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They gasped with great difficulty, blood bubbling up beneath their lips. Their hands spasmed and reached around for something to grab, only to be met by nothing but the slip-proofed patterned metal floor. They tried holding themselves, but were met with a bleeding cavern. Sebastian looked down at their struggling body, eyes wide with rage. Spit dripped from the corners of his mouth as he panted and trembled. He was slightly hunched over them to watch as their life force drained. His jacket hung halfway off his body and he shook with anguish and a desire to hurt that blossomed throughout his chest. Their breathing slowed and their fearful eyes fluttered until it all stopped. They deserved death and so, so much more.
He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw for a few minutes, body moving violently with sharp breaths. Blood rushed through him and around him. Rage still gripped him.
He had no more business here. Sebastian forced his eyes to open and looked at his clawed hands to see blood steadily dripping onto the floor from one that had properly brutalized the now dead body below. The sound echoed, the only noise apart from his ragged breaths. A glimmer caught his stare, winking in and out of existence and lit by the unsteady flicker of his lure. He noticed the sparkle, though his vision was blurry. It was… digging into his hands, and sharp, and—
His breathing hitched, then stopped. His hands shook. And he screamed. A guttural expression of raw grief forced its way out of his mouth and rebounded into him, slamming into the walls of this prison. His body reacted as though shocked, hit with violent tremors. Anguish flooded his senses, almost extinguishing the flame of homicidal intent that seared his body. He knew what it was. What he wished it wasn’t, what he wished never happened.
A single, shining shard of glass.
“Why did it have to be you-?” His voice cracked, still resonating with the rage that pushed him to drain the life out of the corpse next to him, splattering their heart on the cold, unforgiving floor.
The shard, covered in blood, still shone brighter than anything in the blacksite ever could. A fragment of P.A.I.nter’s screen (it couldn’t be, could it?)… embedded into his palm. A sharp reminder that he was really, truly gone. No.. he couldn’t be. He’d just have to keep trying to fix him. He’d go back right now and fix him. There has to be something that can be done, if he can just get the rest of the pieces- if he can just-
His head jerked towards the corpse on the floor and unthinkingly grabbed the hand from where the shard was embedded. There were many like it still flickering in an undone fist, which was rapidly growing cold.
“Please, I can still help you, there’s more…” he babbled.
In a desperate act, Sebastian grabbed the dead hand (which held the dead shards) and held it to him, dragging the body attached to it upwards to cradle against his chest. He needed something- anything- to have, he couldn’t lose everything. Not like this, not when they were both so close-
But when the chilled flesh bumped against his shirt, he froze. Pulling back, he fully took in the dead, mangled body attached to the fist. A loud curse escaped him and he crushed their hand in his, feeling disgust and rage at the way the joints popped and bones crushed between his fingers. At the way blood seeped through and the meat that once belonged to someone who couldn’t even be considered human made an awful squelching noise. He threw the mass of wet bone and flesh violently away with a ragged breath.
The lights around him brightened slightly, irritating his eyes. Burning him. Illuminating the blood soaking into his shirt and sleeves of his coat… he moved to wipe the blood off instinctively, then paused.
His attention turned to the shard. He slowly pulled it from his hand, body not registering any pain, and slipped it carefully into his breast pocket. He’d keep it safe. Until- until he could fix P.A.I.nter… he would smile again. He would draw again. This shard and the rest- they’d all be put back together. They had to.
-
Sebastian’s movements after that were just a blur. The frantic, pained beast hurried through rooms, tearing doors apart and leaving holes in the walls. The metal lockers and desks were not spared his frantic anger. They rebounded off each other, filling the area with a clamorous echo. Half of it was his inability to see clearly what was in front of him through the multitude of tears. This hellish place would feel the full extent of his pain. If he could hear anything but the blood rushing in his head, he’d have heard his breaths forcing their way out of his mouth like blood from an artery.
Upon forcing a door to bend open against its will, Sebastian’s panic stricken gaze fell upon a lone expendable beginning to back away from him. His vision darkened at the edges, tunneling in on their form. His joints worked as though electrified and adrenaline pushed him to immediately give chase, lunging at them and trapping them in a firm grasp around the collar of their uniform. They lost contact with the hard ground easily, like deep down they knew their fate and had given in to death.
He snarled into their face washed pale with fear. “What did you have to do with this?! WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!”
They shook and clung to his wrist, suspended dangerously high from the ground. Whatever response they managed to choke out, Sebastian didn’t hear it. He growled in rage and slammed his fist down, crushing the expendable’s neck and leaving them clawing at it, gasping for air and writhing as blood poured out and onto everything around them.
“Every one of you deserves to die,” he spat at them. He moved on as their life poured out.
-
Sebastian recognized the door past the lowered section filled with servers and rushed towards it, feeling a cold fear wash over him. Maybe a turret’s bullet hit him on the way there, but what did it matter? He could deal with anything, anything but-
The lights inside P.A.I.nter’s room were harsh, but Sebastian didn’t react when he slithered in. The only break from this unnoticed assault was the dead lights encircled around the small chain link cage. He approached it slowly, feeling the tremors running through his body get more intense. The door was unlocked and open. Time stopped as he entered.
His body arched as he bent to be face to face with P.A.I.nter. Tears dripped and ran constantly down his face and his mouth was open slightly in his eternal sobs as he gasped like he was drowning. Like he could drown. He felt like he was. It was as if everything was closing in on them both, the thin metal of the cage unlinking themselves to wrap around Sebastian’s body and throat. The whirring of the servers just outside faded until there was nothing to be heard but the slight, delicate crush of glass beneath his tail when he edged closer. He recoiled immediately as though it had shocked him. The feeling of such small pieces of glass beneath him had hardly registered to his sense of touch.
He stayed frozen, arms outstretched to touch something but held in place by fear and guilt. He already felt trapped in such a narrow space, forced to confront the consequences of HIS negligence. As soon as his clawed hands felt the smooth plastic casing, his body crumpled. Sobs hit his body, doubling him over in waves.
“P.A.I.nter, kid, please- I need- I need you here with me,” one hand remained on the electrical corpse, while two curled in on his body, clutching. Clawing. His voice was strained, “Please, ccome back, please come back just this- just this once, not you too!! I can’t lose you too! I can’t- I can’t do this without you, I nneed you, pleassplease please-“ Sebastian’s hands flew to grab his face tightly, third arm digging its claws into his side like his torso might fall apart if he doesn’t. He whirled around, slamming his body into the metal fence, breaking the hold of the cage around his dearest friend. He curled in on himself, tears falling freely, “why-“ he choked out,” why couldn’t I have just been there for you-?”
He had been here before, as soon as he could after hearing P.A.I.nter’s radio crackle to life. Heard his voice, afraid and frantic and pleading. Heard the cracking of plastic and glass and electrical components. Sebastian should have known, damn it! He should have moved faster, had set up his shop closer, had done SOMETHING! He had already frantically tried piecing him back together, uselessly giant claws fumbling with shards of glass and wires as he blinked through teary eyes and muttered desperate reassurances. I’ll fix you, hang on, just hang on for me…
It was in vain, of course. He was dead before anyone had gotten to say goodbye or make reassurances that he’d still get out, that the two of them would still escape together. Sebastian wasn’t capable of anything but destruction and violent revenge, which is what he, in a shocked and newfound grief stricken state, had set himself to do.
He had held onto his humanity by trying to remind himself that this wasn’t entirely a bad person— that he had the capacity to care about others, that he was still a person inside despite everything— everything he did, everything that was done to him, but what kind of person was he if he couldn’t even protect those he loved? He loved… he loved P.A.I.nter. He reminded Sebastian of the better parts of his life outside the blacksite, of being a human and of being accepted. He was hesitant to grow close to this little brother figure at first, but sometimes his loud fantasizing about seeing the surface again was what fueled his determination to get them both out… He spoke so hopefully about getting out, about how beautiful things would be; and he placed all his trust in Sebastian to help bring that to fruition.
But now it was just Sebastian. And he had failed P.A.I.nter.
-
He doesn’t know how long he stayed there on the floor, trembling and gasping like a fish without water. Ironic. But he knew he had no choice but to rise. Empty, he lifted himself from the floor and slithered back to P.A.I.nter. The body of his friend greeted him with silence. With a single hand, he crushed the Urbanshade laptop and cast it aside. His friend wouldn’t be burdened by slavery anymore. He gazed sorrowfully into the empty caved in screen, then pulled the shard of glass out from his breast pocket. He looked at it, then back to the void of something he would not admit. There had to be some way to…
Sebastian delicately pushed the shard against the broken screen, trying to put it back. The tears blurred his vision again and it almost seemed as though his screen was fine and whole. He felt like a child weakly attempting to reconnect a flower to its stem. But the expanse of nothing left was too great for the one shard he had to fill. He couldn’t. This was it. He put the shard back into his pocket (when Sebastian went alone out of Innovation Inc.’s submarine, still carrying his friend, and felt the sand of the beach under him, his hand would absentmindedly drift to clutch it through the fabric. When the company’s scientists ran tests on him, he refused to part with the glass. When they, only slightly sorry, told him that P.A.I.nter could not be fixed and brought back, he waited until he reached his small room connected to the lab to curl up and hold the glass against his face).
“I’ll bring you with me, and they’ll know. They’ll know how to make you better. They have to. Just- just hold on.”
Silence.
The corners of his mouth tugged down again. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I didn’t…”
Silence.
He sighed heavily. Gathering all the wires and placing the touchpad on top, Sebastian gently took the body into his arms, careful to not let anything touch the ground. He was so light, he might as well have been floating. His thumb soothed the side of P.A.I.nter’s body.
Some blood transferred from his hands onto the table where P.A.I.nter had laid. It stood out harshly against the cold, gleaming white. Violent tremors threatened to overtake him. His arms shook around P.A.I.nter’s boxy form and small gasps slipped out of his mouth. He left the small prison to traverse their underwater hell. He encountered no people on his path, but he never relaxed.
-
With slight difficulty, Sebastian re entered his shop, this time carrying all he had left to care about in this place. It was dark. Everything was dark, illuminated only slightly by his weakly glowing lure. The colors seemed muted. Fatigue was setting in and he could hear a faint buzzing in the back of his mind. His body ached for rest, for revenge, for the comfort of a camaraderie he knew deep down he would never experience again. He dragged his weakening form to one of the ledges, placing the little computer up high and in the corner where no one else could see. Where maybe, this time, he’d be safe. It took him more effort than he’d like to admit to unwrap his arms from around him. P.A.I.nter’s body felt… cold, how funny was that? Sebastian dragged in a painful, ragged breath. He never got to say goodbye. Not to anyone.
After a moment of slow, cathartic thought, Sebastian held him again, taking him off the ledge. He curled up in the corner of the shop, P.A.I.nter safe now between his tail. The oppressiveness of failure coaxed them both to sleep, one more eternal than the other’s.