Chapter 1
You shouldn't fucking be here.
Wait, no. You should be fine with being in what amounts to a fucking war zone. You trained for this shit, right? Wasn't one of your fucking dreams as a wriggler to grow up and be one of Her Imperial Condescension's elite warriors? It was a stupid delusional dream—they'd cull you the instant you slipped up in a sparring match and got yourself sliced open—but you still want through the motions. You're capable of holding your own in a fight.
An Alternian fight, anyway. Which this isn't. This is some weirdass human thing where you're almost certain that the people shooting at you are technically the good guys. As in, they might be the same species as the guy at your side, but they give you a definite drone vibe.
It's fucking awful. You don't know why Dave seems as unperturbed as he does.
Then again, he doesn't seem to have a problem with pulling you to one side or the other right before a bullet cracks through the meager cover the two of you have been dodging between for the past ten minutes. You're starting to wonder how the fuck humans survive—it's not like they keep the area immediately around their hives clear so they can see threats coming. There's not a decent line of sight from any of the buildings themselves at all.
Of course, you know how humans survive this shit: they adapt, just like your species did, and they mold their fucking environment—maybe more successfully than your species did. The only predator you've seen in your perigees of being here is, well...other humans.
Which. Yeah. Fuck.
"Down!" Dave hisses it out this time as he dives down flat; you actually feel something too fucking fast and hot and small pass over your head as you join him on the grass. (The soft green grass. You're still not used to this shit.) "Shit shit shit, dude, I fucked up, I didn't drop the phone close enough, this should've stopped by now, Hal should've dealt with them—"
"For fuck's sake." You're an expert at wiggling around like a slitherbeast, for reasons that you prefer to keep to yourself; it's not even kind of difficult to bellycrawl the two feet or so that separates you from him, just barely prop yourself up on one elbow so you can reach over with the other hand and get your fingers all up in his fine white hair. (Your thinkpan stutters between dumbass needs a haircut and stars above, I wish he had horns.) "Shoosh."
He does. For like, a second.
Then he raises his head and scowls at you. His shades are askew; you can see those eyes for once, like a harbinger of what yours are going to look like in maybe three sweeps. If you fucking survive that long. "This ain't a shoosh situation—"
"It's a shoosh situation if I say it is, fucknuts!"
"Fucknuts? God, if I get out of here I'm gonna kick Wade's ass for teaching you tha—"
The gunshot that cuts Dave off doesn't sound like any weapon you've ever heard, and you've been subjected to Eridan's entire fucking collection and Latula's attempts to convince Kankri that he should carry a firearm for the irony of it. Dave seems to recognize it, though; behind the crooked shades his eyes go wide and even more terrified than they were before, and even before you can take your hand away from his head he's moving. You don't even have time to react before he's dragged you up to your feet and a couple steps away; by the time you open your mouth to ask what the fuck he—
The explosion feels like it ruptures your fucking eardrums. It probably doesn't; you've seen trolls who died from pure sound, and there was a hell of a lot more blood than you're feeling on yourself right now. You still can't fucking hear anything but ringing, can't see anything period; the noise came with a flash of unbearably bright light too, like whatever they're using was designed to keep you immobile and placid.
But hey, you're not a fucking milkbeast.
You snarl and grab for the sickles hooked into your waistband—and they're not there, of course they're not there, one more fucking casualty of people on this planet being fucking nervous around mutants with weapons. Thanks a fucking lot, D; what the fuck did he think was going to happen if he left you with no way to defend yourself? You're going to die, you're going to fucking die with your hands as empty as a newly molted wiggler's, your fucking mutant blood is going to soak into the dirt of this alien world and they'll scorch it with fire until there's nothing left of you—
Dave's familiar weight slams into you, knocking you off your feet. Your head hits something harder than grass. You very dimly hear one more fucking gunshot through the irritating whine in your head.
All that happens in pretty much the same instant.
The next explosion is loud enough to actually make a noticeable impact on your reality, which is saying something; you're still deaf enough to not be able to hear your own highly imaginative swearing as you blink until you can see something other than blinding white. (It's blue streaked with white. You're on your back looking up at the sky.) Your head aches, but not enough to keep you from struggling back to your feet.
Okay, so the weirdass black-and-white vehicle that was the culprit for the whole death-by-gunfire attempt is...kind of gone now. There's pieces of it, but nothing large enough to be recognizable; the main reason you know where it was is because a section of hedge is on fire across the street.
Fuck. You need to remember to never get on Hal's bad side. Holy fucking shit.
"See, Dave, it's fucking fine—" Ugh. Your voice sounds fucking horrible through possibly-damaged eardrums. That's not why you stop, though—you stop because you just turned around, away from the car that Hal just blew up.
You turn towards Dave, and he's...
He's. He's standing there, not looking at you. You don't know where his shades went, but they're gone, and his head's lowered, because he's looking down instead of at you, he's looking down at his hands, and his hands—
They're red. Fuck, there's red on his hands because he touched his chest, and there's red on his shirt starting high up by his throat and all the way down to his fucking stomach already, there's red all over him and your thinkpan won't fucking process this shit. You can't even think the word blood because you've never seen that much of it before.
Not in his color. Not in your color.
"Dave!"
You can hear your voice, and it's a fucking keen. It horrifies you as much as the blood soaking Dave's shirt does; you can't make that sound, you're not fucking allowed, that's only for quadmates and you can't have any.
And your own horror at yourself disgusts you. How dare you doubt him? He fucking saved you; how the fuck can you freeze at the implication that you've settled into a quadrant with him at some fucking point? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Whatever it is, it's not so severe that it stops you from catching Dave when his legs go out from under him. Well, kind of catching him; you keep him from collapsing on the grass, but you stagger under his weight and the weight of your own fucking fear and go down as well, an awkward sprawl that ends with your legs curled under you and Dave laid across your lap like this is an illustration on the cover of a doomed-love romance novel.
Fuck, you wish you hadn't thought that. It makes the moment when you touch his face and realize his eyes are open and fixed so much worse, makes it even more terrifying when you get your arms around him and can't find any sign of the slight movement of his breathing.
No.
This can't be happening.
You try to say his name again and the sound that comes out isn't recognisable as any kind of language. It doesn't get any reaction from Dave, either; he's not fucking breathing, of course he wouldn't react—
This is the point where you hug him to your chest, curl yourself around him, close your eyes, and stop thinking.
Then someone touches you, says something, tries to pull your arms loose from Dave, and you really have to move, right? They're not fucking taking him. You'll kill anyone who tries.
Unfortunately, your completely fucking inadequate claws just skate across the red-and-black leather of Wade's mask, and when you go to try and latch onto his throat because even if you can't claw him open you can still strangle the fucker who's trying to take your human away, he just grabs your wrists and pulls, lifting you to your feet.
Well, lifting you up, anyway. You're not fucking standing, that's for sure—if you were capable of rational thought right now, you'd be aware that you look like a hooked fish, suspended by both wrists, thrashing and snarling helplessly as Wade holds you up and away from Dave.
Fuck!
There's nothing you can do.
When you go limp and start keening again, Wade actually loses his grip on you. The ground is still hard, that much hasn't changed, but you don't even bother to rearrange yourself into some kind of position that doesn't hurt like hell; what the fuck does it matter if this hurts?
"Shit," Wade mutters. "Karkat, stay."
(Like you want to move. Like you want to do anything, ever again.)
Actually, you do move. A little. Enough to watch Wade squat down next to Dave—who still hasn't moved, who you know won't move—and take one limp bloody hand, raise Dave's arm and check the little timekeeper strapped around it.
After a second, Wade sighs. "Okay, alright, awesome—"
When he slides his hands under Dave to lift him up, you realize what's going on. Fuck.
Hal tackles you about half a second before you would have lunged at Wade. You don't even know where the fuck he came from, but it doesn't really matter—Hal outweighs you by just enough that you can't get him off without resorting to actual bodily injury.
Which you're not going to do. This is Dave's family, basically a special kind of quadmate that you don't even have, you're not going to—
Yeah, screw that. You growl at him (as fucking if he's going to register that as the warning it is) and then twist to sink your teeth into his arm.
Hal yelps. You taste blood for barely long enough to register that weird metallic flavor that just screams alien to you; then you taste something that's less a taste and more of an apocalyptic experience. Like having Sollux discharge the biggest psionic jolt he can produce, right into your fucking pan.
So yeah, being conscious is no longer an option right now. Just fucking great.