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What a terrible thing it is, to be the only one spared by a curse.
Maybe some would rejoice at being spared; relieved at the prospect of being one of the very few who’d been left unaffected by an all consuming malign and the threat it posed. Perhaps they would revel in the fact that they were fortunate enough to avoid the terrible consequences the curse had inflicted upon their not so lucky peers instead. But were those not the most logical ways to feel?
When you have narrowly escaped an ill fate that ravaged almost everyone but you, wouldn’t it be fair to feel relieved?
Maybe some of the Brinarr out in Founder’s Wake felt that way, wholly untouched by the implacable sickness that swept the city two days ago as they were. Maybe some Brinarr had taken great joy in being spared by the Sallow, but Zoox was not one of those Brinarr, nor did he think he ever would be.
To Zoox, there’d never been any greater torture, no greater torment in his entire short life, than being fine and well, sitting in a hospital room next to the wilted, unresponsive bodies of his two friends who were blatantly not fine and well.
Amber and Devo were not Brinarr like Zoox, and thus the Sallow had fallen upon them suddenly and mercilessly, just as it had to every other non-coral entity in the city who hadn’t been subjected to the disease already in the past.
The sickness had taken them in its grasp and squeezed until they’d stopped moving, then had dropped them unceremoniously onto the cusp of death, right before Zoox’s very eyes.
They’d escaped that grim fate thankfully; death would not take them that day, to Zoox’s monumental, indescribable relief. But even so, it did not reverse the fact that they were still not waking up.
Even nearly two days later, even after the abrupt and rapid fire spread of the Sallow had come and gone, Amber and Devo continued to lie there in their beds, beguiled away into a distant, unconscious place that could not be followed, and had left Zoox all alone.
And being alone was not something that Zoox Anthellae handled with any sort of aptitude, to say the least.
Zoox had been alone before, a great deal of times in the past, enough to come to an astute conclusion that there was nothing he hated more than being alone.
Isolation was as familiar to Zoox as Ethersea water, though nowhere near as soothing or kindly. One could say it was one of the first feelings he’d really recognised and understood after first coming into being.
Zoox knew that he wasn't like other Brinarr, and other Brinarr knew that too. They’d made it abundantly clear during that orientation day that Zoox’s abnormalities were not something that they felt particularly intrigued or sympathetic with. They’d chosen the path of berating him rather than trying to understand him, and in some dark, cruel little nook in the back of Zoox’s mind, he to this day resented them for it.
He’d been alienated and discarded, deemed broken and unfixable, and Zoox would carry that with him for as long as he lived.
And thus he’d gone his own way, striking out on his own into a world that cared as much about him or the feelings he barely understood as those other Brinarr had, but it was better than standing around and doing nothing. For a year (it was probably a year— combined with his often unreliable memory, Zoox hadn’t had any incentive to keep track at the time either) he was tossed around aimlessly by the comings and goings of Founder’s Wake, building up a halfway generous repertoire of mariner skills through odd jobs in the immediate ocean outside of the city here and there.
It did him well for a time, but it was a lonely, solitary existence— it did naught but stoke the miasma of unhappiness and uncertainty that clung to the inside of his coral like an infestation, capriciously deepening his sense of isolation in a way that was almost unbearable.
It hadn’t brought Zoox anywhere closer to his desire to discover what the expansive and dangerous splendor of the Ethersea could truly offer him— it hadn’t brought him anywhere closer to understanding why he was the way he was, and why he’d been condemned to be so alone.
So, riding on the whim of a split second decision, he’d wound up at the Blue Span Brokerage, in search of change; of opportunity and companionship, and much to his delight, he’d successfully found both with absolute aplomb (though perhaps not in the way he’d initially hoped, considering the frequent complications he’d encountered since, but it was still infinitely better than what he’d had previously).
For the first time in a long while Zoox finally had something that felt…well, right. He was not usually one for being able to describe or articulate his feelings in any fluent or concise way, but what he knew for certain was that the few weeks he’d spent on the Coriolis with Amber and Devo had been more fulfilling and exciting than anything else throughout Zoox’s short existence up until that point, regardless of all of the calamities that seemed to be drawn to the three of them like moths to lantern light.
For people he’d only known for a very short time, Zoox held his crewmates in stupendous esteem, for they had cultivated Zoox’s first diversion from what had felt like a never ending, petulant isolation. Maybe they were still slightly hesitant to say it aloud, but Zoox was not— they were his friends, through and through.
And how good it felt— how ardently right and beautiful it felt, to know that you were friends.
And it was for those very reasons that Zoox sat in that hospital room, festering in a belligerent grief that felt like it was slowly poisoning and killing every single living organism in his ecosystem body, having found himself so terribly alone again.
Being alone in the past had been bad, but this was so unbearably worse.
It was worse because back then he didn't have to worry about losing anyone, because there was no one there for him to lose. But now there was— he finally had people he didn’t want to lose, and after what had happened with the Sallow, how close he’d come to losing his very first friends, Zoox had learnt quite abruptly and candidly how fucking awful that feeling was.
The moments leading up to it all played back in Zoox’s head over and over again, permanently seared into the coral patterns in his mind like a large, bleached bruise.
Zoox had been with Ampersand-Five, attempting to forge an impromptu mind meld with Finneas in order to uproot his buried memories of where the city’s oxygen producing phytoplankton had come from twenty-five years ago. Amber and Devo had been there with Ballaster Hermine right before he’d gone under, looking fine and well albeit a little pale.
Zoox had looked upon them briefly in that moment, before he temporarily disconnected himself with their shared reality and became a vessel for memories, and he remembered that they’d been fine.
And so it’d been all the more horrific to discover how fast it all changed.
He couldn’t have been under for longer than a couple of minutes, scarcely even that. The vision he’d been offered had been vague and indistinct, especially after having to sift through the memories of Ampersand-Five’s past lives first in order to reach Finneas’.
(Even in his disconnected state, mostly divorced from his conscious thoughts and feelings in order to subsist solely in the realm of soul and being, Zoox had retained enough lucidity to willfully stop himself from thinking about how clear Ampersand-Five’s recollections of the lives their Einarr souls had led before congealing together to become who they were now had been, he tried not to think about how he was virtually unable to do the same.)
(He tried not to think about the way Tessellation had looked at him when he’d told them about his plight in their office just before the Sallow hit, he tried not to remember how perturbed and almost wary they’d been left by his mere presence and questions, he tried not to acknowledge how it reminded him to much of the orientation again— that stinging feeling of rejection, how much it hurt to exist as something deemed incomprehensible to others. An enigma with no place in this world.)
After plucking nothing but the image of steam rising from the ocean floor and the harrowing feeling of a slow and bitter death from Finneas’ brittle, frosted over memories, Zoox had been dragged unceremoniously away from his probing and thrust back into awareness, and he quickly discovered that the reality he was returning too was unspeakably, preternaturally different from the one he’d left behind mere minutes ago.
Alarms blared, lights flashed. Every sound and sensation around him was intrusive and violent, accurately capturing the urgency and chaos that had suddenly exploded all around him, its unceasing ricochet of shrapnel tearing through his mind and leaving him discombobulated and panicked.
The world around Zoox moved too slow and too fast at the same time, blurring his vision like fog and condensation on a porthole that refused to be wiped clean. Voices shouted and cried under the unrelenting shrill of the alarms, the shadows of people running across the tiled floor dashed this way and that, featureless phantoms in Zoox’s periphery.
It was fitting for them to be phantoms, in a way— because as far as Zoox had been concerned at that current juncture, nobody else existed in the entire world, and if they did, they were entirely irrelevant.
He’d barely even registered Ballaster Hermine’s presence either, even as she sat hunched over the only two people who did still exist, the only two people other than Zoox who were still corporeal and concrete concepts in his beleaguered, terrified mind.
Everything else had bled away, like old flesh sloughing off a corpse; deliquescing into a heavy, senseless horror that stole every avenue of air whistling through the gaps in Zoox’s coral body.
All that he could focus on, all that had mattered, were his two friends, suddenly prone on the ground in front of him, writhing with a dreadful, gut wrenching pain that Zoox hadn’t believed could possibly exist prior to witnessing it, as their forms were warped and altered against their wills.
All that he could focus on was that somehow, in a breadth of a second, Amber and Devo were suddenly slipping away from his reach.
Everything had blurred together after that, Zoox’s already fragile and uncoordinated emotions sent into total and catastrophic disarray. He remembered when they'd stopped moving, when the pain had finally reached a level of severity that plunged them into complete unconsciousness, and for a terrible moment Zoox thought they were gone.
The doctors (he couldn’t remember their faces or names or voices, not that he probably made any attempt to commit them to memory at the time anyway) told him that they weren't, that they were still alive and that they’d do everything they could to make sure they stayed that way, but it still took a bit of time and several more verbal repeats and assurances of the phrase before Zoox could really believe it.
He was distraught beyond words, torn and shredded with invisible hooks, slowly dissecting his patchwork body into a paroxysm of brightly coloured, ugly clumps of terror and penitence. He was hysterical, he was inconsolable. He was alone.
But now, two days later, he was quiet, doleful and feeble, sitting obsequiously in his chair. He’d sat there silent and immobile for hours, like a great ashen stone. He was calmer now, more put together, but no less alone.
The time had passed in smears, like dirt being rubbed across a viewport with a dry cloth, warping and pushing it into a linear line of something gross and nonsensical without actually clearing it away.
Once the worst of the Sallow’s effects had been dealt with, Amber and Devo had been assigned just one doctor to routinely check their vitals and overall recovery. This happened to be Doctor Shaq, who for a moment Zoox did not recall in the slightest despite the Doctor being certain that they knew each other.
Apparently he’d had a (kind of uncomfortable, if Zoox was remembering it correctly) conversation in the Crystal Ascension with Zoox and his crew not long after they joined the Brokerage some weeks ago. Zoox was able to vaguely recall the scene to mind as the Doctor described it, and after apologising he blamed his lack of recognition on his current preoccupied mental state, which Doctor Shaq kindly understood.
(Though if Zoox was being entirely honest, even if he weren’t in a very delicate situation emotions wise right then, he probably still would’ve had trouble remembering who this guy was. A lot had happened since then, after all. Zoox may have had skewed priorities sometimes, but he could give himself enough grace for at least that.)
Whenever the Doctor was around, Zoox did his best to not obstruct his work, keeping himself rooted to the dismal little corner he’d picked out for himself. Doctor Shaq didn’t seem to mind his constant presence, which Zoox found himself infinitely grateful for.
From the few times that Zoox had observed him work, he’d come to an uncertain conclusion that Shaq always seemed…somewhat cautious of Zoox whenever he was there.
The more logical side of Zoox’s mind told him that it was likely just Doctor Shaq’s response to the current emotional environment; the result of some surface level understanding he must have come to regarding Zoox’s current negative feelings —it’s not like it was a hard thing to identify, really— and though he was probably doing his best to accommodate them in this understandably difficult time, the more unsettled part of Zoox’s mind thought he still came across a little too wary, almost.
Doctor Shaq was cordial and kind, but to Zoox it felt very much like he was walking around on eggshells whenever he addressed him sometimes, as though he expected Zoox to suddenly blow up the room around them apropos of nothing.
That’s fair, Zoox had thought duly, contritely resigned, trying to ignore the wretchedly familiar way it made him ache, I brought the Sallow here, after all. And besides, that’s how everyone else feels about me already.
Usually, in between monitoring Zoox’s friends, Doctor Shaq would offer him a small number of things, typically in the vein of various sad and sympathetic looks he seemed to have an exhaustive collection of, or occasionally reminding him to go for a dunk in Ethersea water or to eat whenever it’d been a particularly long time since Zoox had last moved, but for the most part the doctor left him alone while he worked, which Zoox had discovered a great solace in.
Zoox normally wasn’t one for quietude, or any stillness of any variety for that matter. He preferred to be present in the moment, to be active and tangible in any given scenario, never content to just linger in the background. He craved new experiences through conversation and activity, it was how he’d been uncovering new parts of himself that he’d never been able to understand back when he first came to be, bit by bit.
But this was a different beast entirely, one that was hideous and suffocating, that’d taken every pre-existing feeling Zoox had thought he’d finally memorised and categorised about himself and torn it up into frivolous little pieces.
Zoox felt lost again, like he was that purposeless, companionless Brinarr puttering around Founder’s Wake again, the one who’d spent the first two years of his life in a unmemorable daze, carrying out unfulfilling tasks and jobs with no real substance or future in sight.
It left him small and wanting, desperate for an escape. It left him…hollow. Empty.
As much as he despised those words due to the grueling memories they tended to conjure, they were just about the only truly accurate descriptor for how he felt, sitting there in that hospital room, reluctant to do so much as twitch.
He did leave the room sometimes, obviously. Doctor Shaq was quite right in his assertions that he should still take care of himself, take the time to temporarily depart so that he could dunk and eat to prevent the possibility of an untimely death of his own.
But it was hard, sometimes, to consciously seperate himself from the self imposed vigil he’d devoted himself to.
In some particularly grim instances, the biological need to move and sustain himself so he wouldn’t dry out and expire didn't possess Zoox at all, and he’d only leave after a certain period of vaguely exasperated cajoling from Doctor Shaq.
Maybe it should’ve been telling in some insightful way how Zoox seemed quick to harbour a considerable lack of self preservation in various scenarios, ones typically among the ‘willingly subjecting the integrity of his very soul and sense of self to the psychological ire of some unknown deep sea creature’ variety.
But as was the case with many things at that point in time, analysing the source of it was substantially low on Zoox’s list of mental priorities. It probably just came from the same place everything else that was wrong with him came from, anyway.
But the crux of it all was how disinclined Zoox was to do anything else but stay in that hospital room, assiduously watching over his two etiolated friends like there was no more important role in the whole world.
It was the very least he could do, and that knowledge made it no less painful, in fact, it made it that much worse.
Zoox should’ve been able to do more, he needed to do more, but he couldn’t.
He could only sit, festering in an unfathomable guilt that he had no idea how to pinpoint with any real clarity, always circling back to the same rotten slew of blame and self detestment.
It was all his fault, after all.
How, exactly, he couldn’t articulate with any assuredness, but he knew he was to blame as closely as he knew the living swarm within his body.
If he had just done something, used his stupid interfacing powers to pick up on the Sallow’s presence scraped against the bottom of the Coriolis or something. If he had just looked more closely, been more helpful, they may not have brought the pathogen into the city the way they did. He could have prevented this, he should’ve prevented this.
Maybe there was no logic or reason to thinking that way, maybe it was entirely unrealistic, but Zoox could not convince himself of anything but.
It was a torturous mantle to bear, but Zoox would carry it if it meant sparing anyone else from the blame, especially his fellow crewmates.
Though he’d spent most of the last two days looking over them, always keeping them in his line of sight, it never got any easier to stomach, it never made him feel any less awful.
He wasn't used to the stillness, the quiet. Zoox was so used to seeing Amber and Devo just so…alive, full of a uniqueness and individuality that Zoox so admired.
They were so present and larger than life from Zoox’s perspective. Their individual temperaments lended more towards laudable assertiveness, never content to be a shapeless figure in the background (for better or for worse, sometimes). They lived in a state of being that Zoox had until recently been mostly unfamiliar with, having spent most of his life being just that; a shapeless figure no one batted an eye at.
So it was so abnormally strange, unnatural even to witness the two of them wrought into such a miserable, subdued state, one that so radically opposed all of those things. It was wrong to see them like this, confined to sterile white cots, pale and deathly still save for the steady rising and falling of their chests.
What a strange thing it was, to feel like you were mourning someone who was still alive.
The Sallow had left them husks of the people Zoox had come to know so well, marked by new and frightening features that did not belong on their bodies.
A cloth lay across Amber’s face, preventing any of the white, glaring light from the antiseptic hospital ceiling from getting into her new and sensitive eyes. If Zoox pretended for a moment, he could tell himself that she was just resting, a warm cloth over her face like something from one of those ‘sauna’ things he’d learnt a little bit about.
If he voided his thoughts on the matter and sat very still, he could almost pretend that she was fine; just resting.
This however did not happen very often, for quieting his racing thoughts was also not a skill that Zoox Anthellae possessed with any sort of certainty or finesse.
Not only that, that fleeting farce he would sometimes craft for himself would shatter the moment he looked away from Amber and at Devo instead, whose new affliction was far more readily apparent, not even concealed like Amber’s. It caught Zoox’s eyes like a blatant and grisly wound.
Glossy fins that had never been there before (that shouldn’t have been there, that wouldn’t have been there, if Zoox had just done a little more) ran up either side of Devo’s neck, reaching up from his collarbone all the way to where his jaw met his neck in an array of thin webbing and glittering blue scales.
The dark colour of Devo’s newfound scales stood out like abnormal blemishes against his skin, almost like a large blotchy bruise that spanned the entire length of his neck.
It was impossible to ignore. Zoox wondered with no small measure of despair how such egregious growths on his neck would affect Devo’s voice.
Doctor Shaq had had him on a ventilator for the first day, since apparently they’d caused some complications with Devo’s throat and breathing when they’d first grown in. Zoox had been beside himself with worry, but Shaq had assured him that it would pass once Devo’s body adjusted to inexplicable change.
Though even now, free of the ventilator, Devo’s breath often left him in brittle, thin rasps, the frills on his neck flexing unnaturally with each stuttering pass of air.
It felt like nails against his coral every time Zoox tuned into it, and he feared so deeply how it would affect Devo’s voice, something that he knew his friend valued so highly.
In a similar vein, Zoox feared for Amber and her eyes. Would she still be able to see? Surely her vision wasn’t the same anymore…would she go blind?
Like he had with Zoox’s concerns for Devo, Doctor Shaq had insisted with a knowing gentleness that though her vision would be forever altered, Amber’s eyesight would not be compromised by the change, in fact, there was a chance that it may have improved it in certain aspects.
Doctor Shaq had likely meant for that to be reassuring, but it sorely wasn't.
Even if the changes ended up being beneficial in the long run, and his friends learnt to love them, it still did nothing to ameliorate the level of ailment they’d had to endure to get to that point. It did nothing to take away from the damage the Sallow, and by extension; Zoox’s own folly, had done.
It didn't take away from the fact that Amber and Devo looked wrong, lying there in their beds. Frail and small and quiet— so very unlike themselves.
It was almost too much to bear, but still, Zoox would not leave, he would stay by their sides until they came back to him, no matter how long it took.
The hours went on, agonisingly slow. But still Zoox sat quietly in that room, the world outside that small bleak place distant and inconsequential.
Any concerns about what was going out outside of the hospital remained but an obscure and formless cloud at the back of Zoox’s skull, hardly important to him at that stage.
The sole surviving phytoplankton in charge of the entire cities air supply might’ve finally succumbed to death via the Sallow too, leaving Founder’s Wake without clean air while he sat there for all he knew, and even though it was effectively Zoox’s fault, he couldn’t really bring himself to care.
Maybe that was an awful thought; even just thinking about it frightened Zoox somewhat in its unsympathetic straight-forwardness, but unfortunately it was not so distant from the truth.
Zoox’s life had only gained some semblance of meaning the second he’d entered the Brokerage and joined a crew with Devo and Amber— as far as he was concerned, the only things that’d ever stuck out or had any important meaning in his life were lying there in that room with him.
He didn’t have a home, or any real connections to speak of…he just had two irritable coworkers he’d come to feel great affection for, and that was about the long and short of it.
All that notwithstanding, it felt like reality was taking a wide berth around the woebegone crew of the Coriolis, faraway and inscrutable, with the only tell of its continued existence being Doctor Shaq’s frequent visits to check up on his patients.
Zoox had reached a point where Doctor Shaq’s seemingly vast collection of sad eyed looks was becoming grating— it made Zoox feel wretched and almost belittled, like he was a petulant child to be pitied, a feeling that became more upsettingly familiar the more it happened. It felt a lot like how they’d looked at him back then, at the orientation.
It was like being doused in boiling water whenever Zoox recognised that unseemly comparison, turning every nook and cranny of his complex coral makeup into an arid wasteland of repellent agony.
Sometimes he wished the Doctor would just stop looking at him entirely.
But in saying that, though that feeling was disgustingly familiar, the same could not be said for a lot of the other emotions Zoox had been experiencing the last two days. For one; the unutterable feeling of all consuming guilt and despair was an exciting new contender in the top ten worst emotions Zoox had ever had the misfortune of experiencing in his relatively short life thus far.
Zoox shouldn’t be pitied, he didn’t want to be pitied, not when he knew what he knew, not when he was the sole cause for this entire disaster.
Doctor Shaq came and went, attending to the needs of his patients and updating Zoox on outside developments that he only half paid attention to. He was well aware of the damage beyond their little hospital room, of the people who had survived the sudden plague and escaped with new piscine features of their own, as well as those who had not been so fortunate.
How many people had died because of him? Zoox decided he didn't really want to know.
All he could do was focus on his friends. Being there with them, protecting them, kept him grounded enough to not fully lose himself to the despair of it all.
He spoke to them sometimes, whenever Doctor Shaq was out for a time or tending to other patients down the hall.
It was one of those times now, late into the second day of their collective nightmare. Zoox had pulled his chair up closer to his friends instead of condemning himself to his usual miserable vigil in the dusty corner, and simply talked.
It was an established fact that Zoox wasn’t particularly good at articulating his feelings at even the best of times, but that certainly wasn’t a problem now.
What he was saying to them didn't have to have any rhyme or reason, as long as he just kept talking, holding close to the futile idea that the earnestness in his voice would somehow be enough to rouse them.
“…so, I think out of all the books they kept for the new Brinarr, my favourite was an old book from the surface about some fruit I don't think we have anymore…I think it was…a lime? And it went on adventures? I-I can't really remember anything about the plot, if I’m being honest…but I liked it!”
Zoox gormlessly wrung his hands in his lap, talking animatedly about everything and anything to the two inert shapes laying on either side of him, struggling to not be discouraged by their continuous lack of acknowledgment.
”I wish I could tell you more about it, but all I can remember is that the lime had really good friends that he always wanted to support and who always wanted to support him, kind of like us, you know!” Zoox brought his already clasped hands to his chest, shoulders arched like an excited child. “Oh! Maybe I can get Doctor Shaq to bring me some books like that next time he comes around. You guys would like that, wouldn’t you? I-I don't really have very many stories of my own, you know that already…so, maybe reading some to you would be fun, right?”
As always, Zoox’s questions were met only with silence broken up occasionally by raspy breathing, and his already brittle enthusiasm only waned with every passing minute.
“I…I think it’d be nice. I haven't really done much reading before, you know. That little bit during my orientation weeks was just about it. After leaving I never really thought about it again…” A long pause. If Zoox had a mouth, he would’ve been opening and closing it dumbly by now. He fished for the suitable words he needed to explain the slowly expanding weight in his chest.
”But I— I’d like to, you know. I mean, you guys have all your books on the Coriolis, right? Amber you’ve got your magazines, and Devo you've got all those books you keep in the cubicles in the bridge…I should be doing something like that too, right? I'm always looking for— for new experiences and all that,” Zoox waggled his fingers half-heartedly to accentuate his point. “And reading more would surely help me with that, but it…never once occurred to me. After all this time I never once thought to ask you guys about your books…never thought to ask if I could read them too.”
Zoox nearly startled himself with the careworn laugh that wheezed itself from his body unprompted. “Isn’t that stupid?”
The faint fizzling of the bulb within the piecemeal tungsten light overhead was the only acknowledgement Zoox received for his febrile nonsense. The old light flickered faintly, briefly shattering the light that caught against Amber and Devo’s perpetually unmoving features.
Zoox lapsed into silence again, longer than before. The light returned to its constant unbroken glare not long after, the buzzing ambience of it resuming is constant, bleak hum.
It droned on, utterly indifferent, just like everything else in that horrible, astringently clinical room— a prison of Zoox’s own making, the cell he’d been condemned to for his crimes.
Sentenced to sit there, seething and suffering, waiting for the only two people who meant more to him than anyone else he’d met prior to awaken from a curse he had helped inflict upon them due to his own carelessness.
A curse guided by his own hand, a curse that was so cruel in nature that it had elected to spare Zoox from it, just so that he would have to bear complete and unbroken witness to his execrable error.
‘Isn’t that stupid?’
Something broke and flickered, and it wasn't the ceiling light this time.
In one ungraceful movement, more like a full body spasm than any premeditated action, Zoox hunched forward in his seat and pressed his forehead against the tightly folded hands in his lap. He sucked in a brittle, enervated breath, which for a Brinarr equated to inhaling the air around him through his body’s numerous coral pathways in the absence of a traditional nose and mouth.
Air passing through him always emitted an imperceptible little whistling sound whenever he did it normally, but now, the noise the action created was in every way forced; jarring and unscrupulous, more like a slowly dying ship engine than anything remotely natural.
It was stupid. And it was not just the frivolous topic of books that Zoox had so intelligently chosen to babble pointlessly about that was stupid.
It was the whole thing that was stupid; him trying to fill the empty void with pathetic drivel, saying nonsensical things, thinking he could make anything about this situation different just by talking, as though he could reverse what he’d done through the sheer will of stupid fucking one-sided conversation. It was unfathomably, lamentably stupid.
Words started billowing out of Zoox’s telepathic link before he could do anything about them, spewing out into the open air with a desperate fervidity. He lifted his head slightly, but not enough to rise from his shivering little half ball, far too addled to really make out the shapes of his friends with any real clarity, but it didn't really matter.
”Are you guys mad at me? I-I mean…this is all my fault, right?” Zoox’s voice curdled into something almost hysterical towards the end, twisting in on itself with emotion. He shook his head listlessly. “I should’ve realised we’d hit something bad when we got that scrape…I should’ve checked it before we got to the Auction. If I had, then— then you wouldn’t be like this…! I—“
Zoox’s vision swam, his limbs felt heavy and too tense, like his coral was about to splinter and crack any second now. His emotions felt too big for his already quite large body, jostling for room, trying to claw and scratch their way out of his complex insides, relentless and unforgiving in nature. It was like the storm that destroyed the surface world far above the waves had decided to move away and localise itself entirely within Zoox’s body.
“I just— I just wish you would talk to me right now. I— I know that’s selfish; you guys have to put all your energy into recovering, I can't just expect you to wake up faster because I’m—“ Zoox faltered, teetering on the edge of affrighted misery. What he said next wasn't supposed to be something he said out loud, but found he had no cause or reason for preventing it.
“Because I’m lonely.”
A hush fell across the dingy little room like a thick and oppressive blanket in the wake of that quavering admission, smothering all lingering traces of Zoox’s voice, and by extension, numbing some of the raging mess within his very soul. It dampened the vehemence coursing through him as abruptly as water being thrown onto a blaze, and left him small and shaking. Hollow, almost.
It was quiet again, it was always so fucking quiet. Zoox hated the silence, more than anything, but was momentarily unable to find any words to fill the sudden void.
It was no lie— he wanted to hear them again, to see them wake up so, so badly that it hurt. But he knew there was no rushing recovery, and patience was the only way his friends would get any better.
But still, there had to be some way to reach them, some way to confirm that they were truly still there. Zoox couldn’t stand the rapid way in which his thoughts and feelings escalated and fluctuated anymore— he needed to do something.
Maybe he could mind meld with them. The thought pinged to life like a lighthouse beacon on a tiny lone island, only to immediately be swallowed up by a viscous tidal wave of doubt. Could he even do that?
Up until this point, Zoox had only interfaced with abnormally large sea creatures, other Brinarr (he still wasn’t sure if the bleached coral bodies from the Auction fit into that category with any real certainty just yet, but now wasn’t the time to mentally torture himself over theories pertaining to their strange origins again), and just recently, Finneas Cawl, using Ampersand-Five as a conduit.
Connecting with a non-Ethersea augmented creature was uncertain territory, and as much as Zoox would’ve been willing to try it, his friends were far too fragile at that moment to test such a flimsy theory on. He would’ve sooner died than subject them to any further torment of his own creation.
So Zoox stamped out that hopeless train of thought, and instead focused on trying to organise his perpetually messy emotions and conjure up another topic in his head, struggling more than he had before to do so.
”I’m— I’m sorry. Ignore what I said. It’s— it’s stupid, I know. Just…keep resting, okay? Take your time, I’ll be here when you wake up, I— I promise.”
Zoox was about to raise himself out his bent over trembling and try (and probably fail) to reorientate himself and his swell of emotions better, embarrassed by his little mental spiral now that it was (more or less) over, when the door handle to the hospital room suddenly creaked, announcing a newcomer.
Zoox sat up straight again in a flash, quick to cover up any sign of his earlier misery, as the door carefully opened to reveal Doctor Shaq, clipboard in hand.
Normally, whenever the Doctor showed up for his routine check in, his gaze would understandably always be directed to his patients before anything else in the room. But as of right then, much to Zoox’s immediately dawning dismay, Doctor Shaq was looking at him first and foremost, brows drawn together with perplexed concern.
“Are you alright, Zoox? I was just coming to do my rounds, and I thought I heard you talking from the hall— quite loudly.” Said Shaq. Zoox inwardly winced at the admission.
When Zoox didn't reply right away (or rather, couldn’t find anything appropriate to reply with) Doctor Shaq continued to survey him, a concerned curiousness to his expression that Zoox involuntarily cringed at the sight of.
Doctor Shaq aimed a cursory glance at Amber and Devo’s unconscious forms before addressing Zoox again, thinning his lips. “Were you talking to them?”
“No.” Zoox blurted quickly, almost before Shaq had even finished his question. Zoox promptly followed up that pointless denial by drawing his shoulders together from the hot wash of embarrassment that flushed up his coral, appalled by how ridiculously stupid and probably not convincing that spontaneous answer was. At least he was keeping to a theme.
Having assumed correctly, Zoox angled his head away so that he wouldn’t have to bear the full brunt of the way Doctor Shaq’s face softened with pity, that terrible condescending and undeserved pity that Zoox so loathed.
“That’s fine. It’s good, even.” He said amiably, walking past Zoox and towards the hospital beds housing his two friends. That surprised Zoox enough for him to perk up somewhat, looking back up at Shaq with a wary yet open interest. “It is?”
“Oh yes.” Doctor Shaq aimed a smile at Zoox from over his shoulder, one that thankfully lacked any of the sickly tinge Zoox had come to abhor.
“Typically, patients who are in comas, however long or severe, can still pick up on the voices of people they're close with. They can’t respond to any sound, but their brain’s ability to process auditory stimuli is generally still functional even while unconscious.”
Doctor Shaq performed his usual fussing over Amber and Devo as he talked, checking the condition of their ivs, inspecting their new piscine features for any untoward changes, jotting down notes in the columns of their files, and smoothing down their blankets (the latter of which barely took him any time at all— there was really no need, as Zoox had done it enough on the rare occasions that he did stand up. It was a frivolous gesture, but it granted Zoox some semblance of comfort all the same).
“And I wouldn’t call what they’re in right now a full blown coma per se, as I expect they’ll wake up anytime soon, so they can probably still hear you.”
When Zoox didn’t reply right away, having been left momentarily stunned by this knowledge, Doctor Shaq looked back at him, tilting his pufferfish featured head somewhat. “If that’s any comfort to you.” He supplemented gently, not quite an afterthought, but skirting the edges of one.
It was, it was desperately was.
Even if a lot of the things Zoox had been saying to his friends thus far had been utter gibberish, just knowing that it was more than likely that they may have been able to hear him to at least some extent was just about one of the best things he’d heard those past two miserable days.
Knowing that they might have been able to hear him while trapped in whatever distant plain of unconsciousness the Sallow had forced them into soothed some of the ravaging pain attacking Zoox’s being, because it meant that they were not alone inside their own heads— a clemency that Zoox himself had not been allowed, but that was fine.
It didn't matter if he was alone without them, as long as they were not alone was all that mattered.
As much as this information came as a relief to Zoox, another aspect of Doctor Shaq’s explanation stuck out to him, one that his mind grasped with a fervour that outweighed almost everything else.
“Wh…when will they wake up?” He mumbled, tone slightly pressing despite its feeble volume. Doctor Shaq had effectively answered that already mere moments ago, but ‘anytime soon’ wasn’t a measure of time Zoox found particularly satisfying or reassuring.
‘Anytime soon’ could’ve meant next month, or even multiple months from now, as far as he knew. Zoox liked to think his grip on the passage of time was mostly adequate these days, but how fast or slow he felt it pass by him often tended to fluctuate; ebb and flow at different consistencies, almost like the very Ethersea around them.
It’d ironed itself out a little as of late, having since taken on an action in his life that made him feel like he was actually doing something, a solid purpose to keep him grounded and focused, no longer just going through the motions. He recognised days, weeks. He remembered them and catalouged his feelings and thoughts abt each one whenever he soaked each night. It had become a nice, healthy routine.
But if things stayed the way they were now? He and his friends condemned to that room, unwilling to leave and resume the purpose he’d found for himself unless they were back with him too? Zoox was certain he’d slip back into those old uncertain time patterns as quickly as the Sallow had claimed his friends.
Doctor Shaq hummed thoughtfully, tapping his fingers along the top of his clipboard. “They’re healthy, I can assure you of that. But the Sallow tends to leave a, uh…certain fatigue during the initial recovery process. How long it lasts fluctuates from person to person, and can even continue to affect certain cases even once they’ve woken up.
“It’s…hard to predict, at this stage. But as far as I can tell, I would be surprised if they didn’t wake up before next week, or—“ Doctor Shaq shifted in place, refusing to look away from a spot on his clipboard that Zoox didn’t think had anything of particular interest on it. He looked almost uncomfortable to the trained eye, different from the subtle way he’d often looked uncomfortable around Zoox, indicating that it was in response to some other issue entirely. “Or maybe the week after...”
So basically, Zoox gathered dourly, not needing to think too hard for once to reach a feasible conclusion on what the Doctor was trying to get across, a roundabout way of saying ‘I don’t know.’
Zoox still didn’t know much about the Sallow, but he’d learnt enough from Hermine the other day and what he’d been told by Shaq himself the last two days that it was documented as a mostly unknown malign.
Even after it had struck the shoreside two decades ago, mere months before their descent into the ocean and the subsequent founding of Founder’s Wake, the community had been unable to make heads or tails of it, lacking any and all useful information outside of ‘if you get it you might die, but if you don’t you’ll get fish features for life, who cares, it only happened once twenty-five years ago, surely it won’t happen again!’
It felt despairingly pointless to Zoox to feel angry about it, to be aggrieved by that cruel truth now that it was too late to reverse what it had wrought, even when it was being handed to him on a carefully cushioned platter, wrapped up in twenty-five years worth of uselessly apologetic layers.
It wasn’t right to be angry right now, of all times, when most of Zoox’s energy was already being taken up by draining, defeated misery. And yet, at the same time, if there was any moment to feel rightfully angry about it, it was definitely now.
The lasting remnants of the misery that’d shook him so thoroughly before sloughed away completely, as did the passing blip of comfort he’d garnered from learning that his friends could hear him. They both shriveled and split apart in his head, giving way to a creeping, unfamiliar frustration, like storm clouds parting for a lash of vitrolent lightning.
Doctor Shaq dithered, clearly expecting some kind of reply, or at least an acknowledgement, but Zoox merely stared at him with the passivity of a loaded crossbow.
His actual crossbow wasn’t with him, as weapons were understandably not allowed in the building. That wasn’t to suggest that Zoox would have used it in that moment had he had access to it, but he’d found that simply pointing it at things that upset him had always worked cathartic wonders for him in the past.
Unable to act on that slightly morbid impulse, Zoox pointedly looked away instead, twisting his hands in his lap and ignoring the subtle and strained creak of their coral makeup as he applied just a little too much of the vague intensity that lingered beneath his shell, like an unwelcome shadow at his back.
“Right.” He eventually did reply, colourless in tone. Unlike himself.
Zoox didn’t like being angry. For one thing, it was a feeling he hadn’t actually encountered very often as far as he knew. It was one that he hadn’t been able to efficiently compartmentalise and process properly yet, and whenever he had felt it before, it always frightened him more than anything.
One would think anger was a common thing for Zoox, considering how quick he was to resort to violence sometimes. But that wasn’t the case at all— he’d said as much to Guthrie back when he’d accused Zoox of it during his first job with the Brokerage, what felt like ten thousand years ago now.
Zoox’s capacity for violence was brought upon by impulse and instinct, never was anger usually a factor in it. This, however; the current morbid and blatantly wrong desire to aim his crossbow at Doctor Shaq because of how upset he felt, was certainly an outlier.
When it came down to it, anger was an emotion Zoox felt ill equipped to handle. It was so…overpowering and visceral, raw and scathing in a way that was so tremendously different from many other emotions he’d experienced. It felt like it wanted to swallow him up and suffocate him.
It was a deeply intimidating feeling, but it was also…cathartic at the same time. It felt…understanding.
It was right to be angry sometimes, it was right to feel frustration over being wronged. If anyone had taught Zoox that, it was Devo.
There were probably a lot of things for Zoox to be rightfully angry about in his life now that he was thinking about it, not just that current dilemma, but he couldn’t give himself that abreaction yet. As much as Zoox so wished for the ability to seeth unrestrained, to rid himself of the tumultuous feelings tearing up his ecosystem insides, he still had priorities to attend to.
That, and Doctor Shaq didn’t deserve the brunt of that implacable anger stewing behind Zoox’s coral ribs in the slightest. The current frustration Zoox felt was shapeless, unable to be pinned and defined, unable to be caged or restrained, but he knew well enough that if anyone deserved that hatred, it was he himself.
Zoox wasn’t unfamiliar with self-loathing. He’d felt it on a smaller scale, maybe— fanned by his prolonged isolation and helpless feelings of unwantedness in the past, but this new variation of it was fierce and scathing, stringent and curt.
It was no more than Zoox deserved, after what he’d done.
Keeping all of this in mind, Zoox made a point of squashing down his compulsive need to target Doctor Shaq with his irritation instead of at himself, where it truly belonged— if it weren’t for the Doctor, Amber and Devo surely would not have made it this far. Zoox owed him everything, even if he did not have much to give.
If Doctor Shaq had picked up on any visible threads of the cataclysmic spiral going through Zoox’s head, or the passing wisp of misplaced but no less violent intent, through his disposition or otherwise, he did not address it.
The Doctor simply swallowed thickly, looking away from the hole he’d been burning into his clipboard for the past few seconds and back at his two patients, his face falling into a hapless frown. His eyes flickered with some distant and implacable memory, hidden behind the gleam of the ceiling lights.
“Look, I know this isn't easy,” He began slowly, looking as though he were considering his words with great care. Still he decidedly did not look Zoox’s way while he spoke, which Zoox dimly accepted as a fair thing to do after the unspoken threat of violence that’d just passed through the room.
“It wasn't any easier when it happened on the shoreside, believe me. We didn't even have a real functioning hospital like we do now when it happened.” Shaq shook his head with a breathy laugh that lacked any semblance of mirth. “People died, people changed, and we just had to take it as it came. A cruel sort of fate, I guess, but we had no way of tracking down where this thing came from, or how to reverse it.”
Mindlessly, Zoox studied Doctor Shaq’s side profile, taking in his distinct pufferfish face not for the first time. He wasn't the only one in Founder’s Wake who’d bore piscine features from the aftermath of the first Sallow breakout nearly three decades ago.
It’d never really stood out for Zoox at least— he’d been up until that point operating under the assumption that some people just had fish features— they all lived underwater, after all. That, and no one person was the same, just like how no Brinarr was the same.
Before all of this, he’d only known about the Sallow on a relatively superficial level, never once encountering the full depths of its severity until now. It was easy to forget that people like Doctor Shaq had suffered in the past the same way Devo and Amber were suffering now. It stuck Zoox with a passing stab of shame for the impudent way he was feeling.
Doctor Shaq continued on, idly tapping his pen against the edge of his clipboard. “What we do know is that if the patient does not expire from the initial transformation process, they almost always survive. There is the fatigue of course, and adapting to your new features can pose quite a challenge, but there are no other lasting complications of the disease. Think of it as an ‘in and out’ sort of thing.”
Only then did Shaq look back at Zoox, mouth curled slightly in a kindly smile. It wasn't enough to mollify Zoox, but it also wasn't like any of the mawkish looks Shaq had aimed his way over the past two days again either.
Even though everything prior, from the sad sympathetic looks to the constant reminders to take care of himself had definitely been a genuine thing on Shaq’s part, that little smile somehow felt marginally more genuine than any that had come before. “But the point is, no matter what, they survive, and I think that’s just about all we can hope for.”
Doctor Shaq slid his pen through the top of his clipboard with a measure of finality, indicating that his quick check up of his patients was finished.
He walked back towards the door, passing by Zoox as he did, who could do very little but stare pallidly at him, unsure of how he should be feeling for the first time in the last ten minutes where all his emotions had been so horribly clear cut and defined.
Stopping fleetingly at Zoox’s side, Doctor’s Shaq’s free hand twitched, almost as though he were about to lay it in some conciliatory gesture against Zoox’s shoulder. But he did not follow through with it, his fingers curling back into his palm and his face briefly creasing with something Zoox could not parse.
“I'm sorry that I can't definitively tell you when your friends will wake up, Zoox,” He said plaintively. “But from my experience with the Sallow in the past, I truly don't think it’ll be for much longer, I’m sure.”
Zoox held his gaze for a moment, slowly processing through the information he’d just been offered. He’d been assured time and time again that his friends would wake up soon, and he scraped up as much solace as he could from that everytime he heard it, but even still, it was agony all the same.
Every second he spent in that room, waiting for them to wake up, knowing that he was to blame for their conditions was the worst form of torture Zoox could fathom. They could wake up five minutes from that moment, and though it would liberate Zoox from the worst of his current manifold of hideous emotions and bring him no shortage of overwhelming joy, it would do nothing to assuage the sheer profundity of his guilt.
It was for this reason that he could not be completely comforted by Doctor Shaq’s words, as much as he would’ve liked to be, as much as he would’ve loved that mercy and reassurance for himself. But unfortunately it was not something he deserved.
Amber and Devo would survive, Zoox believed that wholesale— he would speak to them again, see their liveliness and individuality again, and it would envirograte him with a happiness and joy that he would not be able to describe, there was no doubt about that. But the truth of the matter was that it would never be enough to overshadow the accursed mark that’d been left on Zoox’s soul, the dark void of feeling that’d been hammered into his coral bones over the course of two days.
Even after they woke up and they did their best to adhere back to some approximation of normal, Zoox knew that when he looked at Amber’s eyes or Devo’s neck he would be reminded of all of this, of his inaction and his incompetence, of his loneliness and his misery, of his inability to be better for them.
A ghostly image of that large orientation room from his first few days of life flashed across Zoox’s vision, filled with dark shapes that could’ve been Brinarr who whispered accusatory questions and hurtful dinegrations.
This was Zoox’s punishment, his mantle to bear.
All of the despair and fury that had flown through him like a wildfire had died into smoulders in the pit of his stomach, leaving him naught but a bitter desolate husk again, bereft of any thought or feeling that were not sorrow or grief.
With that, Zoox looked away, resting his forearms against his thighs and staring petulantly at the floor beneath his feet.
”Right.” He repeated, just as colourlessly and tonelessly as before. “Thank you.”
A long beat of quiet uncertainty passed. The ceiling light droned cheerlessly overhead.
There was a small noise that Zoox belatedly registered as Doctor Shaq clearing his throat. “Will you be alright?”
No, Zoox thought sombrely, but did not say aloud.
Even though he’d been talking a great deal mere minutes ago, the part of Zoox that was equipped to deal with any sort of actual conversation that wasn’t one sided appeared to have decisively checked out sometime ago, persistently absent. He’d sprinted through about fifteen different extreme emotional states in the span of fifteen minutes, and found himself adequately drained. He felt like a cloth that’s been wrung out one to many times.
Zoox grunted mournfully by way of a reply to Shaq’s question, keeping his gaze fixed to the floor.
Doctor Shaq didn’t speak again for a moment or two, his hesitation palpable even with Zoox not looking at him. It occurred to Zoox that perhaps he was waiting for a more wordy answer, but Zoox did not have it in him to give him one. He just wanted to be left alone.
(A hypocritical thing to think, when he so detested loneliness. But right then, he could find no other remedy for it.)
For once Zoox was relieved that his face lacked the distinct features needed to create expressions, because it meant that Doctor Shaq couldn’t pick out anything more of his internal struggle to try and speak on, raising the chances of him giving up and leaving him be.
Eventually, his efforts prepared fruit. Zoox heard Doctor Shaq sigh, mild and resigned.
“Well, I won’t bother you anymore. Goodnight, Zoox. Keep well.”
Zoox didn’t reply.
If Doctor Shaq thought about saying anything more, he didn’t.
Zoox heard the door creak silently as Shaq stepped out, followed by the dismal click of it closing.
To Zoox, that single sharp sound reverberated the small room with the intensity of a church bell, and left him slightly shivering.
That loathsome, buzzing silence returned, thick and weighty, and for a minute or two Zoox did not stop trembling.
It took some time before Zoox worked up the courage to start speaking aloud to his friends again, not deterred from his goal to try and reach out to them in some conceivable way. Hell, he was more motivated than ever thanks to what Shaq had told him.
But it took no small amount of time for any words to come to him nonetheless, held back by nerves and barely tempered distress. He didn't want to enter some blazing spiral again, he couldn’t let himself get so horrifically lost inside his own volatile emotions again…the last thing Amber and Devo needed to hear while they recovered was that.
For upwards of maybe fifteen minutes, Zoox sat amongst the grating silence, fighting with his uncooperative mind and memory for something to fill the gaping void, desperate to fill the metaphysical hole he could feel opening up within his chest with every passing moment.
As established, he didn’t really have any stories of his own to share, none that were of any real interest, anyway. He instead thought of things his friends had told him in the past, searching for ways to extrapolate on them in ways that sounded cohesive and engaging, even if he knew it would devolve into blabbering gibberish again.
He thought of stories they'd told him, thoughts they’d shared with him, trying to dig up any and all useful memories he could find. But when those mental travels didn't prove all that useful initially, Zoox started thinking about other things, things he’d observed from his friends rather than anything they'd directly told him like stories and the like. Upon following this train of thought, he began to think about music.
You wouldn’t think memories associated with music of all things would stand out so prominently in Zoox’s mind, especially considering that he was about as musically inclined as a brick. But in this case the memories didn't really revolve around the music specifically; more so the way he’d seen his friends react to it— that was what came so strongly to mind.
Zoox wished he could remember the exact notes to the tune he heard Devo play on his rarely seen lute once. Zoox wished he could remember the beat to one of the weird old sea shanties that always seemed to be sputtering out of the old radio kept on the back of the bar in the Cloaca.
If he couldn’t find anything to say, maybe he could try his hardest to remember and hum to them instead…maybe.
He wanted to recreate the emotion he’d seen those melodies elicit in the countenances of his friends. He wanted to again see the serenity on Devo’s face as he’d plucked at those lute strings, the tiny yet unfathomably sincere and content smile that curled his lips. An saccharinely elusive thing to see from Devo, which made the moment all the more cherishable.
He wanted to again see the fraction of ease that settled on Amber’s shoulders whenever they’d walked into the bar and heard the music, loosening some of the constant and carefully concealed tension she carried with her wherever she went.
They’d been such tiny details when Zoox had first seen them; easy to miss and just as easy to forget, but Zoox remembered. Among everything else he seemed so good at forgetting, he remembered that.
It was only now that he was recognising the full meaning of that sentiment, why it was so important that he’d remembered it.
But no matter how hard he tried, how much he continuously scoured his unreliable and often mutinous mind, Zoox couldn’t remember either songs with any real confidence, not enough to make his attempts at humming them sound like more than just tone-deaf drivel.
But for once Zoox put aside his reservations, and he tried, he tried and he tried. It may have sounded awful and may not have come anywhere close to what the songs had originally sounded. As always Devo and Amber, so deep in their sickly unconsciousness, made no reaction to his voice, but just knowing that they might’ve been able to hear him even a little bit was enough to keep him comforted.
And when he finally ran out of discordant tunes to hum, Zoox worked through his thoughts a little more and successfully managed to go back to talking. And he just talked. And talked. And talked.
Zoox wasn’t particularly good at it, as he was with most things, and relayed little else than senseless chatter, but it was all he had to offer, and if it let his friends know that he was still there, staying by them, then that was good enough for him.
As long as they knew that they were not alone, that was all that mattered.
Sometime later —Zoox didn’t know how long— the lights in the room suddenly dimmed without warning, indicating without words the beginning of Founder’s Wake designated night cycle.
In the absence of its typical harsh lighting, the stark antiseptic whites of the hospital room quickly softened into a bleak, monochromatic grey. The shadows that fell across Amber and Devo’s faces darkened and blurred at the edges, shaping their features into obscuring and foggy death masks.
A haze of darkness suffused the space around Zoox, swallowing him whole, empty of feeling or mercy.
The endless stream of nonsense he’d been chattering at them ceased as abruptly as a clam shell closing.
He’d had no real reason for stopping; he already knew what it was like during nighttime hours in that accursed room, but he couldn’t help but feel like he had to be quiet now. It was nighttime now (or, well, Founder’s Wake’s approximation of what nighttime should be like), and so he had to be quiet, as much as he didnt want to.
For the third night in a row Zoox sat in that hospital room, watching over his wilted, unreachable friends. A silent sentinel, a monument of grief.
They lay within arms reach of him— he could touch them if he wanted; prove to himself that they were still there with him. But no matter what he may have done, he knew he could not reach them in any way that tangibly mattered, not until they came back from the world of feverish unconsciousness they’d been lost to themselves. They may have been able to hear him, which was a grand thing in itself, but it didnt extend any further beyond that.
For the third night in a row Zoox sat doggedly in that nondescript hospital room, silent and still within the dark, right next to the quiet bodies of Amber and Devo, his crewmates, his first friends, and yet in all his life, he’d truly never felt more alone.
He watched them, so devoid of the life and energy they normally held themselves with, and idly wondered what they would think of him when they woke.
Would they be mad, like he’d thought before? Would they resent him? Would they blame him like he blamed himself?
Zoox wouldn’t blame them if they did.
But that was fine, he was realising— so long as they came back to him, it didn't matter if they were angry, or if there was no way to atone for what he’d done. He’d endure any vitriol he needed to as long as he could see them speaking and just…alive.
As long as they were okay, Zoox would take on any burden he needed to.
No matter the outcome when they awoke, he would sit there and wait until they did. He would sing and talk as much as he needed to.
It was like he’d declared aloud not long ago; however long it took for them to wake up, Zoox would be there when they did, right by their sides, waiting for them.
He promised.