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“I don’t think you'll be able to play much of anything in there.” The Collector stares, mouth agape as Phillip ties his hair back. He must be mishearing. They’ve misheard because they’re so so excited to be out soon--and even if Phillip could be a little bit of a meanie, he was his friend.
Friends weren’t liars.
Friends he’d told the secrets of the universe didn’t turn out to be the bad guys.
“You-- Phillip , you promised !” At their reminder he scoffs , like someone who couldn’t care less that they were breaking the very most important rule of every pinky swear ever made. “You said you would use some of the Titan’s blood to help free me .” Usually, the tone they took would have their dear friend trying to strike their shadow as they twirled around their too-slow fists. Not today--today they are free to tense and curl around the concurves of the cave walls as they try to tighten their fluidish fists. “We’re friends! ”
“I’m sorry, but there’s hardly enough blood for the portal, much less enough to be wasted on you.” He sheds his Belos-clothes, tugging on the same stupid stupid coat, from the same guy he’d killed. He takes the key out of his pocket for a moment, and maybe there is hope for his friend, maybe he’ll let them have it, and The Collector can teach Phillip everything there is to know about where to find more, smaller Titans.
And then the portal is alive with the blood of a Titan, the brilliant blue light making their shadow even darker.
The Collector’s not sure they’ve ever been so angry. They’ve seen their siblings level worlds, and now they’re absolutely sure they could do the same. Heat surges inside of the wisp of a being they’ve become, and they’re not sure they’ve ever wanted flesh so bad in their life. Every overly-animated movement of rage they twist into remains unsatisfactory--and how could it ever satisfy? How could he let his rage out when he couldn’t feel anything but the nothing that had held him for a millenia?
“You-you promised! You pinky swore you-you liar!” Liar slips off their tongue over and over until Phillip turns back to him. “I gave you the draining spell! I-I played your stupid stupid game for four hundred years--I taught you everything!” If they were truly present, they know that they would be shaking. “I taught you magic stronger than anybody’s!”
“Yes, well. We can’t have you giving that to anyone else, now can we?” There won’t be anyone else! That’s the whole point of witch-hunter! The reason Phillip’s leaving !
The reason he’s going to be all alone !
The Collector screams every insult that comes to mind--regardless of it being mostly ‘liar’. He closes his eyes tight and screams with every last bit of force they can. They are not going to cry, not even as the liar lifts the disc from its resting place on the table. Not even if the same feeling they’d been living with forever grows a little sharper.
“LET ME GO.”
For the first time in the eons since he’s been stuck staring at nothing but dirt--since they first got between the other’s and the big dumb idiot who put them in here, he wants the other Archivists. Even if they hated them, and they wanted their head on a big dumb stick they wouldn’t let something so bad bad bad bad happen to them on pride alone--because above all, even if they were a bad one, they were an Archivist too, and they had images to hold.
Not that they could hear his screams now.
And they were screaming, screaming and screaming and screaming until they’re sure they would be red in the face, and the stars would’ve gone out.
Not that it seemed to help them any.
“That’s enough now.” He might have said that to them all the time when--when they were friends --but they weren’t about to listen to some stupid fibber !
“I DON'T ASSOCIATE WITH FIBBERS! ” They found themselves suddenly pinned, half trapped against the place they had been entrapped. Philips palms blocked a large majority of his last remaining view outwards. “GET OFF ! You’re mean and-and I-I hate you!” They’re too muffled to know if he heard them or not, but it feels right. Friends don’t lie, and they don’t do any of the things they let him do. And if they’re not friends, and they never were, that means that they forgave him for everything for no reason. And they hate him. They hate him so much. “I hate you! I HATE YOU. I HATE YOU! ” Philip’s hands block his sight, but when the disc is swung too quick the wrong way, he feels it in his gut, hands or not.
And then they didn’t, Philip’s hands shift to hold him by the rims of their prison, and Philp has raised them above his head.
And suddenly they can’t scream. They can’t breathe, or talk, or even blink because Philip is holding him above his head.
They had been so much fun--even if they were weird, for a short while they had been everything. Everything everything--they weren’t the Titans, and they couldn’t seem to understand that they wanted out but they were trying, and it was the most interaction he’d had in years.
And they hadn’t meant to drop them, they hadn’t, but they had, and he didn’t see anyone else for another eternity.
And they had screamed, and screamed until they couldn’t. Until their ragged breathlessness had set the ache into their bones, and they’d swung into a numbness with no end. Eventually, out of nowhere they would get desperate again, they would scream, and kick, and swear, and scratch the confinement until they were sure they had to be bleeding--even if they couldn’t feel it. Until the desperation gave in, and they were left numb again.
……
They shouldn’t have brought up his brother, they knew better. They knew, they knew they knew, regardless, they scream when he connects their disc with the table. His brother was off limits in the opposite way the Archivists were, and they knew. And later, when Phillip comes back for him he’ll know he was at fault--but now he screams.
He screams, and screeches, and begs, and claws at the confinement of theirs, because he’s killing them--if this disc breaks, no one will ever find them again, if no one ever finds them again, they’ll be gone, and they’ll never get out. They’ll never see, or hear, or smell or touch, or taste, or anything ever again, and their screams make him angrier, but they can’t help it.
It’s with a final slam that a chip of their mirror cracks, and abandons them to nothing. Their disc flops forward onto the surface they’d been slammed onto, and still, they scream. Something inside of them won’t let them stop making sound. Won’t let the wheezing come to an end--the mirror is still there, still face up--they can see, and the part of them that is missing didn’t get bigger, but still a part of them is still screaming. The noise they’re making should come with heavy tears, and shaking sobs, but if they’re there, they don’t feel them.
….
Their screams echo off of everything. If they had their body the stars would have gone out, and they’d be red in the face.
But they don’t have their body--and being helpless, as they’ve come to find, is a personal hell.
“I HATE YOU. I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YO --”
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There’s bodies everywhere in the cavern that Kikimora takes him to. King tries to ignore the sounds floating down from above. Of screaming, and crashing and of the long-distance screech of a spell that large tearing down on everyone.
He runs through the crevice--he knows he should probably fear the corpses sharing Hunter’s clothes, but his eyes are fixated on the distant glimmer of the familiar blue disc. He’d seen it before. Seen it before--and if King had any idea what he was talking about he’d seen it’s inhabitant before. Heard their voice--and their commands that he not leave them.
And a small, reluctant part of him that keeps forgetting that people are dying , doesn’t want to go anywhere near it. Doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to.
It’s not a spell hanging over their heads. Not in the way he’d come to know them. It’s massive, and if there’s anyone with any chance to stop it--to make things change before everything is horrible for good--he’d guess the weirdo with the moon symbol on his prison would know something about stopping a space spell.
He just needed to get to the--disc.
The broken disc.
King had hardly stared at it for a moment before the denial had come on. Before the desperation to get into contact with the god-being had taken over. He had tried to fit the pieces together. Begged-pleaded---
In the end, he can’t say what did it. All he knew was that with glowing light--and a sound like glass shattering against Hooty, the pieces had fused together. And the thing he’d let out of it had stared at him--big wide teary eyes--and a splotchy face waiting under everything--all of the posturing--the snivelling teasing had led to…a literal half-crying kid.
“I think you might be the best person ever.”