I climb the Queen's staircase one step at a time, leaving behind black and white corridors for what lies beyond the sky. She stands with her back to oblivion facing certain death.
"You are finally here, Batter."
How long has she waited for him, and for me? How long has she been whispering into my ear in my dreams, begging me to return, to end it, to come back, please, let me die, you coward?
"Why have you destroyed the nation that I rebuilt?" She speaks to him, though she looks to me this time. "I truly wish for my children to be happy."
The Queen of Nothing calls us to her with empty threats in hollow whispers and the Batter steps forward. "Player," he urges when I stand numb, and I bring myself to become the puppeteer once again.
She tries, she fights the futile battle again, she utters poisonous words even as the Batter destroys her, even as she is driven to her knees and unable to stand. But she weeps. She weeps silently, tears condensing on her featureless face like water on a glass and rolling down her cheeks, shattering like glass when they hit the ground and sounding like bells ringing in an empty room. "There is nothing but the void after me," she says, and she sounds relieved, like that's for the best, thank you, Player, beneath the words.
"Do you want some coffee," she rasps when it is over, and this time she melts like icicles, like she is crying with her entire body until she is nothing more than a formless puddle that sinks into the ground whispering, "My love?"
The Batter says it is time to forget, time to dream sweet dreams, and when I look at him, bat still clenched in one hand, eyes turned down where the Queen once was, he, too, is crying.
Neither of them mention his eyes this time because he is unafraid.