Chapter Text
Ivan wakes to the sound of rain.
Not the kind that soothes—this one hisses. Every drop against the metal roof feels like it’s gnawing at the silence that keeps the two of them tethered here. Till lies beside him, pale under the white sheets, his breath shallow, his skin fever-wet. And Ivan or what’s left of him, lies on his side.
Watching.
Till was alive. That’s all Ivan could cling to. He’s alive.
He whispers the words, though no sound leaves his mouth. The air doesn’t stir. He wants to reach out—to touch Till’s face, to trace the old curve of his cheekbone, to feel warmth. But his hand sinks through the air like fog.
When Till’s eyes open, Ivan’s heart leaps—a human reflex for someone who no longer has one. You’re awake, you’re—
But the look Till gives isn’t relief. It’s terror.
Sweat rolls down his temples. His pupils shake. He’s staring… not at Ivan, but just past him. At something Ivan can’t see.
Ivan turns. There’s nothing there. Only the cold, humming quiet of the room. The machines pulse weakly, a steady beat. But Till’s breathing turns ragged—he’s backing away, whispering words Ivan can’t hear.
Where are you looking at? Ivan wonders. What do you see?
He wants to follow Till’s gaze, but it’s like staring into a black hole—emptiness that swallows even his thoughts. A shiver runs through him, though he shouldn’t be able to feel cold anymore.
Then Till speaks, voice torn and hoarse, as if it’s been years since he last used it.
“Get off me.”
Ivan freezes. The words land like stones.
He isn’t touching him. He can’t.
Till’s hands tremble—clutching at his neck, his breath breaking into uneven gasps. He’s talking to someone who isn’t there, someone who isn’t him. Ivan calls his name, again and again, but his voice dissolves into the air.
Days pass like that. The walls never change, but the shadows do.
Till mutters to the darkness. Sometimes he laughs, sometimes he sobs, sometimes he stares into the corner like there’s something waiting there—something with his face.
Ivan sits at the edge of the bed, helpless. He doesn’t sleep. As a ghost, he doesn’t need to. He just watches Till unravel in slow motion, each night worse than the last.
There are moments when Till falls silent, chest heaving, eyes half-lidded—and Ivan almost believes it’s over. That he’s resting. Then Till flinches, as if touched by invisible hands.
Till’s hands jerk upward. His breathing stutters into dry, rasping gasps. Ivan thinks he’s trying to claw something away from his throat.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Then he sees the dark stain bloom at the edge of the sheets—thin lines of color seeping where skin should have stayed whole.
Blood.
Ivan tries to intervene, tries to grasp his shoulders, to stop him from whatever he’s doing—but his hands pass through, leaving only light ripples in the air.
Ivan lurches forward. “Stop—please, stop!” His voice never reaches him.
The smell of iron leaks into the room, sharp and metallic, filling the air like a scream he can’t hear.
Till trembles, his eyes wide and glassy, whispering to someone who isn’t there. The red deepens across his collar, and Ivan reaches out again, desperate, useless.
“Till, stop—stop!” he pleaded, though the air swallowed every word.
A sharp noise broke the storm outside—the door slamming open.
“Till!”
Isaac’s voice cut through the rain and static. He froze at the threshold, eyes wide at the chaos on the bed: the overturned lamp, the tangle of sheets, the crimson smears blooming across Till’s collar.
“Hey! Stay with me—look at me!” Isaac shouted, rushing forward. He tried to steady Till’s arms, his hands shaking almost as badly as Till’s.
Ivan staggered back, dazed, watching Isaac do what he couldn’t—hold him, pull him back toward the living.
Till’s movements weakened; his breath hitched one last time before his body went limp. Isaac called his name again, panic spilling from him in broken fragments.
When Till finally collapses, drained and shaking, Ivan does the only thing left. He kneels beside him, gathers him as though he could still hold him, and lays his head gently in his lap—the ghost of a gesture that can’t touch, but still aches to.
He stares down at the man who once burned brighter than anyone he’d ever known.
Why are you doing this to yourself? he whispers, even though he knows Till can’t hear.
The rain outside hasn’t stopped.
It sounds like static, like memory trying to crawl back inside the world.
In that noise, Ivan realizes something worse than death—
he’s not the ghost haunting Till.
Something else is.
Ivan stayed close.
He didn’t know if ghosts could breathe, but if they could, his breath would have been caught somewhere in Till’s hair—messy, unwashed, still smelling faintly of turpentine.
Till looked… lighter.
Not healed, no—but lighter, like something had been released from inside him. His shoulders didn’t shake anymore when he sat down. The tremors were gone. His hands still trembled sometimes, but only when they hovered too long above paper.
He was drawing again. Writing again. Sometimes humming off-tune.
Ivan lay beside him, head resting carefully against Till’s shoulder, the way he used to when the world still had warmth. His hand ghosted over Till’s sketchbook—blank pages filled slowly with lines, figures, faces. A hand. An eye.
Sometimes… a smile.
.. of himself.
But then Till’s lips would start to move. Quiet at first, broken. Like someone whispering through cracked glass.
“Draw me.”
“What?” he muttered. “I already did. When we were kids.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. You just didn’t see."
Ivan invisible body stilled—though he had no heart to stop. Till’s tone changed—harsh, strained, like two people arguing through the same mouth. He wasn’t looking at anyone. Just the air. Just the space Ivan filled.
“Why didn’t you show me anything?”
“There wasn’t anything to show…”
“Liar.”
Ivan’s chest tightened.
He reached for him—uselessly—his hands slipping through air.
Till’s eyes were far away. He wasn’t seeing Ivan. Not the ghost. Not the boy he used to be.
He was seeing something else.
“Were you disappointed?” Till whispered suddenly. His voice cracked, rough and hoarse.
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Ivan pressed his head against Till’s back—his cheek meeting the phantom warmth of skin. He didn’t speak. He could..
But the words wouldn’t come.
All that left him was a soundless breath that might’ve been a sob.
Disappointed.
He was never disappointed. Not once.
KRRRAAACK!
KRA-BOOOOOOM!
The rain had teeth tonight.
It didn’t fall so much as claw at the world outside his window, each drop splattering against the metal like sparks off a dying wire. Thunder rolled over the roof, low and uneven, as if the sky itself were trying to breathe.
Till slept facedown beneath the thin blanket. The room breathed with the storm—light flicker, shadow stretch, silence, then the long-delayed crack of sound that shook the bed frame.
A cold touch landed on his cheek.
Drop.
He stirred. The droplet traced a path toward his jaw.
He opened his eyes.
Another flash—white, electric. The ceiling was smooth, unbroken. No leak. No stain. Nothing that could have fallen.
He pushed himself upright. Rain hissed against the roof. The light from the window strobed with every strike of lightning, bleaching the room to bone.
For a single heartbeat, a shape filled the doorway.
Tall. Motionless. The silhouette of a man watching.
Thunder cracked, and the space was empty again.
Till rose. The bedsprings complained under his weight. Bare feet touched the floor—cold, wet with something that shouldn’t have been there. He stepped forward, breath shallow, head tilted toward the faint hum of the storm outside.
Lightning again. The hallway appeared in a blink—pale walls, overturned chair, nothing else.
He crossed the threshold. The air smelled of rain and static. Each step echoed too loud, swallowed by the next rumble of thunder.
At the far end of the hall, a curtain moved without wind.
He froze. Waited.
Another flash—gone.
He turned back.
Something stood behind him.
Close. Almost touching.
He didn’t move. The next lightning strike erased it. Only the afterimage burned against his eyes—a figure leaning forward, face indistinct, mouth dark as if filled with blood
The thunder arrived late, a deep roar that seemed to shake the air apart.
Till’s body shuddered with it. His hands rose toward his throat, pressing lightly, as if to ground himself. The rain kept talking against the roof, faster now, louder.
He staggered to the window. Lightning carved the world outside into silver and black. For an instant the reflection in the glass wasn’t his own—eyes unfamiliar, smiling faintly.
The sky flared again, erasing the image.
He backed away, tripped against the edge of the bed, and sank down. The blanket twisted around his fingers. The storm’s rhythm filled the room: flash, shadow, sound, silence. Over and over.
His breathing slowed with it. The tremors in his hands eased.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
His fingers drifted to the scar there, old and uneven, and for an instant it felt fresh, as though the sky itself had opened him again.
He kept his eyes closed. If he didn’t look, it would fade. If he just stayed still, the sound of the rain would cover it.
Sleep finally dragged him under—a shallow, trembling kind.
The window dimmed; the thunder retreated toward the horizon.
He didn’t feel the air shift beside him.
If he had opened his eyes, he might have seen the outline leaning over him, the faint shimmer of a presence that didn’t belong to the living.
The ghost bent close, pressing its face to his—a gesture almost tender. The chill softened; his breathing steadied. The storm quieted for a breath.
The ghost brushed his hair. A weightless touch, tracing the line of his temple, smoothing the tension from his brow. The air beside him warmed slightly, though the rain still fell.
He exhaled, long and even. The muscles in his face softened.
When dawn came, pale and thin, the rain had stopped. The room smelled of metal and damp earth.
On the rumpled sheet beside him lay a single red flower. Its petals were wet, as though carried in from the storm.
Anemone.
Till stared at it for a long time. Then, very slowly, he touched the scar at his throat.
The mark was warm. The flower’s stem left a trace of red on the white cloth, as if it had been waiting there all night—as if someone had placed it, carefully, by his side.
Three years had passed since the night of thunder.
Time moved differently now: slower, quieter, like sunlight filtering through water.
Till learned to fill his days with small things.
He rode a bicycle that squeaked on every turn; the sound echoed across the courtyard. The first few times he tried, he crashed into the same hedge, earning a collection of shallow scrapes and the faintest hint of a smile.
Ivan was always there, unseen but close, a ghost made of wind and laughter. He drifted beside him, watching the unsteady balance, the stubborn tilt of Till’s shoulders, the flash of concentration in his eyes.
If ghosts could laugh, Ivan did. Softly, without sound, the kind of laugh that left light in the air. He wanted to tell him he was proud.
Till had started to talk again. Slowly at first—short answers, brief smiles—but the words came. He laughed at Dewey’s jokes, even the ones that weren’t funny. He worked, he drew, he went out into the sunlight.
Some days Ivan almost believed it would last.
Until the night the calm broke.
Rain again. Always rain.
The basement waited under the old building, a place sealed in dust and memory.
He shouldn’t have gone back, but something drew him there—a sound, a smell of iron, a half-forgotten rhythm.
When Till returned, rain streaked his face and blood dripped from his ear. The ghost found him sitting on the floor beside the old desk, shoulders drawn inward, breath uneven.
Ivan hovered near, the air around him cold and trembling. Till sat against the wall, one hand pressed to the side of his head. A faint red line trailed from his ear to his jaw—evidence of a struggle he would never describe.
Till spoke to the empty wall, words torn apart by static. His voice had the edge of someone arguing with silence. The words began, fractured and uneven, addressed to no one visible.
He turned his head, eyes unfocused, as if listening to another breath beside his own.
Till’s hands tightened around his knees. His shoulders shook once, then again, a stifled sound trapped behind his teeth.
“You saw me,” he murmured to the empty air. “You saw me bleeding, and you never asked if I was all right.”
Ivan froze. The echo of that accusation passed through him like cold water.
He moved closer, kneeling beside Till, and reached out. His fingers slid through Till’s hair, a gesture he’d repeated countless times though it never touched.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the space between them.
Till’s breathing hitched. The trembling in his shoulders deepened. He spoke again, voice shaking but clear enough to cut through the static of the light.
“I'm older than you now.”
Ivan’s hand lingered near the back of his neck.
“I stopped growing,” Till said, words spilling faster now, “but my drawings got better. Even the motorbike—”
Ivan smiled sadly, though no one could see it.
“Haha.. I know,” he said. “I’ve seen every one.”
The rain outside deepened.
Till’s breathing broke apart—shallow pulls of air, each one smaller than the last. His fingers dug into his temples, dragging through his hair as if he could hold his thoughts still by force. His body folded inward, curling tight, shoulders trembling. He looked less like he was sitting and more like he was trying to disappear, to press himself into the floor until nothing was left to see.
Ivan moved closer.
The sound of the storm passed through him, but the sight of Till’s shaking made something inside his hollow chest twist.
He reached out, arms open, shaping comfort from air. He drew Till into a ghost of an embrace—weightless, cold, yet impossibly careful. The motion calmed him for a single heartbeat. The tremors eased, just enough for silence to slip between breaths.
Then Till turned. His head tilted back, eyes wet, searching.
For the briefest moment he reached out—and his hand met something.
He turned toward where Ivan knelt.
The distance between them thinned. Till’s hand rose, shaking, reaching through the half-dark. The air rippled where his fingers passed.
For a moment, both froze—the living and the dead, breath and echo—caught in the same space.
It stopped in midair, as though the air had turned solid.
Ivan felt it too, a pressure against his chest, impossible and real.
Till’s fingers closed.
He pulled the ghost into an embrace.
The shock left Ivan breathless.
He hadn’t felt weight in years.
Till’s voice trembled in the hollow between them, fragile as a secret.
“I never knew you were so scared.”
The words cut through him, gentle and merciless all at once.
Ivan’s answer caught somewhere in the space where his heartbeat used to be. His body—light and sound, nothing solid—shuddered.
He lowered his forehead to Till’s shoulder, eyes closing.
For the first time since the end, he felt the ache of being human again.
The warmth of another body. The tremor of breath that wasn’t his.
“Thank you,” he breathed, the sound barely a shape in the air.
It lingered for a moment, soft as dust in sunlight. Then the sound, the shape, the warmth—all of it—unwound. His transparent body thinned to mist, the air folding gently where he had been.
When the storm outside finally fell silent, only Till remained.
He knelt on the basement floor, arms still wrapped around nothing, holding the echo of someone who was no longer there. The dust moved slowly around him, stirred by the absence.
Beside him lay a single red anemone—bright against the concrete, untouched, unbruised—as though it had been placed there by careful hands.
Thank you, Till.