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They lifted their trembling hands to sign.
Please look at me. I’m here to help. I’m not your enemy.
Doey’s doughy face pinched with confusion and unrestrained anger.
“Help…? No one ever helped ME…”
Metal screamed under pressure as the lower platforms groaned and shook. The Player stood firm despite the trembling floor, their breaths steady, hands ready to sign. They faced the towering dough creature whose entire body had started to morph into something....other.... yet still quivered with fury.
Doey’s face twisted, dough curling and writhing like boiling batter.
“They LIED to me!” he bellowed, slamming a fist against the railing, sending vibrations rattling through the structure.
“YOU-YOU AND POPPY!! IT's ALL YOUR FAULT!! EVERYTHING'S TOO LOUD! TOO LOUD!!!”
The Player raised their hands, trying to sign through the shaking platform.
Doey—stop. I’m not here to hurt you.
“LIES!!!! THE GENTLE VOICES LIES… THEY ALWAYS LIE!!!”
Doey however, was too far gone in sorrow and rage to see anything but fear and betrayal.
“No more tricks! No more lies!!!...Not smart enough, not good enough….”
“WANT TO KILL EVERYONE WHO HURTS ME!!! RIP YOU TO LITTLE PIECES!!!” The doughman’s voice cracked under the intensity, yet raw and terrified beneath the anger.
“YOU HURT ME!!”
With what the Player assume was his loudest war cry, he stomped forward, the metal beneath him bending as he prepares to give chase yet again.
The Player was quick on their feet, setting up distance between them and the enraged doughman, ready to try again—slow, calm gestures.
Let me help you. Please.
Doey once again pay them no mind, too consumed with anything and everything as he charged towards the human.
“IT’S ALL BECAUSE OF HER, BECAUSE OF YOU———"
He threw his arm out— desperate for anything to shove away the wrath and sorrow that were crushing his mind. His doughy fist swept across the narrow platform.
The Player’s feet slipped.
Doey’s monstrous form froze as he watched them plummeting backwards off the broken ledge.
To him, that horrifying moment felt like eternity, seconds stretched into agonizingly slow hours as he witnessed the person that Poppy put her hopes on—their eyes, widening in what he assumes shock— was silently glistening with whatever faint light remained in this accursed hell as gravity pulled them downwards.
“……—no! NO!!!”
In less than a millisecond, his monstrous form twisted and reverted back to his soft persona, he then lunged, stretching his arm farther than he ever had. His doughy right hand caught their waist just in time—pulling them to a sudden, brutal stop mid-fall.
However, it was a stop too sudden.
Too sharp.
Too final.
The adrenaline had numbed him, yet Doey knew he heard that sound, the sound he desperately wished was not what he thought, he pulled them back up into even ground, panting, the rage evaporating into a cold, horrible dread. He cradled them in his arms, expecting them to move, to sign, to breathe—
‘please…please prove me wrong…I’m begging you———please… pleasepleaseplease——’
But the Player’s head rested against him with an awful stillness. Their hands—those silent, gentle hands—did not rise to speak.
Doey didn’t understand the silence.
He held the Player gently, waiting for their fingers to twitch, for their chest to rise, for their cloudy eyes to blink—even once. Waiting for anything that meant he hadn’t destroyed the only other human outside of his parents who ever looked at him without fear.
He did everything that came to mind, checked their pulse, listened to their heart, put his trembling fingers underneath their nostrils to check for their breathing—
But nothing moved.
And then the reality finally hit him. It didn’t hit softly.
It rammed into him. Utterly broke him, yet again.
Doey let out a trembling breath, doughy shoulders collapsing inward like his whole body was caving.
“No… no, no—this isn’t right. This isn’t real. You’re just… resting. You’re tired. You always get back up. R-right, pal?” His voice cracked and trembled, desperation clawing through every word.
“Please—please get up.” He shook his head hard, as if trying to mash the truth away.
When the Player didn’t respond, a low, broken sound escaped him. A sob so raw it vibrated through the metal platform beneath him. Tears—thick, warm, and dough-like—slipped down his cheeks and dotted the Player’s still face.
But deep down, he knew.
He clutched the body closer, voice breaking into hushed, desperate pleas.
Doey’s earlier rage evaporated, replaced by horror and grief. Of another sin that he had bestowed upon someone that did not deserve it.
“Please…” Doey whispered. “Please wake up.—I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry— I didn’t want to—…!!!” He muttered as he tried not choking on air, yet his cries fell on now dead ears.
But the Player’s half-open eyes remained fixed on nothing—quiet, vacant, endlessly still—while the faint yet clear traces of dried blood flowed down the wounds on their skin, their white buttoned-up shirt and black pants have long been soiled because of rubble, dust and debris. He averted his eyes from looking at the many other blemishes and lacerations on their body.
His trembling hands hovered over the Player’s cheeks, afraid to touch, afraid to see and admit how cold they were becoming.
Two rivers of red flowed down each end corner of their lips, not dramatic, just a quiet reminder of the violent stop their body had endured. Another thin trail had begun beneath their nose, slow and steady, like it didn’t quite understand yet that there was no breath left to interrupt it.
Their eyes were open, but not seeing.
The spark of hope that had guided them through the darkness of Playcare had faded into a dull, unfocused stare.
Empty. Glassy. Like a reflection with no one behind it. They looked almost fish-like in their stillness, the way eyes look when life has slipped away but the lids haven’t yet closed.
Their hands hung at their sides, fingers slightly curled, no longer forming the signs they always used when words failed them. Their chest didn’t rise. Their body didn’t tense or flinch under Doey’s panicked shaking.
They were simply… still.
He pulled the Player to his chest, holding the body tightly, as if he was desperately trying keep what little warmth remained from leaving their body.
His whole form quivered, dough sagged, breath stuttering.
The air around him was thick—heavy with the horror of realization, thick with a sorrow so palpable it pressed against their chests. It was the kind of silence that spoke louder than any scream.
As Doey stared at the Player’s still, fading eyes, their limp form held against his trembling chest, something inside him cracked open.
And from that crack, as if a colossal dam was broken, everything was spilled out.
Not gently. Not slowly.
But like a flood he could no longer hold back.
In their shared mindscape, Matthew was the one who froze first.
The oldest of the three, the wisest, the one who possesses the most knowledge. His matured mind rushed to make sense and make a timeline of what had happened. To come up with a reason, to rationalize.
‘Their fall was extremely fast especially considering the height we were at— it was likely around forty to fifty meters per second— ’
'— with such speed and even though it was merely several seconds, they reached a dangerously high velocity force— ’
'When something moving fast is stopped very suddenly, the force on the object is enormous.’ Was what his science teacher back in his old school said when he asked a hypothetical question of increasing the speed of something falling to the ground.
Feeling a conclusion was coming clear, his rationality swiftly turned into devastation. Disbelieving. Heartbroken.
The moment the despicable conclusion dawned on him, something inside him broke, shattered into a million pieces, so agonizingly cruel in a way he didn’t know how to hide.
Matthew wasn’t crying—well, not at first. But the silence that followed him felt heavier than tears.
He had always taken the role of the leader among the children.
Not because he wanted power, but because he believed he was supposed to protect the younger ones.
He blamed himself because he believed he should have been strong enough to stop it.
Because he’s the oldest. The one who should’ve known better. The bigger man. The voice of reason.
And knowing he wasn’t, broke him.
‘Their body stopped, but their brain and internal organs continue moving for a split moment due to momentum. The fall had enough force to damage the cervical spine—’
The child who was once the leader now has the loudest silent screams of guilt in his 'head'.
‘—resulting in their neck to snap because of the full force of the fall’s sudden stop.’
"The sudden stop…was their cause of death" it was my fault
The moment the answer was revealed from Matthew’s ‘mouth’, Kevin’s anger collapsed. His deafening wrath was silenced mid-scream. His anger was never truly anger.
It was just grief wearing the only mask weakness that he has.
‘…’
He said nothing, merely turning his ‘head’ away from the two souls that were mashed together with him as he feels the sin of taking yet another life crept up inside him.
As for Jack…
Oh poor, naïve, Little Jack. The youngest of the three lambs.
At first, he just…didn’t understand.
‘Why weren’t they moving, were they tired? M-maybe they just needed a rest?’ were all that his mind supplied him with.
Yet that only made it worse.
‘Why….are they… not waking up?’ he asked softly. His young 'brain' was unable to comprehend the concept of death yet.
Matthew couldn’t answer and Kevin was unwilling to grace him with a response, not that he ever does. Jack waited another moment; confusion quickly morphed into worry.
‘Did I do something wrong—? ...Was it me?’ His voice was tiny. Incomprehensibly small. Fragile.
Jack—in his innocent, naïve way—knew the Player’s 'stillness' was his fault simply because he wasn’t good enough.
His guilt wasn’t loud like Kevin’s or heavy like Matthew’s.
It was quiet, painful, and rooted in the innocence that made him so vulnerable.
A howl tore through him, so deafeningly loud that it echoed through the empty cavern halls with a hollow, aching grief.
Doey was no longer raging.
He wasn’t afraid. He was broken.
And in his arms, the Player remained still—far too still—leaving Doey with nothing but the weight of what he had done and the unbearable silence where their quiet gestures used to be.
"No...no, no...no NO NO PLEASE, PLEASE, THIS CAN'T BE IT!!!"
He kept clutching and shaking the lifeless body tightly in his arms, as if sheer force could bring them back, still desperately searching for the warmth that was no longer there. His shoulders heaved violently with sobs.
"Wake up! Please! PLEASE—" His words were caught in his throat as his entire body vibrated with hysterical denial.
The Player's body laid limp in Doey’s trembling arms, no longer holding its usual resolve. Their head hanging limply against his doughy arms as if all strength had left them at once.
“I… I should’ve… I should’ve been careful. I-I shouldn’t have… I wasn’t thinking—…”
His doughy body shook violently, sobs wracking him relentlessly, but he couldn’t let go.
“I didn't want this! I-I was just—…” But only the factory’s silence was what had greeted him in return.
The moment resembled a tragedy he once overheard—something about the famed fall from grace, a desperate catch, a life lost not from the drop, but from the snap when it stopped. A moment you couldn’t undo once it happened.
And in that empty industrial corridor, Doey realized—too late—that the only person who tried to understand him, his, nay, —their ray of hope, of salvation, an angel who might’ve been able to grant them all salvation— was no longer here.
He paid the rushed footsteps no mind, mind and body too numb to do anything yet still crumpling and gasping for air.
When Kissy and Poppy found him, none of them uttered a single word, at least Poppy didn't, surprisingly. Probably too consumed with shock with what she was seeing. And for once, Doey doesn’t blame her for leaving him and the rest of the little ones in Safe Haven alone all those years ago.
From the explosion, the smell of charcoal and burning metal from whatever remained of Safe Haven lingered, clinging to Doey’s doughy arms, the Player’s motionless form, and the broken remnants of the stones around them. Each inhalation brought the bitter reminder of chaos and loss, each exhale felt tainted by despair.
Poppy’s angel of salvation had been swallowed by the weight of regret and smoke.