bob was gone. there was no one left in the watchtower but the void.

and, well, you.

you’d ascended a few floors on a quest for bandages or painkillers or maybe someone who wasn’t freaking the fuck out. it was safe to the mission had gone wrong—of course it had—and somewhere between the explosions, the shouting and the blood, you got hurt. not a fatal wound, as you wouldn't be craving a slice of pizza if you were bleeding out, but enough to make your muscles protest every few steps.

"are you sure you're alright? because from the look of your ankle, i don't think alright is the right term. i don't care if alexei thinks it builds character." yelena commented, a warm, steadying hand on your back. "do they look alright, walker? no, da?" walker just rolled his eyes.

you'd barely made it to the living room when you'd realized something was wrong—darkness bleeding from the planes of the ceiling. and maybe the sight of val booking it down the stairs was a good indicator.

"that сука." the blonde had muttered, taking out one of her guns and reaching for your hand. "come, we need to find—" bob.

she was a pool of shadows on the stainless floor. you weren't sure if there had been audio to it, or if the thump had been your heart jolting out of rhythm. you didn't even have to turn to know that walker was also nothing but a trick of the light.

so now you were alone, where the glass wall looked out over the city like an accusation. the empty hush of a place that once belonged to legends, now filled with ghosts of broken promises and a sense of foreboding. too big, too quiet.

and he was there. or rather—it was there. bob’s silhouette against the window, drawn out in rough strokes like a sketch unfinished. blackness shifting around him like ink in water, tendrils of nothing reaching for corners and cracks. his head was angled with an innocuous tilt, as if he’d heard you.

well, he'd wanted you to come to him.

“they left you, you know.” the void mused, voice the shape of a thought you didn’t want to think. it wasn’t loud, it never had to be. the darkness held the melody of a pepper grinder, cleaving away the back of your skull. “they always leave you behind. every single one of them. even him.”

bob.

you could sense him, somewhere behind an inky veil. the previous time the void had emerged, yelena and co. had to find their way through endless shame rooms to save him. unfortunately for you, you were very much rooted in reality. no found family to hug it out with.

“they let you get hurt,” he continued, voice honeyed with rage. “they let the mission go wrong. they let you bleed. and now they run. because they’re afraid of me. they thought they could get rid of me with the power of friendship. but i’m not the one who put you in the line of fire, am i?”

you could feel the static pressing on your eardrums, the oil spill of the void blurring the ground at his feet, engulfing where your friends had laid. “i can fix it,” he murmured, softer now, as though trying to soothe you. he cared, you knew he did; too much. “i can make the pain go away. he wants that too. he just doesn’t know how to express it.”