Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He did it. Sunny finally told everyone.

It was difficult, and they had to leave out a lot of details, but he did it.

They told everyone how Sunny only took up violin to spend time with Mari. How Mari really wanted the recital to be perfect. How Sunny wasn’t good enough. How Mari and him were at the top of the stairs.

How Sunny threw the violin down the stairs.

How it broke.

How Mari soon followed.

How Basil helped him make it seem like a suicide.

Silence followed their words.

Aubrey stormed out as soon as they were done, tears rushing down her face that was contorted with anger. Her footsteps were loud and echoed through the silence of the room like a hammer to glass. A part of Sunny’s imagination can’t help but see a familiar red outline around her form as she leaves the room.

Hero left soon after, he seemed to be in some sort of catatonic state, the shock of everything not fully processing yet. Sunny can’t help but feel a pang of familiarity, Hero’s state reminding them of their reaction after the accident. Eyes not fully there, sadness radiating from them but no real emotion seen on their face. It was eerie, Sunny felt like he was looking in a funtime mirror as a circus. A really fucked up funtime mirror.

Kel left soon after Hero, obviously going to comfort his brother. This didn’t stop Sunny from noticing him looking over his shoulder with what they think is hesitation and… something else Sunny couldn’t identify before closing the door behind him.

Sunny let go of a breath he was holding.

He did it.

He wonders if it was the right thing to do.

(A part of Sunny says it wasn’t worth it, how they’ll hate them and how he threw Basil under the bus. How Basil worked so hard for Sunny to not have to face the consequences of their actions and how Sunny, like a selfish monster, ruined all that hard work.

Ruined the peace they had. Ruined the bliss his friends got to live in being oblivious to the fact Mari was killed by the person she loved the most.

Ruined the 4 years of grieving, of healing from what they went through.

Maybe so, Sunny responds. But they deserved to know. They deserved to know from the beginning what happened.

Sunny learnt that the truth hurt, it hurt so fucking much. But it’s important. The truth is all they really have.

Sunny decides it doesn’t matter, they deserved to know.

And they knew now.

It was up to them to forgive him.)

The youngest turned over to their sleeping friend, watching as Basil’s chest rose up and down in a steady rhythm. His left eye looked pretty bruised, but the other areas of his face seemed to only have minor injuries. Sunny thanked any god that would listen for the fact he was weak from 4 years of isolation, or they could’ve really hurt Basil.

Sunny doesn’t think he could forgive himself if he hurt Basil further.

Sunny couldn’t help the guilt eating at him soon after these thoughts, sure Basil had done worse physical damage.

(Sunny didn’t not notice the fact he couldn’t feel his own eye in his socket, how the feeling is slowly beginning to overwhelm him, his mind screaming that it's not right it’s not right it’snotrig -).

But Basil didn’t isolate and abandon Sunny for 4 years. Basil didn’t repress all the memories to forget what he did, Basil lived with the guilt for the 4 years without break. Sunny got to pretend he wasn’t a fucked up murderer, got to pretend and live in a fantasy land where no one really died, where Mari was alive and well. Where everyone loved Sunny and nothing truly bad happened. Sunny got to live in this ignorance. Basil didn’t. Basil was forced to live with this Basil didn’t get the reprieve Basil -

Basil’s eyes opened ever so slightly.

They closed again soon after, but they opened again soon after. His eyes slowly adjusted to the blinding hospital lights and landed their gaze onto Sunny. The black haired teened was sitting next to him, holding his hand lightly. The other gave a small smile, and Basil couldn't help but smile back.

The smile morphed into panic as the others eye rolled into the back of their head and Sunny's body collapsed over Basils.

He quickly hit the emergency button on his hospital bed repeatedly until doctors rushed in and brought Sunny back to his room. They probably yanked out their IV without thinking as to why it was there in the first place. Basil shook his head slightly at this, of course Sunny wouldn't think twice about those things, their self preservation wasn’t really the best sometimes...

What Basil couldn’t figure out is why Sunny went to him, what Basil wondered was where everyone was.

But Basil isn’t stupid, he isn't, really. He knows Sunny said something to the others, if that something was along the lines of there's free food at the cafeteria or…

...or what happened to Mari. What actually happened to Mari. What happened on the night of the recital. The worst night of his (and he's willing to bet) Sunny's life. That terrified Basil, he worked and suffered to keep Sunny safe from this very situation. He made sure Sunny wouldn’t have to worry, that Basil would keep Sunny safe from all this.

He let out a shaky breath.

He doesn’t know what to do.

He wonders if he told them about his involvement. His reasoning.

(He doubts Sunny truly understands why he did it, they never really discussed what they did in the moment due to the panic, or after the fact since Sunny fell into his self isolation soon afterwards.

Basil can understand why Sunny did. Sunny loved Mari so much. He couldn’t imagine how he’d react in Sunny's position. The face of his friend when they realized what they had done is something that's haunted Basil's nightmares for the past 4 years.)

But… Sunny’s smile, the look in his eye. It made Basil question if it really is going to be like last time. If Sunny is going to leave him, alone and suffering.

Something in Basil told him this wasn’t the case.

smiling and closing his eyes, Basil decided to rest for the time being.

Chapter Text

Sunny’s body feels like it's floating.

It’s calming, he doesn’t mind it too much if they’re being honest. The change of stimuli feels calming and grounding to the young teen. They’re so used to feeling so heavy, the weight of his grief and regrets would weigh down his shoulders every moment of every day since the night of the recital. It would make his lower back ache and cry out in pain, or maybe it was the fact his posture was terrible. Either way, it wasn’t fun.

Which is why when suddenly they feel their body drop down on a cold floor he groans. He doesn’t have much time to process the feelings before an echo-ey voice rings out in his mind.

‘Welcome to Grey Space. It’s your first time here.’

Sunny groans even louder at this before reluctantly opening his eyes (his eyes were closed? They hadn’t even noticed…).

The first thing they notice is the clutter. While White Space was empty and devoid of any visual stimulation, this was the exact opposite. Despite the base colour of the room appearing to be grey, as the name suggests, there were splashes of colourful paint across the room. It made Sunny think of an artist he learnt about once in class but more intense. 

(Jackson Pollock? He’s pretty sure that was his name.) 

Outside of the colour however, there were also many items scattered across the room. Mewo was present, but appeared to be on top of an overly complexe cat tree. There were piles upon piles of sketchbooks scattered about the area, they seemed to be all filled and well loved by someone who would stick and glue their way through the pages. 

There were also multiple pieces of art supplies, some basic ones Sunny could recognize, but others seemed more obscure, or generally just not within Sunny’s knowledge of what art supplies could even look like. Despite all the mess however, it didn’t overwhelm Sunny. It felt like an organised chaos, one he could understand. The eye in the hurricane or whatever the expression was.

Looking around however, brought out one sight sticking out like a sore thumb in the sea of colour.

Omori.

Omori sat there, looking at Sunny with its usual blank expression.

Immediately, Sunny can feel himself get overwhelmed. What on earth is Omori still doing here? Didn’t they defeat it?

As if reading his mind, which it probably was considering this literally is in Sunny’s head, Omori’s eyes flickered for a moment. It’s always been difficult for Sunny to understand the small changes and meaning in people's facial expressions, but something inside of them told him that Omori’s expression conveyed ‘Tired, don't want to fight. Just want to rest’.

Sunny feels the tension in his body release slowly at this realisation. He slowly began to make his way next to the black and white mirror of themself and sat down slowly. Sunny can feel Omori’s eyes on him, but decides to ignore it, instead looking up at the ceiling and admiring all the colours.

A beat passes, and Omori’s eyes leave Sunny’s form, joining their gaze towards the sky.

‘It is quite nice…’

-

“I cannot fucking believe them”

“Aubrey, you need to calm down -”

“ I AM PERFECTLY FUCKING CALM I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW- ”

Aubrey's yell is cut off by her letting out a noise of frustration before she slams her baseball bat on the pavement outside. 

“At least this isn’t in the hospital...” Kel mumbles out, silently thankful property damage isn’t something he has to worry about today.

Aubrey’s head turns toward him again, eyes full of anger and fury. She walks closer to Kel before jabbing her finger into his chest and getting into his face.

“We just got told fucking Sunny killed his fucking sister and- and that Basil! Basil of all people helped him in covering it up to make it look like she fucking killed herself and you’re concerned about- about me hitting the fucking floor? What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

She cries out. Kel is looking at her, his expression inderscenable, and that pissed Aubrey off even more. She pushes over her friend and goes back to her angry pacing. Kel stumbles a bit, nearly falling over from his lack of balance (really, why did no one tell him being tall would be so disorientating?) before catching himself and glancing at Hero.

The oldest was sitting on the side of the hospital's flower bed, his eyes still unfocused and hazy. It painfully reminded Kel of when Mari first died, how Hero seemed to lose his will to do anything. Back then Kel had wondered if Mari killing herself had also killed his brother, if not literally than metaphorically. It almost made him mad at Mari back then, for doing this to his brother, but he caught those thoughts soon and nearly vomited from the guilt.

Shaking his head, Kel returns his attention to the pink haired girl right as she seemed to have had enough of the others ‘indifference’.

“ How can you be so fucking calm?? Don’t you give a shit about what Sunny just told us, how he lied to us for years?! He killed Mari and lied to us, then 4 years later decided ‘whoops nevermind let me tell you guys’! He hung his fucking sister and you don’t care!” She yelled out, eyes blazing as she held his gaze.

Something in Kel snapped at that moment, how fucking dare Aubrey say he doesn’t care! It must’ve shown on his face, as her eyes widened slightly before he yelled back.

“Of course I care! Don’t you think I want to join you and immediately hate them and pin all the blame onto Sunny and Basil? Because I fucking do!”

Aubrey's mouth opened slightly in shock, but Kel was nowhere near finished.

“But guess what! I’m not because yeah, it's been 4 years, but I knew, you knew, how much Sunny fucking loved Mari. He looked at her like she was his guardian angel for Christ's sake! And you know how protective we’ve always been about him, especially Basil.

We all treated him as the baby of the group, we all promised to protect him no matter what! So I’m so fucking sorry I want to hear out the reasonings as to why they did what they did before deciding to hate the people I considered family for my entire life!”

As Kel finishes his speech he could feel his breath come in short bursts, despite all his basketball his stamina was no match to the emotional mess he was going through right now. His eyes stayed locked with Aubrey’s, daring her to make a comment or try to pull more shit with him before a quiet sob broke them out of their staring contest.

They both whipped their heads towards the noise to see that Hero was sobbing quietly, face in his hands and shoulders shaking. They make eye contact again, agreeing this conversation wasn’t over and they’d discuss more later on without a single word (a useful skill learnt from all the years they were friends) before heading over to their crying friend.

The three sat there, the large and imposing hospital behind them as they held each other, the silence only broken by the sobs of the oldest. It didn’t feel real. None of it did. They all needed time.

They ignored that the flowers right behind them were iris’s.

(The iris represents hope and cherished friendship.

Mari always said it was one of her favourite flowers.)