James drifted slowly out of sleep, rising gently through the layers of consciousness, floating upwards like an air bubble through deep water. Wherever he was, it allowed for such slow, peaceful waking; he was warm, and comfortable, buried in heavy drifts of blankets like a bear hibernating under a pile of dead leaves. Still mostly asleep, his eyes closed, he reached out, and found nothing on the other side of the bed.

Harry. Harry was gone.

His eyes snapped open, his mind suddenly and fitfully awake. Harry had been here, he'd fallen asleep holding on to him, he couldn't have just disappeared during the night, this place couldn't be that cruel... and instead of the dingy, dark room he remembered, he was somewhere else. Somewhere new, as far from Silent Hill as he could possibly imagine.

For a single, confused second, he wondered if the whole thing had been a dream, if Heather had dragged him to the Apple store again and he'd fallen asleep while she perused the sparkling machines with lust in her eyes. The room was clean, aggressively white, almost like a hospital but without that thin veneer of grunge and misery, and the lighting was soft, almost golden, across his hands. He had been sleeping in a narrow, pod-like bed, under a blanket that was surprisingly heavy for its thinness, and sometime during the night, someone had changed his clothes. Instead of the filthy sweater and ragged jeans he remembered falling asleep in, he was wearing a white, long-sleeved, tunic-like garment, and his skin underneath it felt... clean. He raised a shaking hand to his head, touching his hair, and it felt smooth and fluffy under his fingertips, instead of the greasy, dirty mats he expected.

"Where the hell am I?" he muttered shakily, and the room took the sound and swallowed it away, until it was as if he'd never spoken at all.

James was sitting up, studying the room and trying to find some discernible feature to it, anything that stood out, when the wall hissed quietly and slid to one side. He shied away from it-it had looked just like the other three walls, who would've thought there was a door there?-and the bright light coming through the doorway dazzled his eyes for a moment, temporarily blinding him. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he squinted at the door and the figure silhouetted there, his muscles tensing underneath the thin blanket, ready to fight or run at a moment's notice.

"You don't have to do that," said the figure quietly, and James dropped his hand and gaped.

"Harry?" he asked, not even hearing the longing in his voice.

The figure took a few steps forward and sat on the edge of the bed. It reached out, its arm impossibly long and slender in the otherworldly light, and took his hand, the one he'd been using to shield his eyes just a moment before. Its hand was warm, and gentle and human and oh god he knew that hand and why weren't his eyes adjusting why wouldn't they just work already?

He blinked a few more times, and the world swam into focus, his eyes finally getting used to the light, and the figure on the edge of the bed transformed, changed from something he didn't recognize into someone he did, someone he would recognize long after he'd forgotten himself.

"Harry!" he gasped, and flung his arms around the other man, pulling him in close against him.

Harry laughed quietly into his shoulder, linking his arms around James's waist and returning his embrace, albeit less frantically and with far more grace and considerably less scrambling. James breathed in the scent of him, that cloying, achingly familiar scent, and cautiously ran his hands over Harry's body; he felt real and solid, present in this time and this place, not like the slick, almost translucent Harry that had been tortured by the drift... and he was warm. His body was warm again, powered by an internal fire that the drift had put out.

"It's really you, isn't it?" James asked, loosening his hold and leaning back so he could get a good look at Harry's face.

Harry smiled up at him, his complexion healthy and glowing, all the fine lines and blemishes and textures of his skin back in place. "It's really me."

"Where... where the hell are we? What happened? Is Little Bit okay? What is this place? What..."

Harry put a finger on James's lips, stopping the sudden deluge of questions. "It would probably be easier just to show you," he said, standing, and walked to the door. "Come with me."

Throwing the blanket aside, James leaped to his feet and trotted after Harry, dimly aware that his bad ankle, previously unable to support him, now took his weight easily and without complaint.

Harry led him down a long, windowless hallway, and James felt like he should have been afraid, but wasn't. Something about this hallway was different; it wasn't foreboding, or endless, and the walls were the same bright, clean white as the room he'd slept in and the tunics he and Harry both wore. It was quiet in the hallway, but not silent; their footsteps echoed dully against the floor, and behind the walls, he could hear machines whirling and working away.

When they reached the end of the hallway, Harry turned a corner, and James hurried to follow him, not wanting to let him out of his sight. If he hadn't been hurrying, the new room might not have taken him by surprise; as it was, he staggered backwards a step, completely flabbergasted and shocked silent, his senses temporarily overwhelmed.

The room itself wasn't that impressive, although the one entire wall of windows was pretty nice. What made his jaw drop and his mind reel was the view outside the window-a sprawling, infinite star field, the Milky Way twinkling before him like diamonds spilled across black velvet.

Harry took his arm, holding him above the elbow, and his touch grounded James, brought his mind away from the edge where it had been teetering, unable to take in the immensity of what lay before him. "It's a little much at first," Harry said apologetically. "I'm sorry, I should have warned you."

"... the hell?" James squeaked, shock transporting his voice back in time to puberty.

Harry opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by a short blonde streak that slammed into James and hugged him fiercely.

"J.D.!" Heather cried, her voice excited. "You're awake!"

James instinctively wrapped an arm around her, and she beamed up at him happily. "You have to see this!" she told him, and dragged him towards the wall of windows.

Except it wasn't a wall, was it? It was a... a windshield, an enormous windshield that wrapped halfway around the room, giving them an unblocked view of the stars roiling in front of them. Normally, James had no fear of heights, but something about that windshield, the closer he got to it, made him feel like the floor was dropping out from under his feet. He clutched Harry's arm tightly, thinking hysterically that it would keep him from floating off into the vast nothingness. Harry patted his elbow sympathetically, and whispered to him "It bothers everyone at first. You get used to it."

Up close to the window (while James struggled to keep himself from vomiting as space dipped away below them), Heather stopped them at a small control station. "Check this out!" she chirped, showing him the control panel, which looked surprisingly similar to a car's dashboard. "Any one can drive it!"

"Drive what?" James managed to choke out.

She looked at him like he was the biggest idiot on the planet. "The spaceship."

For just a second, James wondered if he had gone completely insane, and was gibbering away in a padded room somewhere. Then Harry squeezed his arm and took a step closer to him, gently pressing up against his side, and James realized that he didn't care. If he was insane, then so be it-if his insanity let him be with his family again, would let him be happy again, then he'd take that over the awful, aching loneliness of reality every time. He leaned into Harry and sighed, the vertigo passing away behind his eyes.

Someone coughed pointedly nearby, and James turned his head to study the person controlling the spaceship.

He was wearing one of the white tunics too, but he had accessorized his with a canvas vest, which stood out jarringly against the crisp whiteness. He was also wearing a trucker's cap, pulled low over his dark eyes, and he scowled out at James from under the bill, his blue-shadowed jaw clenched obstinately.

"James, this is Travis Grady," Harry filled in politely. "Travis, James Sunderland."

Travis glowered at James for a moment longer, and James got the distinct feeling that this man disliked him on sight. He tried to smile, and offered out his hand to be shaken. The other man glanced down at it, then back up at his face. He grunted "Meetcha," and then turned back to the steering wheel.

"Travis," Harry chastised softly, as James dropped his hand and shuffled his feet awkwardly. He could feel the blood rising to his face.

"I'm kinda busy here, Harry," Travis said gruffly, and shifted the spaceship harder than he had to, making the whole room jerk nauseatingly. It's a stick-shift, James marveled to himself; the spaceship is a stick-shift.

Heather rolled her eyes, but James noticed that she didn't do it where Travis could have seen her. "Come on," she told James. "There's some more people who want to meet you."

In a daze, he followed her across the room. He hadn't even noticed the round conference table in the corner, or the people who were watching avidly as he crossed the room towards them. He felt a smile that felt more like a grimace spread across his face as he sank into a chair across from them. Heather was introducing them, but he heard her voice from somewhere far away as he sank his face into his hands.

"Heather," Harry interrupted her steady stream of chatter. "Maybe James needs a little more time to adjust to all this?" James glanced at him gratefully, and Harry gave his shoulder a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

One of the men across the table leaned forward. "You'll get used to it," he said, unaware that he was echoing Harry's words from earlier. "I mean, it's rough at first, but then it's not so bad."

James looked up at him. He was a younger man, not much older than Heather, with shaggy, unkempt brown hair and nondescript features (except for a slight overbite). He was wearing a pair of dog-tags that hung against the chest of his white tunic.

"I didn't have any trouble," said the other man at the table, and James shifted his eyes to him. His light brown hair was longer than the young soldier's, and carefully, elaborately coiffed over his forehead. He looked like he'd be tall when he was standing, although he was currently bent over some papers spread out in front of him. His tunic was a little different, with a high collar that was buttoned closely around his neck.

The soldier sighed and leaned back. "Yes, Henry, we all know how badass you are, you don't need to keep reminding us."

Henry glanced up from what he was doing, and even from across the table, James could feel the icy disdain in his gaze when he looked at the young soldier. He stared at the other man long enough to make the soldier start squirming uncomfortably, then flashed his white teeth in a smile. "Just so we're clear on that, Alex," he said cheerfully, then turned to James. "Pleased to meet you, James," he said before looking back down at his papers. "I'm Henry Townsend, and that's Alex Shepherd."

"Yeah..." James responded; he had only just met him, but he already knew that he didn't want Henry Townsend as an enemy. "Pleased to meet you too."

"Henry just showed up here one day," Heather informed him. "We didn't have to go and find him like we did the others."

"There's... others?"

For the first time, Heather looked a little uncomfortable, biting her lip and looking down at her hands, which were knotted and twisting in her lap. Harry's demeanor changed too; he shifted in his seat next to James and leaned in close, slipping his arm through James's and holding tightly to him, resting his head on James's shoulder. James glanced down in surprise-Harry needing comfort from him, that was a first. Heather unknotted her hands and grabbed one of James's, and then she leaned in too, actually shifting his arm up and around her shoulders so he was holding on to her.

"What is it with you two?" James asked, baffled.

"It's... the others. They don't like them."

The young soldier, Alex, having regained his composure after his spat with Henry, took it on himself to explain, since both Harry and Heather couldn't... or wouldn't. "There's two more people on the ship," he told James. "Harry and Heather here don't like being around them, because... well, once you meet them, you'll understand."

"Are they dangerous?"

"No more than anyone else who survived Silent Hill," Henry said calmly, his voice cool and dispassionate. "They're just a little... disconcerting, but they're not dangerous."

"Is that what brought us all here? That we've all been to Silent Hill?" James asked; the revelation should have surprised him, but he really couldn't find it in himself to be shocked anymore.

For the first time, Travis spoke up from the steering panel. "That and the fact that someone doesn't know how to control a swerving car."

That got Harry's attention; he took his head off James's shoulder and glared across the room. "I wasn't going to run over a little girl!" he snapped.

"Just saying."

Alex, ruffled at being interrupted and having his explanation derailed, stood up and beckoned to James. "Come with me," he said importantly. "I can take you to meet the others."

James glanced at Harry, who smiled wanly and let go of his arm. "Go ahead," he said quietly.

"Yeah," Heather piped up from his other side. "Alex is cool."

"Of course I'm cool!" the soldier blustered, looking put out. "Come on, follow me," and he stalked off out of the room, James trailing behind him.

Once they were in the hallway (and out of sight of Henry, James couldn't help noticing), Alex perked up a little. "I'm glad you're awake," he confided as he strode purposefully along. "Harry and Heather were really worried about you, and when Harry's in a bad mood, it makes everyone else crabby." He paused for a moment, but when James didn't respond, he continued on a different vein. "I wanted to meet you anyway. Is it true you fought off the bogeyman?"

"The what?" James asked, dumbfounded.

"The pyramid things! Harry said the bogeyman followed you guys, and that you knew how to fight it, so I figured it probably came from your world, and I saw one too, and I can't believe you actually know how to fight them, that is so cool, and..."

"You're giving me a headache."

"Fine, then," Alex said sulkily. "We're almost there, anyway."

They walked in silence for a few more minutes, until Alex reached out and aggressively stabbed one finger at a spot on the wall. It didn't look any different from the rest of the wall to James, but it must have been a switch of some kind; another hidden door slid open with a hiss, exposing a dimly lit room.

Alex stuck his head in the doorway. "Hey, guys!" he chirped brightly. "There's someone here to meet you!" He gestured James in with one hand, but made no move to step into the room himself. James looked at him quizzically, and Alex stared back benignly. With a sigh, he walked through the door and into the room.

It wasn't as brightly lit as the hallway or the main room, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim, shadowy light. This room, more than any other on the ship, reminded him of the place they all had in common, and he wondered why anyone would choose to stay here. Then his eyes adjusted, and he gasped and took an unconscious step backwards.

Behind him, Alex laughed quietly.

The girl sitting at the table looked up first, and it was like catching a bizarre glimpse into the future. She was Heather, but she also wasn't-she was older, with dark hair and sallow skin, and her eyes had a horrible, haunted deepness to them that had never darkened his Little Bit's face. She looked up at him, her expression blank and hopeless, like she expected nothing from him but pain, and he noticed that the corners of her mouth were bracketed with the heavy lines of a woman much older. She was sitting next to a man, holding onto his hands for dear life, and his head was down, hidden in the shadows, and James was suddenly, desperately afraid of what the shadows might be hiding.

The Heather who wasn't Heather-the Other Heather-tilted her head to one side, a gesture his Heather made, and James felt dizzy again, like the floor was gliding out from underneath him.

"I know you," she said quietly. "We've met before," and her voice sounded like the wind through a cold and empty place.

James swallowed, concentrating all his attention on her, hoping against hope that the man would keep his head down. "I... I don't think we have," he told her, his voice raspy.

She studied him a moment longer, then dropped her gaze back to the table top. Her attitude of subservience and despair was all the more depressing because she was so much like his Heather, his Little Bit, and he couldn't stand the thought of her being this beaten down, this wretched. "What happened to you?" he asked.

Looking up again, she squeezed the man's hands. "My father..." she started, and then her voice trailed off into silence. The man shifted in his seat, and leaned forward into the light.

It wasn't as bad as James had feared. The man looked like he could have been Harry's brother, or another close relative, but he wasn't his Harry, that much was clear. This man was shorter, a little heavier, and wearing a garish Hawaiian shirt that would have never found its way into their closet. He wore glasses over his mild brown eyes, and his hair was lighter, and cut differently, and there were a million other small, subtle differences, but... but when he looked at James, his eyes reflected nothing but a cool, patient indifference, and Harry never looked at him like that. Never.

The Other Harry watched him for a few seconds, taking in his features, searching for any kind of recognition. Finding none, he nodded once to James, acknowledging him, then turned back to his daughter, speaking to her quietly, reassuringly, and James realized that the Other Heather had started weeping soundlessly.

James stepped back out into the hallway, and the door whispered shut behind him.

"Weird, isn't it?" Alex asked him as they walked back to the main room. "It's like they're Harry and Heather, but from a different reality. The girl even calls herself Cheryl."

"Do they stay in there all the time?"

"The girl won't go anywhere without the man, and for some reason, he won't leave that room, so... so yeah, they don't leave. Which is okay, I guess; I mean, seems like they're fine in there alone, and honestly, it'd be kind of awkward to have them out and around the real Harry and Heather, so it all works out."

"I guess it does," James agreed, although he couldn't get the Other Heather's haunted, damned eyes out of his head.

Back in the main room, Heather was sitting next to Henry, pouring over his papers with him. She glanced up and waved at James, her smile and equilibrium restored, and he didn't think he'd ever been so glad to see her looking happy and normal. Alex left his side and went to join them, presumably to get into another show of dominance with Henry, and James bit the inside of his cheek to hide his smile; he didn't think Alex would ever win that battle.

He walked to the control panel, where Harry was standing and talking with Travis. Sidling up beside Harry, he looped an arm around his waist and tugged him over to his side, planting a heavy, claiming kiss on Harry's temple.

Harry laughed and gently disentangled himself from James's arm, only to have it immediately around his waist again. "Strange, isn't it?" he asked.

James shivered. "Strangest damn thing ever."

Travis coughed loudly again, and James thought he recognized a little twinkle of jealousy in the other man's eyes when he looked down at him. Travis shifted his eyes away as soon as James met them, but the jealousy was definitely there. What would have once sent James into a tailspin of depression and self-doubt now made him grin like a fool. So that's how it was, was it? Well, Travis could be as jealous as he wanted; nothing was making him give up Harry Mason. Not Silent Hill, not death, not even life in a spaceship shuttling between the cosmos. Travis could have the Other Harry, this one was his.

"Where're we going?" he asked politely. No sense in making an enemy of the man, although he didn't let go of Harry's waist, either.

Travis looked up at him, his face composed into a smooth, blank mask. "Looking for someone," he allowed.

"We don't know his name yet," Harry told James; having given up on trying to get away, he slipped his own arm around James's waist companionably. "We won't know it until we pick him up. But he's like us. He's... been there."

"How many more people are out there? People like us?"

Travis barked laughter. "Brother, it's a big spaceship, and we've got nothing but time."