The air, even in the dream, always tasted of sun-baked pine needles and something else… something brittle, like dry earth after too long without rain. It clung to the back of Noah’s throat. He was always behind Ben, just a few paces, enough to watch the easy swing of his shoulders, the way his hiking boots kicked up tiny puffs of dust from the red-clay path. Every step was a memory, a perfectly replicated echo of a summer that felt both impossibly distant and painfully recent. The world was quiet here, unnervingly so. No birdsong, no rustle of unseen creatures in the undergrowth, just the soft scuff of their shoes, a rhythmic comfort that usually lulled him into a false sense of peace.
“You’re really dragging today, huh?” Ben’s voice, a familiar melody, cut through the quiet. He didn’t even turn around, just flicked his head slightly, a playful accusation in his tone. Noah’s chest tightened, a familiar pressure. This was how it always started. Ben, forever ahead, forever vibrant. Noah, forever trying to catch up, forever a beat behind.
“Not all of us are powered by… pure, unadulterated sunshine and… what even is your fuel, Ben? Annoying optimism?” Noah gasped out, trying to match the old cadence, the familiar banter. His lungs felt tight, even in the dream. The effort of keeping up felt real, the ache in his calves a phantom limb of memory. Ben chuckled, a warm, resonant sound that always felt like coming home. It was a sound Noah hadn't truly heard in a year, only replicated in this meticulously crafted subconscious loop.
Ben finally stopped, turning on the ball of his foot, a grin splitting his face. The sun, a dream-sun, caught the tips of his hair, making it gleam like tarnished gold. He was perfect here. The freckles dusted across his nose, the crinkle by his eyes when he laughed, the slight chip on his front tooth that no one else ever noticed. He was a flawless recreation, a balm to the raw wound in Noah’s heart. Too perfect. That was the trick, wasn’t it? The subconscious smoothing out the edges, erasing the cracks that had always been there, if Noah had only known how to look.
“You’d think after… what is it now? Like, the hundredth time up this exact trail, you’d be a pro.” Ben leaned against a gnarled juniper, its bark peeling in papery strips. He plucked a tiny, dry leaf and crumbled it between his fingers, the scent of sharp, green bitterness suddenly vivid, almost painful. It was a detail Noah’s sleeping mind had somehow conjured, a fragment of reality that pierced the dream’s veil. Noah felt a blush creep up his neck. The heat was immediate, involuntary. He hated that. Even in a dream, he was still just as reactive, just as easily flustered by Ben’s easy confidence, the way he always seemed to know exactly what to say, or not say.
“It’s the altitude, I’m telling you. It gets to me.” Noah tried to wave it off, but his voice was thin, a little too high. He adjusted the straps of his invisible backpack, a nervous gesture he hadn't shaken. Ben just watched him, his smile softening around the edges, something knowing in his eyes. That was the other thing. In these dreams, Ben was always… observant. Too observant, sometimes. Like he could see right through the excuses, past the easy banter, to the hollow space underneath.
They continued, the silence returning, but this time it felt different. Less peaceful, more expectant. Noah’s heart started to pick up pace, a frantic flutter against his ribs. He knew what was coming. Every time. The next bend, the rockfall where the path narrowed to a treacherous sliver, then the final, steep incline. He pushed down the growing panic, the dread that sat like a stone in his stomach. He just had to get through it. He just had to keep following. If he kept following, maybe this time, something would change. Maybe this time, Ben wouldn't…
The trail wound tighter, the trees giving way to exposed rock face. The sun beat down harder here, reflecting off the pale stone. Noah’s palms felt slick, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He could hear his own breathing, ragged and uneven. He stumbled, catching himself on a jutting piece of quartz, scraping his hand. The tiny, stinging pain felt sharp, real. Ben, ever the guide, didn’t even falter. He was a beacon, a fixed point, always leading him onward, towards the precipice.
“Almost there,” Ben called back, his voice surprisingly close, like he’d sensed Noah’s struggle. He was right at the edge of the rise now, where the path broadened slightly before the final, brutal climb to the ridge itself. The air shimmered with heat. Noah could almost smell the metallic tang of static electricity that sometimes hung around mountain peaks, especially before a storm. The thought made him shiver despite the heat.
Noah finally reached the small plateau, his chest heaving. He braced his hands on his knees, sucking in lungfuls of the thin, dry air. He didn’t dare look up, not yet. He knew what lay beyond. The narrow, crumbling edge, the sheer drop, the valley yawning below. The place where the dream always ended, or rather, where the dream carefully avoided ending. The place he both craved and dreaded, because in the dream, Ben always… vanished. Just before. Always just before.
He pushed himself upright, his gaze slowly lifting. Ben was there, not looking out at the vista as he usually did, but standing with his back to the ridge, facing Noah. His smile was gone. The playful light in his eyes had dimmed, replaced by something older, heavier. The meticulous recreation of Ben’s face fractured, for a split second, showing something raw underneath, something that felt too real for a dream. Noah’s breath hitched. This was new. This was different.
“Hey,” Ben said, his voice quiet, devoid of its usual playful lilt. He took a step towards Noah, then another. Noah felt a strange pulling sensation in his gut, a mix of fear and an almost painful longing. Ben reached out, not quite touching, but his hand hovered, a physical manifestation of comfort, of presence. Noah felt a flush burn across his cheeks, an embarrassing heat that had no business in this moment of dread. He couldn’t look away from Ben’s eyes, which were now painfully clear, like looking into a cold mountain spring.
“We don’t have to go up there, you know,” Ben said, his voice soft, almost a whisper. He gestured vaguely over his shoulder, towards the ridge. Noah shook his head, a violent tremor passing through him. “But… we always do. You always… lead me to it.”
Ben’s gaze sharpened, a flicker of something like pity, or maybe exasperation. “Yeah, well. I’m tired of that particular rerun. And you look like you’re about to throw up.” He paused, then took another step, closing the distance between them. Noah felt it, the immediate tension in the air, the way his own body reacted as if to a physical touch even before it happened. The world narrowed to Ben’s face, to the intensity in his eyes.
Then, in a move that shattered the dream’s carefully constructed narrative, Ben didn't lead him on. He didn't vanish. He simply sat down. Right there on the sun-warmed rock of the plateau, cross-legged, facing Noah. He patted the space beside him. “Come on. Take a load off. You look like you’re carrying a truck on your back.”
Noah stared. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. This wasn’t the script. He hesitated, his legs feeling heavy, suddenly unwilling to move. His mind raced, a jumble of alarm and a desperate, illogical hope. But the sheer force of Ben’s presence, the quiet expectation in his gaze, pulled at something deep inside Noah. Slowly, hesitantly, he lowered himself to the ground, settling beside Ben, the rough rock digging into his thigh.
The silence that followed was different again. Not eerie, not expectant, but… heavy. It pressed down on Noah, filled with unsaid things. He kept his gaze fixed on his own worn hiking boots, the scuffed leather. He could feel the warmth radiating from Ben’s side, a palpable presence that was both comforting and utterly terrifying. It was too much. Too real.
“Look,” Ben finally said, his voice low, “about… everything.” Noah flinched. This was it. The moment he’d been dreading, the moment of truth that his subconscious had so carefully avoided. He braced himself for the explanation, the confession, the reason. For the words that would finally explain *why*. Why he hadn't seen it, why he hadn't known, why he hadn't…
“I’m sorry,” Ben continued, and Noah’s head snapped up. Ben wasn’t looking at him, but out across the valley, at the distant, hazy blue mountains. “I’m sorry you had to… deal with all of it. The years before. The mess. And then… the quiet.” His voice was rough now, stripped of its usual lightness. “I’m sorry for the quiet, after.”
Noah felt a strange jolt. An apology. But not for *it*. Not for the act itself. For the aftermath. For Noah’s pain. It twisted something inside him, a knot of guilt and understanding. The dream-Ben wasn’t here to explain, to offer closure on the *why*. He was here to acknowledge Noah’s suffering. To bear witness. The realization hit Noah with the force of a physical blow. This wasn't Ben. Not really. This was his own mind, an avenging angel of his subconscious, stepping in, protecting him from the full, shattering weight of his own self-condemnation. Protecting him from the belief that he had somehow missed the signs, that he was to blame.
He looked at Ben, truly looked at him, and saw past the dream-smooth perfection to the faint, almost imperceptible lines of strain around his eyes, lines that had been there in life, that Noah had, in his own pain, perhaps deliberately overlooked. It wasn’t a recreation. It was a projection. A manifestation of the deep, self-flagellating belief that had gnawed at him for a year: that he had failed to hold on, that he had somehow failed Ben.
Noah opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His throat was tight, dry. He felt an overwhelming urge to reach out, to touch Ben, to confirm his solidity, but his hands felt numb, heavy. The intensity of the moment was a suffocating blanket. He could feel the tremor in his own fingers, the frantic drumming of his heart against his ribs. Ben, even a dream Ben, was too close, too real.
Ben finally turned, his gaze locking with Noah’s. His eyes, the exact shade of deep hazel, held a clarity that was almost unbearable. There was no judgment, only a deep, unsettling empathy. “You know,” he said, his voice even softer now, a little rough at the edges, “you keep playing it over, don’t you? Searching for the missing pieces. Trying to find the moment when… everything changed.”
Noah swallowed hard, a painful lump in his throat. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. He always was. He was always looking for the one thing he could have said, the one look he could have caught, the one thread he could have pulled to unravel the inevitable.
“And you always find the quiet,” Ben continued, his gaze unwavering. “The space where you think there should have been something. A warning. A sign.” He paused, then leaned forward just slightly, the shift in his weight infinitesimal, but it felt like the entire world tilted. The air crackled around them, a charged stillness. Noah felt himself leaning in, too, drawn by an invisible current, unable to resist the pull. The world felt impossibly vast, yet narrowed to just the two of them, perched on the edge of memory and grief.
“Did you really think I didn’t say goodbye?” Ben asked, his voice a low rumble, direct, piercing, shattering the last vestiges of comfort, of manufactured peace. The question hung in the air between them, a sudden, brutal intrusion into Noah’s carefully constructed reality. It wasn’t an accusation, but a challenge. A demand for an answer that Noah didn’t have, couldn’t possibly have. It forced him to confront the gaping hole, not just of Ben’s absence, but of his own distorted memory, his own desperate need to control the narrative of loss. The dream, for the first time, wasn’t offering solace. It was ripping it away. It was demanding he look at the truth, unvarnished, unsoftened.
The world dissolved around Noah, the dream-trail, the sun, the quiet, all of it collapsing into a vortex of cold air and a piercing, metallic ring in his ears. He jolted upright in bed, a strangled cry catching in his throat. The cabin was bitterly cold, the kind of cold that seeped into your bones and left your teeth chattering. The wind howled outside, a feral sound that rattled the single pane of glass in the window beside his bunk. It was a stark, brutal contrast to the engineered quiet of the dream. He could feel the coarse wool of the sleeping bag against his cheek, the stiff canvas edges rough beneath his fingers.
His hands. They were gripping the sleeping bag, knuckles white, a desperate, frantic hold. The very gesture of holding on he had failed to make in real life, clinging to a memory that was now, finally, fraying at the edges. He sat there, shivering, the echoes of Ben’s last question still reverberating in his skull. *Did you really think I didn’t say goodbye?* The illusion of protected grief, of a carefully managed sorrow, shattered around him like fragile ice. The guilt, sharp and unrelenting, flooded his chest, a tsunami of raw, unfiltered emotion. He felt utterly exposed, utterly alone. A sob tore from his throat, a ragged, aching sound, followed by another, and then another, until his whole body shook with the force of it. He buried his face in his knees, the thin fabric of his sweatpants cold against his skin, and wept, the sounds swallowed by the vast, unforgiving silence of the remote cabin.
He wasn’t escaping anything here. He was just… trapped. Trapped with the silence, trapped with the wind, and now, finally, trapped with the unbearable, naked truth of his grief. There was no more running from it. There was no more editing. Just the cold, hard, shattering reality.
The darkness of the cabin pressed in, a physical weight. Every breath felt like a struggle against something heavy, something unseen. He could taste the salt of his tears, the metallic tang of fear and sorrow. His jaw ached from clenching, his eyes burned. It wasn’t just the grief for Ben, but a deeper, more primal ache for the boy he had been, the one who believed he could save everyone, the one who hadn't understood the subtle, insidious ways silence could fester. He had come here to hide, to numb, to control the narrative of his own pain, and the dream had just ripped that control away. He was left with nothing but the raw, unyielding wreckage. He was left with the knowledge that the goodbye he sought might have been there all along, if he had only been able to see it, to feel it, through the fog of his own fear and self-reproach. And that thought, that terrifying, liberating thought, was the most painful of all.
He lifted his head, shivering, the cold air biting at his wet cheeks. The wind outside seemed to mock his vulnerability, a relentless, mournful wail. He pushed himself back against the wall, the rough wood digging into his spine, trying to find some anchor in the spinning chaos of his mind. He was not okay. He hadn't been okay. And this dream, this brutal, beautiful dream, was finally forcing him to acknowledge it. To feel it all. The crushing weight of it settled over him, a cloak of despair. He was untethered, adrift, stripped bare of all his defenses. And in that terrifying, desolate moment, he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the core, that he couldn't stay in the cabin, not anymore. He couldn't stay here, alone with the ghosts and the silence. He had to go back. He had to face the world, not as a victim of loss, but as someone irrevocably broken, but perhaps, finally, ready to begin the long, agonizing process of rebuilding.