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Your name is Vriska Serket, and as you watch the smoke curl into the dark sky, you realize you're not sure where you went wrong.
You used to have it all. Grades, friends, a boyfriend. Looks. You smirk; you've still got those, at least. But you can still remember a few months ago when people still stared. Before they'd avert their eyes when you walked by.
People used to tell John how lucky he was to be with the hottest girl in the school. He'd just smile that little goofy grin of his and say, "Yeah, but have you seen her personality?" He's such a fucking dork. You love him.
It all started innocently enough, you think. Just a party game, just a taste of baclava for a little fun. Soon enough you were giggling on Equius' couch, bargaining with whoever had brought it to give you more. Gamzee was, of course, happy to oblige, and the two of you sat for the rest of the evening, sharing a private joke that was the funniest in the world, pretending you didn't see John's frequent anxious glances. At the end of the night, you traded Gamzee the majority of your last paycheck for the remainder of the baclava. John was on you in a second when you stumbled blearily from the party, grinning with glee.
"Throw it out," he said bluntly. "Get rid of it."
You only giggled. "Chill, John, it's not gonna hurt me. I just want to relax a bit later."
You never knew John could be so stern. "Throw it out," he repeated. Demanded. You weren't laughing anymore, and you glared at him, trying to focus your vision.
"Just leave it alone, John," you said. "If it bothers you so much, I will, then." He nodded tersely.
But of course he caught you with it the next time. And the next time, and the next time after that.
"Vriska, I told you to stop!" he exclaimed, desperate. "Please, you're going to destroy yourself!"
John wouldn't back down. He only stepped back when you took a swing at him, your vision hazy but your blows hard as ever. It wasn't hard for him to dodge, just hard for him to wrap his head around.
If you remember correctly--and you don't necessarily trust your memory--that was the night your relationship ended. After that, he wouldn't speak to you, wouldn't answer your texts, wouldn't even talk to anyone else about you. You know. You asked everyone.
Fine, you said. Whatever. Not like you cared. If he was gonna be a pansy then he could fuck off.
You refused to admit, for a few months, that your grades were slipping. You took smug pride in being both the prettiest girl in the grade and in the top ten. Last you checked, you were around number 70 something. Even though there were still a good hundred beneath you, you didn't like to talk about this fall from grace.
Which was, in fact, most of your life now. A fall from grace. You lost your spot on varsity volleyball when you failed the drug test. Thanks to your mom's connections, you managed to escape more severe punishment, but none of the girls on the team would talk to you after that. You used to be one of the team's most valuable starters. Now Feferi's taken your spot, you think, and Roxy's in line for captain. Whatever, you think. Fuck 'em.
In everything that's happened, you still miss John more than anything else. It was silly of him, breaking up with you like that. You know he loves you more than that.
You decide to send him a text. You can make him see sense. You're not worth losing. You crawl back in your window off the roof, your mobility slightly limited by your neck brace, climbing back in your bedroom after extinguishing your joint on the roof tiles.
You flop on your bed and giggle uncontrollably at the sound of the springs. You grab your phone from the bedside table, and begin a text to John. You tell him you miss him, and that you know he wants you back. You remind him how much fun you had together and how good you two were. You're in the middle of telling him you love him, when your head droops, and you fall asleep soundly, heavily, completely on your mattress.
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Your name is Vriska Serket, and when you wake up the next morning, head pounding and mouth dry, and read the half-typed text on your phone, you remember everything. And you burst into tears.
You remember the sound first. It's always the sound first. A monstrous bang that sounds like a gunshot, metal screeching on metal, glass shattering into a million trillion tiny pieces. A yell that should've been drowned out by the cacophony of the impact, but somehow you heard loud and clear.
You remember the feeling of the airbag, the way it snapped your collarbone on impact. Then everything is a blur, a haze of noise and flashing lights. You taste blood. Even in your flashback, it's a moment before you remember John. You try in vain to stop the memory before it gets that far, but you remember turning painfully to look at his crumpled form, blood pooling around his head from a vicious gash in his forehead. Your breathing quickens as you remember your own screams ringing in your ears, dampened by your high as you sob his name, begging him to still be alive somehow. God, you HAD to be high to believe he could survive that.
More flashing lights. Shouts outside the car. You went to the hospital. John went to the morgue.
He didn't really want to ride with you in the first place, not after he'd kept his silence toward you for months. But high or not, you were the only one who would take him home in time to meet his dad's curfew. He told you to take a different route, he told you that intersection was too dangerous. He told you.
Your name is Vriska Serket, and as you lay on your bed, positively breathless with sobs, remembering how you killed your beloved ex-boyfriend, you can't figure out for the life of you where you went wrong.