Trapped In Here, With You (Sebastian Solace X Reader)

I am that which I've thought into being

An entity who's known death for all their life has no empathy. Simply because knowing empathy is the knowing of the value of life and it's finite element. So whenever they wander through the Blacksite and meet the halfway point, they don't spare time for conversation. They float in and out of the vent for nothing but the key card, hollow eyes of white outlines that don't even drift to the shopkeeper. They are nothing more than the presence of an Imaginary Friend at most, equally haunting, equally apathetic.

The shopkeeper with the practical corpse of the only friend he had before this mess in the room next to him. Evelyn grew numb after getting better, and suddenly just . . . Just stopped breathing. Passed on while she slept. Arguably the most merciful death.

Sebastian doesn't talk more than he needs to. The Expendable saw the end of a tail behind the hatched black fence, that was the only thing they really saw. They hadn't even looked at Sebastian enough to memorize his face. For some reason, in however long it's been, that twisted the knife in Sebastian. And it shouldn't, because it's a nameless Expendable, and they have no resemblance to Evelyn. But being ignored right now was hell, as if he wasn't already burning in its circles. They said nothing, so he assumed they were mute. They bought nothing, ever. Not even when they were bleeding out in his shop and in need of a medkit, or when they stumbled in the dark with lesser quality eyes.

Sebastian wasn't scared of much these days, but they did the trick. He equated it to something worse than suicidal, to be so uncaring about your mortality that you exceed even the will to die. Neither a will to live or cease to exist, it was gut wrenching. Sometimes he thinks of the few moments Evelyn confessed that she had been close to attempting.

Why did this feel worse? Because she was already gone? He wanted to vomit, but he didn't think he had the ability to. They sickened him because he felt a grittier kind of sympathy, not one of malice and mocking, for once. One of anger, but not at them. He didn't know how he felt. But he felt it wasn't meant to be directed towards someone who never acknowledged his existence and seemed to enjoy killing themselves. He swallowed the old instinct to gag.

That's his enemy. Someone who works for the person who wants to keep committing atrocities like they did to him. Even if this Expendable was proof that not even Urbanshade cared, he despised them.

For once, they stared at him.

"What?" He snapped under his breath, suddenly finding their prolonged company annoying.

"I've never seen you grieve before."

He scoffs. "You've never looked at me either."

They looked back at the body, "your friend. Of course, that's why: they're an anomaly."

Sebastian feels his body coil tight, "what?" He growls.

"Your friend wasn't meant to exist. Of course they died, they're not part of the cycles." They spoke.

Sebastian glares at them. They glare back.

They don't blink. "You never grieved when Painter died."

Sebastian halts entirely, even his breathing. "What." He demanded with a low tone.

"You're filled with bloodlust when he dies, never grief—"

The Expendable suddenly noticed a clawed hand holding them above the ground, the points press like teeth into their neck, but they don't flinch. They stare unbidden back at the behemoth, with his fangs bared sharp. "The hell are you talking about? Who do you think you are!?"

"The deity to which you should kneel," they say, with a tone like ice and simmered like fallen snow, flat, unmoving. Their eyes are so empty. Black pools of eternal darkness stare at him. "So, you don't remember those timelines."