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When he starts awake, still blinking back green light from the corners of his vision, the first thing he does is check for them around him: Kanaya on his right; Sollux and Aradia intertwined on his left; Vriska curled in on herself in the corner, turning sleep into her latest act of violence. The humans have formed a haphazard pile and are clinging to each other like the circle of their arms could block out every hurt.
Terezi's bedroll is vacant; she sits at Dave Strider's head, face lowered and in shadow, one hand outstretched as though she would like to stroke his hair. She's thin and bony, sharp edges jutting everywhere, and she looks nothing like the girl who could trounce him in three spars out of every five.
He swallows back the angry acid thing that wants to come out. "Goddamnit, Terezi," he says, "will you get some fucking sleep?"
He might as well not have said anything at all. "I killed him, you know." Nothing of her moves. He doesn't--he's not used to seeing stillness in her.
"Well," he says. "It didn't exactly take, did it?"
"You wouldn't understand," she shoots back, like the slam of a door. She says it with the same finality she's used every time she's talked to him since they landed in the Veil--the twelve paces between them are an impossible distance, and who the fuck's to blame for that?
He takes a step forward, anyway. "So tell me."