For all her existential dread and soul-crushing loneliness, Marshmallow could usually be counted on to help a friend in need. After all, that was the essence of what made someone a good friend, and she was usually halfway decent at that, right?

Well, actually, she failed to ever get serious about busting Bow out of that box during their months-long imprisonment on Idiotic Island. She also, uh, killed her in the cold blood and never apologized for it. As far as literally anyone else was concerned, that basically never happened, though, right?

She hugged herself and tremored; the guilt was so great that it ran through her like mercury in her bloodstream. Just as quickly, she remembered where she was, and switched back to her relaxed pose. Paintbrush's concentration didn't waver for a second as they dabbed yet more paint onto the canvas.

"It's a lot harder to paint without a reference," Paintbrush had explained to her, once, long before everything felt bad. "None of these idiots can sit still long enough for me to finish, so I usually do landscapes.'

'I could pose for you sometime. I'm good at sitting still unless I eat too much sugar,' Marsh had commented, and ate a piece of hard-won candy.

It wasn't an offer that Paintbrush took her up on all that frequently, so it was no wonder they were so focused. In fact, the knit of their brow was so intense that she was a little nervous about the idea of even breaking the silence. She'd hate to ruin their concentration, or worse yet, invoke their wrath when they were essentially stuck together for a few hours.

Leave it to Lightbulb to do what she did best.

"OMGA!" Something swung from the tree above into Marsh's face.

Marsh screamed. When she finally comprehended the beaming face three inches in front of her, she shouted at the sudden intruder, "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"Don't mind me, I was just practicin' my bat skills." Lightbulb hung upside-down from a tree branch with her usual bright smile. "Ya never know when those'll come in handy."

"Your bat skills...?" Marsh asked, but trailed off at the sight of Paintbrush. They were so startled by the intrusion that they had dropped their palette paint-side down in the dirt.

"Sure..." Paintbrush said, slowly.

Marsh gulped.

"Sweetstuff would agree, gravity is quite important for these- whoa!" Lightbulb backflipped to the ground, but stumbled in the process. She would have certainly shattered had Paintbrush not swept in to catch her by her shoulders. They gave her a quizzical look as they set her straight. As usual, Lightbulb didn't miss a beat as she stated, "You know, I did hear a rumor that the next challenge is about knitting. I gotta be prepared."

Marsh raised an eyebrow, "How's that...?"

"Lightbulb, can you please take your nonsense elsewhere?"

"What about this is nonsense?"

"Uh- How about we start with the fact that we're in the middle of something? Or, or the fact that backflips are useless AND dangerous?"

"When a friend says something like that, you have to wonder why."

"Because I actually make sense," Paintbrush countered. "You would've died if I wasn't here just now. But that's just how it always goes with you."

Lightbulb flinched, almost imperceptibly. "That sounds pretty judgmental," she argued.

Paintbrush laughed incredulously. Not a good thing. "Me, judgemental? You never make any sense."

Paintbrush and Lightbulb. Two seasons of being on the same team as them, and hanging out with them in the off-season, made Marsh something of an expert on their dynamic... a really peculiar little thing.

"That's just what you said before I won the pizza challenge."

"We might've still won if Yin-Yang didn't eat our pizza. Which, maybe he wouldn't have if you were keeping an eye on him!"

Lightbulb wanted Paintbrush to value her and appreciate her methods, but sometimes, Lightbulb's methods were... questionable. By contrast, Paintbrush's methods were forged in the sharp, red-hot, passionate smithy of their mind, and lord have mercy on anyone who questioned them.

"Getting thirty-nine out of thirty speaks for itself."

"That doesn't change that backflipping is a stupid skill that'll never come in handy."

"You don't know that!"

"Name one thing backflipping could help."

"Well, if I went to a circus and the clowns started backflipping, I'd be giving it ten stars... or nineteen, actually."

"So what, this game is just a circus to you? Bet you think you're a whole ringmaster, huh?"

...Sometimes, Lightbulb took Paintbrush's 'my way or the highway' stance personally. She took pride in being in charge, and felt like Paintbrush didn't care. But it wasn't like that. Paintbrush was never apathetic. Their problem was caring so much about the game that it pulled them apart, unraveled them as they tried to keep everyone else on the right track.

Marsh tuned back into their argument.

"-You and Fan wasted so much time last episode! If you just focused on the maze, maybe you could've found Test Tube and secured the win!"

Lightbulb stuttered. "We were just trying to help ligh-en the mood! Not my fault you're such a party-pooper."

"By being incredibly annoying and DISMISSIVE?! WHAT KIND OF LEADER ARE YOU?!"

Oh, that.

Marsh dusted herself off with a sigh. That moment, in the maze- it made her extremely uncomfortable. It made her feel undervalued and embarrassed, even.

But it wasn't worth all this arguing. Not between the only two people she could pretend she had in this game.

"Guys!" Marsh exclaimed, but it was too late. They were talking over each other, Marsh could already hear the latent hurt in Lightbulb's voice, and the air was getting hotter by the moment. When they argued like this, Marsh was as good as invisible. The point of no return had been crossed; there was only one way this could go.

Marsh quietly snuck off before it could get there.

⁂⁂⁂

'It was never like this at the Hotel,' Marsh thought shortly thereafter, on a stroll.

She, Lightbulb, and Paintbrush had been... well, not as close-knit as Nickel and Baseball, but they hung out. They laughed at each other's antics, did the occasional sleepover in Paintbrush and Marsh's room, made fun of people they didn't like... Sure, they argued sometimes. All three of them could be stubborn and overly competitive.

...But it never cut so deep before this season. They had a few short months to be happy, and then the game robbed that from them.

'It's amazing how it could just- warp a friendship, even without a betrayal.'

⁂⁂⁂

In a few days' time, a certain few thoughts Marsh had wouldn't leave her mind, so she rotated them.

Inanimate Insanity was a competition. That was the whole premise; you were supposed to look out for yourself, and throw people away if necessary, because only one person could win the prize. Water is wet, right? Friendships were incidental, but conflict was crucial to the drama of the show. Otherwise, none of them would try their best, and the viewers wouldn't care, either.

These had all been opinions she already formed about the show.

So... if conflict was integral, that meant the show had to put pressure on people's preexisting friendships, like Paintbrush and Lightbulb's. Even independent of the prize, which gave them the incentive to do so, people would throw away their friends.

'...Everything ties back to Apple using me.' Marsh's frown deepened.

...Would things have been different without the game, or the siren song of a million dollars? Or would Apple have never pretended to forgive her in the first place?

...Then again, that assumed that everything was as it seemed, but a gut feeling told Marsh there were some missing pieces to the puzzle.

"Um, hey." someone barked. Marsh came back to "reality." She was walking along a path, but Microphone now stood in it, her arms crossed. "What are you doing here?"

"Going for a walk. Is there a problem?"

"No, it's just suspicious. What could you be doing in the woods alone, meeting someone in secret?"

"Because trusting people always works great for me." 'Besides, you're the one walking out of the woods alone,' Marsh thought, but didn't reply.

Microphone winced, then visibly cleared her throat to save face. "Whatever. Just don't be surprised if your teammates want you out." Then she sauntered past Marsh, shooting her one final, suspicious glance for emphasis.

'This is RIDICULOUS,' Marsh thought exasperatedly. 'Has this game really made us into such animals that COMMON DECENCY is out the door?!'

⁂⁂⁂

She had stared at her drawing of Bow so much these days that it hardly even looked like anything to her anymore. The dread engulfed her all the same looking at it, dulled the edges of her vision like an overused knife.

"Marshmallow?" Marsh looked up from the artwork, heard the footsteps on the wooden dock before she even identified the voice as Suitcase's. "I've always wanted to meet you - I was a huge fan of your work in Season 1."

"...What part?"

"You were just really good at the game. You had such a huge impact even without an alliance."

Marsh was used to dealing with fans; usually, a friendly face came easy, but she just wasn't feeling it, today. "It... wasn't for lack of trying," she said, and hazarded one more glance at the drawing of Bow. "I'm glad it never worked like that. All alliances end the same way."

Suitcase frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Just... look at what happened last season! Bomb and OJ, Pickle and Taco, Balloon's alliance... The only one that didn't result in mutual hatred was Paper and OJ's, and- let's be honest, hatred was never on the table for them. Unless there's a fluke, it'll always end with betrayal."

"I-I always thought teamwork made the dream work... I don't think I could ever make my mark without my friends."

"Teamwork can help in the game, if you don't let it blend into some personal thing."

'...Apple understood that better than I did.'

Marsh's grip on the drawing tightened as she thought of the night at the hotel.

'...Or did she?'

"M-maybe you're right," Suitcase replied, and frowned. "...Have you been... OK?"

There was a long pause. Marsh glanced mournfully at her drawing. "It's not important."

"If it matters to you, it matters to me," Suitcase answered, her kind eyes widening. "Listening is what friends do."

For some reason, despite the bitterness in her heart, Marsh found she did trust Suitcase. She opened her mouth to say something, to take advantage of the rare supportive shoulder (er, leg socket?), weakness be darned.

"It's hard to figure out what's real these days," she admitted.

"I-I'm sorry?" Suitcase blurted out.

Marsh shrugged, and threw one of the pebbles she'd gathered at the lake. She intended to skip it, but gravity sent it hurtling into the distance, who knows how far. Hopefully it hit MePhone in the face or something.

"I... know the feeling," Suitcase confessed, and Marsh could tell it was difficult to get those words out. Marsh sensed that Suitcase was trying to build up to some confession, maybe something she couldn't tell anyone else.

Before she got there, they heard another voice: "Man, you really like fraternizing with the enemy." Nickel strutted onto the scene, looking pointedly at Suitcase.

"Am I not allowed to have friends?"

"Interteam bonding is dangerous! It's really not worth it for a golf-ball-stack destroyer like her, trust me." He glanced at Marsh. "Let's go."

Suitcase and Marsh exchanged one final glance before the two armless contestants left. Marsh just hoped she'd be OK.

⁂⁂⁂

There was a time where Marsh was afraid of Knife, but she'd been over that for a while. In a way, the torture he put her through was better than whatever weird purgatory this was. At least he was an oncoming bear, not a snake in the grass.

They didn't cross paths much these days, but they did on one particular day. Knife usually looked so bored, but his expression became perturbed when he set his eyes on Marsh. Marsh met his gaze with a resolute glare of her own.

Then Marsh blinked, and the moment was over. Knife retreated with a grunt, and lumbered in the direction whence he came. Marsh should've considered it a victory, but it sure didn't feel like it.

⁂⁂⁂

It was at least ten o'clock.

The night sky, in all its glory, was perfectly clear.

The crickets were quite loud around her, enjoying the last of the summer warmth before the autumn chill fully set in.

Marsh lay sprawled in the grass. She felt like an animal living out its final moments, desperately craving sweet release of... some kind. She was all at once impossibly exhausted - when was the last time she actually slept through the night? - and unable to relax.

"Do you ever wonder what else is out there?" Marsh had asked Balloon, once, under these stars. It was on the Hotel OJ roof between seasons, a little after OJ thought to get Apple from Idiotic Island.

"No," he admitted. "Are you kidding? I-I still have so much to prove here! OJ and the others can't think I'm a bad person forever..."

What Balloon had said eluded her at the time; Marsh had always wondered what lay beyond the show. She would've gone to Mars willingly if she didn't get flung there!

She... could almost understand what he meant now, though. When you had so much to atone for, it anchored you in one spot. It was both limiting and comforting to have at least one thing that was real to you. One thing that reminded you of your place in the world.

She glanced at her drawing one more time, just long enough for the edges of her vision to go dark, then began to walk.

To where? She didn't consciously think it, but there was only one place to go, to get away from it all.

She remembered the chilling punishment that Bow had gotten for daring to be herself. There could be awful consequences for doing something that probably violated some rule somewhere...

'Honestly, what's he going to do? Kill another fan-favorite? Big deal; I'd rather die than stay here anyway. Dying would send me to the mansion anyway! Besides, I'll be back by morning. Nobody will even notice I'm gone.'

⁂⁂⁂

'...Nobody will notice except that purple screen guy,' Marsh appended the thought as she made a mad dash past him. Thankfully, he made no real attempt to stop her.

⁂⁂⁂

Marsh slammed the bottle on the counter. "Apple seemed like she was the perfect friend. Clingy, sure, but I thought it was because she cared a lot about... me... But once I found out the truth, I can't help but think: is ANYTHING on this show real?"

The words came out in a tumble. It was but a small fraction of her angst — about watching her friend-group corrode, about having blood on her hands, about the game and how utterly powerless she felt—

"Well, hey, she was eliminated, right? Out of sight, out of mind. Makes you think about me, huh?" Bow laughed. She was doing that a lot today.

How... strange.

⁂⁂⁂

"Maybe YOU'RE the one that's lying! Maybe Kumquat wasn't such a good friend to you, maybe she didn't deserve to have your friendship, and MAYBE I MADE HER SAY ALL THOSE THINGS TO YOU JUST SO YOU'D SEE THAT IT'S TRUE!"

Something inside Marsh died.

"You... you... what?!"

⁂⁂⁂

Long story short, there was more heart-to-heart, singing, and soda than she would've expected when she made the trek to Purgatory Mansion. Finding out that even more of the things she thought were real were complete fabrications kind of made her feel like a shell of a person, but.

Well, she'd endeavored not to think about that.

Some people would think she was crazy for leaving at 3am to ask her former enemy to forgive her again. But, you know what? She didn't care what they thought! She decided for herself when she was acting crazy.

Was she acting crazy?

Certifiably, 100% insane.

But she knew this was worth it. Even if the result of tonight was a restraining order.