Chapter Text
Rudo gasped awake, and before he could even move, he knew. He couldn’t even think, he just felt it in his bones, heart, blood, soul, arms—
It was going to be a bad day.
In that moment, he wished more than anything that he could just go back to sleep. Without nightmares. Maybe for longer than two hours at a time. Was that so much to ask?
His hands throbbed angrily as if in answer.
Rudo decided to take stock of himself. His hands felt like the flesh was trying to start peeling itself right off his bones, but they weren’t quite at the liquid hellfire stage yet. Either way, sleep would not be coming back to him like this anytime soon, and he didn’t want to just lay there and stew in the growing pain. So. Might as well try and get himself a glass of water while he still had some function in his hands left.
He tentatively started to shift to get his arms to push him upright and immediately regretted it. Rudo grit his teeth tightly, fighting desperately for several long moments just so he wouldn’t collapse right back down. In the end it took entirely too much time and effort just to finally sit up, and by the time he’d accomplished it, static was creeping in at the corners of his vision. He took a second to try to get his breathing back to a normal level from where it had started to stutter. He looked down at his gloved hands, already visibly shaking where they rested on the mattress. He scowled down at them before turning to shove his legs off the side of the bed and actually stand up.
The sudden movement sent a lightning bolt of agony down his arms, and he nearly doubled over. He grit his teeth to prevent something like a scream from escaping.
His throat was dry. He just wanted some water, dammit.
Rudo slowly straightened back up and shot his bedroom door a nasty look. Or more accurately, the door handle. If looks could kill, Rudo was sure that door handle would be crumbling to dust three times over. But whatever. He needed to deal with it. He was going to deal with it. No one else was here to hold the door open for him, no one else was waiting just in the room beyond, already grabbing the glass and filling it up, no one was here to rewrap his bandages and hold his hands to warm them up and calm the tremors, Regto wasn’t here—
Stop.
Rudo took another deep breath.
He needed to stop standing there and glaring at the door like an idiot. He was going to open the damn door, walk out into the hall, drink some water, clear his head, and come back. Easy.
Powered by fresh spite, he took a decisive step forward. And was promptly reminded why he was supposed to be trying to move carefully. A choked sound of pain made it past his lips when his arms jolted with the movement, but he only gave himself a second to breathe around it before continuing forward, moving gingerly this time around. By the time he actually made it to the door, Rudo was firmly trying to ignore the returning static in his peripheral vision. He braced himself, thanked whatever higher powers that be that this was a door handle and not a doorknob, and used an elbow to push it down.
Electric shocks raced from his elbow down to his fingertips, and all the way back up to his shoulder. Rudo grit his teeth tighter but managed to keep it together. Okay. One win at a time. He carefully shouldered the door the rest of the way open and managed to make it out into the hall without further incident.
Rudo released a short breath he didn’t know he was holding. His arms still burned him from the inside out, but that was nothing new, at least. He’s done this before. He’ll do it again.
The problem with it being fuck-all o’clock at night was that the halls of Cleaners HQ were silent and eerie without the constant noise and energy that everyone brought during the day. There was no playful shouting in the distance or loud, booming music or varied noises from people moving around. For all that the hall was still lit, the silence still felt too unnatural to Rudo, no matter how many times he’d wandered around at night by now. The other problem was that it was all too easy for thoughts he normally tried to keep locked up to return with a vengeance.
Like the memories of Regto, and how he seemingly had a sixth sense for when Rudo was in pain. How he’d check on him every single night without fail and leave Rudo’s bedroom door open a crack so he’d hear any sounds of distress. How he had changed his bandages with so much gentleness in his own hands and care in his eyes, how he’d read Rudo books and shared terrible joke after terrible joke with him even when Rudo couldn’t respond and wrapped them both up in the biggest worn blanket they owned and—
Stop!
—And he just wanted his dad, his hands hurt, and Regto was always, always there whenever it hurt this much, the first sound should have had him come running and why wasn’t he here, why wasn’t he here? The Cleaners had been so kind to him since he fell into their care but they were all asleep and he would rather hole up with his agony on his own than bother one of them anyway, and back then his dad was always just there without Rudo needing to say anything, armed with a worried smile and kind words and gentle actions, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts—
Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop—!
He was in the mess hall.
How did…how did he get here?
Rudo slowly blinked back into some semblance of awareness through watery eyes and realized the sudden spike of pain wasn’t just in his head; he’d probably shouldered his way through the mess hall doors hard enough to send fresh stabbing sensations shooting down his arms. He stared down at them, watching half-detachedly as they trembled without his input. He didn’t really know why he’d come all the way here. For a glass of water? To prove something to himself? Both?
He’d take both. He could go to the mess hall and drink a glass of water. He could at least do that. He didn’t need… He didn’t need help from—
Fucking stop.
He just hoped his shaking hands wouldn’t drop the glass.
He started up his slow, shuffling pace to the cabinet with the glasses in the kitchen. It took him longer than he would’ve liked to get there.
Ah. The cabinet.
He swore that it was staring back at him smugly from its position above the sink. Above, where he’d need to reach up to get to it.
“This stinks,” Rudo muttered to himself through clenched teeth. He started to lift his right arm to the cabinet door. He might as well have been trying to lift it through tar instead of air. Tar that made his arm feel like it was being melted apart and put back together, heavier every time. He couldn’t stop another small noise of pain from escaping, and kept up his vicious muttering to power through it. “Stinking cabinet and stinking doors that just have to be everywhere… and those turdfaces telling me ‘oh Rudo, close your door at night, moron, stop leaving it open all the time, don’t you want privacy, you scuzzball’, well excuse me for having days where my hands feel like literal flaming shit, Zanka—”
His gloved hand reached the cabinet door after what felt like a year, and he decided to just bite the bullet. Rip off the bandaid, open the cabinet, grab a glass, and let his arm drop. Okay. Sure.
He yanked the cabinet door open and bit back another pained yell, practically grinding his teeth together as he spotted his target and reached for it as quickly as he feasibly could. Flexing his fingers to close them around the glass was more like flexing hot knives where his bones were supposed to be. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts so much. He almost dropped the glass about three different times in the time it took him to finally grab the thing and let his arm drop. The impact of the glass hitting the surface of the counter sent more reverberations up his arm and through his entire body that nearly had his knees buckling underneath him.
This wasn’t worth it, some faint part of him thought, while the rest of his vision greyed out for a long moment. All he could hear and see was static, and he didn’t dare move until the kitchen counter started to fade back into view. His hearing came back next, replacing the numb buzzing with the sound of his own heavy breathing. He was leaning against the counter with both hands, staring down at the sink in front of him, cup in hand. His hands burned. His throat felt raw from the effort of choking down the agonized sounds that wanted to escape. He just wanted water. He just wanted…
He watched his free hand reach forward, trembling like a leaf in the wind, like a passenger in his own body. It moved on autopilot, pushing one of the sink handles while his body shuddered from the resulting ripples of hellfire. The water ran, and his other hand moved. The glass wobbled dangerously in his grip, but it filled with water. His other hand shut the water off again. The glass slipped further down his hand. His peripheral vision was dark. He watched it all happen, he felt it all happen, but he wasn’t in the driver’s seat anymore. He was suddenly viewing it all through a screen, like a trainwreck that he just couldn’t look away from. It hurt, but it was almost like this was hurting someone else, and he was just watching it happen. It was him, but it wasn’t. This didn’t feel real. Was he dreaming this entire time, maybe? Was he going to wake up with his arms on fire back in his bed, as if none of this had really happened?
No, no… he knew what this was. The term floated around somewhere in the recesses of his mind and then slipped back into nothingness. He let it happen. No, this was still real. He just didn’t need to be the one in control anymore. He could force his limbs to move on their own. Once he hit the autopilot switch, he’d be fine. He could just stand back here and watch. One last conscious effort on his part, and the actor in his body would take it from there. One last herculean task. It burns, it burns. Someone, help me. Regto—
He hit the switch.
His mind was shoved back, and the actor in his body took over.
He watched the actor lift his arm through molasses again. He felt the cool water finally, finally hit the actor’s throat. A cold respite in the blazing inferno.
He watched the glass slip out of his hand and drop into the sink with a loud clatter like a gunshot in the silence. Rudo didn’t think much of it.
The actor turned back around and started his slow pace back through the mess hall. Everything throbbed painfully. His head pounded. He could still hear uneven breathing. The mess hall was dark, but the light that shone through the cracks in the doors from the hall was a beacon that sent more pulsing pain through his head. Everything just… hurt. It hurt so badly that Rudo struggled to remember what it was like to exist outside of this. One person couldn’t possibly hurt this much. It was so unbearable that he found himself circling right back around to numbness at a breakneck pace.
Everything hurt, but now his limbs were starting to fill up with sharp static like a blanket over the corrosive acid. It didn’t make any of it go away, but this was…better. He thinks. An invisible wall made of thick glass, building itself between him and his body, his emotions, his thoughts. He could still see everything on the other side. Somewhere, he could still feel all of it. But it screamed at him from the other side of the wall, where Rudo didn’t need to touch it. Not until it died down enough for him to stomach.
His actor in his body approached the doors. Rudo watched with bated breath.
And then they flew open on their own and his vision flashed white.
He flinched back, and the movement sparked a horrible electricity through his nerves, crashing right through some of the static, and no, no, no, no—
“Rudo?”
What?
There was a dark silhouette holding the doors open against the bright ass light flooding in from the hall. Rudo couldn’t even shield his eyes against it. His arms wouldn’t listen, and he’d been thrust back into active participation, sharing the wheel with the autopilot, and his head was spinning and he hurt and he didn’t know what to do.
There was a jagged hole in the glass wall in his head, and the everything wanted back in to his side of it. He was going to drown in it.
“Hey, Rudo. You alright?”
Wait. That was…
“En…jin?” Rudo croaked.
“Whoa, kid. You sound like death. What are you doing in there in the dark? Can’t sleep? Get out here so I can see you properly.” The silhouette let go of one of the doors to hold the other one open for him, beckoning him out with an insistent hand wave.
Rudo practically stumbled out, grimacing at the change from the dark mess hall to the lit hallway. He felt like he had a warhammer in his head. And saws in his arms. He was still wrestling with himself, trying to go back to the safe backseat he’d taken before and finding himself stuck halfway there. A part of him wanted to get away from the hell his body was raining down on him. Another part of him, annoyingly loud, was scared of being so cut off from reality. He never really did it voluntarily, and he knew he was never truly numb like that. He could still see everything from the other side of the glass wall. It just… muffled it all, to an extent.
Being stuck between awareness and involuntary distance really just added panic to the overwhelming state he was already in. He didn’t know what to say to Enjin, whom he could finally see properly once his eyes adjusted. His hair was down, and he was wearing a simple, worn-down t-shirt and sweatpants. He was also staring intently at Rudo with a furrow in his brow. It was like he was trying to puzzle out what was wrong with him without Rudo saying anything. Normally, Rudo would have gotten on his case immediately upon seeing that look. He was fine, dammit. He could take care of himself, and this was not new to him anyway.
His stiff arms twitched by his sides, and he felt his eyes scrunch up at the feeling of molten lava rushing up his veins, even as his throat closed up to stop any sound from escaping. Enjin’s gaze zeroed in first on his face and then on his arms like a predator that had finally spotted its prey.
“Your arms,” Enjin said. It wasn’t a question so much as confirming his suspicions aloud. Rudo didn’t respond. He didn’t have the energy to spare for anything other than staying on his feet. He moved his gaze back down to stare at the ground. Enjin bent down to look into his face again. “Rudo. Hey. You here, buddy?”
Rudo didn’t want Enjin to see him like this. Enjin knew, to an extent, that his arms always gave him trouble and that he’d get the rare day when not even the gloves seemed to help him much. But he hadn’t had one of those bad days since he fell to the Ground, and he hadn’t planned on letting any of the Cleaners see how weak he could get. How useless, vulnerable, gross, subhuman—
“Hey. Kid, listen to me. I know you’re out of it, but I want to help you, okay? I’m gonna get you to the infirmary, see if some painkillers can’t help you out enough to get some rest.” Enjin grinned at him. It was strained around the edges. Rudo felt a wave of guilt widen the cracks in his glass wall. He was bothering Enjin. He didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be several hours before dawn yet. Enjin could’ve been out for a glass of water like him before going back to bed, and now instead he felt obligated to help Rudo with his own mess.
He wanted to apologize. He wanted to tell Enjin to leave him alone. He wanted to scream. He wanted to be able to push him away under his own power, with just the usual undercurrent of an ache and not debilitating agony. He wanted to cling to him and not let go. He wanted Regto.
He only managed the barest nod. His glass wall was on the brink of collapse. He could see the sea of static and concentrated suffering rising on the other side. It was already leaking through. Rudo watched all of this in his mind’s eye, watched Enjin’s return nod in real life, and knew what was about to happen. It was with a numb acceptance and a widening, empty pit in his chest that he kept his eyes trained on the ground as Enjin straightened back up. He wished he could warn the man, but his voice had suffocated under the growing void. His body had stopped listening to him long ago.
The glass shattered. One of Enjin’s hands carefully reached out.
The tidal wave of everything crested far above him. The static encroached on his vision.
He felt a warm hand land in his hair, his own hands spasmed, and his nerves lit back up like dry kindling waiting for a spark.
One last choked whine forced its way out. And then the sea crashed down on top of him, Rudo’s vision went grey, and he stopped thinking about anything at all.