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Las Nevadas is one of those cities that never sleeps, they say, but Quackity knows how wrong they are. He's the one who watches the bright, flashing lights flicker out each night and melt easily into shadows, carving darkness into every corner of the small world he crafted with his hands. And from the top floor of the casino, he watches as the stars suddenly seem to brighten in the newfound dark, becoming a brilliant canopy that watches, smiling and winking, from the infinite ether above his head. It would be beautiful, if it did not feel so far away, as if even the stars had distanced themselves from this plagued world. Quackity couldn't blame them. It was the same thing he'd done.
He stands there for a while, drinking in a view he both loves and hates, waiting for nothing and everything to show up at his feet. Waiting for something, anything, to happen and mark this night as significant in some way. Usually, it never comes. But tonight, the air around him is holding it's own breath. Shadows curl and watch his every move. Quackity is expecting a visitor- for once. He holds himself steady and waits.
"Hello, Quackity from Las Nevadas!" The words ring from behind him finally. To anyone else, they might feel almost automated in the tone they're spoken, but they're a familiar song to Quackity by now. He can sense the warmth and friendliness in them. And in this silence, they're more than welcome. Slime has this ability to clear the dread and misery from the corners of Quackity's mind like he's dusting out cobwebs. When the casino manager turns around to face his assistant, Slime is merely smiling in the doorway, but it's enough to make Quackity crack his own smile as he begins to speak.
"Slime! Good to see you!" Quackity chirps heartily, stepping forward to accept the "dap" that Slime is expectantly holding his hand out for. The small motion, as usual, makes the green man's eyes glitter with joy. Both of them remember when Quackity would deny him such a gesture. Both of them remember how it's gradually shifted into a habit they do every time they greet each other. Quackity yet again admits to himself he's gotten a bit soft for this odd little creature.
"It's good to see you too, Quackity from Las Nevadas! You told me to come here!" Slime announces.
"Yeah, I did." Quackity sighs back. Then he has to let a bit of his friendliness fade, because Slime's words make him remember why he called his assistant here, recall the lesson they have ahead. It's difficult to teach, but Quackity knows it's better than letting Slime be caught off-guard by the world, even more than he already will be. He guides Slime over to the table and chairs in one corner of the room, and all the while a familiar nagging worry forms in his head. He studies Slime's face for any sign of worry, doubt, stress, anything that shows perhaps he chose the wrong successor. His fretful mind paces worn circles into the floor of his head. Slime is barely a human, and his awareness of the world is limited to what he's seen from afar, and shuttered in by the borders of Las Nevadas. He's lived as a spectator, with little context for what he's seen and little knowledge for what he's told, and has sewn together a misshapen tapestry of the world out of borrowed thread. Quackity can only help his words can fix the crooked trees and misshapen mountains before Slime finds himself carrying the burden of a nation on his shoulders.
But despite the pressure that Quackity knows he would feel in such a situation, Slime seems eager to learn and do and help. It's a devotion and loyalty that Quackity hasn't known before, a one-track mind that is happy to stay that way. There is no doubt or fear that has settled in the shadows of Slime's face. It eases the pacing in his mind, and his thoughts sharpen to the scene in front of him once more. The theatre director brings the actors onstage, and Quackity calls words from a script he did not practice.
"Today's lesson is... preparation." He begins. "You will meet people, and talk to people, but you can never be sure of their intent. You always have to be ready, because you never know when someone is just... waiting to be done with you." There is a sting on his tongue as he finishes, as memories compose themselves into a puppet show in his brain. He remembers all too clearly the cloudy yet sharp wrath that settled vibrantly in Karl's eyes, the stab of the word murderer as it burrowed it's jagged point in Quackity's heart. For a moment, it hurts, and then it shudders and dies and turns to the ashy remains of love, from which the phoenix of contempt will be born in time. "You have to be ready for the end of anything, but not to the point of paranoia."
He does not pause to let his words sink in- he pauses to let Slime say something, because he always says something, and that's not a bad thing. It challenges Quackity to think different, to genuinely answer every abstract question that no normal person would ask, but that of course Slime would ask. And as usual, it comes.
"Everything ends, Quackity from Las Nevadas! Everything turns to dust! I'm very ready for it!" Morbid words leave the smiling mouth of the creature. Slime's uncanny ability to say the most grim things with a smile of oblivion on his face often stuns Quackity into silence, and this instance is no particular exception. When he finds his breath again, Quackity is glad this first interruption is easier to answer. He could have been hit with a zinger off the bat, and Slime would be none the wiser to it.
"I don't mean the physical end to everything. I mean the emotional end." He grits his teeth and feels the pressure in his jaws, lets it settle wickedly in his heart. "I mean when people will discard you, when they will show that they've been pretending to like you this whole time."
"Oh, I know about that one." Slime adds nonchalantly, and that makes Quackity turn and meet his eyes with alarm. Who's hurt his assistant? When? Why? A murderous rage begins to boil in his blood, but then Slime speaks again. "It's like when Wilbur from L'manburg pretended to like his country, and then he blew it up!"
Quackity often forgets the history Slime's eyes have beheld, and then it startles him like this again out of nowhere. Between his surprise, and the ease with which Slime speaks, Quackity can't help but bark out a laugh. Slime himself does not actually laugh, and there's slight confusion in his eyes as he watches Quackity do this unfamiliar thing, but he tries his best to mimic the noise Quackity makes with a forced "Ah, A HA HA HA!". It's the closest to a joke that Slime has come, but he is also a bit right in his comparison. Quackity's shoulders ease their shaking after a bit, and he catches his breath. A flash of yellow eyes, glowing with sick distrust, settles once again in Quackity's mind as he talks. "You're right. Wilbur... maybe at one point Wilbur liked L'manburg. But after a while, he could only see the bad things in it. He wanted to get rid of it, because it wasn't what he wanted it to be. And people will do that, Slime, to you and others. Often. They'll discard you, and hurt you, all because you aren't exactly what they want you to be, or because you aren't needed by them anymore." His words start to shake. They come from a midway point in his emotions, strong feelings he rarely lets surface like this. Part of it, obviously, comes from the horror and dread he felt the day the earth let out an unnatural roar, splitting the air in two, then buckled and burst and left a ravine in it's wake.
But then, part of it comes from the stench of alcohol, and the stiffness of black suits, and contempt glittering in the red eyes of a broken leader as Quackity aims a crossbow at him.
And another part of it comes from the more fresh sting, the one that kept haunting his mind no matter where he wandered to lose the yellow-eyed ghosts, the one that caused this whole lesson. Murderer!
Slime is looking at him with more confusion than before. It takes a moment for Quackity to realize the unbroken silence he didn't realize had fallen between them. It takes another moment for him to realize how his brow has furrowed, how his eyes have narrowed and his fists have balled so tight that his nails press into the bottom of his palms.
He quickly loosens his shoulders and tries to regain his composure, but he knows the state he was in was already seen by Slime. He watches the thoughts and visions process in Slime's eyes as Quackity begins to burn with shame. He's supposed to be teaching Slime, and yet here he is letting emotions take over mid-lecture. He's ready for Slime's confusion, to answer questions he wasn't just unprepared for answering, but didn't want to answer. He's ready for weakness and contempt and disinterest.
But instead, Slime's eyes fill with a different emotion. "Quackity from Las Nevadas, this isn't really a lesson, is it?"
This one, he certainly wasn't prepared for. It takes him a second, gaze locked with Slime's, before he finds the answer even he didn't know. "I... no, I don't think it is." He chokes on air as he speaks.
"Then... what is it?"
"... I don't know."
Quackity expects Slime to get up and leave, to lose all interest. But instead, something more shocking than loneliness comes for him. Slime leans forward and wraps his arms around him in what is a very good recreation of a hug, for someone who Quackity assumes has never given one.
Slime, surprisingly, is actually able to make himself very solid when needed, and Quackity can't feel any weird sludge or anything leaking through his shirt. Slime isn't even cold, like Quackity always thought. It feels exactly like hugging another human. It shatters his chest and casts bright light across his shadowed memories. Grief for a bygone era wells in his chest and floods his mouth and eyes before he can plug the leak, and then Quackity is crying for the first time in.... months, years, he can't remember anymore. But it's a shock that seems to paralyze his muscles, and it's a sorrow that seems to leak from the very marrow of his bones.
They seem to stay there for a very long time and only a few seconds, when finally the tears seem to reach their end. Slime pulls away, and Quackity finds both relief and desperation in the absence of his presence. There's shame still weighing down his heart, but he looks into Slime's eyes and feels like crying again. There is nothing but understanding there. There is no blame, or hatred, or discomfort. No malice or annoyance, like he once saw in beer-drowned red eyes. No disconnect or apathy, like he once saw in brown eyes that reflected the sparks and smoke of a decimated country. And yet, thank the stars, there is no overwhelming sympathy or extra coddling, like he once saw often in the dual pair of jet-black and yellowy-hazel eyes, full of too much care and yet not enough. There isn't even awkwardness in the air between them. There is only this unspoken kindness that is not too little but not too much, and there is the petrichor smell of his drying tears.
"Thankyou." He manages.
"Of course, Quackity."
There is another memory that unlocks there, hearing the sincerity in his voice. There is the glow of orange reflected in purple eyes, and the suffocating heat of lava, and the desperation to save someone who is already dead the second he is struck off the platform by a netherite sword.
"Slime?" There's so many questions that weigh down the singular word.
"You were a very good friend, Quackity from Las Nevadas."
He looks up and the room is hollow. The lights flicker still, but they feel cold now, and the shadows creep in the corners like they mean to swallow him whole. Tendrils of despair curl around Quackity's throat. He is still watching the empty chair, as though Slime may reappear in it, but he knows he is staring at a grave. There is a long silence, running on for an infinite amount of time.
"I'm sorry."
He cries again, this time into the shoulder of no one.