Viola didn’t wake up from her unconsciousness on the schedule Gilbert had predicted. She remained sleeping even after the tubes were removed, not stirring or turning, lying so still that it worried Sebastian enough that he took it upon himself to personally watch over her through the hours rather than leave her to the care of anyone else.

Meanwhile, Viola was in a dreamland that felt so real that if it had been up to her she would have chosen to stay there rather than wake up to a reality that felt so uncertain and filled with overwhelming pain and danger.

The dream became something like a shelter for her, a place where her mind had retreated to cope with everything it couldn’t hold while she was conscious. In it she felt emotionally safe and steady in a way she hadn’t felt in a very long time. No fear. No pain. No weight on her shoulders.

She was living with her twin sister and smiling without the burden of guilt sitting permanently in her chest. Viola saw herself, or more accurately experienced herself, combing through the dark hair of her twin that was identical to her own, just the way Ivy used to comb hers when they were small.

"You must hate me now, Ivy..." Viola said quietly, her throat thick with pain and held back emotion as she looked into a pair of blue eyes that were mirror images of her own.

The Ivy in her dream smiled at her with the same quiet kindness Viola had always known her for, the kind that never had conditions attached to it. "I do not hate you, Serena. Nothing could ever make me hate you in this world."

"Then why do you look...sad?" She asked softly, hugging her arms around herself the way she always did when she was bracing for something she didn’t want to hear, afraid of finding the hatred she had always expected to see and even more afraid of learning that her sister’s sadness was something she had caused.

Ivy reached out and cupped her face in both hands. "I am in a place you cannot reach, and I never want you to try. You will die if you come here, Serena. I am sad because I can see how desperately you want to find me, and it is not worth it. I am sad because all I want is to see you happy and smiling and living the life you always deserved. Don’t kill yourself while there is still breath in you." Ivy whispered, stroking away the tears rolling down her cheek with the pad of her thumb. "Live, Serena. Experience life the way you always wanted to. Stop trying to reach for me."

Viola shook her head and reached out to grip her sister’s shoulders, feeling the dream beginning to shift and pull away from her, sensing she was about to be thrust back into the pain of reality she had been hiding from. "Don’t say that. We are stronger together. I will find you. I will make it up to you, every bit of it."

"You don’t have to make anything up to me. I do not hate you and I never will. Go and live your life, Serena. There is someone who is becoming important to you and he needs you. He needs you in his life more than you understand right now. Go back to him. Live well, sister..."

"Nobody needs me, don’t leave. Take me with you wherever you are, Ivy. I don’t know myself anymore. I don’t know what I want or who I am without you. I only know that if I find you I will find myself along with you. Please don’t go. I don’t want to feel the pain again. I don’t want to go back there. Don’t leave me!" Viola screamed as the image of her twin began to dissolve like watercolor bleeding through wet paper, turning transparent at the edges and working its way inward.

"You are safer where you are. Goodbye, Serena. I want you to remember that I will always love you. Always."

Viola reached for her sister’s hand but the moment their fingers touched, Ivy’s image broke apart entirely into water, collapsing into a cascade of droplets that splashed against her face and jolted her awake from the long sleep with a sharp and disoriented gasp.

"Don’t leave me!" Viola screamed herself awake, her chest heaving, eyes flying open and scanning the dim room around her before her mind slowly caught up with where she was.

She looked down and found that her sleeve was soaked through with water as if what she had just experienced had been physically real, and when she pressed her hand to her face she felt the dampness there too. How was this remotely possible? Did someone pour water on her to wake her up?

Before she could begin to make sense of anything, movement from the side of the room made her jolt upright and pain shot through her back and spine immediately, a sharp and vicious reminder of her condition.

"You’re awake." Came Sebastian’s voice, and then the light came on in the room and she had to squint against the sudden brightness before her eyes adjusted.

When they did, she found him standing there looking back at her, and the sight of him triggered something in her chest that moved through her in a wave she wasn’t prepared for. Confusion crossed her face first and then disbelief and then relief so overwhelming that tears spilled down her flushed cheeks before she could do anything to stop them.

He was alive. He hadn’t died...

"Seb..." She whispered, and the way she said it, quiet and broken and with a catch in her voice that she couldn’t hide, made Sebastian’s heart thud hard against his ribs.

She left the bed before he could move his injured leg to go to her. She crossed the distance between them and came to him and before he could say anything she put her arms around his waist and held him tightly, pressing her face against his chest.

"Oh g-god... I’m s-so glad y-you’re all right... I th-thought I had l-lost you... I th-thought I was g-going to w-wake up alone... You were in s-such a t-terrible condition the l-last time I saw you... I was s-so af-afraid... I th-thought I—"

The words came out rushing and trembling over each other like she couldn’t get them out fast enough, and Sebastian recovered from the surprise of her holding him to wrap his arms carefully around her trembling body, one hand threading gently into the hair at the back of her head and the other resting lightly on her back, careful of her injury.

"Shhh. It is all right. I am fine. Thanks to you." He whispered, feeling her tears soaking through his nightshirt and her fingers fisting into the fabric at his sides.

"I was so scared..." She sobbed against his chest, like a terrified child holding on to a lifeline.

"I know." He whispered back, pressing his lips to the top of her head and rubbing slow circles into her scalp with his fingers to try to soothe her. "But everything is all right now."

Viola couldn’t find words big enough to hold what she was feeling. It was hitting her all at once, too much and too strong, rocking through her in waves she had no defense against.

She had fallen unconscious without seeing him wake up and in that darkness her mind had built itself a shelter to hide in because reality had become too heavy to carry. She had thought she had lost Sebastian the same way she was losing her twin, because of her. Everyone around her kept getting hurt and it was a feeling she carried like something physical inside her, the certainty that she was not someone anyone should be close to, that being near her only ever cost people something.

The urge not to have woken up at all had been so strong she wasn’t sure she would have if that water hadn’t hit her face and pulled her back by force, as if something had decided she didn’t get to disappear into that dream and stay there to shut her reality. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Viola closed her eyes and tightened her arms around the only solid thing in the room. "I am so scared." She admitted, meaning it fully and not just about Sebastian or Ivy or any single thing but all of it at once. "I don’t want to lose anyone else."

"You won’t." Sebastian said confidently, stroking her hair slowly and steadily. He couldn’t help but feel warmth and happiness in his chest that she was this glad to know that he was alive and also carried fears of losing him just like he carried fears of losing her. Though he didn’t like that she was this vulnerable to her fears, Sebastian’s heart was overwhelmed at the feeling of their progress and the relief of her being awake after days of unconsciousness.

He rubbed her back and it was only then that he noticed her clothes were completely soaked through, the dampness already seeping into his nightshirt. He pulled back slightly and looked down at her, taking in her wet face, wet hair, wet sleeves, in a room where nothing else appeared to be damp at all.