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In Castle Town, there’s little for Tenna to do but think.
Oh, sure, he goes through the motions as anyone else would - he goes out for walks, he smiles and waves at the people he sees, he engages in small talk, he does all the things that one would expect him to do. And yet, when he gets back to his little room at the end of the day, he can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of emptiness.
What is there left for him now? After he’s failed spectacularly at every purpose he’s ever had, attacked the person whose estimation had meant the most to him in the world, and been left behind by just about everyone he would have trusted? And the worst part of it all - the part that leaves a stinging pain in the place where a heart would be if he had one - is that he’s starting to realize just how much of this is his own fault.
In his desperation to be seen, to remain relevant, Tenna had let himself become caustic, burning the people who got close. His employees ended up suffering from his audacious behavior, Kris and Susie and Ralsei got hurt when they fought (even though none of them seemed overly bothered by this, Tenna found himself almost excessively bothered in their place), and… the person he had loved enough to tie himself to with a contract… gone, and possibly suffering, because of him.
Spamton, his little mailman, his partner. Tenna had heard the warnings, heard alarm bells ringing as he drew up that contract, but had convinced himself that those things didn’t matter. After all, once they both managed to become “big shots” together, what could possibly harm them? The idea of consequences just slid over Tenna’s head so easily, replaced by images of himself - and the one he loved - enjoying fame and glory greater than anything they’d ever imagined. Nothing else mattered… but it should have, shouldn’t it? When Mike warned him of a terrible outcome, when Spamton continuously hesitated to provide his signature, those should have been signs to slow down, at the very least.
And in that room in Castle Town, alone, it is ever so easy to find yourself falling down a spiral. Tenna was never built for self-loathing - he was the star of the show, he was adored and he reveled in the gaze of the audience - but when he lost that sense of purpose, the rest of what he’d built came falling down alongside it. Because when he really thinks about it, over and over again, he can’t help but come to the conclusion that the common denominator in all of his problems is himself.
Just then, a quiet knock cuts through the silence. Tenna doesn’t know who could possibly be visiting him at this hour, but nonetheless, he makes sure he's smiling and looking like his usual peppy self before getting up to answer it. “And who is the lovely visitor we have here -” Tenna stops and does an exaggerated double take. “Kris?!”
Tenna can't get a read on Kris at all lately, so seeing them here now is quite the surprise. But he worries that if he expresses that aloud, he'll somehow scare them away. He hesitates a bit before asking, “To what do I owe the pleasure, Kris?” His voice comes out oddly as he struggles between sounding casual and gentle and confused all at once.
> I came to check on you.
“Oh, you - you did?” Tenna is nearly overwhelmed by the warmth that fills him from those words. That means that Kris still cares, that means they'll still look at him, doesn't it? “You came here for me? That's so wonderful! And kind of you!” Atop Kris’ head, an odd pair of glasses flash in the light, lenses shining pink and yellow. For some reason that he can't explain, Tenna feels a strange sense of dread come over him at the sight of them. He remembers seeing them when he fought Kris before, remembers thinking that they looked kind of tacky, but also remembers his gaze being continually drawn to them as if by some outside force.
There is a moment, existing mostly as a blur in his memory of that awful day, where he thought he saw those same shades on… some creature that appeared in front of him. Something about that so-called “rat” was so familiar to him, but trying to figure out why makes his thoughts go empty with static.
> Tenna. Are you okay?
He's pulled from his thoughts by Kris’ question, and his instinct is to smile and deflect. “Of course I'm okay, why wouldn't I be? I'm doing great!” He throws his arms out in a wide gesture, then has to focus single-mindedly on not wincing in pain when a jolt runs through them. The spots where he'd been… attacked… have continued to give him trouble. By now, he's certain that the injury is permanent. Just another adjustment added to his already long list.
Kris seems skeptical. Before they can pipe up again, Tenna continues, “No, really, I mean it! I mean, sure, I might have messed up everything that was ever important to me, but who's counting? I've never been better!” And yeah, after that disastrous attempt at deflection, Tenna deserves the withering look that Kris gives him.
> You can talk to me.
“Well… can I, though?” The fake and strained smile Tenna is wearing softens into something more honest - and also more bitter. “Isn't it more like what Ralsei said? That we shouldn't… burden you Lightners with worries about us? I want to entertain you, Kris, make you smile! I'm supposed to help you forget your problems, not become one of them.”
Kris hesitates. They seem to understand the position they're in: that Tenna is not real, that he was created for their sake, that his pain is completely outside of their reality and yet still just as sad as the real thing.
> I want to help.
> I want to listen.
The glasses catch the light again. Kris’ eyes trail up in their direction for a brief moment, and they flash brighter, as if somehow trying to convey something. Quickly, though, Kris’ attention returns to Tenna.
“You want…?” Tenna can't quite make himself believe it - not only is someone reaching out to him after everything he's done, but that person is Kris? “Are you sure?” His voice is so quiet, so unlike his usual self. He thinks he might be broken, and not just in the literal sense that his arms were.
> I am.
Tenna feels drained of any energy to argue; Kris’ sudden urge to help is hard for him to accept, but they are as stubborn as ever, and if this is what they really want then Tenna thinks he should just try to play along. “Well… alright, maybe things have been a little tough. I mean, who wouldn't be a little bit thrown off by all this sudden change?” Kris nods along with a serious expression.
> You’re doing your best.
“I am, but…” He laughs somewhat bitterly. “You know, there have been plenty of times where my best wasn’t enough.” Tenna really isn’t sure about saying all this to Kris, but they still have that determined look on their face, and so he continues on. “I’m starting to think that I’ve been doing this my whole life… failing over and over. Like with you, with the Knight, with…” He fails to finish the sentence.
> With your old business partner?
Tenna physically flinches back at the mention, and at the same time, Kris’ strange glasses nearly fall off their head before they catch them. “Oh - that’s right, you… you heard what I said to Mike, didn’t you?”
“You told me. You told me you had a bad feeling about that contract.”
“And even though I knew that… I still made him do it anyway.”
“I could have helped him! I would have! We could’ve been big together!”
“... You cared about him too, Mike.”
“It’s - well, I -” Tenna tries to come up with a way to defend himself, to deny his feelings, to do anything except admit to the truth, but Kris is still staring him down with that unusual sincerity and he just can’t. He deflates almost instantly. “I’ve been so angry all this time that he ran away from me… it’s easy to be angry. He left me. He never even said goodbye, he just ran, and maybe that was the moment that those ‘consequences’ started but I still thought… that maybe he’d come back. And there was nobody on the other line, so - was it all a lie?” He briefly turns his back on Kris so he can walk back to his bed. He needs to sit down. “But, ha, why would he come back anyway? I ended up hurting him, and it ended up being for nothing. I was…” Stupid, pushy, manic, manipulative, awful, awful, AWFUL - but Kris doesn’t need to hear him talk about himself that way. At the very least, he can keep enough self-control to not make Kris pity him like that. “I was wrong.”
> But you’re getting better.
> You have a future. You can change.
“Yeah, maybe.” Through tears, he smiles at Kris, whose gaze is now filled with sympathy. They walk closer to him, standing directly in front of him, looking into his screen the way they always used to. “But I loved him,” Tenna says, the first time he’s admitted it in decades, “and now, he’ll always be gone. No more chances for apologies or forgiveness. He’s gone, and it’s my fault.”
Tenna feels his screen go black, and with it, he lets his vision darken. Even with his screen off, his sight could still work, but right now he just doesn't want it to. He feels a brief, gentle touch on the top of his head, before hearing the sound of Kris’ footsteps leaving the room and the quiet tap of something being left on his desk.
> I’ll leave for now.
> I think things will turn out okay.
Tenna can’t quite bring himself to agree with those words, but he can’t begrudge Kris for saying them. It’s nice to believe that a happy ending awaits you, and he would never take that away from Kris. In fact, that kind of escapism is basically what his whole existence is about. But he himself has lost the ability to see the world through that kind of lens, as the mistakes he’s made keep on piling up and he continues to lose the things he cares about.
When Tenna finally looks up again, he sees that what's been left on the desk is that pair of glasses. Looking at them, the memory of them shifting into that creature comes back to him once more. He heard Kris walk to the desk and put them down - why would they leave this item here on purpose? Facing the lenses, he asks aloud, “Are you… is someone there?”
The glasses shake a little bit in response, confirming Tenna's suspicion. Are they some kind of alternate form? Either way, they're connected to Kris somehow, and knowing that, Tenna starts to feel like he should take responsibility for acting out towards them - or rather, the rat-like creature they contain. “Look. I apologize for calling you a rat before, and also for the, uh, the insulating foam. That's no way to treat an audience member! I was just - well - I was stressed.”
‘Stressed’ is a pretty big understatement, but Tenna doesn’t see any need to explain himself fully to a pair of glasses; that is, until they lift up off the desk and shift into the other form, just as they had earlier. And really, now that he looks more closely, the person that now stands on the desk is not that much like a rat. He’s short, his clothes are dirty, and he has… somewhat puppet-like joints… but definitely not as horrifying as Tenna’s earlier outburst would have suggested.
He still looks familiar.
“YOU [new],” the man says unceremoniously, not bothering with an introduction. His voice sounds alien, bitcrushed with seemingly random interruptions, and he looks angry, a strange expression on him that twists up his plasticky features. “YOU [when push comes to shove] ME INTO THAT [legally binding] EVEN THOUGH YOU [NEW!!]!”
Suddenly Tenna understands why he looks so familiar. The accusation leaves him reeling as he tries to process what’s in front of him - Spamton, back after all this time, why does he look like that? Is that - is that my fault? The anger, probably deserved, not just over the contract but over the way that Tenna had treated him upon their ‘reunion’, how could I not have recognized him? How far in denial had I been? The realization that Spamton must hate him, must have no love left for him, and somehow that hurts the most no matter how much Tenna had tried to convince himself that he didn’t care over the years, I know I said I hated you, but I just felt betrayed - how could I ever hate you? Do you hate me, now?
In the end, Tenna is stunned into silence, allowing Spamton to continue his rant. “U REALLY HAVE [nothing.] 2 SAY? I THOUGHT [you really do care] BUT OH, WAS I [Bzzt! Wrong answer!]! YOU USED ME!”
Tenna feels the instinct to defend himself, but what can he say? He does care, he wasn’t using Spamton purely for his own gain - but his actions really do make it seem that way. He can’t help but think that he completely deserves this outburst. The guilt over how things had ended, the fact that he hadn’t heeded the warnings, that had always been there. Now, Spamton is externalizing it, validating it through his own anger, and all Tenna can think to do is let him.
But Spamton is unsatisfied with the lack of response. “COME ON, [trash heap], DON’T YOU [looooove~] THE SOUND OF UR OWN VOICE? YOU WON’T EVEN [apology video]?” He can’t reach Tenna from the desk, but that doesn’t stop him from gesturing wildly in his direction. An odd glitch distorts his face for a moment, but it dissipates quickly and he shakes it off.
That’s Tenna’s cue to say something, anything, but he feels like he can’t breathe. A burning anxiety flares in his chest and seems to travel down every one of his wires, causing his limbs to shake and tears to build up on his screen. This, this confrontation, is somehow more painful than losing his arms, as if the Knight has come again to slash directly through his heart. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, his voice breathy and quiet and pathetic.
For one tense moment, Spamton seems to hesitate, but clearly he isn’t done with Tenna just yet. “And what now?” Spamton’s voice somehow comes out clear, and it’s exactly the way Tenna remembers it, and that’s another stab to the chest. The lenses of his glasses have faded into a dark static. “Even if I accept your apology, what good does it do? You ruined my life.”
The anxiety burns brighter, and Tenna feels his mechanisms overheating now, a clear signal to start trying to calm down before his circuitry gets fried. Unfortunately, this situation doesn’t have an out, and the urge to have an outburst of his own only grows until he can’t contain it anymore. “I never wanted this!” His voice is too breathless to be a yell, but the urgency is all there. “I never wanted to hurt you! I thought - I thought that we could do anything! We were going to be big together, we were supposed to be untouchable! If I’d known th-that it would do this, I wouldn’t - I never would have -” His thoughts are an endless spiral of grief and regret, a jumbled mess that leaves his mouth in gasps and stutters. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Everything hurts. The last time Tenna had a meltdown, it was mostly fear that drove his actions - fear of obsolescence, fear of disappointing his audience. It was a miserable circumstance to be in, and while he knew he’d handled it poorly, he figured that he could be at least partially excused due to the mess of a situation he’d been dealing with. This, though, this hurts down to his very core, guilt burning him from the inside out. No apology could be enough, no atonement would fix what’s already been done. Spamton has every right to react this way, and Tenna takes it like a punishment, no matter how badly it aches.
And the ache isn’t just emotional. The sudden panic is overwhelming, his head is fuzzy with heat, the constant shaking is starting to make his scarred shoulder joints hurt. The thought that comes next isn’t I need to calm down or I need some space, it’s I can’t believe I’m making this about myself again. He once again eyes the state of Spamton’s body and concludes that no matter how painfully he breaks down, Spamton must have gone through worse.
But Spamton’s gaze is a little bit softer now than it was before. His posture has settled into something more neutral and less accusatory, and the pink-and-yellow light has returned to his lenses. “DO U [really, really mean it]?”
“Yes!” Tenna nearly chokes in his rush to answer. “Yes, and it - it was all because I loved you.” He’s desperate for Spamton to understand this point, even if there’s no love left for him in Spamton’s heart. “I still do, I never stopped - and I hate that I did this to you, I hate that all you got was suffering.” His vision is blurring from tears, static, or both, but he doesn’t let himself look away.
Spamton is right on the edge of the desk, as close to Tenna as he can get, but the desk is too far away and he can’t quite reach far enough to touch. Do you want to hit me? Tenna braces himself, waiting for Spamton to jump on him or to get pelted by projectiles, but neither of those things happen. “[10$]. [trash heap]. HEY.”
“W-what?” Tenna sniffles. Most of the anger is gone from Spamton’s voice, but Tenna is still unable to calm the anxiety - it’s like a floodgate has been opened, and he’s at the mercy of this mental spiral that he just wishes would stop. It’s starting to make him feel lightheaded, and he has the fleeting thought that maybe he’ll finally get a break from this if he passes out.
There’s a brief moment of stillness before Spamton abruptly jumps from the desk towards the bed where Tenna is sitting. He undershoots it, and Tenna winces when he slams against the bed frame, but he shakes it off easily and makes a somewhat bug-like climb up the side until he’s seated beside Tenna on the mattress. Once there, he presses a hand to Tenna’s thigh, a small yet firm point of contact. “CALM DOWN,” he says. “UR GONNA [burn up].”
“I can’t,” Tenna whines. This is probably the most pathetic he’s ever felt, maybe even worse than the day that Spamton left. His whole perceptual experience is heat and shaking and pain - and that little bit of pressure from Spamton’s ball-jointed hand. “It’s too much.” He’s still uncomfortably aware that this might read as guilt-tripping - a tactic he’s been known to use, so he couldn’t blame Spamton for thinking it - but he honestly isn’t trying to do that, and the thought that he’s somehow forcing Spamton to comfort him only makes him feel worse in a terrible self-deprecating cycle.
Spamton’s weight shifts, his hand suddenly pressing down way harder, and before Tenna can even flinch, Spamton has vaulted himself up to sit on Tenna’s lap. “IM STILL [angry],” he clarifies while Tenna stares at him in shock. “BUT. I STILL.” He hesitates for a long moment. “I [believe] YOU. AND I -” Spamton’s voice cuts off as a severe glitch briefly destabilizes him. Tenna feels an odd tingling sensation where the glitching body parts connect with him. Instinctually, he reaches up to provide a grounding touch, and is reminded again of the soreness of his shoulders. Again, though, Spamton recovers fast and seems content to pretend that whatever it is isn’t happening.
As if Tenna doesn’t feel bad enough already, now he can blame himself for yet another thing. That must hurt. Is that something I caused, too? Spamton breaks him out of this train of thought by yanking his tie, forcing him to lean forward. “STOP.” He sounds genuine, now, as much as it’s possible with that loud and bitcrushed tone. “DON’T [stop, help me, it burns] URSELF. PLEASE.”
Spamton being nice with him right now is confusing. It clashes against the spiraling self-blame, even more so when Spamton leans forward and rests himself against Tenna’s chest. Tenna is sure that he doesn’t deserve this treatment, that he can’t accept it, but he can’t exactly deny the comfort being offered to him unless he actually wants the anxiety and guilt to fry his circuitry. And, more importantly, he’s already admitted that he still loves Spamton - even the worst self-deprecation won’t prevent him from taking a second chance if Spamton is willing to offer one.
Hesitantly, Tenna rests his hand on Spamton’s back, and is relieved when he doesn’t pull away. “Please tell me you don’t hate me,” he says, knowing how selfish he’s being but allowing himself this one concession. “Even if you still do, even if you’re gonna leave again, please just say it, just this once.”
He’s sure that’ll be the last straw, but it’s not. Spamton doesn’t even move. “GUESS U HAVEN’T [got any change?] THAT MUCH. [I love TV!], OK? I WANTED TO BE [Big Shot] WITH U TOO. THAT’S WHY I [signed away my rights]. MAYBE… WE CAN [Press Reset].” The hope in Spamton’s voice is surprising, at first, but maybe it’s not so unexpected after all. There’s no doubt in Tenna’s mind that Spamton has been even more lonely than himself… this connection with Tenna, this closure, it might be something Spamton needs rather than wants. And maybe this collective desperation, this hurt that they both are victims of, isn’t the healthiest foundation for a relationship. But were they ever really healthy to begin with? Can’t they at least build something similar to the way it was before, even on this shaky ground?
With that, Tenna can finally let himself breathe again. As he sits there with Spamton, those self-hateful thoughts don’t necessarily disappear, but they become easier to dismiss. What Spamton said isn’t quite forgiveness - and earlier, he said he was still angry - but he is willing to try again, and Tenna couldn’t ask for more than that. There’s hope in it, there’s love in it, and maybe when Kris said ‘you have a future’ this is what they meant.
The panic recedes, the shaking eases, the heat cools down, and Spamton stays. “I’m never going to let anything happen to you again,” Tenna says, meaning it more than he’s ever meant anything else. “For however long we’re together, I will never, ever make that mistake again.”
He knows he can’t promise that; even back then, they fought with each other and made each other upset more often than either would like to admit. But what Tenna really means by this promise is that he’ll listen from now on, he’ll take these things more seriously. Spamton seems to understand, as he leans in a little bit closer, reciprocating with a slightly misguided promise of his own. “AND I’LL STAY.”
From outside the door, Kris grins to themselves.
* Seems like the Dealmaker has found a better home.