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His totem pops in a horrific moment. As he blinks gold and green sparks out of his eyes, as Mapicc comes back into focus, eyes wide, he knows he's already lost him before he even opens his mouth. He'll still try though, still try.
"You—" Mapicc starts, getting control over his tongue before Spoke is able to try and think of something, anything to make Mapicc stay and hear him out. Mapicc halts, chest heaving, sword loose in his hands. He's bleeding on his arm, one of the very few wounds that Spoke inflicted on him, only trying to keep up the facade of him being a Null player. He never wanted to hurt Mapicc, but here Mapicc is, looking like a kicked puppy, betrayal in his red eyes.
"Mapicc—" Spoke says instead, desperately, hands reaching out. There is a heavy gash on his leg trailing red onto the floor but Spoke could care less. His only focus is on his best friend slowly backing away, shaking his head. He's already losing him, already losing.
"Mapicc please listen to me! I couldn't say much, Jamato had me under blackmail but I can tell you everything— everything you want to know! Just— Mapicc!"
"You tried to kill Jamato," Mapicc's gaze hardens. "And Jumper is captured because of you. Spoke— I- I can't hear you out on this."
"Mapicc— please we can come up with a plan, we can go save them. We can still save them!"
"I'm done, Spoke. Done with your games." Mapicc laughs, forced. Spoke tries to follow, steps on his injured leg wrong and drops to a knee, hissing. "You can go off with your gallant plan alone, I'm not coming with. I'm going to find Jumper."
"Mapicc—" Spoke tries again, uselessly, stuck on the ground as Mapicc turns and walks away, turns his back on Spoke for the first time since their friendship and doesn't look back.
"Don't follow me." Mapicc calls over his shoulder, voice tight and angry the way it was when he was fighting someone he didn't like, a voice so different from the tone he usually used with Spoke— excited and happy or calm and reasonable, depending on the circumstance. He always paired it with a smile he reserved only for Spoke.
Look at him, already beginning to think about him in the past tense, like Mapicc was already dead—actually dead. He very well might be. Spoke was certainly dead to Mapicc. He forces down a lump in his throat at the thought.
Spoke watches Mapicc's retreating figure the whole time, stunned into silence, pain coursing through his leg, tearing through his heart. He waits there for a little, a small part of him hoping that Mapicc will come back, see through his outburst, apologize, and then hear Spoke out.
But Mapicc, of course, doesn't come, and Spoke is left to pick himself up and drag himself the opposite way.
"He doesn't understand," he tries to reason, catching himself hard on the wall, panting. Okay, let's not put the weight too much on the injured leg. He keep a hand on the wall following it the opposite way. As much as he wants to follow Mapicc, he's worried that Mapicc might hurt him if he does, not like he will be able to catch up. But the thought of going back to the town and all the people who aren't there because of Spoke is all too much. He presses forward instead, making slow pace across the rocky terrain.
"He'll come back. He'll come to it. He'll see that I'm right," he attempts to persuade himself, stumbling along. Because Mapicc always came back to Spoke, always.
"He'll hear me out, I'll tell him everything, we'll come up with a plan and then save everyone." It's a very good plan. They'll make up and save the server like they did the last time. It's a shame that everyone still doesn't take him seriously after he destroyed all of the stasis chambers but they'll do it anyways. Together. Because all he really needs is Mapicc. And Jumper too. But mostly Mapicc.
And then everyone will rush around him and go, Spoke, we're so sorry for not believing you but thank you for saving the server! Or, wow, you defeated Null and found the thousand players mostly alone? You're such a hero, Spoke! And Mapicc would look at him and smile and that's all he really cared about and Mapicc would whisper to Spoke away from the crowds, see I told you you're nothing like Ash! And Spoke would finally believe him.
His foot catches the ground wrong and he stops as a wave of pain courses through his leg, breathing hard. Think, Spoke, think. Memories! Memories always worked to alleviate the pain right? Acted like a balm to the soul?
"I remember when it was just the two of us—" he pauses, steps loud in the dark, voice echoing off the cave walls, voice heavy with grief and pain. "Mapicc and I. Destroying farms." He doesn't know who he's talking to, if anyone. Is this considered a monologue or is it a dialogue? Dialogue would mean two people, but maybe there is someone out there listening. Maybe this isn't real. He laughs slightly, more of a wheeze as his feet scrape forward. "Back when everything seemed possible, when you were with me throughout everything."
Oh, he's talking to Mapicc. Or rather, the Mapicc-sized absence by his side.
"What changed?" He asks the void. "Was it really all my secrets, or did Jamato tell you something." Was it not meant to be? Was it always meant to happen this way, to go wrong?
There's light peeking through the next bend. Moonlight, cool and pale filters through the exits, lands at his feet, stopped at the edge as he takes in his surroundings.
Despite how the tunnel opens, he feels more caged than ever, sees the sky above, speckled with stars and imagines it as a skybox in a video game, looks at what must a maze in front of him, tall, crumbling walls piercing the sky, vines twisting through cracks.
Rat in a cage.
He swallows, takes a step forward, looks back with the expectation that the tunnel behind him will disappear. It doesn't, but something worse forces him to step forward, staggered and stuttering, curiosity, reeling him in, a hook in his mouth like a fish up to the surface, to the bucket to be gutted later.
He's always struggled with curiosity, even while telling himself that the cat always dies. A dead cat doesn't talk, and Jamato knows this very well.
But maybe the cat dies satisfied.
While he drags his injured leg, half-corpse in the stale air, his foot catching on uneven stones, he thinks. That's all there is to do, with no Mapicc to catch his thoughts and scatter them to the wind, they cluster like ants on a cake left out.
“What's your plan, Jamato?” He asks to the empty air, to the wind that howls like a beast in the corridors.
He thinks briefly of the Minoan strategy of placing a hand on the wall and following it until the end. While it doesn't ensure the exit, it is faster than wandering around blindly, gives the person a greater chance at surviving the Minotaur. (Or maybe he's lying to himself and there is no easy way out. No way to leave without losing yourself first.)
He does no such thing, mumbling things to self that slip into rambling, a steady, repeated stream of, “I’m sorry,” like a broken record. He thinks that at this point apologies must be woven into his being, must be woven into his friendship with Mapicc.
“I'll tell you everything,” he murmurs, turning right, words slipping through his teeth like important information stolen from a tortured captive.
“I miss you, Mapicc,” he says as he turns right, following a trail of cracks on the ground with his eyes.
“I'm really alone now, aren't I?” As he goes straight, almost tripping on a loose stone. Easy pickings, his brain mentions helpfully. He pauses, the scrape of shoes on stone pausing too after a retreating echo.
“Is that your plan, Jamato? To separate me from my friends and kill me?” He raises his voice, looking around him as if the masked figure will appear from the shadows lining the corners of his vision. He doesn't. The maze stays still.
“Jamato,” he calls, dragging out the ending of the name like he used to when everything was okay. He continues walking, if not to ward away the silence with his footsteps.
He tries variations of the name, whispering it, chanting it, screaming in frustration but nothing works. Jamato doesn't appear. Spoke doesn't know if he really wants to see him, thinks he just wants the company, the argument, if it'll only drown out his thoughts.
He thinks he's going mad. He must be, turning corners over and over, no end in sight, his talking getting more frequent and desperate, his footsteps faltering like his mind, retracing and retracing and retracing until he's lost, lost in the abyss of his skull until he considers just ending it all, climbs up to the top of maze wall and looks at the vast, vast, vast biome of twisting edges and dead ends, find inky blackness up top that reminds him of the void, his feet sinking into soft star-like skulk.
He turns, runs a hand over sore and bleeding fingers from where he dug them into the wall, from where he forced himself upwards despite gravity telling him no.
Well he’ll listen to gravity, he will now. Tells himself it might be for the best as he toes the edge, tells himself not to peer over the edge at the drop below. He does anyway, stomach twisting nauseatingly at the sight of the fall. It'll kill him, it will. It will break all his bones on impact, will paint a graphic scene on repeating gray, will stick out sore against the monotone.
It will be something. Blood will dry and remain, the imprint of him in the ground as if it does not want to forget his name. If everything else will forget his name, at least the earth won't.
Mid fall, he realizes something a lot of people realize mid-committing. I don't want to die. It's an all-encompassing need to live that makes him catch himself on the edge, and he scrapes his fingers bloody as he catches himself on the ledge, almost yanking his arm out of its socket, dangles there for a moment, breath catching on his ribs as his mind flashes him picture of picture of Mapicc in his red hoodie.
It's Mapicc that makes him pick his way down the wall, makes him lean against it, forehead pressed against cool rock. He doesn't reflect on it, doesn't offer his attempt a second though, just pauses to catch his breath, ward off the pain and then he's moving again, a little slower.
A distant part of him notes that he's leaving a trail of red behind him, red handprints dragged across the wall, one red footstep, a trail of breadcrumbs for the vultures to follow, the scent of something dying for Hansel and Gretel to find their way back.
He’s too tired, exhaustion much more than just physical weighing down his bones like weights on his legs.
He keeps going because that's all there is to do. He gives himself a steady string of commands, shoves aside his thoughts and replaces them with code, with zeros and ones because it's a lot easier to follow, a lot easier to obey.
One footstep. Another. Deep breath in. Another footstep. Catch yourself on the wall. Good.
Breathe out. Focus on heartbeat. Another step. Breathe in. Rinse. Repeat.
The only flaw to his plan is the shooting pain in his leg, a steady hindrance to moving forward, a constant annoyance that makes him grit his teeth, frustrated, a man waving away a fly particularly interested in buzzing around his head. Every step he takes, a wave of pain that subsides to a dull throb when he rests briefly, only to start up again.
It exists only to torment him, he's sure of this. As if he wasn't already in his own personal hell.
He has the sudden, animalistic urge to, like a fox with its leg stuck in a bear trap, gnaw his own leg off, autotomy, they call it. His own autonomy in the act of gnawing through flesh and bone to rid himself of something that is dragging him down, slowing him down, hurting him. His mind recognizes that the gash on his leg is not supposed to be there, is inefficient and unwelcome, and categorizes it as something to get rid of, even if it is self-mutilation. But maybe, maybe if he comes back like that people will finally see how much he has been suffering. Maybe, maybe it will hurt for a moment and then be okay again. Maybe it will stop these rearing voices in his head, maybe the pain will be good-- like disinfectant on a wound it will sting for a moment and then begin the process of cleaning deep underneath the skin to whatever soul-like thing is trapped between the cage of his ribs.
Or he will bleed out, but it might be better than starvation. At the very least, it will be uglier and then people will really know he was suffering. What once was quiet will be loud and present and plain. SpokeIsHere needed help, Spoke wanted to be saved. Spoke tried to find his peace in the world and couldn't.
He presses a hand to his stomach. He's long passed the stage of growling hunger, a dull sensation he could put off in favor of something more important. Instead it's merged into something vaguely uncomfortable, slowly growing more painful. His hand slides over the pieces of food left in his inventory. Small but something. Not enough to get him out but enough to quiet the discomfort, enough to quiet the gnawing hunger.
He doesn't take anything out. He wraps an arm around his abdomen and continues steadily limping. Pain is good, he reminds himself. Pain means I am alive. It's getting harder to convince himself of this, to convince himself that he will be getting out of here. But any way he goes out will be of his own volition, so that's something. That's still control. He likes having his life in his hands, in some morbid way.
And maybe he would need the food later too, more so than now. But whether that was just to quiet the fact that he was purposefully abstaining from food, he didn't care too much to look further, already devoted too much attention to it, too much brainpower and energy into self-reflection when he could be thinking of more important things. Like escaping. Like Mapicc.
He jolts to a stop as a ring of black obsidian appears directly in front of him. Footsteps stuttering to a halt as armored players exit the purple swirling portal, lavender motes catching on their veils like stardust, like snow. He turns swiftly on his heel, ignoring the protest of his leg as his foot sharply catches ground, tightening his jaw and heading the other way.
Another portal in his path. More Null. They stand there silently as he slips past the Null behind him. They follow silently, not attacking, just shadows on his tail. He can feel their invisible gazes on them as he starts mumbling to himself, small attempts at comfort, at humor that fall flat under the gaze of so many people just following, herding him. He's being herded like a sheep to the slaughter.
He ditches trying to choose a direction that will lead him to the end, starts picking any tunnel that doesn't have a portal, collecting silent observers that follow him, footsteps on stone, a hoard of marching players. Maybe they're laughing, are they laughing? They might be laughing, heart picking up, voices merging into one tormenting TV static, voices layering on top of each other and pressing down, down, down until he feels claustrophobic. Maze walls, bodies, voices, pressing in. Pressing in, pressing in, pressing, pressing, pressing, pressing until he feels like he can't breathe.
Like a fox flushed out from the safety of the bushes, sharp dog teeth nipping at his tail, he takes lefts and rights, trees and bark substituted for crumbling cold stone walls. It's no use. Like the fox will eventually run itself tired, Spoke makes a mistake, is herded into the corner by bodies everywhere and suffocating veils and biting swords. He stands with his back to the wall, trying to keep his traitorous heart in check, trying not to breathe, feeling all too hot and cold at the same time, adrenaline rushing through his system. He is waiting for the hunter with the gun because there is always a hunter with a loaded gun.
Sure enough, Jamato steps out from the portal. Spoke hunches, hackles raising, a low noise building in his throat as the fox stares into the small black cave in the muzzle that houses the life-taking bullet, nowhere to go. It's easy to hate him here, to hate Jamato, because where once his hands were warm and soft, his cloak shifting and present as Jamato shared with him his knowledge, watched Spoke's eyes light up at each new glitch, now they are cold and hold Spoke's life in his hands.
Once, the sight of Jamato brought peace and excitement, now the mere thought of him brings a terrifying instinctual terror, the fox hearing the thumping of paws on hard soil, the panting of sharp-teethed slobbering breath, the barking of dogs heading steadily closer. Now the thought of him hazes Spoke's mind over with panic, kicking up his fight or flight. It's always flight with Spoke, but he snarls, bares his teeth as if it's not.
As if he can fool the one person who knows Spoke better than he knows himself.
It's the thought that counts though. The idea that he will not let them think that he will go down easily, that he will use his claws and teeth and animal fight to bring down someone with him, that he will not be made submissive by the snapping of dog jaws at his flanks or the calculated coldness in which the hunter brings the barrel of the gun up to his face.
In these moments, it is easier to draw upon anger than it is fear, to allow himself to feel a sliver of justified hatred towards Jamato. Because yes, he had hurt Jamato, but Jamato had ruined his life, had pettily taken so much away from him and didn't seem satisfied, standing there with Spoke cornered, the last remainder of their friendship covering the vulnerable spot on Spoke's chest.
You made me this, he thinks bitterly. It's not entirely the truth. Jamato should have know about Spoke's tendencies, should have known that the glitch hunting, the exploits were a bad idea. But it was Spoke's fault for not allowing self-control, for taking the power and letting it get to his head because a part of him had seen the exploits, had held it close to his heart and whispered mine. Because for once in his life, Spoke was actually relevant, actually taken seriously. And while none of the attention was good, it was attention, and like every good actor, like every good showhorse, he craved attention.
But although he acknowledges this last part, it is distant and swept away. This is all Jamato's fault. As inhuman as he may be, all shifting, airy form, all cold where warmth should be, it is human to blame something else. That is why man says there is a god after all, to blame it for their problems. So Spoke blames Jamato, because taking accountability is something he doesn't have the energy to think over.
Jamato takes his time in saying anything. He stands there, looking, head tilted like he finds Spoke interesting, like a particularly shiny insect that's been pinned to a board for the pleasure of people to gaze at.
“Hello, Spoke,” Jamato says, as if they had run into each other at the supermarket, too casually. Spoke doesn't deign him a response, tilts his head downwards and locks his jaw stubbornly.
“You know you did this to yourself,” Jamato pointedly glances around. The Null stand like statues. “All of this. You're the reason everything happened. It’s all your fault.”
Spoke hisses, tail curling around his leg in a way he can't stop. He's sure Jamato notes this, takes special care in the way he says the next words very, very slowly, like he's savoring the taste.
“Although I suppose you've always been good at messing up. You ruined your life better than I could have ever dreamed of!” Jamato lets out a scornful noise that constitutes a laugh, an utterly degrading noise that makes Spoke want to shrink into his skin. His fingers find the cracks in the arms, he sinks his claws into them, focuses on the pain. “But I suppose it was always meant to be this way.”
A beat passes, the words echoing through the corridor, worming their way into Spoke's pointed ears, squeezing his throat like the rope of a man at the gallows. The floor feels as unsteady, about to drop.
“I can't believe you, Spoke.” Jamato says, sighs like a disappointed parent, taking note of Spoke's stubborn silence. “All those people you hurt with your stupid decisions. You're the reason Null exists. You're the reason all those rebels got re-captured by Null.”
Spoke's heart makes a run to his stomach, drops so violently he thinks he might just throw it up. He shakily takes a breath through his nose.
“What was I meant to do?” Spoke shoves out through bitter canine teeth, forces out through the tightening noose around his neck.
Jamato forced him through all of it, herded him from refuge to refuge to offer faux peace, an escape from the maze only to take it away, to reveal that he had never been close to the exit, to the cheese. That he had been running in circles all along, amusement to the scientist looking overhead, a clipboard held in hands.
“It was always meant to be like this,” he echoes Jamato, half-crying, half-laughing at the situation. Jamato plans to villainize him, already has begun it. Plans to use Spoke as a scapegoat, erase and lie about every good thing Spoke has done, covering up everything with the very big action of being responsible for the disappearance of so many people. He'd be up there with Flame and Wemmbu, and, already hated, everyone would take the bait, hook, line, and sinker. No questions asked, no looking for Spoke.
No one is looking for Spoke.
And the cherry on top? Jamato has the perfect person. No one would believe the boy who cried wolf, the outcast they already disliked. Jamato had a perfect villain.
And him being a villain isn't even really fully a lie. That might hurt most.
He’s reminded of a man standing before him, once the tyrant of the server, purple glitches obscuring his face. He still stands as though he is in power, almost makes Spoke shrink away even without the threats to back him up.
How he had leaned closer to Spoke and repeated what he had told him when Spoke's identity rested solely on his bucket and George Jr., when invisibility had coated his skin. When he had fallen into the lure of being accepted, of being a part of something.
How Ash had repeated it, had doubled down now knowing who Spoke was, more confident in the way he hisses, “you're just like me,” going back to talking about power vacuums as if he didn't make Spoke freeze, didn't just call Spoke a villain and say that's all he'll ever be. Didn't say he saw himself in Spoke.
And Spoke remembers how he had confessed it to Mapicc, after his best friend had come to his lavacast base wondering why Spoke had been avoiding going outside, avoiding company. Standing on the gravel pathway, Spoke had said, “Ash said I was like him,” and Mapicc saw how much it was affecting him. Had placed a hand on his shoulder and said firmly, confidently, so assuredly,
“You're not anything like him, Spoke. I would know.”
How he had repeated it many a night on various repetition, in varying patterns, curled up side by side, the words forming from his tongue like words carved into stone, Mapicc saying them like truth.
You're a good person. You're not like him. You're my best friend.
How Spoke had believed him, naively, had allowed Mapicc to soothe him into submission to his lies, beautiful as they may be.
Because Mapicc may have said them like truth, but he had left Spoke when he needed him. Had whispered all these things with such conviction, only for them to catch on his tongue when it mattered most.
Spoke stands stock-still, as Jamato gives him one look, says something about how death is too good for him, words that get caught up in the fuzz stuffed in his ears and then leaves with the rest of Null filing in front of him like mindless robots.
It's only when the nightmarish green leaves his vision that he snaps back to body and breaks the portal, scrapes his knuckles raw in his animal desperation to be free from this cage, to be free from the ghoul that was his first friend.
He stands there, stinging, panting, looking at the frame and feeling equally as empty, plunged back into darkness in the absence of purple glow.
He doesn't give off any light. He never has. It would be almost funny if it didn't convince Spoke of how wrong he was in this world, how dark and void-like his soul must be.
Maybe that's what scared Mapicc away. Maybe it was something he couldn't control. Is that better or worse? He doesn't know.
He starts walking so he doesn't have to think about that.
At some point, somewhere in the haze of pain and walking and repeating patterns, it opens up a little bit. He lifts his head. Like a person stuck in the desert for a long time he blinks, tries to figure out if this is an illusion, a mirage offered up by the betrayal of body to mind.
It's still there, but he turns and sees a familiar red-clothed shape in the distance and his decision is made up.
Despite the suffering in the maze, he heads straight, walks past it to Mapicc, shoulders relaxing despite everything, the oasis to the dehydrated traveler.
“Mapicc!” His voice comes out a rasp, still holds a sliver of hope, of excitement, maybe he's Pavlov’d himself to Mapicc's presence, can you even do that? Is that even how it works?
Involuntary responses associated with previously neutral environmental triggers.
That can't be right. He can't ever imagine being neutral to Mapicc. But anyways, no matter the uneducated attack he's accidentally administered to the psychologists (and now to the poets for his unprecedented word placement), it's no matter, pales in comparison to who stands in front of him.
The whole universe condensed into one body, the whole universe standing there as though he never left Spoke, like he was looking for him in the maze. Their paths had diverged but weren't perpendicular, meeting once to never meet again, they had met once more, like fate, like the pull of magnets Spoke had ended up back where he was meant to be.
All of his suffering dims, is nothing. He would do it all again and more if it meant seeing Mapicc again, almost ethereal, a picture of forgiveness and things that Spoke doesn't deserve, his edges softened, individual brush strokes of light like paint, like Mapicc is the subject of a Renaissance painting, something worth hours of time and labor to perfect. The curve of his tail, the sharp jut of his horns paralleling the jut of his chin, defiant and steady. Vertical lines mean defying gravity, a focal point. Spoke’s vanishing point always comes back to Mapicc, the west horizon the sun always sets behind. Clockwork. Meant to be.
He steps forwards. Mapicc does not apologize, does not allow Spoke to speak more. He raises a fist and punches Spoke in the face. Spoke's head snaps to the side. Mapicc just stands there as Spoke stares at the ground in shock, both frightened and curious and horrified and confused and knowing and accepting. A host of feelings that should contradict each other, should be paradoxical, but Spoke himself is a paradox, an anomaly, a stain on the code of the world he thought he deserved to put himself in.
Of course, he thinks, numbly, because pressure makes diamonds. Mapicc had faced pressure, had faced Spoke, unstoppable force versus immovable object, and he had faced the infinite tug-of-war of power between two varying forces and had come out on top, somehow. Not surprising really, considering Mapicc's nature. He was heroic, always adapting, and here he was living proof of that, standing tall and straight, fingers curled into fists, the sword Spoke gave him in his hands. Mapicc had faced pressure and had come out stronger, like metal forged into a blade, honed to perfection, Mapicc was diamond, he was perfection, he was the universe, whole, everything Spoke wasn't.
Facing him, reeling back from the blow he definitely deserved, Spoke wipes blood off the corner of his mouth, looks at the red staining his fingers— at least he has that, at least he bleeds the same red as a human does— and he thinks to himself that pressure also makes pipes burst. And wasn't he exactly the opposite of Mapicc? Where Mapicc's nature made him an angel, a hero, Spoke was the villain, the monster meant to be slain to end the story. Where pressure had made Mapicc diamond, it had broken Spoke. Like a broken pipe gushing water, Spoke's everything was on the floor, leaking wine-red into the grooves of the cold stone ground.
Ah wait, he was spoiling. They aren't there yet. They're here, with Spoke standing in front of someone he still considers his best-friend, because he is nothing without Mapicc, nothing without Mapicc to better him. And now he will die by Mapicc's hands. A fitting end for a villain, an end he knew was coming and yet hurts all the same.
He doesn't fight back as Mapicc pushes forward, attacking, just weakly brings up his arms to protect his face, lets Mapicc take out his anger, until eventually even blocking it is too much. He just backs himself into a corner and hopes that maybe, maybe Mapicc will stop and it will all go back to normal. That maybe he deserves this, all this.
He only really brings up his hands again when he feels the chestplate beginning to break, feels spiderweb cracks form across his chest. He thinks he maybe bubbles up a plea, maybe begs Mapicc to be careful, to stop hitting it, but Mapicc seems to think it the source of his troubles, doesn't care that Spoke is close to tears, trying to hold on to the last remaining good memory of Jamato that he has, trying to hold onto the chestplate that has protected his vulnerable heart without fail, been there for him when Mapicc couldn't.
It's no use. They both stop as the pieces of Alt drop red and dying purple at Spoke's feet, as Spoke stares at it for a long moment, feelings conflicting in his chest as Mapicc doesn't seem to care at all at Spoke's distress, just laughs mockingly. He laughs mockingly, he laughs mockingly, he laughs mockingly, and oh, he really hates Spoke doesn't he? He's not mad, no, he really hates Spoke. Hates in a way Mapicc never really has, always shrugging off fights, always joking about them later, holding occasional grudges but never this.
He flinches back, hitting the wall as Mapicc raises his sword again, the shimmering diamond edge stained with Spoke's blood. He tells himself that this is good, that this is what is meant to happen. That this is what he wants. He doesn't want to die, he really doesn't, has so much more he wants to do, but at the very least he'll die by the hands of Mapicc, right? At the very least he doesn't need to stare at the empty black sky, at the very least he'll see Mapicc's face as he bleeds out, won't be alone. That's good. He doesn't want to be alone when he dies. He's deeply afraid of it. He raises his hands slowly, a criminal in front of a cop, the blinding glare of the cop car headlights in his face, a deer in the light of two artificial suns thinking its found something greater than life, something more. There must be a light peeking over the jabbing red of Mapicc's horns, he can see it, even through the eery, steady darkness of the maze.
“I have nothing!” He gasps, panic giving away suddenly to calm. Acceptance. His shoulders loosen, his breathing calms as Mapicc tilts his head, listens to him. He's bleeding from gash in his forehead, not quite sure when he got that in what time between the slow year it took in their not-really-fight, more like giving-up-because-what-Mapicc-wants-Mapicc-gets. It trickles blood into his eyes, stings, runs down his face like the tears he can't seem to cry.
Mapicc doesn't really know the extent of the nothing he has, doesn't understand that Spoke doesn't care about Alt as much as he cares about Mapicc, latched onto Mapicc as a reason to live, latched on to the chestplate because it reminded him not only of Jamato but of Mapicc and all the good memories he had with his best friend. Reminded him of who he was.
Jamato, right… Spoke has the horrifying notion that he has finally figured out what Jamato's plans were. It's standing right in front of him, the plan in the shining blue crystal of his beloved Mapicc's sword. It's in who will strike Spoke, who will dig the blade further into Spoke's chest than anyone would ever be able to. He could almost applaud it, but he's a bit too far gone for that.
“Of course it was you- it had to be you– he- it was always going to be you, wasn't it?" He stumbles over his words, the plan clicking into place as soon as he speaks them into being. He knows that Jamato can probably hear this, is probably smiling beneath that pale white mask, the one that had never scared Spoke before but now haunts his dreams. He's probably watching this. Spoke pulls himself from the brink of madness for a brief moment. Call it petty, but he is not going to give Jamato the satisfaction of watching him beg Mapicc not to kill him.
Besides, he's already accepted it, a part of him has. It's in the way he had asked Jumper to kill him, not directly, but told her she should. It's in the knife he had pressed into Mapicc's hands as he held them in both his own and whispered to Mapicc, "kill me, because no one else can." The truth was that it was more, kill me because I wouldn't have anyone else do it but you. But those words would never come out of his mouth. Doesn't want to acknowledge the selfishness of his actions.
Instead he brings both hands to the sharp blade, holds them between bloody palms, a mirror of the moment where he had looked into the eyes of a different Mapicc and Mapicc had whispered, "I won't. I can't. Spoke, what are you talking about?" And Spoke had dropped it, had let Mapicc guide him back to bed.
Except now he isn't sure that Mapicc won’t kill him. He expects him to, to simultaneously fulfill Mapicc's role of hero and Spoke's as the villain, unwilling as it may be.
“I have nothing,” he repeats in finality, expecting to cross the event horizon, suspects that he already has, a long time ago, too focused on the lack of oxygen in his lungs to see the light click off like the down flip of a light switch. Mapicc's blade is pressed up against his chest, his palms now wrapped around Mapicc's hand on the hilt. He can feel the cold through his hoodie, and is made all too aware of the fluttering of his heart in his ribcage, a beating bird trying to escape. In time, he promises.
Mapicc's hands are trembling beneath his, eyes blown wide. For all that he seemed to want Spoke dead before, he pauses now.
“Kill me, Mapicc.” Spoke gives permission, the illusion of choice, pressing the point further into blue-gray skin. “Save the server.” He doesn't really want to die but it must happen. It must.
Because he is a rabid dog and rabid dogs must be shot in the street. Shot before they can sink dog teeth into someone, a bullet through their heart before they make another person suffer the long wait of white foam and painful breathing, shot before their abnormal screeching scares the children in the neighborhood, just another body to clean up, blood in the cracks of old pavement, a creature no one will miss, a heap of suffering fur on the ground, no thoughts in head.
There's a moment of stillness as the two lock eyes, try to figure out when the gap between them has gotten so large, even as they're so close together.
Maybe his acceptance of death is his choice, the one thing fate offers him that is his own. Like Oedipus carving his eyes out, an action to take control of a life not really yours. A puppet trying to grab the strings that dance it around the stage.
He's okay with it being Mapicc.
Mapicc is not okay with it. He pulls his hands away, yanks the sword away from Spoke and tosses it on the ground. Reyna on the ground. The queen dethroned. Spoke almost giggles at that.
“I– I don't want you dead,” Mapicc says, almost pleadingly. “Just– go and live, away from here. Build a home, anything.”
It wouldn't be a home without Mapicc, just four walls and a roof, a hollow shell masquerading at “home” but never quite getting there. Because an inanimate structure can't replicate the feelings of warmth and safety gotten from a friend. Can't even come close.
And Spoke can build a house, but it would be so empty, so pointless, so joyless without Mapicc. Might as well just die. It wouldn't really be living anyways.
He opens his mouth, maybe to say something about this, maybe to tell Mapicc that he loves him, something he doesn't feel like he says too often. The moment feels too much like a goodbye, something that terrifies him endlessly. He's not ready to give this up, not ready to move on. There's no moving on from here. He doesn't get the chance.
A portal, the dreaded portal opens up behind Mapicc, sends Mapicc back into the snarling Mapicc, not the close-to-gentle, caring Mapicc he was, looking at Spoke and saying softly that he wants him to live.
Mapicc fights tooth and nail, repeats that he isn't going back, that he doesn't want to go back, and then finally, when Mapicc's armor has been broken, when Mapicc, hands pinned behind his back sees Spoke just standing there, back pressed against the wall, limbs unresponsive, his eyes narrow into slits.
“Good job, Spoke,” he spits. “I can't believe that you were stalling. I can’t believe–”
“This wasn't–” Spoke starts, cut off by the hatred and hurt in Mapicc's eyes that hurts worse than any dagger pressed into his chest. Mapicc wanted Spoke to live, but Mapicc might die for it. Will think that Spoke wanted him dead. He thinks of the shake in Mapicc's hands matching his own, both trying to survive in a world too cruel.
Null drags Mapicc back to the portal and Mapicc strains at their grip, jerks a shoulder to get someone's hands off him so he can pause before he goes in. One last time, he looks at Spoke, mouth pressing into a thin line and hisses out, “Jamato was right.”
“I'm sorry,” Spoke musters up, a pathetic, quiet offering through chapped lips and blood, so quietly that he's sure Mapicc doesn't hear. And Mapicc doesn't make any indication of hearing, no shoulder lift, no emotion in his eyes, no slight turn to Spoke, nothing. And even if not intentional, Spoke’s bearing of the heart is beaten down and stepped on, blood dragged against the ground like someone trying to shake dirt off the soles of their shoe.
Then he's pulled through the portal, purple light swirling like open arms, dragging him to a place Spoke can't go, taking Spoke’s heart with him again.
He stands there for a long moment, silent, shoulders slumped in exhaustion. He's failed. Failed as a hero, as a friend. Failed to do anything right.
He doesn't look up as netherite boots hit the ground, as he hears the shuffle of a cape with the movement of a figure walking towards him.
The green trims on the boots tell him all that he needs to know. He swallows down bile feeling completely and utterly broken, his very being broken down into zeros and ones, into the hated void below the bedrock layer of the world he was born from. Feeling weightless nothing, his nails digging half-crescent shapes into his palms. Of course Jamato was here for this. His plan had worked. Perfectly. Spoke slotting right into place like he was compliant.
Spoke's Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, right? He had been told he was not a good person and he had become one, a psychological phenomena. To match, the bystander effect, people passing by him sure someone else will help, someone else will pick up the broken body and nurse it back to health.
Mapicc had. And now Mapicc was gone.
“Hello, Spoke.” Jamato says, almost cheerfully. “I'll admit, I didn't expect Mapicc to not kill you, but it's almost better this way.”
Spoke's jaw clenches, brow furrowing as he chokes down sobs, as hot tears trace painful lines down his face. Silent tears, like a kid told that he wasn't allowed to cry.
“Are you finally done resisting, Spoke?” Jamato’s voice drops faux soothingly, a parent consoling their child. Spoke makes eye contact with the cold ground and wishes he had died, wishes the car hadn't screeched to a stop before hitting the deer.
He's already lost everything before Jamato tells him to empty out his inventory and ender chest. Stands there still until Jamato sighs and tells him he won't ever see Mapicc again if he doesn't.
He doesn't hesitate, dropping everything, empty slots like he had just begun playing, like he hadn't done anything with his life. His whole legacy erased in the flames that spark and glow, hungrily lapping up his items until ash remains, belching choking smoke and orange-yellow light that flicker across Jamato’s apathetic face.
He watches until nothing is left.
His chestplate is gone, his identity gone. Mapicc is gone. Maybe Mapicc was his identity.
“Is that everything?’ Jamato asks calmly, as if he hadn't just torn Spoke apart, hadn't taken away everything from him. It's too much, Spoke shouldn't deserve this. But maybe by his nature he does.
Spoke, usually so loud, has nothing to say, facade forcefully torn until he is nothing more but a scared child, the very thing he had spent years pretending he was not. A child couldn't save the world after all, a child couldn't do all the things he did, breaking down the Mafia from the inside. But maybe it was his reactions to all of the bad that had shown what he truly was. The want-to-die that was always present, his conflicting feelings and emotions, the way he laughed at things that shouldn't be funny, took everything lighter than anyone else. Because a child didn't understand when to be serious, and maybe Spoke, in his incompetence, didn't either. Maybe he was just a kid pretending to be an adult when he had never really lived a childhood to its fullest. Maybe he was always trying to fit in shoes too big, in a world that forced him to grow up too soon, thus dooming him to this.
He just nods instead, feeling so small and alone, unable to conjure up any words, not wanting to try at all. He doesn't meet Jamato's eyes, clasps his hands together in front of him and lets out a sniffle. He sees tears fall past his vision, feels Jamato stoic in front of him and feels utterly pathetic and weak.
“Perfect.” Jamato says easily. “Now through the portal.”
Everyone will always know him as the reason the rebellion faded. As the reason everything went wrong. He felt a sense of deja vu as his feet shuffled forward, his vision like he was viewing himself timid and small stepping slowly to the portal. He will never get to be that hero, never get to prove to Ash, to the server, to himself that they were wrong about him.
There wasn't even a chance, not even a sliver of hope for Spoke. Like a fool, he had mistaken shining headlights for the light at the end of the tunnel and was about to be hit with a high-speed train instead of feeling sunlight on his face.
He thinks about Parrot admitting that he was wrong by telling Spoke to be the one to destroy the stasis, by giving Spoke the position of hero, allowing him to be the one who takes away all the Mafia’s power.
He thinks of Mapicc telling him that he's his best friend, the best person he's ever met.
He thinks of Jumper questioning why she would kill him, offering to help him find Mapicc even when it meant putting her own life in danger. Because she had cared about Spoke. Cared about him even if he was prickly and stressed and snappish.
He thinks about saving the server from Law, side by side with Parrot and Wemmbu and Flame, how important and included he had felt, bickering with Wemmbu, getting yelled at by Theo, included even though he didn't have much to offer.
How Parrot had given him hope when he had none, when he was sure Mapicc was dead. How Spoke had in turn believed in him, shouted "King Parrot!" long before anyone believed it could be true.
They were wrong. He was wrong. Jamato was right all along. No one would be hurt if Spoke wasn't like this. If he wasn't made wrong. Spoke wasn't a hero, wasn't even close to one. He wasn't anything.
He thought that Parrot and him could have been be okay again, had pushed past his ego to ask Parrot for help, only to be turned down.
He thinks about how no one is searching for him.
Taking a shaky breath, he steps into the portal, purple swirling light overtaking his vision in what feels like finality, an end, his demise.
He is quite sure, has never been so sure of the fact that no one will mourn. This is truth, written into the fabric of the universe. No one cries over the death of the monster.
No one at all.