Summary:

The kids and some of the trolls somehow end up in an alternate universe, and to make things worse, are locked up in an asylum. They don't really know what happened, or how they even got there, and others, believe that maybe they had always been there, and had only imagined that the game had existed. A product of their insanity.

Over time, some of them have become completely insane, possibly even feral, and others have lost most of their memories, forgetting their friends and even partially, themselves.

A few still strive to find out how they got to where they are, and are determined to find a way out, or at least back to where they were. One often finds herself wondering if where they were could have been the product of their creating a new universe, another sick world that would throw them back into the game eventually...but there is no game this time...

or is there?

Please review! Feedback is appreciated.

Author's Note:

Okay so this story was originally on AO3, Written AND Published there by me. I decided to move it here so I'll tell you exactly what I told them there.

(summary sucks, sorry, I'm not the best at them. Also, this may never get past the first chapter depending on if I can keep interest in the story. Eventually it may contain heavy violence and major character deaths. Also may end up mixed with a few other things. No parings established, nor am I sure there will be any.

Also, there wasn't supposed to be a name till towards the end of the chapter for who it is that's the main character,but I decided to change that because I also wrote this as a post for a role-play. Also, there is quite a bit of non-canon personalities in this due to being in an asylum where experiments are done, and others are forced to fight each other. So don't get upset with me for that.

It's obvious as to why the person in this chapter doesn't quite act himself)

Author's Note End

Chapter 1: Memories Are Fragile Things

"Let..go..of..me!"

The doors to the asylum slammed open, several men wearing white rushing through to make sure the path was clear as the voice burst through the lobby. Several more men entered soon after, dragging someone in, and trying to keep a hold of him. The figure was struggling violently, flailing and lashing out to the best of his ability, but to no avail. A sound, something akin to a growl, slid from his lips before he suddenly let his body go limp, quickly becoming nothing more than dead weight for those of whom were carrying him. He held his eyes closed, and carefully slowed his breathing, keeping his face calm so as to seem unconscious.

It catches the men off guard, but they don't loosen their grip at first, just keep dragging him further into the building. The male had caused enough trouble for the day. He had been scheduled to be moved to one of the lower floors due to a sudden change in his behavior. Before, he had been completely calm, with a few outbursts here and there, or just a moment of violence that would erupt without the slightest of warnings, but then one day, a few before the current one, he had suddenly cracked. One of the doctors had gone in to check on him, to give him medication and his food, when he couldn't seem to find him in the room. Quickly he opened the door and made his way in, closing it behind him so that the male couldn't escape if he tried, but, he had failed to see that the patient was still in the room after all.

That was, until a sound something like a mix between a snarl and a scream broke out from over head, and a weight was suddenly on top of him. The male had been waiting above, having slowly made his way up the side of the padded room until he finally found a good grip a bit of a distance above the door. He had known the exact time, the exact pattern of the doctor's visits whether it was for feeding, meds, or both. However, just landing on the man hadn't done enough, because he soon started to fight back. The figure that had dropped onto him only managed to pull back just in time to avoid a fist aimed at his own face. That's when the grin had suddenly cracked his usually apathetic mask, slipping slowly into place, even though there had been a crazed rage in his eyes already. Pulling back a fist of his own, he swung it forward and down at the man beneath him's face, making contact once, twice, and three times, pausing for only a moment, waging a war with himself in his mind before he snapped out of his thoughts and continued his assault until blood stained his knuckles.

The doctor wasn't killed, but severely injured, and unconscious.

The other orderlies still found it hard to believe that the kid they held had actually caused that sort of damage. Dave, like mentioned before, had never been this violent. The "doctors" though supposed that being locked away in a place like this could change someone rather drastically after a long period of time. They remembered his frustration and fighting when they had first brought him in there, but that had died down to an almost apathetic sort of nature once he seemed to accept his fate of being locked up in the place. It wasn't until a year later that he actually started to act up more. The first time he had somehow escaped the asylum was what got him moved to the third floor, because, whether by accident or not, he had actually almost killed one of the orderlies. Of course the women he had attacked explained that it had been her fault entirely, but the others still weren't keen on believing it. The women had always been a bit softer then the others. She seemed to resent their way of thinking, and even watched them for the rest of that day to the best of her abilities with narrowed eyes and her disgust was made clear through her body language. However, there was only so much she could do, confined to bed until her wounds were healed.

The men holding the boy finally seemed to notice that he still hadn't even twitched, or moved really other then to breathe, and so became nervous. They weren't sure if they had done some sort of serious damage to him in bringing him back, so they looked to him, their grips loosening. A mistake, obviously, for as soon as the blonde felt their grip become just in the slightest bit relaxed, his eyes snapped open, and he moved forward, so suddenly and so quickly that the others had almost no time at all to react. They tried to reach for him, to grab him before he got too far away, but Dave was too quick. He had learned from the best, even if he couldn't remember who that was.

Without hesitation or even glancing back, the once again escaped "patient" darted down the hall, at some points his body blurring only to be seen much further away then he had been a moment ago. By the time he reached the end of the hall, the doctors hadn't even reached the door to it. For a moment, the figure actually hesitated, a hand placed against the cool corner of the wall, and his gaze traveling back towards the doctors who were still giving chase, but slowed slightly when they noticed him watching.

Of course the Strider noticed it, he always did because quite frankly it was impossible not to. They were always nervous when he looked at them, but if he kept his gaze away, they were fine. One of them took a step forward, attempting to act nice, and to try and coax him back to where they were.

"Look kid, it's not like we were trying to hurt you ya know, but what with all of your struggling and flailing around, we didn't exactly have a choice. Well, not to mention the fact that you attacked one of us, that's not exactly going to get us to be the nicest of people." The doctor said, his voice holding some sort of, what sounded like, southern accent as he spoke. However, the other wasn't fooled by his false calm attitude, because though he softened his voice and tried to sound sorry and perhaps even nice, none of it touched his eyes. In fact, none of it even effected his facial features in any way. Dave took a step back.

The man raised his hand, suddenly alarmed and worried that he would bolt, but he wasn't going anywhere yet, not until he was ready to.

"Kid, come on, don't go runnin' off again please. Look, would you rather us deal with ya, or would ya rather the owner of the asylum to either come after you themselves or send one of their special forces out? It's your choice, but I'm telling you that we are much more pleasant then they are. So don't go makin' the wrong choices alright?" He tried again, slowly moving closer, a step at a time. It was only when he was a few steps away from him that he finally took off again. A sound of frustration reached him as he ran, but he didn't slow down, not even for a moment. However, his body wasn't quite used to the exertion, seeing as he had been locked in a cell for so long, and the constant movement was beginning to ware him down.

Even if they were granted some freedom, and weren't always locked up in their straight jackets, it wasn't always all that easy to keep in shape...unless of course you were someone else who found any possible way to do so. However, there weren't many things Dave himself could do, because unlike those of whom were locked in the lower section of the asylum (the basement areas) they weren't often pitted against things, weren't forced to fight.

He was slowing down...

He was gasping for breath, pain racking his lungs, and his chest ached, his heart hammering harshly against his ribs, feeling as though it would burst through. There was no way he could keep running, he had to stop, but where? The blonde was back inside of their turf, and so far as he knew, they had cameras all over the place. However, soon it became too difficult to run any further, and he started to stumble, so he threw his hand out to the side, digging his nails the best he could into the wall in a failed attempt to keep himself completely upright. As he collapsed to his knees, palm still pressed to the cool flat surface next to him, Dave closed his eyes tightly, trying to breath, feeling as though he were drowning even though he wasn't in water.

While he waited for the doctors to come and take him away, back to his cell or perhaps to another, he let his thoughts wonder. He couldn't really remember much, and he surely couldn't remember how he had gotten to this place, but perhaps what scared him the most, was the fact that he could hardly remember who he even was, or who he may or may not have shown up here with.

Sometimes, he got flashes, in his sleep, of faces, of voices, laughter, and screams, but he could never keep a firm grip on them, no matter how hard he tried to. For some reason, it was impossible for him to grasp his tattered memories, and sometimes, he awoke screaming, and a few times (though loath to admit it) crying, curled in a ball and calling out to someone he didn't even know. Many times over, he had to sit there, and force himself to think over the names he picked out every once in a while, before he forgot again, to try and force himself to remember.

Flashes of blue would pass his gaze, flickers of orange and yellow, glimpses of bright green and the liquid black of the night sky with it's milky white stars glistening back at him before blurring into a mess, almost as though a black hole had opened in his mind. Other times the strong steady beat of a heart might break through it, followed by something he could only grasp as possibly a bright, brilliantly orange sun moving into his view, and a few drifting words, possibly an apology of sorts? He could never tell if it was his own voice or someone elses, but then, there would be a strange sticky warmth, and he would look down at his hands (or what he assumed were his hands) and found them covered in a bright, candy like red that he knew could only be associated with the blood of another.

Then he'd wake crying...if he were asleep, and if not, he would scream, and get the overwhelming urge to break down. Something told him that he shouldn't do that, that he should just hide how he felt from the world, never let them catch a glimpse of the emotions he knew hid within his gaze, to safely tuck them into the back corner of his mind...and to hide his eyes from the world beneath a shade of darkness...

but he had no clue what that meant, and those thoughts often made him want to scream more then the flickers of memories that would bombard him from time to time.

A sound somewhere behind him snapped him from his thoughts, and he jerked his head up. His breathing had calmed slightly, enough to let him think of something, anything he could use to hide, and so he started to look around the hall, almost desperately. That's when he saw it, the door to a storage closet, a place where they didn't keep any cameras, for who knew what reason, and he let out a breath of relief. A choked sound, something like a mixture of a laugh and a sob slipped from him as he forced himself to his feet, and moved towards the door. He just hoped that they had left it unlocked, like they used to.

He reached out and grasped the handle, pulling down on it, his eyes closed and his breath held as he waited for it to resist his movement...

It didn't, and it clicked open, a soft sound that still startled him, making him flinch back for a moment before he realized what it had come from. A small sigh of relief slid from him, the corners of his lips twitching slightly, a hint of a smile appearing on his face, but not really reaching his eyes as he slipped silently through the gap between the two doors. As he slid it shut, he tried to listen for anything that might have been in the room, but he couldn't hear a thing, other then the rattling of the air coming through a vent near the back of the dark room.

He turned around, slowly, his scarlet eyes taking in anything that he could see in the extremely dim lighting of the room. Somewhat wishing that he could turn on a light, but knowing better then to do so, he started to make his way towards the back, following the sound of air rushing through one of the vents. It was cool in the storage room, at least, unlike with some of the other rooms in the asylum, that permanently had heated air pumped into them through grates on the floors. He took a deep breath, relishing in the slightly fresher, though somewhat stale, air, even before he turned and picked up the scent of what could be described as a hospital sort of smell.

A few of the boxes that were stacked up against the back wall, he noticed, were covered in a thick layer of dust, as though they hadn't been opened in a while, and he found himself wondering what could be in them. With a quick glance back towards the door to make sure no one had snuck in without his notice, he moved to crouch down in front of one. There were names on a few, though some of them he could hardly make out in the gloomy darkness of the room, and symbols on others. Paint seemed to have chipped away, making it impossible to tell exactly what they had used to be.

Curiously, he ran his fingers over one chest in particular, one with a few different shades of orange, and something that seemed a little like what used to be a heart, both sides filled with a different shade of one color, on it. Dust floated up into the air as he ran his hand over the top, his fingers finding the latch that held it closed as he debated opening it. However, at the last moment, he pulled it back and narrowed his eyes at the thing, suddenly wondering if it were such a good idea, seeing as, if someone decided to take something from someone and lock it away, it was usually smart to put an actual lock to keep others from finding it again right? Or perhaps they were just that cocky and didn't believe someone would find it again anyway. It might actually have been set up as a trap of sorts.

Whatever it might have been, and whatever conclusion the scarlet eyed male may have come up with, snapped away as suddenly as it had occurred to him, when he heard something fall near the front of the room. He stood suddenly and spun around, his eyes wild and his arms raised instinctively to protect himself from whatever it might be. However, nothing moved and nothing struck out at him, which took a moment to register in his mind. Once it did though, he cautiously lowered his arms, glancing around in an attempt to find what it was that had startled him. Well it wasn't anything living at least.

In fact, what he noticed was a shape containing some bright orange material, and a shirt made of blue cloth. The face seemed to be almost porcelain white, except for the lips, a single tooth that was gold and it's cheeks which held red circles on them. The things eyes were unnaturally wide, and blue, and the thing had a ball cap on. It was...creepy, even from the distance he was at, to put it lightly, and yet, something tugged at him, his chest once again filled with a wrenching pain that told him it probably had something to do with an old memory. Slowly, he moved towards the thing, cautious even though he knew it was an inanimate object. Once he finally reached it, he stared down, into the dull blue eyes of the thing, creeped out and yet fascinated by it all at the same time. Carefully, he reached down and lifted it from the ground, gently brushing the dust that had built up on it off. For a moment all he could do was stare at it, examine the details of the, what he knew now, or maybe remembered, puppet, before he pulled it in and hugged it close to him. So what if it was creepy as fuck? For some reason it comforted him, made him feel like he was close to someone he used to know, that he wasn't completely alone after all.

A sharp pain flashed through his head and he gritted his teeth slightly in order to stop a cry from escaping. A few images flashed through his mind, too fast for him to grasp more then the bright, bright orange again, and then the red, blood everywhere, pooling beneath him as he crouched over a figure with a sword sticking out of him. He couldn't really tell, who it might be, he couldn't see his face, all he knew was that his entire body was frozen, his heart was pounding painfully in his chest, and the feeling of tears prickling behind his eyes threatened to push him over. Then there was a crashing sound, and he snapped out of it, leaping back instinctively before he even noticed the hand reaching out to grab him.

He snapped his head up, glaring harshly into the eyes of one of the orderlies. He was slowly growing tired of them pushing him around and grabbing at him. He wasn't going to take it anymore. Taking the puppet, Lil Cal, he decided to name it, without realizing that it was his actual name, and placing it at his back, wrapping it's arms around his neck in a way he knew was secure, he reached over without looking and grabbed something off of the shelf next to him, and pulled it out. It wasn't until he was holding the thing in front before himself that he realized what it was. A mop handle.

"A MOP HANDLE! REALLY?"

Oh well, it would have to do, at least for now. The orderly was moving again, over the shock of seeing the boy move so quickly. However, before he could reach him, Dave was on the move, a blurr as he flash stepped away, and around the shelving in the middle of the room, till he was directly behind the other, mop held high above his head, eyes a blur of crimson. He brought the thing down over the males head, a loud crack audible as the man was struck, stumbling forward, and the handle cracked in two. For a moment, Dave just stood there, his eyes narrowed, and hatred pouring from them in a red glow that seemed to emanate from his irises. Then, he suddenly snapped out of his rage, and his eyes dimmed, he dropped the broken mop and backed up, eyes wide. He wasn't sure what kind of damage he may have done, but he wasn't sticking around to find out.

"What is wrong with me!? Why did I just do that?!" He shouted, voice shaking as he bolted from the room and down the hall. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he knew he had to get away from that room, away from the man unconscious and possibly bleeding on the floor. It wasn't until he had to suddenly dart through a door that was sliding shut in order to avoid being caught by another orderly, that he realized he didn't recognize the place he was in. There were stairs that slowly led down to a darker section of the asylum, the smell of rust, oil, blood, and chemicals all mixing and making him gasp for air which he choked on. It was horrid. However, he didn't have much of a choice in where he went at this point, since the orderlies could find him at any point of time.

He was walking down the stairs when he suddenly heard the loud alarm start to blare. He screamed and covered his ears, it was much louder there then it was upstairs, and he found himself wondering how the people down there could even handle it. Then again, they had probably had time to get used to it by then. All he could do at the moment was crouch towards the ground and hold his hands over his ears. What he didn't realize was that the sound of the alarm wasn't necessarily louder then it was for those on higher floors, it was his hearing that was heightened from his adrenaline rush. Soon however, he was on his feet, though stumbling slightly as he tried to stand, and then running. Before he got far however, a hand shot out of seemingly nowhere and grabbed onto his shoulders rather roughly. Dave shouted out, startled, and tried to keep his balance, all the while reaching up to be sure lil' Cal hadn't fallen, when he was pulled back. The puppet was still there, and reassured that he hadn't lost it, he felt his anger flare back to life. Jolting himself forward he attempted to flash step, and instead found his shoulder straining rather painfully against the hold.

There was suddenly a sharp prickle of pain that raced from his neck to straight down his spine, and his anger drained away to horror as he realized he was being tranquilized. With a hiss of breath, he attempted to struggle a little more, but the formula was stronger then usual and he slowly felt himself go limp. The thing didn't knock him out at first, and his gaze was locked on the floor as his mind and body became exhausted. He knew the person behind him was speaking, but he couldn't quite understand what he was saying. The only thing he caught was him shouting to someone to get one of the basement level "doctor/Orderlies" people to come and handle him.

'So...I'm getting a new room huh? Down here no less. That's just...lovely.'

End Note:
(Well sorry if this sucked, I know I should be vigilant and completely go back over my work, changing unnecessary words out for better ones but I don't often do so with my own work. I'm better at editing and helping out on other people's writing then my own. Besides that, please let me know what you think, oh and I know the paragraphs are a bit blocky, but at times that's just the way I write.

Have any ideas for story plot that may or may not help me with continuing the story, feel free to suggest things. I will think them over, but please don't be upset if I don't use them or still don't consider moving forward with the story. This, though, might become a collaboration with some friends if they decide to help, since they are in the role-play. ^ ^

Oh and I have a weird feeling that at some point in the story I switched from past tense to present for a short bit of time on accident. Let me know?