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“I think I want to die.”
Jack's voice. It gently pierces through the previous quiet of the saferoom. It's the first time something has been said in a while but it's not an unwelcome sound.
Dave turns his head to look at him. They're both lying on the ground, flat on their backs. Slacking off as always. And he's never heard such a genuine tone come from his old sport before.
“Why?” Dave asks.
“I don't… well I guess being alive has started to feel more like a sense of duty than me actually wanting to live.” Jack shrugs.
“Huh,” Dave ponders for a bit, then, “What's stoppin’ ya from killin’ yourself then?”
Jack now looks back at him. His expression is amused, however. “Are you telling me to kill myself?”
“No! No, uh I mean, you haven't died yet so there must be somethin’ keepin’ you here. Not necessarily a bad thing.”
Jack just sighs and looks back up at the ceiling. “My sense of duty is what's keeping me here.”
“Oh.”
It's silent again. But not for long.
“Well if it makes you feel any better, old sport, I want to kill myself too!”
Jack looks at Dave again and snickers. “I said I want to die, Dave, not kill myself.”
Dave blinks. “Are they different?”
“Well, to me, yeah I guess.”
“How?”
Jack's expression crumples into something slightly annoyed. “God, don't make me try to put it into words, it's frying my brain just thinking about it. They're just different.”
“Alright, alright, old sport, whateva.”
But that doesn't stop Dave from holding onto it. Dying and killing oneself…
Suicide would be taking your own life but dying doesn't necessarily mean that too. Does Jack want something else to take him so he doesn't have to do it himself?
But he avoids disasters like the plague. He doesn't go in the ballbit. He doesn't talk to Jimbo in case he gets sprayed. He winds the springlocks in his stupid Freddy suit like his life depends on it. Well it does, but like… whatever.
He's going through many lengths to keep living so his words and actions don't line up. But Dave believes him. Maybe because he doesn't look happy. It's hard to read his old sport's feelings most of the time but every now and then, when Jack thinks no one is watching, Dave sees him. Standing in isolation. As if he's the loneliest person in the world. Maybe he is.
Who would want to live a life like that?
Dave's thoughts drift back to Jack's words. A sense of duty, he said. That's seriously all that's keeping him going?
“I can hear the cogs turning in your head,” Jack says.
Dave focuses back on him but his thoughts still race.
A sense of duty.
“Maybe you're right, Dave. Whatever's keeping you from killing yourself, not necessarily a bad thing or something.”
Whatever is keeping Dave from killing himself? He hasn't really thought of it either. Maybe it's something similar. A sense of duty…
“Aw, Sportsy, that almost sounded like affection.”
A goal, maybe.
“Shut the fuck up, man.”
A dream.
Dave giggles.
A legacy.
Dave freezes.
Oh.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Jack asks him, expression changing to confusion and slight uneasiness at Dave's sudden change in demeanor. “Stop it.”
“I think I get it now, old sport,” Dave says, a sort of wonder in his voice.
“Wh-really?”
“Yes, really,” Dave leans in close to Jack. “How can we leave this world when we have a purpose to fulfill?”
“Oh.” Jack looks surprised. “Yeah, you're right.”
“You and I, maybe we're not so different after all,” Dave says.
Jack makes a hum of doubt.
But Dave doesn't care. He was right. Dave was right. There is no one else but his Sportsy who can help him on this journey. It's like the universe lined them up together. It's fate. Bound by circumstance. Bound by Freddy's.
If he squints, orange and pink aren't really that far off from each other.
Jack flicks Dave's forehead. “I said stop looking at me like that.”