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Spoke was at his limit. He stared at his hunger bars, knew they were low, even if not yet dangerously so. He had four hunger bars left. He would’ve been starving around this time just a year before. Now, he can hardly stomach the thought of eating. It all still tastes like rotten flesh to him, no matter how well cooked or made to his tastes.
It’s this knowledge, along with the fact he looks skeletal, and that he hasn’t slept in.. three days now? Five? That has him hardly reacting when the texture of the world changes in front of him. His mind rationalises it as another farlands quirk. It’s all too easy to do so.
As he walks deeper into this mini-world, he can’t help but find himself relaxing completely and wholeheartedly. It looked like his birthplace. When he’d first come to, still learning how to hold a pickaxe and how to forge armour.
It's almost funny. He remembers building similar castles. Back when he’d used to live and explore only empty worlds where he and he alone lived. Free to do whatever he pleased. He missed that freedom. It had him holding the null totem tighter as he moved within the old fortress.
Somehow, even the smell of the place was familiar, albeit it was something he did not remotely remember. He wondered how that was.
When he approached a bed with two chests at the side, it looked beyond tempting. It was king sized, but much simpler than the black covers he had in the end. The closest thing he had to a home. He found himself reaching for his fish, the only friend he had left.
He wanted so badly to collapse into the covers. He wanted more than anything to never wake up again.
It was with that string of thought that he found himself opening the chests, and, almost impulsively, putting every item in his inventory within. He could always retrieve them later.
He hesitated with the null totem, and found himself holding it closer. Not this. He couldn’t lose this.
Once he was stripped and bare, only his uniform left on, he stared at the bed longingly. His feet ached. His chest ached worse. He rubbed at his eyes, rubbed hard enough spots filled his vision when he opened them once more. He was lightheaded. The commander would likely try to get him to eat soon.
If they weren’t too angry with him in any case. He tried not to think of it. Tried not to think at all, opting to stumble out of the room, and onto the balcony. Back to the crisp, clear, almosy untouched air. He took a moment to breathe it, and found himself peering over the ledge. The fall wouldn’t kill him, unarmoured as he is. He doubted it would do more than sprain his ankle, and that was if he didn’t roll.
He turned back, leaving the fortress through a side exit and heading back onto the path.
It was as he was exploring the empty place that he stopped a figure, fishing in a pond. For a moment, he thought it was a Null soldier, but then he managed to make out enough of the features through his blurry, tired vision and the hair at the back of his neck rose.
He didn’t question it. Knew there wasn’t a point. He approached Ash silently, as if invisible all over again. Never seen nor heard. That was the only way someone remained safe in the mafia.
Soon enough, he was standing just three steps away from the man. He tried to examine him, tried to understand anything from his figure. He looked no older than he last remembered, though he could hardly tell with the glitching seeming to have spread through the rest of his body. It looked like it was eating him alive.
Ash ignored his gaze, eyes on the bait he was waiting for.
Spoke’s own eyes drifted to the fishing rod as something caught. Ash made no move to attempt to fish it out.
“My, my,” he said, voice startlingly clear compared to the almost fuzzy texture the world had taken, and Spoke flinched, suddenly able to hear Ash all too clearly. He didn’t question it. Didn’t have the heart. Didn’t know if he wanted this to be real or not. “Fishbucket.”
He pretended the name didn’t fill him with dread.
Ash put the fishing rod aside. Spoke only held his totem closer.
“You know, I searched the entire server for it.” Ash said, suddenly looking at the totem. “Every single civilization.” His voice was airy. Light. It made it all the sharper.
Spoke’s breath caught.
“I kept looking for it.” Ash continued. “The last piece of the puzzle.”
“The totem.” Ash said, taking a single step forward. Spoke wanted to find it in himself to flee, to run. He stayed rooted on the spot. He looked at its shimmering features. It felt like a mockery.
“And out of every single player to find it… it was you.” Ash said, pulling a fish bucket out from the side, eyes never leaving Spoke’s.
Spoke’s own gaze flickered to the fish. Alive. Recently caught. Spared. He felt his throat clog up. He mustered a single step back.
“You- you know nothing about-“ Spoke swallowed, couldn’t finish it. It sounded false to his own ears. He could never lie to Ash. Ash would always tell. Always knew the truth better than he did.
When had Ash’s word become Spoke’s truth? The moment they met? During the mafia? By the end of it? Spoke hardly knew. Not anymore.
“You have the power that I’ve searched for,” Ash mumbled, and it felt like it filled Spoke’s brain, somehow so quiet and yet it was all Spoke could hear. It ricocheted in his head and rang in his ears. It made him sick to his core. “You’ve found it. The totem is in your hands.”
“And you’re cursed by it as well,” Ash continued, snorting to himself. Spoke’s knuckles turned white with how tightly he gripped it. He glanced away.
“And your friends don’t even stand by you anymore. Just. Like. Me.” Spoke wasn’t- he wasn’t- he-… he had no one. Not really. He felt sick. So damn sick. He’d been sick since the start. Had been rotting maybe even before the mafia. Maybe when he’d first touched those damn exploits. Maybe he’d always been rot itself. Living on borrowed time.
“You should be proud of yourself.” Ash went on, impassive to Spoke’s plight. To the strange empitiness in Spoke’s chest and the whirlwind of thoughts in Spoke’s head.
“I’m proud of you.” It’s those words that have Spoke’s mind go silent.
“You’re not-“ he croaked out. “This is different, Ash. This is not-“
“I’m proud of you.” Ash repeated, as if Spoke hadn’t spoken at all. Maybe he hadn’t.
He still needed to say it.
“It’s not going to end how you think it’s going to end,” he insisted, “I am not- like you- this is-”
“No, you and I are exactly the same.” Ash laughed. Cruel and amused. Spoke had always been a joke to him.
Spoke understood, then. Ash had drank himself halfway to death. Spoke stared at his own dwindling hunger bars. He was a joke. He was Ash’s own self hatred reflected.
Ash was every bit of loathing he had for himself reflected back onto him.
“You’re standing here, in front of me, that totem in your hand, commanding Null,” Ash’s voice got louder and louder. Spoke tensed, momentarily, half expecting a strike. Nothing came. Ash wasn’t the type.
“What did I say to you? What did I say to you, all those years ago?”
Spoke didn’t respond, even when he remembered the words all too clearly.
“You are no different. You followed down the exact same path.” Ash said, then quieter, “and you saw what happened to me.”
And for once he didn’t look like the leader of a mafia that stretched all of spawn. He looked like a haggard man who’d been carrying a weight for too long. He looked like what Spoke saw in the mirror.
Somehow this unsettled Spoke more than anything he’d said yet.
Suddenly, Ash was turning back to him, too close, close enough he could smell his cologne and suddenly it hit him like a fright train, that nostalgic scent in the air. It smelled like fruity wine and expensive cologne. It smelled like Ash.
“How did it feel?” Ash asked, and Spoke blinked back into reality.
“How did what-“
“How did it feel to kill people? How did it feel to take lives for no other reason other than your own gain? How did it feel to rip people’s rights from this world just to gain more power? Isn’t it liberating?” He said liberating like an insult.
Spoke didn’t have a response.
Ash laughed at his silence. “You got nothing to say?”
It felt… heartbreaking.
“I understand now, what it- what it might’ve took to reach your level of power. Of success. But I will not… I will not end up like… you.” Spoke could barely get the words out. The world felt too quiet for this. Ash too loud. Ash was Spoke’s world. All Spoke could see. All Spoke had been blindly stumbling behind since he’d gotten wrapped up in Ash’s mafia.
Ash’s response was a full on belly-laugh.
“Let’s get a little refresher for you.” Ash sighed. Disappointed. “You abandoned Mapicc in the underworld, you betrayed Jumper, and slaughtered the players you freed in front of her! You eradicated all life in the end dimension. And now you come here and say the cycle ends with you and that you’re nothing like me?!”
It’s Spoke’s own guilt that was reflected in the sheer rage of Ash’s words. It’s strange, he thinks, almost distantly. He’s not sure he’s ever heard Ash sound so mad. He doesn’t really consider how Ash knows those things. Of course he does. He knows Spoke better than Spoke knows himself.
“Don’t worry, Fishbucket,” he said, suddenly back to his previous, condescendingly gentle demeanour. “Nothing you have done has been anything to be ashamed of.”
Spoke watched blankly as Ash freed the salmon back into the pond. It would die soon, he thought. They only thrived in open water. In rivers. Spoke was still trapped. He’d never truly escaped.
“Those are accomplishments. That you must be proud of. That I am proud of.” Spoke finds he wants to hear such sweet lies over and over. Until he starts to believe them again. Until he can kill and truly believe it’s for the greater good.
“So let denial go, Spoke.” It’s Spoke’s own name from his lips that has Spoke shivering. Not Fishbucket. Not gold trim. Not soldier. Spoke. The player. It’s everything he used to want.
It’s everything he’s not sure he’s ever stopped wanting.
“Denial doesn’t look good on you. Stop pretending that you’re something you’re not. And once you accept it, once you let go of that denial,” Ash stalked forward, gripping Spoke’s wrists with an inhuman strength and-
Oh. Oh, it felt real it felt so real it felt like cold hands on his skin clawing at him and asking what he’d done, why he’d done it; it felt like the chill of death returning to take back what had it evaded it for so long-
It felt exactly like Ash’s hands used to all that time ago. “You’ll achieve what you’ve been reaching for, for so long. A unified server. Under one player.”
It was Ash’s own ambitions reflected back at him. It was Spoke’s own desire’s reflected back at him. It was Ash and Spoke, one in the same.
As if understanding his own realisation, Ash barked out a laugh. “So here we are, Spoke! This is it!” A sigh. “What you do now. Will determine the fate of the server. Make the right choices.” Ash had moved to grip his shoulders now.
It had been so long since Spoke’s had physical contact that didn’t originate from Null’s impassive features or the rage of the friends he’d once had.
Against his will, he found he was slumped in Ash’s hold. He didn’t look up, didn’t want to see how pathetic he looked, didn’t want to see Ash’s pity, if that was something Ash could even experience.
He wasn’t prepared for a softer sigh and Ash pulling him in closer, until his head was on Ash’s shoulder and his body weight being supported by Ash’s own form.
None of this felt real. The touch didn’t feel real, except it did, he hadn’t fallen, even when he knows he should’ve. He didn’t understand. Didn’t want to. Not yet. He shut his eyes, let Ash control him completely, it wouldn’t matter if Ash got his hands on the totem, really. They were interchangeable, weren’t they? Spoke hardly mattered. He could see now. Ash hardly did too.
People moved on. People would move on.
Spoke was bound to be forgotten again, the moment he stopped being everyone’s problem.
He would just take whatever comfort he could. Even if it was from Ash. Even if it was from his own, failed, mirror image. As he drifted off, he swore he felt the cold brush of lips on his forehead, but he was hardly aware to tell for certain. The sound of a fishing rod sounded and Spoke’s consciousness was gone
He would just convince himself it was all a dream.
When he next woke up, he had sand in his hair and mouth and Underscore’s heavy boots were in front of his vision.
He sat up numbly looking around for any sign of- of Ash.
In the pond, a single salmon swam. It was all Spoke could look at, all of a sudden. The only proof it was real. Had it been real? He couldn’t tell. He still couldn’t.
He heard Underscores talking, he heard himself responding, but it all seemed so far away. There was a lull in conversation and he found he wanted to ask, wanted to know if Scores had seen anyone with him. He bit his tongue. Knew better. No matter what the answer was, he wouldn’t have liked it.
He could still feel phantom hands holding him, could still feel the last dredges of a sleep so comfortable it felt safe despite the aches it had cost to sleep on rubble. His heart ached in a way he didn’t want to describe. Still, he knew what he had to do.
The salmon would soon die. His time was running out.