The boy woke up sometime later. Not by his own will, but by familiar sense he couldn't quite grasp. He felt the dampness beneath him as he came to and assumed he was sitting in his own shame. But when he looked down he found that it wasn't the yellow he loathed, but the crimson he needed.
To make matters worse, he could hear the wind carry with it the sound of movement and chatter. The day had come, and the denizens of Vagren were now awake and roaming the streets. The boy will have to vacate this alley soon before someone happens upon him, and he is powerless to resist.
The next few minutes saw the boy lay on the ground motionless with a head hung low and legs sprawled out.
His hair, ruffled from the fall, now flowed down like a veil covering his face. But even as its rough and coarse ends found their way to every cut and wound on his upper limbs, the boy stayed still. He did not even bother to swat away the hair that pricked the white of his eyes.
He did not, because he could not feel any of it.
In the position he was in with all his weight collapsed against the wall and his knees facing outwards, all his pain somehow vanished.
No longer did his stomach ache nor his head throb. He felt free from the hunger that ailed him and the nausea that made his world spin with every step.
So the boy did not move a muscle, even as more of his life force leaked out to never return. He was weary that even a single twitch would disrupt his newfound bliss.
In his head, he flirted with the thought of spending the rest of his time, no matter how short, in this state— free of pain and misery.
After all, even if he were to make it out alive, what is there for him to look forward to?
The boy glanced to his right, his gaze resting on the exit of the alley in the distance. Nothing awaited him out there save for a few more days of breathing the same stinking air as he waited for his end to come.
Why should he suffer waiting for death to waddle its way through this land towards him? Only for it to find him bedridden and maddened with pain. At which point even its cold and draining touch would be considered mercy.
Why do that? When he could simply end it all right here, right now; and leave on his own terms.
Even though they were dry and lifeless, the boy's eyes spared a tear as he thought of how close his relief was.
And all he had to do to achieve it was to perform the simplest action known to man. Nothing.
'*a*h***c'
The voice that rang in the boy's ear was all too familiar. It was the voice of the one he loved most and yet hated the most.
It was the one he cursed at when things went things oft went wrong and celebrated with when they seldom went right.
It was the one he spent the long, sleepless nights conversing with to escape the deafening silence. Without whom he would have succumbed to the maddening loneliness.
It was the voice of his only friend and solace in this world, and the root cause of his suffering.
It was his own voice.
'Not you, not now...'
'So you will throw it all away? How selfish of you'
The words were in a tongue he couldn't speak, its vowels sounded like the howling of wolves, and the consonants like the splattering of rain on a puddle.
Yet the meaning reached him all the same, he could picture the words floating around in his mind no matter how hard he tried not to.
'All, you say? Hehehe...'
The boy strained a chuckle even though it threatened to reignite the dormant pain.
'The decision is not yours to make. Do not forget what we decided!"
'I forget nothing! I am master of my own fate.'
'This body is not yours alone for you to surrender it unto death!"
'Not mine? Tell me, do you know what hunger tastes like?'
'...'
'It tastes of whatever ground lies beneath my feet. But you would not know, never have you filled your stomach with dirt to silence its grumbling.
And what about the feeling of it? How my joints ache and squeak as though they were made of wood. How my head feels light as though filled with air. Do you know it?
And what of the pain behind my eyes I feel every day be it sun or rain. How the nerves in my temple magnify every pulse to throbbing no matter how hard I press them with my thumbs.
Of course, you would not. Because right now, you are nothing but a daydream, a whispering bug that eats away at the back of my mind. As long as this pain mine alone to feel, then the body is also mine alone to do with as I see fit.'
Even though the words never left the boy's lips, shouting in silence at his own mind still left him breathing heavily.
'What of our dreams and ambitions? Dreams of leaving this land and going to where the white mountains touch the sky and where the springs run with milk and honey.'
'You speak of dreams and ambitions? Look at my mangled arm and the chunks missing from my foot. I couldn't even walk and yet here you are speaking of distant lands.'
The voice in his mind was unceasing, its tone filled with urgency and pleading.
'Will you really die without knowing the truth that we seek? The truth of our life, our parents... our name?'
'What good is a name without a grave to mark it on? You may have stopped me before, but you won't stop me this time, I won't stand for it. I refused to waste another breath chasing behind a distant dream.'
'I am afraid this is goodbye, old friend.'
Those were the last words the boy uttered and the voice in his head yammered for a final time, but he could not hear it. For his body slowly slumped to the side and his consciousness was fading.
But instead of falling down to his demise, the boy found himself a prisoner in his own body, staring through its sockets.
'You can't do this, you have no right! It is not your turn.'
'I will have no turn left if I let you go through with it.'
The boy's arms then moved, and it caused what was numb and distant to return with a renewed vigour. Yet the crushing pain of his shattered limbs served to remind him of something he had long forgotten.
And even though the movement of the arm that unraveled the tattered shirt wasn't his, the tears that refused to drip down from his eyes were.
'I..I am sorry'
'Don't be. It has been a long time since the last swap, it is only natural.'
'No, I was selfish. I thought I was the only one carrying this burden, I thought you did not understand. How could I have forgotten?'
'It is quite a heavy burden, neither of us could carry it on our own. But as one we can, it is too soon to give up.'
' I feel ashamed. I am returned and again in your debt, my one and only friend.' '
'Think nothing of it. Welcome back, my companion and only solace.'
The lip that quivered belonged to them both. No, it belonged to the boy, for they were both one.