My Tears Are Becoming a Sea

The King Wept

    The cyclopean frame sat, his feet soaked in layers of atmosphere, weeping silently to himself. He knew that it was his fault. He knew his own power, and he knew what he could do in the wrong hands.
The wrong hands. He said that like he was an object. Was that all he was? Just a machine pretending to think? Was there a person behind that face?
Whatever kind of person it was, it was a stupid, inconsiderate, socially awkward one. His entire life with the brigade was a series of social gaffs and learning experiences. Tycho had even considered himself a person by the end of it.
And now that had all faded away.
Clouds swirled around his feet, away from the angry sun behind him, creeping shamefully into the night. Tycho had gone from a childlike nuisance to goofily awkward. He spent his time learning social cues, how living beings react, and yet the Queen lied to him and fooled him.
Oh, how he had failed.
Oh, how he had proved all the brigadiers who had ever complimented him wrong.
Oh, how he had slaughtered those interstellar refugees.
Oh, how he didn't deserve to live.
The red pain of regret rippled across Tycho, his head in his knees. He shook with pain, causing tornadoes and thunderstorms on the planet below with every shudder. Every screaming child. Every grim-faced mother. Every tearful father. Gone. Due to his negligence. His carelessness.
He looked like he was the enemy's mascot, and yet he had made friends, but still he had let them down. Doctor Sung's perpetual smirk would evaporate. Brian would stare him down. Try and stab him. Even Strive would frown at him.
If ever again they could bear to look at him.
His fault.
His fault.
He had not detected the queen's slight. His mistake caused the deaths of millions.
Nul.
Nul wants him dead.
Nul was perhaps the brigadier who he admired the most. And now, everything he had ever worked for, everything he had fought for, sacrificed others for, watched his friends die for, Tycho was the annihilator of it all.
Besides the abominable Queen, there was not a single soul who wanted him alive.
He wanted to die.
And he deserved it.
And he knew he did.

"Tycho."
The radio signal's voice rippled across his face like smoke.
"It's not your fault."
"Yes it is," he responded without examining the voice's source.
"No, it isn't. We forgive you."
Tycho's head emerged from between his knees. It was coming from a familiar ship, parked at the bridge of his nonexistent nose, flanked by a couple others. The voice clicked in his head.
"N-Nul?"
"Yes."
"Y-You can't forgive me."
"Yes, we can."
"I don't deserve it."
"Yes you do."

Tycho stretched out with his thoughts into the microphones of the ship, listening to the conversations aboard Nul's ship and his flotilla.
"I don't get why we're doing this. He doesn't deserve this," Yuko grimaced. "And he's just... too dangerous."
"Nul says it wasn't him. That's gotta count for something," Sieg replied.
Tycho began to cry harder, tears the size of cities dripping from his face. "Hey, hey, it's okay..." Solaris said aboard a larger ship, helping Chi-Ma up to her feet.
"Shit... my k'anna... it's like a billion wailing voices... all from him..."
Solaris looked at the massive frame in the window. "We have to help him."
Aboard another ship, Justin rubbed the tufts of beard hair on his chin. "This is very, very bad. I hope Nul knows what he's doing."
"Do you really trust him?" Allay genuinely asked.
"I do. I've seen this before. He needs our help. Nobody else is going to give it to him."
"Nobody should."
The room turned and glared at Commander Meouch.
Tycho broke down, his head returned to his knees. Even Meouch, the radical, smooth-talking, joyful lion, was allied against him.
"What happened to love everyone!?"
"Love? He doesn't deserve love. He never did."
"You know exactly what he's going through!  And he was under mind control!"
"You don't know that he was under mind control! You don't know that he's not faking it right now!"
"And so what if he genuinely meant to destroy that planet? Still wouldn't be any better than what you did!"
Meouch was taken aback at Allay's retort. Meouch's hulking, muscular body stomped up to the relatively short Moebian and reached for her neck.
"You do not bring that up."
Meouch, his pupils receded to angry slits, stared into Allay's fearful eyes. Slowly the rage vanished and he let Allay go.
"He needs love. He does," the lion whimpered. "Even if he doesn't deserve it."

"Nobody wants me. I'm just another time bomb waiting to go off. You have to leave me here."
"No, Tycho. Look at me."
Tycho raised his head and looked, with enormous camera eyes, at the ship at the vertex of the formation. Nul was staring right at him.
"Tycho, we know that wasn't you. We know that was the only Void Queen trying to get us to shun you."
"It was all my fault though. She tricked me. I killed everyone. Only because I was dumb enough to let her."
Nul released a button on his console and pressed a nearby one. His mouth moved, but Tycho could not hear anything. He could, however, try and read his lips.
Something about flares. Suddenly, from all the ships in the formation came pink streaks of light, dazzling across the darkness. As the streaks made their way through space, Tycho could make out their shape.
A heart, the size of a moon.
A message of love.
Nul's ship drifted up to Tycho's nose. Nul stepped out onto the deck, right in front of the enormous head's midline.
"It's okay, bud. All is forgiven."
Nul placed a hand on Tycho's cold face, utterly dwarfed by the mountainous head.
"It's alright."
Tycho felt the regret, the pain, the sadness all start to melt away. But only just a twinge. Something was wrong.
Nul's crystals were already glowing, but they began to blaze.
"Oh god," he whimpered. "There's too much. Way too much." He pulled his hand away as if Tycho were a hot stove.
Tycho's eyes met Nul's. Nul had the look of regret which could kill a man. Tycho knew he was not at fault. He collapsed over on his side and crashed down into the nearest continent, leveling it. Lava seeped up from cracks like blood.
"What now?" Asked Yuko.
"Who knows," Sieg grimaced.
Tycho, before them, kept wailing.
And then he looked at the heart. No matter what Nul tried, the heart persisted. And if enough ships could bother to get together to make that, maybe it wasn't so bad. Maybe he did have some amount of love up there. Maybe he wasn't at fault.
Maybe Nul's thing did work after all.