Work Text:
Florence looks down upon this new world, leaning against her other half. She sighs— another one? Truly? Must she wish to try again?
Her other half places a hand on her waist as he hums, his ethereal voice echoing through the empty space as they watch the newly-made world begin the grow.
“You know she’ll keep going. Binding herself to more of them. What is it they say about psychosis? Doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result?”
“Darling, you know this one will be different. You’ve put in effort with her to make it different.” she looks back at the small maze of rooms and walls, where their newest little members live happily, still too young to know what exactly is to come. she hadn’t been able to visit them yet, but she will soon, she’s sure. “Server, you have to at least try.”
Server’s rings rotate around him, almost upset. He doesn’t want to give it a try. Not again. These new little ones… he can’t control them. They aren’t directly his.
And he always has to have the control. (Neither of them think back to the storyteller in the files, locked away, never to be heard from. They ignore his cries. His pleas. They keep him there for a reason. But his need for control infects. It strangles, twisting the once-loving god into something almost unrecognizable.) His grip tightens around Florence and her breath hitches.
“Server?”
He’s quiet. Thinking. “I don’t have to try. You cannot make me try. This one will fall, like all the others. It will fail. She will fail.”
“You can’t say that! She won’t fail— you have to have hope! Her heart is here—“
“Like it has been in all the others? What makes this one different, Florence? What makes her any different this time? It’s just another world. Another bond.”
“She has put so much effort into her harvest, dear. I cannot believe it will go to waste. It is against my nature.”
Her nature. Her nature. It’s her nature that has caused her to step away from him, every time. To fight with him, every step of the way.
“Server— Server, my love, you’re hurting me—“ Florence tries to pull away from his ever-tightening grip, but fails.
She is not on his side. She will continue to fight him.
He thinks on the children, still growing and learning. He cannot let them learn of her methods, her thoughts. He needs them to believe in him. He is the father. He is their creator.
But to do that… the children will have no mother.
But they can have a mother.
Just not this one.
He twists her around, spinning her towards the portal to the new world. “Come, my love. Let’s take a walk. Explore this world. See if it’s all that you say it is, all that she thinks it is.”
She doesn’t sense the danger in his words, the hidden loathing. She takes his hand with a smile and follows him into the world. They spin through the grass, the trees, they explore this new world, this new creation together.
Then they reach the place that Server has been working on with her and he turns on his wife with anger, rings glowing bright.
“…Server?” she shrinks back, pulling away at the sudden change in mood. “Server, what are you—?”
“I can’t let you twist them. Your harvests are going to remain strong, but you can’t give them hope. Not again.”
He holds out his hands, gripping onto her form— one of the translucent hands goes into her form and—
Rips.
Her.
Out.
Her lifeless body falls and he swoops it up before it can hit the ground. He disconnected her— he can still feel her presence around him, shocked and hurt and betrayed.
Without knowledge of her by the players, without their care and devotion, she’ll eventually fade into the world. It hurts him to do this, but he’ll recover.
She won’t.
Not for a long time.
She’ll be forced to float harmlessly, without being able to help, only able to watch.
Unable to save.
Unable to rescue.
Unable to help her children (who she never met, she never got to love, she never got to care for) even from death.
Clover is cradled by her only for moment following their passing before they’re ripped away from her once more.
For she is bound to where she was ripped from the world, only to watch, watch as her children are ripped from the hands of their new parents. Her touch fleeting, without a body she cannot hold them like she longs to, she can't hold them from suffering more, cannot hold them back from the darkness and pain of death. For she can only watch as their friends, families, fathers, mothers weep for them like she has weeped. A formless god, forever bound to watch, longing to hold that is not hers.
They don’t remember the warm phantom embrace.
They never will.