Chapter Text
Shout out to @princleoww for giving the idea that led to silly brainstorming that led to this. So.......without further ado:
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Tony woke up in a room that seemed too bright, too clean, the sheets too stiff under him, his body a stranger. The air was hospital air, the kind of sterile, sterile-smelling air that didn’t belong to any single place. It was just… air. He could hear the soft beeping of some machine nearby, the fluttering sounds of voices beyond the thin, white walls, and the faint, metallic scent of something like antiseptic, but also of something older—dust, maybe.
His first thought was that this couldn’t be him. This body, this bed, this room—none of it seemed to belong to him. It was like walking into a room that was too small for your skin, too big for your mind. And then there was the dizziness, a sharp, slow ache creeping up the back of his skull, making his head heavy, as though the memory of who he had been was lying somewhere at the bottom of that ache, just out of reach.
He opened his eyes and tried to focus. The ceiling above him was white, almost blinding in its whiteness, and there were pale curtains around the bed, hanging as if in some half-finished dream. His fingers twitched, felt the sheets beneath them, and there was a faint pulse of panic, as though they belonged to someone else. His hands weren’t exactly his—there was a sense of strangeness to them, like a borrowed thing.
A voice, low and familiar, broke through his confusion. A woman—her face was a blur, a suggestion, an outline in the corner of his vision.
"How are you feeling?" she asked. Her voice was soft, but it had a certain authority, as if she had been asking this question for a long time, and he was just now getting around to answering it.
“I—” He tried to speak, but his throat felt dry, unfamiliar. It was as if he had forgotten how to form words, the syllables coming out slowly, unevenly, as though they weren’t his own. “I don’t know.”
“Do you know who I am?” Her voice had a strange, patient edge to it, the kind of patience only someone who had been waiting for years would have.
He blinked hard, staring at the blur of her, willing something—anything—to come back to him. There was a blankness in his mind that stretched out like a yawning abyss, and though he could feel something heavy in his chest, some deep weight that suggested he should know her, it was as though the answer had been erased, wiped clean, just like that.
"No," he said finally, the word small but loud in the hollow space between them.
The woman’s face shifted. She didn’t look angry, not at all. She just seemed—tired, maybe, or resigned. “It’s okay. We’ll take it slow.” She stepped closer, and her face became a little clearer. Still, there was something off about it, something that felt like trying to find the right key for a door that had been locked for years.
“I’m Taggie,” she said softly, like she was saying it more for herself than for him.
His eyes narrowed as if trying to make sense of the words. He wanted to ask her for proof, something tangible, but instead, all he could do was nod, because that was what people did when they were uncertain but didn’t have the strength to ask more questions.
A sudden, sharp pain bloomed behind his eyes, and he flinched.
“I don’t remember…” he began, his voice trailing off, the words dissolving as soon as they left his mouth.
“I know,” she interrupted gently, her hand now resting on his. It was the first time he had noticed it—her hand, the warm, familiar weight of it, and the faint tremor in her fingers, like she, too, was holding on to something that was slipping away. “But you will. You’ll remember everything, eventually.”
"Eventually." The word hung in the air, but it didn’t feel like it belonged. It wasn’t the right word for what he was feeling. What did it even mean? How long did "eventually" take? Could he trust that word? His body was here, yes—this body, with its scars, its bruises, its pulse—but his mind, his memories? They felt like something from a dream, fading the more he reached for them.
His fingers pressed against the side of his head where the pain was most intense, the memory of being hit—no, not the memory, just the sensation, like the aftermath of a storm, a violent flash that left behind nothing but a great emptiness. Who had done this to him? Who had he been before all this? And who was he now?
"Do you remember what happened?" The woman’s voice was soft, but there was an edge of worry in it now.
He shook his head, the movement almost imperceptible. “No. I don’t… I don’t know anything.”
She looked at him with that same deep sadness, like someone staring at an old, cracked photograph that had been left out in the rain too long, its edges curling in on themselves.
“We’ll get through this,” she said, and though the words were supposed to offer comfort, they didn’t. They hung in the air between them, heavy and unfulfilled.
He wanted to ask her more, about his life, about who he had been, about the person he should have been before all this. But the words felt foreign, too, lodged somewhere in his throat, and all he could do was stare at her, searching her face for the answers he didn’t have the courage to ask for.
For the first time, it occurred to him that maybe there was no "before." Maybe there was only this room, this body, and the emptiness that stretched out in every direction, without shape or form.
And that was the hardest thing to accept: that he wasn’t sure if he could even trust himself to remember.
The woman was still standing there, her hand on his, but her touch had softened. It was as though she were afraid to press too hard, afraid he might shatter, like one of those fragile vases you only touch with the tips of your fingers, just in case. Her voice was low again, the kind of voice people use when they’re trying to coax something back to life, like a flame that’s almost gone.
“Do you want to know what happened?” she asked.
The question felt like it was aimed at something deeper, a place inside him he hadn’t touched yet, a place that wasn’t ready to be reached. He didn’t answer immediately. He couldn’t. The word “yes” sat on the edge of his tongue, but it wasn’t the right word. The word “no” was even worse, like a door slamming shut before it had even opened. So instead, he just looked at her, at her worn-out face, the sadness in her eyes that didn’t seem to belong to someone who was meant to be this young. She looked older than she should have been, or perhaps older than he remembered. Did he remember her? Or was he just supposed to?
It occurred to him—half-formed—that he didn’t even know who she was or how old, or how she was related to him. How strange, to be looking at someone who was so close, yet so far away. She could have been 15. She could have been 25. Her age didn’t make sense anymore.
“I don’t remember…” he said again, the words sounding like an apology. It was all he had, the only currency in the room. He could feel the words inside his mouth like dry, cracked paper. He didn't know how to make them stick.
“I know,” she replied, but her tone was different this time. Not impatient, not even sympathetic, just… something else. Something he couldn't quite place, but it felt as though it came from the kind of knowledge you only have after you’ve lived through things that can never be undone. “You don’t have to remember. Not yet.”
A sister? A friend? A child?
His eyes flickered down to her hand on his. She was still holding it, but not in the way he imagined a friend should—possessive, desperate, loving in a way that threatened to suffocate. No, it was gentle, almost clinical. He couldn’t help but wonder—if he peeled the layers back, would he find that she had already given up on him? Maybe that was why she wasn’t pressing him to remember, why she wasn’t trying to pull him back from the brink. Maybe she had already accepted that he was no longer the person he had been.
It was strange to think of himself like that—someone else—but the more he tried to grasp at the memory, the more it slipped through his fingers. He felt like a photo album that had been left out in the rain. Pages curling at the edges, the ink bleeding together, nothing clear enough to see. Not even his own face.
His gaze waded around the room, searching for something, anything that might anchor him to a reality that was slipping like sand between his fingers. The walls were painted a dull beige, the kind of colour that wasn’t a colour at all—just an absence of colour. There was a window, though, and through the small sliver of it, he could see the faint outline of trees, swaying gently in the breeze, the sky a soft blue that almost didn’t seem real. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that there were trees, a sky. There was something outside, something that existed beyond this sterile room, beyond the soft beep of machines and the weight of his own confusion.
“Do you know what you were before?” she asked, suddenly, breaking his thoughts.
Her voice held an edge now, not accusing exactly, but something close to it. Something softer, like the way people ask a question they know you should have an answer to, but know you won’t. It made him uncomfortable, the tension tightening in his chest. The discomfort twisted inside him like a knot he couldn't untangle. She was watching him so closely. Too closely.
His mind scrambled. He tried to picture himself, to summon something—a fragment, an image, a feeling that might tether him to some past life. But it was as though someone had erased him.
“I—I don’t know what I was,” he said quietly. “But I think… I think I wasn’t who I am now.” He stared at her, the words slipping out before he could stop them. There was no real meaning in them, just a hollow truth.
She seemed to accept this, nodding, though her lips thinned with some expression he couldn’t decipher. “No,” she murmured. “You were something else. Someone else.”
His heart raced, and suddenly, his mind was full of noise—voices shouting in the distance, something ringing in his ears, a jumbled mess of ideas that had nothing to do with him. Nothing felt right. Not the walls, not the room, not the woman who was still holding his hand.
“Who was I?” he found himself asking before he could stop himself. “Who was I before all this?”
She took a long, slow breath, as though the question had travelled a long way, and now it was finally reaching its destination. But her eyes, when they met his, were distant. Her gaze held something almost foreign, as if she had been waiting for him to ask this all along.
“You were a boy,” she said softly, her voice breaking slightly. “A boy who had dreams. A boy who… wanted to change the world.”
His throat closed. A boy. A boy who had dreams. But how could he be that boy now? How could he be anyone at all when everything he was—everything he had ever been—was lost to him?
The silence between them stretched out, unspoken words hanging like a fog in the air, thick and slow. And in that silence, in the hazy discomfort of not knowing who he was or who he had been, a question began to form in the back of his mind—was it possible to rebuild yourself from nothing? To start over and make something of the pieces that were left, when nothing was familiar and everything felt unreal?
For the first time since he had woken up, he wasn’t sure if he wanted the answer.