Red Goes With Red

"Turns out the bloke I'd been avoiding had a voice in his head too. He offered to pretend none of it happened. I don't know if that's mercy or just two people agreeing to lie together. Either way, I took it."

Time became meaningless as I battled the generator.

The sun tracked across the sky in its slow, indifferent arc, and I tracked nothing but wires and frustration. My fingers had learned the particular shapes of cables I couldn't identify, had memorised the contours of connection points I couldn't understand, had developed calluses from gripping components that refused to cooperate no matter how I twisted or pushed or swore at them.

The generator sat in the dust beside my caravan like a sphinx guarding its secrets, offering riddles instead of answers.

"Fucking thing," I muttered, yanking at a cable that had somehow tangled itself with three others while I wasn't looking.

The wires had a malevolent intelligence, I'd decided. They knew I was out of my depth and were conspiring against me, rearranging themselves whenever I turned my back, creating new knots from connections I'd sworn I'd already sorted.

My scowl had etched itself so deeply into my face that it had stopped feeling like an expression and started feeling like a permanent feature. Sweat dripped from my forehead despite the afternoon not being particularly hot, the exertion of failure apparently enough to trigger my body's cooling systems.

I'd tried logic. Had attempted to trace each wire from its origin to its presumed destination, following the coloured insulation like a trail of breadcrumbs through a mechanical forest. The colours matched nothing I'd expected — this wasn't the simple red-and-black of household wiring, wasn't the straightforward positive-negative of car batteries. This was something else, something that required knowledge I didn't possess.

I'd tried intuition. Had let my hands move on instinct, connecting things that looked like they should connect, twisting terminals that seemed designed for twisting. The results had ranged from nothing to alarming sparks that had made me jerk backward and reassess my life choices.

I'd tried stubbornness. Had simply refused to accept that this task was beyond me, returning to the same problems again and again with the blind determination of a ram butting its head against a wall. The wall, as walls tend to do, had remained unmoved.

The expletives that escaped my lips had grown increasingly creative as the hours passed, my vocabulary expanding to accommodate new combinations of profanity that the situation seemed to demand. If swearing could have powered the generator, my caravan would have been lit like a Christmas tree.

But swearing, as it turned out, was not a viable energy source.

I was crouched in the dust, my hands tangled in cables, my face set in an expression that probably frightened small children, when the voice came from behind me.

"Do you need some help?"

The words hit my nervous system before my brain could process them, triggering a startle response so violent that I nearly threw myself into the generator. My heart plunged downward, finding new depths in my churning stomach, and for a moment I couldn't breathe.

Chris.

I knew his voice. Would have known it anywhere, after what we'd shared — what I'd forced on him — at the lagoon. It carried the particular weight of trauma that couldn't be discussed, the resonance of experiences that bound two people together whether they wanted to be bound or not.

Slowly, with the reluctance of a man facing execution, I turned to face him.

He stood a few feet away, his posture carefully neutral, his expression carrying something I couldn't immediately identify. The cut on his head had scabbed over, a dark line against his skin that drew my eye like a magnet despite my desperate wish to look anywhere else. He'd survived the injury. Had apparently healed well enough to be walking around, offering assistance to the man who'd put him in the lagoon in the first place.

I didn't know what to say. Didn't know if there were words in any language that could bridge the gap between what had happened and what needed to happen now.

The silence stretched, filling the space between us with everything we couldn't voice.

Then Chris spoke again, and the words rearranged everything.

"I'm assuming it was because of the voice?"

The sentence came with a gentle shrug, casual and devastating in equal measure. He stepped closer as he said it, his movements cautious but not afraid, hinting at the incident that had driven us apart without naming it directly.

My eyes narrowed, piercing through him with an intensity born of shock rather than anger.

He hears it too.

The realisation cascaded through me like cold water, washing away assumptions I hadn't known I'd been carrying. Chris heard Clive. Chris knew about the whispers, the demands, the presence that lived inside your skull and pushed you toward things you'd never choose on your own.

He wasn't just a victim. He was a fellow captive.

The implications stacked on top of each other, building a tower of understanding that made me slightly dizzy. Clive had been working on both of us. Had been whispering to Chris the same way it whispered to me, perhaps making demands I couldn't imagine, perhaps explaining things I'd been too consumed by my own horror to consider.

Did that change what I'd done? Did knowing that Chris also carried a passenger in his consciousness somehow lessen the violation I'd inflicted on him?

No. It couldn't. What I'd done was still wrong, still a betrayal of the most fundamental human boundaries. But it added context. Added complexity. Suggested that the lines between perpetrator and victim might be more tangled than I'd allowed myself to believe.

"If it's alright with you," Chris continued, extending his hand toward the generator with a steadiness that I envied, "the incident never happened."

The proposition hung in the air between us, an offer that felt too generous to accept and too necessary to refuse.

Never happened.

Could it be that simple? Could we just... decide to forget? To file the lagoon away in some mental cabinet marked "do not open" and proceed as if the waters had never touched us, as if my hands had never touched him, as if the sounds and sensations and violations had all been a shared nightmare that faded with waking?

Part of me wanted to argue. Wanted to confess, to apologise, to lay out every horrible detail of what I'd done and accept whatever judgement Chris chose to deliver. The guilt I'd been carrying demanded acknowledgment, demanded consequences, demanded anything other than the simple mercy of pretended forgetting.

But another part — the practical part, the survival part, the part that knew we'd have to live together in this small camp for however long our lives in Clivilius lasted — recognised the wisdom of Chris's offer.

"Sure," I heard myself say, my voice coming out hoarse, scraped raw by the desert dryness that clung to my throat.

The word felt inadequate. Felt like a contract signed without reading the fine print, an agreement to terms I didn't fully understand. But it also felt like relief — tentative, fragile, possibly temporary — seeping through the cracks in my defences.

The incident never happened.

I could live with that fiction. Could wrap it around myself like a bandage and pretend it was healing something.

The uncertainty of what else to say paralysed me for a moment. How did you transition from agreeing to forget sexual assault to making small talk about electrical systems? What bridge of words could possibly span that gap?

Chris solved the problem by simply moving forward.

"Come on," he beckoned, gesturing toward the power generator with the easy confidence of someone who understood what all these wires actually did. "I'll teach you how to get this thing hooked up."

I stared at him for a moment longer, searching for signs of hidden resentment, of buried anger, of the kind of festering hatred that reasonable people felt toward those who'd violated them. I found nothing. Just a man with a wound on his head and a generator at his feet, offering help to someone who needed it.

A glimmer of hope flickered in my chest — faint, easily extinguished, but present nonetheless.

"Where should we start?" I asked, my voice still carrying the rasp of uncertainty.

I surveyed the jumble of wires and components that had defeated me so thoroughly, seeing them now not as enemies but as puzzles awaiting the right expertise.

"First things first, we need to connect the power cable from the generator to the caravan's electrical input," Chris explained, a reassuring smile crossing his features.

The expression put me at ease in ways I hadn't expected. He was treating this as a teaching moment, not an awkward obligation. Sharing knowledge rather than enduring proximity.

"Don't worry, it may seem daunting, but it's actually pretty straightforward. We just need to match the colours of the wires. Red goes with red, black with black, and so on."

As he spoke, his hands moved through the tangle with the confidence of experience. Wires that had resisted my every attempt separated willingly under his fingers, sorting themselves into neat bundles as if they'd been waiting for someone who knew the proper way to ask.

I watched, equal parts embarrassed by my earlier failures and grateful for the demonstration.

"See these connectors here?" Chris pointed to a row of terminals I'd spent the better part of an hour staring at without comprehension. "They're designed to secure the wires in place. We'll strip the ends of the wires and insert them into the appropriate terminals."

His voice had settled into a patient rhythm, the cadence of someone who'd explained technical concepts before and had learned how to make them accessible. He stripped the insulation from several wire ends, the motion fluid and confident, then inserted them into their corresponding terminals with a precision that made the whole process look absurdly simple.

This is what it looks like when you know what you're doing, I thought, watching his hands work.

"Now, it's important to ensure a solid connection," Chris continued, his tone instructive without being condescending. "We'll tighten these screws to hold the wires securely. Just tight enough to prevent any loose connections, but not too tight that we damage the wires."

Under his guidance, I mirrored his actions.

My hands moved with a newfound sense of purpose, following the path he'd laid out, connecting wires to terminals with growing confidence. The screws clicked as I tightened them, each small sound an affirmation that something was actually working, that progress was being made.

"Great job, Kain," Chris praised, his smile widening with what appeared to be genuine appreciation. "Now that the power cable is connected, let's move on to the control panel inside the caravan."

The compliment caught me off guard. I'd done nothing exceptional — had simply followed instructions that any child could have understood if they'd been explained properly. But the warmth in his voice suggested he meant it, that he was choosing to see competence rather than dwell on complications.

We entered the caravan together, the space feeling different now that it was about to come alive. Henri raised his head from the mattress, tracking our movements with drowsy interest before apparently deciding we weren't worth the effort of full alertness.

The control panel waited on the wall near the door — a rectangle of buttons and switches and indicators that had seemed like decoration before and now revealed itself as the brain of this mobile home. Chris approached it with the reverence of someone greeting an old friend.

"Here's where the magic happens," he said, a note of excitement threading through his instructional tone. "This control panel allows you to monitor and control the electrical systems in the caravan. We'll start by flipping the main switch to 'On'."

My hand reached toward the switch, hesitating for a moment as the significance of the action registered. This was the moment. The culmination of hours of frustration and failure, reduced to a single motion that would either work or not.

I flipped the switch.

The control panel burst into light.

Indicators illuminated, symbols glowed, the entire surface transforming from dead plastic into something vibrant and alive. A soft hum filled the caravan — the sound of power flowing through circuits, of electricity finding paths to follow, of civilisation asserting itself in a place that had seemed determined to reject it.

"Now, let's test the lights," Chris suggested, a playful glimmer dancing in his eyes as he pointed to a button near the panel. "Press that button there."

I pressed it.

The caravan filled with warm, golden light.

The illumination wasn't harsh or clinical — it was welcoming, comfortable, the kind of glow that made a space feel like home. It touched every surface, chased away the shadows that had been gathering in the corners, transformed the interior from a shelter into a sanctuary.

The grin that broke across my face was unstoppable, cracking through the layers of tension and guilt and exhaustion that had been weighing me down. For a moment — just a moment — I forgot everything that had happened. Forgot the lagoon and the assault and the voice that lived inside my head. Forgot that I was stranded in another dimension with no certainty of ever seeing my fiancée again.

All I knew was that the lights worked.

"It worked!" I exclaimed, unable to contain the excitement that bubbled up from somewhere deep.

Chris laughed — a genuine sound, warm and unguarded, that seemed to push back against the darkness we'd both been carrying. The sound chased away shadows that had nothing to do with inadequate lighting.

We continued exploring the control panel together, our fingers finding switches and buttons, activating systems that transformed the caravan from a hollow shell into a functioning home. The refrigerator hummed to life, promising the possibility of fresh food. The stove's pilot light flickered on, suggesting meals that didn't need to be cooked over campfires. Small fans began to circulate air, pushing back against the stuffiness that had been building through the afternoon.

Each activation brought a fresh surge of satisfaction, a tangible reminder that we were capable of building something here. Not just surviving — building. Creating. Making this hostile place slightly more habitable through knowledge and cooperation.

I moved through the caravan with growing confidence, flicking switches and toggling controls, watching the space around me come alive. The kitchen glowed with inviting warmth. The sleeping area acquired a reading lamp that Henri immediately positioned himself beneath, apparently appreciating the comfort as much as I did.

When I finally paused to catch my breath, standing in the centre of my newly powered home, I felt something shift in my chest.

The generator outside was fuelled by solar energy — Chris had explained that during our work, pointing out the panels that would drink in the relentless sun and convert it to something useful. This barren landscape, this hostile dimension that had taken so much from me, was now providing something back. The same sun that beat down mercilessly during the day would keep my lights burning through the night.

There was poetry in that, I thought. Something almost redemptive.

This caravan wasn't just shelter anymore. It was proof that the life I'd left behind could be partially reclaimed. That electricity and light and the small comforts of civilisation could exist even here, even now, even after everything.

"Thanks," I said to Chris, the word carrying more weight than it had before.

I wasn't just thanking him for the generator. Wasn't just expressing gratitude for the technical knowledge he'd shared. I was thanking him for the offer he'd made, the fiction he'd proposed, the chance to move forward without the constant presence of what had happened between us.

He seemed to understand. His nod was brief, acknowledging, and then he was moving toward the door, his task complete.

"If you have any problems with it, let me know," he said over his shoulder. "These generators are pretty reliable, but they can be temperamental sometimes."

Then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, leaving me alone with Henri and the gentle hum of power flowing through my new home.

I stood there for a long moment, letting the light wash over me.

It wasn't forgiveness. Nothing could grant me that — not Chris's willingness to pretend, not the successful illumination of a caravan, not any achievement or kindness I might manage in this dimension. What I'd done at the lagoon would stay with me forever, a stain on my soul that no amount of river water could wash clean.

But it was something.

A step forward. A small reclamation. A reminder that even monsters could be useful sometimes, could connect wires and flip switches and make light appear in dark places.

I lowered myself onto the mattress beside Henri, the springs squeaking their familiar greeting, and let my hand find the warm fur of his side. The dog shifted slightly, pressing closer to my leg, offering comfort without requiring explanation.

The lights glowed overhead, powered by sun and ingenuity and the reluctant cooperation of two men who'd shared something terrible and chosen not to speak of it.