Chapter Text
Stanley ran as fast as he could, as he’d been doing for seven years. His breaths came in sharp gasps, and his feet beat a staccato rhythm on the pavement. Stanley all but shoved his way through people making their way down the sidewalk, completely uncaring of all the people he was disrupting. Stanley couldn’t be distracted by any of that - he was being chased, and the person chasing him was far too close behind Stanley for him to dare spare the attention to apologize to the people he almost bowled over. Stanley could feel his pursuer bearing down on him, most likely yelling after him and nearly close enough to grab him. Despite that, Stanley ignored them, too.
He shut out their voice and presence, though even their proximity was painful. The bond that let Stanley’s pursuer find him tried to yank him back like a fish on a line, but he forced that pull out of his mind. He didn’t dare glance behind him, knowing that even a moment’s slip in his razor focus would likely be the end of all his years of near misses, strategic avoidance, and quick escapes. Stanley knew he couldn’t let this end without a fight. And thus, he narrowed his focus to his unremarkable gray sedan. If Stanley could only reach it, he knew he could slip away again and lose his persistent pursuer for a little while.
The person chasing after Stanley would find him again, and he knew it. There was no way to escape or hide his location from them. But darting away would at least buy precious time, and Stanley intended to keep running for as long as possible. He couldn’t go forever, but Stanley knew all too well that forever was an awfully long time - and he was nothing if not good at getting close to it. Stanley’s stubbornness was sometimes his downfall, but it was also his greatest asset - and in staying ahead of his soulmate, it was invaluable. By that point in his racing, Stanley had broken a sweat, and his legs spasmed as the too-sudden transition from standing in line to running caught up with him.
Stanley guessed his luck was out to mess with him for taking a bit of a farther-away parking spot. Stanley had only been out to grab himself some coffee without having to make it at home and some pastries to go with it. But evidently, even simple tasks like that didn’t come without risking an encounter with his eternal, implacable pursuer. But Stanley didn’t let exhaustion distract him. He knew what his body was capable of, and it was a lot more than this little sprint: he wasn’t particularly fit, but Stanley wasn’t bound by anything resembling human endurance. If he had to, he could run for weeks without stopping.
But Stanley’s mind drove him forward more than his body ever could. Pure determination to escape drove him on. He couldn’t slow down now. Stanley missed a single step, barely a stumble - but it cost him immediately. He felt fingertips brush the back of his shirt, almost a first touch, which he knew would halt him in his tracks. Stanley’s focus changed gears into a genuine panic. Too close, too close, too close. Stanley let that stress flow and fuel him - and he poured on the afterburners, sprinting even harder to get away. Stanley dug down, dug deep, and pressed on.
At last, though, Stanley closed in on his car. His panic-fueled adrenaline had let him leave his pursuer just far enough that Stanley could wrench open the door, leap in, and slam it behind him. A touch would be Stanley’s undoing - or even a lingering glance could be. Running was profoundly unnatural in his position, and he knew that every facet of the bond that drove his pursuer after him was actively working against him. Even a scrap of information could ruin Stanley and his drive to continue. His pursuer’s name, face, or gender - he could allow himself to know none of it to keep up this insane flight.
The bond that let Stanley’s pursuer follow him without error was almighty, inexorable, and inescapable...but that didn’t stop Stanley from outrunning it. Even closeness to his pursuer would sap Stanley’s indomitable resolve, so he couldn’t hesitate. Merely driving away wouldn’t be enough either - this was too close to his home. He was too hurried to even bother with his seatbelt - he just slammed the key into the ignition and his car into reverse, backing hastily out of the parking space he’d been in.
Stanley would have to uproot his life and run yet a-fucking-gain, even though he’d made it nearly a month in the latest apartment he’d rented - one of the longest rests he’d had since the chase had begun. His pursuer would always know how to find him, and Stanley had no choice but to simply keep ahead of them. His awareness of their movements was his only advantage aside from sheer tenacity. To Stanley, there was no choice. There was no way he could try and reason with them, reach out to them, or call off this insane race - there was nothing he could do but keep running.
That knowledge, and all the laundry list of things Stanley knew about how this high-stakes cat-and-mouse chase worked, didn’t stop him from being an idiot. And thus, like an idiot, Stanley glanced back to where he’d run from. Stanley’s eyes met icy blue ones, staring directly into his with the same uncompromising intensity that had brought them both this far. Stanley was a stubborn man, but he knew his pursuer had to be every bit as determined to chase him for so long - and in their stare was precisely the raging, intense focus Stanley was half-hoping to see. Even though he avoided them, Stanley would feel insulted if that fury and dedication weren’t present in someone he was bound to. Theirs was the expression of someone who would chase Stanley to the ends of the Earth and the end of time if they had to. Their gaze bored into his as though they were trying to reach into his soul and rip out the throat of his convictions with their teeth - Stanley figured they’d gladly gut him like a fish to end their stupid, crazy game.
And on some level, Stanley was happy to see such ferocity from his pursuer. After all, they were his soulmate, the person he was bound to above all else. Despite all that their tenacity drove him to, despite all the pain their race had caused, Stanley expected nothing less. Perhaps, if he hadn’t been so entrenched in his own shit, and if he didn’t know how stupid, pointless, and hurtful the game they played was, he would have enjoyed the chase. Even as it was, it was all Stanley could do not to smile - but he knew letting himself enjoy the confrontation or the competition would make him crumble.
And yet, meeting their gaze wasn’t unlike the feeling of crashing from a tall flight of stairs - something that Stanley had done enough times to be intimately familiar with the pain. The jolt that came with it was violent, harsh, and agonizing - burning cold fire through his entire body, intense enough to make his vision swim and his head spin. Stanley could feel the bond that stretched between them as though it was a string tied to his every sinew, being yanked on enough to physically pull him back - unconsciously, he leaned his body into the feeling, back towards the person he was running from. He gripped the wheel hard enough to make his knuckles go white and ground himself - he couldn’t give in. Stanley needed to stay strong; and had to go. He needed to snap himself out of this.
The core of Stanley’s soul screamed at him to stop, making a ringing in his head that seemed to block out the world aside from himself and the person he couldn’t make himself avert his eyes from. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this, and he knew it. The tension mounted slowly with time, eventually morphing into physical pain, but rarely did anyone ever reach that point. Usually, soulmates would never feel the type of pain that Stanley felt from mere proximity - but typically, soulmates would never avoid one another. They would give at least one fair shot to their soulmate, and that tension would snap like a string, never to return. Stanley should have stopped. He knew he should have stopped. He should have let destiny come to him when it knocked seven years earlier and ended the whole mess before it had even begun. But now, Stanley couldn’t. Not least because he was sure he wouldn’t be able to leave again - but settling down with his soulmate was also unthinkable. By running, he’d left himself no choice but to continue.
To shake himself from his reverie, Stanley focused on those blue eyes. He paid no attention to the rest of their face, knowing it might break his composure and his will to do so. He needed to stay strong - he believed he was locked into this path with no other choice. Meeting his soulmate’s stare was searingly painful, but that grounded him - the pain sharpened his focus. He knew how hurtful it would be to allow this to progress, how likely it was to go badly. And thus, after the briefest moment longer letting himself stare, Stanley tore his gaze away from his soulmate’s and threw his car into drive.
He felt them move, broken from their stunned stillness by Stanley’s movement, but it was too late. Before they could shout after him, run into the street as they’d done before in their pursuit, or even take more than a step, Stanley hit the gas pedal and floored it. As fast as he could, Stanley drove away, not willing to so much as slow down. Stanley knew that the intensifying bond would eventually win, that they would be dragged together no matter what Stanley did, but he still didn’t intend to give in any time soon. Stanley was sure that if he refused to stop, merely being in the same room without releasing all that tension would break him and render him helpless. But Stanley was immortal; he had forever to work with - and he could stretch out his stubbornness for an awfully long time.
Stanley kept his eyes on the road as he drove, blinking back burning tears from the sheer intensity of what he’d just felt. He needed his eyes to be clear to see the road and go quickly without incident - but even managing that was a struggle. Stanley had never been much of a crier, but that didn’t stop the tears from welling up. He could still feel the echoes of the pain of meeting his soulmate’s gaze, down to his bones, like something had ripped deep into him, and the tears hadn’t stitched themselves shut yet. He was still gasping, even though he wasn’t running - the pain had driven the air from his lungs, so it seemed, and panic didn’t help. It burned all the brighter because Stanley seldom felt pain - his body was inhumanly durable, an eternity in the Parable having rewarded him with nigh-invulnerability to match his agelessness.
That had been far too close of a call for Stanley’s comfort. It was painful, much too painful for him to want to risk that happening again. Stanley knew that running was only hurting them both, but he couldn’t stop. Stanley had reasons for avoiding his soulmate - reasons he held on to tightly, even though he was pretty sure he was making terrible decisions. Seven years earlier, he’d been kicked out of a previous life that most would have considered a prison, but Stanley considered a paradise and hell in equal measure - the Stanley Parable.
He’d been locked in looping time and a single office building with regular contact with only one other person. A person, if he was human enough to be called one, known only to him as the Narrator. They had been as close as two people could ever be, trapped together for eons, intimately familiar with one another in a way Stanley was sure no soulmate could replicate, even though he had kept his deepest feelings for the Narrator to himself. Stanley had done everything there was to do in the Parable ten times over, with the Narrator’s voice guiding him all the while.
Stanley had memorized every secret and trick the Parable had to offer. Every bit of the Narrator’s story, in all its disastrous quirks, immortalized in an immortal mind - a perfect record in Stanley’s memory. He’d raced through every ending, every secret, every piece of the Parable, over and over and over until he could do them in his sleep, recite every moment like it was engraved into the inside of his head. And then, once he’d done that, he’d ripped it all to bits and put it back together. He’d picked it all to pieces to understand every loving line of code and then built it anew with the Narrator, far above and beyond the confines of what the Parable was supposed to be.
And like the Parable itself, the relationship between Stanley and the Narrator flourished far beyond what could have been intended. They’d had an eternity, and they had made the most of every moment - even when that meant getting into petty arguments that lasted millennia, giving each other weeks of the silent treatment, and orchestrating grand and eon-spanning plans just to prove a point. Stanley and the Narrator had hurt each other, cared for each other, been there for each other at all times whether or not they wanted to be, and spent eternities together like others spent days. After a certain point, time had all but lost meaning - they spent more of it together than the new world Stanley was in had existed, and as far as he was concerned, his identity was too entwined in the Narrator’s to ever be extricated.
However, things were far from perfect between them. Stanley had killed himself in the Parable. Out of spite, out of curiosity, out of bad judgment, out of desperation, out of anguish, out of boredom, over and over and over again. The Narrator had killed Stanley in the Parable, too - out of vengeance, malice, mercy, by mistake, to prove a point, and just because. In every way that one person could hurt another with no way to grab them by the throat and choke them out themselves, Stanley and the Narrator had hurt one another - and themselves. Stanley had all too many awful memories of it - some more prominent than others.
And yet, Stanley had loved the Narrator in every way one person could love another without saying the words and without a way to yank them in and kiss them silly. He’d received the same non-physical and strange unspoken affection in return, though he wasn’t sure the Narrator meant it the same way he did. Romantic feelings were enough of a human quirk that Stanley wasn’t sure whether the Narrator felt them at all - he certainly seemed to deride the idea when it came up. Beyond that, Stanley wasn’t sure that anyone else would fall in love the way he did in the conditions of the Parable. For Stanley, their relationship was intensely close and intensely personal. He knew the Narrator too intimately not to love him for precisely who he was, knowing every piece of him as Stanley did - but Stanley couldn’t be sure if he felt the same.
That knowledge of every quirk of the Narrator had taken a lot of time to form, as had Stanley’s love for him - but it wasn’t like he hadn’t had all the time in the world, looping over and over. Once, Stanley and the Narrator had done something that even resets almost couldn’t undo. The Narrator had fallen into a slump over outside input that Stanley didn’t fully understand despite centuries of explanations. But with the words of strangers haunting him, the Narrator had made a button that would allow Stanley to skip through his interminable rambles - pausing him in time for a few minutes to enable the Narrator to ramble to air. The first couple of times had been funny. It was a way for Stanley to mess with the Narrator and a resounding success in its function, even if Stanley was sure that the Narrator would quickly tire of it.
And then the door had vanished into thin air, the skips in time had swiftly begun to lengthen, and everything had gone to shit. Stanley had no choice but to press that button, leaving the Narrator alone with only his thoughts for longer and longer periods. Listening to the Narrator slowly break down, completely helpless to stop it, was unmitigated hell. He’d signed apologies until his fingers could no longer form shapes. He’d cried and beaten at the walls and struck them with the chair, and nothing worked. Nothing allowed him out. Nothing let time truly tick away, no matter how long Stanley waited - the clock on the wall would even pause, seemingly taunting him. He skipped, he skipped, and he skipped. The Narrator lapsed into rage, mantra, and then silence - from which he did not return.
Even a reset hadn’t fixed things at first. For years, Stanley had banged on the walls, signed to the ceiling, and dropped down into the bowels of the building, hunting for anything that might bring him back. And over the years of screaming into the void in every way he could without a voice, Stanley brought the Narrator back just enough to realize they were as free of that room - and his own name was, at that moment, the sweetest thing Stanley had ever heard. It took nearly a century, the most they’d ever worked together at that time, for Stanley to bring the Narrator back - years upon years of patience, tapping, and signing, building back up to where they’d been.
Stanley wasn’t entirely sure how it had changed, but he knew their relationship was never the same after that, not just because of the bucket the Narrator had given him shortly after. The Narrator seemed less antagonistic, even though they never ceased their banter. It was as though the heat and poison had leaked out of the Narrator’s caustic commentary, leaving behind something Stanley wasn’t sure how to define. And Stanley, despite everything, mimicked that. They still battled over fucking everything, and Stanley wouldn’t have it any other way, but somehow there was more camaraderie in their competition than before.
And then they’d been trapped in that room a second time - Stanley had only been poking around the boss’s bathroom and then found himself somehow there again. Stanley knew that the Narrator’s mind would not be able to handle a second ordeal like the first. Getting him back was nearly impossible, and lightning wouldn’t strike like that a second time. If he lost the Narrator, Stanley knew he would break too - and he didn’t want to hurt him, not truly, not permanently. And thus, he strode across the room where he could no longer see the Button, sat down, and waited for the walls to crumble. That time, the clock ticked. That time, the Narrator reacted to his bullshit.
It took the Narrator a solid year to realize that Stanley wasn’t going to push the Button and two more to stop insisting it would be fine, that he should just press it so that he, at least, could leave. But Stanley, for better or worse, was a stubborn man. He refused to abandon his only companion there again. And thus, years blurred into decades. Those into centuries, then millennia, and then Stanley stopped counting as the time lapsed into boundless, endless eons. But with a companion, even being trapped in a little concrete box of a room was bearable.
The two of them whiled away eternity with mostly one-sided chatter. They spoke of everything and nothing at all, made games and played them together, told stories, practiced British Sign Language, and cracked years’ worth of stupid jokes. Stanley was intent on not allowing the Narrator to fall apart on his own a second time - and he’d never again let the Narrator believe Stanley hated him. Those things were far more intolerable to Stanley than waiting there with him ever could be, and he knew the Narrator knew it. And Stanley, as he discovered, couldn’t simply sit in a box with someone for a billion years and not fall in love with them. He couldn’t deny it to himself in the darkness of that room as they became closer, as they shared every stupid detail about themselves - Stanley knew he was head over heels for the Narrator, but he didn’t dare tell him.
Stanley couldn’t see himself moving on, with or without anyone else. Their bond, forged in such an eternity together, ran too deep. He simply couldn’t imagine leaving that behind - not for anyone, not even for some soulmate he was supposed to love and was undeniably drawn to. Stanley had been unceremoniously spat out of the Parable alone into a new life he wanted no part of, seemingly having received some final achievement and having reached “100% completion.” Stanley had no idea what had become of the Narrator - whether he was out of the Parable, looking for Stanley, if he was alone, if he missed Stanley. After the Parable, Stanley had found a couple other people who’d been trapped there, one of whom he’d met before being kicked out, but he was still no closer to finding the Narrator than he’d been on day one. The Narrator had no physical form to look for, no name to track down - and Stanley had no leads to follow.
Stanley’s soulmate didn’t make the search easier, either. They kept him on the run and far too busy to search effectively. Since a couple days after Stanley had been kicked from the Parable, his soulmate had been hunting him. And since they’d started, Stanley had darted away just as insistently. One meeting would stop the tension and let Stanley explain the situation - but he couldn’t do it. Stanley couldn’t imagine coming face-to-face with someone he was bound to after losing the only person he wanted to spend his life with. Stanley was confident that the person hunting him wasn’t the Narrator - after all, his soulmate had a body and a name he didn’t allow himself to know, and the Narrator had neither. Stanley had spent enough time with the Narrator that he was sure he’d already know - and that any bond between them would have registered a first meeting.
Stanley repeated those memories and beliefs to himself, hoping they’d comfort him and make it easier to run away. His hands shook violently on the wheel, but he refused to let go or to turn from his course. Stanley drove home quickly, struggling to keep his emotions under control, blinking tears out of his eyes. He didn’t have time to slow down, break down, or consider his next move. If he was going to stay ahead of his soulmate, Stanley just had to move as fast as he could. Luckily for Stanley, he’d grown good at moving fast. For most of his time after the Parable, Stanley had been all but living out of what he could fit in his car, staying in hotels, short leases, and anywhere else he could swiftly evacuate.
By that point, Stanley practically had running away down to a science, one he was an expert in. Even settling for a little bit hadn’t broken him of that - moving quickly came all too easy to him after seven years. A remote-work software development job, where Stanley didn’t have to work very hard and often didn’t need to talk to anyone for weeks or longer, certainly contributed to the ease of staying on the move. Thus, he ran into his apartment.
And as he started to pack, Stanley finally broke down. He sobbed through cramming all his belongings into suitcases, texting his landlord to break his week-by-week easy-exit lease, and repacking his car so he’d have access to things he needed on the road. Crying made the process harder, but at least it was deeply cathartic. Stanley wasn’t sad to be abandoning his apartment; he didn’t care about that. He wasn’t even too upset about having to leave again - as hellish as his situation was, at least it kept him active and forced him to think.
Stanley was reasonably sure that he’d fall apart entirely if he stopped, sinking into a stupor too deep to crawl back out of. No, that brief near-contact between himself and his soulmate, as inconsequential as it should have been, was wrecking him. That one glance had driven itself like a knife into his core and twisted. It was almost more than Stanley could take, and he wasn’t sure his will would hold if it happened again. He knew that near-contact was going to fuck with him for quite some time, and it was going to hurt - all because he’d been stupid enough to look back even once.
When Stanley was ready to go, his soulmate was already closing in. They didn’t have a car, Stanley had gleaned that much, but that didn’t stop them from doggedly following him - it merely made them a little easier to outrun, given that Stanley had come into his new life owning a car and a license. By the time he was on the road, his soulmate was worryingly close, enough for him to feel it in his limbs like pins and needles - but he’d mostly stopped crying. Stanley was on the move, and that was all that mattered. It was all that he would allow to matter. For days, Stanley put everything out of his mind and simply drove.