The Reluctant Apprentice: Friends Forever

Phantom Pains

⚠️⚠️WARNING: The following next 2 chapter contains depiction of blood 🍷 and death 💀 . In particular the death of William. If you find the following offensive or upsetting then I recommend you leaving the fandom. His death was cute in pixels but in reality... not owo. But on a serious note, you probably want to skip this and the following chapter. ⚠️⚠️

POV: 1st - Alex
                              I appreciated how quiet William was when we got home, his mind clearly was preoccupied with something else. He seem to find the videos that I put on for him entertaining enough. I was surprised that he wanted to watch the game theory videos on his universe and his timeline. I mean he already knew it, but I guess he was just curious how much did I know. I was even more surprised that he agreed to marathon the oldest videos to the newest videos during our team effort on my homework. We both got good laughs at how inaccurate the first few videos were.
                        Eventually I got too tired to continue my videos and homework so I got changed and went to bed. I put William down as I looked at him, "Why does it take you pissing off my best friend for you to be nice to me for a few hours?"
"You know it doesn't have to be a one time thing, I'm not that bad."
"I can assure you. You definitely are."
"Well you'd be a little snarky if you had to spend 30 years in a backroom by yourself. I've gone years without socializing, here and there, so I've lost a bit of my edge. You have no idea what I've been through. Your mind can't even imagine how painful the springlock suit felt, let alone how the agonizing pain felt being dragged out for 30 years and the isolation does to a person."
"Will, you are not a friend of mine, but I'm used to you. A part of me wishes that you weren't such a terrible person because having a friend who's a ghost might've been really cool. But deep down no matter how many good times I have with you, you are still a monster. Good night."
"Good night, Alex."

POV: Narrator
                              As the poor girl fell asleep, she found herself once again slipping in between the creations of her mind and his memories. She was suddenly in a very familiar room, not familiar to her personally, but somethings she had witnessed in a video game before, a certain cutscene.
                           One by one, the spirits of the dead children appeared. They were much more horrifying than they were in the game. Pale white forms of mutilated children. They had began to circle her and walk closer. At this moment, she realized that this was not real, this was once again one of William's memories. She was not particularly squeamish, when it came to blood and gore, and the lack of smell of blood made this more tolerable than her previous experience with deceased children.
                           She was calm now, no longer frightened, as she allowed William's body and eyes to go through the motions. She wondered what was going through his head. She knew damn well that it had been many years since his original death and his reflection of the moment clearly was not accurate to his true feelings at the time.
                          She watched as he scramble to put on the suit. At that moment, the true terror of what was happening sunk in, just like before she probably would feel something. She had felt the blood on her skin, it's moisture and texture, what was going to stop her from feeling how William felt when he died.
                           She slapped herself and punched herself to try to wake herself up, but of course she was in a dream and still couldn't move outside of his body movements. What she could feel however was how William was sweating profusely. She noticed something that he probably did not notice at the time, that the children were watching him get dressed in the springlock suit. They weren't scared of it anymore, they were waiting for him to stupidly put it on.
                           She took a deep breath and swallowed. She began to feel William's throat fill with laughter. It was a very unpleasant sensation, a sensation she had felt along time ago when she was younger. It was high school when it happened and it was the second time her mind had split in 3 in such an obvious way.
Her survival instinct, which her friends had comedically named for nearly the last semester, Kimmy, acted as a third lens for her, but also the one that held the memory. Meanwhile, the emotional aspect of her brain and the logical one thought an unholy war against each other, quietly in the back of her mind, while she was simply trying to make it through her classes. Till finally she snapped.
Watching from a third perspective, logic began to laugh. Laughed about how horrible the emotional part of her brain was doing at controlling emotions. It felt horrible, it hurt, it hurts so much. The uncontrollable laughter ripped through her body. She felt like she was choking, she could not breathe during the outburst, and it felt like she was not herself who is doing it. She imagined, at the time, that this is what it was like to be possessed and if so why it was so frightening. But these old memories were the least of her troubles now, it was happening again, but she knew it was only going to get worse.