A/N: Here's a story I wrote late last night for the people at /co/. Decided to put it here as well. Enjoy.
He tried to go to bed. That didn't work.
He tried to browse the internet. Benson said it was too late.
He tried to think about other things, such as the events that had occurred earlier in the day, but his mind kept on coming back to… him. Where was he?
He looked up at the clock. Half past midnight. He was beginning to get worried. 'He can fend for himself…' he thought, trying to dismiss the anxiety as him just being overprotective. 'But still…' He thought back to what had happened earlier in the day, and how he reached this dilemma.
The sun was high in the sky, the trees were rustling, and the grass was wavy in the park that many visited a day. However, the calm and peacefulness would not last for long. In a house in the middle of the park…
"What did you DO with it?"
"ME? I don't even know how it disappeared, dude!"
"What do you mean? You were-"
"What's going on in here? Why are you two yelling so loud?"
The argument between the two figures came to a stop as the gumball machine entered the room. The taller one of the figures, a blue jay, sighed. "Sorry Benson. Rigby's lost something."
"I didn't LOSE it!" The smaller one, the raccoon addressed as Rigby, said. "How do I lose a gigantic mound of stuff?"
"Oh, you mean that pile of junk in the corner of the room?" Benson asked, pointing at the now vacant space.
"Hm!" Rigby said with a nod. "I went out to go grab some lunch, but Mordecai insisted on staying here. And when I came back, he was asleep on the couch, and my stuff was all gone!" He finished, pointing an accusing finger at the bird.
"Dude, I fell asleep right after you left!" Mordecai said, throwing his arms up in defense. "And besides, how would I be able to move all your crap in an hour and a half? You know how much stuff you had up here-"
"Guys, guys, calm down. I know what happened," Benson said. "Sorry, Rigby. Skips moved all your stuff out. We thought it was junk."
"You WHAT?"
"I'll tell Skips to bring it back. He didn't put it with the rest of the garbage just in case. It'll be back here before long."
He looked at the corner of the room. The pile was still missing.
Benson left the room and shut the door behind him. This left an awkward silence between the blue jay and raccoon. Rigby emitted something akin to an angry growl and kicked at the space where his pile of old stuff was, crossing his arms.
"Hey dude, don't worry about it," Mordecai said reassuringly. "Benson said he'd get it back."
"I don't care about the stuff!" Rigby responded loudly. "I'm angry that someone invaded my personal space!" Mordecai looked at him oddly for a second, and then let out a small chuckle. "What's so funny?"
"Dude, when have you ever cared about personal space?" The bird asked, rearranging some of the stuff Rigby had knocked down on his side of the room in his tirade earlier. He paused. "Oh wait, I get it; you only care about personal space when YOU'RE the victim!"
"That's not true!" Rigby shouted defensively.
"Oh yeah? How about when you destroyed our room when you were being a baby over the whole punchies thing? Or when you constantly hambone everyone? Or when you just knocked down my stuff; AGAIN?"
Rigby scoffed.
"Dude, it's not a one way street. You have to respect others' privacy if you want others to respect yours."
"I never stole your whole bed away!"
Mordecai thought about this. That was true, as that pile in the corner was where Rigby slept every night… he shook his head.
"Maybe this'll teach you a lesson… oh crap!" Mordecai said, looking at the clock. "I'll be late!" Rigby's ears perked up as he watched the bird run toward the door.
"Late for what?"
"Didn't I tell you?" He asked, opening the door to the hallway. "I'm meeting up with Margaret. We're gonna hang out for awhile."
No. No he had not. Rigby's look of curiosity and interest soon reverted back into a scowl. "So you're just gonna leave me here, dude? After what just happened?"
"Rigby, you have to grow up someday. You can't just keep being a big baby the rest of your life!"
Rigby let out a scream. "I am SICK of you calling me that!"
"See, you're doing it again!"
"Doing what?"
Mordecai sighed. "Never mind… just…"
"Just what?" Rigby asked, tapping his foot and waiting for an answer.
"…Just stop being so damn selfish."
At that moment time seemed to stop. Rigby's gaze hit the floor. Mordecai turned and started to close the door ever so slowly. As he did so, he swore he could hear something soft, a whisper; but he dismissed it as his imagination. Had he not, it could have made all the difference. Things that were about to happen could have been avoided. But the words fell on deaf ears.
"…I hate you."
The door closed.
It was dark out when Mordecai returned with a smile on his face. The day had gone well. He opened the door whistling, and shut it behind him with a spring in his step. As he began to walk up the stairs however, his smile disappeared. He remembered what had happened earlier, and was dreading to see what Rigby had done to their room. He didn't notice the eerie silence. He didn't realize what was missing. He walked down the hallway at the top of the staircase, squinting. He called out to the silence as he approached his room. "Rigby, I swear, if you messed up anything in my room-" His voice disappeared as he opened the door. He shocked and astonished at what he saw. Everything…
Everything was exactly the way he had left it. The oaken desk next to his bed with small engravings on it, slightly resembling an ornate artifact; the silver alarm clock on top of the desk, with the large hand on the 6 and the small hand on the 10, rusting only slightly as time had weathered it, but at the same time dealt with it quite well; the sheets on his bed, all set and covered as he remembered organizing it in the morning before the rest of the fiasco had happened; it was all the same. There was only one thing missing from the otherwise complete scene; one variable that had not been carried over in the equation.
"…Rigby?"
He looked all over the house, searching through all other rooms; the bathroom, the attic, the closets, everywhere. There was no sign of his companion. After what seemed like eternity, Mordecai gave up and shrugged his shoulders, sitting down on his bed and looking down. "He'll turn up eventually," he told the darkness. "He always does." His eyelids began to close when suddenly they flew wide open. There WAS something different about the room.
He looked down at the trash bin next to his desk. He had just cleaned it out before he left to go out with Margaret. There was now a small, crumpled up wad of paper inside the bin. Without a moment's hesitation, Mordecai leaned down and snatched the paper. He unfolded it and realized that it had words on it. "Rigby." He recognized the sloppy handwriting instantly; words had been crossed out, misspelled, and oddly formed. His eyes dissected the writing, making sure he knew every single detail that the piece of paper discussed. He read the note once. He read it again. And again. And again. The letter fell from his feathery grip.
He realized that he was never meant to have read it.
A shock of thunder woke the blue jay from his reverie. His eyes went straight to the clock. It read 1 A.M. He looked over at the vacant corner, where the raccoon should have been sleeping on top of his large amassment of useless items. Neither the animal nor the growth were there. He heard the pitter-patter of rain on his window. He looked out as he saw another flash of lightning, accompanied by an even harder downpour of rain. Had anyone been out there, they would be soaked.
'Rigby is not in the house. Rigby would not be anywhere else; he is too much of a slacker to even give the effort of trying to find shelter, even if it is in his most basic instinct of survival. He must be out in the rain.' Mordecai convinced himself that this was fact, and so it was. If he knew all this… 'Why don't I go out there and look for him?' His eyes scanned the darkness of the outside world for any sign of life. 'Is it spite? Is it to teach him a lesson?' No life. Or sign of it, anyway. 'He could be dying out there for all I know… he can't protect himself… ugh, what am I doing?' An even louder clap of thunder, and suddenly-
The lights went dead. Mordecai looked up as all the power in the household went out. He could barely see two inches in front of his face. Accustomed to the layout of the room by now, however, he stumbled through the black abyss and made his way toward the closet by his bed. He felt for the handle, a small indent in the white mock wall that would allow him to pull it out and enter- ah, there it was. He found it, slid the closet door open, got on the ground, and felt for the familiar object. At last, he found the cylindrical item that fanned out at the tip to make for an odd shape. He clicked a button and a bright light emitted from the bulbous end of the flashlight. He squinted as he used the light to guide his way down the stairs. He grabbed a purple umbrella which was hanging on the coat rack, opened it up, and stepped outside into the harsh, stormy cold.
The letter remained on the desk.
The inclement tempest raged about the dark trundling figure, who held onto both the protection that guaranteed his dryness and his guiding light with all his might, despite the gale threatening to tear them from his tight grip; the darkness was sucking him into the never ending nothingness, his tiny light being the only thing that kept it from overtaking him completely, lest he lose his way and become part of the spatial absence.
"Rigby!" His voice called out against the storm, which answered with yet another roar of thunder, as well as a strong gust which threatened to knock the blue jay off his feet. He kept steadfast. "Rigby, where are you?" He called again. No answer this time. The downpour continued to rain on his umbrella, his only safeguard. 'I need this for when I find Rigby…' he told himself. '…Oh, who am I kidding? This park is enormous! I'm not even sure if he's still here. For all I know, he could be back in the house, and… and…'
His thoughts stopped for a moment as he thought he heard something. It sounded almost like a whisper, like a soft call to him. He shone his light in the direction of where he thought he heard the noise coming from; the light met with the bridge over the river that ran through the middle of the park grounds. Skeptical, the bird began to traverse over the passage, his grip tightening even further, as if he was holding on to the very fabric of time itself, and that if he would let go of either item, be it the umbrella or the flashlight, that he would be letting go of all things he knew, and all the world would slowly fade away, as if it were only a dream; a figment of his imagination, like the feeling that it's almost raining…
As he came across the other side of the bridge, the sound he heard before had dissipated into nothing. He used the flashlight to try and find the source, but to no avail. He continued to brave the harshness of the torment and began to walk once more. After what had seemed like an eternity, and he finally felt as if his legs were about to give out, he saw a familiar sight.
A bench. It was a bench he and Rigby would sit on whenever they were bored and felt like slacking off, but at the same time, not doing anything; it was situated in a lovely place, as to its back were the immense woods of the grounds, where Skips would sometimes retreat to when need be, and Rigby and Mordecai would occasionally hold fake adventures in there - though those times were in the past now - and to its front was a crystalline pond, where all the less-intelligent aquatic species would gather and swim around while the two would sleep, talk, or just do whatever they felt like doing, though it was mainly a meeting place for when they were tired.
No fish today. No Skips. No fake adventures. Instead, alone on the bench, curled up in a pathetic little ball, was a small animal who Mordecai knew too well. The ball was unmoving, its fur drenched to the bone; Lord only knew how long the creature had been out there. That wasn't the only thing that brought a lump to the searcher's throat. The body was bruised, almost as if someone had deliberately hurt this wretched being. Mordecai almost dropped the treasures he had carried for so long as he ran toward his fallen friend.
"R-Rigby!"
The storm continued to rage as the blue jay kicked the door open, carrying the mass of fur in his arms. He set the purple umbrella down by the old rack where he had found it earlier, and set the flashlight which had helped him so well down next to it. He walked up the stairs and entered the bathroom, setting the poor raccoon down on the toilet cover. He quickly grabbed a bath towel and began to dry off the creature. "Don't worry Rigby…" Mordecai whispered to unhearing ears. "It'll be alright…"
Once he had finished with his task, he scooped the being up and carried him into their room, where he laid him in his bed. He felt the forehead of his friend. Scalding. He rushed out of the room and back into the bathroom. He took a small washcloth and wet it with cool water, so that it may bring down the temperature of his patient's ailment. He came back into the room and placed the cloth on the victim's head. He was about to run off to grab the first aid kit in order to treat the injured raccoon - he knew where the case was, down the hall and by the staircase to the attic (he thanked every being he knew that he had been paying attention when Benson was going over the layout of the house) when he realized that he had forgotten one very important thing.
He bent down close to where the animal's mouth was, and listened… listened for a sound… listened… listened for a sign… listened… listened for… anything…
And there it was. He was breathing. He was alive. Mordecai's look of worry that had been plastered on his face since he had first come back into the room at 10:30 that night, a look that made his stomach churn and think that everything that could possibly go wrong would, disappeared, and was replaced by a soft smile of gratitude and relief. He got up to find the case down the hallway.
He retrieved it and brought it back to the room. He then grabbed a chair from the other side of the room, and began to cleanse what wounds he could. The cuts, scrapes, and bruises were many in number, but thankfully, none were too severe. 'He'll be crying in pain when he gets up, though,' Mordecai thought, trying to make himself do one of his trademark chuckles, or "hmm"s of affirmation, or that sing-song voice he would so often bring out - but he couldn't bring himself to it. He finished bandaging his friend up, and stared at the damaged body before him.
'…Is it my fault? Was I too hard on him? Did I… did I do this…?' These thoughts plagued Mordecai's mind. He sighed as he got up to return the chair to its rightful place when he heard a soft noise from the direction of the bed.
"…Mor..decai…"
Mordecai rushed back to his friend's side. Rigby's eyes were still closed, but his arms were beginning to move slightly, as if trying to reach out for him. "I'm here, dude. I'm here, Rigby." The raccoon struggled to open his eyes, but Mordecai calmly put his feathers on the shoulders of the injured one. "You need to rest…" Rigby was opening his mouth again, trying to emit a sound. At last, he was successful.
"Ah-I…I'm.. sorry…"
That killed Mordecai. "Wait, YOU're sorry? Dude, I'm the one who said all those… I'm the one who…" For one of the first times in his life, he found himself at a complete loss for words. "…I should be the one apologizing." Rigby made another effort to speak.
"N…no. I-I… shouldn't be acting… like a b-baby…"
Mordecai put a feathered hand on Rigby's paws, clasping them tight. "Dude… Rigby… sleep. We'll have plenty of time for arguing in the morning." Rigby let out something akin to a chuckle, and fell silent again. Mordecai became worried again for a second, but that worry subsided as he heard the normal breaths, inhaling and exhaling, of a sleeping friend. He pulled the covers up over the resting raccoon, and looked at him with caring eyes.
"Good night, Rigby."
The letter was in the bin.