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There was an awkward silence that hung in the air as The Pale King lay alone on top of Sovus’s grave. His eyes remained fixed on the cavern ceiling, his mind searching for anything to talk about—anything other than what Sovus had done. Every memory of the man brought up pain and guilt, so he searched for anything else that he could possibly talk about.
“Hey, Sov, can I tell you something?” The Pale King began, “It’s something that I’ve only ever told Root.”
He was answered by silence.
“Where I’m from—when I was a kid, we didn’t do… burials.” he began to fiddle with his hands, “Unimaginable, right? You must be wondering what else there could be, but… as a kid I was taught that the body traps the spirit, so instead of being buried the body would be burnt… it’s actually kind of funny, there was a friend I had after my family died who’s whole thing was fire but anytime we had to do a funeral for someone he insisted that we bury them…”
His hands froze and he took in a rough breath.
“…” The Pale King gulped, trying to keep his voice even as he began to speak, “But, you probably don’t want to hear about that right now… I’m sorry, I’m dumb. Hey, remember that time we built a bunkbed in your apartment?”
The Pale King let out a soft laugh in the silence of the graveyard.
“I don’t even know what it was that brought us to want to do it…” he turned his head to the side and looked towards the ground, “you had a perfectly good bed, you know. We both could have fit—wait! That’s right! You said you were afraid you’d crush me in my sleep!”
He shook his head as he began to cackle.
“I still don’t know why you wouldn’t let me just take the couch—or even take the couch yourself at the absolutely worst-case scenario.” The Pale King rolled his eyes, “It was a damn good couch—would have saved us the disaster that the bunkbed turned into.”
He rolled over and placed a hand on the dirt underneath him.
“I suppose I am lucky that you’d been so insistent that I take the top bunk.” He closed his eyes with a sad smile, “Then again, I’d much rather have been the one getting hurt when that thing broke… if either of us deserved to face consequences for our actions, I should have been first on the list…”
His void-stained hand dug into the dirt.
“I… I don’t hate you, you know.” The king’s voice began to waver, “I can’t… you did exactly what I did…”
He let out a broken laugh.
“I hate that I don’t hate you…” tears began to collect in his eyes, “I should hate both of us, but instead I can only bring myself to hate one…”
He felt his voice break.
“I should have known… I should have figured that you’d…” The Pale King pressed his face into the dirt of his friend’s grave, “If I’d hadn’t been so caught up in my own shit, perhaps I could have… perhaps you wouldn’t be…”
Tears began to roll down his cheeks.
“I think I just… I never thought that you’d…” a pained sound escaped his throat, “Did I think of you as so different from myself? Was I that much of an asshole to think of myself on some different level to you despite our many, many similarities?!”
The Pale King lifted himself up just enough to face Sovus’s headstone.
“Would you hate me if I did?” he asked desperately, “You should hate me, all of this is my fault… you never would have been in that horrible position if not for me… I just thought you couldn’t… why did I think you couldn’t…?”
He held back a sob as his eyes went wide.
“I think…"
His voice caught in his throat for a moment.
“I think I always thought that if I’d been mortal I’d never have been…”
He struggled to say it aloud.
“I thought that I couldn’t have been…”
He took in labored breaths as he tried to finally put to words what drove such a constricting, agonizing pain into his heart.
“I thought that I wouldn’t have been a monster.”
Time seemed to stand still, his heart stopping for a moment as he felt his fists clench into the ground.
“But being a god was never my problem… was it?”
“It was always just me…”
“I was the problem…”
The Pale King began to weep onto his friend’s grave.
“I’m sorry, Sov… I’m so, so sorry.”