Author's Note: The italicized paragraphs are from Kevin's POV, and the regular paragraphs are from Cecil's. ~Undiscovered
So bright. It is so very bright. My once energetic body now lies lethargic and limp against the wall, cheery voice now reduced to a croaking whisper as I helplessly try to speak to those who have already fallen, to warn those who have not yet succumbed-if there are any of them left.
Head lolling as though my skull is a cannonball supported by a straining sapling, I gaze around the walls of my home, my prison. Yellow walls emblazoned with that damnable orange emblem, painted over with the flaking brown of my dried blood. LIES, I had scrawled. LIES. TRICKS. DO NOT BELIEVE THEM.
How foolish was I? I close my heavy, heavy eyelids as my dry lips move soundlessly. Am I apologizing? Still trying to report? I raise a hand to my ear, longing to feel the comfort of headphones again but finding only fever-hot skin. My arm falls back to my side, elbow striking painfully against the stained linoleum floor. So bright. So very, very bright.
"Are you sure that this is the right place?" I ask, squinting at the lock illuminated by the beam of Carlos's flashlight.
"I'm sure, Cecil," he says in that smooth, silken voice. "I've spent months tracking him down. We can be sure of it."
I nod, bending and beginning to fiddle with the lock. Lockpicking was an essential part of my internship, I remember that cassette tape saying. Muscle memory doesn't fade as fast as brain tissue, fortunately, and I manage to jimmy the lock open. The door swings open, reluctant, like a stiff joint flexing for the first time in weeks. Jerking an arm up, I block the blinding light from inside the room and turn my face away, and beside me Carlos does the same.
When I am used to the horrid glow, I cautiously lower my arm and peek through the door. My stomach drops into my shoes as I see the clash of yellow and crimson, red words scrawled in agonized sweeping letters across the paint. SMILING GOD, I see, and I groan internally. Has the silence perverted his mind even more? Has he reverted back to the devilish wretch that took over my studio? Looking briefly into Carlos's stunning eyes for reassurance, I swallow hard and step through the door, into hell.
Someone has entered. I want to raise my head, but I am so tired...I want to let go of everything. The pain, the guilt, the grief...
"Kevin?"
A stutter passes through my heart and butterflies rush into my stomach. Kevin. I lift my head slowly, phantom strength rushing into me like the echo of a river. Two illusions stand in front of me, towering over me as I half sit, half lie against the wall. "No," I whisper, raising my shaking hands to cover my face. No more hallucination gas. I will close my eyes until Strex—that cursed, fiendish hell of a place—lets me go.
It is not until warm hands close gently around my wrists that I realize that these are no illusions.
Masters of us all, his hands and wrists are nothing more than frail, scarred skin stretched tautly over bones—the muscle and perhaps even the blood is seemingly gone from his limbs—and they tremble in my grip like the body of a frightened bird. I pull his hands away from his face and there is no resistance from the breathing corpse in front of me. "Kevin?" I whisper again, my throat tight with horror.
"K-Kevin." The word is almost inaudible, no more than a breath, but it makes the corners of his dry lips tilt up ever so slightly. "That was my name."
"That is your name, Kevin." I obey the feeling that I should shift my grip from his wrists to his hands. Holding them gently, I look more closely at his face. His skin is the color of ash and his hair has grown long, raven-black fading into gray. He shivers and his head sags away from me. Kneeling beside me, Carlos reaches out and turns his face back to us, and at the sight of it I nearly vomit. Tears are trickling slowly from his obsidian eyes and down his cheeks, where they pass over the pitted red scars that carve his mouth into a permanent, leering smile.
My hands have not been held in so long...I feel tears of countless emotions spill down my cheeks—joy and relief that I am no longer alone, shame that they see me cry, embarrassment over my scars, the ever-present rage at Strex. "They made me smile," I whisper. Every syllable is painful. I feel like I am speaking around a lump of chalk. "I realized what they were and I ran but they caught me and made me smile..."
The deep-voiced man's name comes back to me with a flash of pleasant pain, the breathtaking sharpness of a blast of ice water. "Cecil," I mumble.
He squeezes my hands. "Yes, Kevin. I'm Cecil, and this is Carlos."
"Carlos," I repeat uncomprehendingly, then again as I remember. "You were my friend in the desert otherworld."
"I'm still your friend," Carlos assures me, sitting next to me.
This weakened wraith of a person is nothing like the Kevin I knew—he barely has the strength to hold his head up. His arms are crisscrossed with blotchy red scars from where he has clawed his skin open, and I gaze in horror at the yellow walls, painted with his own blood. DO NOT TRUST THE SMILING GOD. LIES. LIES. LIES.
Carlos glances at me, pain in his eyes and a crease in his brow as Kevin coughs up blood, shuddering weakly as his eyes close and his head slumps to the side. I reach out and shake his shoulder as gently as I can, and he blinks. "Cecil," he mumbles, his dry lips barely moving. "Oh, Cecil..." He coughs again, a thin rivulet of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and Carlos wipes it away with the sleeve of his pristine white lab coat.
"Take your time, Kevin," I say, rubbing the backs of his cold, skeletal hands. "What do you have to tell me?"
"Not tell you," Kevin rasps. "Ask you."
I've been trapped in this miserable room for so long, so very long, with those yellow walls and damnable Strexcorps emblem. "I want to see the sky again, Cecil," I whisper. "I want to see the stars...my beautiful desert..." I cough again, tasting the salty-iron of my own blood as it rises in my throat. The fever is too strong for me and I know that I'm dying. But now, with the arrival of Cecil and Carlos, my saving graces, I have a hope of ending my life somewhere I want to be. "Take me outside," I gasp. "Please."
"Of course, Kevin," Cecil says quietly, and through my blurred vision I think I see the shine of tears in his eyes. After all the things that Strexcorps and I did to him and his beloved Night Vale, he still has enough humanity left to cry for me? I feel the familiar fiery pinpricks needle at my own eyes. Cecil slides his arms under my knees and beneath my back, lifting me as though I'm a little child. I almost feel like a child again, small and secure and safe in someone's grasp. My head rests against his shoulder as he crosses the floor in smooth, steady strides. Envy tugs at my gut; his legs are unrobbed of their strength, his balance hasn't been stolen away from him.
I carry Kevin out of his prison, into the cool night breeze. It runs gentle fingers over his fever-hot skin and through his hair, and he gives a faint "Ohhh...!" of joy. His black eyes grow dreamy and a smile—a true smile, not that ghastly thing he used to do, or the scars carving across his cheeks—lights up his skeletal face.
"Ohh, Cecil...Carlos...the stars!" All the pain and exhaustion leaves his expression and he half-raises his bony arms. "The stars, they're so beautiful!"
With my old enemy and new friend held in my arms, I sink down onto the cracked, parched earth. Kevin wriggles slightly and I help him sit on his own, between Carlos and I. The three of us all tilt our heads back and stare up at the sky, mostly void and partially stars. Not so much as a wisp of cloud floats above us, leaving the endless dome above us as clear as glass as silence falls over the desert.
Nothing has ever felt as good as the desert air on my skin. Not the adrenaline and passion that flooded my body as I stood defiantly between Strexcorps and my beloved radio station, not the delirious, bloodthirsty joy that came with violence carried out in the name of the smiling god. I stare up at the stars, the pinpricks of light looking like snowflakes against the deep, blue-black curtain of the night. Quiet joy fills my heart and I lie back against the hard-packed sand. I am happy, truly happy. I reach for the hands of my friends and hold them as I lose myself in the sky, my tormented soul loosed from its mortal chains and set free at last.