John
The world was quiet out here.

Basil sat on the floor of the hallway, dark eyes pressed to the cool white tiles under his feet. He tapped out a loose collection of patterns with his fingers, humming in tilted, high tunes. His black hair had been taken out of their braids and hung loosely around his face, their green sweatpants digging into their knees. 

Throughout the past few days, they'd been allowed sporadically to walk around, side-lurching limping up and down the rebuilt hallways. He knew he had broken up the windows. He knew that he'd broken up the walls. He knew, and it echoed, and it hadn't set in it's entirety.

Newton's Cradle was quieter than they remembered. Everything was. The astute amount of *Silence* Was astounding. The dead moments, the spans of quiet, the unease. How did they handle it, these people, who had never known anything else? Memories came in swaths and fantastical bursts, and Basil propped their feet up against the wall and laid back down on the floor.
Stephen
Newton's Cradle was quiet — not because the people at Newton's Cradle were quieter — but because they seemed to take their antics off campus most of the time. Still, it was not uncommon to find people in all sorts of strange places and positions, and Fennel was used to walking past them.

They had planned a trip to the kitchen. They wanted chai.

The key word, though, was *Had* — because as they passed by the latest of many people loitering in the hallways, this time a boyish-looking person sitting in a strange position, with his feet propped up against the wall, something changed.

Fennel stopped dead in their tracks, sat down on the floor next to Basil, and felt. The memories were absent, but the strange, overwhelming emotion was not — they longed for moments they had never experienced and did not know. It was an unusual feeling.

They looked up at Basil, and provided their best smile, tinged with Basil's own complicated feelings. 

"You're feeling," Fennel stated, quite matter-of-factly. "Nostalgia?"
Lillian
Basil looked up at her and their eyebrows pressed together, just minutely. The stranger (stranger?) looked familiar. A cotton-candy pink, translucent cat with matching eyes materialized, and walked up to Fennels feet, sniffing their shoes, and winding around their ankles. 

"Oh, hi. We've met, haven't we?" His voice was soft, still scraggly and uneven from recovery. "I'm sorry. I don't remember your name."

The cat mewed for Fennels attention, Basil's curiosity prickling into the air. He held a clunky CD-Walkman in hand, the track paused.

A face, a voice, a large, scaled dreamland with wandering feet and a maladaptive way to live. Basil understood. 

"You were–... Were you there, with us?"
Stephen
For a few moments, Fennel didn't say anything. Without taking their eyes off Basil, they reached down to the cat Basil had manifested, letting it sniff at their hand. "Mmhm," They nodded, smiling at Basil, "That was me. I'm Fennel. It's nice to meet you for real, Basil." They kept their voice low out of respect for the many people in the building who were sleeping, and to avoid startling Basil.

Basil seemed... Fragile. Like Fennel had been, for some time after waking up — held together, awake, aware, but only barely, like they might shatter at even the lightest pressure. Perhaps it was a consequence of... Wherever *There* Was.

Fennel remembered *There.* They remembered the plastic stones and the dead plants and the sun-that-wasn't and the brief moments of company they got from Amelie's pseudo-body. They remembered walking. They remembered the biggest undertaking they might ever accomplish — and they remembered that none of it was real.

"I..." They trailed off. They had no idea what to say to Basil. They were sorry? Happy to see Basil well? Upset? They had no idea. After everything, how could they even react?
Lillian
"You were," Basil said, voice still deft, and light. "It is more in our memories than not. I don't see much of it."

The cat wound around Fennel's ankles once more before sitting decidedly on their foot. Basil nodded and pointed to it. 

"I hope you don't mind. That's curiosity. She doesn't bite."

He looked up at Fennel with the same sort of empty eyes one might expect of such a fragile person. His dark eyes blinked only but every so often, as if they had to physically carry out the action, rather than it being a reflex of any sort.

"It is nice to meet you for real, too," He decided. "You seem nice. We remember the, uh, what was it? The tea party? There was tea, wasn't there?"
Brows furrowed together as they tilted their head to the side, just a touch. 
"It's all a little blurry."
Stephen
Fennel glanced down at curiosity and smiled gently. Of course they didn't mind.

"Mhm," Fennel nodded, "There was tea. There were melons, too. You seemed to like them — do you still like melons?" They remembered it. It was... Kind of a sad memory. Fennel, trying to cheer Basil up, through everything, and only sort of succeeding.

Fennel only really had sad memories about Basil.

But they wanted Basil to be okay. They smiled their best smile, through their own complicated feelings.

"Have you been okay? Since you got out, I mean." Fennel imagined it was just as strange for Basil as it was for them — if not more.
Lillian
"I think so," Basil said. They blinked once, twice, tilting their head back and forth to think. "We - *I* Don't remember much about them. I think they come in different shades - green, and red, and that sort of thing."

Curiosity retired it's post, curling up into Basil's lap - still present, but quietened. 

"To answer the other question - I've been, um. I think this is okay. I'm not sure. It's been different. It's so, um. It's quiet out here, compared to in there. Joan lets me use a white noise machine. I haven't seen Levi since then - but, I have PT twice a week, and, I got to try scrambled eggs again, so everything is not so bad. I've been online a lot. I get to watch YouTube, and that sort of thing, too."

Basil's voice drifted off sometimes as he spoke, a light, airy voice that rambled and fell, eyes that didn't quite focus on the person hovering in front of him. He yawned periodically and went through a careful series of stretches in their arms and wrists as they talked, prescribed by the local hospital to keep his muscles in working order after so long in a black hole.

"It's been okay."
Stephen
"Yeah," Fennel nodded, "That's what it was like for me too. Just okay." Except, they quickly realized, it must be immeasurably worse for Basil. Fennel had made friends with Dae-hyun — they had someone to wake up to in the hospital. Who did Basil have, they thought — no one?

"It's very dark out here," Fennel remarked. "It took some time to get used to." They didn't really know if they had been in the same place Basil had been. Theirs, after all, hadn't been so loud.

"I lost my memory too, when I first woke up. Not all of it, but a lot. Mostly about me and my past, but it was still confusing, waking up like that. I'm kind of glad I'm not alone." Fennel's expression was a strange mix of a comfortable smile and a look of concern. "But I also kind of wish you didn't have to deal with it too."
Lillian
"Dark? It's not so bad, I think."

Basil scratched the cat behind it's ears gently, glancing up at the sound of a water heater rumbling somewhere above their heads. Conversation disappeared from their face as his expression fell flat, staring off at the ceiling with an intent expression.

They'd, more or less, become completely distracted, peering up at nowhere with a dissociative gaze. Too easy, they'd found out, it was to become sidetracked, in this realm where everything happened all at once.

"I'm sorry," He said, still maintaining a direct eye contact with the ceiling. "I tend to wander off."

The Deans had referred to it in gentle terms, guiding Basil back to reality with mindfulness exercises and grounding techniques. It was, as Joan said, very necessary, to keep Basil oriented with reality; many of those from the black hole were afflicted in turn. Curioisity faded from view, purring off into nothingness.

"What was the question, again?"
Stephen
"I..." Fennel hesitated. They didn't really want to say it again. 

"...Never mind. Would you like some tea?"
Lillian
"Oh. I like tea, sure," Basil said. 

They finally looked back towards Fennel, and started to stand up. "Wait, what kind do you have again?"

Basil, it seemed, had a long way to go.

———————(done!)————————