Toki can scream. They all knew it, from random nights when nightmares took hold (the week after their folks visited the first time was the worst, Pickles gave him a handful of Xanax after being woken up five nights in a row and that ended it) or if he saw bicentennial quarters. Shit, he screamed for nearly an hour after that kid croaked on him.
Pickles hated it. Hearing anything with that much raw emotion and pain made his hands ache for a bottle. Any bottle. But Nathan fucking loved it. He recorded it once and wrote like fifteen songs (two of which Nathan actually liked and might hit production). So they stand there, open mouthed, shocked by the chain of events that lead to this, Toki kneeling in the ice and snow, screaming in a mash up of Norwegian and English, pounding on the ice with his bare fists.
Pickles looses track of how long it goes on. Murderface grows bored of staring and moved onto throwing more firecrackers. Nathan is mumbling song lyrics into his recorder. Skwisgaar sulked into his seat in the murdercycle ('er, murder-snow-thing,' according to Nathan) and was running scales on his guitar, muttering in Swedish after a particularly loud outburst from Toki. They've all moved on. But Pickles can't look away, can't even close his mouth. His teeth hurt from being exposed to the cold. But it seems oddly important to him that someone sees what is going in, someone pay attention to their bandmate's mental break down. And apparently, he's the one to do it. He hates the others for making this his problem. And he hates himself, of course, for caring enough to listen. He hates that he can really understand the pain behind the cries.
Bearing whiteness isn't enough; he realizes when he sees the blood on the snow. Pickles doesn't know if it is from Toki screaming his throat bloody (how many times has he seen that happen in Dethklok between Toki's nightmares and Nathan learning how to scream in the early days before he got the hang of not damaging his throat?) or his hands from hitting the ice, and it doesn't really matter. Because he's suddenly pissed off and tired of this (and worried, but anger is easier and safer) and he turns back to the murder-snow-thing.
"Don't nobody do nothin'" he mumbles, but knows they're all too busy ignoring or being inspired by the screams to care about a silly thing like Toki injuring himself in his grief.
He digs around under his seat of the murder-snow-thing and comes up with the tranquilizer gun. The same one he shot Rockso with. This is less fun than shooting that fucking clown. Without warning anyone, (would they even care anyway?) he walks out onto the ice and takes aim at Toki's rump - best place to hit someone, they learned at the party (a guest didn't do so well after being shot in the eye with a dart -though that might have been due to how close Murderface was standing to him- so he feels better aiming there, a bit safer) – and fires the gun.
Pickles is honestly surprised that Toki even notices it, the tiny (new) pain of the dart biting into him considering how lost into his horror he is, but Toki does. He gives a half turn to look at Pickles, mouth open but finally no sound coming from it (the screams still ring in Pickles' ears). He reaches for the dart, but the act of taking a hand up off the ice makes him lose his balance and he face plants into the ice and snow (good thing his head was turned slightly, or he might've busted his nose, Pickles thinks, but ignores it, the unmetal act of caring about another man not hurting his face). Toki's eyes are still open and locked on him, frozen.
Fuck, he had hoped that would've made the pain he saw there go away (not hat pickles will ever admit that out loud either).
He crunches over the snow covered ice to squat next to Toki who is breathing much slower now, making tiny, almost in audible hoarse cries of frustration and pain without making words. It's actually worse than the screaming and Pickles has to stop himself from reaching out and clamping a hand over Toki's mouth to stop it. He settles for drumming out the intro to Thunderhorse with his frozen fingers on his equally frozen thigh. Fuck Norway is cold. He saw enough snow in Tomahawk to last a lifetime. He hated the shit.
"Drownsed," Toki says. Pickles can hardly hear him, his voice is so raw. The blood on the guitarist's teeth and chin at least explains where that came from.
Pickles finds himself nodding stupidly, but all he's thinking is why does the damn sedative take so fucking long to actually work.
"Far's dead, Pickle. Was scareds as he sinks." Toki continues in his cracked raw voice, despite how much Pickles whishes Toki would just pass out already.
It doesn't help that Pickles thinks the old dead bastard deserved to be terrified, making it hard for him to be all that sympathetic at the moment. They had all seen the scars the fucker had left on his son, the physical and mental. Shit, it took Toki almost six months before the rest of the band saw him shirtless (they were all more impressed than anything else, it was brutal after all, all that marred flesh, until later when they put it all together and realized what those scars meant - then it was far less metal and more screwed up and stomach clenching). Pickles couldn't understand why Toki came back. Pickles would have come back to make sure the bastard was dead, and it made Pickles angry to know that wasn't why Toki came back to this frozen hellhole.
Pickles says none of this, of course. Caring isn't metal, but fuck it, he can't help but reach a hand out and awkwardly pat Toki's shoulder, wanting to offer some kind of comfort. He's just not good at that shit.
"Fuck it, dood," He offers, finally, just to say something. At a loss for what to say and gives the best advise he's ever been able to give in life. "Close yer eyes and enjoy the high from the tranq."
That gets a teeny tiny ghost of a smile, then Toki does as told. All the tension leaves his face, finally.
Pickles lets out all the air that's been trapped in his lungs since Toki started to scream, since before that, really, since Charles bullied them into coming on this god awful trip.
Fuck Norway.
Fuck the snow and ice.
Fuck the bastard that sunk to the bottom of the fucking lake. Pickles hates him for that, the cowardly bastard sinking out of reach. He'd like to piss on Aslaug mother-fucking Wartooth's dead corpse, but he can't now and his chest is tight and fuck asthma because he can't breath and fuck Toki for making him get this angry at a dead old creepy bastard that never did anything to him, so why the fuck are his hands aching from being clenched so damn tight other then the fucking cold and he really cannot get a breath in and he feels four fucking years old like the first time his pent up rage at Seth made him stop breathing and his mother freak the fuck out -
His startled yelp when a hand clamps down on his shoulder makes Pickles take a much-needed breath in.
"Fuck!" Nathan yells as Pickles' chest heaves for breath. Pickles can't even look up at the other man, his face red from anger and embarrassment (fuck does he know that drill so well or what?). Nathan is silent for a moment, then let's out a relieved sound and toes the dart sticking out of Toki's ass.
"Oh, uh, good. We thought you, like, uh really shot him."
The weak giggle that bubbles out of him makes Pickles hate himself more. "Nah...didn't..." want him to hurt himself, his heart, that cold little shriveled up stone wants to say, but his mouth goes for the semi-truth instead. "Couldn't listen to him scream over that douchebag no more." Fuck. He didn't mean to imply that concern, but really, Pickles is pretty proud of his brain coming up with anything but useless vowel sounds.
"Yeah. I hope drowning hurts. If, you know, falling down that hill didn't." Nathan's words make some of the embarrassed color leave Pickles' face. That's good then. At least someone else hated Aslaug fucking Wartooth.
A grunt from Nathan snaps Pickles back into the moment. Fuck he needs to focus here. Nathan is lifting Toki up and Pickles uncurls from his squat, the way his back pops telling him he is too old for this kinda shit.
"Hey guys, Pickles didn't kill him! It was just a tranquilizer dart!" Nathan's voice is too loud and too happy in the frozen wasteland. Too tired to even speak, Pickles just raises a pierced eyebrow at the singer. Nathan actually looks sheepish. "We, uh, didn't think it was a real gun...but you know..."
Pickles' laugh this time sounds more tired than hysterical. He'll take it. They reach the rest of the group, Nathan setting Toki down in his seat with surprising gentleness.
"How ams wes to knows if you decikdes to kills him, pickle?" Skwisgaar asks defensively. If he could feel his own face, Pickles would know he's frowning at them, at the idea of him killing fucking Toki of all people.
"Like I'd shoot any of you." He catches himself sounding like he cares about them and adds quickly: "From behind. I'd wanna see it on yer faces."
With that, he folds himself into his seat and huddles his knees to his (still a few inches too tight) chest. He's done with this shit.
That will only last until the Dethkopter lands and the others slink off after setting the still unconscious guitarist on the chaise lounge in front of the roaring fire. Pickles will mumble something about wanting to warm up and something in his voice will keep them from pressing him. After he's sure they're all gone, Pickles will get Toki out of his half wet clothing and quickly check the man over for frostbite (in a not gay way). He'll spent the entire night on the floor, shivering, telling himself it's the cold despite the sweat on the small of his back. As a result of his vigil, he'll be the lucky bastard to explain to Ofdensen what the hell happened in Norway. He'll be the one to get asked why no one thought to tell Toki's family that the old man was at the bottom of the lake. According to what Ofdensen knows about the douche bags' church, this is a very bad thing, he'll be told. Pickles will almost think Charles is really upset about that until the usually deadpan mans face morphs into a slight grin and Pickles will be comforted that at least one other person really does share his glee and his hatred of Aslung.
That will, combined with Toki's horse "Takk, Pickle," some hours later will make his chest loosen up those final few inches. Safe at home, with all his bandmates also safe, he'll be able to breathe again.