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He awoke in a white bed, in a room with white walls, with white light streaming in through a half-open window. It smelled of sunshine mingled with dust and blood. A heart monitor beeped next to him. Sitting at the foot of his bed, in a rickety wooden chair with his elbows resting on his knees and his chin resting on his hands, was B-52.
“Am I dying?” he rasped, seeing no point in beating around the bush.
“Yes,” B-52 said. He raised his head to look at Spaghetti, then stood from his chair and started pacing, back and forth and back and forth in the small confines of this room.
When Spaghetti shifted, pain shot through his body, too vague and numbed for him to pinpoint where it was coming from. “What are you people keeping me alive for?”
“I asked them not to kill you.” B-52 stopped behind the chair and leaned over it, staring Spaghetti down. “Not that you’re going to make it much longer. We’ve just been… I’ve just been hoping you’d be conscious and lucid at some point. Which you are now, I think.”
“What the fuck would you do that for?” Spaghetti snorted. He didn’t miss how B-52 flinched at the sound. “Don’t you want me dead?”
“Not really,” B-52 said. “I mean, I don’t know. It’s weird. Thinking that you’re not going to be here anymore. After so many years, it’s just… it doesn’t feel real.”
B-52 resumed his pacing, now directing his attention towards the window. The sky was blue and cloudless. Outside, he heard the shouts and laughter of children playing, too faint of a noise for their words to be made out.
“You didn’t answer the question.” Spaghetti mustered up the energy to glare, which, given the situation, wasn’t very effective. “Why are you keeping me alive? Are you trying to torture me or something?”
“You shouldn’t be in pain.” B-52 put his elbow on the windowsill, his wings fluttering idly as he stared into the sky. “Are the painkillers not working?”
“They work well enough,” Spaghetti snapped, his patience dwindling. “You’re still avoiding the question, aren’t you?”
B-52 shook his head. “I don’t know the answer,” he said simply.
Spaghetti couldn’t explain why that lit such a flame of fury inside him, but if his limbs hadn’t felt like lead, he would’ve taught B-52 the lesson of a lifetime right then. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know why I didn’t want you to die yet,” B-52 said. “I mean, I’ve always thought there was a lot I wanted to say to you. Ask you. I’ve thought up a lot of scenarios where I confront you or something, but now that I can say whatever I want, I can’t think of much.” He hesitated. “Don’t—I mean… is there anything you want to say? Since this is kind of the last chance you’ll get to say it.”
Silence filled the room. The children outside cheered and whooped and hollered before an adult’s voice called out, and they quieted down for a moment, then promptly resumed their previous activities. Birdsong broke out nearby. The curtains fluttered in the breeze. They were white, just like everything else.
“Nothing that matters,” Spaghetti said finally.
“Really?” B-52 asked. “For someone who was so loud in life, you’re pretty quiet when you’re leaving it.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m serious.” B-52 cast a glance at Spaghetti, so brief that it was almost imperceptible. Spaghetti saw. “I guess there’s no point in trying to manipulate me right now.”
“What were you expecting to get out of this?” Spaghetti hissed.
“I’m not sure,” B-52 admitted. “I guess I kind of hoped you’d just be honest. Open. About everything. Since there’s no use lying when you’re going to die anyway.”
Spaghetti went to draw in a breath and found it surprisingly difficult to do so. Blackness flickered at the edges of his vision. His heart skipped a couple beats. Slowing down. He was slowing down.
“I don’t have nearly enough time for that.” His voice was losing its anger and decreasing in volume as it did. “Everything? Be honest about everything?”
“Do you have any regrets?” B-52 asked suddenly.
Spaghetti scoffed. “Plenty.”
“I don’t think you would’ve admitted that before,” B-52 said. “Do you regret what y—”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” Spaghetti interrupted, a note of warning in his tone.
“Oh.” B-52 chuckled a little. “Wow, you’re looking out for me. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Stop.” Already his consciousness was beginning to fade, and he knew he’d be out again in no time. He didn’t get the feeling he’d be waking up.
“I never wanted you dead, you know,” B-52 said. “I know when you’re dead I won’t have to be scared anymore. It’ll be a relief, definitely. But I never actively wanted you to die.”
“Can’t say the same for you.”
“I know.” B-52 turned to face him, and Spaghetti squinted to see that he was smiling. “You’ve wanted me dead for a long time now. You never really cared about me at all, so it’s easy for you.”
“Do you miss me?” Spaghetti asked, because it was the only question that came to mind. His head felt fuzzy. The room was turning gray.
“I think I would’ve said yes,” B-52 said, “if you’d asked me that, say, ten years ago. Or maybe I wouldn’t’ve said it, but I’d have—I’d have known deep down the answer was yes. But now, no, I don’t think so. Honestly, I’d have been perfectly happy never seeing you again.”
Spaghetti barked out a laugh, ignoring the pain that erupted in his body as he did so. “Well. Lucky you, getting to watch me die. Isn’t that right?”
“Like I said—”
“I know, I know, you don’t want me dead.” He sucked in air through his teeth, grimacing. “You’ve really become a sentimental imbecile since you left me, haven’t you?”
“Ha. Maybe.” B-52 gave a half-shrug.
Spaghetti watched dust particles swirl through the beam of sunlight as his vision warped, distorted, darkened. He took in the gray walls, the gray curtains, the gray sheets stained black with his blood. His heartbeat pulsed in his aching lungs.
“Thanks for not apologizing,” B-52 said. “I wouldn’t have known how to respond if you had.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know.” B-52 laughed, almost fondly, as if looking back on good times with an old friend. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Spaghetti’s eyes closed against his own will. His head lolled back against the pillow. Everything was dark fuzzy static and he could barely move his numb lips enough to speak.
“You know,” he said, not entirely conscious of his own words. “If someone had told me when we were together that this is what you’d become someday, I’d have laughed in their face.”
B-52 smiled. He stayed silent as Spaghetti’s body went limp, and he waited as Spaghetti’s heartbeat slowed to a crawl, and when the irregular beeping became a constant high-pitched hum only then did he move. He crossed the room and put a hand on Spaghetti’s forehead, brushing back stray strands of hair matted to his skin by sweat. Spaghetti’s body was already beginning to cool.
“Good night,” he said, and then exited the room. Outside the window, a child shrieked in mock distress, and the game continued.