Chapter Text
Chosen stared at the mangled corpse of his former best friend.
Staring down at what was supposed to be his carved-out grave, a gracious bed gifted to him by the earth itself. The entire site had been kissed by death.
Smoke lingered through the soil, curling weakly into the air. Chosen could still feel the heat radiating beneath the soles of his boots. The crater stretched around them in jagged ruin, carved violently into the ground by the force of the blast. It had been easy to follow the scorched path leading here, a brutal trail etched across the surface like the world itself had been split open.
And at the center of it was Dark.
What was left of Dark’s shirt had mostly burned away, the surviving scraps fused against charred skin and melted fabric. Parts of his clothes were scorched black, others still faintly smoking at the edges. Angry burns crawled across his body where the laser had torn through him, raw and blistered beneath layers of ash and dirt.
Half of his long red hair had been burned away entirely. The remaining strands clung to his face and shoulders in singed, uneven clumps, smoke still curling weakly from the frayed ends.
Chosen’s eyes kept snagging on Dark's left arm.
At first glance, it almost looked buried beneath the soil, hidden under the rubble and ash packed around his side.
But it wasn’t.
It took a horrifying second for Chosen’s brain to understand what he was looking at.
There was no blood.
The wound had been completely cauterized.
The arm was simply… gone.
And there was something weird faintly glowing at the chest.
Green light seeped through the cracks in scorched flesh in faint, breathing pulses across Dark’s chest, dim beneath the ash and blood, pulsing weakly from the cratered ruin at the center of his torso. Not bright enough to illuminate anything, but it was there.
Like the blast had lodged itself inside him and was still eating through what was left.
Chosen couldn’t tell if it was residual heat, radiation, energy, or something else.
It was wishful thinking to hope he’d find Dark glaring back at him somehow, those brilliant red eyes narrowed in annoyance like he’d merely been inconvenienced by all of this.
But all that stared back at him were dull, half-lidded, lifeless eyes, their usual sharpness long extinguished. One eye was barely open beneath ash-streaked lashes, fixed on nothing at all.
Chosen couldn't tell which part is Dark and which part was dirt.
Waiting was never an issue for the Chosen One, so he waited.
And waited.
Waiting for Dark to finally stir, run a hand through his hair with a groan, complain about the splitting headache, maybe even throw a fistful of dirt at Chosen’s face and they’d argue for a while after that, neither of them would admit they were wrong.
And then they’d go home and sleep it off like they always did.
He always gets back up.
The sky had already begun to dim by the time the heat finally started leaving the crater. The scorched soil had long since cooled beneath him, smoke no longer rising from the earth. Ash now drifted quietly through the air instead, settling over Dark’s body in thin layers that the wind kept reshaping.
Chosen still hadn’t moved from his spot, overlooking the crater.
The world had started moving again around them.
The evening wind rolled through the crater in slow breaths, stirring loose dirt and the burnt strands of Dark’s hair. Tiny insects had begun cautiously hovering near the body now, buzzing softly around the stillness, drawn toward a silence that no longer fought back.
Somewhere farther out, shapes began to appear at the edge of the crater.
Small scavenger birds, circling hesitantly at a distance as dusk settled in. They didn’t come close. Not yet. Not with Chosen still there.
He hadn’t moved the entire time. That alone was enough to keep them away.
Chosen swatted at another insect drifting too close.
Dark remained exactly the same.
The crater seemed less like a battlefield now and more like a grave the earth was gradually reclaiming.
Waiting was never an issue for the Chosen One.
But…
What else was he supposed to wait for now?
Hours passed before Chosen finally decided to move.
Slowly and stiffly, he pushed himself back onto his feet. Dirt clung stubbornly to his clothes and knees, ash dusted across his sleeves, but he didn’t bother brushing any of it off.
He stood there in silence, staring down into the crater one last time.
He didn’t know what to do now.
Maybe the earth would do its job eventually. Maybe time would bury what remained. Maybe this crater would become nothing more than another scar in the landscape.
Chosen’s gaze drifted back toward Dark.
Faint green pulses still glimmered weakly from the center of Dark’s torso. Like dying embers refusing to fully go out.
Chosen stared at it a little too long, almost mesmerized by it.
For a horrible moment, Chosen found himself unable to look away.
Then, quietly, flames ignited across his palms.
Without another word, he turned from the crater and shot into the darkening sky.
Six years had passed.
Chosen would be lying if he said those years hadn’t been eventful. Life just kept unraveling one surprise after another at him, never quite giving him enough time to settle before throwing the next disaster his way.
A month after Dark’s death and the fight that shook the entire Outernet, a mysterious group of men began following him every time he stepped foot into the city.
At first, he brushed it off.
Evading people had never exactly been difficult for him. He slipped through alleyways, rooftops, crowded streets, disappearing just as easily as he did from the cops whenever they got too curious. The men never managed to catch him, always losing sight of him eventually.
But they were persistent. Like fleas that refused to die no matter how many times you scratched them off, they kept turning up everywhere he went.
What started as distant tailing eventually escalated into outright hunts.
Every chance they got, they came after him armed with strange high-tech weapons Chosen had no interest in learning on what it could do to him with hoverbikes that allowed them to follow him to the sky. At first they’d tried to stay discreet about it, until they decided to just "yeah fuck being incognito" and caused a public nuisance everywhere.
Luckily for Chosen, this wasn’t his first rodeo.
He slipped through their grasp like a fish writhing free from a fisher’s hands, slipping into the water before they could ever fully pin him down.
Eventually, Chosen decided it’d be smarter to lay low for a while.
A long while.
For months, he barely stepped foot outside the house unless absolutely necessary, only forcing himself into the city whenever he finally ran out of basic necessities. Even then, he kept himself hidden beneath layers of disguises.
And on the third time he returned—
He found his face plastered everywhere.
Wanted posters flooded the streets wall to wall, cluttering alleyways, train stations, lamp posts, storefront windows, like the city itself had turned against him overnight.
His face stared back at him from every corner.
Report sightings to Rocket Corp
It became six straight years of cat-and-mouse chases before those bastards finally got their hands on him, along with the very stick that had once saved his and every existing stickfigure's lives.
Second.
Chosen had selfishly dragged him into his mess, hoping one overwhelming blast of power would finally make his problems disappear for good. Everything only spiraled further downhill from there once Chosen realized Second didn’t actually have a buttfuck clue about his powers and was conveniently amnesiac to the entire time he actually used them.
Honestly, Chosen could admit he partially deserved every punch and kick thrown his way by his supposed ancestor—or whatever the guy was to him, all he knows that he wasn't the first creation that noogai created that day, it's this bleached out hollowhead who's claiming that he killed his wife.
Fuck if Chosen knows who the fuck she was.
victim didn’t believe a single word Chosen said when he insisted he barely participated in the attack, that he’d only flown nearby with his partner the entire time, and that surely earned another round of torture and getting his privacy rudely invaded with a memory scanner.
The devil’s in the details! Chosen frankly doesn’t feel like unpacking all of that mess. Let's focus on the present.
He’s fine. Second’s fine. Yellow’s fine. All of their friends are fine.
Everything’s all nice and dandy now.
…Mostly.
He and Victim still don’t exactly see eye to eye, but they’ve at least reached a point where they can be civil with one another.
And honestly, that’s probably the furthest their relationship is ever going to get.
When he said he's fine, he meant physically.
Ever since he became the sole occupant of the house, it started to feel suffocating, their home seemed bigger than it used to, like it was stretching out just to remind him of the emptiness.
It didn’t take long before Chosen ran out of things to entertain himself with. And at some point, he just… stopped seeing the point of doing anything at all.
The food in their kitchen slowly rotted away, so he mostly survived on instant ramen and microwaved meals. Dust began to settle over everything, layer after layer of neglect creeping across every surface. But the thickest coat of all clung to Dark’s bedroom and the makeshift lab, spaces that had once been alive with noise, movement, and purpose.
The home they had built together gradually faded into a hollow shell of what it used to be.
The big canon from the balcony had been reduced to nothing but pulverized smithereens, Chosen himself had destroyed it one day, after he happened to lock eyes with it and decided he couldn’t stand seeing it there anymore.
Chosen thought he enjoyed silence, but he never expected it could also be this torturous.
His mind started playing tricks on him. He’d catch sounds that weren’t there, faint shifts in the air he was certain belonged to someone else moving through the house. Every creak of the walls made him pause longer than he should have.
Then eventually he started seeing shadows at the edge of his vision. Just out of focus. It's gone the moment he turned his head.
At some point, he had deluded himself that Dark would come back any day now, because the Dark Lord always bothers him eventually.
Chosen sniffles softly as he tightens his grip around the red jacket in his hands.
He doesn’t remember when he had picked it up, or why he was being clingy to it in the first place. All he knows is that it never leave his side anymore, especially when he goes to bed, as if it had become something he couldn’t sleep without.
Some kind of…a...a...what did they call it again? Comfort item?
He never owned any red jackets of his own.
This one was Dark’s.
And it used to smell like him.
Now, the scent has long since faded, the jacket is almost unrecognizable, the printed designs are now cracked, flaking at the edges, some parts faded into near nothingness, if he didn’t already know what he was looking for. The fabric itself looks worn too, softened at the edges from being held too often.
Today had been another one of his unproductive days. He had done nothing but lie on the bed, staring at nothing in particular, quietly wallowing in his own woes and whatever weight had settled in his chest and then—
A loud bang echoed from downstairs.
Chosen jolted upright so fast he almost dropped the jacket he was clutching. The sudden movement sent a brief rush of air through the room, and it was only then he realized his face was already wet, silent tears slipping down his cheeks without him even noticing.
He tightened his grip on the red jacket instinctively, knuckles going pale around the worn fabric.
Usually, he would’ve brushed it off. Made some lame ass excuse in his head about how it's 'just the wind' or his mind is playing tricks on him again.
But this was too loud to ignore.
And it didn’t make sense, because he lived alone, he has no neighbors, there's no nearby houses. Just him living in the middle of nowhere stretched out for miles.
Another loud bang echoed through the house.
Chosen went still for half a second.
Okay. Enough of this depression session.
If someone was actually breaking in, then Chosen's going to beat this intruder's ass to make them know they've chose the wrong house to ransack.
He pushed himself off the bed, nearly slipping on his socks as his feet hit the floor. The sudden loss of balance made him stagger, but he quickly steadied himself, jaw tightening in focus.
Without thinking too much about it, he shoved the red jacket under the blanket, for safe keeping.
Stealthily, he made his way out of the room and down the hallway, ears straining for any follow-up sound. The house felt different now, it's less empty and more occupied, maybe he oughta thank this stranger for sprucing up the place with a brief sense of life for a brief moment.
He followed the source of the noise downstairs, tracing it with slow, deliberate movements, every step measured as he closed in on where he was sure it had come from.
Just as he thought the intruder had finally gone quiet, a sharp clatter rang out, something metal tipping over, a pot or pan crashing onto the floor that helped him pinpoint that they were at the kitchen.
Got you.
Chosen pressed himself against the wall beside the doorway, breathing steadying as his focus sharpened. He could feel it now, the faint presence of movement inside, he can hear someone rummaging through cabinets like they owned the place.
He lifted a hand slightly, fingers curling as energy began to gather.
A small pressure started building in the air, a tightening sensation around his fist as he channeled power into it, there's now an implosive sphere condensed around his knuckles, ready to release in a single explosive strike.
Carefully, he leaned just enough to peek into the kitchen.
There, the intruder had their back turned, completely unaware, still rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, looking for something.
Chosen exhaled once.
He stepped out of his cover in a blur, launching forward as energy surged through his arm. The moment his fist connected with the intruder’s back, the compressed force detonated outward in a controlled burst.
"WRONG HOUSE BI-"
The impact sent them flying across the kitchen.
They slammed hard into the opposite wall with a violent crash, the force rattling through the room as debris shifted and the cabinets shook from the impact.
Crap. Maybe he shouldnt have channeled too much power.
Chosen stared for a brief second at the very noticeable dent in the wall where the intruder had just been launched into, the surrounding cabinets rattled from the impact.
Okay.
In his defense, it had been six years since he last punched someone inside his own house. His power scaling might’ve been a little off.
Chosen cautiously approached the stranger, stepping over the scattered debris and broken cabinet pieces left behind from the impact.
The guy wasn’t moving.
“…Oops.”
He nudged them lightly with his foot.
No response.
“Sorry dude,” Chosen muttered awkwardly. “Got a little carried away.”
The stranger had landed face down against the rubble, half-pinned awkwardly against broken wood and fallen debris. With a quiet sigh, Chosen crouched down and grabbed them by the shoulder, dragging them away from the mess before carefully rolling them onto their back.
And then—
Chosen’s breath caught in his throat.
Everything in him went still.
Because staring back at him was a face he knew far too well.
Chosen lets go of him so fast it was almost violent.
He stumbled backwards, scrambling away across the floor like he’d just touched something that burned, eyes blown wide in horror.
No.
No, no, no—
That wasn’t possible.
The face staring back at him belonged to someone who was supposed to be dead.
He swore he saw him dead.
Chosen could only stare, chest heaving unevenly as he instinctively kept putting distance between himself and the body, like he’d just seen a ghost— one he's sure who should be a ghost.
Chosen’s hand shot up to his scalp, fingers tangling harshly into his hair as his breathing turned uneven.
“H—how are you—” His voice cracked badly. “Fuck—you’re dead. You're supposed to be dead—”
His eyes stayed locked onto the unconscious figure on the floor, panic rapidly bleeding into every inch of his expression.
“You can’t—” He swallowed hard. “This...th-this isn’t possible.”
He shook his head once.
Then again.
Like denial alone could make the body disappear.
“You’re not real—”
The hand in his hair dropped to fist tightly at the fabric of his shirt instead, clutching it hard enough to wrinkle beneath trembling fingers.
“Y-you— you…” His breath hitched violently. “Fuck—where are my pills?—”
His hands were shaking terribly now.
Chosen tried to push himself back onto his feet, but his legs refused to cooperate, panic pinning him frozen to the floor as he stared at the face of someone who should not exist anymore.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and forced his gaze downward, locking onto the kitchen tiles beneath him instead of the body sprawled nearby, trying to ground himself with the breathing exercises that Blue taught him.
Chosen forced the air into his lungs despite how tight his chest felt, counting the breaths silently in his head to keep himself anchored. His thoughts still spiraled violently, clawing over each other in panic, but he focused on the rhythm instead.
With trembling fingers, he lifted his free hand slightly.
A small block of ice slowly formed against his palm.
Chosen immediately pressed it against the inside of his wrist, the freezing sting snapping through the haze in his head hard enough to ground him back into the present. The chill spread up his arm, shocking his system just enough to interrupt the panic threatening to swallow him whole.
His breathing gradually began to steady after that.
Eventually, Chosen lowered the melting ice from his wrist and swallowed hard, finally daring to glance back toward the unconscious figure again.
Either he had finally started sleepwalking and is hallucinating again, or his best friend had somehow crawled his way back from the dead.
Wouldn’t even be the worst surprise the universe had thrown at him.
Once Chosen was sure he could breathe without spiraling again, he cautiously shifted forward, slowly.
His palms pressed against the cold kitchen floor as he carefully crawled his way back toward the unconscious figure, movements stiff with lingering panic.
He stopped halfway at first and just...stared.
His chest tightened again the closer he got, anxiety clawing at the back of his throat as though approaching any further would somehow ruin it, like the image in front of him would dissolve if he moved too quickly.
Like this was some cruel hallucination his mind had cooked up to torture him.
Still, Chosen forced himself forward again.
His hand reached out first, Chosen could see the slight tremor in his own fingers as they hovered near the arm, hesitating mere inches away
Then, he lightly touched the bicep.
Chosen immediately jerked his hand back afterward anyway, breath catching sharply in his throat as the realization slammed into him all at once.
…He’s real.
His heart skipped painfully against his ribs.
Swallowing hard, Chosen slowly lifted his hand again. This time, he forced himself not to pull away.
Two trembling fingers carefully pressed against the side of the other's neck, shaky enough that Chosen almost couldn’t tell if what he was feeling was his own pulse or not.
Tiny beats fluttered unevenly beneath his fingertips, it's a bit fragile, but it confirms that Dark's alive.
Chosen’s eyes widened in disbelief as he froze completely in place, staring at Dark like the world had just tilted off its axis.
There is a pulse.
A shaky breath escaped him.
The tension holding his body together seemed to finally give way all at once, his shoulders trembling violently as he slowly lowered himself further down beside Dark. He hunched over himself like his body no longer had the strength to keep upright, exhaustion and disbelief crashing into him in uneven waves.
Carefully, almost reverently, Chosen leaned forward until his forehead rested against Dark’s.
He's...warm.
A weak, breathless laugh broke out of him despite everything, cracking apart midway like he didn’t quite know whether to laugh or cry anymore.
His hand lifted without thinking, cupping Dark’s jaw gently, afraid that he might vanish if he held on too tightly.
His thumb brushed faintly over Dark’s cheek, trying to confirm through touch alone that this was real.
It is real.
“Fucking bastard…” he whispered shakily. “I missed you.”