Chapter Text
Spoke can feel the weight of Jamato’s stare and he looks up at him, wide eyed.
He knows that there’s tear tracks on his face from his encounter with Mapicc, and he feels on the verge of crying again. Still, as Jamato stares him down, he tries to look as non-threatening as possible.
All of his armor is broken and gone, and the moment he fights back against Jamato, Null will show up again and swiftly put him down. Like a dog.
He’s close to a breakdown, every nerve ending fried from the emotions he’s gone through today.
His phasing is heightened with his emotions and the particles surrounding him are dancing erratically. He’s shaky, as if the very ground beneath his feet has been removed and left him free-falling in the empty void.
He can vaguely register that this is what he deserves, his actions over the past few years finally catching up to him and eating him alive.
“Drop your stuff if you ever want to see Mapicc again.”
Spoke drops his stuff immediately, emptying his pockets, his inventory, everything.
The prospect of getting to see Mapicc is much greater than his remaining shreds of pride. Mapicc is the only thing he has left, the only person who’s stayed with him, and now he’s gone too.
It was only a matter of time before Spoke ruined the last good thing in his life.
He lets his items drop on the floor with a loud sound, and it rings in the long, empty hallway.
He stares at Jamato expectedly, waiting for what next, when he pulls out an ender chest and motions towards it.
“Everything out.”
His hands shake as he opens it, particles glitching in and out of existence.
Jamato notices and grabs his wrist, harshly pulling it towards him. Spoke flinches and tries to pull his arm out of his grip, but Jamato’s iron grip doesn’t let him.
Jamato examines his hand, looking at the way the particles jump off of his skin and disappear. Spoke’s heart rate kicks up and feels the painful feeling of his hand phasing in between states of matter.
“See. You can’t even control this. You’re a danger to everyone around you.”
Spoke stares at him, not confirming or denying it, letting Jamato’s words settle like a heavy weight in his chest.
Jamato releases him and Spoke finishes emptying his ender chest, his hands shaking harder now.
“Is that everything?”
“Yeah.”
“If I find out you’re lying, you’ll never see Mapicc again. Ever.”
Jamato stares him down, as if assessing whether or not Spoke was lying to him or not.
“Fine. Come on.”
He beckons towards the portal. Spoke takes a few hesitant steps forward before Jamato gets impatient and grabs his arm, shoving him forward into the portal.
Spoke hasn’t been in the nether in a while, and it looks completely different. He stops to stare but Jamato pushes him forward, causing him to keep walking.
There’s a large castle in the distance, dark and foreboding, a build that looks like it comes from the Invisible Mafia era. The part of the nether that they’re in has seemingly been terraformed and Spoke can’t see any traces of lava pools.
It’s also completely empty, no trace of the Null members who had disappeared only minutes before them.
They eventually get to the castle. Jamato grabs ahold of his wrist, ignoring the way Spoke tries to pull his arm away, and leads him up into it.
He leads Spoke to a nondescript room, empty of anything, and this might be it for Spoke. Jamato was going to execute him millions of blocks away from spawn and Mapicc would never find out the truth.
“How does it feel to know you’ve ruined your life?”
Spoke doesn’t answer.
“How does it feel to know that every time I tried to give you the chance to make the right choice, you made the wrong one. Trying to kill me at the lighthouse? Trying to kill me while I was regearing?”
“Maybe you’re the common thread there.” Spoke retorts. Fuck JamatoP. Fuck Null.
“Hmm, I don’t think so. What about Leo? All the players you killed while you were with BAT to cover up your mistakes? Jumper’s spies? MajesticRose?”
It would’ve been better if Jamato had stabbed him.
Spoke’s blood turns to ice, and he can feel the particles jumping on him speed up and glitch out of existence.
“See, all you do is lie, cheat, and kill. You use people and then you turn around and stab them in the back. And I really thought you could grow out of it, learn from your mistakes. I stopped enabling you. But no, you continued the exact same behavior and kept getting in trouble and tried to cover it up. But you can’t hide anything from me, Spoke. I’ve been watching you for years now. I know every crime you’ve committed.”
Spoke backs up, hitting the wall of the small room they’re in. His breathing is erratic, coming out harshly.
Here is everything he’s been terrified of. A record of the sins he’s committed and now Jamato is here to act as judge, jury, and executioner.
“Are you going to kill me?” His voice comes out rough and shaky and he cringes at how pathetic he sounds right now.
“No Spoke, I’m not going to kill you. That would be too easy. I want you to think about what you’ve done, really think, long and hard, on all the people you’ve taken away from their families, on all the destruction you’ve caused.”
Spoke flinches and feels pain wrack his body as he phases in and out of reality.
“And… that. You’re a danger to everyone around you. Of all of the things on this server that are unstable, you really take the cake. Do you think it’s normal to walk around like that?”
Spoke shakes his head, gritting his teeth. He knows his phasing is unsettling and unusual, but it’s not like it’s actually dangerous. It’s only harmful to himself.
“You’re going to stay here for a while. And maybe, if I feel like you’ve changed, grown from your mistakes, maybe you can try again on this server.”
Jamato turns to leave, and Spoke can’t stop himself from saying, “Wait! What about Mapicc?”
“What about Mapicc? Am I really meant to believe you care about the friend you’ve manipulated and exploited?”
“Mapicc is my best friend.”
“Mapicc was your best friend.” Jamato corrects and Spoke can’t help the way he flinches at that.
“Mapicc will be fine,” Jamato says, after a moment of silence, “but if you even think about trying to escape, I will kill him and Jumper faster than you can blink. And you’ll have made me do it. More blood will be on your hands, not that you would care. But just know, there is nowhere you can go without me finding you. I might’ve let you wander around the server free these past few years, but not anymore.”
He turns to leave again and Spoke stops him, grabbing onto his arm.
“How long are you going to leave me here?”
“That’s up to you. This is your opportunity to reflect on the atrocities you’ve committed on this server.”
“And will I get to see Mapicc again?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On your behavior. And if Mapicc truly wants to see you. Given the way you’ve treated him, I doubt he ever will. Have fun Spoke.”
Jamato yanks his arm out of his grip and finally leaves, the door thudding behind him like the sound of an executioner’s axe.
Spoke sinks to his knees and begins to cry, dry heaving and shaking. His body keeps flickering in and out of existence, his phasing worse with his heightened emotional state.
Pain wracks through him and he knows he deserves it, has always deserved the side effect he has for simply existing, and wishes he could fade out of existence and never come back again.
He spends a long time lying there, curled into himself, sporadically jerking and shaking. He goes numb from the pain after a while, the glitching and the phasing feeling more like a tingle than the white-hot pain that usually consumes him.
He recalls his past episodes and the way Mapicc would hold him through them, reassuring him. Mapicc. He misses Mapicc. He needs Mapicc, needs the only person who didn’t think he was insane.
Except Mapicc hates him and Spoke deserved it.
Time passes lethargically and he calms down, getting a hold of himself and his phasing. It could have been hours or days, and he would be none the wiser.
This had been one of his worst episodes in a while and he wishes he could curl up with Mapicc.
He wants to be at their base, in a warm bed, and to have never heard the name JamatoP.
Instead he’s in a cold, windowless room with no chance of leaving. He couldn’t risk Mapicc’s life, not after everything he’s done to him.
Maybe this is exactly what he deserves, to be locked away for the rest of his life, being forgotten by the rest of the server.
Maybe one day there would be a vague memory of the person who made the server unstable, the person who broke every natural law.
But he had thought this before, when he was trapped in the chunk ban. And he’d gotten out. If he singlehandedly clawed his way out of hell once before, he could do it again.
But that’s the exact type of thinking that got him here in the first place.
He needs to stay here, stay in this room, stay with all the thoughts he’s been trying to avoid, and maybe, one day, he can leave.
He drags himself to the corner of the room and he can almost convince himself that it’s not the wall he’s leaning against, but Mapicc. Almost.
His body, exhausted from dealing with his mental and physical breakdown, shuts down almost immediately. He sleeps, hoping he’ll wake up soon and realize this was all some twisted nightmare of his psyche.
But the universe has never been kind to him.
—
He slowly wakes up in a haze, not entirely understanding what is happening.
The events come back to him, and he’s hit with the uncomfortable awareness of how alone he is.
There is nobody on the server that cares what happens to him. He could die tomorrow and no one would mourn his death.
He stays like this, lost in his head, lost in the thoughts he tried so hard to run from. Drifting through his stream of consciousness as an unwilling participant.
He hates everything about himself. Hates the way he seeks out trouble and destruction like a moth flying towards a light. All he’s done since he joined Unstable was ruin people’s lives.
All he did before Unstable was ruin people’s lives too.
His entire life, since he glitched into existence, has been one long thread of manipulation and death.
He’s never been able to keep a friend, using and pushing everyone away, because if they get too close they’ll realize how broken Spoke actually is.
He didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse that he was the only one that remembers Lifesteal.
In the early days of the server, he tried talking to Parrot about it, who looked at him like he was insane. Maybe that was for the best.
No one knows what he means by server hopping either. Every time he brought it up, he was only given confused looks, and eventually he stopped bringing it up. It’s not like he can leave either, with no communicator.
That was another thing that had disappeared and made Spoke feel like he was going crazy.
It was almost like he remembered a completely different history than everyone around him.
Maybe one day when phasing, he fell into the wrong reality and never came back. He fell down the rabbit hole and is waiting to claw his way out again.
Mapicc, Minute, Wemmbu, Flame, too many people to count, all people he remembered from Lifesteal. Except they were all a little to the left, slightly off, acted differently, looked slightly different.
Maybe he hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe he was hallucinating now. Maybe nothing was real.
He stays like this, spiraling into the darkest depths of his mind for what must be hours. At some point he must fall asleep, because he jerks awake, breathing heavily.
Was Jamato ever going to come back?
Was this it for him, shut away in a cold, dark room for the rest of eternity?
Even if anyone found him, who would let him out? When he died, would he wake up on another server? Or would he be lost for all eternity?
He’s already lost everything that matters to him.
He hates everything about himself, hates his corrupted code, hates the side effects he has for living.
He wishes he never joined Unstable. He wishes he never existed.
—
It could days, weeks, months, that pass before Jamato comes back for him. Spoke thinks he’s hallucinating for a moment when he hears the door unlock and open.
He struggles to push himself up, muscles atrophied from the lack of exercise, and he stares up at Jamato’s silhouette.
“Jamato?” His voice is rough from disuse and lack of water.
Jamato crouches down next to him, and in the faint lighting, Spoke can see him looking down on him.
“Spoke.”
Spoke doesn’t know what to say, and he doesn’t have the strength to hold himself up anymore, his arms giving up and he collapses back down like a puppet with its strings cut.
Jamato moves, properly sitting down now, and manhandles Spoke’s head into his lap, brushing through his hair soothingly. Spoke leans into it, unsure about what is happening but trying to enjoy it nonetheless.
“Are you sorry?”
“What?”
“Do you feel sorry? For what you’ve done. For the people you’ve murdered in cold blood to cover up your mistakes. For the places you’ve blown up without a care in the world.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound very sorry to me.”
“I am! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please believe me.” Anything he has to say to get out of this prison.
“I don’t know if I believe you. Maybe some more time alone will help.”
He moves Spoke’s head out of his lap, and gets up to leave. Spoke pushes himself up and desperately grabs Jamato’s wrist before he can leave.
“Please.” He’s close to tears now, voice high and stuttering.
He knows he’s messed up when the blood spills onto the floor.
“Spoke. Let go of me.”
He does, and feels Jamato’s blood on his claws and hand.
“See what I mean? The first time I come and visit you, where I’m trying to be nice to you, and how do you repay me? By immediately hurting me.”
“I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, please.”
“You’re dangerous Spoke. All you do is hurt people.”
“Please, please, please, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” Jamato leaves him like that, begging on the floor and wishing he was dead.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, doesn’t know how long he’s laid on the uncomfortable stone floor, periodically spiralling into his thoughts.
Any concept of the passage of time has escaped him, his life defined by the dark corners of his room.
This is his punishment, for being a bad friend, for being a bad person, for killing and manipulating and exploiting.
He’s never known otherwise.
He joined Unstable because Jamato asked him, because he thought they were friends. He started exploiting because it’s the only thing he knows how to do, it’s in his blood. He didn’t think they’d get in trouble for that.
Wherever the owner is, they certainly don’t care about anything that happens on Unstable, never once interfering with anything.
No, it was the other players who turned on him. Wemmbu, Zam, Parrot, who tossed him into that chunk ban. Where he spent months in a terrifying state of limbo. But at least he had someone to keep him company that time, Parrot’s little friend. Who Spoke had manipulated into the chunk ban for no reason.
At the time Spoke hadn’t cared, it was funny to him to watch Parrot and Wifies stumbling around the server for a secret that didn’t exist.
And he got out, and went right back to his previous behavior. Except he helped end the invisible mafia, and tried to do something good with his life.
And how did he do that? By murdering people. iMajesticRose, a completely innocent person whose family he got to know, pretended like he didn’t take away their beloved daughter and sister.
Who does that? Who murders someone and then becomes friends with their family? Him, it seems. It didn’t seem as sociopathic then as it does right now.
Ash was right, he followed right down the well paved path to hell.
And then BAT, killing all those people and covering it up, Jumper’s spies, all the Law people, and all those people just seemed like annoying ants in his way. A means to an end.
He didn’t know them, didn’t care that they were potentially dead forever. He has no idea where people go after dying on Unstable, with no one else even realizing that there was an outside world. There are so many servers out there, he knows that for sure, even if no one else remembers.
And then Leo. The elation he felt to finally get rid of the biggest thorn in his side, the only man who had caught onto everything Spoke had done.
He’s glad that Leo is dead. It had to happen, because Leo tried so hard to murder him and yet Spoke was smarter. Spoke was the person who was one step ahead.
It doesn’t matter how long Jamato keeps him locked in here, he’ll never feel regretful for that.
He just wishes he hadn’t hid anything from Mapicc. Maybe if Mapicc had been in on everything from the start, he wouldn’t be in this situation.
Where is Mapicc? Is he safe? Does he even care that Spoke is locked up?
He misses Mapicc. When he sleeps deeply enough to dream, the only thing he sees is Mapicc.
He misses Mapicc so much, it’s a physical ache. A longing, a need, for the one person he thought understood him.
He wishes he was dead.
—
He wakes up to his claws and hands bloody and realizes that he’d been unconsciously scratching at the wall in his sleep, trying to get out.
His hands hurt with the same dull pain that fills the rest of his hollow, empty body.
He’s glad, for once, for the bad lighting so that he can’t see the damage he’s inflicted upon himself.
He tucks his hands between his legs, hopefully trapping them there as he drifts off to sleep again.
It doesn’t work and the next time he jerks away, there’s enough blood running down his fingers that he could paint a picture.
If he wanted. Because he’s not that crazy. At least not yet.
—
It could be hours or days later the next time he has an episode. He couldn’t help it, being completely in the dark for what had to be weeks now, set him down the spiraling of his mind faster than he could ground himself.
He’s trapped in one position, shaking and feeling the pain run through his body while he phases and glitches between planes of existence.
It hurts so bad, and he knows how pathetic he is, crying on the floor, waiting for him to tire himself out and hopefully pass out. He wants to be in a real bed, in a warm base, with Mapicc. He doesn’t want to be here.
But he deserves this. He deserves to be locked up for his crimes against humanity. The pain is worse than it’s ever been, and he feels like he’s being electrocuted, twitching and spasming on the hard floor.
He hopes one day he’ll phase through the floor and just keep falling. Maybe he’ll end up in a new world. Maybe he’ll wake up on Lifesteal again. Except he still isn’t entirely sure Lifesteal actually existed, so maybe not.
Either way, anywhere had to be better than here. Somewhere he could manage his pain, and not scream and cry himself to sleep.
Can Jamato even hear his screaming, or does he just not care?
Maybe he thinks it’s ironic that Spoke’s body is enacting a better punishment than he ever could.
More pain spasms through him and he goes breathless as his entire body phases out of existence. He can’t breathe—he can’t breathe, he’s choking on nothing, there’s no oxygen, he’s going to asphyxiate in between reality and not, and he’ll be gone and there will be nowhere for him to go because his particles will simply disband and rejoin the universe it tried to break away from.
He keeps trying to breathe and eventually he can again. He starts coughing and dry heaving and there are thick, hot tears running down his face. He wants to disappear and exist at the same time, and be far away from here and to have never even heard the word unstable.
Where is Mapicc? He needs Mapicc, needs his best friend to tell him that everything is alright and they’ll get out of this, the way they have so many times before.
Except Mapicc hates him and will probably never speak to him again.
—
He doesn’t know how much time has passed the next time Jamato visits him. Time has been dripping down, like the blood that soaks his fingers, the blood that pools around him where he’s been sleeping. Time is draining away, like his sanity, like all his hopes, and everything he wanted from his pathetic life.
Maybe he shouldn’t have chased the rabbit and they fell down the wrong hole.
He never was meant to exist in the first place, the fact has been hammered into him enough times for it to truly exist along the rest of his thoughts. Being locked up in a dark box gives him a lot of time to reflect, a lot of time to piece together exactly where his life went wrong.
Finally, however, Jamato visits him and Spoke knows how pathetic he looks, practically crawling towards his oldest friend.
He needs to get out of here. He’s losing his mind. Or maybe he already has. Maybe he was never sane to begin with.
“Please, Jamato, please, let me out, please,” His words are stuttered and slurred, and probably don’t make any sense to Jamato.
Jamato doesn’t say anything and Spoke can’t bring himself to push himself up to look at him.
“Please let me out, please Jamato, I’m sorry, please, I’ll never kill anyone again, please, I’m sorry.” He’s on the floor, fully sobbing. It’s embarrassing for his oldest friend turned captor to see him like this, to see him so broken down. He’s pathetic.
“Are you sorry for what you’ve done?”
“Yes, yes, please, I’m sorry, please, Jamato.”
“You know what I think Spoke? I don’t think you’re actually sorry at all. I think you’re sorry you got caught. You’ve gotten so used to getting away with everything that you can’t actually face the consequences of your actions.”
“No, please, I’m sorry, please, please, I’m really sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?”
“For—for manipulating Mapicc and lying to him, for BAT, for killing Leo and the spies and the innocent players and—and—”
“And?”
“For killing MajesticRose and—and exploiting and fucking up the server and blowing up everything. I know I ruin everything I touch, I’m sorry, please Jamato.”
Jamato sits down and pulls Spoke’s head into his lap, petting his hair again. Spoke almost whines at the contact, so desperate for another person to interact with him.
They sit like this for a while, Spoke not wanting to break the silence, doesn’t want to break whatever tentative situation they’re in.
The slow brushing through his hair feels nice, even if he’s realizing for the first time how long his hair is.
How long has he been here?
Except that’s a thought process that gets him spiraling, so he can’t follow it, for fear of having another episode. And if he had another episode, Jamato would definitely leave.
But he needs to ask about Mapicc, needs to see if there’s a chance that he can see his best friend one more time. He takes a while to gather the strength to speak before saying, “Jamato?”
“Yes?”
“When—when you brought me here, you said I could see Mapicc again. When can I see him, please?”
“Hmm, I don’t know if Mapicc wants to see you Spoke. You used him, manipulated him, he doesn’t want to be your friend anymore.”
“I know, I know that, I just—maybe I could apologize? Please?”
“Maybe.”
“Please Jamato, please?”
“I said maybe.”
Spoke would’ve left it alone, except for the way Jamato had said it. Like he wouldn’t even stop to consider it. The lighthearted tone that didn’t actually reveal how he was actually feeling.
And for the first time since he was put here, he didn’t feel like breaking down and crying. He felt angry, angry at Jamato for keeping him here, for causing him to attack Mapicc, for Null, for everything.
He doesn’t even think, when the surge of adrenaline rushes through him, to launch himself up at Jamato. He clips him in the nose, and Jamato clearly wasn’t expecting it with how he clutches his face. Spoke gets on top of him easily and starts punching him, swinging again and again. With only one goal in mind, kill Jamato.
It wasn’t the first time he’d tried, but the first time in this room, the first time after weeks of captivity.
He grabs Jamato's hair and slams his head against the stone floor, and they both get covered in the yellow and green dust of Jamato’s totem popping.
When he wipes the dust out of his eyes, he’s not surprised to see that Jamato’s gone. Whatever teleportation thing he uses must still be active.
He knows he fucked up, but he honestly can’t be too broken up about it now. He finally snapped, finally attacked back. Jamato must’ve been expecting it at some point, if he thought he was actually going to be able to keep Spoke here long term.
Jamato might never let him out and that’s a fact that Spoke is learning to live with. A fact that causes him to break down most of the time, but a fact nonetheless.
If Jamato isn’t going to let him out and Mapicc doesn’t want to visit him, he might as well be dead.
He is dead, in spirit, and his body is slowly catching up to it. He can survive without food for a pretty long time, especially relative to a normal player, but at some point even he will succumb to hunger.
His claws are still pretty sharp, even after spending day after day scratching at the walls.
It would be so easy to simply end it all.
He drags his nails softly over his forearm, and can feel the beads of blood start to dribble down his arm. The pain is grounding and for a moment he feels more lucid and aware than he has the entire time he’s been locked away. It’s a different kind of pain than the one he gets from his phasing, a sharper, more centralized kind of pain.
He digs in deeper and the pain gets more intense. He takes a deep breath before doing it to the other wrist. He would escape even if this was the only way how.
He feels the blood pour out of his forearms, slow and slick down his hands and fingers.
If he’s going to die, he might as well feel comfortable, and he curls up in the corner.
He feels sluggish and slow and when he finally drifts off for good, he only feels vaguely uncomfortable.