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She sat in the hotel room, lights dimmed and door locked. Her one chance to get back everything she lost? Wasted. Pencil was far too focused on ensuring safety, that she’d nearly cause the world to end.
Wasn’t that the point in all of this though? Safety?
She couldn’t afford to go back into a labyrinth like the EXIT. Not after escaping. That’d make all her efforts useless! But if she spent all that time trying to leave, then why doesn’t anyone have an ounce of empathy or pity? It felt almost as if her team was dismissing her problems as foolish, but she had reasons! They just never understood them.
Pencil sighed and curled up tightly in her bed. Will anybody understand and have any kind of empathy?
Footsteps approached the room, and a knock soon followed. “Leave,” Pencil coldly muttered.
“Pencil?” the person behind the door asked. Pencil knew that choppy, pitchy voice all too well. What could Pin possibly want from her? If she hadn’t dropped something as small as Ice Cube refusing to swing with her for that long, why would she have already dropped everything she had about Freesmart at all?
She knocked again.
Pencil rolled her eyes, but had given up trying to force her away knowing how persistent she was. Tentatively, she got up to unlock the door, and in comes Pin, a slice of cake in her hands.
“What do you want from me?” Pencil asked, agitated.
“What point did you have almost ending us all?” Pin snapped back, matching Pencil’s exasperation.
Pencil sighed, avoiding Pin’s sharp gaze, the guilt gnawing at her. Should she tell the truth? That she wants everything she lost back?
“I…don’t want to explain it,” she replied, deadpan.
Pin sat down next to Pencil. “I can tell you’re scared of losing it all,” she said, looking at the ceiling. “I get that. The very words that come out of your mouth can work against you.”
“What do you know?” Pencil retorted. “You don’t know what kind of prison I was locked in. I had no freedom and I couldn’t speak up.”
“Exactly my point,” Pin replied. “We’ve both suffered so much from our own mistakes that we had to have any kind of self-expression taken away to stop those.”
“What are you even trying to say right now?” Pencil asked, coldly gazing at Pin.
Pin put the plate of cake down on the bedside table. “No matter what you went through, you can’t expect special treatment.” She looked at Pencil. “Your own hurt can’t justify hurting others.”
Pin stood up, leaving the room. “I had to learn the hard way,” she muttered, before shutting the door and leaving Pencil in the dark.
Pencil took the slice and slowly ate at the cake Pin had made. So much for the understanding she seeked; for all she knew, Pin could be saying nonsense.