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You Can't Break Up The Midnight Crew

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This isn't how it's supposed to be.

You're still alive, and there's something inherently wrong with that.

You're still alive, yes, but barely. Half-machine and hooked up to an even bigger machine. You could have done so much better - you could be dead. And you should be dead.

You killed her. You killed Snowman, and in turn, the universe. Everything you had ever known, had ever hated, had ever loved - gone with a single gunshot. But you're still here, and you hate that. You hate surviving the end of the universe.

Those things you once reviled and reveled in haunt you, even as you lie in bed at the mercy of an alien with far too much power over you. The alien bandages you up first, and the next thing you know, you're waking up from a dreamless sleep, and he's hovering over you. He's fixing you, he implies. Going to make you better.

You don't feel better. Not when, the next time you slip into darkness, you see them walking by you, ignoring you as though you weren't real anymore. As though you didn't exist. They're ghosts to you, but in your restless slumber you find that you're the ghost, drifting along and clinging to an indestructible lifeline you want so badly to cut.

No, you don't feel any better at all, and you let the alien know as much, that you hate him and his repairs and he just plain sucks at fixing you. You tell him the food he gives you is lame too. He doesn't seem to give a damn about what you think.

The fixing and repairs go on and on and it feels like forever to you. More than once, you have to fight off a recurring fever, and through its haze you see the Knight of Prospit you aided, so many years ago, and sometimes you wonder where he is now. Sometimes you curse him for exiling you, for giving you this damned existence. Sometimes you bless him, for refusing you the Queen's ring, for giving you the good life you had in your beloved City. Always, you wish him the best of luck, though you know he won't ever hear you.

Once, the alien comes to you dressed in green. By then you've regained use of your metal hand, and you stab him for even coming near you with that disgusting color. He continues wearing it anyway.

He got off lucky, Droog would murder him if he were here in your stead.

Droog got off lucky too, and it's not fair at all, but then when has anything ever been fair for Jack Noir?

The rest of the Crew did their parts, played out their roles like the unwitting pawns they've always been. They were rewarded with the kind of oblivion befitting someone who had run out of purpose and use in life. But you did your part too. You played out the role given to you by the prick. You killed her. And now you're being punished for performing your final duty to the universe.

You had nothing to lose at the time. You were wrong.

And this isn't how it's supposed to be. You're still alive, they're not.

And you hate them for it.

You tell yourself that whenever you remember to.