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The nightmares have been getting worse lately, so Thomas goes and researches lucid dreaming. He figures, can’t stop sleeping altogether (despite Remus’s best efforts), so might as well try to twist them a little bit, right?
Lucid dreaming isn’t his first thought, not even his second. Roman technically controls his dreams. Well, he and Remus. (Thomas doesn’t want to talk to Remus about it; he preemptively dreads the answer.) But Roman controls the dreams Thomas likes, so Thomas pulls Roman over one lazy afternoon and asks him if he could maybe pull some brain-strings, flip some thoughts and paint some dreamscapes and make things a bit better in the fantasies of the night-time variety.
But Roman just sighs sadly and says, “No hope there, I fear – the way your brain works isn’t perfectly clear! To me, anyway. Oh, I wish I could, I really wish, but I don’t make the dreams happen, I just guide the vibes.”
Roman is all vibes and story and song, all the time. Thomas just has to accept that if Roman says it can’t be done, it isn’t happening. But asking his creativity to pull stop on the bad dream level would probably be too easy, wouldn’t it?
He tries chamomile tea, meditation tapes, even makes a start at trying a healthy sleep schedule (and fails – sorry, Logan), but it’s all more than fruitless, and he’s at nearly a full month of yawning and bleary eyes and Remus grinning at him from the shadows. He doesn’t need Janus to tell him that this is unsustainable, but it’s not like taking a spa day or tripping his enemies down the stairs or whatever Janus is advocating for this week is going to help him any on that front.
So he remembers something vague he’d read once about lucid dreaming, thinks, all right, time to snap myself out of it, and flips open his laptop to learn more.
*
Lucid dreaming is more of an art than an exact science, which annoys Logan so much that he isn’t very talkative about it, even when Thomas is thirty tabs research-deep and his aging laptop is whirring in heated protest.
The theory goes like this: you pick a symbol – some sort of recurring motif or reminder – and strongly associate it with a reality-check in real life. Every time you see the symbol, you ask yourself, is this it? Is this the real world? Am I awake or dreaming? – and, so the theory goes, if you do this enough times it’ll eventually worm its way into your subconscious. You’ll see the symbol during a dream eventually, and the familiarity of the routine will force you to question your state of consciousness. And once you’re aware of the fact that you are in a dream… well, the world’s your oyster. Goodbye, nightmares. That’s the hope, anyway.
The only thing to do now, Thomas thinks, leaning his elbows against his desk, is to find a symbol. Maybe a circle? Just a regular circle He sees a lot of circles, the world is full of circles – but no, that’s too vague, he won’t remember to do it every time… maybe a location he visits a lot?
He swivels around on his chair for inspiration – catches sight of a mirror, of his own tired face, and thinks, hm. It’s not the worst catalyst for a reality check. He glances at himself in the mirror often enough that it’ll probably be a consistent routine in his head, but not too much that he’ll forget to do it. He needs a second opinion, though.
“Not too egocentric, is it?” he asks Janus, who’s lounging near his work desk and making a game out of scrolling through his recent messages and announcing under his breath which ones deserve to be left on read for the rest of eternity. “Maybe I should pick something that… isn’t my face.”
Janus stops advocating for ghosting Mary-Lee forever, and says, “You’re really asking me this? Go rub an oil lamp and ask a genie for sleep assistance, for all I care. Whatever works, works . The only person judging you for using your reflection as a dream symbol is you.”
“I am very judgemental,” Thomas mutters. “All right. Mirror it is. Remind me if I forget.”
“Certainly not.”
Thomas nods his appreciation, then turns around. He looks properly at the mirror, examines his own face, and asks himself, am I awake, or am I dreaming?
“Very clearly awake,” says Janus, the figment of his imagination that is currently starting discourse via his Twitter account. “Wow, look at how easy that was. Your sleep’s improving already. This was a good idea.”
Thomas throws an eraser at him, and shuts his laptop.
*
Over the following week, he glances at himself in the mirror over and over and thinks, am I dreaming?, each time. Catching sight of his bleary face over the bathroom sink in the mornings, rings dark enough to make Virgil sue for infringement – definitely awake, urgh. His reflection in the shiny surface of the still-untouched stove? – awake, I really should cook something. In the rearview mirror of his car – pretty sure I’m awake, I always crash in dreams. Wait, I need to signal, oh shit –
There’s a few bumpy starts at first, a few times when he remembers way too late that he should have reality-checked half a dozen times over – but eventually, it starts to fall from conscious thought to habit. Enough so that all the disparate parts of him get in on it too, easy as breathing.
Patton is digging through the fridge, pulling out a half-crumbling slice of chocolate cake – he says, “Oop, reflection in the cake pan – you’re awake, right?” and Thomas respond with a nod and a sigh, he’d really wanted that last slice –
“You’re awake,” Logan says, with a sigh, “and you really shouldn’t be. Have you tried closing your eyes and waiting it out? Rest without sleep is better than no rest at all – ”
“Definitely not awake,” Janus hisses in his ear as Thomas tries to force himself out of bed, “you can totally just go back to bed now and catch an extra ten minutes nap time– ow! How dare you shove me bodily off the mattress – ”
But the dreams keep coming, and the nights don’t get any better, and the symbol doesn’t appear. Remus is in sickeningly good spirits, belting out increasingly filthy showtune parodies at odd hours of the morning – and Thomas is officially at the end of his rope.
“Mirrors,” he tells himself into his pillow, pressed against his face like he’s trying to choke the breath out of himself with feathers – no, that’s a Remus thought, don’t think about it, let it go – “Definitely mirrors, thinking about mirrors, I’m awake right now, just keep thinking about mirrors. Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors – ”
Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to force it so hard, considering what happens next.
*
Air hazy. Feet bare. Sensation is strange and barely-there, on one second and off the next. It might be a forest and it might be a churchyard. The trees are tall, and they bend with vicious wind. There is a crowd of people, but they might be multitude or they might be few. It’s evening, or early morning, or deepest midnight, whichever makes the most sense when you pause to consider it.
The ground squirms beneath his feet. The earth smells of worms.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today –”
He is dressed ever so finely, black and white from neck to toe, pulled right from childhood Sunday mornings. Rose at his lapel. Fingers plastered around his wrists, digits drawing tight and painful. He tries to shift against them, but they hold fast and firm, unrelenting.
“ – in this sign of God – ”
He cannot move – he is marched forward in a slow-moving haze by the silent crowd. He can’t speak. He can barely breathe. There is a box, and it is lovingly carved, and it has his name on it. The inside is lined with slick sweet velvet.
“ – to celebrate the life of this man – ”
The invisible hands help him along, the crowd begins to murmur. He can’t make out the tone of it, which is worse than knowing for certain if they hate him or not. He doesn’t want this. He tries to will himself to speak, to push away the hands and to make a break for it, but the impulse doesn’t reach his limbs, not even close.
“ – and to bid him farewell – ”
He is pushed backfirst into the coffin. It is soft and comfortable; his skin crawls. He looks up, and sees no faces, only the thrashing trees. If the crowd is still there, they choose not to look down upon him.
“ – through me – through the earth – may he join you – ”
The box closes over him – unoiled latch snickering to a fatal halt, lid firmly in place. The air is hot and heavy all at once, and he finds there is barely room for him to draw his legs up to his chest. Before he can put it to the test, there is a terrible jolt. The motion of being pushed forwards, and then falling down, colliding with the ground, every joint in his body rattling in protest through the cushions.
“ – in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, may he be committed to soil and Heaven, may the Lord forgive his sinful soul. In the name of Christ: amen. Amen. Amen. Amen – ”
He holds on tight, braces until it’s over and he’s fully fallen – and then the moment it is, wet clumps begin to fall on the roof of the box. Heavy, arrhythmic. There is still light seeping through the cracks, but soon it is covered, and soon he can only smell worms. And still the dirt begins to fall.
He tries to scream, his throat locks. He tries to plead, his tongue fails. He tries to pound on the sides of the coffin, the lid, but his fists are weak and slow-to-move and the sound is muffled before it can even reach his own ears.
Even the crowds are barely audible now, their muted murmurs faded out to nothing over the pounding of his heart. The dirt shifts and settles. Presses and compresses. The lid bends and buckles, a fine trickle of dark earth spilling onto his face.
He tries to scream. His throat locks. The box is silent and dark, but for his breathing.
He tries to scream. He cannot. Inexplicably, the wood above him glints like glass, and Thomas is caught with the vision of his own face – pale, exhausted, terrified, thoroughly cushioned in velvet and oak. For a second, he asks himself a question that’s so habitual it’s become instinct – and then he wonders how he can see himself, even through the violent darkness –
– and then, all at once, he’s aware and he is there.
“I’m dreaming?” he wonders, and then his breath chokes him and he is seized with utter terror. The knowledge that this isn’t real, not at all, doesn’t make it any better. He wheezes and flails, pressing at the sides of the narrow coffin with trembling fingers, smelling only dirt and hearing only his heart pounding in his ears. “Oh, my god. I’m dreaming. About being buried alive. Oh my god, I’m in a coffin, oh my god – ”
With a shriek and a shatter the image of himself falls through the mirror from above, plunging from shiny darkness into velvety blackness, knocking the wind out of Thomas. It’s a collision like no other. Thomas screams and chokes and sobs, fighting back instinctively, trying to gain distance in a space where there’s no distance to be gained at all. It’s a nightmarish thrashing of limbs and panic as he tries to push back grasping hands and snapping teeth.
Then, just as quickly, he feels fingernails rake across his skin and, absurdly, they are familiar fingernails – and as the frenzied panic tightens, becomes more acute, he hears the voice of his attacker and knows who it is, even if he doesn’t know why or how.
“It’s me,” he gasps, trying to hold on and push back all at once, “Please, Virge – Virgil – it’s just me, please… ”
The other person in the box goes abruptly still, and the air goes heavy, weighted and motionless, and then Virgil says, “Thomas? What the fuck!” A second passes, and then there’s motion again, the sound of feet kicking out against the far wall of the cramped box. Thunk. The whole thing rattles, and he kicks again. Thunk. Thunk. “Is this a coffin?”
“I’m never trying lucid dreaming ever again,” Thomas wheezes miserably, unable to catch his breath, unable to still his stupid speeding heart. “Stop kicking it, you’re making it – ”
Virgil has never made a habit of listening to what Thomas wants. Especially when they’re locked in a spiral, especially when they’re pressed so closely together. He kicks again. The coffin lets out a terrible shudder, and dirt showers down onto them, and they both freeze solid in mute terror.
Virgil is right on top of Thomas, pressing him painfully down into the velvet, elbow digging into his gut. Thomas can hear his breath coming hot and strained; feel the electric anxiety prickling off him in painful waves.
“I think we’re really deep down,” Thomas whispers, voice cracking. “Can we just… move slowly? And carefully? You’re… you’re kind of crushing me right now.”
This coffin isn’t built for two. It takes some shuffling and some squirming to get them lying mostly side-by-side, but even then they have to twist themselves together, tangling their limbs and draping body over body in some claustrophobic parody of a hug. Virgil’s chin is tucked angularly to Thomas’s shoulder, his nails cutting painful rivulets at the back of his arms. They can hear each others’ equally ragged breathing, feel the synchronous thunder of their heartbeats as they induce each other to even further panic over and over again.
“Can’t you just wake up?” Virgil growls after a moment, voice raspy and strained.
“How?” Thomas retorts, and he’s getting a bit raspy himself. “Extremely open to suggestions right now – ow!” Virgil has just pinched him on the arm, hard. “Ow, ow!”
“Isn’t that meant to do it?” Virgil says, and pinches him again. “That’s how it always works in books – ”
Thomas does his best to shove Virgil back, pushing his hands away, even though there’s barely the space to move. “I don’t know! It’s just not working and it hurts, so stop it.”
“Okay, okay, shit, okay – ” Virgil stops pinching, flattening his hands to Thomas’s back instead in what is nearly an apology. He is shaking, but then again, so is Thomas. “…It’s lucid dreaming, you know you’re dreaming, so can’t you change it? Get us out of here? Isn’t that the point of all of this?”
Thomas tries. He tries so hard, he presses his eyes closed and remembers that he’s dreaming, and thinks about not being in a box with a lid on it. There are so many better places he could be right now, and – theoretically – he could be in any one of them in an instant. Isn’t that how dreaming is supposed to work? Isn’t that how lucid dream is supposed to work?
But the box feels so real. And every time he starts to get a handle on the idea of not being in the box, he becomes joltingly aware of Virgil’s presence all over again – the constant jitter of nerves coursing through both of them, the way his fingers jitter and tap nervously against Thomas’s spine – and he can’t drag his mind away. He’s grounded to the coffin, in the worst possible way. He tries reaching for the others too – Logan, Roman, even Janus would do in a pinch right now – but it’s like trying to hold onto sand as the tide drags it out. Too much doubt. Too much fear.
If only Virgil weren’t here – but, no. Virgil is here now. They’re in this together, and there’s no changing that.
Eventually, he gives up. He shakes his head, knowing Virgil can feel the motion, and says, “Sorry.”
And Virgil says, “Oh god, this sucks. You really had to drag me into this, didn’t you?”
*
There’s no way of knowing how deep they are. If there’s any end to the dirt at all. Maybe it’s just all dirt, forever, an eternity of dirt and one small box containing the two of them. It’s not real, so anything’s possible.
“We could dig our way out,” Thomas says. “I – I mean. It’s just a dream. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“We die,” Virgil snaps. Being in a cramped space, being trapped in a coffin, is making him irritable and skittish. Thomas feels like he’s been locked in a box with a feral cat. The claws aren’t out for the moment, but Thomas knows they’re there, that he could get slashed and sliced to shivering shreds at any time.
Virgil doesn’t mean to hurt him, but sometimes he just can’t help it.
Thomas swallows so hard it feels like he’s choking all over again, and offers, “But… we might get out.”
“And we might never get to the surface, so we’ll just be suffocating in the ground forever like the world’s worst Bethesda glitch,” Virgil snaps, and cringes into Thomas’s side, pulling them together. “So… so we just stay here. Forever. It’s bad. I know it’s bad. But it’s better than choking.”
“It can’t last forever,” Thomas says into the earthy darkness.
“Unless it does,” Virgil breathes back.
“It won’t.”
“It might.”
“I have to wake up eventually,” Thomas huffs against the nervous bubbling in his chest. “That’s… that’s how this works. Right?”
“What if you can’t wake up?” Virgil hisses into Thomas’s ear. “What if you fucked up the lucid dreaming thing and you’re trapped here, and we’re both trapped here, and you’re never going to wake up because you did it wrong and now you’re in a coma forever, and nobody’s going to check on you for days and days because you didn’t tell anyone you were going to get buried alive in your head, and – ”
Thomas lets out a panicked whine, squirming in Virgil’s death grip. His head is starting to spin, dizzy anxiety taking over. He throws his arms tight around Virgil, and they cling painfully to each other, and Virgil just doesn’t stop talking, bubbling out worst-case scenarios like a broken bad-water fountain. It’s the worst, it’s the absolute worst, it feels like dying without really dying and it feels like it’s never going to end.
But Virgil can’t help it, and neither can Thomas. It’s just the way they are.
*
It subsides, after a while. It always does. They’re huddled together again, hands tangled together and pressed into the space between them. Just two miserable anxious wrecks, six feet under, trapped in a living nightmare.
And maybe they’re not so alone after all, because Thomas has one ear pressed to the base of the coffin like this, one ear directly towards the ground beneath, and he swears he hears something moving. Is it big? Is it small? He doesn’t want to think about it, he can’t. His nightmares are just the worst.
“What do you think? Remus’s fault?” Thomas asks haltingly. There’s nothing to do but talk, here, and he doesn’t want to live in the silence. He doesn’t want to hear what else might be there.
“Probably,” Virgil shudders. “I’ll kill him. I swear to god, I’ll kill him.”
“Yeah. I mean – could be Roman’s,” Thomas admits, breath still shaky.
“I’ll kill him too,” Virgil says reflexively, then, “Why would this be Roman’s fault?”
“He likes a good rescue plot,” Thomas tells Virgil. The conversation takes place in hushed whispers, the coffin too tight and close to accommodate anything louder than that. “You know… we both do. Getting rescued from buried alive is… it’s… you know. It’s a good one. Usually. When you’re reading it.”
“Oh. Right. D’you think Princey’s going to come and rescue us?” Virgil’s tone is dour and flat, but morbidly hopeful.
“I mean,” Thomas says, “you made it here. So I guess there isn’t any reason why he can’t show up, too.”
“That’d be nice,” Virgil says, softly. He sounds like he means it.
“Nothing to do but wait it out,” Thomas says, shivering. It’s awful how he’s not getting used to the fear, even though it feels like it’s been hours down here. He’s not claustrophobic, but he’s starting to think he could learn to be. It’d be funny if he developed a phobia in a dream, wouldn’t it? And by funny he means not very funny at all.
Virgil’s leg keeps twitching intermittently, nervous energy without an outlet to expel it, dull sporadic thumps on the wooden ceiling of the coffin that make dirt sprinkle down like icing sugar. Thomas doesn’t say anything, because it’s clear that he’s trying to keep it to a minimum. He says, “I hate waiting it out. I hate this. I hate it.”
“I know,” Thomas says, and holds onto Virgil as best he can. “I know, buddy, I know. Me too.”
Beneath them, something vast and terrible shifts, parting the earth in its wake.
*
They wait and wait, and the air grows thinner, hotter. Like city smog on a summer day, impossible to breathe through, but with none of the sun and none of the city to accompany it. Roman doesn’t show. They’d know if he did. There would be grand hoofbeats on the ground high above them, a bright princely voice calling out their names like a song, the earth parting in his wake like the Red Sea.
It started unbearable anyway, but it’s quickly becoming worse. Virgil was not made for cuddling – Thomas isn’t necessarily opposed to trying, but the close quarters and cramped space make it probably the worst scenario to experiment with hugging your anxiety in. Neither of them wants to be here.
“So,” says Thomas, and he wants to bite his nails but he doesn’t think he can wriggle his arms clean to manage it inconspicuously, “when you said you used to be one of them…”
Virgil releases a sigh that’s a growl and a sob all at once, and tries to turn away even though there’s no room for him to flip over. The best he can do is squirm awkwardly onto his back so that his voice hits the ceiling instead of Thomas’s side. He says, “We’re really doing this now?”
“We can lie in stony silence and wait to die instead,” Thomas says, and means for it to be wry and joking but it comes out more like exhausted resignation. “Look – I just think we should talk about it. And since we’re both here… and nobody can hear us…”
“Want to keep it a shameful little secret?” Virgil snaps, louder than the cramped space permits. Thomas flinches back, and Virgil flinches too in fearful parallel.
“No. No, not that. I just thought you… you might not want the others to hear,” he mutters, after a second of fumbling for recovery. “You seemed really…” He fumbles for words. Virgil has a tendency to make the words stutter and stick in his mouth; make normal sentences hard to put out in the right order, the right sentiment. Especially when he’s like this, all bristling and defensive and angry at every part of the world.
Virgil is silent, though. Expectant and furious. Thomas thinks that if he had the choice, he’d be curled up into a prickly little ball of fury, like an angry patchwork hedgehog. The mental image is adorable enough that he manages to get it together, just for a moment.
“I was just… surprised,” Thomas settles on. It’s stupid how realistic this nightmare is. He can feel the sweat gathering on the back of his neck, feel how his limbs are seizing against the cramped position they need to hold, feel the prickle of his arm going numb under Virgil’s weight. “You… surprised me.”
“I know,” Virgil says, bitter. “I felt it.”
“I just didn’t think – ”
“Do you ever?” His voice is so low and seethes so bitterly, it reminds Thomas painfully of when they weren’t on the same side at all. When Virgil was just Anxiety and only that – when Thomas wouldn’t stop wishing he’d leave, when Virgil wouldn’t stop lashing out because it was all he knew how to do.
“I just didn’t think it’d be such a big deal,” Thomas presses onwards, and Virgil abruptly shuts up and stiffens. “No, not like – not like that, it’s… I mean – I kind of already knew?”
“No, you fucking didn’t,” snaps Virgil, stiffening even further.
“Maybe… not consciously,” he amends, pressing his nose to Virgil’s shoulder. “But it felt right, the moment you said it. It felt like I knew the whole time, I just hadn’t been thinking too hard about it.”
Virgil doesn’t untense, at first. He’s a through-and-through line of unyielding steel, a jittering statue of nervous angry fury. Thomas just keeps holding on, though, because there’s nothing else he can do with his arms, and because even if there was something else he could do, he still wouldn’t want to let go. And gradually, Virgil softens. The curve of his body becomes less rigid; he stops trying to flinch away so hard.
Reluctant, he says, “…Yeah. I guess it was… kind of obvious.”
“I never thought too hard about where you came from, at the start,” Thomas admits. The coffin creaks around them. Something’s moving, below. Probably worms. Hopefully worms. “Which, you know. I didn’t think there was anywhere you could come from. So I guess that makes sense, too.”
“But,” says Virgil. “When Janus did show up – and you realized that there was someone else, some place else…”
“It’s fine,” Thomas tells Virgil, as gently as he can when they’re both in a coffin and terrified out of their minds and trying to distract themselves from it with a serious conversation. “It’s fine – it really is fine. You can feel as bad or guilty as you want about it, I’m not telling you not to, but I don’t hate you for wherever you lived or whoever you lived with in the past. I’m… working on some things. And I’m starting to get it; I’m starting to get that…”
He pauses, trails off. The darkness means he doesn’t need to look at Virgil, doesn’t need to see the expression on his face or if he’s on the brink of tears, or if he’s glaring at Thomas. If he’s even listening at all, paying attention. No, he’s probably paying attention.
“…You’re all parts of me,” he finishes, barely managing to force the words out. “And… I don’t think… I’m bad.” He pauses. “I’m trying to believe I’m not a bad person.”
Virgil’s inhale is shaky, his exhale equally so. “And if you’re not a bad person…”
“You never were,” Thomas tells him, and now Virgil isn’t bristling and stiff-as-a-seething-board at all, he’s sighing and he’s soft, he’s ducking his head down into Thomas’s chest and they’re folding into each other like origami. “Neither of us were.”
“Shut up,” requests Virgil, and it sounds a little bit like a sob, and for a while they just lie there together in the creaking squirming dark, two anxious wrecks bundled together – no longer quite as miserable as they were.
*
*
“Wish we didn’t have to have that conversation here,” Virgil says, an indeterminate amount of time later. “In your stupid lucid nightmare. Your extremely stupid lucid nightmare that I’m going to punch Remus, or possibly Roman about, the moment we’re out of it.”
“There’s worse places to have that conversation,” Thomas says, dully exhausted. He’s still shaking, still twitching right alongside Virgil at every shift and squirm from outside, every time the coffin creaks and the dirt seeps through the cracks, but something in his chest isn’t quite so tight anymore. And now they’re lying as comfortably as they can manage, and Virgil hasn’t tried to pinch him once since they settled. Accentuate the positive, he thinks. See the bright side, even if it really isn’t that bright. “You know… probably.”
“Name one.”
Thomas thinks for a moment, and then says, “Smaller coffin.”
Virgil blows out an unimpressed puff of air. “I’d rather not have it in a box, if it’s all the same. Hate boxes. Hate being in them.”
“Life in a box is better than no life at all,” Thomas murmurs. “At least you’ve got a chance, if you’re alive in the box.”
“Yeah,” Virgil says. There’s a huff that’s very nearly a laugh. “At least we can lie here, thinking, ‘could be worse. Could be dead.’ At least we’re alive enough for that.”
“I’m glad you’re with me,” says Thomas. “I’m glad we’re not dead.”
Silence. It feels like the coffin’s gotten tighter around them, like it’s tightening with every passing second. Is that just Thomas’s imagination, or is it getting harder to breathe? Although this is all his imagination, so there might not be any point to wondering…
“I don’t mind the dark,” says Virgil, like it’s as huge a confession as his last. “And I don’t mind tight spaces either. But this is…” A shaky breath. “Don’t go dying anytime soon, okay? I really hate being stuck in a box.”
“We’re going to be all right,” Thomas mutters, hugging Virgil tight. “We’re going to be okay. We’re good, right?”
Virgil hugs him back, and his fingernails aren’t driving daggers into Thomas’s back this time. He doesn’t sound entirely convinced of it, but even so, he replies, “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”
Inside a coffin, inside a dream, buried under miles of Earth and the far-off weight of soft bedcovers – they lie together and wait for Thomas to wake up.