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You remember. You remember everything. The blazing heat of the sun that day – almost six years ago now – the pain of a thousand deaths lingering in your mind. You remember the bright red hue of the lava pooling in your land, and the orange of your alternate selves wings. You remember red meeting purple for the first time, and red meeting green. You remember angry blocks of grey text, and a mishmash of numbers and letters inked in teal. You remember dying and then re-emerging from the dust a new boy; purpose suddenly bestowed upon you in the form of ruby material and a clockwork symbol.
You remember fearing you burdens, and burying the deaths of those you loved in the past. You remember not aging, not aging, not aging – a thirteen year old trapped in the body of a sixteen year old. You were the boy who never grew up.
You remember the sudden panic as your time drew to a close – as the dog hunted the four kittens who split themselves’ up. Two escaped onto a ship leaving the harbour for a three year voyage, and two were tossed into another save slot, introduced to those that had been nothing but lines to read for so long.
You remember dreaming of the dead, their eyes white and their years dragging on and on. You remember losing the girl you’d thought you could love to the twisted circus run by a man with no boundaries. You remember the ringleader, a Lord of Time far more skilled in your aspect than you were, and you remember losing hope.
You remember being selfish, and you remember giving up and clinging to a mute alien who made a town of cans and let you escape the reality you were hoping was still just a dream.
You remember the boy that was and wasn’t your brother at the same time, and you remember realising that the man you had idolised for so long was the same as you. A messed up kid who never had the chance to mature, and suddenly your role model became just a plastic toy soldier buried under your bed with the rest of your childhood toys.
And finally you remember a grand battle – teal, jade, purple and red splattering the floor and the crumbling ruins of civilisations long dead. You remember screaming until your throat was raw, and you remember hacking and slicing. You remember watching him fall, and you remember the closing curtains as the carnival comes to a halt, left to rust for years to come.
You remember the light, and you remember the goodbyes.
And you remember waking up.
You remember everything – the pain, the hope, the loss, the suffering you all went through.
You remember...
And no-one else does.
Two years have passed since sunlight streamed through your curtains, arousing you from the deepest sleep you’ve ever had. Two years since you hissed when your feet made contact with the ground, and two years since you stumbled downstairs to find your three friends gathered in one room, making breakfast and laughing as if they weren’t sobbing and breaking just three god damn minutes ago. Two years have passed since you asked them what the hell is going on, since they stared at you with confusion in their eyes and Rose placed a hand on your shoulder, telling you to sit down and try to breathe.
They didn’t remember. They didn’t remember anything, and you cried. You cried and you screamed at them and you told them everything, trying to make them see.
You remember being taking to the doctors the next day, and you remember the first time you were taken to see the psychiatrist.
“It’s ok, you can tell me everything. I won’t judge you.”
But she did judge you – she thought you were crazy as you spilled your heart out to her. You saw her scribbling in her notebook, and when the hour was up she told you she was going to schedule weekly sessions. She said you needed her help, and to not be afraid of her.
And you weren’t afraid of her – no, you were angry at her. Angry at everyone because you weren’t lying. But nobody cared, and each week you focused on a different aspect of your memory – or dreams, as they were labelled by your friends and the professional assigned to you.
You would laugh when they said you had a brilliant imagination – a short, clipped sound that you hoped portrayed the bitter intent you felt at the action. Because this wasn’t your imagination – you could never imagine something as twisted and messed up as this. But let them think what they want – a year had already passed and you had long since given up on trying to make them remember.
You had long since given up on everything.
Anne – she had requested you call her by name, said she was your friend, not your therapist – made you spend more time on the trolls than she did with any of the others. When you described each of their personalities, she said that they may be ‘other versions of yourself – people you wish you could be, or personifications of past events’ and you told her that that was stupid. You told her that you were never as brave as Terezi, or persistent as Kanaya. You told her that you hoped to god you were not as fucked up as Gamzee. And Karkat...
You refused to talk about Karkat. His name was mentioned once in all your sessions, maybe a few more times if you slipped up. Anne asked why you didn’t want to talk about him, and you remained silent for the rest of the session, the only sound being pen to paper – frantic scribbles.
You could handle remembering the events of those three years – they hurt, and they eroded and they rotted, but you could handle them.
You could handle remembering your fling with Terezi, your young mind believing that it was love, and you could handle remembering Kanaya, and Dirk, and Bro.
But you couldn’t handle remembering Karkat.
The other memories ground away at your mind, you mental state. But the memory of Karkat’s nubby horns and vulgar mouth – of his firm skin under your touch, his rough lips pressed against yours and his sharp claws digging into your shirt; into your flesh – It killed you. It ripped your heart to shreds and burned it on the hot green flames of a power long gone. And you hated it, because you loved him and that love was gone. Gone forever.
A year and a half already gone and the boy you once considered your best friend was now your babysitter. He rubbed your back when you woke up in the middle of the night, screaming your lungs raw and slick with a cold sweat. You felt like you were in an Asylum, just lacking the chains of a mad man. Or the straight jacket – to be honest, you were surprised they hadn’t locked you in the sponge room, bound and alone, yet.
But your friends wouldn’t let the big men in white coats take you away – they said you were still the same person, that what you were going through wouldn’t make them abandon you, and they would go on and on about memories that they had of you. Memories that you didn’t have of them. And you thought to yourself ‘I can’t do this – I can’t do this alone’.
And so you lay on the floor, two weeks before you hit the two year mark, back pressed against the tiles of your bathroom. Tears pool in your red eyes, and red pools around you and your mind in foggy, black cobwebs creeping into your vision. In the distance you can hear a voice calling your name, and fists banging on a door, but they are so far away, the loud screaming inside your hear more prominent as you feel yourself slipping further and further away.
And then you are being hoisted from the ground, and you feel something warm and wet drop onto your cheeks but you can’t see and you don’t want to see. You just want to sleep. Let me sleep. But he doesn’t let you sleep and the next thing you know you are awake and the walls are white and everything is so clean. There’s a boy by your bed and he’s asleep and a girl walks in, hurriedly putting her cup of coffee to one side as soon as she notices you’re awake. She strokes the hair from your face and purple lock with red as she asks ‘are you ok?’ and for the first time in almost two years, you tell her the truth.
“No, I’m not ok.”
And whoever said telling the truth helps lied because admitting that you are broken – breaking – just makes you feel one hundred times worse than pretending that you were coping. And you get another look of pity and a hand on your cheek and a small sad smile as she says ‘I know, but it will get better’. But it won’t, you know it won’t.
You’ve given up.
Officially two years have passed now and he’s nattering on at you, one hand making weird gestures whilst the other stirs his coffee and it seems too normal. You were in hospital not two days ago and now you are in a crowded town square at a local coffee shop. They want you to be out of the house, to move around and get fresh air but you don’t want to do either of those things. You want to rewind two years and wake up on that sunny morning again, this time blissfully unaware of your past. You want to wake up and you want this to have all been a dream and Karkat is there and you are happy instead of the wreck you’ve been become.
The wreck you always were.
He’s still chatting away, you notice, and your eyes begin to wander, taking in the faces of the strangers that litter the cobblestones. The voices blend together into one useless babble as you peer out from behind your shades, the same ones from the game, only less scratched and damaged and the one who gifted them to you doesn’t remember doing so.
“Wow, some people are just so rude.” The sudden topic change jolts you out of your dream world – much better than the real world, you’ve discovered – and you whip your head to the side, following the blue gaze of your companion as he stares at a small boy who appears to be shouting at a waitress in a nearby cafe. His hair is fair like yours, and he seems to be screaming about something insignificant, the waitress looking terrified, jade eyes wide as she backs away. Squinting, you can see that the boy is crying, and for the first time in a long time you feel concern for someone other than yourself, but you don’t know why.
The waitress turns and leaves, probably to get help, as soon as the blond boy stops yelling, his chest rising and falling in rapid succession. A crowd has gathered, and he notices, turning around glaring at everything and everyone.
And then your eyes lock, and your heart stops and you find yourself rising from your seat. ‘What’s wrong?’ and ‘where are you going?’ are the two phrases that slip from your friends lips as you begin to walk towards the stranger who’s eyes are in line with yours. You feel something wet gather in your eyes – tears – and something warm pool in your stomach. Such an unfamiliar feeling, an emotion you thought died two years ago.
And then you’re in front of the boy and tears are running down your cheeks and you’re not sure what you are doing but his voice gives your actions sudden meaning. It’s scratchy and familiar, but what gets you is the name that slips past those pink lips, not the way it’s said.
“Dave?”
And suddenly he’s in your arms or you’re in his but you don’t care. All you care about is that this is him, it’s actually him and he’s human but it’s still him. And soon you're pressing your lips to his desperately in a sloppy kiss, all teeth and squished noses. His lips are soft, no longer rough with his new human body and his skin is smooth under your touch but his hands are gripping your shirt the way they used to and even without the sharp claws it feels amazing and right and you don’t give two shits about the audience you two have because right now everything is ok.
You know this is just single moment out of many to come, and you know that you are still a train wreck of a man but you assume he is too and all you can think is that you are no longer alone.
Your lips part and you're both panting, eyes swimming with all the things you want to say but don’t and your voice is hoarse and scratched preventing you from saying all the words trapped in your brain, leaving you dumbly letting loose the only thing that your tongue seemed to agree with.
“Karkat.”
But it seems to be enough because he is back in your arms and sobbing into your shoulder and you are crying too, eyes squeezing shut as tears stream down your cheeks. And you repeat his name over and over and over as if to confirm this is actually happening, and he is doing the same.
But this is real and he’s actually here and you choke one final time before you both sink to the floor in a wet, broken mess. Your babbling into his hair, recounting your past two years and the pain and the anguish and the memories and how god damn lonely you felt and he takes a shuddering breath before letting out a choked laugh.
“I remember.”
Time freezes. The words echo and you laugh loud and joyful yet bittersweet at the same time before sniffling and nuzzling further into his blonde locks.
“You remember.”