A/N: It begins; a series of bad ending one shots for every episode of Wander Over Yonder! Because apparently I enjoy your suffering, dear readers. Sorry about that.

My two other bad ending fics will probably be absorbed into this when I get to their episodes.

The Greatest

In retrospect, he probably should have run the plan by Sylvia before rushing headlong into a horde of evil eyeball henchmen, but perhaps he'd started to take the zbornak's support for granted. While he and Sylvia were still fairly new to traveling together, his friend had already saved him from a variety of deadly situations. Whether he needed to save a little boy's doll from being torn apart in a meteor shower, help an old lady cross a river of molten hydrogen, or get a cat out of a tree in the mile-high forests of Tallius 7, she'd gone along with it.

He'd never even considered that taking on Lord Hater might be when she'd put her foot down.

...Okay, so he'd definitely started to take Sylvia for granted. Moreover, he started to take her passivity for granted, as if she had no breaking point. As if she'd never put her foot down like the independent creature with her own dreams and goals she was. As if she'd never decide to leave and let him lie in the bed he'd made.

The realization of how poorly he'd treated Sylvia made Wander's face sink deeper into his knees as he sat in the dungeon on Lord Hater's ship. There were no chairs - the concrete floor was unbearably cold and some leak upstairs was dripping down and mixing with his tears, forming a puddle that would eventually take over the small room and leave nowhere dry to rest.

He imagined the bars smoothing out into a solid wall and the water dripping faster. He imagined drowning in the freezing dark room.

But it wasn't dying that scared him. He was no fool; Lord Hater was surely going to kill him before day's end anyway. What scared him was the lack of warm, blue hands reaching out for him and holding him close in those last minutes, which only made him start crying all over again because how could he be so selfish? How could he imagine a friend dying alongside him? How could he put the needs of strangers over the needs of someone he cared about?

...How could be still, after today's events, not really regret anything?

"Hey, weirdo, get up!"

Wander's eyes peeked out from behind his knees. Well, there he was. There was the guard, and Wander already knew what came next.

He stood, thoroughly defeated, as keys clanged and the cell door opened.

"It's time."