Chapter Text
2:57.
Walking.
2:58.
Blanking.
2:59.
Walking.
3:00.
Alive.
Tyler Joseph was alive.
Well, it didn't always feel that way. Sometimes he needed a little reminding. Like right now. The brunet stopped walking abruptly, a small sigh escaping his lips and dispersing into the night. The air was frozen, which Tyler was acutely aware of as his movements slowed, and which was hardly ideal for a boy adorned in just a black t-shirt and sweats. It made his blood flow slower. He felt his bones begin to crack open.
But, just like Tyler, the weather was accountable to no one.
It was a brisk Friday night. Well, rather Saturday morning now, wasn't it? It was the last weekend before term started on Monday. Tyler would be a junior on Monday. A junior. He wasn't really thinking about that right then, though, standing in a random street in a suburb he vaguely recognised. It could be anywhere. It felt like nowhere. He could be surrounded by a million people, and it would still feel like nowhere. The world felt dull. All sensation had been leaked from it, and instead it's energy was running through Tyler's mind in busy corridors. It got so lost that nothing seemed to matter, and time became worthless, to be spent on worthless things.
Tyler wasn't always like this, of course. No one was always like anything.
He'd been walking for ages. Ever since he'd left his house a few hours earlier, excluding a number of breaks to eat and text Josh and try not to cry. The stars were all up with him now. He tilted his head back to look at them as he walked, scattered like malevolent angels over the empty streets. God, it was something. Tyler often wondered how stars had the ability to make him forget about everything else for moments at a time. He rubbed his hands together, taking in his surroundings that late Autumn night. The moon was up too, with no clouds to quench her, pouring clear silver over all of the ones left awake.
There was more in the sky, Tyler hoped. More than the voice that shattered the vacant wasteland inside of him every time he was alone. As much as he sometimes wished the voice would envelop him, he hoped there was more in the sky. More room for more hope, he hoped.
These thoughts struck against each other mercilessly in his mind, messy constellations that felt completely unattainable. Tyler slipped his phone out of his pocket in an attempt of distraction, the weak glow illuminating his shadowy features. It read 3am; he had no recollection of it getting so late. He rarely did. There were no people out at all now. The entire world was silent. He hated silence. There was a pulse in his mind and it was drowning out all rationality and...
Hello, Tyler.
Tyler didn't look up. He didn't have to to know exactly what was coming.
It's been a while. Tell me, how's your father?
Tyler breathed deeply. "What do you want?"
That didn't answer my question.
"That didn't answer mine." Tyler slowly lifted his head to Blurryface, knowing all he had to do was get through one more night of this. And then one more. And then one more. And then.
And then.
What are you even doing out so late, hm? Waiting for someone to check in with you? Waiting for your family to ask where you are? H e laughed. Don't you know no one cares? Your family doesn't care. You're friends don't care. The universe doesn't care. The world isn't going to just stop spinning for you and your stupid problems. You don't keep anyone up at night. Everyone has the curtains drawn and closed on you.
Blurryface continued with his unnerving whispers as the two of them walked down the street; two shadows dressed in black, engulfed in a pressing silence.
"I know you're not real," Tyler finally said.
Oh, Tyler. I'm just as real as you are. I actually get quite a satisfying feeling of enlightenment out of my own self awareness, which feels quite content, as well as depressing. The shadow smiled. Ignorance is bliss, I'm sure you know. Don't you think your life would be so much more enjoyably simple if you weren't out of your fucking mind?
Tyler stuck his chin out, covering his fear with faux-confidence. "Can we maybe talk about this some other time?"
Look, Tyler. I'm here because you need me. Aren't you sick of people pretending to know what you're going through? They don't know you, but I do. I know that you're twisted up. I know that you don't sleep because you're petrified. I know that you used to dream, but now you just watch the backs of your eyes. And I know that someone needs to go out and finish your waste of a life. And guess what? Nothing kills a boy faster than his own head. Blurryface laughed then. I wonder, does Josh know what I know? Does he know? Does he?
Tyler didn't have time to answer because Blurryface was gone.
He always left eventually, but he was never really gone. He'd never be gone. Tyler was getting more and more susceptible, and his shadow was always fucking waiting. He'd been there when his dad had almost ripped Tyler's door off its hinges, trying to get through the locked door to him. He'd been there when Tyler had snuck into an 18 and over bar just to piss off his dad. People there wanted to give him attention, and what's better than that when you're stuck hating yourself?
He didn't know what to do with himself lately. Everything was getting darker around him, and he didn't know how to stop it. And now there was more silence.
Tyler was so insanely sick of it. It had followed him around his entire life. He took out his phone again; 3:37am. No notifications. He refreshed them and refreshed them, but no one else was awake. He went through every name on his contact list. That's all they felt like to him, at that moment - contacts. People he had contact with. Contact in class. Contact in the hallway or at lunch. Deep down, in his rational mind, he knew that most of them would listen to him if he wanted to talk, would worry on his behalf. But when he tried to play out that scene in his mind, it fell flat. It didn't help. It only added bystanders to what was essentially his burden. So he closed his contacts.
But then.
Josh.
Josh cares, Tyler thought. I know that he does. But Josh was probably asleep, like Tyler should have been. Something told him to do just that, and he wanted to do just that, he really did. More than anything. But sleep could turn so quickly into drown, and that was the last thing Tyler needed right then.
I need to calm the fuck down about everything, Tyler thought. But he didn't know how.
He was at a dead end. And he was fucking cold. He needed some kind of hotline, he supposed. Not a suicide hotline; more like the opposite. Was there a hotline for people who felt a little too motivated to be alive?
"I'm alive," said Tyler. "I'm alive." He was still just as alive as he had been in the summer, playing Mario Kart with Josh, and going to the local pools with Josh, and calling Josh at midnight because he was the only person who would listen.
He was still as alive as he'd been a few hours earlier, as he stormed out of his house in a hurricane of anger and fear and hurt, his father still screaming at him from the doorway.
So here he was. He was alive, and it was a normal night. Normal. Only 3 hours until sunrise.
Then I can try again.
It wasn't that easy, though. Maybe one day it would be, and Tyler held onto that as he chewed at his thumbnail and sat down in the middle of the empty road. He thought again and again about messaging Josh, but he didn't want to seem too desperate and what if Josh thought he was pathetic? What if Josh didn't understand his fears? Tyler thought about Josh's brunet curls and squinty eyes and and his grin and all he wanted was...
Well. That.
3:44.
Tyler was up. Tyler was running.
Headlights call my name...