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The cage is worse.
He's spent years asking himself which one was. The guilt, snaking itself around his ribs like a vice? Or the chest, his prison, the coffin he was buried in when he wasn't in use that felt like it was shrinking in tandem with his lungs?
Every time, he answered the latter. Every time, he felt the guilt curl a little tighter around his beating heart.
But the claustrophobia was worse, so he dealt with it.
His ankle throbs, the sensation dull in the back of his head.
It's worse, because it's too mundane to even scare him, now.
...
He's tired.
...
(This is all his fault though, isn't it?)
...
The metal shutters on his prison blink open, loud and slow like something's prying them open from the outside.
He looks up.
And there is.
A woman on the other side, holding a crowbar that looks, somehow, like it was hand-drawn into existence, and rather poorly at that, thickly outlined in wonky black.
White, matching her skin, screwed up with effort. Her arms shake. She pushes down on the crowbar with all her weight, strained grunts leaking between her grit teeth.
Then, all at once, it gives.
The force barely pries the shutters apart an inch more, but somehow, it's enough that they decide to fly open all the way, and the girl yelps as it renders her efforts suddenly useless, flinging the crowbar a good foot away from her and sending her to the floor with a hard thud.
She blinks. Pitch black irises matching-
(Dark's, always so alight with enthusiasm he never bothered to hide-)
...
Shaking herself out of her daze, the girl looks up.
Her eyes go wide. "Oh. Oh!"
She scrambles to her feet. "Oh my gosh, I didn't think-" she runs around to the front of the cage, crowbar left forgotten on the floor. "I've been checking cells in case anyone was inside but I didn't actually think I'd find anyone- oh I'm so glad I took the risk, hold on-"
She pulls a pencil out of her skirt pocket, thick and monochrome.
Orange's.
(Where did she-)
In the air, she draws a key. White as the hands that forge it and too cartoon to work, two thick lines marking the only notches on the blade.
And yet, when she shoves it unceremoniously in the lock-
Click.
...
The door swings outward with a languid creak, and the woman-
The woman rushes inside, anything but languid, already asking him about his restraints, if he's okay, if he's hurt, if he needs anything and he can barely put any of it together, barely breathe when she crowds closer-
And then she stops.
Calms, all at once. Looks him over, eyes soft like Dark's never were.
... She sits across from him, tucking her knees under herself and smoothing the front of her skirt.
"Hi." She says gently. "I'm Mitsi."
...
Mitsi.
The gray one kept saying that name, when they were in the box.
When this very woman came out of another.
"What's your name?" Mitsi asks, leaning forward to draw his attention back, chestnut brown hair spilling messily over her shoulders.
...
(He doesn't have a name anymore, does he? He doesn't have his powers, or anything that came with it. No one. Did he lose his personhood when the label was shoved into his head?)
...
(Although he doesn't really have much else to go by.)
"Chosen." He rasps, voice raw from lack of use, from the water he's sure is still coating the bottom of his lungs.
"Chosen." Mitsi repeats, like the name means something even though it's dead. "It's nice to meet you."
His eyes narrow.
Mitsi's smile trips over something drier. "Well. As nice as it can be."
...
He sighs. "You should go."
"I don't think a few minutes of rest can lower our chances much." Mitsi shrugs. "They're already abysmal."
...
He leans back against the cell bars. Mitsi scoots over to the opposite end of the cage to do the same, stretching out her legs and crossing them at the ankles.
Pain lances around his own.
...
"He missed you." He utters. "The... The gray one."
"Vic." Mitsi answers, flat in a way that makes it seem automatic. She smiles sadly, meeting the other's eyes. "I miss him too."
"He's still alive."
"Yeah." Mitsi traces shapes on the floor with her finger, pencil left forgotten at her side. "But I wasn't really conscious when I had the code, so I doubt he is."
...
"Who are you, to him?" He asks. He needs to know. "Who did... Who did he lose?"
Mitsi bites her lip. "... I'm... I'm his wife."
...
"Shit." He breathes.
"I'm also Pivot's best friend..." Mitsi adds, twirling an unruly lock of hair around her finger. "Uh, he's the one with the sunglasses-"
"Shit."
"And like... the boss..." Mitsi looks away, pulls all her hair over her shoulder, combing her fingers through it. "Of the entire... company?"
He presses his forehead to the circle tying his wrists and groans.
"Yeahhh, I was kind of important." Mitsi smiles, lips curled around a sheepish laugh.
...
"I don't remember you." He whispers, the admission stinging like bile in his throat.
(It's the least he could've done, isn't it? Remember her face, probably twisted up in pure terror just like the rest of his victims, a primal scream torn from her throat that fades into something vague enough to stomach.)
(But he never cared enough to do even that much.)
Mitsi's smile softens. "I'm not surprised. You two probably wracked up a pretty high body count."
He shrinks, feeling the faint tremor that shakes him in his skin. It's torture.
He deserves this feeling. He has no right to feel it. He still doesn't know how those two thoughts can coexist.
"I'm sorry." He chokes, and it's pathetic that the words are so hard to get out. It's pathetic that's it's the only thing he can do. As though remorse could reverse murder.
Maybe he's just pathetic.
Mitsi softens that much more, and how can she do that? How can she look a terrorist in the eyes and find a single shred of pity for him? "You didn't kill me, you know. Your partner did."
He sags hard against the bars of his cage. He's not surprised. He stopped doing most of the work awhile after the world with the blocks and the cubes sewed more than destruction in his head.
(He still killed, sometimes, when he felt Dark was getting suspicious. It was selfish, but he couldn't lose his best friend. Couldn't lose the only person who saw him as more than a mindless killer, a wild beast to be tamed.)
(... He was never any better than one though, was he.)
"I didn't stop him." He argues.
"You tried." Mitsi counters.
His eyes slide over to meet hers. "... What?"
Mitsi looks down at her lap, her hair falling forward and curtaining the sides of her face in chestnut.
"I remember you." She says, reminiscent, almost fond. "Your partner was such a... a demanding presence. Like they wanted everyone to look their way even though they were the one blocking our sight with fire and rubble."
He almost laughs, reminiscent, fond. He almost throws up for allowing himself to feel that way.
"And then there was you." Mitsi goes on. "And you were so much more... still. Like you couldn't decide whether to watch the carnage or close your eyes."
He tenses, curling further into himself.
"You had fire in your hands." Mitsi recounts. "It looked like it was keeping you in the air. It was smaller than what your partner was throwing around too. Like you were being careful about how much you let out."
(It burned him, every single time. And Dark would laugh, wrap the blisters, boast about how his own flames never dared harm The Dark Lord.)
"And when your partner flew past with this- this big ball of energy ready to launch, you let go of one of the flames." Mitsi thumbs over her own palm. "The other one got bigger so you could stay in the air, and you... you reached out. And you said something."
She trails off, movements gone still.
Then she shakes her head. "I don't know what it was. I couldn't hear you from the ground, I just saw your mouth move. It was short. Something like 'stop,' or maybe you were calling their name."
She smiles wryly, meeting his gaze once more. "I don't think they heard you, and it was too late to do much else, but..."
She shrugs.
And the other thinks he might just remember a voice roaring over Newgrounds' screams, firm and a little frantic but still impossibly soft.
A tattered dress. Tangled chestnut hair. Pearly skin caked in soot and grime as she pulled civilians out of the wreckage, scooped kids out of danger, let the injured lean on her even when she was limping, made sure everyone around her was safe even though every gunshot made her clap her hands harder over her ears.
"She doesn't deserve to die," he remembers thinking. And then she was half buried in a chunk of wall, and a man was screaming her name like it meant something, and when Dark soared past, something curled tight in Chosen's chest finally unfurled.
"Dark!" He had called, raw and desperate like it meant something-
...
But it didn't. It didn't mean a goddamn thing, and the one person in the whole mess who probably deserved it the least ended up buried in ash and rubble.
...
"Oh." He utters, because not once in his life has he been able to summon words that mean anything.
"I'm not gonna sit here and pretend you're a good person." Mitsi tells him, straight and to the point. "And I'm not gonna say I forgive you until this whole situation has died down enough for me to figure out if I even do."
She looks into his eyes, a black somehow duller than her own. Down at his hands, circled in transparent gray. "But you can't hurt me right now, can you?"
... He shakes his head.
"Then I'm not in any more danger than I already was." Mitsi shrugs, all soft edges and kindness over self-preservation, just the same as the day she died. "And I could use a friend that isn't brainwashed."
He stares at her with furrowed brows. "... I'm not a good person. You said it yourself."
"I did." Mitsi confirms, tucking her legs beside her so she can stand. "But..."
She steps forward. Crouches on her toes. Reaches out.
Stops short.
...
He offers his bound hands, like his input means a single thing.
And Mitsi takes the restraint between her own and gently tugs it off. "... I have proof you're capable of trying to be."
He looks up.
Mitsi sets the restraint off to the side. Reaches back for her pencil and slides it back into her pocket. "Yeah, I died. I don't think I'm really over that, but I'm here now, and so are you."
She stands again, spine straight and shoulders back. "So right now, you're a friend. And I trust my friends."
She puts her hand out, palm up, unmarred by the scars and callouses that litter his.
Soft.
"Don't break it." Mitsi adds firmly.
...
He brings his shaking hand up and places it in hers, unmarred, warm against his freezing skin. "... I'll try."
Mitsi grins at the words like they mean something, and helps him to his feet with a surprising burst of strength.
"I think that'll be more than enough." She assures, squeezing his hand once and then letting go.
And for the first time since he lost himself, Chosen stands on his own.