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It was supposed to be a quick scouting mission. Easy in and out. Paranoid had climbed to the rooftop—his usual post—scanning for a safe exit path. Merciless had been nearby as always, watching his rear, eyes sharp, mouth grinning that crooked grin he wore like armor.
Then came the shot.
It wasn’t exactly loud, just a low kind of intensity like a full stop, ending something immediately.
Merciless_Night remembered the sound of Paranoid_Night hitting the ground. He went down with a wet, heavy thud, his body jerking for a moment before he went still with a silence so loud it made his ears ring.
He didn’t scream when it happened. Not yet. He simply stared at him, as though unable to process it. His hands began shaking and didn’t stop.
He remembered reaching out and holding onto him, locking eyes with him as his breathing stilled, pressing their foreheads together as though he could bring him back to life through sheer will alone.
The world felt as though it had slowed. The chaos of the battlefield faded to a muffled drone in his ears. He didn’t feel anything at the moment, not the bullets brushing his body, not Paranoid_Night’s blood soaking his hands. He barely registered the calls of the other night operatives.
He remembered the way his eyes stared back, the blue and gold pupils unblinking and glassy. Wide and terrified. Already starting to cloud. He opened his mouth, only for nothing to come out. Paranoid_Night’s body was already losing its warmth; his bucket hat had rolled off somewhere. His lips were parted, as though he had been in the middle of a sentence.
He didn’t remember much else. He just knew that he had jumped over rooftops like a madman until he was two buildings away, sinking his claws into the sniper and tearing it to pieces.
The others said that they found him standing over the carnage, a pile of what used to be a man twitching at his feet. That even Horrid_Night didn’t want to go near him.
He didn’t remember carrying him down the building. Didn’t remember how he got through enemy lines.
All he could recall was the way Paranoid_Night’s body felt in his arms, the way his scent, the citrusy mix of detergent and sea-salt, was already fading. He wasn’t blinking, his face frozen as his body lay limp and locked in death.
Gunfire cracked in the distance. Alarms blared. Someone screamed into his comms. He was hit twice, took shrapnel to his shoulder. None of it mattered.
He didn’t know when or how he reached the base, bloodied and silent as he beelined to their shared quarters.
All he knew was that he had laid him in their bed. Smoothed his messy hair. Wiped the blood off his face. Covered him with their blanket, adjusting his limbs so he looked at peace, though there was none to be found. Pulled the blue bucket hat—worn and beloved—gently over Paranoid_Night’s chest. Like a goodbye he didn’t have the words for.
And then he began screaming.
He didn’t know how long. Hours, even days maybe. He destroyed everything. Cabinets thrown, walls punched until they crumbled. His claws scraped deep gouges into steel. No one went near his room after the screaming continued for three hours straight.
Blood soaked the floor—his own—from fists pounded into concrete, from flesh shredded by his own hands. His cap was flung across the room, forgotten. His tie—yellow, stained with soot and blood—hung loose from his neck like a noose.
He clawed at his own face. Tore through flesh. His hands were covered in blood, not from battle, but from trying to peel the grief out of himself. As if he could dig out the pain with his own claws. His voice gave out, broken, horse and strained.
He didn’t sleep or eat. If he wasn’t destroying something he was pacing, like a beast in a cage, eyes hollow as broken ramblings escaped his ruined throat.
Eventually, it stopped.
Not in the sense that he reached the limit. In the sense that he crossed it permanently.
He had gone outside one morning, before the sun even rose, walking to the coastline near the base. The ocean was dark, a deep endless black that swallowed everything. The moon hung cold and far above, a pale coin in a sky that had no interest in grief.
Merciless_Night stood at the edge of the shoreline, boots sinking slowly into the wet sand. The tides lapped at him, tugging the hem of his coat, pulling gently as if urging him forward.
His yellow tie hung loose, soaked and dark. He hadn't tied it properly since Paranoid_Night went limp. It draped limply down his chest like a forgotten ribbon—an echo of structure, of discipline. Things that had stopped mattering the moment his body fell.
He held something in his hand.
It was a crumpled blue bucket hat.
The only thing he brought with him.
Merciless stared at it. The brim was frayed. Stained from years of wear. There were three loose black hairs caught in the weave. He ran his thumb over it slowly, picturing the times he would run his fingers through Paranoid’s hair.
His hands hadn’t stopped shaking, fingertips covered in dried blood and ruined flesh where his claws had been worn down and snapped off, revealing the bones underneath from clawing at everything until he physically couldn’t. He hadn’t spoken to anyone else since his Paranoid died.
He stepped forward.
The water reached his knees, then thighs. His crocodilian tail dragged behind him, sluggish in the current. The waves wrapped around his waist. The cold bit into him, sharp as knives. He continued to walk.
The sea was silent. No gulls. No wind. Just the slow, sloshing sound of his steps, heavier now. His breathing grew ragged, his heart stuttering in his chest.
His cap drifted away as another wave tore it from his head. He didn’t turn to retrieve it.
He clutched the bucket hat tighter, and he was gone. No splash, no struggle.
The blue bucket hat floated up for a moment, and then disappeared beneath the waves.