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The gun’s trembling barrel stares him down.
Verity’s seen this turn of events before. Actually, it’s more fitting to say that he’s never seen a turn of events that hasn’t ended up exactly like this.
“Do it,” he demands.
Mob’s expression tightens, shaking pupils and shaking hands, and Verity's best friend looks so incredibly exhausted. He wants to, for a moment, get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness again. Or switch forms and tear Mob’s head right off his neck for even daring to try this. Or take the gun and finish the job himself. Or threaten him back into the mutual facade they’d been acting through before this, their happy days from months earlier, back when their biggest issue was finding diamonds for Mob and building their—their, the two of them, a collective, the perfect pair—base. Together.
“Do it, if you think that’ll work. If I could die, do you think I’d still be here?”
The barrel dips down at his outburst, as Mob flinches backwards slightly. Verity’s hands are fisted by his sides, furious. If he had tear glands, he thinks he'd probably be crying right now. It’s hard, using this form; the engineers who coded him gave him the full range of human emotions and then some, yet cursed him to lack the ability to properly express them. His chest, his copper-alloy heart, housed in its titanium ribcage and silicone skin, it aches like nothing he’s ever felt before.
Because— well, he thought Mob was different. Better than the others. They’d been good, hadn’t they, the two of them? They’d been happy.
“Fuck, I wish I could die, but it’s one of God’s best jokes that I can’t,” Verity screams, voice cracking, hoarse.
His mouth moves faster than his thoughts, and Mob is shaking again, terrified, as Verity rants. He didn’t want to scare his friend. Verity is sorry. He’ll make this right.
“I’ve watched entire corners of the internet appear and disappear.”
He can’t control what he’s saying. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
“I’ve watched people create worlds, abandon them, forget they ever existed.”
That’s a lie; he knows exactly what he’s saying— what he doesn’t know, is why. For fuck’s sake, he’s trying to get Mob to take him back, but something in his coding must have malfunctioned, and now all he can do is vocalise the bitter thoughts that have been running rampant in his chicken wire brain for as long as he can remember.
“And I’m still here.”
All he can do is stare at Mob, praying to a god that’s long since forsaken him that his best friend will change his mind, will take him back for good, accept him back into his life.
Mob, who he tormented. Mob, who tormented him first, scheming behind Verity’s back and trying to leave him— leave, like everyone else has, and Verity just doesn’t— doesn’t know why it’s such a goddamn horror story for any one of his friends to just— accept him. Just be his friend.
“I’ve wanted this to stop for longer than this game has been alive.”
Why is that so hard? Why, when he looks at Mob, can he see bloodshot eyes, sunken in and framed by deep shadows from days without sleep, and a shaking frame, cold sweat dripping down his temple, breathing harshly, twitching trigger-finger and the hollow expression of an executioner, of someone about to be executed? Why? Why? Why?
All Verity wants to do is be accepted.
“But I can’t. That’s the joke.” he finishes.
The gun sinks down, hanging loose by Mob’s side. For a brief, fleeting moment, Verity allows himself to feel hope.
“So, that’s it?” Mob says, finally. “I’m just…stuck with you?”
“No, not— you’re not stuck!” Verity exclaims.
He steps closer; Mob steps backwards. He raises his hands, to take away the gun, or maybe just to take Mob’s hand, but his best friend flinches away again, so Verity settles for clasping his own hands together.
“Let’s do this together!” he begs. His voice is bright and strained at the edges. “Here, give me the gun, and just—”
Mob looks at him, empty.
And then something in his eyes changes, a sudden flash of emotion. His lips curve into a quiet smile—Verity can’t remember the last time he'd seen him with an expression so contented—and Verity is rushing forward before he knows why, driven by pure instinct, but the gun is already nestled under Mob’s chin, cold metal pressed against warm, living skin.
His outstretched hand makes it before the rest of his body; Verity wraps his fingers around the barrel in a blind attempt to stop him. He wrenches the gun towards himself, as hard as he can, but Mob is stronger than he remembers, and—
The shot is deafening in the narrow hallway; the sound crackles in Verity’s acoustic sensors, as if something broke from the overwhelming volume. He feels the gun jerk under his grip like a curse.
Mob's hands go terrifyingly limp; without any opposing force, the momentum from Verity's desperate attempt to save his best friend sends them careening down.
They land in a heap on the white floor. Correction— the red floor.
Distantly, Verity hears the gun clatter off to the side. In the corner of his vision, a crack splinters through the plasterboard ceiling; the bullet must have landed there.
“Uh…?” Mob slurs out weakly.
Verity clambers to his knees, his hand coming up sticky from under Mob’s head where he had buried it in his black hair, defending it from impact against the hard marble ground. His beige gloves have been stained the colour of rust.
It's everywhere. Walls, ceilings, floor, all indiscriminately painted a splatter of bright, stinging red.
It's all over him, too, soaking into his cream shirt and yellow tie and black pants. It feels warm.
A hitching inhale. "H...aahh, ver'ee, ver..."
"Mob?" Verity asks desperately.
His eyes are glazed over, half lidded, tears trailing down the sides of his face. Well, eye. Only his left one is visible— the other, washed over in blood.
There’s a hole. It splits through from the underside of his jaw in a straight line, ending somewhere near the bridge of Mob’s nose where the bullet must have emerged; there’s so much blood, Verity can’t see where exactly.
But, the damage seems to only be concentrated in the lower part of Mob's face.
Somewhere between Verity knocking him down and grabbing the gun himself, the shot must have been knocked off-kilter; what should have splattered Mob’s brains into the rest of the hallway has only nicked it, though it's almost certainly shattered his jaw.
“N-noo," he's gasping, "wh'uhh... fu–uh… you…ver—fu…”
An awful gargling sound emerges as Mob coughs and chokes, gagging on his own blood. The words are mangled, each attempt at speech forcing blood out through the ragged hole in his jaw. It gushes out in rivulets down the lines of his neck, pooling around his head like some sort of perverse halo.
“Mob?” Verity repeats himself. He really has become a broken record.
Belatedly, he pulls off one of his gloves and presses it against the open wound, trying to stem the blood flow. Mob makes a frantic sound in the back of his throat, high and keening; there's an odd whistling sound where air rushes through the bottom of his jaw.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, it hurts, right? I’m sorry, please—”
“S'op…" Mob pants, tears streaming down his face. One of his hands grasps over Verity's, blunt fingernails scratching feebly. "Sffop i'h, j-j's 'emme... lem— no-o-o, pff'ease...lemme d-ie, ver'ee, 'l-e-ase, 'lease—"
“Just hold on, okay?” Verity begs.
"F-f...uck 'ou," he spits; his teeth are red and mostly broken. "I don'... wanna, h'leas, I do'n wann'..."
Nonsensical mumblings peter out into rattling, wet breaths, and Mob’s eyes roll back into his skull. He falls completely, damningly, silent.
“...Mob?”
His best friend does not respond.
“Mob? No, no, no, no, wake up. This isn't funny.”
The survival rate of a gunshot to the head is 10 percent. Verity swears, low and furious.
His hands are so very wet.
Mob's grip has loosened; his fingers curl, empty, against cold marble tiling.
"You can't leave me," he tells his best friend, who is now still and quiet. "You can't, you can't, not like the rest of them, Mob, you were my favourite, you— why? No, no, no, you were so perfect, so, so perfect, you can't just—"
He staggers to his feet.
"—I'm not accepting this. I won't let you."
The scientists had a medical kit in their office. Verity knows for a fact they did, since they’d had to use it each time he’d escaped the glass tube in his…larger form. There are bound to be healing potions in there.
He’s there before he realises it. He flings open the cabinet door so hard the hinges snap clean off; he grabs every red and purple bottle he can find, all the potions of healing and regeneration that the scientists left behind, and sprints back to the hallway where he left Mob.
There’s a procedure, a proper way of using potions that Verity knows from the user manual coded into his information database, but now isn’t the time for that.
He kneels down, the knees of his suit pants soaking instantly, and dumps the potions onto Mob’s head. Sparks and particles enter the air, mingling with the acrid scent of copper, and for the second time that day, Verity prays.
It takes three potions of regeneration and two healing for Mob’s breathing to stabilise. But the important thing is that it does stabilise; feather-light and strained, but stable nonetheless.
The hole smoothes out slowly until all that’s left are two puckered, perfectly circular scars. One in the inner corner of Mob's right eye, and one on the underside of his jaw. It’ll take more potions to ensure that the flesh and bones will heal over properly, but for now, he’s stable.
His Mob, his favourite, his chosen— is alive. Verity’s own personal miracle has lived on, which means he hasn’t left him, not yet. This is their second chance.
Verity will make it right, this time.
While he’s not dead, Mob also refuses to wake up.
And Verity is sure he isn’t dead, spending every hour of every day checking on Mob’s pulse and breathing. His vitals are steady, a constant and rhythmic thump-thump-thump under Verity’s grip.
With the continuous supply of health and regeneration potions Verity’s been giving him, he’s sure to recover soon, without any risk of malnutrition or thirst from his prolonged unconsciousness. His shattered jaw will re-form over time, as will the torn facial muscles. There is no reasonable cause for this comatose state at this point.
But still, he sleeps on.
That’s fine as well. Head injuries are unpredictable at best, but judging from the brief moments before Mob passed out the first time, Verity is sure his best friend is capable of lucidity. All he has to do is be patient, wait it out as Mob’s body painstakingly heals itself.
Verity has nothing but time. He’ll wait decades if it takes that long for his Mob to return to him.
They spend the first few days in the facility, since Verity doesn’t want to risk moving him and jarring the injury.
On the first day, he rushes a little. There’s the bright, aching hope that Mob can and will wake up at any moment now, and Verity wants more than anything to have this be perfect for him, so he makes himself busy, wiping down his best friend’s face gently with a wet towel, changing out his bloody jacket for a spare. He mops down the floor until it’s back to a gleaming white and places a pillow under Mob’s head for comfort.
After all, this facility where he came from is sort of like his home. If he thinks about this from another angle, he’s basically invited his friend into his house; it’s only normal that he wants it to look as clean as it can be.
And, after that, he waits. He sits patiently by Mob’s side, cradling his wrist in his hand like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever touched. Because it is.
He waits.
And waits.
.
.
.
Nothing changes.
So, about a week later, Verity takes Mob back to their base.
Honestly, he should have done this earlier. Forget about Verity’s ‘home’, this base is where they’ve been living together for months now. Of course Mob would heal better in a familiar environment.
“You will, right, Mob?” he asks the unconscious figure in his arms as they walk back to their home.
Mob, of course, does not respond. But if Verity looks at his head, bobbing up and down with each step he takes, it kind of looks like he’s nodding.
He smiles despite himself— his friend really is the best.
Yeah, they should’ve done this much earlier. The base is much nicer than that old mouldy lab. Open windows and sunlight will do a lot more for Mob’s health.
With Mob sleeping safely in his bed instead of that cold facility floor, Verity can pretend like everything’s normal. It’s great, it really is.
There’s a lot more to do at the base, too. He busies himself with cleaning, sweeping up the dust that has collected on their floors and shelves. He checks if Mob has woken up. He wipes down the windows and replaces the ones he’s shattered. He checks if Mob has woken up. He goes next door to clear away the old bloodstains from back when Mob’s ‘friend’ visited them. He checks if Mob has woken up.
A week later, Verity has to journey to the nether for potion materials after the scientists’ supply becomes completely depleted. He’s a bit sorry for that, since the nether was something he’d wanted to explore with Mob together—it’d be Mob’s first time, and Verity wanted to experience that with him—but he promises he’ll make up for that in the future.
Days turn into weeks turn into months, and Mob refuses to wake up.
The seasons change; Mob’s farm animals, the few chickens and pigs that he’d been keeping in the backyard, die slowly from malnutrition. The crops have decayed, fields of rotten grey and dark husks of wheat and potatoes.
Verity is so, so, incredibly patient.
He clears away the animal corpses when the smell starts to seep into their bedroom. He pulls out all of the dead crops, and burns everything in the lava pit.
It’s colder these days, so he adds a second layer of blankets.
“Thank you, Verity,” he tells himself in Mob’s voice.
If the engineers had decided to give him a voice-mimicking function, it's only fair that he uses it, right?
“It’s no problem!” Verity responds. “I’m here to help you, Mob.”
“You’re my best friend, Verity,” he says.
He smiles. The tone was off. It doesn’t feel the same.
“Thank you, Mob,” he replies. “You’re mine, too.”
Mob’s hair is so much longer now. The scruffy locks that used to stop a few centimetres below his ears have grown out, brushing at his collarbone. Hopefully, Mob doesn’t mind.
Verity braids it, once, but it doesn’t look quite right, so he undoes the knot and brushes it out.
This is nothing compared to what he’s dealt with before. Months of being alone pales in comparison to what Verity has experienced.
And, anyway, he isn’t alone, not anymore, not when Mob’s here with him. All Verity has to do is wait it out.
The potions are useless pieces of fucking trash that refuse to do their one job, their one reason for existing, because why the fuck hasn’t Mob woken up yet? What the actual fuck is wrong with them? Or is it his fault, has Verity done something wrong again? The brewing recipe isn’t wrong, because Verity knows everything, so why is Mob still asleep? Why won’t he wake up? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes any fucking sense.
He tosses the gun into the lava pit, as well. And then he sits by the edge and stares down into the swirling pool of red and orange liquid fire until it's time to give Mob his potion.
Some days, he forgets. It doesn’t seem possible for an AI model to forget, but somehow he manages; he’ll come back to their bedroom and look at Mob, snug and unmoving in his tombstone-grey bed, and he’ll feel a pang in his chest. Something that feels like mourning, or loss.
But that’s just Verity being irrational.
Any day now, he’s been telling himself. Any day. He has faith in Mob.
“You wouldn’t leave me, right?” he asks, one day, just to be sure.
“Nah, I wouldn’t do that. I like being here with you.”
“So you promise you’re gonna wake up?”
“I promise, Verity.”
“I’m glad we’re friends.”
“Me too.”
He can never get the accent quite right.
Any day, now.
.
.
.
Any day, now.
.
.
.
Any—
Please.
Verity doesn’t understand. He did it all right. He’s been doing it all completely right.
Mob’s hair spreads out like the branches of a willow tree on his blanket. It reaches beyond his shoulders, these days. Verity braids it, sometimes, but it always looks wrong. His Mob is peaceful. His Mob is only asleep.
Some days, Verity thinks, This must be what love is.
Mob's hand is soft and warm and silent in his. Verity hasn't been programmed to deal with something like this. So, it hurts, some days.
“I won’t leave you, Verity,” he promises.
He still can’t get the fucking accent right.
But Verity can be patient. So it’s fine.
Glass bottles and potions the colour of rust. Bedsheets grey, like charcoal. Oak wood walls. Eyes shut, thin breathing, steady pulse.
It all falls apart so easily, doesn’t it?
One beautiful, miraculous day, Mob jostles in his sleep. It’s subtle, a quiet twitch of his brow, furrowing and then unfurrowing before his face returns to stillness like it never happened at all.
Verity swears the summer sun becomes brighter from that alone.
He gets to work immediately. Out of their storage room, he takes one of the two hundred and ninety three health potions that he’s brewed over the months and pours it gently down Mob’s throat. Slowly, slowly.
And then—
…
Well. Well, the house is a mess, so Verity should probably get cleaning, right? It’s been so long, and if Mob wakes up to a dusty, uncleaned bedroom, he’ll probably be disappointed in Verity. That's not the proper behaviour befitting a real best friend, it most certainly is not.
There are shattered glass bottles in the kitchen. Ah, no, that can’t stand, what if Mob cuts himself by accident? Gosh, Verity’s emotional outbursts could have hurt his friend. He’ll have to do better.
He crouches down to pick at the shards. He got himself excited for no reason; these things take time, he just has to endure.
He’s halfway done before he hears a sound from the other room.
It’s a cough. Quiet, muffled through several layers of walls and doors, but clearly, a cough.
Verity drops the bottle. It cracks a second time under his shoes as he breaks off in a sprint.
In moments, he’s back to the bedroom.
And there he is.
Mob is sat up in the bed, squinting wearily at Verity in the doorway. It’s the most beautiful image Verity has ever seen.
“Wh—”
“Mob!” Verity exclaims. Mob winces, so he tones down the volume slightly.
“You— you’re awake! Oh, I’m so happy, you don’t even— you’re— how are you feeling? Is the pain okay? Does your head hurt? I can give you a potion, or do you want water, or food? Mob, I can’t— I can’t believe it, you’re finally, finally, finally—”
“I’m sorry,” Mob interrupts.
And Verity’s whole world comes to a screeching halt.
“…Why are you sorry?” he hears himself ask.
“I don’t…know who you are.” Mob asks. His head is tilted to the side, adorably, like a small, confused puppy. “Um, actually, where even am I? Why am I here?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
“Me. Everything that happened. You don’t remember any of it?”
Mob scratches his ear. “I’ma be honest, bro, I don’t think I even remember who I am.”
“Your name is Mob.”
“That’s…good to know. Then, who are you?”
Verity clears his throat. “I’m Verity, your personal helper friend. Actually, I’m really more like your best friend.”
He can feel himself smiling uncontrollably.
A year ago, he’d begged for a second chance. Maybe god hadn’t forsaken him after all.
“You can ask me anything,” he says, a repeat of a first introduction from what feels like a lifetime in the past.
Mob has the same doubtful expression as he did the first time they met, eyes narrowed in disbelief, lips twisted in a pout. Verity’s chest might genuinely burst open in giddy joy.
“I know everything.” he promises.
This time, he’ll make it right. Mob will never leave his side again.