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It is dark, and Wifies drowns.
The water is lit-up by the faint glow of a TV-screen directly across from him. If Hummer had eyes they’d surely be glued to his own. The only other place would be the dark of the surrounding ocean, the drifting kelp that casts shadows that plead for you to turn your head from the light of your friends face, that ask you to explore further.
Wifies drowns. He hasn’t run out of air yet — he’s scared. This isn’t the first time he’s died, certainly not the first time he’s died with only one life and the breath in his lungs is forcefully expelled as the world lights up-
He isn’t afraid of dying. There’s no such thing as dying, really, only gasping for air as the cold of the void draws away from you and you open your eyes to the blue of a new world, still dreaming of stars and a dream, a long dream. Wifies has spent his life dreaming of faceless monsters and the empty skies that go on forever until it’s impossible to tell which way the world is and all you can do is fall.
Hummer has no mouth to breathe with, no eyes to see, but he still found Wifies in that world and he still pleaded with him to believe in him. And Hummer is real and passionate, is so painfully alive that Wifies has to believe. They’re alike in some ways, would be more if Hummer didn’t cling to blind faith, if the first face Wifies learned to hate wasn’t his own.
It’s dark like death, in the ocean. Sunlight catches and casts stars across the surface while all the creatures below scuttle and feed and sleep in this awful place. Wifies misses the sun, will miss the air in his lungs and the words on his lips. He believes, burns the thought into his brain to make it as true as he possibly can.
Drowning hurts. He doesn’t swim up (he believes in Hummer) but the panic is instinctive and all-consuming and prolonged. It’s quiet, and he doesn’t know if that’s worse than the collapsing floor and ceiling as he clutches a promise close to his chest, like he does now in the silence of a glowing screen and the stillness of the water.
Wifies has drowned before, will drown again now, but it has to mean something, has to be worth the silence of death and the ever-persistent chill in his bones.
The world flashes red in quick bursts - a familiar sequence, learned over years of living and fighting and dying again - and Wifies does his best not to struggle. There’s his friend, screen flickering with static and he asks- do you trust me, and he does, he has to. Would drown for him, over and over until the dream faded into long, waking hours spent doing everything-nothing at all and all at once.
His eyes open.
It’s dark like death, in the ocean, but Wifies is not dead. He’s alive, and that knowledge brings him such joy, such triumph, that he doesn’t realise that the darkness has become all consuming. Where is his guiding light? Words pass through his lips and fade away into the silence of drowning because he’s alone.
Is this how it feels, he wonders as he watches the last traces of his friend drift up towards the sun, to watch a friend die? And he doesn’t understand how he could have survived, after everything Hummer had done, why he can still hold onto this promise (please) as the darkness swallows him whole.
Wifies is drowning.
But he’s not, he’s falling, it becomes clear, and this is not death but the height tears the oxygen from his lungs as the world spirals into meaninglessness below him. It’s too high - the moment he reaches the end he’ll be gone (like Hummer). Will it hurt more than drowning, more than fire, more than an arrow through the skull? And Wifies has died before, but never in such a way that the world stretches and contorts beneath him.
When he hits the ground it’s dark, and he is alone. The water still presses at him from every angle, the TV-screen still glows, but that is a dream best left buried in the ocean floor, until he’s standing beside Hummer again in his library or leaning on the hull of the ship, when Hummer won’t look at him with eyes he doesn’t have but he’ll laugh and promise and swear on both of their lives.
There’s no such thing as dying, not even in the endless shadow cast by the roiling waves where sounds give up before reaching the end of the story, of the video, but Wifies thinks that this is pretty close. Hummer might agree with him, when they meet again.
He just has to believe in his friend.