Red thread brings everything around again for @letitroll

[cheerybomb]

Chrissy jolted forward, the same kind of hypnic jerk that sometimes happened when falling asleep. It wasn't hard enough to smack her face on the table in front of her, but suddenly enough to slap both hands down flat on it, and hard enough to sting. But only that, there wasn't any other pain, and that couldn't be right.

She flexed her fingers for a moment, brow furrowing at the fact that her hands were unbent, almost pristine, and that definitely couldn't be right either, this had to be another trick, that monster toying with her again -and why again was her first thought she didn't know- letting her think it was over, or that she'd gotten away somehow.

She twisted partway around without getting up, half-expecting that she'd see that damn clock wedged partway into a tree trunk again, or just standing freely between trees. Her heart was thumping wildly in her chest, she could practically feel it in her ears, under her tongue, some kind of adrenaline dump because this couldn't be real and it was just going to shatter again at any moment. But there was no sign of it, she couldn't see it, she couldn't hear it, and the dappled afternoon sunlight showed no sign of shifting suddenly to twilit gloom.

Flexing her fingers again she turned back around, "Eddie?"

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[letitroll]

Eddie woke up on the ground. Limbs sprawled out like he'd just fallen asleep that way, but he woke up with a scream in his throat and the memory of his own blood choking him, and it was with wild, panicked eyes that he looked around his surroundings, collecting himself in a protective crouch.

But it was just the woods. The woods, and 'his' picnic table, nothing tinged in greys or reds, everything strangely normal. So he stood carefully, patting himself over absently, surprised his clothes were whole, not stained in blood, and belatedly he realized somebody said something.

Chrissy.

A turn and there she was, like nothing had ever happened, and he closed the space to climb onto the bench opposite her.

"Uh. Hey. So this is...weird, right?"

[cheerybomb]

She watched him scramble upright, and there was something wrong about that too, the movements were too wild, he'd looked about as scared as she felt, and that just struck her as wrong.

But then he was sitting across from her, just like the first time, earlier that day, and she hesitated briefly before reaching across the table, catching gently at his fingers, not entirely sure if she'd be allowed or even if she should, but she nodded at the question all the same, "It is. We already... we were here, earlier, right?" She bit her tongue before she could ask if she was going crazy, not wanting to even put that out into the world.

[letitroll]

The contact is comforting, in a weird kind of way. She's warm, definitely not dead, which is a damn sight different than the last time he saw her, when she was bent and broken, twisted around like pipe cleaners.

"Yeah. I mean, I was here a couple days ago but. Yeah, for you it. Yeah."

He couldn't say it out loud, it was bad enough he had the images still stuck in his head.

[cheerybomb]

"Eddie, did we... I mean... are we... dead?" The word was only barely a murmur, more an exaggerated mouthing of it than anything, not wanting to make it try by saying it, but needing to know that they were on the same page about what may or may not have happened.

She didn't think that the afterlife was supposed to make people re-live moments from their lives, but if that was what was going on, this was a good place to start, one of the few times she'd truly felt seen. But at the same time, if things were meant to be going the way they had before, they were already off-script.