Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The air is still in a way that it usually is not; holding the suspense between the group the same way that a little kid holds a jump-rope. It comes in waves, as the silence after Timmy Turner’s words drags on, awkward and scary and somehow a little humbling; all at the same time, in an impossible combination.

And, eventually, Timmy grows bored. 

This, too, is humbling.

He moves forward in a fluid movement, hands clasped behind his back as he leans forward ever so slightly. Jimmy watches, intense, as he swerves left first—towards where Jenny stands next to Jimmy, with her gauntlet held taut by her head, balled into a fist. Like the tease of the wind beside your ear when riding a bike or the smell of a campfire when walking through a neighborhood, Timmy Turner drags his index and middle finger along the metal, before pulling away with a wink.

“Scary,” he coos, teasing. 

Jenny does not react in any violent manner (a first, Jimmy thinks: deadpans. At least when it comes to her). Instead, her gauntlet stays suspended where it is, only slightly trained in Timmy’s direction as he spins to face the group once more. 

“What a peculiar group,” Timmy says. Jimmy, more invested in the way that he moves, pays little attention to his words. He says something else—another teasing quip—and Jimmy is focused on the way that his legs move like he is skating; he does not even lift his knee as he walks. It is all smooth motion over grass that Jimmy thinks takes practice. That, somehow, has been coded into an uncoded man. He says something else and Jimmy thinks that maybe his fluid motions comes from the half of him that is part shadow. 

“You know better than to attack the Royal Prince,” Manny says, tight, in response to whatever Timmy mentioned earlier. He leans down, ready to attack—ready to prance, like a cat. Jimmy watches as Timmy laughs in response.

“Do I?” Timmy says, genuine confusion written on his face. “Does the Royal Prince know better than to attack me?”

Manny growls his response, tighter and more strangled than any time he has ever been upset at any of them; Jimmy, Jenny—even Danny. It comes out from the base of his throat, rough against his voice.

(Briefly, for a moment, Jimmy wonders if there is something more Manny has behind this fight. If his code says one thing and every other part of him says something else. If Timmy’s capture is more than something his dad has told him).

“Timmy,” Danny says from the right—it comes out weird as well, the name. Danny’s tongue wraps around the word like he’s not quite sure how he wants to feel about it yet—fear and desperation and nerves combining into something that makes the tone the same as an old acquaintance greeting a co-worker. And maybe that’s all their dynamic ever was.

Timmy turns to him; looks at the space above Jimmy’s shoulder. 

He looks away just as fast—cranes his head in the opposite direction as his gaze lands on Spongebob. He does not even try to be subtle as he extends his arm towards the smaller sponge, gestures towards him with an outstretched hand. 

“And I see you have brought a barnacle,” Timmy says, but this, too, is not meant to be insulting. “Hello, strange creature.”

“Hello, Mr. Timmy!” Spongebob exclaims back to him, with the same bravo and cadence as he greeted everyone else. Jimmy needs to remind himself that this reply is coded; that it is scarily in character with Spongebob’s innocence because it is exactly who Spongebob was meant to be; welcoming. Open. “It’s a pleasure to meet you! I’ve only heard good things!”

“I find that hard to believe,” Timmy says with a grunt, eyes flicking to Manny as he does so. The implication is evident, even if Jimmy was not as smart. He knows the people that Spongebob is hanging out with; what his reputation is when it comes to royalty.

“Well,” Timmy says, in the wake of their silence once more. Jimmy’s not quite sure why the fighters on his team are not attacking—why they’re standing perfectly still (as if by design) when they have spoken about nothing besides how much they have yearned to sink their teeth into the side of Timmy’s neck and pull. “If it is a fight you seek, you must remember how to start one, right?”

“That’s it?” Danny says, emotions leaking beyond the stoic face of a faux co-worker. “That’s all you have to say?”

Timmy shrugs, as if Danny’s presence does not move him. As if the programmer did not even think to consider how Timmy may react to seeing a man who he has been separated from for so long. “You have come here, looking for a fight. Who am I to take that away from you?”

Jimmy cannot see Danny’s reaction from where he stands behind him. He thinks that he is grateful for that small mercy: “Timmy—”

“Where are the rest of your goons, then?” Manny asks, and he extends his sword out in front of him, the end of his blade barely touching the ground between Timmy’s feet. It is meant to be a threat—Jimmy does not think that anyone within their group perceives it to be one. “Why hide them?”

“The ones that are willing to fight have fought,” Timmy answers, arching a brow and tilting his head slightly. It is a riddle to him, Manny’s words. It is a riddle to him, Manny’s reaction as he looks over his shoulder, ever so briefly, at where they have killed and fought. “The ones that do not want to will not.”

“What?”

“What?” Timmy echoes back at him, somehow more confused.

“Que horrible,” Manny says, but his shoulders relax, and Jimmy thinks there is something grim in the way that he seems elated about the fact that he has killed. He prays that it is just what Manny has been coded to say—that it would be different in different circumstances. “That is a terrible way to rule a kingdom; who will fight for you?”

“Why would the United West want to fight my fights?” Timmy says. He laughs at the end of his sentence, strangled and breathy. It sounds comedic to him, the simple idea. Jimmy thinks he understands what Timmy is telling him, but he is confused as to what it means. As to what the implications are that a coder means to get across. Then, his gaze travels to Jimmy, and it stays there. “Why would I make them?”

He takes a step towards Jimmy. Jimmy does not take a step away; he does not move.

Jimmy would like to use the excuse that he has been frozen in place, paralyzed by his own fear. But he knows that it would come across as a lie to his own ears. His immobility is as simple as the fact that he does not think Timmy Turner will kill him. He approaches with his hands balled in fists and his chin tilted upwards—but all Jimmy can think of when he meets his gaze is lake water staining his shoes and a sword through his neck and the abyss of what lies beyond the woods. All Jimmy can think of is all of the times that he has been so, incredibly, unhostile—to the point of being a bystander as Jimmy himself limps away.

“It’s interesting—to me, at least—that you brought Jimmy Neutron with you, on your adventure,” Timmy says. He stands a foot away, eyes scanning Jimmy’s face before falling on his gun. There is something threatening there that is not threatening at all. Jimmy puts a word to it only as Timmy looks away. Cautious, wary. “It’s smart, fine. I’ll give you that much credit.”

Afraid. 

“What?” Jimmy asks.

It seems as if his reputation has protruded him once more.

Timmy arches a brow in curiosity—gaze shifting away from Manny, however briefly, in order to meet Jimmy’s knitted brows and scared expression. He lets his gaze linger once more, but decides better of himself as he turns to Manny, lips-sealed. Unexplainably quiet.

“I’ll let you know that I didn’t bring anyone with me,” Manny says with a scoff, but he blushes red against his own dark complexion all the same. It is the implication, here, that even Timmy Turner would suspect the royal prince to be in charge of the mission—that Timmy Turner thinks highly of the prince, and the same prince has to explain that he is nothing in the eyes of his father. “It’s—pues. My father put him in charge of our mission today.”

“Oh,” Timmy says, and smiles at the Cheshire Cat at the new information. He gleams under the information, that the royal prince is not all that he brags to be; even in the eyes of his own kingdom. “So Jimmy Neutron brought you on his adventure.”

“Well—” Manny says, and he searches for something to say, afterwards—but he comes up short. “Well, yes. He did.”

“How interesting,” Timmy coos, and Manny blushes a deeper red in his own embarrassment.

“Lay off him, Timmy,” Danny says, from behind Jimmy. 

Timmy raises a brow at the interruption, turning to face Danny in a fluid motion. He tilts his head, ever so cautiously, as he looks past Jimmy. Danny, to his credit, sounds just as embarrassed at the fact that he has come to the prince’s rescue (but when Jimmy looks past an approaching Timmy, and sees Manny out of the corner of his eye, he watches as the other man digs the blade of his sword into the dirt and uses it as a stand. He is weak, out here, Timmy thinks. Talking has never been his strong suit; being underestimated has never been his strong suit.

And perhaps, maybe, this is why it has taken Timmy so long to be captured by Manny and company. Maybe Timmy knows the flaws of the Western Kingdom that lie beyond their fighting styles.

It would explain the gleam in his eyes; his scrutinizing gaze).

“Of course, Phantom,” Timmy says, and he slurs the words in a singular purr, tongue curled behind his teeth as he stands next to Jimmy, both of them facing opposing directions (Jimmy thinks it could be poetic in the way; how they stand so close and see such different things). “Whatever you say, it shall be done.”

Danny does not respond, verbally, but Jimmy has gotten to know the man well enough in the course of a day and a half to account his silence to his own confusion. His lack of words to the fact that he does not know what to say in this situation; nothing pre-prepared.

Timmy rests his arm on Jimmy’s shoulder. Jimmy cannot stop himself from flinching. “Cat got your tongue?”

Danny scoffs at this (and Jimmy is confused, for only a moment. It is something that makes sense, in the wake of the knowledge that everything is programmed and scripted; but then Manny stands up straight in Jimmy’s peripheral vision and Jimmy remembers the hidden meanings that happen during cut-scenes that the programmer cannot code). “You have not grown up in the slightest.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Timmy pushes off of Jimmy at that, and Jimmy can feel the slight breeze against the bottom of his pants as Timmy passes by, behind him. And Jimmy can feel Timmy’s gaze against the back of his head, intense in a way that Jimmy is soon learning did not have a definition before Timmy. “I know of the others—” he begins, and Jimmy hears the monologue before even the programmer knew he was going to write it “—of Manny’s confidence; Jenny’s cowardice. They are the only two that matter, of course.”

“I am not a coward,” Jenny says, and Jimmy is inclined to agree.

“Not in the way that you think,” Timmy's cryptid reply, told through shrugged shoulders, and uncaring gazes. Jenny makes a hurt noise in the back of her throat at the clip, and Timmy does not stop as he continues to circle Jimmy, before stopping with his arm on the opposing shoulder.

“I know of you,” he says; whispers. He says it into Jimmy’s ear, under the guise of a stage-whisper, much similar to Spongebob Squarepants himself. Jimmy thinks, in different circumstances and different coding, that they would get along well. “Who doesn’t, amongst the West; amongst the rebels.”

“What?”

It reminds him of conversations within cellars, surrounded by steel bars. It reminds him of the praise of a king, as he lies helpless in a hospital bed. Jimmy may be able to control his own dialogue, everything that stays scripted around him does not influence him; but he is not immune to the program that lies before him. His story and his own background, painting a picture around him.

“I thought that I knew the King better than he knew me,” Timmy says, and he lingers next to Jimmy for a moment more. He smells like absolutely nothing, Jimmy thinks. Like he was never meant to exist in the first place. “It looks like I may have been wrong.”

He leaves with that, and Jimmy changes his footing to meet him. He watches as Timmy leaves, his back still turned to Jimmy as his jaw clenches without his permission.“What is that supposed to mean?”

Timmy stops, moves in a swift motion. Turns around.  He opens his mouth to say something, and his lips flit around absolutely nothing before he seemingly thinks better of himself; closes his lips and purses them tight.

Jimmy takes a step forward after a moment of silence. The rest of his companions watch in their own wake of silence; Jimmy does not know if it is because they are all suddenly afraid of Timmy Turner, or if it is because they know something that Jimmy does not.

“I am not who you think I am,” Jimmy says, and it sounds familiar to his own ears. It is the same thing he told Danny, in a cell (it is the same thing he told the king, when spoken about his greatness. It is the same thing he told Cindy and  he told his parents and everyone he has ever known. It is a miracle that it still tastes foreign on his own lips, when it is the only sentence Jimmy has ever known). “I don’t even know who you think I am.”

Timmy looks at him, expression blank. Jimmy takes it as a threat.

“Who are you?” Jimmy asks, in the silence of an answer.

Sure, he thinks to himself, he is Timmy Turner. He is as coded as the rest of Jimmy’s friends, with the same wants for victory and the same thirst for battle—but he is also, inexplicably, a man and a monster. He is also, inexplicably, able to escape his own programming for a night, the same way that Jimmy is.

He is also, inexplicably, running from himself.

The same way that Jimmy is.

Timmy blinks, tilts his head.

And, because of course it does, it all goes to shit from there on out.

When Timmy opens his eyes after the subtle movement, his expression is replaced by one with unguarded precariousness. He is surprised at the sight of Jimmy in front of him, standing, breathing. He looks at Jimmy with wide eyes and painfully white scleras, before his gaze drops as if pulled by a string; falling to his arms and trailing up the length of his own skin, his own arms. It feels terribly intimate, Jimmy thinks. He feels guilty for watching. He feels guilty for being unable to say anything as he is rendered into silence. He watches as Timmy turns his outstretched arms in a circular motion in front of him; as he flexes his fingers and his wrists, thumb connected to his pinky finger. He turns, then, with his gaze on Jimmy, quickly. As if it may burn.

And this is the sense of reminiscence that Jimmy has been looking for; faint within the depths of Timmy’s gaze. It was what made his gaze so piercing, Jimmy thinks, for now that the recognition is fully on him, he feels as if he is burning alive. It is the first time he has felt known in this game. It is the first time he has felt truly seen, he thinks.

Timmy stumbles backwards; clunky, ungraceful. Jimmy reaches forward to catch him, out of instinct alone, and out-stretches his hand as Timmy’s head comes dangerously close to hitting the ground. His eyes are wide, Jimmy remembers, and he looks as if he remembers, Jimmy remembers. Jimmy memorizes.

Then, before he can hit the ground, Timmy Turner disappears completely.

Jimmy’s hand is still out-stretched in front of him, as if it is a trick of the light; the same way that the shadows of the forest surrounding them have constructed Timmy’s body in different colors. He waits for the sun to shift in the sky and for Timmy Turner to appear in front of him again, with his hand extended as well; fingers wrapped around his wrist. He waits, watching the spot where his head had last been, as a second passes by. As one more travels with it.

He waits for piercing gazes and bright blue eyes to appear once more. He waits to be examined in a way he has never been before; taken apart and put back together, meticulously. 

The only thing that shifts his gaze—takes his attention away from the spot where Timmy Turner last stood—is the sound of a body hitting the ground behind him.

(He feels evil, he thinks, as something light takes his heart and wraps the strings connected to his veins taut. He immediately connects the sound of the thud to the injury of one of his teammates, and assumes that it is another trick by Timmy Turner. He feels elated at the idea of seeing Timmy Turner, even at the harm of his teammates.

He does not know what is wrong with him; he has never wished harm on anyone before.

Jimmy wonders if being known is a cause for blame. If being known is similar to being loved in the way that it makes him do stupid things; wish irresponsibly and act even worse).

As he turns around (he digs the ball of his foot into the ground and spins, more graceful then what was last seen of Timmy Turner) his gaze immediately lands on Danny, he looks uninjured, all things considered, but his mouth moves rapidly around absolutely nothing—lips flitting around words that do not make any sound. He looks at himself with a sense of fear that is as intense as Timmy Turner’s renaissance, hands slowly traveling to his neck as he holds his throat, fingers limp instead of taut.

Jimmy watches as Danny’s gaze then travels to Jimmy’s right, where Manny stands.

Yet, when Jimmy turns to look at Manny, there is absolutely nobody there.

Which is odd, Jimmy thinks to himself, as he takes a step away from where Manny’s body should be. For a moment, Jimmy wonders if this is yet another trick—an attempt by Timmy to wrap his sleek hands around Manny’s wrist and whisk him away back to the Western Side of the Kingdom. He thinks that maybe this is what is supposed to happen; why he has been put in charge of this quest in the first place, instead of the prince; so he can lead in his absence.

But that would not explain the genuine remembrance in Timmy’s gaze. It would not explain an expression so earnest that it cannot be faked.

Jimmy turns back to Danny in time to watch as he falls to his knees, a hand still wrapped loosely around his throat, with the fingers of his other hand traveling upwards to cover his mouth, fingers curling around his bottom row of teeth. He looks up at Jimmy from where he kneels, fear evident, and reaches the hand around his neck out, extended, like a scared kid reaching for his mother, before his eyes roll upwards and his body leans forward and Jimmy thinks that he is going to collapse against the ground.

But he, too, disappears.

He turns then to his left, where Jenny and Spongebob were—are, they are supposed to be there, still standing. Because they are going to figure this out together; because Jimmy cannot be left alone—at the beginning of Timmy’s monologue. Jimmy’s eyes widen at the sight of Jenny, body twisted in an arc above her gauntlet, which weighs her left side of the body down with the metal. It is as if all of her strength has been stolen from her; as if she has been robbed of his muscle. She has a hand against the entrance of the gauntlet, trying her best to pry her arm out of it, but collapses against the sharp metal after a moment more.

She makes contact with Jimmy as she disappears, sweat against her brow.

It is sweet, Jimmy thinks, and yet so bitter at the same time.

At least she does not collapse.

Spongebob is in no better condition than the rest (and that is how Jimmy knows that this is not a question of the Rebels of the West taking their group; teleporting them to their own jail. Timmy did not know Spongebob existed before he appeared; he would have not suspected Spongebob to be worthy of a kidnapping. Even after meeting him, he would not consider Spongebob a significant threat). He looks less as if he is about to collapse, but when he makes contact with Jimmy, he moves on shaky feet—as if he is terribly light-headed, or sick with fever. Jimmy, helpless, feeling as if it was any other day, falls to his knees in front of Sponge.

He opens his arms—let’s Spongebob stumbles towards where he kneels, and holds the sponge close to his chest in a weak attempt of comfort. He is cold in a way that Jimmy has noticed before (in the close proximity of the carriage, he was weak to do anything but notice how cold it was, despite the fact that everyone’s body heat should have made it improbably warm. He then thought about how insignificant body heat was in the face of code) and shaking in a way that Jimmy did not think he could.

He presses a hand against the sharp corner of the top of Spongebob’s head, holds him against his curved chest with an achingly important need to comfort. Spongebob has been there for him, he thinks, as he presses his nose against the top of Spongebob’s head and lets Spongebob stain the front of his shirt, wet. It is only right that he is there for Spongebob.

And because Spongebob is nothing more than built from the same clay and code as everyone else, he, eventually, leaves Jimmy Neutron too.

Jimmy does not notice, in the wake of wrapping his own arms tighter around him. When his vision is blurry as it is right now and his arms shake with a tremor, he can confuse everything for Spongebob; for Jenny and Manny and Danny. He can confuse himself for being code too, for being normal as the rest.

(But when he brings his arms taut around himself, he can feel his own body heat reflected back at him. He is as different to the rest of them as the sun and the moon. As heat and the tremor of the cold. He is the frostbite that stains the edges of fingertips and the feeling of a hot bath against your feet after you stand in the cold

Something shifts, he thinks, as he collapses in on himself. As he folds himself around a Sponge that does not even exist anymore. Maybe, in a way, he is not that different from them at all).

When the sun hits the line of the horizon, and Jimmy’s head aches, he stands up on shaky limbs.

He does not know why he is so affected by the disappearance of his team; he has known them for a day. Has fought with them for even longer than that. He knew that they were not real when he first appeared in the little cottage in the forest, and he knew that they are not real, even now. Nobody died, because nobody existed in the first place.

(He remembers Manny’s laugh. Remembers how Jenny treated him like he was above everyone else in their group. He remembers how Spongebob would climb his shoulders like a squirrel. He remembers Danny, in his final moments. The fear in his eyes as he died.

Because that is what happened. He died. 

They died).

Jimmy Neutron, slowly, hesitantly, like Atlas and like Sisyphus, begins the trek back to the campsite through the woods.

When he can see the hints of green tent through the woods and the faint smell of what still exists of their campfire, from earlier, he knows that he is only yards away from the campsite; from his tent where he can collapse in on himself for the next day and from the world, which exists as much as Jimmy Neutron, at this point.

But, then.

A voice.

“Jimmy!” Someone calls from in front of him, high and light in a way that Jimmy recognizes. It is irreplaceable, recognizable without even seeing a face. Jimmy Neutron perks his head up like a trained dog and watches as bushes and trees move in the far off distance—twigs snapping and leaves rustling. The thing in the woods comes closer and closer until suddenly, all at once, Jimmy Neutron has two thin arms wrapped around his legs.

Jimmy’s hand travels to the sharp edge of a corner before he thinks. He rubs circles into the head of the man at his feet with his thumb before he can stop himself.

“Spongebob?”

“In the flesh!” Spongebob giggles, and he pulls away from Jimmy with a half-hearted laugh. Jimmy watches him with wide eyes, unable to create a response as his lips struggle around absolutely nothing. He thinks, automatically, that this is a flaw in the code. That he is only seeing Spongebob now because he is programmed to come back. That it is all scripted. “Well—I guess not in the flesh, because I don’t have any—” he presses his hand against Jimmy’s ankle, exposed skin. “—There we go! Close enough—now it’s on the flesh!”

And he giggles at his own joke as if he is the funniest man alive. 

Jimmy Neutron blinks at him absentmindedly in response.

“Ah,” Spongebob says, in the silence after his own joke. He pulls his hand away hesitantly, pressing his two index fingers together with a guilty expression. Jimmy watches as he does so, unable to create a response. “It’s—uhm. Are you okay, Jimmy?”

And when his gaze meets Jimmy, Jimmy can see how the guilt folds so neatly into his expression—he sees the recognition; the way that Spongebob’s iris’ gleam with an explanation as to why Jimmy was so harboured upon the sight of the yellow sponge.

It is not a mistake of code, Jimmy thinks, as he makes an injured sound in the back of his throat. It echoes around the forest, and Spongebob manages a weak smile, as he wrings his fingers together. It is not code at all, if Spongebob remembers. “You died,” Jimmy says, and Spongebob laughs too high immediately afterwards. It is not code if Spongebob approaches him unscripted. Jimmy can tell that his conversation about flesh is more him than it ever was an old man.

“I don’t know what happened,” Spongebob says, instantly, and Jimmy Neutron recognizes the truth the same way that he recognized the grief and the fear and the wariness. Without the limits of the code, everything is painted so evidently on their faces; for they have never lived in a society where they have been taught to hide their expressions; even during cutscenes, where the code still restrained them somewhat. “Really, Jenny and Manny are shouting about it, but they wouldn’t let me listen. Danny’s in his tent—Manny said he was sulking, but I think he was crying, really—and you didn’t come back with the rest of us, right? So I’ve been looking for you!”

“They’re—” Jimmy starts, and stutters over his words. “They’re all back here?”

“Yes!” Spongebob responds, allows for the elation to coat his words for a moment. Claps his hands together and lifts his legs as if being presented with gossip in a schoolyard. “You’re the only one that didn’t show up, actually! Merlin’s Beard, we were all so worried!”

“I want to see them,” Jimmy says, but he cannot stop the way that it comes out like an order from his lips. In an effort to be kinder, he strands on a weak: “Please.”

“Oh—of course, Jimmy!” Spongebob says, and Jimmy stumbles after him as he gestures back towards the camp; towards the clearing. He continues to speak as they walk back, and Jimmy’s gaze shifts from Spongebob to the camp beyond. “Everyone’s a little on edge, right now. Manny and Jenny are trying to figure out what happened; everyone has a big headache, and it’s all a little confusing—you know?”

Jimmy looks down on him; furrows a brow as he steps over a steep and sudden incline in the path. “What is?”

“Oh? Do you not feel it as well?” Spongebob says, almost musing to himself. He rubs a hand against his chin, the perfect image of deep, critical, almost cartoon-ish thought that Jimmy is helpless to do anything but watch. “Everyone else has been worried sick about it—it’s been nothing but really noticeable since we woke up.”

“Feel what?”

“It’s like—uh,” Spongebob starts again, and pulls his hand away from his face in order to push away the extended branch of a shrub. Jimmy can hear the sound of Manny and Jenny shouting in the distance, and he feels a little bit lighter; the rock in front of him turns into a pebble and the world on his shoulder turns into a heavy yoga ball, nothing more. “We were all wearing glasses—you know? And now, all of a sudden, after meeting Timmy Turner, nobody’s wearing glasses any more. Real confusing when you think about it!”

Jimmy hesitates for a moment. “What?”

Spongebob shrugs his shoulders, as if Jimmy’s own lack of comprehension is not due to his inability to explain things properly. “Manny thinks he cursed us.”

“Who?”

“Timmy Turner, obviously,” Spongebob says, and he turns to look over his shoulder at Jimmy Neutron as if Jimmy’s own behavior is out of the ordinary. He stops in the middle of the path, with the clearing only a few feet in front of him, and turns around to face Jimmy fully—brow furrowed in confusion and mouth only slightly open, as if hesitant. “Are you sure you’re okay, Jimmy? You didn’t hit your head or anything, right?”

“No,” Jimmy says, too busy thinking about the information provided to him to even think about what Spongebob is asking. It’s like nobody’s wearing glasses, Jimmy thinks, and he thinks about how the world is blurry to them now. Or, perhaps more accurately, they were never supposed to wear glasses in the first place, and now it is all clear. It is everyone besides Jimmy, returning to the campsite. Jimmy thinks about his own differences; what separates him from the rest of the group. “No.”

“I’ve—” he starts again, and he thinks about things that make sense. About scientific hypotheses and mathematical theories and the fact that, maybe, possibly, hopefully, Jimmy Neutron understands something about this video game for the first time in his life. “I’ve never felt better.”

He then looks down at Spongebob, pleading with the sponge once more. “Take me to see Manny. I need to talk to the rest of the group.”

“O-kay,” Spongebob says, dragging out the ‘o’ in the word almost hesitantly. He eyes Jimmy suspiciously, as if he is not completely sure whether to believe him when he says that he is okay. Jimmy, in his own adrenaline and childish elation, almost sticks his tongue out at Spongebob in response. “If you’re sure.”

They break the space between where they stand and the open campsite in a clean stride, with the setting sun casting rays of golden hour against the leaves and the cloth of the tent and the leftover coals in the fire. The arguing forms of Manny and Jenny are visible between the spaces of the two tents, with both of them standing, weapons discarded, as Jenny nurses her head in her hands and Manny counts something off on his fingers.

Fighting is the wrong word, Jimmy thinks, as he and Spongebob walk over to where they stand. It is more like a bickerment. Teasing between siblings that has discarded into fighting and exasperated noises, with the knowledge that you cannot say anything true; nor anything too mean. 

“Look who I found!” Spongebob chimes in, singing the words as if Jimmy’s presence is more exciting than it should be. Jimmy expects a quip to escape one of their mouths (is counting on a quip, to be honest, from the two people who he can rely on the most), but they do nothing but stare upon his appearance; Manny with his chin hanging like a man starved, and Jenny with her expression taut, almost intrigued. “Fresh from the forest!”

“Jimmy!” Manny says, quickly, with the familiar Spanish accent that dances at his words and the breathy way he speaks. Jimmy could collapse from relief, he thinks. He does not know what is happening, and he is glad that it has not changed any of his friends all the same. “Do you know what is happening? What is going on?”

“A ‘hi, hello, how are you?’ could work wonders, Rivera,” Jenny says with a roll of her eyes. She crosses her arms over her chest and leans against the nearest tree, and Jimmy thinks he could cry at the subtle jab. This is not the Jenny that speaks in only scripted sentences and coded messages. This is the Jenny that speaks during cutscenes. This is Jimmy’s confirmation that he is right; that this is not something coded, that this is not something intentional, on the part of a bizarre coder. “Hello, Jimmy. Thanks for making an appearance.”

“Hi,” Jimmy says, not trusting his voice further. He thinks it says something that it breaks over even only a singular syllable; he thinks it says something that Jenny’s guarded expression folds at the noise, all the same.

“That is not an answer, Mr. Neutron,” Manny says, and he makes a desperate sound in the back of his throat. He seems to be doing as poorly as Jimmy was a few moments ago, cheeks glistening in the yellow light of the setting sun. He clings to the front of Jimmy’s shirt desperately, and Jimmy wonders if their discussion has revealed more than Jimmy could. They have described a situation in which only Jimmy holds a word to; but rather they hold the explanation. “What is happening?”

“I—I think I might know,” Jimmy says, and he stumbles backwards from Manny’s grip. This only makes the boy stumble forward with him, fingers clenched in the fabric of Jimmy’s shirt, desperately. Like a man who has everything to lose. Jimmy thinks that this is absolutely true, and yet so wrong at the same time (he has nothing to lose, because Manny Rivera did not have anything real in the first place). “But I—I don’t think you’re going to believe me.”

Jenny fixes him with a gaze over Manny’s shoulder, piercing and examining. Jimmy thinks that this is the final piece to the puzzle that she has been putting together meticulously. “Try us.”

“Okay,” Jimmy says, meekly, because he does not know how he couldn’t tell them. Ignorance is bliss and never existing in the first place is something that changes a person. It is an itch that will rest underneath their skin for the rest of their lives, regardless of if Jimmy tells them or not.

Jimmy is not bringing them out of their ignorance. He is simply giving them a definition to something they have already experienced.

“Okay,” Jimmy repeats, and he pats his hand against Manny’s back hesitantly, before the other man pulls away to face him. Jimmy looks to the side—finds Spongebob, and offers him a weak smile. “Spongebob, can you go get Danny?”

Spongebob manages a sailor’s salute, hand pressed against his forehead as his other hand rests behind his back. “Aye, aye, captain!”

Jimmy watches as Spongebob scrambles towards their tent, before the fabric closes behind him. He then turns back to Manny and Jenny, who have their gazes solely on him, rather than their yellow friend. Jimmy places a hand against Manny’s shoulder, trying his best to offer a sort of comfort that the opposing man has yet to know that he will need, and gestures his head towards the circle of logs and rocks behind him, where he slowly pulls Manny towards by his shoulder. Jenny pushes herself away from the log as she follows, quiet in a way that she normally is not with the lack of code.

They sit in the same position that they sat last night, leaving space for Danny and Spongebob as they surround the dead fire. Jimmy almost considers getting up to grab logs and flint and steel; but he feels Manny and Jenny watching him, even in the wake of absolutely nothing. Their gaze is pressing against him, searching for answers. They do not know that Jimmy will provide them an explanation because he is different; they assume that he will provide them an explanation because he is an inventor; because of a backstory and a home that Jimmy Neutron cannot escape.

Danny and Spongebob come out of the flap to the tent a moment later, Danny in no better condition then Manny nor Jenny as he follows on the heels of Spongebob’s feet. They, seemingly following the example of everyone else, sit in the same spots they sat in last night, gaze trained on Jimmy as they lower themselves to their feet.

Manny rests his feet in the extinguished fire pit, Jenny sprawls her limbs out carelessly, toes brushing against Jimmy's curled up legs. Danny is sitting against his seat, with his knees pulled against his chest. Spongebob is barely even sitting at all, vibrating with excitement.

They are so intrinsically humane, Jimmy thinks, at this moment. Without the code.

And that is how Jimmy knows he is correct.

It makes sense, he thinks. In the adrenaline of everything else (of the game itself and in dying and then in escaping and then in fighting) Jimmy had almost forgotten where he bought the game, had almost forgotten about the programmer himself. There is a reason that he bought the game in the clearance section of Goodwill, he thinks; now. There is a reason that it was fifty percent off.

(“This says that the reason it’s fifty percent off is because the designer never finished programming it,” Jimmy had said, what seems like forever ago, when he thought Jumanji-styled experiences were improbable, and a game in Goodwill was bad for him because it was terribly designed. “So. I guess you really do wish that there would be more time in Nickelodeonia.”)

He has reached the limit of the code. This is as far as he will get with faux messages and scripted words. 

It should not feel as dooming as it does; not when this is the only thing that Jimmy has hoped and prayed and wished for since he has appeared in this hellhole of a video game.

“Spongebob says you know what’s going on,” Danny says, breaking the silence. Jimmy, loosely, noncommittal, shrugs his shoulders in response. Danny exhales out of his nose and tries again: “You were the only one of us who didn’t wake up in the campsite. You say words that sound foreign to us, sometimes.”

“What?” Jimmy asks, meeting Danny’s gaze at the last part. “When do I do that?”

“Wait, you don’t know about it?” Manny asks, raising his hand as if asking a question. He leans forward slightly, ankle curling around the stones marking the campfire pit. Jimmy furrows his brow, unexplainable. He has known about the other things; has been conscious about it—he does not know what Danny talks about when he mentions foreign words. “I thought you just spoke a different language, tambien. But, you—What do you mean you didn’t know?”

“The words you say in your anger,” Jenny explains, collected. She continues to watch Jimmy, head tilted to the side. “In your grief. They are sharp and quick; foreign to us.”

“Oh,” Jimmy says, and tries to think about what he has said historically in his anger. At first, he thinks they speak of God—but then he remembers how Manny likes to curse in Spanish in one of the only phrases Jimmy recognizes from his time with Sheen, and he thinks about how he has heard quick words of God out of the other's mouth as well.

Then, it occurs to him what else he says in his anger: “Do you mean—when I say swears?”

“Uh, no,” Manny says, and he makes a taut expression, face twisted like he took a large bite of a lemon; like Jimmy’s words upon his ears are bitter. “I’ve heard the others swear—you do not do that.”

And Jimmy narrows his eyes, because he is suddenly acutely aware of every single time he has sworn in front of the others—verbally and underneath his breath. It is a myriad, countless. Jimmy thinks that he is more explicit in this E-rated video game than he ever was at college.

He is also aware of all of the times that his companions have sworn around him—he thinks that he cannot remember a single time. 

Which is odd, he thinks, in hindsight, because they have definitely gotten angry. They have gotten angry at the people they fight in conflict and at their own mistakes and at each other; and Jimmy’s not saying that he expects people to swear every motherfucking second, but he also recognizes that their group is composed of five young adults. He recognizes that their group has been built off brash mouths and quick teases.

It surprises him, in hindsight. To think about all of the times they have not sworn.

(He remembers that he is more explicit than this E-rated video game. He remembers that, in order for a game to be ‘E’, they cannot contain swear words within their scripted dialogue. He remembers, now, that perhaps his words are foreign to the computer programs that have only ever experienced the dialogue-friendly options of a six-year-old)

“Give me an example,” Jimmy says, a little more breathy than he attends for it to be. When Manny gives him a confused expression, he specifies: “Of a time where you swore in front of me.”

“Dios mio,” Manny says, simply. His brows are furrowed in a thick sort of confusion that is hard to speak through, but Jimmy tilts his head to the side as he continues all the same. “In Spanish, that means oh my god. There have been other times; in Spanish, as well.”

(And Jimmy thinks that that makes sense; that, perhaps, when the video game was produced, the ratings of video games fluctuated a lot more. He thinks that perhaps Manny swearing in Spanish, during the other times—if they’re as severe as Manny describes them to be—could get past the censors, if only due to an odd combination of laziness and racism)

“And everyone else?” Jimmy says, gaze hovering over the others in the group.

“I told you what the heck, when we—like. First met,” Danny offers, and Jimmy hums his acknowledgement. Spongebob follows up, loosely, with a confused: “What did you think Merlin’s Beard even stood for?”

“But that is not what you are talking about, when you mention swearing,” Jenny says for him, from where she sits to his left. Her gaze is furrowed, similar to Manny’s—but her’s, unlike his, is taut with concentration and focus, rather than confusion. Jimmy, unable to do anything but nod, confirms her question. “Swearing is different for you—sharper words.”

She pauses, licks her lips. Jimmy watches as she watches him, gaze slowly flicking from his eyes to his shirt to the rest of his body, before returning to his eyes. Jimmy thinks that the rest of the group does not give her the credit she deserves; that he does not give her the credit she deserves. She is the smartest one out of all of them.

Then, face relaxing, she asks the question of the night: “Why?”

“I’m not—” Jimmy says, and makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat. It’s a lot harder, he finds, when they are all looking at him and they are picking him apart by his own flesh and bones. When he has to tell people he actually enjoys the company of that they are not real. When he has to admit to himself that the people he enjoys the company of are not real. “I’m not from here.”

“So it’s a foreign language, then,” Manny says. “Like I said.”

“I guess,” Jimmy offers, meekly. Manny laughs, then, at what Jimmy presumes to be the misplaced tension at the simple explanation Jimmy provides; but Jimmy cannot laugh with him—not when he can feel Jenny’s gaze tracing every wrinkle in his face, picking apart his explanation.

“Then where are you from?”

And it sounds so childish when he explains it, but he has no other way to put it: “It’s—it’s different then here. The people are more authentic. You would—it’s real.”

“I would?” Jenny repeats, at the same time that Danny goes: “What do you mean it’s real?”

“You would like it,” Jimmy specifies, and they all watch as he struggles through his words. He feels like a kid giving a presentation in front of his fifth grade class, showing off his latest invention at the science fair. Everyone wants him to fail, in a way. They want him to fail in order to prove that he is not as smart as the newspapers say he is; as mortal as they all are (everyone wants him to fail, in a way, here. They want him to fail to prove that he is as fake as they all are).

“You know exactly what’s happening,” Jenny says, and she says it through grated teeth. Jimmy does not think she means to be mad, but her anger controls her some nights and Jimmy cannot escape it. “Stop sparing us from the truth—it’s not helping. Tell us, Neutron.”

“This isn’t real,” Jimmy says, all at once. Jenny flinches at the explanation, full-body. Jimmy cannot bear to look at anyone else as they react, gaze focused on Jenny, and Jenny alone. “None of this is real—the world, the forest. Timmy Turner.”

He hesitates, inhales through his nose and curls his toes inside his shoes. “You.”

“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

“In the real world,” Jimmy offers, meekly. He thinks that it may be mistaken for a joke, but here it sounds more like he is rubbing salt in a wound when he says it. He wishes he could take it back. He wishes he could return the video game in the first place. “We say what the fuck is that supposed to mean.”

“You’re right, Jenny,” Danny says from the right, and he laughs; humorless. “Those foreign words are sharp.”

“I didn’t ask you, Danny,” Jenny snarls, gaze focused entirely on Jimmy in her anger. She leans forward, where she is sprawled out across the grass. Jimmy thinks that if there wasn’t a yard of distance between them, she would pounce like a cat. “Jimmy Neutron, what do you mean that we are not real?”

“I told you, you would not believe me,” Jimmy continues, and Jenny makes a noise deep in the pit of her throat once more—it’s a threat, for him to tell the answer that she is truly seeking (Jimmy has missed this version of Jenny, when it comes to the version of her that is coded. He reminds himself that he will be seeing a lot more of this version of her). “I don’t know how to explain it, to be honest. Your world—you guys—are all a part of a video game—but I don’t think your world is modern enough to have video games.”

“What?” Manny says. Jimmy flinches at the tone of his voice—it is the most broken Jimmy has ever heard the other boy. “Our lives are a game?”

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy says, but he can tell that it means absolutely nothing, even on his own tongue. “I don’t know what more I can say. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re joking, right?” Danny says, and he laughs again. The sun sets and the golden hour is against their backs and now the lighting is red, like their anger. Jimmy reminds himself that this, too, is how he would react if he learned that his entire world was fake. “It’s a bad joke.”

“I’m sorry.”

“How did you get here, then?” Jenny asks, bites out like the bark of a dog. “If it’s a game—how are you here?”

“I—I don’t know,” Jimmy responds, and his gaze drops towards his own lap, where he plays with the hem of his shirt weakly in an attempt to distract himself. The rest of the group watches, in varying degrees of noise (Manny and Danny scoff at his reply, with Manny muttering to himself, almost anxiously, in Spanish. Jenny has her gaze on him, but he can hear how hard she is breathing. Spongebob is uncharacteristically silent). “This isn’t how games work in real life. You’re not supposed to enter them. They’re on a screen—everything is already chosen for you. I have no idea how I got here—and I know it means absolutely nothing in the fact of everything you guys are going through, but I—I don’t know how to get back.”

“Because our biggest concern is how you can leave,” Danny remarks, bitterly. Jimmy flinches at his tone, and Danny sneers his response; expression twisting into something taut upon seeing Jimmy’s face.

“I’m sorry.”

“Everything is already chosen for you?” Jenny repeats, verbally. Jimmy can feel her eyes against his skin and his clothes and his hair. He wishes that it would all simply eat him alive. He wishes that he could be consumed whole (he wishes he died the first time). “What does. What does that mean?”

“Throughout this entire experience,” Jimmy says, and he cannot bear to meet any of their gazes as he explains that their life has all been for nothing. That none of them are free. He feels evil, like a monster. He feels as if they should capture him and put him in a cell, one that he can share with Turner. “Everything has been planned by a programmer. Everything you have said, everything you have done—it is all a part of a set code.”

“None of you have done anything by your own freewill,” he says, quick. Like a swear. “It has all been set in front of you. There have been brief periods where the programmer has not had as much control, but this is the first time where you can truly do whatever you want. There is no planned future for you.”

“There’s no planned future?” Danny asks, mad. He has taken Jenny’s anger, now that the other girl has gone silent in the face of the truth. “Or there’s no future?”

Jimmy can barely manage the words as they come out of his mouth. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” 

“I didn’t know what was going to happen when it was coded, either,” Jimmy specifies. He breaks his fast of eye contact for this, meeting Danny’s expression to level his glare (he flinches, again at the sight of tears upon Danny’s cheeks. At the way his scleras are red from tears. He did not expect this grief in the wake of his anger. He blames himself for this, too). “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. I am in the same situation as you.”

“Only you’re not.”

Jimmy’s gaze drops to his lap again. “I’m sorry.”

“So. It’s all fake?” Manny asks, and his gaze is also in his own lap, where the stones surrounding the firepit meets the black coal inside it. “The kingdom; the civilians—” he looks up at this; meets Jimmy’s expression when it matters “—my dad?”

Jimmy cannot manage the words it takes to tell him yes. He cannot manage anything more than a nod of his head when Manny—a boy who treats everything with such bravo, and a weird cadence in his step that speaks of nothing but confidence—is on the verge of tears; when he is shaking like a cat, soaked. Jimmy cannot manage anything as his own vision blurs.

For all of it being fake, it is more real then Jimmy would have expected. 

Manny makes a pained noise, in the back of his throat. It makes Jimmy flinch; makes him cry.

“I love my dad,” Manny says, and his voice cracks. Jimmy flinches, again. He is not good with emotions; never will be. He is the wrong person to do this—the wrong person to ruin someone else’s life. “He can’t—you have to be lying. He’s real. I know he’s real.”

“Manny—”

“No,” Manny says, and there is a tremor in his voice that makes Jimmy shake, similarly. “No. I—I need to go think.”

With that, Manny stands up. He turns without thinking, tripping only slightly on the log that he was sitting on as he moves towards the woods—he does not head for his tent, instead running through the brush of the nearby shrubbery. Jimmy does not attempt to solve him—he thinks that, now that the programmer is done with his code and with his toying, that there is no threat in the woods. No real villain.

(Besides, if they needed to truly find Manny Rivera, they could follow the black path of ash that follows behind him, gathered against the heel of his right foot. Like smoke, like death)

“I don’t get it,” Jenny says, taking the group’s attention away from Manny Rivera. She sits up straight; pulls her knee in towards her chest. Her eyes gleam with tears, similar to the other, but Jimmy could almost interpret her expression to be one of grief; of pity. Of acceptance. He finds it odd, considering only moments ago, before Manny Rivera stormed off in a blazing fire of righteous anger, Jenny was as mad as any of them.

And now she’s not. As if Manny managed to leave and take all of her anger with him. As if there was no point in being angry or upset when Manny Rivera, the living sun of a man (and that is the only definition. Manny is no living son of no man), was more angry than she.

Jimmy thinks he understands. He sees himself in Jenny; sees Cindy in Manny.

“What don’t you get?” Jimmy asks, politely. He is not trying to take their grief for himself. He is polite enough to recognize small mercies. “I want to help. I do.”

“Why do I feel real, then?” Jenny asks. As she speaks, she drags the palm of her hands up the length of her arm, as if to prove her point. Fingers against the soft skin, pausing against her pulse in her wrist, which she brings up to her bottom lip. “I feel alive. How can I not be real?”

“I—” Jimmy says, and he hesitates, because he truly does not know. He knows that the video game is not real and that is that. He cannot explain it further. “I don’t know.”

“So how do you know for certain that I am not real?” Jenny asks. “That we are not real.”

“I can’t explain it,” Jimmy says, and Jenny sighs at his lack of explanation. She does not seem mad, though—not like before. Rather disappointed; Jimmy does not know which one is worse, in the grand scheme of things. Jenny’s disappointment is just as bitter as the wine that brings the high of adrenaline afterwards. “It’s how video games work. I would say it’s like how the sky is blue—there’s a scientific reason, but it’s also as simple as the fact that the sky is blue—and that’s what your situation is like. There’s an explanation, but the sky is blue. Except, I don’t even think that’s a good analogy, because for you—”

He cannot say it. Jenny, more mercifully than he deserves, fills the silence for him: “Because for us, the sky is not blue at all. Because the sky is not real.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The more you say it, the less I believe it,” Jenny responds, and her words are sharp in a way that Jimmy thinks his own swears have never been. It is incomparable to each f-bomb and mention of shit. Jenny glares and curses without any of the explicities. “I—” (and she hesitates. Digs her index and middle finger into her pulse) “I don’t think it’s your fault, for the record. I—I just need to understand. Please.”

“Did you know?” Danny asks, from the right. Jimmy’s gaze slowly travels to him.

Danny smiles in the wake of the silence, maniacal and insane. Jimmy thinks that this may be his natural reaction to being told that everything is fake; that it is nothing more than a hilarious joke. Jimmy thinks that maybe it is his fault. 

Jimmy’s silence is a response enough. Jenny scoffs at it, once more, while Danny throws his head back in laughter. He then, after his breath starts to come out strangled and his words desperate, looks at Jimmy with a new light in his eyes.

“When were you going to tell us? If this never happened—if the world didn’t collapse—when were you going to tell us?” Danny asks, and after a moment of silence, he moves his head to the side a little, blinks his hesitation as he briefly looks at Jenny out of the corner of his eye, as if he cannot believe Jimmy’s silence. “We’re you going to tell us?”

Jimmy sighs his response. “Danny—”

“I wish you left me in that cell,” Danny says, through another humorless, airy laugh. Jimmy rolls his eyes, exasperated, and Danny rounds on him in his silence once more. “I wish you never came here at all—I’m kind of bummed that we’re in the weird middle-place between existing and not being real.”

“I couldn’t have left you in the cell,” Jimmy chooses to comment on, and Danny arches a brow in response. They both know the evident attempt to not note the most prominent part of the conversation, but Jimmy continues before Danny can point it out. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! I was forced to take you out of the cell, because it’s a video game, and the future was predetermined. I wouldn’t have been able to leave until I retrieved you from the cell.”

“So what is real?” Danny asks, bites. Jimmy finds that the name ‘Phantom’ is an awful juxtaposition when put beside Danny’s form; Danny’s words are more real than any ghostly spirit. There is no metaphor, left up for interpretation when he shouts at Jimmy. “Because we’re having this conversation right now, and it’s real. Is it not? You’re real, and you’re experiencing this.”

Jimmy furrows his brows, again. Danny elaborates, again. “Does that not make it real?”

“I think,” Jimmy starts, and then thinks over what he’s about to say—starts again. “I think that right now, all of this can be interpreted as real.”

Jenny makes a confused noise, and Jimmy sighs as he tries to explain himself. “It’s real, here. In the game. I don’t think anything’s going to change that—the only thing that might is if I leave, since I’m the only thing that really makes this real, as the player.”

“So we die when you leave?” Danny asks. “When you decide that you want to be real, will we all cease to exist?”

Jimmy does not understand. 

This is his response, in a way.

“Great,” Danny says, with enough venom in his voice that Jimmy fears for his life. It sounds like genuine anger, and Jimmy is not sure what he is supposed to do with it. Not when he cannot offer anything to help; to make it better. “Awesome.”

And Danny rises to his feet with that, face contorted in anger as he glares at Jimmy; sharp in a way that is meant to scare. Similar to Manny only a handful of minutes before, and similar to Jenny, last night, he leaves with his back to the crowd. Jimmy watches as he hesitates, briefly, in front of their tent, before he sends another glare over his shoulder at where Jimmy and Spongebob sit and moves towards the forest.

Jimmy, in a moment of genuine care, hopes that Danny and Manny do not find each other while wallowing in their grief and anger. He thinks that they are angry enough to let normally teasing comments dig deep, and he would not put it beyond them to kill and die, either. That would be real, Jimmy thinks. They will die in a way that they cannot come back from; not like Jimmy.

Jenny, Spongebob and him sit in the wake of Danny’s departure, surrounding a dead fire. Jimmy does not look at the other two, and they do not look at him. Occasionally, he can see Jenny’s head shift from the corner of his peripheral vision—watches as she looks at him; looks at where the two boys disappeared in the forest.

“I think I understand,” Jenny says finally. She’s quiet when she does so, and Jimmy does not know if that is because her normal talking voice is quieter then when Danny yells, or because she is afraid of what she will say next. “I think. Maybe.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“We were created when you started the game. We became officially real only when we first met you, since the world revolves around you—” and Jimmy knows that it’s supposed to be a real comment. That, to be frank, this world does revolve around him; what is created and what dies and what happens. He laughs anyways when it escapes Jenny’s mouth “—And all of our memories—Danny and the rebels, Manny and his father; beings a prince, and my experience as a guard—were all implanted into our head.”

It’s a better explanation than Jimmy could come up with, to be honest. He does not argue, and Jenny continues, gaining a sense of confidence in her explanation as she goes on. “They were meant to feel real, but the only real memories any of us have are from meeting you. I was only real in the courtyard. First, anyways.”

“That’s my theory, anyways,” Jimmy says, matching Jenny’s volume. It feels like they are talking about bad things, underneath their breaths, while kids sulk during the night. “I don’t know how real it makes you, but I don’t think any of you were real until we met. Until I entered the game.”

“But we’re real now,” Jenny says, and Jimmy makes a noise of acknowledgement—not necessarily one of agreement. “Not before, but after whatever happened when we met Timmy. This conversation’s not coded; it’s real. We’re real after. Now.”

“I—” Jimmy starts again, before he realizes that he cannot really find any fault in Jenny’s explanation. Perhaps she has truly put the puzzle pieces together; perhaps Jimmy needs to give her more credit, truly. Assume that she is smarter than he accredits guards to be. “Yeah.”

“And you don’t think we’ll be real after,” Jenny says, and her gaze is back to piercing—picking Jimmy apart by the limbs and putting him back together inside-out, where she can examine his innards like it all means something. “Once you leave. Once you go back to the real world.”

“I didn’t say that,” Jimmy says, and Jenny tilts her head at him. “I said it ‘might’. With games like these, you have a ‘save’ file, right?—” and he does not know why he’s asking for her confirmation. She’s never played a video game before; those things are simply not real to her. “—I think that, as long as the save file exists, and the video game is in my DVD player back at my house—everyone here is still connected to electricity; to the save file. The code. You should all still exist, hypothetically.”

Jenny looks at him for a long moment.

Afterwards, she relaxes her head on the log against her back—inhales deeply through her nose. She sits like that for a moment, lashes fluttering against her eyebrow as she stares at the sky of red above their heads. Jimmy copies her, and Spongebob does the same by their side. Jimmy can see the moon, a bright white, peering down at them.

“I’d like to believe that,” is her eventual reply. Jimmy acknowledges it with a hum and a smile.

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy says, looking away from the sky to look at her. He will apologize to the others, too, when the anger has worn off. He will look Manny Rivera and Danny Phantom in the eyes and he will apologize, because he has never been more sorry in his life. He has considered them his friends; he does not want to see them die anymore than they want to die. “Really. I am.”

“I know that, Neutron,” Jenny says. She does not look at him. “I think that makes it worse.”

They are silent for a long time, after that.

The sun sets above their heads, shades of red disappearing underneath the sky as the moon replaces it. It is a scarily dark black, without the fire—and yet still light enough where Jimmy can see his surroundings perfectly, like the lighting of a video game on his screen. It is another inaccuracy that makes his friends less real that he will never tell them about; for all they will ever know, this, too, is how the real world works.

“Someone should go get them,” Jenny says, and Jimmy makes a noise of confusion, so she specifies. “Manny and Danny. If they haven’t yet killed each other, someone should go get them.”

“Do you want to go?” 

Jenny thinks it over, for a moment, her gaze still lingering on the night sky above their heads. When she has finally decided, she looks at Jimmy with a weak smile (and Jimmy did not think, when he started this conversation, that Jenny would be the only one on his side when push came to shove, but he is not necessarily complaining. Not at all) and reaches behind her, pushing herself upwards into a standing position.

“I’ll be back soon,” she says.

And then she’s gone.

Jimmy watches the space where she leaves, gaze lingering on the blackness that expands beyond the space between tree trunks and above shrubbery and bushes. For a moment, Jimmy considers following her, just to have something to do; just so that he is not alone with his thoughts. Just so he can have the confirmation that somebody still likes him.

(And maybe it is so selfish of him, after everything, to hope for something that is real)

Somebody places their hand on Jimmy’s. Somebody rubs their thumb in circles against Jimmy’s knuckles.

To his credit, he does not jump.

Spongebob sits beside him, gaze trained on Jimmy's face. Jimmy feels bad, for a moment, over the fact that he forgot that Spongebob was sitting with them and the fact that he forgot that Spongebob’s life has just changed and the fact that he forgot, an hour prior, Spongebob has fallen unconscious in his hands; in a way where Jimmy thought he had died. His thumb is against Jimmy’s skin and his brows are knitted in an expression of concern and Jimmy turns away as soon as he makes eye contact with him, afraid of crying underneath the vulnerability.

“Are you okay, Jimmy?”

“What?” Jimmy manages, and Spongebob makes a cooing noise underneath his breath. “I’m fine, Spongebob. I should be asking you that question.”

“Well, maybe,” Spongebob says, and laughs at his comment within the same breath. His laugh, unlike Danny’s, contains humor. His laugh, in a way, makes Jimmy smile. “Maybe. But you’re still upset—I mean, Merlin’s Beard, Jimmy; how long have you been carrying this secret?”

“Plus, today hasn’t been easy on you!” Spongebob exclaims, and he curls into Jimmy’s side at the comment. If Jimmy was in any other mindspace, he would have argued, he likes to think. But it is comforting, the way that Spongebob makes himself noticeable in Jimmy’s side, curling his arms around Jimmy’s upper arm. “You had to watch us all die, and then all of your friends got angry at you. That’s kind of upsetting.”

“It was,” Jimmy’s response is, more honest than he means it to be.

“So, I think I should be asking you,” Spongebob says, and Jimmy leans against him in response—allows for Spongebob to curl up against his arm as a pressing comfort. “Are you okay?”

And Jimmy’s answer comes out honest; real. 

“No.”

Spongebob does not say anything in response to that, but he continues to rub circles into Jimmy's skin with his thumb, and Jimmy continues to watch the stars above his head. It’s comforting in a way that Jimmy thinks two fake things could not create; and therefore they must be real. It is stupid logic, and his philosophy teacher in high school would’ve laughed, but it is something to believe in, Jimmy thinks. That flicker of hope in his chest upon the thought is enough.

Spongebob hums as Jimmy laughs to himself. “What are you thinking about, Jimmy Neutron?”

“Do you see those four stars up there?” Jimmy asks, gestures towards the sky with his hand. Spongebob’s thumb stops against his skin, and he glances up towards the night sky with an expressive drawl of noise from his lips. When he does not respond, Jimmy specifies. “Arranged in the square.”

“Uh,” Spongebob starts, before he gasps, and makes a noise of recognition. “Wait, now I do! They’re right there!”

“Do you want to hear a story about them?” Jimmy asks. Spongebob nods against his side. “I made it up—it’s something that people do, in the real world; make up stories. Especially about the stars in the sky.”

“Intriguing!” Spongebob says, and Jimmy shrugs his shoulders half-heartedly in response. He does not have enough energy to do anything more than that. His cheeks are still wet with tears. “Tell me about the stars!”

And Jimmy tells Spongebob a tale about a boy that dreams of going on adventures. Of one that is the most important member of a quest that no one wanted to go on. Of one that, even now, is the true heart of their group; of the adventure. Impossible and improbable to complete without.

Curled up by his side, Spongebob radiates body-heat.