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It’s dark enough out that Guest 666 can’t see the clouds anymore, just the dark sky and the milk white moon.
The constant buzz of the safe-house beacon, alongside its bright electric light, makes it hard to focus on that though.
Tonight, they decided they’ll waste their precious resting hours by sitting on the grassy roof of the safe-house.
It’s a genius plan, clearly. In a hell like The Vast you want to waste your time and disadvantage not just yourself, but your team too! The people that rely on you to be in top working conditions and ready to take on entities that you all can barely begin to comprehend for the most part. All alone by themselves on the roof. No one to bother them.
Well… not alone actually. It’s them and Model out this late at night. Guest 666 would’ve preferred to be alone, but Model clung to their clothes and just wouldn’t let go no matter how many times they unstuck his claws from the fabric. They nearly woke up Unit-8 with the racket, so they opted to instead take him with them to avoid any trouble or questions.
As far as Guest 666 is aware, they are one of the few who are still awake at this ungodly hour. The other survivors, the ones they go out sailing with, are fast asleep downstairs. At least they think they are. They could be wrong, but they don’t have any reason to go back downstairs and check.
But the ones they don’t go scavenging for supplies with? Probably awake too.
Noli is easy to guess why. He doesn’t sleep for any amount of time longer than an hour most days. Guest 666 thinks he has insomnia, but they’ve never gotten that suspicion confirmed. He’s always falling half asleep at that shopkeep desk, and then perking up moments after ready to keep talking. It’s kinda charming, in its own deteriorating and poor mental and physical health way.
The Intelligence and Ben are sort of similar to Uncle Noli. Guest 666 can remember times they were caught by one or the both of them when sneaking up late previous nights. They’re pretty certain it’s because the two are weird though. The Intelligence has apparently been awake and active for 15 years straight or something, and Ben… Guest 666 swallows hard, they don’t want to think too hard. They’d never admit this aloud, but Ben scares them in a way. The height and bright eyes, something like that.
Yorick is Yorick. Yorick is wild and fun. Enough said on it’s sleeping habits.
Guest 666 picks at their nails nervously. They’ve exchanged biting them for pressing the skin nearest to the nail down, sometimes digging a nail into their skin instead.
They don’t really know why they struggle to sleep. It’s always been like this since their inception. They remember restless nights spent tossing and turning in bed, failing to sleep and being cranky and weird in the morning because of it.
Walking around helped in a way. It got their brain off of things. Doing anything but trying to sleeping did that.
Sometimes, when the others tick them off, and they really regret thinking of this please keep that in mind, Guest 666 finds it easy to imagine what it’d be to have accepted SPIRIT’s offer. They’ve never wanted to, rest assured, they never want to fall into their hands again. But just for a moment, Guest 666 wonders what it would’ve been like to have all of that power, and to use it to shear peoples faces off like wool on a sheep.
It’s a bad habit they’ve had for years now. They don’t like to think this way, it’s demeaning and gross to their fellow survivor, but it's just very easy to, it’s an almost natural train of thought they encounter. Turning every situation violent when it goes even slightly wrong seems so simple. It turns the table quick enough that most don’t expect it. The weak surrender and you get your way. The ones on your level fight you, and the stronger one wins and gets their way. It’d be so much easier if every interaction could be that way for them.
But no, violence isn’t the answer to a lot of stuff. They can’t ask their fist how to do laundry. They can’t ask a knife to do math, they can’t ask a gun to teach them how to tie their shoe laces. And they can’t ask a sword for what were they created for no matter how hard they beg.
So why is violence the language that most of the people (and things) in the Vast speak? They (anyone really) can’t go anywhere out of the safe-house without facing the threat of death or worse. They’ve seen the things the monsters in this place can do, none of it is pretty.
The knowledge that they’re probably the one in their scavenging group to have the best grasp of The Vast bothers them to no end.
(They should feel grateful that no one else in the team has to know all the details like they do, but they suppose they’re just selfish in the end.)
Guest 666 doesn’t talk to Noli about this stuff, they don’t want to. She’s already burdened enough by stuff they don’t even know of, they don’t want to add onto her overflowing plate with all of their own messiness.
The one person they should feel they could open up to is the same person that they don’t want to. Ironic.
They feel bad they even think of any of this. It’s all stupid, just super stupid. They came up here in the first place specifically to try and avoid spiralling like this.
Theres no use on wondering “what-if” when they’re living in the present. All it does is make them miserable in the end.
Guest 666 wonders though, for a moment, if anyone else thinks the way they do, with the rampant unwarranted violent thoughts about others. Is it just a byproduct of being a Vast citizen, or being THE Guest 666? Or are they just weird in the head? Did SPIRIT hit them with a rock or steel pan or something when they were younger and they just don’t remember and it made their head turn sour from that day on? Maybe they just drank water that had some evil parasites that went and died in the folds of their brain to make them this way? There’s got to be some cure to their affliction.
(They don’t like entertaining the idea that there might not be a total guaranteed way to remove 100% of this from themselves. Like how cutting off the spotty green edges of moldy cheese doesn’t remove the inherent mold now infecting the whole block. There’s just no way.)
Model nuzzles up to them, pressing his fat face into their arm. It pulls them out of their head and back to reality.
They can walk and sit and stare at the boring sky all they want, but they’ll still wake up agitated in the morning. All because they can’t sleep.
And someone’s climbing the ladder, they can hear it creaking under the anonymous persons weight.
Guest 666 dries their face. They didn’t even notice that.
Oh well, that’s just how things go, they suppose.