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Tenna still wasn’t entirely certain he was awake. He had never been to Castle Town before, so he wasn’t sure if this was really it or if he was simply hallucinating, his real body slowly being concealed by snow as his damaged systems shut down. Sure, he could feel his arms and the constant pain radiating through his wires from the point where they were crudely reattached, but he had heard of phantom limbs before so he knew better than to trust it.
He tried to act normal anyways. It was probably for the best. He didn’t have his own room in Castle Town- well, he technically did, but the weather duo had invited themselves in immediately after he arrived and they never left him alone for long. They were probably trying to be nice. Or maybe they just pitied him, like the Shadowguys and Pippins who helped Susie fix him. The reason didn’t matter. Either way, Tenna couldn’t find the space to begin processing everything that had happened without an audience.
He decided the best solution was to simply not think about anything until he got to his new home. Susie had promised to find him a new home, after all. She was so confident someone would want him. He wanted to trust her. He owed her his life, after all. Multiple times over.
Sweet Susie had been the only one to finally listen to him. To hear him. To care. If it weren’t for her, Kris would have surely scrapped him after returning to the light world. As much as he wanted to believe otherwise, Tenna knew Kris wouldn’t have helped him. After all, Kris was definitely more annoyed with Tenna than they were with Ramb, and yet the egomaniacal plug was nowhere to be seen, left behind in the Dreemurr residence when Susie lugged Tenna all the way to Castle Town just to check on him.
When the Lightners and the Prince visited him, he made sure to focus all of his attention on Susie. It was the only way he could continue to smile and banter as if he were simply visiting Castle Town and not living there in a state of limbo because his old home was destroyed. He tried to think positively and look to the future. He would leave all the people who had already left him anyway and rebuild his beautiful studio from scratch. He had swept into an empty Dark World and transformed it to his will once before. He was confident he could build something even better this time, with so many years of leadership experience under his belt.
If he really thought about it, it was probably for the best that his worst fears had come true! If he had anyone he could truly rely on, he would have to feel bad about leaving them behind. Susie had only promised to find Tenna a home, after all, not Tenna and a handful of tagalongs. This way, he wouldn’t even have to worry about saying goodbye to anyone. He kept to himself, in the room he could kind of pretend was his old greenroom if he didn’t pay attention to how empty it was, with only Lanino and Elnina to keep him company, and he wouldn’t be saying goodbye to them because they left him silently first. This would make them even so he couldn’t be mad at them anymore, and he wouldn’t go to his new home feeling like he hadn’t resolved things with his old friends.
Tenna considered trying to resolve things with Mike. He had seen Mike’s new room in his brief introductory tour of the new studio Castle Town had apparently conjured for his former employees. Normally, Tenna would have immediately ducked into Mike’s room to visit his loyal right hand. The man who was always there, never not, until Tenna’s life was on the line, apparently. Sure, Ramb was the only person who had known the true stakes at hand aside from Tenna himself at the time, but why didn’t Mike realize how serious things were based on Tenna’s desperation? Hadn’t they been friends for years? Did they even know each other at all?
He hadn’t spoken Mike’s name since arriving in Castle Town, to be honest. Something felt… wrong. Thinking about Mike at all made Tenna feel uncomfortable. He realized he couldn’t quite remember when Mike left him. Was Mike one of the last to leave, or one of the first?
Tenna didn’t want to think about it anymore. It didn’t matter. Mike left. Just like everyone else. That was all that mattered. Mike left, so there was no problem if Tenna left him in return.
It was almost funny. Now that everyone had left Tenna, Spamton didn’t look like such a monster in retrospect. At least he hadn’t left Tenna when he needed him most. Maybe Tenna would let go of his little acts of petty one-sided revenge against his old partner. It would be hard to continue spiting Spamton anyway when most of the personal belongings he had left behind that Tenna would take his anger out on were lost with the closure of the dark fountain. He could always remake the papier-mâché Spamton head for contestants to beat up, though, so choosing not to do that meant Tenna was taking the high road and burying the hatchet, right?
His lack of anger towards the little mailman definitely did not have anything to do with his previous encounter with a strange rat, by the way. He did not recognize that rat, even if it looked and sounded vaguely familiar, because that would mean the worst possible person had heard Tenna lamenting his absence as everyone in his life left him and his world crumbled around him, and the idea of that being the case is so embarrassing Tenna might just die on the spot if it were true, and that’s why it’s not. It’s not true. That was definitely a rat.
Besides, if that wasn’t a rat, it would be too sad. It would mean something bad happened and his little mailman wasn’t out there living it up as a Big Shot without him. Tenna’s anger and hurt for all those years would have been for nothing. But that wasn’t the case, so there was no tragic misunderstanding to be mourned, and it was perfectly alright for Tenna to just stop being angry now and wish his old partner the best, wherever he may be.
Tenna was even more unsure if he was witnessing reality when Susie burst into his room, shouting that she might have found him a home and he needed to come with her right away. Maybe he should have asked some questions before they left Castle Town, but Susie’s excitement was infectious. He matched her toothy grin and sprinted after her toward the light of the outside world.
He was glad the Lightners couldn’t see his reactions when he met his new Lightner. The Lightner called him handsome and Susie introduced him by name and he wanted to cry. When Susie helped him into his new home, he shouted his thank yous and goodbyes even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. He hoped his gratitude would break through the barriers between their worlds and reach her anyway.
When the door closed, the interior of his new home looked rather dark and dreary. For a moment, Tenna felt melancholy. It was nothing like his old home. Now that he was alone, he had no more excuses to keep his feelings buried. He was worried that he would be left in this gloomy room to spiral by himself.
Rather than leaving the room, however, Tenna’s new Lightner plugged him into the wall and turned him on straight away. They manipulated his broken antenna carefully until they got a good signal before they laid down, bathed in the glow of his screen.
They tuned in to the music video channel. The one Dess always loved. The one Tenna hadn’t seen in years, the one that was finally unlocked when the Lightners disabled his parental controls.
As the image appeared, the translucent Lightner gasped, “Tenna, you cad! What is this… salacious music video?”
His Lightner… was speaking to him. His new family called him by his name. Treated him like a person.
Tenna had often been cruelly reminded by his fellow Darkners that the people he thought of as family would never see him as more than an object.
Maybe this treatment would be temporary. Maybe his new Lightner would grow bored of him all too soon and he will lay unplugged and dusty once again. It didn’t matter.
In this moment, he felt loved. He was happy, and that was already a better ending than he could have possibly imagined.