Chapter Text
The last thing Mono heard in his mind, his focus broken from the Signal upon seeing how tightly Six clung to him, was a voice that was very much -not- his own saying, “I was so close. How unfair.”
He didn’t know what that meant. What he did know was that he was on the floor now and Six was up and standing and holding a pipe.
It hurt.
As the static abruptly ended, the ability to feel his own skin again had Mono rendered immobile on the floor. It wasn’t just physical ache, he’d been experiencing that for days, months, possibly longer. This was him recognizing his last attempt at saving some scrap of what he’d known had been extinguished. This was anguish.
It was really real now, wasn’t it? That everything was gone and never coming back. Mono had kept pushing that back for so long, had kept hoping against everything that that wasn’t true, that somehow he could save it, the city and people he loved. It’d been there the whole time he journeyed with Six, the looming sense of loss. Places he’d known and seen layered and degraded until they were nearly unrecognizable. A shell, just as he felt.
He missed it and had missed it for so long.
He missed the sun, and the songbirds, and all the people, even the other kids who used to pick on him. Mono missed his family, one that’d been gone long before all of this, people important to him, and he couldn’t even remember their faces! Or their names. Everyone thereafter had been distorted, faces twisted beyond recognition, it’d all gone so far away from him. He was never going to see them again, Mono was all that was left of the old city, alone with that burden, and he wasn’t quite sure if he even was present at the moment.
Mono could hear Six panting, they’d stayed and fought and destroyed the thing that had wanted Mono. Part of him tried to be thankful for that, that they’d stayed, the other was indescribably upset about it. Rather than do anything with those feelings, Mono lay still and stared at the ceiling of the tunnel.
He knew Six moved because he could hear them, they were limping now, steps uneven, the iron pipe dragging on the floor. They stopped, stood in front of the boy, their breaths coming a bit more smoothly now. They nudged his leg with their foot. Mono remained where he was. Another nudge, more insistent, this time earning a very tired groan from Mono. He didn’t want to get up and this must have upset Six because the next thing he knew, they were pulling at his coat with their free hand.
Mono batted it away. He sat up, slowly, his chest aching for many reasons, but didn’t stand. He was tired.
“H... Hey.” Six whispered. Mono shook his head, wanting to sink back onto the floor.
Six’s hand was back, gripping his shoulder, shaking him. They must be upset with him, Mono thought, for being as he was, for being so broken. He sighed, aches ringing across his battered form, wondering when this would be over with. He didn’t want to move. Six shook him again, roughly. Mono looked up at them.
—
He must be hurt, Six thought, but they needed to move, couldn’t stay here. They were so close to finally being somewhere else, the idea of him being stuck here, after everything, had Six feeling frustration boiling in her guts. They can’t give up, not yet, it simply wasn’t an option and they weren’t going to let him.
Six looked at Mono’s face, really fully looked at him. Ignored the way her skin broke out in goosebumps, hairs on the back of her neck standing, an aura of strangeness that Six refused to stand down from, even as it had her subconsciously grimacing. The longer they looked, the more silly it all seemed. Mono’s appearance was that of a kid, an extremely gaunt and sickly looking kid but one nonetheless. His cheekbones showed a bit, his eyes dark and tired as he made contact with Six’s own. Before, Six had thought of them as blank screens, but right now she could see herself reflected in them. The waves of wrongness exuding from him was itself wrong, it didn’t match with how he was. Because Mono wasn’t strange in the way he’d been strange before, not scary strange.
The boy’s gaze shifted from Six’s to the pipe in her hand. Mono shut his eyes. Not in the avoidant way he usually did, not a pained scrunching to fight against the desire to cry, this was something else. It was like he was waiting for something.
He was waiting for Six to hit him. The very idea of that made Six instantly go cold, the hot fervor of her fury at the world died instantly. Six threw the pipe away as though it’d burned her, metallic clanging echoes in the tunnel.
Mono thought Six wanted to hurt him, and why wouldn’t he? Six had nearly left him to die before, had in fact for a moment (a moment of weakness and fear and distrust) intended to drop him when he’d been at his most vulnerable, had thought of him as some cruel monster. (Six hadn’t helped at all, the girl in the yellow raincoat falling from the cliff down into the sea. Six may as well have pushed her down themself.) An invisible wound deepened in Six’s chest, a vast emptiness spreading fast.
It hurt.
Six had, back in the cabin, grappled with the idea of trusting another, not just to keep going but with her life. A blind trust, tenuous, uncertain of what would result of it, and trusting like that had been so frightening, but really Mono had trusted Six before just the same, his own life repeatedly in Six’s hands. Six had thought themselves betrayed, thinking of Mono as a monster for even just a moment, thinking everything up until then had been an act. But, now, seeing Mono be so resigned, no, expecting Six to strike him? If Mono was a monster, Six didn’t want to think of what they were.
The emptiness writhed so violently in Six’s guts it made them gasp in pain. This was the same kind of debilitating ache that had struck them before, when they had just left the television, when Mono had been curled on the floor in pain, helpless. When he had looked at Six, Six who had thought themselves betrayed, forced to return to running by themself, without rest, in a world full of monsters, and he’d looked so deeply, indescribably, hurt. Hurt by Six.
She stumbled back, the heels of their feet protesting with hot stinging wounds where glass had cut into them, wrapping their arms around herself, trying to squeeze the ache away. Their guts churned audibly, empty.
Mono flinched at the sound and that only made it worse.
Six fell to their knees, pained exhales. They’d never -wanted- to hurt Mono, it wasn’t an idea they’d liked, even when they’d felt so sure that he may hurt them, Six didn’t feel good about considering leaving him behind. About seeing another person they’d nearly considered a friend fall to their doom.
At that thought, the emptiness only grew and Six could see a flicker of a shadow standing in their peripheral vision.
-
Oh. Mono heard Six fall, unsettling growls coming from them. It was like before. Like they were starving, or sick, something definitely wrong with their insides. They hadn’t hit him, maybe they were just too exhausted from everything else. Or maybe it was hunger, Six ate lightly. Right, the sack she wore as a backpack, there was food in it. Perhaps that would help.
It was second nature to Mono to focus in on aiding the other kid, even when he was also suffering, even when he was anticipating the force of their fury for how bothersome he felt. He leaned up and forward, tentative of if he should even broach Six’s space. Six shivered, distressed hums, bent over themself. That solidified his decision. Mono reached up and over Six’s head to undo the cord that kept the bag on their back closed, the kid inhaling and holding their breath, likely trying to not cry.
Then Six leant into Mono, their hooded head pressed against his chest.
As Six collapsed into his midriff Mono’s concern for the other kid only grew. They wrapped their arms around him, trembling. His ribs hurt but he ignored it, worry for the other superseding his tiredness. He finished undoing the knot and pulled out one of the bread rolls. Mono thought he saw a shadow, something to the side, but he chalked it up as a trick of the dying lights, remnants of a migraine ebbing away. He went to offer the food only for Six to shake their head, a movement that did finally make him hiss in discomfort.
Six continued to hold him and Mono realized they were fully crying. They were hugging him and crying and shivering. While Six hardly weighed anything, the weight of the gesture had Mono crushed as he realized how mistaken he’d been about Six. Tentatively, he set a hand on Six’s back and she hugged him a little harder, a small raspy strained voice saying, “Mono...” He then fully embraced them, feeling just how shaken they were, how they didn’t let him go.
Mono had actually only ever wanted to be wanted. (“I don’t want to be alone.” He said to the thing within the television that had pointed to the empty space within his heart. The empty space where his loved ones had been.) He didn’t ask for this, these strange powers he had, the state of the city around him, had never asked for anything like this. He’d just wanted to be wanted, to be held again, to hold on to what he used to have, to not feel so alone. All that he’d had before was gone but in this moment Six wanted his comfort, wanted to be around him, wanted him to stay and share their company. Six had stayed, willingly, for Mono.
They were warmth returning to his arms and it made him cry too.
-
Six didn’t expect to be forgiven, still hadn’t forgiven themself, didn’t feel deserving of it. Six couldn’t recall when, if, they’d ever last been so vulnerable as this. The pain and emptiness inside them was so vast, but as Mono embraced them back the waves of agony lessened.
Her hands dug into the folds of his coat, as though she were still trying to keep him from going away, desperate to just be able to keep one person who had been kind to them, just once. He felt cold, colder than a kid should be, but his breathing was steady even as he cried, the timing of each exhale helping Six regain control of themself, the overwhelming pain becoming aches. Mono was still alive, he hadn’t fallen, hadn’t been caught by the monster that was hunting him, was still kind to Six even when she felt like it was undeserved.
Holding Mono like this made Six feel a rush of sadness they’d been holding back for some time. The unfairness of it all, of their situation, of how many had been left behind. The sadness of lost potential friendships, people they never got to know, names never given. Just this once, Six thought as she hugged Mono tightly, they didn’t want to have to leave them, didn’t want to have to do this alone. In the wake of the surge of grief, the emptiness subsided.
Still weak and dizzy, Six gradually found the strength to slowly pull away from Mono. She slid to sit beside him, finally accepting the offered breadroll. Both of them were so tired. Mono wiped at his face with his sleeve, sniffling while Six took small slow bites of the bread. It was hardly sweet, but filling.
•
Mono blinked away the last of his tears. Six chewed quietly, the two children looking contemplatively at the wreckage in front of them, broken televisions and glass and rotten things. They didn’t want to be here, either of them. But. They wanted to be around the other, to be allowed to continue on, to somewhere else, somewhere with sunlight and fresh air and warmth.
Six took Mono’s hand in her own and squeezed, near painfully tight in their grip. Mono returned the gesture, holding just as hard. They weren’t quite friends, not yet, could not possibly understand eachother just yet. But they could be friends, wanted to be.
Mono leant forward to pick the glass out of Six’s feet so they could walk onward and Six brushed away the debris stuck to his back.
••
It was a rough walk, but they walked, keeping eachother steady, hand in hand. There’d been a barricade, concrete blocks and warning signs, which they’d crossed to make it beyond an intersection. Figures, Mono thought, that the routes to the Pale City would have been closed off from the outside, nobody should want to go there anymore. As they plodded along past it, Mono thought about where they were. It was the end of the map, this tunnel was under another place, Mono was officially outside of the Pale City. He kept looking back over his shoulder as they walked, as though he could see it again.
They continued on for a while, the maintenance lights in this section actually functional. There weren’t strewn clothes here, abandoned luggage or televisions. It still looked quite the same but for Six it already felt different, like the atmosphere had shifted despite them being underground. The atmosphere did indeed change, a tremor beneath their feet.
The ground quaked, the two children hugging a wall and hoping it would subside before anything started to fall. They could hear something, coming through the subway tunnel, a different rumble and a metallic screeching noise. Lights coming towards them along the rails.
It was a subway train. The gigantic cars slowed to a stop, the ground shaking still. The train cars were brightly lit and to Mono’s incredible delight, it was full of passengers. People, he hoped. Six was already pointing a way up for them, onto the furthermost rear car. It must be making an emergency stop because of the earthquake, Mono thought as he hurried to follow Six’s lead in getting up. The kid knelt and hoisted Mono up onto the back of the carriage, with him then turning to pull Six up after him (with some pained effort, they were both still incredibly sore).
Six examined the door cautiously, Mono offered to lift her up this time, which she accepted, being raised high enough to see through the window. They were only able to get a brief glimpse before hopping back to the ground, Mono’s strength giving out. Six was grateful for the rumbling earth as it masked the boy’s heavy breaths as he tried to recover. They’d seen enough of the car’s interior to feel confident in pulling the door, which slid open enough for the two children to slip in, Six closing it behind them.
It was full of luggage, piled on and under seats and tied up into raised storage compartments, the passengers in the other carriages audible from here. Mono went to go for the next door only for Six to grab his arm, halting him. He looked at her, confused, and Six’s response was to shake her head, pressing a finger to her lips and shushing him.
Six directed Mono to take cover under one of the seats, between oversized luggage that was firmly wedged. He obliged, the two huddling together, silent.
The rumbles stopped after a couple minutes, the tunnel going quiet. The train groaned and then lurched forward, making the two kids bump shoulders a bit painfully. They were moving, somewhere else, wherever it was this train was going.
Six sighed, releasing a breath Mono hadn’t known she was holding. Mono thought about why Six would be so frightened of adults, wondering what was so scary to them about him wanting to see people again. They were near enough to the next car that he could hear the passengers talking, a couple gruff voices sticking out.
“Terrible state of things, absolutely terrible.”
“It was only a matter of time, it couldn’t last forever as it was. Shame to see it like this now.”
Mono leaned forward, peering up at the windows, a sliver of the inside of the next car visible to him. He wanted to see who was speaking.
“Running out of resources, left and right. What I wouldn’t give to see it all sparkle again.”
“What a grand liar you are, you would never give anyone anything so long as you could keep it for yourself.”
He saw a bit of one of the figures, an oversized plump hand tapping the shoulder of another, who leaned just enough as they laughed for Mono to see a bit of their head. The skin hung loose, like it wasn’t fully attached.
“Ha ha! Caught, but still. What a mess, how much longer will the Tower stand, do you think?”
“Will have to see once we hit top-side, that last crack was a doozy.”
Mono shivered. He didn’t understand all of what they were talking about, a lot of it went over his head, but the mention of the Tower had him push himself further back into their hiding space. The bizarreness of the figures’ features let him understand Six’s caution better now.
The movement of the train would be comforting if Mono were not absorbed in thoughts of the Pale City, how he could feel it going further and further behind them. He missed it. Was going to miss it still, but he acknowledged now that it was gone.
After a little while, Six crept out from their hiding space and wandered around the car. They found a first aid kit, one that attached to the underside of a chair, and pulled it out with much more gusto and excitement than Mono had ever considered giving such a mundane object. Mono helped Six apply some bandages, to their arms and the bottom of their feet mostly, after Six cleaned their own wounds. They seemed experienced with it. She then motioned for Mono, to which he shook his head. He didn’t have any open cuts, he didn’t think he did anyways.
Still, Six persisted in letting it be known they wanted to see where Mono was hurt, no hesitation in how they went to push and prod at him. He relented, taking off his coat (it always made him feel much smaller when he took it off) and pulling his shirt up enough in an attempt to say to Six, ‘look see, I’m not bleeding.’ only for that plan to backfire spectacularly as it was revealed to the both of them that his whole right side was a deep dark stretch of purpled bruising, with some scabbed scrapes for good measure. The both of them winced.
The inspection moved to his leg, Mono rolling up his pant leg while Six sat at the ready to apply more bandages (she pressured Mono to let them clean the scabs, something he really disliked, but Six succeeded and pressed bandaids where it bled just a bit, his side aching). His ankle was similarly bruised, he’d fallen on it when he twisted it, but it hadn’t swollen since so Mono felt confident in assuming he hadn’t broken it (someone some time ago had drummed it into his head that heavy swelling meant broken bones).
While it was for the better, the dressing of their wounds had each of them silently griping about how being hurt was dumb and unpleasant. They were healing, sure, and it was better to do this, but it wasn’t a very fun thing to do. The both of them settled back in their hiding spot, sore, tired, sharing the space shoulder to shoulder.
But, they were on their way to healing, to somewhere else, and that was something.