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It will be like planning a vacation, he'll think.
It will have all the same steps. He'll like that. The order. The simplicity. A list of empty checkboxes in a row.
(It will cut down the magnitude of what he is about to do. Chop it into easily swallowed pieces.)
Step one will be to get up in the morning and pretend that everything is normal. He will open his eyes and stare at the ceiling. He will only be able to see half of the room in his periphery. He will tell himself that to do what he intends to do, he must take each step in order.
(It will be a lie, technically. There will be a million ways to do it, and all of them will pass through his mind throughout the day.)
Step one will be his right foot. It will touch the floor softly, not making a sound. His left foot will follow, and by the time he shifts his weight to stand up, his body will have enough momentum to go into autopilot. Always a routine. Always going through the motions.
Step one will be taming his headache with a small handful of painkillers. He won't bother looking at the label. He will know the maximum dosage by feel at this point.
(He will pause for a moment before swallowing them anyway. It will not be out of fear.)
Step one will be getting dressed. It will make him wonder why he used to care so much about this step. His hand will drift, slowly, over the sleeves of shirts hung nearly in a row. Always consistent. Always neat. Even though nobody will ever see it.
He will tie his tie in the same precise way he always does. He will imagine tying a different kind of knot. Brushing away the thought will be like brushing snow from his shoulders during a blizzard.
Step one will not be the hardest step. It will be like planning a vacation; he'll treat it like a Tuesday. Life must go on as always up until the moment the plan comes to fruition.
Step two will be to clear his schedule. He will already have started this step. All he'll have to do is go to see Foolish.
(On the way, he'll see visions of his body lying cold and broken in the gutter on the side of the road. He will not look twice.)
Step two will have a destination in mind, but on the way he will make the mistake of looking over at the horizon with a clear view to the edge of the nation's border. He will not look away as though the sight has burned his eye. Not anymore. Instead, his gaze will linger on the abandoned outpost. He will be well past wondering why the van is empty. His questions will have swirled around in his head for long enough to answer themselves.
Step two will not be to think too hard about what he plans to do and how familiar it feels.
(It will be no worse than what Wilbur would have done.)
(It will be no better either.)
(Wilbur will not come back. He will be gone for good, vanished without trace, without warning, without so much as a goodbye. It will not be the last nail in Quackity's coffin, but it will be damn close.)
Step two will be to stop getting distracted and move on. He will tear his eye away from the lonely sight and keep walking.
(The weight will swell inside him. Crushing the dead things in his stomach into nothing at all. Bursting his dead heart and rupturing every empty artery. His muscles will feel so weak and his bones so heavy. The silence in his ears will scream at him with all the rage he no longer feels. He will see himself lying cold and broken on the pavement below every upper story window.)
Step two.
Step two will be too much. No one will watch as he sinks down and sits on the curbside. His lungs will be full of tar. His body will ache. Step two will be to keep breathing and not wonder why it matters at all.
Step two will be revised slightly. Step two will be postponed.
Screw step two.
Step two will be to lose sight of the reality that exposure will not be fast enough, that he will not be able to hold out longer than his body's instinct to gasp for air, that he is not and has never been capable of self neglect to this absolute extreme.
Step two will be to go limp, lying on the pavement like a body below a balcony.
(He will not be found. He will not have opened his messages for over three weeks, and no one who noticed will bother to call and ask why.)
(He will think that he knows why that is. He will almost be right.)
Step two will be to lie there until it hurts, until the sun burns his skin and the pavement imprints a layer of grit on his shirt.
Step two will be the wondering.
(It was always going to come to this.)
(Why?)
(You know why.)
(Look at yourself.)
(Which step are you on now, Quackity?)
(Does it matter?)
(This only ends one way. You can keep your little secret or scream it at the top of your lungs, but no one will hear you.)
(You know why. Don't ask.)
(You know.)
(This only ends one way.)
(So tell me which step of your master plan this is. The one where you give up. Tell me where in the script it was written, "scene opens on our hero, lying facedown on the blistering walk.")
(How many more masks to you have up your sleeve? Enough to hide the emptiness behind your eyes? How much longer can you pretend to be anything at all? No one is watching now.)
(Prime, you sound like Wilbur.)
(Even he couldn't stand to look at you anymore. Not even a goodbye. He's the only one that ever truly understood you.)
(He knew what he was doing, leaving without a word. He has a life to live. A second chance that you couldn't buy with all the blood in your veins.)
(Charlie should have left faster. He could have spent precious moments of his life with someone real. Instead, he got you.)
(You both suffered for it in the end.)
(But enough of this. You need to finish the job. Plan the vacation and leave on it. It's better if it doesn't feel real anyway. You've been lying here for hours and your body hurts like hell.)
Step two will be blurred and muddy in his heat-drunk mind. It will take a tumbleweed grazing directly over his face to drag his consciousness out of its dark spiral.
He will barely process heaving himself deliriously to his feet. He will feel like he's dying. He will be too out of touch with rational thought to recognize the symptoms of heatstroke, but he will manage to reach the shade before he passes out.
(He will not have time to realize that perhaps exposure would be quick and easy after all.)
When he wakes up, it will be late afternoon. His throat will feel like it is full of gravel. His sinuses will burn. His head will pound. He will still feel delirious.
Step three will be forcing himself to get up and find a bathroom.
Step three will be vomiting until he is empty, dry retching as though his stomach itself wants to escape his body.
Step three will be splashing his face with water in the sink, knees weak and trembling. Splashing some in his mouth and attempting to swallow. Feeling the sticky layer of sweat coating his body and beginning to retch again.
Step three will be lying on the cold bathroom floor until he feels like he can keep his grasp on consciousness a little more firmly.
Step three will be drinking water out of the sink and begging his body to accept it. It will. He will not throw up again, not now. He will leave and make his way home, stopping to catch his breath in the shade every few minutes. He will make it home my sundown.
(Step three will be to live to die another day.)
It will be like planning a vacation, he'll think. Everyone procrastinates that sort of thing. He'll push it off till the next day. It's such an insignificant thing to handle, he'll tell himself.
He will wake up past noon the next day. He will not even bother to wonder if anyone missed him. He will know the answer all too well.
Step one will be to start all over, get up, get dressed.
This time he will choke down a bottled electrolyte drink and try to keep his head clear. It won't work when he looks in the mirror.
(Who do you think you are?)
(Stop pretending this is all some distant future.)
(You're pathetic.)
(An insect scraped off the bottom of a boot. Nothing.)
(Haven't even cried in Prime knows how long.)
(Not real.)
(Go on, play your little game. Act like this is your plan. Plans are all you have. All you've ever had.)
(Everything you touch decays, doesn't it?)
(You can only hope for something to stay pretty if you haven't touched it yet.)
(So go on, tell yourself all about how this is going to happen. Pretend it can be anything other than meaningless)
He will look away from the mirror, and the weight will be like cement filling his body. There will be no space left for his organs. He will not feel human anymore.
He will walk out of his front door with grim resolve.
Step two will be to spot Foolish sitting next to the fountain, eating a sandwich with papers spread around him.
Step two will be wondering what he's doing there. Then remembering that it doesn't matter.
Quackity will not be the one to initiate conversation. His throat will be glued shut from the inside. It will be Foolish who speaks.
"Hey, Qua- oh. Dude, you look awful."
Quackity squints in the sun and tries to mimic his usual demeanor. He feels like a wooden puppet, stiffly acting out his little show.
"What are these?" he manages to ask, pointing at Foolish's papers. Foolish shuffles them out of view.
"Just some stuff I'm working on. Personal projects." He looks defensive, like he's ready for Quackity to snap and yell at him.
Quackity stares at him blankly.
Foolish looks uncomfortable. He changes the subject.
"Hey, you didn't answer any of my texts about the plaza. What are the plans for next week? This is supposed to be, like, a big thing for you or whatever, but. Man. You haven't said a word about it for... a while."
"I'm going to kill myself," Quackity says, but it comes out sounding like, "I didn't make any plans for the plaza next week."
Foolish's expression shifts to mild irritation. "Are you just gonna skip it then? Last month you were all up in my face about how important this is to you, and now you're just, not?"
"I'm going to kill myself," Quackity says again, but this time it sounds like, "I don't care."
"Well..." Foolish eyes him. "If you're not doing anything then, I want the week off. I have some stuff to do that's- well it's none of your business, actually, but-"
"I'm going to kill myself." It sounds like an acceptance of Foolish's unexplained time off, and an agreement not to call or text him during the next week. Foolish blinks in surprise.
"I... kind of expected you to fight me on that..." he mutters. Quackity shrugs unaffectedly and looks away.
Foolish gets up and seems about to leave.
"Hey, uh..." He hesitates. Quackity looks at him again. They make eye contact. Quackity stares at him dully, as if through clouded glass. Foolish asks, "Are you okay, man? You seem... off."
"I'm fine." Quackity's gaze bores straight through Foolish's skull and off into the distance beyond.
"You sure?" Foolish still looks uneasy. "You look pretty bad. I mean like, sick. You look like you're sick or something."
"I'm going to kill myself," Quackity says, but it sounds like a mumbled excuse about being tired today. Foolish doesn't look convinced. Part of Quackity doesn't want him to be.
"...okay," Foolish says eventually.
"I'm going to kill myself, Foolish. I'm going to take my life if you walk away from me right now. You're the only one still here, and the only reason is your employment contract. What's left when that's gone? Nothing. Walk away now and you'll never see me again. I'm dying."
Quackity screams the words in his head. Foolish cannot hear them. He turns to leave.
There will come a moment when planning doesn't help anymore. He will realize this as he watches Foolish walk away. He will only have one thing in his mind as he numbly turns and stumbles back to his house to find his tnt in storage.
(It does not have to end like this.)
(But it will.)