Chapter Text
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
Is the noise of Grace’s screwdriver against my bubble. I finch with it each time. “Grace, no!” I panic. Grace had explained how humans needed touch before. This was why he was always asking for hugs and fist-bumps, but he knew I couldn’t actually touch him! I would die in his atmosphere!
Grace laughs at me, high and light and airy.
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
“Whaaat? I can’t hear you over all this noise!” He taunts with a giggle.
I try to roll away from him, but realize I’m trapped in a corner with Grace blocking my only escape. My heart pounds, liquids pumping through me a rushing river of static in my brain. Why was he—? “Grace, please!” I beg, pressing myself into the back of the ball (as if that would do me any good).
THUD.
“But I want a huuug!” Grace sing-songs with a grin.
THUD.
“Grace, you know I can’t survive in—!”
THUD-
KSHHHHH!!!
The bubble breaks into a million glittering shards all around me, and I scream as oxygen rushes in to ignite my lungs. They burn hotter and wilder than my sun ever could, I’m sure, the claws of the gas that’s completely harmless to a squishy, weak, fragile human ripping and tearing and devouring my insides with a manic passion.
“Rocky!!” Grace squeals with joy now that his pet has been released, leaning forward to draw me into an embrace.
And oh, that’s so much worse.
The Cold drowns out the heat immediately, though I still know it’s there; it just pales in comparison to this.
The Cold has no teeth, the cold doesn’t bite, the cold doesn't roar or tear or taunt.
It just is.
It knows I’m going to die, it knows it’s going to kill me, and it knows it’s going to hurt. It has no particular feelings about this. Just the knowledge of it.
I try to change its mind anyway.
I shiver and shake and rip my throat to shreds with my crying, screaming, bargaining, begging.
Grace doesn’t let go.
He doesn’t let go as The Cold slithers into my skin, under my craggy carapace with ease. It hurts. It hurts and it hurts and it hurts and I scream and Grace nuzzles closer to me and The Cold suddenly gains another centimeter under my shell. At the same time, the heat, the tearing the biting the awful heat is moving from the center of my being outward. To greet The Cold of course. This is their home now. Well, once they meet. Once they join hands and shake on a job well done. And they will have done their jobs well. They will have ravaged and burned and numbed and bitten and made bleed every inch of my being.
But, unbelievably, something worse suddenly occurs to me.
Grace hates me.
He must, because,
He wants me dead.
He’s killing me.
And that, naturally, leads to
He… doesn’t love me.
And I don’t know why I shake a little harder at that, because as soon as he started pounding I knew it had to be true. I just didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to.
The next thought slips into my mind before I can stop it, and it makes me choke.
He never loved me, did he?
…
I know the answer.
Yes… I know the answer, but it feels so wrong. It feels like… I’m missing something, like there’s something just beyond my consciousness that I’m just failing to grasp.
But it’s no matter, really, now, because the heat and The Cold are just about to clasp hands and it hurts and I scream one last time to be let go and Grace cackles because what a stupid request and—
And I wake up