll do until he can find other clothes, at any rate. He sets them down next to the bathroom door and knocks lightly.

“There’s clothes out here for you. There’s a spare toothbrush underneath the sink – it’s orange, or yellow, something like that. I’m…” It’s here that Matt pauses. What now?

Food. Joey was so thin that Matt could feel his ribs when he hugged him, and there’s a certain sallowness to his cheeks that reminds Matt of those heart wrenching photos of starving children that corporations use to try to convince you to donate your spare change. Matt doesn’t know where Joey was for the year that he was missing, but wherever he was, it doesn’t look like he was getting enough to eat.

“...I’m going to make some food,” Matt finishes after a moment. “I’ll be downstairs.”

Matt starts to turn away when he doesn’t hear an immediate response. But then, quiet under the running water, he makes out Joey’s voice, slightly strangled.

“T-Thanks, Matt.”

It sounds like Joey is close to tears, and that– that makes Matt want to cry, too. Instead he just swallows back the choking heat of emotions in his throat and walks back downstairs. Skip is lounging on the back of the couch, his eyes slitted as he stares at Matt as if asking, Who did you just let into my house?

“He needs somewhere to stay,” Matt points out, like he’s talking to someone other than his cat. He’s trying to convince himself more than he’s trying to convince Skip, though, because there’s a part of him that still wants to throw Joey out on his ass and tell him to figure it out like Matt and Nikita have to.

Nikita. Matt stops in his tracks as the fierce woman comes to mind, her bright pink dress and those dark, unreadable eyes, masked off by the vicious attitude she kept wrapped around her as though it could keep away the autumn chill. Would she resent him for doing this for Joey?

Nikita looks like a wild animal mid-pounce, her eyes blazing with righteous anger as she tosses her blonde hair and glares at Matt. “She voted for me to die, and she got what she deserved!”

“I murdered him,” Nikita sobs, her hands shaking as Matt grabs them and tugs her away. “I murdered him!”

Matt’s throat feels tight as he thinks of her. Is she okay? Has she eaten yet? Has she slept? Did she dream of Manny? Roi? No matter how callous she acted – and she did act callous, Matt thinks, with an ugly twisting of resentment in his gut – Matt knows she never really wanted anyone to get hurt. Everlock brought out parts of her that she probably hates just as much as Matt hates parts of himself now.

He tries to think about something else as he pulls out a saucepan from the cabinet and then starts putting together the simplest, least-offensive thing he can think of: pasta. Matt doesn’t know if Joey likes pasta, or if he can even eat it, but he figures that Joey probably isn’t going to be picky right now. He fills the pan with water and then sets it to boil on the stove.

Staring at the water starting to simmer, Matt’s abruptly reminded of bobbing for apples in icy water, the sickly-sweet taste of rotten fruit in his mouth as he threw it to the ground and ran as fast as he could to the next challenge, leaving Ro ever-farther behind. He should have let himself die. He already did it once, didn’t he? Maybe it was just his time. Maybe the universe just wants him dead.

Maybe God wants him dead.

Matt’s spine prickles uncomfortably at the thought. He hasn’t considered himself religious since before he hit puberty, but…the knowledge that there’s a Purgatory implies the existence of a Hell, and a Heaven, too, and that implies the existence of a god. Maybe not the God, the one that televangelists love to quote, but…a god. Of some sort. After all, demons exist, and ghosts do too, and zombies also, and time travel is real and magic is real and–

Matt’s crying again suddenly, and he hastily wipes his face with his forearm, sniffling back tears as best he can. He’s built his entire life on science, things that can be proven, things that can be measured and observed, things that have logical reasoning built into them. He’s got a fucking degree for it on the wall, for fuck’s sake, Matthew Robert Patrick in nice fancy cursive telling him that he put in all that work, all for science. He built a career out of it – sure, maybe media analysis isn’t exactly hard STEM science, but it’s still more scientific than fucking locking a town in time so a demon can’t destroy it using zombies and magic.

The timer beeps, and Matt dumps the pasta into a strainer, trying to feel some kind of comfort at the familiar routine of making food. He can’t seem to find it. It’s like there’s a pit in his stomach now, like a part of him got cored away and left in that misty, barren landscape somewhere between this world and the next. All he feels is tired.

He’s staring into the fridge by the time the water shuts off upstairs. Joey will be down in a bit, then. There’s a few cans of Diet Coke sitting in the door of the fridge where he keeps them, and Matt grabs one, just because it feels like he should. He cracks the top of the can and takes a hesitant sip.

He can feel the carbonation, but just like the cereal, the soda tastes like nothing. It’s just cold and uncomfortably fizzy, with a vague aftertaste of chemical sweetness. Matt sets the can back down on the countertop and looks at it miserably. He feels like an idiot, being sad over soda when people are dead, but even this small, meaningless thing feels like salt in the wound. It’s just one more thing that Everlock has taken from him. Opening the fridge once again, Matt shoves the can against the back wall and tries to think about something else.

Matt wanders to the coffee table in the living room, starting to go through the mail from yesterday piled there just to give his hands and brain something to do. A coupon booklet, an advertisement for life insurance (oh, the irony)... He’s torn open a letter from his bank about some update to their policies and is managing to focus about a third of his attention on it when he hears footsteps from upstairs and looks up in time to catch Joey hesitantly making his way down the staircase and into the kitchen.

Dressed in Matt’s clothes, his hair still wet and hanging loose around his face, he looks like an entirely different person. The sweater is one of the Game Theory sweaters, black with green stripes around the cuffs and neck and the logo of the channel embroidered over the breast. Matt got it a size too big, and it makes Joey’s starved figure look tiny, his height be damned. Though the plain gray joggers are a few inches too short on him, they’re still baggy around his legs.

“Thanks for the clothes,” Joey says after a moment. Not only does he look like an entirely different person, he sounds like one too. The Joey that Matt knew in Everlock wouldn’t let himself sound this unsure. This…vulnerable.

Matt manages to stop staring at Joey a few seconds before it would get even more awkward than it already is, and looks back down at his mail. “Yeah. There’s pasta on the stove. Have some. You look hungry.”

Joey doesn’t move for a second or two, then he carefully pads into the kitchen as if he thinks Matt will pounce on him and takes one of the bowls set out on the counter. Matt watches from the corner of his eye. Joey’s got a certain shakiness to his hands, his movements faltering slightly as he goes through the motions of making himself a bowl of pasta. It’s strange, to see someone that seemed so confident suddenly so hesitant and gunshy. But then Matt looks down at his own hands, and he realizes that he can’t quite keep them steady.

“I am sorry,” Joey offers, sitting at the kitchen island.

Matt looks up at him. Is this going to be Joey’s grand speech about how he regrets Everlock and hopes that Matt can forgive him for it?

“I know I’m not– I’m probably not really the person you want to see right now.” Joey stares down into his bowl as he stirs it around with his fork. “And if I had anywhere else…”

There’s a long, heavy minute where neither of them say anything. Joey doesn’t return Matt’s gaze. Joey really doesn’t want to be here, and Matt…doesn’t know how he feels about that. He doesn’t want Joey here either. Right? After all, Joey killed Ro, and Safiya, and he killed Manny and Colleen, and JC and Roi and Teala, and all those other people, too. Matt almost didn’t even let him inside.

There’s still a part of him that never wants to let Joey go.

“What about Tyler?” Matt asks, when Joey doesn’t continue. He’s about to specify – Oakley, of course, Joey’s (former?) boyfriend – but Joey visibly winces before he can say anything else, one hand going to his chest as if an instinctual movement.

“I…” Joey swallows heavily and self-consciously lowers his hand, curling it around his bowl as if seeking the warmth from the ceramic. The fridge hums in the background. Joey sniffles, and then says, very softly, “Tyler was with me when…when I died.”

Matt just stares at him, not knowing what to think. Joey hunches his shoulders and takes a hesitant nibble of his food, still refusing to meet Matt’s eyes.

“It started last summer,” Joey says, his voice reluctant. He sets his fork back down in his bowl and stares at the marble countertop, folding his hands in his lap and fidgeting absentmindedly. “Dreams. Of a house. I didn’t recognize it. I– I could never get a clear look at it. And then…one day…I got a letter. It had an address, and…I found it. The house.” Joey shakes his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking, I just– I thought it was all– I didn’t believe in magic, or– or in ghosts, or evil gods, I just thought– it was an old mansion out in the hills, some– some investment property that my great-great-granduncle twice removed or some bullshit like that had bought back in the 1920s and it had just– ended up with me.”

“The 1920s?” Matt asks, just because it’s so specific. Everlock was trapped in 1978 – was this mysterious mansion trapped in the 1920s?

Joey nods miserably, probably having guessed what Matt’s thinking. “I started spending time there. Just– a few days at a time. I’d take my dogs to run on the grounds. It was peaceful, you know? No phones, no computers. I could just relax. But…then I started spending more and more time there. And the dreams didn’t go away. They just…got darker. And I…I hoped that maybe if I brought other people to the house, maybe it would…chase the darkness away, or something.”

“How many people died?” Matt’s words are blunt, and there’s a part of him that takes satisfaction in the way Joey cringes.

“Eight,” Joey says, small and despairing. “Eight people. And I– I went back home, but I didn’t– I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t talk to anyone. I just– hid.” He wipes his face and sniffles again, his voice breaking as he continues, “And then…there was a mansion. Victorian. Not far from Mendocino, in the woods. I don’t know how I got there, I don’t remember– I don’t remember anything. I…”

At this, something in Joey just seems to snap, because he sobs, bringing his hands up to cover his face as his shoulders tremble. Matt remains impassive. He wants to feel sympathy for Joey, and maybe part of him does. It’s not a big enough part of him to make him forgive Joey, though.

“I’m sorry, I just–” Joey sobs again, turning his face away from Matt and biting his lip hard. “I was trapped there. For– for a year, and vampires– they–”

Matt almost wants to laugh in Joey’s face and tell him that it’s a good joke, even if Joey’s an idiot for thinking Matt would ever believe it. But Joey doesn’t look like he’s joking. Whatever bitter humor Matt felt at Joey’s words dies in his chest as he blinks at Joey, taking in the tears dripping down his cheeks and the red flush on his face that makes the weary lines and dark bags under his eyes stand out even more. Matt’s seen a lot in the past day or so. Are vampires really so unbelievable?

“Next thing I know, Liza’s helping me out of my chains and there’s a bunch of people there that thought I wanted them to come to a masquerade ball,” Joey says weakly. His eyes are distant, staring past Matt. “Just like that, seven more people were dead, and– and I just wanted to go home so badly, I– I got overconfident. I got too close, I got–” Joey’s next breath is shaky. “I died. Right in front of Tyler and Andrea.”

Sitting here in Matt’s clean, modern kitchen, it all seems too fantastical to believe. Resurrection and vampires, houses trapped in the Victorian era and towns forever on a loop of a night in 1978…it all sounds like something out of a TV show. It would be nice, Matt thinks to himself, if that’s all it was.

“I don’t know how to face Tyler.” Joey shakes his head and wraps his arms tight around his midsection. “I never told him about– about the house. A part of me just wanted to keep it to myself for a little longer, I guess. Then everything happened, and…the next time I saw him, more people were dying. It didn’t really seem like the time to talk about…you know…us.”

There’s another pause. Joey finally looks up at Matt, something pleading in his eyes. Matt doesn’t want to look too closely, so he just goes back to his mail.

“You should finish your food,” Matt says eventually, and he can practically feel Joey’s dejection all the way over where he’s standing. “You’re probably starving. I’m going to go upstairs and get some bedding ready for you.”

That seems to jolt Joey, because he gives Matt a guilty look. “Bed… Bedding?”

“Well, you’re not going to sleep on the floor,” Matt replies, raising his eyebrows at Joey with a hint of exasperation, like he thinks Joey’s an idiot. Which, to be entirely honest, he does. “I have a spare bedroom. You can sleep there until you get back on your feet.”

Before Joey can say anything else, Matt turns and leaves. It’s a far more curt interaction than he’d ever have had before this, but he can’t take any more of the look in Joey’s eyes. Something about that bright blue and the fact that Joey’s face is the last thing Matt saw before he thought he was gone forever has set an uncomfortably tight feeling swirling in his stomach, only made worse by how Joey is acting now that he’s out of Everlock and doesn’t have to fight for his life any more. In a word, it’s pathetic. It sounds cruel, even to Matt, but he doesn’t necessarily mean it maliciously. After all, he’s pretty pathetic right now, too.

The spare bedroom upstairs is the smallest room, containing no more than a side table and a full size bed. To be honest, Matt doesn’t even know why he’s kept it as a spare bedroom in the four or so years since buying this house. It always just felt like something that an adult is supposed to have. A mortgage, a job, and a spare bedroom. Whatever the reason, he’s glad for it now. He changes the sheets, dumping the old ones in a pile next to the washer and dryer, and sets a few folded blankets at the foot of the bed for Joey to use.

As he takes a step back, the absurdity of this situation really hits home, seemingly without reason. Matt is about to invite Joey Graceffa, missing for a year and presumed dead, to settle down in his spare bedroom. Where was Joey Graceffa, exactly? Oh, nowhere special, just held against his will in a Victorian mansion by a bunch of vampires. Does he know where the other missing people are? Yeah. They’re all dead. They’re all dead, and they’re never coming back.

Ro and Safiya are never coming back.

No matter how many times the thought comes up, it still hits him like the Strong Man’s fist to his ribs. He still feels Safiya’s blood on his hands, still sees the way she looked at him, panicked and disbelieving. No one thinks they’re going to die until it happens to them, and Matt knows that from experience. Death doesn’t feel real until–

Matt coughs, and the only thing that keeps him from wailing is the fact that he can barely get enough air to stay conscious, much less make noise. All he can taste is blood, thick in his throat and bubbling when he breathes, and his chest burns like he’s inhaling chlorinated water. This is it, then, this is all he gets, 31 years and the curtain’s closing, he’s taking his final bow and the stage is going dark.

Who’s gonna feed Skip? Matt thinks to himself, in a flash of panic, but then his chest shudders with another labored breath and the pain explodes again into bright, metallic sparks.

Until it’s got its hands wrapped around your throat, hot like blood and agonizing like dying knowing you love someone more than you can bear. Matt sways on his feet, suddenly feeling lightheaded with the memories piling on top of his weary shoulders, and reaches out to grab the doorframe and lean against it. His head is swimming, and when he closes his eyes, trying to find his balance, all he can see is Safiya’s wide brown eyes staring back at him, her mouth moving around a word that might have been his name, might have Joey’s name, might have been help me or don’t leave me or this can’t be how it ends.

Matt barely even registers that he’s on the floor until he feels the carpet underneath his hands, pulling his knees up to his chest and trying to keep his breathing steady. If he opens his eyes, Safiya will be there again, her stomach torn open and a bloodstain on the carpet beneath her. Matt’s chest feels tight as he gasps for air. It’s hard to breathe, like he’s sinking into cement, or quicksand, and he gasps again. He couldn’t save her, none of them could save anyone, they were all doomed from the start, all because of Joey–

There’s suddenly a gentle bump against Matt’s thigh, and he whips his head up so fast he’s almost afraid he’s given himself whiplash, mind still full with thoughts of Willie’s rusty, corroded fish hook, stained with red and dripping blood on the carpet as he pulled back from Safiya’s body.

It’s just Skip.

Skip stares at Matt with his unreadable green eyes, twitching his whiskers and bumping his head against Matt’s thigh again when Matt doesn’t give him the affection that Skip obviously wants. Matt’s chest still feels like it’s being pressed in an industrial vice, but slowly, he manages to reach out and scratch Skip’s head gently, his hands shaking. Skip purrs and presses into his touch.

“You really don’t know how much you’re doing for me, buddy,” Matt says, when the tightness finally eases enough for him to speak. Hearing his own voice, however shaky and unsure it might be, bolsters him a little. He clears his throat and tries again. “Do you wanna meet Joey, huh? He…he really likes animals, you know.”

Cautiously, Matt stands up, allowing himself to get steady on his feet before he reaches down and scoops Skip up into his arms. Skip gives a mrrp of annoyance, but he doesn’t fight Matt, just digs his claws into Matt’s shirt as Matt carries him downstairs to where Joey still sits at the counter. Joey looks up at the sound of Matt’s footsteps.

“You have a cat?” Joey asks as soon as he registers what Matt’s holding. The smile that spreads across his face looks so genuine it nearly takes Matt’s breath away. “Actually, wait, I knew that. Um… Skip, right?”

“Yes.” Matt moves close enough for Joey to reach out and let Skip sniff his hand. Skip squirms uncomfortably in Matt’s arms at the presence of the new person, glaring at Joey, and so Matt sets him down on the floor and watches as Skip runs off to his cat tower and hops into the highest bed, where he settles himself and watches Joey and Matt with mistrustful eyes. Matt shrugs helplessly. “Sorry. He’ll get used to you.”

“It’s okay,” Joey says, still giving Skip an affectionate look even from across the room. “I know how cats are. I have one, too.” Then the smile falls from his face, and his eyes go distant. “Well…had, I guess. I wonder how she is…”

Matt tries for encouragement. For some reason, he just can’t stand that expression on Joey’s face. “I’m sure she’s fine. Your family and friends probably took your pets.”

“That’s good,” Joey says after a second. There’s still a distance to his voice, and he frowns slightly. “Did you know there’s a billboard with my face on it?”

“There’s billboards of a lot of the first missing people.” Matt goes to the fridge and pours a glass of water, pushing it across the counter to Joey. “Justine, Lele, GloZell. You, obviously. Sierra, too, I think.”

The missing people have been impossible to escape. It feels like every other trending headline is about them. Not unfairly, of course, because sixteen missing people is a lot, especially when they’re all YouTubers or musicians or entertainers. Some argued it was a serial killer, some argued it was hate crimes, and yet others said that it was a cult recruiting influencers. Though Matt didn’t pay close attention to it, he followed along with the news, vaguely wondering if he would be next. He never changed his behavior, never really worrying about it beyond a detached curiosity, but it’s been a frightening time to be a content creator lately. Turns out it’s all just Joey Graceffa’s dinner parties.

He followed the news about Joey perhaps a little bit closer than the rest. What can he say? He met Joey briefly a few times before all of this, at VidCon and various conventions, running into each other because of a friend of a friend, and Matt liked Joey. He’s easy to like. Before all this, obviously. He’s not so amicable-seeming now.

Joey pulls the glass of water close, like he thinks Matt’s going to take it away. “Justine… God. Justine was…”

Joey shudders, shaking his head. Matt considers pressing him about whatever happened to Justine, but honestly, he thinks he’d probably rather not know.

“It all feels so long ago,” Joey says eventually. “Justine, Shane, the mansion… Like it was an entire lifetime ago. The vampires…time just kind of…blurred. Blood loss, or just… I don’t know. I didn’t even know it had been a year until Tyler told me.”

Matt understands where Joey’s coming from. Everlock was mere hours ago, and yet he looks back on his time there like it’s an entirely different world. For some reason, he can’t seem to make up his mind on whether Everlock feels like a dream, or whether Everlock feels like the only real thing that happened to him in his entire life. He wishes it was just a dream. But one glance at his phone and the memory of the phone call from Mike assures him otherwise.

“Mike Lammond called me earlier,” Matt says, going to the sink and starting to rinse out the pan he made the pasta in and the strainer he used. He feels restless and itchy under his skin just standing still, and so doing the dishes will be a brief, welcome distraction.

Joey gives Matt a blankly questioning look. “Mike Lammond…?”

“Rosanna’s partner.” Matt’s voice is harsher than he meant it to be, and he turns away from Joey to avoid seeing whatever look is on his face. The restlessness jumps into his throat, and before he can stop himself, he adds, “Maybe you should make an effort to learn the names of the people whose lives are going to get fucked up because you couldn’t bear the thought of dying.”

I’m one to talk, Matt thinks bitterly to himself. Still, he doesn’t take it back, not even as his pause stretches out into long, unbearable silence. Even if he’s throwing stones from a house made entirely of glass, he wants Joey to know just what Matt thinks of him. In the middle of scrubbing the strainer clean, Matt glances back over his shoulder at Joey. The rage that’s been steadily building in his chest ever since Everlock is boiling over, hot and caustic and thick like tar or old blood. This man, sitting at his kitchen island, dressed in Matt’s clothes, smelling like Matt’s body wash, killed his friends. Joey killed his friends.

“Nothing to say to that?” Matt asks Joey, and the harshness of his voice is entirely intentional now. Joey stares back at him silently, his eyes welling with tears. “I guess I should have expected that from a person who wanted his friends to go on a suicide mission for him.”

Joey gets up from his chair then, moving so fast that Matt jerks back, splashing soapy water all over the backsplash as he pulls away from the quick movement. But Joey isn’t coming towards him. Instead, he practically runs for the stairs, taking them two at a time in his haste to get away from Matt. Matt hears his footsteps upstairs, then the sound of a door being closed. If he listens closely, he almost thinks he can hear crying.

Just like that, the anger fizzles out. Fuck. Oh, fuck. Christ, Matt needs to fucking get it together. Joey killed people, but so did Matt, so did Nikita, and so did Safiya and Ro. Even if it wasn’t direct, even if it wasn’t by choice, they still allowed people to die for them. Matt supports himself on the edge of the counter, shaky now that the rage isn’t supporting him, and swears softly under his breath. Nobody walked out of Everlock with clean hands, and just because Joey caused the deaths of more people doesn’t mean that Matt can somehow tally up the points of what those people were worth and how horrible their deaths were. Killing one person is bad. And Matt certainly killed at least one person in Everlock.

He finishes the dishes with an ugly feeling in his stomach and a sour taste in the back of his throat. The rest of the food he puts in the fridge for later, then he turns off the lights in the kitchen and walks back to his spot on the couch, pulling the blanket around him once again. He could go up, try to apologize to Joey, but the fact that he feels bad about what he said doesn’t change the fact that Ro and Safiya are gone forever because of Joey. Besides…he honestly doesn’t know if he has the strength for that. He just turns the TV back on and resumes watching…whatever he was watching.

It almost drowns out the sound of Joey crying.

Matt isn’t quite sure what time it is when there’s the quiet sound of a door opening from upstairs and footsteps on the carpeted upstairs hallway. Matt doesn’t pause the show, but he looks up, turning around to look at where the stairs are. After a moment, Joey comes down them, his steps light and hesitant as he glances around like he thinks Matt’s going to leap out from the shadows. Matt looks back at the TV, then checks his phone, unable to stop a brief wince. It’s already three in the morning. He didn’t even realize it was that late…

“Matt?” The soft whisper comes from behind him as Joey approaches. “Are you awake…?”

Matt thinks about feigning sleep. But then he sighs and nods. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” Joey’s silent for a second. “Okay. Do you…mind if I get some water?”

“Go ahead,” Matt says. “The cabinet above the sink has cups.”

“Thanks,” Joey says awkwardly, still hushed, and he walks to the kitchen, flicking on the light above the sink so he can pull down a plastic cup and fill it with water from the pitcher in the fridge.

Matt watches him from his position on the couch. Joey’s hair has dried, and he’s pushed it back from his face as best he can, leaving it tangled and messy. He’s still wearing the clothes from earlier, and the oversized sweater makes him look so thin in comparison that Matt almost wants to wrap Joey up in his arms. Joey looks fragile like this, lit by the dim, warm light, taking sips of the water as he leans against the counter and stares at the floor, lost in thought. He looks as if one wrong movement will cause him to break in two, or maybe like if he moves out of the light, he’ll disappear entirely, and Matt will be left alone, the only man in the world to have died – really, truly died – and come back. The prospect of that is almost as frightening as dying itself was.

He can’t tell that to Joey, though. He can’t tell Joey anything about how he feels. He already fucked up enough with what he did as he died, but Joey hasn’t brought it up and so Matt won’t, either. Maybe the things that happened in Everlock can stay in Everlock. Nobody has to know that Matt kissed Joey as hard as he could, that Joey’s mouth was stained red, that his cheeks were smeared with blood and dirt from Matt grabbing his face. Nobody except Joey and Matt, that is.

Joey lets out a shuddering breath, and Matt realizes that Joey’s staring at him.

Matt manages to hold his gaze, giving him a look with little of the usual inquisitiveness he might have. “What?”

“I– I don’t know. Nothing.” Joey’s trying for nonchalance, and failing pretty hard. “I just– I guess I…I wanted to apologize.”

So this is the grand apology. Matt doesn’t have the mental or emotional ability to deal with this, not right now. He scoffs and shakes his head at Joey.

“Joey–”

“No, Matthew, please.”

Joey’s use of his full name brings Matt up short. Joey doesn’t call him Matthew. Joey calls him Matt, or MatPat, if he’s trying to be funny, but not Matthew, not since Matt was dying in his arms and desperate for a reminder that Matthew Patrick had existed, had lived. Matt shuts up.

Joey sets the water cup down on the counter and fidgets with his hands. “I’m…sorry.”

The words are reluctant, but they still hit Matt like a sack of the bricks to the chest. Joey really does sound remorseful, and the look on his face, agonized and helpless, makes Matt choke on the anger that’s still nestled in his chest. Joey wipes his face and sniffles.

“You– you were right. I’ve fucked up so many people’s lives, I’ve– so many people have died because of me, and I–” Joey bites his lip so hard Matt almost thinks he’s going to break skin. “I hate it. I hate…”

Joey trails off, seemingly reconsidering whatever he was going to say, but Matt can guess.

“If I could fix it, I would,” Joey finally says, his voice miserable. “If I could bring Ro back, o-or Safiya back, or Manny, or JC, I would. You know I would, Matthew. If I could make it so that you never died–”

“You can’t.” Matt doesn’t know when he stood up but now he’s standing, and he’s choking on the anger but it won’t go down easily. He glares at Joey with a hot, bitter feeling spreading over his face, burning his eyes as he stares through the dim light at Joey’s stricken expression. Matt’s voice is venomous as he spits, “You can’t make it so that I never died. You can’t bring Safiya back, or Ro, or JC or Manny or any of the other people that you fucking murdered, all because you couldn’t let yourself die like you were supposed to.”

That’s cruel, Matthew, a voice in his brain says reproachfully, a voice that sounds once again like Safiya. You know how it feels to die, after all.

Matt does know how it feels. And he knows that if he had been in Joey’s shoes, he would have done the same goddamn thing. If it had been the SAE appearing to him after he bled out in the cold, offering him another chance at life, Matt would have taken it no matter the cost.

Matt can’t seem to make himself shut the fuck up, though. Maybe Joey’s vulnerability is the reason he can’t stop himself from wanting to scream in anger at Joey, because this man is the reason Ro is gone forever, this man is the reason she died screaming in pain, this man is the reason that Matt died wanting to scream in pain–

“You know what, it should have been you,” Matt snarls. “I wish Willie had ripped your fucking guts out, Joey. I wish you had died on the witches’ altar, or– or I wish that Nikita had turned around and shot you right in your fucking head, because you deserve to die and none of them did.”

This man is the reason that Matt had comfort as he died, kind words and gentle hands and a kiss that felt like no kiss he’d ever had before.

Matt expects Joey to run again. But instead, Joey just seems to crumple like wet cardboard, his lower lip trembling as he takes a step back from Matt and slowly sinks down to the floor, his back against the kitchen counter. If he looked small before, he looks downright tiny now, defenseless and powerless against Matt’s rage. Tears are rolling down his face freely, but he’s still silent, as though he thinks making any noise will make Matt snap and tear his throat out.

Jesus fucking Christ, Matt thinks to himself, part of him still numb. What am I doing?

He wanted this to make him better. He wanted this to make the anger go away. But it didn’t. Now his mouth just tastes bitter, and he hates himself even more than he did before. Joey went through hell and came out the other side. What kind of horrible person would want to hurt him for that?

Matt can’t look at Joey for a single second longer, though; not to apologize, not to beg for forgiveness. If he did, he’d start crying, too. Instead, Matt just turns on his heel, and walks away.