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You've been walking, searching, for so long, longer than you can figure out how to count. Then again, you're dead; what does time mean to you?
Well, that's what you thought for the first while in this nowhere space you've been wandering and searching. Now you're quite done with the pretty philosophy and ready to say that time means a hell of a lot to you no matter how dead you are. You feel like you've been walking forever through all sorts of landscapes that give you the same crawling sense of deja vu as the memories that lead to your rebellion and eventual execution as a heretic.
And so far, you haven't found any of your friends or loved ones. Any at all.
At first it gives you a small seed of hope; you might be lonely in this not-heaven, not-hell, but that you can't find them means that they might still be alive. However, as time marches forward, as it ever does, that hope turns bitter and shriveled. Alive? Alive to face what fates?
Eventually you feel like you've been in here long enough that your favorite flashy asshole, at least, should have lived out his natural life span, but you still can't find him. You can't bring yourself to be angry; all you have is weary resignation that you are, in fact, walking through an uninhabited hell of your own fractured past life memories.
Your steps take you through a headache-inducing landscape of pulsing blue into one more normal, in a relative sense of the word; you have no idea what this place is, with its flat expanse of concrete and these swooping wooden ramps, but it's a nice reprieve. There are even benches to rest on. You plod to one and flop down onto it, dreadfully weary. It seems unfair that even in death you should get tired, but there you are -- sitting on a bench that doesn't exist and nursing sore feet.
When the sound comes, you almost don't register it. You've heard plenty of sounds in all of these landscapes, so this one barely catches your attention -- until you realize that it's growing nearer. You identify it immediately as the gritty sound of hard wheels rolling against pavement and leap to your feet, ready to run.
The source of the sound rounds a ramp and promptly topples off of his four-wheel device. "Shittingfuckdammit!" he snarls, almost before he collides with the pavement and goes sprawling.
All intentions of fleeing vanish as your knees give way. You sit back down heavily. "M-Mituna?!"
The name is out of your mouth before you can catch yourself. Of course it can't be him -- this is a kid, still gangly and his voice a little too reedy, still looking like he needed a sweep's worth of regular warm meals to look like anything other than a loosely assembled bag of coat hangers. This is a kid wearing his yellow and black, his symbol--
You gape at the past life memory sprawled before you.
He lifts his head, sneers. "Hey stubfuck, if you don't peel your sticky ganderbulbs away from my ass I'm gonna start champing you for the privilege!"
"Charging," you say faintly.
His face twitches with -- anger? Or maybe chagrin, and for a moment you don't think he's going to talk anymore, but then he displays every tooth of his terrible dentition in a broad grin. "That'll be five boonbucks, motherfucker!"
"Fresh out," you say, still unable to look away from him. His speech impediment is much worse, with a slur on top of the lisp, and his voice hasn't completely taken its adult timbre, but there's no doubt about it; this is him, this is the past-life echo of one of your beloved mentors.
He huffs and starts scrambling to his feet, heedless of the four-wheeled device practically under him. "Just can't keep your eyes off me, huh? Want a barely legal piece of-- motherfuckingshittingfuckHELL!" There he goes again, flat on his back, his head hitting the pavement with a sharp crack.
"Shit," you blurt, and jump to your feet. "Are you all right?"
Unaccountably, he starts laughing. "Fucking fine! Luckily I fell on my pan-damanged cranial case!" He keeps laughing, a high, almost hysterical cackle that leaves you far more uneasy than amused, until he abruptly stops. He pushes himself up and gives you a disgusted look. "You're a real killjoy, stubfuck, was your sendoff that bad?"
You stare for a moment more before you shake your head and sink back down onto the bench. "Oh, I was just tortured and executed." You push your arms free of your cloak -- and thank whatever gods responsible for this afterlife that you were able to wander it in real clothes -- and expose your charred wrists. "No big deal."
"Holy fuck," the kid -- Mituna -- breathes. He scrambles closer and stares. "Holy shitting fuck on a stick!"
"No, that went into my side."
He gives you a baffled grimace. "Whuzzuh?"
"Nevermind, it was a bad joke." You flip the cloak back over your arms and sit back. "Anyway, I haven't had a lot to be cheerful about, since."
Kid is still staring at you, his head slightly tilted. "Cranky," he says after a moment, a flash of amusement flickering over his face.
"I guess you could say that?"
"No, no, CRANKY. Crabby canker cranky!" He huffs and smacks himself upside the head. "Damn it, fucking damn it, CRANKY -- no, that's not it, shitty scumsucking stupid--"
"Hey, whoa there," you say, reaching out and giving his arm a quick, light touch. "Come on, kid, pull it together, it's not worth the self-injury."
"I'm sorry." He deflates all at once and your bloodpusher just cracks. Mituna-but-not-Mituna, what happened to you? He swallows hard and huffs. "It's just. You're him, right, you're him and it's your fucking name."
"Kankri?"
"Ehehehe, THAT'S it!" Mituna grins, all sun-brightness and terrible dentition. "Cranky Kanrki, full of lectures." You wince ruefully, and his face scrunches up. "You're not spewing out your squawkhole about triggers or telling me how my persistence is problematic, though." He makes a face and blows a raspberry.
You almost correct him, then think better of it. "It sounds like he's the problematic one, here."
"Yeah, hahaha yeah! You get me, cranky Kankri." He snickers. "But I can't call you that, you're actually kind of nice and a lot more attractive than the original flavor." That broad grin turns into an unmistakable leer.
Uh. "More attractive than who?" you ask, a little dazed. Did this kid seriously just hit on you?
Mituna blurts a laugh. "Than yourself, dumbfuck!"
You blink. Right, of course -- if there's an afterlife with this other Mituna in it -- the first Mituna -- then there has to be the other you. The first you. You chew on the inside of your lip. "I take it you don't like me very much, then."
"Sanctimonious, sexually defenestrated scumsucker," Mituna agrees with far too much cheer and a considerable amount of spittle.
You wince again. The things you remember about your past self are mostly hazy, with a few bright snapshot memories that contrast sharply against what you experienced growing up. After a point (a point which gave you ill-defined nightmares of flames and falling rock), the memories grow so distant that you could hardly pluck anything out of them, and what you did you'd mostly discarded as irrelevant, they were so bizarre.
You also hadn't been a very nice kid in a lot of them.
You rub at your face, earning a startled hiss from Mituna. You glance at your mutilated wrist. "Ah, sorry," you say and hide it back under your cloak.
"That's my line," Mituna says, all mock-affrontery, then snickers. "You remembered more than the fun stuff, huh?"
"Fun stuff." You snort and shake your head. "A little. I apologize for the bullshit past me pulled, that guy is a douche."
Mituna stares, then starts laughing again, and this time he does fall over. You blurt a startled laugh at his sprawl of limbs and instantly feel bad, but he catches the look on your face and just laughs harder. "Ahahaha I l-like you!"
You crack a grin and offer him a hand up. "You're pretty cool, yourself."
He's got a hell of a grip, and the bones you don't really have ache after he's scrambled to his feet and let go. He promptly parks himself beside you on the bench and pouts. "Why couldn't we have had you instead of the asshole we did get?"
You sigh, look away. "I think I had to be that asshole before I could be me."
Silence, then, so quietly it's almost lost under his slur, "You got a point." He pats awkwardly at your shoulder. "Everything still would've gone to shit for us anyway!" He starts laughing, again, with that high hysterical note, and this time he doesn't stop.
You touch his arm, then his hand, patting at it as your bloodpusher cracks all over again. The one thing that you really do remember from that hazy period before you died the first time is the sweeps of growing up without anything to grow up for, of waiting for the next bad thing to happen; you can only imagine how much worse it is for Mituna, who lived it directly, who had one of those bad things happen directly to him.
You wish you could give him a hug, but you know that would be too much. As it is, he's starting to pull away, so you take your hand back, hide it under your cloak.
Mituna quiets after a few moments, breath hitching. "Maybe we can exchange you for him anyway," he mumbles, and sniffles furtively.
"He's cruel to you," you state. Mituna goes still, then nods. "I'm sorry about him... me. ...I don't think I can stay here, though." You feel awful, saying it, but as soon as the words leave your mouth you also know they're true. "I have some people I need to find, first."
"The me that's not brainfucked?" Mituna looks away, a wry, sad twist to his lips.
"The other you," you say pointedly.
That wry twist gets closer to a smile. "I turned out pretty cool, huh."
"You turn out wicked cool."
"Cool as you?"
You have to laugh. "Cooler. You were my mentor, after all."
"Ehehe, no wonder you aren't a fucking douche!" Mituna claps you on the shoulder so hard you rock sideways. "Okay, not-cranky Kankri, you should get out of here. If your douchefuck self finds you there's no escape!"
You chuckle and get to your feet. "I bet he wouldn't like me much."
"He thinks you're very problem-o-matic."
You snort. "I'm sure he does. I don't think we want to know what happens when you throttle your other self into a second death." You grin at Mituna's delighted laughter and twitch your cloak back into place. "See you, original flavor Mituna."
Giving him back his joke earns you another delighted laugh. "Seeya, not-cranky Kankri." His smile falters. "Good luck finding me."
That expression tugs at you, like you shouldn't leave. You know in your bloodpusher that you could grow to love this kid, like a flipside version of the mentorship you had with his other self. But you have to leave; you can't rest until you've found your friends again, lest they walk these places alone forever. Your Porrim, your Meulin, your Mituna.
You give Mituna a smile that comes out sad and a little teary. He nods like he understands and waves, like he's waving you on, and then you're able to turn and walk into eternity.