Work Text:
Subspace never believed that he’ll ever die.
Each breath he took doesn’t count; each step he took is just another addition to that of a repetition. Nothing more nothing less,
Subspace Tripmine never dies. His name will forever be echoed against the walls of the Inpherno, creeping and strangling those who deem his downfall. His figure will reign alone above all else. Yes, that has always been his only reason to keep going.
Each strike purposeful, like he had always known where to be, and where to exist.
Subspace won’t ever die. He won’t ever touch the ground without bloom his everlasting victory against those who had viewed him as nothing more than “another cog in the machine.” He is more than that; he is stronger, and definitely more alive than that.
Maybe he’s far from that.
Maybe each and every word he said were nothing but to give him a false sense of security. To prove to the higher ups even with rotting body he would still be able to catch up with the traitor. That dead or alive; Medkit will be given in.
His footsteps faded into the snow, his mind reeling with nothing and everything. The coldness of that day couldn’t compare to his mind’s trick on how he had been behaving, on how he’d been coming up with nothing but to give his ticking time loose towards finding the traitor he had been so obsessed before.
Medkit never wanted that. Ever since he had spawned, freedom had been something he couldn’t grasp. The reason he exist purely because that is what he is taught of. To keep his breath, to devote himself into being useful, to get his gear into its full potential, Medkit climbed. He pushed himself, again and again, endlessly. Hands reaching one after the other for something he was promised.
His existence is a disgrace in itself. A curse he had to bear for all eternity as it swallows him whole.
Then there’s the person he couldn’t quite put his finger into. That piercing laugh, those clank of medals hang around his neck as if the world revolves around him. Still, nothing is ever enough.
His crystals were stolen out of his hands like nothing. The diploma fell into the renegade’s hands like it had always belonged there.
It isn’t.
His devotion had meant nothing in the eyes of his rival, the bane of his very existence.
He had known everything like the back of his hands; nothing will ever truly belong to him. Yet is it selfish of him to keep hoping? No.
He woven the silk handed to him, each strand carefully tucked to resemble something his, something that fits to be worn—only for it to be snatched and given into someone else’s.
Everything he had done never ends as he thought it would be. Each strand burns itself the very second someone noticed it taking shape, and he would be patient, wove it back into a new pattern. Another one, and another, yet another, unsolved.
His life is a never-ending cycle of threading over something that he never hoped for.
There were no words to be said when each blow had been delivered. Silence forever carrying curse. The roots that had taken place in the soul could never be taken out unless the soil was brought out alongside it.
The both of them had been very patient. Like a drag path forever waiting, like a predator to its prey. They’ve been drawn to each other in a twisted way, a moth to a flame; destined to burn if close, yet far too blinding if kept at distance.
Love truly is cannibalism. An insatiable hunger that gnaws at its flesh, teeth that rips at the seams, tongue that taste through toxin, stomach that digest to nothing.
Their bodies fell limp, the snow barely softening their crash. The cold turning the pain they bear into nothing but numbness.
Medkit’s hand tucked his gun under his hand as he gazed at Subspace’s face just inches away from his, their breath intermingling in the freezing temperature.
Subspace’s face was bare; his gas mask had probably fallen off somewhere along the way. His rots touched the snow, damaged nerves stinging him as he lay limp. He could move; he could finish off the traitor right here and now. He SHOULD end it. Why didn’t he move?
“Do it,” Medkit’s words rang, “don’t be a coward now, you’ve chased me down for years.”
Right. Of course. His life revolves around this one inphernal that he swore had placed a curse on him.
“I hate you.” Subspace admitted, hand moved up, a flicker of light coming from his palm as a tripmine began to take form. Yet, just as fast as it took place, it dissipated like it was never there. His weakened tissue started bloating and turning his flesh into a mush slowly yet surely. His hand dropped into his chest where Medkit had successfully harmed him with dozens of bullets.
“Of course you do, it’s not rocket science.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You’ve always been insufferable since day one.”
“Quite frankly, I’m giving myself my well-earned spotlight.”
Spotlight, huh. Of course, he’s always one to chase after it blindly. It never changes.
Medkit’s grip tightens just a fraction at his gun. His hand shook as the pain from the burn damaged him greater.
This didn’t go unnoticeable to Subspace; he knows the pain inside and out. Having felt like he harbors parasites inside his system after their fight that day. He can’t help it.
His hand, ever so gently, moved on top of Medkit as it guided the latter’s hand to aim the gun straight into his gaping, rotting eye socket.
“You did this.” Not an accusation.
“I did.” He gave a verbal acknowledgement.
“Then finish it.”
“I still have questions gone unanswered.”
To die in peace is to leave nothing behind. Their life had gone unfulfilled, that much is clear. Neither of them would acknowledge it, however, for them such thing is useless.
Medkit’s hand dropped again, still close to the gaping eye socket, still holding onto that gun like a lifeline even as chemicals burn through his nerves.
“Tell me, Subspace,” his voice had lost all the fight in them, all that exist are mere flatness, “what could I have possibly done to end up like this? What sin have I committed for you to hunt me down relentlessly ever since I step foot into the lab?”
Any answer would suffice. He just needs to know the root of the problem—the reason as to why his head must be served on a silver platter for his ‘lab partner’ to feel ‘complete’.
His hunger went above his head; Medkit couldn’t tell just what he actually wants.
He would take all answer. All but that piercing laugh that had struck his eardrum as his opponent took it all on him before coughing more blood due to internal bleeding. His weakened hand wiping over the blood from his mouth—acknowledge, he smears it over his forehead-hair area. Gross, yet something truly Subspace nonetheless. Now he just looked stupid as if he had gotten a shot to the head earlier than intended.
“It’s simple, I hate you,” his voice cracked, wheezed as sharp air punctured his failing lungs, “you and your existence, your presence that had always been the higher ups’ possession, their prize pony. All because your gear could heal! It’s just ... Unfair.
We all had to climb; we reached the top with bloody hands and broken bones! We did everything to have their eyes on us!
Yet all it took for them... Is a single glance at you to deem you’re worthy of their attention. It irks me.”
“You forgot I never asked for this- “
“Some of us had to climb. Some of us had to prove our worth than relying on pure spawn gift.”
Resignation. The tone had dropped all its fight in it as Subspace burrowed his rots more and more into the pile of snow, the pain becoming the one to ground him into reality of his situation.
His face ... Looked awfully at peace, like he had thrown the one thing to weight his heart for years.
Maybe he did.
Maybe each and every word he sprout out are twined in straw, and chucked out after years of molding into the shape of his failure heart.
Subspace is a ticking time bomb, and unfortunately, Medkit had always been the one to be strapped to it from the waist down.
Swords knows for how long they’ve lay bare there as snow started piling up on them, more, and more. Their pain numbed by the sharp sting of freeze, and for them that’s the most familiar they’ve ever been able to feel.
Nowhere in Blackrock are warm enough, the lab still maintains a temperature just slightly warmer than how it is outside, yet never enough to reach that of the other faction. They reel on that fact the first time they set foot outside the snowy Blackrock Mountain.
The sun that shone enough to melt the ice that had long enveloped them, the veil lifted just barely as they felt the warmth other felt daily. A tinge of jealousy mixed with amusement blooms ever so slowly.
Subspace couldn’t blame Medkit for moving away to a warmer area after the incident, he doesn’t blame Hyperlaser for staying longer outside the faction border just for the addicting hint of warmth during the darkest days of Blackrock where the sun doesn’t shine.
Now that they’re looking at each other, yet staring into something far behind the other’s eye, they understood one thing. Warmth is something either of them had wished to grab.
Perhaps it’s the cold.
Perhaps it’s the slap of reality that his reign shall end here, or maybe, he’s just desperate to feel one last good thing before darkness swallow him whole.
Subspace had moved; the sharp sting of the wounds didn’t stop him to turn fully facing Medkit who had his eye near to closing.
“Don’t die yet.”
“... I’m not.”
“Good.” His hand touches the face he had been so obsessed to scar.
Surely his hand is as cold as ice and melting like one the second it touches that skin. Medkit felt it. The way a warm, mushy skin had slid off the second it hit his.
“You’re being strange,” he doesn’t retaliate; he leaned in, “I still don’t get it.”
“I don’t want you to. I need you to suffer for answer even in death.”
“Touché.”
His hand had found to be around Subspace’s head, struggling to reach with broken tissues growing and gnawing at his flesh and skin.
Thus, he forced himself to sit up, propping with one hand to yank Subspace by the collar.
“Up.” He commanded.
He had practically thrown himself into Subspace’s arms the second his figure sat up. His hands thrashed in pain to grip on the other’s molten body.
Warmth spread through the both of them, not quite enough to stop the sharp bite of the frost, yet enough to feel comforting, falsely, at least.
One last thing before it goes pitch black.
His grip tightens; his hand raised and- click.
The muzzle had been pointed to Subspace’s parietal, his finger hanging on the trigger.
He heard that laugh again, manic, yet this time, tired—as he felt the callous edge of an item. The vibrant neon light only confirming his suspicion and he sighed.
The both of them had pointed each gear into the other’s head. A synchronization neither of them had planned, yet oddly appreciated, nonetheless.
The painkiller is about to run out anyway.
“I declare this my biggest trophy.” Subspace mumbled through broken jaw, the fumes doesn’t feel as suffocating as their bodies shut down.
Medkit scoffed, a hint of acceptance visible in it. “Are you going to share this one?”
“Never.”
“Then I’ll carve one for my own.”
Silence. The flaming spark of the tripmine growing rougher on the edge as his hand burns, Medkit’s hand shook struggling to prop himself together.
They’re both suffering in this. No doubt, that is.
“Aren’t there something you want to say before this?” Subspace voice was barely audible through the storm of snow buzzing in his ears.
His hand falters, just slightly.
He had nothing more to say. Nothing more to prove his point that the other’s death is all he had ever wanted.
“I give up.” Medkit finally murmured. Gun almost slipping from his palm as pain shot through stronger than before.
Subspace chuckled, low and estranged, as he put the tripmine closer into Medkit’s nape, the gesture looking like he’s cupping the latter closer rather than intending to bring them down with him.
Softer.
“I hope we never found each other in the next one.”
Blood tainted the snow red as their bodies’ crash into the ground unceremoniously, limp and colder than the cramp walls of Blackrock.
A hole through the head, aimed perfectly to take the other out as quickly as possible. Was it to prevent one to keep living? Possibly. But the silence carried a much gentler acceptance, which the both of them are to be freed from the chains that bind them. To step away from the boiling hatred that had taken shape deep inside their veins.
Everything from that point onwards remains unknown. Whether or not they were found, were they forgotten like those who had gone through the mountains and never returned, it’s all staying in a gray area.
One way or another, they had fulfilled each other’s wish. They kept walking, hand in unlovable hand. Sinking deeper and deeper, each side of their story remains, forever buried.
Perhaps their line would never cross again; the next greatest Subspace Tripmine and Medkit would never find each other. They pass through the street as strangers; they could’ve been at the same spot completely oblivious to the other’s existence.
They didn’t die without regret. They didn’t die an honorable death to allow their name spreading through like wildfire. Their legacy only remains as the biograft mass created, nameplate of their identity tossed into the bin by a new worker and seeped in the mind of those who to live far longer than the rest.
However, they’ll always be there tomorrow, in the freezing cold, in the scorching hot. A fragment of them would still stand clear.
The living proves that once they’ve existed and walked over the familiar path.