Counterclockwise

He is standing at the edge of the Rift.

It's small. It's a single step, a crevasse of ice crossing the wooden floor. It is not a hundred metres wide; it's not even a metre wide. It's a gap between where Simon's feet lay and where Lee stands, holding Simon up, keeping him from falling.

Simon steadies himself, stands up, steps on the edge of the ice.

He steps across the Rift, and stands at Lee's side.

He could throw up, or cry, or scream. But he doesn't. His gaze is fixed down- looking down that crevasse, seeing blueish white light shining up from some chamber beneath the ice.

"What the fuck?" says one of the brothers. Simon can't even tell which one, because both have good reason to say it, and it's in some hoarse horror that both have good reason to hold right now. Simon tries to reach behind his back, because the pain is getting worse now that shock is wearing off, and he comes away with blood.

Simon finally makes eye contact with Noel- staring at him from one side of the Rift, while he stands on the other. Holding the sword that Lee took from Japan, that he must've dropped on his way to run towards Simon.

Noel is staring down at the Rift, but he looks up after a second, shaking, but convicted, just as he was in Simon's hotel room. He holds the sword out, points it towards Simon. "Get away from my brother," he says, and his voice intones like he means it.

Simon just feels sick and not much else. This is not an event that can be processed. He's numb to it. He knows it means something, but the truth simply won't connect.

"Put the fucking sword down," Lee growls, and somehow Simon's surprised that anger is any part of his emotion here. "Do not fucking touch him again."

Noel is, frankly, astonished, alongside the righteous anger that radiates off him like heat. "You're protecting him, of all people? Did you not listen to everything I said? You saw what he wrote! He's going to kill you!"

Simon stares down at the Rift. He kicks the ice with his foot. The gap is small, a few centimetres. It's not large enough to fall through. There's no mist. It's just- ice.

"No, he's not," Lee begins, but there's a shout that cuts him off before he has a chance to explain anything.

"What in the name of-" Miss Mina does not finish her sentence. Simon's heart sinks. He had some hope, knowing she wasn't here- because maybe this timeline would be better. Maybe there'd be hope. Maybe everything changes. But she's here.

All of a sudden, everything makes sense.

"Put the sword down," Miss Mina warns her son. The voice comes from behind Simon. "What the hell is this?"

"Whoever the fuck this guy is-" Noel points the blade at Simon- "he's lying. He's trying to kill Lee because of his power. I have proof and I'm not going to let him get away with it! And look- look what the fuck- how did you do this?!"

He's gesturing at the Rift. Simon feels too nauseous to know what emotion he's feeling.

"Noel, you haven't heard the whole story," Lee tries, but Noel's voice is raised, and at any objection he gets louder; and at the moment of his interruption, Simon can feel the ground shaking beneath his feet. The ice he stands on, the smooth line where ice becomes wood, quakes.

"He's fucking tricked you!" Noel is yelling, and Simon's eyes are closed; he's feeling something intense and overwhelming, the universe answering questions he has held for his entire life. His heart is racing from fear, too, but that hardly matters. "Look what he's done!"

"Noel," Simon tries to say, tries to get a word in edgewise, "I'm so sorry-"

But that was, quite clearly, not what Noel wanted to hear, if he wanted to hear anything at all- which he didn't. Simon flinches a hand up, and cries out from the pain in his left arm, before he even sees the sword swing down, before he hears the yelling of both Lee and his mother. Before he falls to his knees, braces himself with his good arm- against the Rift, against the second huge cut that runs alongside, over, the first.