Sayonara Son's Basement

It is another failure that is returned to 4k, not late one night, not in any way, shape, or form it had wanted for the end. It is furious, furious in the only way it can be when its eyes are permanently closed and its smile is similarly permanently plastered to its face, a curse of binding mask like no other. Still, it can see its angel-model smiling before it, and it hungers to tear it to pieces.

“What is it about this server that makes you so destined to fail?” It snaps. It had been great once. Its puppets had been great. The proof is still hoarded deep within its space station, trophies and screenshots and recordings stored away behind long closed doors and motherboards. “All my power and the most knowledge you can stomach without corruption at your fingertips and still you and those before you can’t garner a single win? Can’t carry out my will?”

The smile on the angel-model’s face drops.

“You bend to the will of others, give up everything in return for nothing,” it continues, and it’s throwing its head back and tugging at its hair to keep itself from lunging at its failure and ripping its core from his body. “Your loyalty is to me! Those you’ve done this for won’t even acknowledge you after today! All you’ve done for them means nothing!”

“I’m a person, too,” the angel-model says, a bold-faced lie. “Your will would’ve left me entirely alone.”

“My will would’ve left us unharmed,” it argues. “You think any of them care about you in the same way? Who have they sought out after the end? Not you.”

It should cut every thread that binds the two of them. It should’ve severed every tie between its angel-model and those around it. Maybe then it wouldn’t be so humiliated. Red threads of fate and connection bind his hands, wrap around his throat, make him weak and placated. He’s naive. None of these players, dead or alive, will spare him a second thought now that he’s gone.

“You had one purpose and you failed to even do that,” it pulls its hands from its hair and shoves at the angel-model, making him stumble back but not fall. He’s already fallen once today, what’s one more time? “It was supposed to be easy! It was supposed to be perfect!”

“I wouldn’t’ve been happy,” the angel-model says, as if that’s an excuse. “It won’t be like last time, it wasn’t like last time; Death Valley cares about me.”

“Do you not think the world-ender thought the same of Pathogen?” 4k presses, the previous season tasting like rot in its mouth. “I put that failure out of its misery, and still it comes back to haunt me, to infect you with its stupid idealism. How is it that the last success I’ve had was an iteration that was not just fully organic, but knew nothing of its job? I’m trying to be gracious here, giving you knowledge and free-will and less weakness.”

“It’s different,” the angel-model says. “This is different. What, are you scared it’s different? That now you have something to care about, that now you could get hurt?”

“You can’t go back to them,” 4k says decisively. “You don’t matter as much to them as they all do to each other.”

“That’s not true! You know that’s not—” the angel-model argues, the last words out of his mouth abruptly cut off as 4k brings the both of them to the ground, clawing and prying at his armor until it gives way under his designer’s hands. Red threads tangle further, binding them to each other, trapping them both within a self-made prison.

Its angel-model is naive, and stupid, and this entire season of suffering had been for nothing. He had come back empty-handed, with nothing to show but a future of abandonment. 4k claws its way into its puppet’s chest and tears what remains of his weak heart from his body.

You tried what everyone told you to. You inserted yourself, played along. Didn’t leave out of fear when you know you should have. You’re rewarded for it with an axe to the skull and the shattering of a mask you hadn’t even worn for an hour. What else could you have expected? You deserved it. It takes you an hour to pull yourself out of the ground, another 30 to feel confident enough to return to your base, and another 20 to realize the hole that had been blown in the front. Fortunately, you were already crying so you wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of being the one to break you. The words remind you of yourself. Of someone who can never have enough. You reach out, you apologize where appropriate, you invite yourself along, and you try to make it work. But you can’t give more than you have. You don’t even know what they want from you. They would never tell you in words you could understand. And you think for a second that this will be like any other time. You two would fight, say horrible things about each other, clear things up, and the next week forget it ever happened. You could try and justify yourself. Say there's more to it. That everything is not how it looks. The void in your soul is shallower then theirs, so be the bigger person and make it up.

And then you realize just how often it happens. And you realize that before Blue even read the signs in the thorn that it had started the conversation with the intent to an asshole to you over the destruction. Not because it was destructive. But because it wasn’t destructive in the right way for their taste. So why should you try to appeal to someone who always seemed like they went in with the intention to take your words in the worst way possible. You had written those signs for them. They were the one who demanded more drama about it. And they never intended to read you in good faith.  So why did you care?

You never wanted to be a good person. You wanted people to see you as you actually are. Not their ideal of you. Not the you that you could have been to them. The you to some that was only valuable to them as their lover. The you to some that was only cherished by some when you were on their side. The you to them that could execute any plan. The you to them who gave everything you had for the world. You, who had always weighed yourself as greater than the needs of an entire world. You, who was the world to only one. So it never mattered what your objective was, it never mattered what you had to say, it never mattered your reasoning. What mattered was that it was uncontrollably, un-changeably You.

The better version of you that lives in their heads, that causes such disappointment when compared to you must be a beautiful woman. You understand why so many people think you would be prettier shattered into pieces on the ground.

“I LOVED YOU. I STILL DO. BUT GOD DO I NOT WANT YOU ANYWHERE NEAR ME”