Chapter Text
“You wanna know what really happened?”
“Do you know where you are right now?”
Questions spoken at the same time, in different cadence, at separate locations — yet Ruin heard them both. He had yet to surrender blindness for fear of what untoward sensation may befall him once his vision split and merged within his mind.
“Sunrise.”
Ruin gripped the fabric of his pants at that, but he wasn’t sure which half of him did it.
“Sunrise, I need you to look at me. Can you open your eyes?”
An itch of irritation sparked somewhere in Ruin’s chassis. “Must you insist on—”
“—referring to me with such a name?”
“What?”
“Insist on what?”
This was getting ridiculous.
Against his better judgment, Ruin opened one of his eyes, only to find himself still in Parts & Service, crumpled on the floor and curled up in the corner. The quiet rage brewing behind Puppet’s mask swept across his gaze.
Wrong eye.
He tried again, closing his eyes once more and attempting to open another. An optic flickered to life in Parts & Service several more times before he finally got it — an interrogation room. Reflective, metal walls and blinding, fluorescent light; Moon seated on the other side of a table. The sight was so achingly familiar that he couldn’t help but laugh humorlessly.
“What’s so funny?”
Ruin tried to tune out the rumbling of the air conditioner and Puppet’s tight tone in favor of the cold, buzzing interrogation room.
Moon tilted his head at Ruin’s Sun, narrowing his eyes. “Well? You gonna finish your sentence?” the lunar animatronic prompted.
“It’s nothing,” Ruin dismissed through the wrong voicebox.
“Yeah, okay. Sure. Whatever you say. Now, are you just gonna stay in that corner looking for pity?”
“I’m not looking for pity,” Ruin retorted — once again through the wrong voicebox.
“That’s not what I asked, but okay,” Moon grunted.
“Nothin’ to say, bud?”
“I’m going to ask you a few questions,” continued Moon.
This is going to be impossible to follow, Ruin expertly conceded.
Something heavy had settled in his chest (or, chests?) — something akin to dread that made his limbs quiver in a way that was impossible to mask. Improvise, he had tried to convince himself. I can improvise. I can work with this. I’m an actor. It’s what I do.
But the stage lights flooded his vision, and he forgot what play he was supposed to be a part of. The house was full: waiting, expectant.
Expecting what?
What even was this? What was he? Why had this happened? How could he fix this? Could he even fix this?
Head swarming with questions that had no answers. A consciousness burdened with the dragging weight of two bodies that weren’t his own but were. Two rooms. Two bodies. Two voices. One hand forced to manipulate both puppets.
He couldn’t completely remember how his other half had ended up in the interrogation room — let alone how much time had passed since then. His kicking and shrieking forced either Puppet or Moon to flip a switch, and suddenly an entire half of his body had gone numb, tingling with static. The head of his other half lulled with weighted exhaustion that made it impossible for him to think past simple, blurred observations.
Lights. He remembered lights.
“Eclipse.”
That caught his attention. Ruin focused back to his reality, quelling the monsoon churning in his chest. Moon was looking at him expectantly, almost agitated, as he tapped his thumb against the elbow of his crossed arms.
“What?” Ruin sighed, balancing two perspectives through a single peephole. It was irritating, but he could deal with it for the time being.
To his relief, the question spoke from the right mouth, and Moon sat forward. “I’ll ask you again: Do you know where you are right now?” he said.
“Of course. You’ve thrown me in Parts and Service and put this part of me in that same, dingy interrogation room! Happy?” he snapped.
Moon tilted his head at him, narrowing his eyes. Ruin tried to ignore the shuffling at the other end of his audio processors.
“Moon? Buddy? Hey, look on the bright side! At least you’re not in that collapsed dimension anymore, right?” Puppet hummed in his ear. “Ah, well, being optimistic might not be too easy without your Sun, though, huh?”
Collapsed dimension. That was right; he’d nearly forgotten where Molten Freddy had thrown him. Ruin tilted his head, which wasn’t an entirely pleasant experience when both vessels physically copied his mental intrigue.
A spark of frustration suddenly lit inside him — he’d been so out of it that he’d completely neglected even observing what the center of a collapsed dimension looked like. Yet, this brought forth more questions: How did Moon find him? How could he even figure out how to do something like that without being torn apart or going mad? How did Ruin survive the retrieval without suffering such a fate himself?
Pouring his focus into “Sun”, Ruin ventured, “Moon, how did you manage to extract me from… ah, wherever it was Molten Freddy had contained me?”
Moon stared at him for a little while longer before eventually asking, “What?”
Ruin paused for a moment, suppressing an amused huff as Puppet murmured, “You know, Moon went through a lot of trouble to get you. You two were in a pretty bad state when we finally found you.”
What did it look like? Ruin was eager to ask, but he bit his tongue.
“Oh,” Ruin excused through “Sun”, “pardon me. You ask the questions, yes?”
“...Yeah,” Moon hesitated, sitting up and clearing his throat. “Let me get started. What—”
“We’ve done this song and dance before, Moon. You probably have some lie detector hooked up to me or— whatever it is this time. My name is Ruin, but you want me to say Sunrise. I’m in Parts and Service and this interrogation room, but you want me to only say the interrogation room. Quit waffling and get on with it. What questions have you prepared for me?”
Moon scrutinized him for a long moment, and Ruin piqued his interest upon hearing Sun’s voice through the lunar animatronic’s speaker: “Um, M— Moon, are you sure about this?”
Ruin squinted at Moon, but his expression remained unreadable. He had to applaud the scientist’s poker face. “I’m sure,” Moon eventually answered his brother.
“Ever heard of M.C. Escher?”
“Penrose. I’m familiar,” Ruin responded.
Moon tilted his head at him, and Ruin mentally cursed himself, shifting his focus over to his other half to repeat the question through the correct mouth.
“Sorry,” Ruin then giggled through his Sun’s lilting tone, but he could tell it did little to quell whatever thoughts were churning behind Moon’s faceplate.
“So, it’s what I thought,” Ruin spoke carefully, mumbling through his Moon’s voicebox. “Some place that makes no sense, yes?”
“Yup,” Puppet responded. The air shifted beside him. “You were barely there. Whatever you were before was gone.”
“You speak in riddles.”
“Frustrating, right?”
“Touché.”
Moon sat forward in his chair. “So, do you know that you are Sunrise, or are you still convinced you two are still… well, Eclipse?” he asked, and Ruin’s consciousness stretched unpleasantly.
“Neither of you responded when me or Moon tried to get your attention. We had to shut you both off because you wouldn’t stop screaming when we’d touch either of you.”
“I know I am.”
“Which part? Sunrise or Eclipse?”
“Honestly? You deserved it.”
Ruin squeezed his eyes shut, and it alleviated some of his headache. “Eclipse. Ruin. Me,” he answered.
“I see.”
“Oh?”
He just wanted it to stop. He wanted to be back to the way he was before. Whatever he was right now was wrong. It was too much.
But Puppet was right. He guessed he did deserve it.
No, he absolutely deserved it.
“Let me put this in a way you may understand, Sunrise,” Moon clipped. “You and your Moon were separated. Similar to the way me and my Sun were separated, from my understanding. Though… I think more magic might’ve been involved.”
Magic. Ruin barely stifled the strangled despair that seized his servos. Science he could understand. Given enough time, he could undo whatever it was that happened to him. But magic?
Ruin was no stranger to the alchemic arts, but his knowledge over the matter was nowhere near where he would want it to be in this case. The combination of magic and science was something he regarded with only a ghost of intrigue, yet, from his understanding and wide breadth of wisdom, he could reasonably conclude that this was bad.
In short, he was completely screwed.
“You are not Eclipse anymore. You are your own person.”
Ruin’s eyes flew open, and he almost fell over. He saw Moon. He saw Puppet. He saw a metal table. He saw a concrete floor. He saw bright, fluorescent lights. He saw winding pipes and hissing grates. He saw everything —everything— all at once, at the same time — every part of him congealed to witness the vision shared between two bodies in one moment.
“Do you remember what I told you?” Ruin strained through his Sun’s voicebox, and Moon shifted at his change in tone. “Several times? Back when we first met?”
Moon paused. “Remind me,” he said.
“I can’t be separated,” Ruin stuttered as he fought off a wave of nausea, struggling to keep the rooms from spinning. “There’s nothing to separate.”
Moon sighed. “Sunrise—”
“It’s like mixing colors. You have blue. You have yellow. Mix them together, you get green. You can’t ever get blue or yellow back again. You can’t separate two colors that don’t exist anymore.”
“Silent now, huh?”
“When you pour green into two cups, you aren’t getting a cup of blue and yellow. You’re getting two cups of green.”
Ruin was hyper-aware of how much he was shaking, but the blur of colors and sensations was so overwhelming that he couldn’t think straight anymore. He was rocked from one place to another, ripped apart and sewn together and ripped apart once more. A kaleidoscope of impossible realities ricocheted through his consciousness and bore down until he thought something might break. His head was throbbing against his faceplates.
“Please tell me you understand.”
Silence. Air shifting. A presence retreating. A presence approaching. A slamming door. A shaking table.
A whisper of something reached Ruin’s audio processors.
Finally, a click, and then:
“I think we have a problem.”
