Chapter Text
Miles crashes hard. Simon offered them the guest bedroom, saying they would need the rest, and as soon as Miles touched the bed, he was out like a light. He didn’t even bother to undress. Waylon himself wouldn’t have either, too afraid to pay too much attention to his clothes, let alone his own body – he'd drive himself mad over the state he's in.
Having slept for the better half of the day, Waylon sat alert and anxious next to the window, periodically peeking between the blinds. Two minutes pass, he checks. He swears he hears the sound of tires grinding against sediment, of distant incoherent chatter, sees lights in the very corner of his eyes. There has to be somebody outside. Each time he checks, there isn't, but he might as well check again, and again, and again. Just in case, because you never could be too sure with these things, could you?
He knows this isn’t good. He imagines Lisa’s look of disapproval, her head shaking sadly. Waylon knew he was a pitiful sight. He’d really, really hate for her to see him like this, to see him whatsoever. No matter how much he wanted to see her, he wondered if he really could bring himself to. What would she think of him now? No, he doesn’t want to know, but he does, but he can’t, if he did it would hurt, if she saw him it would hurt them both. If…
His mind runs like crazy all night, babbling uncontrollably with all sorts of thoughts. If you asked him what he was thinking moments ago, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. Just that they were sickening, that they loosened his grip on reality. One moment he blinks, and the second he's greeted with soft rays of light. Waylon’s not sure if he had actually fallen asleep, or if he lost track of time so severely. He looks around the room blearily – Miles hasn't stirred from his spot, so heavily asleep it's as if he's dead.
Like he's dead. Oh, God. Waylon crawls across the floor and peers over the bed, watching intently for the slightest sign of life. A rhythmic rise of the chest. Rapid eye movement beneath the lids. Anything that would bring him a smidge of comfort.
Then, Miles takes a deep, sharp breath. Waylon startles, taken aback, shaking with relief. A breath he didn’t know he was holding escapes him. He stands up and decides it's time for him to leave the room – before he wakes Miles up with his mayhem.
The guest room was down a short hall, connected to a bathroom and leading toward the living room; as he hobbles down the corridor, he can’t help but feel like a ghost. Lost, wandering without a purpose, a hand dragging along the wall to keep himself steady. There’s a reason why he’s here. He just doesn’t feel important enough to undertake it. Like the job belongs to somebody else, somebody more capable, confrontational, confident. That’s why he sent the E-mail in the first place; he didn’t think he could do it, he lacked the strength that Miles had. If Miles weren’t there, he probably would have given up, would have succumbed to madness and let the asylum claim his dead body, till he was all bones no flesh. He shudders.
Waylon forgets where he is, lost in the depths of his mind, and is shocked when a voice draws him out. It was Simon.
“Mr. Park, was it? You can come sit if you’d like.”
“Oh.” Waylon was still at a loss for words. The formality made him feel shy. “Yes, Park… Waylon Park. You can just call me Waylon, that would be okay.”
He joins him in the living room – small, quaint, with a loveseat by the window and a sofa adjacent to it. There’s an unlit fireplace in the corner, with cinders along the bed to indicate it’s been used recently. It makes sense. The weather’s been getting colder and colder.
“I got it. Waylon. So you’re the whistleblower, aren’t you?”
Oh. That’s what this was. Waylon swallows thickly and wrings his hands together.
“You could say that… But none of this would have happened without Miles. If he hadn’t come, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere, it would’ve–”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Waylon,” Simon cuts him off there. His expression is serious. “It takes the first step, and that? All you. You know, I was in your position once too.”
“Is that so…?”
“Yeah, I blew the whistle a few times myself,” Simon leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes in thought. “Mount Massive was just a pebble in a pond. As was I.”
“You mean, you worked at Murkoff too,” Waylon seemed antsy and unsure. He’d forgotten what Miles had disclosed to him about Simon, but it was slowly coming back to him.
“Something like work, yeah. They used me and hung me to dry, just like they did you, Waylon.”
Waylon frowns. How does Simon know anything about him? The comment felt ominous, gave him goosebumps. The evidence bag was in the guest room, laid by Miles’ side, untouched. He crossed his arms and held himself, idly rubbing his arm with the underside of his thumb, thoroughly stricken with worry and paranoia. Simon continues without Waylon having to respond.
“Tough subject, I know, but I could tell just by looking at you. Didn’t mean to scare you, it just takes one to know one.” Simon gave him his best genuine expression. It still didn’t sit right with Waylon, it felt as if his mind was being read.
“I couldn’t take what was happening. I tried to encourage others at the Corp, and that led to my downfall,” Simon continues, “I was in so deep, and so was everybody else. They decided to admit me to therapy for hysteria.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“It just seemed like you needed somebody who would understand.”
Waylon didn’t feel understood, just threatened. But maybe he was being unreasonable. It didn’t feel as if anybody would get what he went through, not unless they were there suffering with him. He didn’t get a chance to talk about what happened yet outside of his notes (although, he worried that once he reflected on them, they would be truly incoherent, as they had been scribbled down in a trance of horror). Not even with Miles did he talk about the… other stuff that happened, while they were separated. They only shared a knowing look between one another, exasperated, marks of pain and wear lingering on their faces, blotched with dirt and blood and God knows what else. Pain that drew them together, connected them, made them alike.
“There is someone who understands me,” Waylon says, “He’s just asleep in the other room.”
Miles dreams for the first time in what felt like years. He knows everybody and their mom dreams, they just can't remember them – wake somebody up in the midst of REM, and they'll recall the most vivid dreams, tell you all sorts of colourful details.
He dreams of claustrophobia. In airvents, surrounded by pulsing flesh, the scent of copper thick in his mouth. He opens it to speak and blood pours out. He dreams of drowning in sand, the grains filling his lungs and suffocating him to death.
He dreams of meeting someone else, someone who wasn't pretending to be a doctor. Who wasn't a patient trying to relate to him, saying they were too alive, just like him. He dreams of sticking together, hand-in-hand through hell, and then going separate ways.
He dreams of meeting each other again half a day later, utterly changed, like their particles were rearranged by the faces of death. He dreams of crushing bones into marrow and bodies combusting into chunks, organs turned into slop, spraying blood all over his body, all over Waylon. He speaks and nothing comes out, just blood, just sand.
All of this should be horrific, should have his blood pumping, but he feels a whole lot of nothing. He wakes up fully clothed in somebody else's bed. It takes him roughly fifteen minutes to remember where he is. God, he needs a shower, he’s drenched in sweat.
Miles remembers the layout of the cabin from the last few times he’s been there. Making his way into the bathroom, he notes that he won’t have clean clothes to change into, but it’ll still be the best damned shower he’s ever had. He’s quick to undress and get beneath the showerhead, not even bothering to wait for the water to heat up. It’ll get warm eventually, won’t it? Miles probably spends half an hour just standing beneath the waterfall, eyes closed in utter bliss, focusing on how the water soothes his battered body. It’s been days since he last had a proper bathing (he absolutely hates going without a nice, relaxing bath at the end of the day, where he can wash all his worries away) and it feels so fucking good he wants to kiss the guy who invented showers right on the mouth.
It’s not easy to wash his hair in this state – unless he wants to get shampoo in the crevices of his hand wounds and leave them burning. He simply opts to douse his scalp in shampoo, rub it in with the heel of his hand, and thoroughly rinse it with water. He figures Simon won’t be needing it anyway – he’s bald. Have you ever seen a bald person fuss over shampoo? Miles doesn’t think so.
Now that he’s mostly clean, he shifts his attention to his hands. His fingers, or lack thereof, are crusted over with blood and grit and all kinds of nastiness. It's burning hot to the touch, probably infected, but Miles doesn't feel feverish. Warmer than usual, sure, heat radiating off him like crazy, but apart from the extra heat, he feels... nothing, really. He carefully washes the wounds free of dirt and muck, turns off the faucet, and steps out to dry. Relief, that’s the word of the day. Relief in getting a night’s rest, in getting a shower, and drying off with a soft towel. He’s got to thank Simon after this. Maybe he needs a kiss on the lips, too.
There's a First Aid Kit underneath the sink. Miles gets to work on his hands.
The flesh is raw, the scab rubbed off, dried blood cleaned away. They'd been debrided in the shower, and now they were bleeding again. It should be a good sign, that the skin is not totally necrotic. His hands are buzzing with this faint stinging sensation that just barely reaches him. It seems like it should hurt a lot worse, but hey, he’s not complaining.
Miles honestly shouldn't be fucking with the wounds. He doesn't know jack shit about how to mend severed fingers. It’s never been much of an issue for him, wasn’t on the list of risks and disadvantages to becoming a journalist. But nevertheless, he clamps gauze over them for a good five minutes, checks to see if the bleeding's stopped, and then weaves bandages around both his hands. They're stiff, but he has just enough mobilization to clench his hands and wiggle his remaining fingers. He looks over his abdomen, where he'd been shot, and it's an abnormality. It's littered with bumpy, bruised skin, where he supposes the entrance wounds were, and the sight makes his stomach churn. Though he decides, with a worrisome amount of apathy: if it's not bleeding, why mess with it?
That feeling of filth being lifted off his skin was heavenly – better than a bottled water bath off the side of the road. But when he next looks up in the mirror, the relief fades away just as quick as it had appeared. His eyes, sclera and all, are dark, like pools of oil clouding water. And he just stands there, mouth agape, skin prickling and crawling with goosebumps. He hasn’t felt such an intense reaction ever since he got plowed down with bullets.
The bathroom light flickers, and the apparitions he can’t seem to escape reappeared, dancing along the edge of his vision. Miles grips onto the sink to keep himself steady, but when something not-quite-human flickers into view behind him, he swivels around hard enough to make wind, staring owlishly at the figure with a raised fist.
“I’m sorry!” It quickly says, hands flying up in surrender, “I didn’t mean to scare you…”
The voice is otherworldly, feeling not only as if it were coming from within his own mind, but all around him, too. Miles narrows his eyes in disbelief. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s hallucinated like this – it was more than just Rorschach blots swarming his vision. It was something with substance.
It’s fuzzy around the edges, all static-like, that kind of grainy feel a movie made on real film has. It looks youthful in both face and stature – ghostly pale and gaunt, but still retaining a slight boyish softness, a little round on the edges. Black hair falls around its face, and covering its body is a patient’s gown, loose and ill-fitting. It’s staring back at him, and if Miles were in his right mind, he’d probably argue it was just as fucking scared as he was.
There's an air of familiarity in the apparition's face. Miles shuffles through his memories, trying to place it. A photo he's seen before. He might as well go ahead and bite the bullet.
“Are you real?” He finally asks.
“Yes.”
Miles thinks: No, you’re fucking not, I’m going crazy. I’m seriously going crazy. Acute schizophrenia, something like that. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Do you have to cuss so much?”
“Uh, shit, sorry, I mean… okay, yeah, alright. My bad. What – are you, exactly?”
“I'm Billy,” It says, “The last host. You took my place. But you already know that, right?” Its voice is soft, eyes tired, and it smiles sadly at Miles. “Don’t worry… It’s okay that you killed me, really. I wanted to die anyway, just – not alone… I wanted to say thank you." Miles is at a loss of words. He swallows thickly and nods. “You’re, uh – welcome, Billy…?”
It comes back to him; he's seen Billy, before the engine. Seen him while rummaging through Internet archives and names with questionable connections to Murkoff. He looks nothing like the man Miles killed just some days ago. He’s got hair and shit now.
Miles tries piecing it all together. The host is… himself. He's the host now because Billy Hope is dead. But he's not. He’s right here, standing in front of him, staring at him like a lost puppy, expecting him to say something. Now the Walrider is inside of Miles, which is kind of freaking him out right now, not going to fucking lie about that, which also explains a lot of things, like the – well, every fucking thing that has been happening within the past forty-eight hours, really, and –
“You’re thinking too hard, just calm down…” Billy says with a sigh. Crazy mind-reading shit. He almost looks hurt, shoulders falling. Miles clears his throat, runs a hand through his hair.
“So you…” He pauses, mind racing, before landing on a memory, one that has his stomach rolling around taut inside of him. “I killed you. And then I got shot sixty times. But you kept me alive. That’s what this is, right? You’re keeping me alive, like – like that Wernicke guy.”
It’s asked harmlessly. Honestly. But Billy’s smile fades and he averts his gaze. Miles can feel the sad anger radiating off of it. It’s overwhelming. He thinks he might throw up, it’s so much, tinnitus rattling his brain. Then the boy’s face softens into something else.
“You saved me, so I wanted to save you too,” Billy starts, then stops. “...I don’t really have a choice, though. I’m stuck like this. It’s keeping me here because it wants you.”
Miles doesn’t have to ask what it is, he knows. Billy means the Walrider.
“But you’re – it’s – well, I was under the impression that… The Walrider was its own thing, yeah? And you were the host. Two separate guys. Things. Entities?”
“Well, you’re the host now.” Billy says, as if that answers the question. “When I died, it was just my body that was lost. Me and the Walrider became one, and now you’re part of us, too.”
Miles pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. He didn’t exactly sign a consent form for any of this – well, actually, he did, when he marched through the front door of the asylum, saw what the fuck was up, and somehow didn’t run away yelling. That’s the name of the game, he guesses, but he’s not quite sure how many other journalists get possessed in their line of work. He’ll figure this out one way or another – after he puts some clothes on.
“Can you, like, turn around or something? Cover your eyes, maybe? I really need to put some clothes on so I can think.”
Billy nods at him sheepishly, and just like that, he disappears into a thin plume of smoke, which also fades quickly enough.
Shit. That happened. It wasn’t any more bizarre than what else has happened, but it sure left him buck-naked and dumbfounded.