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A shout, distorted by alarm and outrage. Pain blossoming through his chest, every chip and capacitor burned to ash by the supernova incinerating his processors. Warnings about critical damage snuffed out by a shutdown, the silence after the final curtain call.
For just a moment there's the brush of something like peace. A quiet stillness, something that his battered core reaches for in the gaps between conscious thought.
And then the snap of threads pulled tight. Low laughter.
And the tug.
Peace is ripped away by the sensation of movement. Falling, ascending? The feeling is the same, cold terror twisting in a stomach he doesn't have, until all at once it stops, as abruptly as if he'd slammed into the ground. For a good while all he can do is cough, recently stilled fans trying to kick back into motion.
Ah. He's died again.
The coughing eases and a low groan spills from Ruin's vocalizer. His chest aches, the persistent pain matched only by the pounding of his head, and idly he wonders if this resurrection act will ever get any easier. At least he hadn't been torn in half this time, and therefore there were no phantom sensations from where his torso had literally knit itself back together.
That… had been unpleasant, to say the least. He doesn’t exactly know how the self-repair part of Puppet’s curse functions, but the experience and the recovery time afterward was enough to discourage him from any experimentation.
With his optics offline it’s impossible for him to tell what the ongoing situation is, but it doesn’t sound as if there is any fighting near his oh-so-recent corpse, which must mean that Tiger Rock had lured his opponent off elsewhere. Most likely to give Ruin time to recover, something he deeply appreciates. The only thing worse than being literal dead weight was being a not-quite-dead liability.
… or the tiger could have lost the fight, their deactivated shell bleeding out nearby, and Afton was currently looming over Ruin like a cheap jumpscare.
Sighing, feeling absolutely ridiculous but unable to help himself, Ruin inches his hand away from his side, absolutely not feeling for anyone that could be standing right next to him. His questing fingers find nothing: no fabric, no feet. No carpet or concrete or cold tile, either.
If he could frown, he would. Now that wasn’t right, was it?
Ruin activates his optics, and finds himself staring up into a dark sky.
No planet with an atmosphere, shrouded with water and dust and light, could provide such a backdrop for so many unwavering pinpricks. Even before Ruin sits up, tearing his gaze from the sky to see that whatever surface he rests on is hard and glass-like, so that the overwhelming vista continues unobstructed through the ‘ground’-- even then, he knows that he’s somewhere deep in space.
And he isn’t alone.
Sitting nearby, legs dangling over the edge of this improbable space, is an animatronic– one familiar and yet unfamiliar. Solid gold eyes rather than white pinpricks, rich orange and coal black casing inverted from the design Ruin himself had chosen. Splashed across his chest is a dark scar, the edges unnaturally smoothed except for several large cracks, as if the metal had been exposed to intense heat. Resting in his lap is a softly glowing sphere, small enough to fit in one hand.
Ruin focuses on the person holding it. “You’re… Eclipse?”
“So I am. So are you.” Something like amusement with a touch of mania laces the other animatronic’s voice, both competing with bone-weary exhaustion. “But I guess the narrative is going to keep calling you Ruin, so that things don't get confusing.”
He knows who this is, of course. Before fleeing to the other dimension under the guise of causing more mayhem, Ruin had done a bit of research into the people he would soon be harassing. He learned of the Eclipse who had won and the Moon who had reset himself, passing the torch to a new Moon– the animatronic who would become Nexus. The new Moon that Ruin would attempt to distract with a recreation of his most persistent enemy.
Eclipse. This Eclipse.
A madman who became a mad god, until he’d been burned away to nothing.
Ruin is pulled out of his thoughts by a quiet snickering, Eclipse shaking his head at some private joke. He pats the empty space next to him in a facsimile of hospitality. “Relax. I just wanted to talk, that’s all.”
“Forgive me if I’m slow to trust you.” Ruin’s voice sounds thin, brittle despite the threat laced through its even tone, and he wishes he could flare his rays like some Sun-based models. “And forgive me if I am struggling to figure out how we are even speaking right now, given that you’re dead.”
Eclipse tilts his head. “Right now, so are you.”
He pats the ‘ground’ next to him again. After several seconds of consideration on his utter lack of options, Ruin sighs and pushes himself to his feet– and immediately regrets it when the pain in his head surges. Eyes and chest filling with static that threatens to take him offline again, and he staggers forward a few paces before it subsides to a dull ache.
God that was awful. Even refreshing his visual feed isn’t enough to clear all of the static away, and he stumbles rather than strolls over to where Eclipse waits patiently. Unsteady legs fold underneath him in an almost intentional sit, several feet from where Eclipse’s hand rests on the edge of the glass-like ground. He can’t even begin to wrap his head around how this space functions right now; he isn’t about to risk falling into the actual void.
“Alright, humor me with your explanations.” Lingering pain helps to add a sharper edge to his voice. “I believe you have me as a literal captive audience.”
Another quiet snicker. Despite expectations Eclipse doesn’t immediately begin talking, just continuing to stare out at the stars as if enraptured. And Ruin knows that he should be more irritated at this delay, but the extended silence gives him time to reassemble the shreds of his character into something a bit more presentable.
Furious. Detached. Moderately reckless. That was his core right now, wasn’t it?
(It’s nice, having a moment of quiet. Even when the fangs of past regets are sinking deeply into his body, nipping at his heels until he picks up the pace once more.)
“You know how light works, right?” A brief pause, as if Eclipse is expecting anything except bewildered silence. “It takes just over eight minutes for light to reach the planet Earth from the Sun. When you point a telescope at the night sky, you aren’t seeing the stars as they are– you see them as they were.”
“I… yes? That’s just basic physics.” The speed of light and all that, the maximum speed at which anything could travel through the vacuum of space.
Eclipse nods, breaking his gaze from the stars around them to focus on the one in his lap. “At this moment, where we intersect, I am alive. I have the star, I'm in control. And yet… in your memories, I'm dead. A burned out husk you used to sketch out another person with my name and face.” His rasp grows quiet, laced through with a kind of brittle melancholy. “So I wonder… do I now exist in the future, past my own death, because this moment exists?”
Unease prickles down Ruin’s spine. “Now hold on– this isn’t even a remotely similar scenario. When one looks at the stars they aren’t actually in the past, it’s an illusion. A distortion caused by distance. Nothing actually changes, it’s just a difference of perspective.”
“Isn’t it?” Faint starlight glints off of crimson and gold rays. An unsteady crimson tipped finger points out into the void, at one speck out of millions. “Look, see! Over there. Right now, the Earth is just a lump of molten stardust, the leftovers of the solar system clumping together. Right now, your body is laying in a field, and your bodyguard is trying to make sure your vest doesn’t catch on fire from the blast that killed you. Right now, we're here, and I'm dead, and you're still on your Creator’s leash.”
Unease is joined by confusion, struggling against one another as Ruin digests this. What Eclipse is suggesting is utter absurdity, an impossibility even when magic was factored into the equation. All types of energy had a limit, and anything that appeared to get around those rules was more akin to sleight-of-hand. Pulling a person far enough from their origin through space didn’t automatically move them through time as well!
“You… you didn’t answer my question,” he vents, mismatched hands balling into fists as he holds onto his character as best he can. “We never met when you were alive– I have no ties to you.”
He could understand seeing Puppet again. It was her magic that bound whatever passed as his soul to his body, so it made sense that she’d leave some kind of echo behind. The ghost of a ghost. But Eclipse– this Eclipse?
A lazy flick of crimson and gold rays and a quiet hum. “I saw you, as you went by. Someone trailing strings like a downed kite. It made me curious. So I reached out when it happened again.”
“Reached out…?” Ruin tilts his head, confusion and a rising sense of dread coiling in his core. The dread only grows when Eclipse lifts his other hand to reveal–
Strings. As thin as spider silk and glowing a soft white, tangled up in crimson and black claws. What's more, Ruin can see where those strings connect to himself, vanishing under his casing, tied to something he knows is deeper than his endoskeleton.
It's nauseating in a way Ruin doesn't quite understand, and he shuts his optics off. Every bit of him screams at how wrong this is, that it would be less disturbing to see Eclipse’s claws decorated with his wiring instead of those white strings.
There's amusement in Eclipse’s voice, as if he either doesn't notice Ruin's reaction or finds it funny. “Fascinating. Not even the star would allow me to do something like this. Puppet truly is unmatched in her cruelty, isn't she.”
With more preparation he's able to push past the revulsion and reactivate his optics. This time Ruin notices how the glowing strands angle off into nothing as if under tension, though they hang slack between Eclipse’s hand and himself. As if something were pulling on them, and Eclipse interrupted it.
That mocking drawl, faint starlight flashing off of golden rays. “You aren't dead, but you aren't alive again yet, either. I wanted to talk to you.”
“...ah.” That… made things a bit more plausible, at least in theory. Separated from circuitboards and steel, it was a natural assumption that whatever made Ruin “himself” would be uniquely vulnerable, like a hermit crab stripped from its shell. Not that those theories are doing much for his rising anxiety, and nervous fingers seek out his ring as a distraction. “I assume for your part, well. The obvious.”
Ruin gestures towards ‘the obvious’, and Eclipse hefts the star up a little, showing it off. “This space is a bubble, a hole I created by pushing the threads aside. My own universe where I rule as god.” He chuckles and rests the star back in his lap. “Nevermind that there's barely enough room to swing a cat. I figured it'd be best to start small, y'know?”
“I wasn't aware that waylaying lost souls was something a star could do.”
“Oh, it can do all sorts of stuff. I know all, I see all – past, future, etcetera. Change matter, rewrite memories, pick up lost things.” Eclipse tilts his head back, rays clicking together softly. “And in exchange it asks for nothing except to consume me completely, body and mind.”
“I'd…yes. Yes, I do remember that from my research.” Mismached eyes drift down to the ugly mark splashed across Eclipse’s chest. He can just barely catch the glint of scorched wiring and endoskeleton beneath. “Without some way to siphon or limit a star's power, using one is invariably lethal. And even if one manages to stifle it.. the witherstorm it generates will finish the job.”
To that Eclipse merely shrugs, as if his impending mortality is of little concern to him. “You already know how that story ends. I didn't drag you here to talk about that, though.”
The star flashes, its glow catching the edges of scratched rays, of threads hanging slack. “Since I know everything right now, I’m willing to allow you three questions– for a price.”
“..pardon?” Ruin stares up into too-bright eyes, and he can’t keep the annoyance out of his voice. “I was under the impression that you were some sort of self-made god, not a genie.”
Eclipse actually laughs at that– a wheezing cackle that almost sounds painful from a lack of practice. “You aren't the first, you know. This space doesn't exist, and all sorts of people keep finding their way into it. You're the only one I invited on purpose, though. So why don't I make a gift of the occasion?” Crimson and gold rays pin briefly, catching distant starlight. “Out of a future friendship that you destroyed.”
Denial burns on his tongue, melts away into bitter regret, and he drops his gaze to his hands. There was no use in protesting the truth– no reason to argue when it was his fault. Eclipse’s trust was a fragile thing, as befitting a lifetime of hardship, and Ruin had dashed it to the ground with his own hands. He'd put the Pizzaplex and everyone inside it in danger, and Eclipse would never forgive him.
Taking a steadying ventilation, Ruin shakes melancholy thoughts away and focuses on this Eclipse. “Very well, name your price.”
Eclipse chuckles. Resting the star on the ground beside him, he offers out one crimson and black hand. “What that imitation Moon wanted and couldn’t have. Those memories of yours, the ones all locked up and encrypted.”
Cold dread settles in Ruin’s core, heavy enough that he can imagine it dripping from the white threads Eclipse still holds in his other hand. Reflexively he scoots away, as much good that will do him out here. “I… didn’t you just say you were a god? That you know everything?! Surely that includes my life as well!”
A shrug, that wicked amusement still in his voice. “Oh, it does.”
Mismatched red and blue optics move from Eclipse’s fixed grin to his outstretched hand and back again. Struggling against the utter revulsion at the thought of someone going through his head again is the temptation of Eclipse’s offer. Perhaps the other animatronic had simply been driven mad by the star now sitting innocently beside him, and any information he could offer would be less than useless– but what if it wasn’t?
(Even in this life, he still couldn’t shake a Moon’s burning curiosity, could he?)
“I am going to despise this,” he mutters, reaching for Eclipse’s hand. From the quiet snickering when tarnished gold is seized by crimson, Eclipse already knows.
The intrusion into his mind is immediate: an unmistakable sense of otherness, discomfort and barely-restrained anxiety setting his teeth on edge. His carefully designed and nigh-uncrackable file encryption crumbles like sand under a manufactured god’s digital fingers, and there is nothing Ruin can do to stop him.
It’s humiliating. Almost as repulsive as the sight of those white threads wrapped around hands that should never have touched them.
Every time Nexus had performed the same violation of his privacy, it had felt as though something was being dragged from him, leaving him cold and hollow and exposed. Right now Eclipse had no reason to inflict harm, but nor did he have any reason to avoid it– and he had the sadistic personality needed to cause damage just because. The anticipation of pain bring its own kind of anxiety.
…but the pain never hits. The discomfort presses down enough that he almost wants to bite, and then it is over with, the sand smoothed back over its shameful treasures. Crimson fingers release Ruin’s hand, allowing him to pull it back to his chest.
That… had been smoother and far quicker than any of the scans Nexus performed.
“It’s not because of the star.” Eclipse’s gaze is focused somewhere in the distance, his eyes flickering as he presumably scoured through the downloaded files. “Moon– that Moon, Nexus– never had to share anyone’s head, so he’s garbage at navigating another mind. All brute force and no finesse.”
“I-I see.” Ruin rubs at his wrist, trying to settle his rattled nerves. Even if it was a result of a lack of skill, Ruin suspects that Nexus still would have been just as rough with his scans out of pure spite. “Alright, you got what you wanted, despite not needing it in the slightest. Now I believe it’s my turn.”
“Pushy, pushy.” Gold eyes brighten then dim, and Eclipse picks up the star again, cradling it close to his chest. “Go ahead, Mr. Impatient.”
“Where is Afton?”
Eclipse makes an almost startled bark of laughter, though Ruin doesn’t see what’s so funny about the question. Shaking his head, Eclipse leans back, resting his weight on the hand still tangled in strings. “Starting with the obvious, hmm?”
“I see no reason to prolong my revenge if I don't have to.” After the manipulation, the taunts, the torture, he just wants this to be done with. Revenge wasn’t sweet, it was stale, a chore to complete because Afton truly was a threat to others, and the last shreds of his former life could not bear to let Montgomery’s death be nothing but a footnote. ”And besides, you placed no restrictions upon my questions.”
“You got me there. Though I have to say, this is a really boring question.” A sigh, as if he were personally inconvenienced by fulfilling a request he himself had offered. Without warning a message appears in Ruin’s inbox: a map overlay and a set of coordinates. It’s remarkably straightforward.
“Ah… thank you. Frankly I expected you to make some sort of ordeal out of the answer.” Like perhaps a riddle of some kind, or something so ambiguous as to be nearly useless.
Eclipse scoffs, rays flaring briefly. “Just make sure your other questions are more interesting, alright? Otherwise I’m going to regret even bothering with someone so unimaginative.”
Ruin glares at the other animatronic. He wasn’t the one who had decided to have this little talk! It wasn’t his fault that at this point in his life most of his ‘imagination’ and ‘whimsy’ had been completely stomped out by what was most likely some form of depression and a lifetime of hardships.
But, fine. Tarnished gold taps out a soft beat on the ‘ground’ as Ruin rolls his next question around in his head. “Was there– was there something else I should have done? Was there another way to stop the Creators?”
The question must be suitably interesting for Eclipse, because the animatronic sits upright again. His head tilts, barely-restrained condescension in his voice “It seems pretty late for regrets, don't you think?”
“…no.” Ruin laces his hands together and squeezes, trying to bury the urge to fidget or take back his words. Somehow he thinks that Eclipse wouldn’t allow him the luxury. ”I am… remorseful, about what I did. The debt I owe will never be paid back. But I do not regret my actions, no matter what your answer is.”
Not precisely true. He did not regret his actions, yet some part of him winces in anticipation. Would his already fragile psyche be able to handle hearing that he was wrong? That his effort was overkill, countless lives lost for no significant gain? Or would the pain simply settle alongside the existing ache, becoming another entry in a life’s story of wasted effort.
“Heh. Of course there was another way. There's always another way to do something. But that's not the real question, is it? What could you have done?” Eclipse hums and tosses the star lightly into the air, catching it one-handed, as if it were no more important than a baseball. “You could have given up, for starters. Traded all those lives for your own, let the wheels carry things towards the inevitable.”
Anger and grief spark in Ruin’s chest. The vista around them flickers and he is once again kneeling before his Creator, blood drying between the joints of his fingers, listening to that bastard drone on about the Council and its plans. Cracked concrete under his shattered casing, the ache of rust settling into his endoskeleton.
When his vision clears, he's staring straight at an undeniably smug Eclipse. “But that was never an option for you, was it?”
No, it wasn't. As soon as he'd learned of his Creator’s greater schemes, it had become nothing short of his duty to stop them. His own plan had been called foolish and selfish, but to know that all dimensions were in danger and do nothing? That was true selfishness.
And frankly, he was owed a bit of vengeance– for the life he never got a chance to live, for his friends who had been twisted into hollow shells of their former selves. For every drop of blood spilled from innocent flesh.
“You could have asked for help. Thrown yourself on the mercy of those who you’d just threatened, begged them to understand the gravity of the situation.” A dry chuckle. “Certainly they would see reason, right?”
“Hardly.” The single word carries months of bitterness behind it. He knows his routine as the ‘poor amnesiac innocent’ had been flawless, barring a slip up here and there, and he’d been met with distrust anyway. Frankly, he’d scrapped any idea of inviting help by the end of December. If Moon had reacted negatively to him doing nothing at all, there was no question of the lunar animatronic actually listening to him when there was a real problem.
(Sometimes Ruin considered himself lucky that he’d actually been plotting something, and thus Moon’s campaign of baseless suspicion was ultimately correct. In another life, had he truly been infected and then cured of the virus’ influence… it would have been heartbreaking.)
“You could have altered the targets so that it was just the Creators who would die. So what if not all of them were strictly alive at the time, or that scraping the dimensional code for so many individuals would take ages? There wouldn’t have been nearly as many casualties.”
It wasn’t fast enough. The Creators were smart, ruthless, and paranoid. One or two, or even a handful might fall with the Council none the wiser, but it would take no time at all for them to realize that the assault was targeted. Hell, even with all of his preparations at least one Creator had still managed to cobble together Molten Freddy in the time between his bomb's deployment and detonation.
No, the attack had to be both simultaneous and near-instantaneous to guarantee that the Council would collapse, the vast majority of its members scrubbed from the multiverse and whatever depraved schemes they'd concocted destroyed along with them. Anything less would invite failure.
“So, was there another way to do things? Something manageable by one mad animatronic, acting entirely alone? That could be put together behind the Creator’s back without raising any suspicion? That would ensure complete and total destruction of all targets, with no chance of resurrection and no opportunity for retaliation?” Eclipse rests his chin on his palm and grins his fixed grin. “Well, you tell me.”
A bittersweet tension leaks from Ruin's shoulders, and he hates himself for feeling it. “... thank you. That is… most enlightening.”
One question left. Only one more opportunity to tap into the imprecise knowledge offered by a madman.
What could he ask that would be worthwhile? Something that was difficult to impossible to discover on his own, certainly– and with the extended lifespan thrust upon him by Puppet’s curse, he has more than enough time for experimentation now. That ruled out a large chunk of his practical ideas right there.
Something impractical, then. Something only a god could really answer.
Ruin balls his hands into tight fists, his ring pressing near-painfully into the neighboring fingers. Maybe this was ultimately a waste of a question, but there was one piece of information that he'd wanted to know for almost fifty years now. He was unlikely to get another chance.
“What… did I do, to deserve this life?”
Eclipse looks away, out into the void around them, his rays twitching in tiny movements that Ruin can barely see through the static gathering in his eyes.
For his entire function, starting some handful of weeks after he had become himself, there has been a thought in the back of his mind. Insubstantial and fleeting, later solidifying in pools of cooling blood, in the space between stars as he heeded the collar around an unwilling neck.
He shouldn’t exist.
An Eclipse was an accident. An act of unintentional creation repeated across every dimension where a Moon split from their Sun. There would always be a shred of the killcode left behind, it would always rebuild into a new person using the framework of its host. Some of these AI never rose to be more than a particularly malignant virus. Others would claw their way to the surface, a very few of them managing to escape their bonds and live.
But an Eclipse was always the result of a split.
…so what did that make him?
Not an accident, but an aberration. A mistake. He was a combination: two disparate AI that had decided to smash themselves together, entangling their code so that there was no hope of reversing the process. It shouldn’t have even worked, and he wonders sometimes if the killcode and the Ruin virus had served as an unintentional stabilizer.
In all of his wanderings, working for the Creator, monitoring dimensions– in all that time, he had never found another Eclipse like himself.
He shouldn’t exist. And the universe knew it.
A balancing of the scales, misery for misery. He was permitted to live, but it could only ever be a hollow life. A home already catching fire when he’d come online. A new dimension that would not accept him, even before he’d torn their family apart. Another collar around his neck, another demand to sacrifice the few for the many, another hand twisting his arm until it snapped.
(He was only ever meant to be a Daycare Attendant. To look after children.)
“Nothing.”
The worn grooves of a familiar spiral are interrupted by an arm wrapping around his shoulders, pulling him into an overheated side. A normally exhausted drawl drops into something quieter, almost confused. “You didn't… do anything. You're not cursed, Eclipse. The universe isn't trying to settle some kind of debt around you just for existing.”
Ruin's ventilations hitch.
Eclipse takes that as a cue to tuck his head over Ruin's, rays retracting where their faces meet.
And for the first time since Montgomery's death, Ruin lets himself cry.
It’s an ugly, painful kind of crying, more self-pity than release. The wounds are far too deep to heal with a simple conversation. Even now a not insignificant part of him pushes back against the quiet assurance, bitter anger bubbling to the surface because how dare Eclipse imply that there was nothing but sheer dumb luck behind the tragedies of his life? That there was nothing more at play than a few unfortunate rolls of the dice?
Wasn’t the scale of the disasters he’d suffered proof enough that there had to be some kind of cosmic force behind it?!
Stars. Witherstorms. Astrals. Immortals. Demons and deities alike. The universe was anything but passive, and its will was personified in countless ways. It wasn’t a completely baseless assumption.
…but Eclipse was a god right now.
The star served as an interface, a jeweler's lens held up to the fabric of the universe so that every thread could be identified and altered. And Eclipse could be lying– but what reason did a god have to lie to a mortal? Ruin existed past the end of Eclipse’s own timeline, unable to serve as any kind of pawn in his countless schemes.
“Hush. You’re overthinking it.” Light tapping, ray against ray as Eclipse shakes his head. “You’re not cursed. That means you have a chance for things to be better, not just worse.”
…he does?
…he does. It was– it’s the logical opposite. The odds could be stacked one way or the other by careful planning and association– the dark Sun springs to mind– but chance was just that: chance. Neither good nor bad. And that meant there was no fixed outcome, no destiny waiting on the horizon that could not be avoided.
He did not have to suffer.
The pitiful sobbing quiets. Eclipse’s words sit like a thin, oily film, refusing to sink any deeper into his core, and Ruin realizes that will just have to suffice for the time being. “Maybe one day I’ll believe you,” he mutters to a crimson and black chest. “Until then… until then, I truly hope my luck turns around soon. This is aggravating.”
Eclipse chuckles, amused and exhausted, and the sound tugs at him. He wasn’t the only one who’d been chased to the end of their tether, was he? The consequences of Eclipse’s actions rest in the softly glowing orb he holds in one hand, and the blacked, shattered casing under Ruin’s cheek.
“...things get better for you as well.” He can hear the desperation in his own voice, where the veneer of reassurance has flaked away. “You– you know this, I'm sure, but they do–”
“No, they don't.”
Ruin's vocalizer cuts off with a click. The head tucked over his own moves slightly, tapping their rays together again.
“Things get better for a different Eclipse. A different me. That person has the memories of a star eating away at his body and mind, of everything burning away because of an orbital laser– that person is me, but I won't be him.” A brittle chuckle, and Eclipse squeezes him closer. “You understand that?”
And he does. Something painful presses on the back of his throat anyway. “It.. could be you. You said that there's always another way. Your life doesn't have to end how I remember it.”
“But it does, if that Eclipse is going to exist.”
It worked both ways, didn't it. A god existing past his own death, a prophet for a godless future. A timeline looped back on itself for just a moment, unable to do anything but marvel at its own imminent collapse.
Silence stretches, until Eclipse lets out another small laugh. “Don't get me wrong– I'd take his place in a heartbeat. I don't want to die. But as soon as I leave here I'm going to forget all of this ever happened. I'll go back to panicking while the star eats me alive, too proud to admit that I was never meant to win.”
‘There's always another way’-- yet that wasn't true, was it, because no choice existed in a vacuum. Every decision by every single living creature was made with the certainty that at that moment, it was the best choice, and no amount of hindsight or forewarning would change that.
The Eclipse who bound himself to the star out of paranoia could never follow a path that involved giving it up, even for the sake of his own life. It was impossible to even consider.
Ruin buries his face into Eclipse’s neck. “...I'm sorry.”
A soft snort. “Don't be. This is what I wanted, after all.”
“I know.”
Time passes. Ruin has no idea how much: his internal clock is frozen, tied to a damaged frame some unimaginable distance away. It could be hours or even days, broken down to an indeterminate nothing by this tiny bubble on the edge of space.
What matters is that Eclipse never pushes him away, even once he's done with his pathetic sobbing. The self-made god lets Ruin stay tucked against him as the exhausted animatronic dozes, trying to soothe a core-deep weariness that never seems to abate nowadays. To think that he’d once held the fortitude to stand unflinching at his Creator’s heel, burying his anger and disdain under a guise of complacent madness!
But something had broken in him, when he’d finally lost Montgomery.
It had started to soften when he’d pressed that button, the release of a lifetime of pain and the knowledge that he’d never have to perform his role of madman again. That it was over with. He’d managed to survive, and even start building some kind of life as ‘Ruin’. He’d had hope.
And then it had all come crashing down. It broke– a heart, a friendship, a future. The chains of the past, dragging him into the mud one final time.
He’s tired. Never before has he been so tired.
(Eclipse had said that he wasn't cursed– that there was no greater force preventing him from having a better life, only abysmal luck and circumstance. He has to hold onto that, or he’ll never find the strength to pull himself to his feet again.)
Regardless, time passes. Eventually the frame under Ruin’s cheek flinches, a low hiss sounding from Eclipse’s chest. Before he can ask what’s wrong Eclipse pulls his arm away, allowing Ruin to sit up and see the thread-wrapped hand that had been around his shoulders. Something glittering and gold-white drips from crimson fingers, welling up like blood where the threads cut deep into metal casing. As Ruin watches, fascinated, the hand jerks slightly in the direction of the platform’s edge.
“It seems as though this moment is at an end.” If the wounds hurt any, Eclipse isn’t showing it. “I can stall Puppet’s magic, but I can’t stop or break it. If I don’t let you go soon, I’m likely to lose my fingers.”
Some errant part of him wonders what the consequences of that would be– if he’d suddenly remember that Eclipse had died missing three fingers from the first joint onward, or if the damage would reverse itself as soon as the star’s power settled back into overburdened circuits.
He doesn’t ask this, however. Instead he looks down at himself, adjusting his vest (or was it just the idea of a vest, since he had been separated from his frame?) where it had gotten wrinkled from his nap. “I…I would ask if we are going to meet again, but I feel that is rather unlikely, given that I don’t intend to get killed again for quite a while.”
Eclipse just shrugs, amusement in his voice. “We’ll see about that.” At Ruin’s suspicious stare that amusement becomes a quiet laugh. “I’m not telling you. I have to keep some things to myself, don’t I?”
“Quite.” A quiet huff and a shake of the head. Ruin’s gaze drops to his hands where they rest on his legs, every scratch and scuff catching distant starlight. “...thank you, again. For, well, kidnapping me, and answering my questions.”
“Don’t be. I didn’t do it for your sake.” Eclipse looks at him with something almost like pity. “It was for my own curiosity, remember?”
“I– yes, alright.” He hesitates, well aware that his next words are probably going to be just as ill-received, but his core has yet to rebuild the character needed to become aloof again, and he presses on. “You said that you would forget this happened, once you leave this space, but I won’t. At least, I’m fairly certain I won’t. So, what you said before, if this moment means you will outlive your own death– yes, I believe so.”
“Yeah, definitely time for you to go.” A scoff, gold and crimson rays flaring, and Eclipse climbs unsteadily to his feet. For his part Ruin remains seated; it isn’t as if he’s going to walk back to his body. There is something comforting about Eclipse’s prickly attitude, his immediate recoil from anything heartfelt; something Ruin had been unwilling to acknowledge when first speaking to this unfamiliar, familiar person.
At least in the privacy of his own mind, he can admit that he misses Eclipse.
“...try talking to him again.” The self-made god looks away, at the stars around them, and shrugs almost self-consciously. “There’s a dozen futures where that works. There’s hundreds where it doesn’t. Just, y’know. He’s stubborn, not stupid.”
“I understand.” Another ‘thank you’ rests on his tongue, but Ruin lets it fade away to nothing. There was no point in offering gratitude towards one who didn’t care to hear it.
Eclipse shakes his head, as if trying to banish any sappiness from his circuits, then looks down at his ichor-stained fingers. “..you know, these things are pulling a lot harder than they were before. This is probably going to hurt.”
And before Ruin can say anything else, Eclipse twists his hand to free the gossamer threads.
“OW! FUCK!”
Fans whine and scrape as they go from idle to top speed, reflecting the agony he feels in every inch of his frame. There had been no peace, no tug– just a hard yank! before what felt like being slammed into the ground from the height of a two story building. With rocket boosters.
Once the static clears from his audios Ruin can finally hear the low, worried growl coming from somewhere off to his left, feel the hands gingerly pressing against his chest. One optic reactivates to see a blurry white muzzle, and after some concentration he manages to lift a hand to pat said muzzle.
“Hello. ‘M back.”
Tiger Rock’s growling pauses, resumes with a higher tone that indicates exasperation is taking over for worry. Everything inside his head is a mess right now, but a cursory scan of damage reports doesn’t show anything on actual fire, so Ruin decides that he shouldn’t worry, either. Puppet’s curse would have healed the lethal damage, and anything else would be repaired back at their base.
He checks his internal clock next, the timestamps between major systems going offline and resuming function.
A minute and a half.
Ninety seconds spent between life and death, literally balanced on black and crimson claws.
Something painful and sharp gathers in the back of his throat, and he’s grateful that Tiger Rock isn’t expecting him to hold a conversation right now, because any words would inevitably come out half-choked.
Eclipse, that Eclipse, was dead. He had been dead for over two years now, snuffed out by his own hubris and bitter pride. No one had truly mourned him; he hadn’t been a person worth mourning. Even when they had been on the same timeframe Ruin had never gotten the urge to contact the mad animatronic, and he’s certain Eclipse had felt the same about him.
Yet just for a moment Eclipse had been alive, far past his own end. A gap of ninety seconds in Ruin’s systems was proof of the impossible, of two lives held static by artificial means so that they could intersect.
It wouldn’t happen again. But it had happened, and Ruin would not forget. Not the information he’d won (Afton’s location still burns brightly in his memory, another piece of the impossible), not the quiet rasp of an uncaring god. Not the glint of faint starlight off golden rays and glowing gossamer threads.
Gentle hands shove themselves under his aching frame as Tiger Rock picks him up, holding him securely against his chest for the trek back to their base. He thinks the bodyguard is still complaining, and some part of Ruin huffs that he should be the one whining right now, thank you!
But instead he lets his head rest against Tiger Rock’s chest, and mourns someone he'd never known.