“Promise you know how to use this thing?”
Quackity chuckled. “Yes, I promise. I've used it plenty of times before, and I'm confident in my ability to bring you back. Relax, Wilbur, don't you trust me?”
Wilbur didn't relax. Sensing her discomfort, Quackity paused and sat next to her on the couch.
“Do you want to back out? I promise we can stop here and never talk about this again. I won't hold any hard feelings.”
“No, no, I want to do this. I just... I don't know.” Trying to collect herself, Wilbur muttered, “I just don't want to be stuck back there again.”
Having returned to her preparation, Quackity froze.
“Yes, yes, I trust you,” Wilbur didn't, “It’s just nerve-wracking.“ Backing down from something like this, however, in front of her biggest “rival”, was not happening. It was exciting! Maybe it'd feel like something new. She wasn’t afraid of Quackity, or of her judging her. She just wanted to try it.
“No sterilization? Nothing?” Wilbur asked, “Don’t I deserve that at the least?”
“What, is that gonna be an issue?”
“No, I just figured for such an incredible city, you'd have a medbay,” Wilbur drawled.
“Of course we have a fucking medbay Wilbur, but do you really think my workers would be happy seeing their president slicing his so-called rival into pieces?” Wilbur decided to not question her usage of so-called. That'd be a problem for another day.
Her heart was pounding. Getting vivisected, of her own volition, was something she never would’ve done before revival. But the rush, the adrenaline coursing through her body... Well. It was a surefire way to get her fix.
The real question is whether she fully trusted her own healing potions. Q wanted her to be alive the whole time, and sure, that'd help with the rush, but she agreed to do it on the condition that she used her recipe.
Quackity had explained the concept to her multiple times before. Using an IV in her arm to inject her full of healing potions, she should—keyword should—stay alive, at least through the initial cut. She said she'd tested it on Slime- but that didn't give Wilbur much faith. The guy, despite appearing humanoid, was certainly nothing of the sort. After all, testing a cut on a guy who could reform himself around just about anything probably didn't give you much knowledge about how it works on a (mostly) regular human.
Why was she doing this again? Why'd she trust her biggest rival—someone she'd been fighting with since even before revival—to cut her open again?
Saying it was the adrenaline rush didn't make any sense either, because she had no guarantee. Adrenaline is powerful, it makes you feel in control, it's like cliff diving, or blowing up. This is being bared open to the person you hate the most, surely there's a different word for it. Weakness, probably, but Wilbur certainly didn't want to call it that.
Wil tracked Q as she traipsed about the room once more, gathering her last tools and supplies. They had been planning this for weeks, so all the healing potions had been brewed, they had the revive book, and Wilbur was prepared. Her heart was pounding, sure, but she was prepared. She wondered whether Quackity would be able watch her heart beat when she dug into her chest. Fuck! That wasn’t the point.
Quackity had prepared a makeshift sort of bed on her suite's kitchen table. Wilbur had argued that she should at least be allowed to get cut open on the fancy velvet couch she had slept on too much, but Q wasn’t having it. A shame, really. Leaving a permanent bloodstain on such a central part of the apartment (of sorts) would be so fulfilling, even more than the mark she left every time she slept overnight there when Quackity wouldn't let her leave. More specifically, it was too late to leave without it being dangerous to be outside, especially in “a city like this.” After all, wouldn’t Q know all about how dangerous her own city, prided on its safe and accessible gambling community.
Wilbur hoped that Quackity thought of her every time she looked at the couch.
It was time for the first cut, and Wilbur was not confident. Despite this having festered in the back of her mind for months, the stench of rot still filled her nostrils when she stopped moving. The IV was painless, gently stuck into the junction of her wrist, and she could see her own home-brewed neon pink healing and regen potions pumped directly into her bloodstream, highlighting the veins underneath.
Wilbur wasn’t a stranger to being shirtless in front of Quackity, the aforementioned cliff-diving (and more) meant they weren't any stranger to that. However, a lot had changed since then, and her body didn’t look in any way near to what it used to.
The cut was familiar, but it was easy and fast. No scar tissue was left from thirteen years ago, and so her body opened smoothly and quickly under the scalpel.
Not feeling pain from it, however, was odd. The sensation was there, but it didn’t last, and the incision was folded and pinned open in such a way that she couldn’t struggle if she needed to. Upsetting, to say the least. Heart still racing, lungs heavy, it was terrifying to be spread open and forced still like this. Staring at her with a calculated eye, Quackity stood still.
“Sorry, what?”
“I asked you if you were ready to keep going. You’ve been sat there for a good few minutes now.”
Wilbur grimaced. Great, now Quackity knew she was nervous. As if the fast breaths she was taking weren’t actively visible under her ribcage. “Right, yeah. You can keep going. Not like I can do anything but be sat here after all,” struggling slightly against the pins spreading her chest open to make her point.
“Stop that, you’ll tear the skin. It’s only gonna make it more difficult for me to sew you up once I’m done.”
“Aren’t you just gonna revive me?” Wilbur asked, as Q dug into the space below her diaphragm, tapping organs with her fingers and naming words that Wilbur would love to mentally note, if she didn't have Quackity’s hands quite literally deep in her guts.
“Yes, but if I don't sew up the skin, you'll just be revived into being cut open again. No matter how much you might like that, I really don't need to take the energy out of me to revive you twice,” Quackity said without looking up.
Wilbur should've fought back, made some smart remark about how she did just fine the last time, but a squeeze on presumably her large intestine made her freeze. The problem wasn't that it was painful, but that it was… pleasant.
The press against her organs, the knowledge that any movement she made, any feeling she felt, Quackity would see, and know exactly how she felt.
…
And g-d did it feel good.
Cutting open her old best friend and current quote unquote rival, wasn't where Quackity expected to be in the dead of winter. Snow was outside, even in her desert, she had presidential duties to attend to, and she was digging around in Wilbur’s guts. And not in the way she had before.
She wasn't sure why she asked to do it in the first place anyways. It was a release of energy of sorts, but nowhere near the same way she did… Ahem. Previously.
Shit, she hoped that Wilbur didn't think it was that. The idea that she was using her in that way… Well it made Quackity want to storm out of the room and leave Wilbur there unopened.
Unfortunately it was a little too late for that. She just had to hope that Wilbur understood and didn't judge her for this, and didn't think that was how she felt towards her.
This was not violence. This was love. Quackity didn’t want to hurt Wilbur, not the way she did Dream in any way at all. She just wanted her to have a taste of feeling beautiful, feeling open, and she so hoped that Wilbur enjoyed it as much as she was. What with the heavy breaths her lungs took, and…
“You alright there?”
Quackity shook herself back to reality. “Shit, sorry. What’d you say?” The rhythmic pulsing of Wil’s lungs had mesmerized her, and the softness of her organs beneath her blood covered hands… Geez. There was no way this was good for her.
“I asked you if you were gonna.. Do anything more? You’ve been staring and squeezing my intestines for nearly five minutes.” Quackity released her grip.
“Yeah, sorry,” she winced. The hold she must’ve had on her intestines was in no way gentle, and probably hurt.
“No need to be sorry Q, it, um, it didn’t hurt. Don’t worry about it.”
Quackity raised a single eyebrow. Someone was enjoying this. “I’m ready to keep going if you are.”
“Y-yes.” Wilbur took a shaky breath. “Go for it.”
Quackity’s heart shuddered in her chest. So this was what it was like. This was how it felt to be fully in charge.
She hoped she could see Wilbur’s heart pounding soon.
Trailing her nails up Wilbur’s chest cavity, feeling where the diaphragm connected up to her ribs, squeezing her stomach and tracing where the esophagus connected to it, Quackity lost herself.
Wilbur was beautiful. There was no doubt about it, she was always stunning. But peeled open and helpless beneath her? Nothing would ever compare. Her heart… Oh prime, Quackity could hear her heart pounding in the empty room. Her lungs pressing against her ribs with every sharp exhale.
“You’re going to start feeling lightheaded starting now.” Quackity stated, wasting no time after Wilbur’s nod to peel the diaphragm away from her ribcage, sighing as she wrapped her hand around her right lung.
Wilbur’s breathing became even heavier (if that was possible) after Quackity’s hand reached into her ribcage. The pressure on her lungs was more threatening but so much safer than anything had been before.
Quackity was right, though, the lightheadedness was kicking in. She had begun to hyperventilate but g-d did it feel good. Somehow feeling so out of control, leaving that trust in the person she hates most… She felt safe. As Quackity’s hands reached into her ribs, nothing felt important except being here. The pressure on her lungs was increasing but all she could feel was her heart pounding and her vision blurring.
“I’m going to eat your heart.”
“What?”
“Can I eat your heart?”
Wilbur knew about Quackity’s… Situation after Schlatt’s death, but the rumors were many and there was no way she was bringing it up to her directly. Quackity would share if she wanted to.
However.
The idea of sustaining Quackity, the knowledge of her teeth sinking into her heart and consuming her wholeheartedly and not stopping, her death fucking meaning something, her love and heart and existence being eaten… Fuck.
She had to say yes. Well, she didn’t have to, of course, but g-d did she want to. There was nothing she could do. This was everything she wanted… Or was it? She didn’t have enough time to think about it. Quackity was already drawing away.
“Shit, I’m sorry, I don't know why I said that, prime, I don’t mean it I swear.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Eat my heart. Please, Quackity, I trust you. Eat me alive.” Hopefully this wasn’t what Q had with Schlatt. She wanted to be something new. She wanted this to be special.
The next few moments felt like they happened in slow motion. The cuts into her aorta, her vision beginning to slowly blur. Nothing mattered. Her heart was pulled from the center of her chest, the arch dripping blood.
The last thing that Wilbur saw before dying again was Quackity’s teeth sinking deep into her heart.
Quackity quickly began the revival process, placing Wilbur’s heart back between her lungs, sewing up her chest cavity and letting the book do its work. She was on autopilot however, because all she could think about was Wilbur’s eyes when she bit down. It wasn’t scared, no, quite the opposite. It was something she had never seen before, at least not since Pogtopia. She was staring at her with hearts in her eyes, as if she was in love.
Quackity didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t what she expected. She didn’t even know if that’s what she wanted.
But it felt familiar. Familiar and exhilarating.
A single featherlight kiss was left on Wilbur’s lips, blood smeared from Quackity’s mouth to hers. She was still warm.
Wilbur was back in limbo. She expected this, of course, but it was still incredibly fear inducing. Her past self wasn’t there, luckily. She didn’t think she knew how to handle that.
She was still so afraid that Quackity wouldn’t bring her back. She trusted Q, of course, but there was still such a deep-set fear that she would never come back, that this was the end.
It felt like days in that train station, even though it was probably just a few hours. The thrumming of the next train finally passing through was like a breath of fresh air, and she was finally ready to go back.
Maybe this would happen again. Maybe. She was still afraid.
But it felt new, and real.