Work Text:
The Void was a usually static place.
Dark would often go there if he was feeling particularly stressed, and usually it was a stable environment that he could relax in.
That had not been the case the last few times, and it was grating on him.
The thing that kept showing up within the new chaos had many faces, always changing. It almost hurt to look at it, its expressions always shifting, mouth moving with a hundred thousand different words at once as its very form shifted.
The first time he saw it, the Void rippled with its arrival, and Dark played along as the Void yanked him into a scene of faux romance. He played along as the thing dragged him with it into a convoluted joyride through its timeline, and then he somehow managed to forcibly yank himself away from it and back into the Manor.
Dark’s old wounds hurt worse that day than they had in years.
When he tried to rest again a few days later, neck throbbing and aura going wild whenever anyone so much as looked at him, he was dragged into yet another meeting with the thing. The Void went wild around him once more, and that time Dark could all but smell the Actor.
His stink was all over the chaos within the Void, and Dark lost his temper.
If the thing wanted to play along with that monster of a being, then he would make sure it knew exactly what kind of being the Actor was.
The faces kept changing, body warping and melting in on itself a hundred thousand different times as he spoke, pulling like rubber only to melt like tar, expression shocked one moment, happy the next, disgusted seconds after that—
Dark cut their meeting short with a desperate cry through the Void, and vomited the moment he was back in his office.
It had been years since he threw up, and it burned.
Wrong, Damien whispered in his ear, blue flickering wildly around him. It’s all wrong. And yet familiar. We know that thing. Knew. Will know? I don’t know. It’s familiar.
It wants to steal your power, Celine hissed, her voice even more caustic than usual, crimson pouring across his vision for a moment. It knows what you are and it wants what you have. It will KILL US—
“SHUT UP!” Dark all but sobbed, head throbbing and stomach rebelling violently again as Celine’s shriek rang in his ear.
The two fell silent, pulling away, and Dark crumpled into a heap on his floor, choking on the air he tried to breathe.
Everything hurt.
The Void was chaos after that, wild and restless, and Dark saw the thing several more times. It didn’t speak to him or approach him again after those first few times, but Dark wouldn’t have let it even if it had wanted to.
The primal fear he felt every time he saw its face was enough to have him yanking himself out of the Void by the proverbial bootlaces.
He started getting sick more often after those encounters, often left shaking and in agony after vomiting up everything he had eaten for the last month. The worst was when he ended up vomiting blood.
Dr. Iplier could do nothing to help him.
The one time he had gone to see the Doctor, the younger Ego had said that, besides the centuries-old broken bones and bullet wounds, he was in perfect health. There was no medical reason for Dark’s sickness, and Dr. Iplier had no idea how to fix Void-based maladies.
And so, Dark holed himself up in his office and refused to come out.
If there was no way to fix whatever was wrong with him, he had no wish to force others to live with his suffering.
He began having nightmares again, bits and pieces of his pasts bleeding through into his current life. It had been a long time since he had nightmares from Damien, but now he was waking up screaming almost every night, the DA’s face a nonsensical blob in his mind’s eye as he came fully awake.
Familiar, Damien would whisper. So familiar. But why?
Dark didn’t know.
He just wanted to stop being in pain.
On the worst days, he couldn’t even get up, limbs shaking uncontrollably as his shattered spine wreaked havoc on his nervous system.
Dark wondered, only once, why no one had come to check on him, and then the crimson half of his aura lashed out at the door abruptly and he had his answer.
“Why won’t you let them in?” He rasped, pleading for an answer from what was left of Celine.
You are weak when you are hurt. She hissed back, crimson wrapping around his throat for a moment before dissipating. And weakness cannot be shown.
“I don’t care,” he slurred through the broken jaw that hadn’t given him trouble in years. “I don’t w-wanna be alone.”
Stop being a child.
Dark groaned and closed his eyes against another wave of pain.
He wanted to stop being in pain.
Dark drifted for a while, slipping in and out of the Void against his will.
Each time, the Thing was there, just out of the corner of his eye, warping, shifting, rippling, melting.
Dark screamed, curling in on himself like a dying spider, and begged for it to stop.
And, after almost three weeks of sheer misery, his pleas were answered.
The Void settled.
It settled like an avalanche, sending shockwaves through Dark’s very soul, and in the process, it shoved him out.
Dark let out an unearthly noise of agony, entire body convulsing uncontrollably, and then, mercifully, he finally passed out.
Dark knew nothing more for a long, long while.
————————————
There was a new Ego in the Manor.
The King of the Squirrels had only seen him once for a few seconds, looking disheveled and shaken, before he had been ushered deeper into the house by Wilford and Yancy and King had lost sight of him from his perch in a tree.
Dark was nowhere to be seen.
King chewed on his lip anxiously for a moment, then jumped and hissed softly as he bit too hard and made himself bleed. He did that a lot when he was anxious. He flicked his tongue out to feel at the wound, a bit of peanut butter mixing with the blood when he stretched his tongue out a bit too far.
Oh well.
He shook himself, shuffling a bit on his branch, and glanced toward where he knew Dark’s window was.
Why hadn’t their leader been out and about lately?
King had heard something about him being sick, but…that didn’t usually stop Dark. He was far too tough to let a bit of sickness get him down.
King chattered his teeth softly in agitation, and shuffled to keep his balance as one of his squirrels dropped onto his shoulder and lapped at his peanut buttery cheek for a moment as though sensing his distress.
Or maybe she was just hungry.
Either way, he didn’t mind the company.
Squirrels were so simple. They never demanded he talk or be ‘normal,’ and they were very warm to sleep under.
King chattered again as the small animal leapt away, and he huffed a breath before crouching a bit lower on the branch and following. For a few moments, he was completely airborne between two of the massive oaks outside the manor, air rushing past his ears.
He was very glad he had decided not to wear his crown or cloak today—the trees were covered in far too much foliage and he would have gotten tangled.
Stretching out, King’s gloved hands found one of the large branches of his target tree, and he used his momentum to swing himself over to the trunk and scrambled down. Several squirrels moved with him, easily keeping up with his fluid movements.
King had long since lost his fear of falling.
Landing light on the balls of his feet as he dropped from the last few branches, King dropped into a crouch against the trunk, fingertips brushing the ground lightly for balance as he peered up at the darkened window of Dark’s rooms.
There were enough grips.
Scaling a sheer wall was a lot harder than climbing a tree, but King had climbed the Manor multiple times over the years, usually in rain.
Climbing it today would be easy.
He bounded forward, staying on all fours to avoid detection, then pushed of the ground and leapt up to grab the top of the closest first story window’s frame. Scrambling, he hauled himself up and shove himself upward before reaching for the next handhold further up: a slightly protruding brick.
He was panting by the time he reached Dark’s window, but he had made it.
It only occurred to him as he crouched on Dark’s window frame.
King had no idea how to get the window open.
He shimmied a bit to get a better angle, then pushed at it with his hip. Nothing happened, so he shoved a little harder.
He was not expecting the window to all but fly inward, and he lost his balance immediately and tumbled through the window and to the floor inside with a yelp and a heavy thump.
He frantically scrambled back into a crouch, eyes wide as he searched the office he found himself in for any sort of threat.
When he saw none, he relaxed slightly and slowly rose to his feet.
“…Dark?” He called softly, timidly. “Are…are you in here? It’s—it’s King.”
There was a very soft groan from the opposite side of the office, and King scrambled toward the source.
“Dark?!”
Darkiplier lay in a heap on the floor, suit rumpled, hair a wild mess. His aura was flickering weakly and erratically around him body, and a tendril of blue reached out weakly before pulling back. There was a sour smelling trashcan sitting off to the side, and King wrinkled his nose in distaste.
So Dark had been sick.
Badly.
Very, very badly.
Dark’s heterochromatic eyes fluttered suddenly, and King jerked back in surprise before relaxing slowly as Dark merely stared at him for a moment before his eyes fluttered shut again.
“…Dark…?” King hesitantly called again, reaching out to gently shake the shadowy Ego.
A whip-like tendril of crimson lashed out violently as King touched Dark’s shoulder, and he lurched back with a cry of pain as it left a stinging burn on his wrist. The blue part of Dark’s aura stretched out quickly as the crimson retreated, and King reached out carefully as it made a “come-here” motion.
It felt cold to the touch, and soothing against the burn.
“Thank you,” King whispered. “I’m sorry for touching him.”
“…s’okay,” Dark mumbled against the floor, making King jump again. “They’re jus’ overpr’tective.”
“Oh,” King replied intelligently, then shuffled a bit, chewing his lip again and picking at the carpet. “Are…are you okay?”
Dark let out a low hum of assent, then slowly began shoving himself upright.
King reached out hesitantly to help, jerking back a few times as the crimson flicked at him.
“Stop it, Celine,” Dark rasped softly, eyes fluttering a bit as he struggled to keep himself conscious.
Celine.
King had heard that name before.
She was a part of what made Darkiplier who he was.
Apparently, she was the more aggressive side.
Good to know.
“Do…umm, do you, uh, need anything?” King fumbled, wringing his hands.
Dark blinked forcefully as though to clear his vision, then swallowed dryly.
“…water.”
King nodded immediately.
Water. He could get water.
“Why’re you in here?” Dark asked softly as King rushed over to the bathroom and grabbed the cup conveniently on the sink.
“You, uh, you haven’t been out in—in a while,” King replied before hurrying back with the water cup. He splashed a bit of it on himself, and flushed in embarrassment at the mess. “S-Sorry.”
“It’s just water,” Dark shrugged, before downing his glass in a few big gulps. He let out a relieved sigh as he set the glass aside. “Thank you, King.”
“Of-of course,” King nodded, feeling a bit like a bobblehead. “What…uh, what happened?”
“No idea,” Dark sighed. “The Void acted up. It was…restless.”
He shuddered suddenly, somehow turning even more pale than he already was.
“There was…there was a Thing in there,” he croaked, hands trembling. “It…it was horrible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
King shivered.
Anything frightening enough to scare Darkiplier must be pretty horrible.
“It’s gone now though,” King tried to comfort. “It…it can’t hurt you.”
Dark let out a soft laugh. It was a surprisingly nice sound, not grating on King’s ears like so many other peoples’ laughter did.
“No, it can’t, can it?” Dark mused softly before reaching out to gently ruffle King’s short hair. He was so…gentle. Nothing like the stories King had heard. “Thank you for coming to check on me.”
Dark glanced around.
“…Come to think of it, how did you get in here?”
“The window,” King gestured. “I just had to scale the wall. It wasn’t that hard.”
Oh!
And that reminded him.
“I had something to tell you!” King bounced up eagerly, suddenly not nearly so nervous around the leader. “There’s a new Ego in the house!”
Dark’s eyes sharpened, suddenly bright and clear. It was a little unnerving, and King was oddly reminded of the time he had stared down a wolf to protect a few of his squirrels.
He was very glad this wolf was on his side.
“Who is it?”
“I have no idea,” King shrugged a little. “I…I didn’t see him for very long. Wilford and Yancy met him.”
“Hmm…” Dark hauled himself to his feet, his aura rippling around his body for a few moments. His suit and hair were back in place when he was done, and King noticed that the trashcan was gone too.
“How—? How did you do that?!” He gawked, awed.
“Void energy,” Dark replied with a small smile. “I simply made a quick trip to the Void to rest and clean up a bit. Time here and there works very differently, so you won’t even notice most of the time when I do it.”
“Woah…”
Dark let out another one of those pleasant laughs, then turned and walked to his office door.
“Would you like to lead the way, King?” He asked, glancing back. “You don’t have to, of course.”
King straightened up.
“Of course I will!” He scrambled to assure the leader. “I’d be happy to!”
Dark chuckled softly and stepped aside to let the younger Ego go first. King rushed out, a bounce in his step, and led the way toward the downstairs.
Dark kept up with him easily, never demanding that he slow down, and King decided two things.
First, he didn’t think Dark was nearly as scary as the other Egos said he was.
And second, he was very curious to see who the new Ego was, and if he had anything to do with Dark’s illness.