A/N: Wrote for the WritersMonth2021 challenge. Warnings: Mentions of depression, and su1c1d3. Also, SPOILERS of Shane's Two Heart Event.

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He had no fucking clue why he had told her that. Why the words just left his mouth, as if it were nothing, as if it didn't mean any effort.

Perhaps he had been too drunk… Except he hadn't drunk that much at all. It was just a silent, dull night, that one. By the lake, drinking beer, alone, peeking into the waters and wondering how would it feel to just slowly submerge himself, head underwater… for a few minutes… a few hours, a few years…

Then she had appeared.

He didn't know exactly what to do, to be honest. He liked to be around her, she was way more tolerable than the promedium Pelican Town citizen. Soon enough, she would almost be… a friend, maybe?

So he offered her a beer. He had brought an extra one, anyway. He could never know for how long he would remain there, doing nothing but killing time, wasting it miserably, as his parents used to say.

She wasn't that talkative, or maybe it was more noticeable because she could read the mood he was in. Did she know him that well already? Or was he that easy to read?

Uneasy, he half-heartedly commented, "Buh… life."

Then it started to happen. 'If you stare at the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back'... or something like that. So the waters were looking at him, prodding him for answers; and he just stared back.

And what happened was that instead of answering to the waters, he answered her.

"You ever feel like... no matter what you do, you're gonna fail?... Like you're stuck in some miserable abyss and you're so deep you can't even see the light of day?... I just feel like no matter how hard I try... I'm not strong enough to climb out of that hole."

If he had any doubt about how sincere and open he had been, she confirmed it by holding the beer real tight, raising her arm, and chugging the beer down like a champion.

"Heh… Fast drinker, huh?", he chuckled. "Woman after my own heart. Just don't make it a habit. You got a future ahead of you still…"

Silence surrounded them, if it could be called as such, to the lack of conversation mixed with the sounds of the night. But then he noticed that while he looked at the waters, she looked at him. Given that what he saw in the reflections of the lake made him very uneasy, he sent a furtive glance towards her instead and…

Oh, hell, no.

That was even worse. She was looking at him with pity. With pity, and something else...

Compassion, he corrected himself. He was pretty sure it was compassion, not pity. And when he fully turned his head towards her, her gaze made his heart churn inside his chest.

"Welp… My liver's begging me to stop. Better call it a night. See you around."

He couldn't stand to remain there any longer, so he ran away, as he always did. The waters stared at him accusingly, but he didn't stare back.

He had seen the lake's reflections, which always seemed torned and shadowy; but that night, he saw, of course, two different silhouettes…

The silhouettes were closer than he had realized, and although hers looked hella brighter, even in the reflection, somehow it didn't clash with his own gloomy image. Seeing her image, side by side with his, was comforting.

And that was scary.

Maybe he was being too sensitive, too superstitious. But having something comforting, something to care about, always, always carried the terrifying possibility to lose it. In the long run... or in the short run. However, when he thought about the possibility of avoiding their small, daily chit-chats, he found that he didn't want to. It seemed harmless enough. They were not close enough to hurt, so it should be fine, he thought.

Of course, what he never expected was that chit-chats could eventually become long, deep talks; that she would grow on him, that he would grow on her, and that they would look for each other's presence through the day; in her case, to make her day better, in his case to make it through. And after a while, she would be there, one day, everyday.

He couldn't have possibly known all of that.

But the lake did.

And the waters kept flowing, silently, knowingly...

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A/N: Obviously a paraphrase of Nietzsche's quote, "if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you". What can I say, Stardew Valley goes hard on heavy subjects...