#it’s earlyish in their history so the narrator can be capricious as all hell

[queenburd]

I played Zending last night and got to hear lines I’ve literally never, never heard before. It actually hurt.

Anyway here’s Zending fic. Im like. Neutral about it. It feels all over the place. Whatever.

—

He’s trembling.

Stanley sits at his desk, staring at the blinking green marker on his computer screen. He barely sees it.

(“I just wanted us to get along.”)

He stands abruptly. He steps out of his office.

“Where were all of his coworkers? Stanley decided to go to the meeting room—perhaps he had simply missed a memo.”

The voice is steady as ever. It does not waver. It does not whimper. It does not snarl.

Stanley will not be sick. Stanley will not crumple like wet cardboard.

He walks down the hall.

Takes the door on the left.

Goes to the boss’s office.

Turns off the mind control facility.

Steps outside.

Walks down the hall.

Takes the door on the left.

Goes to the boss’s office.

Turns off the mind control facility.

Steps outside.

Walks down the hall.

Takes the—

Both the doors close.

“Stanley, much as I appreciate you playing my game to its proper completion, I can’t help feeling like you’re not absorbing this the way you ought to.”

But—but Stanley is trying to, to play this properly. He’s trying to do what the fellow tells him to.

(“I just wanted us to get along.”)

“Your heart’s not in it, I can tell you that much. No, the story isn’t leaving the impression on you that it’s supposed to. You’re not getting anything out of it, which renders it moot.”

Stanley’s hands are balled up into fists. He grits his teeth tight to the danger of hurting himself. None of this should matter. None of it ever matters, he knows that. It always ends with him in his office, staring down a hall, a voice waiting for him.

“Well if it’s so meaningless, then why are you so adamant to play it?” The voice is offended, it’s clear by how it enunciates its words.

Stanley tries to breathe properly, a boiling anger making itself known.

(“I just wanted us to get along.”)

“And that! What is that, that you keep almost remembering? What in Heaven’s name has you so worked up?”

So it hadn’t bothered him, then? His voice breaking as he begged, pleaded—

Stanley grabs his temples. Squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to think about this. This is his enemy. It was a ploy, nothing more. He’s fallen for it, sure, but that doesn’t mean he needs to remember the vivid details of his shame.

“I don’t understand. What ploy, Stanley?”

Why was he pretending he didn’t know?! Does he enjoy mocking Stanley for being so gullible and weak? That Stanley would fall for such a cheap trick, some waterworks? Yes, fine! He may not like the fellow, but he’s not cruel and heartless! He—

“Stanley!” The voice interrupts, sounding honestly alarmed. “I’m not mocking you, I legitimately don’t understand. I—you’re starting to concern me, really!”

Stanley clutches his head and tries to control his breathing. The voice carries on, clearly anxious.

“I really don’t know what’s gotten into you. I know we went through the red door, saw the stars—did that ending really upset you so much? Because I—well,” it continues, sounding a bit put out, a bit disappointed. “I thought it was lovely. You didn’t like it?”

What part of throwing himself to his death repeatedly was Stanley supposed to like?

A long silence. Then:

“… what are you talking about? What does that mean?”

Wh—

He doesn’t remember?

“Stanley, what don’t I remember? What am I supposed to be remembering?”

He doesn’t remember.

A weight falls off Stanley’s shoulders.

“Stanley? Stanley, tell me what I’m supposed to remember!”

He inhales shakily to let out a sigh of relief. Okay. This changes things. He hasn’t ruined everything beyond repair.

“Stanley, don’t avoid the question!”

No, he doesn’t want to. He wants to play the game. He wants to move on.

“I cannot believe this! You’re behaving like a child! Just tell me what you’re hiding!”

No.

The narrator seethes. Stanley’s face is beautifully blank.

It’s for the best, honestly, that the narrator cannot remember. It’s a miserable thing, to remember. So Stanley doesn’t want to think about it, and that’s much easier to do when the other party can’t hold it over him.

“Fine. Fine. But you listen to me,” the voice hisses venomously. “I will find out what you’re keeping from me, if I have to rip it from your very skull. You try to keep your little secrets, Stanley. You’ll see. You can’t hide anything from me.”

The doors swing open with a bang. Stanley takes the door on the left.

He behaves all the way to the on/off switch, and then slams the ON button.

Alright, look, the fellow can work out some frustration. Stanley will press buttons in the meantime. They can both work off some steam and do something new. Win-win.

(“I just wanted—“)

There’s a low, dangerous chuckle.

“You don’t have the power you think you do. You never did, and you never will.”

There is no timer. The bomb goes off.

Stanley feels like he is flung into his office chair, and then he feels something—someone—pry its large, sharp claws into the fragile mass of his mind, and tear it open down the middle to rifle through the contents.

—

“If we just stay here, right in this moment, in this place… Stanley, I— I think I feel…. Happy. I actually feel happy!”

Stanley looks up at the stars. He watches the lights drift up.

It…

Fuck, but he has to hand it to the fellow. It is beautiful. Really, honestly beautiful.

But he can’t help how his eye keeps getting drawn to the staircase down to a door. Can’t help being curious.

“No… wait. Where are you going?” The voice is shaken from its reverie when he steps out of the room, like it was so entranced it almost hadn’t realized he’d slipped away.

He just wants to see what’s around the corner. They can go back, he just—

“Oh, no!”

Stairs. Stairs that go nowhere. Stairs that go up and up and up, with no other way but down.

Stanley feels his stomach drop. He steps back, through the doorway into the hall, and then turns on his heel and bolts to the room with the lights.

“Right,” the narrator says, clearly trying to recover, still frazzled. “Where were we?”

Lights. Lights. Stanley is staying here.

“Right. If we just stay here… we just have to stop moving.”

No moving. Okay. Okay.

The voice goes quiet. Stanley stays and looks up at the lights for a long time. His heart rate slows, his breaths deepen.

Okay. He’s feeling a lot more put together. And he can see that the narrator does want to show him something beautiful. He’s willing to try to compromise. He’s willing to play along, to meet in the middle.

The voice says nothing.

Very slowly, Stanley feels himself growing cold.

“We would both be so much happier if we just stopped.”

Oh. Stanley thinks he understands. It frightens him.

There is no story here. There is no progression. There is just this room. There is only the trap of happiness here, like the lotus eaters of the Odyssey. The cursed sweet fruit that keeps you from moving, from progressing.

That’s not a life. That’s not living. It’s only escapism. And all this means is that Stanley will never be happy here.

And, and the voice, quiet, lured in, eating the lotuses forever, will not reset, no matter how Stanley pleads. It thinks it knows what’s best.

Oh, god. He has to—

He has to—

Stanley inhales a shuddering breath and gets to his feet. Move. Move. Don’t think about it. Just move without thinking.

He makes it to the bottom of the stairs before the voice finally seems to come to its senses.

“No! What did we talk about?! You’re risking everything we achieved here!”

Stanley takes another breath to brace himself.

“Please, no, Stanley! Let me stay here! Don’t take this away from me!”

It pleads. It begs. When he doesn’t die from the first fall, it takes shuddering breaths and tries again to coax him to see reason.

God, he wants to. His steps are slow—pain creeps up his body.

But Stanley can’t. He knows he can’t. He knows that he’s not just fighting for himself.

He has to do this for both of them.

“I can’t go back to the way I was before!”

God, he’s sorry. But this isn’t living. He feels like he’s trying to hold an addict back from a drug, and it’s cruel, but it has to happen, it has to.

Stanley… is not this thing’s friend. He’s not. It tells him again and again that he has no power. He’s just a plaything for it. A toy. It keeps him in this unending prison and tries to break him when he does anything it deems a distraction.

But he likes to think he’s a good person. He doesn’t act out of malice. Mischievousness, maybe. It’s a little fun to see the fellow fuss, since he’s so dramatic. But cruelty? Stanley doesn’t act out of cruelty. It never grants him the same regard, it’s plenty cruel to him, but he doesn’t take any sick pleasure from trying to return the favor.

But this is cruel.

The voice cracks. With each fall, it loses hope. It gives up on him.

“I just wanted us to get along. But I guess that was too much to ask.”

Stanley wishes he felt angry. He wishes he could feel a spark of resentment at that statement, when the narrator has done so much to him that would dissuade any sensible person from considering that getting along was still an option.

He wishes it all the way down.

But all he feels is shame.

—

“I—“

The presence reels back, away and out of Stanley’s memories, out of repulsion or horror he cannot tell.

Stanley wants to scream. He covers his head and neck with his arms and braces for retribution, for the rage he expected when he first woke up after those stairs faded from his vision.

He had expected anger. Cruelty. Vengeance. He had tried to play along, to ease his punishment if he could. To maybe show his remorse.

(“I just wanted—“)

Fuck, fuck. It’s going to hurt him.

“I…”

He hadn’t done it to be cruel, he hadn’t done it to be powerful, he’s sorry, he knows he let him down, and he wishes the fellow could have just been happier not remembering. He could have kept this burden to himself.

“Why don’t I remember?”

It’s not directed at him. The voice is asking itself. It seems lost.

“I…”

There’s the rustling of papers.

“We. We go into the room,” the narrator starts haltingly. “We come to an understanding. And then I reset. I—that’s what it says. It says that I—but I didn’t—“

Stanley is shaking.

“But I… I couldn’t….”

Please. He’s sorry. He knows it’s going to hurt him, but please, don’t hurt him too badly.

“Oh, Stanley.”

It seems only now to notice him, his terror. His withdrawal. He doesn’t think it’s ever seen him so afraid, not even in the ending with the bomb. And of course it hasn’t. Because that’s just death. Death is scary, but quick.

Pain can last. When done by experts, it can last a long, long time.

(“I just wanted us to get along.”)

“Stanley?” The voice is small. It’s said the same way it was said when it asked him to please, please go back to the other room. “I’m… it’s. It’s okay. You’re okay. It—it’s going to be fine.” It strengthens a bit. Clears its throat. “It’s just an ending. It’s over, alright? We’re none the worse for wear.”

He gets the sense that, if it could, the voice would be placing a hand so gently on the spread of his back, between his stretched shoulder blades, in an attempt to get him to relax. Try to bleed the tension out of him.

“The lotus-eater comparison was… quite clever,” the narrator offers, a small olive branch. “I’m not angry with you, Stanley. After all, I did just see it all through your eyes. I know you weren’t being intentionally cruel.”

It doesn’t make things better.

“Well, no, but intent does matter.” The narrator sighs. “Gosh, you really weren’t kidding about that being miserable. Ignorance really is bliss, sometimes, isn’t it?”

Stanley chokes on a wet laugh. Understatement of the century.

God. It’s so unfair that the most beautiful place in the game so far is so dangerous.

“You liked it that much?” The narrator’s voice is hopeful and perhaps a bit shy.

Yeah. He had.

The fellow preens a bit, humming happily. “Well, I’m sure I can come up with something just as good. And—maybe—maybe I’ll remember now. Maybe we can go back.”

Stanley shivers.

“Oh, no no no, not now. Certainly not. Mustn’t be too careful. Poor fellow. What I mean is—if you need a break. Since—well, since we dealt with this far from that room, I’ll be able to keep this experience in mind. Maybe then I won’t make the same mistakes.”

Stanley doesn’t know. He’s not up for risking it right now. And the fellow doesn’t listen to him much, so he doubts that his prodding would have much effect, not if the narrator is so deeply entranced again.

The voice heaves a sigh again. “Well. It is your choice, in the end. Lord knows I can’t force you.”

The quiet drifts back in. After a long pause, where Stanley wonders if it’s retreated back into the hall, the voice speaks up again.

“Stanley,” it says, very very gently, as though trying not to spook him, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

His reaction startles both of them—he bursts into tears.

It’s just a release of the tension, he thinks distantly, while his body heaves and shakes. He was so unimaginably scared and ashamed, that the final acknowledgement means all that emotion needs an outlet.

Stanley cries. The narrator stumbles over his words.

“Oh, oh damn it all, I’ve made it worse, haven’t I? Stanley, I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m not good at this!”

No, no. It’s okay. He just needs to get it out. This is a thing he needs to do for himself.

“I. Okay.” The fellow clearly doesn’t understand, but he’s trying valiantly to give Stanley what he needs. “I’ll just, wait outside until you’re ready to continue the story.”

Fine. That’s fine.

Stanley lets it all shake out of him. It exhausts him, hollows him out. He comes out the other side feeling cleaner, if a little raw—like fresh skin under the dry peeling sunburn.

“There you go,” the narrator greets when he finally exits the office. “Ready to continue?”

The fellow sounds nervous, though it’s evident he’s working to hide it. Stanley scrubs at his face one more time, then gives a thumbs up.

“Alright.” He clears his throat. “Where were all of his coworkers? Stanley decided to go to the meeting room—perhaps he had simply missed a memo.”

Stanley takes a deep breath.

And then he hops out the window.

“Wh—“

There’s a palpable befuddlement to the voice, but it persists, working to stay on script. Stanley can’t help the sigh of relief.

He needed to be sure. He needed to know he wouldn’t be hurt for disobeying again.

The narrator huffs, strums his guitar, and insults him sternly, but the protagonist gets the sense that he’s just as aware of Stanley’s fears, and just as eager to provide him the proof that, yes, he is going to be okay.

(“I just wanted us to get along.”)

They are going to be okay.