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[MurderWeasel]

The Midway Bowling Alley received no posts on either the V1 or V2 sites, and is included only for historical accuracy and the sake of thoroughness.

[+] Here is something else to entertain you

[+] and one more thing

((Sven Vee continued from A Portrait Of The Artist As A Dead Man))

When the mists came this time, Sven saw his friend only briefly. His eyes met its lack. Both nodded.

"It's been," Sven said, and licked his lips. "It's been something."

"A pleasure."

"Maybe." He shook his head. "Sure. Why not?"

"Well..." The figure checked its watch, tapped its toes. "I suppose this is it for now."

The last two words caused Sven's brow to wrinkle. But before he could say anything, ask for clarification, lash out, any of that, he realized he was no longer nowhere. He was somewhere, but knew it only on an instinctual level—it was all too blurry, too nebulous. There was nothing to do but breath deeply, close his eyes for a moment, count to seven, and then open them.

When the room clarified, Sven found his location only slightly elucidated.

He stood in a small, dim room, amidst a handful of billiards tables. Against the wall were a collection of cues. The room was ringed by a small ledge, hardwood, and on it lay assorted knickknacks. A red plastic basket had once house cheese fries, Sven assumed—there were still smears of yellow on the waxy white paper lining. Could've also been mustard. A handful of flyers on various neon-colored papers were too faint to read. The only clear text he could make out was a paper cup. It read "MIDWAY" in giant block letters.

There were two doors. One, behind Sven, was marked "Emergency Exit: Alarm Will Sound." It was closed, beige-painted metal with a pushbar. A mysterious aluminum pipe connected it to a red box with a light on top in a little glass dome, proof that the door's promise was no bluff. Sven could hear the howling of sirens in his mind.

The other doorway was open, a big wooden door that swung inwards. Beyond was the clatter and chatter of a business in motion. Balls crashed against pins, voices cheered good luck or protested bad. Tonight was Friday night. It was cosmic bowling. The balls were incandescent as they hurtled down the slick lanes, glowing galaxies smashing the natural order in countless miniature big bangs. The people making the shots didn't matter. They weren't real. This place was allegedly popular, but nobody had ever really been here. They wouldn't know Sven was lurking in this corner. Maybe, to them, he wasn't.

His breath was heavy, and perspiration lined his armpits and the nape of his neck, but a giddy smile crossed his face nonetheless. This wasn't quite what he'd expected. Certainly, he hadn't thought he would be let off the hook so soon, and yet he wasn't sure whether he was more relieved or terrified.

Maybe it didn't matter.

He paced around the nearest table, eyeing up the pockets, the balls, the cues. Sven did not know how to play pool.

The lights hung from overhead, hooded bulbs on long chains, so it was not accurate to say a shadow fell over the room. There was a disruption to the illumination, but Sven had to blink before he realized the cause: the blacklit room beyond had been briefly obstructed. Perhaps this would have been more quickly clear had he not been wearing sunglasses.

Outside, there was the rumble of traffic, but when Sven glanced through the wide window perpendicular to the two doors which somehow seemed not to admit even what scant luminescence was offered by the faint stars and streetlights beyond, he saw no cars. That was okay. He was done with cars, he thought, forever. When this world ended, he would not miss cars. He had had enough of driving.

He turned, finally, to the figure that stood in the doorway. This one existed, unlike the props beyond. It didn't belong here—he knew that deep down in his core—but that was okay. Neither did Sven.

Calmly, he smiled and nodded. In the background, a nonentity bowled a clattering strike, and screams echoed through the building.

This wasn't right; he shouldn't have been here.

For a moment, he wasn't sure if that applied to the newcomer who'd spent the last few moments wandering aimlessly about the pool tables, or to himself. Truth was, it was probably both. They were outliers in this space, oddities that didn't belong. No one was here to tell them explicitly so, but he knew. Deep within his mind, he knew.

This was all wrong.

When he arrived, he couldn't remember. Everything seemed so faint, so vague to him. It was almost as though his mind had taken a vacation, leaving a vacancy sign behind to let everyone know that the owners weren't here to maintain the place. The grass would grow over, the weeds would creep out of the ground, and the dust would gather. He'd been doing something — something important. Whatever it was, though, it could wait.

The newcomer crept around the room as though he were seeing the pool tables for the first time. There was something far more egregiously off about the other boy than there was about him. This pool hall was somewhere that neither had ever been, but it was also somewhere that neither of them ever should have. Of that, he was perfectly clear.

Turning, he squinted.

"Hey there," he said, barely a greeting and more of an acknowledgement.

Someone bowled a spare; the nondescript patrons of the bowling alley reacted accordingly. Background noise, nothing more.

"Oh," Sven said, "hey."

The boy—man?—who stood before him was tall and lanky. He had an inch or two on Sven, but Sven probably had the advantage in mass ("advantage," he thought, like it was usable heft and not an abiding fondness for snacks). The boy had deep green eyes that caught the dim illumination of the room and actually seemed to sparkle, and reddish-blond hair. It was messy in a way that bothered Sven; he couldn't tell if it was just left how it naturally was, or if it had been carefully styled so as to appear to have had absolutely no thought whatsoever put into it. The stranger had a lip ring on the right side of his lower lip.

Something about him was incredibly off in this deeply unsettling way. He was dressed in loose casual clothes. He could've been any random guy on any random college campus. Sven thought perhaps he'd seen him on the internet.

"Come in," Sven added, as if this was his domain any more than anyone else's. Really, he was more the interloper, in any scheme of things.

He paced over towards the wall and ran his hands over the pool cues there. There were differences in them, maybe, at some particle-based level, he thought. People always seemed to consider pool cues carefully in movies and TV shows, judging their weight and give and whatever else. To Sven, they were all identical wooden rods, terminating in odd tips. People used... chalk or something on the tips?

He selected two at random, but gave it enough time to seem like he was paying attention. He stepped closer to the newcomer, and held them out, giving a faint smile.

"You play?" he asked. Then, as if to reassure: "I don't."

He wished he had his Go set with him, or the classic chessboard, but somehow all of the belongings he'd thought he'd had were gone except for what was in his pockets. He couldn't even remember precisely what it was he was supposed to be carrying, except for one thing, and the empty space on his belt he could at least recall the origin of precisely.

Right, that was what he'd been doing. He'd been trying to put things back in order.

Some luck he was having with that.

He followed the strange boy into the pool hall, still vaguely aware of the fact that he couldn't put his finger on just where they were. It was a completely unfamiliar room, in a completely unfamiliar space, and his eyes couldn't focus on anything outside of the pool tables and his newfound companion. Cautious, there wasn't a reason to stay back, but he didn't trust this new arrival any more than he trusted his own perception of what was going on.

They shouldn't be here; every second they were was another that they weren't somewhere else.

How was that for circular logic?

"I don't either, I think," he hesitated, but shrugged and accepted the wooden stick. "Or at least if I have, it's been a long while."

It couldn't have been that long — being a teenager as they both obviously were (they were teens, right?), there was only a finite amount of time that one could have learned to play pool and adequately performed, and in the puffy clouds that were his memory, nothing jumped out at him.

He'd been in the middle of something, but now...?

"So, uh, how're you," he paused, collecting a rack of balls from a nearby counter. That was a strange contrivance. "How're you doing?"

Politeness; it never went out of fashion, never hurt. Particularly at a time where everything felt wrong. If only he could remember why or where he was!

"Oh," Sven said, "I'm..."

He'd been planning to say he was alright. It wasn't, of course, the truth. Or at least, he assumed that it bore no more than passing resemblance to reality; most of the time, that was a safe bet. Sven had slipped away from a number of social conventions, shed them like dead hair, but a reflexive response to the most mundane of greetings was not one of them. Likely, it was because he valued the ability to avoid an involved conversation over honesty. It was so much easier to go along with nonsense when it got you what you wanted.

But here? Now? Dodging reality seemed like a poor decision on just about all fronts. There was limited time left. Why spend it lying?

"I'm not sure how I am, exactly," he admitted, giving a nod. He raised his hand to his face and adjusted his sunglasses, feeling the side of his hand scrape across beard over a week from its last grooming. "It's been... one of those days."

He paced his side of the table again, resting his hand briefly on the rim. For some reason he'd never been quite sure of, he'd always associated pool tables with Foosball setups. Maybe it was the way they commanded so much space for such a singular purpose. Maybe it was the color. Maybe it was some cartoon he'd seen, some ancient 1950s rerun that had come on back when he was a kid, where a mouse or something was trapped on a pool table and forced to dodge balls. The scale there was rather like the plastic soccer players.

He'd long related the world to Foosball too. All of them moving where and when they were told, forced into competition by invisible hands with unknowable goals, for the sake of a meaningless game. And most never even realized.

"And you?" Sven asked.

Then, because he had at least a little of his social wits about him, he shifted the cue into his left hand and held out his right.

"Sven, by the way."

He grasped the outstretched hand and shook it. Wrongness aside, there was always a place for politeness, and it was good to have a name to attach to the face. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Sven. I'm," he smiled, and gestured at the pool table. "I'm sure we can figure it out."

Hefting the cue in his left hand, he glanced down at the table and the set of balls that lay beside it. In another life, perhaps there would have been a joke to be had about that, but something about the concept of making a phallic joke made his stomach turn. There was a reason, to be sure, but it wasn't springing to mind. That likely had to do with how wrong everything felt. This Sven character, the pool hall, even himself — what were they doing here, anyway?

"To be honest," he inspected the end of the pool cue, casually picking up the small cubed chalk from the rail of the table and brushing the tip of the cue with it, leaving a smattering of faint blue dust in his wake, "I agree. It really has been one of those days, hasn't it? More like one of those weeks."

Traumatic, even. That was likely true, though the specificity of the trauma was something he wasn't entirely certain of. There was the fog again. Sven had some facial scarring, so it looked like he'd been through the ringer long ago. He could empathise, though he was fairly certain his complexion was just fine.

Strange.

Leaning the cue against the pool table, he grasped the tray of balls and overturned it onto the green felt of the table. The balls scattered gently around, basically begging to be racked and broken. Small details, but he didn't feel up to the task. Continuing to study the boy, he looked across his face for any makeshift traces of blue.

Why blue? The chalk — no, of course not.

It was a good question, but he caught himself staring too long, so he changed the subject.

He hadn't actually said anything.

"I'm sorry that you were hurt. That must have been hard for you."

It wasn't exactly casual conversation, but this wasn't exactly a casual thread of discussion. This felt more like a private chat between two friends, so he felt comfortable asking.

He still hadn't actually asked a question.

"Thanks," Sven said, with genuine gratitude, but shook his head slowly. "I'm over it. It happened a long time ago, or, or it's going to happen soon. I... sorry, I'm not making sense."

He followed the stranger's lead, taking his own cue and grinding the chalk against the tip. The powder faintly rained down, a few motes speckling the green. It made him think of The Breakfast Club. Sven had no idea how much chalk was proper for this. He might well have just messed up chalk, cue, or both. It didn't seem that important.

No, he was just eager for some tactile sensation to distract him from the memory of the feeling of skin on skin. The handshake had been like grabbing a live wire, a surge of some indescribable energy coursing through his body and pulling at the bonds between his constituent molecules, at the same time rendering him unable to be the one to terminate the contact.

Maybe it was that this was, for the first time in some time, a meeting of two real people against the artificial backdrop. It was hard for Sven to bring up a memory of the last time he'd talked to somebody and had it actually mean something. Most interactions held no more weight than the distant chatter of bowlers that only existed now because Sven deigned to notice it.

The hotel, he thought, that had been the last interaction of true meaning. That moment that had blurred inevitably into this.

"I think," Sven said, "this isn't easy for anyone. Even the ones who pretend it is. Maybe especially them."

He shrugged. As the gesture ended, the bottom of the cue bumped the ground with a clonk.

"But what do I know? It's a jungle out there."

Slowly, he reached out and began to corral the balls in the center of the table. There was probably a proper order to this, but like most aspects of sequence, Sven had hopelessly little idea how to go about things properly.

He nodded as Sven started to rack the balls on the table. He obviously had very little idea what he was doing, but the boy was giving it an honest try, and that was all that anyone could ask for, right? "I'm glad to hear it, and don't think twice about it. Trauma's hard. Oh, I think there should be a triangle by your side there," he pointed at the far end of the table. "That might help."

It might — that was the whole purpose of the thing. A neat triangular container to put all of the balls within, so that they didn't roll away. It was rather novel an idea, he was certain that in the olden days, when pool had been in its infancy, people tried to just make triangles by hand, balls going everywhere and likely taking a lot longer. He knew a thing or two about trying to keep things in order. If only his own mind had something like a triangle to keep his own balls in order.

Hah, balls. He tried to suppress a smirk, failed.

"It sure is, right? It's always a jungle, too. Even if the truth is more like a forest or a city, it always seems to turn into a jungle. The lions do the hunting and the jackals lurk on the periphery, waiting to clean up the scraps. Even when the animals differ, the idea is always the same."

Breaking a smile as Sven finally managed to put the balls in an order — it didn't really matter, in the end — he gestured to the end of the table, where the white cue ball sat, waiting.

"Please, be my guest. This is your game, after all."

He was aware the irony. Sven had professed not to know much about pool, and he very well may not have, but he would have had to live under a rock not to understand the basic conceit. Smack white ball, hit other balls. It was only polite of him to let Sven have the first whack. They wouldn't be finishing the game.

"Thanks," Sven said.

He paced around the table again, examining the white ball. Animals chased each other like metaphors through his head. The wood of the cue was smooth for the most part, but Sven could have sworn he felt just enough grain for a sliver to slip free and embed itself in his flesh.

"I suppose," he added, looping back to their more esoteric discussion, "that's the name of the game. Evolution, you know, Darwin and adaptation. There's this... this certain very specific structure that plays out again and again, because it's the most efficient. Anything else gets squashed."

He leaned over and sighted down the cue. It was strange having depth perception again, so he closed his left eye tight, ignoring for a moment how this too made him think of crackling, splintering wood. Now wasn't the time, and besides, he should enjoy every moment of this while he could.

"Maybe there could be some other option," he said, "or... or some different endpoint. But nobody's gotten there yet."

He brushed the tip of the cue up right close to the ball, looking beyond it to the triangle all ready to be scattered and to the boy beyond, noting how his eyes still gleamed, sucking in whatever scant illumination was in this room and refracting it back all about.

"I never understood why so many Christians can't deal with the idea of evolution," Sven added, perhaps a pointless aside but one that felt personal and pertinent. "I mean, if you think about it, couldn't God have just created that system? I don't understand what's so controversial about that."

With a quick, clean jab, Sven struck the white ball, but his aim was abysmal and the tip of the cue impacted on the extreme left flank, sending it spinning in an arc entirely bypassing the triangle to thump gently into a pocket to the side. Sven frowned. He wasn't quite sure what happened now.

"Your turn?"

"If I'm not mistaken, I think the structure has changed over time, though," he grimaced at the weak attempt at a miss, but allowed a kind smile at Sven. "It's okay, you'll have another shot. I'm not that good either."

Making his way around to the pocket that the cue ball had been deposited within, he picked it up and continued over to the head of the table. Placing it down, he looked at the cue, and moved a few inches to his left.

"I mean, I think that in the grand scheme, there might be a different way to go; kind of like a secret level in a video game. But you're right — not sure I can even fathom how you'd go about getting there." He squinted at the freshly racked balls, and let the cue fly. His shot was a little more true than Sven's, and the triangular shape was no more, the spherical objects flying around the table, the orange number five ball satisfyingly rolling into the pocket on the side. Grinning, he looked at Sven and shrugged. "I'll take it."

Moving over to the cue ball, he looked over the table. The balls were all in haphazard combinations, several looking like they might not be impossible to sink. Selecting one, he moved to his right to try and line up his shot. "Yeah, it's tough. I definitely agree with you, though theology was never really my strong suit. I sometimes wonder if my own shit was all part of a larger plan, part of something greater than myself, or if I just ended up the way that I am because it happened to be on a lark for the creator that day."

The cue smoothly moved forward and smacked the cue ball, the yellow number one ball gliding straight into the hole at the far left of the table, close to Sven.

"Nice." He looked up at Sven, nodding at him. "It's really nice having a chat, by the way. You strike me as someone who's pretty well-liked, or at least — you should be. High school is one thing, but everything after is supposed to be easier. I personally," the boy lined up another shot, "wasn't very popular. There was a time where I thought that it was easier to be cool and wacky, but people just called me obnoxious. It's hard, man. These are hard times. We can only hope that maybe we get a fair shake in the future."

He glanced up from the cue, squinted, and looked back down again. He took his shot; the cue ball knocked a striped ball, but nothing went in the hole this time.

"Rats."

"You know," Sven said, as he stepped up to the table once more, eyeing the scattered array of balls and trying to pull together a strategy, "I'm not actually quite sure."

It was coming back to him, now. Pool played in cycles, chaining one ball after the next until you failed to land one in the pocket. A failure could be particularly disadvantageous because it potentially set one's opponent up to capitalize on the prep work. This time, Sven could sort of guess the angle the other boy had been going for. The purple striped ball was close to one pocket, but if he looked from another direction, the way was probably clearer across the table.

Yeah, that was the ticket. Sven would take the longer shot. He leaned close, took a last calculation of the angles, and then made his play with a forceful jab.

Again, his accuracy was terrible, but this time the ball careened off its solid-colored mate, sending the four on an improbable course which in turn knocked it into the three, which rolled smoothly into a pocket. Sven nodded.

"I was a little... distanced from my classmates."

Ah, right, that was coming back too. It wasn't something Sven had talked about much, outside of the deepest darkest therapy sessions at the university hospital, but somehow it flowed easily here.

"I suppose that ultimately, school felt... artificial. The structure and lessons and all that, but more than that the people. Most of them were telling their own stories instead of being human beings. I thought, well, why bother then? Why bother getting to know somebody fake, somebody who doesn't really exist? Especially when I'm just the same."

He walked ninety degrees around the table, lined up white and red, and shot. This time it was true, a cheerful crack and the seven ball disappeared. The imaginary bowlers cheered for somebody else's imaginary success.

"In retrospect, that was foolish of me, or maybe a defense mechanism. You can't fail if you don't try. But you also can't succeed. And... and I don't think either option would be that terrible anyways. I got to see them later, with more of the pretense..." Stripped out? Layered on? Best to let the word die without follow-up and move on. "Anyways, their stories weren't what I was afraid they'd be.

"Mostly."

He chewed his lip as he looked towards his next shot. The white ball was up against an edge of the table now, not a particularly easy place to play off of.

"And thank you for the talk as well. It's nice. I'm rambling, but it's nice. I'm sorry I'm rambling."

The shot didn't go much of anywhere, but sometimes that's what it took to open up the field.

"Nice shot!"

The stakes were even once more, Sven having gotten the hang of the game quicker than he would have expected. Listening to him bear his soul was not altogether unexpected, and he found himself nodding along to most of what he had to say. It was not altogether unlike what he had felt at times, though somehow, he couldn't help but feel less rounded. Surveying the remaining colourful orbs around the green felt table, he tried to think of how to articulate his agreement without sounding trite.

"It's tough, right? Since you know there's such an artificiality, the things you see, witness and," he swallowed, allowing himself a half-grimace, "partake in don't have the same gravitas as they might in the usual world. Things that should be completely off-the-wall seem to happen with more regularity and — maybe stuff is different for you and your classmates — I guess I'm not really making much sense, either."

Moving around to take a fairly simple shot at one of the green balls on the table, he moved haphazardly around as though examining the entirety of the cue ball. "And hey, don't sweat it. To be honest, I think there's probably a lot we might have in common. It's kind of a shame we had to meet under these circumstances. Rambles are just thoughts that aren't as polished, something like that."

Taking aim, he struck the cue ball and grimaced as the green ball hit both sides of the pocket before rolling away. Straightening up, he leaned on the table and looked over at Sven.

"You ever wonder what might have happened if things were different? If maybe circumstances had taken us a different path, if maybe we hadn't needed to go through the things we did? I think about that sometimes, but I can't help but imagine that things would be just as messed up for us had fate authored a different story." He looked over at the tip of the cue. Still blue and chalky. That triggered something; a memory, a quest?

Whatever it was, it wasn't overly important at this very moment. He'd get there, soon.

"Your go."

He stepped back from the table, but paused mid-step, looking back at Sven.

"Are you happy, in the end, with how it's all gone for you? Troubles and all?"

"Am I happy?" Sven paused, frozen in tableau, as he turned that one over again. "Am I happy?"

He regarded the boy quizzically, his vision tracing the path from lip ring to those sharp gemstone eyes and back again. Sven closed his left eye once more. Everything this guy had said had rung painfully, honestly true. There was a flicker of something, moreover, a slow build of recognition. Yes, Sven had definitely seen the figure before him somewhere, but he was becoming ever more certain it hadn't been in the flesh.

"...I don't know," Sven finally said. "The people whose opinions matter are happy. But me?"

He shrugged, and approached the table, eyes sweeping over the spread. The balls were scattered, no obvious shot but then again were any of them really?

"I think," he said, "ultimately I'd prefer to escape the cycle somehow. To... to just decide to opt out and go back to bed."

He stood next to the other boy, leaned down, looked down the cue like it was a rifle, was about to shoot and then reconsidered and straightened again.

"If that makes any sense," he said, pacing around to the other side of the table. "But I can't now, of course. That's not how the world works. No second chances."

He sighed.

"It's not so different for us, by the way," he added. "We like to pretend it is, but it's just that: pretend. Everyone thinks they're better than the ones who came before, because it's terrifying to think anything else. Like, like all that could have been for nothing? All the time, the suffering, the pain, and we just do it all over again?"

The tip of the cue hovered an inch from the white ball. The yellow-striped nine was directly ahead. Behind it was a growing darkness, and behind that the boy. The overhead light cast his features in greater definition, and just like that the jigsaw pieces clicked into place.

"Oh my god," Sven said, right eye widening. "I know you."

On autopilot, his arm wound back, readying the strike.

"I've read about you on Wikipedia."

The world was frozen, perfectly still. The bowlers were dead silent. Probably they really didn't exist now. They weren't needed.

"You're Deadpool."

The cue shot forward and the white ball did too, but it skittered past the nine and collided with the darkness beyond, sending it spinning off on its own trajectory.

Eight ball, corner pocket.

"No second chances, sure. Not for now, anyway. Maybe in another life, another time or place — but I can't confirm nor deny that. It's not for me to say." He stood, tapping the cue on the floor, waiting for the shot. Sven lined it up, and then —

Oh. Right, that small detail.

Before he had time to react, the cue struck ball, and he watched as the white ball missed the aimed-upon shot and sent the 8-ball directly into the corner pocket. His face fell, his lips pursed in disappointment.

"Game over. I'm sorry, man. That's a tough break."

He'd always hated when the game ended prematurely, but those were the rules. One could only bend the rules, not break them. Grabbing the thin top of the cue with both hands, he shrugged.

"I'm certainly no Ryan Reynolds," he gave Sven a wink, "though I'm fairly sure that isn't what you meant."

Looking back over the table for a moment, he shook his head sadly at the number of balls still left on the table. It had all been going so well, and yet now, for better or for worse, the game had ended.

"I like you, Sven. You're a really nice guy who got dealt a bad hand." All he could hear was silence as Sven stared right at him. "I hope you don't take this personally."

Sven stood, watching in silence, as the inevitable became more so. He should've felt something deeper, he thought, some greater frustration or sadness or, or something. Too soon. That's what this was, all out of order. He was supposed to be third. He knew that just as strongly as he knew he didn't have a clue what it meant.

Slowly, Sven nodded, and his lips formed themselves into a hidden little lopsided grin. It was totally genuine.

"Yeah," he said. His hand slid to his belt, intuitively searching for something that wasn't there. He hadn't searched the bush. Hadn't made it that far. It was alright. Better this way.

"Nothing personal." His grin held, and he kept nodding. "Same. It's been a pleasure. Maybe we can do this again somehow, somewhere."

He rested the butt of his cue on the ground, but held it with a firm grip still. It was good, this final moment of calm. He was grateful he'd been able to experience it.

He chuckled.

"I think we both know how this has gotta go."

"I'm afraid so, chum. It was inevitable, so if nothing else, we can take solace in that. Of course, I've spent a lot of the last little while chasing after, well... never mind that, but this was a nice diversion."

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath, and looked back up at Sven. At this point, all they were doing was stalling the inevitable. He didn't want to be here, no more than he wanted to return to where he came from. All he wanted was to go back a few moments. Perhaps Sven could have hit the other ball, perhaps he could have won the game? Impossible. He'd already won the game, so —

"Before we, well, before this all has to happen, can I ask you something?"

No, that wasn't right. He was confused, everything was starting to blur together in his head. Clarity was starting to disappear. Sven couldn't win. He'd already lost. Lost before he had even begun. What did that even mean? His expression remained pleasant, almost sad.

"It's kind of silly."

"Yeah," Sven said.

Now his tone was turning sad, just a little. Not for himself. He was what he was. This was predestined. It had been since before he was born. Maybe it was why he'd been born, if he had. He often felt like one day he'd just come into being, like his entire past was made up.

"Go ahead. I don't mind silly."

He shrugged. It was dead silent except for their voices and a faint hum from the overhead lighting, which must have spiked up just a tiny bit in intensity. He hadn't noticed it before.

"Life is silly."

He nodded; time was coming near. His hands tensed around the pool cue. Soon, things would set back to the way they were, and he would head off to where he was supposed to be. Not where he wanted to be, of course, but ...

"Amen to that. Speaking of, the number seventy-seven somehow continuing to pop up is silly. Maybe less so for you." He made a face. "Oh, uh. Right. Sorry. No matter. Anyway, so — you haven't seen a small blue fellow running about, have you? No face, no legs, he—"

He sighed.

"The MSN Messenger guy. You know what I'm talking about, right?"

Eyes shut, he couldn't even look at him for the reply. This was so stupid. So dumb, and yet — he couldn't help it. He felt ridiculous. Yesterday, this had all felt normal. Today, it sounded about as insane as ever could be. There was nothing else he could do, though. The words flowed and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it; he couldn't go ahead and rewrite the past.

Right?

Sven blinked. Considered. It was... this was not the question he'd been expecting. And, truth be told, it did sound silly. But no more so than anything else. And he had an answer, he found, but not the one either of them were looking for.

"Seventy-seven?" He said. "I'm not sure why—oh." He chuckled, comprehension dawning. "Oh, okay, that is... I'll grant you that. I will grant you that one."

Sven straightened himself a little more, and then got into the meat of the query.

"I'm afraid I haven't seen your man," he said. "I don't think, at least. There was this girl, she was thinking in blue, but that's not... quite the same. I don't think you want to find her."

Sven didn't. Didn't even want to think about her ever again. She was in the past now, somewhere back in the scent of smoke and seared flesh, somewhere where Joe—the real Joe and the new one maybe merged into one being—was Death instead of just dead.

"MSN was, you know... it was before my time, kind of," Sven continued. Then, after one moment more of contemplation: "But I think you're on the right track. This is before my time too."

No pun intended.

After all, from a certain perspective, this was right on time. Maybe even a couple days late.

Raising his hand, he snapped as understanding dawned upon him. For as cloudy as his mind was, some things were starting to make perfect sense. "Of course, my mistake. I should have known. To be honest, I think this is before my time, too."

His sad expression started to fade. It truly was time, now.

"Thanks, by the way. I feel like I'm better now than I've ever been before, and much of that is because of you. It won't make up for anything, but I want you to know how much I appreciate that."

Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and listened to the hum for one moment more. It was loud enough for him to notice, until—

It stopped.

There was silence.

That was their cue.

Literally.

Opening his eyes, he smiled at Sven, and in one swift motion, took the pool cue and cracked it over the boy's head.

Sven grunted as wood met skull.

There had been things he'd thought to say, to express. Gratitude of his own was among them. This was all wrong, and yet it was also the most right it could possibly be. There was no better ending he could conceive of, no one he could share this moment with and be as satisfied with it. He felt, in a way, a deep connection with and affection for the boy before him, a thought that they were cut from the same cloth.

None of that stopped him from scrambling backwards a few steps, ears ringing, and whipping his own cue into position in front of him.

It wasn't a lightsaber, but the length and shape were close enough. Sven took a stance like he'd seen, all that time ago when Star Wars had been so new and magical and real to him.

For a moment, he considered raising his "weapon" straight to the ceiling in front of his face, closing his eyes, and letting it go like that. The ending was preordained. What difference would a struggle make? There was more dignity that way.

But Sven was not Obi-wan Kenobi, despite the beard and the philosophical bent. Somewhere, deep down, he'd always known who he really was:

Anakin Skywalker.

Darth Vader.

It had been split seconds, not that time held that much sway over either of them. Sven felt a small trickle of blood run down the side of his face.

Like that, he stepped forwards again, swinging the cue in a wide horizontal arc.

All of this filled him with sadness; he really, really could not reiterate the fact that he didn't want to be doing this. Not to Sven, the boy really didn't deserve it. Nonetheless, as he took the blow and managed to right himself, he couldn't help but smile as he saw the swing of the cue headed his way. If nothing else, he could allow him this. It was the least he could do for his friend.

They were friends now, right?

"Vwwwwau," he couldn't resist as the pool cue smacked him in the arm. Grunting, he brought his own cue back up and returned it, more of a baseball swing than a parry or a return. "Vwwwwwau, kkkkrrrshhhhh!"

The sounds took his mind off of the task at hand. It took his mind off of many things, all of which were starting to come back to him. They'd leave soon, of course, and all of that would go away, but he wanted to think as little about what had come and what was still to arrive as he could.

"You were the chosen one," he grunted as the pool cues came together and his voice lowered to a whisper, "and I can't remember the rest of the line. Sorry!"

Straining to try and overpower Sven, he aimed a kick at the boy's shins. Fair play, it was not, but in the end, that wouldn't really matter. They were friends, he decided. He supposed that Sven would likely see it the same way, in the end.

"I hate you," Sven shouted, theatrical, but immediately dropped his voice to a more normal tone. "I think that's how it goes. I think that's my line, I don't... you know, I always—"

His musing was cut off as the kick caught him in the shin, sending him stumbling backwards, off-balance. He flailed wildly for purchase against the ledge rimming the walls of room, but just ended up scattering papers and a an empty fry basket and a mostly-drained paper cup across the floor. A few tiny, mostly-melted ice cubes caught the illumination as Sven landed on his back, but he kicked off the wall, his tangling legs pulling a stool into his pursuer's path on the way, and scrambled a few feet, at the same time lashing out with his own cue again.

It wasn't like he was going to do any real damage with his improvised weapon, but that was quite alright. He didn't have to. He didn't even want to. This wasn't about changing what would happen, or getting revenge, or putting things off, or anything like that. This was just it, how it was and how it had to be. He was, if anything, grateful that was understood.

Sven caught the lip of another pool table and pulled himself back up to a standing position, though he hunched now somewhat. His breathing came in deep gulps, half obscured by manic chuckles and half by his continuing muttered conversation.

"I always was more an Original Trilogy sort."

Sven went down and completed what some might refer to as a yard sale, knocking items haphazardly all over the place. As he took a step towards him with a smirk, the pool cue whacked him across the ankle, sending him tumbling down to the floor as well. It smarted, but only a little. He'd receive worse wounds. Pulling himself to a knee, he rubbed his ankle. There might be a welt there later.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Classics!" He slowly rose to his feet, glancing around the room. The front plate window was a few feet behind Sven, other pool tables closer to his own side. Time was about up. "The new ones weren't very— wait, you have new new ones too, don't you? Nothing's ever original anymore, is it?"

He wound up for another swing, but something struck him funny.

"Oh, I— hah, I guess that's," he couldn't help the laughter that began to erupt, "that's rich, isn't it? Coming from me, of all people." He let the pool cue fall to his side as his stomach tightened with laughter, his face going beet red. Continuing to chuckle for a moment, he stopped laughing just as suddenly as he had started.

He'd forgotten.

"Aww, shit! I forgot to make the sounds. Vwwwwwwaaaauuu!"

As he did, he took a step towards Sven and lunged towards him, using the pool cue as a spear, aimed directly at his stomach.

"Yeah," Sven said, "some new ones. I only ever watched the first."

He'd been meaning to see The Last Jedi for a while, actually, but there was just something about Mark Hamill's more grizzled appearance that made Sven uneasy. Maybe it was that the man had been in a crash of his own and you could still sort of tell. Maybe it was that Hamill had also been both Luke Skywalker and The Joker. Sven was not a tremendous comics person, never had been, but there was this one clip from an animated version of The Killing Joke that had stuck with him. He was pretty sure Hamill did the voice. Better to save playing with that sort of fire for the comfort of home; a theatre was just too much stimulation.

As to the rest?

"But you know what they say," he continued, "good artists create. Great artists..."

Then the lunge came. Sven let out a breath quickly, almost in a lightsaber sound of his own, as he moved to parry, but too late. The point of the cue caught him straight in the gut, hit hard, and squeezed whatever air he had in reserve after that exhalation straight out of him. He made an indistinct oof sort of sound, doubled over, his pool cue dropping to the ground with a clatter and rolling off somewhere out of sight, perhaps to join the bowlers.

Sven managed, barely, to look up and meet those dazzling eyes once again.

This time, his nod was slower, solemn. But his smile was the widest it had perhaps ever been.

He returned the smile with one of his own; tossed his own pool cue into the darkness. To wherever it belonged, wherever it had come from. Stepping over to Sven, he wrapped one hand around the back of his shirt collar, using the other to pull him to his feet. The gesture was forceful, but not aggressive. There was an absence of malice here. As he pulled the boy to his feet, he patted him on the back.

"It's been a pleasure, my friend. Save me a ticket for the next one — make it 3D. I'll be seeing you soon, no doubt."

Walking Sven over to the head of the alley, he squinted as the light from the front window shone through, almost blinding him. In theory, the window and the door should have lead to the same place, but he knew in his heart of hearts that it didn't. They were going to different places, different lives, and he knew what had to happen next.

To Sven.

To himself.

"It's time for me to see a man — a great man, bless his soul, about a girl. And it's time for you, well... you know."

With one final pat on the back, he took a slight running start, planted his feet, and with all the strength he could muster, heaved his new friend through the plate glass window of the pool hall.

For one moment, they stood close, almost embracing. The boy gave Sven a pat on the back, and he returned the gesture. It was the most meaningful human connection he'd had in as long as he could remember at the moment.

"Later," he mumbled.

And then, like that, he was rising up off the ground.

He'd been wrong. He wasn't Darth Vader.

He was Emperor Palpatine.

With a phenomenal crash, Sven went through the window, tumbling end over end, feeling the shards of glass splatter against him, but they didn't cut. Each point that hit him turned to a droplet of water, water all around, a fantastic, never-ending spray. He didn't hit the ground like he might have expected, but fell further, further, nothing around him but the water and the air.

It was a long moment.

That was just fine.

He knew what was waiting when he landed.

((Sven Vee continued in Area Description: The Waterfall))