I'll follow you (into the dark) 

September 6th, 2076: Germany, Berlin. 

Kris. 

Zitao isn't an idiot, far from one actually, he has multiple degree's in science and medicine, and he's one of the main neuroscientist in the entire country. Zitao is a genius. 

But just because he's a genius, it doesn't mean he understands things like fairy tales and destiny. 

"Kris!" He hollers loudly across the hallway, Kris chit-chatting with one of the nurses about a patient, Zitao storming up to his co-worker with hard rough steps. 

"Tao," Kris greets with an effortless smile, Tao on the other hand puffing, his lungs constricted from all the running he had to do. "What's up? Need some help?"

"No" Tao bites off ungracefully, "the dreams, are you having them too?"

Kris tilts his head. "Dreams?" 

"Dreams! About you and I, years, centuries, in London, don't you remember? You were a newspaper boy and..."

Kris eyes him oddly, more than just confused. "Zitao, I'm a doctor not a newspaper boy." 

"... It was a dream," Tao mutters softly, head spinning, "but I, it's not... how would I know about 1901 Russian history? I know nothing about Russia, but now I know the language as if I've been speaking it all my life, and Kris," he pauses, his breath almost gone and he's panicking, none of this should be possible. He's a scientist, he knows this. 

"You what?" Kris says, eyes going wide, "wait did you just say you spontaneously learnt Russian?"

"And English, and Chinese and Korean and --- this, whatever is going on, isn't right." Tao finishes, he barely knows Kris, he wouldn't dream of him and Kris kissing, having , hugging, crying in each other's arms, living lives and more lives together, Tao may be smart, but he knows nothing other than German and a bit of English; Tao does not spontaneously learn languages. 

"Why... why are you telling me this?" Kris finally asks, his voice soft, a clipboard against his hip. "Tao, you need help or..."

"No" Tao says shaking his head, "the answers lay in you. I need to talk to you, come with me." 

"I don't know what's going on, Tao I can't help you," Kris protests with, but still trailing after Tao as he leads them into a secluded room. 

"You have the answers, Kris." Tao objects with, slamming the door closed before turning around sharply to glare at the slightly taller blond. "In... In London, you told me your birthday was November 6th, right? Is it November 6th?" 

Kris inhales sharply. "Yeah..."

"Okay, good start, so I'm not completely crazy," Tao mumbles to himself softly, "okay what else? Um, ah! We went to school together in China and Korea, and I dated some guy named Baekhyun and you got jealous, crazy jealous, and in Korea ---" Tao's face darkens, remembering that particular lifetime with grave sadness, "--- you married some girl and I committed suicide. Okay not information, I need proof." 

"Tao..." Kris says unsurely, "if... if what you're saying is true, it sounds like different lives, not a life I lived it's just a bit..."

"Your favourite colour is red, and you like to wear pink bunny slippers, and you got mad at me when I posted a picture of them on Tumblr, we fought for an hour and then --- that was 2011, right? It was long ago."

"Eh..." Kris says, batting his eyelashes softly as Tao paces the room. 

"You always made sure there was blue sheets, you got mad at me when I made the blankets black one day."

"Yeah, my bed sheets have to be dark blue but how do you ---"

Tao eyes light up, before falling down sadly. "You sacrificed your life for me." 

"Tao!" Kris yells finally, grasping Tao's shoulders and forcing the man to look at him straight in the eye, "you're imagining this." 

"How would I know all this about you?" Tao finally says, voice thick with sadness. "Kris, I think... I've known you... for years, almost 200 hundred years." 

January 17th, 1943: England, London.

They say families now days fear the letter and the man in a suit arriving at your door the most lately. 

Though Tao knows better, he won't be able to find out when Kris dies, Tao never bothered to meet Kris' family, and he certainly isn't close to any of Kris' friends. But there's a board, his mother had said, names of the men and woman that had died from this awful war. 

Tao sometimes passes the board, but dreads actually looking at it. 

Sometimes he see's the skeleton floating around the board, trying to lure Tao closer, to just look. Tao usually avoids it like the plague. 

He's turning 16 soon, when he's 20 he'll be forced to join the army if the war is still going on. World War II they call it, Tao calls it the time of grief. 

(Sometimes he can barely remember what Kris' smile looks like, and that scares him most, because he's always loved Kris' smile.) It hasn't been long since Kris went, 2 years ago, Kris would be 20 now. 

"I looked at the board today," Kai says at dinner, fork clicking against his plate as he eats small bites of his potato and bread. Tao, totally baffled on why Kai would eat stuff like bread and potato's with a fork decides to eat with his hands. 

"Oh my," Tao's mother says gravely shaking her head, "no one we know is on that board, right?"

Kai swallows thickly. "No, I don't think so..."

Tao narrows his eyes, "are you lying?"

("I wish that I'll die the exact same day Kris dies, so I'll never have to live a day without him...") 

"No" Kai laughs softly, eyes crinkled in a fake way. Tao shakes his head, disregarding the haunting words in the back of his thoughts, pushing away from the table as he makes his way upstairs, feet heavy as he leads himself up, slower, and slower and... 

As soon as he reaches his bed, his eyes close, and he's pulled into a deep sleep.

(When Tao next opens his eyes, he's in China, telling his mother about his first day in school. Briefly confused on why he's forgotten his sentence, but shrugs it off. He's only 3, after all). 

September 6th, 2076: Germany, Berlin. 

"Every time you die, I die, without me even knowing it, I wake up from sleeping and I'm in a different country, with a different ing family and oh god," Tao bemoans, fingers gripping his dark hair. "What is even going on?" 

"Maybe you need sleep, or you need to see somebody," Kris suggests lightly, "like, maybe right now." 

Tao's eyes widen slowly. "If I kill myself, you die."

Kris crinkles his forehead to that, briefly confused on why Tao would even bring that up. 

"Kris, write somewhere, anywhere, somewhere even when it's centuries from now, I'll still be able to find it write: I'll follow you into the dark," Tao rattles off quickly, turning sharply on his heel, "I remember everything in every lifetime I have, I need proof though, a way that I can prove it to you too,"

"Tao are you going to kill yourself?" Kris asks with wide eyes, quickly running after Zitao that had taken off from the room, Kris hot on his heel. "This is ing crazy, write a journal or something and put it somewhere safe, or I'll write a journal and if you're telling the truth we'll find this journal ---"

Tao pauses abruptly, causing Kris to crash into his back.

"That won't work," Tao finally whispers, "because... this... we're in different universes."

"Excuse me?" Kris grits, "what the honest you cannot expect me to go ---"

"It's the only way to describe how I've lived twice in the 20th century, without having any correlance with my last life." 

Kris throws his hands up in defeat, "that's ing great, then how exactly do you plan on proving this to me?" 

("And I wish Kris would never have to suffer remembering... anything." Tao whispers softly between his sobs, hands shaking as he Kris' matted hair. "Don't remember... just forget, we can be together in another world, right? We can be happy somewhere else.")

Tao pauses, eyes going wide, "I can't."

Kris blinks. "What?"

"I can't, I can never prove it... because that's what I wished back when you were dying... that you wouldn't remember, so we could be happy somewhere else..." 

In a different world.

"Well that's great Tao, now if you don't mind I have things to do..."

Tao laughs softly, pushing his bangs upwards to show his forehead. "Okay. I'll see you later, I think I'm going to go see someone now. I'm losing it." 

Kris snorts loudly, patting Tao's head softly. "It's okay, sometimes when I'm around you," he turns his head to the side, cheeks flushed, "I feel like I've known you for centuries too." 

Tao smiles softly. I know, he thinks. 

"Thanks, for dealing with my craziness, maybe I need to sleep more, without dreaming of brains and nero's and ."

Kris laughs, ruffling his hair. "Of course, we all need brain-less dreams sometimes."

(That night before Tao goes home he goes to a tattoo parlor and tattoo's on his wrist "I Remember, 2076", later that night he slits his throat and wonders if Kris dies too.

When he wakes up he's in Canada, Toronto, a 22 year old man with the words I Remember, 2076  tattooed on his forearm. He merely wrinkles his forehead and wonders why in hells name would Kris let him get a tattoo like this. The 22 year old Canadian, Tao, still wonders how he managed to get drunk enough to get a tattoo on his arm.) 

Huang Zitao & Kris Wu

Dead, January 17th, 1943 & September 6th, 2076.

A/N: Well then.

Things sure escalated quickly. 

THIS STORY IS CONFIRMED TO BE ENDING AT 12 CHAPTERS. TYVM. I wrote a one-shot called "Straight Through Hell With a Smile"