Chapter Text
It's been 5 days since that night—5 days since Brusha's world crumbled right in front of her. 5 days that she's been laying in bed, getting up for almost nothing.
Not for when her phone buzzed on the other side of the room, cracked and probably a fire hazard with how it occasionally sparked.
Not to clean her bedsheets, which she'd thrown off the bed along with her pillows that ended up causing multiple of her paintings to fall and break on the floor.
Not to shower, she probably smells gross by now, but she really can't find it in herself to care.
Not to eat, even though she can feel hunger clawing at her body, begging for something—even when her stomach forced itself to empty the last remnant of the good, expensive meal Vee had bought her.
Her body aches for reasons she doesn't understand, her head and her eyes hurt from crying, her face and mattress are wet with her tears.
Even so, as she blinks slowly, her eyes are focused on her night stand.
Her night stand. Her night stand, where she knows she has a hell of a lot of pain meds. Usually she uses that to manage the random body pain she gets—probably from being what is essentially an abomination with questionable health.
She's tempted.
She's really, really tempted.
She knows, if she takes them.. all of them, the pain will be gone.
The pain in her head will be gone.
The pain in her body will be gone.
The pain caused by her inability to be a decent person will be gone.
The pain she causes others by being nothing but a selfish piece of shit will be gone.
That last part circulates in her head for a moment too long.
She deserves it. She deserves to be gone. Nobody likes her, she knows it. Nobody wants her anymore—she was created for entertainment, her love for painting isn't even her own, it's something programmed into her.
Nothing she is, the person she knows herself as is not her, it's what she was designed to be.
She's so very tempted.
All it would take is to yank out her drawer, grab one of her unopened bottles of painkillers, and down it all at once, even if dry.
Once she does that, it certainly won't be long before she's gone.
..but is she really going to go out with her apartment looking like this? Surely someone will find her eventually, and they'll see how trashed her apartment is and think only of how pathetic she is.
She doesn't want that.
So for the first time in 5 days, she gets up. And it's not only to reach for those pills.
She grabbed her pillows first, taking the fabric pillowcases off first—she grabs some new ones out of her dresser, some with a mild floral pattern and purple coloration.
She tugs them onto her pillows and adjusts them onto her bed until they look neat.
Then, she takes the old pillow cases along with the sheets on the floor and throws them into her laundry basket.
She won't be doing any laundry, there's no point in having clean clothes if she's going to be dead.
Next, she grabs the matching sheets for the bed. She takes off the fitted sheet and replaces it with the purple floral ones, then puts the pillows back on, and then the regular sheets.
She picks up her paintings—half of them are shattered with broken frames.. she puts them back on the wall anyways. Even if she steps in the glass along the way.
Next.. she grabs her phone.
She has a few messages—34 from Tisha, she only sees the most recent one from the preview of her contact.. it's just Tisha telling her to kill herself.
At least Tisha will get what she wants.
There's a few from Vee—which was.. unexpected.
She opens Vee's contact—one from the day after the dinner, just telling her hi. The next, 2 days later checking up on her, one from yesterday asking if she's ok.
She decides, the least she can do is tell Vee goodbye.
Usually, Vee would be powered down and charging by now. It was 4 in the morning—but she had.. an odd feeling.
Never has she ever done something purely over a gut feeling—it feels illogical, irrational, and stupid. But this time, the feeling won.
Since it's so late, she didn't have much to do other than watch TV. It was a little odd staring at a screen that looked almost like her.. at least, at first it was. She's since gotten more and more used to it.
Shelly is asleep curled up on Vee's side. She'd been insistent on staying up with Vee when being told of the taller toon's 'feeling'.. but seems like that didn't work out too well.
They were watching some hyper-realistic animated dinosaur documentaries, there's only about 18 minutes left to the one currently on.. she'll turn the TV off and get to bed once it's over.
Vee's phone buzzed in her pocket, startling her out of her thoughts. She reached and fished her phone out, clicking it on to see a notification from Brusha.
Brusha finally decided to message her back! Vee can't help but be a tad excited. She did enjoy the night out, and especially messing with Brusha. Maybe the woman isn't all too bad.
She clicked the notification and swiped up, tapping in her passcode, before the messages app popped open.
"I'm sorry I never answered, I've been in my head these last few days. Me and Tisha broke up after she brought me home and I haven't had the will to do anything since.
But she had every right to be mad at me. I've only ever been selfish and cruel, and I understand now that she was right. I'm a lost cause.
I thank you for giving me at least one good thing to think about before I'm gone. I won't bother you or anyone anymore."
The second the last message registered to her, Vee stood quicker than she should've, startling Shelly awake.
"Vee? What's wrong?" The ammonite questions, trying to rub the drowsiness out of her eye.
Vee was frantically looking for her keys, finally grabbing them from between the couch cushions.
"Brusha just texted, I think she's going to try and kill herself. I have to go." Vee spoke quick and precise, leaving no room for Shelly to reply before she was out the door.
She ran faster than she ever has in her life to her car, nearly tripping down the stairs in her messy pursuit.
She can hear Shelly yelling after her, the shorter toon's bare claws clicking on the wood of their porch.
She nearly ripped the door of her car open and shoved the key in, starting it up and swerving much too quickly out of the driveway and onto the street—she nearly rammed straight into another car, who honked quite loudly at her. She paid it no mind.
She doesn't care to think about how many speeding tickets she was going to get, how many red lights she's going to run. Her boot pressed hard into the gas pedal, hands gripped uncomfortably tight into her steering wheel.
Where it'd usually take around 25 minutes to get to Brusha's apartment, Vee took only 10. Even so, 10 felt like too long. She wishes she would've been closer—she has no idea if Brusha's going to be ok by the time she gets there.
She swerved into the parking lot and didn't even try to park before putting her car into park and rushing out.
She ran up the staircase and to Brusha's door—she noticed a key sat right in front of the door.
Brusha really hasn't left her apartment since that day.
She didn't waste time. Vee grabbed the key and tried the door—it worked.
"BRUSHA!" shouted Vee as she nearly broke the door open and rushed in. She quickly located Brusha's room, slowing down just a tad as she opened the door.
"Brusha—!" She paused for just a moment, taking in the scene in front of her.
Only Brusha's tableside lamp was on, even then it was a little dim. The bed seemed to have fresh sheets—though the old ones were in a basket in the corner of the room.
There's glass and ichor on the floor along with ichor-stained footprints, Brusha's own.. the glass seemed to be from multiple broken paintings that were now haphazardly put back onto the wall.
And then Brusha. She was sat at the end of her bed, staring up at Vee—open bottle of pills in her hand.
Vee was in front of her in an instant, snatching the bottle out of her hand. Even as Brusha yelped and tried to grab at her, she moved to a nearby window—Vee opened it in one swift motion and promptly threw the bottle out of the window.. along with any other bottle she saw after noticing the open nightstand drawer.
"What the fuck Vee???" Brusha finally grabbed her arm, pulling her away from the window.
"Brusha, I'm not going to let you fucking kill yourself?!" She grabbed back—they're both holding each other's arms, but Brusha's grip, although clearly is intended to be tight, is noticeably weaker.
"Why do you even care?! All I've ever been even to you is selfish and mean! You've NEVER liked me, I don't know why you're pretending to now!" Brusha protests—her feet hurt, ichor continues to stain her floor from them.
"I do care, Brusha! Just because we haven't gotten along in the past doesn't mean that can't change! We had a good night, I can tell you're nowhere near the person you used to be!" Vee continued, now grabbing Brusha by both of her shoulders and lifting her up. She places the shorter toon onto her bed.
"Hey—!" Brusha protests, but is promptly pushed onto her back—she can feel Vee grab her ankle, and then the sharp sting of glass being pulled out of her skin.
"Stop moving so much, you'll make it worse." Vee insisted, continuing to pluck shard after shard of glass from Brusha's paws until only open wounds were left. She cared not about the ichor now on her hands.
Finally, Brusha stopped struggling and just laid there, letting it happen. She flinched every so often, but otherwise was completely still.
Now, Brusha was free of the glass.. but not of the bleeding. Vee stood up now, wandering to Brusha's bathroom. She searched for bandaging—there wasn't really any, only a few bandaids. Those would work.
Back she arrived to Brusha's bedroom.. she still hadn't moved. There she was, still laying on her bed, legs hanging off the side.
Vee didn't try to prompt anything from her, she honestly looked like she wasn't all there. She simply returned to the bed side, knelt back down, and began putting the bandaids onto Brusha's feet.
After that was done, she stood again and sat beside Brusha.
She sat, Brusha laid. All in silence.
Vee glanced—Brusha was staring up at the ceiling, both arms raised to lay above and beside either side of her head. She was barely even blinking.
"..Brusha?" Vee finally spoke, her tail moving to gently poke at Brusha's thigh.
Finally, finally, she reacted. Brusha's eyes focused on Vee.. but she didn't respond.
"I don't know what I can do to convince you not to try and hurt yourself again, but I'm not going to let you." She declared, her voice softer than she thinks she's ever spoken, softer than she's ever tried to speak.
"You know—Shelly and Brightney still wonder how you've been. Shelly's been wanting to ask if you'd want to come over for dinner sometime." Vee didn't know what to say anymore—she knew she shouldn't let Brusha stew in her thoughts too much. So she just started talking.
"Brightney also wanted to see about taking you shopping, she wants to get you some nice clothes and more painting supplies." Vee continues, now leaning back to lay next to Brusha, her legs and tail also hanging off the bed, except her feet actually met the ground.
Vee notices Brusha look away, but she doesn't comment on that.
"I've been wondering how you've been, too. I guess now I know.. I was actually wanting to set up another like.. date night like we had. I enjoyed your company." Vee let her hand brush against the other toon's.. oddly, Brusha didn't pull away.
When Vee turned to look at Brusha again, she noticed tears in her eyes. She heard a soft whine from her throat, the downwards tug of her lips, the scrunch of her face.
She didn't stop Brusha when the other toon moved to wrap her arms around Vee. She didn't stop her when she began to cry into her shoulder. She didn't stop her when Brusha's legs wrapped around her waist.
Instead, she wrapped her own arms along with her tail around Brusha. She sat up and pulled Brusha with her, sitting up against the headboard of Brusha's bed.
"It's ok, I've got you." Vee gently rubbed circles into the other's back, holding her close. "I've got you."
Vee doesn't know what she's doing. Comforting has never been her strongsuit—she's only somewhat starting to understand how words can affect someone in what ways.
But to hell with anyone who believes she isn't going to try.
She sits. She whispers quiet reassurance. She lets Brusha scream and cry and hold onto her as if loosening her grip too much might cause her to fade away.
But slowly, those tears dried up, her voice went hoarse, her limbs grew weak.
Then, Brusha was quiet for a few minutes.
"..I don't.. know what I did wrong." Brusha finally spoke, her voice wheezy and quiet—she might've screamed too much.
"I don't know why Tisha was so angry at me. I thought—I thought I was getting better. I thought I was doing good." Brusha tried to bury her face further into Vee's shoulder, but there was only so much space for her.
"I fucked it all up. I yelled at her. I said really mean things—I got really mad.." She admitted sheepishly, a slight tremble becoming evident in her hands.
Vee didn't know how to respond. She didn't know what to think—she didn't know what to feel.
All she knows is that apparently, Tisha got mad at Brusha, they broke up, and Brusha tried to kill herself over it.
Vee has no clue what Tisha would be mad at her over—did something happen along the way to Brusha's apartment that she doesn't know about? The night went perfectly fine..
Although.
Now that she thinks of it, she does remember Tisha had been oddly silent after Vee had started jokingly flirting with Brusha.
Surely that wasn't it, right?
Surely..
Maybe she was trying to make excuses for Tisha. She'd only seen good in her—except the times she'd refuse to help clean up the table when they'd eat out.. or she wouldn't take off her shoes inside.. or when she's got all huffy when Shelly got all muddy after it rained when they were at the park.
Ok, well. Maybe Vee does see it. She's starting to piece together that Tisha has certainly been acting.. questionable lately.
"..I don't know why she'd be mad at you, either. But now that I think of it, I think she just has issues that she won't work out on her own." Vee gently petted Brusha's tangled hair, her tail slowly coiling around Brusha's leg.
"But—no.. Tisha wouldn't just.." Now it was Brusha trying to make up excuses for Tisha. It pains Vee to see so clearly how much Tisha means to Brusha—maybe even to an unhealthy degree.
Brusha was still trying to defend the person who drove her to suicide.
"Brusha, you don't have to make excuses for her. I've noticed she has had a habit of snapping at people over things that really aren't a big deal. She has a problem—and I intend on talking to her about that." Vee carefully lifted Brusha's face so they were looking each other in the eyes. She wanted Brusha to really hear what she was saying.
Brusha stared for a moment, and Vee watched as her pupils slowly dilated. They were still wet and practically glittering.
She hated that her only thought was how cute Brusha's face looked. How pretty her dull pink eyes are.
Unfortunately, the moment was interrupted by the loud growl of Brusha's stomach.
Brusha eventually pulled away, sitting up on her knees.
"..sorry, I'm—fuck. I'm sorry you had to see me like this—" Brusha was quick to start apologizing now that she was at least somewhat calmed down. Though, Vee was quick to interrupt her.
"Don't apologize. I'd rather you cry more to me than hurt yourself." Vee slowly moved to stand, Brusha watched as she did.
"But unrelated, I'm getting you something to eat. And you're coming back to my house with me." Vee declared, now picking Brusha up before she had the chance to protest.
"Uuaahh—put me downn! I can walk!" Brusha protests as she clung awkwardly to Vee. But Vee seemingly had no intentions of listening to her.
"Nope! Your feet are cut up, you're not doing any walking on my watch!" Vee continued off to the living room, then towards the door. She switched the lights off as she went and locked the door along the way.
"Veeeeeeeee!!" Brusha couldn't help but giggle as she struggled in her fruitless attempt to free herself from Vee's grip.
Maybe Brusha’s glad Vee stopped her just in time.