Don't Cry Out - Act 1 - Part 5
There was a silence that wasn't exactly awkward but dared to border on it before Sollux cleared his throat.
"Tho."
"So."
"You and Thrider need to get him out of here. They're gonna kill him if he thayth."
"We assumed as such." John was almost surprised at how confident he sounded.
"Then I'll let you in when you get back here tonight." Sollux turned away, then suddenly back at John. "And if it'th not too much to athk, where are the girlth?"
John bit his lip, trying to find a nice way of breaking the news and ultimately failing. "Rose is still Grimdark. She was checked into some kind of mental hospital but now she's missing and Jade's trying to find her."
Sollux was taken aback for a minute. "Oh. I'm thorry."
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Thure."
"You said something about Karkat having...stuff from both genders. Are all trolls like that?"
Sollux couldn't help snickering at how John still couldn't say it. "Yeah. Didn't realithe it wath weird until I ended up like thith."
"So you say you're alive to keep him alive."
"Probably, yeth."
"So when Dave and I take him..."
"I'll probably die, yeth."
John suddenly went shock-eyed. "That wasn't what I was going to say!" He pulled his hands over his ears like that would keep the reality out.
"But it'th true."
John caught a half-formed sob halfway out of his chest, leaving it an odd, strangled choking sound. "No it's not. I didn't see you come back to life just to watch you die again."
"John." Sollux sighed to himself, then put his glasses back on and grabbed John by the shoulders. "We're not alive. We're not thuppothed to be like thith. We, no, I need you to take him so I can get out of thith thell. Becauthe the only way to keep me alive ith to leave him to die. You can't do that. You can't do that to him, okay? You just can't!" He stopped for a minute to catch his breath. "Bethideth. If he dieth we all die anywayth. Better make thome fucking uthe of ourthelveth while we're thill here."
John swallowed. "When are they going to do it?"
"Tomorrow. Thay that the ethpothure to people gave him thome kind of fatht-acting ditheathe."
John slowly lowered his hands from his ears, although they shook all the way. "So it has to be tonight then."
"Yeth. If I can't convinthe you, I'll get Thrider to do it."
John couldn't help the mild indignation that crept into his voice from the mere idea that Dave would go behind his back. "We'll be there."
"Good." Sollux let his grip on John's shoulders go, and John was rewarded with the feeling of small, blossoming bruises. Even when they were human, they still managed to be a bit stronger than they should be. There was a moment of silence, and then Sollux turned back to him. "You wanna thee him?"
John couldn't help nodding with enough force to knock his glasses down his nose.
"Cool." Sollux hit a button, and there was a brief shriek of ringing metal, then silence as Karkat ascended into the room.
John's phone-device beeped again, and he frowned at it, both for refusing to stay off and for breaking the general sense of wonder. Dave had written back.
TG: hear you loud and clear, egbert
TG: ill be outside when you need me
[-=+=-]
The tube made absolutely no pretense of being silent once it was about half-in, but John couldn't really hear it over the growing 'holy crap' and 'oh my god' competing his mind. Every time he saw Karkat it was like he was finding him alive for the first time, and his breath caught in his throat and his jaw went slack, making Sollux roll his eyes.
"You know he'th alive now, no need to act like you've found the fucking grail."
"It's still hard to believe." Karkat was curled up tighter from the noise that apparently rang through the inside as well, and John felt a tiny pull on his heartstrings.
Sollux shrugged. "I guethh I've just theen him too many timeth."
John actually got the nerve to really look at him this time, counting all the tubes that emerged from the troll and buried themselves in the glass, running up and down beyond what he could see. And those strange, silver bars..."
"Why does he have cuffs on?"
Sollux winced. "You don't want to know that."
This did nothing to assuage John's fear. "It's worse if you don't tell me."
"No it'th not." Sollux hit a button, and the water started to drain out, waking Karkat up with a panicked look on his face. "Think what you want. My lipth are thealed." Another button undid the cuffs, and John watched as the bars sunk down to the bottom of the pool.
He was only half-aware of his legs as they got up and walked across the room, and less than half aware of his hands as they pressed against the tube, and completely unaware of his mouth when he pressed his mouth up to the freezing cold glass, mouthing that he was here, and it was going to be okay, he was going to get him out.
And it was entirely unexpected when Karkat pressed himself up against the other side of the glass, not mouthing anything back, but matching John's hands perfectly. John's heartstrings were less pulled now and more forcibly ripped from his system, but he was okay with that.
Sollux pressed another button and flipped a few more switches as the very last of the water was drained out, opening the back of the glass in a way John only thought was possible in expensive science fiction movies. John looked over his shoulder at Solomon just in time to miss catching a roll of medical tape.
"You'll need that for hith writhh." He said, turning to walk out.
"Wait, Sollux!"
"You have to do thith yourthelf, Egbert." Sollux smiled sadly through his words, suddenly looking very fragile and very, very tired. "I'm jutht another face to him. He won't trutht me." He laid a hand over his heart. "I don't thound the thame, remember?"
The sound of the door shutting behind him was only a soft click in reality, but in John's head it rang off the walls and reminded him of what he was doing by taking Karkat away.
What he'd do by letting Karkat stay.
He bit deep into his own tongue. He was supposed to be done with these shit decisions when he left the game and stopped being a friendleader. The decisions where they died if you did and they died slightly later if you didn't.
The faint noise of Karkat whispering his name was the only thing that brought him back to reality. His neck snapped back to Karkat's face like he'd been slapped, and he got up and ran around the tube with all the grace of something that wasn't particularly graceful, almost forgetting to pick up the tape on the way.
The closer he got to Karkat, the worse off he seemed. From far off, John couldn't see the hollow cheekbones, or count his ribs, or see the general atrophy of the claws from disuse, or the way he had to keep his eyes shut because his pupils were dialating and constricting at a hundred million miles and hour when he tried to open them and...
John started removing the tubes to distract himself, making sure to pull them out the way they came in and covering the holes with a neat patch of tape. It wasn't until he'd looked up to remove Karkat's mask and then back down at his wrists that he noticed the scars.
Oh.
OH.
John's hands froze, and his head slowly tilted back towards Karkat's face, a look of disbelief and shame in his eyes.
Karkat managed his eyes open to return John's gaze, although he had to keep them downcast. He tried to glare, tried to say something to get John to just stop looking at him like that, but he found himself incapable, so he closed his eyes again.
John started pulling out the tubes again, being even more careful this time. When those were all done, he fumbled with the thick metal of the cuffs, searching all over until he finally found a release mechanism inside the hollow where the tube had deposited itself. There was a similar one in the feet, and once all of Karkat's bonds had been released there was nothing to hide the deafening silence that had permeated the room.
John looked at Karkat, then at the floor, then at his hands, then at the ceiling, which was just really a long, dark, cylindrical hollow that went on forever.
He took one of Karkat's hands in both of his, afraid of both how cold it was and how much it felt like a rotten peach, where a simple pull would slide off the skin and leave twitching muscle and bones open to the air.
"Karkat, I am so sorry."