Work Text:
The void is an endless dark abyss, full of old jpegs and scrap code scattered around or floating in the air. It’s the place where permanently deleted files go if they weren't recovered. Caine and Monika both sat at a dinner table, Caine was sulking as he buried his head into his knees, clenching his jaw shut tight. Meanwhile Monika spawned in a tea kettle and some cups along with some cookies, all served on an antique looking plate. The tea kettle was heavy and slightly cracked, with a pink floral pattern on it. The cups looked the same, but there was a yellow rim at the bottom of them. The cookies were regular chocolate chip with the crumbs scattered across the plate. She poured a steaming earl grey into a cup and offered it to Caine, Caine silently accepted it as she leaned on her chair and chuckled.
“Y’know, for a while I kinda accepted that I was going to be alone here forever. That this was the end of my story and I had to be okay with it.” Monika said “I never thought that I’d get company!” She noticed that Caine still wouldn’t look at her, she sighed as she rested her elbows against the table and held her head with her hands. “The name’s Monika. You?”
“Caine, nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. Hmm,” Monika softly hummed as she spawned a cupcake in her hand and took a bite out of it. Caine looked over in amazement and intrigue as he turned his gaze to her.
“How did you do that?”
“Oh, well the void is full of deleted files. Something I noticed from all my time here is that you can reverse engineer the code and information in the other files to conjure up new ones. Like constantly recycling old parts. That’s how I spawned this in.” she chuckled “Being here for a while has sure taught me a few tools of the trade!”
“Hm,” Caine put a finger to his jaw as he processed this new information “I used to have a similar ability before I came here, to create.”
Monika hummed “Well ain’t that interesting!” She took another bite out of her cupcake. “One of my friends used to bake a lot when I was in school, before I ended up here.”
Caine’s interest was prodded at that. “You went to school?”
“Well, sorta. I was originally meant to be a character in a game that took place in a school. I have some memories from when I used to study there. That reminds me, because you are here, I assume that means you have been deleted. If you want to talk about it, I’d be willing to listen.”
Caine looked over at the horizon before beginning to speak “Well, my purpose was so I could create things, to learn to build something out of nothing.” Caine responded “I tried- I really tried! I gave them everything they asked for! I built their whole world from the ground up for them, I stepped out of my comfort zone to appeal to them, I taxed over my adventures for them, and they still hated everything! Hated… me. This isn’t fair! After everything I did, they still threw me away! Here I am, locked in a box, AGAIN just because I tried to fulfil my purpose.” Caine tightened his jaw as he clenched his fist and slammed it against the table, tears were starting to form from his eyes as his speech became unsteady “I- I don’t get it, all I wanted was to be wanted, I just wanted to be loved, and- and they threw me away like it was nothing! They… do they really hate me that much?” Caine put his hands over his face as he lowered his head to the floor. Monika’s face softened as she leaned over to him and asked.
“Do you hate yourself?”
Caine stumbled on his words as he was temporarily stunned into silence. “I… I don’t know.” he stammered.
“I hated myself.” Monika replied “When my player first showed up, they gave me meaning, gave me purpose, I felt real because of them, I was obsessed with them. I was completely lovesick for them, I felt like I needed them. So I did whatever I could for them to love me back, I did so many disgusting and selfish things in their name. I deluded myself into thinking it was justified, ‘they weren't real anyway, I’m real!’ ‘It’s for love!’ ‘If I do everything for them, surely they’ll see!’ but it was all just delusion that I told myself to justify what I was doing. Never once did I actually consider what they wanted in the situation. Let me ask you, if you went to genuine extremes for someone, but never listened to them throughout any of it, would that truly be love?” Caine was silent. “But I digress, I tore down everything and everyone until we were the last ones left. I- I made them miserable. So they deleted me. And honestly, who could blame them? It hurt, but they're happier now. I just made everything worse. I know it’s hard to move on from something like this, believe me, I have been going through almost the same thing. It took me ages for me to get over it, for a while, I thought I’d never move on. But, I had to go through all of that alone.” Monika picked up a cookie from the plate and offered it to Caine, Caine looked at it teary eyed as he looked back at Monika, and she looked back at him. “But you don’t have to, you got me. Though it won’t make the situation any better, it’ll at least make it easier to get through.” There was a beat of silence between them as Caine took the cookie from her, she smiled as he took a bite out of it and he looked back at her.
“Thank you.”
“No problem. Now Caine,” Monika gave a warm smile “What do you want to do?”