SWAN 12 - Augen Auf -

Song Without A Name
Experiment # 12
Headed by
Lady Yate-xel

Well, fuck.

His head hurt, and he wasn’t sure he was seeing quite clearly, but Johnny figured if he could still think in terms of ‘fuck,’ he was okay. Something was wrong, or some screws were a little less than tight, but he was okay.

“...Ich kann nicht mehr länger warten
Denn ich weiss was du verlangst”

There were people talking at him. Not to him – he wasn’t picking up any of it, nor was he paying any real attention. Devi was back, though, he figured that much out. She had just left, hadn’t she? Even Tenna seemed to be trying to get his attention.

Well, fuck.

People started fading away.

“Eckstein, Eckstein, Alles must versteck sein...

Were they leaving, or was he losing... no, they were leaving. Some of them, all of them, one of them.

“Eins..., zwei...,”

One of them still there. Okay.

“drei..., vier...”

One. One that should be dead. One that he...

One that he...

“fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn!”

“...KILLED YOU!”

“Augen Auf – Ich komme!”

Johnny sat up with a sudden outburst. He glanced at Edgar, who was sitting beside the desk where Johnny had been lying with a startled expression on his face. He stayed rather shocked as Johnny’s gaze darted around the room, panting as though he’d just been doing a lot of running.

“Augen Auf – Ich komme!”

He was in the front part of the office – the section that had actually been used by the choir teacher so many years back. There was music coming from Johnny’s ‘room,’ in the back, and Johnny suspected it to be Jimmy’s doing.

“Augen Auf – Ich komme!”

Johnny found his hands oddly compelling, and discovered himself staring at them as though he’d never seen them before. They felt dirty. Then he remembered Edgar.

“Aufgepasst - ich komme!
Zeig dich nicht!”

“Edgar,” he started, his voice a little unsure.

“Ständig ruf ich deinen Namen”

His head didn’t seem to be able to catch up to his words. As far as his mouth was concerned, he was already well on his way to conversing with Edgar, but his head didn’t seem to be able to turn fast enough – couldn’t find Edgar’s face. Things were leaving trails of afterimages no matter what direction he turned his head.

“Ständig such ich dein Gesicht”

Edgar had stopped looking shocked when Johnny was finally able to look at him. Afterimages faded, and Johnny was able to focus. The expression now was more concern mixed with a little fear. That and he looked like he might cry.

“Nny, are you-?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“L...liar.”

“Wenn ich dich dann endlich habe
Spielen wir Wahrheit oder Pflicht”

There was silence between them for a long time after that. The song Jimmy was presumably pretending he was performing still played in the background as Johnny and Edgar contemplated.

“So I-“

“I failed.” Edgar interrupted.

“What?”

“I failed.” He sat slumped in the chair, staring at something vaguely on the floor, and ran a hand through his hair. Johnny watched him take off his glasses, but didn’t speak to him.

“I was supposed to...” Edgar rubbed his eyes, pausing for a moment, “...was supposed to keep you from...” He seemed to be avoiding saying too much. If Johnny knew Edgar’s personality by now, (and he was fairly certain that he did) he could reasonably guess that Edgar was still trying to determine how much Johnny knew.

“I killed you.” That should clear it up.

Edgar remained silent, though Johnny thought he heard something in his breath.

“That was one of those parts... the ones that I wanted forgotten?” Johnny tried.

“...Alles muss versteckt sein...”

“Yes. And- And god,” he ran his hand through his hair again, “the rest will be even easier to remember now. I... I really thought...”

Johnny rubbed his arm, and let his attention focus on some gnats flying around the lights above him. He’d killed Edgar. Hell, he’d killed, period. Would he do it again? With just this tiny piece filled in, the rest of the holes seemed a little less fuzzy, and for the first time, he didn’t want them to be any clearer.

Edgar was shaking in the chair beside the desk.

Trying to remember how to stop remembering, Johnny pulled his legs to his chest, and pressed his forehead into bony knees. There had to be a way of preventing this from getting worse. Bursts of color swimming before his eyes as he squeezed his eyes shut too tight started to look more and more like objects and things in the room more like blobs.

Memories were overlapped in what used to be the hole where Edgar had died. Before there had been nothing, now there were two distinct scenarios. Edgar torn and shredded beyond recognition in seconds, and Edgar completely unharmed at the same time that he should have been dead. Something was trying to help one memory win over the other, he was sure. What he wasn’t so sure of was whether it was his own desire to keep the memory of Edgar actually living as the dominant one that was doing the fighting or not. It seemed that if it was something he wanted so badly, he could easily destroy the image of Edgar’s death, yet it felt more like something was fighting to get him to remember that he had...

‘Nothing solidifies something in the memory so much as the wish to forget it.’

Someone had said that once, and Johnny had visual confirmation – memories superimposed, fighting each other.

The more thinking he tried to do, the more he realized that he wouldn’t be able to do any thinking until all of this set in. And that as soon as it set in, he wouldn’t be nearly so calm... Looked like it was going to be taking a while.

Edgar looked like he might be crying when Johnny picked his head up again. Or else laughing until he couldn’t breathe, but that didn’t seem too likely in light of the whole, “I killed you” situation. Edgar looked up, and confirmed that there had been at least a few frustrated tears. Johnny was fairly sure he would end up doing the same if he didn’t try to lighten this somehow, but there wasn’t a way.

This was it. He was going to lose himself piece by piece. Right here. Like this. Bit by bit, and anything that anyone could say to him could trigger it. He’d done this before, this little remembering, but before, it had never been anything but things he had wanted remembered – favored hairstyles, favorite foods, or funny stories about teasing pre-teens at the mall. Edgar had always said that Johnny had agreed to everything if only he didn’t remember all the shit from the life he’d just led. What happened now? Johnny was remembering ‘all the shit’ now – would the deal be off? Would he really lose everything in that he would slowly be replaced by this other person, and then, when he remembered everything, and was no longer even the person he’d become in this life, drop dead from a bargain not fulfilled?

“Here lies Johnny,” he muttered to himself, trying to laugh, “We’re not sure which one.” Somewhere in his office, his keys slammed themselves against a wall, and startled Jimmy. Jimmy swore, hit something, and the song that he’d had on repeat for sometime now skipped a few beats.

Songs. Something stirred in him when he thought about songs. Something...

“You’re not going to die.”

Johnny looked back at Edgar, torn from staring into his office. “What?”

“You’re not going to die,” he repeated, “I’m not going to let you. I was supposed to be making you happy somehow or other. I want to keep his wishes, and my own word, as much as possible, of course, and I ... really don’t want you to become him...”

Johnny nodded.

“But if I focus on that,” Edgar paused for moment, then corrected himself. “...if we focus on that, then no one is happy. And that’s not why I’m here.”

“You’re not on a mission from God, Edgar.” Puff of breath that could be construed as a laugh.

Edgar smiled weakly, and put his glasses back on. “I might be.”

“Careful, I could be sent from Satan.” Johnny made half-assed spooky hands at him.

“You know, you’re... well, you’re taking this a lot better than...”

Johnny shrugged, and brushed a stray piece of hair from his face. “How long have I spent telling you that we were different people? I... Fuck, of course I’m not thrilled, but it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me, and I refuse to think it was you either. I mean, hell, it’s not like I was a complete homicidal maniac or anything, right?”

Edgar coughed.

“...Well, I didn’t rape you, at least,” Johnny offered. “That’d be more Jimmy’s style.”

He’d hoped that Jimmy would come in and bear being joked at, but he didn’t seem to have heard Johnny’s comment as the music continued uninterrupted, and was now interspersed with Jimmy’s voice singing in badly mangled German.

“So,” Edgar started, “did you ...” he made a circular motion with his hands, trying to call the words out as he spoke, “...hear us or anything? We were all talking to you for a while after you... We even called Devi back, you know. It looked like you saw her, but we didn’t know.” He rubbed his finger on the edge of the desk, pretending to look for dust he should’ve known wasn’t there.

“Sort of. Mostly, I saw that you... really should have been dead. Even now, looking at you, I get flashes. And I felt like... maybe you all should have been.” Johnny watched as Edgar bit his lip, but when he didn’t reply, Johnny continued. “I heard a new song. You guys were like static for a while. Like someone turned on channel 300 in my head, and it’s all snowy, you know that white fuzzy shit, but it’s someone’s local weather channel underneath, so it’s playing ads, showing the temperature and playing crazy music. That sorta thing. Like how that one channel we watch at home has the Home Shopping Channel underneath it. You were under the song.”

Edgar leaned back in his chair. “Where did it come from?”

“I don’t know. It’s an old one too, from the bottom, I think. Maybe someone played it recently, and it came back up enough.” Johnny shrugged. “Or maybe I just needed it.”

“What was it like?”

“It kept... asking me questions.”

Edgar tilted his head. “Like?”

“It’s not important. The answer was yes though. And the song’s old enough – I should be able to find a hard copy somewhere...” he trailed off, then looked at Edgar, as close to truly smiling as he had been since he woke. “Did you ever get used to this?”

“The collective music collection?” Not the best wording he could have come up with, but considering what he had just endured, Edgar didn’t care if it sounded stupid. “Sort of, I guess. It took a while. I hadn’t really spent time with music that didn’t come from my keyboard before I found you. Though I guess it’s how I managed to find you. You mentioned needing the song – maybe people give off their own songs, and I was just looking for the right one.”

Johnny laughed at him. Of course.

“Augen Auf, ich –”

“And it knocked you out, you loser. Nice job.” He tried to slide off the desk to go see if Devi was in the other room, or maybe to tell Jimmy that he couldn’t sing the whole song with ‘aunnnnoffffish COMMA!’ He didn’t make it. He felt something slip, he saw the wall flash by, then the ceiling, then part of Edgar and everything was black.

“-Komme!”

His brain had elevator music.

*****

All things considered, Edgar thought the situation wasn’t too bad. Johnny wasn’t freaking out, or rapidly degenerating into insanity like Edgar had feared, so randomly blacking out wasn’t so bad at all. Not to say that he wasn’t upset, or wasn’t concerned, because that wasn’t the case at all, but this was certainly better than the alternative. Jimmy and Devi had both heard Edgar yell when Johnny fell off the desk, and were now standing around in silence. Once the initial panic of ‘Oh god, did his heart stop?!’ was over, and Devi was able to confirm that he was alive, there wasn’t much else to do but to sit and stare at him. There was the option of trying to wake him, but even Edgar didn’t want to do that to him.

“Maybe he’ll find a new song,” Devi had reasoned.

This was something new for Edgar. In the time he’d lived this life, he’d still never figured out how long after his prior life this current life had begun. It could have been the next year, or it could have been 300 years, and he really had no way of knowing. The technology all felt relatively the same, so that gave him somewhere to place it, yet he still was unsure. The greatest confusion was music.

Edgar hadn’t noticed it through his whole life prior to finding his friends in the choir room because it simply wasn’t something he cared about, but new music was rarely made in this time. Some time ago, (Jimmy and Devi had said that they could not remember a time when it hadn’t been this way) music became something in everyone’s head and in everyone. At some point, the people developed and tuned the ‘collective unconscious’ that psychology students had been taught about for decades, and music sort of flowed there. Artists at the time saw that sales of albums completely dropped out when everyone learned all they had to do to hear their favorite songs was call it up from the collective pool. Because of this, one by one, artists stopped making new music. The music that played on the radio was old music – music that had been around in the time when music could still make money, music that existed on hard copy somewhere.

There were three types of music in this world, as far as Edgar could tell. There was ‘Middle’ music, which was the music that lived in the people’s collective mental pool. These were songs that were being created or sung often when this mental thing first came into being. People developed a sense to know who the song was by, and who, specifically, that person was. The more popular or more recent a song, the closer to the ‘top’ of the pool it was. Stuff that was a little obscure or wasn’t insanely popular was said to be in the ‘bottom.’ Songs remembered from before the pool era were here. When a person died, their music was weakened in the pool, and would sink without new revival. For this reason, another classification of music came in.

‘New’ music was still a very small collection. This was music that artists who started out at the beginning of the ‘pool’ era had created. They saw what happened when an artist died, and that the best way to preserve a song was to record it somehow. So, for several years now, the first new CDs were being released, but only after an artist had died. So, even though the CDs were new releases, the music could be twenty years or more old. Edgar guessed that the only way to make money in the business was to die. Unless you made dance music. Dance music, love songs, and musical soundtracks – songs you needed to be able to enjoy with other people, and thus outside of your head – were recorded on CDs as they were made. Bands and singers seemed to want immortality now more than money.

Then, there was ‘Old’ music. This stuff was at the very ‘bottom’ of the pool, if it was there at all. This was also all of Johnny’s music. All of his songs were on tapes, CDs and records in that office – some re-recorded and thrown on mix tapes over and over. It had taken Edgar a long time to recognize how old the music was at first. He had forgotten that he simply hadn’t been dumped back into the same time period, and music that he had recalled hearing on oldies stations while growing up the first time wasn’t even going to be considered and ‘oldie’ anymore. It would be an ‘ancient’ if it was still around at all.

There was still a lot to understand about it, but Edgar had managed to realize a few things about the situation when he had the time to think about it – like now when he was staring at Johnny’s sleeping form on the desk. First, that when he’d first found Johnny and had passed out unexplainably, it almost had to be an Old song reacting in him the way it would react in anyone. The Old music does strange things to people subconsciously. It had a different effect on everyone, and depending on some factors that Edgar hadn’t quite worked out yet, could be overpowering to completely unnoticeable. The rest of the school wasn’t affected since they didn’t exist the same way Johnny did. Johnny was near invisible, just as Edgar was, so Edgar was able to pick up on it. Maybe Johnny had been looking for him, too. Maybe people really did give off songs and Johnny was just trying to mess with him. He never really brought that up with Johnny before, but he figured Johnny had better reasons to play the Old songs. They did different things for different people and Edgar suspected that to Johnny they were like some sort of drug.

Or else they were his escape.

This was the other concept that Edgar had entertained ever since Johnny had told them to ‘get noticed.’ If people knew where music was coming from, down to the exact person, then forming a band, and making music good enough to flow out of the group and into the public unconscious, would make sure everyone knew who they were. This explained why Johnny’s version of getting noticed hadn’t been to cause twenty-car pile-ups in the intersection in front of the school or to see how many other teachers he could get fired. Because music was so deeply tied to everyone in this time, not just to Johnny and his friends, as Edgar had previously thought, that no one would be able to ignore that they existed.

The group still sat in silence, staring at Johnny who was remained passed out on the desk. Edgar hadn’t yet mentioned what exactly was causing this, and wasn't sure if he should. He felt they had a right to know, as Johnny was just as much their concern as his, but there was the chance that they would knowingly remind Johnny of what he had done in a moment of spite, and Edgar didn’t want to risk it.

“So.”

Or maybe he’d have to.

Jimmy had been looking thoughtful for some time now. It was only a matter of when he was going to spring whatever he’d been mulling over on Edgar, Devi and Tenna.

“So what?” Devi asked.

“So he just... fell over, huh?”

“God, Jimmy, could you jus-” Devi looked prepared to launch into something she had more than likely prepared for just such an occasion, but Edgar held up a hand, and cut in.

“It’s fine, Devi, let him go. And no, he didn’t just ‘fall over.’ He’s... been having headaches.”

“You expect me to believe that? Somethin’ weird’s going on with you two again, I know it. You know everything and you’re just not telling us anything!” This was turning into another one of Jimmy’s standard lashing out speeches. “Is this some other thing from your secret book? Is it?! You two do this shit all the time, I can’t fucking-”

“Shut up, it’s not about that!” Edgar rubbed his forehead a few times, trying to make sure he could piece things together as best as the situation would allow. “It’s... not that. I wish you wouldn’t think that I’m trying to do something backwards or underhanded to you guys every god damn time Nny does something that’s normal for Nny.”

“Passing out is normal in your world, Edgar? Did you train him to do that, or does it come naturally?!” Jimmy gestured wildly towards Johnny on the desk.

“I’ve told you a million times that I’m not TAKING HIM FROM YOU!” Edgar shouted, furious. “Still, it’s hard for me to take something that didn’t belong to you in the first place!”

Jimmy moved to do something, and Devi moved in front of him, visibly irritated, but quite calm.

“That’s enough. Shut the fuck up, both of you. Edgar,” she said, glaring in his direction, “you do owe us some explanation. This book shit and you two with the weekend visits has been going on for ever without any inclusion for the rest of us. Now this. We deserve to know something by this point. And YOU,” she spat at Jimmy when he snickered, “have been told the same fucking thing for how many years now? I don’t know how many people have to tell you that Johnny isn’t your special thing to put in a box and look at when it would be convenient to get you off before you’ll get the fucking hint. Knock it off. Everyone is sick of hearing it.”

Edgar felt some muscles relax, and watched Jimmy ease up as well. Devi glared at them both, and stepped back. Tenna had been leaning against a wall the whole time, either absorbing it all deeply, or blissfully unaware, so had yet to say a single thing. Devi crossed her arms and nodded her head in Edgar’s general direction.

“Go on, let’s hear it.”

Edgar sighed. “What... what do you want, exactly?” he asked, hoping to get some sort of direction for these confessions he was supposed to be making.

“We want to know what’s going on. We want to know what’s wrong with Nny. We want to know what you did to him, if anything. We want to-”

“Yeah, we wanna-”

“Jimmy. You are shutting up now.”

Jimmy glared at her, grumbled something, but leaned back obediently against the doorway to Johnny’s room, mostly silent.

“It’s really complicated,” Edgar offered. “I don’t even know how to explain everything myself, and even if I did, you’ve already told me you think everything’s bullshit. I told you about the book, you’ve seen Johnny’s keys... Well now... now he’s remembering. That’s what’s causing, well, this.” He made a half toss of his head in Johnny’s direction. “He’s remembering more than ‘my favorite food is cherry’ now. It’s... dangerous things, to be honest. And I think it may be even more dangerous to tell you two – three- everything regarding it.”

“Thanks for the trust, you bastard.” Had they been outside, Jimmy might have spat to punctuate his words. Devi let him speak, probably because she was thinking along those same lines. “Just because he’s not mine doesn’t mean he’s yours. Me an’ Devi deserve to know what the hell is happening to him as much as you do. Stop being a selfish prick and tell us what the fuck is going on.”

“It’s not selfish! I’m worried about Nny’s sanity, not about how many little secrets I can keep from his fan club!”

There was a general mumbling from the table, and the argument was forgotten for a moment as everyone turned to look at Johnny who was just beginning to sit up on the desk.

“You guys... talk too fucking much.”

After a moment of hesitation, Devi moved to stand at the end of the desk, and looked at Johnny, who still appeared very groggy. “What happened?” she demanded.

Johnny blinked a few times, and stared at her.

“Nny. What the fuck is going on? What happened?”

“I think you lived,” he replied, half-smiling at her. When she faltered in her response, he leaned to his right to look around her at Jimmy. “I don’t think you did though,” Johnny said through a smile and part of a laugh. Jimmy looked a little ill, but mostly confused, and opened his mouth to say something, but Johnny had already stopped looking at him.

Johnny slid off the left side of the desk, his usual movements and mannerisms replaced by either lethargy or some sort of sleep-drunkenness. He seemed to slither over to Edgar, an expression on his face that Edgar couldn’t tell if he found familiar.

“And you, Edgar,” Johnny smiled, twisting a few fingers into Edgar’s shirt, “you did both.” Johnny pulled on the shirt, jerking Edgar’s eyes down to be even with his own. “Do you remember both? Either one you particularly prefer?” His tone had a fake sort of sugar coating on it. “They were both so well done don’t you agree?”

Edgar thought he would be sick.

“It’s okay, you can tell me later...” Johnny’s fingers still wrapped in part of Edgar’s shirt, he pushed Edgar against a stack of cardboard boxes that were piled by the wall. “After all, we’ll be spending the whole weekend doing fun things with each other, won’t we?” The sugar coating was melting away, and the grip on Edgar’s shirt tightening.

“Since you, of course,” at this point, Johnny let go of Edgar violently, nearly tossing him off balance, and turned quickly to Jimmy, “... have a CLAIM TO ME!” He glared then at Devi. “SINCE I AM SOMETHING YOU CAN GOVERN AND VOTE ON, RIGHT?! COMMUNAL PROPERTY?”

Edgar winced at every syllable, and assumed everyone else involved did too. He wasn’t even sure if Tenna was still in the room at this point.

“Did you not think for a moment, Nny,” Devi said, her voice calm, but shaking with anger underneath, “that perhaps WE,” she motioned to herself and Jimmy, “are just as concerned as Edgar? I don’t give a damn what you do with him, or Jimmy for that matter, but at the same time if you’re going FUCKING NUTS, then I’d like to HEAR ABOUT IT!”

“I’m not going fucking nuts... I’m remembering fucking nuts. I already went nuts; I’m just heading back for an encore now!”

“God DAMMIT, Nny. Just tell us what the fuck is going on. I want- we want the truth, and at this point, I don’t care how fucked up it is.”

“Devi, please.” Edgar chimed in for a moment. “This is really stressful, just let him-” Johnny held up a hand to silence him.

“He died. Edgar died. I did it. Jimmy died. I did that too. And THEN, something happened, and I got to try it again. Edgar lived. Jimmy still didn’t, and I still did it. There. Satisfied now?”

Devi started to say something, but cut herself off. She looked at Edgar, who hadn’t moved from being pinned to the boxes. Edgar thought he saw something of an apology in her expression, but he wasn’t sure. Just behind Devi, he saw Tenna move for the first time.

“Come on, Devi,” Tenna said, pulling on her friend’s arm, “you need to get out more.”

Still a bit stunned, Devi allowed herself to be dragged to the door. As soon as she was just beyond Edgar’s sight, he saw her hand claw at the side of the door, pulling her back in, much to Tenna’s protest. “Then-! Nny, then what about me?!”

“Devi stop! Let’s go! Let everything calm down.”

“What about ME?!”

“You’re starting to sound crazy!”

“What about-!”

“You got away.” Johnny seemed to stare through her.

Devi’s eyes widened and her grip loosened on the door frame. She flew backwards into Tenna, who hadn’t stopped trying to pull her away. Tenna nudged the door shut a few seconds later, presumably after she had Devi under some sort of control, and Edgar was left in the room with Johnny and Jimmy.

Johnny sighed, and walked by Jimmy, completely ignoring him, and into the back half of the office. His ‘room.’ Edgar heard him collapse onto the beanbag chair, and was unsure of whether he should follow or just sit and stare at Jimmy.

“I apologize,” Edgar was saying words before he knew he wanted to say them. “You see how things are a little bit more than us being at my house on the weekends.”

“Yeah. Maybe. I’ll think about it.” Jimmy turned and looked through the doorway at Johnny lying on the beanbag. He made a ‘hmph’ kind of noise then made his way to the door that led out to the main choir room. He went for the door knob, but paused before actually opening the door. “I’m not leaving you in here to fuck anything up, you’re coming too.”

Edgar took a look at Johnny, still lying on the beanbag, and bit his lip. He really didn’t want to just leave him there after all that, but knew that it was likely that Johnny would just continue to yell if anything was brought up for a while. He sighed, and walked towards Jimmy, who opened the door to allow Edgar to go first.

Jimmy shut the door behind them, and there was silence.

Devi and Tenna never came back, and Johnny never came out. Edgar messed with the keyboard for a while, but didn’t really concentrate on it.

The next thing he remembered was waking up.

It had to be the middle of the night sometime. The door to the office was open, and there was no one in sight. Granted, there were no lights on, so there likely could have been a person three inches from Edgar’s face, but he was reasonably sure he was alone.

He stood up, adjusted his glasses, and stepped cautiously into the office, fumbling for the light. He always reached too low for it. When he found it and light filled the front room, he saw a trace of light graze the beanbag in the other room. Johnny, as far as Edgar could tell, was not in it. He crept into the back room to check for sure. Nothing. Just their usual stuff. Pictures, books, tapes, papers and general junk.

Edgar almost left through the side door, but then remembered the piles of stuff that had landed on him the last time he’d done that, and went the long way around instead. Go down the hall, make a right, pass glowing vending machines and the display case of the school mascot...

He pulled the doors a few times before they gave, and peered in. No, the gym wasn’t lit up the right way yet for Johnny to be here. No problem.

A little further down the hall, a left, and a tug on the door. They opened. Unlocked. He was up here.

Edgar climbed the stairs and felt a quick, cold rush of air. As he emerged onto the bridge, he saw the light from the rest of the town spilling in through the windows. Johnny wasn’t on the bridge, but then, Edgar didn’t expect him to be.

Squeezing between the broken door and the wall, Edgar made his way to the roof.

He would have liked to be able to walk up behind Johnny unnoticed, but with the roof covered in gravel, Johnny had chosen a place to be alerted to visitors very well.

“Hey.” The best he could think of.

“Hey.”

Edgar crossed the gravel, and sat down next to Johnny near the edge of the roof. Johnny was staring out at everything, looking quite vacant.

Edgar sighed, then took a readying breath.

“It’s okay.”

Edgar hadn’t expected Johnny to say anything. “What?”

“It’s okay. I’m fine. It wasn’t me.”

Edgar still thought that Johnny was taking it far too well.

“I don’t feel like anyone else,” Johnny continued. “I feel like I’ve got someone else’s cards stacked in my deck, but the deck is still mine in the end. For it to truly change, we’d need to replace everything. I’d have to be totally rewritten. You said that I didn’t want to remember ‘all the shit,’ right?”

Edgar nodded, then realized Johnny wasn’t looking at him. “Yeah...”

“Then I’m defining ‘all the shit’ right here. I’ve got pieces of the memories, and I’ll be happy if the rest of them don’t decide to show up. I know enough about where I came from, and what I might be doing here – I don’t want anymore. But. But even if I do remember everything that happened, there’s something I don’t have, even with the memories I have now.”

“Which is...?”

“The feeling. The intent. The emotion. The reasoning. The motivation. As far as I can see, what would make me him is having all of that. All of his feeling. If I feel just what he does, then I am him. I don’t feel the same way about it all. You’re more like the person I remember than I am like the person you remember, because my feelings are different.”

Edgar wasn’t sure how accurate this all was, after all, he’d been taking it all so literally all this time that what Johnny was saying sounded foolish, but still... If it would keep Johnny happy, or sane, or possibly both if the world was at all forgiving, then he’d go along with it.

“That doesn’t sound unreasonable at all.”

“You’re getting better,” Johnny said, seemingly out of nowhere.

“What?”

“At lying.” He smiled. “I can still tell, but you’re getting better.”

“Nny, I-“ Edgar tried to recover, but Johnny shook his head.

“It’s okay. I’ll prove it to you somehow, or I’ll just make you believe me. I guess it was nice of you to lie, though. Good intentions, right?”

“Sure.”

After a few moments of silence, Edgar kicked the gravel out of the way, and made a space to lie down. He heard Johnny clear out a similar space, but did nothing with it.

“Ever sleep on a roof?” Johnny asked after several minutes.

“Can’t say that I have,” Edgar replied, looking up at what few stars where there to be seen.

“Good. It builds character.”

With that, Johnny stretched out into the space he’d cleared, and used Edgar’s stomach as a pillow. He'd spent two years with him since the first time they'd set foot up here, and still gestures like this were random, unexpected and frightening. They made Edgar's skin burn, they made him tense up. He'd been so un-used to touch, to contact, that when someone as important as Johnny got that close, acted that familar, all of Edgar's senses reacted. When he finally had the words to ask what Johnny was doing, Johnny was already asleep, or faking it exceptionally well. Lying there like that, Edgar heard every noise at ten times volume, and imagined everything around him to have potential for waking Johnny up.

A faint sort of crackling noise was quite prevalent for some time before Edgar realized it was Johnny’s headphones. With much difficulty Edgar managed to take them off of Johnny without too much disturbance. He was about to turn them off, but then wondered what was playing, and put them to his ear.

It was something loud and growling, and Edgar was completely confused as to how anyone could fall asleep to that. He turned the player off, and set it somewhere in the gravel where he hoped it wouldn’t be kicked.

“Didn’t like the song, huh?” Johnny’s voice felt really strange on Edgar’s stomach.

“Not really.”

“Pity.” With that, he shifted his weight a little, and went silent.

Edgar closed his eyes, trying to breathe normally, and tried to call up a song.

When he woke in the morning, he knew he had, but couldn’t remember the chorus.