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When Apricot was little, Mango thought of monsters.
Not the kind that hid under the bed, or in the closet. Not the kind that could be banished with a warmed glass of milk, or a sprig of lavender on the nightstand, or sticky glowing stars. Not the kind that could be vanquished with time left over for a quippy one-liner and a smile at the cameras.
He had never run afoul of the two web destroyers himself, and even Apricot’s encounter with them wasn’t direct.
But...
On and off, for those first few months...
Long after Apricot had come to understand that his own parents were gone, and the tall orange stick would be feeding him and putting him to bed from now on...
Long after Apricot had come to understand that this place, with its painted grass and no reboots, was his home now...
Long after Apricot had begun to smile again...
…he still woke up crying, on some nights. He still screamed in his sleep. He still stared a little too long at fires.
And as he'd held the little stick whom he was beginning to think of as a son, and as he'd felt tiny arms wind tightly around him while tears soaked into his nightshirt, a certain image had begun to form, in Mango's head.
An image of the ones who had caused this.
Of the two sticks, who had brought the tears to Apricot’s eyes, the grief to his too-young voice.
Because who would do such a thing?
Mango couldn’t imagine them as any stick he would cross paths with, on the street. He couldn’t imagine them as those mythical figures who would show up on the shop TVs sometimes. He couldn’t imagine them as the flashy warriors whom Apricot would pretend to be whenever he found just the right fallen branch on the playground. He couldn’t even imagine them as those sports fighters who seem to revel in the damage they inflicted on their opponents.
He could hardly imagine them as fellow stickfigures at all.
Monsters, surely. Only monsters could wreak such destruction, and notice not or care not for the suffering they caused in their wake.
Time passes.
Apricot grows up.
Apricot recovers. Apricot heals.
The nightmares stop. Fire is no longer something to fear. Game environments no longer ache like a phantom limb.
Their life isn’t easy, but Apricot has a home, and a family.
And Apricot is happy.
And then Apricot dies.
And Mango doesn’t think about monsters at all, as the red light overtakes his vision and the stick beneath him chokes under his hands.
He doesn’t think about monsters for a while, after that.
Not until he’s running as fast as his desperate legs can carry him, reaching forward, heedless of the danger to himself as a purple stick is engulfed by white.
Not until he stands alone, in an empty house that has long ceased to be home, and watches as his sins are spelled out in chalk.
Time passes.
Those sticks want Purple’s help with something. Something that involves Purple’s past.
Purple doesn’t like talking about his past. But he wants to help.
It isn’t Mango’s place to stop him.
Besides, it’s some sort of rescue. It sounds like a noble cause.
The rescue comes and goes. A stick is saved. A stick is left behind.
Details are learned.
And Mango, for the first time in a long time, thinks of monsters and doesn’t picture himself.
The picture he sees instead is an old one. It has long been put away, left to gather dust. It has faded with time, and perhaps warped as well. Because Apricot had grown up without the shadows of those monsters dogging his every step, and Mango hadn't needed to think about those monsters anymore, after a while.
He knows the image in his head can’t be accurate.
He must know. He has to see.
He needs the answer to this question; the question that he’d stopped asking after his son went a whole year without waking up crying.
He needs an answer to this question that isn’t himself.
So he stops by the PC.
And he sees the monster.
It’s younger than him.