"PewDie, is that really… you?"

Felix couldn't move. He stayed staring at the statue in his hand. Did it really just talk to him? Was he going insane?

"Pew-Die…" A door creaked.

The Swedish man blinked and spun around suddenly. Standing there behind him in the doorway of the last room he had tried to enter was a man dressed in gold. He stood about a foot taller than Felix with golden skin, golden brown eyes, and even hair a darker shade of gold. He was like one of those people who paint themselves one entire color for money.

Felix was at a loss for words. He just stared at this person who was seemingly trapped down here with him. He stared at this person who had the same accent as a character he had made up. He stared at… at… "Stephano…?"

The man smiled faintly, a glimmer of tears in his eyes. "It is you…" He stepped fully out of the room before rushing over and embracing the other man in a firm hug. "It really is you…" The hug tightened just slightly. "PewDie…"

A tightness found its way into his chest. Felix dropped the statue with a loud twang before quickly reaching up to hug the other back. The tight knot in his chest caused him to hic as his own tears found their way down his cheeks. Why was he crying? His fingers wrapped themselves into the surprisingly rough cloth covering the other man.

Stephano was a character made by him. He had just been a statue he had found in Amnesia. If that were true then how was this man standing here? This area of the castle was obviously off limits so how had he gotten down here?

"S-Stephano…" he stuttered, needing to say the name once more.

His embrace tightened slightly again. "Yes. It's me," he murmured, voice cracking.

"How…? You… You're just a-a… You're just a person I made up. You can't be real…"

The golden man laughed lightly. "It's because you loved us so much that we became this. You imagined us to life; you and your fans. I know it sounds stupid but it's how it happened. I think…"

Felix was still dumbstruck. He just stared at the ceiling as this man continued to talk to him in an accent so terribly familiar that it was breaking his heart. Doing so in that it was continuing to remind him that he hadn't talked to his friend in so long. One of the many friends that had helped him to become as famous as he is today. Without Stephano or the other bros then Felix doubted he would be anywhere near as popular as he is today. How long had it been since he last talked to them?

Stephano stepped out of the hug then.

Felix got a good look at him. Suddenly the knot in his chest dropped to his gut. Dark circles were obvious under his eyes. There was no life in those golden brown depths. He looked so tired. But then again, this was his first time seeing Stephano as a full human. Apart from fanart.

"We waited for so long for you to come back. Where have you been?"

The Swed flinched. "I-I haven't played Amnesia in forever because there were never any good custom stories. I guess I haven't checked recently though… I'm sorry."

Stephano blinked, a look in his eyes that the other blonde couldn't quite read. "So you've been playing other games? Because we were boring?"

"Not you! The game… it… the stories… I don't know."

"You forgot about us."

Felix felt his heartbeat in his head. "No! I would never forget about my bros!"

Stephano stepped away from him. "We thought something happened to you. The barrels caught you… You were dead… Now I find out you just forgot about us?"

"Stephano, stop! This is stupid… I didn't know you were real!"

Hurt crossed the man's eyes before they narrowed at him. "You didn't know? You didn't KNOW?!" He slammed his fist into the wall. "YOU gave us a purpose! YOU gave us life! You know MY purpose? To protect YOU! What am I supposed to do when you aren't here? What was I supposed to do when you never came back?!"

Felix bit his tongue. His brain racked for anything, but of course he found nothing. "I-I don't know!"

Again there was hurt in his eyes. "That's right. You don't know. At least that's one thing that never changed: You only care about yourself."

"That's not-!"

Stephano grabbed the other by his shirt and shoved him against the wall. "IT'S TRUE AND YOU KNOW IT!"

The Swedish man gasped, holding onto Stephano's arms from fear of the other hurting him. But Stephano would never hurt him… right?

His grip lightened until Felix was back on the ground. "PewDie. You don't know how hard it has been for us." His eyes were hollow now. A darkness took over them that scared Felix. "Each day we hope to see you again. Each day we pray that you'll return and give us purpose again. And with each of these passing days of disappointment…" Stephano turned away suddenly, hand coming up to his face, "we've begun to give up."

Panting, Felix watched the other man cautiously.

"Mr. Chair was the first. He began to search for you relentlessly. We couldn't keep him in the same room for more than a minute and… we gave up on doing so. Piggeh tried to keep us all going. He truly, truly did. He started to lose his energy. He was no longer 'pumped' anymore. I haven't heard him say it for months. Not even just to say that he isn't pumped anymore."

Getting his composure back, Felix reached out a shaking hand to rest it on Stephano's shoulder. "It can't have been this bad. I mean… the Bro hasn't gotten to you, obviously. Or the barrels."

Stephano's shoulder twitched. "Not… that… bad…?" He shoved off Felix's arm as he turned around. "Did I not just tell you what my purpose is?"

Knowing that he had just said the wrong thing, Felix stuttered, "T-to protect… me?"

He stood silent for a moment. "Yes. I made a promise to you, but I made a promise to them all. I made a promise to protect them all at any cost to myself." His eyes fell to the belt around his waist. "Have you NOT noticed that my sword is gone?" Then his eyes narrowed once more and a crude and painful smile found his lips. "Of course you haven't. You probably don't even remember any of my old sayings, do you?"

Felix knew them. Of course he did! Even so he felt stupid for having not noticed that Stephano didn't have his sword.

"I thought so." Stephano took the silence in the wrong way but continued on before Felix could explain. "The Bro was after you, PewDie. Always after you. Once he couldn't find you anymore, he soon gave up but that didn't mean that the hunt was over." Golden brown eyes hardened but still held a hint of sadness in them. "He hunted you because you could not die. You continued to come back no matter what he did to you. WE can't come back. If we die then it is all over." He jabbed a finger at Felix's chest then, pushing him only slightly. "That is the difference between you and us."

"Wait, how do you know that you'll d-" Felix felt the knot in his stomach churn. Had one of his bros… been killed? "…S-Stephano."

His eyes fell, hand returning to his side as Stephano turned away. "All I heard was the scream." His right hand grasped at the lose clothing at his side. "I thought it was you. For a split second… I thought it was you." Then his face turned toward the ceiling almost as if he were remembering the story. "When I found them… When I saw the bro with blood on his claw… I snapped." His grip on his clothes tightened briefly.

"I have NEVER thrown myself at the enemy like that before. Only for you," he turned back to Felix abruptly, "I had ever thought of risking my life like that, but when it was for Mr. Chair and Mayo…" His gaze fell toward the floor, anguish written all over his features. "Thinking of losing them forever… I pulled out my sword and STRUCK him." He reached up and grabbed Felix's arm, shoving him against the wall once more. "My sword broke. It SHATTERED. My only source of protection BROKEN!" His grip tightened painfully. "Mr. Chair lost one of his legs! And Mayo…" It loosened then as Stephano's shoulders dropped. "If only I had gotten there sooner… All of this… AND FOR WHAT?"

Unexpectedly his grip tightened again and he pushed the other even harder against the stone wall. "Because we thought you'd come back to us? Because we thought our friend would finally remember us and come back? You have NO idea how hard it is to keep on living, PewDie! If we had known that you had just straight FORGOTTEN about us then we would have given up long ago." His hands moved to Felix's shirt, lifting him off the floor. "We would have returned to the objects that we once were and just given up altogether instead of fighting on like we have been. Even until this day I thought that we were fighting for a future that…" He dropped the other then, Felix losing his footing and falling on his butt. "…now I see never existed."

Felix remembered the tiny table. He had found it in a chest one day and thought it was so cute that he'd give it a name. Beyond the day he had found him, Felix never talked to Mayo much. How had simply naming a table caused him to become real? Like them? But now he might never know. "Mayo… is…"

"Yes," the moving statue said coldly. "He is gone. Forever. We haven't seen him since the bro murdered him."

"And the others…?" Felix picked himself up. "You said Mr. Chair lost a leg…"

"His right leg," Stephano said pointedly.

Felix flinched.

"Everyone else is fine." Even with those words it sounded like he were lying through his teeth. "Piggeh won't talk anymore, Mr. Chair still follows you, and now I have no way to protect anybody. I am useless. We are all useless. The best we've been able to do is hide." He paused suddenly to look at the room he had exited from. "All that we have left is Chair Mode. It has been what's kept us alive for this long. Our existence is merely a show of perseverance. We do not eat, we do not sleep, and we risk our lives exiting the rooms we have claimed as our own." His eyes moved then from the room back to Felix. "We cannot even stay in the same rooms at risk of the Bro noticing us. The days go by slowly… and the nights are even more so. I fear that before long we will begin to thoroughly give up ourselves to the Bro."

Felix felt terrible. To him, his bros meant a lot, but at the same time they had just been random objects in a game! He had no idea that he were leaving living, breathing people alone in the dark. "Stephano… If I had known… I wouldn't have left you. Any of you."

"Yes… but you didn't know. And now all you want is our help to escape. It's all you've ever wanted: to leave."

Felix grit his teeth. "That's not true!"

"Then why don't you talk to any of us anymore?!" Stephano rounded on him. "Mr. Chair says that you ignore him. You don't even say hello to him anymore and the last time you mentioned his name you acted like you… like you were… like you were avoiding him!"

"I thought you were only in Amnesia…!" Felix confessed in a squeak.

"I am the only one in Amnesia." Stephano grabbed at his own chest to emphasize what he was saying. "The others can move through the worlds. I try my best… I really do… I want to protect you, but I'm only able to be in Amnesia. Mr. Chair and even Piggeh move around the worlds. You don't even acknowledge them! It is a wonder that they are still following you." He stepped closer to Felix making the Swed step uncomfortably back. "Every chair in every game, every dead animal… And yet there is no place for me. Hell there are even barrels in every world…"

"I'm… dammit I'm sorry!"

"Are you? Are you truly? Were you sorry enough that you didn't care that we were waiting for you? How do you think we felt when you never came back?"

"I didn't know you were alive!" Felix shouted.

"Heh… It's sad… because we thought you cared." Stephano stumbled to the side and fell against the wall, sliding down to the floor.

"Stephano, I-I don't know what you want me to say…" Felix stared at his friend now in the flesh. He felt like a stranger from the person he had made.

"Nothing." Stephano pushed himself to his feet, turning down the hall and starting away, deeper into the castle. "I want you to say… nothing."

Felix felt a fear he hadn't felt in a long time. Having heard it from Stephano, he now knew that the Bro was wondering around. "Wait up! Wait, Stephano!"

"Why?" He stopped, looking off to the side but not back at the shorter man. "I can't protect you. I'm useless."

"Stephano… I need your help to get out of here."

The other didn't say anything. For a moment longer he stared in the same direction he had been before he dropped his head and continued on.

"You can come with me. You and the others."

"We are only in Amnesia."

"But this is the real world, Stephano! I fell down here from up above. Marzia and I were on vacation. This is the real world!" Felix jumped in front of Stephano, grabbing his shoulders. "You, Mr. Chair, and Piggeh can all come live with me and Marzia. We could be bros again. Please."

Stephano's eyes were still hollow, but as the truth sunk in, some light came back to those golden brown orbs. "The… real world?"

Felix smiled. "Yes. Yes! This is the real world, Stephano!"

Something with the golden man's expression looked less angry and sad now. He closed his eyes and smiled softly. "Okay." The smile was weak though still with enough happiness that it made Felix smile wider in return. "Come. We need to hurry. The Bro should be searching around this time." Stephano grabbed the other's wrist and hurried down the hall with him in tow.