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Sickness
You can't apply context to everything. Sometimes light is just the cause of a shadow, despite its good intentions.
Phone calls to a memory, a ghost. A message left that may as well be a confession to a tombstone. What's dead is dead and what's dying can be witnessed or ignored, accelerated or delayed. But such a fate cannot be denied.
Hours earlier, the bright and sterile hospital room to contrast the stark silhouette of Fox standing in front of the payphone under the streetlight.
The hiss of the oxygen tank. Peppy's tired eyes looking up at Fox. Just barely darting from left to right, as if reading the page of a novel.
Distant recognition.
"James." His voice weak. Barely above a whisper. Licking his lips, his tongue gets briefly hung up on his front teeth.
Fox studying his every action with a morbid fascination. The details of dying distracting him just enough from the big picture to handle this situation.
A brief moment of pause with the weight of an hour behind it. Peppy's eyes widen slightly, as if he's beginning to panic.
"J-"
Yeah, Pep?
A sigh - more of a wheeze - of relief from Peppy. "James, I- ... It's been so long. I've missed you."
I've missed you, too, Pep.
"I'm sorry, James. I've let you down. I let yer boy dow-" More wheezing. Violent coughing. "I promised I had yer back and I watched you die. I promised I'd take care of yer boy and I... I don't remember the last time I seen his face. I..."
Fox watches the tears well up in the old man's eyes for a moment. He imagines what watching his dad go through this sort of suffering would be like, were his dad still alive to do so.
Small pieces of him die, but go unnoticed. He clenches his fists and fights back tears, like he's always done.
"Fox is okay, Pep," Fox lies. "And so am I. You may have forgotten the debt you're owed by myself, my son and the Planetary Nation of Corneria, but we have not."
Peppy wheezes as his eyes flutter closed. "I don't remember the last time I seen his face, James. I remember the last time I seen yers..."
"It's okay, Pep. Get some rest."
He laughs and hacks out some phegm onto himself without noticing. "Ah, Pep. That's what yer son used to call me."
"I know."
"Where is he?"
"He'll be here soon. Get some rest."
"I wanned to help, y'hear? I wanned to help better than I could."
"I know."
"You don't have to lie to me, James. I know I let you and yer kid down. I let everyone down if y'include m'self." Peppy tries to open his eyes and keep them open but he fails miserably. "I didn't do right by nobody..."
"Nobody can ask you to handle the responsibility of life and death of others on your own, Peppy. Not when you got yourself to deal with. I know that now. You look after yourself now, you hear?"
Peppy doesn't respond. He's asleep.
"Goodnight, Peppy. I'll see you in the morning," Fox lies.
He relives this moment as he hangs up the phone in the booth. Raindrops glistening off the cold glass under the soft orange glow of the streetlight.
A simple request with not so simple consequences fallen on an understandably dead spirit.
Fox knows the score but he desperately hopes he's wrong.
The needle on his speedometer climbing quickly. Lights passing shadows over his head. Leaving him in darkness with nothing but the lights of the console.
Trembling fingers turn the knob near the steering wheel to turn those off as well.
Window rolled down. The motor rumbles over the howling wind in the void Fox feels truly at home in. Part of him wishing he would just crash here and now, when he can't see anything.
Reality harshly welcomes him back when he flicks the knob again and reveals the mailbox he clips. Turning letters to Cornerians into letters to nobody as they dance through the air and into the void. Not killing him. Not even slowing him down, really.
He swerves back onto the road. He's just made things a little worse for some of the people on this planet. He forces himself not to cry, never to cry. Hoping he can make things a little better.
Sunlight spills in through Fox's wall of windows in his penthouse suite. His eyes flutter open, flutter closed.
He hasn't been asleep - not really. He knows what day today is.
Recruitment. Today is the day he once again boards the Great Fox.
He wonders how many days he has left, and more importantly, if he's had enough good ones to make his life worth living. Or if all was forever lost from the outset.