Chapter Text
For all intents and purposes he should be happy. The Chens were no longer a problem, Jinx was taken care of, the entire ghost world was on his side, his family was safe and so was Brighton. You'd think he'd be satisfied, ready to kick back and relax after the insanity of it all. But he wasn't. He was restless, uneasy, and worst of all, hollow.
Scratch laid up in the attic on the green beanbag chair in the corner of Molly's room staring blankly up at the ceiling. His thoughts were unfocused and it felt like his brain was buzzing with TV static. His (after)life was finally in a stable position again, why wasn't he happy? Something felt wrong, like he was incomplete. He was starting to get sick of feeling like this, he thought for sure it would have faded by now. It was almost driving him crazy, this dreadful, dark, swirling feeling in the pit of his stomach had been there for months. It had started after the heist and it had only gotten worse with time.
Molly burst into her room with the usual optimistic energy, "Heyyyyy Scratchy!!!" She nearly leapt out of the hatch, "Isn't today great? Finally everything can go back to normal!"
"Yeah. Normal." He said with zero energy in his voice. Molly picked up on it immediately.
"Hey… you okay? You seem… even less motivated than usual."
"Yeah I'm fine. Just tired I guess."
Scratch knew Molly could see right through him, both of them were terrible liars, especially to each other.
"C'mon, Scratch. What's wrong buddy? Talk to me!"
"Molly, it's nothing. Can we drop it please? It's complicated."
"Okay well either it's complicated or nothing, it can't be both."
"..."
"Scratch, I'm your best friend…! You can tell me anything!"
He knew the only way to get her to stop pestering him would be to open up. Besides, maybe he'd feel better if he told somebody. He kept it from her for this long, she deserved to know. "... I'm… not happy, Mol. And I don't know why. I should be happy but I-I'm just… not. Everything's as it should be; Jinx is gone, the Chens don't wanna mount me as their wall trophy anymore, I finally got this chairman junk figured out, so I don't understand what's wrong. I just feel so… empty. Like something's missing."
She sat cross legged on her bed, listening to him intently. This was weird, he's never this open. "What could be missing?" She tilted her head to the side.
"... Well, my memories for one. I'm still a little on the empty side, if you haven't noticed." He taps his temple with the heel of his palm and moths fly out the other side.
"Oh… yeah that is kind of a bummer. Man, it's a shame that soda didn't work out, we could have had a lead from that! Now I'm completely stumped, otherwise I would have helped you out more by now." She flopped backwards onto her bed.
Scratch slowly tightened his grip on the side of the beanbag, claws digging into the green fabric. "... Well… it wasn't a complete bust…"
Molly shot up almost instantaneously, "Really???"
"... I did remember something… when you went inside after the heist."
Molly's excitement completely overlooked his sour tone and downcast expression, "REALLY???? What was it, what was it??" She was practically jumping on the bed now.
He gave her a worried glance before looking back down at the floor. "... It was… some girl. She seemed… important to me… but I can't remember why… her name is right on the tip of my tongue but…" he put his hand against his forehead and kept his mouth open like he wanted to speak but no sounds came out for a while, it looked almost as if the words were choking him, "... I-I don't know. It's just… not comin to me."
"Th-that's okay buddy!!! That's progress!"
"But it's not. That's the only memory I've had for months. A-and it's a dead end! All I know is there was some girl who didn't want me to forget her and she moved away." His grip on the beanbag tightened even more and punctured it with his growing black claws but he didn't seem to care. He was too lost in his own thoughts to notice.
"... Scratch…" Molly's smile and energy had completely disintegrated now and was replaced with deep shocked empathy.
He started breathlessly laughing to himself, "And I couldn't even give her that! I still forgot her! The one thing she told me to do and I couldn't do it…" large, dark spines began slowly creeping up his arms and his color began to darken, an iridescent black replacing the usual vibrant blue of his ectoplasm.
"... S-Scratch… w-what's… going on…?" Molly began to back up from the edge of her bed as she watched her best friend literally fall to pieces in front of her. Thick black slime fell from his arms and onto the floor with an audible sizzling sound. Her fear was palpable in her quiet voice, "... What are you doing…?"
Tears formed in his eyes as he continued to ramble, "I have been trying everything and ANYTHING to trigger another memory somehow and you know what I've come up with? NOTHING. They're my memories from MY LIFE!!! Don't I deserve to know?!? I… I NEED TO KNOW!!! I NEED... I… I-I don't…" he trailed off and sounded light headed, falling forward into his hands and noticing the creeping black corruption trailing up his arms like poison. A distorted choked sob left his throat as his tears hit the floor in front of him. "... W-what's going on…" quick shallow breaths were punctuated by quiet winces of pain.
Scratch fell to his elbows as long black spines burst out of his back and he screamed a loud, shrill, inhuman cry. Molly could only look on in helpless horror as his unstable form began to grow and shift in front of her, becoming larger and darker, quickly filling her room.
"S-Scratch you have to CALM DOWN!!!" she cried, blinking tears from her eyes. His now piercing blue ones shone through his pitch black claws covering his face. His pained voice spoke, becoming more and more distorted with each desperate word as he repeated to himself.
"I c-can't… I can't … I C… CAN'T … Ḯ̵̜̣̼̗͚̣͍̯̮̺͔̬̩̞̲̊͗̎̒̃̅̏͒̀̔̀̀̉ ̴̢̛̛͚͔̬̰̘̥̊͆̋̂̽̍̐̈́̑̕͜͠C̸̢͔̘̰̹̦̼̠̪͔̮͉͎̣̓Ă̵̢̹Ń̷̢̺̠̟̠̀̐͊͌̾̊̀̇͘͘͠'̶͖̖̇̅̊͐͝T̶̢̺̜̹͎̠̩͉͈̄̔͜ "
His claws were removed from his face revealing the terrible state he was in; strings of thick black ectoplasm dripped from his mouth full of dark, sharp teeth and his unfocused, wild eyes laid right on Molly who was around only one third of his overall size now. His huge, tar-like body could barely be contained by the small attic room. A high pitched screech rang out nearly deafening Molly before the tortured soul leapt out of the front window, cracking the window frame and threatening to take the entire wall with him. He shot off into a random direction, aimlessly roaring and screaming in a stomach churning mixture of confusion and fear. Thick, acidic black ectoplasm nearly coated the entire right wall as the human processed what just happened.
Molly was shaking and crying, she looked at her damaged window and felt like she was either about to completely collapse or throw up. There was a tight feeling in her chest and she felt she could barely breathe. After fumbling with her phone for a few seconds, she called Libby. The phone rang for a few seconds before a polite voice on the other side answered;
Libby stayed quiet for a few seconds, usually Molly's the first to talk, "Uh he-hello? Is everything okay Molly?"
Molly's frantic, shaking voice was interrupted by quiet little sobs, "Libby… L-Libby I… I-I need you to come quick… something's very wrong…"