Chapter Text
I haven’t moved in hours. I didn’t know it had been hours, but the TV broadcast had started airing evening shows.
The previous airing was an episode of some non-descript comedy I don’t care to describe. The laugh tracks are far too loud for me to understand.
Whatever. The episode has ended now. The TV rolls to the next slot. It transitions to show Valk’s shiny, polished smile, and Dom’s brooding demeanour sat next to him. Up next was an interview. How nice.
My glasses were left on the coffee table. I don’t know why I couldn’t be bothered to reach for them, I get headaches without glasses. But here I am, staring at two yellow and purple blobs. The camera pans to show a bright, neon pink blob. So pink it hurts my eyes. They’re sat, from what I can see, politely.
Valk pipes up, chipper as usual. “The people at home call you a visionary, some even say you saved the country,” he explains. Oh. They’re interviewing a member of the government?
Dom speaks with his usual low and deadpan voice. “You’ve helped pioneer some of the most efficient technologies we’ve ever seen here at Blackrock. Several models of Biografts, harnessing power from these crystals… How did you do it?”
I freeze. I’m suddenly snapped out of this zombie-like trance. I reach an arm forward and grope for my glasses, clumsily bringing them to my eyes.
There he is, sitting on the couch, legs crossed, grinning with his eyes. Subspace.
“Well, you see,” he begins, in that horrifically nasally, croaky voice of his. He talks too loud for the mics to adjust. “There was a time I naively thought this power could be used for something more… Insignificant to our war efforts!”
Valk nods with a pearly grin. “Oh, I see! And what were these ideals? How did you get out of them?”
“Well,” he begins. “It took me a while to accept that sometimes brute force is needed as opposed to catering. If you never tell a toddler no and instead coddle them, you’ll be dealing with a kid who can’t behave in the slightest!” He laughs. So does the audience. It sounds fake. All of it is fake.
“I used to have an assistant… Lovely, but a lost soul he was. But, I don’t hold grudges,” he says with a prideful nod. “We had our creative differences, and eventually had to go our separate ways. I hope he’s doing alright.”
Subspace touches his chest, right where his heart is. His heart, that’ll soon be barely holding on, that’ll soon stop as he wastes away. He looks mellow, but it’s a shallow mellow. His left eye has started to gloss over and go cloudy. His capillaries hiding under his skin look purple. His mouth is hidden by a gas mask. It makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Dom nods, what I can make out of his face under the hood mellow too. “You’ve spoken about sacrifice before. About how progress demands it.”
Subspace nods, eyebrows downturned in a painfully faux expression. “Sacrifice, yes, but also commitment,” he pauses, glancing directly at the camera. “I don’t chase those who leave. If they truly mattered, they would have stayed.”
I stop breathing momentarily. The audience claps. I feel like I’m about to throw up. I haul myself off of the sofa, stumbling towards my bed, flopping face first into the mattress. My glasses fall askew on my face, I don’t bother to fix them.
I’ve left my missing eye bare all day. I hadn’t bothered to cover it with the eyepatch. But now it suddenly hurts. A searing, unbearable pain. Behind the socket. It leaks down to my jaw. I cup the empty socket and claw at it, like it’ll relieve anything. The pain gets worse.
I’ll take out my second eye. I’ll blind myself forever, so then maybe I won’t have to look at his wretched face anymore. Maybe I’ll forget what he looks like, maybe I won’t have to watch my mark slowly kill him. Maybe I’ll kill myself first.
I’m not thinking at all. Everything is too loud, my jaw hurts, my eye hurts, and I can’t breathe. I’m leaning over my bedside table, desperately trying to catch my breath, until I scramble to find a mug, discarded and still smelling faintly of coffee.
It leaves my hands, and I don’t have time to process it. It shatters against my bedroom wall, the sound big enough to fill the entire room, leaking over into the next door apartments.
The next thing I hear is a scream. Apparently it was my own. It’s raw and ugly.
I fall to the floor, curling up into a ball on the warm carpet, rocking, desperately waiting for it to pass.
It eventually does. I could hear the electricity coming from the TV in the front room. I can hear Valk’s chatter. Subspace is gone.
I’m sitting, at the foot of my bed, staring at the fragmented pieces of an old mug I never thought I’d cared for.
Someone absolutely heard that.
The thought slowly sinks in, and I’m suddenly more embarrassed than I am angry. The searing pain in my eye is almost nothing, it’s more of a dull, insignificant pain. I let my head fall forward and squeezed my good eye shut.
Minutes pass. Maybe a few more. Time’s bad lately.
A knock sounds at my front door. So gentle I can barely hear it over the TV in the other room. It sounds again.
A voice comes from behind the door. “Hey,” he says, sounding young, still hopeful. “You good in there?”
It’s my neighbour. For certain. I didn’t know him. Some kid that moved in a few weeks ago. He looks like the usual rowdy kid, just a little more grown up, and cobbled together.
“I’m okay,” I answer automatically. It sounds convincing enough to a passer-byer, but this kid is a witness.
“Cool,” he replies, as if I’ve passed a test. “Didn’t sound fine.”
I consider pretending I’m not home. That he’s in the midst of some schizophrenic episode. But that’d be too hard to pretend. My throat hurts, and the TV is still going on about our beautiful country in the room next door.
I unlock the door.
He doesn’t look into the apartment, only up at me. I’ve got a few inches on him, his long, protruding horns jutting a bold orange and blue from his forehead, bandages covering his scraped up face.
I probably look terrible. I don’t glance into mirrors that much, but I know I haven’t shaved in a long time, and I’ve slept far too much, so my eye bags must be terrible. I probably look like some poor addict. The empty socket doesn’t help.
“Yo,” he speaks, softer as he sees my face. “You want water or something?”
I nod.
He takes a step inside as if he’s been here before, digging around in his bag for a bottle of water he just so happened to have on hand. He glances over at the open bedroom door, sneaking a peek at the broken mug.
“Rough night?” He asks with a smile.
I scoff. It’s hollow. “Something like that.”
I take the water as my hands still quiver. The TV applauds behind us.
The kid stares over at the glowing box. “Yeah. They’ve been real loud lately.”
I nod.
———
The TV is off the next time I enter the living room.
My shoes have been off the entire time. I always found people wearing shoes inside a little weird. The kid opposite me seemed to think otherwise, sat on the arm rest of the couch, one leg dangling off the side, the other his knee up to his chin. He looks like an antsy child, combat boots still confidently on his feet.
He’s staring at the wall in silence, zoned out. He blinks as I enter and glances in my direction. For how scruffy he looks in general, his eyes have a surprisingly childlike allure to them.
“How old are you?” I ask, more by mistake than anything.
The kid raises an eyebrow with a smirk. “Uh, twenty? Why?”
I hum and stare down at my feet. “I don’t know. You seem young. I don’t see you around much. Ice breaking.”
“Ah, yeah, I see. How old are you then, huh? I see those greying horns,” he grins, teeth unusually sharp.
I roll my eyes. “I’ve only got a decade on you. Shush.”
“Oooh, I see, old man,” he lazily flops back on the couch. I’m surprised he’s made himself at home, in my clutter. “I’m Coil. If you didn’t know.”
I nod slowly. “…Medkit.”
He perks up at that. “Oh, fun! A naturally spawned healer! That’s rare.”
“Yeah. Rare. A curse. I don’t like being a doctor.”
Coil straightens, his eyebrows shooting up. “Oh, damn. Really?”
“I’m sure you can imagine why it’s stressful.”
Coil nods solemnly. “…You throw mugs at the wall often?”
“No.” I reply curtly. My legs are starting to hurt from standing. Sitting next to the stranger would be awkward. “Not loudly.”
That comment earns a smile from the kid.
He’s sitting behind my coffee table, half a dozen dirty plates stacked on the wood. I usually clean the plates with wet food on them, anything that can grow mould. I’m weirdly afraid of the stuff.
“So, how long you been here?” He asks, making conversation. I’m too tired to find it annoying. The aftermath of panic is a type of tiredness I can’t describe.
“Long enough to know which walls are thin. And who’s loud,” I scoff despite myself. “Have you had a soldier knock on your door yet?”
Coil scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Yeah. I missed a couple, since I’m never here, but they always want me for something.”
I nod, shifting the weight between my feet awkwardly. I don’t normally fidget. I guess I feel sort of vulnerable. “I’ve never opened the door to them. They don’t seem to do much if you don’t. At least they don’t send Biografts. I can’t stand those things.”
“Yeah. They made the design weirdly cute for a bunch of killing machines,” he slides off the couch, staring up at me. “Sit down, old guy. Your back probably hurts.”
I sigh, reluctantly dragging myself to plop where Coil had been sitting. “Stop that.”
Coil stands, presumably to pace around the room. He doesn’t snoop, just wanders. The silence is too awkward for my liking, I’ve run out of things to say. Coil seems to pick up on this. “How are you doing with food?” He asks.
I lift my head. “...I’m alright.”
Coil nods, stretching. “Nice. I’ll get out of your little cave now,” he smirks, making his way towards my door.
I haven’t had company in a long time, it makes me realise. Sword hasn’t come over for a while. He didn’t necessarily disappear often, but he’d sometimes leave for a few days at a time to run errands. He’s involved with Zuka’s business, after all.
“Yeah. Alright. Thank you,” I say.
Coil nods. “I’m next door sometimes, if you need me.”
The door clicks shut behind the kid, and I stare back at the TV. It’s unplugged at the wall. Nothing but my reflection stares back at me.
The kid reminds me of Sword. He used to pace like that. Not snooping, just restless.
I eventually lock my door.