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Chapter Text

21:37

December 19th, 1988

Miami, Florida

You wake up soaked in sweat with a hangover pounding behind your good eye.  Groaning, you consider sleeping another eight hours, but after a few minutes rolling back and forth in the now-sticky sheets you decide in favor of getting up, hoping another shouting match will be sufficient to browbeat the landlord into getting the AC fixed.

You pull on the nearest pair of jeans and stagger out of the bedroom.  Avoiding the comics, RPG splats, dice and takeout containers strewn across the floor, you hope one of the empties littering the dining table will turn out to be half full.  No luck.  The best you can retrieve is leftover pizza, which you eat cold while pawing through the scraps of paper strewn across the computer desk, looking for the landlord’s number.

The light on the answering machine is blinking.

You wipe your hands on your jeans and mash play, drumming your fingers on the table in agitation and excitement while the tape spools up.

Where the hell were you yesterday?  Don’t tell us you want to DM and then not show up, asshole.  At least have the decency to call ahead and say you aren’t coming so we don’t end up sitting at the table for two hours with our dicks in our hands.  We took a vote and if it happens again, you’re out of the group.  We’re running Traveller on Thursday at 8:00, and don’t even fucking try telling us you have work that night, I know for a f-

You roll your eye and fast-forward through two and a half minutes of griping.

-sinine bullshit we put up with from you on a weekly basis, you worthless cokehead.  Show up this time.

With a click, the tape rolls over to the second message.

This is Peter from Miami Health and Fitness.  We have you leading a class tonight at 312 Grand street, apartment D3.  Remember to wear your workout clothes.  I’m sure it’ll be a blast.

Chapter Text

22:29

December 19th, 1988

Miami, Florida

The burly Russian who opens the door is massive, dressed in a white leisure suit over the hawaiian shirt every bydlo seems to think is mandatory in Florida.  He looks down at you, squinting at the hat and vest you poached from the delivery boy now sleeping off a possible concussion in the rhododendrons outside.  You hold out the large, greasy paper bag.

“You are late, phone book says food is free after half an hour,” the mobster growls.

You flip your hair, “Yeah, well, we were pretty busy today. You might want to take a look and make sure they even gave me what you ordered.”

The surly Slav scowls and takes the bag to examine its contents, at which point you pull the revolver from his waistband and shoot him twice through the head.

Through the ringing in your ears, you hear muffled shouts from inside the apartment.  You toss away the cap and pull on your mask.

Sixty seven seconds of gunfire, smashed skulls and slashed throats later, you pick through the wreckage of splintered drywall, shell casings and shattered human beings.  Seven bodies, a new personal best, now for the loot.  A wall safe that would take too long to open, a few wallets, although one’s so soaked with the owner’s viscera it‘s an open question whether the bills are worth the risk of spending.  The guy on the couch, definitely not one of the Reds, is sprawled on the floor after catching a stray bullet or two, probably some rich kid here to sample his first noseful of the blow on the table. The plastic bag holding the remaining product goes in your satchel, and you roll the deceased yuppie over with the toe of your boot.

Make that an almost-deceased yuppie.

One of his kneecaps is a bloody ruin, but the kid (he can’t be much more than 18) is definitely still breathing.  You weigh your options, keeping an ear open for the inevitable police sirens.

Chapter Text

17:08

December 20th, 1988

Miami, Florida

The kid, name of Tavros, is still the tiniest bit doped up from yesterday.  You called one of your Navy buddies over to take a look at his knee, a registered nurse who sighed and huffed and rolled her eyes at being called up in the small hours of the night and sworn to secrecy.

Upon waking, he’d spent the day asking numerous questions about what had happened and how he’d got there, stuttering and cringing and carrying on about his track scholarship and how was he going to pay for college now.  Everything about him seemed tailor-made to irritate you, and you stomped off to the bedroom for a cigarette to keep yourself from tossing him down a flight of stairs.

Eight and a half minutes of blowing smoke out the window later, you come back into the living room looking for your copy of Masks of Nyarlathotep.  Tavros is where you left him, sitting in the wheelchair bought at the Salvation Army down the block, staring at but not really reading the newspaper spread across his legs.

“It says the Rack might be planning to, um, move forward with the reunification of Germany, although they’ve been, uh, saying that for two years now, so, um...”

He folds the newspaper and sits quietly with his hands in his lap.  You sigh and lean back against the table beside him, knocking over an empty bottle and sending a sheaf of pink leaflets fluttering to the carpet.

“Hey, come on, it ain’t so bad being a gimp.  Here, look.”  You remove your glasses, bending close to allow him a look at the empty socket behind the blacked out lens.  Tavros’ eyes widen.  “Lost that up in the Aleutians,” you add.

“Uh, Aleutians?”

“Alaska, dumbass, back in ‘85.”

“Oh, I remember my dad, um, being too old, to participate in that.”

“Lemme tell you, hunting Ruskie destroyers in between thirty foot waves with two hours of sunlight a day?  Bluh.”

“It, uh, certainly doesn’t sound like fun.”

“You know, there’s a girl in my D&D group who lost both eyes, up in San Fran.”

“That, does not sound pleasant.”

“Don’t feel bad.  She doesn’t let it stop her from being a total bitch.”

“Uh, whatever you say, I guess...”

He sits quietly while you rummage through the drawers under the kitchen counter, pulling out the baggie of coke you recovered during the last hit.

“So hey, now that your scholarship’s in the toilet there’s no reason you can’t hit the powder.”

“I really don’t think that’s such a great idea, what with it being one of the, um, bad choices that got me into this mess in the first place, as you said earlier, I think.”

“Come oooooooon, don’t be such a bitch.  I promise nobody’s going to shoot you this time.”

“That is, not so reassuring.”

“Just one itty bitty line you big baby, you’ll be fine”  You’ve already grabbed a record jacket off the floor, laying out a row on the cover of Rain Dogs.  Rolling up one of the scraps of paper littering the table, you bend over and snort it, tossing your hair back and blinking rapidly.  “See?  Easy.”

You push the cardboard sleeve in front of him and tip out another line.

Chapter Text

02:51

January 3rd, 1989

Miami, Florida

You stumble into the phone booth, arm cradled limply against your chest like a useless length of wet rope.  You sit on the ground, wedged in the corner of the booth, and rummage through your bag for change, along with any loose painkillers while you’re at it.  When you stand to insert the coins you nearly white out, bracing yourself against the wall and trying your best not to puke.  You punch in the number, smearing the buttons with blood and gun oil.

One ring.

Two.

You grind your teeth, hoping the roaring in your ears isn’t covering up the sound of any approaching hoods.

A pre-recorded message and a beep.  You suppress the urge to scream and take a deep breath.

“Heyyyyyyyy, it’s me.  I know I asked you for a favor last week but I-” you cry out as your arm slips, the coat serving as a combination bandage/sling is proving inadequate for either task.  “I need a ride really badly.  I’m at-”  You peer through the glass, looking for a street sign, “the payphone a block away from that club with the big stupid neon rainbow out front.  This’ll be the last time, I promise.  I’m going to skip town after this and you won’t ever have to see my face again, so could you please come get me?”

You stay on the line, talking until the phone demands you deposit another quarter.  Blood continues to soak the sleeve of your ruined appendage, spilling out of the enormous gash below your shoulder.  You sink back to a sitting position, wishing you’d brought a weapon of some kind, or at least some opiates.

Maybe Kanaya will get the message and come find you, and you can spend a couple days being fussed over before you leave for good.

Maybe the guy with the machete and his mafiya pals can’t follow a blood trail in the dark.

You try to light a cigarette but your hand is shaking too violently to work the lighter.  Your arm hurts bad, and you’re having trouble staying conscious.  It’s tempting to just pass out.  It isn’t as though you could fend anyone off in the state you’re in.

Maybe you’d look cool in a one-armed leather jacket.

Chapter Text

12:44

April 10, 1985

Kauai, Hawaii

The heat rising off the sand is just barely tolerable, thanks to the cool ocean breeze coming in with the tide.  You’ve managed to improvise a basic field dressing for your stomach, but the internal bleeding isn’t going away anytime soon.  Biting down on a spare length of cloth torn from your shirt, you take the pain in relative silence.  More than anything, you sharply recall long hours spent bullshitting back at the base, arguments over where the most painful place to be shot was, among countless other inanities.  Well, your limited experience is now enough to send ‘the gut’ rocketing to the top of the list.

You contemplate taking a few potshots at the Hind buzzing lazily across the jewel bright water of the lagoon, far far overhead.  Persuade the gunner to waste a few bullets or even a precious missile finishing off your slowly fading heat signature, silhouetted white hot beneath a Portia tree.  Unfortunately your rifle is just outside arm’s reach.  You try shifting to grab it and are immediately and painfully encouraged to lie back and wait to die the old fashioned way: bleeding into your intestines, poisoned by your own shit.  Encouraged to endure in the slim hope that a patrol will stumble across you before the tide comes in and the crabs go to town on your exposed bowels.  That if a patrol stumbles across you it’s friendly.  That if it’s Russian they shoot you quick instead of dragging it out.

Fuck, is this really it?  Talk about a lackluster death.  You can’t even muster the wherewithal to be angry or scared, it just fucking hurts .  Eyes, closed, you work up the balls for another attempt at movement.  You smell the hibiscus and the salt spray of the sea.  Listen to the sound of waves lapping the coarse black sand of the shore, the ringing in your ears

the ringing

the ringing

the r

04:59

January 3rd, 1989

Miami, Florida

inging

Your hands go to your belly.  Scar tissue and a twinge of old pain, already fading.  You’re not lying on a beach with Soviet shrapnel in your gut, you’re lying in your own bed in your shitty apartment.  Where it’s a thousand degrees, and people think it’s appropriate to phone you at-

you roll over to check your alarm-

5:00 in the fucking morning.

Your sour mood is compounded by a sharp kick to the back of your calf.

“The phone’s ringing!”

“Amazing, I hadn’t noticed.  Thanks for depositing that exquisite crystal of wisdom into the vault that is my knowledge of my immediate surroundings.”

“Go answer it, Karkles.  Or admit that I was right and we need an answering machine.”  She kicks you again.  “Or both!”

Great.  You grumble a ‘bitch’ or something to that effect and crawl out of bed.  It’s not bad enough that you’re sleeping with your DM (When has that ever gone well?  You have the answer, and it’s ‘never’), the two of you are a “we” now.  You grab the handset, silencing the infernal device’s furious chiming, and press it to your ear, ready to deliver a truly legendary verbal beatdown.

“-arkat I know it’s late but time is of the essence so I am going to request that you please refrain from the torrent of abuse I so richly deserve for waking you at this hour and just assume that I am well aware of how inconsiderate it is of me to do so but have a compelling reason nonetheless-”

“Christ, slow down will you?” 

“Very well.  Long story short I need your help with something urgent as quickly as you can render your assistance and if I could have waited until a more reasonable time I absolutely would have.”

“Fuck, did someone break in?  I don’t know how fast I can get over there, but you need to-”

“No I am not in danger,” you sigh a little in relief, turning the receiver away so she doesn’t hear, “and no I cannot tell you what it is that I need your help with, first and foremost because if I did so you would not want to do it.”

“You’re not really selling me the sizzle here.”

“No I suppose I am not.  Rather I am gambling that you will trust that I would not be calling you if this were not important and that you will accept an explanation when you get here.”

“Awesome, ok, so I get to drive out to your place at five in the fucking morning.”

“Not directly as there are a number of items I will need you to bring.  Do you have something to write with?”

You should hang up the phone.  Go back and snatch a couple more precious hours of sleep with Terezi before your alarm goes off.

You grab a stubby pencil and the back of a Chinese take-out menu.

“Alright, go ahead.”

She lists a bunch of medical sounding stuff, along with suggestions for where to get it at this ungodly hour.  You grumble and curse and write everything down.  Fuck, you need to get gas too.

“And please I must reiterate that it is rather urgent that you acquire the necessary reagents quickly as-”

“Look, you’ve convinced me, ok?  I’ll be over as soon as I’ve got everything.”

“Thank you Karkat and please hurry and do not tell anyone else about this if you can help it.”

“Right, got it.  See you soon."

You hang up before she locks you into a recursive cycle of her worrying and then worrying about worrying until whoever she’s operating on (and you have to assume that’s what she’s doing, based on the grocery list) has long since exsanguinated.  You go back to the bedroom and sit on the bed to pull on your pants, calculating the shortest route through all the stops you’ll need to make.  Terezi reaches out with a leg, questing toes finding your hip.

“Who was it?”

“Nobody, go back to sleep.”

She shifts, tries to hook her bare thigh around you.  “Can’t, I’m awake now.”

“Yeah, and if you go to sleep you stop being awake.  That’s why they’re polar opposites.”

She grins.  “Maybe I can’t sleep, maybe I need a certain someone to get over here and tire me out”

Your dick agrees with Terezi: There’s a much better way to spend what’s left of tonight than driving around town looking for bargains on gauze and antibiotics.  You zip up your jeans and stand up to find a shirt.  She huffs and lies back on top of the sheets, naked.  Gazes up at the ceiling with her empty sockets.

“If you’re going to Kanaya’s you should take 7th.  It’s normally a nightmare but this time of night it’ll be empty.”

Of course she overheard and of course she figured out who you were talking to.  Of course you underestimated her again, you asshole.  She’s got to at least be smarter than your dumb ass, considering she’s not the one about to be an accessory to back alley surgery at five in the goddamn morning.  She hears you moving for the door, turns.

“Is it about Vriska?  Did she finally do something stupid and get herself shot?”

“No, it’s- fuck, I don’t know, maybe.

“I bet it totally is.”  She licks her lips, momentarily lost in thought.  “Oh, you left your keys in the little tray by the TV this time.”

“Shut up, I knew that.”

“No you didn’t.”

You stalk out of the room to fish them out from amid the candy wrappers and fragments of chalk.

“Come back soon!  Love you!  Tell Kanaya I said hi!” she shouts from the bedroom, already sprawled across the whole bed in your absence.  You flip her off reflexively, because playing with your emotions like that stopped being funny a long time ago.  She already knows you so well that, forever unable to see it, she bursts out laughing at your reaction anyway.

Whatever, enough worrying about that for the moment.  You’ve wasted enough time as it is.  You lock the door and descend the outside stairs to your car.