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Helping with the show was simple, for several reasons. Sometimes it felt too simple.
Falling into his old routine, returning to the script, it wasn't that hard. MePad helped in the background, he pushed things or teleported them. When something was too high up for him, he just asked Mr-
He asked Bot. There was Mr Fan and Ms Test Tube and Bot, but there was no Mr Assistant on this season.
(Bot was a sweet person, they'd tried calling MePad that, once. Mr MePad. He'd paused, for a second, to think about that. Then he'd corrected them, no, MePad didn't need to be a Mister. They could just call him his name.)
Sometimes he wondered if he was doing the right thing. This show with no audience, Fan made it sound so... Obvious. The perfect solution to everybody's problems. Voluntarily made it right, emotional development made it necessary.
All MePad could think about was how fragile everyone was. When Taco splashed into the water, when Test Tube fell, when Poppy and MeTag had that crash.
Mic could short circuit. Somebody else could drown (again, he'd been so- he couldn't- it was strange to know Miss Box now.)
Someone could-
He was in the graveyard. He hadn't meant to come here. There was no reason to.
Usually he brought flowers and placed them carefully, gently by the headstone. He didn't need rough treatment, all he'd ever deserved was gentle.
It was a graveyard because there were multiple headstones. Just the two. For now.
It was so easy to die.
Test Tube had insisted on the other grave being marked, just in case she needed to dig him back up for another sample. MePad pretended he didn't know that was why. (He was glad he couldn't eat.)
He didn't hear the footsteps until they were embarrassingly close.
He was glad it was hidden in the earth now, that wretched thing. MePad was the one that insisted it be put away. He couldn't look at it. Nobody should have to look at it.
Somebody cleared their throat.
He couldn't find it in him to move even a millimeter. It was rude, not to hum in acknowledgement.
"MePad?" Said somebody, and it had to be one of the new residents, because one word didn't tell him who it was. "Did you want me to, uh, talk to MePad?"
Silence, from whoever they were talking to. Poppy. Their most contentious contestant.
More footsteps and he saw yellow out of the corner of his vision. His eyes hadn't strayed from the headstone.
They sat down in front of Cobs' grave. He thought that was fitting, in a way, since people had been acting as though Poppy had climbed out of it.
"Hello, Poppy." He said, voice flat. Flat as it always was. Like it always would be.
"Yeah, uh. Hi?" They moved a little as they talked, but he didn't glance over to see it. "We're between challenges, so..."
They were. That's why he was out here, in a way. He hadn't had anything else he was doing and he drifted until he was here.
He'd never really left Toilet's orbit.
"You and MeTag, you're, uh-" They sounded so nervous.
"We understand each other." MePad supplied.
"Wait, really?" The yellow blur that was Poppy got a little taller, maybe they sat up straight. "Why don't you translate for them?"
He thought about times they'd sat side by side out here. "We both have people we miss."
"I mean, on the show."
"Oh." He'd meant metaphorically. "I meant metaphorically."
"Oh." Poppy repeated.
They both let silence have its turn.
"Who do you-?" Poppy stopped when MePad turned to look at them, and at the other grave, and at MeTag.
"Miss Suitcase killed Steve Cobs." Poppy flinched. MeTag didn't need to, he was just stating facts. His voice stayed flat and even, because it always was, and he was only stating facts. "Steve Cobs killed Mister Toilet. He was my best friend. He saved my life. Everyone's. Even MeTag's, in a way."
MeTag swiveled to look more directly at him. He stared directly at the logo that was more a mark of death than product branding, for people like them.
He understood it was different for MeTag. MePad never had those days, weeks, months where he was Cobs' special newest creation. He'd never tried desperately to please him. There was no love lost between him and Cobs.
"Why haven't I heard about him?" Poppy asked. "I mean, aside from the stage."
Curious. They were just curious, and why shouldn't they be? There was so much they didn't know, so much everybody else simply understood.
He turned away again. "I was his only friend." If he had a throat, it would've burned with the admission. No one else had seen Toilet for the kind, brave, wonderful-
"I'm sorry." They said, as though it could be their fault somehow. People liked to act like things were. MePad understood that impulse, to look at their shapes and colors and flinch away, turn away.
He hadn't condemned Poppy, but he could've fought harder for them instead of sinking into the background. He didn't hate them, he needed to show that more.
"I am, too." He said, and he was sorry about different things.
They were MeTag's friend, and Meeple stick together.
(Why hadn't he gone with MePhone?)
Like it or not, Poppy was one of them now.
(He didn't expect to be the one left behind.)
He regretted a great many things. The things he let MePhone do to the contestants, and what they did to each other. He regretted not waking up earlier, and never meeting the other phones before they died, and letting Toilet convince him to rest.
Toilet was good with his emotions, with laughing and crying and loving. MePad wasn't. He'd only gotten worse at it, now that-
"I do not regret meeting you." MePad said, because it was true, even if it wasn't enough. There was something bigger to say, but looking at this rock (carved, crudely. Labeled by an inexperienced hand. All that was left.) it would have to do.
"Okay." Poppy said, and they sounded like they had more to say too.
But, instead, everyone sat in silence. Only one of them breathed while the other two thought about how, paradoxically, they outlived someone who had. Someone real, solid. Someone with a personality, a smile, someone worth living for.
MeTag found someone new, and MePad hadn't, and for now that was okay.
He hoped Poppy never came to really, fully understand.