Archive of Our Own

            The first thing Spoke processes when waking up is that it’s colder than his bed on Lifesteal. 

The second thing he notices is that he is alive.

And he is very much not supposed to be. That exposed wire in his chest– He took it, he tore it, so why–

Spoke rolls in the cold bed, but that is immediately painful. White-hot fire laces and ties its way up and down through his nerves, creating a negative feedback loop of twitching because of the pain that comes from twitching. ow.

He tries to breathe, but that hurts too. Why isn’t he dead? It was a very in the moment thing, but he went all out on the punishments because he didn’t think he'd have to live with them. And now he’s living and he still wants to die, maybe even more than before, but he can’t move. He’s been through so much worse, he’s been through the sudden switch of holding the weight of the server on his back before Ash swooped in to help, he’s been stabbed and poisoned and candy crushed and– and he’s hurt people, hurt Parrot and Mapicc and Zam, and he should feel so so bad for them, but the thing is–

“Spoke?” Someone asks, somewhere in front of Spoke. He tries for a groan but it comes out as a squeak. “Oh shit, you are not supposed to be awake, my friend!”

Is that… 

“Mmt?” Spoke tries, and fails spectacularly. Jamato? Why is he on Lifesteal? Did Spoke open a wormhole? Did he whitelist Jamato without meaning to? He didn’t– No no no, not again. He doesn’t want to be bad, he’s been trying so hard to be good but all he can–

“Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleeeep. Please go to sleep.” Jamato hums, doing… something. Spoke thinks that maybe sleep would be best. “Oh, you are really not supposed to be up, what are you doing Spoke?”

Sorry, he wants to say. All I know how to do is break rules.

He falls asleep before he can get it out.

- 

            “Spoke woke up,” Jamato announces, walking in as calmly as he can. Everyone in the room stiffens, so he hastens to correct himself. “It– It was too early, I’m not done fixing– I put um, I put him back under.” No one moves to speak. “Uh.”

“Why– Why’d he wake up?” Planet asks. That’s Spoke’s teammate, which they weren’t last season. They also were not a girl the last time Jamato saw them. 

“Well,” He prepares to give a deep dive into every reason why the amnesia loop might’ve failed (Spoke’s torn apart nature, the loop disconnecting, the timer being wrong, the million other ways it could’ve fallen apart), but that is probably not what they all want. “It could be a couple of things. But I wanted– I mean, you’re all his friends too, so I wanted to… tell you guys. Keep you all up to date.”

“So Spoke’s okay?” Mapicc questions, cautious and a little angrily. He was Spoke’s teammate (?) during the Wormhole. Jamato never really– They didn’t talk about the Lore too much, but he doesn’t think Spoke told Mapicc everything. 

“He’s…” Jamato struggles. Spoke is definitely not good, not physically, mentally, spiritually, or codally, but Jamato is doing the absolute best that he can. “On the way to recovery. We’re getting there.”

“Do you need any help?” Ash offers, to an agreeing crowd. Oh god, please no. 

“No! No I– I’m good. Don’t need– uh, too many chefs in the kitchen, right?” Jamato goes for an awkward smile. Spoke was so right, Jamato should’ve talked to Lifestealers more. Most days are not the Wormhole finale. 

“Let us know if we can help, Jamato,” Ash continues, nodding. He was a big part of Wormhole; got creative first, right? Something like that. The room adds agreements, which is– …meaningful. It’s a nice sentiment. “And the updates are good. Keep that up.”

“I will… do that.” Jamato returns the nod, stiffly, then shuffles on his feet. “I should– I need to– Y’know, I d–”

“Yeah, go save our Spokies,” Zam smiles, and gives him a thumbs up. Zam is another Wormholer, like Mapicc. 

“Mhm,” Jamato says, offering a salute before scampering away. He’s the worst doctor ever. They really could’ve chosen anyone else. Or well– not really, that’s kinda why he’s here. Who else knows how Spoke works from a biomech point? Nobody. Jamato doesn’t either honestly, but he’s leagues better than anyone else. And he’s pretty practiced in weaving code.

When he gets back to Spoke’s room, a gentle grey-green color (Spoke’s favorite, just toned down), everything seems normal again. Just as he left it. 

It’s kind of making him lose his mind.

Jamato’s had his eyes more focused on code fibers for pretty much the whole two weeks he’s been here, since Ash first called him to mend the gouges Spoke made of himself. Yet the mass that is Spoke has barely gotten easier to look at. 

He was able to mostly… shove the stuff back inside, and he’s been sorting for weeks on end, but Players are complex creatures. And yes SpokeIsHere is a Player, despite all his insisting that he’s so different from every other thing. 

Spoke being a C-Section universe birth doesn’t really help the process, because Jamato can’t even rely on muscle memory to sort. Spoke constructed his own code for the most part, so it’s… weird. Things are ordered in the way that the first 1’s and 0’s of Spoke’s body thought they should be, not in the universe standard. The opinions section where the body section should be. Jamato keeps following lines expecting them to end up at one place, then he’s thrown off. 

What he means is that Spoke is a disaster to sort through, like a tangled up mess of wires. He isn’t even color coded, Jamato has to look inside each connection to decipher where they go.

At least it makes this interesting, he guesses. It would’ve been a lot… well, nicer, if Spoke was uniform. But that’s just Spoke for you, never making things easy for Jamato. Which usually isn’t a problem, because Jamato likes a challenge, just not so much when his oldest friend’s QOL sort of hangs in the balance.

The longer he spends reconstructing, the more sure he is that Spoke has a giant hole in the middle of him, right where his Player Center should be. Where the truth of the End Poem is supposed to go– Where love is supposed to be. 

And while Jamato isn’t nearly talented enough to recreate the craftship of the End Poem with all its connections and heaviness, he can do something about the love. Just a room away, there’s a whole server of people who love Spoke.

That’ll have to come after he rearranges Spoke in the right order, though. Lots of double triple quadruple checking, because he’s got to make sure that Spoke won’t wake up with his muscle memory mirrored. Eugh, that prank was horrible. 

-

            Planet loves him. 

What else is there to say? She loves him, she loved him, and her love wasn’t enough. 

Every morning for two, maybe more, months, Planet woke up to a bathroom that smelled like blood. She thought she was– She doesn’t know, maybe it was just all in her head? Maybe that’s what getting kills does to someone. How was she supposed to connect the faint smell to scratches on Spoke that didn’t look like they came from a sword or a mob? 

She’s going out of order. Um. Routine.

The routine of their lives felt safe, because at first there was no bloody bathroom every morning, just breakfast. She would knock on Spoke’s door and wake him up, one of them would make food, they would sit on the porch and Spoke would always be in a hoodie, even with how hot it got later on and she misses it. Or, um, misses the beginning.

Gentle mornings like that used to be the only reason she woke up at all. PlanetLord is not a daytime player, but to get that monotonous casual love she’d do a lot worse than mess up her sleep a little. After a week or two of fighting it, her body gave in, and the early(ish) mornings just became routine.

Spoke was different than he had been during the past few seasons. At the time, she just assumed that closer up, he was quiet, or that maybe he was changing and trying to be less of Season Four Spoke. Maybe he was just presenting as loud and chaotic– it’s not exactly hidden information that he was acting weirdly around the Wormhole time period. Maybe he had more important things to put his mind to than talking to her. It wasn’t– She doesn’t wanna make it seem like–

They talked. Every single day, they talked at least a little. Every day. Most of the time they followed a ‘small talk during the day, serious stuff at night’ routine. Then Spoke broke that routine, and said he was gonna be busy during the evening for a while. That was okay, because Planet’s flexible. She would try, at least.

Maybe she shouldn’t have. It led to– Oh god.

Before… all of this, the makeshift hospital with JamatoP, Planet didn’t know how Player code worked. She still doesn’t, really, but she’s known the stories since she was little.

Players are born from the fabric of the universe, constructed through and with love. The universe wants to create, which is a loving thing to do, and so it does. And it makes a Player. And you are the Player. The universe teaches you about life, imbues you with knowledge of sunlight and trees, fire and water, creation and destruction, of hunting and being hunted. It teaches you about shelter. It imbues you with love.

Jamato says that, regardless of species or sex or size, Player code is uniform. All players have the same set-up on the inside, that’s the universe standard. Unless– this is the important part, this is Spoke– they were created another way. For example, if they ripped away from the universe before they were ready and had to finish what the universe did, or write their own from scratch. Jamato thinks that Spoke–

Spoke made… himself. 

Like, he actually just. Made himself. No guidebook or borders or checklist from the universe beyond having a body (and even that was unfinished, Spoke frays at the edges sometimes). He fashioned himself into a Player. It’s apparently why he’s good at hacking. But it means that he’s a mess– literally, as in the code that is SpokeIsHere, and figuratively, as in he’s all over the place and disastrous. 

And being a mess means that there’s a few lines of code that– that he can take and… um.

Spoke had… punishments for himself. He would– While she went out for kills or to grind or whatever, every evening, he would…

It hasn’t gotten easier to think about. Spoke, alone in their bathroom or a hole, stabbing, burning, isolating, hurting himself. Bubbly burns from ‘The Nether’ and scratches that looked way too deep to be from ‘a village cat’ and– 

There were signs, he seemed so sad and different and he had injuries and she should’ve realized so much sooner, she should’ve noticed before it got so bad that–

That he…

The thing about knowing yourself, is that sometimes, if you hate who you are, it can kill you.

The Universe loves you, you are alive because you are loved. By the Universe. And you are the Universe. If you stop loving yourself, believing in yourself, that’s when you die. Not a respawn or a hardcore death, a real life death. You give up. You die.

It’s hard to do that on purpose, to force yourself to lose all hope. Spoke’s told her before about how he thinks he’s separate from every other thing, which seemed weird. How do you not believe the End Poem? It’s the Universe talking to you, it’s your creator, your mother, telling you what it created you with. 

(The answer is love, by the way. You were made with love.)

Spoke apparently thought it was too hard to lose hope like a normal suicidal person, so he did what normal players can’t do, he reached inside his chest and–

Planet walked into her house with the porch and the beds and the kitchen and she saw raw code in a trail leading to her best friend’s body. Players aren’t supposed to see raw code. Planet isn’t supposed to see her only teammate and best friend dead.

Because Spoke, the Player SpokeIsHere, was gone. In his place, a corpse covered in code like mold, a radiant rainbow of radicles and roots and rot and–

Code likes to organize, make lists and groups. Planet stared at her teammate, her friend, her best friend– at the blood, blue-red, refusing to mix with and yet still being overtaken by the raw code, nuclearly toxic and bright cyan-yellow-green in a way that hurt her eyes.

She remembers how it kept shifting, like it couldn’t settle on what ugly color to be. Middle of the road orange-browns, flashing chartreuse, dull moist greens, offensively bright red-greys, colors that left impressions in her eyes like stamps. It was ugly. It was a fatal wound. It was her best friend.

Planet fumbled open her comm and crouched next to Spoke. He wasn’t breathing, and he hadn’t respawned and she doesn’t know how many hearts he’s on and why is he dying?

She wasn’t sure if touching him or trying to stop the bleeding(of code and of blood) would make it worse. You’re supposed to stay far away from radiation, and this looked like what she imagined radiation would. 

But her best friend was bleeding out, and she couldn’t just stand there and let it happen, so she reached in and–

Code, pure code, as she’s learned, is volatile and dangerous. To go outside of where it’s supposed to be, to become visible, takes a lot of energy. And internal player code holds more than enough energy to do that.

Her arm buzzed like the worst pins and needles of her life, and she jerked away. Then Ash TPed to her and told her to look away and she couldn't and he dug into Spoke’s chest– Spoke’s open gaping chest– deeper than physics should allow and then Planett turned to vomit outside.

Long story short, Ash saved Spoke from dying, but didn’t fix him entirely. On Lsoss, they had a very quick meeting on what to do. Ash suggested Jamato, nobody had any qualms with that, so they called Jamato. Who came very fast, by the way. He showed up within thirty minutes, apologizing for not checking his comm, and asked for Spoke.

Planet likes routine. She likes her friends being alive and safe, and she likes being powerful. She likes being able to defend herself and her team. She likes autonomy. She likes love, and she loves herself and her friends– loves the Universe.

JamatoP isn’t usually on Lifesteal, Spoke is hurt, everyone is sad, she can’t do anything, and Spoke doesn’t like who he is. All she has is the Universe, which feels woefully insufficient.

And what else is there to say? 

She loved him, she loves him, and she’s sorry. 

-

            Ash is… taking it pretty bad, honestly. The whole friend attempted suicide thing.

Everyone on the server, his server, his and Spoke’s server, decided to put a hold to all things main server. Manipulating and murdering your friends doesn’t feel as fun when one of them just tried to kill themself. 

Maybe he should’ve realized sooner. In Season Four, Spoke ripped the server out of Parrot’s foundations and put the weight of it (All twenty five billion odd blocks and however many entities and thirty Players) on his back. Ash had to jump in to help because he– a player can’t support that, they’re not designed to support that. And Spoke was strong from wormholing, had well defined code muscles, but no one is strong enough to support a whole server.

They solved it together, put the server on Parrot’s open, gaping and grasping groundwork, and added onto it. Spoke begrudgingly let Ash help.

Spoke dying to his own mind is not something Ash can help with. Spoke tearing his very code open is not something Ash can help with. He’s good at code, very good, he’s a codeholder and a server (co-)owner after all, but not… not like this, not with Players– not with self constructed Players especially. Hence Jamato.

They have Lsoss, a cute, quaint place for the breaks between sessions. Everyone gets bases, they have a little neighborhood, they play Val and have sleepovers and hang out and have fun– That’s what Lsoss is for, having fun. 

After Planet called Ash in a panic, after Ash slipped on code fluid that should never-never-never be physical, after stabilizing Spoke and rattling with the aftershocks and calling Jamato and switching servers and letting everyone know and the declared pause and worrying worrying worrying worrying and refusing to sleep until Squiddo made him and– Ahem. 

After stabilizing the situation and updating the Lifestealers, Zam, 4C, and a few others built a kind of makeshift infirmary not too far away from the main Lsoss settlement.

There’s a couple rooms built in. First, Spoke’s room (fitted with a bed, a couple machines and nothing else), then the living room (“not waiting room,” Zam insisted “that’s too medical”), then Jamato’s lab (not really a lab, moreso a hoarder’s house), then the bathroom (with a shower, thanks nolifers), and, of course, the underground ‘bases’ a few people had made. Ash understands the need for privacy. It’s nice having his friends close by, even though they’re all freaky tunnelling worms.

Most days (every day, unless someone drags him away), Ash sits in the living room. It’s… nice. In a way. They have couches and seats and blankets and a TV that Planet refuses to change to any channel but fireplace ambiance ones. 

Any niceness is flushed out by the fact that Spoke is in a medically induced coma getting his code repaired after trying to gut himself like a fish.

Ash stares at Planet’s fireplace videos long enough to find the cuts. Every video is three, six, twelve, twenty-four hours long. They all have a weird cut every three-ish hours. Ash thinks it’s been three weeks like this, staring at the floor or wall or ‘fireplace’ and waiting to hear Jamato say his friend is gone. 

He tries to convince himself he has low hopes. It doesn’t really work.

Squiddo stays by his side, which is a blessing. Planet, too, is essentially always in the living room. She saw the worst of Spoke’s injuries with Ash. And, according to her and Jamato, also saw the results of a few more of Spoke’s… experiments? That’s what Zam calls them. Zam’s here most hours of the day too, sitting by Mapicc and Ro. The three of them lean on each other, Ash is happy Zam found his people. Parrot’s been with them half the time, and Bacon– by proxy of having Planet and Parrot and Mapicc all deeply affected– has turned into an emergency healthcare worker.

Mapicc raged for the first day, until Bacon convinced him to remove himself (and his lackeys) from the room. When he came back a few hours later, he didn’t talk for three days straight. 

To likely no one’s surprise, this whole event is bringing out sides of his friends that he’s not seen. Mapicc isn’t usually quiet. Ro hasn’t tried cracking jokes in this room for at least a week. Bacon isn’t typically sympathetic or open about emotions. Planet isn’t stoic or strong like this. And Ash–

Spoke’s blood shouldn’t be that color. When he looks closer at the gaping chest wound to see what the problem is, he sees code. Fragmented, frayed, frazzled, full of holes code, akin to clothes unraveled by a thread. Spoke has unspun himself. No, not unspun, this is far more violent. Clothes hacked apart by scissors, fibers split with a seamripper. Spoke has exenterated himself.

–is behaving as close to normal as he can.

“You need to go outside, dude,” Bacon says for perhaps the hundredth time, this time to Planet.

“Spoke’s–” Planet starts, face neutral. Ash can’t say he’s gotten used to it, Planet looking so strict.

“Gonna be in good hands while you’re gone, yeah,” Bacon interrupts. “Come on, five minute walk?”

“I’m. Not. Le– Wait, wait, listen, shut up.” Planet interrupts herself, perking up. Everyone in the room looks over from what they were doing.

“Uh,” Jamato says awkwardly, from the hall. “I wish you would’ve waited at least until I got into the room.”

“Hey bro,” Ro greets, sounding… unenthusiastic, tired. His heart isn’t in it. Ash pretends that hope doesn’t poke its head up every time Jamato comes to give an update.

“...Hello,” Jamato responds, and steps into the room. He pauses where he’s standing, holding himself stiff. Ash has never seen the guy relax when there’s no Spoke to diffuse things for him. “Um. I feel kind of stupid now.”

“What.” Mapicc says flatly. Ash knows he doesn’t mean to be a dick, but Jamato definitely doesn’t.

“I– Okay.” Jamato starts, then sits down in the chair next to the door and immediately clasps his hands together. “Everyone knows how Players work? The basics?”

“It depends on what you call the basics,” Squiddo answers. Jamato’s mouth pulls sideways, definitely not the answer he wanted.

“You know– Players are strings, ropes, lines, you guys know that, right?” Jamato clarifies, looking around the room. He receives various nods and agreeing noises. “Good. Yes.”

Jamato shuffles in his chair and looks at his lap. “Well. The strings all lead to something– Or. Um.”

“You’re good,” Poafa offers when Jamato goes quiet, making him look up. 

“I– Yes. I just, uh– Well I guess privacy isn’t–” Jamato makes a noise like clearing his throat. “There’s like… I’ll show you. Um, Planet you might wanna…”

Planet dutifully covers her eyes with her hands, in a distinctly childlike way. Jamato opens the side of his arm, letting code shine across the floor, and pulls something out of himself. He tightens the wrap, and puts whatever he just grabbed onto the coffee table in the middle of the room. On the ground, Parrot scoots out of his way.

“You can open your eyes,” Jamato announces, tapping something on his little… apparatus. Planet drops her hands, and Jamato drops his tone into something official sounding. “This is a Holographic Code Node Projector, or HCNP. It, uh, projects code.”

With that he settles on the backs of his legs, and a projection of code appears in the center of the room.

“Oh wow,” Zam says, appropriately. 

“They’re pretty cool. But I’m not just here to show off. This,” Jamato zooms in on the Player Center, where the truths sit. Ash gets a very, very bad feeling, and squeezes Squiddo’s hand. She squeezes back. “Is what everything leads to, the heart of who someone is. It’s called the Player Center. It’s got all the important information about you.”

Jamato hesitates, and glances over to Planet. She seems fine, if a little unclean. Everyone here is. He takes a breath, and continues.

“Everyone knows the End Poem. If not by heart, then at least in theory. That feeling of nearly parental care, gut reactions, random bursts of love, all of those things are from here.” 

This isn’t new to him, so he tilts his head away to watch his friends. Everyone is extremely focused, besides Planet, who suddenly looks like she’s about to cry. Ash’s very very bad feeling cements into place like a lock over his intestines.

“It’s also where facts about your identity are. Species, sex, what you like, who you are, what you think of yourself, all that kind of stuff. It’s the most important part of a Player. It’s hard to feel regular love without at least passing through a part of the Player Center. And Spoke…” Here, the room stills. Zam stops fidgeting with his hands, Parrot stops brushing through his wings, Planet’s antennae stop bobbing, Squiddo stops rocking. “Spoke is more… I don’t know how to say this. Um. He’s… spread out?”

“Can you– Sorry Jamato, can you just tell us? Scientifically of course! Just…” Ash requests, trying to be formal and hold the very very bad feeling as far away from himself as he can. For his friends’ sake. Jamato’s expressionless mask meets his eyes. It feels chokingly like a death being pronounced. SpokeIsHere, 3:46 in the afternoon.

Jamato looks away, and takes a breath in.

“I don’t know if he– He couldn’t have torn it out, I think he’s just always–” Jamato stops himself. “Sorry. I… Spoke doesn’t have a Player Center.”

For a floating second, the world goes quiet enough that Ash swears he can hear Spoke’s heart monitor steadily beeping down the hall. And then everything gets loud.

Squiddo squeezes his hand, nails digging in. Planet turns towards Bacon’s side with a sob. In disbelief, Bacon blinks and his jaw slips open. Poafa hits the back of his chair with a thump, and Ro freezes up. Zam leans away and presses a hand to his mouth, eyes wide, while Mapicc slams his elbows against his legs and throws his face into his hands. Parrot’s wings fluff up and he looks like he’s about to either cry or throw up. 

Ash feels sick.

-

            It’s probably the first thing people notice about Spoke. It’s what Mapicc noticed. Spoke is weird. Good weird, bad weird, unsettling, and all kinds of freakish. 

That’s kind of a rough start for a guy who can’t defend himself. What Mapicc means is– He knew. Everybody knew. 

So it doesn’t come as a shock really that Spoke is different (is disabled the right word to use? Is it a mental illness if it’s not even in his head? Code-al illness? Parrot and Ash and Jamato probably know, Spoke might). The shock comes from the fact that it’s something so important. The shock comes because Spoke doesn’t love himself. He can’t. 

Spoke cannot love himself. SpokeIsHere cannot love himself. 

They’ve known each other for years, Mapicc’s been his friend for years. Cared about him, cared for him, hated him, loved him, and throughout all of that, Spoke has never loved himself. It’s– 

“It’s–” Zam says, debriefing in the Gucci Gang (+ Planet, Ro, & Zam) bunker. Ro and Mapicc are the only others there, because Parrot wanted to talk to Jamato, and Planet wanted to cry instead of talk. Mapicc doesn’t think anything else will happen. 

“This sucks,” Mapicc complains, stomach trying to climb up his throat. 

“Yeah.” Zam confirms. Ro nods repeatedly.

He knows– Fuck. Sure he knew, yeah, but he didn’t expect this. He didn’t think that Spoke would try to off himself. 

And he feels dumb as shit for not noticing. Dumb and stupid and upsettingly guilty. It’s making him all nervy. He failed his p– friend. 

Jamato gave them a solution, but– Mapicc just… well. There’s a slight problem.

“…Do you think it’s hard to love Spoke?” Mapicc poses, not meeting Zam or Ro’s eyes.

Yeah, it’s been five years of knowing each other, but like he said, he’s hated Spoke. 

That’s not even it. He thinks honestly–

“What’d’you mean?” Zam asks back. Mapicc sighs.

“I don’t know. I just– …I care about him. I– I care about him a lot, he’s one of my best friends, but–” Mapicc inhales, and scrunches his fists. 

…He thinks honestly, he was closer to loving Spoke when he hated him. That’s the thing. Spoke doesn’t love normally, he loves like a parasite, like he’s always so empty and he rarely has anything to give back. Like if a plant didn’t make oxygen. He loves via consuming.

That’s probably why he can’t love himself, because who wants to consume their own being? Who wants to be consumed like that? Any nutrients Spoke might get from his body won’t be worth the effort of engaging in the act of love. 

And Spoke is one of his best friends. They’ve known each other a really long time, and they have fun and they hang out and Mapicc loves him. He knows that now; it only took a near death experience to get it through his skull. But at the same time, is love what Spoke needs? Is love what he deserves? It’s good that Mapicc has love to spare for Spoke, but… should he? Is it worth it? 

“He’s hurt me. He’s– I mean, he’s fucked all of us up.” Mapicc gives Zam a look, and drags it over Ro. “But I– It’s not like I don’t care. I just– It– I don’t know. It’s hard.”

“You don’t think your love is enough?” Zam fills in. Mapicc flinches back with a pang. 

“No,” he denies immediately. “I definitely love him. I’ve just been thinking.”

“Sorry,” Zam apologizes.

“It’s fine.” Mapicc says, and deflates. “Whatever.”

“I think I get what you mean,” Ro says. “But does it really matter if it’s hard?”

Mapicc looks over. Ro’s been pretty silent since the whole thing happened, which is kind of inconvenient when he’s Mapicc’s comfort person.

“Like, it’s Spoke,” Ro continues. “He’s worth it.”

If the Universe couldn’t finish Spoke, then well, they have to. And he’s– Mapicc’s not a religious guy, but he knows what love is. He knows what the End Poem means. He knows he’s not different from the Universe, that he too, is information from a star.

Ro’s right. Spoke is worth it. Spoke is worth it because– because he’s a Player. Because he’s alive and from the Universe and the daylight and the night and darkness and light and he is not alone and, most importantly, because he’s Mapicc’s friend. Because he’s a part of this server, because he’s a Lifestealer. 

Spoke’s worth any difficulty of love, ‘cause Mapicc loves him. 

It’s kind of paradoxically simple. He’s worth love because he is love.

“Wow,” Zam says, summing up Mapicc’s thoughts. “Ro, did we ever tell you you’re really fuckin’ smart?”

To that, Ro quietly laughs. Mapicc relaxes as much as he can when Spoke, his friend, not pack, is still in danger.

“He’s been hard to love before,” Mapicc says, without really meaning to speak. Ro and Zam turn to him. “But yeah. It’s worth it. I– Uh, really care about him.”

“I really care about him too,” Zam agrees, half teasing. Mapicc huffs, but gets his feet under himself. “Are you already ready?”

Mapicc, halfway up, raises an eyebrow. 

“Are you not?”

-

            Jamato’s solution, in Zam’s opinion, is pretty obvious. Spoke doesn’t have love built into him, so they give him love. They make a Lifesteal cover of the End Poem. They play the game.

Spoke has ruined Zam at least twice. Is the thing. But the other thing is that she still loves him, and she knows he loves her back.

So, Jamato’s solution is easy, except for how it isn’t, because Zam isn’t sure how much of a help her version of love will be. It’s a new thing to worry about– She’s never had to share how love felt to her, because she expresses like a normal person. It’s the internals that are the issues here.

Zam doesn’t want to give Spoke more issues than he already has. They’re similar, too similar, and she– 

She can’t help. Zam doesn’t think she can help. 

She loves Spoke, so much, but she's worried that her love is just like Spoke’s. She’s worried that she doesn’t have a full Player Center, because logically she knows the truth of the End Poem but… 

Her brain is a really long dry spell, a world without seasons, without water. Her sun is dimmed, and volcanic ash blocks out the starlight. Zam soaks up love like a sponge, trying always always to use it to wash away the ash from her skies. Zam takes love and pours it over the continents of her brain. She wants to see stars. She’s never seen stars.

Zam doesn’t want to give that to Spoke. She knows he loves her, but they’re too similar. Two sponges sucking on each other, sharing an emptiness. Holes on holes on holes. 

And she can’t hand Spoke a half soaked sponge and pretend it’s love. He’s been her jaguar and he’s been her mudshelter. She’s been his shark and his lifeboat. They come from the same uranium atom that split into two, they’re both a part of the same fission reaction that can level entire spawns. They love each other like pulling teeth, love each other like creating emptiness.

More emptiness isn’t what Spoke needs.

So when Mapicc asks if she’s ready to love Spoke, she swallows.

“I just… I need a minute.” She answers. Mapicc looks her over, then slowly offers a nod.

“‘Kay,” he says, and exchanges a glance with Ro. “I’ll wait for you.”

“No you don’t have to!” Zam hurries, because she doesn’t want to be the reason that Mapicc delays his love. Instead of leaving, Mapicc plops back onto the floor. Zam sighs.

In season four, Spoke told her that you can kill someone, really kill them, no respawn, and still love them.

Mapicc shuffles.

“So uh, what’s your hold up?” 

The ‘hold up’ is that the closest she’s ever felt to love was when she was going after Spoke with nothing but her fists. The deepest sense of fulfilled she’s ever experienced was dying to Spoke over and over and over until the server died too.

“I just wanna think,” Zam deflects. Mapicc raises an eyebrow. “Seriously.”

“Dude,” Ro says weakly. 

“I just told you all my shit, tell me yours,” Mapicc demands. Zam huffs. “Share.”

Volcano clouds prevent her from seeing starlight, and it’s her own fault. She’s the one with the vast, vitriolic, violent volcano in her chest that just spews ash and bubbles magma forever, leftover soot coating the inner walls of her veins and coagulating her blood. Her lungs are lined with volcanic residue, warning her of future eruptions every time she breathes. Zam can’t think without being reminded that her time is limited, and every misstep might lead to her downfall.

Spoke said she’s the hero, and he told her to stop fighting her destiny. Those don’t… match. What does she fight for, then, if she just has to accept everything? Zam doesn’t want to accept anything.

It’s all confusing and contradictory. Zam is the hero, but she has to stop fighting. Spoke doesn’t know how to love, but they loved each other. She thought that she loved people, but now she’s starting to doubt that she even knows anything about love.

Spoke felt fulfilling. Spoke’s love was more fulfilling than any other kind. That definitely says something about her.

Jamato’s solution is teaching Spoke how to love, but how is she supposed to teach if she doesn’t know either? What if she just makes him worse? She’s terrified of making him worse.

“I don’t know if…” she tries, then rubs a hand over her neck to soothe herself. “I feel like, I don’t like, love like a normal person. I think I’ll just make his whole situation worse.”

“You love him.” Mapicc says, convinced. Zam’s chest rises shakily. “Right? So it’ll– You love him, and he needs love. Duh.”

“That’s the problem, Mapicc,” she complains, letting her hand slip down over her shoulder and onto her arm. “I… I might make it worse.”

“We’re just there to provide models,” Ro says.

“I know.” Zam drawls. “I just– I think I’m a bad model.”

“You love him,” Ro shrugs. It doesn’t feel any lighter the second time. “That’s more than he can say.”

“But what if it’s wrong?” She frets. It’s happened before, where she tried to help but just hurt him.

When I die, the server dies with me.

“You can’t love someone wrongly, dude,” Mapicc scoffs, except you very much can. You can and Zam knows it because Spoke loved her.

“He loves me,” Zam says breathlessly. Ro blinks and glances at Mapicc, who presses his lips together and furrows his brow. “I know Jamato said can’t but he did, he loved me. He loved me and I– I think he still does.”

“Zam,,” Mapicc starts carefully, like she’s crazy, but Zam knows for a fact that Spoke loved her. In season three, he wanted her to kill him, and they killed each other over and over. Last season, he asked her to exploit with him. Spoke is the server, and the server loves her. Spoke loves her.

“He loves me.” She repeats, voice breaking. “He loves me.”

“Zam, Jamato s– You know that he can’t

“He loves me,” she repeats, voice breaking. “He loves me.”

“Zam, Jama– You know that Spoke can’t–”

“He loves me, Mapicc, I promise. I promise he loves me. Please.” Zam begs. Mapicc looks at her, frowning. Lifesteal is hers, Spoke is Lifesteal, so Spoke is hers. And she belongs to the server too, it’s not the same kind of ownership, but they own each other. What is love if it isn’t agreeing to be someone’s something? “And– And Jamato never said he couldn’t love, he just said it would be hard.”

“Okay fine!” Mapicc admits, then grabs her eyes and holds them. “He loves you. Then what?”

That’s not what she expected. what?

“What?” She slips.

“Spoke loves you. What then?” Mapicc repeats, keeping firm eye contact. “He’s still fucked up. He still needs you to fill in the gaps. Spoke’s still sitting on a bed a few rooms away with Planet and she’s probably crying shit up, and– Sure he loves you Zam, but he still tried to fucking kill himself. He’s dying. Who gives a shit if he loves you?”

Zam blinks.

“Mapicc,” Ro starts. Mapicc doesn’t look away.

oh god. Oh god.

“Maybe he does love you, maybe he beat the odds for whatever bullshit you two have, but right now? Right now he needs you to love him.” Mapicc says like ice water to the face, and finally breaks the stare to look at Ro. Zam sucks in a breath.

God, Mapicc’s right. How can she think of herself? Spoke needs her, and she’s worrying about PrinceZam. She’s reminiscing on past seasons and mistakes when Spoke is here and now and she can help. That’s– 

Zam has a ‘later’ to use, time in the future to think about why his fucked up way of loving was the most connected she’s felt to someone, Spoke doesn’t get a later. Not until he knows he’s a Player.

Players are love-made. Zam sniffles, and refocuses on whatever Mapicc and Ro are hissing about.

“We can go now,” she says, pulling herself together. They both give her looks up and down, but a few seconds later Mapicc’s look lands on her eyes. He smiles gently. “I’m ready.”

- 

            It makes sense that, after Spoke’s current teammate, Parrot is the next one to put his love into Spoke. 

He has no idea what to do. They’re… complicated, to say the least. But he does, even after everything, love Spoke. He knows, or at least, is pretty sure about that.

But he doesn’t know how to… like, transfer it.

“Come in,” Jamato says, opening the door. There’s a soft beeping, Spoke’s heartbeat, and gentle blowing air so the room isn’t silent. It is still profoundly empty. 

“Don’t you need more equipment?” Parrot questions, wings ruffling as he looks around.

The lack of decor and whatever JamatoP says next are lost on Parrot, because after almost a month, he sees Spoke. He sees his former best friend. He sees the person who broke him.

One year ago, Parrot handed Spoke an orange, because birdclaws were not especially good at peeling delicate fruits. Spoke grinned, and tore it open for them. 

Spoke has always been really good at tearing things open. Example two: Parrot.

He shared whatever he did, though. He gave Parrot half of that orange, and a little over half a year later he also told him everything about the Wormhole. Parrot ran away all but sobbing, and cried in his room for thirty long minutes. When he emerged the next day, there was a stale orange outside of his room.

Spoke smells like rotting fruit. 

Like– literally. While Jamato talks about his set-up, Parrot tries to put his finger on exactly what fruit the room reeks of. Maybe rotten citrus, he’s bad at smells. It’s sour and putrid and vaguely acidic. If it were physical, it would corrode Parrot’s feathers and seep into his blood.

“Do you know what to do?” Jamato asks, giving him a look like he knows Parrot hadn’t been listening at all, but there’s no judgement. At least, Parrot hopes there isn’t.

“No,” Parrot says, a little breathlessly. “No, I– I don't.”

“Think of why you love him,” Jamato starts. Parrot’s wings twitch. He should hate Spoke. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t.

“I’m supposed to hate him,” Parrot tells Jamato. “Are you sure I’m–”

“Trust me,” Jamato responds. “Think of why you love him. You can hate him all you want, but focus on the love.”

Focus on the love. Well, Spoke always let Parrot get oranges with seeds, even though he preferred them seedless. Parrot recalls telling him it was a bird thing, apologizing, and Spoke waving it off. Remembers Spoke telling him you can always remove something, but it’s hard to add it back correctly.

Spoke, with nothing close to surgical precision, dug the seeds out for himself. 

“If they grow in your stomach, why can’t you just spit them out before swallowing?” Parrot asked once. Spoke squeezed a seed out, leaving gummy, frayed flesh around where it was.

His best friend smiled at him, biting into the orange slice and pretending the skin was his teeth. Parrot couldn’t help but laugh.

Spoke is a part of him. Not the same as him, like an orange with its seeds, but foreign, like an egg laid by a fig wasp. He was born just to eat away at Parrot’s body, the wingless male, chewing holes for the rest of the clutch to leave through while he stays right inside the hole he left in Parrot. He can’t leave.

Parrot tries to coax him out, then tries to claw him out like a seed, but when that doesn’t work, Parrot starts trying to break himself, presses his thumbs against the hole Spoke had carved out and attempts to squeeze out the emptiness. It, of course, doesn’t work. You can’t squeeze out emptiness, because you can’t add back what has been removed.

“Okay,” Parrot says to Jamato. “What do I do after focusing on the love?”

Jamato pretends Parrot didn’t hesitate. “Then think about, like, how you love. What love feels like. Think about the End Poem. Think about the Universe and friends and why you love Spoke.” He says. Parrot’s breath hitches. 

When he was little and still bad at shapes and colors and materials, he thought colors were what made things. Water is blue, lapis is blue, so lapis is a clear, tasteless liquid. Grass and his couch were both green, so his couch was made out of grass. Oranges were the same shade as the sun.

The first time his mom ever evenly opened an orange with her claws, gentle and fancy and unlike Spoke, Parrot was shocked. He remembers being a little scared that she could rip the sun’s skin off, but he trusted her.

Over a decade later, he was smarter than a child and knew that oranges and the sun were different. He knew that you couldn’t rip the sun apart.

And then Spoke did.

And Parrot hated him.

For a little bit, at least. Love and hate weren’t really that different, Spoke just wasn’t sharing anymore. He seized the server– his server, Parrot’s server– and toyed with Parrot, dug gouges and left bruises in the shape of his love.

“You ready?” Jamato asks, again snapping him out of his thoughts. Parrot takes a deep breath, holds, then releases.

“Yeah.” He says, then hesitates. “Do I…”

Jamato wordlessly grabs his clawed hand and guides it to Spoke’s chest.

“Wherever you want as long as you two are touching,” Jamato explains. “There needs to be a transmission point.”

Parrot thinks for a second, then grabs Spoke’s hands. The rotten fruit smell sidles up next to his brain.

Why does he love Spoke? He knows he does, but he doesn’t know why.

Maybe it’s because… Because a betrayal, even as violent and gouging as the one Spoke stuck him with, doesn’t erase years of love. Spoke was his best friend, and now he isn’t, but he is still loved. Or maybe it’s because Spoke gave him a reason, even with the betrayal. First, he created an idol, a goal– something Parrot could do that meant Spoke was his. Then, he made himself the villain, and that was another thing for Parrot to cope with.

It’s impossible to not think about what would’ve happened if Spoke just hadn’t done that, but he’s not thinking about the what-ifs, he’s thinking about why he loves Spoke.

He loves Spoke because Spoke was the first face he saw in the morning, waking Parrot up with a big grin and declaring misadventure. He loves Spoke because they’re friends now, and have been for years. He loves Spoke because it’s them, and what’s an exploitative coup between friends?

He loves Spoke because Spoke needed to be loved, and because Spoke loved him, in a weird way. He loves Spoke because once upon a time, they were more than just “friends”, they were best friends. Spoke had his back and he had Spoke’s. Once upon a time.

He loves Spoke because Spoke shared his oranges and his life and his low-supply-love with Parrot.

Parrot looks down, clenching Spoke’s hands in his claws. He imagines Spoke’s chest being open, blood shiny like cherries and flesh as smooth as them. He imagines love as an orange, radiating onto cherry viscera like sunshine. Even in his own mind, he’s always been bad at peeling them, so he just squishes until liquid love starts dripping onto the suspended vivisection below him. I love you. i love you i love you i love you. promise.

“Sometimes,” Parrot chokes, because Jamato said to bring up the End Poem. “The Player believed the Universe was speaking to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of heavy summer trees.”

Spoke betrayed him, and it hurt. It hurt really, really bad. for a while. Parrot thought he was fucked for the next season– fucked forever. He stepped down as server owner, because if it put that big of a target on his back that his friend, his best friend, would betray him, then he didn’t want to be owner.

“Sometimes,” he continues. “The Player believed that the Universe was speaking to it through the waves that made a crisp apple red to the Player’s eyes.”

But despite everything, despite it all, despite it being Spoke– or maybe even because it was Spoke… 

i love you, Parrot thinks firmly, and smashes the love-orange, pulp exploding across the walls in his head, sliding down the walls like XP to slip into Spoke’s open body. Juice gets into both of their eyes, and there’s evidence now. SpokeIsHere is loved. ParrotX2 loves him.

“And sometimes,” Parrot manages, holding back tears and trying not to shake. “The Player believed the Universe was speaking to it through the hands holding out one half of an orange.”

With that, he loosens his grip on Spoke’s hand and ducks his head, eyes opening as he leans back. Jamato is watching Spoke, but he shifts his focus to Parrot. 

Parrot doesn’t know what to say. He feels bad. Like, apologetic, even though if anything, the one apologizing should be Spoke.

“Do you know what he did to me?” Parrot asks, trying to be conversational. Jamato stares, expressionless behind his mask.

“Some of it,” he confirms. Parrot takes a breath, closing his eyes, and imagines love seeping into Spoke’s code like lotion to skin.

“I think love is in the hands.” Parrot says. Jamato hums. “I love him.”

“Yeah,” Jamato acknowledges quietly. “Yeah. Me– Yeah. …Me too.”

Everyone here does. Parrot keeps his eyes closed and imagines love separating from Spoke’s code like oil to water. He imagines digging a knife down each of Spoke’s arms and stuffing a packet of love above each wrist. Imagines Spoke pressing between his ulnar and radial arteries when he feels alone.

He shouldn’t love Spoke, he thinks.

But when he walks home from the far side of the universe and suddenly smells food at that familiar door, right as he is about to dream– it’s citrus that surrounds him.

(Parrot doesn’t notice at the time, but the smell of rotten fruit abates after he drips love into Spoke like an IV)

- - -

You, SpokeIsHere, are a Player in the long dream that every Player has. You were born from your own hands, and sunk them, chubby with childhood, into the wool of the Universe. It is not a bad thing to want to live. It is not a bad thing to hold on tightly.

SpokeIsHere cannot listen to the Universe. Still, lovingly, the Universe tells you to hold on poor thing, hold on. Lovingly, the Universe sends you friendship and talent and capacity. Lovingly, the Universe presents you with Lifesteal. With love.

You are good at being loved. The Universe can confirm, even if you were a handful as a child. 

and the universe said i love you

[Jamato sits quietly next to Spoke’s bed. He wonders if Spoke knows that they love him. That they’re kind. He thinks the Lifestealers have filled his oddly shaped Player Center enough to last a lifetime. There’s codal love all over the floor, and no one can see it but him.]

and the universe said you have played the game well

and the universe said everything you need is within you

and the universe said you are stronger than you know

[Planet believes in him, steady and sure as running into a hug, she knows he’ll be awake soon. It’s impossible that Lifesteal doesn’t love him enough to make him love himself. They aren’t the Universe, but they’re Spoke’s, and that is enough. Planet loves him, and that’s enough.]

and the universe said you are the daylight

and the universe said you are the night

[Ash has been in the same waiting room for the past 20 days and 20 nights, and he hasn’t stopped thinking about Spoke. Spoke, his friend, his co-owner, his fellow exploiter, his worrying pal. Spoke makes him laugh, but now, Spoke is making him cry. He told Spoke every time they saw each other that he loved him and it wasn’t enough. He can only hope that this time is different.] 

and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you

and the universe said the light you seek is within you

[Mapicc knows now, after putting his hand on Spoke’s sternum and burying love under it like secret treasure, that Spoke is hard to love. His skin isn’t thick, his heart is open, but the love just doesn’t stick. But he’s worth it. It’s Spoke. So Mapicc will try again and again and again until Spoke is drowning in the love and can’t hold his breath.]

and the universe said you are not alone

and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing

[Zam gives her love, dripping down from her eyelids to his throat, lets it flood Spoke and knock his organs around until they form a heart. She knocks over the container holding her love and it splashes against his sides and the wave crashes droplets all over him. Then, she looks into Spoke’s disorder. The symptoms are familiar.]

and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code

and the universe said i love you because you are love

[Parrot considers what to say when Spoke wakes up. I’m sorry. Say you’re sorry. I love you. Can you love me? Would last season have been different if you loved normally? He considers a lot of things. He considers if Spoke will be the same, or if the master manipulator version Spoke is just Spoke when he’s lonely. Parrot loves him anyway. Every way.]

And the game was over and the Player woke up from the dream. And the Player began a new dream. And the Player dreamed again, dreamed better. and the Player was the Universe. and the Player was love.

You are the Player.

Spoke wakes up.