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To say the disappearance of Gaty was hard on Two would be an understatement.
X remembered finding them in the kitchen, staring with this expression of pure horror. When he tried to approach them, ask what was wrong, their knees gave way and they fell to the floor, crying so intensely they had managed to make a sizable puddle on the floor. Once the tears stopped, they kind of just… lay on the floor, flat on their face, too drained to get up. It was like their tears had glued them down — X had to get Four to drag them out of the kitchen and into their room. They had glued themself even harder to their bed.
For the first few days, Two was completely inconsolable. There was an ungodly amount of tissues strewn about every corner of their room that X had to come in and clear up every morning and every evening (they wished Four would help them with some of the Two business but he was not the kind of person you could trust around a greiving person) when he would deliver their food, which they wouldn't even touch.
They didn't know if algebraliens actually needed to eat to survive, but that wouldn't stop him from feeling intense concern for their eating habits. He actually resorted to propping Two up and feeding them until they started doing it themself. It really was that bad, and it never really got better.
Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, and Two still hadn't gotten out of bed. X’s concern had slowly shifted into genuine fear for their mental health, but they put on a brave face whenever it came time to deliver their food.
“Hey Two,” he said, stepping into their room. “I have your dinner for you!”
He slowly made his way towards their bed, and placed the little paper bag on their bedside table. It was a hamburger again. It seemed to be the only thing they were willing to eat.
Though Two was eating semi-normally at this point, X would always stand by their bed and wait until they took a bite out of their food, which they did a lot faster this time. An improvement? X thought.
Satisfied, they started making their way out, until Two did something surprising.
“Can algebraliens die?”
X jumped at the sound of their voice. It was different to what they were used to — quiet, unclear, and uncharacteristically monotone — but that made sense considering they hadn't spoken in four months. Sure, he was glad they were speaking again after so long, but was that really the first thing they had to say to him?
Perhaps they had heard them wrong.
“Uh… can you… repeat that?” they asked, uncertainly.
“Can algebraliens die?”
Two used a much harsher tone this time, though you could tell by the crack in their voice that they weren't mad at X for asking them to repeat themself. If anything, they were mad at themself for asking their friend such a concerning question. And, yeah, he was concerned alright.
X had absolutely no idea how to respond, not just because he didn't know the answer, but because he had no idea what Two would want to do with that information.
“I don't know,” is what they settled with. “You're not… planning on doing anything, are you?”
Two looked away from them and took another bite of their burger.
That single action made X really hope the answer to their question was no.
For the last couple of months, all Two had wanted to do was sleep.
They didn't have the energy or the will to live to do anything else. It's not like they really could do anything else, anyways. Every day seemed the same to them now — force self to eat breakfast, cry, listen to contestants ramble about some new algebralien they didn't know anything about, cry, lie in bed in silence for a couple of hours, cry, force self to eat dinner, cry some more, rinse and repeat. They wanted to live as little of this boring, meaningless existence, but nowadays, even with the assistance of that milk, it was nigh impossible for them to fall asleep. No matter how hard they tried, their thoughts kept them wide awake.
They couldn't even begin to imagine how bad their eyebags were. On average, Two got around one hour of sleep a week. No wonder they struggled to even sit up to eat.
They felt awful whenever they thought this, but sometimes they wished the world really did end. Like, in the way that everyone dies. As far as they knew, their world ended when Gaty disappeared.
Gaty, oh, Gaty. She was a touchy subject in the hotel. Whenever they thought of her, their eyes would begin to water. They tried their best to forget about her, to accept that she was gone forever, but she always found a way to crawl back into their mind. On the rare occasion they would be able to fall asleep, she would appear in their dreams. For someone who was gone, she sure did show up a lot.
Two often wondered what actually happened to her. Was she erased from existence? Had she been kidnapped by this One person, like a few of their other contestants had been? Or did she die in a way that made it impossible for her to be brought back? That last one didn't seem very likely, their contestants had died in many ways of varying insanity, and they always came back once their names were typed up in the recovery center, but it did make them question their own mortality.
This evening they had asked X whether algebraliens could die or not. They felt bad putting their close friend on the spot like that, especially for such a loaded question, but they just couldn't keep it inside them anymore. They needed to know.
They needed to know because they just…
Couldn't take it anymore.
Every single second of their life was spent thinking about the same thing and nothing else. Things would be so much easier if they just… couldn't think anymore. If they ceased to exist.
They got out of bed for the first time in what felt like years. They stepped towards their window and opened it. The cool, midnight air felt nice, almost refreshing. They leaned forward a bit, and…
No.
They slammed the window shut and locked it.
It would be selfish to just end everything this way. Sure, their contestants were coping perfectly fine without them, but if they were to die, they wouldn't have anything to compete for. You can't have The Power of Two without Two.
Two sighed. They turned around, ready to step back into bed, to lie on their back the same way they had been for all that time before, but as they turned, a shadowy figure entered their line of sight.
Ah. She's come for me too, hasn't she?