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Everything was quiet.
Except for the tapping of their feet against the rotted, broken ground, all Superstitional Realism could hear was the silence.
This purgatory that they were in, that they had failed in, was nothing but silence now. The only sounds were footsteps and her thundering thoughts.
She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. It wasn’t necessarily cold here, not really, but the chill still wracked her body.
The quiet was getting to her. At first, she had been glad for it, after all the snarling and hissing and demented, warbling, horrific neighing… but now it was just a reminder that she had failed. She had failed not only herself, but her friend and her partner and the one person she’d truly cared about in the end.
Superstitional Realism had failed Cyan. But, at the very least, she was not a failure alone.
She glanced to the side, and saw the person who was supposed to be the hero. The indomitable force who never relented and never gave up and never lost. The flawless hero with flowing orange hair and a perfected build and a neck now empty from the shining medals that had once adorned it.
Jovial Merryment glanced over at her and cracked a smile.
Superstitional Realism glared at her and turned away, not able to break the silence of her failure that clung to the two of them like a putrid stench. Instead, she scanned the muted, molded blue horizon for a way out, and found nothing.
Honestly, she wasn’t even sure how she’d made it here in the first place. There had been that twisted, off-white figure that looked like her, but draped with terrible malice and a body torn to pieces. One that smiled at her with a violent, lipless mouth that made her skin crawl and her brain freeze up in fear. How Jovial had faced that thing and stood her ground was beyond her.
Then again, Jovial had even squared up against the one that looked like her , but pulled and stretched into nothing but a series of streamlined, knife-like points, perfectly cutting through the air like it was all that thing was born to do.
Superstitional didn’t even know what these twisted creatures were, or what they wanted with Cyan. All she knew was that she had shown up, and Jovial had shown up, and they’d fought their hardest and still failed Cyan at the moment that she needed them most.
They were both failures.
Suddenly, a hand laid itself onto her shoulder.
Superstitional turned to the side, and saw Jovial offering her another smile, this one softer and more crooked and less sure of itself, but still confident in a way that would have been insulting on anyone else.
“Hey,” Jovial said, “Chin up, buddy.”
“Fuck you.” Superstitional spat. She stopped in her tracks, and Jovial took another step forward before stopping, pivoting on her heel to look at Superstitional over her shoulder. Her back was broad and confident and firm, holding up all that brightness that her now missing smile had brought.
“Hey, calm down,” Jovial replied, holding a hand up, palm out. Her lips pressed into a little frown, and she turned to formally face Superstitional, “I’m just trying to cheer you up.”
Superstitional felt her face peel back into a vicious sneering scowl. She threw a hand out at the diseased landscape around them and snapped back.
“I don’t need cheering up! I don’t deserve cheering up, and neither do you! We lost, okay?! We lost! We fucked everything up and now we’re stuck in this stupid purgatory with nothing to do but walk forever until we die while pretending we can find a way out.”
“W-Well, hey,” Jovial replied, face falling further, “Those things made it out somehow, right? So there’s obviously a way out, we just have to–”
“Shut up!” Superstitional stomped her foot, slamming it against the ground and letting the sound of the impact echo throughout the space they were in. Jovial blinked in surprise, and Superstitional continued, “Stop pretending to be positive for five minutes! It’s over, okay?! Just accept that we lost!”
“I’m just–”
“You’re not winning this one, Jovial! I get that the only thing you know how to do is win, but that’s not the case this time!” Superstitional felt tears springing to her eyes, vision going blurry until the only thing that stood out from the blue gray haze of this purgatorial hell they were in was Jovial fucking Merryment. “We lost! We’re stupid, pathetic losers who couldn’t help the one person who didn’t deserve a single second of this!
“I know you wanted to show up and be the big hero, but that’s not what happened! You showed up and we still lost! We still failed, and now we’re stuck here! Those monsters have Cyan and we didn’t do enough to stop them! I didn’t do enough to stop them! We lost! We lost, and now we just have to sit here and die because that’s all that losers like us deserve! Losers don’t deserve anything!”
Superstitional’s voice echoed across the ground even after she stopped speaking, letting that finally set of words echo in her head. Losers don’t deserve anything. They deserve to curl up and die for failing their friends and their loved ones because they’re good for nothing. Tears ran in fat drops down her cheeks, and her hands clenched heavily until her nails split her palms, and Superstitional’s breath hitched as she stared at the stupid hero that couldn’t save anyone.
Jovial’s shoulders slumped, and her stare dropped to the ground, and for once there was not a single drop of positivity to her at all. She grabbed at a bicep, rubbing it softly, and then glanced back up and made eye contact with Superstitional.
“Don’t say that,” She said.
“Why not?!” Superstitional snapped, “It’s true! We–”
“Cyan would agree with you,” Jovial muttered, and Superstitional felt her heart stop in her chest.
“...h-huh?”
“Cyan would agree with you,” Jovial repeated, “I don’t know how much she told you. She never really told me much. But… I really think she was broken up about not having a name. About being a loser, and not deserving anything.”
Superstitional’s breath caught in her throat, her mind drifting back to quiet moments with Cyan, where she marveled to her about what her name might be if she won.
If.
“I don’t think she was a loser at all. Just unlucky, maybe.” Jovial squared her shoulders, taking a deep breath and fixing her posture. “And I don’t think you’re a loser either. And neither am I. We just hit a bad stride.”
“H…” Superstitional stared in shock, taking a moment to scrub at her face with her arm. “How are you… confident at all? In anything right now?”
Jovial adopted a grin that only looked mildly forced.
“Cuz I’m Jovial Merryment! And I never go on a losing streak.”
Those words hung in the stale air for far longer than Superstitional meant to let them. They were so stupid. And Jovial was the last person she ever wanted to receive a pep talk from.
And yet, for a moment… for a moment Superstitional understood. Despite the gloom of this purgatory they were trapped in, there almost seemed to be a light behind Jovial’s confident form. There was inspiration in those squared shoulders, something to cheer for in that toothy smile. This was the Jovial Merryment that people saw crossing the finish line and cheered for with their whole heart and soul.
Superstitional wiped at her eyes again. She let her stare fall to the ground. And she thought of Cyan. Thought of those cyan tinted carrots, a warbling aura surrounding them, even as that slow, bloated monster reached out and claimed them for itself.
Superstitional thought of the girl she’d fallen in love with. The one whose sadness was betrayed in her tired smiles and halfhearted laughs and slumped posture after a long run race. The same one who was cuddly and cozy and genuine in private, who wanted to win no matter what some day. A girl with a drive so strong that it ran her right into the depths of hell. A girl who Superstitional wanted desperately to see again some day.
The haze filling this purgatory they were in seemed to clear up just a little bit.
They didn’t exchange any words, but Jovial’s grin grew more genuine as she stared at Superstitional’s face. She took half a step forward, and Superstitional followed it up with a half step forward of her own, until they were face to face.
Jovial held her arm out, forearm held up and at an angle.
Superstitional raised up her own arm, and tapped her forearm against Jovial’s, forming an X.
“Now then, enough moping,” Jovial said, “Let’s find the way out of here.”
Superstitional nodded.
Jovial’s grin grew larger. “I’ll race you.”
And she was off like a shot, feet pounding against the rotted, broken ground, leaving impacted footprints in her wake.
Superstitional took a deep breath. And then pitched forward, and sprinted after.