Chapter Text
"If you care more about that damned rift than your actual friends, then so be it."
The words replayed in Black Hole's mind. His hands, real and warm and alive and strained with every horrible feeling at once, shoved the stairwell doors open. The metal doors slammed into the walls and sent cracks thundering into the concrete. Stinging cold wind blasted his face and whipped his hair into his eyes. His face felt hot against the icy burn. He didn't care.
"You can't keep living in fear all the time!" The conversation restarted in his head yet again. Every time it did, he tried to force it out. And each and every time he tried to force it out, it just came back worse.
Heavy, pouring rain choked the sky as he lodged one foot onto the glossy-wet roof of the hotel and pushed himself out, sending thick, sharp needles of water stabbing at him. His face stung. His hands stung. Even through his clothes, he stung. He could barely see five feet in front of him. The sounds of thousands, hundreds, millions of droplets of water careening towards the tiled roof and crashing into it filled his ears. The livid, howling wind only worsened the combined deafening sounds that sent waves of pain through his head. The frigid cold soaked his clothes. He didn't care.
"You can't just – force yourself to abandon everything you love for an entire year!"
"But I didn't abandon anything!" he'd retorted. "I was protecting everything!"
Tree's face had shifted into one of near exasperation in his memory. "You exhausted yourself to a severely unhealthy point that made us all concerned, and you just didn't care. You have to take care of yourself!"
"I care more about the world still existing than myself! What else have I done for it, anyways? Destroy everything that dared to live peacefully?"
He forced himself across the ground, not letting himself hover. Step after step, nearly slipping every time. He resisted bringing an arm up to block the weather's efforts to attack his face. He didn't deserve to have things easy. He had no reason to blame anyone but himself. Everything was entirely his own fault, and his fault alone. The deafening wind tried with everything it had to push him back, to resist his futile attempts at making his way across the slick, marbled surface, threatening to trip him up at any time. It tried to intimidate him, to scare him away, to freeze him to death with the soaking rain, to hurt him. He didn't care.
"You know you're not a monster, Black Hole. You didn't intend to destroy anything."
"But I still did," he'd cried back once more. Memories of bloodied, gored bodies had taken the forefront of his mind. The horrified faces of everyone that got too close, shortly before the worst of it took them. The broken spirits of those he'd stolen from. Whose ambitions he'd crushed.
"You still don't deserve this. You don't deserve to suffer in isolation. You didn't want to do any of that. You deserve to be here, with us. Even if you don't think so."
"I can't."
He forced his eyes open, to turn towards the pitch-black sky. He couldn't tell if it was the rain blurring his eyes anymore. He couldn't tell if the painful burning sensation across his face was just from the freeze of the wind against his soaked face, or if the heavy breaths tearing air from his lungs were just from the lack of oxygen in the air. He couldn't even see the clouds in the blackened sky, let alone the scenery on the horizon, the dead grass and bushes and trees sticking up like thorns. He couldn't tell if it was day or night. He had no idea if the stars even shone up there in the sky anymore. He didn't care.
"You're not even a black hole anymore! You can't do anything about the rift! You're a human, BH. There's so much to experience. So much to learn, and feel, and enjoy. You can't just live like this forever."
"I – I can't just do nothing. I at least have to – watch, to warn everyone if something goes wrong. What if –"
"You're not the only one helping, Black Hole. We're all working on solutions, competition or not. Everyone is working together. You can't expect it all to be on your shoulders."
He couldn't keep his thoughts straight. His knees wobbled and threatened to buckle under his weight. His hair stuck to his face and neck, sopping wet with rain, and his clothes clung to his body. There was no respite in the rushing wind that besieged him, magnifying the frigid icy temperatures against his body, the painful rain that fought him and jabbed him and soaked him to the bone. His fault, his fault, his fault, his fault. My fault. And the only thing Black Hole could make out through the rain, the dark, the screaming in his ears, everything: the blurred, glowing figure of the rift, just ahead, in the sky.
My fault.
"Please, Black Hole. It's not just you. We miss you. We miss talking to you. I miss talking to you." Tree's face had just slightly fallen from something fierce, something rigid, into something gentle Black Hole hadn't recognized on it before. Something soft. Something Tree must not have shown often at all. He remembered how Tree had stepped forward, just a bit. He remembered how Tree's arms had fallen together, one hand resting on his other arm, and how the thick, wide curls of his hair had followed through gently. How his shirt collar was just slightly asymmetrical. How his glasses reflected the light behind the two. How Tree had gazed into Black Hole's eyes, through them, into him. And Black Hole remembered how he'd gazed back into Tree's. Tree's rich, dark amber eyes. He thought he might have been able to see through them, too. But his mind was much too clouded with pain, and anger, and stress, and my fault, my fault, my fault, to be able to.
Black Hole had shaken his head and broken his eyes away. He had stepped back. He had pulled his arms in tightly towards himself. He hadn't been able to say anything. If he'd tried, all that would've come out was my fault, my fault, my fault.
"You can't just abandon everyone. You're not just hurting yourself with all of this." Tree's face had stiffened again. Whatever softness that had been there had reburied itself. "Do you know how many days we've gone thinking about you, how you would've liked this, known what to do with that, just missing our friend. All while we watched you slave away at some – god-forsaken crack in the sky that you didn't even have anything to do with, that you didn't even create?" His voice had taken one of a scolding, almost raged tone. But it wasn't venomous. It wasn't mean. It was pained. Broken.
And what did Black Hole do? He didn't even turn back towards Tree. He'd barely moved. All he remembered himself doing was furrowing his brow further. Nearly choking out a sigh, but instead swallowing, gasping shakily, then telling his best friend, his friend of eight years, his friend he thought he'd had no choice but to leave, in almost a whisper – "it's the only thing I'm good for."
He didn't need to be fully facing Tree to know that he had looked betrayed. That his expression had turned back to one of... some sort of anger. Not anger, but not... not anger. Pain. Hurt. Betrayal. His arms had crossed to his sides. He'd just... stared for a few seconds. And then, he'd silently turned around. He'd started walking away. Towards his bedroom. To go inside, to fume, to rage-clean, to do whatever. At first, he had taken a few steps, looking down just a bit. But then, he'd stopped. And he'd stood there for a moment. And then, he'd turned his head back towards Black Hole. Not all the way. Just enough. And all he had to say before he turned around again, before he kept walking, before he headed into his room, before he shut the door behind himself without looking back again even in the slightest, was just... one thing.
"Fine, then. If you care more about that damned rift than your actual friends, then so be it."
Black Hole wished he'd shaken his head again, shoved himself out of the cramped mindspace he'd been in. He wished he'd been able to break down his own walls. He wished he had just run after Tree, stopped him from shutting himself into his room. He wished he'd apologized. He wished that he'd admitted what he was doing was messed up for himself and for his friends. How he should have let himself have a break, how he should have acknowledged to his friend that he wasn't alone, how there would always be people there to help, to not leave him alone in his desperate, mortal struggle to keep the rift at bay. He wished he'd allowed himself to not feel like a horrible person for once. He wished he'd shown his friend how much he really cared. He wished he'd asked to spend time. To learn to be alive. To learn to enjoy himself.
He wished he hadn't crushed his first ever friend's soul. He wished he hadn't trampled all over his best friend of eight years' feelings. He wished he'd opened his arms and wrapped them around Tree for the first time ever and squeezed and squeezed and choked sobs into his shoulder and apologized a million times more and allowed himself to feel free and untethered for once and allowed his only first best friend of all his four billion years of life to feel acknowledged and appreciated and realized by him for the first time in over a year.
By now, he was heaving the same heavy sobs he'd imagined over and over. But not in the comfort of Tree's presence. He was alone on the hotel's roof, freezing cold, in the middle of one of the worst storms Goiky had ever seen, in the middle of one of the whole universe's worst times, where the sky was pitch-black and filled with sludge and depression and even more darkness. The only comforting words he got was the sharp howling of the wind pounding inside his head, the crashing of the rain against the slick, tiled ground, and his own wavering voice, which he could barely even hear over the catastrophic symphony of the weather around him. His own arms wrapped around himself as tight as he could get them, to the point his fingernails dug into his skin, trying to do anything, anything to make himself feel even slightly better, against the cold and the torture and the agony. But the only gentle words whispered into his ear were your fault, your fault, my fault.
His face burned against the bitter chill. His eyes squeezed shut, both droplets of lava-hot and shocking cold drowning them. He couldn't breathe through his throbbing nostrils. His only source of oxygen from the thin air was through his mouth, and the involuntary heaving and gasping and choking and wailing forced his lungs to expel any air he tried to get. He could barely breathe. His mind was fuzzy. He felt dizzy. He wanted to collapse and curl up and die and never come back. But he just... couldn't move.
And, in the distance, staring him down, taunting him through his blurred vision, mocking him sadistically? That god-fucking-forsaken rift. Know what? Know what? He fucking hated it. He wanted to tear it apart and burn it down and scream his rage right into its face and force it through all of the pain and suffering and torture that it had caused everyone, his friends, the people he killed, the people it almost killed, the people it had taken and changed and ruined. He wished it would just fucking end the goddamn universe already. Your fault. My fault. Our fault.
"IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?" he heard his own voice shriek from the rain. His throat felt grated and dry, and his tongue felt thick in his mouth. He didn't care. His grip tightened on his sides. "DID YOU WANT TO SEE EVERYONE SUFFER AND DIE AND HATE EACH OTHER?"
Black Hole didn't even know what he was doing anymore. He didn't know what he was good for anymore. He didn't know why he was here anymore. He didn't even know what he was thinking anymore. The only things swimming through his head were my fault, your fault, I hate you, I deserve this. It was almost like he'd begun to see the rift as some sort of conscious thing. Some sadistic, psychotic, apathetic higher being, only using the living, breathing, feeling, loving, hating, wishing, dreaming people of the world as its mere playthings to torture and waste. He hated himself. He deserved everything he was getting. He wasn't worth living for. He didn't deserve his own life. All he did was make everything worse. If it was the rift that brought him to life by some insane miracle of hell, it was the rift that could fucking fix him.
"JUST FUCKING STRIKE ME AGAIN ALREADY!" he felt his lungs and throat and voice strain again. He glared at the glowing blob of light in the sky with all of the daggers he could aim. He swung his arms out behind him, as if that would do anything. The cold blasted the sides of his body where his arms had warmed him. He couldn't breathe. He gasped, grasped, for air, for oxygen, that wasn't there. Sobs stole whatever scarce air he could get. "TURN ME BACK!" he screamed again. But the only response was the wind's own screams in his ears.
The rift stared back. Laughing at him. It would let him suffer.
"DO SOMETHING!" he screamed yet again. And then he kept screaming. And he kept begging. And he kept pleading. He screamed for death. He screamed for the end of everything. He screamed for pain and peace and revenge. He screamed with every trembling fiber of energy his lungs could expend. His head throbbed agonizingly, every wave of pain pounding another shot through his brain. His face burned and his throat burned and everything else was numb and the storm above kept falling relentlessly. But he just didn't care. The rift still hovered innocently, idly in the sky.
Finally, finally, it was all too much for him to handle. Too much pain. Too much everything. He gave up trying to get anything out. He gave up trying to stabilize his soaked feet on the slick tile. He gave up and let them slip. He fell to his knees. He collapsed to the ground. He curled up on the rock-hard tile. He tried with whatever energy he had left to hold in something from his stomach that was trying to come out with every wailing sob. He couldn't tell what was up or down or sideways or right or wrong or hot or cold or wind or rain or night or sunshine or abyss or starlight or today or tomorrow or rift. He didn't even want to anymore. The only, only two things he could ever want in this moment, were to see Tree one last time, and disappear forever. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
My fault.