Chapter Text

At some point in the murky, dreamy darkness you share a single thought, senseless, incoherent, unmoored. It is:

Isn't this taking longer than last time?

It feels like it's going on forever this time.

For the rest, you each wander alone. But you remember echoes of the other, just as the right hand cannot help but feel the presence of the left, even if it knows not what it's doing.

You dream many dreams, but this one stands out.

You're fourteen as of today, and sulking in the back of Dad's van to get away from everyone. Mom had at least had the decency to tell your brothers and sisters to leave you alone for the day after all their parts to play in ruining your birthday. There was nobody in *particular* to get mad at, was the thing, so instead you were just mad at everybody and sorry for yourself most of all.

Dad had apologized a week ago. He'd made your brothers apologize for distracting him and your sister, and your sister apologize for crashing the van in the first place, and even your other sister for complaining to Dad about the twins right at the moment the guy swerved into them. They made a really big deal about it, and he told you it'd be just a couple weeks until his next paycheck, and all of that should have made you feel better but it didn't, it just didn't, because--

--Because you'd just worked so HARD for this, painting walls and mowing laws all summer and saving up every scrap of money you didn't spend going out with Min, and now you just had to keep WAITING even LONGER, and you'd already been waiting your ENTIRE FRIGGIN' LIFE--

--and Min had come around but you'd told him not to bother you, and he'd gone and actually left you because you were being such a jerk! And he was so busy with school and stuff it felt like you barely got to see him lately and it was so stupid ruining your birthday like this and--

"You done moping yet?" Min-Gi asks from above you, perfectly neutral and perfectly smug. You jump up from where you were laying curled up on the van floor, already rubbing your face with your arm to wipe away the tears.

"Min! You're back!" You yelp, without it occurring to you how transparently pathetic you sound at all. "I mean--I wasn't moping." You say through a sulky little pout, foregoing any thank yous or hellos or attempts to improve the day in favor of lying, and continuing to mope. Min just smiles that annoying square smile he does when he knows that he knows something you don't, and can't wait to show off with it.

"Oh, okay, great." He agrees, in a tone that perfectly conveys how magnanimous he thinks he's being by letting you lie about how whiny you're not being, and perfectly makes you want to hit him, just a little. But you don't have time to so much as aim for his shoulder for a playful shove before he says "So you're ready to go then?"

You furrow your brow at him. "Go where?"

He looks at you like he's the most patient babysitter in the world, except for that wicked knowing smile tugging on his lips. "To buy your guitar, obviously."

Your furrow turns into a scowl, and for a second he looks like he's scared you might actually punch him. He stands his ground, though--he knows you never would. "Haven't you heard?" You say, and you're not sure if your voice is acidic at him for making you talk about it or just acidic over the situation in general. "Field trip's off. Dad's gotta do repairs on the van, so we're not--"

"Taking the van, yeah. Your dad's taking us in your Mom's sedan." Min says, like he's giving you the answer to an algebra problem he thinks is too easy for you to be struggling with. Except that if it was like that, he'd be annoyed, and he's having fun with this. His annoying bracket smile gets wider and you're almost as mad that it has the power to spark a glimmer of excitement in you as you are, despite yourself, getting a little excited.

"But Dad said he can't pay his half," You say again, a question by way of a protest, "He said it'd take--"

"A couple weeks for him to get the money, yeah. Lucky for you, you have the BEST best friend in the world." Min-Gi says, and his smug square smile breaks into a smug square grin that bears his perfect cemetery-line teeth. "I told him I'd cover it with some of my allowance money savings. Said it'd be a pain to hang out with you all month if we didn't do it this way, and I'd been looking forward to it too anyway, but only if he doesn't tell them until after he pays me back,--"

And he's cut off because you're throwing yourself into him with the most brutal hug you think you've ever managed with your weak, stringy doodle arms. Min laughs with his whole chest and belly and he actually hugs you back for once, just a little, his hands resting on the middle of your back. "--and ONLY if you ADMIT I'm the best friend who ever lived, for any best friend, ever." He finishes, luxuriating in this completely unprecedented level of power.

You submit gleefully. "Are you kidding!? Dude, of COURSE! I could KISS you, that's amazing! You're the best! You're the absolute best friend there ever was! I'll do your homework the whole month if you want, the whole YEAR, I--oh my god, Min, for real? You'd really do that for me?"

He's still laughing and smiling, but a blush crept onto his cheeks. "Haha, well yeah man, of course. I wanted us to play with an electric guitar too, and it's only a couple weeks anyway, isn't it? It's not THAT big a deal." But it IS that big a deal, so much so that him playing it off like it isn't after being the coolest guy ever makes you want to grab him and shake him until he breaks open like a piñata, except you realize he looks maybe kind of uncomfortable?

And you think about what you said and you wonder if-

--and you're holding it and you're holding it and you're strumming on the strings and it's smooth cold heavy metal in your hands and it's yours, and it's real, and it's YOURS, and it's REAL!!! You can't believe it's happening, you don't think it feels quite real, but you don't really care because if this is a dream you want to live here forever, forever, just you and your new guitar and Min.

Min's sitting across from you in the van, with the doors open just like they'd been this morning when this was the worst day of your life instead of the best. Min's parents had come around to ask about the guitar, and you'd lied through it almost effortlessly, Min's suave polite smile paving over his contribution by simply never acknowledging its existence.

Every roadblock was cleared away, all the waiting over. Your look down at it like you grew a new body part. Your own electric guitar. Not the acoustic which, while beloved for what it was, had always been for practice. And yours. Not your dads' electric, borrowed only under direct supervision and usually with all the constraints on what you and Min could play that came with it. You strum at the strings with your fingers, still trying to get the feel for it.

But you're sick of waiting. "Hey Min, let's play something." You say, and it comes out almost a whisper, conspiratorial. Min catches your drift immediately, and looks from your house to his, making sure no one's coming or watching from the windows. Coast's clear, though.

"Just make sure we keep it quiet. What'd you have in mind?" He says, knowing full well that you want to play something neither of you should know, whatever it turns out to be.

"Not sure! Something easy, just to say we did the whole thing." You say cheerfully. You look up at the roof of the car and sting your tongue tight through your teeth as you think, fingers tugging at the guitar more comfortably now. "Something with mostly guitar instrumentals. You gotta do the vocals so I can focus on playing--"

"Ugh. Do I really have to?" Min whined.

"--so something that's easy to sing, too, JEEZ Min! Let me finish!!! And yeah you have to, because come ooonnn it's my birthday! And I'm not used to how this one feels yet so I'm gonna be distracted! And if we're gonna be a duo act you've gotta at least get comfortable singing enough to do backup, don't you???"

Min-Gi makes an uncomfortable noise of not-quite-agreement, but you know by the tone that it was an invitation to keep talking him into it, not a desire to stop. Min loved singing, was the thing; what he couldn't stand was being heard. Which was dumb, because his voice was nice and he was better at matching pitch and notes than you are. Min is always so uncomfortable with himself, uptight in a way that just makes you want to somehow reach inside him and loosen whatever strings are wrapped so tight around his insides.

But you can't do that, so you just put on your puppy dog eyes and beg. "Besides, it's my birthday! You never sing for me without complaining, Min-Giiiiiiiiiiiiiii~" You drawl the iii on and on and on as you reach your finger out and poke him softly on the cheek, then stroke down the same cheek with the pad of your finger. He puts up with you for all of half a minute before batting you off like an annoying fly.

"Fine! Whatever! Just play something." He says, sounding like he's definitely totally just annoyed and not at all pleased to be buttered up into doing something he kind of wanted to do anyway. You snicker under your breath as you fall back against the van and strum. No song at first, but soon you have a thought and you smile wide. You start playing out the melody and soon enough, Min recognizes it. He looks at you, aghast.

"Seriously, man? That one?" He says, like you're embarrassing him or something.

"Hey, it's easy for both of us. And it's one of your favorites." You answer, your smug smile comfortable on your face.

"But it's...what if someone hears us?" He pleads, scared he'll get in trouble, or worse, embarrass himself.

"We already accounted for all of that, doofus. Look, I'm playing super quiet. Just don't sing so loud the whole block can hear. Just for you and me, okay?" You say, putting everything you have into sounding encouraging, and he actually smiles at you! So maybe it--you start the instrumentals over from the start and Min actually opens his mouth right on cue, hell yes!

"Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?

Mother, do you think they'll like this song?"

Min still isn't allowed to listen to Pink Floyd, even at 14, but that only mattered as far as when in the day you got to hear it, so you could hide it from his folks. Over the last two years, both of you had pretty much gotten the album memorized, or at least your favorite songs, and now that you both more or less had instruments, you could carry the music with you anywhere you decided to go.

The first line had always been kind of special to you, having grown up with your parents' stories about their parents' stories about the bombs back in Japan. The second had always hit a little closer to home for Min-Gi. It wasn't that you didn't worry about it, but to you it didn't really matter if anyone else liked your songs as long as Min did. That sort of thing stressed him out all the time, though. You see it even now in the way his eyes shimmer a little more heavily when he sings that line, like he's actually feeling it in a way he wasn't the last one.

Then he gulps, flushes, and you grin.

"Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls?"

You're not trying to be mean when you have to try not to laugh; it's just funny hearing a guy as uptight as Min say a word as crass as 'balls'. Especially when his voice catches on the word like that, and especially when he's so clearly trying not to laugh himself, running a little red in the cheeks with laughter and embarrassment. You share the momentary joke, at least 40% of why you'd picked the song in the first place, as you both knew, and then it's gone with the wind when the next verse is up and the music moves you both along.

Almost without missing a beat, Min's voice turns wistful and mournful, and your heart swoops down with it--

"Ooh-ah, Mother, should I build the wall?"

--Then sharp and contentious, and it feels like he beating your heart like a drum--

"Mother, should I run for president?"

Then rebellious and cynical, your faces meeting with sharp eyes and wild grins and he already knows you won't be able to help himself as you join him for your favorite line--

"Mother, should I trust the government?"

--And you both carry it along into the next line, your voices turning into half-gasped little howls of desperation as you let out the cry--

"Mother, will they put me in the firing line? "

--And with that you fall back against the van and turn your full focus back to the instrumentals, letting Min's voice lead the song back towards melancholy.

"Ooh-ah, is it just a waste of time?"

There's something very sad and far away in his eyes when he sings that part. Like he's thinking about something he doesn't like to talk about, and you've learned not to ask about, because it makes you too mad and so you don't even help. But still, it's not a toy, not a waste of time, you protest in your head. You will the feeling into the strings of your guitar, hoping it reaches.

If it does, he doesn't answer. This might be his favorite part, though, so that's okay. He falls deeper into the abyss the guitar leads him into, shifting his voice a little for the answering chorus.

"Hush now, baby, baby, don't you cry

Mamma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true

Mamma's gonna put all of her fears into you

Mamma's gonna keep you right here, under her wing

She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing"

He surprises you a little with how loud he lets himself get. He sings it with his whole body, hunching over a little and rocking back and forth on the van's edge. Especially when he sings that wistful line about being allowed to sing. Even though he's careful not to be too loud, his voice echoes in the metal of the van a little. Something about it, he says,

"Mamma's gonna keep baby cosy and warm"

Something about this part,

"Ooh babe, ooh babe, ooh babe"

Feels really,

"Of course, Mamma's gonna help build the wall"

Intense for him. In a way it doesn't, for you, quite the same way.

"Mother, do you think she's good enough... For me?

Mother, do you think she's dangerous... To me?"

This one's the opposite, though. As far as he'd ever told you, Min didn't feel anything about this one at all. But for you it was...well, it made you feel...?

"Mother, will she tear your little boy apart?

"Ooh-ah, Mother, will she break my heart?"

You suppose you still didn't really understand it. You just knew that Min looked good singing it, and that it made you think about how sooner rather than later now, there'd probably be girlfriends...

"Hush now, baby, baby, don't you cry"

Mamma's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you"

And Min was definitely the sort of guy to go for a nice girl with a college track and plans to be a teacher, or a doctor, or a NASA engineer or something, someone his parents would like at any rate

"Mamma won't let anyone dirty get through

"Mamma's gonna wait up until you get in "

And for some reason this part always made you feel bad, like were you dirty? Did Min's parents worry if he was out late with you? When would they stop if they still did? When would they start if they didn't now?

Mamma will always find out where you've been

Mamma's gonna keep baby healthy and clean"

And the thing that killed you was the passion was back in Min's voice again, something boiling under the surface of him, cathartic and quietly loud and confused and maybe even resentful, and you weren't sure even Min understood it so you sure as heck didn't,

"Ooh babe, ooh babe, ooh babe

"You'll always be "baby" to me"

And he always looked so sad and tired when he sang this part, which was fair you mean it's a pretty sad song and even the instruments feel like they're dying by the end, but

"Mother, did it need to be so high?"

But why does Min looking so sad make you feel so much like you want to do something about it and also so bad about yourself, like somehow you're the root of the problem? Why did it confuse you so much, like you wanted something without understanding what it was? And why did it break your heart a little, like you already knew you could never have it?

And all at once you remember, you remember, when this really happened you finished the song a little sad but then you realized you'd played your first full song on your own guitar and Min had sung it all the way and you'd been so excited so jumped right onto him and hugged him again, and then you really HAD kissed him hard on the cheek, and he'd even laughed about it more than he'd seemed embarrassed

But that isn't what you're doing now. You just linger on the thoughts like a disc stuck on repeat, looping and looping the memories and feelings, stuttering and jarring. And it comes back again

"Mamma's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you"

And back again, even though you're not a girlfriend,

"Mamma won't let anyone dirty get through"

And back again, and you know you're dirty, too,

And you've slipped out of the van and out of the world and into someplace black and dark where you're tumbling like you're on a faulty rollercoaster, and there was a heat you weren't aware of until it goes missing and then the vertigo feeling of impact and then dragging, dragging through the dark, until you come to a stop and there's just a feeling of bitter, biting cold creeping in

And on some level you realize you're asleep. On some level, you remember everything. On some level, you're old enough now to understand everything you didn't back then.

Which is exactly why you just don't bother. You just stay right where you are, in this cozy little bed or coffin, and try to look for Min again in your dreams. Time passes, and by the time you think you find him the feeling of getting colder has been growing so long it's starting to give way to feeling a little warm again, like maybe you're getting used to it--

You dream many dreams, but this one stands out.

You're twelve and every kid at your party is from study group, or viola lessons, or friggin Jimmy Donovik from the Church your dad started taking you to once a month or so to see Jimmy's Dad, a work friend of his. Some of them go to your school too, but none of them are friends from school, because you don't really have any of those.

Everyone's nice enough though, except Jimmy who's just annoying. But even if he wasn't here, you still wouldn't feel comfortable doing anything actually fun, like showing them your mini-synth. You suspect most of them would just humor you about it, politely weirded out. You hate the idea of showing anyone something special only to be met with an echo of the same puzzled patience you see in your parent's eyes.

You think you've had enough of that look for a lifetime. You think when you want to be honest, you want to Wow, and until you can do that you'd rather just keep up this performance, an intricate song made of polite little lies.

There's presents, but they're mostly clothes, a couple of music books, but the music's mostly classic--good, just not your thing. All in all, the party was ok you guessed, but the schedule mostly just added up to a lot of pretending. That's perfectly alright with you, though. You have something to look forward to. Ryan.

Well, not really Ryan exactly. Ryan's already here, unusually dressed up in a button up shirt that he clearly hates but you think looks nice on him. He's on his best behavior for once, and doesn't even talk about rock around you and the other kids much. He doesn't want to get into arguments about it today, wants to avoid all trouble and the scrutiny it comes with. He's saving--no, you're both saving all the luck and goodwill and karma you can manage for the real misbehavior, the transgression you're planning for later.

He'd woken you up in the early morning, before your parents were even awake, just to show you a little glimpse of it before the party. Rocks on your window, delicately thrown from the branch he climbed up to when he was sure nobody would be looking. Suddenly you're not at the party remembering how he showed you, you're standing at your window looking at his mischievous smile as he puts a finger to his lips in the dim blue-grey light of dawn.

He pulls the 8-track cassette out of his hoodie pocket, proudly displaying it for you to see. Pink Floyd's "The Wall." An album you'd only heard snatches of since it'd come out last year, though everything you'd heard had frightened and enticed you in equal measure, your little soul begging you for more. Later you'd find out Ryan had stolen it from his dad's music collection, but that's alright; his dad liked the oldies and wouldn't go looking for it.

It was also fine that that meant Ryan had to keep the thing, since it'd be way too risky to keep it where your parents could find it. Sure it meant it was more a present for both of you than one he'd gotten just for you, but it was such a good one you could hardly be bothered by the details.

You see it and the light of the dawn fades into the dark of evening around the cassette, Ryan's hands melting into yours as moment before the party melts into the beginning of the promised sleepover after, when it's finally in your hands and Ryan lets you do the honors of pressing it home against the slot of the 8-track player built into his dad's Van.

You sit for a while together, half enjoying the album, half keeping watch. The unspoken agreement on sleepover nights like today is that you get to be left alone for once; no prying parents or fussing brothers to babysit or annoying homework or chores to do. But that didn't always constitute a promise, even on a sacred occasion such as a Birthday.

And it would be just your luck to get an impromptu visit tonight of all nights, when you were using your rare privacy to break a real rule. Sure, you were technically allowed to listen to some kinds of rock, especially from Ryan's dad's library of kid-approved tunes. But Floyd was most definitely still a no-no in your parents' book, and you getting in trouble meant Ryan getting in trouble for getting you into trouble.

(Ryan's parents didn't always seem like they cared, but it seemed like they cared enough to put up appearances for your folks. You appreciated that about them, even if telling Ryan that when he was grounded would just make him mad at you and so you never did. If they didn't, you worried maybe your parents wouldn't want you hanging around him in the first place.)

There was just no helping it, though, even for a boy as risk-averse as you. Pink Floyd was just that good. You remember how you'd been buzzing and lighting up from the inside out with anticipation all morning and afternoon, unable to sleep, only barely able to contain yourself while talking to your parents and the dozen and a half guests you just wanted to leave.

You remember feeling nearly tired with catharsis as the music started playing--not as loud as you'd prefer, but loud enough to make out the lyrics--except that you were so excited to hear what the singer had been trying to say, a message you'd only caught in broken fragments for the last year. You remember how Ryan was so excited he was bouncing in his seat and you had to shush him into listening so he wouldn't distract you.

You remember at some point you got swept into the music enough to give up scouting for nosy parents and cram into the back of the van together, where the speakers were better. You remember laying on the floor with Ryan, looking at each other, looking at the roof, looking at the floor, looking at each other again as the music played and played.

Sometimes exhilarating, like being free. Sometimes moody, like being sad. Often scary or sad or even heartbreaking in ways you didn't really understand. But that was okay. Being scared or sad or heartbroken with Ryan was better than smiling politely with anyone and everyone else in the world, you thought, because it was actually how you wanted to be feeling, and the music was yours yours yours. Yours alone, yours together.

You remember when "Hey You" came on, and how it wasn't the start of the album and it wasn't the end of it, but it was the part that stuck longest and sharpest because of what happened during it. The way you and Ryan ended up looking at each other, saying nothing, while the vocals sang

Hey you,

Out there on your own, sitting naked by the phone

Would you touch me?

Hey you

With your ear against the wall, waiting for someone to call out

Could you touch me?

Hey you

Would you help me to carry the stone?

Open your heart, I'm coming home

And then the guitar solo swept in like river rapids, sharp and rough and ragged and lovely, and neither of you thought to break them up with your voices at all. Later, Ryan would tell you he wanted to learn to play just like that. And then it abruptly stopped and the voice came back, sounding sadder than before, saying

But it was only fantasy

The wall was too high, as you can see

Ryan told you after that he'd never heard this one before, that he just got scared because he could feel it coming, how something ominous and terrible was building in the song. You believed him, because even if he ended up doing something, you felt it too. You might've even done what he did, if you'd thought to, but you didn't--

No matter how he tried, he could not break free

--and so it was that his hand snapped out and took yours and squeezed it so tight it hurt until you realized what was happening and squeezed back--

And the worms ate into his brain

-and something broke in both of you then, didn't it? To imagine someone could want something so bad, and not be able to get it. Even something so simple as wanting to talk and have someone answer. How awful, you'd tell each other later. But whatever it was you broke in your hearts, at least you broke it together.

You remember how the rest of the song soothed the wound that split open, and how you didn't let go of each other's hands for the rest of it--not the rest of the song, not the rest of the album.

(You remember how you didn't talk about just how much you'd liked holding hands at all, like if it wasn't mentioned, it wasn't weird. Like a spell. Maybe it just wasn't weird to Ryan, who had siblings and parents who sometimes touched him, if only to get him out of the way or muss his hair up or shove him around.

Maybe you were the weird one, for feeling like that had somehow made the night naughtier of you than listening to the album in the first place, like you'd done something even more wrong than taking something too old for you. You remember how you decided not to bring it up, but you also decided that whether it was his hand or the album, you didn't regret it. Only, one of those turned out to be harder to believe when you got older, didn't it? You remember...)

You remember some other song on the album whose name you can't remember, no lyrics, just guitar and drum, pure rock and roll. You remember how Ryan's eyes glittered in the darkness, and you remember you're remembering, and suddenly the rock and roll of the music in your head is thudding against rocking and rolling in your body like you're tumbling in a washing machine, hitting something soft and warm, hitting something cold and metal, feeling a loosening in the air and brightening behind closed eyelids and--

--Min didn't so much wake up as tumble into wakefulness over an immense pile of what felt like hard rock and wet snow, the barrel he seemed to be stuck inside rolling all the way down an uncomfortably steep hill until he finally came to a stop. The first things he became truly aware of besides the overwhelming confusion of his tumble were the sharp blue sky above, the blooming feeling of aching bruises swelling all over him, and disgustingly damp cold seeping into his clothes.

He grunted, forcing his protesting body to his feet just to avoid getting any wetter with a surge of paranoid adrenaline. Just like that, it all came rushing back. He was back on the train, which meant he had to be careful--getting sloppy could easily mean dying from hypothermia. Jeez, the train wasn't playing around this time, he guessed. He must've been dreaming just a second ago, and then.

He blinked and looked down, then up, where his eyes lingered. He was in some kind of middle plateau halfway up a damn snowy mountain, stuck between the summit far above and the base deep below. Typical Train nonsense, really. No sign of Ryan though, except...it looked like there was a strange line slashed out of the snow far above him, diagnogal and downwards past the corner to his right, as if Santa had rolled over that part of the mountain on some bizarre sled.

The marks of his own body disturbing the snow started below that line, so maybe he'd been on a vehicle and then somehow gotten knocked out? But that didn't make sense to him. None of this was how it had started last time--

Panic bloomed in Min's heart from half a dozen buds.

His feet started walking on their own, beginning his trek along the circumference of the mountain. He was back on the train. Anything could happen, any old time. Danger could sprout up from anywhere. For all he knew, a chunk of the mountain could come alive and devour him on the spot. And unlike last time Ryan was nowhere to be seen, so was he right and Ryan had been on whatever missile had crash landed with them on it? Was he alright if he had?

Or was Min off entirely, and something else was going on? Had Ryan just woken up somewhere else? Was Ryan even in this car? Somehow the only thing more intolerable to Min than the idea of Ryan being hurt in the landing, of being eaten alive by rocks himself, was the idea that Ryan could just be somewhere else on the train, and they could spend the rest of their lives here not even trying to get out. Just trying to find each other.

The sheer terror that idea inspired pushed him out of his brisk walk and into the fastest jog he could manage without worrying he'd start to sweat. He was lucky the air was dry right now, for all it's coldness. He didn't want more moisture through which to lose body heat right now. He heard his voice yelling for Ryan as he walked and felt his hands grabbing at his arms, trying to hold in warmth, but all of it was mechanical and far away to him; inside his brain was just screaming.

He worried about being back on the train. He worried about his parents and Emily. He worried about the apartment and the album they were working on, and the tour they were planning soon, and ok Emily would probably make sure the bills were paid if she didn't fucking divorce him over this which he'd deserve if she did but even if she didn't they couldn't just stop their whole careers like this. He worried about the train some more, because it was easier.

It was bad enough to be back here in the first place. Why did it have to be different, too? If he could atleast start off without unsettling variables like what seemed like a crash landing, as if the train hadn't known how to deposit them properly. Like Ryan being gone. Like this weird feeling that he'd been sleeping forever, like--

He was struck again by the knowledge of being on the train again, and his eyes compulsively went to his hand. He could see it from the underside alright, that eerie green glow. His stomach lurched. But before he turned his hand to check it, he'd turned the corner and there it was, right on the edge of the mountain's middle outcropping. A cylindrical metal pod, like something out of a sci-fi movie, with an imprint of snow trailing off up from above the mountain and along the path to where it had come to a stop.

Damn the cold; he broke into a run. This time his head was actually involved when he cried out "RYAN!" at the top of his lungs. But there was no answer. For a horrible moment he thought he'd arrive at the pod just to find it empty, and that he'd come here alone. Then he got there and, finding it open along some hatch, looked inside. His heart froze in his chest as he realized he'd been naive to think having arrived alone could be the worst possibility. "Ryan..." Min breathed, seeing his own breath puff visibly in the air, and Ryan's name was a prayer, a beg, a plea. Ryan was just lying there in that strange metal bed, looking somehow too thin and delicate for this frozen desert that seemed to span forever in every direction Min could see. He was so still.

Min couldn't tell if he was breathing, and found he was afraid to check. He could see stray little snowflakes in Ryan's eyelashes, on his lips, in the brown locks of his hair drooping along his neck and down his shoulders. Min had the morbid thought that Ryan looked strangely pretty like this, that he reminded him of Snow White laying in her pristine glass coffin, taken too soon.

Thinking that felt like he was contemplating a beautiful light on the horizon that heralded the beginning of the Biblical apocalypse, or nuclear war. Just as the horror of it forced him to action and he started to hunch over the pod and reach in, Ryan's chest rose and he shifted a little, and Min remembered how to breathe. "Oh, thank God." He exhaled. Then he reached in.

"Ryan, buddy, come on man. Time to wake up. It's not a good idea to sleep in the cold like this."

He said with rising panic in his voice.

Came Min's voice, coming from the brightness outside this comfortable dark cradle, along with the gentle touch of Min's hand on his shoulder. Ryan hovered in that fragile space between dream and waking, resisting the urge to even think.

He ignored the voice, hoping against hope he was also dreaming it. That even the feeling of Min's thick, capable fingers was just a fantasy his hopefully dying mind was using to comfort him. Or just torture him. Either way, it wouldn't be the first time he woke to thoughts like this, sometimes even almost this vivid.

But the hand shook him harder, and Min's voice came again, panicky this time "Ryan? Ryan!? C'mon man, don't do this to me. Uuhhhrrrghh oh man you're really cold oh god oh no..." His hand wandered quickly over Ryan as he talked, fingers pressing on his neck, then cupping his cheek, then finally both hands wriggling under Ryan's back and lifting him by the shoulders, wrapping him into an embrace.

It wasn't really that the light or the warmth of Min's body reached some critical peak that made it impossible to stay awake or anything. It was that Min-Gi sounded so scared and upset, and Ryan couldn't stand the guilt of making him worry that way even more than he couldn't stand facing that he'd dragged him here in the first place. Back to this fucking train again. "Mmnrrhg..." Ryan grunted, his face stuffed into Min's shoulder and chest. "Min..."

His hands rose and grabbed at Min's neck as he pulled himself up so he was sitting on his own instead of just dangling against Min's body like a flaccid puppet. "Oh THANK GOD you're ok Ryan, I thought you--don't scare me like that!" Min whined, his voice wavering like a guitar string just about to snap.

Ryan's jaw clenched and his eyes squeezed shut in sudden frustration, the first fully conscious feeling he had. "Why..." He started, pulling his hands away from Min and suddenly pushing him away by the shoulders, so they could see each other's eyes. "Why'd you follow me!? Min-Gi, what the hell???"

His question was so bizarre that at first, Min-Gi didn't really understand what he was hearing. Yet Ryan's gaze was vivid and ferocious, without a single hint that he'd ever been anything but perfectly alert, or anything short of perfectly right, for that matter. He was so convincing that he left Min feeling unmoored and dreamy, like this whole time it had actually been him having some terrible nightmare that made no sense at all, and none of this was real.

"What?" Was all that managed to leave Min's lips, in the end. "What kind of question is that?" He asked again, when Ryan wasn't forthcoming. "The--you were, the train...you're the one who ran in! What was I supposed to, OF COURSE I was going to--"

"Dude, what about your WEDDING? What about EMILY?" Ryan interrupted, bordering on shouting now. "I wasn't trying to-- You don't have to just ditch EVERYTHING for me whenever I do something stupid! We're not kids anymore! I wanted to get away from you, not drag you in with me!"

The silence that filled the air between them after that, howling so loudly it deafened their very thoughts, was infinitely colder than the brisk snow-cooled air around them. Min's mind worked on figuring out an answer, but couldn't seem to get past the frigid shock. All he could think, and it wasn't quite a thought so much as rote repetition, was a whispering echo of I wanted to get away from you, I wanted to get away from you, I wanted to get awa--

"What?" Min said again, aware he was repeating himself, feeling like an idiot. Like a wind-up toy soldier, marching steadfast against a wall, not making a single inch of progress. "You were...you think--what, Ryan? You thought you'd just leave and, what, we'd say 'Oh well' and just have the wedding without you? You think I would've shrugged and gone and had a good time for weeks while you--what? Ryan, what was the FUCKING plan here?"

Min didn't know when talking had become yelling; didn't even perceive his voice rising until the curse exploded out of him like a bomb and Ryan recoiled from the sheer impact of it's fury. It wasn't the burst of a dam spilling overflow and returning him to zero, though. It was the spark of nuclear fusion, turning something old and awful and rotten that he thought he'd left behind and setting it alight into a poisoned sun.

"What about the band, Ryan? What about our careers, what about any economic security we --no, I, since you're pretending you just care about me soooooOOO MUCH,-- HAVE!? Did you even stop to think, for a SECOND, that ALL OF THAT goes right out the window if you just--just, LEAVE? NO, of COURSE you didn't!" He spat, and he'd only seen Ryan look this hurt with him one other time in his whole life, but,

But he'd only felt this hurt one other time, too, at least where Ryan had stuck around to see it. So fair was still fair. Numbly, distantly, Min registered surprise at the fact that neither of them was crying. Ryan looked shaken, but he kept his composure when he softly started "I...just meant you didn't need to fuck your life up over me. I didn't want you to--"

"Have you gone completely crazy, Ryan, or are you really just the biggest moron who's ever fucking lived?" Min interrupted, seething. "I have to think it's the former, because I stopped believing the latter after the last time we did this. I don't have a life! I NEVER did! WE have a life, that YOU just walked out on! And we have it because YOU convinced me it was what you wanted and for some reason, I believed you! And I decided I wanted it too!!! And NOW,"

"After we made it work, after we got through the hard part, you just decided not to talk to me and let me think things were going great!" Min started laughing, a bitter, increasingly hysterical laugh that cut up his sentences into stuttery chunks. "For how long? I don't know! Weeks? Months? Years??? Until you let it get so bad you just RAN AWAY! AGAIN! AGAIN, RYAN! YOU JUST LEFT ME, AGAIN! AND WHY THIS TIME? I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I DID!!!"

"And then you start yelling at me for caring enough to chase you???" He finished, panting, winded from the outburst despite his lungs' years of singing practice. Ryan started at him with eyes as big as the moon and as hollow as a black hole. When Min-Gi spoke next, his voice had a rasping, gasping twang to it, like he was still out of breath. "Then yeah. I GUESS that makes me a moron for following you. Because CLEARLY, I'm the only one who does."

Silence drowned the world again like a waterfall, crushed it like an avalanche. Despite it all, Min-Gi half expected Ryan to respond like he always did when things got serious; backpedal and back down, try to soothe him or something. Instead, he just withdrew, his entire demeanor pulling away from Min like...like it didn't affect him at all. Like none of this really mattered. "Yeah." Ryan agreed curtly. "I guess you're right. So why don't you just--"

"Oh, goodie, you're awake!" Said a whimsical, sing-songy voice coming from inside the pod, interrupting Ryan. "You greedy little piglets sure know how to keep us waiting..." Came a slightly different voice, more somber and melancholy.

"What...?" Min-Gi said despite himself, one last time, in sheer confusion. If the third time was indeed the charm, then maybe the spell was Open Sesame, because as if in answer a segment in the middle of the pod unlatched, hissed, and lifted up diagonally, revealing an impossibly flat screen that looked more like a window or a mirror than a TV.

Inside the screen, seemingly standing up to greet them, was a spherical white orb on little stumps, like a hyper-simplistic robotic parody of a dog or a cat. Splitting it vertically was a black bar, with two white dots inside. The dots seemed to be looking at them with a strange, pupil-less gaze that made it hard to tell if they were really seeing at all. But then they scrunched upwards at the bottom, as if both dots were tiny moons being overtaken by tiny eclipses, and the thing said

"Well, would you look at your little suits! You look like big artic monkeys! Or maybe giant penguins?" It suddenly yelled in a tone of eerie pollyanna delight, as though this was it's favorite question in the world. Just as suddenly, the crescent moons inverted, making it look sad instead of happy. "You know, penguins huddle together to preserve body heat so they don't freeze to death. But there aren't enough penguins in this car. So even if you do, you prooobably won't make it."

Ryan just stared at the thing, unimpressed. "Does it look like we're about to cuddle?" He snapped.

Min-Gi fought the urge to look at him, as well as the fresh pang of bewildered hurt. What the hell had gotten into Ryan? This was such a night and day difference from just a few minutes (hours? longer? the thought made him sick) ago in the bathroom. But he clearly wasn't getting answers from the guy, so he decided to focus on the less infuriating mystery in front of him for now. "What are you?" He asked. "Are you here to, uh...help us? Like Kez did?"

"I'm One-One! And ohhhh hahahaha that's funny, that's funny, but heavens no!" The creature known as One-One said, rearing up on its hind legs and putting its front to its bottom, as if doing a tiny parody of a belly laugh. Then its eyes flipped in a circle and it fell forward low, looking morose. "Wouldn't want to get too attached again..."

Without giving either of them time to be bewildered by that, One-One continued. "No, no, I'm just the conductor! I'm here to give you a helpful introductory message and send you on your way." It said in the cheery voice. The sad one kicked in, curtly adding "Standard policy updates since last time you were here. Also, emergency protocol."

"Emergency protocol...?" Min-Gi repeated, trailing off. Then everything it said snapped into focus. "Wait, you're the conductor? Of like, the whole Train? Does that mean you can open the door for us so we can get off? U-uhm, please? Conductor? ...Sir?"

"Ooo, Sir. I like that. Somebody knows how to sound like a bootlicker" The shitty little orb answered sarcastically, and amazingly, Min heard Ryan snicker. He might've considered punching him just then, but the robot switched again, its eyes turning wide and strangely confused, as though his question had stumped it. "I can't just open your doors for you, silly, that's what the numbers are for! Besides, why would I do that? You're the ones who ran away in the first place, aren't you?"

Min bristled with his whole body, so much so that he actually seemed to get taller and wider to Ryan's eyes, like a puffed up angry cat. "Ran away!?" He demanded. "No, I didn't run away, I was about to get married when THIS jerk ran, so then I had to follow him and--"

"--You ran away. Mum doesn't even try to pick anyone up unless they want to run, so if you weren't running, you wouldn't be here." The mean one said, speaking in a fast and exasperated tone, like an annoyed teenager. Then it sighed dramatically and went "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh--"

One-One let it's deadpan mockery drone on and on for a while, its pitch and tone shifting strangely as though its voice was a synthesizer. Min's mind reeled at the implications of its answer over the buzz. Then it started talking again. "--hh. And your numbers are even higher than last time, so somehow you even got worse. Don't go asking for more when you're already getting special treatment, or I might decide to stamp my boot."

The robot made it sound like a threat, but something in it's sarcastic deadpan tone made it sound like a tease anyway. Or maybe it was just that the mention of their numbers jarred them out of paying attention. Their hands came up like mirror images, and twin chills ran up their spines as they saw the number:

505

Min looked at Ryan, stricken with horror. Almost three times bigger than it'd been last time. How long would they be stuck here now? No, that wasn't the scary part. What had they done to go so wrong, convinced they were happy all the while? No, that wasn't the scariest part either. The worst thing of all was how Ryan looked so unsurprised.

"It would be impressive, if it wasn't so sad," the robot said sardonically. "And it would be sad if it wasn't so useful!" It added, with chipper good humor.

"Useful? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ryan demanded, scowling at it. He drew closer to the pod and leaned over it, resting his hands on the metal brim. It shifted forward a little and then settled into the ground. Min found himself walking closer, too, wanting to get a closer look at the robot on the screen.

"Well, since you've already been through the train once, you're a little more practiced than other passengers. Which is pretty good for everybody, since honestly I have no idea what we're doing with you this time around!" One-One gleefully explained, and then admitted. "Maybe some of your incredibly low stats will carry into New Game Plus for the hard mode run..."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Demanded Min this time, bewildered. What is a "new game plus", even? He wondered. The robot loosed an annoyed sigh, seemingly bothered at the idea of explaining.

"When the train got derailed, it caused a 0.0000213284139 dot dot dot sub-atomic probability cascade shift on our processing systems for passengers, and in your case that resulted in Mum shifting you over by a car, from the one you were meant to wake up in right away to one locked in quantum stasis." The positive voice answered. "It took us a while to notice you were just sitting there like you were stuffed in a pickle jar. Sorry." The negative one added, not sounding particularly sorry at all.

"We were in...stasis?" Min echoed, his mind struggling to wrap itself around the implication.

"For how long?" Ryan asked, adapting fast enough to want the details. "How much time did we lose?"

"Iuhnno." One-One said in its happy, ditzy voice, fantastically unhelpful. "None, biologically! You're not any older or anything. Relative to the world off the train, though..." It trailed off, sounding almost like it was looking through a file cabinet. Its eyes suddenly squeezed, squinting at them in mock threat. "Enough to matter."

Min's stomach lurched, the world feeling like it might give out from under him. Ryan watched him from the corner of his eye, felt the impulse to reach out and try to steady him, provide some comfort, and decided against it. "So we're screwed, is what you're saying? Even if we get off the train. Depending on how long it's been, at least." Ryan said flatly. He could freak out later, if it was true.

The bathroom still felt fresh and vivid in his mouth, his last breakdown only minutes old from his perspective no matter how long it'd been. It gave him a sense of post-helpless sobbing clarity he rarely possessed. And Min was definitely too busy worrying about everything back home to get intel out of this thing, so it was up to him to do it for them.

"Oh, no, no!" The pleasant voice said. "I mean, you're temporally trapped if you care about when you go back, in addition to being regular old number trapped, that's true. But I have it on good authority that there's some way or another to get back to your original time before getting off, if you keep an eye out for it!" It said this last bit in a hushed, conspiratorial whisper: "Mum told us so. She said it'd be like a fun little bonus puzzle."

"Who the HELL is MUM! You're a--you're a talking SOCCER BALL!" Min-Gi exploded suddenly.

("Huuurtful...") The sad one answered in a genuinely wounded tone, but Min kept talking right over it. "Forget ANYTHING about how the Train is possible in the first place. This thing is so advanced and so impossible that GOD may as well have made it."

"So if that's true, and you're in charge, then how in the FUCK could you make such a BASIC but insanely important MISTAKE in the first place! Do you have ANY idea what this does to our lives!? I don't want your fun little bonus puzzle! I want my band, and my parents, and my nice apartment I need to keep paying rent for or lose and all the cool stuff inside it, and my wife who may or may not have already DIVORCED me if what you're saying is true, assuming we haven't been declared dead or missing, and my--"

"Yeah, yeah, snooty passenger who called us in the first place thinks they don't want to be here, what else is new. I told you we should've left a video tape like usual. This is a pain." The sad one whined to itself. The glad one responded to itself, "No, no, this is good! This is fun! Besides, it's all part of the course correction, you know that." It finished with a note of self-assured pride, a certainty that it was accomplishing some important task.

Ryan raised an eyebrow. Had it done that up until now? Talk to itself?

"Fiiiine." It sighed, turning its attention back to them. "Anyway, rude. I said the shift was a consequence of the derailment, not that it was an error." It said in its disaffected goth teen voice, now in the frustrated flavor of an increasingly impatient calculus teacher. "It's likely more helpful to think of it as a joke, or a prank, on Mother's part. She can have a wicked sense of humor, you know. Isn't she great?" It asked in the preppy cheerleader tone.

"We still don't know who she even is." Ryan said quickly, raising an arm to Min's chest to stop him wasting their time with more pointless grounching he wasn't in the mood to listen to.

"But of course you do! She's all around you." The orb said delightedly. "And she's treating you like kings, compared to everyone else that's ever come aboard! Everyone else's car route can be a little bit random, between you and me. Even yours were, last time." It admitted like it was letting them in on a good joke.

"But she had explicit instructions for us this time around, specifically designed to help us help you help us make the necessary corrections to get us back on track!" It finished, nearly euphoric. "She even made me bring some cars out of quarantine for it..." It added in a spectacularly defeated, miserable voice.

There was a blank, baffled pause in the conversation. Then the bummer voice said, sounding disappointed in them for not getting it already, "She's obviously the train, dinguses."

Min and Ryan both blinked, looking around at the car around them in a new light. The blue sky above, with wisps of white clouds floating like suspended cotton. The grey-black rocks of the mountain smothered in white almost everywhere they could see, all the way up to the summit at the top. The small ring of stable terrain they were on, halfway down from it, similarly swallowed by snow.

The vast field of white pervading the land in all directions like an infinite blanket from the base of it, broken up only by the distant arch of the curved red door, standing in empty space at some arbitrary point. It occurred to Min just then that he had no idea how they were going to get down from this entire fucking mountain and get to that door, and he thought the idea of having to somehow scale it was going to outright send him into a panic attack.

Luckily, Ryan's rapid and intuitive mind was having a series of much more interesting thoughts, much more quickly. Ryan thought: This whole place is alive? It doesn't really look like it... Then he thought of every car they'd ever been in, and the rattling, hulking metal spaces in between. All of that's alive, too?

One-One saying She can have a wicked sense of humor, overlaid with his memory of the hand-monster coming out of the painting, trying to drag Min in. Pig-Baby and its Cow Creamer Mother. The cowboy bugs in that one car, the partygoers in the other, the alien trio in their bizarre orange parkas.

Morgan, a massive living structure that could think and feel enough to grieve.

Kez. Isn't she great? Echoed One-One in his head.

All of THAT--all of them--was all the Train, too? Parts of her, maybe, or maybe more like children? The specifics didn't matter, Ryan decided immediately. What mattered was that if the Train was affected by something, everything inside it was too. Which meant--

"You said the train derailed?" Ryan asked with new concern, distracting Min from his neurotic breakdown before it could properly snowball. "Like there was a crash or something? Is Kez alright??? Was her car caught in it? Are we even safe, or--wait, how are we supposed to help with something like a CRASH in the first place, we're not mechanics! I--"

"Oh, heavens no, no! It's not a literal crash, silly, that would be impossible!" The happy one said. "Unless the Gohms developed a hivemind and tried to topple us over from the outside in an en masse rebellion..." The sad one countered, as unfathomable as it was morbid.

"Right, I suppose so." The slightly-less-happy one agreed. "In any case, you don't need to do anything all that special! This will mostly be business as usual from your limited perspective."

It said, sounding a little reassuring and a lot condescending.

"Huh?" Said Min and Ryan, in incredulous unison.

"Maybe it would be helpful to think of it as more of a conceptual derailing. It's not something you can see and feel through limited human senses, nothing so obvious as a physical crisis. It's more like..." It trailed off, seeming to genuinely struggle with describing something that didn't translate easily to English. "Like in a metaphysical sense, one invisible to us but regardless very real, someone came along and plucked the train off its tracks."

"Someone?" Min-Gi asked, at the same time as Ryan asked "Off its tracks?"

One-One took both of their parrotings as a request to continue. "Yes, and then simply set it down in the dirt next to the tracks, never to move again. But then someone else didn't like that, and put us back on a different track, one already set towards a final destination."

"A final destination?" Ryan asked nervously, unsettled by the finality of the phrase. "What's that supposed to be?"

"The destination of our fate." The One-One said in it's light, happy voice. Except that it sounded serene and calm to the point of solemnity, like it was conveying something of immense import.

"O-okay. And you want us to help you stop that, I guess?" Ryan bargained, starting to worry that he might end up the one freaking out.

"Not at all. That's impossible." The happy one said, at complete ease with the implication. "There's nothing scary about destiny, it's just what's bound to happen. There's no reason for you to concern yourselves with the macrocosmic perspective, really! All you need to do is what you're naturally inclined to!" It said with a grand little flourish, getting up on its hind legs and raising its front stumps to the sky.

"Figure out the puzzle, reclaim your lost time, and go back to your lives about how you remember them!" One-One said, like the host to an exciting easter egg hunt. "Or earn your exits like usual and see how a completely indeterminable span of time has reshaped the landscapes of your lives." He added like it was announcing a funeral march, but one it thought might be fun. "We're only here to let you know the game's a little different now."

"Then why even tell us the weird cosmic derailing stuff!?" Ryan complained. "Because it's so much FUN! And I was never going to get the chance to tell anyone else." One-One answered, shouting at what sounded like the top of its--speakers? Bursting with enthusiasm, in any case. "For some completely arbitrary reason, Mum chose you as the key points of leverage through which to save our entire pocket of reality from eternal, incomprehensible perdition."

"Doesn't that sound so exciting!? How many beings ever get to say that! I've never even heard of it happening before, and I know mostly everything! Haven't you ever wanted to be a hero?"

It asked with what sounded like earnest curiosity. It asked in the singular, but it's eyes subtly shifted--the top one pushing to the left, seemingly looking at Ryan. The bottom pushing to the right, looking at Min. It was unsettling the way it rendered them oh so subtly asymmetrical, like it was going just outside the bounds of what its construction allowed it to do.

"NO, not REALLY!" Ryan shouted, after long enough pause to establish it really was expecting an answer.

"This is ridiculous. That whole explanation was even worse than Kez's! Are you REALLY what's in charge of this nightmare roller coaster?" Min yelled.

"Iunno." Said the joyful voice, sounding rather pleased with it's own ignorance. The deadpan one came back with the air Ryan didn't recognize at all but which reminded Min instantly of Hamlet. "Are any of us really in charge of anything? Or is everything we experience just a theoretical projection cast upon the shifting walls of the quantum sea of probability like a transitory shadow play, put on for the entertainment of invisible watchers?"

There was a long and pregnant pause in the conversation. Then, as one, Min and Ryan simply said "WHAT."

"Alright, well, I think that's everything!" One-One said happily, by way of an answer. "Bye, penguins. Try not to die and stuf--"

"WAIT!" Ryan interrupted. One-One emitted a palpably annoyed and put-upon groan that started off like "Uuuuhhhnnnnnnn" and then, about when they'd expected the sound to end, picked up and dragged upwards like "nnnRRGgghhghghhuuhhhhhhhh.", came to a stop, and resolved into "What."

"You said your, uh, Mom...laid out the next cars for us, right?" Ryan asked, his voice taking on the first note of positivity Min had heard in it since they'd gotten here. "Does that mean Kez is up ahead?" He finished hopefully.

"Who's Kez?" One-One answered innocently.

Ryan's shoulders went up in a frustrated clench. "KEZ! She's a little diner bell that lives in a giant talking castle called Morgan. You should know her, she was born in your mom!!! Like a--

sister, or at least a born citizen or something!"

"Oh. We don't keep track of denizens. They don't have numbers."

"Why does that--urgh, whatever! You kept track of us, right? Don't you have like, I dunno, creepy security cams from last time or something? Can't you just check the car we left from before and tell us if it's in the lineup?"

"Hhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnngggghhhh fine, whatever." One-One jumped upwards and the camera followed, settling just above it as it inserted himself into a circular groove. It emitted a few beeps and then, almost instantly: "No. It isn't."

"Whuh--well, why not!? This perfectly tailored adventure sounds like total shit so far, dude!" Ryan protested. As much as he wanted to see Kez too, all things considered, Min thought this was kind of a silly thing to get hung up on relative to everything else--they had never expected to see Kez again when they left, after all. So he just let Ryan argue and looked rather vacantly between them, trying and failing to wrap his head around the enormity of what his life had suddenly become.

"I dunno, actually. Mum didn't add it, but she isn't saying it's locked, either. I could add it to your queue, if you'd like. Hey, maybe she even figured you would ask!" It gasped in delirious ecstasy, and then intoned in hushed whispers, "Maybe it's a cluuueeee."

"Oh. Really?" Ryan blinked, taken off guard by getting to get his way so easily, instead of being denied and having to sulk about it. "Then if you could do that, that'd be super great, actually. Thanks?"

One-One beeped again, then: "Done! And don't mention it. Only about 47 cars down the yellow brick road!"

Ryan pouted at that. "Forty-Seven? Jeez, why so far ahead? Can't you just make it the next one?"

"I don't know if it's a good idea to be pushy with the lord and master of the train, Ryan." Min-Gi said warningly, but also rather vacantly, as though he didn't expect Ryan to listen and didn't really care if he did, for that matter. He didn't even really have it in him to be nervous.

Between the lockbox of infinite uncertainty his old life was being kept behind and the even more unsettling sudden distance Ryan was imposing between them, he felt rather certain the train could do anything it wanted to him and it would remain the least of his concerns.

He'd prove to be wrong.

"Seriously." One-One agreed. "You're really ungrateful for someone so demanding. I'll never be appreciated in my time, I guess..." It said mournfully. Then it's eyes switched as the more polite personality came to the forefront. "Sorry. That car wasn't locked, but the first forty-seven were. Mum's special orders, and all. The progression of the album is quite important, you see." It said, giving them both the uncanny sense that it was using their experiences from last time to mock Ryan in petty, playful revenge.

"Okay, but--" Ryan started,

"NO MORE QUESTIONS!" The happy voice shouted over him, with the air of a circus ringmaster about to begin a show. "I'm afraid we're out of time." He admitted. Then the eyes switched again, giving them a look that was all serious goddamned business. "Get in my house and get out of this car. Now." It ordered nonsensically.

"Wh--" Ryan started, and "Bh--" Min began, but both of them were cut off as all around them the snow and ground and rock and seemingly even the very air seemed to start shaking violently, and a loud roaring rumble of an explosion deafened them from above. They looked up to see the tip of the mountain--shit.

They looked up to see the tip of the volcano billowing black, fetid smoke like the chimney of one of 1993's Top 5 Pollutant Factories Of All Time, Featured In Rolling Stone Magazine. Acid little spits of lava trailed in arcs through the sky life fireballs, some of them looking a little too much like they could head their way. That would have been scary, except for the freshly-grown river of lava spilling over the brim and slithering towards them, so rapidly Min could hardly believe what he was seeing, devouring the snow in its wake with a terrifyingly loud hiss of steam.

Min and Ryan met each other's eyes, black holes to black holes, wide with terror and adrenaline. No thoughts, pure survival instinct. The only thing to do was the obvious.

They turned around as one and Min held the brim of the metal pod as Ryan practically jumped back in, thumping against the far end hard enough that he almost sent it over the edge of the cliff.

Weighing himself against it, Min-Gi leaned in and followed suit in one rough motion, landing on top of Ryan. There was a split second where their arms wrapped around each other. Ryan coiled his around Min's back and held on for dear life, his legs similarly wrapping up and over Min's knees like he was scared he might accidentally go flying out of the car when the terrible thing that was about to happen finally did.

Min shoved his head into the crook of Ryan's shoulder and neck, wrapped his right arm around said neck like a pillow, and his left arm up and over Ryan's head and as much as he could manage of his own. Better I break my arms than one of us snapping our necks, he had time to think, although what he could feel was only how thin and delicate Ryan's neck felt, how vulnerable, and a wild urge that came with the sensation: A desperate desire to protect it, to keep him safe.

Then gravity did it's work, the pod's weight tilted up and over the edge

And

toppled.

The world melted into a blur of overstimulation, everything sharpening and saturating like it might if you were out in space and suddenly starting moving at the speed of light.

No time for thought, no space for it, just

The crushing feeling of being squeezed between the metal of the pod and Min's heavy body, making Ryan fear he'd simply stop being able to breathe or just forget. Ryan went on holding him tight out of animal understanding that pushing him to the opposite end of the pod meant pushing him towards the hole, where gravity and air pressure could simply tear him right out the entrance and into the sky and merciless wall of stone,

The banshee howl of the wind spinning in and out of the pod like a cyclone, Min feeling the coattails of his jacket flapping wildly on his back as they fell and fell and fell forever, downwards and sideways, the touch of the metal freezing, the wind a storm of chilly claws at his back, the only warm thing in the world Ryan and even him still too cold, making Min-Gi wish he could somehow get closer, which of course made him ashamed enough to want to die on the spot except that was so terrifyingly possible, he was falling off a mountain, Min-Gi Park was falling off a mountain, and he didn't want to die, oh god he really didn't, he deeply and truly wanted to live, and he'd never been a believer or a praying man but--

The screams in their throats, raw and roaring and going on and on and on forever, so long you'd think they start getting bored of it except that there was no other way to cope with the incredible sense of speed and pressure, both starting off unbearable and exponentially climbing with every eternal second that went by,

And it just dragged on and on, longer than either of them imagined could be possible to arrive at any destination moving this fast, but it turned out mountains were just this fucking impossibly huge. It just dragged on and on for what seemed to be hours but was in actuality precisely eight infinite minutes, and at the exact moment that Ryan feared he would pass out,

he realized he could see One-One on the screen above them alternately standing on its back legs and waving the front ones frantically, then settling down and standing perfectly still, then standing back up and repeating the sequence.

He added his scream to the chorus of their voices and then wind in one long continuous drone that seamlessly shifted in pitch and tone, going "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

And although he would've thought it impossible a second ago, Ryan instantly decided he liked that weird fucking robot ball thing a lot on the spot. He almost thought he would laugh, but the instant his terrified scream threatened to break into something joyful the entire pod suddenly swooped upwards, spun twice in with vertigo inducing speed like they'd been thrown into a washer

Then they tumbled through the hatch and he and Min were flying through the air, wound so tight together they were a single body hurtling to the ground. Min had one more second in which to hope that in some impossible way, the impact wouldn't kill them instantly or worse, slowly. Ryan simply hoped Min would land on him rather than the other way around, and thus have no reason to bother staying on board once he was gone. Better than what he knew he'd soon have to do if he lived.

They landed, and the coin fell on the side of Min-Gi's wish. The layers of snow were so thick and so perfectly balanced on the firmness-to-softness spectrum that rather than making deadly impact with deadly ice or gravel, they simply sank down and were buried three feet deep before coming to a stop, Min on his back and Ryan straddling him. For a few moments they just stared at each other, thoughts blasted clear out of their minds and still left somewhere halfway down the mountain.

There was just an awareness of looking at each other and feeling the pressure of the other's body--Ryan's lithe form under Min's hands, Min's firm hands on Ryan's hips, the way both their hairs looked disheveled and windswept. The weight of Ryan's hips on Min's crotch, the humiliating wet feeling that was now just another source of unbearable cold. Something in the way Min looked at him just then, Ryan thought--

but that wasn't a thought he could even bear to entertain these days. Almost merciful, the car echoed the whiplash strike of self-loathing and revulsion in him with another earthshaking rumble. Min's hands tightened around him and Ryan reciprocated at Min's shoulders despite himself, but as soon as it subsided he shook himself loose and sprang to his feet.

He looked around. The door was close by, miraculously--just a couple feet, maybe. He looked back to the volcano just in time for another roar coming from its direction, and his heart sank as he witnessed a massive torrent of lava spew forth from its top. The red magma was already at the base of the mountain and pooling, evaporating the snow and making its way towards them at a breakneck pace.

"MIN! GET UP!" Ryan snarled, his voice coming out broken and hoarse, vocal chords ravaged. When Min didn't move instantaneously, he darted down and grabbed him by the shirt and shoulder, dragging him up and onto his feet with all the strength he could muster. Only then did Min obediently oblige him, though he still looked dazed and shellshocked. Ryan spun him around to show him the lava, and that seemed to snap him out of it, but Ryan didn't wait to see.

He spun right around and started kicking and grabbing at the snow, pushing his way through it with everything he had. It was more giving than he expected, but it was still bitter and frigid work, and he was already so wet he was sure he'd have frostbite any second. He went at the task of clawing out a path like a wild animal betting everything on a desperate struggle for survival, because that was what he was, and he didn't stop until his hands stopped finding more snow and grasped the painfully cold metal handles of the door.

Ryan grabbed the top end as hard as he could and pushed down and to the right and the lock swung open, slicing the snow out of the rest of its way. The door started to open on its own, but Ryan raised his best leg and kicked it right in the middle, slamming it wide and dumping a messy pile of built-up snow cascading to the outside.

Temperate wind blew over Ryan, wonderfully warm by comparison to this hellscape. Then it was all around him as he launched himself out of the car with a leap that cleared some more snow for Min behind him. Holding his hand on the door to keep it open, Ryan turned around to find--

His stomach freezing in his chest. Min-Gi was trailing behind, walking towards Ryan and the exit but doing so on wavering, unsteady legs that shook and stumbled. Maybe they'd fallen asleep on the slide down, possibly even because of Ryan's knees wrapped around them. Maybe Min was just going into shock. He was so, so close. But he wasn't moving fast enough, and the lava was right behind him, already swallowing the pod.

He could see One-One still standing at attention on the little screen, and as soon as it noticed his eyes making contact, it offered a little salute. "It was a pleasure serving you for the day, gentlemen! Go on without me. You'll be alright!" It said encouragingly. "Unlike me, I guess, but that's alright. I've always kind of wanted to go out melting in lava..." It trailed off just in time for the screen to go to static as the pod melted into increasingly soupy steel, whatever internal circuitry had maintained the connection presumably frying for good.

Ryan met Min's eyes. Min could feel the heat pressing in from his back now, could sense how close it was coming. He was out of breath and disoriented and it felt like at any moment he was going to keel over and throw up. Ryan saw it in his eyes, that he knew he wasn't to make it. He wanted to--God, he wanted to, he looked so scared--but he knew it wasn't happening, and even though he was going through the motions he was already giving up.

Fuck that. No time to think. Ryan leapt into the frozen, burning storm and grabbed Min by the shirt and dragged him forwards, forcing him to stumble faster, letting Min fall against his shoulder and holding him up that way when he threatened to fall. Never in his life did Ryan feel so frustrated that Min-Gi was the bigger and heavier of the two of them, that his guitarist muscles weren't enough to just pick him up and run with him.

But between the two of them they moved faster, even if it meant Ryan was kind of rough about forcing Min along. They reached the threshold of the door just as the heat behind them grew intense enough to sting, and Ryan put his hands on Min's back and ass and shoved him bodily through the door, sending him careening onto the metal floor of the train outside.

Then he stumbled through himself, turned around just in time to see the lava, raw yellow-red so close and so bright it hurt his eyes and so hot he thought the air itself was scalding him even from here. Just seconds to go and it would be through the door. He grabbed the door handle and slammed it shut, sealing that bipolar world of warring temperatures off forever.

The steady rumble of the train wheels and the wind filled the air as Ryan fell to his knees and then crumpled sideways, shaking and shivering. Now that they were safe, that the adrenaline was gone, he couldn't imagine ever getting back up. He felt cold and damp and filthy, already exhausted and terrified and humiliated. He was grateful that Min either decided not to speak, or simply couldn't because he wasn't doing much better.

They stayed there for what might have been half an hour, or might have been three hours, or might have been a day if they'd fallen asleep. Neither one was certain they could track time very well at the moment, or that they could tell the difference between being awake and asleep. The train sort of had that effect on you, as they'd learned last time. They might've thought they were ready now. But nothing really could prepare you for something you never imagined you'd experience even once.

What Min did know was that by the time he felt ready to move again, or even think in any way more substantial than a sort of numb, completely scattershot haze, his clothes felt mostly dry again. Still too cold, and still just damp enough to be annoying, but dry enough that they'd be back to normal soon, he thought. It almost felt like they were drying too fast.

Maybe something about this creepy endless desert sucked the moisture from the air? It was pretty dry, after all. Pointless thoughts. Distractions from what he wanted to say. "You saved me, Ryan." He said, and his voice came out rough and frayed. "You came back for me." He echoed, that one less for Ryan and more for himself, his voice raspy and full of wonder. The clump of balled up fabric that was Ryan Akagi didn't move, and didn't answer.

"Um. Thanks a lot for that, is all I wanted to say." Min-Gi said, dragging himself up to his feet and holding onto the railing as he tested his legs. Good. He could stand. He started walking over to Ryan, starting to wonder if he was asleep. He didn't think he was, though. He'd spent a lifetime watching Ryan sleeping, and it was nothing like this. He didn't know what this was.

He stood over Ryan awkwardly, unsure how to approach when he was ignored again.

Something about Ryan looked very unapproachable, and Min thought the amount of times Ryan had ever really been unapproachable to him could fit on one hand, and he'd never gotten any better at handling it. Especially now, when he couldn't just leave him to mope. They needed to get moving again.

He hadn't even quite been aware that his hand had been reaching for Ryan's shoulder until Ryan abruptly twisted from his knot and knocked it away hard with his wrist, sending Min's arm flying high. "Don't. Touch me." Ryan seethed, his eyes burning like pained malignant suns. A chill went through Min, beginning at the point of impact where their arms had met, as if Ryan had cast a curse on him.

"And as for why we're here: We're not discussing it. Period." Ryan continued, frigid and impermeable, an unassailable fortress of ice. "I don't care how much this stupid train thinks we're supposed to."

"Um...alright, sorey." Min-Gi ameliorated. "I was just trying to help, since you seemed so upset. Are you...no, sorey, you JUST said." He debated with himself as Ryan rose to his feet in silence. Ryan walked past him without a word, stepping purposefully onto the bridge and striding off to the next car. Min-Gi did a little half-jog to follow, noticing that his clothes really were fully dry now with breathless relief. Then his eyes landed on Ryan's palm.

321.

"Oh, hey! Your number went down." Min-Gi said with weary but genuine happiness. "Mine too!" He added as he checked his own, pleased to find it matching. "I guess that makes sense for you, Mr. Lifesaver. I dunno what I did to deserve..." But he trailed off as Ryan turned around and looked at him with an expression perfectly devoid of emotion, like the last however many hours had simply sucked them all out.

Ryan raised his hand to his chest and looked at his palm with perfect, serene clarity. The eerie green light from the number glittered in his eyes like starlight. Then he simply said "No." And the number answered the command, instantly shifting. When it settled, it was 505 again.

"Ryan...what?" Min-Gi said, aghast. Like nothing noteworthy at all had happened, Ryan turned and kept walking to the door. Min-Gi stayed put, waiting for an answer, and when it didn't come he screamed it this time, as loud as his ravaged throat would allow: "RYAN!!!"

Ryan paused again, but didn't turn around. "You've got the wrong idea about this." He said impassively.

"Oh yeah? Then give me the right one." Min-Gi shot back. Ryan started walking, but this time with an air that expected Min to follow, and so he did. Then Ryan answered.

"It doesn't matter if our numbers go down until we know how to fix the time issue, or at least how much time we probably lost so you know if it's worth it." He said simply, and that much was obviously true, but still no reason to deny themselves a small victory. Min was about to say so when he spoke up again.

"And even that doesn't matter as far as I'm concerned. You have your number, and I have mine. It doesn't look like we get a Kez this time around, at least right now, so for as long as it looks like I can, I'll help you. But you're here to get your number down and get off the train so you can get home to your real life. I'm here," At that he reached the door and opened it expertly, holding it open on one side and turning sideways to meet Min's eyes. "To get back to Kez and Morgan."

"What...what's that supposed to mean?" Min-Gi pressed, a flower of unadulterated horror blooming in his heart. The world beyond Ryan leaked out from the door, spilling dark and murky shades of red, purple and blue out onto the dull steel-grey metal of the train. A runny wash of uncertain colors that seemed to be lights, but ended up feeling like shadows.

They cast Ryan in unearthly light, making his disaffected gaze even more unsettling. "Ryan, what are you trying to say?" Min tried again, his voice wavering with a terror perhaps even worse than that of plummeting down the face of the world.

Ryan blinked dispassionately, looking somehow bored. "It means exactly what it sounds like." He said, almost annoyed, as though Min-Gi was being obtuse on purpose and missing the answer to a math question that should be perfectly obvious. "I'm not getting off."

With that, he turned around and slipped into the train car, consumed by those vying hues of color. Min took a moment to look at his own hand, bewildered. Still 321. He considered what Ryan said, and for a few long moments thought about everything that had just happened, everything that brought them here.

His thoughts turned to the mystery of why Ryan, who had always been so caring and warm, was acting like this. To the fact that despite the wall between them, Ryan had still risked his life to save Min's. To come back for him.

Silently, he made a decision, and his own number shifted. Back to 505 again.

Speechless, with nothing he could say and nobody to say it to anyway, Min-Gi Park followed Ryan Akagi once again.

Into an even darker nightmare.

Chapter Text

Ryan walked into the car with crisp, flat movements, like he was going to a way-too-stiff business meeting he was already antsy about having to sit for. Specifically, it reminded him of the arduous series of interviews he and Min had gone through together, back in what he supposed he now called the "good old days.", to find a manager willing to help them out with marketing. It hadn't taken as long as they might've thought in the beginning

The agonizing wait to find out if this would be the time when they finally heard a "Yeah, I like this sound, I like your moxie. I believe in you." from someone who had power to help them take it to the next level, who wasn't just each other or fans trying to hook up with them or asking curiously how they felt about each other and why did it always come back to each other again? The rejection hitting like a bullet in his heart when it wasn't.

It was always so much easier for Min for some reason, going through the motions and doing his best at negotiations. Ryan almost always either got mad when they criticized their act and only narrowly avoided blowing up the meeting, or just as often froze up entirely, leaving poor Min to do his fair share of the work. Ryan could do crowds forever even if they hated him, but he hated being judged by someone with Authority.

The greatest authority of all came stumbling into the train, nipping at Ryan's heels in an ungraceful heap. The heavy force of his run sent his foot skidding on the glass with a blunt impact that went up from his heels to his hips and threatened to make him slip, making him hop awkwardly a few times to adjust to the texture of the territory. Ryan didn't acknowledge him.

Min undoubtedly believed this to be part of the apocalyptically pathetic baby temper tantrum he was perfectly aware he was throwing as if in an attempt to burn on the pyre every last shred that remained of his dignity in Ryan's mind, and he was fine with letting it stay that way. Really, it would've been true no matter what; it just wasn't the current reason for his disattention.

Right now it was mainly that this car was really very fucking distracting. Whatever was going on here was really messing with his head; too much sensory input from his vision. This world was awash in a haze of vibrant, deep color that didn't so much hurt the eyes as consumed them, sending them adrift in a current of overwhelming, disorienting hues.

Deep, vibrant purple down the center of a wide highway road, right where they entered. It didn't even have the decency to stay the same shade of purple; little flickers of sparkling, shimmering light waxed and waned like neon freed from its tubes and released as water spritzed and floating in the air; Purple Rain in Zero Gravity. Prince would've killed for a stage like this, Ryan thought, but he didn't want to play anything to Min about it.

There was red off to the left, but the hues there were so intense that Ryan found his eyes forced away from them almost immediately. The blues off to the right were more comfortable to his eyes, even if they felt somehow like being pulled deeper into an abyss.  Still, when Ryan's eyes tried to focus on the gradient spaces between blue and purple, he found them straining until he forced them away from there, too.

On an impulse, he took his glasses off his face and tucked them in his jacket pocket. Making the whole world blurrier helped, somehow, and he found the headache he'd been rapidly developing start to pass. He loosed a small sigh of relief. Regardless, this definitely felt like the weirdest car they'd ever been in already, in terms of aesthetic. Like being dunked into a fish tank colored with fluorescent food dyes.

And inside that tank, drowning in the shifting hues that gave even the buildings the sense of being suspended in water, was what felt eerily like a New York City block. Min couldn't quite pinpoint what block, but it felt so familiar it couldn't not be. On the left hand side of the road was the metal front-and-side to what looked like a combination bar and strip club, the kind of place they only played once or twice in the really early days. On the right was a long concrete fence that led to an ornate church towering above them.

Whatever. Who cared about any of it. The storm was coming from inside them, anyway.

"Ryan," Min-Gi said, his voice aching and wavering. "You have GOT to tell me what's going on, man. What do you mean, you're not getting off?"

Ryan's fist clenched. "Aren't you supposed to be the smart one? I'm staying on the train. Don't make me repeat myself." Shoulders up, braced for conflict, trying to seem and feel bigger than he was.

"A-alright? But, why?" Min-Gi asked, extending his hand, hunched forwards, trying to look small and non-threatening instead of judgmental, knowing how sensitive Ryan could get when he got...well, as close to this as he'd ever gotten. "If things were this bad, why'd you never tell me? You know I would've wanted to know, right...?" His fingers brushed against Ryan's back and

Ryan spun on the tips of his shoes and knocked his hand away again, glaring at him. "I DUNNO, Min! Because there was no point! There's no SOLVING it, so I didn't--" He broke off. Clasped his mouth shut and swallowed. He took a few steps to the left, towards the bar, and Min turned to follow only for Ryan to wave him off harshly.

Min's wide-eyed gaze coiled into a frustrated scowl. "You know what? Fine. If you don't care about Em, or the band, or any of our friends, or even me, then whatever. You can just leave, if you want." He said in what Ryan knew as the barely-tempered tone he used when he was building himself up to really do a good lecture. "But Ryan, how can you do this to your family? Your parents? After how much they helped us last time? You're the one who told me you--"

And there it was. Ryan's teeth ground so tight he could hear them squeak. "Don't tell ME that! This was never the plan!  I was just gonna wait for you and Em to get married so I could move out--"

"You were gonna move out?" Min-Gi echoed quietly, sounding like Ryan had shot him.

"--while you were off on honeymoon, and--" "You were gonna move out this WEEK?" Min repeated again, panicked and squeaky now.

"--and I was going to keep paying rent for three months while I crashed with a friend who's got a spare room, jeez , Min, let me finish!" Ryan said, bristling. "You're marrying into money, and we make enough with the band. You would've been fine, I wasn't just being a jerk! And I would've been fine too, eventually! I just needed some space, and then you--you had to go and say all that stuff and ruin everything!"

Min found himself caught between the thoughts You're crashing with a friend? And ruin EVERYTHING! and failed to process either. Eventually he managed a meek "You mean what I said in the bathroom?" Ryan stopped, just at the sidewalk, and stood quietly for a second. Min-Gi tried to talk, but...what was there to say to that? "I, uh...I'm sorey if I--" Min-Gi said, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

Ryan sighed a sad, weary sigh. It disoriented Min even more than the lights, bizarre coming from Ryan, who he was so used to seeing as vibrant and happy. "Look, it's...you didn't do anything, alright? Sorry I said that. It's my fault. I already thought about talking to you, and I can't. It would only make everything worse if I did. Just trust me on that."

"And my folks..." He turned at the hips and looked back at Min. "I already messed things up with them for good, they just don't know it yet. If they did..." He shrugged, and managed a sad, too-small smile. "They'd rather I was gone, anyway." He finished. Min-Gi opened his mouth, about to protest even if he was unsure what he would say, but--

A sharp mechanical hiss and the sharp, fast motion of an endlessly long pane of glass slamming home from the far side of the car into their side, severing their two sides of the car completely. It acted like an absorbent prism, slicing the light color-ways, sucking up all of the purple in the center of the car into itself and setting it's walls alight with it.

The reds on Ryan's side of the car and blues on Min's got even more deliriously concentrated, the only gradients now unnatural illusions produced by gazing across the dividing looking glass that glared an eerie prismatic purple in between.

Min and Ryan called each other's names in surprise, but neither could hear the other. Min-Gi quickly ran up to the purple-tinted glass, which was just reflective enough to let him see the pale ghost of his reflection and just transparent enough to look past it, to Ryan locked away in redshifted world.

Ryan stared at Min in absentminded shock as he pounded and hollered and paced back to the car door to see if he could find a way through, until he finally threw up his hands helplessly in Ryan's general direction. Ryan shrugged again and gestured vaguely at the church, and didn't stop to see if Min followed his suggestion before turning away and heading to the bar.

Min watched dumbfoundedly as Ryan arrived at the door and slipped inside. His hand rested on the violet glass until it set in that he was, indeed, alone. Ryan wasn't coming back, and the door wasn't opening. All there was to do was try to...get through the car, until they met up again. Min turned away fast, with his eyes closed, and set his eyes squarely on the church in the instance. He moved towards it without looking back, too.

If he had looked back, he would've seen the impossible figures standing there together. His and Ryan's reflections side by side, gazing at him from the shimmering glass. As Min-Gi entered the church, they looked at each other. "You're looking great, you know."

Said the Min-Gi in the mirror, warm and gentle.

"Thanks." Answered Mirror Ryan, affectionate, yet strangely deadpan. "You too."

It was too short and unenthusiastic an answer to be Ryan at his best. "You still don't think it'll work. Even after everything."

Ryan shrugged. "I know it won't for mine, at least. I'll do it because you convinced me it sounds fun, but it'll just make things worse. And then it'll be over."

"Unless mine makes a move. And he will." Min answered, grinning his self-assured square-jaw grin. The square-framed sunglasses made him look even cooler than usual, but Ryan still liked it better when he could see his eyes.

"I guess we'll see if you're right." Ryan answered coolly.

"You don't believe in me?" Min pressed, the amusement in his voice a thinly veiled mask for a real vein of frustration or hurt, if one endured with good humor. He pressed closer to Ryan, too, his left hand curling around the side of Ryan's chest and his right landing on his hip, drawing the smaller guy close. The black choker Ryan wore around his neck needled into Min's chest with its silver spikes, but he didn't mind.

"I just don't want to get my hopes up. Or make you feel like you failed, if it doesn't work out the way you're hoping. It's fine either way, really. I don't mind the idea of being gone too much." Ryan answered.

"You don't really mean that." Min-Gi said. Not a question. Not even a protest. Just a solemn comment on a tragedy.

"Guess not." Ryan agreed. "All I'm really trying to say is, even if this is the end of the road...it's been a lot of fun. I don't regret it, not for a second."

"Yeah, I know. Me either." Min answered, and smiled down at Ryan when he stopped resting against his back and turned to face him, leaning up and wrapping his arms around Min's neck. "So that's why you're gonna give it your all, right? Even if your heart's not really in it." He asked, voice low and intimate, like he was flirting. Which he was, a little. But mostly as a way to render the request a little sweeter, turn it more into a bribe.

Ryan laughed sarcastically, but not entirely without humor. The sharp violet-purple hues of the world made the contours of his face stand out in vibrant black; the ink of Ryan's dark eyeliner and lipstick carving him out of the too-saturated reality. "That's silly, man." Ryan said by way of an answer. "Just because I don't know if our audience will be any good doesn't mean I'm not gonna play the show. The point's just to play with you."

"Oh, is it now?" Min-Gi answered with a wicked, delighted grin, and Ryan stifled it with an impulsive kiss. Min returned it with ease born of years of practice and held him tighter. They lingered there, dragging it out, as if waiting themselves would stop time in the car, too.

But of course, they knew it wouldn't. The train rolled ever onwards, dragging them inexorably to the end. Ryan pulled away. "See you at the show?" He confirmed.

"Not if I come find you first." Min-Gi growled, throat rumbling in what was both promise and threat. His hands loitered on Ryan's hips, clenching the big folds of fabric hanging over Ryan's ripped jeans. "You know how much I like a tune-up before we go live."

Ryan laughed again and pulled free of Min's grip. "Well, just make sure you do your part first. I'm not going anywhere near that side." He said, just a little bit of playfulness left in his voice as he dried up into an attitude of stoic distance. Min's heart broke for both of them for a second; knowing how scared Ryan was, and knowing he could do so little. Knowing how scared he was himself.

"I'll do my best. You know I will." He promised.

"Yeah. I do. Love you, Min."

"Love you too, Ry."

"Catch you on the flipside."

And the ghosts in the mirror were gone.

The moment he opened the large oak doors of the church and stumbled in, Min groaned and covered his eyes with both hands. The color shift was that jarring; the oozing intensity of the shades of black and blue of the Church world were contrasted intensely by what seemed to be a hall of mirrors of throbbing purples and violets.

"Seriously!?" Min hissed to himself complaining to no-one in particular. "What's with this weird color...matryoshka car!?" From beyond the black of his eyes squeezed tightly shut, he heard someone Shhh him harshly, and suddenly remembered he was in a damn church. He flushed with heat and embarrassment and took his hands off his face, whispering "Oops, sorry, I..."

Nobody there. Just a chaotic maze of mirrors, or...maybe just crystalline glass. It was really hard to tell, though he was certain they were the same substance as that mirror wall on the outside of the car. They certainly looked like mirrors in a way Min couldn't quite describe, rather than just elaborate windows, but none of them reflected Min and his own part of the room back at him.

Instead they showed him the rest of the church, divided into chunks of yet more planes of glass. It was hard to tell through the dizzyingly overlaying sheens of color--some sectors seemed to be "blue", some "purple", and some overlaid each other so many times in the maze before him that they blurred into black, so much colored light that it warped itself right back into darkness.

It all seemed to add up to a series of walls that cut through the church arbitrarily, trapping him inside like a hamster in a cage. It was a spacious cage that seemed to contain more of the church than it excluded, but still, it left him feeling like he was trapped in a labyrinth. He didn't have very pleasant memories of the last time he'd been stuck in one.

He could see movement deeper into the church, thought he could make out people sitting in the pews, but his ability to hear the church was erratic and hazy too. As if each plane he looked through was transmitting a different radio signal directly into his ears, and would abruptly cut off as soon as his eyes broke contact. It was difficult to wrap his mind around.

"Min my man! Glad I caught ya." Said the gruff, playfully professional voice of a man off to his left. Min-Gi jumped, turning to greet him. The hazy purple light that pulsed over them in fluorescent waves rendered the man almost a stranger in Min's eyes, his usually sandpaper-colored hair dyed black and his normally ocean-blue eyes all but vanished into the background, giving Min the impression that he was being looked at through flashes of silver sclera wrapped around an irisless pupil.

"M-Mike?" Min-Gi stuttered, not because the man made him nervous (years of exposure had numbed him to that), but because this already felt deeply wrong. He...he knew this. All of it. This wasn't just a church, it was The Church, he had been here just...hours ago? Min-Gi realized he already didn't know. Just like before, the Train swept away his sense of time effortlessly, scrambled his entire center of reality.

But this was familiar. Being approached when he walked in, and exactly the way Mike was standing, if not the look in his eye. "I wanted to talk to you about the pictures, one last time."

Mike said, and Min suddenly remembered that he desperately didn't want to have this conversation again.

"I already told you last time, Mike. No pictures. I don't want this turned into some kind of...ad campaign!" He said involuntarily, and then his hand went to his mouth. Exactly what he'd said last time. Was the train doing this? Forcing him to play out the steps in his own memory?

Mike countered breezily. "Oh I know, I know, look; the final decision is yours. You're the ones with the band, I'm just trying to help you along here. But look, Min--" ( He never said Min-Gi. ) "We both know you're the practical one. I've been biting my tongue hoping you would come around on your own, but since it's come to this, it'd be nice if you could hear me out. I've got a camera right here, but you don't have to decide if we'll shop to any magazines just yet. We can just hold on to them, y'know? For insurance." He winked.

Just like before, Min suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. "Well of course, I'll hear you out." He said instead, smiling. "What were you thinking?"

"I'm thinking you two kids have a real shot at going big-time, if you play your cards right." Mike said with an air of experienced candor. "I'm not saying it's for sure, but you are building up the cult buzz that can elevate a musical career to at least B-Side mainstream success, with the right collaborations and sponsorships."

"Huh. That's more praise than I've ever heard you give us." Min-Gi said, only a little less impressed than when he heard it the first time. The words came out of his mouth automatically, which was, in a deeply disturbing way, kind of helpful. Freed his head up to keep panicking about what the hell was happening.

"That's because I'm honest, kid. No point wasting flattery if I just think you're wasting my time. Until now, you two were sort of a hobby project. But now I think I might have a shot at playing the game on your behalf, for real."

"Except." Min-Gi punctuated for him. Mike bellowed a hearty laugh, only barely lowering his tone for the rest of the cathedral.

"Except that you're holding yourselves back , boy. It's not a matter of your music or your skills anymore; not even what shows you do. It's a matter of your image in the screen, on the radio. It's about whether you seem like anybody could listen to you, even kids! And your songs mostly do just fine at that. But your history, the band's structure, it's all kind of..intimate. Suggestive, even."

"What?" Min-Gi half-gasped again, in low baritone to match his furrowed brow.

"Why're you even worried about if he passes or not? He's such a loser. " Said the harsh, reedy voice of a preteen boy with a buzzcut sitting at one of the pews, from a blue section of the church. Jostled out of paying attention to Mike, Min looked at the backs of their heads through a pane of glass that sectioned off their pew in far sharper blue light than his area, and his mind skipped a beat as it tried to convince itself it had imagined what he heard. But no,

"Ryan's not a loser , Jimmy, he just has a hard time with math sometimes." Came the prim and proper response of an 11-year-old Min-Gi Park, morbidly resplendent with his bowlcut. He sat to the right of the buzzcut boy in the primly tailored suit, who Min realized really was fucking Jimmy Donovik. "I don't mind tutoring him, it's fun. More fun than Sunday school, that's for sure."

Jimmy rolled his entire head, presumably to carry the drama of the eyes on the other side of him. "Yeah, alright, whatever. Dad said it'd be a good idea to tell you to come, that's all." He said, and then they sat in silence for a second. "Anyway, I never said he was a loser because he's bad at math." Jimmy then started up again.

"Lay off, Jims." Kid Min-Gi warned, annoyed now. "He's really nice and cool, once you get to know him. He likes cool music, and his parents let him listen to all sorts of rad rock stuff, and-"

"He's kind of a sissy." Jimmy cut Min off, sneering with an innocently malicious glee, like that of a kid sharing a dirty joke.

"What?" Said kid Min-Gi's young voice in an uncomprehending, vaguely horrified gasp. Like a kid about to hear a horror story. Which, Min supposed, was exactly what he'd been back then.

"Look, Min-Gi, I'm a professional, so you need to understand that I really don't give a shit what your and Ryan's...arrangement is at all. Even if it's true it wouldn't kill ya--you've got your Bowies and your Princes out there, and everybody knows what they get up to without giving them much crap for it."

"What I'm asking you to consider is that whether you fool around or not, there's a marketing reality to consider. Two guys as close as you, who got started the way you did? No matter how much you tell everyone you two are only best pals, the closest of compadres, totally pure and platonic buddies, people are gonna look at you two and get to wondering. Get to asking questions. Getting some ideas ."

Even through the memory, Min's throat felt dry. Mike nodded at his silence and continued. "So all I'm suggesting is that in terms of networking, you'd benefit from a little bit of plausible deniability. And it sure ain't coming from Ryan, so--"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Min interjected. Again a shadow of the bewildered anger he felt back then surged, as though the imposed performance demanded even emotional memory. Were the panes of glass putting him in some kind of hypnotic trance? He'd heard about hypnosis suggestions and stuff like that, but it had never sounded anything like this compulsion.

Mike frowned at him. In the real world, it had been imposing and nerve-inducing, like becoming aware he'd disappointed his Father with the wrong answer to an important question about life.

In the hallucinatory purple-blue light that cast onto him from the inner reaches of the Church's roof, the expression cast the left side of his face in endlessly deep shadows, making him look like the crescent silhouette of a person rather than the full thing. A frightening specter. "C'mon, Min, don't make this difficult. You know exactly what I mean."

"Out of the two of you, Ryan is...y'know, he's a little short, a little skinny, a bit effeminate. It ain't a bad thing. Plenty of guys make it work, the ladies love that sort of look, but it always comes with the question of if...well, you know what I mean." Another wink. "And unlike you he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to settle down, so unless he gets us into a sex scandal with some saucy girls which I would not like, you're our best option to--"

"Fine! Jesus christ. I--Mike, I'm not arguing about this. I can't believe you'd even go there." Min repeated automatically. "Look, take whatever pictures you want, alright? But don't send them ANYWHERE. We're not done talking about this. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a wedding to get to."

Mike grinned cheerily at him, shining purple-blue teeth gleaming in the darklight. "Knew you'd listen to reason, buddy." And abruptly he shattered, exploding into what seemed to be billions of crystalline pieces that clattered to the floor in a shimmering heap.

"You know what I mean! He's so runty and dainty lookin'. And he sucks at sports, too. He's good at running away, but that's about it." Came Jimmy's nasty wheedle voice again, self-assured and cocky.

"I'm way worse at sports than he is." Little Min countered, armed with the unassailable power of Knowing A Fact.

"Yeah, but you're not a priss about it, just kind of a dweeb." Jimmy said, spinning effortlessly around Min's block. "It's totally different. And honestly, the way he clings to you like that is just weird. Did you know the Craigster said he caught him staring at him once? I'm just saying, the kid sort of seems like--"

"Jimmy." The young Min-Gi said, sharp and solemn enough to get him to stop. Even across the years, the older one could feel the echo of the string in him, as it snapped back then. He spoke perfectly matter-of-factly and with perfect polite clarity. "You don't know what you're talking about, Ryan isn't like that. Also, I don't want to talk to you anymore."

There was a pause as Jimmy waited, then realized that was the entirety of the statement and Min-Gi wasn't kidding. "What? Are you for real?" He asked, as if to confirm it. "You know I'm doing you a favor, here. If word gets around--"

" Word's not getting around, because nobody but you thinks that." Min-Gi answered primly, like he was answering a question in front of the class. "You're making stuff up so you can be mean. I hate that about you. It's pathetic ." He didn't bother looking at Jimmy, but he could still see him out of the corner of his eye as his mouth worked.

"Sounds like you're being the mean one to me." Jimmy said glumly.

"Doesn't matter. We're not friends. I'm not friends with bullies." Min-Gi cut neatly again. "Can we just make it through Church quietly?"

"I'll be a bully alright, if that's what you want me to be." Jimmy said again. "I know lots of guys who'd have fun doin' some roughhousing. Maybe not on you, but nobody'd even believe Ryan, since he's getting in trouble all the time."

"You can try, if you want. But all the teachers like me. Everyone would believe me over you, if I told on whatever you did." Min replied evenly. Jimmy slumped into his pew and made a show of crossing his arms, seething.

Min didn't quite remember himself seeming this calm when he said all this stuff, he realized. Even now as traced echoes of the words with his own tongue, echoing his younger self, they came out sounding so much harsher and intense than he remembered, full of barely contained vitriol. Was that how he'd felt at the time? All he remembered was feeling sort of far away and empty.

"Fine, but you can't really stop me from just bugging

you . Just cause you wanna stand up for your boyfriend or whatever doesn't mean we can't hang at all--" Jimmy protested, and--maybe it was just nostalgia, or even perspective, but that last sounded different from how Min remembered it too.

As a kid, it had sounded like a threat. The word boyfriend had been a fang, a weapon meant to escalate things and force Min's immediate surrender. Maybe that really had been what it was. But Jim also sounded sort of pleading to his adult ears, like a kid suddenly trying to do damage control with a friend. They'd been the only two boys the same age who showed up to this church, sometimes , and Jimmy's family came a lot more than Min's.

He was probably alone the rest of the times. Maybe...

But of course, that didn't matter. It was the past, and his child self's reaction was already sealed. He remembered the surge of defensive fury, the righteousness and outrage at Jim for uttering such an unspeakable accusation. He remembered being angry and not understanding how angry, or if it was as angry as he was supposed to get. He remembered saying in a harsh, collected whisper,

"Yeah, well, maybe I can stop you and maybe I can't. We'll just have to see, I guess."

He answered Jimmy simply. "Just remember, you're the one who made it a problem." And it had been a promise to himself, and a threat to Jim, and he'd made good on it. But the memory didn't fill Min with pride. In the end Jim hadn't even really been his truest target, had he? Or at least, not the one he really ended up hitting.

"That's right, loser! It's really kind of a problem for you, isn't it. You have no idea how hard you swing, and when you do, you always miss. You never hurt what's really hurting you, just whoever's caught in the crossfire. Or whoever can be useful..." Said a lascivious, baritone voice that Min-Gi knew way too well even as he found it dizzyingly alien. He turned around, to the right side of the church now, and looking through a purple Mirror-Window he saw,

Himself.

Only it wasn't.

"Except I am." The Min-Gi in the mirror said, grinning a wild wolflike grin.

That was completely impossible.

"Sorey, but it really isn't." He answered again, as though he could read Min's thoughts.

"Why would I have to do that, though?" He answered the silence, speaking theatrically to himself, a little too loud for even the back of a church. "I know exactly what you're going to say and think. I'm you, after all." He grinned that smug bracket grin again, rendered eerie and cheerless with his eyes hidden by dark square sunglasses that reminded Min of Ryan's frames.

"Anyway, this is getting boring. And you piss me off too much to look at for long, so let's cut to the chase, Min-Gi my buddy my pal;"

The mirror-him looked so strange. His hair was still swept back, but from there all similarities ended save their basic builds. There were the sunglasses, but they were the least inappropriate thing about how he was dressed. There was the keytar that hung off his side by a black strap that looped thrown over his chest and shoulder, and that was actually kind of cool; made Min's heart rush just as little as it always did at the sight of a new instrument, especially one he thought he could play.

But then there was his shirt, a familiar-looking white button up Min thought he had fond memories of, except the mirrored Min wore the buttons open far lower than he ever would, baring his chest and stomach past where Min could see of him . His bottom half was hidden by an ornate concrete fence-handrail thing that extended past the bottom of the steps leading deeper into the church.

There was really only one path through the inside of the building, a narrow walkway the reflections and memories had been leading him down, he only now realized. Covering the bottom of the mirror and cutting off his view of the rest of Min the Second's body was a depiction of what Real Min-Gi was pretty sure was Lucifer's Fall, from Paradise Lost,

But even without being able to see it, Min had a clear sense that something untoward was happening down there, behind that painting. Mirror-Min was leaning against the wall with his whole back, as though he was squatting a little, and his elbow rested on the guardrail like he was propping himself up.

And he was breathing huskily, his shoulders shifting up and down in a way that suggested he was enduring something he didn't exactly mind having to endure.  It was, in the best case scenario, an uncomfortable way to carry himself anywhere. In the worst case scenario, it felt like he was putting on a deeply uncomfortable kind of performance for Min, showing off for him, in a way that certainly didn't belong in a house of God.

And then of course there was the collar. Not just a collar, but a tight and purposeful one, with a long and thick looking leather leash trailing off it and slipping into the inside groove of his shirt. The collar itself was leather black, with gaudily big metal spikes that shimmered in the Purple light the glass he was rendered in. True purple, not purple-blue like Mike's window, and not blue-blue like his and Johnny's. That felt meaningful, somehow.

" Stop fucking shit up for us." Mirror-Min not so much snapped as barked at him. Min jolted, having forgotten they'd been speaking as he tried to understand the logic of this train car-- " Especially by doing stuff like that. Trying to " figure out " the logic of the train car? Bull shit. You spent most  of that monologue making judgmental commentary on my sex appeal and wondering if I'm getting my rocks off in here."

Even through the infinitely dense wall of sheer confusion he was experiencing, Min managed to bristle. "You're part of the train, Mr. Dark Reflection Of My Soul Or Whatever. And you don't seem very helpful, so I think I'll go figure it out somewhere el--"

"Yeah, and get you both killed? Don't think so. This is why I'm telling you you gotta stop what you're doing. You're gonna fuck shit up permanently this time if you don't wise up, and it won't really be us who pays for it. Come on. Just listen to me, this once." And there was a sincere, earnest note in the reflection's voice, the first note he'd played that wasn't a performance. Something that bordered on...desperation.

"And maybe there's still a chance we can save him."

Min-Gi Prime took a breath. Let it out slow . "Save who?"

"AaaaauUUURRGHHHH We don't have TIME for this, you repressed uptight jackass! You know exactly who. The only him there's ever been. The only who there's ever been! Ryan! " Mirror Min said, scream-growling his name too loudly for a natural progression of the sentence. The way his hips leaned forward didn't help at all. Min's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"This is exactly what you've gotta stop doing. Thinking so damn much; or at least, wasting all that thinking on lying all the time. To everyone, obviously, but--"

"Are you...are you really messing with yourself down there? "

"--but mostly to YOURSELF, don't interrupt the spirit of cooler yous to come, Min! Especially not for stuff nobody cares about! Anyway, no, I'm not. I'm getting a blowjob." He said, ending with a smug correctness that implied to Min Prime that he earnestly believed that was a good answer.

"Dude, are you insane? " Min-Prime hissed at his doppelganger. "There's people here! This is a Church! You're--"

Mirror Min laughed at him, or at the whole church--it was hard to say. His hips leaned forward seemingly out of spite, and he bit his bottom lip. "Oh, them ? Look man, I probably don't have much time left and you can't go an inch without bumping into some kind of spooky apparition or another here, so whaddaya want me to do? A guy's gotta enjoy the ride if he knows it's about to end." He said, shrugging him off. "Besides, none of these assholes are even real ."

"What?"

"It's true. In this entire car, there's actually only four people that are really alive." He paused. "Maybe five, actually. Or maybe there's only two people, except there's maybe three?" He said, now almost muttering to himself, like he was genuinely puzzling out the question.

"You sound so certain." Min-Gi Prime said snidely.

"It depends on how you count a 'Person', that's all. You'd be keeping up easy, if you ever listened to Ems." Min-Gi the Second parried, sounding like he barely even tried. "Anyway, it's time to get this show on the road. If you want to get out of this car, dweeb me--if you want to get Ryan out of this car--then all you need to do is follow me. Just gotta--HEY! HANDS OFF THE RING!" He barked downwards, making Min jump and look down at his chest, and then jump again screaming this time when he saw what was there.

A lithe and delicate hand was resting on Mirror-Min's abdomen, big but with long and slender fingers. It wasn't purple, or even blue--it was black like a living coal smoke, except far darker-- so dark it was suggestive of an infinite abyss. It didn't look like a real hand at all, in fact; it looked like a punched-out hole cut out of the world, a black hole molded and warped into the shape of a shadow puppet.

But Min's hand closed sharply over it as if it was a real wrist, and it pulled the nightmare silhouette up like it was real, too. It bounced onto its feet with a hollow self-echoing giggle, like it was many voices all at once that somehow equaled out to nothing--the very sound of a Zero. It was grinning, a wide and manic thing that exposed the full curve of its open mouth but revealed no teeth, no gums, no tongue--just a hollow space that exposed the rest of the church and then a wall of slick oil black that covered it up behind it.

Mirror Min looked completely unaffronted by the nightmare, and merely settled his hand over his leash protectively, tut-tutting. The creature in a shape that could've been a girl or a boy or a zombie made no move to resist him at all. "You know the rules. Touching anywhere on me is fine, but the collar's off-limits. That's not for you." He chided it. "Man, what a mood kill. Ah well, it's time to move on to the next part of the plan anyway." The creature's crescent-moon grin abruptly flipped downwards, making it look tragically disappointed.

Min's reflection blew on it gently and it dissipated like black-grey mist. Then he pushed himself off of the wall and took a few steps forward.

"The next part of the plan? You haven't even started doing anything yet! You've just been insulting me and...and..." Min Prime stumbled on his words.

"And havin' some fun, yeah. That was the start of the plan." Min-Gi Second countered. He grabbed the keytar off the concrete and stepped out into the church hall, gesturing for Min to follow. "Also--Min-Gi Second, Mirror-Min, I'm getting kind of tired of all these stilted names." He complained, but with good humor. "For the rest of this little adventure, why don't you call me..." Abruptly, he spun around into a low squat on his knees with his left arm holding the keytar and proclaimed "

Prince Min! " as he played a wicked little flourish with his right hand, in major key.

Min Prime raised an eyebrow at him with a flat "Seriously?"

Prince Min kicked one leg wide and spun on the heel of the other, turning his back to the prime. "Of course! It suits this story nicely, doesn't it?" His fingers didn't stop drumming out a tune with the keytar as he walked confidently along the glass, leaving Min to follow. Soon he reached the inside corner of the glass and shimmered as he turned to the left, his Prime wandering down a tunnel of glass after him, deeper into the church.

Once they turned the corner Prince Min he leaned back, throwing his head and chest up to the sky, and started strumming the keytar as he half-sang " Once upon a time, there was a lonely Prince locked away in a castle, trapped by royal decree in a lifetime toiling away for the Kingdom's economy for the rest of his days~."

" The Prince's only comfort was an urchin boy, a cat-burglar Thief of the night who snuck into the Prince's life and stole him away from adventure to adventure, helping him see the world beyond his home. In the end, the Thief stole the very breath out of the Prince's lungs, and he found himself promising to travel far and wide with the Thief as they lived out their dream..."

He played a flourish on the keyboard as the shadows of two boys passed by him, their laughter making its way to Min Prime's ears as if through a watery film, only to disappear out of sight.

"To be rockstars." He finished. "And you know, if nothing else, we made it work. We really lived that dream for a while, the four of us."

"The four of us?" Min Prime asked.

Prince Min gave him a humorless grin. "I'll tell you while we walk to where we're going." He said vaguely.

"And where are we going?" Meat Min shot back, turning a corner to the right and going around a U-Turn, losing sight of the entrance to the church entirely as he went deeper into the crystal-glass maze.

"To the truth, obviously. Of who you and I really are. Of what's waiting for us at the end of the tracks of fate we're riding on." Prince Min answered. He didn't elaborate on what that meant.

Min Prime felt an uncomfortable chilly crawl go up his back.

The hardwood door of the bar closed behind Ryan with a loud thud that echoed far into the long, long corridor that made up the establishment. It was unnaturally long for a bar hallway, actually, seeming to stretch so far into the distance that Ryan couldn't make out the end of the room. But eh--that was a pretty normal thing to witness by train standards.

The strangest part of the whole setup was probably the bartender desk being covered up, all along its length, in what seemed to be a thick shimmering mirror, seemingly made up of intense panels of Red and Purple light. That was strange, actually. He'd expected the bar to be just as intensely red as the world outside, but instead it was a deep blue in here, even though there were wide and seemingly open windows that did show that crimson world when you looked outside on the right.

The place was packed, but nobody seemed to take notice of him when he entered. Just when he was about to try to get someone's attention, Ryan was distracted by someone stealing his.

"So, you're here." Said an eerily familiar voice from Ryan's direct left. He turned to find an ornate square frame with an inlaid mirror built in. Or at least...something about it looked like a mirror. But it wasn't reflecting Ryan or the room around him at all, so how could it be? It was more like a window frame who's glass vaguely suggested a mirror somehow. And it was the first one that gave off that eerie red light.

The inside of the frame only showed him a burgundy-black shadow, sitting with its arms wrapped around its knees, repeating ad infinitum . Like the voice, its silhouette was familiar and yet distorted in a way Ryan found unsettling. It sounded a little too much like his brothers, or maybe one of his sisters, not quite like--

"Myself." said the figure, resting its head against the frame it sat against with a concrete-metal thud-twang! "All I've ever been is myself. Which is to say, you. The you that can't ever exist in the real world, because everything you do is about denying my existence. The real you."

The infinite tunnel of reflections behind Mirror ( Ryan? Was that him? ) lit up from the inside out, blasting pink-red light into the hall so bright and powerful that the sharp silhouette of ( them? Her? The blocky fabric bunched up at her waist, the way her curly hair drooped down her back and over her shoulders in big bushels, the way-- ) blasted Ryan clear out into what felt like another plane of consciousness. " I'm the you you're here to kill." She finished.

The swimmy, watery quality of the light intensified, and His/Their/ Her light carried intense, blooming heat out into the watery air of the bar now, smothering Ryan like a tractor beam.   She stood up and drew closer to the mirror, and Ryan could see it now--all the details of her.

She was wearing a black blouse over a white jacket rendered pink in the crimson light. The square frames of her glasses were black, pairing excellently with the way the black lipstick made her mouth stand out vividly against her reshifted skin, inviting in the light. Her skirt was an even split of blacks that stood out against the red and whites that melded into it, and she wore tight leggings that rode up to her thighs with rips at the knees, just like his favorite kinds of jeans.

She looked exactly like the kind of girl he'd most badly ever imagined wanting to fuck. She looked nothing like him at all. She looked exactly like him. She looked like a him he'd never even considered he'd ever want to be, but the moment he saw her in full, it gave him an immediate sense of raw recognition and longing that went right to the core of his soul, that  he'd been burying forever somewhere even deeper than he had his feelings for Min.

She looked incredible, amazing, breathtaking.

And she was the most terrifying thing he'd ever seen in his life.

Ryan broke eye contact with the hot scary goth girl and determinedly walked deeper into the bar, outside the pillar of red light cast off by her mirror frame that now marked the entrance he'd walked into like a starting line.

"Yeah, figures you would run." Called mirror Ryan, sounding perfectly melancholy about it. Unimpressed, unsurprised, but disappointed all the same.  "Whatever, fine. Since you can't even bear to look at me, go talk to them for a while. See you at the end of the bar, when it's time for the show to be over already."

At first Ryan just blinked back at the bizarre mirror, too stunned to process what he'd seen. He was at a safe angle now, where he could see the red square of it without really looking in. There was a desperate pull to run right back, of course, to chase that revelatory vision further.  But the fear was much, much stronger than that, and he didn't even know what to do with the feelings it gave him. So instead he just did as he was told, turning to the patrons of the bar.

They gave him an uncanny feeling right off the bat, and when his eyes made contact with the gaze of a woman with long, swooping curls and dimples like mountains who beamed at him when saw him, he realized why:

He knew these people.

"Oh my god, Ryan! " She said, and he didn't remember her name. She came towards him with the guy she was with in tow. Ryan recognized him, too. Shit, he recognized all of this, and he knew quite suddenly this was not a conversation he wanted to have--

"See, Marty? This is Ryan, from Chicken Choice Judy! We were looking forward to your show, so I'd been telling Marty about how you and I dated for a while, back when you were still a solo act. I was so happy to see your buddy came around in the end!" She said, wrapping him in a brief but tight hug.

"M- Merry ?" Ryan had answered back then and his lips echoed it now, independent of his will. Short for Merigold. He remembered that now. She jumped and cheered when he said her name, delighted. Marty looked at him with an easy, even gaze, not the jealousy he'd expected but instead a keen... interest . "Wow, uh, nice to see you again. I didn't, uh--I thought we weren't--"

" Aw, you're still worried about that old stuff? Water under the bridge, Ry, we were kids!" She laughed him off, waving a hand in the air. "But hey, tell Marty about that song we got together over? 'My dad's van is everything you're not.', right? You remember? Hey, did your pal ever tell you what he thought?"

"Yeah, I remember." It was the song he hated the most in his entire discography. The only which, if he could, he'd have struck from the record and erased entirely. The one he'd written all of Ouvre around delivering at maximum impact like a knife to the heart. His heart, specifically. Min's. Who'd been struggling so much already, and who he'd forced into giving up everything for him as soon as he was done being mad at him for not doing it on his own.

To Merry it'd been a passionate, bitter send off to her mom. She hadn't elaborated too much, or if she had, Ryan had forgotten most of it in the haze of cheap beer and occasional drugs he remembered from his time with her. "Me and Ryan here used to stay up all night talking about our home lives, back in the early party days." She said in fond remembrance.

"Yup, we sure did..." Ryan said, and could see in her eyes instantly that his tone was off, that he wasn't being subtle, that his every social grace was failing and she could see he just wanted to leave. Her eyes turned disappointed as he continued. "But I need to get on up to the show, so..."

"Oh, alright. Well don't let me keep you." Merry said, distant now. And that was where it'd ended last time, so his body started walking past her on its own, but then his strings drew taut again when she added "You never said, though, about your friend. What'd he think of the song?"

No words spoke themselves out of muscle memory this time. Ryan couldn't move, he realized with a distant sense of panic, but he could speak on his own again. So the next thing to do seemed obvious. "He, uh... implied he didn't like it, I guess? Once. A really long time ago. We uh...we never really talked about it too much, though." He said, and as he finished his body was released enough for him to first shrug, and then take another step away from the two.

"Oh. That's too bad." She said flatly. She turned away from him and looked at her date. "I always wondered." She confessed. Then, with a single pulse of light warping over their bodies, they both

imploded from the inside out, like an overpowering explosion was contained in their frames, and collapsed into trillions of tiny glass shards that crinkled to the floor, turning to dust.

Ryan jumped backwards with a startled yelp and knocked his hip on a bar stool, bumping elbows against the guy next to him. "Oops, sorry man, I--" Ryan started, but when he opened his eyes and looked at the guy he trailed off. He looked familiar, like someone he might've seen at one of their shows. But he also looked perfectly nondescript, like he could've been anyone at one of their shows.

Before Ryan could place him, he noticed something unsettling. He was talking, but he wasn't speaking --Ryan could watch his lips smile and flap at his buddy's, but couldn't hear anything. And most importantly, he looked to be made of metal, or maybe glass. Chrome? This was the kind of thing Min-Gi would know, for sure. Whatever the case, he definitely didn't seem entirely--

"Not real. Weird, right?" She said, and Ryan spun in the stool like someone had grabbed it and whirled him full force. He stopped hard facing the bar though, and there she was, the  second most impossible and terrifying thing he couldn't have imagined coming across on the train:

Emily Myers, resplendent in her wedding dress and gracious in her smile.  She sat opposite him encased in a purple mirror, where the bartender should have been. She was polishing a bonito.

"Only you and Min are really here. The rest of them are just shards of people you've put together through memory. Like composite ghosts. Spooky, right?" She said perfectly pleasantly, as though nothing had happened in the last however-long-since-the-train-took-him. "Oh, well, except for me. I'm here too, I suppose."

"Um. Alright? I'll take your word for it." Ryan answered, irritated at whatever game the train was putting on already. "But you don't look very composite to me, and you're also way spookier than the weird glass partiers. What are you, really? You're not Emily."

"Oh, I am. Emily, I mean, though I can rock being spooky, too. Thanks!" Em said with a wink. "I'm the Emily that exists on this side of the looking glass, just like the doppelganger you met a few minutes ago. To be reductive, I'm the one that exists where she thinks other people can't see. Well... most people, anyway. You've seen a bit of me before, haven't you, Ryan?"

She said this last bit with a salacious, scandalized twang that was occasionally commonplace between the two of them. It made his heart ache for a past he didn't even remember liking all that much. "If you were any real version of Emily, you would hate me. I mean you're in the dress and everything, so you have to know what... I did." You said. "So obviously you're some trick the train's trying to pull to ...I dunno, do something to me. Get in my head."

"Well like I said, in some ways, I'm the her she has to hide. One thing she's not hiding out in the real world is a lot of anger. For both of you. Why bother rehashing it?" Em explained, ignoring your wince. "Interesting that you think that's what you think I'd do with those feelings, though.  Even though you told me about the train."

"Do you think maybe it's actually just what you want? For me to let you really have it, I mean."  She asked, talking so fast it was hard to keep up, her eyes full of playful malice. "To punish you like you think you deserve, for getting between me and Min-Gi. Well...to be honest, I did think about it. There's a part of her that feels that way." She admitted. "But she wants to be better than that. And so do I."

"I don't understand what you're saying at all." Ryan whined. "Aren't you just her? Or our memories of her?"

"Let's put it this way, Ryan. Where does a reflection exist, besides in a mirror?" Em said, in that voice of hers that put Ryan right back in every time they ever slumped over the couch and talked long into the night about the mysteries of the universe, the nonsense of government, and the proud hearts and hardships of good people. It was a non-question, a dream-question, but because it was Emily he knew it demanded a true answer anyway.

"Hmm, I dunno...." Answering her himself, not being puppeted, he noticed. This conversation felt so familiar it was effortless to fall into the rhythm of it, but it wasn't any specific memory he was reliving. And Emily felt more reactive, more present , than Merry and Martin had. This felt real. Was that what she was getting at? "In water, or--"

"No, stop. A reflection you see in water is still a mirrored reflection, Ryan. Think about a kind of reflection you can't see with your eyes ." She said, cutting him off. Sometimes talking to her about this stuff reminded Ryan of being tutored by Min back in high school, except she was actually fun and her questions were interesting and Min was always a mean, frustrated bore about it.

"Mmm, a reflection you can't see with your eyes. Sort of like...an echo?" Ryan said out loud, experimentally. She nodded, and he went on, encouraging himself. "Yeah, like when you remember hearing something in your head! Or seeing something, in this case. So, your imagination, right?"

"Right." Em said, pleased. "I always told you you're smarter than you think. You'd be a great philosophy major." Despite everything, warmth bloomed in Ryan's chest. "Yes, the imagination is the great mirror of the world, where we hold everything. Your reflection exists in three places: In physical reality, wherever you see it on a reflective surface. Inside your own mind. And," She said, raising fingers as she went and finishing on the third: "Inside the minds of others--the better they know you, the stronger the imprint."

"Huh. Alright. And that means...what?"

"Well, you and Min are physically here, and so your reflections are, too. And I'm..." She shrugged, the motion overly dramatic on the big poofy shoulders of her dress. "I'm a weird case. Unlike the rest of these jokers, I'm a real reflection, like your's and Min's.  But well, she isn't here, so how come, right? I spent a lot of time wondering about that. I don't know for sure, but..."

"My current theory is that the train brought me here through a sort of mental bridge. Your and Min's images of her were so vivid they managed to create a true reflective surface. That's probably only possible because two cognitive points to map from meant the train was able to triangulate the particular nuances of me as an external Other, huh? Maybe it wouldn't be possible at all if there weren't two of you..."

It sounded more and more like he was a sounding board for stuff she'd been thinking about for a while now. That wasn't an unusual way to talk with Em, but it did make him wonder-- How long had she spent here? "But it's probably also because she's thinking about you, too. Her heart is so set on trying to find you two now that you're here that I, as the only part of her able to reach you, was pulled into being on this path that would intersect with yours. At least, Lils would probably say something like that."

She paused. Thought for a moment longer. And then said, "She's doing a lot of research on the train right now, you know. The real me, I mean. She hasn't given up on you two."

She let the weight of what she'd said hang heavy in the air, and Ryan's dry lips didn't have an answer to it. The silence drew itself out as she absentmindedly started mixing a drink, clinking ice cubes into purple-lit glass and then pouring an astonishingly vivid yellow-gold liquid into it out of a small metal flask that looked like it shouldn't contain as much fluid as came out.

It shone so brightly it seemed to chase the violets and aquas that dominated the rest of  their world away, and his eyes rested on it comfortably, as though it were natural sunlight. Ryan was surprised to find that even now, silence with Em wasn't uncomfortable--it was reassuring and calming to watch her work, to listen to her alternate between talking to him and thinking out loud to herself.

"Oh right! We were talking. Anyway I meant, some combination of those reasons resulted in the train bringing me along, too. The real me, I mean. Well, the real me as in the mirror to surface-world Emily, who I suppose existentially constitutes the actual 'real me.'" She said, holding the glass without drinking from it. Her dress swam in a sunflower-lavender haze. "With me so far?"

"Nope. You lost me a while ago." Ryan said in an attempt at cheerfulness that ended up sounding flat and lifeless to his own ears. "I guess I sort of understand everyone but me and Min being memories or whatever, including you. That seems like something the train would pull eventually. But you said you were a reflection of hers, like that's different from being a memory projection?"

"Well, it is." Em said helpfully. Unhelpfully, she didn't clarify.

"No it isn't! It's semantics!" Ryan protested. "If the real you isn't here but you're here anyway, then you're obviously a kind of... mix of how me and Min see you! Sure you're more complicated than Merry or this bozo," Ryan stuck his thumb out at Notalk Notreal sitting to his right, "but that makes perfect sense, because we know you way better! Definitely way more recently. So of course the train could make a more complicated version of you than of them. Um. Sorry if that's rude to say?" He finished, realizing too late he was probably being an asshole.

But when Ryan looked up from the counter Em was beaming at him. "Well! Now you're a philosopher and a man of science! Careful, Ryan, or I might swoon. A very solid hypothesis, I have to say. Here's a reward." She said through a grin as she gently pushed the glass of sun-gold Whatever over the counter towards him, where it met the dividing pane of glass and then slipped right through with a watery shimmer that reminded Ryan of those secret entrances to other worlds in Super Mario 64, camouflaged as walls or pools of water of whatever.

While on her side of the mirror Em looked perfectly normal, once her hand broke the border it exposed itself with the same metallic, chromey look everyone on Ryan's side of the car had. But the sunflower light of the drink remained, and it lit her up beautifully, making her palm so bright it was a little hard to look at. "Still, you're wrong." She said cheerfully. She took her hand back over the barrier, and Ryan took his drink. "The difference isn't semantic. It's taxonomic."

Taxonomic. Now there was a word Ryan knew he'd only ever learned because Min had forced him to study it at some point. Was he even sure he understood it now? Not really. But he didn't want to ask, so he just closed his eyes and took a swig of the drink.

The flavor burst into Ryan's mouth, a shocking, sunny rush. The intensely bitter alcohol taste he'd expected, but there was also the bright tang of orange, a taste that shone bright with the memory of love. It reminded him immediately of Mrs. Park making sure to give him and Min-Gi mandarins at basically any opportunity, reminding them constantly to eat well and take care of themselves.

When it was over, Ryan stared down into the glass, licking his lips and thinking about asking for another. But Emily picked right up where she left off before he could. "The memory composites you see around you are just that--memories. They're reflections of people that are haunting your mind. They're made of the same material as us because the train seems to find it practical, for whatever reason."

"But the versions of you, Min and I are totally different. We're, in a way, real, living people--Denizens of the train that also happen to have always been reflections of you."

"Wait--me too???" Ryan asked, now truly adrift in the seas of nonsense, distracted as he was by the afterglow of that brilliant flavor.

"Um, yeah? Your reflection. The girl in the red mirror. Remember how I mentioned your doppelganger at the start, being mopey and dramatic in the dark?"

" You're telling me she's alive !?" Ryan yelled as he jumped to his feet. Em visibly restrained the urge to roll her eyes at him.

"Yes. The long story short is that when I talk about us being reflections, I'm being literal. Your reflections in the mirror? That's us. We're there in the real world whenever you're exposed to a reflective surface, and the rest of the time we live on the train in all these, like...mirror worlds. It's all very hush-hush and also way too complicated to explain, like, metaphysically. Let's just not get into too many details."

"O-oh...? Huh. Really? That's..." You said, slowly settling into your stool again. You searched your thoughts and feelings for a while before coming to a true opinion. You looked Emily square in the eyes. "Em, I gotta be honest? That sounds really really dumb and weird."

She laughed, a delighted hyena cackle. "It sure is, isn't it? Existence can be like that." She said, unclasping the flask and pouring a second glass in one smooth motion, sealing the bonito back shut, and then taking a chug herself. She kept her glass raised in the air expectantly with her right hand as she exclaimed  "To the Train!" in a tone both proud and mocking.

Ryan couldn't help himself; the sheer overwhelming weirdness of it all made him laugh. Her infectious charm made him keep smiling when when he finished. Maybe he was already feeling a strange, electric sort of buzz from whatever he just drank, and maybe that feeling was what made him raise his glass and clink it against hers, right at the meeting place of their worlds. Ripples spread over the veil from the point of contact.

"To the train, I guess." Ryan said, and if it wasn't happy, at least it wasn't bereft of wry humor.

"Like I said, don't overthink it. Or overthink it later, after you and yours really meet." She said encouragingly, settling into her chair again and playing with the edge of her glass with her finger. "For now, you should probably keep moving. You still have an exit to catch, after all."

"Ugh. Maybe I'll just stay here." Ryan grumped. "The rest of this train so far gives me the creeps. It's kind of nice here. Relaxing." The thought of seeing Min again at the end of this car flashed in his mind and made him feel--what? Sick of himself? Hurt at him, or for him? Happy or sad?

Tired, mostly. Utterly and completely exhausted.

"Nice as that is to hear, it's a bad idea." Em insisted sternly. "You don't want to wait around here forever. Sooner or later, that thing's gonna wake up. Whatever it is."

Ryan made himself perk up for that one. "You mentioned that in the beginning, too. What ' thing '?"

"What, am I supposed to know everything about the train just because I live here? I keep saying I don't know! I can't even see it, but it's here, you can feel it. It's like...the energy in this whole place--the church, the bar, the entire car. It's all poisoned with it." She said. "I tried to figure it out, and it sounds like Min and Ryan-- my Ryan, not you--know more about it, but neither of them ever wanted to talk about it."

An uneasy chill crept down the small of Ryan's back. "Huh. No kidding." He said.

His voice came out several times smaller than he'd intended.

She stood from her stool, and as though he were the reflection, he impulsively followed suit.

"Mmm, alright I guess. Only 'cuz you're nice to talk to, though." Ryan said sourly. "And um, because I guess I probably owe you kind of a million. More than that, actually. I dunno if I'll ever get to tell the real you, or if saying it to this you even counts, but uh. Sorry. About all this."

"Oh, Ryan..." Em said, looking at you sadly. "Thanks, but...it's not really my apology to receive. And anyway, you should probably know what you're apologizing for , first. Which means it should wait until it's all said and done. But..." She hesitated. Seemed to consider something, and then spoke again. "If you want to make it up to me, then try to make it back to her, okay? So you can really apologize. Don't give up. Prove her wrong."

Your brain caught on her last sentence. He thought about the girl locked behind the red frame, the way she'd been so sure he was here to destroy and abandon her. To kill her, she'd said. Ryan realized Em probably wasn't talking about the Real Em. But when he was about to ask her, he blinked and she simply wasn't there anymore. There was just a wedding dress suspended in mid-air, which then crumpled softly to the floor behind the counter and forever out of view. Like something out of the Rapture.

Another glass of vivid gold was left behind in her place.

Ryan turned back to the cartoonishly stretched out hallway of the bar dyed in aquamarine, holding his liquid sun drink in his hand. It burned brightly,  blazing like a torch. He took another sip, a small one to make it last, and believed as hard as he could that the heat in his mouth and belly banished any trace of cold from his nerve endings. Maybe that even made it a little more true.

Ryan thought about Em's vague words about The Thing. He thought about Min-Gi in their van, looking out at the Train so many years ago, lured to it by the promise of death.  He thought about not thinking about every time he'd woken up with nightmares or dashed for the light switch convinced that this time, this time it'd come back to get you, reemerge from inside a painting or behind a curtain or under your bed.

He thought about how scary it was thinking you might actually be about to get what you'd wanted. That it could feel like the apocalypse, the end of the whole world. And then as he started  to walk, he started thinking about all the reasons he'd started wanting it in the first place, and soon enough whatever good mood he'd managed to build up was gone again, Emily and her magic sun beer be damned.

Her words stuck with him though, drawing his thoughts back again and again.

"Oh well, you'll get through it one way or another. " She had said. For some reason, that was the only comfort that stuck. She was right after all, wasn't she? One way or another, soon enough, he'd get through this. One way or another, soon enough,

this would end.

" So when I'm uh, having pretend arguments with people in the bathroom, you..." Min Prime asked with mounting, mortified horror.

"I have to stand there like a doofus, making your stupid angry faces back at you, yeah." Prince Min answered smugly, savoring the way his prime squirmed, even if the blush they both knew was there was invisible through the prismatic haze of colored lights. "But who cares? I've got way bigger problems than that or all the other embarrassing nonsense you do by '"yourself'" He finished, turning his fingers into little quotation marks just before he turned the glass corner of the inside hallway's wall and disappeared out of view.

Meat Min turned the corner and caught sight of his reflective double again, now on the wall facing the entrance to the church rather than its altar. "Oh, yeah? Like what?" He asked politely.

Their voices echoed back and forth on the glass panes, making it feel as though the whole church was speaking, and Meat Min noticed for the first time that his own voice was a slightly higher baritone than his counterpart's.

"Like not being able to be me. Being trapped inside you and all your little boxes like a caged fucking animal. " Prince Min spat back immediately, acidic venom on his lips. Min Prime had to fight the urge to flinch. He'd almost started feeling like they were interacting normally, Prince Min feeling nearly amiable. He held himself arrogantly for sure, and Min found it abrasive, but it was in a cocky, self-assured way that Min Prime found himself realizing he envied as well.

And that made it hurt all the more when that whipcrack judgment in his voice. Prince Min barely seemed aware of it, even as he delighted in wielding it like a weapon. The way everything about his voice and his affect suggested that it was more that Min-Gi was failing to measure up, that it was more like because he'd failed to live up to the Prince's expectations he was completely fucking worthless .

It reminded Min-Gi of his parents. And he had a sick notion that it reflected more than he cared to admit about himself, as well. So he didn't bite back. Instead he said "We do seem different. You don't get to be yourself, even though you're not really me? How does that work?"

Prince Min shot him a scowl that was perfectly readable through the dark sunglasses. "I can be myself here because we're on the train. In the real world things have to pretend to make sense , so I have to pretend that I'm you whenever I even get to show up. I'm just your reflection, after all." It came out bitter and blaming again. "But that's whatever. I don't really care about me being trapped. It's nothing compared to what it does to her. "

He doesn't answer. Licks his lips, slowly, like he's tasting the secret he's keeping from Min.

Then he says simply "You'll find out." In a low and sultry voice, a threat and a promise.

"We're here." He slipped around a corner that marked the end of their long corridor and the opening of a bigger room. Meat Min spared him one glance, making sure he was still there--arms crossed and expression dark, back leaning against the wall of some surface in the mirror world, hunched slightly forward.

Then he turned to survey the room he'd been led to. "Here" turned out to be a wide open room, a cathedral hall leading to an altar. On either side of the altar were enormous red stained glass windows, shimmering crimson light into the room. That light felt silently deadly to Min's eyes for some reason, like to step into them might be akin to stepping on the scales of God, waiting to measure his soul.

"You don't understand." said the voice of a woman Min knew well from within the glass on the left, and he ran towards her immediately despite that feeling. She sounded frustrated and wound up tight, and most of all, tired. "I think I almost have it."

As he neared her, another woman's deeper voice answered from within. "What I understand is that you've barely eaten at all this week, let alone slept. You can't keep doing this to yourself, Emi. I need you to help me help you ."

"I didn't ask you to come help me, Lils." Ems said. Not angry, not biting. Just exhausted and maybe a little apologetic. Lils--Em's ex-girlfriend from college, Min remembered-- was a taller woman than Emily herself was, her skin a deep shade of black that the window's red glare deepened until she looked like living shadow. By contrast that same light played off Em's pale skin so that she looked like a pinkish ghost in it, the dark bags under her eyes vivid and haunted. "You can go, if you want. I just need to focus on these reports."

"I came because I wanted to. And I'm not leaving you alone in this fucking dump." Lillianna said, and that hurt, because they were in Min and Ryan's apartment. It looked like a fucking mess. Their stuff was still there, but Emily's was too, as though she'd moved in anyway in their absence. And all of it--hers, Ryan's, Min's himself--was thrown wildly into haphazard bunches and piles, not at all like the put together and organized woman Min-Gi knew.

"Do you think I don't know what you're doing? Do you think I'm stupid? You've read all of the reports, every scrap of Passenger commentary we could scrape off the darknet, every interview from every loony Boarder in their fandom at this point. We both have, because I did it with you as soon as your Dad called. There's nothing we don't already know. And now," Lils raised an accusatory finger at Ems

"You're trying to run away into the research, as though as if you just focus hard enough on it, the Train will fucking meet you halfway and come get you."

Panic and despair exploded in Min's stomach along with overwhelming guilt. He'd never imagined Ems might respond to their absence like this , that her desperation for them would go to this extreme. Lily's eyes traveled down off Em's face, to her hand. Min's eyes followed and caught the sparkle of white glistening on her finger.

"You should take it off." Lils said flatly. Listen to her , Min begged to himself, helpless and frustrated in the world beyond the looking glass, infinitely far away where his words would never reach her.

Em recoiled like she'd been struck, snatching up her ring finger with her other hand and holding it against herself. But in the same motion she whirled in her chair, twisting away from her computer so she was facing Lils. " What? " She gasped harshly. "Lils, I love you, but you can't just tell me to--"

"I can, because he left you, and I'm the one who came back to clean up his mess." Lils spat, lovingly merciless, and instantly Min-Gi loved her in exactly equal measure to how much he hated himself. Why hadn't she come to the wedding?

"We've both read the accounts of the people who leave. The pattern is consistent, it's about escapism. He wanted to get away. " Emily trembled like that rocked something at the core of her. "It wasn't me they were running away from." She said, but it was in the meekest voice Min-Gi had ever heard from her, as though she wasn't really sure. He wanted to bang on the glass, scream that she was right, but then--she wasn't entirely, was she? Misery tasted like black bile on his tongue, in his throat.

"That doesn't matter. What matters is that you got left behind." Lily said, firm, trying for gentle but failing at it.

"I've been left behind before. I'm almost getting used to it." Emily snapped, a vicious whip of a sentence that made Lilianna flinch. Min-Gi had never heard her sound even remotely like that before. Suddenly he felt like he was intruding on something private and intimate, the aftermath of a battleground she'd never quite let him see before.

Lils licked her lips. "I apologized for that. We were young. I didn't understand what I wanted back then, I was so..." She said, trailing off, but Emily had succeeded at draining her of that righteous anger. "Anyway, I'm here now , aren't I? I've been here." She tried again, and this time it was gentle, tender with old yearning, in fact. Slowly, she dropped to her knees and wrapped her hands around Em's arms. Kept her grip far away from Em's hands, the ring. Just did it for the contact.

She delivered her next words with the gentleness of someone who knows they have to hurt someone terribly. "Emily, darling, rival, " she said, like it was something intimate and precious that existed only between them. Min-Gi had no idea what it meant. "It's been years. We don't have any way to know if they're ever coming back."

Years, Min-Gi thought dizzily, like he'd been hit by a cannonball. Emily started to shake, tears spilling from her eyes and down her cheeks, glistening red and white in that unreal light. For a moment Min-Gi accepted the proclamation like a death sentence, believed that they really were unsalvageably fucked, but then as if he were out at sea and desperately seeking a life raft, something in his brain went click and the puzzle came together.

Red went to the future. Blue went to the past, just like fucking Jimmy Donovik back then.

And Mike sat the middle, bothering him right before the wedding, sitting right inside the purple- blue near present.

"You don't understand," Emily answered through choked sobs. "I'm happy you're here, I feel it too, but I...I still love them," her voice broke into a high pitched whine at the end, and Min-Gi's brain caught on them instead of him like a scratched record. "I can't let go of it, I can't just stop , I don't know how--"

"I'm not asking you to." Lily said soothingly, putting a hand up to Em's face and wiping her tears away. "You made me part of your friggin boy band crush, ok? I hear the music, I see the legacy, I know it's not just some guys , I know they're like, your queer indie rock heroes and they deserve to be. I'm in this with you til the end. I'll help you do whatever you need to to get them back, or find them. Just don't..."

She broke off, and when she came back it was with a low and vulnerable plea in her voice. "Just don't pick them over me. Don't try to leave me behind them for them. Especially not if it means walking into that, where maybe nobody could ever reach you again."

The silence lingered between them for a moment. And then, shivering like she was freezing to death in a blizzard, Emily shakily nodded. Min-Gi watched as Lillianna leaned in and kissed her, deep and slow, and Emily slowly warmed to it, answering her first receptively and then hungrily, like she needed the contact, needed her specifically. Her trembling slowly let up, like the cold was being beaten out of her.

And perfectly silently, she slipped the ring off. Min-Gi accepted it with a perfect mixture of heartbreak and gratitude, if only for the fact that she wasn't alone--

"Darling, you're awake..." called the voice of another siren, the woman Min-Gi knew and loved most in the world, coming from the mirror on his right. His mother. Sounding far worse than tired, sounding harrowed, hollowed out. This mirror had been bad enough. Min-Gi couldn't bear to imagine what he'd see in that one. But there was no resisting the train's demands, or his Mom's voice anyway, and so he went to her.

The moment he took in the scene through the looking glass, understanding snapped home like a guillotine. His mother was sitting in a small white chair looking vulnerable and tiny, hunched over a hospital bed with both hands clasped around the right hand of his father. A heart monitor beeped quietly in the far corner. His father didn't answer her, and while his eyes were open Min-Gi thought his eyes looked unstable and disoriented, not quite there. He wondered if his Mom had been hoping more than knowing, and thought he could trace the edges of restrained panic in her voice when she'd said he was awake, like it had been a prayer or a plea.

But his dad seemed to solidify, concentrate somehow right before his eyes, and then said quietly "It happened again."

Not a question, and it wasn't answered. Silence lingered in the air thick enough one could have hung the stars on it. Eventually Mom answered "They said it was a very close call this time, worse than the last one." with adult practicality and bitter heartbreak in her voice. She spoke the next part very gingerly. "The doctor said...well, you really shouldn't be going back to work, dear."

Dad scoffed, because of course he would. "Nonsense. What else am I going to do?"

" Rest." Mom said patiently and immediately. "Heal. Take care of your heart, my love."

"My heart. " Dad barked out a laugh. It sounded angry and bitter. "You mean sit around and think, darling, sit around and wait for him , and it's been a long time since I believed that boy is coming home to us. And in the meantime who's supposed to be taking care of you? You'll need money, after I'm gone."

A horribly sad sort of silence smothered them, quite suddenly. Min-Gi had the unusual sense of perceiving his father realizing he'd said something profoundly wrong. And then in a soft and quiet voice that felt to both men like an earthquake that could rip the very planet apart, make it all come undone, Min-Gi Park's mother confessed "I don't want you to be gone. I don't want to end up all alone like this, in this distant country I followed you to. I want...I wanted..."

Min-Gi pressed himself up against the glass he couldn't see anymore, shaking with the sobs that were only the palest echo of the loneliness and heartbreak that tore themselves free from the chests and throats of the man and woman who had been the anchor and foundation of his entire world, the only reason he'd ever been blessed with the fortune of meeting Ryan Akagi in the first place.

"I'm sorry." His dad said, with a raw and broken voice. "Oh my love, I'm so sorry. All I wanted was for our boy to be safe and happy, to thrive in this land of dreams and opportunity, and every time he tried to reach for what he wanted I made sure he knew I thought it was a mistake. I'm such a fool. I pushed our Min-Gi away from me, but worse, I made sure he couldn't go near his mother, too."

He sounded drained and wan, like the fit had drained him of something vital somehow. Min-Gi felt a growing sense of alarm. He'd seen friends look like that after a good day of partying, if they were the wrong sort of sick. "Mom" he croaked, knowing it would do nothing, desperate to try anyway. "MOM!"

His mother didn't hear him. "You wanted him to be safe, my love. To have a future he could live off of. Music was a beautiful dream, but we couldn't know it would work. I always agreed with you about that."

"But it did work." His dad said, half a laugh, his eyes dangerously distant and dreamy. "Those boys didn't need us at all, in the end. They made a life even better than we could have dreamed for them, all on their own." Sentences that didn't quite line up, grammatically disjointed. He begged, begged with everything he had for Mom to notice. "I should have believed in him. I should've been more than just an obstacle in his way. I'm such a failure of a father, I..."

He trailed off as the heart monitor started to speed frantically up. His mom gave a sudden shout of alarm, first calling out his name, then screaming for nurses at the top of her lungs. A new wave of tears had overtaken Min a long time ago, and it was a storm with so much force he couldn't try to speak at all. He managed a strangled "Dad..." as he slid down the cruel dividing looking glass, crumpled in a heap as close as he could get against the dying love he couldn't reach.

His mom was in hysterics now, screaming for anyone to "SAVE HIM, PLEASE SAVE HIM! OH GOD! OH GOD!" And Min-Gi understood perfectly now. This was his truth, his end and his beginning, the final note in the song he'd chosen for himself and for his parents. The destination of their fate. His parents had moved across oceans and worlds dreaming of a life where they could give him everything, and even despite their own best efforts to stop him, they had succeeded.

And now here, this , this was the ending he'd given back to them as payment. This was the thank you that they had received. His father dying with guilt and regret on his lips and his mother alone and abandoned in the endless tundra of the Americas, all by herself in the cruel, cold world.

There was the loud CLUNK of theater lights turning on as the window shifted from red to purple, cutting off Min-Gi's miserable ghost of a link to his parents with brutal abruptness and replacing it with Prince Min, who didn't even deign to look at him. Instead he was looking down at a little white table with a little white plate on it, and on that plate was a tangerine, sliced neatly and evenly.

The Prince paused just long enough to let Min's sobbing die down, let him catch his breath.

Then he opened his lips and sadly started reciting , not singing, a poem Min-Gi recognized:

"sweet boy’s got an orange

brown and green

been on the table since he was a teen"

"dried out, cried out, picked, pecked and pried out

absurd, you figured your word could cure the future that occurred"

"Press pointed fingers to freckled flesh

pull apart, hide with hopeful hands

inside is dried, its powdered pulp

crystalline prisms of teeth for you to eat

tongue tasting tomorrow"

"it's bitter, bitter, bitter

sweet lord, have mercy on the dead

man, don’t you understand?"

It was one that he'd written, once upon a time, thinking of his Mother's tangerines and his father's disapproval. It sounded now like a dire prophecy. Prince Min didn't touch the tangerine, letting it sit there in wasted perfection, untasted and unappreciated. "Are you enjoying this?" Meat Min nearly spat at his doppelganger, turning sorrow to anger just to keep sane. "Is this fun for you? Torturing me like this?"

Prince Min turned to look down at him, expression equal parts repulsed and unimpressed, like he'd just stepped in something gross. "No. This isn't fun at all." He said flatly. Then he went on "You know what really pisses me off?"

Min-Gi didn't want to know. "What?" He asked anyway.

"You're supposed to be a rock star. You already got all the financial success they'd wanted. It could all be fine if you just let them into your world, opened up and let them see the real you a little, but you never really even gave them a chance. It was just half-hearted half measures right to the end. I mean I know why , it's because you're a fucking coward, but--"

Min-Gi knew the shape of the obvious question before the Prince hidden in his heart even asked it.

"You wrapped your whole life around them, you wrote and sang about them, but you never tried to write or sing to them, not even once." He said matter of factly. He didn't even sound mad, just curious, in a way that suggested he expected the answer to be boring.  "Why not write an album, just a song , for the two of them? If not to say thank you, then at least to let them really see into your world a little. You know nobody in the world could do a better job of it than you. Prince and Bowie are good and all, but they didn't know our parents."

There was no answer to that, of course, except for the one the Prince had already given; Min's cowardice. The fear of trying so hard and seeing those puzzled, disapproving looks again anyway. But Min-Gi closed his eyes and held onto the words write and could do like a lifeline, finding himself desperately grateful for his mirror counterpart making it sound like there was still something to do, like everything wasn't over already, like there was still a chance.

Red leads to the future. Red leads to the future. And was the future in his parent's mirror the same as the one in Lily and Emily's? Was it the same number of years, even the same timeline of events? He couldn't know anything like that, sitting where he was in the past. Until the moment it became the present, the future was something hazy and indeterminate, no matter how many horrific windows he got. And they'd been told there was still a way back to the start.

They were being treated like kings, One-One had said. Min-Gi focused on thoughts like that as he counted out his breaths and took back control of his chest, his mind, his arms and legs.

"Don't bother answering that. I did what I had to, I'm outta here." Prince Min said, seeming strained, like he was tired out after a long performance. He slipped out of the mirror in front of Min-Gi and then his voice came back from the far end of the cathedral hall, the way they'd come in. "We'll see each other during the show. If you want to save Ryan at all, if you're interested in not being such a hideous fuck up, then watch for my signal. "

You'll k"now what to do. Just don't fucking hesitate. "

And turned the corner into the corridor, leaving Min-Gi sitting by himself  in the cathedral's neon dark.

" Woah , you're Ryan Akagi , aren't ya? From Chicken Choice Judy! " called the deep voice of a man that managed to sound both like a shout and a whisper at the same time, a furtive secret he was trying to share and an awkward fact said too loud, where the whole of the bar could hear. Indeed, some of the glass people around them turned to give them looks, sideways, over their shoulders.

But the bulky chrome man in the backwards baseball cap just grinned at him, paying them no mind or maybe just not noticing. His awe and surprise seemed perfectly genuine and filled with earnest, simple delight. "I mean that shouldn't be too much a surprise, I came to your fuckin' show and all," he went on amiably. "Just didn't think I'd see ya before it even started! Where's Min? Backstage?" He said, conversational and teasing, making a joke out of his own overfamiliarity.

He made it work, for some reason. Something about this man struck the perfect balance of friendly without being weird, which was a little uncommon even among the fans Ryan liked, which was basically all of them. Something about stardom changed relationships between people, between performer and fan. And this guy did think they were cool, there was no mistake about that, but it was like he thought they were cool guys he wanted to know a little better, not that he thought they were unknowable gods or worse, like they were already friends just because he liked their music.

Ryan knew this guy. He'd felt almost like how Emily had when they'd first started getting to know her. He liked him right away, and still remembered his name. It was such a fucking shame Ryan couldn't imagine a conversation he wanted to relive less. But his body didn't entirely belong to him in this place; it was a puppet pulled by strings of memories, so he said "Yeah, doing set up."

The stranger looked disappointed, but not unreasonably so. "Oh. Right, 'course," he said easily, his friendly smile only dampened a little. "I'll let you get back to it. Honor to meet ya, brah- -"

" Brah? What are you, a frat bro?" Ryan laughed easily as he moved towards the table and leather couch he was sitting in. The brah was sprawled over the outside end, with his arms spread over the back of the lounge sofa and his forearm resting on the table. He was a bit slow on the uptake, looking up at Ryan standing right in front of him with slowly growing confusion until Ryan gestured with his glass and realization hit his face.

"OH!" He said, sliding inwards on the couch so there was room for Ryan to sit. His grin broke like the sun at daybreak, the sort of smile that could light up a world. It was so fucking weird going through the motions of a conversation he enjoyed so much at the time, knowing how it ended all the while. "Sorry, sorry. And yeah , actually, 'til I dropped out at least. Names' Dennis, by the way."

"Be ready." Said the girl from the red windows, sounding bored and frustrated and expecting to go ignored. But she also sounded ready to go to work anyway. Ryan was grateful that the memory of Dennis didn't ease its strings and give him the luxury of looking back at her. "The exit's right over there, and the future is coming. Don't forget what happens when it does." she said, that last part sounding like the doors of a coffin sliding shut.

Ryan's eyes trailed away from Dennis and maybe two more couches down the hall. She was right. A set of heavy looking double doors made of glass, vivid, hostile red light thrumming from them, just like the windows. He thought about Dennis. About how the rest of the conversation was going to go. Red is the future .

Ryan felt like he was nearing the top of a particularly morbid rollercoaster. But no matter how he felt, he was still bound to the tracks he was on. "Ryan, but you knew that." He finally answered Dennis, and it came out easy and pleasant like it had the first time. He sipped from golden fire drink. It didn't make enduring this any easier. "What brings you here, Dennis? You don't exactly sound like a New Yorker."

Dennis laughed in a way that filled up the whole room. "Haha! Naw, I'm a Florida boy. You do, obviously! Been listenin' to your songs since college, an' well, I figured if I didn't finally come up to watch y'all now I wouldn't do it never. So here I am." he said easily. It almost sounded casual, if a bit subdued, when he said "Sorta changes your priorities, when you know you've got the GRIDs."

Ryan had the eerie sensation of deja vu of the heart. He remembered exactly how his heart had frozen in his chest, hearing this warm and lively stranger say that, and it was the perfect echo of the way his heart clenched now. He remembered the vulnerable quietness of Dennis then, the way he hadn't brought himself to look at Ryan's eyes, even though he seemed so warm and friendly. GRIDs. Gay Related Immune Deficiency.

An outdated term for AIDs, and inaccurate to boot, but Ryan wasn't about to start lecturing a friendly fan who'd just opened up about having it.

Dennis was bigger than him, bigger than Min-Gi even, but he looked small and not at all like the raucous party boy he'd seemed just a minute ago, waiting for Ryan's answer to that.

Ryan felt a sense of judgment from the mirrors and shadow-people filling the crowd around them when they gave them glances, as if they'd heard of something ugly. He wasn't sure if he was just imagining or remembering that night wrong now.

He remembered catching the eye of one particularly affronted looking guy the first time he did this and bitterly thinking We're not fucking clowns over here, mind your own business. He hated people who treated everything like a performance for them, and in moments like these, being in public made him feel paranoid.

Ryan had been down this road too many times already. It happened now and then, hearing about sickness taking one of their fans. Sometimes even watching a regular slowly succumb to it over months, quickly over weeks on one or two memorable occasions. Ryan didn't know which was worse. It never got easier, or less scary.

A TV blared to life from where it was hanging off the roof corner and started playing the news, unlike the first time. The president, Reagan, spouting off some garbage about how it was God's judgment for the gay community or whatever. Ryan felt impotent with fury. He wanted to offer Dennis a sip of his drink, just to offer the guy some kind of connection,  help him feel human.

But he couldn't do it now because he hadn't done it then, either. Because he'd been scared. Because of "what if". It was only the smallest, vaguest kind of touch. An indirect kiss, he'd thought back then. But it was also the risk of saliva to saliva, and even if it was unlikely, drawing losing the dice roll on a risk like that was the difference between a full and healthy life and the agonizing experience of having your future cut short.

The thing was, he wasn't just Ryan Akagi. If his life had just been his own, he thought he would've risked it a lot more aggressively a very long time ago. But he was Min-and- Ryan, Chicken Choice Judy , and Min-Gi had made him promise that day in the bathroom, had begged him to take care of himself. If not for his parents and siblings, then he had to do it for Min. Especially when he imagined catching it and then spreading it to Min himself on the way out.

It wasn't like they made a habit of trading body fluids, even though thinking about that was, well--Ryan mostly didn't think about that. But they shared beers and water now and then. The (indirect kiss) risk was the same. So hating himself for it, Ryan just looked down at his little glass of sunlight and said "I'm sorry."

Death, the great equalizer. Ryan could puke. Nothing could be less true. He felt, he and Min and Emily felt, literally everybody that existed in their world felt like they were living in a nightmare, and apocalypse that seemed to target most aggressively precisely those who were least able to afford the medical care to even try to survive it, and who least deserved it.

But Dennis laughed his gregarious laugh again, and when Ryan looked up at him he'd completely rallied. " Sorry? I came here to thank you." He said with good cheer that only slightly seemed like bravado now, and only because Ryan knew what he knew. "You should be saying you're welcome just for giving me the chance, I'm really so happy, I...you guys help keep me going, you know? Good songs, good vibes, and its nice being reminded about the fundraisers and research and stuff." He said, which meant he didn't just listen but followed your newsletters, if he was from Florida.

"I know I'm a big dummy, but people are smart. Any day now could be the day there's a big breakthrough and things get better." He said, and he did it with such a genuine faith that Ryan was dazzled by the brightness of it, shining stark against the dark and short tunnel the man's life seemed like it must feel like, when Ryan tried to imagine living in his shoes. He didn't think he'd ever been able to believe in anything like that, not when it mattered.

"You don't seem dumb to me at all." Ryan said softly.

"Oh, I'm a dumbass ." Dennis grinned wider as he said it, like he took pride in unintelligence. "My best bro back in college--Min kinda reminds me of him actually, which is weird cuz he's Texan--he always used to tell me so. And that guy was smart , like he was ripped as all get out but that wasn't good enough for him, you know? He had to be smarter than all the professors and too smart to even take college seriously, too. Like life was just a game to him."

Ryan quirked his lips. "That sounds like he was way more of an idiot than you are to me. Min thinks he's smarter than everybody too sometimes, and that's when I know he's not being smart."

Dennis grin just kept seeming to expand, lights dancing in his eyes like he was coming all the way alive with this. Ryan suspected this was what he'd really been wanting to talk about from the start. "See? I was right. But he made it work anyway. He aced all his classes and he barely had to try, and he had time to get ripped as hell and also keep up with all his weird little hobbies. He was the weirdest fuckin' guy, man."

He clearly wanted to be asked, so Ryan obliged him. "Weird how?"

"THE FUCKIN' PUPPETS!" Dennis yelled immediately, so loud some mirror-patrons shifted to look at them in annoyance. Ryan had forgotten that line in the script. And so it only struck him now, how weird it was to be reliving this in a conversation that the train or the mirrors or the lights or whatever were seemingly puppeting him through as well. "That motherfucker loved those puppets in a way bigger and weirder than anythin' I ever seen."

" Weirder ?" Ryan egged on, curious now.

"He insisted it was ironic, somehow. That motherfucker always insisted everything was ironic somehow, only I couldn't even tell if the fact that everything was supposed to be ironic was supposed to be the actual joke, like he was just pretending not to be sincere about it?" Dennis shrugged helplessly, but it was with a fond smile on his lips. "Never made any damn sense to me. I think if he wasn't so ripped and hot about it, he would've been the kind of guy who got shoved into lockers for bein' a dweeby little poser in high school."

"I can see that." Said Ryan, who Min-Gi had saved many times from being shoved into lockers for being a dweeby little poser in high school. He could relate to making a performance and a spectacle out of every little thing. "It sounds like he's pretty special to you."

Dennis' fond, slightly mocking smile grey distant, and then melancholy. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess he fucking was. He was a nerd, too. Did lil video game reviews but like, frat boy themed? Game bro, he called it. Ever heard of it?"

"Nope!" Ryan admittedly cheerfully. "Barely know anything about games myself. It was always music for me and Min-Gi." A lot of this conversation was hard for him to conceptualize, to be honest--this guy of Dennis' really did sound fucking weird. But that wasn't too odd, really. It was one of his favorite parts of talking to fans, the unpredictable variety of the stories people told him about. You really could just hear about anything.

"Well his thing was always pretty indie anyway. It wasn't something serious, the whole thing was a joke. But he made me like, a character in it. Like he was the Game Bro, and he'd talk about how his buddy Dennis got wasted at the party in his reviews and stuff. Said that was all ironic too, but..." That big wistful smile.

"It was nice. I don't think anyone ever made me feel so much like I was in on the joke like that, like I was sharing something with someone else nobody else could ever have. He didn't do it with any of the other guys from our frat, y'know? And now..."

He shrugged, helplessly. His voice came out soft and neutral, like it was being kept on a leash with a length Ryan couldn't measure. "It's even more nice now, in a sad way. Thinking that even if I don't wake up one day and this whole.... thing turns around," he gestured at himself, at everything. "Even if I'm gone, I'll still be there in his pages somehow. Even if it's just a joke. Maybe he'll remember."

Ryan struggled to think of what he could possibly say to that. He sipped his joy-and-plasma drink and it did fuck all to help. He drank it instead, finished the glass the rest of the way off in fact, but that still didn't do jack. His throat still felt dry. There just wasn't any helping the immensity of it. "Does he know?" Ryan asked, and he didn't need to specify whether he meant about Dennis' feelings or his illness.

"Nah," Dennis said right away, drawing it out and waving his hand as if to dismiss the notion as a joke. "Nah, I...we fell out of touch, before he dropped out of college and moved back to Texas. And then I went and dropped out too because I was so sad he left and I didn't even tell him I didn't want him to, and then I started messing around with guys trying to forget him--I'd have told you I was straight before then, y'know--and then I was too fuckin' careless and ended up like this."

"All over him, kinda. I wouldn't want him to know alla' that. It..." He drank hard from his own drink, and all of his cheer and good humor broke again when he was done. "It would really hurt to really disappoint that guy. To admit it wasn't ironic at all when he went on about how dumb I am, 'cuz I went and proved I really was that much of a moron all along."

Ryan couldn't think of what to say to that for a while. Well, he knew what he'd said last time, but it seemed like just as bad an idea as the first time he'd said it, so he took just as long. But Dennis didn't volunteer anything, so eventually "I'm sure he'd want to know, or well, probably. I know I would."

Dennis stared into his glass, something dark and sad in his eyes. He was so completely transparent, and not because he was made of glass. Even back when Ryan had seen him as a flesh and blood dead man walking instead of this ghost made of mirrors, he had been convinced that this might well have been the most simple and genuine man he'd ever met. It was like it just didn't occur to him to hide anything at all. But he thought about whether to say this next part.

"You know, its the strangest thing..." He drawled. "I never knew him to have any kind of respect for anyone in authority or really, anyone but himself. Certainly not the fuckin' republicans. It was one of the things that was so cool about him. But just before he moved back home, there was this one day. A really weird day. He'd been getting weirder and weirder around then, angrier, punching walls and stuff sometimes, I didn't know what the hell was going on."

"Except that one day he'd seemed normal, more like his usual quiet inscrutable self. We'd just been working out, and I don't even know if I said something or what, but all I did was touch his arm--I'd done it before, we groped each others muscles sometimes, it was one of the things he called 'ironic' but it was fine, all in good fun."

"But that day, he snatched his arm away and acted like I punched him--no, worse really--and he said the weirdest fucking thing I ever heard in my life. He said ' Watch it. I ain't nobody's fuckin boywife." , and the way he said it was like he was calling me a...well, you know what I mean?" He asked, sounding like he wanted to be excused from the rest of the sentence.

Ryan nodded. "That sounds like total fucking shit, man. I'm sorry."

Dennis shrugged again. Regular shrugger, ol' Dennis. "If it'd just been shit, that would be one thing. It's the weird I can't stand, because I can't stop fucking thinking about it. It keeps me up at night.  Right after he said that he seemed more surprised than I was, like he wasn't even the one who said it? And then he said that that was ironic, tried to say it was a joke, but he didn't take it back or say sorry or like, offer to let me touch his arm again, so what the hell was I supposed to do with that?"  He sighed, sounding frustrated now.

"It sounds like he didn't really deserve you anyway." Ryan said flatly, but he remembered how Dennis had answered that, so it felt mean and pointless to say it.

Dennis had flashed him the one and only spark of negativity he'd really displayed all night, a clipped kind of annoyance. Like he knew Ryan was right, but didn't like it. "Yeah well, it'd be nice if the heart gave a shit about what we deserve , wouldn't it." He said a little bit sharply. "It's whatever, it's all history now. But it's...it's like I said. I haven't given up, exactly."

"What do you mean?" Ryan asked vaguely, hoping being neutral would bring the conversation back from the precipice back then. Knowing Dennis would indeed walk back from the edge of impoliteness now.

"It isn't, I'm not--If I'm just going to die, it's just pointless." He said, so bluntly that it shocked Ryan's sense of propriety, though of course he'd never say it. Out of the corner of his eye, the mirror-shadow of a woman turned in her chair and looked disapprovingly. "I'd mess up his life if I had a shot of giving him something , but I'm not gonna do it just to make him sad when I'm gone. But getting sick made me think about how stupid it was for me to chase other guys around when all I wanted was him in the first place. Not that there's anything wrong with it, just that..."

Dennis licked his lips. "What I shoulda done was told him that stupid joke wasn't even funny anyway, and that the only times he ever wasn't cool were when he used his irony shtick to be such a mean prick sometimes, and also if it was such a big goddamn deal maybe I wanted to be the boywife, and what just what the hell was 'boywife' supposed to mean anyway." He said in a rush.

He didn't even wait for Ryan to answer, just went on bitterly. "I should've had a fight with him about it, made him own being the idiot for once. But I didn't. I just got scared and locked up and hanging out got awkward, and then he moved without saying jack shit, and I fucked myself over trying to get past it." It was the first time despair had crept into his voice. "And now it feels like it's too late."

Ryan couldn't stand the sound of it. He tried to believe the words so intensely it was like a physical exertion as he said "But maybe it isn't, right? It's like you said. It could be any day at all. It could work out okay."

Dennis stirred like Ryan had shaken him out of something and remembered himself. That genuine smile slipped back onto his lips, a little ashamed and deeply grateful. Horribly, his eyes looked like they were a little watery, even now in his mirror form. "Yeah, you're right, 'course. It's what I was gonna say from the start." He said, and Ryan wondered if either of them believed him. "If it does, if there's a cure or something, then...then I'll go track him down. And say all that stuff. Even if he has a wife and a kid or something. I owe it to myself, so he can just deal."

"Hell yeah. Fuck that guy. Maybe fuck that guy." He said cheerfully, wiggling his eyebrows, and that got a loud barking laugh out of Dennis that rocked his whole body. It died down fast when he started to cough, but he only coughed a little, and he was still smiling at him.

"So yeah, all's I wanted to say was...thank you. Your music helps a lot. And especially thanks for listening to all that. You didn't have to, and by now I'm definitely keeping you, aren't I?" He said, now really apologetic, like he hadn't noticed and the thought had him panicking.

He was right. Min had been nearly apoplectic at how long Ryan had kept him waiting, back when this had really happened. He hadn't been sorry back then, though, and Min hadn't stayed that way once he heard about it. They understood this was an important part of it sometimes, that somewhere along the way it had become more than just the music.

So Ryan shrugged and said "It's my pleasure. You're cool, I'm glad I got to know you. And it's people like you we do all this for." Which was a lie, they did it for themselves first and foremost. But somewhere along the way, in little steps, it had been becoming more and more true.

"Still. I'll let you go now, I can't wait for the show." Dennis answered politely, and Ryan nodded as he slid out of the couch, leaving his glass behind. Dennis looked up at him, clearly trying to disengage but not wanting to look away.

"Got a song request? Hell, we'll shout you out and play a whole setlist." Ryan said with a laugh he hoped sounded easy and not worried that the joke would be too grim or, maybe worse, taken seriously. Dennis laughed and seemed to catch the nuance, because he thought about the question instead of answering immediately.

"Train to nowhere, obviously" he answered pretty quick, with a melancholy grin. "It's where I'm headed, after all. And at least you guys are here to keep me dancing on my way."

And that broke Ryan's heart obviously, but it was something, wasn't it? "You got it." He said.

He reached the double doors and pulled one of them open.

The red light of the outside world filtered into the bar, washing over him.

" It didn't work out. " The ghost of the man Ryan never saw again called from his seat.

It drew Ryan's view back towards him. The mixture of the red light Ryan was swimming in and the blue water-light of the bar itself mixed together, casting Dennis in a purple haze. Black ooze was flooded down from his mouth and out of his ears, and from his eyes like tears, his eyes themselves pure pools of inky darkness. His voice was empty and hollow, with none of his genuine charm and warmth.

The ghost said one last thing. " I'm already dead. " He admitted. Ryan knew it was true.

All at once, every single window and mirror in the bar exploded to the deafeningly loud twang of a paradoxically gentle electric guitar. That included the glass of the door Ryan was holding, glass flying all over him and surprising him into letting go, the door swinging back shut.

Red light flooded and devoured the bar and its patrons, and random numbers of them started to convulse and heave in the hue of it, their bodies seeming to twist and darken. Frozen in horror, it took Ryan a moment to understand what was happening. Then he focused on Dennis again.

Dennis was leaning over his table and gripping the wood with both hands, scrabbling for purchase. He was heaving and retching and black fluid gushed from within him, but out from within that waterfall something else emerged from his mouth, a slithering black tendril like a particularly long and thick mosquito's tongue.

His hands were changing, turning into something else that couldn't even grip the wood, just scratch at it with claws. The skin of his metallic-chrome body darkened like a bruise, shifted and warped, expanded and melted, until he started taking the shape of something bulky and and dark. His mouth seemed to unhinge and split around the searching tentacle, letting out a hideous howl with an eerie blue light shining from within.

Further down the bar other patrons had turned into these roach-dog things, and Ryan understood now--it hadn't been random at all. It had been the ones already marked for death, who carried the same poison in their veins Dennis had back then. The roaches were turning on the other patrons who shrieked in terror and tried to flee, pouncing and clawing and smashing glass to pieces.

It looked like they were going to run out of victims quick, and the thing that had been Dennis had already been looking at him. Instead of bothering to open the door again Ryan just leapt through the shattered frames, his jeans catching on the broken glass at the sides with a pang of pain, but he paid it no mind. He just ran, and ran, and ran as fast as he could to try to leave the nightmare that was coming for him behind.

All around him,  the seductive rhythm of drums and guitar gave way to a pair of voices, urging him along with their song.

Showtime.

Min-Gi was only halfway through the corridors of the Church-themed mirror maze house of horrors when it hit. The hazey blue windows had been turning purple as he walked, washing him in his present as he walked through the halls with his halls with his hands in his pockets as if letting curtains fall after its performance of its past, leaving him with no ghosts to distract him from the trainwreck that was his own miserable self.

The soft twang of the electric guitar was so loud that it hurt , making him instantly put his hands to his ears, made him worry about earbuds--or he would have, if he'd had more than half a second before the force of the very sound made every single mirror in the church explode from sheer volume, making him cover the rest of his head to hide from the crystal shrapnel too.

He felt nicks and and tears where they cut at his clothes, including one at his neck. He thanked his lucky stars it wasn't worse when he lowered his eyes and saw the church path paved with the wreckage of shattered glass, vibrating in the music like dancing little stars.

For a moment he was too shocked and surprised to know what to do.

Then the voices came.

HE KNEW WHAT HE WANTED TO SAY,

BUT HE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO WORD IT,

THE DIRTY LITTLE HERBERT --

Min-Gi took off, bolting down the halls towards the exit as fast as he could manage. Prince Min had been very clear with his allusions to

Showtime. Follow his lead.

Don't hesitate. Save Ryan, who's life was on the line. He didn't understand, but he didn't need to. He knew a performance when he heard one and he knew the voices on the speakers, too.

Ryan sounded incredible. Prince Min's voice was backing his, and Min was used to playing backup, but the Prince leaned into his own baritone in a way that contrasted Ryan's pitch, making him sound more vibrant and bright than he did on his own. Together, the two sounded better than they ever had. He was terrified, and still it was intoxicating.

It felt like it was time to run for his life, but it also felt a little like it was time to dance.

WAS SEEKING AN ESCAPE...

BUT THE PLACE WAS WELL-GUARDED.

THE GUILTINESS THAT STARTED,

SOON AS THE OTH ER PART HAD STOPPED!

He broke out from inside the church and the world outside had been flooded in red, one sharper and even more hostile than the kind that had flowed from the mirrors. It was the angry red on the back of a black widow or the skin of a poison dart frog and all sorts of other things with poisons that could kill, if they got close enough to touch. It rendered everything physical in a seamless deep black, like the whole world had been reduced to shadowed silhouettes.

Except for there. A lone skinny boy sprinting towards the far end of the car in the middle of the street, far ahead of Min and as close to the dividing glass as he could manage. And,

And a mass, a horde , of strange black shadows that looked like hounds but with shapes all wrong, insectoid somehow, buzzing and flying and chasing after him. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Min hadn't even stopped running as he took it in, just followed after Ryan instinctively like always, and he sure as fuck didn't mean to stop and start to count.

D IS FOR DELIGHTFUL,

AND TRY AND KEEP YOUR TROUSERS ON!

I THINK YOU SHOULD KNOW--

YOU'RE HIS FAVOURITE WORST NIGHTMARE!

He strained to speed up instead, his side already aching. He cursed himself for not working out more, for eating too many sweets, for just having never been quite as fast as Ryan. He put everything he had into sprinting diagonally towards the door anyway, down towards the end and inwards towards the mirror, where he saw himself and Ryan--

-- Ryan , who was in leggings and a skirt, wearing lipstick and eyeliner, and holding a microphone in his right hand and the leash to Prince Min's collar on the left, pulling on it to draw it taut. Prince Min didn't look at him but up at Ryan from where he knelt on his knees, rising to his pull but not enough for the leash to give him the slightest bit of slack.

Ryan, who looked like a complete stranger and everything Min-Gi had ever wanted.

D IS FOR DESPERATELY TRYIN' TO STIMULATE

WHAT IT WAS TH AT WAS ALRIGHT,

THREE QUARTERS OF AN HOUR AGO!

His legs kept carrying him on autopilot, if anything he got faster , as if being consumed by the vision in the mirror made it easier to run, like the distraction from his body made it easier to ignore every ache and protest.

It was lucky, or it was fate, or it was something even better than that, because no matter what it was Min couldn't have torn his eyes from that sight no matter what was going to happen to both of them. Prince Min and (Girl? Princess? ) Ryan were looking at each other like the only two people in the entire world.

THAT HAD LED HIM TO BE IN A POSITION

AND EVERY CO MPRO~MISSION,

AND EVERY OTHER EPISODE!

Not just that, their music -- ( He raced through red grass and pavement, feet pounding down the earth)

HE'S NEARIN' THE BRINK,

BUT HE THINKS FIRST

THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE

PERHAPS COULD BE THE PERFECT SCENE!

The way they wove their voices around each other in a dance, playing backup to each other in perfect synchronization, completely confident that when the one fell into the backdrop the other would surge in to swell and claim dominance, shining in each other's accompaniment--

More than singing in harmony, matching each other like they'd always done.

(he was completely unaware he was breaking every speed record he'd ever set in his life)

HE'S NEARIN' THE BRINK,

BUT HE THINKS FIRST

THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE

PERHAPS COULD BE THE PERFECT SCENE!

Even more than playing off each other's contrasts, which they'd increasingly done as they grew in experience as performers--

(His fingers trailing on the glass, he slammed into the metal of the end of the car before he knew what he was doing. He had to catch himself as he wheezed for breath, gather his wits as he pulled them away from the spellbinding performance.

Three things gathered his wits for him:)

HE'S NEARIN' THE BRINK,

BUT HE THINKS FIRST

THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE

PERHAPS COULD BE THE PERFECT SCENE!

This was that, elevated to a level where each of their voices was a blade each held, the very tip of it pressed up against the other's act. Any missed step, any error in judgment, and Prince Min would smother Ryan's voice with his depth or Ryan would undercut Min with his sharpness.

It was exquisite, perfection.

(Ryan, the real Ryan, difficult to see through their dazzling selves shining in the mirror and not even looking at him, facing down that horde of black animals with a terror Min-Gi hadn't seen since the art gallery on his face,

The door, which he realized with a swell of despair was split perfectly divided by this miserable wall of glass, and )

HE'S NEARIN' THE BRINK.

BUT HE THINKS FIRST

THE PARALLEL-

I THINK YOU SHOULD KNOW-

YOU'RE HIS FAVOUR ITE WORST NIGHTMARE!

(Their mirror selves moving, Princess Ryan yanking HARD on the leash and Prince Min springing to his feet to meet her without his fingers missing a single beat on the keytar. For a single second he towered over Ryan, looking down at him like a wolf at a rabbit, and then turned to face Min, legs spread wide as he strummed on the keytar.

Except then he stopped, and the music kept going.)

D IS FOR DELIGHTFUL,

AND TRY AND KEEP YOUR TROUSERS ON!

(Princess Ryan dropped to his knees without losing a single strum of the guitar either, putting himself between Min's outstretched legs, head resting back against his thigh. He looked at Min with unwavering intensity, black lipstick-traced mouth dancing to the lyrics.

The roaches were almost to Ryan. He was pressing himself into the corner of the metal and glass, trying to make himself as small as he could, visibly trembling.

Their lips kept moving, but Princess Ryan stopped playing too. Instead his hands snaked up Prince Min's leg and side, making sure to touch skin, and undid the clasp for the strap of his keytar. It fell in two sides around them.

Prince Min reached towards the outside of the mirror, the Keytar held tightly in his fist.

Meat Min understood his signal immediately and reached in.

Their hands touched. The keytar was solid metal in Min's tight fist.)

YOU SHOULD KNOW,

(He pulled and the Keytar came easily, grey metal chrome perfection, heavy on his arm.

He grabbed the handle with both hands and lifted. Mirror Min faced him with his bare chest pushed outwards in fearless defiance--break me if you can, become me if you dare, Min could almost hear him say. Princess Ryan looked like nothing was happening at all, except for the way she looked up at his Prince.

Real Ryan shot him and then one single panicked look across the looking glass. The roaches were so close that even through the noise, Min could hear their chorus of hissing.)

YOU'RE HIS FAVOURITE WORST NIGHTMARE!

Min-Gi Park swung down and smashed their reflections in the mirror, broke clear through the clear wall like it was nothing with a force that it splinter into crystal and cave in completely, a giant hole opening and clearing the way for the--

"DOOR!" He screamed at Ryan, and Ryan obeyed immediately. There wasn't time for anything else, because with the upswing of the keytar he smashed one of the roach things under it's--chin? Mouth?--knocking it reeling into the air and back into the others. On the next swing back down he swung right into the face of a second, then left into the face of a third, there were so many they'd be on him in a pile any second--

He was yanked by the back of his shirt so hard he nearly fell over, but he managed to catch himself just in time and suddenly he was out of the train car. Ryan slammed the doors shut just as one of the things nearly blocked them, and the result was that its thick, ugly proboscis was caught in the metal snapping shut like a bear trap. They heard a scream as the tongue whipped and writhed and Ryan let out a horrified scream as it came into contact with his skin.

He jumped away from the door like it had struck him with lightning, held his cheek for a moment, and then crumpled to the floor as he broke into tears.

The train took them through the desert, rattling towards nowhere in particular at all.