yeah, maybe my head's fucked up

Leave voicemail, phone calls, and text messages for Prior Walter here.

"But you can't come back. Not ever."

It is, without a doubt, one of the hardest things Prior has ever done. To walk away from this love — well, to limp away, once he's out of this hospital bed, but figuratively, to walk away from this man he's loved for so long — it's not easy. It is very, very difficult. He has faced angels. He has faced death and chosen life. He's struggled with this disease alone, and to be offered companionship, oh, how it tempts him.

But Louis had a point the other day when he said that nothing would change. Maybe Louis has grown, maybe these past couple months have changed him. But it would still be the same. Prior isn't going to stay and comfort him, always glancing back, always wondering when he'll be left again. He's chosen life, and he can't tie himself to a man he no longer trusts, no matter how he loves him. There is room in his life for Louis, perhaps, but not that kind of room. Not ever again. There's no going backwards.

"I'm sorry. But you can't."

To Louis' credit, he only cries a little. He doesn't pout or rant or refute what's been said. They cling to each other and they cry, and they feel the world split apart again, but he accepts this sentence that Prior has handed down. Maybe he has changed, a little. But that isn't enough. Louis will be waiting forever for him to get magically better, to heal, and that isn't going to happen, not the way Louis wants it. There is healing and growth and decay, life and death, all at once within Prior's body, and that's how it is. That's all, forever.

Still, it feels good to be held.

Eventually they untangle from each other, and Louis reluctantly departs, leaving Prior to the rest everyone insists he so desperately needs (and perhaps he does. He is exhausted. Heaven is a hell of a trip).

Somehow, he falls asleep.

In his dream, the rumble of wheels on train trucks lulls him into deeper slumber, and when he wakes, it's entangled in the same sort of stiff white sheets that speak of hospital rooms. This, though, is not a hospital, and there are no waiting friends or nurses. Outside the window, there's a steady flow of movement, trees flying past — not New York, not any subway Prior has ever ridden, with trees and land and beneath him a bed. He slips out of bed and onto his feet, letting out a soft hiss of pain, and stares out the window.

A train.

He bursts from the little room and into a hallway, walking down it as quickly as his leg will allow. The train is eerily quiet, all rows of empty seats, and it squeals to a stop before he can come across any kind of dining car or conductor. He nearly falls down, gripping the seats on either side of him tight to keep his balance.

"What the fuck?"

At first, he simply stands there, waiting for something; he doesn't know what. An announcement, perhaps, or someone to come in and tell him where he is. After a minute or two, though, when it becomes clear no one and nothing is coming, he hobbles out through the doors and into a station. People mill past, sparing quick judgmental glances for his hospital clothes, but not otherwise acknowledging him. He makes his way over to the information booth, and the young man there looks him over, and not in the way Prior is used to or likes. Instead, the man shoves a thick manila envelope through the slot under the glass and goes back to his paperwork.

Prior Walter, it says across the top and all Prior can do is exclaim again, "What the fuck?" He pounds on the window. "Excuse me? Excuse me, what the fuck is this —" But the man simply ignores him. Opening the envelope, he begins to pull out various objects — bits of what seem to be money, a strange dark glass rectangle, a key, an ID card, a map. He's going to have a panic attack if no one answers him soon, if he doesn't wake up.

This is not Heaven. It's not New York either, and he'd thought he was done with angels at last anyway.

He dumps everything back in the envelope and, clutching it close, he makes his way out of the station and onto the street, as if things might be clearer in the sunlight. He stops just outside the doors, looking up and down the sidewalk, seized by a fear of going further in his bare feet. If he steps on something rusty and develops tetanus, he's dead. If he steps on glass, there's no telling what might enter his system. Maybe he needs to go to the place the key is for; maybe something, someone, is waiting. He could hail a taxi, use the money in the envelope.

Truthfully, though, he's tired. This seems like more games from angels, and he is tired. "What the fuck?" he asks again, despairingly, hugging the envelope to his chest, and leans back against the station wall, closing his eyes. "There's no place like home, there's no place like home..."

Nothing.