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## looked up and i saw the sky scream

|| Negative Spirit character study.

i.

Anyway, their story ends here, wrapped in the facade of a beginning. There isn't much left to say.

ii.

They try to function and they try to spark and it is all so hollow without Him inside of Them inside of Him inside of the membrane that separated their entanglement from the rest of humanity & the vast remainder of the universe. They cut Him out of Them, He cut Them out of Him, and now the Spirit is firmly on the outside, as far away as is conceivable, cursed to dream. They ruminate, they dream. They ache even in their fantasies, even in the worlds they concoct in agony where things work out all the time, and no one ever touches the embodied flesh of suffering with the familiarity of intimate lovers, and no one ever carves into themselves, and no one ever has to ache and - they’re getting ahead of themselves, they’re in over their head, drowning in the overflow of their pain. How typical of them. How horribly typical.

See: the Spirit knows too much, now, about flesh. The Spirit knows too much. The Spirit knows too much as in too often and here are the facts:

1. Larry is on Earth with their son, the beautiful being created from each shard of their bond that crashed into the dimensional floors, Keeg like a mosaic of the - the - they hesitate to call it love because that makes it real—-
2. Larry is on Earth with their son, and both of them surely despise the Spirit now. Larry has only been abandoned and only knows how to abandon and Keeg was born out of abandonment; this should be beautiful, this should ring some sort of serendipity into the space around them.
3. Larry is on Earth with their son and the Spirit is not there to see any of it; their son will grow up believing that they didn't want him, that they left with malevolence. This kind of punishment is worse than anything the Bureau of Normalcy could ever conjure.
4. Larry is on Earth with their son. They will never see each other again. The Spirit will live forever and Larry will live forever. They will never see each other again.

ix.

Anyway, their story began here: force. The Spirit was forced into Larry’s body by Niles Caulder; force. The burden of their presence was forced upon Larry, the burden of Larry’s spiralling pain was forced into them, injected into their energy against the will of the universe. It was never meant to happen like this, it was never meant to happen. Reality and chance are amoral; they devour in blindness, without regard to who they hurt or who they bestow a miracle upon or who they curse. Life.

The Spirit knows this now, and the Spirit knows many other things now, ruminating over the concept of genuine love and undying desire and yearning and yearning and they will never see each other again. That kind of ending was inconceivable only ten years-on-Earth ago, and at one point the Spirit would have done anything - anything - to grasp it, anything except hurt Larry, always the one complication. They wanted to take him home, all those years ago, when Flex Mentallo failed at his rescue. He would fit in here. They could’ve been something.

viii.

They ruminate, they dream. They imagine, to feed the fire, what Larry and Keeg are doing now on the planet beneath them. Time works differently here, sideways and vertically-flipped, liquidstone, eternal yet fleeting - now is not a concept that translates, so the Spirit has to work harder in their dreaming.

They see it: Larry holding their son in his arms, comforting Keeg in the pain that the Spirit knows is inevitable; Larry flying through the skies with Keeg steering him, in the air once again, living inside of it like he used to but this time he’s living instead of running, the skies only invigorating him. They see it: Keeg growing up as Larry watches, reaching his adult form in 20 years-on-Earth, and there’s beauty, they are both always beautiful. Their son is perfect and they’ve never even met him. Larry’s growth is their ultimate mark on the planet, his blossoming into something less turbulent nurtured into existence at their hands. Their son is a being created from a human soul and the soul of a Negative Spirit, something that shouldn’t be possible, something that never should’ve happened, yet the only viable outcome of their love for Larry Trainor.

x.

They will never see each other again.