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Hello, Darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk to you again
Dylan stepped lightly down the hall, his eyes glued to the tightly closed door where soft music drifted. The Horsemen had been living in the Royal Observatory now for a week, and all had laid claim to a room in the old structure to become their own bit of living space. The door Dylan neared was Daniel’s.
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
Dylan stood before the door for five long, painful minutes, just listening to the song float around him. Daniel had been uncharacteristically quiet since their return from the London show- the Horsemen were worried about him. Dylan was worried about him. With a twisted feeling in his gut, he raised his hand to rap his knuckles against the door.
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
A shuffling sound from the other side broke Dylan’s resolve, and he let his hand fall to his side. In silent defeat, he turned from Daniel’s door and walked back down the old observatory halls.
Daniel never liked people to bother him in his room, anyway. What Dylan wanted to say could wait for another time.
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
All night, Dylan tossed and turned and awoke to stare for awhile at his bedroom ceiling before falling asleep and beginning the process anew. The anxiety he’d felt yesterday at Daniel’s door did not subside as he conceded defeat early that morning and sat at the bar in the kitchen, sipping coffee that refused to sit right in his stomach.
He pushed back the adrenaline that made his heart pound as he neared Danny’s room once more. It was noon, and Atlas had yet to make an appearance. Dylan noted his sweating palms as he approached the door and tried in vain to control the trembles that raced down his spine. The twisting in his gut worsened- he felt a primal fear, but he couldn’t place where it came from. He swallowed hard and lifted his hand as yesterday. Finally, he gave a knock that was, somehow, far more solid than he himself felt in that moment.
There was no reply.
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
Footsteps sounded down the hall, and a familiar voice. “Dylan, what are you up to?”
Dylan spared Merritt a glance as the man neared him. He turned back to the door and contemplated it before speaking. “Danny’s not out yet, and he’s not answering.”
“C’mon, he’s Danny, he gets like this. Has to pout for a few days sometimes, for who-the-hell-knows why. He’s fine.”
Dylan frowned, shaking his head. “Merritt… something’s wrong,” he confessed, the coils in his stomach releasing only slightly at sharing his concerns with the mentalist. “I feel it.”
Merritt grunted and stepped closer to him and the door. “Alright, if it’ll make you feel better,” he muttered. He gave a loud, hard knock and shouted, “Daniel, yo, it’s Merritt and Dylan. Open up.”
Again, there was nothing.
Dylan and Merritt shared a look, both men frowning. Dylan reached down and, against everything he knew Daniel would want him to do, tried opening the door. It was locked. Merritt stepped back.
“Wait here; I’ll find Jack.”
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
Jack made quick work of the lock.
“He’s going to kill me for doing this,” he mumbled, slipping the lock pick into its place up his sleeve and standing back. Dylan ignored his complaint and quickly twisted the knob, throwing his weight against the door in his sudden desperation to be in the room. In his sudden rush to be with Daniel.
The room was a sterile sort of clean, the eldest Horseman noted first. An obsessive sort of clean- everything had its place. He let his eyes drift for a moment, observing the neatly organized bookshelf and the papers stacked perfectly on a desk by Daniel’s closed laptop. His mind told him to keep scanning the room; but his heart stalled him there, eyes focused on the desk, the last solid object that could take his attention. His heart would not let him see more.
Merritt shoved past him. “Alright, Atlas, time to get your ass up, day’s half over and-”
Merritt stopped. From behind, Dylan heard Jack inhale sharply. Dylan finally turned his eyes onto the perfectly made bed and onto the man who lay on his back and very still on its pristine duvet, staring up at the ceiling.
Staring up at the ceiling with eyes of clouded glass. Staring up at the ceiling with lips parted oh-so slightly. Staring up the ceiling as though to avoid staring at the closed yet empty prescription bottle that sat, very neatly, on the bedside table. The coils in Dylan’s stomach released as the source of his anxiety and desperation made itself known.
For another hour Dylan stood there, staring at his friend, his lover, his everything- but they did not stare back.
People talking without speaking
Days past. Dylan spent more time in Daniel’s empty room than the others thought healthy, but they were too grieved to do much more than spare the man pitying looks as they passed by the open door. Dylan couldn’t close it- last time it was closed, his whole world had been ending just on the other side.
He hadn’t known. He had, but he hadn’t.
The others were gathered in a common room, Jack and Lula on a couch trying to find some comfort in one another. Merritt sat by himself in a chair on the other side of the room, taking a keen interest in the mist outside the window. The silence in the room was deafening.
People hearing without lis tening
“‘Control is an illusion’.”
They looked up as the silence was shattered. Dylan stepped from the hall, a leaf of paper in his grasp. He held it up a bit as he looked to the Horsemen.
“Found this inside his nightstand. The drawer was open too much- Danny never would’ve kept it like that unless he wanted someone to take a look.”
The three shifted in their seats, now giving Dylan their full attention.
Dylan looked down to the paper once more, hands shaking as he began reading aloud the words that cut a wound so deep he didn’t think it would ever heal.
“‘I learned that the hard way, like always. I put my ego and my compulsions before my family and before our job, and people got hurt. People almost died. Yeah, it was a set up by the Eye, but one I made possible by sheer arrogance. One I can never apologize enough for.’.”
Dylan paused, hands trembling now too violently to read the page. He leaned against the wall and continued, his voice wavering now, as well.
People writing songs that voices never shared
“‘You’re all going to be pretty upset with me for what I’ve just done. Maybe you’ll even hate me for it, and that’s alright- do what you have to.’
“‘We-we d-did a… a lot of… of-’,” but his voice grew thick and he couldn’t get the words out. Merritt, who was out of his chair and had been edging towards Dylan and the note, now took it from his hands and finished it out, a comforting hand resting on Dylan’s shoulder as the older man look away to compose himself.
“‘We did a lot of good together and I don’t think the world will be forgetting the Horsemen any time soon. I know we just had a big win, and me doing what I’ve done now, it’ll bring the mood down. But I couldn’t go on celebrating winning a battle when I’m the one who caused it in the first place. That shouldn’t stop you guys, though- take this victory, you earned it. You earned it more than I did.’
“‘Control is an illusion’,” Merritt concluded, his own voice threatening to break, “‘and the lesson that taught me that took a lot more than I had to give. I don’t know if there’s a place after, but if there is, I want you all to know-‘”
Merritt drew in a breath, a sad but almost fond smile pulling at his lips.
“‘I’ll be waiting for you there’.”
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
Sometimes, Dylan wonders how people mark the passage of time. Days, week, months, years… they don’t seem like enough, somehow. Dylan’s time passes without any aid from a number on a calendar or a time on a clock.
His time is marked by how many heartbeats it takes in a day before he’s too numb to hurt anymore. By how many nights he lies awake, wondering what could’ve been. By how many times he hears Danny’s laugh when he’s alone and too sad to move or eat or think.
The Eye had not contacted them since the incident. Dylan thought maybe they were just keeping a respectful silence- he was starting to hate silence.
The Observatory was quiet and felt lonelier than before. It was as though the building itself was mourning the loss of the talented young illusionist. Though Dylan tried to escape the pressure of the stifling quiet, he found no release.
“Fools,” said I, “you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
He sat alone now in Daniel’s room. Other than the absence of the young street-magician-turned-master-thief, it remained wholly untouched. Dylan wouldn’t let anyone near to move anything.
He gripped the duvet from where he was perched at the foot of the bed, his imagination letting him picture for a moment a very much alive and happy Daniel sitting behind him, pressed flush against his back and wrapping his arms around the older man’s shoulders.
But the moment he opened his eyes, he knew that could never be again. Daniel could never give him another arrogant smirk, the one where his eyes narrowed dangerously and his entire face took on an almost elven beauty. Daniel could never throw his arm carelessly around Dylan shoulders, laughing the loud laugh he had when he was happy and felt young and good and free.
Daniel Atlas was gone, and, for his final act, he'd stolen Dylan’s heart from his chest.
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you.”
“Why didn’t you talk to me,” Dylan murmured, hands clasp in front of him as he leaned forward on the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on in that head of yours?”
With unshed tears filling his eyes, Dylan looked up to the ceiling and fought to keep the agonizing pain in his chest from erupting.
“Why couldn’t I see what was happening to you?”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
With the thought that he could’ve save the man, could’ve stopped him from taking this final, drastic step- Dylan broke. Tears streamed down his face freely now, choked sounding sobs filling the room softly as he tried desperately to contain his anguish.
“I heard you,” he whispered brokenly, “You were alive the first time I came to the door-”
A gasp escaped his lips and he wrapped his arms around himself. He squeezed his eyes shut and grit his teeth, anything to stop the unending torrent of pain that ripped through his body.
“I-I.. I could’ve stopped this…”
And echoed in the wells of silence