[Prince Piper]

Word Count: 521
Sanity: 5%

Stars and voices. Both very distant, both very bright. Pinpoints of attention-drawing material woven onto a blackish canvas high above. Unreal, cosmic, not to be separated from the other. I can touch neither, why shouldn't both be imaginary? Prince pawed at the sky from his place in the crook of a dumpster and a stone wall. His eyes shone the stars' reflections on their glazed surfaces, long tired of struggling to rip apart one plane of existence from another. As far as he was concerned, everything he saw was legitimate. If he saw them, how could they not be? There was a young girl not far away, her manifestation long departed but her voice and her memory causing the vision to linger. Sight of the mind's eye didn't bend to rules of reason. The fact that even a moment's mindplay could last as long as the viewer toyed with the idea was commonplace in schizophrenia. He heard her over and over again. She was not there, he knew, but she had been at some time, for he saw her now. Perhaps, a ghost of the past. But no, that little girl had lived in his bedroom for as long as he could remember, which he knew must be nearby for her presence to be made so clear. 

Many words escaped through a small opening between his lips, nonsensical phrasings derived randomly from the million times they had been used to form syllables. It was all perfectly clear, to him. To anyone else, he was someone to be avoided, a misfit of society that somehow posed a threat to one's children. Ironically, the latter was true. The former, though... well, loneliness could lead a person to this state, so there was no way avoiding someone so sensitive would do any good. Better to go over and say hi, break them from their wild musings and fleeting flashes of imagination. "Love... went to the store and... carton of jam... three dozen, I said, three dozen... no mate, no harm..." The girl seemed to nod, there or not. She seemed to understand and accept. She had already left, but she could speak to him long-distance. Distance was not a problem with ghosts. How silly it would be for a ghost to have trouble getting past a wall. They should just be able to float through, right, pass on to the other side as their nature should warrant them? What was the use of storybooks if they taught such fallacies? Why should children be misled, when dealing with the defining characteristics of phantasms? What was Halloween when ghosts were limited by mundane things like walls... Walls. Walls. Walls.

These walls can't hold me! They can't! Prince looked feverishly at the stone surrounding him, pressed himself more securely against the dumpster. They would not take him. They would not. But they did and he felt their resilience twofold as they pressed against him. He grabbed his throat and suffocated himself, so that they could not. They had him. They were suffocating him, convincing him it was the only way, leashing him along to his doom. He would not be a slave. As his eyes fluttered shut, his grip loosened, and he felt the coming-ons of sleep.

Then, black and messy paint strokes. 

[Morgan]

Morgan tried to will away the sound of his own pulse and his breathing but his awareness prevented him that. The most he could do is dull it somewhat with concentration upon the streets and alleyways below as he ran from roof to roof in an effort to catch up with Piper's escape. Fear prickled along his nerves like needles; would it be good or bad news, if he caught up to the young man sooner rather than later? What would it mean if he was no longer running?

No! Can't think like that. The bullet wasn't fatal, he needed to keep that at the forefront of his thoughts. 

From the corner of his eye did he see something nestled in the space between a dumpster and a wall. His own coat, and the young man still wearing it, arms crossed as if...? He couldn't tell. For the moment Piper seemed to be simply resting. He scouted around for a fire escape nearby and followed it down to ground level, then made his way over to the slumped figure. 

Unconscious. He had been bleeding from his ear. The bullet only grazed that much, and Morgan could guess it had taken a piece, but he'd need to get the wound clean to be sure to what extent that was true. 

The blond cast his gaze down, crestfallen. All of that, and it still resulted in the Masked Man shooting at his friend. Morgan had wanted to apologize for failing to protect him fully, but he knew the other was somewhere he couldn't hear. Hopefully, it was more peaceful where the brunet was until he woke up eventually. For that, he could take his time. The night itself had gone on for far too long, and what felt like mere seconds or minutes extended much like the space above into hours, the darkness of which had seemed so convenient to hide all the world's cruelties. And it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to Piper, for him to wake to a life that seemed eager to extinguish his.


Morgan picked Piper up and carried him. He'd take him home; it was the only place he knew where Piper wouldn't have to worry about potential murderers, where desperation wouldn't run him ragged and leave him alone in a dark corner of who knows where. And at least, they knew each other. That would help him.