The world was on fire and no one could save me but you
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do
Cause I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you

Wicked Game – Chris Isaak

~ ~ ~

"Hey, hey, are you with me? Come on, wake up, we need to go!"

His velvet voice called out to me, but it was different from the whispers I had heard before. He sounded upset. Angry even. Confused by the unfamiliarity of the sound, I opened my eyes, and found myself face to pallid face with the owner of that voice, staring down at me through blue-green eyes with a very displeased expression.

I hastily scrambled up into a sitting position, immediately regretting my every move. With a groan of pain I pressed a palm against my pounding head, hoping that the outside pressure would perhaps counteract the one coming from within.

I'm starting to get quite sick of getting knocked out all the time, I thought.

"Do you think you can get up and walk?" he asked me.

"Where to?" I asked back, confused.

And then I realized that we were no longer in the white room. Underneath my hands, I felt brittle, dry foliage. We were in a clearing in a forest, surrounded by dead trees. Everything around us seemed tinged grey. The dead leaves on the ground. The trees, stretching their naked, scraggy branches up into a leaden sky above us. Everything but Cloud's eyes, which he had fixed on me.

"What is this place?" I asked, slowly getting up to my feet.

"It's a forest."

"Why, thank you, I would have never known," I remarked drily. "How did we get here?"

He just stared at me with that unhappy look. I had the impression he wanted to say something, but didn't know how. And at the same time the look on his face made me wonder if I really wanted to know what it was.

"I'd love to tell you, but I don't know," he answered curtly and turned away. "We should go."

"Where to?"

"Anywhere but here," he just said and began to walk.

"Hey. Hey! Wait up!"

I caught up with him and looked at his face from the side. He continued to stare straight ahead, ignoring my presence and wearing a frown so dark that I thought it might block out the sun, if it hadn't already been absent from the sky above us.

"Where are you even going?" I gestured at the desolate, dead woods around us. "Everything here looks the same!"

"It doesn't much matter which way we go."

...as long as we get somewhere? I thought. We're sure to do that, if only we walk long enough.

"Come on now, at least tell me why you're so mad!" I pleaded.

"It's nothing."

I snorted. The 'nothing' had become almost tangible now. There was something unspoken between us, a tension like a stretched out rubber band just about to reach the limit of its elasticity and violently snap into each of our faces.

What right does he have to be pissed when I'm the one who gets trash-talked by his sister? Who gets treated like an enemy when I don't even understand the first thing about what is going on in this place? Who continues to get thrown into these insane situations that make no sense, and is somehow expected to obey and follow orders and nobody ever bothers to explain just what the fuck is going on?

Along with these thoughts, I felt a wave of anger well up inside of me.

"Stop this."

He continued to ignore me, so I just stopped in my tracks. He went on for a few steps before he noticed, then he turned around and threw me an annoyed look.

"Come on now, we don't have time for this."

"Why are you like this?" I asked.

"Like what?" He crossed his arms in front of his chest and cocked his head to the side as he looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

I vaguely gestured in his direction, unable to put into words this aura of hostility he exuded all of a sudden.

"I'm not doing anything," he said.

"Exactly my point. You used to be... nicer."

He snorted. "Don't you remember? I'm rude, I'm mean and I have no manners whatsoever."

"But you have lots of other qualities, don't you. For example, you're secretive and refuse to tell me what the fuck is going on in this place," I snapped.

He heaved a deep sigh. "Just keep on walking."

"No, I won't! Not until you tell me where we are."

"We're in a forest!" As his voice grew louder the velvet in it turned raspier. "We're in danger. So we need to keep. On. Walking. Is that so hard to comprehend?"

"Yes," I met his angry glare defiantly. "Yes it is. Because nothing here makes any sense whatsoever. You, least of all things."

He groaned in frustration and turned away. I watched him pace back and forth a few steps without walking away too far. He remained with his back to me, a perfect picture of despair, with his shoulders and head hanging and his face covered by one hand. It pained me to see him like this, for a reason I couldn't quite explain. But the thought that I was the reason for his state somehow drowned out my own anger and frustration and replaced it with misery.

"I thought..." I started, "When you showed me the library... and we talked ... I thought..."

A memory forced its way through my mind like a tidal wave, and I recalled that moment in the library when he had been so very close to me. When I had made my decision to never come back to this place, because I could not bear his perfection and all these foolish feelings that he had evoked within me. But I had never really had a choice. Now here I was, back again, with Sartre in mind as I was looking at this other person, who was my hell. The sight of him alone was just about as agonizing as I remembered. I swallowed hard, and forced myself to finish my sentence, despite the strangely bitter taste the words left on my tongue.

"I thought we could be.... friends, I guess."

"Friends?"

I could see the tension in the muscles of his back through the fabric of his clothes. It made me wonder if the rubber band between us would snap any second now. But when he spoke, his tone was soft and strangely wistful, caressing me like velvet.

"I'm sorry about all that. It was wrong of me to look for solace in you."

"You - what?"

"You just came to this place. You shouldn't... I shouldn't put you in this position, to make you responsible for my happiness. That's why I thought..."

"What are you even talking about?" My heart was pounding in my chest as I hesitantly took a step towards him. "Wait. Is it because of what Rain said? How she thinks I'm-"

The words got stuck in my throat when he turned around to face me. His eyes were filled with sadness, but beyond all that with a yearning that shook me to the core, caused my mouth to go dry and my mind to go blank. As he looked me over like that for just a moment, a shiver ran through my body, but I wasn't feeling cold any longer. Not in the least.

"Ah. I thought you must have overheard that... No, I don't think you're a spy," he said quietly, "But still..."

"You think I'm imprinted," I guessed, narrowing my eyes at him. I began to hate that word.

"I- well. I certainly haven't met anyone before who was so happy to listen to me read Paradise Lost for hours..." he mumbled.

On his cheeks, there was a hint of a red shimmer as he ran his hand through his silver hair in a nervous gesture. It left it more tousled than before, and somehow, the thought that even someone with looks as perfect as his could have a bad hair day made me smile.

"I'm not imprinted," I insisted. "I'm not a duckling."

He chuckled. "No, you most certainly aren't."

"So what's all this really about, then?" I gestured between the two of us. "Did I do something wrong to upset you? I mean, I still don't really know what's going on here and I'm just trying to..."

Do what, exactly? Find a way to wake up? I thought to myself. No. That point has passed. This is not just a dream... There's more to it. And I need to get to the bottom of it, and find the secret that his place holds.

But as I looked at him, and the gentle smile that had replaced the frown on his face, I really wished it was just a dream, because that would have been easier to handle. Just looking at him hurt. A lot. I didn't want to be hurt again. At the thought, another image appeared before my mind's eye, of a body in a black and red uniform, in a pool of black and red blood, and a head of black and red hair bending over her.

But then again, I only ever bring misery to those around me, don't I? So actually, I'm the one who hurts others. Maybe I deserve to be in hell.

I averted my eyes and stared at the dead leaves on the ground before me.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Cloud finally answered my question. "It's just... From the moment I first saw you, I felt very... strange. Like I had seen you before somewhere. When I look at you, you seem so very familiar, but... When Quill said you might just be imprinted, I wondered what it meant, for what I felt. I didn't want to rush into something foolish and make everything more complicated, just based on a feeling like that, especially not at your expense." He heaved a deep sigh. "I know it all sounds silly now, and..."

"Not at all," I shook my head. "Perhaps you're the one who's imprinted."

He looked at me with a baffled expression, then he let out a laugh that made me smile too.

"Well, I mean.... When I realized you had memories, I just wondered... if it's just me, or if you, too... feel something?" he asked.

A special connection? I thought.

As our eyes met, and I was drawn in by that hypnotizing color again, I felt my mind go blank and my body turn into nothing but tingles in a sea of numbness. An old song forced its way into my mind, like a nagging little voice that tried to derail my train of thought that I was barely able to steer into a meaningful direction as it was.

"Well, I...."

I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream.

"I mean I certainly feel like..."

I know you, that gleam in your eyes is so familiar to me.

"Like we might have met before, but I don't..."

And if I know you, I know what you'll do –

"But I don't remember. And I'm certain I would remember meeting someone..." I gulped. "Like you."

"Hm," he hummed, giving me a curious look. "Perhaps... we just need to get to know each other better, before we can know for sure."

"Yeah, perhaps." I concluded.

We looked at each other in silence for a few moments, until somewhere in the distance, a long-drawn, blood-curdling howl echoed through the woods. It seemed to spread through every fiber of my body, and filled me with an undefined sense of dread. But what was worse was the eerie silence that followed. It seemed to creep into my bones like an icy chill. Just like before, not a bird was chirping, nor an insect buzzing. This forest was as dead as the leaves below our feet, but it wasn't completely lifeless. Now I knew that something else was out there, somewhere.

"Let's continue our conversation while walking," Cloud suggested, and I nodded in agreement.

_____
A.N.
The lyrics of the song quoted here are from "Once Upon a Dream" from the 1959 Disney movie Sleeping Beauty. Its melody is based on the Garland Waltz from Tchaikovsky's ballet The Sleeping Beauty. There's a fairly popular and more recent, hauntingly beautiful and eerie cover version by Lana Del Rey for the movie Maleficient.