Work Text:
You would have let him die.
It’s the thought that consumes Fern as he runs a hand across Decidueye’s outstretched wing, awkwardly crouched to make sure he sees each and every feather.
You would have let him die, and you wouldn’t have felt any remorse for it either.
It’s like some stupid miracle that Decidueye isn’t hurt. It’s like some stupid miracle that Fern isn’t hurt, too; he isn’t so completely convinced of his invincibility to call his survival anything more than that.
It hammers the point home even harder. You really, truly would have let him die.
…Of course you would have, though.
You may have everyone else fooled, but not Fern. Never Fern, except for, perhaps–and it’s only begrudgingly that he’s willing to admit this–a few moments at the start.
He runs his hands across Decidueye’s other wing. It’s simultaneously illuminated by too-warm and too-cool lights: The dim mining lamps are flickering, lit by Serperior’s hidden power, and the pockets of emerald living in the rock suspiciously emit a chilled green glow.
It’s too quiet here; he can hear his own racing mind far too well. This is only a bad thing because the adrenaline is starting to wear off, which is causing little thoughts to infest his brain that he doesn’t want and knows are fundamentally untrue.
Maybe it’s because all cylinders are already firing on the subject of you, but those little thoughts are often taking the form of: Lin likes you. Lin wants you. Lin doesn’t expect anyone (anyone at all) to stop you, not for real stop you, just stop you for, like, a minute at most, no more than that–
(Reminder, again: This line of thinking is only because of the fading adrenaline.)
Fern sits suddenly, awkwardly perching on a high, jutting outcrop of rock to better see the end of Decidueye’s feathers. Decidueye lays its free wing on the top of Fern’s head, and he looks up to be met with something that feels like thinly-veiled concern in oval avian eyes. He must pull a face, because the wing vanishes.
You would have let them both die.
It’s funny, almost. You used to be kind to Decidueye.
Even at the very beginning, Fern had hated that, even though he’d never known why.
Now he knew, though. It must have been his subconscious picking up on the truth long before his consciousness had: You couldn’t be trusted. You were only ever going to ruin things.
And yet, still, Lin likes you.
Probably because you and her are the same: Same cloth, same side of the coin, and a million other metaphors. Fern can see it; he isn’t blind. You’d have to be blind to miss it–and you are, he knows.
Maybe you parade around pretending you’re moral and just and good simply because you don’t even realize that you’re not. Maybe that’s what makes Lin better, in the end. She’s more self-aware.
Or maybe believing you live in ignorance of your own actions is too charitable.
Fern is not exactly in a charitable mood.
You know what you’re doing. You always have.
Fern brushes the dirt off his pants maybe a bit too aggressively, or maybe just the right amount of aggressively for the day, and stands roughly. Decidueye backs away, calm, cool, collected, and completely unhurt, and Decidueye had always been calm, cool, collected, and completely unhurt, Fern had just been fussing, and–
Fern takes in the room.
This is all your fault, you know. Every single bit of it, you’re responsible.
It’s an easy thought for Fern to hold.
You would have let him die. You’re responsible. Twin phrases looping in his head, ad nauseam.
When he’d walked into the cavern originally, still shaky, he’d hurried his way to the back, ignoring everything else. Now, he looks around, really dwelling on the area’s structure for the first time.
His eyes linger on the emeralds dominating the walls. They shouldn’t shine, but they do, and curiosity leaves him wondering if the sapphires, the rubies; the amethysts no doubt lining the other branches of the old mine do too. If maybe the others feel warm, because the emeralds don’t.
No, the emeralds feel cold. Unsettling.
Maybe he just doesn’t like looking at endless uncarved rock all that much, though. Maybe he just thinks he should only have to interact with gemstones when they’re in their rightful place, which, in Fern’s mind, is when they’re stuck in jewelry.
Or, maybe, he’s slightly bought into Solaris’ religious bullshit, which is a disgusting idea, especially since it seems like you and everyone else has done the same.
Or, it’s that this is the middle of Victory Road, and that this is the manner he finds himself in it. The fact that he won’t end up in the hall, not properly; he’ll just sta–
No. Nope, he’s bothered because it’s endless uncarved rock, and he doesn’t like that very much. That’s what’s unsettling him.
He’s never really liked rocks. Not like some people he knows.
Which would’ve made that such an ironic death, wouldn’t it have? There’s some sort of joke buried in it that he can’t quite pin down and drag into fruition, something about how rock is weak to grass and how he should have won a fight he never even saw coming.
Would you have made the comment after? Are you the type to?
He doesn’t know the answer, but the thought of it still twists the knife further in.
There’s no way Fern ascends into Charous Hall, no way he gets to see the dragon statue poised on the mountain side up close and personal, no way he gets to walk the carved-out, ornate rooms of the Elite Four. You stole that chance from him.
The best Fern can do is steal it from you in return. Maybe Lin wants you to walk into that final room, even if she doesn’t intend to let you win, but Fern doesn’t have to play by those rules, not unless he wants to.
And he doesn’t. Why should you get that satisfaction, even momentarily?
You don’t deserve it; that much has always been clear. You’re not moral or just or good, not if you’re willing to let someone die some terrible stalactite-related death.
(Because it would have been terrible, it would have been slow and crushing and claustrophobic, and maybe that’s the part that makes it linger in his mind, maybe it’s that he can so clearly imagine it and imagine the way no one would have even come to check–)
There’s vines growing throughout the cave. Little spurts of proper greenery littered among the mine carts and the emeralds. They must be tough vines, to be growing all the way down in here, to still be alive.
Fern takes a deep breath.
He’s positioned up high, which is beneficial; it’s a good vantage point. Decidueye can aim down with its shots, which is infinitely easier than aiming up, especially since you tend to scurry around like a rattata that’s just crawled out of the Peridot sewers.
The tricky bit of the room is the old mining tracks. Fern’s only up high because so much of the room’s surface was carved out for them, which means the walls of the tracks are the same height as his platform. It resembles a Durant farm, and there are plenty of places for you to hide in as you try to sneak through.
Most of the odd angles can be struck by Decidueye somehow, though. It’ll just take some movement, finding good positions–like one of those old arcade games in the back of Obsidia’s casino. Fern had always been good at those. Decidueye’s never played, obviously, but maybe it’ll take after its trainer.
Fern’s footsteps echo off the stone as he walks, tracking the way the minecart rails disappear and reappear within his field of vision.
Winning might be tricky, depending on how quickly you adjust. But Fern is good at tricky. He feels confident.
He’s not shaky, not anymore. That feeling’s gone, banished into–
He nearly trips on a hidden outcropping of rock, stumbles to regain his footing.
But he’s confident, so it doesn’t matter. It can’t. Not when he knows that he can win.
Another thing he knows is that you’ll come alone. He can feel it in his bones, in the air, and he’s almost vibrating from the thrill of it. It’ll be even ground, finally.
This whole night, you’ve had your pathetic band of friends helping you. The Meteor turncoats and the Hardy Andersens of the world, although who knows why any of them bother to put up with you. Fern thinks they should all hate you, albeit each of them for different reasons.
But they don’t, because you’ve always been good at playing for every team.
You gather up as many allies as you can, because there’s safety in numbers–that’s never been a lie, every group of elementary-aged boys that had found Fern fit to kick down had proved that true–and because it’s the only way you can ever win.
But Fern doesn’t need that to win. He’d had to kick and bite and grab for every scrap of power and control he’s ever held, for every tenuous ounce of respect he’s ever earned from his peers, and he’d done it all by himself and made sure he’d never relied on anyone else to maintain it.
He’s never once needed others, not the way you do.
And doesn’t that make Fern better than you? That one thing right there, doesn’t that do it?
You are fundamentally weaker, fundamentally worse, because you can only claim to have power when there’s someone else standing beside you to hold onto it for you. Fern knows this, is sure of it, is more sure of it than he’s ever been sure of anything, really.
Everything that you have is a fluke, and Fern is the only person that seems to know or care, because he’s the only person that’s seen through your facade and drilled beyond the surface into the flesh and blood and rot that pools there.
Even if it doesn’t seem like flesh and blood. Even if it doesn’t feel like there’s a heart beating.
No one would ever believe Fern if he said something like that, but, well, the feeling’s there. He can’t lie.
Just like with her, any shred of humanity feels gone when he looks at you.
He knows he’s the only person who sees that. Even your enemies don’t–Solaris respects you, the old fool, and Sirius’ hatred stems from painfully simple motivations in the end.
Which, there’s the real reason Fern should be in charge, the real reason Fern should get to have his hand in shaping any new world that comes trickling forth: If he’s the only person that sees, that accepts, something so glaringly obvious, then what else do they all miss or willfully ignore? What else does only Fern understand?
He’s sure he could come up with a laundry list, years and years worth of grievances to levy against humanity as a whole.
He could fix it. In one fell swoop, he could fix it all. He knows he could, and he knows you never would.
No one else would either. They’re Lin, or they listen to you, or they’re only interested in themself.
Which means he can’t let you out of this room. He has to be the final barrier.
There’s footsteps echoing down the hall. Fern freezes in place and Decidueye does the same; they’re not going to give themselves away like that.
Not like you already have.
Decidueye readies an arrow; it barely even needs the command.
Fern is going to win this time.
He’s going to beat you, finally.
He knows it.