#i've got a lot of feelings abt the tragic quality of late-community abed

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

you say the whole world's ending (honey, it already did) (Trobed)

"It has to be okay for it to get on a boat with Lavar Burton and never come back."

This wasn't supposed to be a tragedy. This wasn't supposed to end like this.

He was supposed to end up with Britta. Or Annie. Anyone, really, it didn't matter, as long as he stayed. As long as the Dreamatorium still functioned.

(As long as you got to love him through movie nights and pillow fights and butter noodles and Armageddon.)

You don't know when you began to lose Him. It wasn't to the Air Conditioner Repair School. It wasn't to the Great Pillows-And-Blankets war.

It wasn't Pierce. Not truly. Pierce was never important enough to sever that tie.

He needed to be his own man. He needed to go on his own adventure.

And you?

You are floating. Drifting. You cannot find your plot. You cannot thread together the character arcs that once guided you. You are pulled and pushed and the world falls apart. He turns and hugs you and the one person who you counted on to always understand you, all of the tangled film reels making up your brain, gets on a boat with Lavar Burton and never comes back.

The color seeps from the world. The color grading fades to a grayish, sickly shade. The wide shots disappear in favor of mid-range shots centered around one location, the study table, but it's not a bottle episode in the fun way. It's not. The apocalypse has arrived, not in fire and nuclear war, but instead The Road style, all depressing grays and cold blues.

The shenanigans continue, sure. Of course they do. The show is barreling towards something- or, perhaps, it's limping. So many parts of it have been chewed away, stolen by other networks. First Pierce, a wound to the arm you could sustain and sew up with a few stitches and then move on.

But then Him. Then the other half of yourself, the part you clung to throughout so many potential apocalypses before, gets on a boat, stepping into freedom and his own spin-off, and you are handcuffed to a filing cabinet for the crime of being strange. Of your senses being too sensitive. Of you being finally understood and- not loved, not appreciated, but shown kindness.

It's wrong for others to show you kindness. It's wrong for others to accommodate you.

You are not made to be accommodated. You are made to mocked and shoved and forced into the cookie-cutter hole that society has forced upon you.

You stop getting up to adventures. You stop searching out whimsy. Your delight got on a boat and abandoned you.

You retreat behind your camera. You enter your corner and you never leave. You lock away the corner of your mind that contains the Dreamatorium.

You are still handcuffed to the wall of that locker, aren't you? He found you at Inspecticon, but he lost you in the lava. A clone emerged, a perfected copy, who is bound by metal and lava and zombie bites and the knowledge that you were a whole person before Him but a jagged wound after Him.

You stop reaching out. You leave him at an unanswered "I love you." You cannot bear to seek and not find, to be rebuffed in person once again by the one person you once gave your bleeding heart to.

He doesn't come back. He is never coming back.

Pierce is gone. Shirley is gone. He is gone. Frankie and Elroy are here, and they're nice, but it's not the same.

You wish the lava had cauterized the wound in your heart. You wish that the world had allowed you to move on without a constant pain tearing itself into your chest.

There is only one answer you can give yourself now. There is only one way your story can end.

You leave the study room for the final time and you look back and the table has so many empty seats. So many holes that need to be filled.

You close your eyes, tears burning the backs but refusing to fall, and you lay his name behind you. You will not take it with you. You cannot bear to take it with you. You cannot carry this weight alone. You must leave this hurt behind, even if it means abandoning your heart in Greendale just like He once abandoned you.

The door falls shut. The curtain falls. The credits play.

The show is over. The tragedy has run its course, you at the center, you the fool, you the crushed body, you the director who packs everything up and ends the story.

No one is interested in seeing your heart anymore, if they ever were in the first place.

***

(Years later, a man will step foot off of a boat. He is late. Far too late. He should have returned ages ago. He has a beard and a few new scars and he is wiser and more worn but his eyes shine like they always did.

He stops in Greendale and is told that you left years ago. That he has missed his chance. That he is better off returning to Air Conditioner Repair and not wondering where you went.

You have drifted. You have left. You have turned your back on a world that turned its back on you.

But He is far more stubborn than you give him credit for. He turned the world over for himself, but also for you. For the spin-off you always begged for.

He picks up your heart from beneath the study table, cradles it close, and resolves to return it to you. He will bring you the keys to the handcuffs. He will bring you understanding. He will bring you butter noodles and a smile that never wavers. Not for you.

It will take time to reestablish trust, to unravel trauma and an ache as deep and old as the life you have survived, but he will do it. He would follow you anywhere, you know? He was delayed, detoured, but you were always the end goal.

He will eventually return his hands to repair. He likes helping people, and likes fidgeting with his hands, so why not?

But right now, he turns on his heel and heads straight for the airport. He has a plane to L.A. to catch.)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/48569731