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The trees thickened the further Shedletsky ran, until the cabin's lights were nothing behind him but a memory of warmth he didn't feel like he'd earned anymore.
Something solid stopped him cold.
The barrier.
He hadn't meant to run this far. He stood there a moment, chest heaving, palms braced against the invisible wall he couldn't see and could absolutely feel, cold and unyielding under his hands.
For the love of Robloxia. Why’d he have to mention Him?
There was water pooled shallow at the barrier's edge, some runoff from the last rain, still enough to hold a reflection in the pale moonlight filtering down through the canopy.
Shedletsky looked down into it without meaning to.
Does Builderman still think everything goes back to Him?
His own face looked back at him. He looked tired. Hollow around the eyes in a way he usually managed to hide better than this.
Why? Why? I’ve already told him to treat us as separate.
Then the reflection smiled, and it wasn't his smile at all.
“Because we aren’t.”
Oh 2x2, please save me.
"There he is." The voice came soft, familiar in the worst possible way, dripping with an affection that had curdled into something else entirely a long time ago. "Hiding in the trees like a whipped dog. Shedletsky always did prefer running to facing what he'd made."
Shedletsky's breath caught, sharp, and he stumbled back a step, nearly losing his footing on the wet ground.
Not real. Not real, not real, this isn't–
"He knows it isn't real," the reflection agreed, pleasant, almost gentle about it, "and still he can't look away. Isn't that the funniest part? Telamon always thought that was the funniest part."
"...Stop it." Shedletsky's voice came out thin, cracking on the second word. "You're not– you're not here. You're not real, you're not–"
"Telamon doesn't need to be real to be right." The reflection tilted its head, mimicking a gesture Shedletsky hadn't made, wrong and unsettling in a way that crawled straight up his spine. "Real enough to remember every single thing he never told them. Real enough to count how many nights he's sat at that little table, laughing at jokes he doesn't mean, while the truth just sits there curdling in his chest like sour milk."
"They don't need to know."
"Don't they?" A soft, mocking laugh, nothing like Shedletsky's own. "Dusekkar knows. Has known for ages, hasn't he, and still Shedletsky lets him carry it alone, lets him watch that little secret fester between them every single time somebody so much as mentions a sword fight on the heights." The reflection's smile widened delightedly. "How very brave of him. How very honest."
"I'm trying–" Shedletsky's hands had come up, pressed hard against his own face, refusing to look down anymore, though the voice didn't need eye contact to keep going. "I'm trying to protect them from–"
"From himself." The reflection's voice softened again, worse for the gentleness in it. "That's always been the real secret, hasn't it. Not protecting them from Telamon. Protecting them from finding out exactly what kind of person built him in the first place. Arrogant. Hungry. So certain his own hatred deserved a body that he gave it one, and then acted so surprised when it turned around and used it against him."
"That's not–" Shedletsky's voice broke entirely, dropping to something small and wrecked. "That's not who I am anymore."
"Isn't it?" A pause, almost thoughtful, almost kind, which was somehow worse than any cruelty could have been. "Then why is Shedletsky still standing out here, alone, in the dark, unable to walk back and simply say it? If he's truly changed, truly better, truly worth the ‘family’ he's built for himself back there–" the reflection's smile sharpened, "--why does the truth still feel so much safer left to rot in the dark with the rest of him?"
Shedletsky sank down slowly against the barrier, knees giving out beneath him, forehead pressed hard against his own drawn-up arms.
He didn't answer. There wasn't an answer he could give that the voice wouldn't immediately, correctly, tear apart.
The reflection, patient as ever, simply waited in the water for him to look again.
Shedletsky didn't want to. He made himself do it anyway, because not looking had never once made the voice stop, and at least looking gave him something to argue with instead of just the dark.
"You're not him." His voice came out rough and weak. "I know what you are. You're not Telamon. You're just– wearing him."
The reflection's smile didn't waver. "Does it matter which mouth, if the words are still true?"
"It matters to me." Shedletsky pressed the heels of his hands against his own eyes, hard, like he could physically push the sensation back down where it belonged. "Because I am him– I made that persona, I gave him an avatar, I know exactly whose fault that is."
"But I'm not that Telamon. Not anymore. That was – that was years ago. That was someone who thought he deserved a monster shaped like his own worst feelings. I'm not that guy standing here right now, and you don't get to just–" his voice cracked weakly, how pathetic, "--you don't get to just crawl in and talk like there's no difference."
"How touching," the reflection murmured, unmoved. "He's rehearsed that one before, hasn't he."
"Shut up." Shedletsky was more desperate than angry. Shedletsky's hands curled into fists against his own skull, nails digging in hard enough to hurt. "Just– shut up, I know you're not real, I know exactly what you are, and it doesn't matter, does it, doesn't matter one bit that I know, because you're still in there–"
It felt like worms.
That was the only way he could describe it to himself, over and over, some writhing, crawling wrongness behind his own eyes that he couldn't claw at because there was nothing physical to claw, no wound to open, just this constant, nauseating sensation of something moving through thoughts that were supposed to be his and his alone.
"If I could just–" His fingers dragged hard against his temples, desperate, useless. "If I could just get you out–"
"There is no out," the reflection said, almost gently now, almost sympathetic, which was somehow the cruelest register it had used all night. "There's only in, and further in, and the parts of him that were always going to let something like me take root eventually, given enough dark and enough silence to grow in."
“Telamon was just supposed to be my persona for the Heights. Why– why have you twisted me into something like this?” Shedletsky wept, brokenly.
"Telamon didn't twist anything, Shedletsky. It simply noticed what was already there, waiting for permission."
“Stop calling yourself Telamon!” Shedletsky screamed. “You’re not me! I don’t want to be you, you stupid fucking BOOK!”
"Isn't it?" The reflection's voice stayed maddeningly gentle. "How many times did he stand in that arena, sword raised, feeling powerful for the first time in his life, and think nothing at all of what that power might cost someone standing across from him? How many times did winning feel better than it should have?"
Shedletsky screamed. His palms slammed against the sides of his head.
“GET OUT OF ME!”
The water shuddered.
For one awful second, his reflection fractured beneath the ripples. His face broke into pieces of moonlight and blackness, eyes stretched into silver slivers, mouth warped into something that looked like a smile.
Shedletsky recoiled as the feeling came back.
There.
Behind his eyes.
Under his thoughts.
That horrible crawling.
He gasped and doubled over, fingers digging into his hair as though he could reach through his own skull and pull the thing out by hand. It wasn't pain, not exactly. Pain would have been merciful. Pain had edges. Pain belonged somewhere.
This had no edges.
It moved.
It squirmed through thoughts that were supposed to be his, worming its way between memories, curling around words before he could think them. He could feel it in every horrible little hesitation, every thought that suddenly didn't sound like his own, every photo that seemed to have someone else's fingerprints smeared all over it.
“Stop–” His voice broke. “Please.”
He dropped to his knees. The mud soaked through his clothes. He didn't notice.
“Please, just– just stop.”
His hands flattened against the ground.
The earth was cold. The water was colder.
Everything was cold except his chest, which felt like it was burning from the inside out.
His heart.
Oh 2x2, his heart.
It wouldn't stop.
It hammered against his ribs with such frantic desperation that he could feel every beat in his throat, his wrists, his temples. Each one seemed to scream the same accusation.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
And he hated it.
He hated that it was his.
He hated that there was something in him that could be frightened and angry and ashamed and still somehow keep beating.
“Why?” he sobbed uncontrollably. The question disappeared into the forest. “Why won't you leave me alone?”
His reflection slowly settled. Shedletsky stared at it.
His own face stared back.
Tears ran down his cheeks, dripping from his chin into the shallow water and disturbing the reflection one drop at a time.
Plip.
Another ripple.
Plip.
Another.
For a moment, he couldn't tell where his reflection ended and the darkness beneath it began.
“I'm sorry,” he whispered. He didn't know who he was apologizing to.
Maybe Builderman.
Maybe Dusekkar.
Maybe everyone he'd ever hurt.
Maybe himself.
“I didn't know.” His breath hitched. “I didn't know I'd become this.”
His hands curled into fists. “I didn't know.”
“I DIDN'T KNOW!”
He struck the ground. The water splashed violently around his hands.
“I DIDN'T KNOW!”
Again.
“I DIDN'T KNOW!”
Again.
Do it again.
“I'm sorry!”
His voice cracked so badly that the last word barely existed.
He folded over himself, forehead touching the wet earth.
“I’m sorry.”
A sob shook his entire body.
“I’m sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”
The worms moved, though not physically.
He knew that.
He knew that.
That was the worst part. There was nothing there. Nothing he could tear out. Nothing he could crush. Nothing he could bleed away.
Just a sensation, a thought, a presence wearing the shape of something that had once been his own.
His breathing became shallow. “No…”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Please don't make me remember.”
But the memories were already there. The awful, intoxicating certainty of being stronger than someone else.
His stomach twisted.
“No.”
His fingers trembled.
“I don't want it.”
His heart kept beating.
“I don't want to be him.”
Another sob.
“I don't want to be me.”
He lifted his head. His reflection looked back at him through the trembling water. Shedletsky's face was ruined with tears.
His mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Very quietly, he whispered.
“What the hell is wrong with my heart?”
The question sounded almost childlike.
He pressed a hand over his chest.
It was still beating.
Still beating.
Still beating.
He hated it.
He hated that it could carry all of this and refuse to stop.
He hated that there was still something alive inside him stubborn enough to want tomorrow.
He hated that, beneath all the fear and shame and crawling wrongness, there was still a tiny, miserable part of him that wanted to go back to the cabin.
Back to the others.
Back to the people who trusted him.
Back to the warmth he had convinced himself he didn't deserve.
His face crumpled.
“I want to go home.”
The words came out as a whisper.
“I want to go home.”
His hand tightened against his chest.
“I want to go home!”
The scream tore through the forest again.
“I WANT TO GO HOME!”
The water trembled.
The trees gave him nothing back.
And Shedletsky stayed there on his knees, sobbing into the cold earth, clutching his horrible, beating heart as though it were something he could apologize to until it finally forgave him.
“Oh 2x2, please unmake me.”