Mark lvs Fred & George :3

A lot of people had pointed out to your face by now that you lacked common sense, and you'd never even denied any of them. You were many things but not someone blind to yourself.

And right now, you were perhaps doing the craziest thing in your life. Honestly maybe your upbringing had stuffed a little too much empathy and all that other crap into you, because otherwise there was no way you'd be raiding a closed amusement park with another version of your high school friend—who you had only recently learned was a hero—and climbing to the top of a roller coaster with him.

Holding onto the metal safety bar in front of you, you glanced at the equally tense companion beside you from another universe. According to the news from just a few days ago, this guy had practically destroyed Russia. But right now if anyone saw him from afar, they'd probably just say he looked weird.

The air between you carried a heavy feeling that seemed untouchable, as if protected by magic. But you hadn't come here just to sit quietly. No, not even the weight hanging in the atmosphere could stop you. You shoved the concern in your voice into the farthest corners of your mind.

"Sooo, what's life like around here?" you asked. The two of you looked at each other in surprise after saying the exact same thing at the same time.

You assumed he was looking back too, even if you couldn't see his eyes—his parted, cracked lips gave it away. You trembled as you exhaled, a small, hesitant chuckle slipping from your lips. "Wow...well, I wasn't expecting that. Did this happen a lot with the version of me in your universe? It didn't really happen with mine..." you turned back toward the tracks where the coaster was slowly passing by. "We weren't that close."

You looked back at him with a distrust you couldn't explain. Because now everything was falling into place. Why had you agreed to hold the hand of the fallen version of a friend you weren't even close to in your own universe and leave with him? What exactly had been going through your mind? You wanted to smack your forehead but didn't. Maybe what had brought you here was how helpless and pained his voice had sounded.

"No, we never had things like this." he said, with that same brittle voice that had greeted you from the very beginning. Toward the end, it sounded as though if he spoke any more, he would do something terrible just to put an end to his own fragility. Despite the dozens of questions running through your mind, you gave him time to continue. "The last time I saw you, we were both still kids. Honestly, I don't even know if you're alive in my world." wounded Mark began. "Though I couldn't see even a single shred of hope for a positive confirmation..."

"That's why you're here." you finished his sentence without thinking. Your voice came out stranger than you wanted it to. His shoulder slumped in a way that confirmed your words. Even though his head remained facing forward, you could imagine the emotional glances he was secretly throwing your way.

"I want you to come with me. It's not like this place. I can never promise you the peace this world gives, but I'll protect you. I won't let anyone touch you."

He kept his voice as low as possible, hungry for the possibility of convincing you. And it was actually working. The more you felt his eyes lightly turning toward you, studying your face, the tighter the knot in your throat became. He really could have convinced you. But there were things you would never abandon, even for your own life.

Besides, you hadn't forgotten the massacres he committed. Still,, what would happen if you threw that in his face? Were you really about to preach about morality to a man you barely knew? Were you stupid?

Silence settled between you for a short moment, though for the both of you it felt painfully long.

"I can't do that." With the peak you were approaching, the train let out even slower rattling clicks. Every sound made your head ache even more, as though planting a seed inside you. His hand slid across the metal bar to hold yours but as if the movement had burned him, he quickly pulled it back. "I know it's hard for you, but please. Give me a chance. I want to start a new page and I want to do it with you."

"Why...why me?" Maybe it was the sunlight or indeed because of your tangled emotions, your eyes began to shimmer with a wet brightness. "Why would you want something from the past that made you this way to stay by your side?" your eyes wandered over the wounds on the boy's body, as if they could find their own voice and answer for him. You suppressed the urge to touch him—to feel and understand every single ache.

"You were the only good thing that ever happened to me."

By the time the cold brightness of the sun brushed against your skin, you had already reached the peak. The train had nearly ground to a halt just to build the tension. Yet it didn't have a single effect on either of you. You were completely lost in the black lenses that hid another world from you. And they were holding onto your irises as if those eyes were the very source of life given to them.

"Mark," as though your words had brought him back to life, he drew in a breath. Yet the words that followed only shattered the both of you. "We don't belong to each other."

You waited for him to say something or to get angry, but neither came. He stood frozen, like a gear whose power had just been unplugged. As the train rolled further past the edge of the peak, you could feel that the time you possessed each other was also coming to an end.

You didn't want it to be like this. Ignoring your own logic, you placed your hand over his knuckles much harder than necessary. As though it could somehow give strength to this man breaking apart in front of you, you squeezed his hand tightly in your palm.

"I can't go with you. Nothing there belongs to me, even if it's something left behind by my other self. And you," your lips pressed together in a tremble. Not a single tear caressed your skin in that moment, but your heart was already prepared to weep. "There's nothing left there tying you down. I'm not telling you to come and try to take the place of your other version. Let this place, this world, this life here bind your wounds and keep you alive."

"I...I don't think I can do that." his head shifted away from you. You didn't allow it. Your hand moved to the back of his neck, guiding the skin there back toward you with a gentle force. "How do you know you can't! Don't think, just try. There are thousands of people out there starting from nothing, managing to lift themselves out from under weights they were never meant to carry. Of course neither they nor you are the same. But answer me, Mark. What do you lack that they have?"

Maybe in that moment, more than anyone else, you were voicing the words you had always wanted to hear yourself. Those cascades of words you wished, even for a single fleeting moment somewhere in your life, that someone would give you. But they never came. And instead of waiting, you continued down the cruel road called life with your exhausted body.

And now that you had seen another soul even more wounded than yours, you couldn't deny him the hopeful words you once longed for. No, you would give him the reason to keep going that nobody had ever given you. Or maybe he already possessed that reason. It was obvious he had come here for you, even if you didn't know what kind of meaning you held for someone in another universe.

And neither your heart nor your soul wanted to let him go. He was the one who found you, but it was the both of you who refused to let go. As the wind passed between you and caressed his hair, you rushed downward at breakneck speed. The train's descent from the peak felt as though it never even happened to either of you; you were both still trapped beneath the spell of your own words.

He finally abandoned the metal bar that had turned cold beneath his fingers. The inside of his palm found the warmth of the hand holding him instead. Your fingers entwined, like a pair of doves nesting into one another. In that moment, both of you wanted to say so many things, but your lips were already sealed, while your souls greeted each other as if it were the dawn of the world.