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Mapicc’s gone.
—
“You just got him back. You aren’t worried he’ll run off again?” The question comes out hesitant, Jumper giving him an assessing look from the corner of her eye.
Spoke doesn’t respond. He watches as far below, Mapicc darts out of Zam’s grasp, his laugh a light and clear bell ringing in the air. Zam’s hair is near golden in the sunlight, and Mapicc gives her braid a playful tug. He smiles, dodges the next blow— Zam growls frustratedly. Spoke’s almost completely sure she’s actually trying to hurt him. Mapicc must know, because he grins wider.
Mapicc is happy. Mapicc is safe. Mapicc is here.
“Nope,” he finally declares, popping the P in that obnoxious way he knows Jumper hates. Predictably, her eye twitches. Ha-ha. He swings his legs absentmindedly, kicking one out.
“No,” he says again, with a fond certainty. “He knows his way home.”
—
Mapicc left.
—
“You must’ve crawled out of Hell or something,” Mapicc says to him one night with foreheads pressed together. They’re huddled in bed facing each other, feet laid side by side and no space left between.
Spoke rests his hand, open-palmed, on Mapicc’s neck. He shudders beneath him. This close, Spoke can hear, almost feel, feel, feel the tempo of Mapicc’s stuttering, thumping heart. Under his palm, Mapicc’s jugular pulsates at ¾ time. Spoke listens.
“Or something,” he grins.
“Or something,” Mapicc sleepily agrees.
What Mapicc doesn’t know is that he’s right. Or he’s wrong, or he’s somewhere between the two. Spoke is from Hell. Spoke remembers what might be Hell, at least. In the beginning, before the now, before he was Spoke, Spoke The Exploiter, Spoke The Friend, Spoke On Unstable, Spoke And Mapicc. He remembers Hell.
It was black and dark and cold and a sinking, sunken Nothing and it was an impossible and inevitable dream-or-nightmare of sleep. Spoke was asleep for a long time. He was dead behind his eyelids, in the black and the dark and the Nothing before he crawled and clawed his way up and out into the overworld.
And he liked to be Here, above ground, not in Hell, but in what might be closer to Heaven: with brightness and warmth and the sun and Mapicc. With light and so many things, an endless amount of these Somethings instead of Nothing. All of it, so new and shining; a beautiful, wonderful, fantastic nonsense.
But Spoke remembers Hell, remembers it more than he thinks of the Here and Now. Still in the Before. Spoke doesn’t know what happened in the Before, but he knows enough. It was dark. And cold. That’s really all there is to say on the matter.
But if there was more—
—
Mapicc, something dark and pathetic and scared hiding in him cries out. Mapicc, Mapicc, Mapicc–
—
Spoke toys with the hair falling over Mapicc’s eyes. “I’m a bad person, you know,” Spoke admits suddenly. “But most people are, so I think it’s okay!”
Mapicc furrows his brows, propping himself up on his elbows and lifting his head from Spoke’s lap. The hair slips from his fingers.
Mapicc begins, “Spoke—”. Spoke puts a hand where Mapicc’s shoulder meets his neck. Mapicc falters; he pauses and lays back down again, as if cowed. Spoke’s hand stays where it is, heavy and cold as a corpse. Mapicc shivers under the touch and Spoke can feel hair raise and skin become almost clammy.
Mapicc never finishes.
—
“You’re probably the worst person I’ve ever met, dude,” laughs Mapicc, and Spoke can’t help but laugh with him, ribs aching with the force of it. Because it’s the truth and Mapicc just hasn’t realized it.
Mapicc hasn’t figured out that there’s something rotten about him, inside him, consuming and destroying everything in its wake.
Because Spoke is not a person at all, is Nothing, has Nothing inside of him, has this emptiness he builds and contorts and molds himself around. And it is so hungry. It’s insatiable. It will never be filled. It will never be enough for him. Because the truth is that something is wrong with Spoke— there must be— and Mapicc doesn’t understand.
Mapicc doesn’t understand that Spoke is going to destroy him.
—
He can hear Mapicc laughing. Bright, brighter; yet brighter.
—
That’s what he does. He tears apart the people he loves, breaks them apart and shatters them into a thousand—million—billion pieces. Is it really so bad, though? Spoke knows about it. About breaking. Spoke breaks himself into three; Spoke puts himself back together. Spoke can put them back together. He can see it some nights in the dark, all of them, breaking, breaking, breaking. In the black of the night Spoke can feel it too: him, three times over, repeating— repeating and breaking, breaking, breaking.
—
Mapicc is saying something. Spoke doesn’t know what. It doesn’t matter. He’s content to simply listen to his voice, warm and bright and alive. As he watches Mapicc gesture excitedly while speaking, Spoke thinks. And in a startling moment of clarity, Spoke understands that he is probably going to kill the two of them dead someday.
And then the thought is gone, and it rolls right off his tongue with a “Sure, Mape”, dissipating into smoke as Mapicc grins, and then, like a light blinking: on, off, on, and—
—
If there was more, he would tell Mapicc about the Nothing. Maybe it was all in his head, and he dreamed it up— that beautiful, all-encompassing, world-ending totality. The dark and the cold. Maybe he was Nothing, and then he was Something, and he’s filled in the blank between the two with made-up something, something, somethings. Something bigger than death. Something like dying. Spoke remembers the dark and the cold of Nothing.
But then, what about the warmth?
—
Sometimes Spoke wonders what it’s like to be dead.
Spoke wouldn’t know. Spoke will never die. Never ever, swears Mapicc in a whisper from the back of his mind. Never ever, Spoke, because he would never let that happen. You’re my best friend. He’s Spoke’s best friend, and he’s—
Spoke thinks very hard: shut up, shut up, shut up. The memory obeys.
—
There’s no Jumper beside him now, no Zam, no Mapicc. He swings his legs back and forth where they dangle off the ledge of the building.
Capital City looks so small from this high up, buildings and peoples reduced to specks and smears of shapes and color, red, gold, red, repeating. A light blinking— a thousand lights blinking— on, off, on, and no Mapicc, no Mapicc, where is he, where is Mapicc?
Spoke thinks: Someone will come eventually.
Spoke thinks: I want Mapicc.
And then, with no shred of guilt, he thinks: I want to blow this place sky high and take as many people as possible with me.
And he wants, he wants, he wants. He wants this city razed, for there to be nothing left of it but rubble and debris. He wants every single person gone. For all of them to go away forever, far, far away, wherever Mapicc is. It’s only fair. Why should they keep their home when Spoke has lost his? Has lost everything?
Why should they get to keep living when Mapicc— Why should he have to keep living when Mapicc—
—
Mapicc is his best friend. Spoke loves Mapicc. Mapicc loves him.
Jamato was his best friend too. Jamato loved him. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he doesn’t. But Spoke loved Jamato. Spoke loves Jamato. It makes him want to tear Jamato to shreds with his bare hands. It makes him want to rip himself into pieces.
Mostly, it makes him want to cry
—
He stands at the precipice, a foot dangling experimentally over the edge. The drop is sheer, long and dizzying and far, far, far. Spoke doesn’t want to die. He’s sure. Over and over like picking at a reopened scab: I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die. Spoke prays it into existence and it makes itself true. It must be true. He doesn’t want to die. So he doesn’t.
He steps off, catches himself in the water. Closes his eyes and pictures himself, broken on the ground, bloody and shattered into a thousand—million—billion pieces, falling, falling, still falling. He’s still falling.
Mapicc, he wants to call out into the dark. Mapicc, Mapicc, catch me, hold me, save me. The sounds fall dead inside his throat. Spoke has no Mapicc to call for. Spoke has no voice to call with. Spoke has nothing.
Traiterously, he thinks of Jamato, hands round his neck like a collar: You ruin everything you touch. You destroy the things you love. You’re evil, evil, evil. You’re less than that. You’re sick. Traiterously, his heart stutters, you’re just as evil as me. But that can’t be true. Spoke isn’t evil. Spoke doesn’t want to die and he isn’t evil and he has nothing and he wants Mapicc and he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t, he doesn’t.
But sometimes—
—
Mapicc runs hot. It drives Spoke wild some nights, when a palm that’s all but burning rests over his heart. Mapicc can’t help it, he knows. The touch is searing, on the left side of his face, over his hip, behind his ear. Mapicc runs hot and Mapicc is touchy. Spoke likes it. Spoke likes the feeling of fingers interlocked, of arms linked together, a chain of paper dolls, on and on, inseparable and irremovable parts of one another. Spoke likes the closeness. Spoke likes the warmth. Spoke likes Mapicc. Mapicc runs hot, Mapicc is touchy, and Mapicc is his. The thought makes something tangled and knotted inside of his chest loosen, makes him want to sing he loves me, he loves me, he loves me and I love him. Mapicc is his best friend. Mapicc is Everything. Mapicc is—
—
Sometimes Spoke feels like he’s crazy, or he’s going crazy, or he’s halfway there already. An indefatigable, violent passion strikes him and he loses himself in it, torn open and schismed and splintering and shattering and wrong, wrong, wrong. Sometimes Spoke thinks he’s crazy. The way Mapicc looks at him sometimes; the way Jumper and Zam and Mapicc and Jamato and Minute and Mapicc and Mapicc and Mapicc look, look at him, unseeing and distant with something almost scared— Sometimes Spoke thinks he’s crazy and everyone else knows it but him.
—
In moments of weakness Spoke wants to cry. He wants to beg, wants to demand for them to tell me what’s wrong with me. Tell me how to fix this. Tell me how to put you back together. He won’t. Spoke is above those things. Spoke will die before he cries and begs and demands for anything from anyone. He’s better than that. But sometimes—
—
Maybe Spoke has mistaken delusion for genius. Maybe Spoke has mistaken himself as a wielder of that vast emptiness instead of its subject. Maybe Spoke is crazy.
—
There’s nothing wrong with you, Mapicc says. You’re Spoke. You’re my best friend. Like a candle, weakly flickering to life against the darkness, in, out, in, out: you’re Spoke, you’re my best friend, you’re Spoke, and it’s almost enough to convince him this time. There’s nothing wrong with him. Over and over and over again: there’s nothing. Nothing at all.
—
Maybe Spoke is bad.
—
Spoke feels like it somedays, alone with his thoughts in a lightless Nothing. He feels it: himself, fraying, splitting, coming apart and unraveling, unspooling like a long dancing thread; ones and zeroes in triplet turns, three, three, three all the way down. Soft, softer, with a pulse that itches— golden sunlight and clear bells, ringing, ringing and it cuts sharp, knife-like through the fugue. Zam and Mapicc and Jumper and Jamato and Minute and Parrot all dancing behind his eyelids, Rose, Ash, and Mapicc, Mapicc, Mapicc, burning himself into the blackness. Bright enough to blind the sun, Mapicc, his Mapicc, beautiful, wonderful Mapicc.
Mapicc who he loves. Mapicc who loves him, always. Always, Mapicc promises, a fantastic nonsense, five fingers flexing over Spoke’s heart. Always.
Don’t stop loving me, Spoke begs in sleep: not you, never you. It’s pathetic, he knows, but he can’t help it. He can’t. Spoke can’t live in a world where Mapicc hates him. He doesn’t want to. Because he loves Mapicc. That’s how it’s always been. Spoke and Mapicc and Mapicc and Spoke, always-and-forever-and-ever.
There’s nothing else for him.
—
Maybe Spoke is evil.
—
I’m all out of air, he thinks, gasping and shaking and shuddering with a hand where his shoulder meets his neck. Spoke holds himself together in a mockery of an embrace. His fingers dig in deep enough to draw blood. I’m all out of air. There’s not enough of it. He thinks of the hatred in Mapicc’s eyes, the clash of a sword meeting armor, the very last thing of Jamato’s that was still his: breaking and shattering and gone, gone, gone. He thinks of Mapicc’s back drawn taught as he steps through the Nether portal, surrounded by Null. He thinks of Mapicc leaving him. He thinks of Mapicc hating him.
He thinks of Jamato. In, out, in, in again—
—
Mapicc laughs from where he’s tucked into Spoke’s side. The sound is like sunlight across water. Spoke smiles.
He thinks he might be in Hell.