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For a little while after Red Jack, they aren't sure if they're ever going to be the same again.
Sometimes, Rita can still feel the sensation of the wings protruding from her shoulder blades, the pain excruciating, her own scream aborted and painful in her throat as her body for once refuses to stretch and reshape itself around the offending addition to her being. Sometimes, when Larry shuts his eyes, he can see the poor people down below, writhing in unrecognisable masses as he makes their skin slough off their bones and congeals into a puddle against the floor.
The ache runs deep. Most nights, they can't even bring themselves to sleep without the aid of some outside force. Rita now slides into bed with a couple of glasses of whisky resting within her, feeling warm and tingly and just on the right side of dazed as she urges her body to forget about that intrusive pain, and she drifts off to sleep with the taste of warm alcohol on her lips. Even before Larry allows himself to collapse onto his bed in an overly-exhausted heap, he ejects the spirit from its confines within his chest and allows it free reign of the halls without his body, gives it permission to do as it pleases, and Keeg does so eagerly with the knowledge that its curiosity has the side-effect of giving Larry some much-needed sleep for a couple of hours.
It's a hard thing to forget. The pain you inflict on others just by existing. Sometimes, Larry has to wonder if he would be better off being in Cliff's predicament if the two of them could switch bodies. If Cliff had been the one wrapped in bandages, able to feel and able to be, and Larry had been the one locked away in a metal prison of his own making, tortured every day but never able to hurt another soul again.
Things have changed now. Things are always changing. Jane doesn't know who she is anymore, and frankly, neither do the others, as she's almost a different person each time she steps through the door. Vic is in the midst of relationship troubles, and nobody understands it enough to help him with it. Cliff is in the middle of a personal and psychological dilemma, trying and often failing to be a nicer person while still wanting the world to go and fuck itself. Cheif is trying to repair his relationship with Dorothy while Dorothy continues to wreak havoc without even meaning to while an omnipresent force whispers dark, nonsensical thoughts into her ears.
Larry tries and fails spectacularly to fix the family he tore apart so long ago. Rita tries to let go of her past and falls back into the familiar daily grind of the theatre until she realizes that people will always see her for the monster she isn't.
Nobody is coping very well, but nobody else had to deal with Red Jack, so comparably, they're dealing pretty well.
They sit on the couch together, enjoying each other's comfortable silence, watching one of Rita's old movies with the volume turned down as Larry reads a book with his legs curled up on the couch and Rita nursing a tall glass of gin and tonic as her legs slowly turn into disembodied mush. They haven't spoken about Red Jack yet, or their time in his carnival of pain, or the butterflies pinned to the walls. They don't speak about it, and that's just how it works.
They don't speak about it until they do.
"You know," Rita breaks the silence, her voice louder than the commotion on the screen, over the clinking of ice in her glass as she waves her hand. "I've been thinking."
"Oh yeah?" Larry marks his page with a thickly bandaged finger and closes the book to give Rita his full and undivided attention. It feels nice, just him and her, Larry and Rita, the bandaged man and the slime woman, just as it used to be. "What about?"
He recognises the look on Rita's face as most of it begins to tremble and slip. She reaches a delicate hand up to hold the flesh in place until she regains her composure. "Oh, you remember our old maniacal pal Red Jack," the name still sends shivers down Larry's spine, makes the spirit in his chest flare up in anger, and the way she says it makes it even more so. "I've been thinking about all those poor people that he turned into butterflies and pinned to the walls. All the time they had been there, and the things he had done to them... that could have been us, Larry."
"It could have been," he agrees. "But you saved us."
She resettles against the couch, sparing a moment to glare down at her puddling legs before she brushes her hair away with the back of her hand. "Well, yes, I suppose," she says. "But Red Jack thrives- well, thrived- off of other peoples pain, and forcing them through trauma. I don't know why he chose to take you, and subsequently me, but I can't help but wonder if it was deliberate. If he chose us for a reason."
"We've always known that the two of us have been hurting for decades," Larry says, and the fact that he says it at all surprises him. The spirit flares with pride in his chest. Maybe all this time, all this trauma, all the things they've been through recently have finally managed to smooth down the jagged edge of the admission. "Maybe we drew him to us. Maybe it was random. Or maybe we always knew that it was destined to get the best of us someday."
She doesn't answer. She bites at her lip, her legs undulate as she mentally tries to get them under control, and the skin flexes as it tries to remain its solid form. "That's certainly one way of looking at it," she pulls at her lip too much and holds a finger to it to force it back into place. She must be distressed, Larry realized, for it to be happening so badly like this. "I think that maybe he thought we were special, in his own twisted way."
Larry can't help but snort- to anyone else, it would be a rude gesture, but Rita turns partially to face him with a semi-smile, her eyebrow cocked up. "That's rather optimistic of you. When did that happen?"
"Yes, well, I suppose seeing all those people tortured into tiny butterflies and then finally set free has given me a new outlook on life," there is no irony or sarcasm in her words. She looks back towards the TV, brings the gin and tonic to her lips. She doesn't drink it. Not yet. "I've decided that I would prefer not to die like that. And I hope to all things holy that you will make sure that happens."
He can't help but laugh. He's so tired. He's so sore. He aches, deep down in his bones, in his very marrow, the irradiated parts of his veins. But the laughter feels good, and after a moment he can feel the spirit vibrate with its own form of laughter and Rita joins in, her smile small and her laughter light. "I think I can do that for you, yeah."
Now she sips at her drink, the ice clinking gently against the glass. Her eyes are fixed on the TV, but she isn't seeing it. "Out of all the people I could have endured that with, I'm glad that it was you."
It shouldn't be as meaningful as it is, but the words tug on something in his chest, and he has to look away from her before his eyes start to prickle with tears. He remembers the feeling of his bandages being unwound by some mystic force, the prisoners down below that had been tossed into his cage and he was forced to watch, screaming, as their skin began to blister and burn before they became unrecognisable, twisting and writhing and making these terrible gasping-gagging sounds with what breath they had left in their lungs. He remembers Rita, beautiful, brilliant, brave Rita bursting into the room despite his protests, despite the wings sprouting out of her back, despite the way he made her skin turn to liquid on her bones, and she pulled him down from the ceiling with all her might and-
"Larry?" he must have made a noise. She's looking at him now, too closely. There's concern in her eyes. He doesn't deserve it. Not after what he's done.
"I could have killed you."
"But you didn't."
He doesn't press, though he really wants to. He wants to tell her how she should have left him there to rot, how she never should have risked her life for scum like him, but he doesn't want to upset her, so he keeps her mouth shut. The spirit pulses in his chest, confused and concerned and waiting for something, though Larry doesn't know what.
He too often thinks of Red Jack and the butterflies pinned to the walls like prizes in a trophy case, and how easily that could have been them. He already has an inkling of what it would be like, when he was strung up on the ceiling like a human chandelier, trying to tug himself free from the chains wrapped around him and trying to save the people down below, but failing every time.
The sight of Rita's skin beginning to slop off her face due to him still causes him nightmares when he thinks about it, and he is endlessly relieved that he only dreams when Keeg wants him to.
"You saved me," he says instead because that's the most positive thing that comes to mind. It's true, as well. If it weren't for Rita selflessly risking her life to save him, he would still be there, strung up on the ceiling and torturing people for Red Jack's enjoyment, or pinned to the inside of his trophy case by his blue and black wings. "You saved us all."
"Well," Rita tosses her head like she does when she tries to be dismissive, but she's holding her chin too high, and her eyes shine with a pride that she deserves to feel. Larry is glad that his bandages hide his knowing smile. "You have saved me many a time since we met. It's about time that I repaid the favour."
Larry isn't sure how to answer that, so he doesn't, and he settles back against the couch with a sigh. Rita takes another sip of her gin and tonic, and Larry goes back to his book as the black and white movie of Rita's younger face plays in the background.
There are footsteps by the door, and they both glance over to see Jane entering. It's definitely Jane, but the way she's holding herself they wouldn't be surprised if she were the Hangman's Daughter, or Penny Farthing today. Her eyes are downcast, she's skittish, and if Larry had been having a better day, he would have spared a thought as to why that was. "I'm going to go for a walk. Clear my head," Jane says, not really looking at either of them. "Either of you wants to come?"
"I'd love to, dear, but uh..." Rita trails off and gestures at her legs with the hand that holds her drink, at the sloppy mess slowly making its way across the floor, a puddle of human flesh. "I'm not quite put together for a walkabout."
Jane looks at Larry, and he shakes his head. "Not today, but thanks, Jane. I think I'll keep Rita company if you don't mind."
"Whatever," Jane says, but she seems stressed. "If anyone comes looking for me, just tell them that I'm around."
"Sure thing, darling," Rita calls out after her as Jane piots and leaves the room. "Have a wonderful time."
That leaves the two of them alone again, a familiar experience. It always had been the two of them, but then came Jane, then came Cliff, then came Vic. But at first, it was Larry, and it was Rita. Larry doesn't know where he would be without Rita and doesn't even know if he would be alive today if it weren't for her unwavering love and support. It was the first time in a long time he had really felt that unabashed kind of love. John loved him, but it was always something they had to hide. Not Rita. Rita loves him and doesn't care who knows it. And though Rita was the one to pick him up and carry him through one of the hardest times of his life, he likes to think that he did the same thing for her, in a way. He's never cared about what she looks like- or doesn't look like- or what she is beneath her put-together surface. He's just always loved her for her. And she has loved him despite the bandages and radiation.
A hand on his arm pulls him from his thoughts, and he glances up at Rita, looking at him with a sad, knowing expression, but there's love in her eyes, so strong that Larry almost has to look away. "Just you and me again, Larry darl."
"Yeah," he laughs, moving to grip her hand. Her nails are painted a scarlet red, like her lipstick, and he pays no mind in the way the skin on her hand begins to waver and lose form. He loves her too much to care. "Just you and me. Until the end."
Sure, maybe they are a little bit fucked up. Maybe Larry can't take off his bandages without the constant fear of killing all the people he holds dear. Maybe Rita has to struggle to keep herself in a solid form and ensuring that she doesn't turn into a monstrosity. Maybe they can't fall asleep without remembering Red Jack and the horrors he inflicted on them and others.
But Red Jack is dead, and they have survived. So maybe Red Jack wasn't as powerful as he thought he was.
It doesn't matter. What matters is that they made it out of there and that they're both alive and safe. And what matters most is that they did it together and that they will be together for as long as fate allows it. Larry will make sure of that.