Chapter Text
A boy's footsteps are heard on the grass. They're heading for his fate.
Shoes collect dirt in between the crevices on their soles—dry air is taken in, filtered and treasured in the lungs of a voidling. The squelching of puddles of mud mixed with rainfall fills Spoke's ears, with the same dull ache that sang disgusting melodies into his head everyday.
It's so dull, and he is so tired.
He can feel the rain on his skin and his clothes, weighing him down, as they sag on his slow-moving body. He moves like deadweight sinking to the bottom of a lake, begrudging movements that just barely indicate that he's alive and not a dead man walking.
Though, it feels like it. It's been feeling like that everyday—like a dead man walking. Even the smallest things feel so wrong, and even the smallest mishaps and stupid tiny little mistakes cause the biggest spirals. Pair that with the most mistake-making person of all—SpokeIsHere—and it's as if you can't even count that thing as a functioning human being any longer.
Honestly… for all that he doesn't care about, he sure does care a lot about purpose. Which shouldn't make sense; why care about purpose when purpose weighs you down? When it makes you question your morals, your reality, your values? Purpose gives you accomplishment; it only gave people like Spoke guilt.
Hell, maybe that does make Spoke more human than he's thought of himself. He's so stuck with finding purpose, like every single other living, conscious being out there.
So off with purpose's head. He's now got rid of it. A hero? A villain? Make friends? Show love? Hah! It's all gone now!
…Now what? Do random bullshit and make chaos everywhere? Spoke does quite enjoy that. He's long since tossed away any semblance of empathy or feeling other than the sheer thrill and adrenaline the random colours of an RGB screen give him.
He didn't realise those pixels start to dim. And dull. And eventually become all monochrome—gray and white and black, the same as everything else.
It's all just the same. There's no point. There really, really is no point.
Boring.
No, not even boring anymore. Exhausting.
But eventually purpose comes back, in the form of warm hugs and flower fields and lava lake baths. In the form of the freedom in flight alongside the person you'd swear you'd end the world for.
And purpose stays. Purpose stays like a bandaid, neatly patching up whatever was broken and hollow and empty in that chest before. Tidying up the messy code that built organs in a void-feline's body, adorning it with a beautiful bow and a letter that reads: Everything is okay!
And it was. Everything was so okay.
So why'd everything go to hell and fuck itself over?
Spoke knows the world has nothing for him anymore. He knows by the whispers in the corridors and the pit in his stomach—by the fall of night and the stars that no longer shine.
"You're my star."
Stars are meant to burn.
And by the void and End and Universe, Spoke burned. He burned and burned and burned until all the colour in the Universe was spilled over by the rainbow in his chest and his eyes and his mouth.
Leaving nothing left.
Right foot. Left foot.
They leave a drag path within the grass. He stains the ground with whatever evidence that Spoke existed.
He'd been wondering this for a long, long time.
He always wonders. It's something he used to be praised for.
How his mind looks for the endless possibilities of the world, tracks them down with spinning strings of cobweb connecting each thread together; each world has a purpose. Each world had a purpose.
Because within them left the question of uncertainty, the unknown, and fate. Fate that which is unbeknownst to the Player, to the person the Universe loves the most. It was exciting. Thrilling. It was truly the most marvellous thing: knowledge.
Spoke was made with curiosity, he likes to affirm himself.
But curiosity kills the cat. And sometimes, satisfaction isn't enough to bring it back. Back from where? Spoke thinks its addiction. He thinks its meddling too much with what was supposed to be the incomprehensible. And now… he's ruined. Awesome.
He knows that at some point he was aware of this possibility coming up. He knows that at some point, he exchanged greetings with knowledge itself, and it had whispered into his heart: If you take this path, you will be ruined.
He had contemplated that for a moment, those few years ago. The thought was immediately dismissed.
Did he care? No. Did it most definitely affect him now? Fuck yes.
Does it matter? No.
A flash of lightning strikes a nearby tree, and he sees the shadow of a figure who told him he's too far gone.
He is. Really, he is. Because there is a bitter dark lump of flesh underneath all that code that shows he never really cared. And if he really did then, he tells himself he doesn't now. He doesn't care, and nobody else needs to care. It's all for naught, anyway.
So, really, does it matter?
Yeah, no.
Right. Left.
Not footsteps, but directions. In between the trees, the vines, and the rain—he treads through. The air is suffocating, heavy and dense. It counteracts the sheer willpower Spoke has to force himself into in order to navigate through this maze.
But a clearing comes through, and he can see where he's meant to be.
For such a curious boy, only one question was truly the most intriguing.
He'd only been wondering one question.
How do you disappear forever?
Despite the adventures, and futures, and victories and laughter, the only thing Spoke was drawn back to over and over in his web of Universes were the ones where people disappear without a trace.
Ones where he, may too, also, disappear without a trace.
How does one do that? Leave no mark behind, fade into a world and fade out of it without leaving a dent? Spoke's left far too much of a dent in this world. A dent so deep and so harmful that he lies in the centre of it, unable to climb the walls out.
It makes his heart rush in anticipation when he sees the rain pellet the surface of a lake in the clearing, in pure darkness. He is so painfully aware of the bullet-like sound they make when they hit and puncture through the water, and of the rustle of bushes as the gentle wind of rain sweeps them across.
A knee on the ground, and a finger in the water, a shape is made in the ripples. A lightning bolt. It disappears and mixes with the other shapes as quickly as it came.
Disappearance. Really… at this rate, nobody would care anymore. He'd hope not. He'll reach the bottom of this lake where no one will find him. Where he'll be left to rot.
And if one day he were to be pried out like a crate full of secrets, he hopes he'll be unrecognisable. He hopes he'll have been mauled and fed to the crows off the riverbank.
How do I disappear forever?
Spoke takes a shallow breath, and looks at the moon in the reflection of the surface.
It's distorted. Unrecognisable.
He steps into the water, shoes off by the edge. He steps, and steps, and he prays. To what? For what? To the Universe, perhaps, to make it so that he wouldn't try and struggle while he forced his lungs underwater.
He can't tell if there are tears or not. Maybe they are, and they've already mixed with the waters of nature and the bubbles out of his insides.
Nine.
The water fills his nose and lungs and ears. The jagged edge of his ruined horn stings, as the wound reopens and a whirlpool is sucked in.
Seven.
He lets out a wet, gargled laugh, and wraps his tail around a piece of abandoned underwater debris as tight as he can. He keeps floating. He needs to sink. He needs to sink.
Five.
What would they think? Probably disgusted. Or disappointed.
A million names and faces cross through his mind and lace the ripples he sees near the surface, yet he can only go back to himself.
Selfish.
Three.
At one point, he was so afraid of whether it'd hurt. Whether it'd be quick, or painless, or anything relieving.
He realises now that it really doesn't matter. If he was going to die cruel, cold and alone, that's what was deserved.
Truly, this was all deserved.
Two.
It's pitch black. It's freezing. It's so lonely.
It's death.
One.
"SPOKE!"
Zero.
A body on the surface of a lake drifts across, the afternoon sun shining itself into its lightless eyes.
He wakes up.
His limbs are exceptionally heavy, and moving is a burden. So he lets the water bring himself back to land, back to the dirty mud in the ground.
He looks around. Why is he awake?
I'm not supposed to be awake.
What was he supposed to be?
An answer makes itself clear when his eyes land on a lone rock, seemingly holding writing that was smudged. It's empty. It seems stepped on. It seems forgotten.
The headstone gives the boy his answer, as he reads across its barely readable text:
SpokeIsHere
may the Universe ever have mercy on these souls
The boy drags himself out of the water—the wet, heavy, cold water—and destroys it.
In the distance, the Universe watches its failure, and erases his sin.
The small, pathetic grave—if you could even call it that—stays intact.
But the boy already knew. He knew from the soft ground and the hollow echoes that resound in his skull. The hole in the ground is empty.
There is no body.