Kairos sighed as he watched Arkadin sob in the corner. Kenon had popped by earlier that day and made a simple request of Arkadin, to destroy a cluster of dead corrupted nodes, and something had gone wrong, requiring Kairos to intervene and causing the Thantophor to collapse in a pile of tears. They had managed to get the job done, it had taken a bit longer than usual, everything had been sorted out and Kenon had probably already forgotten about the situation, but Arkadin was still sobbing.
“Are you always like this?” Kairos tutted, deciding to leave his work for now and do something less tedious.
“Yes…” Arkadin muttered between heavy, wet breaths. “I’m always like this. Can’t do anything right…”
“You fall apart on every little mistake, really?”
Arkadin unfurled himself, revealing a massive heap of used tissues he had been holding. Realising how disgusting he looked, he sheepishly started picking up the tissues and throwing them away in a nearby bin. “Yes, everything. No matter what, I always seem to fuck things up. Nothing I do is good enough.”
“We got it sorted out though…” Kairos sighed, watching Arkadin attempt and fail at picking himself up. “Seriously, what is wrong with you? It was a simple mistake! We got it sorted out!”
“I shouldn’t have made a mistake in the first place!”
“We all make mistakes, brother.”
“Well I shouldn’t make mistakes!”
Arkadin collapsed into a heap again, this time sobbing and sniffling. He’d run out of tissues and was trying in vain to wipe his snout on his arm, leaving trails of snot on his armour. His tears and sobs though were somewhat hollow, as he knew he was overreacting.
“Arkadin, please…” Kairos skulked around the room, waiting for Arkadin to stop being such a child. He had been tired of Arkadin’s antics a while ago and now he was getting genuinely pissed off. “You’re just embarrassing yourself now. You’re not going to get pity from me.”
After a few more empty sobs, Arkadin sat himself up again, staring blankly at the floor. He had realised how stupid he looked.
“I’m such an asshole…” the Thantophor muttered. “Not only do I fuck things up all the time but I make everyone else suffer too.”
With a sigh, Arkadin stood up and traipsed out of the room, towards the nearest bathroom to clean himself up. Kairos hesitated, then followed. He didn’t want to follow Arkadin, but he was worried he would try something stupid while in there. To Kairos’s surprise though, Arkadin was actually washing his face and wiping away the years and snot.
Kairos watched as Arkadin cleaned himself up, pausing whenever he caught a look of himself in the mirror. Whenever he did so, he would sob a little then look away. Kairos wasn’t sure why Arkadin did that, but he assumed Arkadin just hated how he looked. After all, he WAS pretty ugly when he cried.
“You done now?” Kairos grunted as Arkadin finally left the bathroom.
“Yeah. Sorry.” Arkadin’s reply was blunt. He traipsed towards the room Kairos was letting him sleep in and threw himself on the bed.
“Why do you do that to yourself?”
“Because I hate myself.”
“That much?”
“Yeah…” Arkadin sighed as he pulled a blanket over himself. “I’m a fucking failure.”
“You’re really not. You’re just having a bad day.”
“Kairos, you don’t get it…” the Thantophor tutted, covering himself up, possibly in shame. “This is a somewhat average day for me…”
The Whenvern sighed. He wasn’t getting through to Arkadin. “Fine, whatever. I’m going to close the door and leave you to it. Do me a favour and don’t try and kill yourself, at least until I come back to check on you.”
Arkadin grunted, huddling up under his blanket. With one last sigh, Kairos closed the door, wishing that his brother would one day finally get around to fixing himself.