Chapter Text
When Till's heart stopped beating and he closed his eyes for the last time in that stupid setting that became his prison (although a part of him knows that it was also the place where for a few moments he could pretend to be free), he felt like he could finally rest. For a moment he felt the calm - the peace - that the aliens had taken from him since they decided that the only valuable thing he had was his voice and his musical talent. He thought that was the end of everything.
He was wrong.
Apparently nothing in his life could be calm and normal. Till couldn't die like everyone else and go to heaven or hell or whatever damn place everyone else goes to when they die - and Till did investigate all these concepts when he had the chance, although that provoked endless incredulous looks because of how esoteric his reading options were at his age. He didn't care. But life has never thought kindly about Till, because if it determined that 21 years of suffering was not enough, it also did not give him the option to live again without remembering his fucking past.
He's a fucking reincarnated man. -Thanks modern literature for putting concepts to EVERY FUCKING THING-.
If that wasn't enough to consider Till as karma's number one enemy, then finding out from his mother -maybe the only good thing he got in exchange for losing his sanity and dignity for being a baby who depends on others and this time remembering the whole damn process- that not only is his name no longer Till (although he got it back somehow, Till swears) but that fate managed to make him reincarnate as a woman.
A. WOMAN.
It's not that Till looks down on women or thinks it's humiliating for him to be one (For her. Till has to start to come to terms with the fact that this is his new reality), but he doesn't think anyone would blame him for reacting the way he did when he first found out about the situation of his current body -And if he scared his mother to the point of taking her to the hospital in a panic for crying inconsolably until she fainted that's between Till and the gods-.
Looking back, Till who will always be Till, but is now Hester (*) Vlachou, has moved forward steadily and surely in the first five years of his new life. Perhaps, for many people in this new world being raised by a single mother who emigrated to a completely different country from his birthplace is a nightmare or at least a challenge, but Till has managed to survive with less favorable circumstances in his past and Io, his beloved mother, is a beacon of light and optimism who has given him the best childhood he has had in his two lives. With Io at his side, Till believes he has achieved some sort of balance in his new life and can look forward to a happy future without fear of someone - an alien - taking it away from him.
Till was wrong.
AGAIN.
He realized this when he caught a glimpse of neatly coiffed blond hair accompanied by an impassive golden gaze coming from a boy his own age.
-It's a fucking joke!