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You hold him close to your chest like you did when you were children and feel the breath in his lungs, his ribs rising and falling underneath your hands. It’s so quiet, here, now, like it never is anymore.
He’s sound asleep, and you know that’s the only reason you can get away with gently carding your fingers through his hair. His mask is discarded somewhere on the desk near the bed, but you can’t see his face anyway; he’s buried it in your shoulder. There’ll be drool on your sweatshirt when you wake, even as he’s long gone into the morning light.
That’s how it always goes. You remember an age when you woke before him, would shuffle about the house quietly while he slept, would be there when he stumbled into the living room still half asleep.
Those days are past, and you know very well there’s not many more of these nights he’ll let you have.
So you’ll make the most of what he’ll give you. It’s not healthy, but you’ll treasure anything left of the man that was once your best friend. It won’t matter soon anyway.
.
Sometimes you still wait for him to come home. Sometimes he even does.
.
There are days when you wonder if it’s the land itself. If there’s a fundamental flaw in it, some kind of a rot that haunts, that lingers, that drives good men mad. You saw it in Wilbur. You saw it in him, too, even earlier, even if you denied it, then.
But those early days are golden in your memory and you refuse to taint them.
You miss him. He is standing right in front of you and you miss him, suddenly, desperately. He is a stranger to you, and you don’t know when it happened.
.
You don’t see him very much, these days. There are other things to occupy your time, other projects and places and people. He doesn’t come find you, like he would have once, bored, looking for excitement. You don’t know where to go to find him.
Karl asks you, only once, why you look so sad. You don’t know how to answer that, but it doesn’t really matter: you’re pretty certain he already knows. He always seems to, with these things, without you having to tell him. He looks sad, too. You wonder if it’s too late. If it ever wasn’t. (You don’t know for whom.)
Quackity doesn’t ask you why you look sad, but his stare lingers just a little too long on the horizon, on any little scribbled smiley-face in the margins of papers. Quackity was his friend, too, once. Maybe not as long, but you’re not the only one he’s left behind.
So you focus on helping the people you can help, and loving the ones who will let you. You remind Karl of the things he forgets, and don’t question why he seems so distant some days, as if he barely knows you. Quackity still flinches at the glint of a pickaxe, so you mine enough for the both of you and keep the tools in the shed near the mineshaft that he never goes to anymore. You don’t come up on his blind side and hold him quietly in the hollow hours of the morning when he shakes apart in your arms.
.
He knocks on your window, one night, and you do not startle. It’s quiet enough that neither Quackity nor Karl wake, though you’re the heaviest sleeper of the three of you.
He always played by different rules. The love of someone who is just left of a god leaves marks that can’t be taken back, after all, even when he tries to tear that love from his own heart.
(He is here , isn’t he? He has tried and will try again, but he hasn’t yet succeeded.)
You let him in, bandage him up, and lead him to the spare bedroom. Despite himself, you think, he holds your wrist when you try to leave. You look at him as steadily as you can as he hesitates. In the darkness, he is almost the man you once knew, and you can read him as you ever could; there’s a fight in his eyes. What he wants, what he’s always known, against what he is trying to convince himself is better.
You do not return to your own room that night. You wake just after he is gone: the bed is still warm where he had laid. You try not to let the pain slip from its cage in your heart as you make an early breakfast.
But Quackity smiles at you when he stumbles into the kitchen to the smell of cooking eggs. For now, at least, this is enough.
.
Some time later and with an aching heart, you take Karl and go to find the only other person who knew your best friend as well as you did.
George is exactly where you expect him to be. It’s almost surprising. No one seems to be these days.
(Don’t think about Quackity, don’t think about Quackity, don’t think-)
.
And you’re happy, for a time. Kinoko Kingdom is its people but it is also the land, the earth, the ground beneath your feet. It is something tangible you can see and build and care about that will not turn its back on you, that will not stand up and walk away because the dirt loves and loves and does not judge.
It’s been a long time since you’ve had something like that. Since before the first war, perhaps. You think it’s good for you.
You only go to Las Nevadas once. It is in the middle of the night, quiet and unlit, slipping between half-complete buildings and marvelling at all that Quackity has brought up from nothing without you.
It hurts, but it is pain you were prepared for. You breathe through it and set it aside, and it is easier than it ever has been before.
You still love him, of course, and you probably always will. You want only the best for him, and if the best for him is not you, then you will let him go. You’ve come to terms with that.
(It will be a long time before you realize you were wrong. You will find him, then. You will see with open eyes everything you ever were and everything he has done. And despite it all, you will open your arms and pray to a god you’re not sure you believe in that it is not yet too late.)
.
You relearn things about George you hadn’t realized you’d forgotten, or maybe you never knew in the first place. The two of you were always in parallel, after all, planets orbiting your shared star.
But that star has gone dark, and you are left with one another. It is not as if you’ve never been the two of you without him before, but there is something different about it now all the same. There is an empty space lingering between you that neither of you know how to fill.
So you ignore it. What else are you supposed to do?
.
He doesn’t let you hold him anymore. He doesn’t let you or George or anyone else anywhere close. You ache with the grief, but you should have known.
.
You haven’t gone looking for him in a long time, but you meet him in the forest one day by sheer chance. You can only watch, for a time, and he watches back. You’re not certain when you two became so careful around one another, and you don’t want to be, but more than that you don’t want to scare him off.
He doesn’t take his mask off even though you’re alone. You know what he looks like, every freckle and scar- but it’s the principle of the thing, you suppose. Him and his whole attachments thing.
It’s not good. It’s not. It’ll only get him and you and everyone hurt in the end, it already has. But you don’t know if you could ever raise your words nor blade to him, so you try not to think about it too much. (Is that worse?)
Have you been well? You ask, quietly, eventually.
A pause, and then: Well enough.
That’s good, and then, because for all your bravado and fire deep down you are a sentimental fool who has always loved too much, I miss you.
He hums. He does not respond, and you knew he would not. Then he’s gone.
You stand alone in a forest for what feels like it could be minutes or hours, after that. A traitorous part of you wonders if he truly is better off without anyone at his side. He could make it as long as he wanted to, really- maybe you were burdens, all of you, things in need of protection that cost more than they could provide.
Maybe you are simply doomed to always need the ones who will never need you back.
.
They put him in the prison and you are not there. They put him in the prison and maybe you should have been.
They put him in his own prison and he will never again show up at your home in the middle of the night and quietly sit in the corner of your bedroom for hours and leave before you even wake because he never succeeded, he never really did even if he pretends as if to himself. Most people would never even know he was there but you are not most people.
(You looked at George sometimes, the night after he came, and even though he would not look back at you still you knew. Neither of you have been most people in a very long time.)
.
Karl lifts his head to look at you, one day, and he is more present than he has been in months. Go see him. It’s not a suggestion, or a question. It’s a command.
You don’t want to. Desperately. You don’t want to make it real. You don’t want to face everything you’ve been avoiding for months, years. You don’t want to face what your best friend has done and what you’ve let him become.
But here is something inevitable: you go. You look the Warden in the eye and wonder when was the last time you talked to Sam, and you take the plunge deep into Pandora’s Vault.
He is there, and you’re not quite sure why you thought he wouldn’t be. He is not a god. Your best friend can die, and there are people who believe he should.
(You only realize, now, looking down at him, that you still think of him as your best friend. He’s not, anymore. But there are some things that cannot be taken back.)
He does not stand to greet you. He tips his head sideways, flicks the eye you can see up toward you. It’s not an acknowledgement, barely a reaction.
You stamp out the pity bubbling up in your throat. He wouldn’t want it, not in a thousand years. You take the three strides it is across the cell, seat yourself down in front of him, and close your eyes.
It is one impossible moment, and then the ghost of fingertips brush against your cheek. You do not flinch, do not even suppress one. You came here looking for someone you have always known with perfect faith that you still do.
A moment, and a moment again: you will have to lead, this time.
Steadily, slowly, (he is more fragile than you have ever known, but he is not weak, even now) you take his hand and thread your fingers together. You open your eyes, and he is looking back at you.
His shoulders shake, and you abandon all pretenses of distance. You gather him up into your arms as if you were children again, and let him fall to pieces.
You are not children anymore. He is here for a reason, and it is a reason he cannot take back, whatever comes next. It won’t ever be okay again, not really. But still you love him.
Still you love him, and still you wait for him to come home. Maybe one day he will.