A/N: Can someone please tell FF . Net to PLEASE stop mysteriously removing my cover/profile images. It's not a big deal for me to put them back up, but I'm getting real sick of having to do it in the first place. Get your asses in gear, please, and fix your damn site, thank you.
Slightly AU because I only watched the cutscenes on YouTube (I don't have a PS5 yet, unfortunately), and I didn't know until later Lawrence was on paid parental leave. And I misinterpreted the one image in the credits.
Nefarious isn't entirely sure how he managed to make it back to his hideout, deep, deep in the sewers. He isn't sure how he managed to get himself out from under that mech, either. Or what's left of it. How did he even survive being crushed in the first place?
Don't know… don't care.
He trips on something in the darkness, and loses his balance— crashing into a pipe chest-first. He doesn't move. He just hangs there, arms limp, and gears whirring more slowly. He should probably take a look at his waist and legs, as they had suffered the most damage when he'd been crushed.
He doesn't look.
"Well, congratulations, me," Nefarious mutters to himself. "You just lost. Again."
Even he's not so sure what his motives are anymore. Ever since Magnus, his mind's been a little… screwy. More so than usual, anyway.
Is that why Lawrence left him?
Again?
This time, for good?
Ratchet, Clank, and Qwark never came looking for Nefarious after they'd found a way to escape Magnus. He hadn't been too surprised of course— he made it clear that he's a supervillain, and that's all he'll ever be. But a small part of him had hoped…
He thought he could count on at least Lawrence to come back whenever he "left."
He was wrong. Just like always.
Lawrence left him too. Forever. For some pretty woman… and a baby.
A baby.
Nefarious was upstaged by a baby.
And now… he has nothing.
No one.
He is nothing. Just a pile of scrap no one cares about anymore.
He's not sure how much of it is his own fault, and how much of it is the universe's. At this point, it probably doesn't matter anymore. It's all pointless. Pointless. Like his evil plans.
Like his very existence.
Maybe he should do everyone and himself a favour and just stay in this pit of darkness forever. Yes. Stay here, and never come back out. Eventually he'll run out of power, probably in the next two weeks or so, and be no more alive than these pipes. No more alive than anything else down here.
Perhaps, a few hundred years into the future, the he'll be useful to someone— perhaps they'll put whatever's left of his rusty, lifeless husk on display in a museum. Or his remains will just lie here in the sewers, forever forgotten. That seems more likely.
Nefarious takes one last look around his self-proclaimed to-be-grave. Not that there's much to look at in the first place.
And then he drops his head, closing his eyes one last time.
He starts the countdown, and— for the first time in his life— just… waits patiently.