17. Handle This
Handle This
There were few things in life that were more unsettling to Dustin than not knowing what to expect.
As Dustin sat cross-legged in a circle with the rest of the group in the center of the Lotus Garden, his heart pounded in his ears. They were supposed to be meditating; “clearing their minds so they could transition into the illusory realm”.
But that was far easier said than done.
“This shit is so stupid,” Chris mumbled, his eyes still closed and pale flames flickering across his fingertips, “why isn’t anything happening?”
“Probably because you won’t stop fucking talking,” Chloe snapped, “we’re supposed to be concentrating,”
“I’m sure you bitching at me is super helpful,”
“Guys calm down, please,” Bailey cut in, “just breathe deep and clear your thoughts. Just like Sima said,”
Dustin tried to put their bickering out of his mind; closing his eyes and focusing on the sound of his own breathing. It quickly settled into a rhythm:
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
After a few minutes of counting his inhales and exhales, he realized something…
He couldn’t hear the others anymore, nor could he feel James’s knee brushing against his in their little circle.
His eyes snapped open, and instead of being met with the serene-yet-eerie atmosphere of the Lotus Garden, he instead found himself sitting in an entirely black void; the ground beneath his feet little more than a reflective surface similar to glass, but strong enough to stand on.
“Chris?! Guys, are you here?!” he called out as he scrambled to his feet, his voice echoing endlessly into the abyss that had apparently swallowed him whole.
There was no answer.
His pulse quickened as his eyes darted around, desperate to find something, anything to visually latch onto…
But the only thing in the void, was him. His own reflection, staring back up at him from where he stood. Its eyes locked onto him like a silent judge, ready to hand down the harshest sentence imaginable.
And then… it moved.
Sudden. Jerky. Uncanny. Like Leo’s puppeteered body, but this time wearing Dustin’s face.
He screamed as it lunged forward, cracking the barrier with a sound like shattered ice, before grabbing his ankles. The glass rippled outward violently as it pulled him down; straight through the barrier into an endless, bottomless sea of black, arctic water.
He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel anything but the bitter cold stabbing into him from every direction all at once. He wanted to shriek, but the sound was stolen from his throat by the oppressive liquid suffocating him.
He wasn’t even sure that he still had a physical body anymore; not with pain seizing all of his senses.
It felt like something was grinding him apart molecule by molecule, pulling him downward with the inescapable hunger of a black hole.
Not tearing flesh; tearing identity. Every regret. Every mistake. Every buried fear.
All he could focus on was a singular concept…
Escape.
He had to get out, even if he had to suffer through the excruciating pain to do it. He’d survived worse; nights where he couldn’t breathe from the sheer pressure of it all. Days when he swallowed pain until it hollowed him out. If he’d endured that, he could endure this.
Right?
With every atom of determination in his body, Dustin forced his legs to move; demanded that his body resist the pull of oblivion and fight its way to salvation. He didn’t know where he was going, what the ultimate goal was beyond survival, but he knew that he simply couldn’t give up.
But of course, with every furious kick of his legs, the water around him only grew thicker, more suffocating; like tar hardening into hands that were physically gripping him from all directions at once; holding him in place while frantic, erratic voices surrounded him from all sides.
“Dustin?! Baobei?! Can you hear me? I… I can’t swim. I can’t swim without you, please I need you, HELP!”
Dustin’s heart nearly shattered at the sound of James’s voice; he’d never heard it like that before.
Strained, out of breath like he was fighting just to keep his head above water.
He whipped his head back and forth in search of James, but the black nothingness of the water completely obscured his vision.
While he was still struggling to find James in the sea of nothingness, Bailey and Chloe’s voices rang out.
“Dusty… you’re really going to die here. I’m sorry, but I protected you enough. I shielded you as much as I could, but you never learned to swim on your own… not really,”
“Don’t apologize for a boy’s inadequacies Bailey. He let Sima convince him he was a leader, but he can’t even pull himself out of this,”
With those words, Dustin felt like the pilot light within him was blown out by a winter storm.
His thrashing and kicking stopped, the burning in his lungs faded to a distant throb, and the weight pulling him down no longer felt like resistance. Now it was simply… inevitability.
They were right. That’s all he was; someone who only survived because other people held him up.
Chris had been forcing their parents to notice him, Bailey shielded him from the worst of the bullying by making herself a bigger target, Chloe did all the actual tactical work while letting him pretend to be a leader, and James… James was maybe the worst of all.
James pitied him enough to let him pretend to be a savior. To pretend like he mattered.
Dustin’s body went slack. The black water fully solidified around him, pulling him down faster now; so much that his stomach lurched from the force of it.
But he didn’t care. He couldn’t. Not anymore.
For the first time since he found himself in this black hole of absolute turmoil… everything was quiet.
At least, until a voice pierced the vacuum once again; tiny, wavering, almost imperceptible.
“H-hello? Is someone there?”
This was clearly the voice of a child; alone and afraid. Dustin could’ve sworn it was familiar, but it was hazy; like a far-off memory, or a scattered dream.
“It’s really dark and I can’t see… I just wanna go home! Please, someone help!”
With that small, innocent, terrified cry, that inner force roared back to life within Dustin. But it was no fire… it was a current.
This is what the darkness always did, what it had been doing to him since he was old enough to recognize it lurking in the corners of his mind. It swallowed the smallest, the weakest, the ones who couldn’t swim at all.
“Enough,” he barked, the word erupting from his chest with a burst of bubbles.
The water squeezed him tighter, as if enraged by the mere thought of defiance, but Dustin pushed back harder.
The cold around him dulled, replaced by the familiar feeling of ice in his veins as he flexed his power; not just his element, but the power of memory.
He wasn’t the same boy who once shielded himself from social interactions with his headphones. The one who packed his old identity away in both a literal and figurative closet.
But he also wasn’t just the Water Sage; an heir to an impossible legacy of imperial defiance and heroism.
He was a boyfriend. A best friend. A brother.
He actually had the one thing he’d convinced himself he’d never find; true, unconditional love. And he refused to surrender all that to some bottomless pit of despair, not when he had something to fight for.
James taking his hand and telling him that he saved his life.
Bailey’s selfless support and unyielding presence at his back.
Chloe’s sharp pragmatism and constant support.
Chris’s mere existence as his biological mirror, biggest supporter and most consistent frustration.
“Hang in there kid,” Dustin’s voice trembled, but it never broke, “I’m gonna get you out of here,”
Finally, the dam that he’d blocked himself with so many months ago came crashing down. His powers exploded outward with newfound ferocity as every molecule of the water he’d been trapped in became part of his awareness.
Before he was blind, but now he was omniscient.
With a casual flick of his wrist, he sent the seemingly endless ocean spiraling away; like bathwater down the drain. Little more to him now than inconvenience.
And suddenly, as if nothing had happened at all, he found himself standing in the Lotus Garden once more; alone, but completely unharmed.
He immediately scanned the room for the others, but they were nowhere to be found; in fact, the only other thing in the deserted garden was a single door, standing all on its own in the center of the room, made of thick wood and overflowing with vines.
Dustin instinctively knew that James was on the other side, likely fighting for his life in the same way Dustin himself just had.
Without a thought, he rushed towards the door, preparing to throw it open… but something caught his eye first.
The fleeting shape of a young, dark-haired boy in the periphery of his vision.
A boy that looked an awful lot like he did as a child… right down to the stupid overalls.
That must’ve been the source of the voice; his own disembodied inner child calling out to him for help. But if he’d saved himself… why did it still feel like part of him was missing?
He couldn’t make eye contact with his younger echo, before it vanished into a cloud of mist, leaving him alone once more.
Dustin wanted to question it, wanted to call out to Sima Yao for more answers, but with the Wood Door standing alone before him, he knew he’d have to compartmentalize it for now.
James needed him, and he wouldn’t let him fight through his personal Hell alone.