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You’re not sure how you managed but Terezi is finally out of that fucking monster’s grasp. The large red eyes are overblown and small dark pupils stare straight into your own grey ones. Everything shakes… and trembles… and fucking quakes!
Those eyes aren’t supposed to look like that to you.
The honking echoing in your ears ground you, the voice sounding sick like some disease, reminding you that that time has long since passed. The sickness has settled in and nothing you do can remove it.
Not that you want to.
A different kind of sickness scorches you. It hums in your fucking veins, your fucking blood pulsating along with your heartbeat as it fucking burns through your skin making you hiss and snarl back at the monster. Twin sickles rest in your hands, their metal freezing your skin to them reminding you, fucking ordering you, to kill it.
You should have done that the moment you met him. You should have followed the howl in your blood for the monsters own and ended the nightmare it dragged you into, claws still fresh from where it grabbed your heart.
Your vision blurs red and surely it is from rage and not despair. The shakes are fury not nerves. You are not afraid of attacking it.
But you are afraid of killing him.
NO! A thought screams through you, enough to break the stand still and push your feet forward towards the monster (not troll, never troll). Your blades sing through the air, slicing air as the beast easily dodges your mindless attack. You curse, twisting your body in time to meet your blade with a club. The force behind the object is immense and you have to roll it off of you and jump away in order to prevent your knees from crumbling beneath the pressure.
The monster is now between you and Kanaya. Her chainsaw is ready, standing tall in front of Terezi who is still recovering from the beating you witnessed. However the female troll does not move, her grey eyes locked on your own. This is your fight, your monster, your fucking failure that you must correct. And she understands that, understands enough that until a final breath is drawn she will not intervene.
No matter how much she wants too.
However the monster is not concerned with her, never motherfucking was, and it charges at you once more. The club is gone, replaced with claws and it reaches for you, for your own claw that is wrapped around the stinging metal. Instead of attacking, of slicing that pathetic claw off of its fucking arm you dodge to the side instead. Your heart is thundering in your ears because you could have finished it there, you could have fucking finished it there!
But a hand can’t block a sickle like a club can.
Curses escape your lips as that shit eating grin becomes even larger on the monster’s face. It knows your struggle, it knows your pain.
And it’s using them against you, the motherfucker.
Hissing you ignore the reddening view as you direct your sickles at its head. But your swing is too wide and it easily dodges you, gripping a fist and punching your gut. The blow forces you back but you recover in your tumble and stand once more. Your stomach howls in pain at you, but your chest hurts more and you wonder if it broke something up there that will never heal right.
Your sickles feel heavier, your shoulders sag, and you find your breath coming out slower. The monster is reaching out for you again as it charges, bloodied claws ready to tear into what’s left of you and you… want to let go of the searing sickles, the crushing weight and your scorching heart. You want the red of your vision to vanish, your blood to cool, and your chest to stop hurting.
A dark voice whispers that you’re weak, useless, pathetic, and that is why he left you.
Purple paints your vision as you lash out. Anger forces your fucking weakness to the dark corners of your fucking mind. Rage fucking stomps them into fucking submission. And fury… Fucking fury manipulates your fucking useless body.
A fourth scratch etches into the monsters face, crossing the three your distant friend gave him. Her memory burns bright in your mind, its sins weigh against you, and you pass the judgement that Terezi could not pass.
For a moment it collapses, clutching its face and whining, of all fucking things, in front of you. Something grabs your breath, reminding you of the guilt it expressed when you were alone, when you should have fucking killed it. You stomp the feeling down, force it into obedience. Such a feeling has no fucking place here and never will again.
You will not allow yourself to fucking pity a monster.
However the lapse in your movement was all it needed to strike. Suddenly the sickles are free from your grasp and they screech as they sail across the rock. You head smashes against the floor, darkness painting your vision for but a moment. Its cold hands take the place of your blades, holding your hands to the stone, fingers almost sliding beside your own.
They’re as cold as your remember and they freeze the anger in your veins. You bite your lip, struggling and growling and swearing against it because it’s not supposed to be like this! It shouldn’t be able to steal your rage! To steal your strength! To remind you to breath, to think!
He’s not supposed to be here anymore.
You lock eyes with solid black, ready to tear the monster apart verbally, to leave some sort of scar on it like it did you. But the words die in your throat because the monsters face has changed. Blood is the only constant, dripping onto your cheeks and staining them. The lips are curled downward, the red eyes simmering to an orange and a body shaking much more than yours ever did.
A different purple bleeds from his eyes and you briefly realize they are tears.
“Katkat…” His voice is rough and pained yet exactly as you remember it. The orange is still there, still fucking burning, even as his face morphs from a monster to a troll and you can’t let him fool you again, you fucking can’t!
Freezing tears rain down on you and your thoughts cool along with your skin. He’s shaking and blubbering and crying and you don’t understand what’s happening. Your chest hurts from his weight and your eyes sting with dying rage and suddenly the red world isn’t so red anymore.
~
It takes a couple seconds of your hiccupping to realize a silent sound accompanying them. Karkat is still shaking, but the feeling is different. Instead of anger making his small body hum it is something else causing it to motherfucking vibrate beneath you. His grey eyes are locked on the ground, having turned away from you and that’s when you see it. Blood dripping down his lip from his awkward tooth biting into it and candy red tears staining his face.
His fingers are still burning next to your own and his rage still scars your heart over and over but you can’t bring yourself to motherfucking let go, to run away once more. A voice in your head is screaming at you to rip his pathetic throat out but a stronger voice is telling you to look and look motherfucking hard.
The sight causes a whole new wave of tears to break through you.
Your little miracle’s soul, if you even have the mother fucking right to call it that, is shattering beneath you. Cracks fill him like a broken mirror and you remember how hard it was to glue those pieces together, how often skin ended up getting cut by those shards. How Karkat always insisted that you just leave them be as he slowly stitched you back together with more care than you could ever motherfucking hold.
Your foreheads are touching before you even realize it.
He burns beneath you like his soul is sickened with a motherfucking fever that threatens to turn you and him both to ash. You want to embrace him, to motherfucking hold all of him in your arms and just squeeze the anger away. To let his harsh breaths even out into long drawls, let his cracking shoulders sag so that the worries can roll off of him. To just let him be rather than act.
But his clenching eyes, the pooling tears, and the soft whimpers escaping bruised lips remind you that all this pain if because of motherfucking you.
“Let go… Gamzee…” His voice strikes you like lightning. It burns your body only to freeze it and you shake your head against his. No. No no no! Mother fucking NO! You will not let him go again, you will not let such harm come to him again. It was you, all you, but you will fix this. You will motherfucking fix the broken glass no matter how much it cuts into you, not matter how much it hurts you because it’s time to stop thinking about you and start thinking about him.
You pull yourself up, bringing him with you as your finger locks next to his own. His body burns as it all but collapses against you. He’s cursing himself, calling himself weak and pathetic and how he only has one job and that is to fucking kill you but even that he fucks up on.
His fingers clutch at yours as you rest them on your chest, his face hovering against your injures. It hurts, but the stab wounds are superficial compared to the pain in your heart from seeing him like this. Words swim in your spoiled thinkpan but his warmth continues to warm your frozen body and you continue to cool his and you find yourself unable to focus on them.
You want to hug him, to burry your bleeding face in his rough hair and shoosh and pap until serendipity slaps you both around and reminds you of what you are to each other. But his shaking body next to your own isn’t ready for such rough treatment. You’re not sure when it will be, if it ever will be, but all you know is that he’s here and so are you and neither of you are dead yet.
~
You watched the display with burning eyes and a tight grip on your chainsaw. Despite your promise to Karkat you were ready to jump in the moment things got ugly. In fact was it not for the shaking grip of Terezi’s weak hand on your ankle you would have beheaded the monster before you the moment Karkat fell onto his back. She was too weak to speak as adrenaline left her battered body but her grip was a heavy reminder that this was not your fight.
Now, the two lean near each other, hands intertwined… Yet they didn’t feel like they were touching. There was an invisible sliver between the two, Karkat holding his head weakly away from a bloodied chest, Gamzee’s own hovering above the others head. Even their legs that at first glance looked folded together were actually folded around each other. Only their hands, burning fingers and freezing digits, were connected.
You have never seen two trolls look so utterly exhausted and broken before. Shards of glass and patches of cloth were smashed and torn around them. Frozen glue and a burning needle had been placed into their hands but neither moved to fix the other. Briefly you realize that they don’t even know if they can fix each other.
You have never seen such broken pity before and you hope to never see it again.