Chapter Text
"who even are you bro?"
That's all.
That's the only thing that remains crystal clear in his mind, ringing, anything else he tries to think of is incoherent, just screaming and the guilt. Guilt so heavy it presses him down into the dirt and keeps him there as lighting crashes around him, the thunder masking the crunching of leaves as someone emerges from the forest behind him.
"Spoke?" A voice called out to him. Boots fill his vision and he shifts his eyes upwards, and its a anthropomorphic cat. He doesn't think he knows anyone who looks like this cat, but he doesn't know a lot right now so he could be wrong. "Hey spoke~ I thought that was you" the man sang. He watched as the man crouched in front of his prone form, he didn't like this man, his heart pounding at his chest, almost like it was begging him to get up and away from the cat-man.
"Who are you-" Spoke manage to croak out before he was cut off.
"Oh Spoke you're so silly, acting like you don't know exactly who I am!" the man crooned smiling down on him. Spoke didn't like him, he decided. He had to go. He pushed himself up off of the ground, and then a shoe stomps down against his back and his face is imprinted into the ground as the man moves in one smooth motion, disallowing Spokes action. "Nuh uh uh Spoke, stay on the floor where you belong." The foot on his back presses harder, compressing his chest and making him cough.
"Bro- get off me-" he splutters "I really don't know you". He really doesn't like the face the man is making now. Like he's won without Spoke knowing what game he's participating in, but the pressure on him lifts as a hand reaches out towards him in offer of help. He shouldn't take it, but what other choice does he have, so he cautiously grabs the paw accepting his 'help'. "Uh- thanks man, so what was all that about?" He questions, not caring about the dirt attached to his soaked clothes.
Cat-man tilts his head at him, smirking, and gestures at him to follow. Spoke does so against better judgement. "My name is LettuceK, people just call me Lettuce though" he explains whilst gripping his arm and dragging him through the forest. "I'm sorry about my behaviour, but I think it's justified since you're a war criminal and a budding evil mastermind and all" Spoke's eyes widened minutely.
'What?'
He dug his heels into the ground and wrenched his arm out of Lettuce's grip pulling them to a stop and Lettuce finally turned around with a smirk on his face. "I'm not going with you bro I have to find-" his head exploded with pain and his vision filled with static. He nearly crumpled to the ground, back to the dirt, but Lettuce caught him. "What was that-" he grit out, nothing was making sense anymore, and the screaming was back, he tried to shove off of Lettuce but his legs gave out.
Lettuce snorted at his failed attempt and picked him up, stressing Spoke out more, and carried on walking not saying another word. He tried squirming out of his grasp but Lettuce's grip tightened, he couldn't think straight.
'Why was this happening, who do I need to find- a red bandana.'
It felt like fireworks shot through his brain at that last thought, the static cleared quicker this time, and with that decided he shot his foot out and brought it back with enough force into Lettuce's side to surprise him and drop him, he needed to get away. Now. As he fell he tried to twist himself so his head didn't hit the ground first and it worked.
Snap!
Spoke screamed out in pain and his vision whited out as his wrist caught itself underneath a root whilst he rolled away. He breathed out through his teeth, he still needed to get away. He looked back towards Lettuce, cradling his broken wrist to his chest and using the other to scoot away from the man towering over him, still smiling, Lettuce began to speak whilst taking a step towards spoke. "Oh Spoke this could've been so easy for you, oh well!" Spoke turned around and got on his knees to start running when he felt the wind charge, the freezing terror, and vibrations of the mace slamming into his head, before everything went dark.
"█████ please, you don't understand."
"No Spoke, I do, in fact I think I understand this completely!" ██████ spat back
"Please ██████ you can't leave me now, we were so close at getting away scot-free!"
██████ looked back at him with disgust "no you were, It was never about me Spoke, it was about you."
"who even are you bro" said ██████ from beside ██████
He watched ██████ equipped his elytra and flew away with ██████ leaving him behind.
He screamed out in frustration and started ripping the flowers out of the dirt and using his sword to slash at trees, ██████'s base didn't deserve to look pretty. He's all alone now, 'I deserve this' he thought as he slowly sank to the ground fists clenched around several now dead roses.
He awoke with a start, squinting in the dark, trying to look around whilst wiping the sweat from his forehead away. he swung his feet from the bed to the floor and pushed himself off the the bed, wobbling a bit from the dizziness, he felt wrong. He pushed that feeling down as he shuffled around and came in contact with a wall, smiling in celebration, he felt along it for a door. When he came in contact with the door he startled at its bone-chilling temperature, as the feeling of wrongness started bubbling up, he didn't feel right but he had to continue looking for a way out. So he touched the door looking for a handle, the cold infecting him with every second his hand was in contact with the door. He brought his other hand up and pressed it against the door and- agony. He cradled his arm, it was still broken, the people who put him in here, Lettuce his mind supplied, didn't heal him.
The feeling of wrong came back, it was consuming him, he couldn't take it, it felt like his body was moving ever slightly so faster than he was, and the dark wasn't helping. His form kept shifting he gripped at his hair to try to ground himself and then he realised why he was feeling off. His wristbands, his bandana, they were gone, but- why was that important? He continued to shift in his skin,'wait what-' he thought to himself 'that's not supposed to happen, who shifts in their skin' terror began to settle in his chest and crept up his throat. His eyes adjusted to dark, but he still couldn't see where he began and the dark ended, he grabbed at what he thought was his arm but caught nothing. He needed help. He didn't know what to do. He fell to the ground and pushed himself against the wall using both his arms, trying to control his breathing, and hold on a second- he looked at his wrists again. Why didn't he feel any pain? Which one was broken, he realised he didn't know, why couldn't he tell, he needed to know.
So he smashed his left hand against the floor, it didn't hurt. He turned to look at his right one and whacked it against the wall. It. Didn't. Hurt. Why, why didn't it hurt, he knew one of them was broken, what was happening to him, he couldn't tell anymore. He started bashing his head against the wall, he needed something to hurt, anything. It didn't though, even as he started screaming his lungs out, maybe, he couldn't tell anymore, couldn't even hear his own voice, did he even have a voice? Was he dead, but before he could give the thought any more consideration, there was light. His head shot up towards the door to see "Lettuce?" his voice crawled out his throat before he could stop it.
"Hey Spoke." Lettuce looked at him. His eyes flitted about searching Lettuce's face, and could only stare as the other approached and squatted beside him. "Oh Spoke, what to do with you," the lynx smiled at him, "you look so unbelievably pathetic right now." He then brought a hand in front of his face shook a cup in his hand that Spoke hadn't noticed till now "I have a couple of pills in this cup, " he explained "and if you take it, it might be able to deal with the unstable form you've got going on right now." Spoke hand reached to snatch the cup, but Lettuce was quicker and just lifted his hand leaving the cup out of reach, "but you have to promise me something Spoke, can you do that for me?" Not having any other choice Spoke shook his head up and down "good. You're going to help me win king" he explained as he placed the cup in Spokes hand, watching as embodiment of the void consumed both the cup and the pills within. "Now get up, we have a meeting to get to" Lettuce stated as he got back up and started walking to the door. Spoke scrabbled after the cat, trying to hold his form together, before wincing as his left wrist began to pulse in pain. Spoke stopped right outside the door to look at his naked wrist and giggled, all that torment just to be fixed by some pills. "Hurry up Spoke, before I decide you're too risky to take out the dark room." At that Spoke sprinted after Lettuce, cradling his broken wrist once more, with another man beside him who Spoke presumed was escorting him.
Spoke was escorted up a set of spiral stairs following behind Lettuce before reaching a spruce door where Lettuce stopped, the lynx looked towards his guard? "Bring him out when I ring the bell, got it?" The man beside him nodded and then Lettuce was gone, Spoke looked at the guard? and asked "So, whats your name?" the void man looked at him and squinted, like he didn't believe that was an actual question Spoke had, but he still opened his mouth to speak before bells rung from above them, and the man immediately grabbed at his elbow and dragged him out the door and to the outside.
Spoke had to blink at the brightness of the sun before his eyes adjusted. He looked around as he moved across to where he assumed Lettuce was, and started to listen. "Dear members of the Unstable SMP" Lettuce called out towards the audience. "This is the person behind the raiding of upwards of a hundred bases, and the release of the escaped terrorist ██████", he stopped listening as his head filled with pain and static, but once again the pain cleared up quicker and it didn't matter as he was dragged onto the podium with Lettuce before the crowd. His vision cleared and he looked at the audience within the walls of this place, with the sun shining down on them, and then locked eyes with a bird-man before the worst pain he's felt since the dirt exploded behind his eyes, and screamed out before something was shoved in his mouth and it all went dark.
"What's Spoke doing here bro?"