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He’ll be stuck here forever.
It's a subconscious thought; one of those thoughts that hold a level of absolute certainty because there was no reason for him to believe otherwise. The days blurred into one, the world kept spinning, the sun set and rose, and all while, Coiny and Pin were stuck frozen in time at the core of the Earth with nothing but each other.
Time didn't actually freeze, Coiny knew that much– Pin’s disintegrating corpse served as the only means to tell time was passing. She’s gone. Dead. Even when he talks to her and holds her corpse close to him to feel her body against his, she was just that: a corpse. But it was enough, he'd tell himself. Having her here to keep him company, dead or alive, at least she was here, like always.
It's ok. Everything should be ok because she's here. But, just as the lava took her life, it began to take the only remnants of her. Coiny's hands shake, desperate and clumsy when he grabs onto the ash breaking off her body and attempts to fit it back into place to reconstruct her piece by piece. It doesn't work. The lava keeps taking, and taking, until a corner of her upper base disintegrates completely under his own grasp.
He'll be here, and, eventually, Pin will be gone, leaving him all alone in the confines of the earth.
But he just got her back! He’d just helped her regain her face and a shiny new mech suit, and they'd just reconciled after sabotaging each other. He can't lose her. Not again.
Coiny wonders if, at the expense of them relying so heavily on each other, they were doomed by the world to be separated. Fate never favored their relationship, it seemed. If Coiny has to fight back time and time again just to be with her, then he’ll fight against the destiny that kept taking from him.
When her body continues to break apart through his frivolous attempts of reconstructing her, ash of her remains seeping through his fingers, his hands pause. There was no use; pieces of her body broke off faster than he could keep up. For once, no matter how hard he tries to help, he couldn't do anything except grab her corpse in his shaky hands to hold her and cherish their last moments before she was torn from his grasp for good.
Coiny refuses to believe it— fate won. He'll be stuck here. Alone. Forever.
"Winning the island would be great, but I realized today that... I'd rather lose than be all alone."
Her words which he cherished rang in his head, so much so he could pretend they were spoken in real time by the corpse now fading away. He held her tighter, leaning into her–
Until something enters the core to come crashing down between his hands–
And in an instant, she's gone. Her body breaks off into a million specks of ash to float back into the lava that took her from him.
"No, don't go!"
But not a single trace of her remains – Instead, a flag, blinking blue and green, took her spot; Tookher.
"Who would…huh– Book?"
White flashes in his vision, and somehow, someway, the heat of the lava is nowhere to be felt, and he’s transported atop a purple ocean fountain just beside a familiar drill. He blinks. A paper airplane glides in the sky just above him, his eyes catching sight of that familiar blue and green.
"Book…”
Coiny tends to pride himself on his cool composure, though contrary to his usual carefreeness, when the matter is centered around Pin, each spark inside him lights up and burns until impulsivity takes over, and now he’s running along a glass road, eyes on his target, drill weighing down in his hands, and sparks of flames seeping through each and every nerve.
For Pin, no one else matters.
The cold air hits against his body– a chilly contrast to being encapsulated in lava for the past few months–but the sparks stay aflame as he jumps up onto Tennis Ball and descends down, eyes locking onto his target.
A crack. A shatter. 3 screams fall down along with splinters of glass.
For Pin, he’ll do anything.
Coiny manages to jump back up onto an intact piece of the platform to watch coolly from above as they hit the floor. He wonders: is this what Pin saw when she betrayed him and watched him fall from that tower? Would Pin be proud of him following in her vicious footsteps?
His thoughts are for naught; Pin isn't here. Not in death, not even in ash; she’s gone. Coiny clenches the drill in his hands, wishing it were her.
Beams of light radiating from the descending sun seep through fluffy clouds passing overhead. With nowhere left to go, or more so, no one to go to, he sits down onto the broken edge of the glass road and watches the clouds, and he wonders if somewhere out there, Pin is looking up at the same sunset. At least the drill is enough to keep him some company— it did belong to her at one point. He keeps the drill by his side like it were his fellow WOAH bunch captain that always took her place right beside him.
The serene environment is the perfect background to lose himself in memories of days long past. So much so, he almost misses the footsteps clanking against the glass.
"What? Who’s–”
"Coin-y!”
And he saw her; not as a corpse, not as ash; not faceless, or even limbless for that matter. She’s breathing. Talking. Alive.
"Pin! Oh my mint, you're alive!"
"Yyyeah? What, did you think no one was going to recover me?"
Hearing her voice— her actual voice, and not a memory of her words repeated in his head— it’s more invigorating than even the sun itself.
"I mean, maybe? I just thought we were gonna be stuck forever!"
And when he holds her with all his longing, she doesn't crumble; doesn't disintegrate; doesn't disappear. She's whole, alive, here.
"I’m just happy neither of us are dying right now—“
Ok, so Coiny didn’t plan for the glass beneath them to shatter. Maybe this was his karma for sabotaging the challenge earlier….But he didn’t dwell on that—
Piles of glass shards litter the grassy plains, though she’s nowhere to be seen.
"Pin?"
….No!
Not again!
He can’t lose her again, not when he just got her back!
"Pin?!!"
"Coin-y?"
From a pile of glass out protrudes a familiar point, and then, out comes Pin, face poking out halfway through the pile. One of her utensil arms pokes out the glass to flail around. “Ugh, these limbs– I can't get out!"
Coiny freezes. Her face bears a discontent frown, and even when halfway in a pile of glass and a silly butterknife arm reaching up and out…
She's still the most beautiful thing Coiny ever laid eyes on.
Oh, how he’d missed her.
He can’t help himself when he hunches over himself and takes a deep breath in before breaking off into a fit of laughter. It hurts— he’s not smiled much over the course of these few months, much less laughed, and it hurts like hell to do so— but Pin wrings out every ounce of joy he thought he lost. Still laughing, he rummages through the glass to pick her up and place her down wearily. His grip around her is firm, mindful to hold her until her wobbly legs adjust to the ground and letting go when she stands firmly.
“Thanks, Coin-y.”
He takes her spork hand in his. "You have limbs again! These are awesome!”
When Coiny had first seen her in the lava, it reminded him of a time before her mech suit; His efforts to get her limbs and face back became worthless once she descended back into the Earth and lost everything again. But, now she’s here– A smile forming on her still intact face, and her limbs flailing in the air.
Pin sighs. "I guess. They're–" Her butterknife leg takes a step forward "kinda–" her other fork leg takes a step, "inconvenient."
"I can carry you," Coiny offers to help; of course he does. It was selfish, really, because he speaks with the intention of holding her again.
"Hmm, it’s fine.” Pin’s utensil legs give out under her, and she plops down to sit on an empty spot void of glass shards. Her spork arm pats the ground beside her. “Here. sit."
Coiny cracks a smile at the action; her new limbs are pretty cute. He wastes no time, promptly sitting down beside the object he’d yearned for all this time and scooting closer to her until their bodies brush against each other, and the firm plastic that touches his edge didn’t disintegrate upon contact. She was whole, and beautiful, and real.
The sun finalizes its descent down below the horizon, and white, tiny lights in the sky flash against a dark indigo. The air is chilly. His body leans into Pin.
“I’m upset you got eliminated,” Pin says suddenly. “I was really hoping you’d win.”
She stares up towards the glass road reflecting a sparkly silver in wake of the moon’s appearance. Given that a chunk of the road had broken off just above them, bits and pieces of glass scattered about began to glow that same shade of silver as the moon, and essentially, act as lights glowing around them. They were just measly shards of glass, but it appears as if the stars themselves had fallen from the sky.
Although, not a single light could outshine the beauty beside him.
“Oh…I guess I am eliminated. That doesn’t matter-” Coiny gives into the desire of holding her, wrapping his arm around her waist. “-As long as I’m with you.”
Pin scoffs. “That’s cheesy.”
“Hey— It’s true! I was so scared I’d lose you forever…”
To that, Pin subconsciously leans into him. “What, why?”
“I mean, we were trapped in the lava for, what, a couple months, I’m guessing? I thought Leafy’s challenge was still going on…”
Pin cocks a brow. “What do you mean we?”
“We were stuck in the lava.”
“Hm, no? I wasn’t.”
She isn’t necessarily wrong; it was Coiny who pretended she was with him in spirit, even when deep down, he knew she’d been dead the entire time.
“Oh. Well,I was, and…” His voice drops. The hand on her waist holds her tighter, as if he lets go, he’ll lose her all over again. “You were there- er, your corpse was there. It was the only company I had.”
“Coin-y…” Still in Coiny’s hold, Pin maneuvers her body to face him directly. Her spork hand traces along his circumference to observe how his copper is reflecting the moonlight. “What happened? How’d you get out?”
Coiny leans into her touch before taking a glance up towards the broken glass road. “I don’t know. One moment, your body, it just…disappeared. And then, somehow I was out, and then I saw your drill, and I didn’t think about it when I…”
She traces a spork hand over the corner of his mouth. “When you…?”
Coiny doesn’t mention how uncomfortable the spork is against him. “I, uh, wanted revenge. Against Book; it was her fault your body disappeared. And I took your drill and I kinda, sorta…” his eyes linger onto the broken edge of the road. “…Tried to drill a hole into Book’s face???”
Her hand stops. She blinks.
“Book moved out the way though, and I just ended up breaking the glass.”
Pin’s eyes are wide for a second, and Coiny swears there’s a sparkle in her eyes (though it might just be the moonlight). A smile, wide and bright, takes over her face, and it entices him to give her a smile of his own. “Wow! You’re so cool, Coin-y! It’s ‘cause you take after me, huh?”
A breathy laugh tapers off when he responds, “Yeah. That’s exactly it.
Pin’s body is now facing completely towards him. He moves his own body to face her, wrapping both his arms around her waist while Pin keeps her hand on him. Her metal arm scrapes against his own metal, a tiny screech ringing out; but he doesn’t mind because it’s her.
“I really missed you, Pin.” A hand around her waist moves to trace along the edge of her cylindrical body. His hand takes its time to glide absentmindedly along her plastic before it slots back around her waist. “I missed your face, your voice, your everything. I’m just…so happy you're alive.”
The gesture is playful when Pin rolls her eyes. “Of course I’m alive.”
The cold air is silent. Shards of glass twinkle around them to reflect silver light off Pin’s metallic limbs and point. She was just too spectacular, enticing his body to move on its own as he leaned into her, their breaths intermingling and—
“What are you doing?” She whispers against him. Pin doesn’t make an effort to move, her eyes locking onto his lips that are now mere inches apart.
Coiny can’t get himself to pull back. “S-Sorry…”
“Shhh.” She leans in further, just enough so that when she whispers again, her lips brush against his,
“I missed you too, Coin-y.”
Even when fate tried countless times to separate them, here under the moonlight and in the midst of twinkling glass, Pin leans in to slot their lips into a gentle kiss. Tears well in Coiny’s eyes. She’s here. She’s alive. And Coiny holds her, not in yearning, but to lean into their kiss that conveys what mere words could not.
A tear rolls down Coiny's exterior, catching a glint of moonlight.