Work Text:
There's nothing very ceremonious about it.
Under a sweltering sun, the eliminated contestants march through vacant grasslands, the finalists following suit in a mutual silence.
It was a hard-won victory, claimed by the skin of her own teeth. Pin wills herself to bite her tongue, to keep from gloating just long enough until Dream Island was formally in her possession. It felt better that way. Poetic.
It's everything she deserves.
So she instead made do with the silence. Needle and Book trail behind her, frowns etched deep upon their faces, and Pin can't bring herself to care. Not for their envy, nor their disappointment. The two of them could hardly amount to the effort she had put in to be in their place.
They stop in the middle of a clearing. Spectators eager, they tumble over themselves in forming a loose circle, leaving just enough space for Pin to propel her way through. The Freesmarters glare, her former W.O.A.H Bunch teammates share glances.
She spots Coiny in the crowd, smiling for her, despite everything.
Her eyes can't linger for too long, though-- a blast of confetti is in her face before she can even think, and she stares daggers at Firey, who wields a party popper in his hands.
"Y'know, from one winner to another, this is a pretty high honor. You should really cherish--"
"Yeah, uh-huh," Pin interrupts, her patience fraying. "Just gimme my island already!"
Firey doesn't waste her time after that. Guiding her down the clearing towards her prize. It sends her heart galloping with anticipation. Revenge had tasted the right amount of sweet, and now she was about to savor victory--
Firey and Gelatin stop before Dream Island. Jazz hands, all smiles.
Her heart skips, stops for a moment.
Dream Island.
Dream...
"Um."
"Congraa~aatulations!" Gelatin sings. "How about some applause for our winner?"
He was beside Pin now, a hand giving the top of her head congratulatory pats. Baring a grin as if he was unaware of the danger, like she hadn't run him down like roadkill beneath her wheels. If he was expecting a reaction, Pin didn't give him one, her mind stuttering like it couldn't believe what she was seeing. Someone, somewhere, did start clapping, but she could hardly hear over the ringing in her ears.
She blinks at it owlishly. Twice, three times-- maybe the heat of the sun was making her see things.
It hasn't even moved an inch. Somehow the island-- farm?-- withstood all that time in the middle of nowhere; crude, frivolous and as ridiculous as the game they'd played to own it. Hastily drawn scribbles on sheets of paper, something that vaguely resembled cattle made of plastic. An innocent arts and crafts project, by hands and minds that wouldn't have fathomed all of the disorder and conflict that had brought them here.
Finally, forcing the words out of her mouth in a shaky whisper, "Is this a joke?"
Firey's clueless silence sends her into a rage.
"You," She rounds on Gelatin, (because who else could she be angry at?) "said that the winner gets Dream Island."
Firey secures a hand around his wrist and pulls him away. It doesn't stop Pin from advancing, a white-hot anger simmering in her chest.
"We played this stupid, stupid game for months, and I won fair and square--"
She misses Book's flinch, the deeply uneasy look on Needle's face, as if she had just realized something that Pin hasn't yet (because she refuses to). At some point, Coiny completely stopped smiling.
And Pin, far too used to making a spectacle of herself, makes sure her shouts reach the sky, loud and cracking and desperate: "--So where's my real prize!?"
Truly, truly, this can't be all there is. Tell me it all wasn't for nothing.
"Use your brain, pinhead," Pencil-- ever the conflict resolver-- shoulders her way between them. "Did you forget? We had to make an island for a contest lest we'd be battling for nothing." She towers over Pin with ease, thrusting a finger in her face as if she was yet another thing to patronize, to embarrass, and for once Pin is stunned into silence.
"Well," Pencil spares a withering glance at Dream Island. "So much for that. I pity you."
I don't need your pity, rests hot on Pin's tongue like smoldering coals. But Pencil's words plant seeds of doubt in her mind: did she forget? How could she have?
Her breathing hitches; It was like the air was disappearing before it reached her lungs, and once again she felt reduced to mere inches of herself. Helpless, defenseless, unable to cry or shout, and this-- This wasn't fair.
She'd been stripped bare of her autonomy in every way possible. Mocked and alienated, and never had she harbored so much vitriol that she didn't know what to do with. Nobody here could possibly imagine it: how lonely, agonizing, and exhausting it was, being caged within her own body. And lord forbid her teammates witnessed her complain.
(Because heroes weren't made for weakness.)
These people-- this game-- wrung her like a doll and had the audacity to be upset when she retaliated. For choosing herself, after everything.
The mechanical whirr of her suit like the growls of a lion-- Moonlight catching on the metal of the drill like a bared fang. Merciless upon whomever stood in her way. She was an apex predator, a force to be reckoned with, treading on her adversaries in the path towards her supremacy.
(And those with no place in it were left behind.)
A desperate cry sonorous in the night as Coiny plummeted into the forest, the sound of failure. A sound Pin pretends not to hear.
A lone red emblem projected onto the stars. She had marked the sky itself, made it bleed her color. It was everything. Everywhere.
It's what she deserved, after so long of having nothing.
It's everything that she could've wanted.
She wanted to be feared, and be loved, to be celebrated, and envied. What better than to make a show out of the worst parts of herself, broadcast to thousands. Anything to numb that weariness nested in her chest.
(A bone-deep weariness that was only ever eased by the thrill of the chase. She knew that she was broken, fundamentally. Pin had come back, but she hadn't come back right. Like some part of her being withered away in the fires of that hell she'd been sent to; since then, she'd let code and programming do all of the feeling for her.)
All of it, for this?
Maybe the prize remained intact this long just to spite whoever was unlucky enough to receive it. This was the thing that made a monster out of her, out of everyone, Pin almost wants to laugh. It was never that serious-- nothing about this ever should've been.
And yet.
"Congratulations," Book is the first to speak. Her voice is small, quivering and bitter. The sound of failure.
The phantom feeling of drilling through pages, embedded in the back of her mind; scapegoats recognized their own kind. Guilt, anger, and shame, rises in the back of Pin's throat, tasting like bile.
So much for being a leader. So much for hero complexes.
It meant everything, and it meant nothing.
Congratulations.
I hope it's everything you wanted.