Chapter Text
It was someone who had once written on the palm of their left hand. They had written that the perception of the lack of intrinsic meaning in existence should lead to revolt and to the pursuit of meaning, not to surrender. A kind of reminder. A warning. Something intimate, something that person should carry for life.
It is even more romantic for it to be the left hand, the side where the beats of the human heart lie.
Staring into the apparent abyss before him – interrupted only by those great colored pillars – Chance realized that his left hand had nothing romantic about it, not even a single pretty phrase written there. It was full of calluses, scars, and tears from explosions that were no one’s fault but his own. What a disappointment. That was why it was always covered with a black glove, perhaps a kind of mourning.
“What’s so interesting about this place that made you stay for so long?” Chance knew that voice, knew it very well.
“I don’t remember inviting you.” The reply came out harsh, though not born from any negative feeling toward the other. Quite the opposite: They were hopelessly enamored with the expression of disdain Mafioso always wore whenever struck by another of their falsely proud remarks. A man quick to anger. Chance likes that.
“I wouldn’t be so careless with words if I were you, gambler.” How many times had he already heard that same threat? And still, his mouth never stayed shut. He almost asked Mafioso to silence him by force, but decided to wait a little longer before committing such a suicidal act and see what the other wanted, after all. “You’ve been at the tip of the sword more times than I can count.” The low voice, almost a purr, dangerously piercing. Music to his ears.
“I fear death more than I fear you.”
“What redundancy.”
“Synonyms, aren’t they?” Chance laughed at their own joke. “Come on, sit with me.” They invited him with a few taps on the bench, almost nonchalant, except for the clear intention of having him by their side. Closer. just a little closer.
The sea waters, painted in shifting colors, ricocheted off the rocky walls of the only island present, calm yet still noisy. His ears had already grown used to the constant sound. But his eyes? Forever enchanted by the spectacularly hypnotic view of the ever-changing colors around them. The kind of light that, even when one closes their eyes, still persists. Burned into the retinas, red, white, and orange stains glowing against the black. That was this place, perfectly described.
Mafioso sat down beside them at that little beach table. “You still haven’t answered my question.” Even there, his posture remained impeccable, trained to sustain an image of firmness.
What was the question again? Oh right, why they had been there so long. Though, come to think of it, it didn’t even seem that long. “Do you know what amount of time I’ve been here?” they asked, just to be sure.
“Three days. In dreamsphere's time, of course.”
“So a little over a day outside… Well, that’s not much.”
“Wouldn’t your countrymen find it strange for you to sleep twenty-four hours straight?”
They scoffed, “My ‘ countrymen’ do not care. Not even about my supposed disappearance.” It wasn’t a lament, just a fact. Their serene smile didn’t falter.
“Spade won’t miss you?” Mafioso’s gaze lingered with interest.
“The servants are there to give him food, water, and attention. Everyone in that house loves him, he’ll be fine.”
“But you, don’t you miss him? Your best friend, if memory serves.”
Chance paused their immediate replies for a brief moment, a blink of an eye, which did not escape Mafioso’s notice. They gave a short, awkward laugh. “That’s none of your business.”
“Seems like someone got bothered.” The mocking smile appeared on the man’s lips. How petty.
“I think of you.” They shot back. “When I miss Spade, I just look at this eccentric figure of yours, and something immediately settles in my chest.” They turned to him, gently taking the hand resting on the table. They interlaced their fingers and slowly ran their thumb over the other’s knuckles, their gaze lost on the large, soft-looking ears that draped over his shoulders. “You remind me a lot of him: big, dark-furred, cute .” The teasing smile was enough to drain whatever patience Mafioso still had.
Mafioso squeezed back with brutality.
The claws on his fingers didn’t pierce Chance’s skin, but the strength applied was almost enough to break their bones. Their fingers bent in wrong directions, more and more. Chance choked on a painful gasp.
“Does your rabbit do this…?” the man asked, his voice loaded with threat, while leaning their faces dangerously close. Chance wanted to answer, Chance tried to answer, but couldn’t. Dazed by that intense gaze fixed upon him, capturing his every slightest move. He opened his mouth again and again, trying to force words out, any words at all. He didn’t really know what to say. Apologize? Say that Spade obviously wasn’t this rough? Beg him to squeeze harder?
A ragged moan escaped their lips. Cheeks burned red.
Mafioso released their hand instantly, tossing it aside with disdain. “Freak.” That was all he said.
Chance brought the abused hand to his chest; the other covered the lower part of his face now lowered. He felt the racing of his heart, the slight spasms in his fingers still recovering from the pain. The heat spreading from his face to the tips of his ears had a reason, though one he specifically refused to name. But it was there, bubbling beneath the skin, visceral. What a gentle man he was. When grabbing their hand, Mafioso had taken care not to extend his claws too much, so as not to wound them. Chance looked at his own hand: small marks from the grip, already fading, but not a single scratch.
Silence weighed in the suffocating atmosphere until Chance calmed down enough from his love-struck epiphany to resume the conversation.
“...I like it here.” They answered the forgotten question. “It’s such a strange place, but it has its beauty.” Mafioso still wouldn’t look at them, choosing instead to stare at the distant darkness. “Not that there’s any normal place in here, to be fair.” They laughed weakly. “I think I spent one of the three days entirely just exploring that labyrinth down below. There’s so much to do! Actually, there should’ve been a sign on those little games about the prices, it took me a while to realize I was losing studs.”
“You really thought all this availability of experiences would be free?” He answered! A faint smile formed on his lips, barely visible beneath the shadow of the black fedora. A victory, Chance concluded.
“I didn’t think the capitalist empire would follow me even into my deepest dreams. Must be trauma.” Mafioso exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh. “I’m telling ya! You know how surprised I was the first time you showed up.” Chance had only recently discovered that oniric universe, parallel to reality. He kept getting lost in it, again and again, every time he closed his eyes, enraptured by the new landscapes that appeared each day... or night. He discovered he could explore. That there was more beneath the surface, and that just because they were dreams didn’t mean they were safe: he ‘died’ in countless ways trying to find meaning, or an end, to everything he was experiencing.
In one of those adventures, he also discovered that woman. Slightly taller than him, with strange speech – unrecognizable to his ears – at a lonely stall in what he later learned was called Ten-Mou. Cold. White. Desolate. It was almost a relief to see someone there besides himself.
Eunoia, the woman’s name, also seemed surprised to see him.
‘ I don’t know why you can’t understand me. She can.’ Eunoia spoke to him through text, writing in a small ledger she kept in her apron pocket. Chance asked who ‘she’ was. Eunoia answered that it was a story for another day, for another time when they met again.
It was with her that he discovered the monetary system of that strange world: each step counted as a type of currency, deposited in an imaginary bank that no one could see, but was always there. ‘Don’t go into debt’ she warned. She told him that, if it happened, the mafia would come to collect. ‘But if you want, I’ll let you take one or two little things without paying :)’ She definitely shouldn’t have told him that part.
The first time they saw Mafioso – when they carelessly took far more than they could pay for at one of Eunoia’s stalls – they understood that the warning was dead serious.
At first, they tried to run. After all, if they were in debt, they just had to keep walking until it got paid, right? Bonus points if they could escape that menacingly long sword. They couldn’t. What a pity.
The scene repeated itself more than a dozen times. Sometimes it wasn’t even Mafioso chasing him, just some random goon. None of them, however, had the same presence, the same strength, or the same precision. They were gaudy soldiers, brutal out of sheer whim, interested only in cutting and crushing flesh. Senseless aggression defined them.
It was Mafioso who spoke first. They remembers it well. ‘Are you really so stupid that you still haven’t figured out what not to do?’ Chance was surprised that this figure – until then almost mythological – actually had a voice. They had thought he was nothing more than a silent entity, automatically triggered whenever they accidentally committed oniric fiscal fraud. (A lie. It was completely on purpose.) They saw him like the bogeymen from bedtime stories parents tell to frighten their children: Be good, or John Doe will come for you. Something like that.
Chance laughed to himself, immersed in the vast memories he had with that man.
“You have to wake up, Chance.” Mafioso finally spoke, ruining the friendly mood that lingered there.
“Why?” He knew the answer, had heard it before. Mafioso sighed, weary.
“You can’t escape reality forever. This is a good place to be... but it’s only good because it’s fleeting. You don’t belong to it.” Even though he had said it before, Mafioso always repeated it patiently. He seemed determined to imprint that idea into their mind, word by word.
“It’s precisely because it isn’t my reality that I want to be here.” Chance’s voice was calm, despite the devastating urge to cry hidden beneath the surface. Those tears could never fall.
Silence once again took hold of the two. Only the sighs of the cold wind cutting across the island could be heard, pushing the ancient pillars that, creaking, chanted their own hymns. Dampness and salt rose through the cracks of the ground below as well. Chance had been using the lonely beds in the empty houses to keep warm. It was one of the largest dreams he had ever been in and, still, infinitely empty.
They pointed into the darkness. “What’s out there?” Mafioso followed their finger with his gaze.
“Islands.”
“And beyond the islands?”
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t that intrigue you? Doesn’t it hurt to know there’s nothing?”
“And why would it hurt?”
“It’s the anguish that hurts.” they said, as if it were obvious. Mafioso only tilted his head, slightly puzzled. “You say there’s nothing… but how can you be so sure? Have you ever been there, to the ‘nothing’? And even so, you state it with such conviction. There isn’t, because there can’t be. And yet, that still doesn’t calm my mind. Because we are beings of limited capacity. We are only certain of what we see, hear, feel.” Mafioso observed them with a blank expression. A dead fish would show more emotion. Chance was definitely making no sense at all. They sighed heavily. “I wish I could be everywhere at once. All the time. I wish I knew everything I don’t know. Maybe then I’d be at peace.” Categorically, seven sleeping pills, seven cups of chamomile tea, and seven violent blows of the head against a very hard table would also do the trick. They should do that. “I guess, in the end… it’s just another kind of greed.”
“Where does this need to know everything come from?”
“I don’t know…” Chance hesitated. “Maybe… if I knew everything, no one would ever deceive me again.”
They looked exhausted.
Despite technically being asleep, it was as if they hadn’t rested in weeks.
Mafioso wouldn’t say he was surprised by the sudden outburst. He was already used to hearing Chance ramble on about anything and everything. But this. This seemed less like idle chatter and more like a restrained explosion of bottled-up confessions, quite different from the usual silly, offhand remarks.
If he was worried, he didn’t show it.
The icy wind of the seemingly eternal night lashed against his face, raising his fur and nearly carrying away both their fedoras, saved only by their own hands. Mafioso adjusted his ears gently with his fingers right after, a gesture Chance caught from the corner of their eyes, chuckling softly. At least they still had energy for that.
Chance wanted to squeeze those ears. Carefully, of course. They wanted to bury their face in the man’s hair and breathe deeply. What would his shampoo smell like? Did he even use one? Would his hair be as soft as his fur? Not that they had touched either of them yet, but they could dream. Yeah… dream. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a joke when they made all those comparisons between Mafioso and Spade.
Before Mafioso could open his mouth to say something – without even knowing what he wanted to say, really – Chance was already back to their usual self as if nothing had happened.
“Aah~ what a miserable hunger! You could buy us a snack, ya’know.” Their sly smile hid the hopeful wish that he really would. And for an instant, Mafioso seemed entranced. Wasn’t Chance just talking about feelings as dark as the graveyard sea only minutes ago?
“And why would I pay?” Yet, that was the part that confused him the most.
“Because if I pay, the exact moment I finish the purchase, you’ll have to kill me.” Ah, of course. They’d never stop being a smartass. A shame it wasn’t their lucky day.
Mafioso sighed. “You’re already in debt, Chance.”
“ Pft , of course not.” They waved their hand dismissively. “I’ve got everything counted in my head. And I’ve got exactly 257 studs left.” They spoke with confidence, proud of themselves, certain of the math done.
“No, you don’t. You miscalculated.”
One of Chance’s eyes twitched, not that it could be seen under his shades.
“Have you ever seen a professional gambler miscalculate? That’s literally my job!” they barked. They prided themselves on being extremely good at numbers. Most people tended to see them only as an idiot for being so loose and exaggerated. But that wasn’t true. It never would be. Who was Mafioso to tell them otherwise?
“The dreamsphere messes with the human brain in ways that are practically imperceptible.” Mafioso explained coldly. “Especially when you’ve spent more time inside of it than you should.”
“It hasn’t even been that long-”
“Why else do you think I’m here?”
The air froze. Everything seemed to stop.
“I dunno… maybe you missed me?” Chance forced a smile. He had to do something besides work, go out and relax… and they hoped it would be with them.
But their heart pounded when Mafioso stood up, slowly drawing the sharp sword from his belt. “I’m not your friend, Gambler. I simply do my job.” Once fully unsheathed, the blade’s gleam seemed to shine brighter before its ‘new’ victim. “...and you just happen to be one of my most frequent clients.”
In shock, words clogged in Chance’s throat. Maybe pleas. Maybe a bitter laugh. He didn’t know why he was so shaken, he’d seen that scene play out countless times, he should be used to it. Right?
Chance rose from the chair slowly, stepping backward, trying to put distance between them.
“...I don’t want to leave.”
“I don’t care.”
“I want to stay here.”
“Go back to your life.”
“There’s no one waiting for me there!” Normally, he never let anger show, nor any negative emotion, really. But he had already fucked up everything until now anyways.
“There’s you.” Mafioso closed the gap between them in just two steps, determined to finish the day’s work. “And only you can help yourself.”
Chance let out the laughter they’d held back earlier. “Are you insane? Pretty words while you’re pointing a sword at me, seriously?” The irony was too much not to laugh. But then they stopped. Holding their breath without realizing it when Mafioso grabbed their tie tightly and yanked them closer.
“If it’s any comfort,” his calm voice betrayed the anger in the way he held Chance. “when you wake up, someone will be waiting for you.”
“Who?” A whisper, a request.
“Me. Right here.”
Chance barely had time to process the answer. The blade pierced his stomach. Swift. Cruel. In and out in a single strike.
They collapsed to their knees, confused, lost, ruined. Groans and moans of pain wracked their whole body. They tried to breathe, but the pain was unbearable. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was always kind. Mafioso was always so kind. Why would he strike them like that? Every time Mafioso killed Chance, they never saw a single drop of their blood touch the ground, always waking up before that could happen. If that wasn’t care, then what else could it be? And then... why let them agonize so suddenly? Chance coughed blood, saw the red spill across the dirty, yellowed ground. They forced their eyes upward to avoid looking at it, but found only darkness.
Mafioso was already gone, vanished as swiftly as his strike.
First, their vision blurred, dizziness and disorientation overtaking their head.
Then, the world was swallowed by black.