A Lullaby For Gods Chapter 131

JANUARY 21, 2014

NIGHT VALE

Sapphrel Angeles was the stupidest person Hal Strider had ever met.

He’d declined Jeremiah’s offer to help fix his face up; there wasn’t much superglue could do aside from make it uncomfortable, anyway. With how he could somehow feel sensation now even when the Anathema Point was dead, he didn’t want to know how having chemicals squeezed into a crack in his cheek was going to feel like, so he’d passed and found a random hallway in the large house to get lost in, dutifully avoiding any room he heard noises in. He heard Kevin yelling at Benzedrine about something in one room, with Mr. G trying to mediate and then giving up, before walking back around and choosing another path to wear his shoes out on. Vriska was cackling about something downstairs while Terezi berated her for being insensitive; he went out the backyard instead.

But the backyard was still stained with flecks of Ruben’s blood, and whenever his vision blurred as he stared straight ahead, he kept tricking himself into thinking that he could still see Angeles’ dead body in the corner of his eye, lying still on the grass.

There were too many people in this house for him to think, and for its sprawling grounds and many rooms, there weren’t enough for him to hide away. He needed somewhere quieter. Somewhere far away from here, where he didn’t see people’s blood or dead bodies on the grass or hear acquaintances cackling over his misery.

Hal hopped the fence.

He didn’t know how this town was laid out, but that was the point. He didn’t need to, he just needed to walk.

And so, that was what he did – he stuffed his hands into his pockets and walked. His limbs didn’t tire, because he wasn’t made of muscle or flesh, and his eyes never got dizzy with all the new buildings and the weird figures passing him by, because they weren’t made of fragile nerves. He watched spectres and tall shadows shop around the antique stores and the restaurants and flower shops, and he didn’t say a word to any of them, watching them go about their business completely unaware that the world outside the town was ending.

Watching oblivious citizens going about their lives once again struck him with the thought that it made perfect sense for Angeles to choose this town to hide out in. It was somewhere the least combat-oriented of them could be safe in. It was somewhere the more volatile ones of them could be stowed away in without fucking shit up for everyone else – he didn’t know Vriska that well, but from what he’d heard from the others (namely, Eridan) she had a tendency to scheme that ran worse than his own (and if Eridan ‘murder spree’ Ampora was wary about someone, that was saying something).

As for him – well, there was no telling what Hal would have been driven to do if he’d felt them fading and their cosmic binding urged him to save them from some threat he couldn’t actually fight.

That was one mercy out of all this, he supposed. One silver lining. He could think clearly without the influence of that. Think objectively. Move onto the next logical step. It was an unfortunate thing that his friend had died, but there was nothing to do about it, not when even they knew it was necessary for the survival of the universe. They’d bought everyone time with their death, but the world was still ending. The Anathema Point was supposed to take the brunt of the world’s decay, but it’d been too much and they’d died…but if the world was still ending, then that meant everything was in freefall.

And Angeles wouldn’t leave everyone in freefall like that, so what the fuck were they doing? If they’d fought to stay alive, then they could have bought everyone even more time, so why ensure that they died and stayed dead?

What the fuck was the little bastard up to?

There were benches up ahead. Looking beyond, there wasn’t anything to look at but an expanse of desert sand, along with a small strip of red pavement that said Border of Night Vale; Thank You For Visiting, but Hal supposed that was the point. The beauty of the sand, the beauty of the desert; that patch of nothingness was still a unique part of the world, stitched together amongst the forests and swamps and oceans. It certainly wasn’t something he and Dirk ever had the luxury of seeing back on their earth as that had been dominated by water, and so he took a seat at one of the benches, not minding some of the sand that had blown on it. The desert looked like a sea of gold, slowly reddening with the light of the setting sun. Out here, it was quiet, it was empty, and he was alone.

What would someone like Angeles gain from dying and staying dead?

There had to be something. They’d left a message for Ruben, instructions – they had a plan, and they’d been planning it for a long while. The whole time they’d been slowly dying and decaying, they’d known about their end and they’d planned around it, so why the fuck hadn’t they told Hal?

They would talk to each other, that was their deal. That was how their whole thing with the cosmic bond was supposed to work, so neither of them put the other in difficult situations or dragged them to hell and back; and yet here he was, alone and in the dark because whatever they had planned, it’d died with them.

“Don’t they know…it’s the end of the world…” he murmured, that damnable song Eridan kept humming whenever he started spacing out in the tunnels. He wondered how the kid was doing. Fine, hopefully. “It ended when I lost your love…”

Maybe it was easier to hate them and forget them. Let them stay dead and let their plans kick off and then get back to dealing whatever came after.

If the world ended, and Angeles’ plans failed, then that would take care of itself, but if the world got fixed, what was next? What did come after? Obviously, Rose and the others had the Safehouse. If Roxy and Dirk were here and people were being strategically placed around the universe, then there was a chance Jake and Jane would reunite with them. Eridan had his friends too, and while Davesprite might have some trouble finding his space, the kid would eventually find his feet. He’d find some friends with everyone.

But Hal, while he was friends with Dirk’s own friends, there was always this barrier of…distance between them, like he couldn’t quite cross this gap of not-being-Dirk that made him slightly less real in their eyes. Him looking like some errant brother of Dirk would probably make that weird. He had Eugene and the others who never minded that he was artificial intelligence, of course, but a mutual friend of theirs just died. How the hell did everything go back to normal after that?

Could everything go back to normal after that?

“I fucking hate you.” Hal ran a hand through his hair, casting his gaze skyward. “Of course you’re going to tell me I could go to you if everything got too much and then just – throw me overboard and leave me drown when it’s my first time dealing with grief. Had to be you to die too.”

Some coolant was still leaking from his face. He wiped it off with his sleeve, staining the fabric blue.

Why them? Why didn’t the Heir of Doom just become the Anathema Point themself? They were practically the same person, weren’t they? At least, on a genetic level. Why choose the younger self who had barely lived their life and lived their last days in misery? The Heir of Doom had lived thousands of years, had fallen in love, had found solace in their grief and long life with their friends. Angeles was a miserable little wretch who felt so unimportant they thought they were disposable to the point of martyrdom.

Five stages of grief, he could hear their voice in his head. He scoffed. Perhaps grief wasn’t so much as five stages as five platforms one constantly wildly bounced around off of.  You have to be careful, the Heir of Blood takes advantage of tumultuous emotional states.

Who cared at this point? Besides, the Heir of Blood already tried a bloodleech with him and he’d lasted a good while. If the man had any sense, he wouldn’t try for the same party trick, he’d go for something bigger. Something better. Something a lot more violent. Something that would make sure to grab him and rip him apart and if it couldn’t do that, it would grab him by the ankles and throw him headfirst into hell. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

But who cared? If Angeles really did, they wouldn’t hide things from him and leave him having to deal with the fact that they were fucking dead.

He stood, hands in his pockets once more. He might as well walk into the desert until his systems somehow tired out or the sand got into whatever cracks he got from his fight earlier and made his body malfunction.

He stepped over the border of Night Vale and the rest of the world, stepping into the desert.

He got ten feet away before he heard them.

“Hal?”

Hal froze. He turned, painfully slow. In the dimming night, he saw Angeles behind him, standing whole and alive, their snow-white hair whipping about the wind. Their brow creased in concern.

“What are you doing out here? It’s nearly evening,” they said.

Great. He was hallucinating. Somehow.

Did androids hallucinate?

Angeles marched over to him, taking his hand – their skin felt warm to the touch, thrumming with life, and the contact instantly sent a jolt of enhanced perception through Hal’s system. His eyes widened. Wait.

“Come on,” Angeles said, pulling him back towards the town. “You’re going to get lost out here.”

“What the fuck.”

“What?” Angeles turned to him, tilting their head. “I’ve been looking for you for hours, Hal.”

“You’re dead.”

“What?” Their question broke off with a laugh this time, and they stopped walking as they turned back to face him. “What are you talking about? I look plenty alive to me,” they said, before frowning again. “Are you…Hal, are you seeing things? We got the bloodleech out of you, didn’t we?”

Something was going on. Something was definitely going on, but he could feel the warmth of their hand and the rush of their power linking up with him. That couldn’t be faked. Even the Heir of Blood hadn’t been able to fool him. He could instantly recognize when Angeles was Angeles because of their cosmic bond, and everything about this alive doppelganger was telling him that it was his Angeles, alive and well, like the events of this morning hadn’t happened at all.

“Hal?” Angeles touched his cheek, the one that had broken. Hal jolted back slightly as their touch instantly had the wound smarting, pain amplified by their power. “Sorry – when the hell did you get that? What the fuck?”

“I had a fight with your friend Ruben.”

“What?” Angeles asked. “No, you – no, Hal, you didn’t. When the hell did that happen? Ruben was with me the whole day, you just disappeared from the house after I had you look for James.”

What?

“Hal, remember? I asked you to look for James, you never came back,” they said. “I told everyone and we’ve been looking for you the whole day. What happened? Did someone magick you or something?”

That…that didn’t make sense. Did it? Did something happen to him that had him hallucinate everything after he’d left the house?

“Is it like with my memories?” Angeles asked softly, fear in their voice.

It could be. Their perception constantly got altered with their fading memories, and he’d never managed to quite figure out how they snapped out of that or how they fell into it again. Was something similar happening to him? Only this time, he was experiencing things that didn’t happen?

At the same time, how could he trust what he was experiencing now? What was real? Had he left the house and hallucinated everything after or was that real and was he hallucinating this? If this was a hallucination, how was it so accurate to Angeles’ abilities?

“Hey, look at me.” Angeles’ hand on his cheek gently guided his gaze down towards them, as he’d started staring off in the distance as he thought. “We’ll figure this out, but I need you to stay at the house for now, okay? No more wandering off until we find out what the hell is going on.”

Hal stared at them, at their worried, odd eyes, flicking about his face as they took in the very real damage that he could feel on himself, at his confused expression.

“…Angeles?”

“Yes?”

“Are you real?”

Angeles blinked. They chuckled softly, fondly, and stood on their toes as they braced their other hand on his chest.

They kissed him.

And Hal –

#

- opened his eyes as sunlight hit his face. On instinct, he immediately raised a hand to block out the light.

"It's seven o'clock, Hal, get your ass out of bed~!"

It was what? What did that have to do with anything, since when did he wake up on or before seven? Since when did he even wake up, anyway?

But he found himself blearily opening heavy eyelids anyway, glaring at the sunlight. Someone was by the windows - he could see their silhouette, moving away as they'd already pulled aside the curtains.

"What?" he asked. His voice was gravelly, like it hadn't been used for a short while. Was something wrong with his voice box?

"You have exams today, idiot, did you forget? How much did you stay up last night?" The person had gone around the bed. They yanked the blankets down from his face, and Hal suddenly realized he wanted them back up because they were quite comfy. "Did you even study?"

"What do I have to study for?"

"Okay, smartass, don't rub it in for the rest of us of average intelligence," the person said, laughing, and it was the laugh that made everything click in his head.

Hal licked his chapped, dry lips. His throat felt parched, the way it usually did in the mornings. "Not my fault you're dumb, Saph."

Sapphrel Angeles pinched his cheek, making him wince in actual pain, before they made their way to his desk. There was an open bag there - his schoolbag - and beside it, several lunchboxes. They packed it into the bag.

"Just get changed, then, we're gonna be late if you stay in bed any longer," they said.

"What time is it?"

He glanced at his alarm clock. 7:07. Shit.

Wait, why did he check the clock? Didn't he have his own, couldn't he just check with his internal system clock -

What was he talking about? Internal system clock, what was he, a fucking computer?

Hal got out of bed, kicking his blankets off to grab a change of clothes from his closet.

"Hey - at least make your bed!"

"No time, sorry," he said, already closing the door as he locked himself in the bathroom.

"Why the hell can't you be more like Dave?"

He snickered, switching his pajamas out for fresh clothes. He could do without a shower for today, he was never unhygienic anyway. It would be fine just this once. He settled for just running his hands under water and fingercombing his hair back and washing his face, and then he was hopping out the bathroom trying to get his socks on.

The bed was made when he walked out, Saph waiting for him by the doorway, fondly exasperated.

The clock said 7:15.

"Shit, let's go!" he said, grabbing them to race down the stairs. Saph quickly closed the door as they were dragged. They hurriedly shoved his bag at him.

"You're never this disorganized, so I'll let it slide this once," they said. "I'll drive. Your breakfast's in your bag."

"You’re sweet today," he chuckled, ruffling their hair. They swatted his hand away and tried to smooth their curls down.

"Yeah, but you owe me now," they said.

"Sure, I'll help you with everything you can't reach 'cause they're on the highest part of the shelf."

He got an elbow to his side for that.

"Asshole," Saph said.

"And yet, I'm your favorite."

"You wish," they said, and waved a hand as they passed by their friends lounging around the common room. "See you guys later!"

"How the hell are you both late?" Dave asked, peeking a head over the couch. Bastard didn't have a class until this afternoon. Lucky.

"Your uncle slept in, believe it or not," Saph said.

"For real?” The boy sat up and turned to them properly this time. “Should I get a net if it rains money today?"

"Eat shit,” Hal said, to his nephew's snickering, before yanking Saph through the front door. Both of them ran across the Safehouse parking lot as soon as they were out the building, letting go of each other’s hands so Saph could unlock the doors. Hal got into the passenger seat and fished out the second lunchbox in the front compartment as Saph slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

"You have a presentation today, right?" he asked, taking the top of the lunchbox off. "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be. I fucking hate group projects," they said, pulling the car out of park and heading for the street.

"Heh, good luck."

He stabbed a strip of fish with his fork and took a bite out of it.

It was good.

He paused, as if realizing this was a novelty, something he’d never had before but - that would be ridiculous. He'd had food before. He’d had Saph's cooking ever since he and the others moved into the Safehouse years ago.

"Why the hell did you even ask me if you were gonna make fun of me, dick," Saph said, though they laughed. "I can't wait for summer break. I wanna go see the ocean."

He resumed eating. They were on the road now. "You're excited to get sunburn?"

"I'm a sensible human being, Hallmark, the only thing I will be doing is waterskiing,” they said. “Maybe bury Ruben in the sand if we can catch him asleep.”

"Dibs on throwing Jeremiah off a pier,” Hal said. He took out one of the thermoses from his bag and cracked it open. Oh shit, miso.

"I’m not eager to get shanked by the bastard, so you can have him," they said. "Hey - the miso's supposed to be for lunch!"

"Too late, I want it now," he said. "This other one's coffee?"

"Yeah."

"I'll have it in class."

"Yeah, well, don't ask for my miso when you want some later," they said. The light ahead went red and they had to slow the car to a stop. They sighed. "Why do our Space players have to be out of town today?"

"Look on the bright side,” he said, slurping the soup straight out of the thermos like an animal. “Maybe you'll miss your presentation and not have to deal with your shitty group."

"I need to pass, dickweed," they said, flicking his forehead.

He winced, rubbing at the sore spot. "You'll do fine.”

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

He did end up having some of the coffee on the way to the university – which they made it in time to, somehow, probably because of Saph’s ‘Guided and Protected by Fate’ clause in their whole Heir of Doom thing. That, or just dumb luck. They were due that recently, after accidentally falling into a frozen pond.

Hal had none of that dumb luck since his building was meters away from the parking lot, though, because fuck his life.

"Ahh, thank god," Saph said, winding their blue scarf around their neck. Their building was right to their left. "Good luck on your test."

"If I don't get locked out the classroom," Hal said, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

"Scale the wall," they suggested, standing on their toes to press a kiss to his cheek before dashing off. "I've gotta go though, see you after class!"

"See you," Hal said. He should start flashstepping if he was going to make it class – or use Electric Love as discreetly as he could in public. Loki’d said to keep magic usage at a minimum unless they wanted another investigation by S.H.I.E.L.D. again. Whatever. He’ll walk.

But, hey, better this than another batshit New York day. No villains, no disasters, and most of all, no world-ending catastrophes.

But then again, why would there be?

#

“I can’t find him anywhere,” Eugene Wilde said, flopping down onto the couch with a sigh.

“Maybe he ran off,” Vriska said.

“That’s not like Hal.” Leon pulled his shoes off from his aching feet before he sat on the carpeted floor, stretching his toes out. “I don’t think that guy even knows the definition of running away, he just looks at everything like a challenge.”

“Ooooooooh, even better,” Vriska said, eyes suddenly alight in interest. Leon narrowed his eyes at her but said nothing.

They’d spent the last few hours of the afternoon looking for Hal once they realized he hadn’t just retreated to his room in the house for a few hours of solitude. After they’d turned over every single hiding place they could think of in the estate, they’d all split off into groups around town, looking for their missing friend. Even if Night Vale was essentially a haven from the end of the world, it was still a weird, dangerous town – Eugene, Cecil, Kevin and Ruben had immediately freaked out once they’d realized Hal must have just been wandering around the city by himself with no guide or Night Valean to warn him about the town’s oddities.

Eugene, Vriska and Leon were back at the house, but everyone else was still out there, searching. The sun had set around two hours ago; nobody had called about anything.

Leon frowned at the clock mounted on the wall. If Sapphrel was here, the kid would be pissed…the boy wiped at his rapidly-dampening eyes. God, the kid was dead. How the hell was that real? They were fine yesterday. Hell, they were fine this morning. And then they were just…gone.

Outside, someone was yelling.

“We found him!”

Kevin. Thank fuck. Leon and Eugene immediately bolted for the door – outside, Mr. G had an unconscious Hal in his arms, surrounded by the rest of the search party. Mrs. H, at the head of the group, shooed Leon and Eugene from the doorway so Mr. G could step inside and set Hal on the couch.

“Is he alive?” Vriska asked.

“Well, his arc reactor’s still functioning,” Jeremiah said; his eyes were wide, spooked, but by what, Leon didn’t know. “But he’s not awake.”

“Maybe he passed out from exhaustion,” one of the children, Kristina, said.

“He’s a robot, he doesn’t get tired,” Leon said. Hal even made that point several times, either to brag or just to remind everyone else to let him take care of something because he wouldn’t tire of it.

“Stasis mode?” Eugene asked.

“Where did you find him?” Leon asked.

“Just over the town border,” Mr. G said, standing and brushing sand off of him. “He was just passed out in the desert for some reason.”

“Passed out…?” The only time Hal ever passed out on them was when he got Manifested all the way to an island across the world. Was that what happened? Another consciousness-astral-projection situation?

“Jesus Christ.” Ruben put a hand on his face. When that didn’t satisfy his exhaustion with the situation, he crouched down, hands on his head. “Fuck!”

“It’s not your fault, ‘Ben,” Kevin said, patting his hair.

“Everybody calm down, we have to figure out what’s going with him first. It’s either a system error or he just put himself in stasis from stress,” Leon said. That had to be it. Because Hal wouldn’t just shut his body down for no reason, that wasn’t like him.

He sat down beside the couch his friend was laid down beside. As he did so, the bracelet hanging on Hal’s wrist caught the light overhead, and Leon took the boy’s wrist so he could take a better look at the trinket. Saph had given everyone one, and this one they’d given him last December. Leon remembered.

The gem at the center was broken, like something had burst out of it.