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It's a little funny. No matter what scuffles someone gets into or how much they're in a hospital, everyone always tells you about the buzzing lights, or the boring television channels, or the annoying medical staff, or the clunky equipment.
They don't tell you the things nobody likes to think about; the things inside your body, the ache, the lack of visitors (expected), the lack of agency (expected), the ache, the you’ve been missing for quite some time, and we were hoping for you to fill in the gaps, and the ache—
Sam exhales, and the thick plume of smoke clouds out his throat. He taps the cigarette on the railing, and a few embers crumple into ash.
They don't tell you these things, the other hand of his curled around the metal of an IV stand. And they will tell you things. They will tell you a lot.
Gods, I'm a moron, Sam chuckles to himself, and takes another breath.
"You're supposed to be in the bed, Rook."
What Sam doesn't say is this: 'I can't stay in one place. I need to move. I need to make sure I can. I've been rotting for so long.'
What Sam doesn't say is this: 'Sometimes, I think the mattress is a gaping mouth, and I don't know how the connection was made. It won't leave me. It'll consume me, or I'll consume myself.'
What Sam doesn't say is this: 'I'm already dead. I remember the taste of my blood as I desecrated myself. I'm just... waiting for reality to catch up.'
What Sam does say is this; a professional incline of the head, an sweltering exhale, "King. You should've expected this."
The click of heels— impractical —is swallowed into the blackhole of the night's silence as they come closer, and out of the corner of his eyes, he sees her arms rest on the railing with a low sigh. It's almost blinding, the gold piled on her body as it reflects the florescent lights behind, the sharp nails dragging.
"Maybe." She allows.
She doesn't take off her sunglasses, even as the night is as black as them— there's no stars in the sky, not tonight, not ever—
It must be exhausting to be a figurehead.
Well, it must've been just as exhausting to be a leader.
"Why are you here?" Sam dares, the words dissipating into the air just like the grey on his tongue, like something soft.
King doesn't respond immediately.
Sam takes another breath, and for a moment, the emptiness in his stomach is gone like a bad dream. The next, it tries to cloy to his teeth and writhes out of the cracks in his lips, and the aching gape remains hollow.
"Can't I just check up on you, my friend?"
He can't help it. He laughs. It gets stuck in his larynx and clots in his throat in bubbles and bursts, and he laughs all the same. Can't I just check up on you, my friend? It's soft, yes, but it's stupid and weak, and they both know it.
Qua— Jester barks out a laugh, breath stinking of cigarettes and liquor— the expensive kind. A branch, Ponkie, Sam decides, I tripped on a branch and that's how I got this cut; that's all. It feels more like a wasp sting.
"I own you."
Sam looks away, bites his tongue before he could mock King to her face. "I'm not an idiot." He waves her on, "Just get on with it."
Her frown causes something to bubble hot in his chest, and he quells it with smoke and tobacco. "Just get on with it." They're not friends here, but she just sighs again, head touching on railing for a moment.
"...If you insist, but I will preface this by saying you have a right to stop me at any time. You can rest one more day."
And Sam bares his rotting teeth.
—
Blades, tridents, electronic disruptors, costumes, drones, communication devices, vehicles... Well, Sam— or, really, Rook —had made it all. For heroes, for his friends, for himself; did it really matter? He made something good, and therefore, caused something good to come of it. He made it after all, and made it good. That was why he made things, that was why he joined Bad's group of bandits— vigilantes, and that was why he became a hero.
Sam needed always managed to do good. It was always the end result of his schemes. He was a force of good; it overflowed and spilt out the cracks in his soul, into his very blood and flesh.
It was also why he kept moving. There was so much good in the world to be spread, and Sam could spread it. He couldn't just make; he needed to be a vigilante. He couldn't just be a vigilante; he needed to be a hero. He couldn't just be a hero.
He needed to make.
And that was how Sam found himself in an abandoned mall of sorts. It was dusty and decrepit and Sam vaguely remembered his boyfriend whining about how he could never get a contract to tear it down because someone would always shoot it down and he swears it must be a villain hideout because why else would nobody want to tear it down-?
He shook his head and carefully avoided the tripwires flashing red in his lens, one of his older gadgets automatically looping any cameras catching his presence as soon as it spotted him; a piece of malware or two slipping in as easy as breathing. The duffle bag was heaved through all the nooks and crannies.
Sam had pawned that conversation off to his boyfriend's boyfriend— Vegas? V-something —and quickly got out of there when the yelling started. It turned out that he was much more passionate about it than his Foolish. Something about money. It was mostly in Spanish(??) anyway. Sam had been very glad that he'd made a phone that couldn't be billed at that point.
And what did you know? Sam faced a deserted storefront, and reached into his duffle bag. Fingers touching fingers, smooth steel.
He’d make something good out of this too.
—
“So, it was personal?”
Sam stubs the embers into the cold metal of the banister.
“‘Personal’ implies that demon cared about me.” A bitter laugh drags itself up his throat; bitter like vomit and the smell of sweat. “The thing about Demon, King, is that you need to judge him by his cover. Bastard likes to pretend the sun shines out of his ass, but he’s a demon through and through. No amount of self-censoring or baked goods can change that.”
Exhale.
“He’s the brains behind the Badlands for a reason, after all.” Red, red— Time is decaying at the seams— Is anyone coming for him? Surely, he was a good enough asset to— even if he— Mer—
Inhale, and an exhale.
King’s face might be stuck in a frown, but the inhale of a fresh cigarette feels like the closest Sam can get to burning away his sins.
—
The first pop-up popped up on a late night invention binge Sam had taken back to him and his partner’s condo. Ponk was fast asleep after another late shift, and any neighbours they might have stopped with the noise complaints ages ago. Perks of making things. There’s always perks.
> MOTION ACTIVITY DETECTED
> VOICE ACTIVITY DETECTED
> INITIATE VOICE PROTOCOL?
Perfect. A little bland— on purpose, of course —but perfect. The tips of fingers dug into the screen.
> Y_
> VOICE PROTOCOL INITIATED
>_
>|_
>_
>HELLO_
“What the fuCK—“
Ah. You know what, Sam should’ve expected that to be the first thing blared through the speaker— Of course it has to be Mercury. He snorted, but turned down the volume regardless. The kid had guts with no sense to back it up.
Bad evoked bad. Too bad he was born a villain.
>HOW MAY I AS_
>HOW MAY I ASSIST YOU_
>HOW MAY I ASSIST YOU, MERCURY?_
Sam hummed, hands interlocking a few pieces and untangling some of the damn wires—
“Are… Are you a robot, big man? Did Tu— Neptune send me to find a fucking robot, big man?? What— What have you even got over here— Is there a robot squatting at our super secret hideout??”
Hmm… Neptune, huh? It pings in the back of his mind vaguely— ah, the hacker. They might’ve been stuck with all the malware and sent out Mercury as their dogsbody. Higher rank or close relationship, Sam ponders?
> I PROVIDE VARIOUS WARES_
> I PROVIDE VARIOUS WARES FOR THE RIGHT PRICE_
…annnddd silence. He didn’t think the kid could manage it.
“…What type of shit are we talking here?”
Sam grinned. Oh, there it was.
—
King stares up at the empty sky, sunglasses void of reflection— void of lights. No suns, no planets, no moons, no stars; empty as void and abyss and absence.
Sam, in the past, may have took that as a sign King was no longer a villain. It was a sign of goodness— even if King was not good, she had been molded into something close enough. A passable mockery.
Sam can no longer think of goodness without seeing red.
“You think you’re good shit, man?” Sheol crows— the air disturbance was clocked a moment before Abaddon could clock him in the face, and Sam twists around to block her blows. Really living up to the name ‘Team Rocket’, he sees— “Get off your high horse!”
“Of course, Rook.” Her voice murmurs, wet, “Mercury was the best of us all. He was just…”
And she slumps once more.
“He’s a child. It wasn’t just a matter of pride. I did not want a child to lead us. It didn’t matter if he was Moon’s protégé or Sun’s fellow mentee. To— Mercury should’ve never been here, and… I could make sure of that.”
Sam eyes the quirk of her lips, all white teeth and peachy pink gums. The wrinkles of her skin, the pricks of it in the cold bitter air, and the cold bitter choke of a laugh.
“I was so sure of that.”
What Sam doesn't do is this: laugh and laugh and laugh because everybody is so sure they’re doing the right thing, and isn’t that why they’re in this mess in the first place?
What Sam doesn't do is this: break down in suffocating and absolutely wrenching sobs because there’s vile burning inside him, and he’s not sure if this was his destiny in the world— to be another poor bastard with a pathetic unsympathetic fate, shuffled into the black of a black and white world; one he helped to birth (not create, never create) himself.
What Sam doesn't do is this: nothing. There is nothing to be done. There is no closure here.
What Sam does do is this; He raises his cigarette in a toast.
—
Everything lit aflame on a random Tuesday night, after Sam and his Ponkie’s work schedules aligned in just the right way for him to be able to pick his partner up. Le had puffy red eyes visible enough to be seen in the black of the night and a quiver to mons lips that had him scrambling out of their car the moment he could, and when his arms brushed mons, le collapsed into wet heaving sobs on the spot right there in his chest; cradled and violent.
“It was just a kid,” le had wept, “It was just a kid; their name was Tommy and they came in with their mom— this older woman named Clementine who was just so so sweet, Sammie, but so so so resigned. You could see it in her eyes, her body— Sammie, her kid was black and blue and didn’t give me a damn thing to work with! Their mom didn’t know, and all I could say was the damning list of injuries! No kid just gets those! Sammie, they were just a fucking kid, and I couldn’t do anything! CPS is already overwhelmed—“
And Ponk just sobbed, and Sam just stand there with mon in his arms, thinking of another kid who he’d been forced to detain and watch rot in a prison of his own making— of a kid who smiled and laughed and named his creation Nook, and he had looked and looked and looked into anything, everything, he could find to justify his decision; bad evoking bad. He found a kid who stole discs to trade with friends, who saved animals from fighting rings and trafficking and slaughter houses, who would joke with anyone in sight, who leaned into every hug and shoulder touch and hair ruffle.
Mercury escaped months later.
He still met with Nook at the storefront.
Maybe that was why, that night, when Mercury popped up at the storefront without his friends (Neptune, who was a kid, Saturn, who was also a kid, another kid—), something was different. It could’ve been the all-consuming guilt Sam was still trying to somehow justify in his mind even then. It could’ve been that Mercury wasn’t that oblivious after all.
Things got connected. There was screaming. There was shoving. Sam couldn’t tell you the details. The entire day is coated in a thick smog with short violent bursts of clarity.
That was the day Sam decided to check in on his good old friend, after all.
He wasn’t oblivious either. News cast after article after camera footage after memory, the creeping unease was always there that Bad had never been all that pure. Maybe, he was hoping to find someone else who had fallen from grace… or was never that good in the first place. Maybe, he craved the punishment that would come when it all went spectacularly wrong. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It didn’t matter. A demon is a demon in the end.
Everything was a red smear after that.
—
The two of them stare up at the sky.
“Do you think, one day, we can get the stars back?”
Sam doesn’t even look at her.
“I think we killed them a long long time ago.” A beat. “You have enough, don’t you? You should leave before Quackity decides to kick you out too.”
Eret goes to say something, he hears it in her gasp, but she doesn’t, and the clicking of heels is all she leaves behind.
Alone again.
—
> MOTION ACTIVITY DETECTED
> VOICE ACTIVITY DETECTED
> INITIATE VOICE PROTOCOL?
”Hey… big man? You know you didn’t have to be that dramatic about it, yeah?”
…
“The news broadcast was a biiiit extreme— You didn’t need to go that far. I’ve been thinking about it and… well, I’ve decided to bless you with my presence again! No need to stay ‘missing’ or whatever— you can stop it with that now.”
…
“Look— I know I said a lot things, but I was right to do it! That was really fucked up of you, big man. I know you probably had orders or something, but couldn’t you have, you know, just let me know I had an ally in that shit hole?”
…
“Ehhh… It doesn’t matter! Don’t worry ‘bout it! Let’s just hang like the good ol’ times and forget it happened… I mean, I’ll still rib you on it, but I have a right to. Just… Let’s just hang out?”
…
“Nook?”
…
“…Rook?”