y'know that post that's like "a portal opens up and a more well adjusted version of you is talking to a spirit or something and says like 'gosh i never realized how bad it could have been! i need to appreciate my life more!' and then it closes and you're just left there". no? ok. i need to find it. anyway. bitter eternity upon ye.
og!cocole is transported to the bitter eternity universe to do basically that. also all the other rhythm doctor characters but COCOLE !!
it's not really to teach og!cocole a lesson or anything? they do gain a better appreciation of their current circumstances i suppose but it's mostly to make be!cocole feel bad. oh wait. it could be a lesson if it's before miracle defibrillator? when they're still fighting
og!cole is like. horrified. he just realised how isolating himself and prioritizing his music over everything else was like. not ideal. and beau!cole is doing exactly that but so much worse than the og AND he isn't even doing it because he likes writing music or wants to make something cool. it's literally just to write music. doing it for the sake of doing it. he's having a miserable time for literally nothing. it's purposeless. even in his worst creative slumps cole would still push through because he wanted something better but beau!cole just wants anything at all. so really he wants nothing at all.
the state of beau!cocole is also like. awful to cole because he can't fathom it ever happening. caring about things is his Thing. he may deprioritize things when he directs his focus to a specific area, but he's never Not Caring. he's full of passion no matter what. the idea that he and nicole just... stopped caring? that they drifted apart, never really broke up at all because it didn't matter anymore? it just doesn't compute. their fighting in 2-XN was centred around him ignoring nicole, sure, but they were still fighting about it. if it became too drastic, they'd go down in fire and flames. there's some comfort in knowing that it was important enough to hurt.
og!nicole, on the other hand, fully understands the inevitability of it all. life is hard. just getting up in the morning can be a struggle, and the day after day of endless voices and faces that slide just past you can grate on your nerves. sometimes it feels like nothing at all would be better than the something you have. so she would make that choice. she understands that choice.
but nevertheless it still shakes her. because even though beau!nicole chose "nothing", to stop sustaining anything more than a daily routine, even that is fueled by a horrible, barely concealed desperation.
(nicole watches her mirror work at the cafe and sees how beau!nicole must claw her way through every moment. her strained, unsettling smiles and the minute shaking of her hands as she records orders-- is it that obvious to anyone else? anyone but her perfect mirror, watching somewhere nearby? and is nicole herself that obvious at her lowest points? do they look the same? what do they look like? it's surreal, getting the chance to observe yourself from an outside point of view and yet knowing it means nothing at all. or something different, at least.)
it's not that beau!nicole isn't exhausted. it's that she's too tired to close her eyes. she is compelled to run herself to the ground because of.... some sense of inertia, maybe? nicole can't quite pin the feeling down, but she knows it well. sees its embers somewhere deep within her.
so nicole is grateful for what she sees, in a way. it's confirmation of what could have been, but also confirmation of what isn't. and she knows that her uncertain future can be steered far away from the rocks this shipwreck lays scattered upon.
and beau!nicole just keeps going, knowing that she is the cautionary tale and that there is no future for her.
also the edegas are like. this
nothing is gained from their interaction at all